Stephen Lendman

The whole world's watching. Growing millions know. Israel is a rogue terror state. It is amoral, brutish, and ruthless. Arabs are murdered for not being Jews.

Gazans suffer most of all. Israel's been terror-bombing them daily. Civilians are maliciously targeted. Growing numbers are killed. Official totals way understate the toll. Many others are injured. Children are traumatized. Parents are frantic. How much more of this can people take?

Gazans dig through rubble for survivors. Others bury their dead. Media scoundrels assault truth. They run cover for Israel's worst crimes. Imagine supporting mass murder. Doing so makes them complicit.

A scurrilous New York Times editorial headlined "Hamas's Illegitimacy," saying:

"Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 and is backed by Iran, is so consumed with hatred for Israel that it has repeatedly resorted to violence, no matter the cost to its own people."

Fact check: Vicious lies like this demand condemnation. Setting the record straight is vital. Hamas is Palestine's legitimate government. In January 2006, Palestinians elected their officials overwhelmingly. Israel and Washington imposed a West Bank coup d'etat regime. It's illegitimate. It's also pro-Israeli. Conflict followed. Hamas was wrongly blamed. Abbas serves illegitimately as president. Israel rigged his election. His term expired in January 2009. He won't step down or hold new elections. He's a longtime Israeli collaborator. He sold out at Oslo. He spurns his own people. He replicates Quisling harshness. He's an embarrassment to legitimate governance.

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Gilad Atzmon

In the last two weeks we have learned that one of central London’s abandoned houses has been reclaimed and transformed into a “radical” centre for “discussion, action, and education around the issue of Palestine.” The Palestine Place promised to become a “squatted hub of activity from the 2nd-17th June running everything from film screenings, lectures, workshops and trainings to cultural, musical and culinary events”. But it didn’t take more than a week for the ‘radical’ place to become yet another crypto-Zionist gathering engaged primarily in gatekeeping and even expulsion of some distinguished activists and thinkers.

I have learned yesterday that Ken O’Keefe, one of our most prominent solidarity activists, a man who spent many months of his life in Gaza, a man who is married to a Palestinian woman and is father to two Palestinian kids, a man who posses a Palestinian passport and a key to Gaza, given to him personally by Ismail Haniya – two days ago this man was rudely expelled from Palestine Place. Clearly a Palestinian Passport and a ‘key to Gaza’ were not sufficient for London’s Palestine Place’s radical committee.

As soon as Ken told me about his expulsion I spoke with two Palestinian grassroots activists, both of whom had participated in missions alongside Ken. They both repeated the same shocking line:

Palestine Place, forget about them, it is taken over by the PSC and the BDS gang.

The news about PSC and the ‘BDS gang’ being dominated by AZZ are now widely accepted amongst most commentators on Palestine but still, I was intrigued to know what happened there in this ‘radical’ Palestine Place that led to these ‘pro’ Palestinian squatters to behave like Israelis and evict KenO’Keefe.

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Roger Sheety

From the December 2008 massacre in Palestine (Gaza). The
murderous siege still is in place and many people are dying.

The recent killing of 25 Palestinians in Gaza and the wounding of at least 80 more within four days—March 9-12—requires some context as the majority of western mainstream media outlets are either unwilling or unable to provide any.

More often than not these mainstream media reports in some form or another refer to the Palestinian dead as “militants.” The term militant is defined simply as “vigorously active and aggressive, especially in support of a cause” and “engaged in warfare; fighting.” Synonyms listed include “belligerent, combative, and contentious. See: fanatic.” Already then, Palestinians, even as they are killed in large numbers by the most sophisticated weapons money can buy, are marked as the aggressors. Further, as implied within the definition, they are fanatics, irrational and bent on destruction—the victim in this case being poor, nuclear-armed and US-protected Israel.

Virtually none of the major western media outlets ever ask questions such as: who exactly are these “militants”? Why are there so many of them in such a small place as Gaza? Why, if they are such an existential threat to poor Israel, are they always being killed in such substantial numbers? And why do the dead always include scores of women, children, the elderly and the sick? These, apparently, are taboo questions in the free western media and therefore beyond the realm of permitted discussion.

Here, however, is some background to help answer these supposedly unspeakable questions.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: A Palestinian woman hangs her laundry on the roof of her house close to a concrete wall, part of the controversial Israeli security barrier which separates the West Bank town of Abu Dis from east-Jerusalem on June 30, 2004. (Reuters/Reinhard Krause)

Instead of peace, reconciliation, equity and justice, Israel plans settlement expansions and more Walls. More on them below.

At the same time, Abbas broke his pledge about no peace talks unless settlement expansions stop. Chief negotiators Saeb Erekat and Yitzhak Molcho are meeting in Amman, Jordan. They're joined by Quartet representatives.

Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev claims "talks are intended to move forward to negotiations."

PLO spokesman Xavier Abu Eid said, "We are just trying to create the right environment for talks." Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat sidestepped controversy, saying "I would not make a big deal out of it." According to Abbas:

The meeting "was a response to a noble initiative by the brothers in Jordan in an attempt to push forward the peace process and to bridge gaps."

"God willing, results of this meeting will be revealed in the coming two days, and based on that we will set the suitable grounds for resuming negotiations. This would be positive, and we hope Jordan will succeed."

In fact, Abbas and other PLO leaders know decades of peace talks proved fruitless. Israel doesn't negotiate. It demands. Settlement construction won't stop. Neither will Israel's Separation Wall and others on three borders - Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. More on them below.

Claiming meeting in Amman doesn't begin new talks is duplicitous, even though what follows is uncertain. Hamas denounced them. Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri wants them boycotted, saying they replicate a "failed policy."

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) calls them an affront, a clear setback, and "severe political mistake," benefitting Israel alone. The Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA) opposes them while land theft, home demolitions, and settlement expansions continue.

They benefit Israel at the expense of Palestine. Notably, as talks began, Israel's Housing Ministry announced 300 new East Jerusalem housing units on stolen Palestinian land. They're part of 500 units announced in mid-December.

At the time, Housing Minister Ariel Atias said it's "clear that in any future agreement, these neighborhoods will stay under Israel's sovereignty," as well as others yet to be announced.

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William James Martin

Daily life in tents for 6,000 Palestinian residents of Nahr
Al-Barid Refugee Camp in Tarablus, Lebanon, 1952.
Today, the population of the camp is more than 40,000...

One thing is certain: Israel is not the victim.

November 29, 1947 was the date the UN passed the Partition Resolution partitioning Palestine, more or less equally, into a Jewish and an Arab state.

In fact, the ethnic cleansing commenced the very next morning when the 75,000 Arab citizens of Haifa were subjected to a campaign of terror jointly by the terrorist group, the Irgun, under Manachem Begin, and the Haganah, the regular militia under David Ben Gurion. The Jewish settlers who had arrived during the previous decade had built their homes higher up the mountain and thus occupied a higher topographical space. From the superior height, they could snipe at the villagers at will. They began doing this while the Jewish troops rolled barrels of burning oil down their roads and then ignited them. When the terrified residents came out to try to extinguish the rivers of fire, they were sprayed with machine gun fire. Another techniques was to deliver cars filled with explosives to Arab garages to be repaired, and then to detonate the cars in the garages.

On its website, the official historian of the Palmach (a special unit of the Haganah) states, “The Palestinians [in Haifa] were from December onwards under siege and intimidation.”

This was the beginning of the ethnic cleansing and occurred six months before the first regular soldier from a surrounding Arab state entered Palestine, which was on May 15, 1948.

I remind you that the Deir Yassin massacre occurred on April 9, 1948, and also that by May 15, all of the major cities of Palestine had been cleansed of Arabs and about one half of the 750,000 to 800,000 Palestinian refugees has been ethnically cleansed.

This was the beginning of the expulsion of the Palestinians Arabs from Haifa and from Palestine. The ending for Haifa’s Arabs came on Passover evening of April 21, when the British commander, Stockwell, called four Arab community leaders in to this office to inform them that the British army would be evacuating the city and advised the Arabs that they could not be protected.

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Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: From time to time, I do meet some very brave Jews, people who fight for humanism while stripping themselves of any trace of choseness and exeptionalism. Evelyn Hecht-Galinski is such a person.

♣ ♣ ♣

Evelyn Hecht-Galinski: After 1945, my father issued a 'Denazification Certificate' to the then GDR leader Erich Honecker, amongst others. In today's sad present, a point is already reached where critics of Israel have to be provided with a 'Antisemitism-free Certificate' in order to kosherize them.

A point is already reached where representatives of Jewish interests are pressing to prevent public appearances of any such critic perceived as dangerous to them for simply working on the basis of facts.

A son of German Jewish immigrants, Prof. Ilan Pappe was banned by the highest representative of the city of Munich, Mayor Christian Ude (Social Democratic Party, SPD), from delivering a public talk in a local cultural centre. In Vienna the 'Wiener Zeitung' (Vienna newspaper) called him a 'controversial' historian with the aim of challenging his appearance at a conference right from the start. Public funding is being withdrawn in order to nip all criticism of Israel in the bud. In Freiburg, it was only by means of a court order that the cancellation of a Nakba exhibition in public spaces could be averted. Then the city of Düsseldorf staged a replay of its inglorious past: the early eighties had already seen the enforcement of a ban on performing Joshua Sobol's “The Palestinian Girl” at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus (Düsseldorf theatre) at the instigation of Mr. Scheinmann, president of the local Jewish community. Even my public protest, e.g. in WDR-TV and in various print media, didn't succeed in lifting the ban. It was, however, possible to get "asylum" at the theatre in Bonn (general director Volker Canaris from Düsseldorf). In these days, it is again Düsseldorf that prevented a Nakba exhibition.

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Ibrahim Hewitt

Thousands of words have been written about the scandalous arrest of Sheikh Raed Salah by the British government in what is being seen as an attempt to silence him at the insistence of the pro-Israel Lobby. Supporters of the Sheikh from all sides of the political and religious divide in Palestine and beyond have stepped forward to condemn Britain's action; Home Secretary Theresa May should hang her head in shame that she has been prepared to sacrifice goodwill for Britain across the Middle East to please the right-wing media and lobbyists for Israel.

As the phrase "pro-Israel Lobby" implies, this group of individuals and organisations carry out their nefarious work to promote Israel and its interests by influencing Western politicians and anyone else who will listen; the media is a favoured tool in this work and all too many journalists are happy to take the Zionist shilling and abandon their integrity in order to oblige. The Israel Lobby in the United States is, of course, well-documented and more or less controls Congress; witness the absurd spectacle of numerous standing ovations for Benjamin Netanyahu while addressing a joint session in Congress recently, and America's slavish devotion to and support for Israel, right or wrong. Theresa May's transparent-obsequiousness in pandering to the Lobby's whims a week ago by arresting Sheikh Salah suggests that Israel has decided that it is time to come out and flex its political muscles openly on this side of the Atlantic.

At the heart of the imbroglio is a man in his mid-fifties who is known as the "Gandhi of Palestine", much to the Lobbyists' amusement. They seek to portray Sheikh Raed Salah as a "hate preacher", an "anti-Semite" (even though he is more Semitic than many of his European Jewish detractors) hell-bent on destroying the Zionist state and all in it. Charges of blood libel have been levelled at him in Israel as well as in Britain; the strange thing is that in Israel he has been found not guilty of such ridiculous charges whereas in Britain there is an assumption that he is guilty - hence the mysterious, never-even-reached-him banning order - and deserving of being arrested, locked-up and, if the government gets its way, deported. As one commentator said, Britain is being more Israeli than the Israelis.

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Stephen Lendman

[Part II] Wikipedia says US presidential doctrines state "key goals, attitudes, or stances for United States foreign affairs." Except for James Monroe in 1823 asserting a declaration of regional dominance, later ones reflected Cold War and imperial politics since Harry Truman.

On March 29, eight New York Times contributors asked "Is There an Obama Doctrine," preceded by an introduction saying his previous day America's role in Libya speech asserted unilateral authority to intervene abroad "when our interests and values are at stake," an illegal position under international and constitutional law, unmentioned in the debate.

On April 13, Times writer Peter Baker headlined, "Obama Puts His Own Mark on Foreign Policy Issues," saying:

"If there is an Obama doctrine emerging, it is one much more realpolitik than his predecessor's, focused on relations with traditional great powers and relegating issues like human rights and democracy to second-tier concerns."

In fact, no US president in recent memory gave a damn about either or anything humanitarian.

Unmentioned was Obama's belligerent lawlessness, waging four imperial wars and numerous proxy ones, spending record amounts on militarism while homeland needs go begging. In fact, former White House chief of staff (now Chicago mayor) Rahm Emanuel calls it being "cold-blooded about the self-interests of your nation," no matter the death, destruction, and misery toll taken to achieve them.

They, not major media boilerplate, define his doctrine, an out-of-control agenda for American dominance, using missiles, bombs, ground troops, and assassination squads to indiscriminately slaughter civilians, including women, children, and elderly, virtually anyone in raging wars he opposed as a candidate.

In addition, he endorses torture and extraordinary renditions as official US policies, as well as backing the world's worst despots, ones not fit to be in polite or any other company.

Notably they include the odious Saudi monarchy and Bahrain's Al Khalifa one, committing daily atrocities against nonviolent protesters, doctors and nurses treating them when injured, and anyone potentially threatening their despotic chokehold on people wanting to be free.

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Medialens
Medialens

[Part 2] One of the main headlines on the BBC news homepage earlier this month read, 'Violence erupts at Israel borders'. Israeli soldiers had shot dead at least 12 protesters and injured dozens more. BBC 'impartiality' decreed that the brutal killings were presented almost as an act of nature, a volcanic eruption that simply happened.

Clicking on the link did at least bring up a more accurate headline: 'Israeli forces open fire at Palestinian protesters'. But the brutality was sanitised, with no details of the many victims. The Israeli viewpoint was prominent with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he 'hoped' that 'calm and quiet will quickly return, but let nobody be mistaken, we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty'.

Somehow a 'neutral' BBC perspective dictated that the lead image illustrating the story was of young Palestinian men throwing rocks in 'clashes' with fully armed soldiers from the Israeli Defence Forces.

The Palestinians had been taking part in annual protests on Nakba ('Catastrophe') day which, as the BBC put it, 'marks the moment when 100,000s of Palestinians lost their homes' on the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Again, the BBC's sanitised version of 'lost their homes' buries awkward history, as though homes had simply been repossessed when families fell behind on their mortgage payments. In reality, more than half of Palestine's native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted and 531 villages destroyed (Ilan Pappe, 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine', Oneworld, 2006).

After complaints from us, and perhaps realising the newspeak was just too much to swallow, the BBC tweaked the sentence the following day to read:

'Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in fighting after its creation.'

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Stephen Lendman

This day remains embedded in Palestinian consciousness. A historic fact, it represents an appalling injustice, inspiring resolve to keep struggling for liberation, independence, peace, and just redress, nothing less.

What Ilan Pappe described as "the ethnic cleaning of Palestine," Edward Said called its "holocaust," saying:

"Every human calamity is different, but there is value in seeing analogies and perhaps hidden similarities." He called Nazi extermination "the lowest point of (Jewish) collective existence." Occupied Palestinians today "are as powerless as Jews were" under Hitler, devastated by "power used for evil purposes," not self-defense.

As a result, they hang onto life by a thread, while Israel's military juggernaut systematically reigns terror against them, no one intervening to help. "Is this the Zionist goal for which hundreds of thousands have died," Said asked? Isn't it time for justice advocates to demand for Palestinians what Jews spent decades to achieve.

In his book titled, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," Pappe documented Israel's master plan D (Dalet in Hebrew), a war without mercy:

● depopulating villages and cities;
● massacring innocent victims;
● committing rapes and other atrocities;
● burning, bulldozing, blowing up or stealing homes, property and goods; and
● preventing expelled Palestinians from returning.

In all, systematic terror expelled about 800,000 Palestinians, killed many others, and destroyed 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. It was genocidal ethnic cleansing, what international law today calls a crime of war and against humanity for which convicted Nazis at Nuremberg were hanged.

Under 44 years of occupation this June, Palestinians still experience daily institutionalized persecution with no power over their daily lives in a constant state of fear with good reason.

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