Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

Some of the pseudo intellectuals in the Arab world are lamenting the demise of "progressive regimes" in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt as well as the looming demise of some other regimes in the region.

These hypocrites and hangers-on, who had benefited immensely, financially and otherwise, from their close association with some of the defunct regimes, are now bewailing the allegedly negative impact of Arab revolutions on the overall Palestinian cause.

These orphans of tyranny and despotism falsely think that Arab tyrants, the ones who have been consigned to the dustbin of history and the others awaiting their turn, preserved the Palestinian cause from possible demise and prevented Israel from achieving its expansionistic goals.

The truth of the matter, however, is that all these regimes exploited the legitimate Palestinian cause in order to repress and torment their own people and stay in power as long as possible, all under the false rubric of challenging Zionism and Western imperialism.

Thus, thousands, probably tens of thousands of innocent Arabs and Muslims were brutally killed and tortured in the name of fighting Israel and Zionism. Hundreds of thousands were imprisoned and persecuted for demanding freedom, dignity and human rights.

The great Arab poet, al-Mutanabbi, may have had sycophants like these in mind when he said: "The tears of the eye betray their man if they happen to harrowing after the traitors."

Well, since when would the merciless murder of our fellow Arab citizens lead to the liberation of Palestine.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

An Arab-Israeli boy looks at the remains of the mosque burned over-
night in an arson attack by Jewish extremists in northern village of
Tuba Zangaria. (Photo/Caption: AFP/The Australian)

As Jewish terrorist attacks on mosques in occupied Palestine are assuming a phenomenal frequency.

Indeed, with the Israeli government and security establishment doing next to nothing to put an end to this wanton and unprovoked terror, a huge fire is being started in the region.

In religious wars, all sides are usually variably culpable and blamable . However, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Jewish fanatics bear nearly 100% of the blame.

Their attacks against mosques are not provoked by similar Palestinian attacks against Jewish religious places. In fact, Jewish terror groups readily admit that arson attacks against mosques are meant to embarrass the Israeli occupation army.

The attacks are perpetrated under the slogan "Price Tag" every time the Israeli army moves to dismantle a Jewish settlement outpost.

So why is it that the Palestinians and their places of worship are attacked, not the Israeli army?

Well, it takes a thoroughly sick mind to rationalize, even glamorize such attacks, but the Israeli settler camp never faces a shortage of virulence, mental depravity and mental sickness.

We are talking after all about the worst of the worst that racist, Talmudic Judaism could breed, people who view the rest of mankind as subhuman.

The practical implications of such a venomous ideology are enormous and absolutely nefarious. If non-Jews are subhuman, then their lives must be worthless, have no sanctity and expendable.

Think not I am making an exaggeration as it is difficult to exaggerate the evilness of these racist thugs who spend a lifetime demonizing and dehumanizing humanity as they celebrate their Chosen-people or Master-race status.

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Khalid Amayreh

Land grab: Fortified settlements for Jews on stolen Palestinian land

Despite knowing that settlements have broken the peace process, Israel is forging ahead with plans to build new Jew-only colonies on Palestinian land, writes Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

Taking advantage of the ongoing turbulence in the Arab world, the proximity of the US presidential elections, and the international community's manifest powerlessness to check aggressive Israeli unilateralism, the Israeli government has been stepping up hostile measures against the largely unprotected Palestinian community.

The measures, which include the seizure of a large swathe of Palestinian-owned land for settlement expansion, wanton home demolition as well as unrelenting attacks and acts of vandalism against Palestinians and their property, are aimed at rendering unrealistic and impossible the goal of establishing a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank.

The latest colonialist Israeli scheme would confiscate thousands of acres of mostly privately owned Arab land south of Bethlehem. This week, the Israeli occupation army approved the establishment of a new permanent settlement south of the Biblical city. The new settlement would include a large farm as well other infrastructure. It would also cut off the southern West Bank -- the Hebron region -- from the Bethlehem and Ramallah regions, putting an end to Palestinian demographic continuity in the vicinity.

Virtually powerless Palestinian Authority (PA) officials described Israel's plans to build a new settlement as "outrageous". One PA official labelled the new expansion scheme as an "act of rape".

PA spokespersons appealed to Egypt and the European Union to condemn and actively oppose Israeli plans, rightly described as "effective decapitation of the last hopes for a dignified peace in the region".

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

In a cheap effort to procure Jewish votes and money, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has claimed that the Palestinian people is "an invented people".

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places and for a variety of reasons we have sustained them against Israel now since the 1940s. It is tragic."

Asked whether he considered himself a Zionist, the highly opportunistic and morally duplicitous republican leader said "I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a state…Remember, there was no Palestinian state. It was part of the Ottoman empire until the early 20th century."

There is no doubt that Gingrich's claims are an obscene gallimaufry of errors, half-truths and outright lies.

Let us begin with the issue of an "invented people." Well, if we discuss the matter academically, e.g. honestly and objectively, we will reach the ineluctable conclusion that the American people themselves are an invented people. After all, the only true and "un-invented" people are the native Americans, most of whom were exterminated by White immigrants, presumably including Gingrich's forefathers, who called the genocide "manifest destiny."

In comparison, the Palestinian people have stronger claims to originality and authenticity.

In fact, Palestinians predated the Israelites by thousands of years. Remember, even Abraham, the patriarch, had to purchase a burial place for his wife Sara from a local Palestinian. The story is mentioned in the Bible.

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Khalid Amayreh

"The apartheid Israeli regime decided last week to freeze the transfer of tax and customs revenue levied by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority." (PA)

The illegal and immoral measure, which Israel resorts to rather routinely, is intended to bully the Ramallah leadership to capitulate to Zionist whims and blackmailing tactics.

Israel never stopped threatening to strangulate the PA economically and financially if the latter didn't succumb to the Israeli will.

The systematic Israeli blackmail of the PA is a disgraceful expression of the Oslo Accords and other subsequent accords and understandings between the pseudo autonomous authority and the Nazi-like Israeli occupation regime.

Needless to say, these scandalous agreements which effectively reduced the Palestinian regime-from the supposed equal partner envisioned in these so-called agreements-to a vanquished supplicant begging for virtually everything from the Israeli side, from travel permits to basic commodities without which any modern society wouldn't be able to function.

But the story doesn't end here, which reminds us of what the legendary Arab poet, Abu'ttayeb al-Mutannabi, said about slaves who cling to their masters while crying out for freedom:

Wa'inna domo'a la'yni ghodron berabbeha. Itha konna ithra al ghadereena jawariya.
(The tears of the eye betray a man if they keep running after the traitors.)

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Khalid Amayreh

It is a good omen that the newly-appointed Prime Minister of Jordan, Mr. Awn Khasawna, has finally admitted publicly that the expulsion of Hamas leaders from Jordan in 1999 was wrong.

Khasawneh, a jurist of impeccable credentials, said deporting the Islamist Palestinian leaders, who were and are still Jordanian citizens, was a legal mistake.

His audacious observation portrays a man who wouldn't be silenced or intimidated by a police-state apparatus or a security machine that sees itself above the people.

Khasawneh probably couldn't have uttered what he said only a few months ago, especially prior to the outbreak of the Arab Spring against autocracies, despotism, and dynastic fiefdoms.

The fact that he has said what he said illustrates the tremendous psychological change hovering over the Arab world, including Jordan.

Indeed, the very appointment of a prime minister that is not automatically at the King's beck and call shows that the regime is beginning to consider and be sensitive to the feelings of the people, which is an auspicious sign.

Fortunately, the Hashemite regime in Jordan , despite its many excesses, is not a nefarious regime as indeed is the case with most other regimes in the region.

Nonetheless, the Kingdom of Jordan still has a long way to go in terms of political reforms which would make the kingdom strong and immune to foreign pressure and interference.

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Khalid Amayreh

It seems that the tight Jewish stranglehold on the American government is not only preventing the Obama administration from pursuing a fair, rational and honest approach to the enduring Palestinian crisis, but is also inhibiting the formulation in Washington of an accurate and objective understanding of basic facts in and about the Middle East.

An example of this willful and unnecessary ignorance was a statement made recently by the US Ambassador for Middle East Peace David Hale. According to Hale,

[the Arab Spring could] "sweep Hamas from power." "The Palestinians are no more immune to currents of change and demand for democratization, reform and freedom than any other people in the region," [he was quoted as saying.] "I think you will see those same forces affect Hamas because clearly their leadership is not characterized by any of those words."

Hale's words exude a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding of the facts and realities in the region.

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From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

There is no doubt that one of the main reasons for America's phenomenal economic and financial problems, which affect America's overall global standing, has to do with the so-called Israeli factor. I know it is politically incorrect to say so, especially in an electioneering atmosphere. Nonetheless, knowing and telling the truth shall set us all free.

President Obama admitted recently that the US is facing the severest economic crisis ever since the great depression. However, like most of his predecessors and nearly all others contemporary politicians in Washington, the last thing that comes to Obama's mind is pointing an accusing finger at Israel and her powerful lobbies and pressure groups that have effectively hijacked the American government, especially Congress, by making sure that the American political establishment is answerable, first and foremost, to the Zionist Jewish power-centers, not to the American people.

The backyard dogs of Israeli propaganda as well as the numerous political prostitutes who would do virtually anything to get Jewish attention (and money) would go to any extent in order to deny the obvious, namely that Israel is destroying America by utilizing and exploiting the erstwhile great country in order to expedite regional and global Zionist interests, including territorial expansion and regional supremacy.

Nonetheless, it seems that America's economic woes are too real and too pervasive to be obliterated through a façade of lies and prevarication by the Zionist-controlled media.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

There are growing signs that Israel is traveling on a losing track. Indeed, with the prospects of finding a dignified, just and mutually-accepted settlement for the enduring Palestinian question nearly nonexistent, Israel is making sure that its future will be problematic, uncertain and even precarious.

True, Israel is militarily powerful and somewhat tightly controls the politics and policies of the United States, its guardian ally. However, the strategic value of the "American variable" or "American connection" is steadily becoming less certain and less than absolute in light of the progressive deterioration in America's global standing

Until a few years ago, the U.S. was thought of as a potentially positive force, a source of an absolute and matchless asset, facilitating rather than impeding the achievement of a prospective peace deal in the Middle East.

However, with the phenomenal domination of Zionist Jews of the American government, especially Congress, the U.S. seems to have become a handy tool in the hands of Zionist extremists pursuing maximalist goals in occupied Palestine, including the contemplated liquidation of the Palestine cause.

Hence, one would exaggerate little by saying that the U.S. has now a very limited ability to effect real change in the Middle East. One could even say that the U.S. is now a liability rather than an asset for efforts to effect real peace in the region.

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From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

Palestinian leaders on both sides of the Green Line have warned against rising mass terror by Jewish religious fanatics against Muslim holy places.

The warnings came hours after suspected Jewish terrorists torched a mosque at the village of Tuba Zangariya in the Upper Galilee .

Eyewitnesses reported that around 1:00 o'clock a.m. (after midnight Sunday), suspected Jewish terrorists stormed the main mosque at the village, and set it on fire, apparently using an inflammable substance. The entire interior of the mosque went up in flames, causing heavy damage.

Quranic texts and other religious books were burned. Before leaving, the perpetrators scrawled racist anti-Islam graffiti on the walls.

Ahmed Teibi, an Arab lawmaker in the Israeli Knesset, described the burning of the mosque as "a clear-cut terrorist act."

"This is not an isolated incident, this is not an aberration, it is not thunder on a clear day. This is a natural outcome of the systematic incitement against the Arab community. The poisoned incitement against our community by many rabbis and the Nazi-like edicts issued by some rabbinic councils, which forbid Jews from renting homes and apartments to Arabs have finally produced this.

"This grave deterioration must be stopped immediately. We hold the government of Israel solely responsible. We are talking about a racist, fascist and extremist government whose policies and practices have made this crime inevitable.

"Why is it that the racist rabbi of Safad has not been arrested? Why is it that not a single Jewish terrorist responsible for mosque torching has been arrested."

Teibi added that the best response to the terrorist act was rehabilitating the mosque as soon as possible and exercising a measure of self-restraint.

"This is the most appropriate response to these racists and fascists."

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