Stephen Lendman

It's longstanding Israeli policy. Palestinians aren't wanted. Israel considers them subhuman. It wants them eliminated. It wants Jewish exclusivity. It wants maximum Jews and minimum Arabs. Israel's entire history is blood-drenched. Depravity defines it. It's longstanding genocidal war on Palestine reflects it. In 1985, then Israeli president Chaim Herzog said:

"We are certainly not willing to make partners of the Palestinians in any way in a land that was holy to our people for thousands of years. There can be no partner with the Jews of this land."

Former Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan urged treating Palestinians like dogs.

They're denied fundamental human and civil rights. Israel spurns peace and stability. Militarized occupation harshness persists. Rule of law principles don't matter. War without mercy is waged preemptively whenever Israel wishes. Victims are blamed for its crimes.

Imagine living in limbo under a foreign occupier. Imagine being denied self-determination. Imagine having no control over your daily life. Imagine living in constant fear. Imagine being economically strangled. Imagine being collectively punished. Imagine being denied free expression and movement. Imagine Gaza's suffocating blockade. Imagine isolated West Bank population centers. Imagine closed borders, curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, and separation walls. Imagine daily Kristallnacht in Palestine. Imagine hellish state terror. Imagine normal life denied. Imagine torture as official Israeli policy. Imagine mass arrests and imprisonments. Imagine thousands of Palestinian political prisoners languishing in Israel's gulag. Imagine their brutal treatment. Imagine it for wanting to live free on their own land in their own country. Imagine land and resource theft, targeted assassinations, and diaspora Palestinians prevented from returning to land rightfully theirs. Imagine Israeli security forces given authority to kill, brutalize, and otherwise collectively punish Palestinians with impunity. Imagine them taking full advantage. Imagine them being promoted, decorated or otherwise honored for cold-blooded murder and brutality. Imagine justice denied. Imagine Western leaders supporting Israeli genocide.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Israel Is Stealing and Murdering Its Way Through Palestine

Readers are asking for my take on the Israel-Gaza situation, and, believe it or not, Oxford University’s famous debating society, the Oxford Union, invited me to debate the issue.

I replied to the Oxford Union that I was unprepared to take responsibility for the Palestinians without undergoing the extensive preparation that an Oxford Union debate deserves and requires. Unless things have changed since my time at Oxford, one prevails in a Union debate by anticipating every argument of one’s opponent and smashing the arguments with humor and wit. Facts seldom, if ever, carry the day, and sometimes not even wit and humor if the audience is already committed to the outcome by the prevailing propaganda. There is no time or energy in my overfull schedule for such preparation plus time away and jet lag.

Moreover, I am not an expert on Israel’s conquest and occupation of Palestine. I know more than most people. I was rescued from Zionist propaganda by Israeli historians, such as Ilan Pappe, by Jewish intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, by documentary film makers, such as John Pilger, by Israeli journalists such as Uri Avnery and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and by an Israeli houseguest who is an Israeli member of an Israeli peace group that opposes Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes, villages, and orchards in order to build apartment blocks for settlers. There is only one take on the current Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, which Netanyahu, the demonic Israeli leader, declares will be a “protracted campaign” this time.

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William A. Cook

There he stands in his pin striped suit, Israeli star embossed on the US flag pin, glistening in the podium lights, smiling delightedly as he mouths lie after lie to the delighted listeners, including some 400 Congress members who find it a bit awkward as the klieg lights get brighter and brighter shining on them as stooges for this foreign government that commands them how to vote regardless of the desires of the American people. Netanyahu cannot preach truth to falsehood, he is the very face of falsehood.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the 2014
AIPAC Policy Conference

“Ladies and gentlemen, peace is Israel’s highest aspiration. I’m prepared to make a historic peace with our Palestinian neighbours — a peace that would end a century of conflict and bloodshed. Peace would be good for us. Peace would be good for the Palestinians” (B. Netanyahu before the 2014 AIPAC Conference)

There are those who stand in regal splendor in halls resplendent with brilliantly colored flags and emblems of rank testifying to their positions as leaders in the world, acknowledged with respectful applause, as the audience standing in adulation of that position, witness the entrance of the announced Lord of the realm as he ascends to the podium to declare his moral righteousness before the world spread out through the nations in the Temple of Television, and boldly, shamelessly lie before all humankind—they are the face of falsehood.

Yesterday that face was George W. Bush addressing the joint sessions of Congress as he announced vengeance against an unknown enemy as lie after lie fell from his lips. Today it is Netanyahu declaring his love for peace when he speaks for a nation led by Zionist ideology that has never sought peace as that word is known to the entire world and thus masks truth in obfuscation, for “peace” to the Zionist has been and continues to be “greater Israel” achieved by power not by peace as we know it.

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Gilad Atzmon

In the last few days blogger M. Jay Rosenberg came to the conclusion that Electronic Ali Abunimah is an anti-semite. Rosenberg's accusation is clearly unsubstantiated. Ali Abunimah is not an anti-semite. Dishonest? More likely.

Rosenberg writes, “let me explain why I consider Ali Abunimah to be anti-semitic…Ali Abunimah refers to Israelis as Zionists,.. but then he makes clear, over and over again, that Zionists are all bad people. Just go to his twitter feed and read the labels he uses for Zionists..’

Rosenberg is obviously uninformed. More and more commentators and scholars accept that Israelis are not Zionists, they are actually the product of the Zionist project. Most Israelis do not even understand what Zionism stands for. Zionism is the promise to bring about a Jewish national home. Once the Jewish State was founded (1948) Zionism finished its role as far as Israeli Jews are concerned. Thus, Zionism is now largely a Jewish Diaspora discourse. Accordingly, the debate between Zionists and the so-called ‘anti-’ has little relevance to Israeli politics or practice. In short, Rosenberg is wrong, yet why Abunimah misleads his readers, referring to Israelis as Zionists, remains unclear.

Abunimah may not be the most sophisticated theoretical commentator around, but he certainly monitors Israeli society and understands its politics. Abunimah refers to ‘Israelis’ as ‘Zionists’ only because his operation is sustained financially and politically by Jewish ‘anti-Zionists’ and the Jewish Left. Abunimah refers to Israelis as ‘Zionists’ only because he knows that telling the truth, uttering the ‘J’ word, may cost him dearly.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: Mass graves have been discovered in the historical cemetery of Al-Kazakhana in Jaffa, Al-Aqsa Foundation for Islamic Endowments and Heritage announced on Monday. The graves contain the remains of Palestinians killed by Jewish militias in 1948 during the Nakba (Catastrophe). According to the Foundation, they were discovered during routine maintenance and rehabilitation of the cemetery in one of the cities occupied by Israel since 1948. The Head of the cemetery rehabilitation project, Mohammed al-Ashqar, said that the remains indicate that they were of Palestinians of varied ages “killed by Zionist gangs” in Jaffa. Some of the graves also date back to the Palestinian Uprising of 1936 against British Mandate rule. (MasterAdrian2nd)

On June 1, Press TV headlined "Mass graves from 1948 war discovered in Jaffa." Palestinian Jaffa is now Tel Aviv's Jaffa municipality. Six mass graves were discovered. They contain remains of at least hundreds of Palestinian victims. These and other questions remain unanswered.

■ How many more mass graves are yet to be discovered? How many never will be found?
■ How many thousands of dead Palestinians remain hidden? How many loved ones were lost? How many surviving family members couldn't bury them respectfully?
■ Why have responsible Israelis remained unaccountable? Why hasn't the official historical record been set straight? Why don't lost Palestinian lives matter?

The Nakba was one of history's great crimes. Much about it is known. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe documented it. His book titled "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" explains. More on that below.

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Gilad Atzmon

Once again we see a familiar pattern: our united 'progressives' -- a veritable synagogue, a collective of great humanists -- lend their support to the oppressed. This time it is the ‘Syrian people’ whom they wish to liberate and their enemy is obviously Bashar Al-Asad.

It is a pattern we know only too well by now. Ahead of the ‘War Against Terror’ we witnessed years of intensive progressive Feminist and Gay’s rights groups campaigns for women’s rights in Afghanistan. The Progressive type also disapproves of the current state of the Iranian revolution. Too often he or she would insist that we must liberate the Iranians. This week, once again, we see a united front made by Tariq Ali, Ilan Pappe, Fredric Jameson, Norman Finkelstein and other very good people. They clearly want us to ‘liberate the Syrians’.

They campaign openly to topple Bashar al-Asad’s regime. They call the ‘people of the world’ to pressure the Syrian regime to end its oppression of and war on the ‘Syrian people.’ “We demand,” they say, that Bashar al-Asad leave immediately without excuses so that Syria can begin a speedy recovery towards a democratic future.”

So here we are. Ali, Jameson, Pappe, Finkelstein & Co, in light of recent Israeli attacks on Syria, will you be kind enough, gentlemen, to tell us whom you support? Is it Asad or Netanyahu you're siding with?

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Gilad Atzmon

Ilan Pappé is an important voice. One of those courageous historians, brave enough to open the Pandora box of 1948. Back in the 1990s Pappe, amongst a few other Israeli post-Zionists, reminded Israelis of their original sin - the orchestrated, racially-driven ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of Palestine - the Nakba.

On Nov. 30, 1947, Jews in Tel Aviv celebrate after the UN's
decision to partition Palestine into an "Arab" and a Jewish state.

But like many historians, Pappé, though familiar with the facts of history, seems either unable to grasp or reluctant to address the ideological and cultural meaning of those facts.

In his recent article, "When Israeli Denial of Palestinian Existence Becomes Genocidal," Pappé attempts to explain the ongoing Israeli dismissal of the Palestinian plight. Like Shlomo Sand, Pappé points out that Israeli President Shimon Peres’ take on history is a “fabricated narrative.”

So far so good, but Pappé then misses the point. For some reason, he believes that Peres’ denial of the Palestinian’s suffering is a result of a ‘cognitive dissonance.’ i.e. a discomfort experienced when two or more conflicting ideas, values or beliefs are held at the same time.

But what are those conflicting ideas or values upheld by Israelis and their President which cause them so much ‘discomfort’? Pappé does not tell us. Nor does he explain how Peres has sustained such ‘discomfort’ for more than six decades. Now, I agree that Peres, Netanyahu and many Israelis often exhibit clear psychotic symptoms, but one thing I cannot detect in Peres’ utterances or behavior is any ‘discomfort’.

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Ilan Pappé

In a regal interview he gave the Israeli press on the eve of the state’s ” Independence Day,” Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel, said the following:

“I remember how it all began. The whole state of Israel is a millimeter of the whole Middle East. A statistical error, barren and disappointing land, swamps in the north, desert in the south, two lakes, one dead and an overrated river. No natural resource apart from malaria. There was nothing here. And we now have the best agriculture in the world? This is a miracle: a land built by people” (Maariv, 14 April 2013).

This fabricated narrative, voiced by Israel’s number one citizen and spokesman, highlights how much the historical narrative is part of the present reality. This presidential impunity sums up the reality on the eve of the 65th commemoration of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine. The disturbing fact of life, 65 years on, is not that the figurative head of the so-called Jewish state, and for that matter almost everyone in the newly-elected government and parliament, subscribe to such views. The worrying and challenging reality is the global immunity given to such impunity.

Peres’ denial of the native Palestinians and his reselling in 2013 of the landless people mythology exposes the cognitive dissonance in which he lives: he denies the existence of approximately twelve million people living in and near to the country to which they belong. History shows that the human consequences are horrific and catastrophic when powerful people, heading powerful outfits such as a modern state, denied the existence of a people who are very much present.

This denial was there at the beginning of Zionism and led to the ethnic cleansing in 1948. And it is there today, which may lead to similar disasters in the future — unless stopped immediately.

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Stephen Lendman

Palestinians know what they're up against. UN success changed nothing on the ground. Daily Israeli state terror continues. World leaders do nothing to help. Rhetorical Palestinian support rings hollow. Americans like to say: Put your money where your mouth is. World leaders able to change things put theirs on Israel. They're complicit with US/Israeli imperial crimes. They spurn Palestinian rights. Their suffering continues daily. On December 1, Israeli soldiers shot two more Gazans. They accosted, arrested and detained another 13 Palestinian fishermen. Their "crime" was fishing in their own waters.

On November 21, Israel accepted memorandum of understanding terms. Both sides agreed to end conflict. It continues unabated. Israel bears full responsibility. It bears repeating. Its word isn't worth the paper it's written on. Rogue states operate that way. Israel is one of the worst. It matches the worst of regional tyranny. It's unsafe to live in. Even Jews for justice are targeted. Israel tolerates no opposition.

Shock troops attacked peaceful West Bank protesters. They arrested dozens lawlessly. They terrorize Palestinian communities. Occupation harshness continues. Life for Palestinians is hell.

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Stephen Lendman

Righteous Condemnation of Israeli Mass Murder

Media scoundrels feature pro-Israeli supporters. Doing so makes them complicit with Israeli crimes. Charles Krauthammer is one of the worst. He's an embarrassment to legitimate journalism. His latest Washington Post op-ed headlines "Why was there war in Gaza?" His commentary shows appalling ignorance, support for Israeli lawlessness, racist hate, and contempt for besieged Gazans.

"Israel wanted nothing more than to live in peace with this independent Palestinian entity," he claimed. "After all, the world had incessantly demanded that Israel give up land for peace." "It gave the land. It got no peace."

In 2005, Israel disengaged from Gaza. It did so to get Jews out of harm's way. Palestinian West Bank land was stolen to accommodate them. War was planned with no timeline. Cast Lead followed. Now Operation Pillar of Cloud. More coming. Stay tuned. Occupation of Gaza doesn't exist, claims Krauthhammer.

Explain it to 1.7 million oppressed Palestinians. They're isolated in the world's largest open-air concentration camp. Its harshness replicates Nazi-enforced Warsaw ghetto conditions. Humanitarian crisis conditions persist. Borders are closed. No one gets in or out without hard to get permit permission. Israel bombs, invades, and commits other atrocities at will. It maintains total control. Palestinians have no say whatever. "Israel has once again succeeded in defending itself," claims Krauthhammer. Irresponsibly he called months-ago planned naked aggression self-defense.

Rabbi Avichai Ronsky calls himself a man of God. He's also a former chief Israeli military rabbi. He's more concerned about militarism than Judaic doctrine. His comments show it. Ending conflict was "a great mistake and a disappointment," he said. Killing and injuring Palestinians should have continued.

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