palestinefreevoice

Historical Injustice and Madness of the Highest Orders - the Illegal Incarseration of the Palestinian People

2009-11-27T20:59:00.005+02:00

"Historical Injustice and Madness of the Highest Orders
the Illegal Incarceration of the Palestinian People (Naji Mujahid)

Hiyam Noir

November 27 2009

On Monday morning Israeli border guards denied the American citizens Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Naji Mujahid entry into Palestine. The two Americans were travelling from Amman in Jordan via the Allenby Bridge located at the border between Jordan and the Palestinian West Bank.The trip to Jordan and the West Bank is "normally" quite a long and tiresome undertaking so even much worse for radical Palestinian Human Rights Activists, meanwhile mainstream media and liberal politicians are boasting over their "bravery"daring a visit to the "dangerous" occupied Palestinian territories, without problem are passing ahead foreign more radical Palestinian activists and the long lines of Palestinian workers and students, some waiting in lines days and nights at Israeli checkpoints.

Invited to participate in a conference in Jericho on the topic of Palestinian political prisoners illegally incarcerated in Israeli jails, the two Americans,Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a leader of the Black Panter Party and Naji Mujahid a law student and civil rights activist based in Washington , was ill treated by Israeli border guards.Then interrogated, strip searched,had their belongings rummaged then confiscated and ordered to return back to Jordan. Humiliated and frustrated after the denial of entry to Palestine, the two US citizens and human rights activist walked up to the consular facility of the Palestinian Authorities in Amman.

Not knowing about that the consular and juridical adviser at the Palestinian Authority office in Amman has no diplomatic status or formal authority to enforce laws in Jordan, they were told they can not expect from the PA office in Amman, any help to enter the West Bank.The security of Jordanian border control is actually a matter between Mukhabarat el-Aama, Jordans General Intelligence Directorate, GID,s head quarter in Amman and CIA.(Gid has surpassed the Israelis Mossad as America's most effective allied counter-terrorism agency in the Middle East. Jordan's intelligence partnership with the U.S. is so close, in fact, that the CIA has had technical personnel "virtually embedded" at GID headquarters in Amman).

"The Israelis did not deny entry into the West Bank on grounds of security reasons, Bin Wahad stated in a video cast yesterday - " ultimately we were barred because of ideological reasons".Bin Wahad was him self a political prisoner incarcerated in a US jail, the judgement against him was overturned after 19 years in prison, for a crime he never committed. In their statement the Americans said that the treatment of them is a mirror of - " The Israelis policy of forcing the Palestinians out of their homeland, through illegal land confiscation and settlement-building,the checkpoints, the Judaization of Jerusalem, and the enactment of discriminatory laws against Palestinians, in the 1948 occupied area of Palestine. It also reflect the Israelis continued denial of the right to return for over seven million Palestinian refugees in exile."

The Israelis actions prevented important meetings between former American and Palestinian political prisoners, as well as disrupting media coverage that both Dhoruba and Naji had arranged to provide for the African American community news outlets about the conference, focused on Palestinian political prisoners and the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

_______________

Dear Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Naji Mujahid I am so sad to know about your predicament,you did not make it to Jericho, but you will earn the media coverage, your presence in Jericho was important and highly anticipated.

You statement of yesterday expressed analytical sharpness.

"There is a criminalisation of the truth and the legalisation of lies in this decennial"
"The Palestinians are vilified of their right to struggle"
and "The criminal state of Israel is its own worse enemy"

At last .. there roared a hurricane of passion and fury, brought a fresh wind of progress and intelligence into Palestinian political arena and Palestinian activism - the latter hijacked by a local and international mediocre qualmy petit bourgeois. The result: tens of thousands Palestinian political prisoners are suffering mighty in Israeli jails, thousands of Palestinian freedom fighters tortured by their own people in dark and cold dungeons on the West Bank, loss of precious Palestinian lives, loss of land and possessions.

Related information;
http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_28834.shtml
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33546.pdf
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/132248.pdf
http://rebelyouth-magazine.blogspot.com/2009/09/free-mohammad-n

Gaza Water Unfit for Human Consumption

2009-11-26T22:08:00.006+02:00

UN warns Gaza water supplies are "in danger of collapse"



	Palestinians fill bottles & containers at UNRWA

GAZA CITY (AFP)

Water in the Gaza Strip is so salty that it is unfit for human consumption, a Palestinian official in charge of water supplies inside the besieged coastal territory said on Saturday.

"The water is no longer fit for human consumption, with analysis and international studies showing that just 10 percent of water in the Gaza Strip is usable... threatening the lives of Palestinians," Munzir Shiblak warned.

	The water is no longer fit for human consumption, with analysis and international studies showing that just 10 percent of water in the Gaza Strip is usable... threatening the lives of Palestinians
Munzir Shiblak, Palestinian official

He called in a statement for "the necessary measures to be taken to end the problem of salinity in Gaza water supplies, a problem that is getting worse."

Shiblak called the water situation "critical."

He said the amount taken from underground aquifers last year to supply 1.5 million people with drinking water and for agriculture was 160 million cubic meters, but that natural replenishment was 80-90 million cubic meters.

"The ground water deficit rose to more than 80 million cubic meters last year, and if this situation continues reserves could collapse in the next few years," Shiblak said.

	Unless the trend is reversed now, damage could take centuries to reverse. Since the aquifer is a continuum with Israel and Egypt, such action must be coordinated with these countries
UNEP

In danger of collapse

In September the United Nations Environment Program also said Gaza's underground water supplies are "in danger of collapse" following years of overuse and the devastating war Israel waged in the territory at the turn of the year.

"Unless the trend is reversed now, damage could take centuries to reverse. Since the aquifer is a continuum with Israel and Egypt, such action must be coordinated with these countries," UNEP said in a report.

Israel and Egypt have sealed off the impoverished enclave to all but basic goods since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control in June 2007, severely hampering the upkeep of basic infrastructure.

The sewage system has been particularly hard-hit, as Israel does not allow the import of virtually any pipes or other metal equipment that it fears could be used by Palestinian militants to make improvised rockets.

UNEP estimated that restoring the aquifer beneath Gaza could require $1.5 billion over 20 years, including the construction of desalination plants to ease the pressure on underground sources.

Alarabiya.net

RUSSEL TRIBUNAL ON PALESTINE

2009-11-26T19:15:00.003+02:00

Welcome to Restore the Law in Brussel December 16 2009

FOR THANKSGIVING:Native Blood:The Myth of Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T03:06:00.004+02:00

November 15, 2009

Puritan settlers massacre Pequot people.

By Mike Ely

It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth — by giving thanks to the Christian God who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be continually excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present.

Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists–and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.

* * * * *

In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast, delivering 102 exiles. The original Native people of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox behind. Three years of plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of the coast, destroying most villages completely.

The Europeans landed and built their colony called “the Plymouth Plantation” near the deserted ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived–he had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. Squanto spoke the colonists’ language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish until the first harvest. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.

These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. The first Virginia settlement had been wiped out before they could establish themselves. Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the settlers not only survived their first year but had an alliance with the Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of peace.

John Winthrop, a founder of the Massahusetts Bay colony considered this wave of illness and death to be a divine miracle. He wrote to a friend in England, “But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection.”

The deadly impact of European diseases and the good will of the Wampanoag allowed the settlers to survive their first year.

In celebration of their good fortune, the colony’s governor, William Bradford, declared a three-day feast of thanksgiving after that first harvest of 1621.

How the Puritans Stole the Land

But the peace that produced the Thanksgiving Feast of 1621 meant that the Puritans would have 15 years to establish a firm foothold on the coast. Until 1629 there were no more than 300 settlers in New England, scattered in small and isolated settlements. But their survival inspired a wave of Puritan invasion that soon established growing Massachusetts towns north of Plymouth: Boston and Salem. For 10 years, boatloads of new settlers came.

And as the number of Europeans increased, they proved not nearly so generous as the Wampanoags.

On arrival, the Puritans and other religious sects discussed “who legally owns all this land.” They had to decide this, not just because of Anglo-Saxon traditions, but because their particular way of farming was based on individual–not communal or tribal–ownership. This debate over land ownership reveals that bourgeois “rule of law” does not mean “protect the rights of the masses of people.”

Some settlers argued that the land belonged to the Indians. These forces were excommunicated and expelled. Massachusetts Governor Winthrop declared the Indians had not “subdued” the land, and therefore all uncultivated lands should, according to English Common Law, be considered “public domain.” This meant they belonged to the king. In short, the colonists decided they did not need to consult the Indians when they seized new lands, they only had to consult the representative of the crown (meaning the local governor).

The colonists embraced a line from Psalms 2:8. “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Since then, European settler states have similarly declared god their real estate agent: from the Boers seizing South Africa to the Zionists seizing Palestine.

The European immigrants took land and enslaved Indians to help them farm it. By 1637 there were about 2,000 British settlers. They pushed out from the coast and decided to remove the inhabitants.

The Shining City on the Hill

Where did the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies of Puritan and “separatist” pilgrims come from and what were they really all about?

Governor Winthrop, a founder of the Massachusetts colony, said, “We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” The Mayflower Puritans had been driven out of England as subversives. The Puritans saw this religious colony as a model of a social and political order that they believed all of Europe should adopt.

The Puritan movement was part of a sweeping revolt within English society against the ruling feudal order of wealthy lords. Only a few decades after the establishment of Plymouth, the Puritan Revolution came to power in England. They killed the king, won a civil war, set up a short-lived republic, and brutally conquered the neighboring people of Ireland to create a larger national market.

The famous Puritan intolerance was part of a determined attempt to challenge the decadence and wastefulness of the rich aristocratic landlords of England. The Puritans wanted to use the power of state punishment to uproot old and still dominant ways of thinking and behaving.

The new ideas of the Puritans served the needs of merchant capitalist accumulation. The extreme discipline, thrift and modesty the Puritans demanded of each other corresponded to a new and emerging form of ownership and production. Their so-called “Protestant Ethic” was an early form of the capitalist ethic. From the beginning, the Puritan colonies intended to grow through capitalist trade–trading fish and fur with England while they traded pots, knives, axes, alcohol and other English goods with the Indians.

The New England were ruled by a government in which only the male heads of families had a voice. Women, Indians, slaves, servants, youth were neither heard nor represented. In the Puritan schoolbooks, the old law “honor thy father and thy mother” was interpreted to mean honoring “All our Superiors, whether in Family, School, Church, and Commonwealth.” And, the real truth was that the colonies were fundamentally controlled by the most powerful merchants.

The Puritan fathers believed they were the Chosen People of an infinite god and that this justified anything they did. They were Calvinists who believed that the vast majority of humanity was predestined to damnation. This meant that while they were firm in fighting for their own capitalist right to accumulate and prosper, they were quick to oppress the masses of people in Ireland, Scotland and North America, once they seized the power to set up their new bourgeois order. Those who rejected the narrow religious rules of the colonies were often simply expelled “out into the wilderness.”

The Massachusetts colony (north of Plymouth) was founded when Puritan stockholders had gotten control of an English trading company. The king had given this company the right to govern its own internal affairs, and in 1629 the stockholders simply voted to transfer the company to North American shores–making this colony literally a self-governing company of stockholders!

In U.S. schools, students are taught that the Mayflower compact of Plymouth contained the seeds of “modern democracy” and “rule of law.” But by looking at the actual history of the Puritans, we can see that this so-called “modern democracy” was (and still is) a capitalist democracy based on all kinds of oppression and serving the class interests of the ruling capitalists.

In short, the Puritan movement developed as an early revolutionary challenge to the old feudal order in England. They were the soul of primitive capitalist accumulation. And transferred to the shores of North America, they immediately revealed how heartless and oppressive that capitalist soul is.

The Birth of “The American Way of War”

In the Connecticut Valley, the powerful Pequot tribe had not entered an alliance with the British (as had the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Massachusetts peoples). At first they were far from the centers of colonization. Then, in 1633, the British stole the land where the city of Hartford now sits–land which the Pequot had recently conquered from another tribe. That same year two British slave raiders were killed. The colonists demanded that the Indians who killed the slavers be turned over. The Pequot refused.

The Puritan preachers said, from Romans 13:2, “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” The colonial governments gathered an armed force of 240 under the command of John Mason. They were joined by a thousand Narragansett warriors. The historian Francis Jennings writes: “Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy’s will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective.”

The colonist army surrounded a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River. At sunrise, as the inhabitants slept, the Puritan soldiers set the village on fire.

William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth, wrote: “Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire…horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them.”

Mason himself wrote: “It may be demanded…Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But…sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents…. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.”

Three hundred and fifty years later the Puritan phrase “a shining city on the hill” became a favorite quote of conservative speechwriters.

Discovering the Profits of Slavery

This so-called “Pequot war” was a one-sided murder and slaving expedition. Over 180 captives were taken. After consulting the bible again, in Leviticus 24:44, the colonial authorities found justification to kill most of the Pequot men and enslave the captured women and their children. Only 500 Pequot remained alive and free. In 1975 the official number of Pequot living in Connecticut was 21.

Some of the war captives were given to the Narragansett and Massachusetts allies of the British. Even before the arrival of Europeans, Native peoples of North America had widely practiced taking war captives from other tribes as hostages and slaves.

The remaining captives were sold to British plantation colonies in the West Indies to be worked to death in a new form of slavery that served the emerging capitalist world market. And with that, the merchants of Boston made a historic discovery: the profits they made from the sale of human beings virtually paid for the cost of seizing them.

One account says that enslaving Indians quickly became a “mania with speculators.” These early merchant capitalists of Massachusetts started to make genocide pay for itself. The slave trade, first in captured Indians and soon in kidnapped Africans, quickly became a backbone of New England merchant capitalism.

Thanksgiving in the Manhattan Colony

In 1641 the Dutch governor Kieft of Manhattan offered the first “scalp bounty”–his government paid money for the scalp of each Indian brought to them. A couple years later, Kieft ordered the massacre of the Wappingers, a friendly tribe. Eighty were killed and their severed heads were kicked like soccer balls down the streets of Manhattan. One captive was castrated, skinned alive and forced to eat his own flesh while the Dutch governor watched and laughed. Then Kieft hired the notorious Underhill who had commanded in the Pequot war to carry out a similar massacre near Stamford, Connecticut. The village was set fire, and 500 Indian residents were put to the sword.

A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in the churches of Manhattan. As we will see, the European colonists declared Thanksgiving Days to celebrate mass murder more often than they did for harvest and friendship.

The Conquest of New England

By the 1670s there were about 30,000 to 40,000 white inhabitants in the United New England Colonies–6,000 to 8,000 able to bear arms. With the Pequot destroyed, the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonists turned on the Wampanoag, the tribe that had saved them in 1620 and probably joined them for the original Thanksgiving Day.

In 1675 a Christian Wampanoag was killed while spying for the Puritans. The Plymouth authorities arrested and executed three Wampanoag without consulting the tribal chief, King Philip.

As Mao Tsetung says: “Where there is oppression there is resistance.” The Wampanoag went to war.

The Indians applied some military lessons they had learned: they waged a guerrilla war which overran isolated European settlements and were often able to inflict casualties on the Puritan soldiers. The colonists again attacked and massacred the main Indian populations.

When this war ended, 600 European men, one-eleventh of the adult men of the New England Colonies, had been killed in battle. Hundreds of homes and 13 settlements had been wiped out. But the colonists won.

In their victory, the settlers launched an all-out genocide against the remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government offered 20 shillings bounty for every Indian scalp, and 40 shillings for every prisoner who could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave any Indian woman or child under 14 they could capture. The “Praying Indians” who had converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles with “hostiles.” They were enslaved or killed. Other “peaceful” Indians of Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading posts–and were sold onto slave ships.

It is not known how many Indians were sold into slavery, but in this campaign, 500 enslaved Indians were shipped from Plymouth alone. Of the 12,000 Indians in the surrounding tribes, probably about half died from battle, massacre and starvation.

After King Philip’s War, there were almost no Indians left free in the northern British colonies. A colonist wrote from Manhattan’s New York colony: “There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand of God, since the English first settled in these parts.”

In Massachusetts, the colonists declared a “day of public thanksgiving” in 1676, saying, “there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled.”

Fifty-five years after the original Thanksgiving Day, the Puritans had destroyed the generous Wampanoag and all other neighboring tribes. The Wampanoag chief King Philip was beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole in Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later.

The descendants of these Native peoples are found wherever the Puritan merchant capitalists found markets for slaves: the West Indies, the Azures, Algiers, Spain and England. The grandson of Massasoit, the Pilgrim’s original protector, was sold into slavery in Bermuda.
Runaways and Rebels

But even the destruction of Indian tribal life and the enslavement of survivors brought no peace. Indians continued to resist in every available way. Their oppressors lived in terror of a revolt. And they searched for ways to end the resistance. The historian MacLeod writes: “The first `reservations’ were designed for the `wild’ Irish of Ulster in 1609. And the first Indian reservation agent in America, Gookin of Massachusetts, like many other American immigrants had seen service in Ireland under Cromwell.”

The enslaved Indians refused to work and ran away. The Massachusetts government tried to control runaways by marking enslaved Indians: brands were burnt into their skin, and symbols were tattooed into their foreheads and cheeks.

A Massachusetts law of 1695 gave colonists permission to kill Indians at will, declaring it was “lawful for any person, whether English or Indian, that shall find any Indians traveling or skulking in any of the towns or roads (within specified limits), to command them under their guard and examination, or to kill them as they may or can.”

The northern colonists enacted more and more laws for controlling the people. A law in Albany forbade any African or Indian slave from driving a cart within the city. Curfews were set up; Africans and Indians were forbidden to have evening get-togethers. On Block Island, Indians were given 10 lashes for being out after nine o’clock. In 1692 Massachusetts made it a serious crime for any white person to marry an African, an Indian or a mulatto. In 1706 they tried to stop the importation of Indian slaves from other colonies, fearing a slave revolt.

Celebrate?

Looking at this history raises a question: Why should anyone celebrate the survival of the earliest Puritans with a Thanksgiving Day? Certainly the Native peoples of those times had no reason to celebrate.

The ruling powers of the United States organized people to celebrate Thanksgiving Day because it is in their interest. That’s why they created it. The first national celebration of Thanksgiving was called for by George Washington. And the celebration was made a regular legal holiday later by Abraham Lincoln during the civil war (right as he sent troops to suppress the Sioux of Minnesota).

Washington and Lincoln were two presidents deeply involved in trying to forge a unified bourgeois nation-state out of the European settlers in the United States. And the Thanksgiving story was a useful myth in their efforts at U.S. nation-building. It celebrates the “bounty of the American way of life,” while covering up the brutal nature of this society.

Source of this article

Israel Holds Over 370 Palestinian Children Captive

2009-11-24T18:22:00.002+02:00

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:03:07 GMT

The media liaison at the Palestinian ministry in charge of prisoners' affairs says that Israel is currently holding captive more than 370 child detainees; all under the age of 18.

"Child detainees are sent to courts that prosecute cases of adult detainees. This is a flagrant violation of International Law. Dozens of detained Palestinian children undergo a series of harsh trials under a legal system that treats them the same as apprehended adults," Riyadh al-Ashqar told the official Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV network on Monday.

Al-Ashqar went on to note that the child detainees are not immune to 'egregious abuses', adding mistreatment and torture in Israeli detention facilities are not uncommon.

He also called on the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and humanitarian organizations across the globe to intervene, to stop Israeli brutalities against underage Palestinian prisoners.

Many of the Palestinian children in Israeli jails are arrested for nothing more than throwing rocks at heavily-armed Israeli troops and armored personnel carriers, the Palestinian Center for Defending Prisoners reported in early April.

The prison authorities place eight to ten children in a four meter square room, and routinely vilify them, put them under psychological pressure at every turn and even molest some of the children, the report added.

Source: PressTV

Things Could Get Ugly Fast

2009-11-21T19:05:00.001+02:00

By Mike Whitney

November 19, 2009

Things could get ugly fast. With the Democrats backing-off on a second round of stimulus, the Fed signaling an end to quantitative easing, and Obama moaning about rising deficits; there's a good chance that the stumbling recovery could turn into another sharp plunge. Bank lending is shrinking, consumers spending is off, housing prices are falling, unemployment is soaring and the wholesale credit markets are in a shambles. This isn't the time to slash government support in the name of "fiscal responsibility". Obama needs to ignore the gloomsters and alarmists and pay attention to the Nobel laureates like Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. They're the guys who know how to steer the ship to safe water.

But there are troubling signs that Obama has joined the ranks of the deficit hawks and is planning a policy-reversal that will pitch the economy into a nosedive. Here's what he said on his tour through Asia:

"I think it is important to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession."

So it's true. Obama has aligned himself with the faux-prophets and dollar demagogues who think that the end is nigh. But trimming the deficits now (when they should be expanding) will lead to a viscous cycle of debt deflation that will push-down asset prices, increase defaults, force more layoffs, slow consumer spending, lower earnings and send the economy into a downward spiral. The president is paving the way to a double-dip recession, a slump that could be worse than the first.

Has Obama perused the jobless figures lately? Has he noticed the Fed shoving more than a $1 trillion under the collapsing housing market with no sign of improvement? Has anyone told our blinkered accountant-in-chief that the entire financial system is propped-up with $11.4 trillion of dodgy scaffolding that could buckle in the first big gust?

Obama has either taken leave of his senses or he's spending too much time listening to the cheerless Jeremiahs on the Internet. He needs break their spell and seek the counsel of the experts who get paid to crunch the numbers---real economists. Cutting government spending and raising taxes--the two ways that deficits are paid off--is the fast-track to disaster. Don't go there.

If Obama needs more proof that the economy is still flatlining, he should thumb through Fed chair Ben Bernanke's speech to the Economic Club of New York which was delivered on Tuesday. The presentation was a sobering snapshot of lingering depression with precious few glimmers of light. Here's an excerpt:

"The flow of credit remains constrained, economic activity weak, and unemployment much too high. Future setbacks are possible....How the economy will evolve in 2010 and beyond is less certain....

Access to credit remains strained for borrowers who are particularly dependent on banks, such as households and small businesses. Bank lending has contracted sharply this year, and the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officers Opinion Survey shows that banks continue to tighten the terms on which they extend credit for most kinds of loans...

Household debt has declined in recent quarters for the first time since 1951. For their part, many small businesses have seen their bank credit lines reduced or eliminated, or they have been able to obtain credit only on significantly more restrictive terms. The fraction of small businesses reporting difficulty in obtaining credit is near a record high, and many of these businesses expect credit conditions to tighten further.

The demand for credit also has fallen significantly....Because of weakened balance sheets, fewer potential borrowers are creditworthy, even if they are willing to take on more debt. Also, write-downs of bad debt show up on bank balance sheets as reductions in credit outstanding. Nevertheless, it appears that, since the outbreak of the financial crisis, banks have tightened lending standards by more than would have been predicted by the decline in economic activity alone.

Many securitization markets remain impaired, reducing an important source of funding for bank loans. In addition, changes to accounting rules at the beginning of next year will require banks to move a large volume of securitized assets back onto their balance sheets. Unfortunately, reduced bank lending may well slow the recovery by damping consumer spending, especially on durable goods, and by restricting the ability of some firms to finance their operations.

The best thing we can say about the labor market right now is that it may be getting worse more slowly. (Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke Speech Before Economic Club of New York)

Is this really Bernanke speaking, or is the Fed chief channeling Roubini?

Okay, so credit is tight. Consumers aren't borrowing and banks aren't lending. Unemployment is rising and deflation is pushing down asset prices while the burden of personal debt is rising in real terms. Bleak, bleak, bleak. The only sign of improvement is that "things are getting worse more slowly". Now that's encouraging.

What the economy needs is a hefty dose of stimulus aimed at job creation and strengthening demand. Only the government can provide sufficient resources to rev up economic activity and put people back to work. Unfortunately, the TARP bailout soured the public on deficit spending due to the shabby (and possibly criminal) way it was handled. That will make it harder to do what is necessary. The political support for more stimulus on Capital Hill has vanished. But, without it, another hard landing is certain.

Despite rumors in the media, stimulus works. It speeds up recovery, minimizes unemployment and stops asset prices from overshooting on the downside. Here's an excerpt from "The effectiveness of fiscal and monetary stimulus in depressions" a scholarly analysis of stimulus by economist-authors Miguel Almunia, Agustin S. Benetrix, Barry eichengreen, Kevin O' Rourke, and Gisela Rua:

"Where tried, fiscal policy was effective in the 1930s....The details of the results differ, but the overall conclusions do not. They show that where fiscal policy was tried, it was effective.

Our estimates of its short-run effects are at the upper end of those estimated recently with modern data....This is, in fact, what one should expect if one believes that the effectiveness of fiscal policy is greatest when interest rates are at the zero bound, leading to little crowding out of private spending. It is what one should expect when households are credit constrained by a dysfunctional banking system. Given similar circumstances in 2008, this underscores the advantages of using 1930s data as a source of evidence on the effects of current policy." (The effectiveness of fiscal and monetary stimulus in depressions" by Miguel Almunia, Agustin S. Benetrix, Barry eEchengreen, Kevin O' Rourke, and Gisela Rua, 18 November 2009 vox)

Stimulus works in multiple ways. It also helps increase inflation expectations which is necessary to get people spending again. In a deflationary environment, consumers shut-down and stop spending. The Fed tries to spur economic activity by convincing people that the dollars they hold will be worth less tomorrow. That's why Bernanke keeps pointing out that the Fed will keep rates at zero indefinitely. Regrettably, only the goldbugs take him seriously, which is why gold prices have zoomed to the stratosphere. Personal savings rates are still rising. There's been a sharp drop-off in consumption. Bernanke's psychological experiment has flopped. The masses still believe we're in recession. Without a gigantic fiscal expansion to jolt the economy out of its lethargy, the severe contraction could drag on for a decade or more. We're becoming Japan.

Obama's deficit cutting plan is madness. It offers no hope at all. It draws from the half-baked theories of amateur economists on the Net who think that massive liquidation and years of bitter retrenchment and high-unemployment are the path to recovery. They're wrong.

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16177

APPLAUD AN ISRAELI JUDGE DECISION:

2009-11-21T17:37:00.008+02:00

Rafah Crossing June 1 2008
"Throwing stones at Zionist occupant".
Photo Propa/PalestineFreeVoice Images

Hiyam Noir

November 21 2009

An Israeli judge made an historic ruling last week when he proved to have the strength of mind enabling a civil courage order in his ruling that an Arab teenager needed "protection" from the Zionist justice system.

The judge ruled that the teenager should not be convicted despite of that he actually was found guilty of throwing stones, in this case, a petty felony ( throwing a stone at the Zionist occupants police- car when participating in a protest against Israeli war on Gaza during the turn of the year) .

The prosecutors in the case demanded a sentence of the 17- year- old from Nazareth, to be convicted of endangering a vehicle on a village road, such a crime might carry a punishment of up to 20 years of jail time.

The judge, Yuval Shadmi stated in his writing that: "the discrimination in the Israeli Judaical system's treatment of Jewish and Arab minors, particularly in cases of what he called "ideologically motivated" offenses, was "common knowledge."

So he penned down in his verdict: "I will say that the state is not authorized to caress with one hand the Jewish 'ideological' felons, and flog with its other hand the Arab 'ideological' felons."

This judge made a judicial decision that can be used to appeal against convictions in similar future cases.

Zionist Propaganda Body Seeks Volunteers to Distort Wikipedia Input on ME

2009-11-21T14:27:00.004+02:00

Zionist Web

Occupied Jerusalem: 21 November, 2009

by Khalid Amayreh

A Zionist hasbara (propaganda) body based in North America is trying to recruit “volunteers” whose main job is to distort the input of the internet’s most visited websites in Israel’s favor.

Propaganda efforts are reportedly focused on popular sites such as Wikipedia, the huge on-line encyclopedia which can be edited by anyone

CAMERA, which calls itself a “committee for accuracy in Middle East reporting in America,” already has a team of dozens of paid Jewish propagandists who regularly and often scandalously distort basic data pertaining to such themes as Israeli apartheid, Zionism and its ideological similarity to Nazism, Israeli state terror and ill-treatment of Palestinians as well as other issues related to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Recently CAMERA sent a circular to potential Zionist propagandists, asking them to help ensure a pro-Israeli bias in the internet.

“The idea behind Wikipedia is that if thousands of well-meaning and informed volunteers collaborate on an online encyclopedia, the result would be more accurate, up-to-date and inclusive than any print encyclopedia could possibly be.”

The circular went on: “CAMERA seeks 10 volunteers to help us keep Israel-related entries on Wikipedia from becoming tainted by anti-Israel editors. All it takes to be an effective volunteer is a basic comfort level with computers. Call or email me, and I will train you on how to become a volunteer Wikipedia editor.”

Reputed for its notoriously mendacious and inaccurate input, CAMERA has consistently sought to exonerate the Israeli occupation forces of war crimes committed against innocent civilians especially in the Gaza Strip.

Acting as a propaganda mouthpiece for the Israeli occupation army, the group, relying on questionable and often concocted statements by Israeli army spokespersons, argued on many occasions that the widespread killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army occurred by mistake and that measures were often taken to minimize civilian casualties.

Earlier this year, the Israeli army carried out a virtually genocidal onslaught against the nearly totally unprotected Gaza Strip, killing and maiming thousands of innocent civilians, including hundreds of children.

Moreover, a sustained aerial bombing by the Israeli air force destroyed more than six thousand Palestinian homes and hundreds of public buildings including more than a hundred mosques.

CAMERA, whose staff includes former Israeli Shine Beth’ officials, attacked the recently-published Goldstone report, accusing the former South African Judge, who is Jewish, of reporting “inaccurate information.”

The Goldstone report, based on meticulously authenticated data obtained first-hand testimonies from victims, accused the Israeli forces of knowingly and deliberately committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 21-day onslaught.

The data contained in the Goldstone report were corroborated by testimonies made by Israeli soldiers who took part in the winter onslaught.Israel, apparently fearing international condemnation, had refused to cooperate with the Goldstone commission.

PA Police Arrest Journalist

2009-11-20T23:18:00.009+02:00

ABBAS MILITIA ( thugs) IN ACTION

19 November, 2009

Palestinian Authority (PA) police have arrested Walid Suleiman, a Hebron-based journalist on suspicion of “inciting against the PA” and “undermining vital Palestinian interests.”

His family said the Preventive Security Force (PSF) summoned Suleiman for what was to be a “brief interrogation” on his activities, including public lectures on Islam and current affairs.

However, upon his arrival at the PSF headquarters in downtown Hebron, Suleiman was arrested until “a further notice.”

Suleiman had been arrested twice by the PA security apparatus on concocted charges pertaining to his outspoken criticisms of PA conduct.

A few years ago, the PA closed down the offices of the bimonthly paper, the Hebron Times, which Suleiman owned and edited.

The tabloid, now published in electronic form, can be accessed through the following link: http://hebrontimes.com/index.php

The draconian measure was part of the PA clampdown on free press as demanded by the Bush administration.

The PA security apparatus lately resumed a campaign against the non-conformist press, arresting three journalists working for the Gaza-based al-Aqsa Television.

Suleiman, 46, had been a globe-trotter who toured more than 100 countries on foot.

Suleiman’s brother, Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh, described the arrest as “a stupid measure aimed at muzzling freedom of speech and expression.”

“I think the PA is still living in the 1950s and 1960s. It seems they haven’t heard of the internet and the global village.”

Amayreh himself had been detained and ill-treated by the PA for criticizing the PA.

(end)

ABBAS WESTBANK MILITIA ESCALATE TORTURE OF HAMAS PRISONERS

2009-11-19T01:59:00.005+02:00

Gaza City December 15 2007
The 20Th Commemoration of Hamas Movement
Hamas won landslide victory over Fatah in democratic Palestinian elections
monitored by EU and other representatives of the International Community.
Photo Fady Adwan PalestineFreeVoice Images

Hiyam Noir

November 18 2009 - 10:16 PM

In Mahmoud Abbas jails and dark dungeons the abuse and torture of political prisoners continues. Hamas movement said in a press release on Wednesday, that in the past two weeks, an escalation of abductions of Hamas affiliated has been observed.

Many freedoms fighters, including high officers of Hamas cadres and Hamas supporters are suffering in Abbas jails from serious health conditions and pain from infected gunshot wounds and beatings,intimidated and mortified after the severe physical and mental torture inflicted on them.

Mahmoud Abbas and his militia are responsible for uncountable tragedies in the West Bank,the names of these torturers involved in the abuse of prisoners are well known and their crimes are documented,an account of the events on the West Bank will be presented to International human rights organizations.

Hamas media office said that what happened in the cities of Al Khalil, Salfit,Juneid and in Beitunia, the past two weeks gives an indication about the fate of many of Hamas members in particular those whom are suffering from fatal diseases.

The abductions of Palestinians advocating dissenting political views has become a part of real daily life for a large number of citizens in the West Bank. During the last two days Mahmoud Abbas militias allegedly abducted five Palestinian citizens in the Governate of Nablus, Ramallah, Tulkarem and Jenin, including a man suffering from an autoimmune disease - diabetes.

On Monday evening in the town of Bidya, Kanaan Shater 32, was apprehended by a group of Abbas hoodlums. Kanaan was severely beaten.The family of Kanaan has confirmed that after their son was taken to nearby Salfit, one of Abbas torture centre on the West Bank,a group of about 10 uniformed men continued the physical assault, resulting in a fracture of Kanaan's skull.

Today ( Wednesday November 18 2009) this report will be directed via email to Amnesty International and its representative for the Palestine Territories, to take immediate appropriate action and bring about the release of Hamas members and supporters, whom for their political affiliation and social - religious beliefs, are arbitrarily and ceaselessly abducted and tortured by Mahmoud Abbas and his fascist West Bank militia.

Under Palestinian Law and Constitution such violence as conducted on the West Bank by Mahmoud Abbas and his militia,is illegal and a gross violation of Human Rights guaranteed by International Law.

Note; Amnesty International was earlier this year, informed by a number of observers whom had gathered evidence against Mahmoud Abbas and his militia's activities on the West Bank, conducted simultaneously in the shadow during the Israelis war-crimes on Gaza - however these worrying reports to Amnesty International has until this day, almost one year later - passed unnoticed.END

11/20/2009

Dear Hiyam

Thank you for sending the information concerning the detention of Kanaan Shater. I am passing this to my colleague ............ copied on this message, who is replacing me, as I am on sabbatical for a year.

With best wishes

Donatella
--------------------------------------------
Donatella Rivera (Amnesty International)

Netanyahu: The Obscene Liar

2009-11-19T00:23:00.001+02:00

18/11/2009 - 06:58 PM

By Khalid Amayreh

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is a manifestly fascist-minded demagogue who thinks that everything Jewish must override everything non-Jewish, regardless of all considerations.

He is also a first-class liar who believes that lying to the world, including Jews, is the first line of defense against growing opposition to genocidal Israeli criminality.

Indeed, like Nazi Germany, which waged war on Europe and killed or caused the death of millions in the name of self-defense, Israel is doing the same thing by threatening and attacking its neighbors, especially the helpless Palestinians who have been trying for decades to rid themselves of the Nazi-like Israeli occupation of their country.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu is a true pathological liar. Falsifying reality is simply an inherent and conspicuous character of the notorious bigot.

Netanyahu claimed this week that nuclear-armed Israel is the world’s most threatened county.

He was quoted by the Ha’aretz newspaper as saying that “ Israel is facing enemies who don’t conceal their intentions, who first attack us physically and then attack our right to self-defense.”

But Is Israel really a threatened country?

Obviously, the claim is a big lie because Israel is actually a threatening, not a threatened country. Israel, which possesses a huge stockpile of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, has been attacking other countries from day-1 of its hateful existence.

Indeed, Israel has been trying relentlessly to annihilate the national existence of another people, the Palestinians, by arrogating their land, demolishing their homes and towns, and expelling them from their ancestral homeland.

Harsh ethnic cleansing, which takes a variety of aspects, has always been and continues to be Israel ’s modus operandi in treating the Palestinians. Israel is probably the only country in this world that thrives on murder, theft and lies, a country that murders children on their way to school and then cries out “self-defense! Holocaust! terror.!

In his monologue of lies, Netanyahu also claimed that Palestinian “rocket attacks” on Israeli settlements were not experienced by any other country since German attacks on Britain during WWII.

Well, if the term “pornographic lies” has any meaning, it is people like Netanyahu and his colleagues who give it meaning.

After all, no honest person under the sun can compare the extremely primitive projectiles fired by desperate Palestinians resistance fighters on Israeli settlements, with the German raids and rocket attacks against London and other British cities.

Indeed, while the German missile and other attacks on British cities killed thousands of Britons, eight years of Palestinian rocket firing on Israel killed less than ten Israeli settlers. In other words, more people would die in a single traffic accident in Israel than they would in eight years of Palestinian “rocket attacks”.

More to the point, a single attack by Israeli fighter-bombers, e.g. F-16s and F-15s, would cause more death and devastation than all Palestinian rockets would in many years.

This is exactly what happened during the past ten years. Israeli aerial and artillery attacks on Palestinian population centers killed thousands of innocent Palestinians. Thousands others were maimed and badly injured. In fact, it is amply safe to state that for every Israeli settler killed by Palestinian “rockets,” a thousand Palestinians, mostly children, women and other innocent civilians, were killed by the Jewish Wehrmacht, deceptively known as “Israeli Defense Forces.”

This massive Israeli criminality culminated in the virtual genocide in Gaza last winter, when hundreds of Israeli war planes, the state-of-the-art of the American technology of death, rained bombs, depleted uranium and white phosphorus, on unprotected Palestinian towns.

The pornographic killings in Gaza proved to be far more satanic and diabolic than many of the crimes committed by the Nazis. The Nazis attacked a super-power at least by that era’s standards and bombed well-protected towns, Whereas the Nazis of our time, the Israelis, rained death on totally unprotected refugees who had absolutely no means of defense or protection against the virtual genocide.

Actually, what Israel did to Gaza and Gazans in December and January can be compared to the extermination of Germany’s real or perceived enemies during the War.

In both cases, innocent and helpless people were mercilessly murdered en mass for political or ideological reasons. Hence, the appropriateness of the term “Nazis of our time.”

Like Netanyahu is doing today, many Nazi leaders and ideologues tried to rationalize and justify their evil acts by claiming that Germany, the motherland, was facing mortal threats and the German nation was faced with either of two choices, destroying the enemies using a no-holds-barred approach, or be destroyed itself.

But Israel is using the same Nazi arguments very lightly, not to repulse any real threats, but rather to justify real crimes against humanity being committed against the captive Palestinians.

Otherwise, how can people of any semblance of rectitude buy the big lie that a country that possesses more 300 nuclear heads, and has one of the strongest armies in the world, and above that controls the government of the world’s only superpower, is threatened more than any other state in the world?

It is, of course, unlikely that Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders think in their hearts that they are not lying. They do know they are lying. This is quite natural for a state that is based on lies and myths such as the claims that Palestine didn’t exist and the Palestinians were not a distinctive nation and that Israel didn’t expel the native Palestinians to the four corners of the globe.

In light, it is very important that the peoples of the world, men and women who value honesty and justice, be constantly on the alert to confront and refute Zionist hasbara lies with the same aggressiveness and resolve with which they confront Zionist crimes.

In short, Israel must not be allowed to translate its pornographic lies into a license to commit a holocaust against the Palestinian people and other peoples of the Middle East.

The Zionists are capable of doing the unthinkable. They behave as the way the Nazis behaved because they possess the same mindset. The only difference lies in name, place and circumstances.

Intellectual Rights Retained

Israeli Government Approve 900 Settlement Units in East Jerusalem

2009-11-18T14:25:00.000+02:00

18/11/2009 - 11:09 AM

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Different Hebrew media sources reported Wednesday that the Israeli government approved the building of 900 settlement units in the eastern part of occupied Jerusalem.

They said that the committee for planning and construction of the Israeli interior ministry sanctioned the building of these units in Gilo settlement.

According to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, these units are the first phase of a broader and comprehensive plan aimed at expanding the settlement, there are still more than 4,000 settlement units in Gilo pending the final approval.

In another context, a large number of Israeli troops stormed at dawn Wednesday Palestinian homes in the town of Idna and Al-Aroub refugee camp in Al-Khalil in the West Bank, and assaulted a young man at Al-Hawwar checkpoint, north of the city.

Palestinian eyewitnesses told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that Israeli troops invaded Idna and imposed a curfew in the vicinity of the house of a citizen called Tayseer Abu Juhaisha and damaged its furniture, adding that they stayed several hours inside the house before withdrawing.

Other Israeli troops broke into and ransacked the house of a Palestinian citizen from the family of Abu Khairan in Al-Aroub camp for the third consecutive time in less than a week, and detained the family members inside a room.

It was also reported that a 24-year-old young man called Abdelrahman Al-Abd was moderately wounded when he was attacked by Israeli troops at Al-Hawwar checkpoint.

Medical sources said that the young man sustained different bruises in his body and was transferred to Al-Khalil hospital.

In another incident, Israeli settlers threw stones at Palestinian citizens on the Shalala street in the old city in Al-Khalil for the second time in a week without any reported injuries.

For its part, the Hebrew radio alleged that a Palestinian homemade rocket landed Wednesday morning in Sha’ar Hanegev area in western Negev without inflicting casualties.

No Palestinian party claimed responsibility for the attack.

Intellectual Rights Retained

How Israel Builds its Fifth Column Palestinian Collaborators..

2009-11-17T17:49:00.002+02:00

By Catherine Taylor
Special to The Christian Science Monitor

JERUSALEM - Hani knew it was wrong,but the young Palestinian says he couldn't resist the woman who seduced him in a field near his house two years ago. And he never suspected what was to come.

In the middle of the tryst, the couple was ambushed by Israeli security agents who told Hani (not his real name) that his wife would be informed of the infidelity unless he cooperated. He says he now suspects he was set up, but he admits he was an easy target – wanted for a raft of petty crimes and a wallet full of fake identity cards. Within days he had agreed to trade his freedom for life as a collaborator.

Across the West Bank and Gaza Strip many thousands of Palestinians like Hani have been successfully coopted as informers. Precise numbers of those on Israel's payroll are unknown but figures of up to 15,000 have been suggested by human rights groups.

Israel's use of informants has prevented numerous suicide bombings. Yet in addition to enhancing Israeli security, collaboration has also developed a culture of suspicion such that anyone who runs a successful business or has access to hard-to-get permits is often suspected.

In Hani's case, the motivation was fear, not greed. "I agreed to work with them in return for clemency," he says. "I agreed to help them solve cases involving theft and drug dealing."

Last year Hani says his Israeli supervisor contacted him and asked that he watch two men from his West Bank village – one a member of Hamas, and the other from Fatah. "I didn't want to do it but he said that he merely wanted to know their movements," Hani says. "I gave away extensive information about them. But fear came over me that they planned to do more than just monitor them. I saw on television how Israel was assassinating people and how they went after them methodically. I came to the conclusion I was helping this to happen and I ran away."

Hani's odd behavior was noted by Palestinian police, who arrested him. He says it was a relief to escape "this deep hole I had gotten myself into. I confessed everything. I spoke faster than my interrogator could write."

A crucial role

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, that transferred chunks of the Occupied Territories to Palestinian Authority control, the recruitment of collaborators has become a crucial plank of Israel's security apparatus. The role begins simply – passing details of a neighbor's car number plate or place of work. As collaborators are drawn more deeply into the system they may be asked to infiltrate the highest levels of militant and political groups or set up targets for arrest and assassination. Israel has stepped up its policy of targeted assassination during this intifada, typically using collaborators to arrange the hit, as they did with Hani.

"Where would Israel be without collaborators?" asks Moshe Kuperburg, a former agent with Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, who recruited and ran a network of informers in the West Bank before retiring in 1999. "It's simple. We'd be up [a] creek."

Incursion as recruitment drive

Saleh Abdul Jawwad, head of the political science department at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah, believes collaborator recruitment was one aim of Israel's recent offensive in the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinian men were rounded up. The declared goal was to root out the militants among them, but Mr. Jawwad says during interrogation many were offered opportunities to collaborate.

"In most countries you are detained or imprisoned because you do something wrong, or plan to," he says. "Here almost the entire adult male population has been through this experience. I see it as a kind of refinery for producing collaborators."

Hani's story is backed up by research from human rights organizations including Israeli human rights group B'tselem and Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG).

Both have recorded testimonies from those with criminal records detailing how they were offered freedom in exchange for information. Others were shown photographs of female relatives undressing in fashion store changing rooms, and told the images would be circulated unless they agreed to collaborate. "There are many taboos in Palestinian society that create opportunities to pressure people into collaboration," says Jawwad.

'Sophisticated methods'

Mr. Kuperburg, a wiry, energetic man with a wide smile and ready charm, says his methods were more sophisticated, centered on disillusioning young militants against the organizations they joined by pointing out inconsistencies in the extremist rhetoric, or the failure of the groups to achieve the Palestinian state they claimed to be fighting for.

Others were convinced by Kuperburg they could better help their people by working for Israel because of access to credentials that allowed freedom of movement through the occupied territories.

"[Successful recruitment] is about confidence building," Kuperburg says. "The collaborator must understand why they are working with us. We are professional and they collaborate because we tell them the truth. If I want an 18-year-old to collaborate, he must believe we have common understanding. I will tell him that I also want to prevent bloodshed. With time, he will see that I am honest."

If all fails, there is always money: "I make sure they know we are generous," he says.

Kuperburg, a secular Jew who speaks fluent Arabic and was trained to impersonate a Palestinian using the undercover name "Musa," often targeted junior members of militant organizations. "Someone who is a good student, a moderate, we will leave him alone," he says. "But if he is radical, we can tell him he is living in a dream. Sometimes even if he does not become a collaborator the conversation can prevent a future attack."

Collaboration 101

The process can take as little as an hour, or many months of work. Kuperburg – who says he counts Palestinians among his friends and endorses a two-state solution to the conflict – teaches the new recruit how to avoid detection.

Tell no one, he cautions, not even your mother, and spend the money you receive frugally to avoid suspicion. Kuperburg also promises protection inside Israel if the collaborator is discovered.

Kuperburg says Shin Bet runs entire neighborhoods of former collaborators who have been assigned new identities. "We also send some overseas," he adds. But this protection is typically reserved for high-ranking informers. Disgruntled collaborators who worked on the lower rung of the system claim Israel should do more to protect them. Some are preparing a legal case against the Jewish state.

The Palestinian Authority has been strongly criticized for the way it deals with the issue. Human rights groups are concerned that those labeled collaborators are denied fair trials. Military courts are convened quickly, and justice dispensed just as fast.

"There are many questions concerning the degree to which the State Security Courts respect the right to a fair trial, and it is doubtful that justice will truly prevail," the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza (PHRMG) says in its latest report on the subject, published in February. "Suspected collaborators should be held accountable for their actions," says Raji Sourani, director of the PHRMG. "But they should receive fair trials, not state security trials. I am against any form of military court."

Revenge, swift and imprecise

But the problem is not limited to sham trials. During the first intifada, which began in 1987, about 1,000 Palestinians died in fighting with Israeli soldiers and settlers. Research by PHRMG suggests a similar number were killed by their own people under suspicion of collaboration but just 45 percent of those killed were rightfully accused.

Many suspected collaborators are simply gunned down in the street by vigilante groups. The PA turns a blind eye. The label is sometimes used as an excuse for extra-judicial killing designed to settle old scores.

The tactics contravene agreements signed by the PA. Oslo II, for example, states, "Palestinians who have maintained contact with the Israeli authorities will not be subjected to acts of harassment, violence, retribution, or prosecution."

Yet it goes on. Last month, three men were shot in the center of Ramallah by masked attackers. The families of those killed this way are afraid to speak out. "The families of suspected or alleged collaborators suffer from social ostracism sometimes with serious economic consequences," says the PHRMG report. "Neighbors and relatives no longer come to visit. Children are isolated at school and their trauma affects their school performance. Young men and women cannot marry since no family wants to be related to a collaborator's family."

Hani, now in jail, may have escaped alive from his life as a collaborator, but he says his deeds have ruined his future. "I can't look at my wife in the eye," he says. "If I ever get out of jail I will leave immediately without seeing anyone. My life here has come to an end."

The Issue of Collaborators in Palestine (Passia publications)
The Fate of Palestinian Moderates Arafat's thugs don't murder only Jews.
Fatah, Israels newfound friend in Palestine
Blood for Bread /Sattar Kassem

Intellectual Rights Retained

PALESTINE : The New State Solution

2009-11-17T03:31:00.005+02:00

Wounded Gaza Looking for Love and Peace

Photo Fady Adwan PalestineFreeVoice Images

By Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:50 EST
© AP / Hatem Moussa

The collapse of the Palestinian Authority, the result of Israel's 42-year refusal to implement a two-state solution, leaves the Palestinians no option but to unilaterally declare an independent state. Israel acted unilaterally when it announced independence in 1948. It is the Palestinians' turn. It worked in Kosovo. It worked in Georgia. And it will work in Palestine.

There are 192 member states in the United Nations and as many as 150 would recognize the state of Palestine, creating a diplomatic nightmare for Israel and its lonely ally the United States. Israel will face worldwide censure if it attempts to crush the independent state by force and very likely be subjected to the kind of divestment campaigns and boycotts that brought down the apartheid government of South Africa.

The two-state solution, long held up as the way out of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, flickered and died with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. No Israeli leader since, including Ehud Barack, has shown any interest in its implementation. Israeli governments have instead cynically used the promise of negotiations as a cover to steadily expand settlements, evict Palestinians from their homes, carry out egregious acts of violence and repression against Palestinians and steal huge swathes of the West Bank, including most of the aquifers.

The death of the two-state solution is not news to those of us who have spent years in the Middle East. What is news is the public acknowledgement by the Palestinian leadership. Mahmoud Abbas, the compliant and discredited president of the Palestinian Authority, who has announced he will not run for another term, has uncharacteristically blasted Israel for deceiving the Palestinians. The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who says that the effort to negotiate a solution to the conflict with Israel is dead, has called on Palestinians to declare statehood.

The disarray within the Palestinian Authority has led to the cancellation of the Palestinian elections in January, although the elections were already in jeopardy. The militant group Hamas, which took over Gaza in 2007 after thwarting a coup attempt led by Abbas' Fatah party, said it would not allow the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza to vote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is counting on the Obama administration to thwart a declaration of Palestinian independence, will have difficulty finding a Palestinian stooge as complaint as Abbas. Abbas' time in office has been marked by repeated and humiliating concessions to Israel, including deferring, at Israel's request, the vote at the United Nations on the Goldstone report, which documented human rights abuses during Israel's offensive in Gaza last December and January.

Israel has shown its appreciation by ignoring Abbas' protests for a halt on settlements and dismissing his calls for negotiations. It is hard to imagine any Palestinian leader, at least one with a shred of credibility, agreeing to take Abbas' place. The only alternative left to most Palestinians, unless an independent state is declared, will be endless war and an embrace of Islamic extremism.

A declaration of independence, based on the 1967 demarcation lines between Israel and Palestinian territory, should cover East Jerusalem among other areas and the several hundred thousand Jewish settlers living in settlements in the West Bank. These Israeli settlers would instantly become citizens in the new country, replicating the experience of many Palestinians who suddenly found themselves counted as Israelis in 1948.

"When he declares independence, Abbas should call upon the Jews living in the state of Palestine to preserve the peace and to do their part in building up the new country as full and equal citizens, enjoying fair representation in all of its institutions," Yossi Sarid, who supports the independence movement, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "David Ben-Gurion would not have been upset by such a pretty act of plagiarism from his Declaration of Independence."

The Israelis have orchestrated acute misery and poverty in the Palestinian territories over the past two decades in an effort to subdue and ethnically cleanse the captive population. They have reduced Palestinians, many of whom now live on less than $2 a day, to a subsistence level. They have created squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos in the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli soldiers, who ring these ghettos, have the ability to instantly shut off food, medicine and goods to perpetuate the misery.

Israel, when the Palestinians grow restive, drops 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs and artillery shells - as they did a year ago in Gaza - on the concrete hovels that pack neighbor hoods. The Israeli objective is to turn the Palestinian territories into a hell on earth. This policy has, however, swollen the ranks of radical Islamists in the occupied territories and throughout the Middle East.

The refusal by the Obama administration and nearly every member of the U.S. Congress to defend the rule of law and basic human rights for the Palestinians exposes our hypocrisy. It also perpetuates the absurd pretence that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, whose security and dignity are being threatened. The F-16 jet fighters, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs used on Palestinian civilians are part of the annual $2.4 billion in military aid the United States gives to Israel.

Palestinians are slaughtered with American-made weapons provided to Israel with taxpayer dollars. Israel, an international pariah, would be unable to carry out these atrocities without our financial and moral support. Mix this toxic brew with the illegal wars we wage in Iraq and Afghanistan and the United States becomes a satanic force in the eyes of many Muslims.

Abbas, in a speech delivered a few days ago on the fifth anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death, announced that the Palestinians would not return to negotiations with Israel without a full halt to settlement building, "including the natural growth" - a term Israel uses to justify construction on the basis of natural population growth in settlements.

"They are putting obstacles in its way," he said of promised negotiation. "They are trying to remove this concept. What do they want?"

The anniversary of Arafat's death is a bitter reminder to many Palestinians that Israel can never be trusted. It is widely believed among Palestinians, as well as Israeli peace activists such as Uri Avnery, that Arafat was poisoned by the Israelis, something Israeli officials deny. Arafat became gravely ill in 2004 as Israeli forces besieged his Ramallah headquarters. He was eventually flown to France for treatment and died at Percy military hospital outside of Paris on Nov. 11, 2004. The French, abiding by an agreement with the Israelis, did not release Arafat's medical records.

"Each expert we consulted explained that even a simple poison produced by an average scientist would be difficult to identify by the most experienced scientists," said Arafat's nephew Nasser al-Kidwa. "I can't tell for sure that he was murdered by the Israelis. I can't refute that hypothesis because doctors couldn't refute it."

The suspicions around the death of Arafat replicate the feelings of most Palestinians around the death of the two-state solution. Each, in the eyes of Palestinians, was deliberately murdered. The Israelis have ensured that from now on the Palestinians will fall or rise on their own.

http:/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestinian-push-for-an-independent-state-causes-israeli-alarm-1821261.html /

Intellectual Rights Retained

Fort Hood Massacre

2009-11-15T14:54:00.005+02:00

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:20:36 PST

As is the usual manner of the mainstream US media and its policy attachments, much will be said/made about this horrific incident in the moments, days, and months to follow.

The massacre comes at a time when President Obama looks more like his predecessor and the US wars in IraqAfghanistan are far from deescalating.

That said it should also be expected that much will be made about the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan (39), who is said to be an American born Muslim of Palestinian/Jordanian descent.

Major Hasan is suspected of taking 13 lives and wounding 30 others, as of this writing.

Though the story is still unfolding the Guardian reports that Major Hasan, a military psychiatrist, has in recent months grown increasingly "unhappy" in his career and has even been seeking to be honorably discharged.

The report says in part:

Unusually for a soldier, Hasan appeared to have little taste for violence, at least up until yesterday. His cousin, Nader Hasan, said: "He was someone who did not enjoy going to the firing range." That may have been a consequence of the stories he had heard in the hospital wards from the returning soldiers.

Hasan became an unhappy soldier as his career progressed, according to his family and colleagues.

Nader said his cousin, though born in America, had suffered harassment from fellow soldiers who questioned his loyalty to the US and commented on his Middle East ethnicity. As a Muslim, he was upset at the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Nader confirmed that he had been resisting deployment in either war zone.

He had been scheduled for deployment to Iraq at the end of the year and had told colleagues repeatedly he did not want to go. He felt trapped, looking at ways to buy his way out, even going to the extent of hiring a lawyer to see if he could leave military service honourably.

I expect that as Major Hasan, who is still alive according to a news report, is put on trial his co-accused will be all Muslims, particularly those living inside the US.

Racist questions about the compatibility of Islam inside American democracy and culture will resurface.

And from inside Muslim communities there will be persistent voices who will seek to demonstrate their loyalty to America over their misgivings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I dare add that even as more Muslims were killed in American drone attacks in Pakistan US as the victim of Islam and its terrorists.

In addition to the horror that this massacre represents it is necessary to see the US inside of the absolute violence that it has perpetrated in the Middle East.

I have said it here before, Islam is not at war with the US, rather it is the US that is at war with Muslims (Islam).

And that war is not about ideology or even religion. It is about resources. Oil!

I left the US in 2005 after 23 years, most of my life. A big part of my decision was the fact that I could not live inside of, and pay taxes to, a state that was at war with innocent people who looked like me and mine.

I absolutely refused to adopt an apologetic silence/posture while the noise about Islam and terrorism was all about me.

Don't get me twisted though. I am not even trying to defend what happened today at Fort Hood. Nor am I trying to agitate that all Muslims have no option but to leave the US.

It should be said that there are many Americans of every persuasion who abhor and resist what the US government is doing in the Middle East and elsewhere.

I am, however, pressing the (my) reality that I could not continue to live with conscience, and pay taxes, to an ever expanding and warmongering empire.

At one early stage in my life I was drawn to the idea of America. But as I looked closer I saw that the idea never really passed being more than just an ideal.

As Satre said, America is a brute and brutal.

There is a lot more of a fallout to come and innocent lives will continue to be spent.

And so the brutality of America/US continues ... one undoing dialectic at a time.

You simply can't run from your history .

Source
Indigenist Intelligence Revue

______

"In the wake of the massacre there will be a tendency to say one man snapped. The truth is anyone could have snapped -- and we need to de-stigmatize PTSD and mental health before someone else does."Christine Pelosi"

Palestine - What's next?

2009-11-14T19:21:00.002+02:00

Whatever lies ahead after Abbas's notification of not seeking the Palestinian presidency again, the status quo ante is over for good, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah.
______________________________________________________

The recent decision by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas not to seek a second term in office has already thrown into question the continued survival of the Oslo peace process as well as the future of the PA itself.

Most Palestinians have interpreted Abbas's decision as a frank -- though belated -- admission of the failure of the peace process with Israel.

In his speech on Thursday, 5 November, Abbas didn't mourn that process much. But he did suggest that it was pointless to walk any further along the current path given Israel's adamant refusal to stop settlement expansion and the Obama administration's refusal to force Israel to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.

Abbas did ask the Palestinian people to continue to believe in the eventuality of peace. However, he also gave the impression that true and just peace with Israel was a distant dream if not unrealistic.

It is still uncertain if Abbas will reconsider his decision under the influence of incessant calls to that effect by his supporters, especially within the Fatah organisation.

However, most Palestinian pundits seem to unanimously agree that the Palestinian leader won't do so unless he receives real "concessions" from Israel with regards to the settlements issue. Otherwise, Abbas would lose face and give Israel and the US an additional reason not to take him seriously the next time he triggers a crisis over the peace process.

Abbas's decision has raised many questions as to how the PA will survive his absence and the virtual death of the peace process. After all, that process, which provided a certain promise that the Palestinians would eventually rid themselves of Israel's military occupation, has always been the main raison d'être of the PA. Hence, the PA would be effectively reduced to a mere subcontractor of the Israeli occupation if that promise vanished as most Palestinians seem to believe it has.

But the problem goes beyond the ostensible failure and imminent collapse of the peace process. Abbas is probably the most moderate Palestinian leader from the Israeli and Western viewpoint. It is inconceivable, at least at this juncture, that any other Fatah substitute who would replace Abbas would be willing to accommodate Israeli whims, especially on matters related to Jerusalem and the settlements.

Hence one Fatah leader in Ramallah questioned the "wisdom" of appointing a successor to Abbas under the current political conditions. "What would any potential successor to Abbas be able to do? Abbas has given the Americans and Israelis all they want. He went to the greatest extent possible in order to demonstrate Palestinian desire for peace. But look how they have treated him."

The source added, on condition of anonymity: "They [America and Israel] wanted Abbas to be a full-fledged collaborator working against the interests of his own people. They were not willing to accept a dignified Palestinian partner. They didn't want partners, they only wanted to see collaborators, such as the current rulers of Afghanistan and Iraq."

So far, the Obama administration has been reticent about these latest developments in the occupied West Bank. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Abbas specifically blamed for convincing President Obama not to pressure Israel on the settlements issue, said she would continue to work with the Palestinian leader in whatever new capacity he might choose. The allusion here is to the possibility that Abbas might retain his more important post as head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which is uncertain to say the least.

Spokespersons at the State Department and White House called on Abbas to reconsider and to give the peace process another chance.

It is uncertain what steps the Obama administration would take if Abbas made good on his undertaking not to run in the Palestinian general elections, scheduled for 24 January. Indeed, the elections themselves have been thrown into question by Abbas's speech. After all, many Palestinians, including many Fatah leaders, question the rationality of holding elections when all political horizons have been completely closed and no successor to Abbas is known.

Some pundits suggest that the Obama administration might seek "another" Palestinian Karzai -- a strongman like Mohamed Dahlan. However, it is near certain that any meddling from Washington would cause Fatah to implode from within with such a new leader being viewed by the majority of Palestinians as an American agent. Another possibility is that the US would further boost the status of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, enabling him to function as de facto Palestinian leader in lieu of Abbas. But this prospect, too, is fraught with uncertainty because Fayyad is bereft of a popular base despite attempts to build one.

Earlier this week, Fayyad and his ministers threatened to collectively resign their posts if Abbas left the Palestinian political scene. It is not clear though if this was a stunt, or a real threat. The resignation of the Fayyad government, coupled with Abbas's resignation, would deal a serious blow to the PA and might bring about its complete collapse.

Such a collapse would force Israel to re-assume all the tasks and responsibilities of an occupying power. In this case, Israel would be faced with two undesirable scenarios: the likely resumption of violence and resistance by all Palestinian factions, including Fatah; or rising Palestinian demands for a one-state solution whereby Israel would have to grant Palestinians equal rights as citizens in a unitary and democratic state extending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean.

This last option is anathema to Israel and many Jews since it would herald the end of classical Zionism and auger the ultimate prospect of Israel losing its Jewish majority.

There have been reports that the Obama administration might opt to overcome the present crisis by declaring its recognition of a prospective Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. Israel is already jittery about this prospect and has been seeking "clarifications" from Washington in this regard.

However, while such an acknowledgment on Washington's part would be a remarkable event for increasingly frustrated Palestinians, it would do little to change reality on the ground, as Israel has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to overrule and disregard American decisions, especially if these decisions are not coordinated with Israel beforehand.

And, Now, Who Will Accept Responsibility For the Failure?

2009-11-14T06:57:00.005+02:00

Hamas guard Gaza City August 2007
after Fateh coup d'état revealed
Photo Fady Adwan/PalestineFreeVoiceImage

By Khalid Amayreh

13/11/2009 - 10:09 PM

Finally, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has admitted, belatedly, of course, that 18 years of talks and negotiations with Israel have availed to nothing.

In an interview with the pro-Fatah news agency, Maan, on Wednesday, 11 November, the prominent PA negotiator Sa’eb Ureikat was quoted as saying that all negotiations with Israel since the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 produced a zero result.

“We have reached the decisive moment, we have to be frank with our people, we have failed to reach the two-state solution.

“We have reached a conviction that Israel doesn’t want to see an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967.”

Well, Mr. Ureikat, great that you’ve waken up after 18 years of deep dormancy. This is probably the longest duration of hibernation one can imagine.

But someone must be called to account for 18 years of failure, deception and lies.

True, Israel is ultimately responsible for this failure, but you and your colleagues are also responsible for this monumental fiasco.

Indeed, even if we were dealing with minor management failure at a small business, conclusions would have to made and those responsible would have to draw consequences.

But we are talking about our national cause, about Palestine, the patrimony and future of our people, which means that failure at the leadership level amounts to criminal negligence bordering on treason.

Can you Mr. Ureikat imagine the amount of suffering and losses we have incurred and are still incurring under the rubric of this hateful and barren process in which you personally were involved from the very inception?

Can you imagine how much pain and tears we could have saved our people if you and your colleagues had not made these scandalous miscalculations?

Someone somewhere has to show us the accountability sheet. After all, thousands of Palestinians lost their lives due to this huge illusion euphemistically and mendaciously called “peace process.”

Moreover, Israel, the deceitful peace partner, exploited every minute and every hour of these 18 years to kill more Palestinian children, destroy more Palestinian homes, steal more Palestinian land and build more Jewish settlements while you and your bosses- Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas- kept fretting and babbling about a peace process that had actually more to do with political whoredom than with true efforts to achieve genuine peace.

For the sake of this “peace process” Palestinians had to kill each other, our human rights had to be crushed, our civil liberties had to be violated and a police-state apparatus had to be imposed on our people.

You and your colleagues thought, out of stupidity, ignorance and arrogance, that if you tormented our people on Israel’s behalf, which you have done extremely efficiently, Israel would give you our usurped legitimate rights on a silver platter and allow you to build a viable and independent state in the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Instead, Israel has treated you as worthless collaborators whose main job is to repress and pacify the Palestinians for Israel’s sake.

Frankly, you deserve the humiliating treatment you have been receiving from the Zio-Nazis. You deserve it because you could have reached the same conclusion about Zionist mendacity from the first year or the second year of the hapless Oslo era.

However, instead of “smelling it from afar,” you allowed yourselves to be bamboozled and duped for 18 long years, and whenever an honest-minded Palestinian advised you against further beguilement , you used all the bad epithets in the dictionary to describe these sincere people who sensed the falsehood and deception from day-1.

We, the people of Palestine, need to know why it took you and your colleagues, people like Abbas, Yasser Abed Rabbo and ilk, 18 long years to discover that Israel is not sincere about peace.

Were you intoxicated? Were you stupid? Were you gullible? Were you blind?

And now after all this shameful legacy, do you still expect the Palestinian people to grant you another 18 years to further experiment with the national cause?

Well, the least you should do now is really to quit with whatever semblance of dignity you may still have. Not doing so would be a scandalous expression of national irresponsibility.

Yes, this is the logical conclusion that you must reach, otherwise you and your friends would be flying in the face of the Palestinian people.

We cannot afford to see another 18 years of miscalculation, lies and failure?

But in order to ensure that this won’t happen again, all the faces of failure would have to leave the scene, perhaps to retire and write their memoirs.

Mr. Ureikat, you wrote a book recently entitled “Life is negotiation.” Perhaps this time you might have to write another book entitled “life is honor.”

Arafat Revisited

2009-11-12T17:47:00.010+02:00

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[ 12/11/2009 - 01:01 PM ]

From and by Khalid Amayreh

In his lifetime, Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader, was always a controversial figure. To his supporters, he was almost a god-like character who saved the Palestinian national cause from what could have been a definitive demise. It was probably thanks to Arafat (and the resilient steadfastness of our people) that the Palestinians have survived as a people in spite of history, a history that has always been and continues to be unkind to us.

Arafat had often to wrestle with death wherever he went and was able to survive the machinations and exploits of his internal and external enemies…until his time came.

To his enemies, who were many and diverse, he was a mercurial, unethical and dishonest figure. Arafat had to navigate the treacherous precipices of the Middle East by often appeasing and placating Arab despots from Abdul Nasser to Saddam Hussein who often seriously undermined the Palestinian cause thanks to their unscrupulous policies and scandalous miscalculations.

Now in the belly of earth for five years, Arafat is still as controversial as he was alive, and many questions are still unresolved as to the real circumstances surrounding his death. Was he really poisoned by the Israeli intelligence? Did some of his aides play a role in poisoning him? Did the current PLO leadership connive with Israel to kill Arafat, as Fatah’ leader Farouk al Qaddumi claimed a few months ago?

The Palestinian Authority asserted on many occasions that Arafat was killed by way of poisoning by secret Israeli agents. Arafat’s personal physician supported this hypothesis. But this view contravenes the French medical report which established that Arafat died of the AIDS illness.

So far, the PA and the PLO have utterly failed to carry out a thorough and genuine investigation into Arafat’s death despite the passage of five year.

Even today, the Palestinian people don’t know the exact circumstances of his death. Similarly, his widow, Suha, continues to refuse to divulge the secrets surrounding his death.

Arafat’s nephew Nasser Al-Qidwa has affirmed that Israel and Israel alone is responsible for uncle’s death.

Al-Qidwa pointed out in a speech marking the fifth anniversary of Arafat's death, in Ramallah Wednesday, 11 November, that the late Palestinian leader “ was poisoned by Israel and died a martyr’s death” and that “ we are determined to obtain the last piece of evidence” which will uncover the whole truth about his death.”

True, it is extremely difficult to say for sure who stood behind the “liquidation” of Arafat if indeed he was liquidated by way of inserting poison into his food or body.

Nonetheless, in the absence of a real investigation by a professional and credible committee, questions will continue to be asked as to whether there was a conspiracy in which some of his closest aides were involved.

In short, the Palestinian people are entitled to know the truth about what exactly happened. As to the reluctance of the PA and the PLO to tell the truth in this regard, it can only mean that they either have something to hide from the people and are afraid of divulging the truth, or that they are breaching the trust of their people.

Another matter: It is well known that Yasser Arafat, who during his lifetime held all the reins, took all the decisions, and controlled all the money, left hundreds of millions of dollars deposited under his name.

Hence, the Palestinian people want also to know where these hundreds of millions went and how they disappeared. After all, these were the people’s monies, and every Palestinian man, woman and child has a legitimate right to know the full truth in this regard.

In recent years, it was reported on several occasions that certain Fatah and PLO figures held a secret agreement with Suha Arafat a few weeks after his death. According to the agreement, Arafat’s widow received a huge amount of money in return for her “silence.”

One report pointed out that Suha, who was living in Tunis until two years ago, transferred $50 million dollars to a Maltese bank. Her brother is the PLO ambassador to Malta.

The veracity of the report was neither confirmed nor denied which really raises a big question mark about the indulgence of the PLO leadership in a huge “foul play” at the expense of the Palestinian people.

As a journalist, I once confronted some senior PLO officials with this issue. At the beginning, they tried to evade the subject, but when I pressed them further, they told me that I had to carry out a thorough investigation and obtain a damning evidence corroborating “these allegations.” I told them that an investigation as such would require an entire state apparatus and that in any case a journalist’s job wouldn’t go beyond raising the issue. At this point, I was told “to put up or shut up.”

I have no doubt that a big foul play occurred concerning the hefty bank accounts left by the late Palestinian leader. Similarly, I have no doubt that certain PLO figures, people such Muhammed Rashid, aka Khaled Salam, and are hiding sensitive pertinent information in this regard.

I am not suggesting that these people be hounded or harmed in any way. However, it is imperative that these people must be thoroughly investigated in order to establish the truth. Again, the millions of dollars embezzled are the people’s money and our people have every right to know the fate of these millions.

It is really sad that the PA government which doesn’t stop boasting about “law and order” has done next to nothing to recover the embezzled money.

There are two main reasons contributing to this shameful inaction on the part of the Palestinian justice system. First, it is likely that some figures within the PA government are themselves implicated in corruption dating back to Arafat’s era. After all, the corrupt cannot investigate the corrupt, as the popular saying goes.

Second, it is even more likely that these silent “witnesses” are worried that should they speak out, their lives would be in danger from the big thieves and their agents and accomplices.

Well, this is a sad fact which really caricatures the pathetic state of affair under the Palestinian Authority. After all, a bad beginning makes a bad ending.

A final word about Arafat. Today, the current PA leadership, which openly conspired with the Americans, and probably with the Israelis as well, against the late Palestinian leader is now singing the praises of Yasser Arafat.

Needless to say, this is an ultimate expression of hypocrisy and dishonesty. And the Palestinian people must not be fooled by these hypocrites.

Yasser Arafat Speech at UN General Assembly, 1988

2009-11-12T06:33:00.004+02:00

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May 30 2006
Republished November 12 2009

Geneva General Assembly December 13 1988

" Mr. President, Honorable Members: It never occurred to me that my second meeting with this honorable assembly since 1974 would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva.

A bad thought that the new political positions and postures evolved by our Palestinian people in the course of the Algiers meeting of the Palestine National - Council (PNC), all of which have been made public and extremely well received internationally, would have necessitated my travel to the United Nations headquarters in New York to brief you on our resolutions and projections en the issue of peace in our homeland as formulated by our PNC, the highest legislative authority in the Palestinian body politic.

I am both proud and happy to meet with you today, here in Geneva, after an arbitrary American decision barred me from going to you there. I am proud because I am in your midst and you are the highest rostrum for the problems of justice and peace in the world.

I am happy because I am in Geneva, where justice and neutrality are a guidepost and a constitution in a world where the arrogance of power drives some to lose their sense of neutrality and justice.

The resolution passed by your esteemed assembly, with 154 member nations voting to move the session here, was not a victory over the American decision but an unprecedented landslide for the international consensus in favor of justice and Peace. It is proof that our people's just cause has become embedded in the fabric of the human conscious.

Our Palestinian people will never forget the position taken by this honorable assembly and these friendly States in support of right and justice and in defense of the values and principles for which the United Nations organization was established-

This position will be a source of confidence and security to all peoples subjected to injustice, oppression, and occupation and struggling, like the Palestinian people, for freedom, dignity, and survival.

I extend deep gratitude to all nations, forces, and international organizations and personalities who backed our people and supported its national right-particularly our friends in the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, the socialist countries, the non-aligned States, the Islamic States, the African States, the States, the Latin American States, and other friendly States.

I also thank Western European nations and Japan for their latest stands toward our people and I invite them to take further steps Positively to evolve their resolutions in order to open the way for Peace and a just settlement in our region the Middle East.

I reiterate our solidarity with and Support for the liberation movements in Namibia and South Africa in their struggle, and our support for the African front line states against the aggression of the racist South African regime.

I seize this opportunity to express my gratitude to those friendly states which took the initiative in supporting us, in endorsing Our PNC resolutions, and in recognizing the State Of Palestine.

And I will not miss this opportunity to thank warmly His Excellency the of the United Nations, Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar, and his assistants for their relentless efforts to achieve humanity's aspirations for international detente and the settlement of its problems, particularly those related to the Palestine question.

I also extend my thanks and appreciation to the chairman and members of the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the inalienable Rights of the Palestinian people on their endeavors for Our people's cause, and I salute the nonaligned nations, "Committee of Nine on the Palestine Question" for all its constructive contributions to our people's cause.

And to you, Mr. President, my warm congratulations on the occasion of your election as president of this assembly. I have full confidence in your wisdom and insight.

I also congratulate your predecessor on his skillful handling of the proceedings of the previous session. Lastly, I extend warm greetings and thanks to the Swiss government and People for making this meeting possible. Mr President, Honorable Members Fourteen Years ago on 13 November l974, I received a gracious invitation from You to expound the Problem Of Our Palestinian People before this dignified assembly.

Here I am returning to you after all these eventful years to see now Peoples taking their places in your midst, crowning thereby their victories in the battles for freedom and independence.

To the representatives of these peoples, I extend the warm congratulations of our own. Let it be known that I return to you with a stronger voice, a firmer determination and a greater coincidence to reiterate my conviction that our struggle will bear fruit and that the State of Palestine, which we proclaimed at Our Palestine National Council, will take its place among you to join [bands with]

You in consolidating the charter of this organization and the Universal Declaration of Human rights, in putting an end to the tragedies afflicting humanity, and in upholding the Principles of right, justice- Peace, and freedom for all.

Fourteen years ago, when you told us in the General Assembly hall- "Yes to Palestine and the people Palestine, yes to the Palestine Liberation Organization, yes to the inalienable national rights of the people of Palestine," a few imagined that your resolutions would carry little weight, failing to realize that these resolutions were among the springs that watered the olive branch I carried that day.

Since then, we have watered it with blood, tears, and sweat, and it has turned into a tree with roots entrenched in the ground, and a stem reaching for the sky promising to bear the fruits of victory over coercion, injustice, and occupation.

You gave us hope that freedom and justice would triumph and we gave you a generation of our people that bas dedicated its life to the realization of that dream.

It is the generation of the blessed Intifadah, which today is wielding the homeland's Stones to defend the honor of this homeland and be worthy of belonging to a people thirsting for freedom and independence I bring you greetings from those heroic people, from our men and our women, from the masses of our blessed Intifadah, which now enters its second year with great momentum and painstaking organization, using a civilized, democratic approach to weather and confront occupation, coercion, tyranny and the barbaric crimes committed daily by the Israeli occupiers.

Greetings to you from our young men and women in the occupation forces' prisons and collective detention centers.

Greetings from the children of stones who are challenging occupation forces armed with warplanes, tanks, and weapon-an unarmed Palestinian David facing, a heavily armed Israeli Goliath.

I said in concluding my address in our first encounter that as chairman of the Palestine Liberation organization and leader of the Palestine revolution, I reaffirm that we do not wish to see a drop of Jewish or Arab blood shed, that we do not want the continuation of the fighting for one extra minute.

I appealed to you then to spare us all these ordeals and sufferings and to speed up work on the foundations of a just peace based on securing the rights, hopes, and aspirations of our people and the equal rights of all peoples I said that I was calling upon you to stand by the struggle of our People to exercise its right to self-determination and to enable our people to return from the exile into which it was driven at gunpoint.

I solicited your help to end this injustice to which successive generations of our people have been subjected over several decades so that they can live free and sovereign on their soil and in their homeland, enjoying all their national and human rights.

The last thing I said from this rostrum, was that war breaks out from Palestine and that peace starts in Palestine.

The dream we entertained at the time was to establish a democratic State of Palestine in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews would live with equal rights and obligations as one unified community, like other peoples in this contemporary world.

We were shocked to hear Israeli officialdom interpret this Palestinian dream-inspired by the spiritual heritage that illuminated Palestine and the civilizations and humanitarian values calling for co-existence in a free democratic society-as a scheme to destroy and obliterate their entity.

Mr. President: We had to draw the necessary conclusion regarding the gap between this reality and the dream.

We set out in the Palestine Liberation Organization to look for realistic and attainable formulas that would settle the issue on the basis of possible, rather than absolute justice while securing the rights of our people to freedom, sovereignty, and independence; ensuring for everyone peace, security, and stability; and sparing Palestine and the Middle East wars and battles that have been going on for forty years.

Didn't we, Mr. President, take the initiative of relying, on the charter and resolutions of the United Nations, the Declaration of Human Rights, and international legitimacy as the basis for the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Did we not welcome the Vance-Gromyko communique� of 1977 as a move that could form the basis of a proposed solution to this conflict?

Did we not agree to participate in the Geneva conference on the basis of the American-Egyptian statement of 1977 to push forward the prospects of a settlement and peace in the region?

Did we not endorse the Arab peace plan in Fez in 1982 and later the call for an international peace conference under the auspices of the United Nations and in keeping with its resolutions? Did we not underwrite the Brezhnev plan for peace in the Middle East?

Did we not welcome and support the Venice declaration by the European Community as the basis for a just peace in the area? Did we not welcome and support the joint initiative of presidents Gorbachev and Mitterand on a preparatory committee for the international conference?

Did we not welcome scores of political statements and initiatives put forward by African, Islamic, non-aligned, socialist, European, and other groups and states for the purpose of finding a peaceful settlement based on the principles of international legitimacy?

What has been the attitude of Israel on all this, even though not a single one of the aforementioned initiatives or plans or communique�s lacks political balance or overlooks the claims and interests, of an the parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Israel's response to all this bas been the escalation of its settlement and annexation schemes; the fanning of the flames of conflict with more destruction, devastation, and bloodshed; and the expansion of the confrontation fronts to include brotherly Lebanon, which was invaded by the occupation troops in 1982, an invasion punctuated with slaughters and massacres perpetrated against the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples, including the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

Until this moment, Israel continues to occupy parts of south Lebanon, and Lebanon faces daily raids as well as air, sea, and land attacks on its cities and villages and our camps in the south.

It is painful and regrettable that the American government alone should continue to back these aggressive and expansionist schemes as well as Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian and Arab territories, its crimes, and its iron-fist policy against our children and women.

It is painful and regrettable, too, that the American government should continue refusing to recognize the right of six million Palestinians to self-determination, a right which is sacred to the American people and other peoples on this planet.

I remind them, of the position of President Wilson, author of the two universal principles of international relations, IE, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force and the right of peoples to self-determination.

1 remind them, too, that when the Palestinian people were consulted by the King-Crane Commission in 1919, they chose the United States as the mandatory power. Circumstances having prevented that, the mandate was given to Britain.

My question to the American people is this: Is it fair that the Palestinian people should be deprived of what President Wilson prescribed? The successive American administrations realize that the only birth certificate for the establishment of the State of Israel is Resolution 181, approved by the General Assembly on 29 November 1947, and endorsed at the time by the United States and the Soviet Union.

It provides for the establishment of two states in Palestine, one Palestinian Arab and one Jewish. How then does the American government explain its position which acknowledges and recognizes the half of the resolution that pertains to Israel and rejects the half pertaining to the Palestinian state?

How does the United States government explain its lack of commitment to the execution of a resolution that it has endorsed on more than one occasion in your esteemed assembly, Le., (UNGA) Resolution 194, which provides for the right of the Palestinians to return to the homes and properties from which they were evicted and for compensation for those wishing not to exercise this right?

The United States government knows that neither the U.S. nor anyone else has the right to apportion international legitimacy and fragment the provisions of international law.

Mr. President: The uninterrupted struggle of our people for its rights has been going on for several decades during which it has offered hundreds of thousands of martyrs and wounded and endured all kinds of tragedies. On the contrary, its adherence to its Palestinian homeland and national identity has grown stronger.

The leaders of Israel, in their intoxication, deluded themselves into believing that, after our exodus from Beirut, the Palestine Liberation Organization would be thrown into the sea. Little did they expect our march into exile to turn into a procession of return to the homeland, to the field of battle, to occupied Palestine.

The result was the heroic popular Intifadah within our occupied land, the Intifadah which is there to stay until the fulfillment of our goals of freedom and national independence.

I take pride, Mr. President, in being one of the sons of these population [sic], whose men, women, and children are writing with their blood an outstanding epic of national resistance and who are performing legendary miracles daily to sustain their Intifadah and make it grow until it can impose its will and prove that fight can prevail over might We salute with deep pride our people of the Intifadah as the authors of a unique democratic revolutionary experiment.

Theirs is the faith that could not be crushed by Israel's military machine; that could not be killed by any kind of ammunition; that could not be shaken by the burial of people alive, the breaking of bones, the inducement of miscarriages, or the usurpation of water resources; and that could not be deterred by detention, internment, exile, deportation, collective punishment, the demolition of homes, the closure of universities, schools, trade unions, associations, institutions, and newspapers; or the laying of siege to camps, villages, and towns.

Those brutal reprisals have only served to strengthen that faith, spreading it to every household and giving it roots in every inch of our national soil. A people with such a heritage and such a history is invincible.

All the forces of tyranny and terror cannot sway its deep-rooted faith in its right to its homeland and in such values as justice, peace, love, coexistence, and tolerance. The rifle of the revolutionary has protected us from liquidation and the destruction of our national identity in the arenas of hot confrontation. We are fully confident of our ability to protect our green (olive) branch in the arenas of political confrontation-

The worldwide embrace of our just cause, pressing for the realization of peace based on justice, demonstrates clearly that the world has unequivocally identified the predator and the prey, the aggressor and the victim, the struggler for freedom and peace and the terrorist.

The day-to-day practices of the occupation army and the gangs of fanatic armed settlers against our people, women and children, have unveiled the ugly face of Israeli occupation and exposed its true aggressive nature-

This growing worldwide awareness, bas reached Jewish groups within Israel itself and outside. Their eyes have been opened to the reality of the problem and the essence of the conflict, particularly since they have witnessed the inhuman, day-to-day Israeli practices that undermine the tolerant spirit of Judaism itself.

It bas become difficult, if not impossible, for a Jew to reject racial persecution and uphold freedom and human rights while remaining silent about Israel's crimes against Palestinian human rights, the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian homeland, particularly the ugly day-to-day practices of the occupiers gangs of settlers.

We distinguish, Mr. President, between the Jewish citizen whom the Israeli ruling circles have continuously sought to disinform and mislead and the Practices of the leaders of Israel.

We realize that there are within and outside Israel courageous and honorable Jewish people who do not condone the Israeli governments policy of repression, massacres, expansion, settlement and expulsion and who recognize the equal rights of our people to life, freedom, and independence.

On behalf of the Palestinian people, I thank them for their courageous and honorable stance.

Our people does not want a right which is not its own or which bas vested in it by international legitimacy and international law. It does not seek its freedom at the expense of anyone else's freedom, nor does it want a destiny which negates the destiny of another people.

Our people refuses to be better or worse than any other people. Our people wants to be the equal of all other peoples, with the same rights and obligations.

I call upon all peoples of the world, especially those which were afflicted by the Nazi occupation and considered it their duty to close the chapter of coercion and oppression by one people against another and to lend a willing hand to all the victims of terrorism, fascism, and Nazism, to see clearly today the responsibilities cast upon them by history toward our downtrodden people which wants its children to have a place under the sun in their homeland-a place where they can live in freedom, like the rest of the children of the world.

Mr. President. It is cause for optimism that our struggle should culminate in the ongoing Intifadah when the international atmosphere is marked by a serious and sustained quest for international detente, accord, and progress.

We arc heartened by the successes scored by the United Nations and its secretary-general in contributing effectively to settling many problems and defusing trouble-spots around the world in this new environment of international detente. Surely, it is impossible to consolidate this new, positive international climate without addressing problems and trouble spots around the globe.

This would enable us to formulate a more accurate and reliable yardstick to assess the endeavors of man and nations and to brace for the next century and the challenges and new responsibilities it will lay before us in terms of averting wars and destruction and promoting more freedom, well-being, peace, and progress for mankind.

No one, Mr. President, would dispute the fact that the Palestine problem is the problem of our contemporary world. It is the oldest on your agenda. It is the most intricate and complex.

Of the regional issues, it poses the most serious threat to international peace and security. Hence, its priority among the issues that should command the attention of the two superpowers and all the countries of the world. Hence, the need for an effort to outline a course for its equitable solution-a solution that would spread peace across the Middle East.

We in the Palestine Liberation Organization-as a leadership responsible for the people of Palestine and its destiny, loyal to the struggle of our people, venerating, the sacrifices of our martyrs, eager to contribute to the prevailing climate of coexistence and detente, and [the] consensus of the need to participate in the peaceful efforts to find a political settlement that would put an end to the tragedies of wars and fighting and would open the way for peaceful coexistence under international law-summoned our Palestine National Council to convene in an extraordinary session in Algiers last 12-15 November; the purpose being-, to specify and clarify our position as a main party to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which cannot be settled without its participation and approval.

It pleases me to inform you, with great pride, that our Palestine National Council, through a total.1y free exercise of democracy, ha again demonstrated its ability to shoulder its national responsibilities, endorsing serious constructive and responsible resolutions which pave the way for us to reinforce and highlight our desire and contribution to find a peaceful settlement that would secure the national and political rights of our people as well as peace and security for everyone else.

Mr. President: The first and decisive resolution of our Palestine National Council was the proclamation of the establishment of the State of Palestine, with the holy city of Jerusalem [al-Quds ash-Sharif) as its Capital.

The State of Palestine was declared. By virtue of the Palestinian Arab people's natural historic, and legal right to their homeland, Palestine, and of the sacrifices of their successive generations in defense of the liberty and independence of their homeland; pursuant to the resolutions of the Arab summit conference, by the authority of international legitimacy, as embodied in the resolutions of the United Nations since 1947.

In implementation of the Palestinian Arab people's right to self-determination, political independence, and sovereignty on their soil, and in conformity with your Successive resolutions.

It is important for me, in repeating this historic proclamation before the international community, now that it has become one of the Official United Nations documents to reaffirm that this decision is irreversible and that we will not relent until it succeeds in casting 0ff the Occupation, enabling Our Palestinian people wherever they may be to exercise their sovereignty in their state, the State of Palestine. In it they shall develop their national and cultural identity and enjoy full equality in rights.

Their religious and political beliefs and their human dignity shall be safeguarded under a democratic parliamentary system of government built on freedom of opinion; the freedom to form parties; the protection of the rights of the minority by the majority and respect for the decision of the majority by the minority; social justice and equal rights, free of ethnic, religious, racial, or sexual discrimination; a constitution that guarantees the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary; and on the basis of total allegiance to the centuries-old spiritual and civilizational Palestinian heritage of religious tolerance and coexistence.

The State of Palestine is an Arab State; its people are an integral Part of the Arab nation and of the nation's heritage, its civilization, and its aspiration to attain its goals of social progress, unity and liberation.

The State of Palestine is committed to the Charter of the League of Arab States, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the principles of non-alignment.

It is a peace-loving state committed to the principles of peaceful coexistence and it shall strive with all states and peoples to attain a permanent peace built on justice and respect of rights. It is a state which believes in the settlement of international and regional disputes by peaceful means in accordance with the charter and resolutions of the United Nations.

It rejects threats of force, violence, terrorism, or the use of these against its territorial integrity and political independence, or against the territorial integrity of any other state, without prejudice to its natural right to defend its territory and independence. It is a state which believes that the future can only bring security to those who are just or have come back to justice.

This, Mr. President, is the State of Palestine which we proclaimed and which we shall endeavor to embody so that it can take its place among the states of the world and share creatively in shaping a free world where justice and peace prevail. Our state, God willing, shall have its provisional government at the earliest possible opportunity.

The PNC has mandated the PLO Executive Committee to assume the functions of the said government in the interim. To embody the aforementioned decision, our Palestine National Council adopted a series of resolutions. I am keen to spotlight the most salient of these, which underline our serious determination to pursue the path of an equitable peaceful settlement and to exert maximum effort to ensure its success.

Our PNC reaffirmed the necessity of convening an international conference on the issue of the Middle East and its core, the Palestinian issue, under the auspices of the United Nations and with the participation of the permanent members of the Security Council and all parties to the conflict in the region, including, on an equal footing, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, on the understanding that the international conference will be held on the basis of Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and the safeguarding of the legitimate national and political rights of the Palestinian people, foremost among which is its right to self-determination.

Our PNC reasserted the need for Israel's withdrawal from all the Palestinian and Arab territories it occupied in 1967, including Arab Jerusalem; the establishment of the Palestinian state; the annulment of all expropriation and annexation measures; and the dismantling of the settlements established by Israel in the Palestinian and Arab territories since 1967, as called for in the Arab summit resolutions of Fez and Algiers.

Our PNC also reaffirmed the necessity seeking to place the occupied Palestinian territories, including Arab Jerusalem, under the supervision of the United Nations for a limited Period, to protect our people to create an atmosphere conducive to the success of the proceedings of the international conference toward the attainment of a comprehensive political settlement and the achievement of peace and security for all peoples and states in the Middle Fast, on the basis of mutual consent, and to enable the State of Palestine to exercise its effective authority in these territories reaffirmed earlier by the resolutions of the Arab summits.

Our PNC called for the settlement of the issue of Palestinian refuge, in accordance with the pertinent United Nations resolutions. it guaranteed freedom of worship and the right to engage in religion rites for all faiths in the holy places in Palestine.

And it reconfirmed that the relationship between the fraternal Jordanian and Palestinian peoples is a privileged one and that the future relationship between the State of Palestine and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will be built on confederal foundations, on the basis of the two fraternal people's free and voluntary choice, in consolidation of the historic ties that bind them and the vital interests they hold in common.

The PNC reaffirmed the need for the Security Council to draw up and guarantee arrangements for security and peace between all the states that are parties to the conflict in the region.

It is important for me, Mr. President, to point out that these resolutions, in their content and wording, reflect our firm desire for peace and freedom, and our total awareness of the climate of international detente and of the eagerness of international community to achieve balanced solutions that address the claims and fundamental interests of the parties in conflict.

These resolutions attest to the solemnity of the Palestinian's people's position on the question of peace; that they are committed to peace and believe that it should be secured and guaranteed by the Security Council under the aegis of the United Nations.

These resolutions constitute a firm, unambiguous response to all arguments, prejudices, stands, and pretexts used by some nations to cast doubt on the position and policy of the Palestine Liberation organization.

At a time when our people were voting or peace through their Intifadah and their representatives in the PNC, thereby confirming their positive response to the prevailing mood of detente in international relation and to the growing trend of toward the settlement of world conflicts by peaceful means, the Israeli government was fanning the flames of aggressive, expansionist conflicts, and religious fanaticism, thereby announcing its adherence- to the option of belligerence and the dismissal of our people's right.

The Palestine side, for its part, bas formulated clear and responsible political positions which conform with the will of the international community, to promote the convening of the international peace conference and the success of its proceedings.

The gratifying and courageous international backing as expressed in the recognition of the State of Palestine is further proof of the credibility of our course and resolutions and their compliance with the international will for peace.

While we greatly appreciate the free American voices that have explained and supported our position and resolutions, we note that the U.S. administration remains uncommitted to even-handedness in its dealings with the parties to the conflict.

It continues to demand from us alone the acceptance of positions which cannot be determined prior to negotiation and dialogue within the framework of the international conference.

I would point out here that the answer to the many questions being posed, regardless of their source, rests solely on the acceptance of the equality of the two parties to the conflict and on the recognition of their equal rights on a reciprocal basis.

And if the policies applied on the ground are any reflection of the policy-makers intentions, it is the Palestinian side that has more cause to worry and to demand reassurances about its fate and its future, facing as it does a state of Israel that is bristling with the latest of arms, including nuclear weapons.

Mr. President: Our Palestine National Council has reaffirmed its commitment to the UN resolutions that uphold the right of peoples to resist foreign occupation, colonialism, and racial discrimination, and their right to struggle for independence.

It has also reaffirmed its rejection of terrorism. in all its forms, including state terrorism, emphasizing its commitment to its past resolutions in this regard, to the resolution of the Arab summit in Algiers in 1988, to UN resolutions 421159 of 1987 and 61/40 of 1985, and to what was stated on this subject in the Cairo Declaration of 7 November 1985.

The position, Mr President, is clear and free of all ambiguity. And yet, I, as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, hereby once more declare that I condemn terrorism in all its forms, and at the same time salute those sitting before me in this hall who, in the days when they fought to free their countries from the yoke of colonialism, were accused of terrorism by their oppressors, and who today are the faithful leaders of their peoples, stalwart champions of justice and freedom.

I also offer a reverent salute to the martyrs who have fallen at the hands of terrorism and terrorists, foremost, among whom is my lifetime companion and deputy, the martyr-symbol. Kbalil al-Wazir, and the martyrs who fell in the massacres to which our people have been subjected in the various cities, villages, and camps of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and South Lebanon.

Mr. President, Honorable Members: The situation in our Palestinian homeland can bear no more waiting. Our people and our children, leading our march to liberty, holding aloft the torch of freedom, are being martyred daily for the sake of ending the occupation and laying the foundation of peace in their free, independent homeland. and in the region as a whole.

For this reason, the Palestine National Council, taking into consideration the circumstances of the Palestinians and the Israelis and the need for a spirit of tolerance between them, built its resolutions on foundations of realism. The United Nations bears an historic, extraordinary responsibility toward our people and their rights.

More than forty years ago, the United Nations, in its Resolution 181, decided on the establishment of two states in Palestine, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish. Despite the historic wrong that was done to our people, it is our view today that the said resolution continues to meet the requirements of International legitimacy which guarantee the Palestinian Arab people's right to sovereignty and national independence.

The acceleration of the peace process in the region requires special efforts on the part of the international community, particularly the United States and the Soviet Union, who bear a great responsibility toward the cause of peace in our region.

The United Nations, the permanent members of the Security Council, and all International blocs and bodies have a vital role to play at this stage. In my capacity as chairman of the PLO Executive Committee, presently assuming the functions of the provisional government of the State of Palestine, I therefore present the following Palestinian peace initiative:

First: That a serious effort be made to convene, under the supervision of the secretary-general of the United Nations, the preparatory committee of the international conference for peace in the Middle East-in accordance with the initiative of President Gorbachev and president Mitterand, which President Mitterand presented to your assembly toward the end of last September and which was supported by many states-- to pave the way for the convening of the international conference, which commands universal support except from the government of Israel.

Second. In view of our belief in international legitimacy and the vital role of the United Nations, that actions be undertaken to place our occupied Palestinian land under temporary United Nations supervision, and that international forces be deployed there to protect our people and, at the same time, to supervise the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from our country.

Third: The PLO will seek a comprehensive settlement among the parties concerned in the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the State of Palestine, Israel, and other neighbors, within the framework of the international conference for peace in the Middle East on the basis of resolutions 242 and 338 and so as to guarantee equality and the balance of interests, especially our people's rights, in freedom, national independence, and respect the right to exist in peace and security for ail.

If these principles are endorsed at the international conference, we will have come a long way toward a just settlement, and this will enable us to reach agreement on ail security and peace arrangements.

Mr. President: I hope it is clear to everyone that our Palestinian people, determined though they are to gain their legitimate national rights to self-determination, repatriation, and the ending of the occupation of the Palestinian state's territory, are equally determined to strive for those goals by peaceful means within the framework of the international conference under the sponsorship of the United Nations and in accordance with its charter and resolutions.

I assure you that, like all other peoples on earth, we are a people that yearns for peace--and perhaps with Mater enthusiasm, considering our long years of suffering and the harsh conditions that plague us and our children, who are deprived of die normalcy of a life free of war, free of tragedy, free of the torment of exile, free of hopelessness and daily anguish.

So let the voices supporting the olive branch, peaceful coexistence, and international entente be heard.

Let all hands join in defense of an historic, possibly irreplaceable opportunity to put an end to a tragedy that has lingered too long and cost thousands of lives and the destruction of hundreds of village and cities. We reach for the olive branch because it sprouts in our hearts from the tree of the homeland, the tree of freedom.

Mr. President, Honorable Members: I come to you in the name of my people, offering my hands that we can make true peace, peace based on justice. I ask the leaders of Israel to come here, under the sponsorship of the United Nations, so that, together, we can forge that peace.

I say to them, as I say to you, that our people, who want dignity, freedom, and peace for themselves and security for their state, want the same things for all the states and parties involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And here, I would address myself specifically to the Israeli people in all their parties and forces, and especially to the advocates of democracy and peace among them. I say to them: Come, let us make peace.

Cast away fear and intimidation. Leave behind the specter of the wars that have raged continuously in the furnace of this conflict for the past forty years.

Set aside all threats of wars to come, whose fuel could only be the bodies of our children and yours. Come, let us make peace. Let us make the peace of the bold, far from the arrogance of power and the weapons of destruction; far from occupation, oppression, humiliation, murder, and torture.

"Say: O Peoples of the Book! Come to common terms," so that we can build peace in the land of peace, the land of Palestine. "Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, goodwill toward men." "O Lord, thou art the peace, and the peace is of you, and the peace shall return unto you. Let us live, O Lord, in peace, and enter Heaven thy house, the house of peace.

Finally, I say to our people: The dawn approaches. Victory is at hand. I see the homeland in your holy stones. I sec the flag of our independent Palestine fluttering over the bills of our beloved homeland. Thank you. Peace be upon you, and God's mercy and His blessings.".END

________

Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine

2009-11-11T19:35:00.003+02:00

By Alison Weir

In August Sweden’s largest daily newspaper published an article containing grisly evidence suggesting that Israel had been taking Palestinian internal organs. The article, by veteran photojournalist Donald Bostrom, called for an international investigation to discover the facts.1

[In this photograph taken March 22, 2007, Vasile Dimineti holds a picture of his 24-year-old son, who died a year after selling his kidney. The family lives in the impoverished Moldovan village of Mingir, where about 40 of its 7,000 residents are thought to have sold a kidney. AFP photo/Daniel Mihailescu/Files]

In this photograph taken March 22, 2007, Vasile Dimineti holds a picture of his 24-year-old son, who died a year after selling his kidney. The family lives in the impoverished Moldovan village of Mingir, where about 40 of its 7,000 residents are thought to have sold a kidney. AFP photo/Daniel Mihailescu/Files

Israel immediately accused Bostrom and the newspaper of “anti-Semitism,” and charged that suggesting Israelis could be involved in the illicit removal of body parts constituted a modern “blood libel” (medieval stories of Jews killing people for their blood).2

Numerous Israeli partisans repeated these accusations, including Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, who asserted that the story was “merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of European funded and promoted anti-Israel hate.”3 Others suggested that the newspaper was “irresponsible” for running such an article.4

The fact is, however, that Israeli organ harvesting—sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries—has been documented for many years. Among the victims have been Palestinians.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Chancellor’s Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, the founder of Organ Watch, and the author of scholarly books and articles on organ trafficking. She is the pundit mainstream media call upon when they need expert commentary on the topic.5

While Scheper-Hughes emphasizes that traffickers and procurers come from numerous nations and ethnicities, including Americans and Arabs, she is unflinchingly honest in speaking about the Israeli connection:

“Israel is at the top,” she states. “It has tentacles reaching out worldwide.”6

In a lecture last year sponsored by New York’s PBS 13 Forum, Scheper-Hughes explained that Israeli organ traffickers, “had and still have a pyramid system at work that’s awesome…they have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they’ve got recruiters, they’ve got translators, they’ve got travel agents who set up the visas.”

Lest this sound simply like a successful international concern, it’s important to understand the nature of such a business.

As Scheper-Hughes describes it, organ trafficking consists of “paying the poor and the hungry to slowly dismantle their bodies.”

Organ traffickers prey on the world’s poorest, most desperate citizens—slum dwellers, inhabitants of dying villages, people without means or hope. Traffickers promise them what seem like astronomical sums of money (from $1,000 to $10,000)—which they frequently don’t even deliver—in return for vital internal organs.

For traffickers, human body parts are commodities, to be cut out of the bodies of the poor and sold to the rich. The organ “donors” receive no follow-up care and end up worse off on many levels—physically, financially, psychologically, socially—than even their original tragic situation. Sometimes they are coerced into such “donations.”

Organ sales have been illegal in most countries for years. The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which covers prevention, enforcement and sanctions in trafficking of humans, includes in its definition of human exploitation the extraction of organs for profit.7 Israel finally passed legislation against organ trafficking in 2008.8, 9

In her Forum 13 lecture Scheper-Hughes discussed the two motivations of Israeli traffickers. One was greed, she said. The other was somewhat chilling: “Revenge, restitution—reparation for the Holocaust.”

She described speaking with Israeli brokers who told her “it’s kind of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We’re going to get every single kidney and liver and heart that we can. The world owes it to us.’”

Scheper-Hughes says that she “even heard doctors saying that.”

For many years Israelis in need of an internal organ have gone on what experts call “transplant tourism”—traveling to other nations to obtain internal organs. Sometimes body parts are obtained from those freshly dead; more often from the desperately needy. While affluent people from numerous countries and ethnicities engage in this practice, Israel is unique in several significant ways.

First, Israelis engage in this at an extraordinarily high rate. According to a 2001 BBC report, Israelis buy more kidneys per capita than any other population.

Second, Israelis have the lowest donor rate in the world—one-fifth that of Europe, according to BBC. This is in part because there has been a widespread impression that Jewish religious law prohibits transplants as a “desecration of the body.”10 The Israeli news service Ynet reports, “the percentage of organs donated among Jews is the lowest of all the ethnic groups.”11

Third, the Israeli government has enabled the practice. For many years the Israeli health system subsidized its citizens’ “transplant holidays,” reimbursing Israelis $80,000 for medical operations abroad. Much of the remaining costs could often be obtained from government-subsidized12 Israeli insurance plans.13 In addition, Israel’s Ministry of Defense was directly involved.

Scheper-Hughes discussed Israeli organ trafficking in detail in 2001 in published testimony to the Subcommittee on International Relations and Human Rights of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.14 In her extensive testimony, Scheper-Hughes stated that although Israel had become a pariah for its organ policies, Israeli officials exhibited “amazing tolerance…toward outlawed ‘transplant tourism.’”

She described an international syndicate which was “organized through a local business corporation in conjunction with a leading transplant surgeon, operating out of a major medical center not far from Tel Aviv,” and which had forged links with transplant surgeons in Turkey, Russia, Moldavia, Estonia, Georgia, Romania, and New York City.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense was directly involved in what Scheper-Hughes called Israel’s “‘illicit [in other nations] national ‘program’ of transplant tourism…Members of the Ministry of Defense or those closely related to them” accompanied transplant junkets.

In her Forum 13 lecture, Scheper-Hughes said that investigating Israeli organ trafficking over the past decade had taken her “from country to country to country to country.”

One of these is Moldova, the poorest country in Europe—and homeland of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman—where 90 percent of the people earn less than $2 a day. A 2001 BBC report on organ trafficking described the situation: “Hundreds of Israelis have created a production line that starts in the villages of Moldova, where men today are walking around with one kidney.15

Another is Brazil, where a legislative commission found that 30 [it may actually have been as high as 60] Brazilians from impoverished neighborhoods had sold their kidneys to a trafficking ring headed by Israelis, with Israeli citizens receiving almost all of the organs, and the Israeli government providing most of the funding.16

The ring had also begun inquiring about buying other vital organs from poor residents, including lungs, livers and corneas.17

An Inter Press Service (IPS) news story from the time reported that Scheper-Hughes testified to the commission that international trafficking of human organs had begun some 12 years earlier, promoted by Zaki Shapira, head of kidney transplant services at Bellinson Medical Center, near Tel Aviv.

Scheper-Hughes reported that Shapira had performed more than 300 kidney transplants, sometimes accompanying his patients to other countries such as Turkey. The recipients were very wealthy or had very good health insurance, and the “donors” very poor people from Eastern Europe, the Philippines and other developing countries.

The chairman of the Brazilian commission, physician Raimundo Pimentel, was outraged at Israeli policies, pointing out that trafficking can only take place on a large scale if there is a major source of financing, such as the Israeli health system. Pimentel charged that the resources provided by the Israeli health system “were a determining factor” in enabling a network that preyed on society’s poorest populations.

In 2004 there were reports that Israeli traffickers had added China to their target donor populations.18 In one recent case an Israeli paid an organ broker $100,000 for a kidney transplant in China from an 18-year-old Chinese girl. She received $5,000 and died following surgery.19

New York Times reporter Larry Rohter pointed out that allowing brokers to operate with few restrictions benefited Israel “by exporting Israel’s organ shortage overseas.” Rohter cites a kidney specialist at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem who explained that patients who go abroad “‘save the country a lot of money; not only in terms of what doesn’t have to be spent on dialysis, but also by opening places for other people who are on the list.’”20

Many people find governmental complicity in organ trafficking deeply troubling on moral and philosophical grounds.

As Scheper-Hughes testified: “The sale of human organs and tissues requires that certain disadvantaged individuals, populations, and even nations have been reduced to the role of ‘suppliers.’

“It is a scenario in which only certain bodies are broken, dismembered, fragmented, transported, processed, and sold in the interests of a more socially advantaged population...of receivers.” She believes that the risks and benefits of organ transplant surgery should be more equally distributed among nations, ethnic groups, and social classes.
Organ theft

It is difficult to know how often Israeli trafficking involves outright theft of vital organs from living human beings.

It is not rare for the “donor” to receive little or none of the compensation promised. For example, in 2007 Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that two Israelis had confessed to persuading Palestinians “from the Galilee and central Israel who were developmentally challenged or mentally ill to agree to have a kidney removed for payment.” According to the Haaretz report, after the organ had been taken the traffickers refused to pay for them.

On occasion, people are coerced into giving up their organs. For example, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, the alleged Brooklyn trafficker recently arrested in an FBI sweep in New Jersey, reportedly carried a gun. When a potential organ seller would try to back out, Rosenbaum would use his finger to simulate firing a gun at the person’s head.

The Rosenbaum case, reportedly part of a ring centered in Israel, is the first case of trafficking to be prosecuted in the US. His arrest and the substantial evidence against him may have surprised State Department Countermisinformation Director Todd Leventhal, who had characterized organ trafficking as an “urban legend,” stating, “It would be impossible to successfully conceal a clandestine organ-trafficking ring.” Leventhal called such reports “irresponsible and totally unsubstantiated.”

More often organ theft involves dead bodies—or those alleged to be dead.

Israel’s very first successful heart transplant, in fact, used a stolen heart.

In 1968 Avraham Sadegat unexpectedly died two days after being hospitalized in Beilinson Hospital in Israel’s Petah Tikva for a stroke. When his family finally was able to retrieve his body (the hospital initially refused to release it) they found his chest covered with bandages; odd, they thought, for a stroke victim. Upon removing these they discovered that the chest cavity was stuffed with bandages and the heart was missing.21

During this time, the Israeli press was heralding the historic heart transplant, performed by a team of surgeons who were to become some of Israel’s most celebrated physicians, among them Dr. Morris Levy, Dr. Bernardo Vidne, and Dr Jack Solomon, who harvested the heart.22

When the family began to ask questions, the hospital denied any connection. After the man’s wife and brother had raised a media furor, petitioned three cabinet ministers—and agreed to sign a document that they would not sue—the hospital finally admitted it was Sadegat’s heart that had been used.

Haaretz quoted Sadegat’s tearful wife: “They treated him like an alley cat. From the moment he entered the hospital, they apparently saw him only as a potential source of organs and not as a man in need of treatment. They only thought about how to do the deed without us knowing.”

Sadegat’s medical condition before his heart was removed has not been made public. It is possible—perhaps probable—that up until his heart was removed it was still beating; according to an Israeli media report, “once a heart stops beating, it is no longer fit for transplantation.”23

Even if he was what is now termed “brain dead,” the general view is that family members should at least be a party to decisions regarding the patient: first, whether to “pull the plug,” and, second, whether to donate an organ. At the time, however, Israeli law allowed organs to be harvested without the family’s consent.

Forty years later the hospital held an anniversary celebration of the transplant, despite the fact that, according to Haaretz, the heart had been obtained “through deceit and trickery.” The festivities, which honored surviving members of the transplant team, featured balloons and a red, heart-shaped cake.

In this incident of organ theft (and from a possibly living body), the family was Israeli. Had the wife and brother been Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza, they would not have possessed the power to force a confession from the hospital, and it is likely that those individuals today calling the Swedish article a “blood libel” or “irresponsible journalism” would have applied the same epithets to journalists reporting questions concerning the historic Israeli heart transplant—if any reporters even bothered or dared to do so.
Yehuda Hiss, keeper of the morgue

Perhaps one of the most long-term and high-level cases of organ theft—and one that involves Palestinian as well as Israeli organs—concerns an extraordinarily high official: Dr. Yehuda Hiss, Israel’s chief pathologist and, from 1988 through 2004, director of Israel’s state morgue, the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir.

An early indication of malfeasance came to light in 1998 and concerned a Scottish man named Alisdair Sinclair, who had died under questionable circumstances after being taken into custody at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport.

The Israeli story, as reported by the Israeli news magazine Jerusalem Report, is that Sinclair had confessed to transporting drugs, even though none were found, although he was in possession of 9,000 German marks ($5,000). He then, the police claim, hanged himself by looping his shoelaces and T-shirt around a towel bar about a meter off the ground and slipped the improvised noose around his neck. From a squatting position, the police story goes, he repeatedly threw his bodyweight downward, choking himself.

Sinclair did not die, however, and medics were able to restore a heartbeat. He was transferred to a hospital where, according to the magazine report, the hospital’s associate director, Dr. Yigal Halperin, said that Sinclair “had suffered irreversible brain damage, and there was little doctors could do for him. Left in a corner of the emergency room, he died at 7 p.m. [It’s unknown whether he had been put on life support.] His corpse was transferred to the Institute for Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir for an autopsy.”

Afterwards, Israeli authorities located Sinclair’s family and gave them three weeks to dispose of the body. They suggested that he be buried in a Christian cemetery in Israel, pointing out that this would be one-third the cost of shipping the body back to Scotland. However, the grieving family scraped up the money to bring him home.

They had a second autopsy performed by Glasgow University, only to discover that Sinclair’s heart and a small bone in his throat called the hyoid were missing. The British Embassy filed a complaint with Israel, and a heart was sent to Scotland. According to the Jerusalem Report, the family “wanted the Forensic Institute to pay for a DNA test to confirm that this heart was indeed their brother’s, but the Institute’s director, Prof. Jehuda Hiss, refused, citing the prohibitive cost.”

Despite a protest from the British government, Israel refused to supply Hiss’s pathology findings or the police report. According to the British government and a report in the Israeli media, around the time of Sinclair’s death a doctor at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital put in a request for a hyoid bone for research purposes—and eventually received a bill for shipping costs.24 Israel retained Sinclair’s $5,000.

Through the years Hiss and the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic medicine continued to be accused of organ theft. In 2000 the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot published an investigative report alleging that Hiss had been extracting organs without permission and then packing the bodies with broomsticks and cotton wool to fill in cavities before burial. The report charged that under Hiss the institute had been involved in organ sales of body parts—“legs, thighs, ovaries, breasts and testicles,” allegedly to medical institutions.

In 2001 a district judge found the Institute had performed hundreds of autopsies and had removed body parts without the families’ permission—and sometimes in direct opposition to their expressed wishes.25 One report described a “museum of skulls” at the institute.

Little was done, however, and complaints continued—often by the parents of dead Israeli soldiers horrified to discover that body parts had been taken from their sons. Finally, in 2004 Israel’s health minister transferred directorship of the morgue itself away from Hiss. Hiss, however, retained his position as Israel’s chief pathologist, a post it appears he holds to this day.26, 27

Hiss had also been connected with two previous national scandals, both of which may have involved powerful people in Israel, which may account for his longevity in Israel’s medical establishment despite years of proven wrongdoing.

The first controversy concerned the “Yemenite Children’s Affair”—a situation, largely from the early 1950s, in which a thousand babies and small children of recent immigrants to Israel had “disappeared.”

When the immigrants had arrived as part of Israel’s “ingathering of the exiles,” babies were immediately taken from their mothers and placed in children’s houses. Many were hospitalized for a variety of ills, and hundreds died, their deaths coming in such large numbers that they were announced over loudspeakers.

The distraught parents often never saw the body or received a death certificate, and there were growing suspicions that not all had died—some, it was believed, had been “given” to Ashkenazi parents. One author writes: “It was a well-known fact within the Jewish community in the United States that if a family wanted a child they could go to [baby brokers, both rabbis] and simply pay the necessary fee.”28

Some Israeli investigators have found considerable evidence for these charges, and indications of complicity at multiple levels of the power structure. In fact, one researcher charges: “People in positions of power at the time that the State of Israel was established profited from the abduction and sale of children from poor immigrant families.”29

Hiss’ connection comes in 1997, when Israel finally had formed a committee to investigate the disappearance of Yemenite and other Jewish children in the years 1948-1954. Among those testifying before this committee was a California woman who had come to Israel searching for her biological mother—and, according to DNA testing by a geneticist at Hebrew University, had found her.

The committee demanded that another DNA test be conducted at the Abu Kabir forensic institute. As at least one observer predicted ahead of time, Hiss’s test came up negative, and the government was allegedly exonerated, despite the fact that the geneticist who had conducted the first tests stood by his results.30

Hiss also plays a role in some conspiracy theories regarding the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, who had begun a peace process with Palestinians. In March 1999 a group of academics presented findings alleging that Hiss had submitted false evidence to the commission that investigated the killing.31
Palestinian Victims

Israelis have also targeted Palestinians, a particularly vulnerable population on numerous levels.

In her congressional subcommittee testimony, Scheper-Hughes reported that before he moved overseas, Israeli hospital transplant head Zaki Shapira had located kidney sellers “amongst strapped Palestinian workers in Gaza and the West Bank.” She said that his “hand was slapped by an ethics board,” and he moved his practice overseas.

For decades numerous Palestinians and others have charged Israel with taking body parts from Palestinians they had wounded or killed.

In her subcommittee testimony, Scheper-Hughes testified that toward the end of the apartheid period in South Africa, “human rights groups in the West Bank complained to me of tissue and organs stealing of slain Palestinians by Israeli pathologists at the national Israeli legal medical institute in Tel Aviv.”

A Washington Report for Middle East Affairs article by Mary Barrett (see “Autopsies and Executions,” April 1990 Washington Report, p. 21) reported “widespread anxiety over organ thefts which has gripped Gaza and the West Bank since the intifada began in December of 1987.”

Barrett quotes a forensic physician: “There are indications that for one reason or another, organs, especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half. There were just too many reports by credible people for there to be nothing happening. If someone is shot in the head and comes home in a plastic bag without internal organs, what will people assume?”

A 2002 news story from IRNA reported that three Palestinian boys aged 14-15 had been killed by Israeli forces on Dec. 30, their bodies finally being returned for burial on Jan. 6. According to the report: “shortly before burial, Palestinian medical authorities examined the bodies and found out that the main vital organs were missing from the bodies.” In an interview on Al Jazeera, President Yasser Arafat held up photos of the boys, saying, “They murder our kids and use their organs as spare parts.”

Journalist Khalid Amayreh, recently investigating this topic further, found that “several other Palestinians gave a similar narrative, recounting how they received the bodies of their murdered relatives, mostly men in their early twenties, with vital organs taken away by the Israeli authorities.”

Israel has consistently characterized such accusations as “anti-Semitic,” and numerous other journalists have discounted them as exaggerations.

However, according to the pro-Israel Forward magazine, the truth of these charges was, in fact, confirmed by an Israeli governmental investigation a number of years ago.

In a recent story critical of the Swedish article, the Forward actually confirmed its main point, that Israel had been taking the body parts of slain Palestinians. The Forward article reported that one of the governmental investigations into Hiss had revealed that “he seemed to view every body that ended up in his morgue, whether Israeli or Palestinian, as fair game for organ harvesting.”32

Over the years, a great many Palestinian bodies have “ended up” in the Israeli morgue. In numerous cases Israeli occupation forces have taken custody of wounded or dead Palestinians. Sometimes their bodies are never returned to their grieving families—Palestinian NGOs say there are at least 250 such cases.

In other cases the bodies have been returned to the families days later, with crudely stitched naval-to-chin incisions. On many occasions Israeli soldiers have delivered the bodies late at night and required the bereaved families to bury their children, husbands, and brothers immediately, under Israeli military guard, sometimes with the electricity shut off.

In 2005 an Israeli soldier33 described a military doctor who gave “medics lessons in anatomy” using the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. Haaretz reports: “The soldier said that the Palestinian’s body had been riddled with bullets and that some of his internal organs had spilled out. The doctor pronounced the man dead and then ‘took out a knife and began to cut off parts of the body,’ the soldier said.

“‘He explained the various parts to us—the membrane that covers the lungs, the layers of the skin, the liver, stuff like that,’ the soldier continued. ‘I didn’t say anything because I was still new in the army. Two of the medics moved away, and one of them threw up. It was all done very brutally. It was simply contempt for the body.’”34

While most Israeli investigations into organ theft have largely ignored the Palestinian component, a number of significant facts are known:

* Palestinian organs were harvested during years of an astonishingly lax system in which the body parts even of Jewish Israelis were extracted illicitly at the national morgue by the chief pathologist and exchanged for money.
* Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are largely a captive population. Numerous reports by highly reputable Israeli and international organizations have documented a situation in which Palestinians have few if any real rights; Israeli forces have killed civilians with impunity, imprisoned massive numbers of people without benefit of trials, and routinely abused prisoners.
* Israeli authorities have conducted numerous autopsies of Palestinians without permission of their families, without even a semblance of public transparency, and without, it appears, accompanying reports. For example, the families of those who were taken while still alive are not provided with a medical report stating time and cause of death.
* A very small but significant minority of Israelis, including military officers and governmental ministers, hold extremist supremacist views relevant to organ extraction. In 1996, Jewish Week reported that Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, a leader of the Lubavitch sect of Judaism and the dean of a religious Jewish school in a West Bank settlement, stated: “If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that.” Ginzburgh elaborated: “Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.” [The Jewish Week, April 26, 1996, pp. 12, 31]

While most Israelis strenuously repudiate such beliefs, Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, an Israeli scholar on Jewish scriptural views on racism and ethnic chauvinism, has said, “The sad thing is, these statements are in our books.” Greenberg, who was a professor at Hebrew University, pointed out that such Talmudic texts were “purely theoretical” at the time of their writing, because Jews did not have the power to carry them out. Now, he pointed out, “they’re carried over into circumstances where Jews have a state and are empowered.”

While it is impossible to know whether any Israelis have ever acted on such religious permission to kill a non-Jew in order to provide body parts to Jews, some observers have considered this a possibility.

Dr. A. Clare Brandabur, a distinguished American scholar who has lived and traveled extensively in Palestine, writes that the information published in the Swedish article “resonates with reports from Palestinians in Gaza which I heard during the first intifada.”

She comments, “When I interviewed Dr. Haidar Abdul Shafi, head of the Red Crescent in Gaza, I mentioned to him reports of shootings of Palestinian children at times when there were no ‘clashes’ going on—a solitary 6-year-old entering his schoolyard in the morning with his bookbag on his back. The soldiers abducted the wounded child at gunpoint, then his body would be returned a few days later having undergone an ‘autopsy at Abu Kabir Hospital.’”

She says: “I asked Dr. Shafi if he had considered the possibility that these killings were being done for organ transplant, since (as Israel Shahak notes in Jewish History, Jewish Religion), it is not allowed to take Jewish organs to save a Jewish life, but it is allowed to take the organs of non-Jews to save Jewish lives. Dr. Shafi said he had suspected such things but since they had no access to the records of Abu Kabir Hospital, there was no way to verify these suspicions.”

Scheper-Hughes, in her congressional testimony, describes the danger of “organs got by any means possible including (I was told by one guilt-ridden practitioner) chemically inducing the signs of brain death in dying patients of no means and with access to minimal social support or family surveillance.”

Whether or not there have ever been organ-inspired murders in Israel as it appears there have elsewhere, numerous groups around the world are urging an international investigation into Israel’s handling of Palestinian bodies in its custody.

However, the Israeli government and its powerful advocates abroad, who regularly block investigations into Israeli actions, are doing their utmost to prevent this one.35, 36 Several lawsuits have been filed against the Swedish newspaper, the largest by Israeli lawyer and IDF officer Guy Ophir, who filed a $7.5 million lawsuit in New York against the newspaper and Bostrom. Ophir declared that Israel must “silence the reporter and the newspaper.”37

International investigations, of course, have two results: the innocent are absolved, the guilty discovered.

It is clear which category Israel believes it falls into.

______

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and is on the board of the Council for the National Interest.

An Internet petition calling for an investigation can be viewed at
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/investigateorgantheft/

Footnotes:

1 Bostrom, Donald, “Our sons plundered for their organs,” Aftonbladet, Aug. 17, 2009 , translated by Tlaxcala.
http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en
(Original Swedish version at http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab )
2 Israel Insider, “Netanyahu to press Sweden to condemn blood libel,” Aug. 23, 2009
http://israelinsider.ning.com/profiles/blogs/netanyahu-to-press-sweden-to
3 Tobin, Jonathan, “Swedish Anti-Semites Dig Up a Blood Libel,” CommentaryMagazine.com, Aug. 20, 2009
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/tobin/76522
4 Cassel, Matthew, “Baseless organ theft accusations will not bring Israel to justice,” The Electronic Intifada, Aug. 24, 2009
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10730.shtml
5 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, “The Organ of Last Resort,” UNESCO, www.unesco.org, July, 2001
http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_07/uk/doss34.htm
University of California Berkeley Anthropology Faculty CV: Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Chancellor’s Professor in Medical Anthropology, Head, Doctoral Program in Medical Anthropology, Critical Studies in Medicine, Science and the Body, Director, Organs Watch
http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/nsh.html
6 Griffin, Drew and David Fitzpatrick, “Donor says he got thousands for his kidney,” CNN Special Investigations Unit, CNN, Sept. 2, 2009
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/09/01/blackmarket.organs/index.html
7 Osava, Mario, “BRAZIL: Poor Sell Organs to Trans-Atlantic Trafficking Ring,” Inter Press Service (IPS), Feb. 23, 2004
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=22524
8 Yeshiva World News, “CNN: Israel a Leader in Organ Trafficking,” Sept. 3, 2009
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/38973/CNN:+Israel+a+Leader+in+Organ+Trafficking.html
9 Chabin, Michele, “Organ Donation: Legal, But Still Controversial,” Jewish Week, April 9, 2008
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c40_a7588/News/Israel.html
10 Rohter, Larry, “Tracking the Sale of a Kidney on a Path of Poverty and Hope,” The New York Times, May 23, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/international/americas/23BRAZ.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
11 Shapira-Rosenberg, Efrat, “A mitzvah called organ donation,” Ynet News, June 10, 2007
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3388529,00.html
12 Rohter, Larry, op. cit.
13 Ibid.
14 “Organs for Sale: China’s Growing Trade and Ultimate Violation of Prisoners’ Rights,” Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 107th Congress, First Session, June 27, 2001, Serial No. 107–29
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa73452.000/hfa73452_0f.htm
15 Lloyd-Roberts, Sue, “Europe’s poorest country supplying organs to its neighbours,” BBC Newsnight, 9/7/01
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1437345.stm
16 “BRAZIL: Poor Sell Organs to Trans-Atlantic Trafficking Ring,” Mario Osava, IPS, Feb. 23, 2004
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=22524
17 New York Times
18 “Israeli organ traffickers shift operations to China,” BioEdge, June 4, 2004
http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/7726/ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/international/americas/23BRAZ.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
19 “CNN: Israel a Leader in Organ Trafficking,” Yeshiva World News, Sept. 3, 2009
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/38973/CNN:+Israel+a+Leader+in+Organ+Trafficking.html
20“Tracking the Sale of a Kidney on a Path of Poverty and Hope,” New York Times, Larry Rohter, May 23, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/international/americas/23BRAZ.html?th
21 “40 years after Israel’s first transplant, donor’s family says his heart was stolen,” Dana Weiler-Polak, Haaretz, Dec., 14, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046041.html
22 “40 years on, medical staffers from Israel’s first human heart transplant reminisce about the feat,” Judy Siegel, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 7, 2008
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P1-159077338.html
23 “Shas swing vote pushes through organ donor law,” Shahar Ilan, Haaretz, March 25, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/968084.html
“With top rabbis’ blessing, Knesset approves organ donation law,” Shahar Ilan, Haaretz, Aug. 7, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/967871.html
24 “Scottish Tourist’s Family Rejects Out-of-Court Settlement,” Netty C. Gross, The Jerusalem Report, Jan. 29, 2001
25 “Attorney-General lodges complaint against Abu Kabir coroner,” Dan Izenbert, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 11, 2003
26 “Hiss fired for repeated body-part scandals,” Judy Siegel, Jerusalem Post, May 11, 2004
27 “Infamous Chief Pathologist to Once Again Evade Punishment,” Ezra HaLevi, Arutz Sheva Israel National News, Sept. 26, 2005
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
28 “Were the Children Sold?” Yechiel A. Mann, Stop-Abuse.net
http://stop-abuse.net/ym5.htm
29 “The Missing Children,” Yechiel A. Mann, Stop-Abuse.net
http://stop-abuse.net/ym1.htm
30 “Infamous Chief Pathologist to Once Again Evade Punishment,” Ezra HaLevi, Arutz Sheva Israel National News, Sept. 26, 2005
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
31“Infamous Chief Pathologist to Once Again Evade Punishment,” Ezra HaLevi, Arutz Sheva Israel National News, Sept. 26, 2005
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
32“Illicit Body-Part Sales Present Widespread Problem,”
By Rebecca Dube, Forward, Published Aug. 26, 2009, issue of Sept. 4, 2009
http://www.forward.com/articles/112915/
33“Palestinian corpse used for IDF anatomy lesson,” Amos Harel, Haaretz, Jan. 28, 2005
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=533018
34 “The Swedish canard—not only smoke, but also fire,” Shraga Elam, Aug. 25, 2009 (posted Sept. 4, 2009)
(Hebrew: http://cafe.themarker.com/view.php?t=1192567 )
http://shraga-elam.blogspot.com/2009/09/swedish-canard-not-only-smoke-but-also.html
35 “Israeli lawyer sues Swedish paper,” JTA, Aug. 27, 2009
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/08/27/1007480/israeli-lawyer-sues-swedish-paper
36 “Israeli lawyer sues ‘Aftonbladet’ in NY Court,” E.B. Solomont, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 26, 2009
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145124980&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
37 “Israeli Reservists To Sue Swedish Newspaper,” David Bedein, The Bulletin, August 30, 2009
http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/09/04/news/world/doc4a9aa59f46ce3700709743.prt

Ahmad Sa'adat Calls From his Isolation Cell for Action to Support Prisoners

2009-11-11T01:18:00.002+02:00

Ahmad Sa'adat, imprisoned Palestinian national leader, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestinian Legislative Council member, issued a letter from his isolation cell on November 8, 2009, in response to the October 22 international day of action and the efforts of political, social, legal and media organizations in solidarity with Comrade Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners, particularly those confronting isolation in the jails of the occupier, calling for ongoing actions against isolation and in support of the prisoners.

Sa'adat's letter expressed his support for the actions and said:

"The policy of isolation is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and the law of prohibition of torture. This policy is also a systematic practice of killing and destruction of the human personality, and in some cases, a mechanism for carrying out a living death sentence against freedom fighters, particularly those who have served many long years in isolation, such as Hassan Salameh, Jamal Abu Hija, Ibrahim Hamed, Ahmed al-Maghrabi, Abdullah al-Barghouthi and others. "The policy of isolation, this death penalty imposed upon prisoners and detainees, are not based on any legal grounds. It is a decision of the occupation intelligence services under a secret file that may be seen by nobody but for the judge, who has never denied any decision to isolate a prisoner or made clear any mechanism for the use of isolation. "The policy of isolation targets the essence of human rights and humanity - the right to social relationships - through isolation from the surrounding environment, and means deprivation of even the minimal rights under the laws of the Israeli Prisons Administration, including access to newspapers, books and clothes. It is collective punishment of prisoners' families as well, as every decision to isolate a prisoner is accompanied by a 3 month prohibition on family visits." Sa'adat concluded his letter with a call: "The struggle of the prisoners for freedom is part and parcel of the ongoing struggle of our people which will end only with the defeat of occupation across all of the soil of Palestine. I call upon all institutions, activists and organizations to develop an action plan to support the struggle of prisoners in general, and, in particular, the prisoners suffering in isolation."

http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/

Russel Tribunal on Palestine in Barchelona 2010

2009-11-10T18:14:00.004+02:00

National support committees and Organising committee recently met in Paris for a meeting preparing the first session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Barcelona (March 2010). This is what they had to say after the meeting.

Intellectual Rights Retained

Irredeemable War Criminals AshkeNazi Threatens Gaza with Another “Little Holocaust”

2009-11-10T14:59:00.005+02:00

"Hence, the Palestinian must seek to recruit the best minds and most gifted spokespersons to raise the awareness of the peoples of the world about the creeping holocaust Israel is trying to wreak on our helpless people."

By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

There seems to be a perfect conformity between Gabi Ashkenazi and his last name. The Israeli chief of staff is considered one of the main Israeli war criminals responsible for the virtual genocide against the Gaza Strip during the past winter. On his murderous hands, he carries tons of innocent blood, including that of more than 340 children, killed in Israel’s pornographic bombing of civilian neighborhood.

Last week, Ashkenazi was quoted as saying that Israel was likely to wage another quasi holocaust on Gaza, adding that the Israeli occupation army would enter the innermost corners and streets of the coastal territory.

As a nefarious mass murderer, Ashkenazi, like the rest of Israeli war criminals, ought to be in the Hague preparing his defense against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. After all the crimes he perpetrated put him on equal footing with Nazi war criminals who had stood trial for their own crimes against humanity during the Second World War.

However, because of the serious moral imbalance afflicting our world today, which finds a brazen expression in western complicity with Zio-Nazism, Ashkenazi and ilk are not only free but are even threatening their victims with a fresh holocaust.

In a certain sense, Ashkenazi’s arrogant behavior falls within the normal order of things. The totally inappropriate reaction by the international community to the Nazi-like blitz against the unprotected Gazans must have further emboldened Israeli leaders, convincing them that Israel can always have a free season on the 1.5 million helpless, blockaded and thoroughly starved inhabitants of the coastal enclave without having to worry about any serious ramifications and repercussions.

Hence his repulsive statements.

It is true that many free-minded political and moral leaders, such as the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have strongly condemned Israeli barbarianism in Gaza .

It is also true that the Goldstone report, prepared by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, denounced Israel for perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza blitz, which is a positive development.

However, it is also true that war criminals pay little attention to verbal condemnations even if coming from prominent international bodies and figures.

This is why Askenazi’s remarks ought to be taken with utmost seriousness for two main reasons: First because the Israeli army, or Zionist Wehrmacht, is capable of committing the unthinkable, including the carpet bombing of civilian areas, using cluster bombs, as happened over Lebanon in the summer of 2006, or white phosphorus as happened in Gaza last winter. And second, because Israel is essentially a rebellious state which has never taken international law seriously. What is even more scandalous is that western countries, especially the United States, have always treated the Judeo-Nazi entity as above international law.

Hence, it is imperative that the Palestinian people play their cards very carefully and smartly. After all, when wrestling with a huge bull, one has to rely on his brain, not his muscles, otherwise one may end up getting crushed by the mighty beast.

Palestinians ought to be always mindful of this fact because their very survival as a people depends to a large extent on the good will of the international community, not their own military or political strength. After all, most Palestinians are effectively prisoners of the enduring Israeli military occupation.

Hence, the Palestinian must seek to recruit the best minds and most gifted spokespersons to raise the awareness of the peoples of the world about the creeping holocaust Israel is trying to wreak on our helpless people.

We must not flinch from invoking the holocaust lest we be accused of making hyperboles. Indeed, if even one tenth of what happened in Gaza earlier this year had happened to Israeli Jews, Israel would have invoked the holocaust nonstop, and urgent calls from around the world would have been made for saving the Jews and preventing the Arabs from completing what Adolph had started nearly seventy years ago.

More to the point, the idea of Israel carrying out a sort of a holocaust is not unthinkable at all.

Last year, the Israeli deputy defense minister Mattan Vilna’ai warned that Israel would launch a holocaust against the Palestinians if that was what the Palestinians wanted. And during the blitzkrieg on Gaza, the psychotic Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman was quoted by the Israeli media as saying that a nuclear bomb ought to be dropped on Gaza.

Hence, Palestinian fears are not and shouldn’t be viewed as phobic and irrational. After all, we are dealing with an irrational state and a morbid society that are overwhelmed with a unique type of collective psychosis.

Never the less, raising our voices is not sufficient. We must also seek to enlist the attention and support of international human rights organizations as much as possible. These are credible witnesses whose testimonies might be proven crucial for safeguarding the rights of our people, the dead as well as the living.

We must also gather and meticulously document every conceivable piece of information pertaining to Zionist crimes and criminals, from the ordinary soldier in the field to the highest-ranking commander. This shouldn’t be a difficult job as there is already a huge amount of information pertaining to Israeli war criminals available, even through the internet.

Furthermore, Palestinians and their supporters should always confront states all over the world with information indicting Israeli military and political leaders. We should seek to narrow their horizons, make the capitals of the world off-limit to them, we should pursue them wherever they go. These people are war criminals and child killers must not be allowed to have any shred of peace of mind . Their murderous crimes must condemn them to a life of existential anxiety, stress and depression.

Of course, the Zio-Nazis will not surrender and allow themselves to be easily defeated by our efforts. Moreover, manifestly immoral governments such as those of the US and Germany, to name just a few, will hasten to support Israel and shield it from any proactive measures that would make the Zionist regime feel the heat and understand that the occupation has a cost that must be paid in full.

But we and our allies could counter this true axis of evil by building a worldwide front comprising millions of free and honest men and women who would chase the war criminals wherever they go and expose their evil deeds.

Luckily, we already have such a movement in place. But we need to get more organized, and be more effective. These goals are not difficult to realize as the world is already fed up with Israel, a state that we must never stop comparing with Nazi Germany because in the final analysis when Zionist Jews think, behave and act like the Nazis of the past century, they become Nazis.

We must never be apologetic about this.

How Israel Wages War in Plain Sight

2009-11-10T14:44:00.003+02:00

(iran-press-service.com)
It’s now well known that Israelis and pro-Israelis
“fixed” the intelligence that induced the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

23/08/2009 09:00:00 PM GMT

By Jeff Gates

It’s now well known that Israelis and pro-Israelis “fixed” the intelligence that induced the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What’s not yet widely known is how. If peace-seeking nations hope never again to see deceit operate on such a scale, those deceived must learn this lesson before these same operatives induce a war with Iran.

To “wage war by way of deception” (the motto of the Israeli intelligence service) requires the capacity to operate in plain sight yet without detection. To detect this duplicity in real time requires a grasp of how Israeli strategists rely on three key categories of operatives: agents, assets and sayanim (Hebrew for helpers or volunteers).

Agents are fully conscious of the intended goal of an operation. Intent is what distinguishes premeditated murder from involuntary manslaughter. Culpability is gauged by the state of mind. Agents operate with what the law calls extreme malice and an “evil mind.” Thus the severity of the sanctions for premeditated capital crimes.

From 1981-1985, Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard stole 360 cubic feet of classified US intelligence documents on Soviet arms shipments, Pakistani nuclear weapons, Libyan air defense systems and other data sought by Tel Aviv. With oversight by only a few case officers (katsas), Israeli agents routinely manage sophisticated operations with the help of pre-staged assets and a network of sayanim.

Assets are people profiled such that—within an acceptable range of probabilities—they can be relied upon to behave consistent with their personality profile. Assets lack the state of mind required for traditional culpability due to their lack of intent. Assets contribute to an operation simply by pursuing their subconscious personal needs. Typically those needs are for recognition, influence, money, sex, drugs or the greatest drug of all: ideology.

Put a profiled asset in a pre-staged time, place and circumstance and Israeli psy-ops specialists can be confident that—within an acceptable range of probabilities—that person will perform consistent with their profile, much as Bill Clinton behaved with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Israelis are indifferent to political parties. Pro-Israeli assets include Christian Zionist presidents Harry Truman, a Democrat, and George W. Bush, a Republican. Both were reliable and pliable advocates for a geopolitical agenda pursued by an enclave of Zionist extremists. Truman granted them nation-state recognition while Bush dispatched the U.S. military to help pursue their expansionist goals for Greater Israel.

* Granting aid and comfort

Sayanim play a role akin to military reservists who can be activated on short notice to support Israeli operations. These helpers are shielded from criminal culpability by being told only enough to perform their narrow role. Because recruiters ensure these volunteers are kept ignorant of the broader goals of an operation, they could easily pass a polygraph test. Their narrow intent: to respond promptly to requests to assist Israel.

That assistance could be logistics, medical care or intelligence gathering. Sayanim routinely staff the “in between” positions in political offices. Morris Amitay, a former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), described the strategic role played by sayanim in U.S. policy-making:

There are a lot of guys at the working level up here [on Capitol Hill]…who happen to be Jewish, who are willing…to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness…These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in those areas for those senators…You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.

Author Victor Ostrovsky, formerly a katsa, conceded in 1990 that the Mossad had 7,000 sayanim in London alone. What this vast volunteer corps is not told is that an operation may endanger not only Israel but also the broader Jewish community when Tel Aviv is linked to extremism, terrorism, extortion, organized crime, espionage and treason. Ostrovsky explains in By Way of Deception:

…the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the Diaspora if it was known. The answer you get if you ask is: “So what’s the worst that could happen to those Jews? They’d all come to Israel. Great!”

The signaling system for pro-Israeli operatives remains opaque. Yet to be explained by this U.S. ally is why, for instance, ten days before the mass murder of 911, Tel Aviv announced a $1 million grant to super-spy Jonathan Pollard.

As the duplicitous how of this Information Age warfare becomes transparent, the consistency of this treachery will become apparent as will its common source. Jurisprudence will need to adjust to ensure that those aiding such “evil mind” operations are held accountable consistent with the gravity of the crimes. Those crimes include ongoing treason, a capital offense.

In combination, agents, assets and sayanim provide a powerful force multiplier that enables an extremist few-within-the-few to wage war non-transparently yet in plain sight. Thus their key role in the “in between” domains—media, pop culture, think tanks and politics—where duplicity can be deployed to displace facts with what “the mark” can be deceived to believe.

-- Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution. See www.criminalstate.com.

Kill Enemy Children: Jewish Edict

2009-11-10T00:55:00.004+02:00

Palestinian child killed burnt to death by white phosphorous bombs
Photo Fady Adwan PalestineFreeVoice Images

By Khalid Amayreh, IOL Correspondent

Hundreds of children were killed in Israel's war on Gaza earlier this year.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – A Jewish rabbi has issued a book giving Jews permission to murder non-Jews, including babies and children, who may pose an actual or potential threat to Jews or Israel.

"It is permissible to kill the Righteous among non-Jews even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation," Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement in the occupied West Bank, wrote in his book "The King's Torah."

He argues that goyem (a derogatory epithet for non-Jews) may be killed if they threaten Israel.

"If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder."

Shapiro, who heads a small Talmudic school at the settlement of Yitzhar near Nablus, claims his edict "is fully justified by the Torah and the Talmud."

The anti-goyem edict seems to come in response to the arrest by Israeli police of a Jewish terrorist who has confessed to having murdered two Palestinian shepherds in the West Bank.

Palestinian Holocaust Museum

The terrorist, an American-born immigrant named Yaakov Teitel, also confessed to have tried to assassinate leftist Jewish figures.

Police considered the arrest an important achievement in combating Jewish terrorism, which experts contend thrives on religious edicts issued by rabbis affiliated with the religious-Zionist camp.

Nearly 16 years ago, a Jewish terrorist named Yigal Amir assassinated then Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin.

Moreover, numerous innocent Palestinians have also been murdered in cold blood by Jewish terrorists.

In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a notorious Jewish terrorist, murdered 29 Muslim worshipers inside Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank town of al-Khalil.

Non-Humans

The controversial edict is backed by numerous rabbis affiliated with the so-called national-religious camp as well as the Talmudic seminary in West Jerusalem, known as Merkaz Ha’rav.

Among the rabbis who have publicly supported the edict are Yitzhak Ginsburg and Ya’akov Yosef.

Ginsburg had written a leaflet glorifying murderer Goldstein and called him a "saintly figure."

Shapiro’s views on how Palestinians and non-Jews in general ought to be treated according to Jewish religious law (halacha) are widely looked at as representing the mainstream not the exception in Israel.

During the Israeli onslaught against Gaza earlier this year, Mordecahi Elyahu, one of the leading rabbinic figures in Israel, urged the army not to refrain from killing enemy children in order to save the lives of Israeli soldiers.

He had even petitioned the Israeli government to carry out a series of carpet bombing of Palestinian population centers in Gaza.

"If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after we kill a thousand, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop, we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to stop them."

According to Israel Shahak, author of "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: the Weight of Three Thousand years," the term "human beings" in Jewish law refers solely to Jews.

Many Jewish orthodox rabbis, especially within the national-religious sector, view international conventions incriminating the deliberate killing of civilians and destruction of civilian homes and property as representing "Christian morals" not binding on Jews.

In 2006, the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Settlements in the West Bank urged the army "to ignore Christian morals and exterminate the enemy in the north (Lebanon) and the south (Gaza Strip).

Such manifestly racist and hateful edicts don’t raise many eyebrows in Israel, neither among the intelligentsia nor in the society at large.