No Cancellation !!!

Friday, April 29, 2011 at 3:00PM Gilad Atzmon
The London JC reported today that Westminster University cancelled anti Zionist event.

The event is not cancelled!!! We will be there and explore different aspects to do with Zionism, Jewishness and Israel. We will get to the bottom of it.

My internet stalker Tony Greenstein promised to organise a picket against the event together with his Jewish so called ‘anti Zionist’ friends. I really hope that they keep their promise.

Panel Event: Zionism, Jewishness and Israel
Time: Tuesday, May 3 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: University Of Westminster - Cavendish Campus

A panel discussion examining Israeli Criminality in the wake of the Goldstone Retract.

Alan Hart, Gilad Atzmon and others

Ghada Karmi’s Pullout Update
In case you missed it: Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Ghada Karmi’s Pullout Update

Friday, April 29, 2011 at 9:29AM Gilad Atzmon

In spite of Jewish 'anti Zionists' bragging about themselves being the force behind Ghada Karmi's 'pullout' from a panel event with me this Tuesday,  Ghada just wrote to me and asked me to quote her. 

"I'm delayed here (in Jordan) and will not be back in time for the event, and that is the reason for my not attending."

I guess that Tony Greenstein and his Jewish political allies may want to consider  being  slightly more gentle with the Palestinians whom they claim to support.

It may as well be important to mention that John Rose also made it clear that he would attend a panel discussion with me anytime. His reason to pullout was due to a disagreement with organizers of the panel event regarding the title of the event.  I guess that he may have a point. Though, I am very happy with the title (Zionism, Jewishness and Israel), I agree that other panellists should have been consulted.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160038250722935

Panel Event: Zionism, Jewishness and Israel
Time:            Tuesday, May 3 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: University Of Westminster - Cavendish Campus
A panel discussion examining Israeli Criminality in the wake of the Goldstone Retract.
Alan Hart, Gilad Atzmon and others

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Honest people can't be indifferent to Israeli fascism

By Khalid Amayreh

Thursday, 28 April 2011 13:00


Michael Weiss is a typical Zionist propagandist who wants the entire world to swallow Israeli lies and disinformation in their entirety.
I read with utter contempt the article by Israeli apologist Michael Weiss in which he asked, "Why is Amnesty hosting a Hamas-friendly publisher of racists?".

It deserves a response, not because Weiss and other propagandists for the Zionist state of Israel are right; as far as I and millions like me are concerned, they aren't, and never will be. They inhabit a murky "hasbara" world, a fact which is being acknowledged and condemned not only by Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims but also by millions of conscientious people around the globe, including many Jews. Increasingly, the creation of the state of Israel is being seen for what it was and remains; the rape of a land and people to create a racist entity devoid of any moral legitimacy.

Weiss named me in his article, so I think I have the right to respond, lest readers fall victim to furthe Zionist mendacity and malicious distortion of the facts.

From its inception, Zionism and its followers viewed Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land". This denial of my people's very existence didn't arise out of ignorance. It was an expression of virulent and violent racism, originating among those European barbarians who exterminated untold millions of indigenous Native Americans and called the genocide "Manifest Destiny".

The Zionists knew full well that Palestine was populated by hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims. In 1897, two Austrian rabbis visiting Palestine to assess the feasibility of making it a Jewish state, sent a pithy telegram summing up the situation: "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man." That "other man" was, of course, none other than the Palestinians, long-established as a distinct political entity.

Michael Weiss is a typical Zionist propagandist who wants the entire world to swallow Israeli lies and disinformation in their entirety. For people like him, it has to be "Israel, right or wrong"; the truth must be cast aside if it interferes with Israeli colonialism. Even Israel's criminality must be excused due to its "exceptionalism" in Zionism's perverted world view.

The truth of the matter, which is being discovered by millions around the world, mainly thanks to the new social media and the internet, is simple: far from being the innocent victim of a hostile Arab world, Israel is a state whose very existence is based, and depends, on ethnic cleansing, land theft and lies.

In fact, it is reasonable to claim that Israel itself is a crime against humanity. How else can we describe a state imposed on the land of another people, the Palestinians, and which proceeded to drive the people from their homes in order to accommodate Zionist Jewish immigrants from around the world?

As a Palestinian who has been living under the oppressive yoke of Israeli military occupation for 44 years; who has seen three innocent uncles and several other relatives, in addition to tens of thousands of my people, killed to satisfy Zionist racism, I have no problem comparing Israel with the worst criminals in history, including Hitler's Nazis.

It is true that Israel has not introduced gas chambers into Palestinian towns and villages (although relatively innocuous tear gas is often used in confined spaces, against the manufacturers' recommendations, with often lethal results). However, gas chambers were never the only extermination method used by the Nazis. Israel has been killing and tormenting Palestinians in a variety of ways that, for sheer brutality and evil, don't differ in substance from Nazi Germany's murderous behaviour.

Moreover, it is important to remember that the Nazi Holocaust didn't begin with Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; it was the end result of years of brutality; the "Final Solution" that began with an idea, then a book and then with state-sanctioned discrimination and terrorism of a distinct group of people. The sort of things, in fact, that are rampant in Israel 's collective thinking and actions these days as Jewish society in the Zionist state continues to drift menacingly towards religious and jingoistic fascism. Israel is a democracy, we are told; let us not forget that Hitler came to power via the ballot box.

The minute a Zionist Jew sets foot on Palestinian soil in order to live on land stolen from its rightful owners; or live in a house seized at gunpoint from its native Palestinian occupants, this Zionist Jew loses his sense of morality.

Zionism is supposed to be about "building a national homeland for the Jews". However, for the millions of its victims, Zionism is about dispossession; it is about the uprooting, expulsion and dispersion of the bulk of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland through organized terror and violence. Israel's state ideology has always been clear about one thing: the Palestinians have to leave their land, willingly or by force. There is ample evidence to support this statement, including documents written by and for Zionism's pioneers and Israel's founders.

In 1948, the Zionists ethnically cleansed more than 90% of Palestinians in historic Palestine. Today's Zionism ideologues are planning to "complete the task" with the "transfer" of millions of Palestinians across the River Jordan in order to maintain Israel's Jewish identity and have more "Lebensraum" for "God's chosen people".

This is not fantasy on my part, or on theirs. A conference in Ramleh on 26 April heard several leading rabbis calling for the "cleansing the land of the Arabs."

"Today there is a lot of land in Saudi Arabia and in Libya , too. There is a lot of land in other places," said Dov Lior, the extreme right-wing rabbi of Kiryat Arba, an illegal settlement built near Hebron. Such rabbis are not marginal figures in Israeli Jewish society; they have thousands of fanatical - and fully armed - followers at their beck and call.

Hence, it would be unethical and dishonest to deny let alone defend this racism, fascism and territorial expansionism (the search for lebensraum) by a state that calls itself "Jewish" while committing every sin possible.

Michael Weiss tries to discredit pro-Palestinian activism by throwing the "Hamas" card onto the table. The Islamic Resistance Movement may not be perfect and one may not agree with everything it says or does. However, Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in elections that were declared to be free and fair by the international community, including Israel and its guardian ally, the United States .

However, Hamas has been demonised because it insists on Palestinians being given their rights as defined by the United Nations; for this the movement is listed as a terrorist organization due in no small measure to intensive lobbying by well-funded and generous Zionist groups in Western capitals.

Israel, of course, was founded on the terrorism of the Stern Gang, Irgun and even the Haganah (the forerunner of the Israel Defence Forces). Its declaration of independence is stained by the blood of Palestinian civilians butchered by the nascent state's armed militias. So it knows a thing or two about terrorism. To this day, for every innocent person killed by Hamas, Israel kills at least a hundred innocent people.

In 2006, Israel dropped 2-3 million cluster bomblets over southern Lebanon, enough to kill and maim between 2-3 million children; or half a holocaust worth of innocent people. And in 2008-2009, Israel carried out a blitzkrieg against Gaza, using state-of-the-art American-funded and built weaponry and munitions, including white phosphorus bombs, against an essentially helpless and unprotected people. Thousands of civilians were killed and maimed. Despite this, some Zionists still have the temerity to invoke Hamas as the bogey in the region.

In any reasoned analysis, Zionists are the last people who are fit to lecture the Palestinians on the evils of terrorism: Israel was born in terror; Israel is the embodiment of terror; Israel represents ultimate terror. The Israelis have destroyed our homes, stole our land, massacred our people and expelled us from our birthright. For arrogant Zionists to call us terrorists is, to quote Professor Norman Finkelstein, "beyond chutzpah".

The world is changing, and Michael Weiss and his hasbara chums should wise up; Zionism tomorrow will be as unacceptable as other forms of racism are today. The writing is on the wall, and the irony is that the Zionists know this to be true; they are fighting a losing battle. And Palestine will be free.
.

Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London

Thursday Apr282011

A panel discussion titled ‘Zionism, Jewishness and Israel’ will take place at The University of Westminster - Cavendish Campus on Tuesday May the 3rd, from 6:30pm - 8:00pm.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160038250722935

As one may imagine, the Zionist operators in Britain are not happy about the meeting at all: 'Green Engage', a Zionist anti-BDS campaign group launched an immediate campaign, soon after the announcement of the panel. Far from being surprising, within hours, they were joined by Tony Greenstein and the so called Jewish ‘anti Zionist’ network.

The original panel was supposed to include John Rose, Ghada Karmi, Alan Hart and myself.

The venue as well as the panelists (except myself funnily enough) came under severe pressure that verged on abuse: one of the panelists admitted to the organisers that he had received twelve phone calls from different Jewish ‘anti-Zionist’ activists, who insisted that -- ‘for the sake of Palestine’-- no one should share a stage with Gilad Atzmon.

Now, interestingly enough, when I asked the panelist whether any Palestinians had actually called to preach for the ‘sake of Palestine’ -- the answer was a resounding negative. I guess that Jewish ‘anti Zionists’ know better than everyone what is good for Palestine, they are chosen after all.

John Rose and Ghada Karmi pulled out, and that is understandable: not many can endure such a level of abuse – as we learnt recently, Judge Goldstone has also surrendered, and by doing so, has severely damaged his credibility and reputation.

In the early days I myself struggled a lot: on a daily basis I would hear from one ‘progressive’ Jew or another who I should like and who I should hate. Being a rebel, I never followed any of these ‘instructions’. It took me years to develop a very thick skin, to believe in myself and to believe in ethical thinking. And, having done so, I am now happier and free, and I continue in the spirit of humanism and resistance.

Resisting Zionist tactics then, the organisers of the event and the venue are undeterred, standing strong, and determined to continue with the original plan: a list of Palestinian intellectuals and journalists stepped immediately in place of Ghada and John. I advised the organisers not to publish their names for the time being, simply to save them from the unnecessary irritation, annoyance and abuse. However, I myself made sure that they are fully aware of the possible trouble ahead.

This event is promising to be a turning point -- The relentless attempts by Jewish political bodies to gate-keep the discourse needs to be confronted and exposed.

And I guess that what we see here proves beyond doubt my arguments regarding the duplicity that is tragically manifested all too often by different bodies and individuals within the Jewish ‘anti-Zionist’ network.

Come and support freedom and intellectual exchange

Panel Event: Zionism, Jewishness and Israel
Time: Tuesday, May 3 · 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Location: University Of Westminster - Cavendish Campus
A panel discussion examining Israeli Criminality in the wake of the Goldstone Retract.
Alan Hart, Gilad Atzmon and others
(Facebook event Announcement)

"Despite the huge pressures from certain Zionist and "anti-zionist" groups, John Rose and Ghada Karmi have pulled but have been replaced with a number of other high profile and brilliant speakers.

A lot of criticism has been mounted about the fact that the event is putting "Jewishness" into the debate with Zionism and Israel. The fact that Israel calls itself the "Jewish State" warrants that we as rational, critical individuals must at least enquire and question what this may mean.

This is not anti-semitic nor racist, and in fact every religion has been subject to these criticisms and enquiries, and in a truly democratic society, any exclusive belief that posits itself as the truth must be scrutinised and put under the spotlight."

EXCERPTS : Hang ‘Em High!

- 28. Apr, 2011

They are not the Americans, and “we” are not the rest of the planet. “They” are a small sliver of the American population, the get-rich-quick crowd from the East Side of Manhattan and similar places.

Key players and historic figures in the global economy

Excerpts from the article By Israel Shamir

– September 25, 2008

Seven years after 9/11, we witness another, greater and even more enjoyable collapse, that of the American financial pyramid. It took some twenty years in building; its collapse took only a few weeks. Let us cut the hypocritical crap: this was a wonderful show, no ifs, ands or buts. The US stock markets boomed when they bombed Baghdad and Belgrade, they prospered when they robbed Moscow and squeezed sweat from Beijing. When they had it good, they had plenty of money for invading Iraq, threatening Iran and strangling Palestine. In short, when it was good for them, it was bad for us. Let them have a taste of their own medicine!

They are not the Americans, and “we” are not the rest of the planet. “They” are a small sliver of the American population, the get-rich-quick crowd from the East Side of Manhattan and similar places. The last twenty years witnessed a great shift of money upwards, to a smaller and smaller pack of greedy beasts. While the majority of Americans lost the ability to send their children to universities, these fat cats bought themselves villas in Florida and houses in Tel Aviv. Worse, they spent their billions buying up the media in order to subvert American democracy and send American soldiers to fight wars in far-away places. A big part of the stolen money was siphoned off to Israel, where apartment prices went through the roof and are still rising.

They had it good; they were proud that the financial charts of the US and of the world were drawn up in a small room by Henry Paulson of the Treasury, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve, by Maurice Greenberg of A.I.G. They built their world surrounded by Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Marc Rich, Michael Milken, Andrew Fastow, George Soros, et al. Their exciting new world of Lexus and Nexus was glorified by Tom Friedman of the New York Times. They gave the Nobel Prize in Economics to Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, proud board directors of the now infamous Long Term Capital Management hedge fund that was bailed out by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to the tune of $3.6 billion. President Bush rewarded them for their unaccountability by releasing them from the burden of taxation. Let them pay now for all the fun they had.

They took your real dollars and turned it into funny money — “unredeemable, non-interest-bearing promissory notes of the Fed, that are not backed by anything other than the confidence of the credulous”, in the words of one Internet wit. The ruination of the American working class and even its middle class is unavoidable The fears about the Large Hadron Collider creating a big black hole in place of Earth were based on this sinking feeling that the incredible riches of the US are disappearing into their own black hole.

This is not the first confidence trick in US history: Jay Gould and Joseph Seligman caused the ‘Black Friday’ stock market crash in the late 19th century, while Jacob Schiff caused the notorious ‘Black Thursday’ panic that led to a nationwide economic depression [1]. Seligman was also the mover behind the Panama affair, a stock market swindle that became proverbial in France. The swindle was set up by two Jews of German origin, Jacques Reinach and Cornelius Herz who bribed parliamentarians. While Reinach was working on the right wing, the ‘Republicans’ of his day, Herz was working on the ‘Democrats’. Wikipedia quotes Hannah Arendt, who wrote that the middlemen between the business sector and the state were almost exclusively Jews. This warm embrace between the state and the business sector was a recipe for disaster.

Obviously things have changed since then, and now the Mammonites are of various persuasions, even of Christian Science, like Hank Paulson, whose net worth is estimated at $700 million and whose career at Goldman Sachs (Chairman 1998-2006) made him the obvious choice for the position of secretary of the treasury. Only their devotion to the god of Greed remained constant. In the world of ideal capitalism (“market economy”) they so glorified, they would have paid a price. In Glen David Gold’s vastly entertaining novel Carter Beats the Devil, their spiritual ancestor was tarred and feathered by strong-willed Connecticut folk circa 1670, for he had bought a whole boatload of imported products with the criminal intent of getting rich quick by cornering the market and ripping off his fellow men. Nowadays such a criminal would get a medal from the neo-liberal Milton Friedman Fund, a citation from JINSA and be taught as a positive example by the Harvard Business School.

Now they intend to use their control over the government in order to shift their losses onto ordinary Americans. Whether this act is called ‘nationalisation’ or ‘privatisation’ or ‘bailout’, the bottom line is that many Americans will find themselves poor, and all Americans will have a huge tax burden to bear. But the perpetrators of the pyramid will get off scot-free; they will retire to their castles and to their sure and protected investments as they have always done before.

The Americans were played for suckers; they were cleaned out as easily as were the unsophisticated Albanians a few years ago. Even worse: the Albanians took out their guns and pursued the robbers; the Americans take it all lying down. But the device was the same.
The Americans are entitled to know who robbed them and their children: these are the men who became so ostentatiously rich during last two decades. They should pay the price of their crime. And if the government, the President, the Congress and Senate, the Democrats and the Republicans are reluctant to enforce it, the ordinary Americans may do as their Connecticut Yankee ancestors did: apply tar and feathers liberally. If this does not help, hang the bastards on the lamp posts.

If we assume that more than half of all billionaires are proud members of the Israel Lobby, it will also solve the Middle Eastern problem. To be on the safe side, confiscate all the assets of the Pyramid-builders: of Paulson and Bernanke, of Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs executives, and of President Bush who allowed it all to happen. Peace will come to Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq; Americans will again become proud of their country. Such mass confiscation will restore democracy in the US: the next candidates for the Presidency will not go hat in hand to AIPAC to declare their fealty. The defeat of Greed will turn people back to God; the eliminated ballast will allow for national medical care, social security and free education for all. Instead of being a disaster, the financial collapse offers a unique opportunity to fix all America’s ills. Do not miss it!

Speaking for the wide world outside America, I’ll tell you this: do not throw good money after bad. Reject the seductive purring from Washington. Consider your funds in the US already lost. If you can still get something, good; but do not waste money and efforts to regain what is gone. There is a most valuable asset you may get for the lost ones; that is your freedom and independence. An undermined dollar means your economy will be safe.

The Pyramid collapse will set you free!

Israel Shamir is a critically acclaimed and respected Russian Israeli writer. He has written extensively and translated Joyce and Homer into Russian. He lives in Jaffa, is a Christian, and an outspoken critic of Israel and Zionism.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Gilad Atzmon: Time Is Ripe For A Paradigm Shift

It is slightly embarrassing for me to admit that sometime Zionists are actually well ahead of our favourite intellectuals in understanding the depth of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It is not that they are more clever, they are just free to explore the conflict without being subject to the tyranny of ‘political correctness’, also being proud nationalist Jews- they do not need the approval of the Jewish left thought police.

I have recently come across a short Haaretz article by Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua*.

Yehoshua is a proud Zionist, He believes in the right of his people to dwell on Palestinian land. He is also convinced that the Jewish state is the true meaning of contemporary Jewish life.

I guess that Yehoshua loves himself almost as much as I despise everything he stands for and yet, I have to confess, he seems to grasp the depth of the Israeli Palestinian conflict’s parameters slightly better than most solidarity activists I can think of.

In his Haaretz article Yehoshua stressed that Zionism was “something original and one of its kind in human history- A folk arrived at the homeland of another folk attempting to replace the old identity with a new/old identity”. Yehoshua also counters the faulty colonial paradigm and practically repeats my own theses almost word by word. “There was also no (Zionist) attempt to impose a colonial regime, since the Jews had no (mother) state that could have sent them to perform a colonial conquests like in the case of England or France.”

Yehoshua, is certainly correct here, as much as some amongst us are contend to argue that Zionism is a ‘colonial project’ and Israel is a ‘settler State’, such a position has no ground and cannot be supported factually or historically. The Colonial paradigm is simply a fantasy that is clumsily imposed on our discourse in a desperate attempt to make the Israeli/Palestinian conflict meaningful within a decaying Marxist discourse.

Yehoshua continues, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict will not be resolved because it's a totally unique conflict in human history. “There is no historical precedence for a nation that decides to return to its ancient homeland and establish its sovereignty there.” Whether the conflict will be resolved or not is indeed a crucial question. I am not so sure that Yehoshua knows the answer or even can contemplate a reality in which the Jewish State belongs to the past. However, Yehoshua is obviously correct in his reading of the uniqueness of the Zionist history. We are dealing here with an exceptional and unprecedented national aspiration driving by racist impetus. But Yehoshua takes it further. “Thus,” he says, If we all accept that the modern return of Jews to Zion is a unique event in human history – then the Palestinian people, unlike any other people, had to face a totally unique phenomenon.” If we accept that Zionism is an abnormal political ideology and practice, then, Palestinian nationalism (that is defined by negation to abnormality) must be also a unique to say the least.

I must admit that Yehoshua’s stand is well argued and totally valid. However, it means that all comparative models such as the colonial paradigm are doomed to crash. Jewish nationalism doesn’t fit into any available template, it formulates a model of its own.

According to Yehoshua, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not really about territorial issues. “Territorial issues can be resolved” he says. “In our conflict, both sides, struggle over national identity of the whole country.” Yehoshua offers here a very interesting insight that cannot be uttered within the boundaries of the Left discourse. For both parties, especially the Palestinians, he says, “it is unclear what is the size of the people it is up against, is it only the Israelis or is it also the Jewish Diaspora as a whole.” Yehoshua raises here an issue I myself have been stressing for years. It is far from being clear to anyone (including Israelis and Jews) where Israel ends and the Diaspora starts. It is also far from being clear where the Israeli ends and the Jew starts. I guess that for most contemporary Jews it is even far from being clear anymore where Zionism ends and Judaism starts. In the contemporary Jewish world there are no clear dichotomies. We are dealing with a spineless elastic metamorphic identity that shapes itself to fit every possible circumstances. This may explain how come the Jewish state can dually operate as an oppressor and a victim simultaneously.

The Israelis, according to Yehoshua are also subject to a similar confusion. They also cannot figure out whether it is just the Palestinian people they are up against or is it the whole Arab nation or even the entire Muslim world. For Yehoshua, the conflict “lacks a clear demographic boundaries. This fact alone creates an initial deep distrust between the two peoples that prevents a possible solution.”

Yeshoua is far from being a brilliant mind, yet, he manages to analyse the conflict correctly just because he is free to think out of the Leftist box. Being a proud Israeli Jew he is free to say what he thinks without the need to appease half a dozen so-called ‘progressive’ Jews. Yehoshua’s analysis makes a lot of sense to me though we draw the complete opposite conclusions. I believe that the Palestinian solidarity discourse better liberate itself of any form of dogmatic political thinking. It is about time and look at the conflict for what it is. We must engage in a true plural debate and emancipate ourselves of any traces of rigid and anachronistic thinking.

* The article has now disappeared from Haaretz site. You can upload an Hebrew version here.
The English version just appeared here.
++++++++++++++++++

In case you missed it: Truth in Stuttgart

THIRD PALESTINIAN INTIFADA: All Arabs to March on Israel on May 15th

April 24, 2011 posted by Dr. Ashraf Ezzat ·

“With those powerful political storms rolling up the Middle East, and with this unstoppable and unpredictable domino effect of popular uprisings, how long before we watch the Israeli domino piece fall down”

“And if dictatorships are not tolerated in the Arab world anymore, why the Israeli quasi-dictatorship over the Palestinians should be any exception”

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat

All of The popular uprisings that swept through the Arab world have been preplanned and officially launched on facebook pages weeks in advance.

Pro-Israel lobbying. An Israeli Cabinet minister, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a massive American-Zionist campaign have succeeded in pressuring Facebook into removing the “third Intifada” page, which clearly calls for an all-Arab uprising against Israel.
According to the facebook “cause” page, the plan for the intifada would go as follows;

Friday, May 13th
 In Egypt, the epicenter of the Arab world, the biggest Arab country and from Tahrir square at the heart of Cairo where the whole Arab spring has sprung and gained fervent momentum, this massive Arab intifada will be launched.
Millions will gather once again in Tahrir square at the heart of Cairo but this time to call for all Arab-march toward Israel.
This mass protest will come two days prior to the actual march, as a clear message to Israel and the rest of the world that liberating Palestine is the core cause for every Arab in the Middle East. And that restoring Jerusalem is all Arab’s sacred mission
 
Sunday, May 15th
 To commemorate the Palestinian exodus day 1948 ( Nakba) when well over 750000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled out of their home land by Israel, similar number of Thousands angry Arab protesters from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon along with their Palestinian brothers from Gaza and the occupied west bank will advance toward Israel in what they call, the third intifada



Profile photo of the
third Intifada on facebook



In their march they will be denouncing the ongoing Zionist occupation of the Arabic land of Palestine and calling for internationally recognized independent Palestinian state over its legitimate pre-1967 borders with Eastern Jerusalem as its capital.

Those fair Palestinian demands have been begged for by all ways known to diplomacy over the last 60 years. But since diplomacy has utterly failed the Arabs of Palestine and since politicians have granted them nothing except despair and Diaspora, they thought it was time they put their life into their own hands.

And what could be more timely than this Arab spring, which

a lot of Arabs could not see or rather imagine approaching its full bloom without Palestine included.

This revolutionary plan that has been publicly posted on a facebook “cause” page and given the daring title “the third Palestinian Intifada” as there has been two Palestinian Intifada- uprisings- before. The first was sparked in 1987 and the second or what is known as the Aq’sa intifada in 2000, during both uprisings, Israel had to live through years of domestic unrest and worldwide condemnation of its apartheid and oppressive policy toward the Palestinians.

But as this “cause” page managed to attract almost 300000 fans and incredibly growing number of visitors in just few days Israel grew restlessly nervous about it. And nervously restless Israel acted in response.

What was worrying Tel Aviv is the fact that, so far, all Arab uprisings have been kicked off on facebook pages. So, under the boiling situation in the Arab world this facebook call couldn’t be underrated nor neglected.

Bullying facebook

With the unbelievably growing traffic to the facebook page and the spread of the call for a third intifada Israel couldn’t just stand watching underneath its big sign that reads “The only democracy in the Middle East”
Quickly switching signs, Israel grabbed the “Israel-hating and anti-Semitism” sign and put on its despotic mask, and before the administrators of the third intifada knew it, Yuli Edelstein, Israel’s Minister of Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, on the last week of March wrote Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder and told him ..

“the social network site has great potential to rally the masses around good causes, and we are all thankful for that. However, such potential comes hand in hand with the ability to cause great harm, such as in the case of the wild incitement displayed on the Third Palestinian Intifada page”

Third Intifada

A facebook statement said on Monday of the first week of April that whiles the “third Intifada” page “may be upsetting for someone, criticism of a certain culture, country, religion, lifestyle, or political ideology, for example — that alone is not a reason to remove the discussion.”

At that point it was clear to Israel that this Zuckerberg is not getting the message, Israel didn’t not seek his eloquent definition of the site’s terms for freedom of speech, removing the page that what Israel wanted. So Israel, with its Zionist lobbies and pro-Israel campaigns began to pull some strings and show some muscles and it did not take long before Mr. Mark Zuckerberg came to his senses and reevaluated the page as inciting violence against Israel.

And to make sure this will always be a lesson, learned the hard way, less than a week after facebook removed the intifada page; Zuckerberg was hit by a law suit seeking more than $ 1 billion in damages, for doing too little too late. The law suit has been filed by one of the American Zionist puppets- let off the leash- by the name of Larry Klayman.

After the page was no longer available on Tuesday, ADL director Abraham Foxman commented ..

“By taking this action, Facebook has now recognized an important standard to be applied when evaluating issues of non-compliance with its terms of service involving distinctions between incitement to violence and legitimate calls for collective expressions of opinion and action. We hope that they will continue to vigilantly monitor their pages for other groups that call for violence or terrorism against Jews and Israel.”

But that will be mission impossible, for how could facebook go after thousands of Arab users who replaced their profile photos with the poster photo of the third intifada. Will facebook be able to pull down the other pages that began to play the same intifada tune?

Why can’t Israel face the truth, it is crystal clear, it needs no terrorizing of Zuckerberg or Goldstone. Arabs will never accept Israel as a neighbor state as long as Palestine is being systematically wiped off the map by the Zionist military dictatorship.

Israel could intimidate facebook but not the millions of awakening Arabs.

If facebook to block any page or any account that speaks unfavorably of Israel that will mean that Mr. Zuckergerg is going to sacrifice the hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims who are already using facebook worldwide.

Could facebook, contrary to its previous boosting role to the Arab uprisings, save the Israeli domino piece from falling?

That is yet to be seen.

For more articles by Dr. Ashraf Ezzat visit his website  

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Israeli Humour- Mocking Jesus on Israeli TV

Sunday, April 24, 2011 at 12:08AM Gilad Atzmon

Easter Weekend Special......

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

US weapons to Israel are disincentives to peace

Via MCS

- 24. Apr, 2011

Against the background of Israel’s contempt for international law and violations of Palestinian human rights, and as Washington now considers raising the debt ceiling and making even more substantial cuts to the 2012 budget, Josh Ruebner argues that “the moral, financial and political costs of arming Israel can no longer be ignored”.

—By Josh Ruebner

Israel may be forgiven for failing to realize the current fiscal woes of the United States. After all, US military aid to Israel not only sailed unscathed through last week’s passage of the 2011 budget, but reached the record level of 3 billion dollars.
The United States additionally provided Israel 415 million dollars for procurement, research and development of joint US-Israeli missile defence projects, including 205 million dollars to fund Israel’s newly-deployed Iron Dome system.
This anti-missile battery already has altered significantly the strategic balance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when Israel successfully shot down incoming rockets fired from the Gaza Strip earlier this month. With the assured diplomatic backing of the United States to prevent Israel from being held accountable by the international community for its illegal blockade, Iron Dome will embolden Israel to tighten its siege and escalate its attacks on the occupied Gaza Strip by providing its citizens with additional protection against retaliatory fire.

US funding of Iron Dome is but one example of many of how US weapons transfers to Israel enhance Israeli military dominance over Palestinian freedom and create perverse economic disincentives for Israel to defy US policy goals, such as halting Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land, ending its collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and negotiating in good faith a lasting peace agreement.

As long as US weapons continue to flow, Israel will feel free to disregard the Obama administration’s mild blandishments and half-hearted attempts to bring Israel to the negotiating table. Unfortunately this disincentive structure is set to be reinforced over the coming years.

Under a Bush-era agreement, US weapons transfers to Israel are scheduled to total 30 billion dollars during 2009-18, an annual average increase of 25 per cent above previous levels. With this 2007 Memorandum of Understanding, the United States solidified Israel’s position as the largest recipient of US military aid this decade. In line with increases proposed under this arrangement, President Obama asked for a record-breaking 3.075 billion dollars of weapons for Israel in his 2012 budget request.

A new online database – How Many Weapons to Israel? – casts doubt on whether the United States can afford, either morally, financially or politically, to continue transferring weapons to Israel at taxpayer expense without examining the ramifications of this policy.

During 2000-09, the United States licensed, paid for, and delivered to Israel more than 670 million weapons and related equipment, valued at nearly 19 billion dollars, through three main weapons transfer programmes (Foreign Military Sales, Direct Commercial Sales and Excess Defence Articles). These weapons transfer programmes accounted for nearly 80 per cent of the more than 24 billion dollars in military aid appropriated to Israel during these years. The bulk of the remaining money was spent by Israel on its own domestic arms industry, a unique exemption written into law for Israel. All other countries receiving US military aid are required to spend the whole sum within the United States.

Military aid to Israel ran the gamut from the patently absurd – one used food steamer valued at 2,100 dollars – to the lethal – 93 F-16D fighter jets valued at a total of nearly 2.5 billion dollars. With nearly 500 categories of weapons transferred to Israel, the United States is pervasively, intricately and comprehensively involved in arming its military.

These weapons transfers also make the United States deeply complicit in almost every action the Israeli military takes to entrench its illegal 43-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip and the apartheid policies that undergird its government’s stance toward Palestinians.
From September 2000 to December 2009, roughly the same period during which the United States transferred these 670 million weapons to Israel, the Israeli military killed at least 2,969 Palestinians, of whom 1,128 were children, who took no part in hostilities, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.
For example, Israel killed 446 unarmed Palestinians, including 149 children, with missiles fired from helicopters. The Pentagon classifies the number, types and value of missiles transferred to Israel; however, the United States gave Israel nearly 200 AH-64D Apache, Sikorsky CH-53 and Cobra helicopters from which at least some of these lethal missiles were fired. It was likely one such US-supplied missile from a US-supplied helicopter that Israel fired in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on 29 December 2008, which killed five sisters, Jawaher (age four), Dina (age seven), Samar (age 12), Ikram (age 14), and Tahrir Baulusha (age 17) during an attack on a nearby mosque.

Israel’s misuse of US weapons to commit human rights abuses like these against Palestinian civilians should trigger sanctions against, rather than increasing amounts of military aid to, Israel. The Arms Export Control Act limits the use of US weapons to “internal security” and “legitimate self-defence”. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip is defined by the US government as a foreign military occupation, and the killing of thousands of unarmed civilians in support of a military occupation cannot be justified as legitimate without distorting the meaning of self-defence.

In addition, the Foreign Assistance Act strictly prohibits US foreign assistance to any country that “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”. The State Department’s recently released  2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices documents amply, if not comprehensively, Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians.

As Washington now considers raising the debt ceiling and making even more substantial cuts to the 2012 budget, the moral, financial and political costs of arming Israel can no longer be ignored.

If the Obama admininstration is serious in its efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and genuine in its stated commitment to the universality of human rights, then it must utilize the significant leverage the United States wields over Israel through its military aid programme. By terminating weapons transfers to Israel at least until Israel upholds its obligations under US and international law, ends its illegal military occupation of Palestinian land and negotiates in good faith a just and lasting peace with Palestinians, the United States can create an incentive structure to achieve its frustrated policy goals.
Source: Redress

Josh Ruebner is National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 350 organizations working to change US policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law and equality. He is a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The battered judge

Panel members of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
speaking about the report. Photo courtesy of the United Nations.

- 24. Apr, 2011

The Goldstone investigation met the hardest test of impartiality: the chairman, Judge Richard Goldstone reported evidence that was unfavourable to his personal interests as a Zionist.

– Paul J Balles/ My Catbird Seat

The basic issue raised by the Goldstone Report on the Cast Lead Operation by Israel against Gaza is whether the investigators followed their judicial responsibilities.

Here are some of the responsibilities of a judge (from the Code of Judicial Conduct):

• A judge shall uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary.

• A judge shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all the judge’s activities.

• A judge shall perform the duties of office impartially and diligently.

Despite complaints about the report and Judge Goldstone, who chaired the fact-finding mission, there has been no impartial evidence of the investigators’ failure to meet their responsibilities.

One key definition involves impartiality” or “impartial” denoting an absence of bias or prejudice in favour of, or against, particular parties or classes of parties, as well as maintaining an open mind in considering issues that may come before the judge.

The investigation met the hardest test of impartiality: the chairman, Judge Richard Goldstone reported evidence that was unfavourable to his personal interests as a Zionist.

Before the report by Judge Goldstone was made public, Antony Lerman, writing in the Guardian reported that “despicable attacks” had been made “on human rights organisations investigating Israel’s Gaza offensive”

As most people following this saga know, Israel refused to cooperate with Judge Goldstone’s investigators. They refused to respond to letters from Human Rights Watch (HRW) and denied the Goldstone mission entry to Israel.

Furthermore, according to Lerman, Israel rubbished testimony from Gazans unless it supported Israel’s version of the offensive, and allowed the army to investigate itself.


Despite Israel’s refusal to cooperate in the HRW investigation, Israelis and Jewish organizations in America couldn’t find enough fault with Judge Goldstone.

Letters came from holocaust survivors bemoaning the facts they said Goldstone ignored: “because larger and larger rockets were arriving from Iran, and a million Israelis were threatened by these rockets.”


Twitter and Facebook entries ignored the refusal of Israel to cooperate and vented rage in non-stop temper tantrums.


It got so bad following Goldstone’s report that he was called “an enemy of the Jewish people” and could not attend his son’s bar mitzvah in South Africa.

After the story made international news, its main effect was to rally defenders of the one-sided report, and Goldstone was able to attend the bar mitzvah without Jewish protests.


Judge Goldstone’s earlier investigations into violence in South Africa, his willingness to criticise all sides led to him being dubbed “perhaps the most trusted man, certainly the most trusted member of the white establishment” in South Africa.


Writing in the Baltimore Sun, Laila El-Haddad recounts that Goldstone “published an op-ed in the Washington Post reconsidering one of the allegations in the report: that Israel intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians during the assault.”


Continuing, El-Haddad reports that “Judge Goldstone’s co-authors, Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers, sharply disagreed with him in a statement issued in the Guardian on April 14.”


She added “they stood by the report in its entirety, saying “there is no justification for any demand or expectation for reconsideration of the report as nothing of substance has appeared that would in any way change the context, findings or conclusions…”


However, Israelis and their supporters have been celebrating Goldstone’s retraction of one bit of the original report as vociferously as the Israelis dancing on the roof of a van in New Jersey on 9/11 as the twin towers collapsed.


Unfortunately, Judge Goldstone has been battered so badly that he felt compelled to retract one aspect of his report on which the Israelis refused to cooperate.

Shame on his biased critics.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the GULF DAILY NEWS . Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Men Die, Lions Rise

Via MCS

- 20. Apr, 2011

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Men Die, Lions Rise

By Jonathan Azaziah

Illustration : Brilliant Carlos Latuff

Is the sky falling, are there pigs flying…

I mean, is this still the same doomed reality…

Yes, because there’s still Iraqi, Afghani, Somali, Pakistani and Palestinian kids dying…

And yes, your eyes are truthful about this cruel brutality…

Peering through the fallacy…

They’ve put a mask on it, so its easier to consume the savagery…

Why they’d take him, he was a brother of peace, like harmonious music and love…

They are the sons of the beast, executioners and Lucifer’s thugs…

Vittorio Arrigoni, it’s so hard to grasp that you are gone…

But you left here as something different than what you were when you were born…

At birth you were a man, but in death you became a lion…

A martyr, a hero who in life gave a voice to those living in pain and silence…

A beacon of courage who gave everything to expose how deep the occupation’s reign of crime is…

You sought to have truth rain on the baneful tyrants…

We know that they hated you, we know that you were a target of heavy hate…

We know that they watched you, moving and marking your every place…

Now they want to convince us that your Palestinian family murdered you with their own hands…

Like we aren’t familiar with the usurping entity’s cold plans…

As if the ritualistic and brutal way you were murdered didn’t give all of the clues…

As if we would let justice slip away, as if we would be okay with them slaughtering you…

If so, they were dead wrong, we would never believe the liar’s wisdom…

We know damn well that Vittorio Arrigoni is a violent victim of Zionism…

He joins the martyrs of the Freedom Flotilla, murdered on the vibrant seas…

Murdered in cold blood for striving to break the occupier’s siege…

He joins Rachel Corrie, when monsters bulldozed her, humanity wept…

She was the definition of a pure soul, her passing made us all wonder how much of the world’s sanity’s left…

He joins Juliano Mer-Khamis, who fought for Palestine’s struggle via film…

Jenin went black when he was killed…

Masked militants, please, your stories are old…

We refuse to let your vicious hasbara taint the memory of Vittorio’s soul…

We know that IOF trains special units to pose as terrorists…

You can bulldoze our sister but you cannot bulldoze her memory or bulldoze our reverence…

Bassem Abu Rahma, and his sister Jawaher…

Heroes murdered by Israeli tear gas, stood up to vile tyrants with not a drop of fear…

These are the lions that Vittorio rose up to join…

Their martyrdom and bravery is the cure to the Zionist entity’s colonial poison…

He was a lion who stayed with Gaza during Cast Lead…

A lion who pitied IOF, showing them their humanity was past dead…

A lion who was tasered and imprisoned but remained in the Strip…

Remained to expose Zionist crimes and to show Israeli democracy is a dangerous myth…

A lion who protected children as phosphorus fell…

A lion who walked through Israel’s tanks, bombs, rockets and shells…

To defend the Palestinian babies of Gaza, now I want the media to say again…

That Palestinians murdered a man they considered their own, what a lie, a falsehood, a dose of propaganda from hellacious men…

They can print their lies Vittorio, through their TV shows and Zionazi papers…

But the truth will emerge, for al-Haqq is a force that cannot be vanquished…

And when it does, the world will see…

That you lost your life at the hands of men who hated you most, Israel is on an international murder spree…

Your mother is coming to Gaza, we will pray for her…

And when we will see her beautiful face, this is what we will say to her…

Your precious son didn’t meet death, you see he is still alive…

And when the tears fill her eyes…

We will ball too, right next to her, kneel and cry…

Umm Vittorio, men die but lions roar and rise…

And your child was a lion in every sense, you can see his face shining in Gaza’s gorgeous skies…

Your child fought for us, and for him, we will never lose hope or flee…

Umm Vittorio, you’re not alone in burying your son because so did we…

Humanity was the language Vittorio spoke to his last breath, he stayed fluent…

He taught us that division was nothing more than a strained illusion…

Rest in peace brother, we know that you will eternally “Stay Human…”

“Al-Shaheed Vittorio!” shakes Gaza as the battlecry…

The spirit of a lion, forever wrapped in the flag of Palestine…

~ The End ~

by Jonathan Azaziah

Source: Mask of Zion

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian