Israel Into The Dock »
Posted By hyperbola 1 month, 1 week ago in ReligionThe UN Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution based on the Goldstone Report is a damning condemnation of Israel. The original meaning of being "caught red-handed" was literally being "caught bloody-handed," with the victim's blood on one's own hands. In Gaza, Israel has been caught red-handed in that literal sense, and for the first time in its history, is approaching the dock in the international court of opinion and, hopefully, of justice as well.
This case could be a watershed event. For Israel and its US Government (USG) puppet-patron, the moment of truth in the UN is rapidly approaching. ...
What makes this significant -- since the US lobbied hard first to keep the Goldstone Report from even reaching the HRC, and then for others to vote against the HRC resolution -- is that many states who voted for it, or abstained, would normally have been in the US corner. This is NOT a good sign for the US and Israel of how the General Assembly will go, and perhaps even the Security Council, which could easily have a majority of 10 or 11 supporting the resolution...
...US criticism of the HRC resolution should be disregarded, as Washington only parrots Israel's wishes here. So can the odd criticism that the initial report lacked an Israeli perspective, simply because Israel refused to cooperate with Goldstone -- not surprisingly, since the report made it clear that nothing Israel might have added would have exonerated it in any way.
But other reservations need to be addressed. One is that the resolution did not mention Hamas. I agree it might have been better to have included Goldstone's condemnation of Hamas offenses as well, but it is legitimate as it stands for five reasons: (1) Israel committed the great majority of the violations; (2) Israel had an overwhelming preponderance of military power; (3) Palestinians suffered almost all of the death and destruction; (4) Israel has a long, sordid history of ignoring UN commissions and resolutions, and of attacking UN facilities and killing UN staff, as when the clearly marked UNRWA facility in Gaza was bombed; and (5) the HRC focus is properly on the actions of the oppressor (Israel) and not on those of the oppressed (the Palestinians).
Another is that it did not accord Israel the right of self-defense. But Israel's claim to self-defense in its savaging of Gaza is specious, because Israel -- like all occupiers and oppressors -- has no inherent right of self-defense against its victims. Who, for instance, would have accepted Nazi Germany's assertion that its brutal reprisals against the Czechs for their assassination of a Nazi commander named Reinhard Heydrich was an exercise in self-defense? No one, and no one should accept Israel's claim, either.
A third is that holding Israel accountable for its actions will somehow endanger the Middle East peace process. But there is no peace process, simply meaningless discussions to the dead end (for Palestinians and the rest of the region) of Israeli hegemony, and under Netanyahu or any electable government in Israel, there is not and cannot be one. There will be an enforced peace imposed from outside of the Middle East, over the objections and obstruction of Israel, or there will be none at all.
...Netanyahu's assertion that he will prolong the diplomatic battle over the Goldstone Report and the subsequent HRC resolution is akin to a lawyer for a serial murderer trying to delay the trial in the hope that the witnesses will die of boredom or old age. It is also predictable. Since promises, excuses and offers of aid no longer suffice, it is inevitable that bluster, threats and blackmail will come to the forefront.
Done properly, this could be the start of a real diplomatic revolution on the path to an enforced peace in Palestine and an end to Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. But if those countries supporting justice for Palestine do not act now, while attention is focused and the momentum is building, it will all have been for nothing. They will have no one to blame for their failure except themselves.
(Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College)
Read Full Story at informationclearinghouse.info »
89 Views Share Story 51 Comments Report
Submitted By:
hyperbola
Military brat (14th generation American) with unassuaged wanderlust. By age 11, schools in four states and three foreign countries (in 3 languages). Left home at ...
Who Also Submitted:
RSS Join the Discussion
+ Add CommentComments So Far: 51 (view all)
-
-
75%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Oh how you must lie to try to cover up massive zionist crimes against humanty. To start with, Goldstone is jewish - one of those jews who has not sold out his moral integrity to the racist totalitarianism called zionism. You should stop supporting suicide by jews in Palestine if you want to support jews. Here is an israeli jew from whom you should learn.
Reply
Deception, Spin and Lies from Israeli Zionists
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/10/18/deceptio...
Less than a week after Ankara cancelled an air exercise with Israel, Turkey’s state-sponsored channel TRT1 broadcast "Ayrilik" * ("Farewell"), a new prime-time TV show that depicts the true image of Israel’s genocidal military operation in Gaza last January.
The Israelis are not happy. "Broadcasting this series is a serious case of state-sponsored incitement. …,” said Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman this morning. “Such a series, which doesn’t even have a weak connection to reality presents the IDF's soldiers as murderers of innocent children….” I wonder whether one should remind hardliner Lieberman, who happens to be an enthusiastic ethnic cleanser and a proud Judeo supremacist racist, that the reality on the ground last January was ‘connected enough’ to establish a genocidal war crime inquiry and a crime against humanity. It left over 1400 fatal casualties. It also left thousands more injured, most of them children, women and elders. However, for once Lieberman happens to read the map. The Turkish TV-show indeed depicts the IDF’s soldiers as murderers of children women and elders for this is what Israeli soldiers are and this is exactly what Israel stands for politically, symbolically, ideologically and practically....
Spin, Deception and Lies are the Answer
A few weeks ago, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu stood in front of the UN waving the Wannsee Conference’s protocols suggesting that he was holding the ‘proof for the Nazi extermination of European Jewry’...
.... However, far more crucial is the fact that the Wannsee Protocol lines out a program that is not that different from Lieberman’s deadly plan for the Palestinians. In reality it is the Jewish state that murders Palestinians en masse and starves those who survive. Moreover, it is very interesting also to elaborate on the following questions: how is it that the leader of the Jewish state is standing in front of the nation and spins in broad daylight in the name of Israel and the name of the Jewish people? What can we learn from the fact that an Israeli leader tries to fool the entire UN assembly? ...
-
-
-
60%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
The truth is readily available and well documented for those who wish to consider the evidence.
Reply
New Legal Study finds that Israel is Practicing Apartheid and Colonialism in the occupied Palestinian territories«International Law Observer
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/09/29/new-lega...
The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a study conducted by a high-profile group of legal experts , indicating that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)(See the Executive Summary of the Study ).
The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank to conduct the study....
The resulting 300-page draft, titled ‘Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law’, represents 15 months of research and constitutes an exhaustive review of Israel’s practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law. The project was suggested originally by the January 2007 report by eminent South African jurist John Dugard, in his capacity as Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council, when he indicated that Israel practices had assumed characteristics of colonialism and apartheid.
Regarding colonialism, the team found that Israel’s policy and practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the international community developed ....
Regarding apartheid, the team found that Israel’s laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.....
The report concludes that the three pillars of apartheid in South Africa are all practiced by Israel in the OPT. In South Africa, the first pillar was to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups, and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group. The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups. And the third pillar was “a matrix of draconian ‘security’ laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination.”
The Report finds that Israeli practices in the OPT exhibit the same three ‘pillars’ of apartheid:....
-
-
75%
Thinker221 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
In my opinion, the "best" statement in the article above that summarized the message its author was trying to deliver is this:
Reply
"Israel -- like all occupiers and oppressors -- has no inherent right of self-defense..."
For these people it is enough to declare someone an "occupier" or an "oppressor" (even if, like Israel, he/she/them DOES NOT occupy any foreign country) and Voila! Israel "has NO RIGHT FOR SELF-DEFENSE" meaning that it is OK to murder Israeli men, women and children but it is NOT OK for the Israelis to defend themselves.-
60%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Do thieves have the right to keep stolen property? Would you defend the right of thieves to "self-defense" when they occupy your house and throw you out? If racist hooligans drive your neighbors out of their house, do the hooligans have the right to demand that you look after the neighbors?
Reply
Sderot - A town built on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/01/29/sderot-a...
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about Sderot, a town that has become the centrepiece of Israeli propaganda. Israeli spokesmen, and Israel’s stooges in the media and among politicians in Britain, the European Union and the United States, repeat ad nauseum the mantra about Palestinian home-made rockets "raining down" on Sderot, although only 1 in 500 causes a fatality. It is a mantra that has been used to justify the countless thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, grenades and tank shells that are blasted into Gaza's tight-packed humanity. Bu what do we know about Sderot? Below is an insight into the town's history.
Israeli land thieves built Sderot on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village called Najd.
Sderot was settled by Jews in 1951. In All That Remains, Walid Khalidi says that Sderot, along with the settlement of Or ha-Ner, founded in 1957, were established on the village lands of Najd, which means "elevated plain" in Arabic.
According to Umkhalil, Najd's Palestinian villagers, approximately 620 in 1945, were expelled on 13 May 1948, before Israel was declared a state and before any Arab armies entered Palestine. UN Resolution 194 and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2, stipulate that the villagers of Najd have a right to return home to their personal property and to their native village.
Najd is 14 kilometres from Gaza. Palestinian Arabs own 12,669 dunums in Najd, although Israel refuses to honour their rights to their personal property, and refuses them their inalienable right to return home. In 1945 Jews owned 495 dunums of land in Najd and public lands consisted of 412 dunums.
In short, Sderot is an illegally occupied territory stolen from Palestinians.
Israeli Goebbels: Stop lying to the world about needing to defend what is not rightfully yours. You're worse than bank robbers saying they have a right to defend their loot!
-
-
50%
Justice4All1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
It would have been good to have reports from outside reporters. But since Israel blocked any communication there are no outside reports.
Reply
The Palestinians are telling the world to witness what is happening. Israel is blocking communication with the outside world. It's pretty obvious who has something to hide.-
50%
Thinker221 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
> The Palestinians are telling the world to witness what is happening. Israel is blocking communication with the outside world. It's pretty obvious who has something to hide.
Reply
This is new to me. Can you elaborate on the ways Israel can "block" communication of Palestinians with the outside world considering that radio was invented more than 100 years ago, that every Palestinian has a TV receiver and most of them have cable TV service delivering hundreds of channels from all of the world and that most Palestinians have at least one cellular phone?
In addition, can you explain HOW the Palestinians "are telling the world to witness what is happening" considering that, according to you, "Israel is blocking communication with the outside world"? If you don't understand the question you may consider that it is not possible to communicate when communication is blocked.
Still further, can you explain WHY the Palestinians and their democratically elected leaders insist that the war against Israel should continue if they do not like the results?
-
-
-
0%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Getting desperate Georgia. Your anti-americanism is showing through again. Americans support the ideas that all men are created equal and have equal rights. Anyone who is so desperate to support a racist, totalitarian state like Israel is clearly not an American. Are you just another "israel-first" traitor or are you perhaps an israeli zionist trying to dupe Americans into supporting crimes against humanity? Here are some real American christians form whom you should learn.
Reply
The Unacceptable Cost of Judeo-Christianity; Its Legacy of Pain
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/10/08/the-unac...
No religious persuasion has ever been more clearly responsible for so much bloodshed and destruction as has “Christian Zionism.” This 100-year old offshoot of fundamental Christianity has almost single-handedly legitimized wars in Arab states since January 1991. Its destructive power is only now being understood. ... We note again that the grassroots individuals within this movement are almost always motivated by altruistic religious belief (this author was once one of these), while the driving force behind their leaders is almost always tainted by money and the power of fame.
...First: It must be understood what Judeo-Christianity (also called “evangelicalism,” dispensationalism, or Christians Zionism) is: by any name, a 20th Century phenomena, an apostate-cult, meaning it practices, in part, a deviant path of following Christ, and it relies upon many varied human sources other than the traditional bible(s) for its theology.4 & 5
Second: Judeo-Christianity ascribes holiness to a foreign political state, Israel, as though it was itself a god. It placed political Israel on the throne along side of Jesus Christ, and, in so doing, its teachers ignore, if not annul, much of Jesus’ teachings. 1 & 2 & 3
Third: Rank and file churchgoers and many lesser known Judeo-Christian pastors think of themselves as moral, even when they are actively contributing to immoral acts, such as supporting mass military assassinations in Gaza and the West Bank. ...
...Judeo-Christianity can easily be used by its leader, and by the leaders of Israel, to carry out a political agenda that favors that foreign political state over and ahead of the interests of America, and ahead of the interest of any humans in the USA or any other country except Israel. For the most part followers of the cult do not know they are being used. Without this understanding many are confused between Judeo-Christian religion and its political agenda. Pro-Israel activists, including John Hagee, should rightly be registered as agents for a foreign government, so open are their objectives.,Some of our allies against serial wars attribute them to Israel, working through its agents and lobbies for the purpose of gaining US dollar support and creating chaos in the Middle East for its own benefit. -
0%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Much is finally being exposed about the powerful Israeli lobby led by The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC's agenda that calls for the USA to finance and bless its occupation of its neighbors, and eventually control the oil of the Middle East, tactics that are contrary to American interests. ...
Reply
...Every politician in Congress and those competing for the presidency know George W. Bush became president because he and Carl Rove found a way to identify Bush with the Christian Right, but to get this blessing one must also be Israel blessed. Even today 70% of Republicans support Bush and his war in Iraq because what is left of the Republican Party is predominantly Judeo-Christian.
The relationship between the Christian-Zionists leaders and AIPAC is simple and straightforward. AIPAC pressures Congressmen in Washington to give Israel what it wants; the Christian-Zionist celebrities brainwash the laymen in hometowns to pressure the Congressmen at the polls, and the Congressman takes a junket to Israel and complies. Congress is in the vice between the strongest lobby in Washington and the biggest lobbying voting block in the country. Why would they listen to you or me?...
... We must blame those who have influence, the Christ follower who mistakenly listens to the celebrity Christian leaders, and who are themselves victims. What has the Judeo-Christian movement given back to America? Is has sacrificed the value of loving your brother as yourself, as Jesus demanded…even loving your enemy. It has left in its place a legacy of hatred, war, violence, and diluted money, all in the name of Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. This can and must be changed from inside these apostate churches and media sources.
Church-going Americans are not only going in debt for war, they supply their sons and daughters to be killed and maimed in the contest. Celebrity Zionists beat the drums for war that Israel wants, but I have not heard of Hagee’s or Farwell’s son enlisting, or any of the congressmen’s children. The scorched foot soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan include a disproportionately large number of Judeo-Christians, who we believe, often enlist because mom and dad raised him in the Judeo-Christian church where volunteering is considered noble, even today after Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Their youths are taught that if we honor Israel we earn blessings for America from God. It is these young men who pay with shattered bodies and broken minds for the free junkets to Israel taken by a reported 80 Congressmen in August 2007. ....
We concluder there could have been no Shock and Awe or war of occupation in Iraq were it not for the Christian Zionists’ zealous campaign to destroy Muslim nations. The now publicly acknowledged War on Islam is in fact already 17 years old....
-
-
50%
Georgia501 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
We turn now to the Girl Scouts of Israel for an exercise of intelligence that is not an option for either Hyperbole or the author, a Ph.D. from the University of M... Mi... Mic...
Reply
Oh hell....as a Buckeye I always struggle when typing it...but you get the picture.
Here we go:
1. "Justice Richard Goldstone himself has worried that the UN action on the report is being treated as conclusive when it was never intended that way. "If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven," Goldstone told a reporter."
2. "For example, the report describes the Israeli attack on Gaza's Islamic University, stating: "These were civilian, educational buildings and the mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility."
"Anyone with a normal university campus in mind would agree, unless they were in the habit of watching Palestinian television. The Islamic University was previously featured as the site of clashes between Fatah and Hamas gunmen, with Fatah soldiers identifying it as a weapons laboratory for the new and improved Qassam rockets that Hamas fires by the thousands into Israel. Palestinian Authority television had a full display of the weapons cache found in the Islamic University at the time."
3. "The report also condemns the destruction of several mosques in Gaza by Israeli fire, finding no basis for the Israeli allegations that mosques were used as launching points for Hamas attacks and as weapons storage facilities. Again, anyone with a normal image of a house of worship in mind would have to agree.
"But the "fact-finding" mission did not seem to gather all of the facts. Israeli soldiers testifying at Tel Aviv's Rabin Academy after the war displayed first-hand photographs – not hearsay accounts from a friend of a friend – showing weapons stored in Gaza mosques and Hamas gunmen using mosques as firing platforms. Goldstone has complained that the Israelis did not cooperate with the mission, but the IDF testimony is publicly available for anyone, including the UN's "fact finders," to see."
As baseball season winds down in the US, I see no reason why Hype should get more than 3 strikes.-
50%
Georgia501 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I neglected to provide a link for the quotes above. Sorry 'bout that.
Reply
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/713921 -
-
50%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Back to the zionist propaganda again Georgia? That you have to stoop so low simply shows that the zionist racism and totalitarianism has no rational arguments in its favor. It is time to end propaganda campaigns by foreign governments and "isreal-first" traitors in the US.
Reply
Here is an israeli jew from whom you should learn.
The Pathology of Evil - Netanyahu’s UN Speech
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/09/30/the-path...
Israeli PM Netanyahu’s speech at the UN is a major insight into the Israeli’s mentality, psyche and logic. In his speech Netanyahu, a prolific and charismatic speaker, gives air to his genocidal inclinations, he brings to light the Israeli supremacy but he also allows us to detect some shaky and vulnerable spots at the heart of the Jewish national narrative. Reading Netanyahu’s speech makes it very clear that both the Zionist Shoa and the ‘promised land’ narratives are on the verge of collapse.
Israelis love their Shoa, for the Shoa is no doubt their best selling Hasbara (propaganda) product. It somehow allows them to kill en masse and to do it indistinguishably while insisting that it is they who happen to be the victims.
“I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee.” Said Netanyahu. “There, on January 20,1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people.”
PM Netanyahu, if you are genuinely interested in ‘extermination plans’ you do not have to travel to Wannsee, Berlin. All you have to do is visit your IDF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. Your chief commanders will guide you through their IDF ‘solutions’ for the Palestinians. At the end of the day, it is your army that surrounds Palestinians with barbed-wire, it is you who keep civilian populations in a siege with inadequate food supplies and medicine. It is your army that poured WMD over the most densely populated neighbourhoods on this planet. While the real meaning of the ‘Nazi Final Solution’ (Die Endlösung) is still discussed by historians who fail to agree between themselves what it really meant, the true reality of the Israeli murderous solution has been seen by us all.
... PM Netanyahu, may I suggest to you that not a single human cares about the exact numbers: whether it was one or four millions Jews who died in Auschwitz, no one doubts that the camp was a horrible place. Yet, two questions must be answered once and for all: how is it that the Jews, who suffered so much during that war, managed to get themselves involved in a colossal racist crime against the Palestinians (1948 Nakba) just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz? How is it that the Israeli leadership, that happens to be so sensitive to Jewish suffering, manages to neglect the pain they inflict on millions of Palestinians?
However, for once I agree with Netanyhau: “The greatest threat facing the world today”, he says, “is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.” -
50%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
In fact, no one could describe the danger posed by the Jewish state and Zionism any better. Israel is indeed a deadly marriage between Old Testament gross genocidal barbarism, Zionist fanaticism and a huge arsenal of WMD, chemical, biological and nuclear that has already been partially put into action.
Reply
...Sabbath Goyim
Like other Zionist operations around the world, Netanyahu is convinced that the Goyim should fight the Jewish wars. “Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?” I actually would like to stress that PM Netanyahu is all wrong here. If the United Nation is interested in bringing peace to this region and the world, it is of the essence to help Iran to develop its nuclear project and even its military nuclear capacity. This seems to be the only thing that may curb the English Speaking Empire’s lethal expansionist enthusiasm as performed recently in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It will surely stop the Zionists from celebrating their symptoms at the expense of their neighbours....
Bibi* the Peace Maker
By now, the Israeli PM is ready to state his Judeo centric peace mantra. “Ladies and Gentlemen, all of Israel wants peace”. Yet as far as statistics are concerned, we have recently learned that 94% of the Israeli Jews also approved the carpet bombardment of their next door neighbours. It is impossible not to see a clear discrepancy between the ‘peace loving’ verbalism and the murderous reality.
...PM Netanyahu, I will make it plain and clear. Not only are you foreign to the land, you are also foreign to almost every possible understanding of the notion of humanity. In fact, the Separation Wall that is going to be left after the inevitable disappearance of your ‘Jew only democracy’ will serve generations to come with an astonishing historical monument of Jewish national identity estranged from ethics, universalism and human brotherhood. The crime against humanity committed by the Jewish state in the name of the Jewish people is not something that will be wiped out from the history text books in a short time. Quite the opposite; it will stand as another mythological chapter in this never-ending saga of supremacist compulsive pathological self-loving.
-
-
-
50%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Well beavith, lets let an israeli jew tell you about what you support and then ask who is the racist. If opposing this makes one an "anti-semite" (at least for lying zionists), then that is becoming a badge of honor equivalent to those Germans who opposed Hitler.
Reply
THE KEY TO PEACE: DISMANTLING THE MATRIX OF CONTROL
... Because it operates under a Kafkaesque guise of "proper administration," "upholding the law," "keeping the public order" and, of course, "security," the Matrix of Control renders the Occupation virtually invisible. In "normal" times (when active Palestinian resistance can be stifled), its outward appearance is legal and bureaucratic, the most effective means of control over a long period of time. The Israeli military government over the Occupied Territories is called, for example, the "Civil Administration," even though it is headed by a colonel under the strict authority of the Ministry of Defense, and is bound by the orders of the general commanding the "Central Front."
The control mechanisms of the Matrix are varied and diverse. There are, first of all, active measures to ensure acquiescence:
Outright military actions, including attacks on civilian population centers and the Palestinian infrastructure;
Extensive use of collaborators and undercover "mustarabi" army units; administrative detention, arrest, trial and torture; and
"Orders" issued by the Military Commanders of the West Bank and Gaza (some 2000 in number since 1967), supplemented by Civil Administration policies, that replace local civil law with policies and procedures that cynically further Israeli political control.
A second set of controls derives from Israel's policy of "creating facts on the ground" - virtually all of them in violation of international law (including the Fourth Geneva Convention signed by Israel itself). These include:
Massive expropriation of Palestinian land;
Construction of more than 200 settlements and the transfer of 400,000 Israelis across the 1967 boundaries: about 200,000 in the West Bank, 200,000 in East Jerusalem and 6000 in Gaza (the latter occupying a fourth of the land, including most of the coastline);
Carving the Occupied Territories into areas -- Areas "A," "B," "C," "D" in the West Bank; "H-1" and "H-2" in Hebron; Yellow, Green, Blue and White Areas in Gaza; nature reserves; closed military areas, security zones, and "open green spaces" of restricted housing over more than half of Palestinian East Jerusalem - which confine the Palestinians to some 190 islands all surrounded by Israeli settlements, roads and checkpoints; -
50%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
A massive system of highways and by-pass roads designed to link settlements, to create barriers between Palestinian areas and to incorporate the West Bank into Israel proper;
Reply
Imposing severe controls on Palestinian movement;
Construction of seven industrial parks that give new life to isolated settlements, exploit cheap Palestinian labor while denying it access to Israel, rob Palestinian cities of their economic vitality, control key locations and ensure Israel's ability to continue dumping its industrial wastes onto the West Bank;
Maintaining control over aquifers and other vital natural resources;
Exploiting holy places (Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and others in and around Jerusalem) as pretexts for maintaining a "security presence," and hence military control.
Yet a third set of control mechanisms, the most subtle of all, are those of a bureaucratic or "legal" nature. They entangle Palestinians in a tight web of restrictions and trigger sanctions whenever Palestinians try to expand their life space. These include:
A permanent "closure" of the West Bank and Gaza;
A discriminatory and often arbitrary system of work, entrance and travel permits system restricting freedom of movement both within the country and abroad; -
100%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
The use of diverse methods of active displacement: exile and deportation; the revoking of residency rights; induced emigration through impoverishment; land expropriation, house demolitions and other means of making life in the Occupied Territories unbearable. Schemes of "transfer" have also been suggested (in fact, two parties in Sharon's government -- the National Union Party of the assassinated Tourism Minister Ze'evi and Minister of Infrastructure Lieberman's "Israel Is Our Home" -- have "transfer" as their main political program). Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have "departed" since 1967, but a core of three million sumud ("steadfast") Palestinians still remains.
Reply
Zoning policies which, under the guise of planning and the law, serves to freeze the natural development of Palestinian towns and villages. Part of this system involves the restrictive use building permits, enforced by house demolitions, arrests, fines and daily harassment, all designed to confine the population to small enclaves;
Expansive "master plans" being drawn around the settlements which allow for massive building while contending that settlement building has been "frozen."
Restrictions on the planting of crops and their sale, together with the wholesale uprooting of hundreds of thousands of olive and fruit trees since 1967; and
Employing licensing and inspection of Palestinian businesses as a means of political control.
To all of this must be added, of course, the debilitating psychological costs of life under occupation: loss of life, imprisonment, torture, harassment, humiliation, anger and frustration, as well as traumas suffered by tens of thousands of Palestinians (especially children) who witnessed their homes being demolished, saw their loved ones beaten and humiliated, suffered from inadequate housing, and who lost opportunities to actualize their life potentials. These are wounds that will take generations to heal.
Barak's "Generous Offer" and the Matrix of Control
This popular view is based on both false information and false assumptions. First of all, there never was an Israeli "offer," and Israel never proposed to relinquish 95% of the West Bank.....
http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6=3
-
-
100%
calitennflo1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
ref: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=205...
Reply
The United Nations Council for Human Rights approved the Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of targeting civilians during the December-January war in Gaza. While the move has been accurately described as a naked attempt to demonize Israel, it was also a distinct failure for President Barack Obama in the Middle East.-
100%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Frankly it is a "defeat" for Obama only to the extent that his administration is "controlled" by israel-firsters. It is a victory for Americans who believe in the principles of American democracy.
Reply
Actually Obama is doing pretty well in resisting the pressure of the "israel-firsters" at Fox News and could use this as an opportunity to recover American foreign policy from the zionists. They have been bleeding America for far too long. Here is an American jew on the topic.
JFK Was Enraged at ‘Zionist Control’ Effected by Campaign Contributions
Back in the shtetl the two highest values in Jewish life were wealth and learning. Well I’m pitting the learning against the wealth here. I’m going to keep on my theme of Jewish wealth in politics, inasmuch as it distorts our policy in the Middle East.
Last year Seymour Hersh, god bless him, openly spoke of “Jewish money” when he criticized the push to attack Iran. And my correspondent just sent me a selection from Hersh’s 1991 book “The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy”:
....“… [Governor Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut said that in 1960,] ‘I told Kennedy I was going to get in touch with Abe Feinberg, who I thought was a key Jew. I arranged a meeting [with Kennedy] in Feinberg’s apartment in the Hotel Pierre and we invited all the leading Jews.’ About twenty prominent businessmen and financiers showed up.
.... ‘As an American citizen he was outraged,’ Bartlett recalled, ‘to have a Zionist group come to him and say: “We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you’ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.’” Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, also resented the crudity with which he’d been approached. ‘They wanted control,’ he angrily told Bartlett.
“Bartlett further recalled Kennedy promising to himself that if he ever did get to be President, he was going to do something about it”–a candidate’s perennial need for money and resulting vulnerability to the demands of those who contributed....
...JFK wanted a nuclear-free near east with inspectors at Dimona and a resolution to the Palestinian refugee problem (which would be a policy based on American interests or perhaps even regional or international interests). I don’t think his patrons liked those ideas much. they wanted a policy based on Israel’s interests. and as they say, when you pay the piper, you call the tune.
To which I’d add: Israel got nukes. Nukes seem to have played a role in causing the ‘67 War. Now Iran wants nukes; and this time around the U.S. is contemplating military attacks. Maybe it’s time to get nukes out of the Middle East? Isn’t Dimona a bargaining chip?....
http://mondoweiss.net/2008/07/jfk-was-enraged-at-z...
-
-
67%
Commodore11 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
It sounds like those jovial and warm hearted "gentlemen" at Al-Jazeera are trying to spin the BS again. What else can the arabs do? They obviously can't handle Israel militarily. You'd think w/Israel pretty much surrounded by arabs that the arabs would be able to align and try to defeat Israel. But they can't. They are not capable. Their governments are inept and corrupt. All they can do is spin the bull and blow themselves up. Big deal. Who cares? Besides it's the U.N. The U.N. is just as incompetent and inept as the arabs are. No one listens to them. No one even tells them to shut up because no one is listening. The U.N. and the arabs get all the consideration they deserve.
Reply-
Neutral
rimbaud1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
The Arabs would have better success against Israel if they amassed in hordes, unarmed, on Israel's borders and then simply marched across. Israel has been toughened by winning every one of it's wars against the Arabs, and by living in a state of constant siege by the Palestinians.
Reply
-
-
-
67%
Daylight1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none."
Reply
~ Thomas Jefferson.
America needs to follow very closely these principles if she wants to be respected as a world leader and a defender of freedom and liberty. -
67%
reallypsst1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Here we go again with israel and hype,all those people who are opposing israel have had many opportunities to develop a nation right next to israel but they want it all and for what,before israel that whole area was a sh.t hole,now there is fresh water farms and electricity,for over a thousand years people have move in and out and not one has made a nation out of a desert till israel,the jews are not going anywhere and if they do many are going with them !
Reply-
0%
rimbaud1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
For such a small population and such a small sliver of land, Israel does get an inordinate amount of the blame for the condition of their Palestinians charges. You'd think that economic progress for the Arabs would be welcome by Israel, and attracting economic investments, rather than charity and arms, would be a high-priority of the Arabs.
Reply -
67%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
You really are a barrel full of zionist propaganda lies! Starting with the whole "blooming desert" confabulation of all things! The truth of the matter is that the zionists have just about destroyed the environment in Palestine that christians and moslems had nurtured for millenia. Why did the zionists have to steal the Jaffa orange businesses that Palestinians had been runing for decades before the zionists started their campaign of ethnic cleansing?
Reply
Isn't it true that Palestine was destitute until Israelis made its desert bloom?
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-...
As it will be proven below based on British Mandatory statistical books and other sources, this myth about Palestine and its indigenous people was concocted to romanticize the "Jewish return and redemption of the Promised Land". Let's get a detailed accounting of the agricultural production in Palestine for the season of 1944-1945, we will directly quote the British Mandate (who prepared two volume books, titled Survey of Palestine, for the United Nations in 1946-7) as follows:
(see article for original table and documents)
Let's contemplate the following lands statistics about Palestine (based on CIA's WorldFact Book) before we draw any conclusions.
(see article for original table)
Based on these statistics, it is clear that the indigenous population planted 13 times more than newly immigrated European colonizers, which explains why the majority of them preferred to work in the services and manufacturing industries. It should be emphasized that the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund provided lots of subsidies and incentives (such as free consultation, loans, and attractive long term lease programs) to encourage Jews to "redeem" the land. On the other hand, Palestinian agriculture was profitable and sustainable without any assistance from the local government.
It should be emphasized that Jews owned under 7% of Palestine of which only 44% was used for agricultural purposes by Jews (click here to see the exact scanned page from Survey of Palestine p. 376). In this regards, we ask the reader how could this myth be true if Jews cultivated under 3% of Palestine?
Soon after Nakba, the victorious Jews destroyed most of the usurped Palestinian farms and groves, especially the olive and orange groves that required extensive labor to maintain and harvest. In this regards, it is worth quoting the Israeli Zionist writer Meron Benvenisti who described the Palestinian landscape soon after Nakba as follows: -
100%
hyperbola1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"The destruction of hundreds of thousands of dunums of fruit-bearing trees does not fit Israel's self-image as a society that knows how to make the desert bloom. And the contention that the green Arab landscape had been destroyed because of necessity of adopting the crops to the agricultural practices of the Jews only underscores the conclusion it was not the war that had caused this devastation, but rather the disappearance of the specific human community. that had shaped the landscape in accordance with its needs and preferences. The destruction of vast areas of orchards did not attract the same degree of interests as had the demolition of the Arab villages, despite the fact that it perhaps had more devastating effect on the landscape." (Sacred Landscape, p. 165) Click here to view a documentary film showing how Israelis uprooted over half a million olive trees in the occupied West Bank.
Reply
...It should be emphasized that even the most zealous of Zionists will find it hard to disprove that Jaffa's citrus plantations were first planted, marketed to Europe, packaged, and harvested by mainly Palestinian Arab companies, click here for the proof. As early as 1891, Ahad Ha'Am (a leading Eastern European Jewish essayist) tried to open many Jewish eyes to the fact that Palestine was not a desolate place, he reported upon visiting Palestine for three months in 1891:
"We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ..... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains .... are not cultivated." (Righteous Victims, p. 42)
...This baseless myth, although an outright lie, attempts to paint a romantic vision for the "Promised Land" i.e. that it was destitute for 2,000 years until the "returning Jews" made its desert "bloom". It is sad to see how far this myth has been propagated in the Israeli school system and society in order to legitimize the continued collective dispossession of the Palestinian people.... -
50%
Justice4All1 month, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Most of the area surrounding Palestine was a sh.t hole. But Palestine was nice. It had water and good farm land. That's why the Israelies took it. Now they ask the Palestinians to re-build in the desert, but without the water that Israel has kept for themselves.
Reply
People are no longer free to move in and out. Palestinians were thrown out of their homes. And Israel has decided who can live in occupied Palestine.
-
-
-
0%
hyperbola1 month ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Can't face the music huh Georgia? Still have nothing to "justify" massive zionist crimes against humanity except chants and slogans.
Reply
Good of you to make that clear. By the way, don't you feel a bit ashamed about calling liars so many jews (both israeli and american) whose articles I linked.
Pretty abominable Georgia when you sit in America and cheer on massive killing and crimes against humanity elsewhere for your ugly ideology. Perhaps we do need hate crimes legislation in America.
-
-
Neutral
orndorffter1 month ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I'm telling you hype, I find no reason for you's to keep putting Israel down like you do. If you read your Bible like I read in some of your posts, you well see what it says about Israel, and I fear no man or women, but I do fear the man, our creator, You well not hear me say anything against Israel it is the chosen one and what the Bible says no man can change my mind on it, you have a lot of hateward in you and sounds like you hate Israel alot, but if you ever went to them they would take you in as their own, they are not bad people.
Reply
Sure they take up for themselfs but all countrys do. Even America.
In one of your posts you said that all man is created equal, well that is right. and if you beleive that way then you should live by it. You better sat down and read the Bible better because reading what you have wrote about Israel has put the fear of God in me. and should you to.-
Neutral
hyperbola1 month ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Every tin pot dictator snce the dawn of time (christian or not) has used the "chosen people" argument to justify his crimes against humanity,
Reply
Sorry Orn, but your diatribe is profoundly anti-American. Better go back and learn about the principles of American democracy.
By the way, your "interpretation" about what the "bible" says about israel is pretty much only subscribed to by rather small, ugly sects. -
-
Submit a Story
Advertisement
Add a Comment
Sign In With Your Propeller Account
Please keep your comments relevant to this story.
To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.