PALESTINE, LEBANON, SABRA AND SHATILA, YASSER ARAFAT.

Ehud Olmert - Ariel Sharon brothers in arms, followers of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of most radical, racist, & militant Zionism

“Mama, will Baba Roumieh (the Pope from Rome) visit us in Shatila camp?”

HABIBI, THE POPES ARE COMPLICIT IN ALL THESE MASSACRES!

Hulagu with his Christian queen Dokuz Khatun. Hulagu conquered Muslim Syria, in alliance with Christian forces from Cilician Armenia, Georgia, and Antioch

Displaced Palestinians

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“Mama, will Baba Roumieh (the Pope from Rome) visit us in Shatila camp?”

April 16, 2012

Beirut

Graphics by Alex

Al-Manar

It’s official according to the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI will visit Lebanon from the 14th to the 16th September, in just five months’ time.

By coincidence or design, the Pontiffs visit will coincide with the International commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre during which Christian militia, facilitated by nearby Israeli troops who had sealed the Palestinian refugee camp, slaughtered more than 3000 unarmed civilians on site—approximately 25% of whom were fellow Lebanese.

If the Pontiff accepts the invitation of Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai and stays during his visit in Bkerki, the seat of the Patriarchy, he may or may not be informed that he will sleep close to one of the burial pits where bodies from the 1982 massacre were trucked from Shatila camp.

Samir Geagea’s ‘greens’…

According to British journalist Robert Fisk, and the late American journalist Janet Lee Stevens, more than 1000 bodies were dumped by Christian militia on Saturday and Sunday September 18 -19, 1982 at various sites in south and east Beirut (including the golf course on airport road) and Bkerki.

These Christian militia killings, overseen by their Israeli handlers, amounted to a second massacre inside the Cite Sportiff “interrogation center”. The sports stadium is located on the western edge of Shatila Camp bordering the Drouk neighborhood, which is also known as Sabra, across from the former Gaza Palestine Red Crescent Society Hospital.

Understandably, the Pope’s schedule is going to be tight with many pressures on the Pontiffs limited time. Some complaints are already being heard including one from the office of Israel’s interior minister Eli Yishai. Yishai has condemned the timing of the Pope’s visit to Lebanon questioning and arguing that if Benedict XVI visits Shatila Palestinian camp, Israel would view it as an attempt to fan the flames of hatred against the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Yishai had earlier sent a memorandum to the US reminding the Israel lobby not to forget that following his 14th birthday in 1941, Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope, joined the Hitler Youth. Yishai omitted the information that Hitler Youth membership was required by law for all 14-year-old German boys after December 1939, and that young Ratzinger was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings, according to his the Pope’s brother Georg.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon hope that the Pope will find time to meet with them and some of the kids in Shatila told this observer that “We can tidy up the camp and make it nice for his visit.”

Yet it is a bit awkward to envisage the Pope trudging along Shatila’s sometimes barely five feet wide sewer-wet winding alleys where the sun has not shone since the original camp tents became cinder block hovels back in 1950-51. President Jimmy Carter considered such a visit and route a couple of years ago but his Shatila camp trek was vetoed by the US Embassy and the US Secret Service. Then as now, the worry was that at the juncture of some of the alleys are security forces from a variety of PLO factions and making sure all went well would be an enormous task.

28 Years Later: Sabra and Shatila Massacre
Picture by Franklin Lamb

Still, the kids hope the Pope will come and he could indeed attend the Sabra-Shatila Massacre commemoration at Shatila’s Martyr’s burial site where more than 1,100 bodies were buried in haste as the world discovered the scope of the carnage on September 19, 1982.

Vicar General of the Maronite Patriarchate, Archbishop Paul Sayah shared some thoughts on the Pope’s visit saying that “The Holy Father will expect Lebanon to lead in the implementation of the Post-synodal Exhortation which carriers the main ideas of the Synod , namely communion and witness and to revive the Christian identity in Lebanon and by example, demonstrate the teachings of Jesus. He will bring a special message not only to Lebanon but also specifically to the countries of the region so we expect this visit to inject a new dynamism, not only in the Lebanese society and Christians in Lebanon but I would say in the region.”

Many in Lebanon, including in the refugee camps, in anticipation of the Pope’s visit, are discussing Jesus from Palestine and his missionary work as well as the human rights teachings of the 5th century Syrian Christian monk, St. Maron from “Kefar-Nabo,” who devoted his life to his quest for nurturing and healing the “lost souls” of both non-Christians and Christians of his time.

St. Maroun’s Tomb, Kimar & Brad, Syria

One Christian supporter of Palestinian civil rights explained: “We remember what St. Maroun taught us all as he preached the Gospel, Christ came to his special people, but at first they didn’t understand him or accept him. But in spite of rejection, Jesus spoke, and he advocated for justice for refugees, the downtrodden and those facing discrimination, and he spoke Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And what Jesus said, nobody had ever said, and nobody must ever ignore and nobody must rest or be silent from trying to achieve.”

Pope John Paul II in Lebanon

Hadi, a teenager from Shatila camp explained, “We have studied that in 1997, Pope John Paul II visited Lebanon to give hope to Lebanese who are downtrodden and discriminated against and who said, “Lebanon is more than a country, it is a message from Calvary to love thy neighbor as thyself.” John Paul II reminded us of the divine Sheppard’s plea, “Care for my lambs. . . . Care for my sheep” (John 21:16-17).

St. Catherine Monastery,
Mount Moses, Sinai, Egypt

Christian-Muslim relations in Lebanon today can benefit from the letter and the spirit of the civil rights enactment guaranteed to Christians in 628 C.E. when Prophet Muhammad granted the Charter of Privileges to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai. The Charter consists of several clauses

enacting civil rights for Christian refugees including freedom of movement, freedom from arbitrary arrest and confinement, freedom to work and to own a home.”

Alaa, from Shatila camp, whose little brother Omar asked their mother if “Baba Roumieh” (the Pope from Rome) would visit Shatila, said she hopes that “the Pope will urge and advocate that all Christians in Lebanon support meaningful civil rights legislation for Palestinian refugees in compliance with international law and Christian morality. We urge Pope Benedict to condemn the racist and anti-Palestinian language and graffiti that has polluted public discussion for the past half century in Lebanon and has undermined dialogue.”

Civil rights for Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees have been denied for too long.
These days are pregnant with potential new tragedies that nobody wishes upon anybody else. Hopefully Pope Benedict XVI will urge the faithful to support the earliest possible enactment of Civil Rights legislation for Palestinian refugees.

Franklin Lamb volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign. He is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com
He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.

He contribute to Uprooted Palestinians Blog

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Eva Bartlett: The Sabra and Shatila Massacre

April 16, 2012

By Eva Bartlett
In Gaza, 28-03-2012

Two days before Land Day and the GMJ, we visit Sabra and Shatila. An impoverished Beirut neighborhood and Palestinian refugee camp in the same vicinity, Sabra and Shatila are known for the savage massacre of Palestinian refugees and poor Lebanese Shiites (internally displaced from southern Lebanon by the “Israeli” occupational brutalities) which killed anywhere from over 3000 children, men and women-the assassins killed out of the sight of media and covered their tracks with mass graves, so the precise numbers of martyred are not known.

From September 16 to 18, 1982, Phalangists, a Christian Lebanese militia aided, trained, and supported by the Zionist state and by, slaughtered victims locked into the camp area by surrounding “Israeli” occupation forces. “It was a killing spree,” X, a Lebanese, tells me. He outlines the basics of the massacre and events leading up to it.

After the withdrawal of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) resistance fighters from Lebanon, via an American-mediated agreement under which the Lebanese pledged to protect the camps, camp residents were no longer allowed weapons to defend themselves. The September massacre was allegedly an attack to avenge the killing of Bashir Gemeyel, but the Palestinians weren’t guilty of his assassination, and the Phalange and Zionist leaders knew this.

“It was a part of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” he says, pointing out the complicity of the “Israeli” occupying army in Lebanon. “They surrounded the area, closed off the exits, and lit flares during the night to aid the attacking Phalange assassins.” Badil notes that an “Israeli” General “provided Lebanese Forces Intelligence with aerial photographs to arrange entry into the camps.”
An excerpt from American journalist Janet Lee Stevens, provides a glimpse into the horror of the slaughter:
I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles.
In the makbara Shuhada Sabra wa Shatila (Sabra and Shatila martyr’s cemetery), a large sign attempts to honour the murdered, when nothing can ever do so. Although a cemetery, it is without gravestones, save a sole marble marker on which is written: the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, 1982.
The grass is tall and trees sway gently in the breeze of the football-sized area, and as I note this I am told that, in fact, children used the plot as a football field until recent years, not knowing that the Phalange had covered thousands of massacred bodies with earth in this plot, attempting to cover their atrocities.
“But there were still many corpses in camp streets,” X tells me and independent journalists’ accounts corroborate this.

Sabra and Shatila are names I’ve heard over the past few years but, shamefully, knew little about other than that they were massacres. But with so many “Israeli”-instigated massacres, it is far too easy to lose track, to let them become numbers and statistics.
They may be numbers, in the tens of thousands, but they are entire families, they are elderly, they are women raped before being slaughtered, they are unborn children savagely snuffed with the stab of a knife or the bombing of a building.
I drift off on my own, away from the group which has come to march for al-Quds and which are also learning about or remembering these unforgettable massacres. Standing on this plot of bloodied land, the bodies of so many more victims of Zionist savagery, and trying to grasp the enormity of the 1982 massacre, I come to the signs-with their photos of the lifeless bodies of slaughtered children-commemorating still more massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese, from the Israeli occupation of much of Lebanon, to the Israeli assault on Lebanon in 2006. Qana 1986 and 2006, Marwaheen 2006, Chiah (“Sheyah”) 2006…
As I research later, the massacres are more and still more. During the 2006 “Israeli” war on Lebanon, 33 days of bombing from warplanes, war helicopters, UAVs, tanks and warships, over 1100 were killed. Throughout, the IOF committed massacres throughout Lebanon. Rweiss (southern Beirut), ‘Aitaroun, Mansouri, Marja’youn, Dweir, Zebqine, …bombing of homes, cars, bridges on or near which were cars, and the UN post in Khiam prison, killing 4 UN observers.
Qana, a village in the south-where it is believed Jesus Christ spent time-is known as the ‘town of massacres’. The village suffered massacres in 1996 and 2006, the former killing 106 civilians and injuring 110 more.

“It has a big cemetery, but not all of the martyred were buried there because many were blown to pieces,” X says. “The IOF bombed indiscriminately, bombed anything that moved. People were afraid to flee their homes for safer areas.”
On April 18, 1996, “Israeli” occupation forces waged their sadistically-dubbed “Grapes of Wrath” attacks on Lebanon. Badil reports:
Approximately 800 civilians were sheltering in a United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) base in the village of Qana, South Lebanon. They had assumed – incorrectly – that since international law strictly prohibits the targeting of civilian structures and UN facilities they would be safe under UNIFIL’s protection. Just after 2 PM on April 18, a barrage of proximity-fuse shells crashed directly into the pre-fabricated building. Minutes later 106 people lay dead, many burned and dismembered beyond recognition.
“”Israeli” officials tried to deny the massacre, claimed it was an error. But they knew where the UN locations were,” X says. “The UN had already confirmed their locations. There were only civilians in the compounds.
A month after the massacre, reporters confirmed this:
UN officials had told “Israel” repeatedly that up to 9,000 civilians were taking refuge in their compounds. In that period, by the peacekeepers’ count, “Israeli” fire hit or came dangerously near U.N. installations or mobile units 242 times.
and:
The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The “Israeli” shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world’s protection.
In front of a burning building of the UN’s Fijian battalion headquarters, a girl held a corpse in her arms, the body of a grey- haired man whose eyes were staring at her, and she rocked the corpse back and forth in her arms, keening and weeping and crying the same words over and over: “My father, my father.” A Fijian UN soldier stood amid a sea of bodies and, without saying a word, held aloft the body of a headless child.

On 30 July 2006, the IOF bombed a 3 level home in Qana, claiming Hizbullah resistance were hiding in it, a claim proven false. The bombing massacred 27 civilians, among them16 children.
Two weeks earlier, on July 15-in the first days of “Israel’s” war on Lebanon-a combination of an IOF warship strike and an IOF helicopter attack massacred 23 civilians (among them 14 children and 7 women, 2 of whom were pregnant) fleeing their village, Marwaheen, in southern Lebanon.
In Chiah, Beirut, southern Lebanese were among the massacred on August 7, 2006, when the IOF bombed the multi-level building they’d taken sanctuary in-having fled the heavy bombing of the south. “Those families who escaped death in the south found it in Beirut,” X tells me of the 39 martyred in the Chiah bombing.
*********
We leave the martyrs’ cemetery and walk through the narrow lanes typical of a Palestinian refugee camp.
The UN Reliefs Works Agency (UNRWA) reports on Shatila refugee camp that, “environmental health conditions in Shatila are extremely bad. Shelters are damp and overcrowded, and many have open drains. The sewerage system needs considerable expansion.”
The truths of refugee camp hardship reveal themselves in the leaking pipes and puddles of water flooding alleyways and streets, in the tangles of electrical wires dangerously low overhead, in the shoddy cement-block houses too small for their families and too closely layered for privacy, and in the stench of sewage and garbage yet to be collected, services in the camp being far below sub-par. In these drab conditions families live and children play-making toys out of street findings, playing in the lanes.
A beautiful elderly Palestinian woman allows me to photograph her, posing with her gracious smile and immense dignity.
I speak with an elderly Palestinian refugee outside his shop. He is fluent in English and, with a charismatic smile, answers my questions about life in the camp.
My name is Ismail.
I was born in 1950 in Baalbeck (Lebanon). Now I am working in my shop (a small grocery store). My family is from a small village about 2 km from Haifa. My family was expelled from there. They were farmers, we had only a small bit of land, 8.5 dunams, near the seashore.
The situation in the camp is very bad. Too much garbage in the street. The water is very bad, we are using salt water as utility water. We get plenty of skin diseases. The electricity is not good….
Things are getting worse. Before, the UN was giving service to all the refugee camps. Nowadays very few people can take benefit from the UN. Even if someone gets sick, he can’t go to the hospital. He will die.
His words don’t convey the extent of the difficulty of refugee camp life, which I learn more of in later visits to Beirut and Trablus (Tripoli) camps.Since the original purpose of our visit to Lebanon is to participate in the Global March to Jerusalem, I ask if he’s been there.I haven’t been to al-Quds. I hope I’ll go there some day, to pray in al-Aqsa. (They-the “Israelis”) won’t let me go back to my native country.

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Will the Islamic Republic support the “Sacred Palestinian Resistance” in Lebanon?

February 18, 2012

Franklin Lamb

Shatila Camp

Graphics By Alex
Al-Manar

“Grand Ayatollah said no one doubted the sincerity of Mr. Haniyeh
and his fellow combatants in continuing resistance and,
pointing to the destiny of Yasser Arafat who was once a popular leader,
adding that Arafat lost his position with regional nations because he
deviated from the path of resistance.”

“My friends and I like Iran. Maybe they will ask their friends in Lebanon to help baba (daddy) to be allowed to work and our family allowed to own a home outside the camps.” Hanadi, a precocious youngster at Shatila Camp’s Shabiba center on learning last week from her teacher that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warmly welcomed Palestinian leaders to Tehran during the 33^rd anniversary celebrations of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and that both committed Iran to a “religious and moral duty to alleviate the effects on Palestinian refugees of the Nakba’s ethnic cleansing.”

Around noon on Tuesday September 14, 1982, the day before Israel greenlite the launch of the three day Sabra-Shatila Massacre, two white vans pulled into Rue Sabra, diagonal from Akka Palestinian Hospital (PCRS), the main Shatila camp road.

Mrs. Halabi, a Palestinian teacher thought the four foreigners who exited the vehicles near the current Martyrs cemetery, were from a European NGO because the four men carried detailed maps of Shatila camp and she hoped that they might be assessing camp needs for an infrastructure project.

“Can you show us all the camp shelters?” she recalls one of the heavily accented men asking.

“Yes of course,” Mrs.Halabi replied and as the men followed her and took notes and photos, she explained that the shelters were too small to be of much use during “bombardments.”

“We understand”, said the apparent group leader, the only one their Palestinian guide recalls speaking during their visit, and then he added, “Why does this place smell so foul? Embarrassed by the question, Mrs. Halabi explained that “the sewers in Palestinian camps, especially Shatila and nearby Burj al Barajneh are always in need of repair.”

We now know that the “European NGO delegation’ members were in reality two Israeli intelligence agents accompanied by two Phalange intelligence operatives including their chief, Elie Hobeika. They arrived at Shatla camp for the purpose of identifying shelters where Palestinians would likely try to hide during the coming days.

And they succeeded.

It was to the 11 shelters inside and on the edge of Shatila camp that the first arriving Christian militiamen found their way through unfamiliar alleys and began their 46 hours of non-stop slaughter. With very few exceptions all of the hundreds of refugees who huddled into the identified shelters were among the first to be massacred.

The Mossad organized group was not the only ones to complain about the sewer gases from Shatila. For weeks the Israeli troops sharing with Hobeika’s troops the HQ west of the camp at the Kuwaiti Embassy also complained to journalists that when the wind came off the mountains to the east and swept thru the camp toward the sea behind them that they “could actually smell the Palestinian terrorists.”

30 years since the massacre at Sabra-Shatila, the camp sewer problem persists. When the wind blows eastward from the sea across Shatila camp the Hezbollah dominated Ghouberi Municipality offices located where the former Algerian Embassy stood in 1982 can smell the Shatila camp sewers just as the Israelis did three decades earlier. During the Sabra-Shatila massacre, the then Algerian Embassy gave sanctuary to refugees lucky enough to flee to the diplomatic compound which is about 50 meters from the eastern edge of Shatila camp. To do so the survivors had to dodge five Israeli tanks positioned along the airport road to in order to seal camp residents inside Shatila. Those who were caught were forced by Israel soldiers back into the death camp.

And those who today work to the east of Shatila in the Ghouberi Municipality offices and live nearby are not alone. If the wind happens to blow from north to south across Shatila camp and the Bir Hassan neighborhood it is the Iranian Embassy that receives the wafting foul air.

While the overwhelmed and broken camp sewers, lack of electricity, inadequate clean water, no heat in winter, no AC in summer, absence of sun light and fresh air, intense over-crowding-sometimes eight persons to a room, inadequate nutrition and health care, sky-rocketing respiratory diseases, high student dropout rates, increased drug usage, are among the seemingly endless problems in the 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and impact every life, every day, recent words of solidarity from Iran are much appreciated.

According to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Iran endorses the creation of a Palestinian state, regarding Israel as Palestine under occupation by the “Zionist regime”. Iran rejects a Two state solution and considers that Palestine is indivisible and inseparable, probably reflecting a majority opinion today as support for Zionist Israel plummets globally.

“Iran does not expect anything except endurance from Palestine’s resistance,” Khamenei was quoted as telling a visiting delegation led by Hamas officials.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had a very successful visit to Lebanon, last year, repeated his call for a free referendum for the entire Palestinian population, including Arab citizens of Israel, to determine the type of government for the future Palestinian state. He reiterated that establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel would “never mean an endorsement of the Israeli occupation”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told visiting Palestinians Iran would aid those suffering in the camps and spoke of “the need for Palestinian adherence to the basic principles of resistance as the key ingredient for their victory against Israel,” according to the official Iranian PRESS TV news agency.

Evolving PLO-Iranian Relations

Before the Iranian revolution there was no Palestinian embassy in Iran. The Shah was much more interested in maintaining good relations with Israel and the United States, than in the Palestinians or in the Arab-Israeli peace process. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) developed close ties with the Iranian opposition, training Iranian dissidents at PLO camps in Lebanon.

Arafat who was once a popular leader,
lost his position with regional nations
because he
deviated from the path of resistance.”

The PLO backed the 1979 revolution, and several days after the revolution, PLO chief Yasser Arafat became the first Arab leader to visit Tehran to congratulate the country’s leadership on their success and he led a 58 member Palestinian delegation. The Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan hosted an official welcome ceremony for Arafat, where the keys to the former Israeli embassy were symbolically handed over to the PLO.

However, the leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini while supporting the Palestinian cause did not warm much to Arafat. During an intense two-hour meeting on Feb. 18, 1979, the ayatollah criticized the PLO for what he considered its limited nationalist and pan-Arab agenda. He urged Arafat to model the PLO on the principles of the Islamic revolution. While Arafat was an observant Muslim, he told aides why he rejected some of the ideas of Khomeini. Arafat and Khomeini never met again.

As with most countries in the region, PLO Iranian relations fluctuated, sometimes dramatically. The Iran-PLO relations deteriorated fast when Arafat supported Iraq during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and again when Saadam invaded Kuwait. Iran condemned Arafat in 1988, after he recognized Israel, renounced terrorism, and called for peace talks with Israel. In 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Arafat a “traitor and an idiot” and while the PLO maintained diplomatic relations with Tehran, Iran did not aid the PLO again until 2000.

Palestinian Refugee Camp of Rashidiyye
South of Lebanon,

open sewer in the middle of the street.

Figuratively speaking, will Iran help fix the sewers in Lebanon’s camps? And crucially, will the Iranian leadership ask their close Lebanese friends to enact the right to work and repeal the 2001 law that outlaws home ownership for Palestinians in Lebanon? Quite frankly, the absence of these very basic human rights in Lebanon negatively affects Palestinian lives day after day even more that the goal of liberating Al Aqsa on Temple Mount, however essential that is to achieve.

No right to work or home ownership please, they’re Palestinians!

“Miss International”, Zeinab al Hajj, born and raised in Shatila camp, regularly explains to visitors from Iran: “If we are allowed to work and own a home our capacity to engage in the liberation of Palestine will grow fast. As part of an economic middle class we could do more than scavenging to put bread on our table for our children. We will have the energy and more time to resist the Zionist occupation of our country. Currently we are so forlorn who among us has the energy to do more than just try to survive, not really live mind you, but try to survive and barely keep our families together.”

A bit more than words of solidarity are needed from Iranian friends of Palestine to help them escape the sewers in which they exist not far from where their Muslim sisters and brothers and all foreigners in Lebanon enjoy full civil rights.

During this 33 Anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the 30^th anniversary of the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila, for the Iranian government to give solid achievement to its words and to facilitate the right to work and to own a home for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would require only the cost of one phone call or email from Tehran to Dahiyeh.

Specifically a communication from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah, Sec-Gen. of Hezbollah, to work for Parliament to meet its Lebanese Constitutionally mandated and its internationally required obligation. And they are to immediately grant the basic human right to legally work and to own a home to Lebanon’s quarter million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon just until they are able to return to their own country, Palestine.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon. He is reachable c\o fplamb@gmail.com

He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.
He contribute to Uprooted Palestinians Blog

Please Signhttp://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp
Beirut Mobile: +961-70-497-804
Office: +961-01-352-127

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30 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla Lebanese politicians still block Palestinian rights

January 30, 2012

Franklin Lamb
Shatila Camp
Graphics by Alex
Al-Manar

We all know is it not just American and Lebanese politicians who use Palestinian refugees as political footballs during electoral campaigns. But they are currently the two most egregious apart from most Zionist politicians in temporarily occupied Palestine.

In the US, it would not be a difficult task to find even more revolting and groveling intellectual “half-men” to borrow a phrase from Syria’s beleaguered President Bashar Assad than Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich during their recent “debate” in Jacksonville Florida.
While a high percentage of Republican Jewish voters will go to the polls in this winner take all primary, Mitt and Newt are also pondering their national fundraising networks as they gratuitously misrepresented history and betrayed their claimed religious and moral beliefs.

Romney repeated his screed that President Obama “threw Israel under the bus” by following international law, seven UN Security Council Resolution and World opinion by designating the pre-1967 borders as the starting point for peace talks. He also complained that America’s President “disrespected” Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu when Obama spoke recently at the UN and mentioned in passing illegal Israeli settlement building but did not discuss retaliatory rockets being fired from Gaza into occupied Palestinian territory.

“Native” Gingrich

Genuflecting just as obsequiously to the Zionist lobby, Gingrich insisted to Florida voters once again that “Palestinians are an ‘invented people who historically were considered Jordanians and Syrians.” No one in the audience was so impolite as to remind the claimed student of history that Jordan did not even exist until created by the pro-Zionist British occupiers of Palestine, well into the 20^th Century, while Palestinians have lived in Palestine for more than 3000 years. While more than 95% of Zionist colonists have zero historical links to Palestine and their genealogical roots are in Europe, Russia and elsewhere, despite the fact that millions have invaded Palestine seeking free land and US government funded cash and housing handouts. Morally and legally these colonists have no right to even one grain of sand in Palestine.

Source:
In the 1890. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts.
The Jewish population mainly due to immigration to about 10% .
During British Mandatory the Jewish settlement raied sharply specially between 1930 and 1947

Approximate population growth in (OCCUPIED) Mandatory Palestine

Year	Source	Total	Moslems		Jews		Christians		Others
Year	Source	Total	(No.)	(%)	(No.)	(%)	(No.)	(%)	(No.)	(%)
1922	Census	752,048	589,177	78.34	83,790	11.14	71,464	9.50	7,617	1.01
1931	Census	1,033,314	759,700	73.52	174,606	16.90	88,907	8.60	10,101	0.98
1937	Estimate	1,383,320	875,947	63.32	386,084	27.91	109,769	7.94	11,520	0.83
1945	Survey²	1,845,560	1,076,780	58.35	608,230	32.96	145,060	7.86	15,490	0.84
1947¹	Projection	1,955,260	1,135,269	58.06	650,000	33.24	153,621	7.86	16370	0.84

Newt again promised his audience that on his first day as President, he will for sure issue an Executive Order moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, another violation of International law.

Florida’s nearly 640,000 Jews are just 3.4 percent of Florida’s population. But because they vote in extraordinarily high numbers, they are 6 to 8 percent of Florida’s general election turnout but not of course when it comes to Republican primaries. Yet one recent poll estimates that 52% of the state’s registered Jewish voters would support a Republican presidential ticket such is their mistrust of Obama and what he might do in a second term with respect to occupied Palestine.

As with his rival Mitt, President Newt’s first foreign trip will be to Israel. With these latter two pledges Newt joins 19 Presidential primary aspirants who since 1967 have made similar promises. Fortunately, for what is left of American Humanitarian values, not one has been elected President.
Lebanese style anti-Palestinian political speech is more sophisticated and subtle, like the Lebanese people themselves, and nearly always devolves to the gut wrenching warning, delivered with a straight face, that “if we allow Palestinian refugees the right to work or to own a home (as required by International Law and currently enjoyed by refugees in 192 other countries) it might encourage them to get lazy and become too comfortable in Lebanon and they might, God save us all, seek naturalization. And this could interfere with the Palestinian refugees internationally guaranteed Right to Return to their homes in occupied Palestine which Lebanese strongly support for their brotherly and sisterly guests.
Lebanese politicians, including every party and religious grouping bar not none, except the Druze and the National Syrian Socialist Party, use voter’s fear of naturalization (in American think immigration) to undercut growing human rights pressure for Lebanon to give Palestinians elementary human rights.

A rare exception for a Lebanese politician shocked many here when earlier this month, to his eternal credit and honor, Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour became the first Lebanese Cabinet member to make an official visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in six years when he toured south Beirut’s Burj al-Barajneh camp before signing a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA). The agreement will enable UNRWA for the first time to work in coordination with the Social Affairs Ministry to provide some services to some of the most vulnerable people in the camps.
The lack of employment opportunities for Palestine refugee prolong and intensify their hardship and poverty. In the five Southern Lebanon camps, according to a recent Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and UN International Labor Organization study, more than 81 per cent of all refugees are living in abject poverty. Young people are particularly affected, with unemployment for Palestinians between 15 and 24 reaching 60%. The employments figures are not must better in the northern camps.
Speaking at the event, Faour called on his fellow politicians to follow his lead and experience firsthand conditions in Lebanon’s 12 Refugee camps. “Whoever wants to rediscover his humanity has to see the living conditions in Palestinian camps in Lebanon” Minister Faour told Lebanon’s Parliament. “We are used to bringing Palestinians to discussions in fancy hotels and then sending them back to the misery in the camps. We decided to invert these traditions by coming to the camps.”

Unfortunately Minister Abu Faour undercut some of the positive contribution of his visit by emphasizing to the media “the difficult relationship between Lebanon and the Palestinian population. The Lebanese government has consistently declined to grant rights to Palestinian refugees for fear that it would pave the way to naturalization, which it argues would diminish their right to return to Palestine.”

It would be difficult to find one Palestinian in Lebanon, or any advocate of human rights here, who truly believes the Lebanese politicians claimed notion of concern for the sanctity of the Palestinians Right of Return justifies keeping a quarter million human being in the most degrading squalor while outlawing even the right to work or to own a home out of an altruistic concern to keep hallow some of the refugees other international rights. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon reject more than any of the politicians here any form of settlement, naturalization, implantation or tawtin. They have a county just across the southern Lebanese border and their goal, now in its 64^th year, is to return without more delay.
Many Palestinians in Lebanon’s camp mention a new energy among their fellow refugees as a result of the continuing, broadening and deepening Arab and Islamic Awakening which erupted one year ago in Tunisia and whose spread continues.

The swelling bud of intifada! is also being observed by foreigners here and as Palestinian camp residents invite Pope Benedict to visit their camps in the Spring during his reported visit to Lebanon, one idea from kids at Ramallah school in Shatila Camp is for the Vicar of Christ to hold a Mass for tens of thousands in the new Cite Sportiff, on the edge this Camp. For it was at this sports center 30 years ago that part two of the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla was organized by Israeli and Phalange troops on September 18^th and for which, like the other 43 hours of uninterrupted slaughter, no one person has ever been held accountable. (See Children of Shatila – Part 1, Part 2)
It would be an enormously powerful historic event should Pope Benedict fill Cite Sportiff with people of good will, and there are many here like Minister Faour, from all the confessions and political parties, joined by all religious and civil society leaders in Lebanon, and with the Pope’s blessing and admonition for all of us to follow in the path of Mohammad and Jesus and their decuples, that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon might be granted even the most elementary human rights.

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A Tireless Advocate of Justice for Palestinians

December 3, 2011

Franklin Lamb
Graphics By Alex

Al-Manar

Francis Khoo Kah (1947-2011) and his wife Dr. Swee Chai Ang,

Francis Khoo Kah Siang passed away on November 20, 2011.

In addition to the countless reasons Francis will be sorely missed by his friends and loved ones, he will be missed because he leaves a void for many of us who were and remain inspired by his work for Palestinian rights. Francis Khoo is an icon of countless others, who like himself, are neither Arab nor Muslim, neither from the Middle East nor culturally or politically connected to Palestine by birth, but who support the Palestinian cause.

Tributes to Francis Khoo (1947 – 2011)

Many of us, but especially Westerners and Americans it seems, learn essentially nothing about the Nakba in school. Yet many, often quite by chance and for one reason or another, have come into contact with the Question of Palestine and, learning about the great injustice that has befallen the Palestinian people, could not remain indifferent or idle. Francis was one of these.

Dr. Ang Swee Chai’s
From Beirut to Jerusalem

To my personal regret, I did not know Francis Khoo well personally for a long period although we knew of each other. But by the time we finally met, which was just fourteen months before his sudden and untimely death last month, I knew what kind of a person he was and something about his lifelong quest for justice.

Over the past half-decade I learned something about his remarkably work through my friend, his wife, the gifted orthopedic surgeon and well known humanitarian, Dr. Swee Chai Ang, who for three decades has embraced and supported Palestinian refugees both with lifesaving medical care under heavy and indiscriminate bombardment inside Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp and Gaza Hospital in Beirut, and with her indefatigable work for the refugees return to Palestine. The latter included lectures and appearances around the World, sometimes in the company of Francis, her beloved husband, advocate, counselor and partner.

It was in September of 2010 that I met Francis in person when he came to Beirut for the 28^th annual commemoration of the September 1982 Sabra-Shatila Massacre and he attended a reception at the office of the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign and participated in a heavy schedule of activities during his visit. It was evident that he was a fascinating life-loving person with whom it would be a great pleasure to spend time and to work with which I had hoped to do. All the while he was in Lebanon he was on peritoneal dialysis for kidney failure which he administered himself three to four times a day.

According to his niece Melissa, Francis would often use his walking stick as a hanging post for his dialysis fluids including at the Hezbollah museum at Melita in South Lebanon. He recalled with fondness how the Hezbollah melita museum guard who was obviously unfamiliar with this version of makeshift dialysis tried to help him. On the bus south, to visit Palestinian refugee camps, Francis entertained the passengers with songs, including Beladi (‘my land’) the beautiful Arabic anthem of the Palestinian revolution, followed by a soliloquy on the origin of the song and his interpretation.
Few of the passengers on the bus had much idea about Francis’ background. Francis Khoo Kah Siang was born into a closely knit, devoutly Catholic Singapore Peranakan family. As a lad he sang in the Singing Khoos with his brothers and at an early age developed a passion to work for the rights of the oppressed. Once admitted to the Singapore Bar, Frances began working on sensitive civil rights cases that many other lawyers preferred to avoid.
Francis had earlier developed a reputation as a defender of the downtrodden and while as an undergraduate at University, or later as Vice President of the Student Law Society, he opposed the introduction of the Suitability Certificate, fought the abolition of the jury system in Singapore and condemned the indiscriminate criminal 1972 Christmas Day bombing of Hanoi ordered by President Nixon.

Before long Francis found himself being accused of violating Singapore’s Internal Security Act, which particularly during the 1977-1987 period was used to arrest hundreds of Singaporeans who were held without trial. A fortnight following their January 1977 marriage, the international security police came for him. His young wife Dr. Swee Chai Ang, was also sought by authorities who came for her and threatened to handcuff her while she was in the operating theatre performing surgery. Eventually, and following continuous interrogation, sleep deprivation and solitary confinement, Dr. Swee was released as part of a government scheme to try to lure back to Singapore Francis, who by then had escaped and left for England and he began his 34 years of exile from his country. Swee joined her loved one and they developed their remarkable careers in London.

Francis’ niece recently wrote that, “They could kick Francis out of Singapore, but they could not kick the Singaporean out of Francis,” as he followed events in his country, frequently wore his Peranakanskirt-the Sarong, and wrote about his homeland including the well-known song, “And Bungaraya Blooms All Day.” Francis had hoped that 2011 would be the Singaporean Spring.

Some friends saw a parallel between Francis’ wish to return to his homeland and his decades of advocacy of the Palestinians Right of Return.

Francis Khoo, was a gifted humanist. He had many God given and self-discipline acquired talents that included using his legal education and life experience to challenge injustices and using his energy and organizational abilities to defend the oppressed.

Just three examples, out of many, include his important work in support of the 1984 UK striking miners and working as Director of War on Want, established by the late British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.

Francis also co-founded with his wife Swee, and their and my friends, Pamela and Major Derek Cooper who spent the summer of 1982 with Janet Lee Stevens with me in West Beirut, Medical Aid for Palestinians. Francis served as MAP’s Vice Chairman from 1984 to 2007, while also donating his time and abilities to numerous other charitable works.

Francis’ passions included writing, especially articles, poetry and songs, photography, and drawing. He possessed a particularly unique skill, as explained by his niece Melissa, currently doing her residency in surgery and using the medical term ‘eidetic memory’ in describing her uncle’s photographic memory, that gave Francis the ability to recall images, sounds or objects as well as dates with remarkable precision.

Francis Khoo lived a full and valuable life and left this world a better place because of his lifelong labors for justice. Those of us who were honored to know Francis Khoo Kah Siang and who share his commitment for the liberation of Palestine and the full return of her six million refugees will pay him tribute by continuing his work for peace and justice.

This includes advocating in Lebanon and internationally for the end of the politically motivated excuses from Lebanese politicians and religious leaders, across a wide spectrum, who continue to counsel a go slow approach, after 63 years, for the implementation of even the most elementary, morally and legally mandated civil right to work and to own a home for Lebanon’s quarter million Palestinian Refugees.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Libya. He is reachable c\o fplamb@gmail.comHe is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.
He contribute to Uprooted Palestinians Blog

Please Sign
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Some things do not exist but some thing you do not see

October 27, 2011

By Raja

http://www.al-awda.org/until-return/sabra_and_shatila.jpg

The NATO nor the US
did not stop the massacre of SABRAS+CHATILLA

How often , we heard
that NATO is operating in Libya ?
Did you see any of NATO’ s planes or soldiers ??
Try to recall any time you did see any footage of such.
My question is :
what if it were only the USA bombing Libya ??
how can we tell the difference , if any ??
How often , we heard
about MASSACRES in Libya or in Syria ??
Did you see any ??
I did not……………
What if those ” Massacres “ never took place ??
and what if ,
the NATO is only there to refuel the US War Planes ??
I can speak about what I see
and not of what I have heard !!
Raja Chemayel

Posted by Tlaxcala at 8:25 PM

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29 years after the Massacre at Sabra Shatila…

September 17, 2011

Franklin Lamb
Sabha, Libya

Exclusive – Al-Manar
How much longer until we find the missing and grant civil rights to the rest?
“The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind” was the general consensus following a discussion between this observer and a gathering of Palestinian refugees in Sabha, Libya, many of whom would very much like to travel to Shatila camp in Beirut this week and participate in the 29th annual commemoration of the 1982 Israeli facilitated massacre that left more than 3000 dead and hundreds still missing.

Sabha, now the district Capitol, is about 400 miles south of Tripoli in the Saharan desert, and is one of the four main areas that NATO concedes is still controlled by pro-Gaddafi loyalists,( the other three are Sirte, Bani Walid, and Jufra) and for that reason NATO has intensified its, sometimes, seemingly indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.

Today, NATO is desperately wanting to announce “mission accomplished” and put an end to its ill-conceived mission “ to protect Libya‘s civilians”, that President Obama assured the World nearly 7 months ago, “will last days, not weeks.” NATO continues to hope that no one bothers to carefully examine what it wrought here because no person of good will would accept its massive gratuitous carnage.
NATO’s bad luck it that its war on Libya’s civilian population continues to be documented and it will be held accountable, at least in the court room of public opinion and conceivably elsewhere.

It was from Sabha, following the 1969 September 1st Fatah Revolution that Gaddafi announced “the breaking dawn of the era of the masses”.

As NATO tightens its noose around Sabha, the cousin of

the “brother leader” (as Moammar was

nick named by Nelson Mandela in gratitude

for Libyan support for the long African

National Congress (ANC) resistance to South

Africans apartheid),

and his able spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, reminds his audiences that the deepening civil war in Libya which was forced on this peaceful people by NATO and its ill-advised rush for regime change, is just beginning. Ibrahim and some diplomats here believe it may well engulf other parts of Africa and the Middle East. Musa added yesterday, “Our leader will die in our sacred country for what his hero, Omar Muktar sacrificed his life for, and that is our country’s freedom from colonialism.”

Today Sabha, with a usual population of around 130,000 is now less than half that but hosts a few thousand Palestinian refugees, who appear to avoid current Libyan politics. Some are survivors of the 1982 Israeli facilitated massacre at Shatila camp in Beirut and they insist that no Palestinian or Hezbollah groups were fighting anywhere in the East or around here. Maybe a few individual Palestinian members of the Benghazi based Muslim Brotherhood happened to be Palestinians but that was about all the gathered explained.

Many of Libya’s Palestinian refugees in Libya, like those is the Diaspora, desperately seek to learn what became of their family members who disappeared before, during and following the events of Sept. 15-20, 1982.

Palestinian refugees, like their Lebanese sisters and brothers suffer unrelenting pain and anguish as they resolve to take concrete steps to learn what happened to their loved ones.
For more than 30 years Palestinians in Lebanon have disappeared as a result of various Israeli invasions and the Lebanese civil war with innocent refugee camp residents becoming victims of shifting regional and local political alliances.

Thousands of Palestinians, like Lebanese from all the sects, became victims of enforced disappearances, abductions and other abuses. Seriously compounding the problem, Lebanon has failed to legislate a truth, justice and reconciliation agency. Consequently, along with the failure of the governments of other states that were involved, the result has been that the whereabouts of many Palestinians remain a mystery and those responsible remain unidentified and unpunished.

British Journalist Robert Fisk, writing in the UK Independent claims that more than 1000 Palestinians are buried in pits in Lebanon’s only Golf Course that is adjacent to Shatila camp and the Kuwaiti Embassy.

Dr. Bayan Nuwayhed al Hout — author of “Sabra and Shatila: September 1982″ told this observer: “I’m positive that dozens of people were buried there with the help of bulldozers. The bulldozers were used to get rid of the dead bodies.”
Author Al Hout is referring to the fact that Israel supplied bulldozers, paid for my American taxpayers, to their allies, the right wing Christian militia that committed the slaughter with Israeli facilitation. On Saturday morning, September 18, 1982 Israeli Mossad agents inside the camp actually were observed driving three of the bulldozers in a frantic attempt to assist the Christian militia in covering up evidence of the crime before the exported international media arrived on the scene.

The late American journalist, Janet Lee Stevens, documented that during Sept. 18 and 19^th, most of the massacre victims killed during this period were slaughtered inside the joint Israeli-Lebanese Forces “interrogation center.” Janet testified that these killed were put in flatbed trucks and taken to the Golf Course, just 300 yards away, where waiting Israeli bulldozers dug pits. Other trucks drove in the direction of East Beirut.

At the time of her death, seven months later, Janet was preparing her report for publication. This observer packed Janet’s belongings and after some wrangling with the US Embassy staff who had arrived on the plane President Ronald Reagan sent to return Janet and the other Americans remains to the US, her two cardboard boxes of papers and research notes were onboard. Unfortunately, but understandably, a family member, who I was advised did not understand Janet’s work in Lebanon, discarded her papers, following Janet’s funeral in Atlanta Georgia and before they could be collected by the University of Pennsylvania for analysis and preservation.
So we are deprived of most of Janet’s data on the missing Palestinians which confirmed the fate of several hundred who disappeared during the massacre. Fortunately, in February of 1983 Janet had forwarded some of her conclusions to friends and for publication.
What needs to be done to locate the missing Palestinians and Lebanese?
A serious and sustained effort to locate the disappeared Palestinians and Lebanese and bring some degree of solace and closure to their families should be undertaken without further delay.
These Palestinian and Lebanese families have no idea if their loved ones are dead or alive. Obviously they are unable to organize a dignified burial or even properly grieve. Families of the disappeared suffer from a series of legal, financial, and administrative problems that result from not knowing what became of their missing loved ones.

Wadad Halawani,
the founder of the Committee of
the families of the Kidnapped
and missing in Lebanon.

A recent Amnesty International study of Lebanon’s problems on this urgent subject included the experience of Wadad Halawani, the founder of the Committee of the families of the Kidnapped and missing in Lebanon. Wadad described her life after her husband, was taken away from their home in Beirut in September 1982, apparently by agents of Lebanese military Intelligence, the Duexsieme Bureau. Wadad was forced to raise her two young children, aged six and three alone following his disappearance, and she described how she “lost her balance in life.” She did not know “how to protect the children from the rockets” and was “lost for answers to their endless questions” about their father for which she had no replies.
From knowing many families of missing husbands, Wadad outlined the problems faced by them, personal, social, legal, administrative, and economic.
On the personal and social level, she explained that a Palestinian or any woman in Lebanon, whose husband is missing is neither a married woman nor single, divorced or a widow, and for all that time she will have faced serious problems and obstacles linked to the low status of women. On the legal and administrative level she explained that “a woman cannot spend her husband’s money nor dispose of his property, such as selling his car, as she does not have power of attorney allowing her to do so. Nor can she get a passport for herself, nor for her children if they are under 18 as the guardian required the father even though the mother is raising the children. On the economic level, Wadad told Amnesty International that most of the missing people are from poor families, so the loss of the breadwinner has had devastating impact. In many cases, the families have been unable to cover basic daily needs, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and the costs of education.

The families of missing and disappeared Palestinians and other persons have the right, under international law, to the truth which means a full and complete disclosure about events that transpired during the disappearance of their loved ones.

In March 2010, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that this includes the right to know the exact fate and whereabouts of each victim.

International law and human rights standards also require each party to an armed conflict must take all feasible measures to try and account for people reported missing as a result of the conflict, and release all relevant information concerning their fate or whereabouts.

This applies to Israel during the September 1982 massacre. More than once over the past three decades Israeli officials have reported that Israel has detailed records of what its sponsored militias did inside Shatila camp and on the periphery with respects to eliminating terrorists and hiding their remains. To date Israel has refused UN and international demands to turn over its records. The international community must sanction Israel until is complies with international law on this subject.

In addition, friends of Palestine including NGO’s and relevant UN agencies should immediately establish an agency cooperating with independent experts and representatives of civil society, including relatives of missing individuals, in cooperation with the Government of Lebanon to investigate the fates of every missing Palestinian and Lebanese including locating and ensuring protection for mass graves and for exhumations, to be carried out consistent with international standards to identify human remains and match them with DNA from relatives. The Embassy of Palestine in Lebanon would be a good choice for organizing the collection of DNA samples from Palestinian families with missing relatives.

As many Palestinians and their supporters arrive at Shatila camp in Beirut this weekend, the thoughts of Palestinians in Libya and the diaspora, land their friends around the world will be with them. As a young Palestinian lady in Sabha told this observer, and sounding very much like Miss Hiba Hajj in Lebanon’s Ein el Helwe camp:

“Every Palestinian must visit this site you told us about of this mass murder of our brothers and sisters. I will do it soon. I promise you. It is not an option, it is an obligation.”

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Libya. He is reachable c\o fplamb@gmail.com

He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.

He contribute to Uprooted Palestinians Blog

Please Sign
http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html

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Gilad Atzmon: Being in Time

September 14, 2011

(A talk given at the ‘Palestine, Israel, Germany- The Boundaries of Open Discussion Conference’, Freiburg 11^th September 2011)
Dear ladies and gentlemen.

I will begin my talk with an unusual confession. Though I was born in Israel, in the first thirty years of my life I did not know much about the Nakba, the brutal and racially driven ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in 1948 by the newly born Israeli State. My peers and myself knew about a single massacre, namely, Deir Yassin but we were not at all familiar with the vast scale of atrocities committed by our grandparents. We believed that the Palestinians had voluntarily fled. We were told that they had run away and we did not find any reason to doubt that this had indeed been the case.

Let me tell you that in all my years in Israel, I have never heard the word Nakba spoken. This may sound pathetic, or even absurd to you — but what about you? Shouldn’t you also ask yourself — when was the first time you heard the word Nakba? Perhaps you can also try to recall when this word settled comfortably into your lexicon. Let me help you here — I have carried out a little research amongst my European and American Palestinian solidarity friends, and most of them had only heard the word Nakba for the first time, just a few short years ago, whilst others admitted that they had only started to use the word themselves three or four years ago.
But isn’t that a slightly strange state of affairs? After all, the Nakba took place more than six decades ago. How is it that only recently it found its way into our symbolic order?

The answer is, in some respects, quite a straightforward one: to be in the world means to be subject to changes and transformations. It entails grasping and reassessing the past through different present realisations. History is shaped and re-shaped as we proceed in time. Accordingly, we seem to understand the Palestinian expulsion and plight through our current understanding of Israeli brutality: In the light of the destruction Israel left behind in Lebanon in 2006, followed by our witnessing of the genocidal crimes performed in Gaza in ‘Operation Cast Lead’, and observing the footage of the IDF execution of peace activists on the Mavi Marmara — we have subsequently, managed to amend our picture of the scale of the 1948 Palestinian tragedy. As we grasp more fully what the Israelis are capable of — we are also able to re-construct our vision of Israel’s ‘original sin’ i.e. the Nakba. We are able to empathise more deeply with the expelled Palestinians of 1948 via our current evolving comprehension of Israel, the Israeli, ‘Israeli-ness’, Jewish nationalism, global Zionism, and the relentless Israeli lobby.

The meaning and significance of it becomes clearer — the past is far from being a precisely sealed off set of events with a fixed meaning, pre-decided for us by a fixed viewpoint and then closed off from further debate. Instead, our understanding of the past is shaped and transformed, constantly, as we progress and grow in knowledge and experience. And, as much as our current reality is shaped by our world vision — our past too, is shaped, re-shaped, viewed and re-viewed by the narratives we happen to follow at any given time.
This is the true meaning of ‘being in time’; this is the essence of temporality, and this is what historical thinking is all about. People possess the capacity to ‘think historically’– to be transformed by the past — but also to allow the past to be constantly shaped, and re-shaped, as they proceed towards the unknown.

Deir Yassin Remembered

Deir yassin massacre -1948

Sabra and Shatila Massacre -1982

But here is an interesting set of historical anecdotes that deserve our attention: Indeed, one may be left perplexed on learning that — just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 — the newly-formed Jewish state ethnically cleansed the vast majority of the indigenous population of Palestine (1948). Just five years after the defeat of Nazism — the Jewish state brought to life racially-discriminatory return laws in order to prevent the 1948 Palestinian refugees from coming back to their cities, villages, fields and orchards. These laws, still in place today, were not categorically different from the notorious Nuremberg race Laws. One may also be totally perplexed to find out that Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, is located on the confiscated land of a Palestinian village Ein Karem, next door to Deir Yassin, which is probably the ultimate symbol of the Palestinian Shoa.

One may wonder what is the root cause of this unique institutional lack of compassion that has been exhibited and maintained by Israel and Israelis for decades. One might expect that Jews, having been victims of oppression and discrimination themselves, would locate themselves at the forefront of the battle against evil and racism. One might expect the victims of discrimination to resist inflicting pain on others.

Yet, some deeper and far more general questions come to mind here — how is it that the Jewish political and ideological discourse fails so badly to draw the obvious and necessary moral lessons from history and Jewish history in particular? How is it that in spite of ‘Jewish history’ appearing to be an endless tale of Jewish suffering, the Jewish State is so blind to the suffering it inflicts on others?

On the face of it, what we see here is a form of alienation from historical thinking. Israeli historian Shlomo Sand has noted that Rabbinical Judaism could be realised as an attempt to replace historical thinking: instead of history, the Torah provided Rabbinical Judaism with a spiritually-driven plot. It conveyed an image of purpose and fate. However, things changed in the 19th century. Due to the rapid emancipation of European Jewry together with the rise of nationalism and the spirit of Enlightenment, assimilated European Jews felt bound to redefine their beginnings in secular, national and rational terms. This is when Jews ‘invented’ themselves as ‘people’ and as a ‘class’: like other European nations, Jews felt the urge to posses a coherent narrative about themselves and their history.

Inventing history is not a crime – people and nations often do it. Yet, in spite of the rapid process of assimilation, Jewish secular ideology and politics failed to encompass the real meaning of historical thought and historical understanding. Indeed, the assimilated secular Jew was very successful in dropping God and other religious identifiers. And yet, at least politically, the assimilated Jew failed to replace divinity with an alternative Jewish anthropocentric secular ethical and metaphysical realisation.

Temporality and Alienation
I only recently understood that the ‘Jewish Identity political discourse’ is not only foreign to history; not only is it actually antagonistic towards historical thinking, but it is also detached from the notion of temporality.
Temporality is inherent to the human condition: ‘To be’ is ‘to be in time’. Whether we like it or not, we are doomed to be hung between the past that is drifting away into the void, and the unknown that proceeds towards us from the future.
Through the present, the so-called ‘here and now’, we meditate on that which has passed away. Occasionally we hope for forgiveness; and sometimes we are cheered by a pleasing memory. At other times we become angry with ourselves for not having reacted appropriately at some moment in our past. And from time to time we may recall a sensation of love.
In the present we can also envisage the future, and in the awareness of that presence we may sense the fear of the unknown. But we can also experience waves of happiness and optimism when the future seems to smile at us.
More often than not, we draw lessons from the past. But far more crucially important and interesting perhaps, is the idea that an imaginary future can easily re-write, or even re shape the past.
I will try to elucidate this subtle idea through a simple and hypothetical yet horrifying war scenario:
For instance, we can easily envisage a horrific situation in which an Israeli so-called ‘pre-emptive’ attack on Iran could escalate into a disastrous nuclear conflict, in which tens of millions of people in the Middle East and Europe would perish.
I would guess that amongst the few survivors of such a nightmarish imaginary scenario, some may be bold enough to say what they ‘really think’ of the Jewish state and its inherent murderous tendencies.
The above is obviously a horrific fictional scenario, and by no means a wishful one, yet such a vision of a ‘possible’ horrendous development should restrain Israeli or Zionist aggression towards Iran.
But as we know, this hardly happens — Israeli officials threaten to flatten and nuke Iran all too often.
Seemingly, Israelis and Zionists around the world fail to see their own actions within a historical perspective or context. They fail to look at their actions in terms of their consequences. From an ethical perspective, the above ‘imaginary’ scenario could or should prevent Israel from even contemplating any attack on Iran. Yet, what we see in practice is the complete opposite: Israel wouldn’t miss an opportunity to threaten Iran.
My explanation is simple. The Jewish political and ideological discourse is foreign to the notion of temporality. Israel is blind to the consequences of its actions; it only thinks of its actions in terms of short-term pragmatism. Within the Jewish political discourse the time arrow is a one-way road. It goes forward, yet it never turns the other way. There is never an attempt to revise the past in the light of a possible future. Instead of temporality, Israel thinks in terms of an extended present.
But Israel is just part of the problem. The Jewish lobby is also blinded to the immanent disaster it brings on Diaspora Jews. Like Israel, the lobby only thinks in terms of short term gain. It seeks more and more power. It never looks back , and neither does it regret.
To sum up, the notion of temporality is the ability to accept that the past is ‘elastic’. The notion of temporality allows the time arrow to move in both directions. From the past, forward, but also, from the (imaginary) future, backward. Temporality allows the past to be shaped and revised in the light of a search for meaning. History, and historical thinking, are the capacity to re-think the past. Ethics is bounded with temporality, for ethics is the ability to judge and reflect on issues that transcend beyond the ‘here and now’. To think ethically is to produce a principled judgment that stands the test of time.
Looking at the Past
To a significant extent then, the ability to revise one’s perspective on, and understanding of the past, is the true essence of historical thinking — it allows us to reshape our comprehension of the past through an awareness of an imaginary future perspective, and vice versa. To think historically becomes a meaningful event once our past experience allows us to foresee a better future.
Revisionism then, is imbued in the deepest possible understanding of temporality, and therefore inherent to humanity and humanism. And it is obvious that those who oppose proper and open historical debate are operating not only against the foundations of humanism, but also against ethics.
And yet, in Israel some lawmakers insist that commemoration and historical debate of the Nakba should become illegal. And, interestingly enough, Jewish anti Zionists also oppose any attempt to deconstruct or revise Jewish past. I, for instance, have been criticised recently for being an ‘anti Semite’ for suggesting that Zionism is not colonialism. In case you do not know, this conference was under severe pressure mounted by some leading Jewish anti Zionists who insisted on preventing any discussion about the history of Jewish suffering.
But I guess that it is pretty clear by now that my philosophical outlook is not very flattering to Jewish political and ideological discourse. Yet, the truth must be spoken: Jewish political discourse openly opposes any form of revisionism. Jewish politics is there to fix and cement a narrative and terminology.
Though the Zionist ideology presents itself as a historical narrative, it took me many years to grasp that Zionism, Jewish identity politics and ideology were actually crude, blunt assaults on history, the notion of history and temporality. Zionism, in fact, only mimics an historical discourse. In practice, Zionism like other forms of Jewish political discourse, defies any form of historical discussion. Thus, those who follow the Zionist and Jewish political ideologies are doomed to drift away from humanism, humanity and ethical conduct. Such an explanation may throw light on Israeli criminal conduct and Jewish institutional support for Israel.

Self-Reflection Is Overdue
Inventing a past, as Shlomo Sand suggests, is not the most worrying issue when it comes to Israel and Zionism. People and nations do tend to invent their past.
However, celebrating one’s phantasmic past at the expense of others is obviously a concerning ethical issue. But in the case of Israel the problem goes deeper. It is the attempt to seal the yesterdays that led to the collective ethical collapse of Israel and its supporting crowd.

However, as much as I enjoy bashing Israel and Zionism, I will also have to ask you to self-reflect. Sadly enough, Israel is not alone. As tragic as it appears to be, America and Britain also managed to willingly give up on temporality. It is the lack of true historical discourse that stopped Britain and America from understanding their future, present and past. As in the case of Jewish ‘history’, American and British politicians insist on a banal, binary and simplistic historic tale regarding WWII, The Cold War, Islam, and the events of 9/11. Tragically, the criminal Anglo-American genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, AKA ‘The War against Terror’, is a continuation of our self-inflicted blindness. Since Britain and America failed to grasp the necessary message from the massacres in Hamburg and Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, there was nothing that could stop English-speaking imperialism from committing similar crimes in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

And what about you, my dearest Germans. What about your past? Are you free to look into your past and to re-shape your understanding of it as you move along? I don’t think so. Your history, or at least some chapters of it, are sealed by some draconian laws. Consequently, you younger generation do not attempt to grasp the true ethical meaning of the holocaust. Clearly, Germans do not understand that the Palestinians are actually the last victims of Hitler, for without Hitler, there wouldn’t be a Jewish State. Your young generations fail to see that the Palestinians are certainly victims of a Nazi-like ideology, which is both racist and expansionist. Let me also advise you, if any of you feel guilty about anything to do with your past, it should be the Palestinians whom you should care for. The fact that Germany is detached from its past clearly explains German political complicity in the Zionist crime. It certainly explains why your government provides Israel with a nuclear submarine every so often. But it also explains why you may remain silent when you find out that Yad Vashem is built on Palestinian land stolen in 1948.

But it isn’t just Israel, Zionism, Britain, America and Germany. Let us look at ourselves, the supporters of Justice in Palestine. Even within our movement, we have some destructive elements who insist that we shouldn’t dare to touch our past: in the last month, Café Palestine Freiburg and the organiser of this conference were subjected to relentless attack by some established elements within the Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist movement. They were demanding that the conference should drop me because I am a ‘holocaust denier’. Needless to say, I have never denied the Holocaust or any other historical chapter. I also find the notion of ‘holocaust denial’ to be meaningless, and on the verge of idiotic.
However, I do indeed insist, as I did here today, that history must remain an open discourse, subject to changes and revision, I oppose any attempt to seal the past, whether it is the Nakba, Holocaust, the Holodomor or the Armenian genocide. I am convinced that an organic and ‘elastic’ understanding of the past is the true essence of a humanist discourse, universalism and ethics.
I clearly don’t know how to save Israel from itself, I do not know how to liberate Jewish anti Zionists from their Judeo centric ideology; but as far as America, Britain, Germany, the West, and us here today are concerned, all we have to do is to revert to our precious values of openness.
We must drift away from a restrictive, monolithic Jerusalem, and reinstate the ethical spirit of pluralist Athens

You can now pre-order Gilad Atzmon’s New Book on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

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Posted in Deir Yassin, Gilad Atzmon, jewish identity, Jewish Ideology, Nakba and Right of R

Archive for May, 2012

Syria’s Parliamentary Elections: The Good Old Baath

May 8, 2012

People head into a voting station in Damascus, during the first parliamentary election under the new constitution, 7 May 2012. (Photo: Marwan Tahtah)

By: Mohamed Nazzal, Tareq Abdel Hay

Published Tuesday, May 8, 2012

On Monday, Syria held its first election under the new constitution. Absent from the multi-party poll were the usual bread and butter issues. Instead, the elections were political par excellence, with the opposition sitting them out.

US president Barack Obama scoffed at the new constitution in Syria three months ago. And many others did the same.

The Syrian President Bashar Assad for his part scoffed at the scoffers. He pressed ahead with the new constitution, which meant the Baath Party, in theory, was no longer the “ruling party.”

Yesterday, Syria held its first parliamentary election under the new constitution. The Syrian people went to the polls as officials in Damascus turned a deaf ear to their critics abroad.

But who was competing with whom in yesterday’s elections in which 7,195 Syrians ran? Is there a party that can electorally compete with the Baath?

Counting of Ballots of People’s Assembly Elections Continues,
Counting Finished in Some Areas

The country’s new parties law did in fact produce some new players in the political field. But do they have enough weight to compete against the Baath Party which has been ruling the country for 40 years?
No one today is expecting the new political parties or even independents to “invade” the parliament. The Baathist can rest easy as they are the masters of the political game in Damascus.
Al-Akhbar met Baathist candidate Fayez al-Sayegh, who is running on the National Unity List after he left a polling station yesterday in Bab Touma in Damascus. He pointed out proudly that his party has 2.8 million registered members.

Qadri Jamil

“We do not want to see our list breached but if it happens, we will accept it because that will make us re-examine ourselves. We will have discussions with those who got more votes and defeated our candidate to see where they stand,” he said.

It is true the Baath is no longer the ruling party according to the new constitution, but every Baathist deep down practices politics with the conviction that he is “entrusted with the country.”

Al-Sayegh believes that Article 8 of the old constitution (which states that the Baath Party leads the state and society) “made the party lax because members weren’t worried about an electoral loss. Today however the party has to mobilize its efforts to meet the expectations of the people and public opinion.”

You cannot find an opposition supporter who is calling for deposing the regime inside polling stations. That part of the opposition called for a boycott of the election. Some of them even issued threats against those who run or vote.

Therefore, all those who went to polling stations yesterday are either regime loyalists or supporters of candidates like Qadri Jamil who is categorized as a member of the “soft” opposition.
Inside the polling station in Kfar Sousa neighborhood in the Miqdad al-Kindi School, Fidaa al-Khatib considers her participation in the electoral process an “existential challenge.” Everything that Fidaa, who is a teacher, says indicates that her motive for participating is “purely political.”
At the entrance of the polling station, an old woman was speaking with a Chinese journalist. She told him: “I voted because I am with the army. My son is a soldier, may God protect him and return him to me.”
Inside the station, Rita al-Haiby, the young woman who is taking part in an election for the first time, is making the rounds with all the journalists to get everything off her chest. For her, “the conspiracy has been defeated.”

Conspiracy is still one of the most frequently heard words in Syria. Al-Haiby is angry at the sectarian climate “that the opposition introduced…We love Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah for his positions, not because of his sect, and the same goes for President Bashar and his father before him who never shook the hand of the Israeli.”

Thus, the election in Syria yesterday was political par excellence. Bread and butter issues that are normally part of parliamentary elections were not brought up by voters.

Until yesterday afternoon, the electoral scene in Damascus and its countryside was characterized by contradictions.
At a time when ministries and governmental buildings were crowded with voters, candidates’ representatives, and official media outlets, some polling stations were rather quiet.
Inside, voters’ opinions varied between those who decided to vote for certain known candidates, those who were not convinced by any of the candidates in the first place, and those who were wondering about the new political parties.
The new political parties were not happy with the long election day that lasted from 7:00am till 10:00pm. While some parties decided to withdraw to protest the “unfair” elections or because of the alliances forged by the Baath Party, other parties decided to press ahead because they thought it a necessary step to open a new page in Syria’s political life.
Artist Majd Niazi who is the secretary general of Syria the Homeland party told Al-Akhbar that his party decided to withdraw from the parliamentary elections because it is “a new party facing a party with a long history like the Baath Party.”
She also cited the flow of what she called “political money [to influence voters] in the past few days as electoral alliances formed, especially those between traditional parties and the Baath, which was expected to put its house in order but that did not happen.”
Niazi said another reason that led to their withdrawal is “the security situation in the last few days,” adding that “all these reasons led the party to withdraw. Nothing will change in the political scene as long as the situation stays the same.”
For his part, Jihad Ibrahim, member of the National Youth for Justice and Development, said that “the turnout in Damascus and al-Hasaka, where supporters of his party are concentrated, was not as it should be.”
“It is clear that there is a direction to heed the boycott. But the party is trying hard to get its candidates in the parliament which is a necessary step to create a body that would lead the Syrian national dialogue,” he added.
Ibrahim believes that “a campaign of discrimination is underway in al-Hasaka and that is why there is a boycott by some Kurds against candidates who have national tendencies.”
On the other hand, he says that “there is a sense of tribalism among the Arabs of al-Jazirah that sums up the electoral scene in eastern Syria.”
Al-Akhbar tried to contact other parties that decided to take part in the election but their representatives were busy in polling stations.
It was noticeable yesterday that some voter protested by submitting a blank paper in the voting booth. It is, according to a voter, “an option to affirm one’s citizenship and participation in a national event that opens the door to political pluralism.”
“At the same time,” he added, “it is the choice for those who are not impressed with any of the candidates who continue to live in the era of 1990s flowery slogans without putting forth anything new, including a large number of young people who did not offer anything different from traditional candidates.”
Another voter preferred to vote for Baath candidates because “despite the economic hardships that the Syrian citizen is enduring, a sense of safety and security prevailed previously in Syrian cities. Surely we owe the Baath Party for this policy and that is what makes us vote for it.”

“In addition,” he said, “the Baath candidates whom we knew in governmental agencies have proved their loyalty to the country and we have witnessed their accomplishments in their areas of work, which also encourages us to vote for them.”

A state employee near the polling station, summed up his opinion of the elections saying: “I prefer to vote for someone I know rather than someone I don’t know.”
In the areas adjacent to Damascus, where there is fighting and military operations, the elections did not go so well. The turnout was weak in places like Daraya, Harasta, Douma, and al-Mouadamiyeh.
Some complained about an article in the election law that requires those living outside their provinces to vote in their cities or prove they work in a governmental agency in the city where they reside.
This had a negative impact on the turnout of many students and private sector employees who decided to stay put and forgo the elections.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.

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Terror in Tel Aviv

May 8, 2012

by Roy Tov
Monday, May 7th, 2012
what international media purposely ignores…

Shapira Neighborhood Kindergarten | After a Molotov Cocktail Attack

On April 27, 2012, five Molotov Cocktails were thrown in Shapira Neighborhood, a poor area in Tel Aviv’s south. One of them hit a kindergarten, where children were sleeping (see picture); the others hit private homes.

In one case, the terrorists opened the window of a house—where people were sleeping—and threw an ignited bottle inside. God’s unsleeping angels made sure nobody was hurt.

The event was barely mentioned in the Hebrew media and was completely ignored by the international one.

The main report on the event was done by the Israeli website Maavak (“struggle” in Hebrew; www.maavak.org.il). I almost forgot to mention that the victims were black people; the attackers were Jews.

The terror attack followed agitation by a racist Jewish group led by Michael Ben Ari, a Knesset member on behalf of the National Union party. This party is a union of four ultra-nationalist political parties, namely Moledet, Hatikva, Eretz Yisrael Shelanu, and Tkuma. In the current Knesset it has four members, out of the 120. Michael Ben Ari is leader of the Eretz Yisrael Shelanu (“The Land of Israel is Ours” in Hebrew) faction.

They are right of Netanyahu’s coalition, and do not form part of the current extremist coalition; simply, they are even more extreme. Michael Ben Ari is the first outspoken disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane to be elected to the Knesset. Rabbi Meir Kahane was an American-Israeli ultra-nationalist rabbi that founded both the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in the USA, and the Kach (literally “So;” roughly “This is the Way”) political party in Israel. In 1984, Kach gained one seat in parliamentary elections, and Kahane became a member of the Knesset. In 1988, the Israeli government banned Kach as “racist” and “undemocratic” under the terms of an ad hoc law; Kahane was subsequently assassinated in New York, in 1990. In 1994, following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein, a Kahane follower, Kach was outlawed completely.

Following the massacre, the US State Department listed it as a terrorist organization. Recently, Michael Ben Ari was denied a visa to the USA (see USA Denies Visa to Jewish Knesset Member).

Shapira Neighborhood | South Tel Aviv

The attack was aimed at Sudanese and Eritrean refugees. In Israel there are several thousands (estimations vary between 4,000 and 8,000) refugees who arrived from Sudan and are seeking refuge from the ongoing military conflicts in their home country. Small numbers of Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees can also be found.

All of them arrived by land, after a perilous trip across the Sinai and Negev deserts; reports on the horrors faced by them along the way should be enough to grant recognition as refugees to the survivors upon arrival. In order to accomplish the feat, they use the help of local Bedouins, the only masters of the dessert (see Explosion in Sinai).

Israel has formally recognized as refugees only a few hundreds of them; the rest work as illegal workers, hiding in the vast population of foreign workers building up the Zionist dream. They replaced the Palestinians, who are not welcome anymore in Tel Aviv. In this precarious and rather violent conditions, Sudanese workers face deportation back to war and death. Yet, racism in Israel runs deeper.

On the Jewish Heart

Evelyn Belseng and her son.Source:haaretz

Contrary to what one may think, the Jewish state doesn’t show neither compassion nor mercy. In Jewish Compassion I reported the case of Evelyn Belseng, 38, who came to Israel from the Philippines in 2002 to work as a caregiver at Kibbutz Kfar Menachem. After her employer died in 2006, she went to work in Ashdod. In December 2007, she met Michael David, a religious Israeli Jew from Gedera. “We met through a childhood friend of Miki’s,” she said in an interview. “I worked at the time in Ashdod and it was important for me to keep my job, so we met mostly on Saturdays and he would sometimes come visit me. My employers met him and were very supportive of us.” In early May 2009, after living together for two years, Michael went to the Interior Ministry in Rehovot and made residence arrangements for her since her Israeli visa was due to expire later that month. An official recommended that he begin the process of having her recognized as a common-law spouse. But the process of obtaining the necessary documents, mostly from the Philippines, was time-consuming and expensive. It is almost impossible for someone defined as Jew by Israel’s Internal Affairs Ministry to marry somebody defined by that fine and egalitarian institution as a “goy,” a non-Jew.

“Meanwhile our son Gilad was born, and Miki assumed that when we registered him, everything would be fine,” she said. After the child was born, David asked the family court in Rishon LeTzion to recognize Belseng as his partner, because he couldn’t legally marry her in Israel; she is a hated goy. Later that year, he became sick with cancer, which drained their energy. They therefore concentrated on trying to settle Gilad’s status. In June 2010, the Family Court recognized David as Gilad’s biological father and ordered the child registered in the population registry, meaning he became an Israeli citizen. Ten days later, David died. Due to David’s death, Belseng’s residency process was halted and in August 2010 she was issued a deportation order, which wasn’t enforced. Israel is about to deport a toddler citizen. Probably they will say he is a potential terrorist.

Are you Falash Mura or Beta Israel?

Wolleka Synagogue, Ethiopia

It is not easy to be a foreign worker or a refugee in Israel, beause nobody helps them. Few even report attacks on them. Israel had developed over the years a public image that doesn’t allow the publication of these cases. Yet, reality is different. No better way of reinforcing the new image portrayed here than with the cases of Beta Israel and the Falash Mura, two groups of Ethiopian citizens seeking Israeli citizenship under Law of Return. The Law of Return gives automatic and immediate citizenship to every Jew arriving in Israel.

A Jew is defined in that law as a person born Jewish (with a Jewish mother or maternal grandmother), with a Jewish ancestry (with a Jewish father or grandfather) or a convert to Orthodox Judaism (Reform and Conservative converts are recognized only if the rites were performed outside the State of Israel, other groups are rejected).

The basis for this racist law is what is known as “Jus Sanguinis” in Latin, namely “Blood Law.” In ancient times, it was used to attribute citizenship on the basis of family relations. However, the Law of Return denies citizenship to Jews who have converted to other religions out of their free will. Did their blood change during the conversion process? (see Is Israel Sovereign? for more on this)

Beta Israel Community Area

Somehow, Israel’s public image consistently fails to convey the reality of the Zionist state. While asked to link northeast Africa and Israel, most people will immediately mention Beta Israel, a group of Jewish Ethiopian citizens that immigrated to Israel through the Mossad-run Operation Moses (1984), Operation Sheba (1985) and Operation Solomon (1991).

According to tradition the name “Beta Israel” originated in the 4th century when the community refused to convert to Christianity during the rule of Abreha and Atsbeha, the monarchs of the Aksumite Empire who embraced Christianity.

In 1973, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, then the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, ruled that the Beta Israel were Jews and should be brought to Israel. That was the foundation for their arrival at Israel according to the Law of Return. Other notable poskim (“deciders” in Jewish Halakha Law), from non-Zionist Ashkenazi circles, placed a Halakhic “safek” (“doubt;” Halakha is the Jewish parallel of the Muslim Sharia) over the Jewishness of the Beta Israel. Such dissenting voices include the notorious rabbis Elazar Shach and Yosef Shalom Eliashiv.

Later on, a 1999 study by Lucotte and Smets studied the DNA of 38 unrelated Beta Israel males living in Israel and 104 Ethiopians living in regions located north of Addis Ababa and concluded that “the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of the Beta-Israel from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Beta Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia and not the Levant.” Other studies reached similar conclusions. Despite these, the Halakha ruling issued by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef still holds.

In contrast to the discrepancies regarding their Jewishness, there is no doubt on the link between Beta Israel and the Falash Mura. Both groups acknowledge that Falash Mura were people from Beta Israel who accepted Christianity in various waves of conversion since the 15th century. In comparison to the roughly 130,000 Beta Israel living now in Israel, the number of the Falash Mura is small; apparently less than 10,000 still live in Ethiopia. They are not recognized as Jews by the State of Israel, and thus are not allowed to reach the state under the clauses of the Law of Return applied to their brothers from beta Israel.
In February 2003, the Israeli government decided to accept religious conversions of Falash Mura people organized by Israeli rabbis, and that converted Falash Mura can then migrate to Israel as Jewish. Yet, Israeli government continued to limit, from 2003 to 2006, their entry to about 300 Falash Mura immigrants per month.
In November 2010 the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to allow 8,000 Falash Mura immigrate to Israel; since then nothing has been done. Due to their Christianity, Falash Mura reaching Israel independently would be treated as illegitimate foreign workers and deported if caught. Meanwhile, their Beta Israel brothers live mainly in “development towns” and are widely discriminated by the Israeli society. As a former IDF officer, I remember IDF pamphlets explaining how to treat Ethiopian soldiers, which included rather racist remarks. Eventually, this discrimination is accepted by the international community. What would be the reaction if Germany was to legislate a law allowing the immigration of Christian Turks to Germany, but denying the immigration of Muslim Turks to its territory? Why is Israel allowed to perpetrate a parallel crime?
It is very difficult to read this. You can’t be only half-racist. You can’t just endorse positive-discrimination towards certain groups. If you do so, violence would appear as it recently did in Tel Aviv. Racism is racism, and Jewish racism is not different from Nazi racism. The State of Israel cannot enjoy immunity for such crimes; sanctioning them is calling for a A New Holocaust.
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US Report: Al-Assad More Confident, Controls Scene

May 8, 2012

Local Editor

The Syrian regime’s confidence altered the US administration stance on UN envoy Kofi Annan’s plan.

According to the US daily, “The Washington Post”, “while stopping short of calling the accord a failure, White House officials are suggesting publicly and privately that it is time to consider a new approach.
“If the regime’s intransigence continues, the international community is going to have to admit defeat,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Thursday.

On its Sunday report, the daily confirmed that “interviews, intelligence officials from two neighboring Muslim countries said they saw a more confident al-Assad consolidating his recent military wins and preparing to dig in, fully expecting that he can outlast both the rebels and his international opponents.”

“Our view now is that al-Assad will survive 2012 unless there’s a big surprise,” said one of the officials, who agreed to discuss his country’s intelligence assessments on the condition that neither his name nor country be revealed.

“He has cleaned up Homs and Hama. Damascus is quiet. The Druze and Christians
haven’t turned against him. Even the flow of refugees we’re seeing confirms that he is succeeding.”
A second official described the Syrian President as “more confident because he feels he is in control.”
“The security forces and elite military units have remained loyal to al-Assad so far, faithfully snuffing out pockets of resistance,” the official said.

The second official further said “like al-Assad himself, the loyalist forces rely for financial support on Syria’s dwindling cushion of hard-currency reserves, which is being used to finance the assault on rebels.”

“While those reserves are emptying out quickly, the accounts appear sufficient to keep the army supplied for months,” he added.
In parallel, “the Washington Post” also revealed that “current and former US officials largely share the assessment that al-Assad’s removal is far from imminent.”
Source: The Washington Post, Edited by moqawama.org
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Al-Jafari: Syria Carries Out Annan’s Plan, Countries that Provide Terrorists with Money and Arms Should Stop this Support

May 8, 2012

May 08, 2012

NEW YORK, (SANA) – Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN , Bashar al-Jafari, said that the work of the observer mission is on the right path, yet the type of crimes committed by the armed terrorist groups became more worse.

Speaking at the UN headquarters in New York, al-Jafari said that Syria is implementing its pledges under the plan of the UN Special Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan, but those sides which support terrorists with money and arms from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are not, adding that these countries should stop their support to the armed terrorist groups.
Al-Jafari added that the armed terrorist groups are committing crimes against civilians and military members, indicating that confessions of 26 Arab people who were arrested in Syria revealed that they came from Libya, Tunisia and other countries through Turkey and Lebanon to launch terrorist attacks in Syria.
He said that the Syrian security forces killed 15 members of those Takfiri and Salafi groups, adding that “Therefore, we are talking about facts that cannot be denied regarding the involvement of foreign fighters in the events in Syria which is a very serious issue.”
Al-Jafari added that the sheikhs who issued fatwas calling for murdering and committing crimes live in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
R. Raslan/ Mazen

Annan: Violence Should be Halted, Armed Groups Must Discard Weapons
Neeraj Singh:UN Observers Reached 70 and to be Notably Increased in the Few Coming Days
Russian Academic and Media Delegation: Media Broadcasting Unreal Image of Events in Syria
Iran Slams West’s Nuclear Double Standards, Hails Syria’s Elections

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The Battle Over the Druze Spiritual Council Reveals Major Splits in the Community

May 8, 2012

During the commemoration ceremony of Sheikh Abu Muhammad Jawad Walieddine in Baakline, Mount Lebanon. (Photo: Haitham Moussawi)

By: Bassam Alkantar

Published Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The Druze Spiritual Council’s term ends on 24 September 2012. The two traditional Druze leaders, Walid Jumblatt and Talal Arslan have not come to an agreement on the question of Sheikh al-Aql (the spiritual leader), and former minister Wiam Wahhab decides to join the battle.

Druze spiritual leader, Sheik al-Aql Naim Hassan, has less than three months to set the election date of the Druze Spiritual Council, which was elected for the first time on 24 September 2006. Its term ends six years after the election of its members according to article 15 of the law regulating the affairs of the Druze sect.
The law stipulates that the Council elections take place during the 60-day period before the end of the current council’s term. The election date is determined by Sheikh al-Aql and should be announced at least 30 days before the elections.

If Sheikh al-Aql should for some reason fail to set a date, the Spiritual Council will definitely meet on the first working day after the 30-day deadline. In this case, the oldest member will preside over the council and it will set an election date.

But setting the date is not only a function of legal deadlines stipulated by the law. It is also a function of a number of political circumstances for different parties, most notably, Walid Jumblatt.

If Jumblatt decides against holding elections, no one will argue with him. The matter will be allowed to proceed, to be patched up later with a legal justification.

MP Talal Arslan does not hide his belief that Jumblatt will postpone the election of the Spiritual Council, under the pretext of lack of consensus on the question of unifying the office of Sheikh al-Aql or consecrating its duality through a legal justification.

Nasr Eddin al-Gharib

This issue represents an embarrassment for MP Arslan that he cannot ignore. Arslan had declared Nasr Eddin al-Gharib as Sheikh al-Aql in a kind of religious and popular nomination ceremony. The same day, the Spiritual Council was being elected in Beirut and other areas.

Ever since Sheikh Hassan was recommended for the position of Sheikh al-Aql on 5 November 2006 at a meeting held by the Spiritual Council, the Druzes have had two spiritual leaders.

One is affiliated with Jumblatt and consecrated by law. The second affiliated with Arslan who is pushing to have him legally recognized as a precondition to recognize the Spiritual Council and compete in the coming election.

The crisis and severe disagreement over the issue of the two spiritual leaders manifested itself clearly at the funeral of the highest spiritual authority of the Druze community, Sheikh Abu Muhammad Jawad Walieddine.
Sheikh Gharib did not attend because the Jumblatt-affiliated sheikhs refused to have him give a eulogy and insisted that the eulogy be given by Sheikh Hassan only.
But away from the Arslan-Jumblatt feud inside the Druze community and over it, the head of the Arab Tawhid Party, former minister Wiam Wahhab, decided to take part in the Spiritual Council’s upcoming elections, through nomination and electoral campaigning.
Wahhab believes the occasion to be an opportunity to open up discussions within Druze voters in preparation for the parliamentary elections in 2013.
In a related story, the Druze residents of Beirut are waiting for these elections to shed light on the pending legal dispute between the Druze Charitable Solidarity Association and the current Spiritual Council over the management of the ownership of property No. 2046.
The property includes a religious council, a cemetery, a public hall and the headquarters of the office of Sheikh al-Aql.
Even though the legal dispute over the management of the property predates the current Spiritual Council, the latter used its political weight to speed up the issuing of legal decisions.
These decisions pertain to the dissolution of a lease between the Spiritual Council and Bankmed for 10 shops located beneath the headquarters of the office of Sheikh al-Aql, due to the absence of renter status.
Druze residents of Beirut are engaged in a public opinion battle around encroachments and transgressions they accuse the Spiritual Council of committing.
The conflict has led to criminal lawsuits after attacks on members of the Druze Charitable Solidarity Association, which took place with the backing of security personnel in official uniform.

Due to political interference, the Directorate General of Internal Security Forces and the Military Courts have not taken any actions against the assailants who were identified by name.

Dispute over the management of property No. 2046 has led to a battle over moving the cemetery currently located on the property. This includes the tombs of the May 6 martyrs (journalists and editors executed by the Ottomans in 1916), whose memory is celebrated by Lebanon and its journalists on Martyrs Day.
The Druze Spiritual Council decided in 2008 to hire lawyers to ask the Lebanese government to cancel the land ownership of the martyrs’ cemetery on the property and transfer their remains to another site.
While the cabinet has not made up its mind on the Spiritual Council’s request, it is likely that last Sunday will be the last celebration held by the League for the Commemoration of Martyrs in that location. The property is expected to be transformed into a tower block similar to what exists in the surrounding area.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.

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Interpol Issues Red Notice for Hashemi’s Arrest

May 8, 2012

Interpol said Tuesday it had issued an international Red Notice for the arrest of Iraq’s fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi “on suspicion of guiding and financing terrorist attacks”.

“The Red Notice for al-Hashemi represents a regional and international alert to all of Interpol’s 190 member countries to seek their help in locating and arresting him,” the Lyon-based international police agency said.

Interpol said the notice, its highest possible alert, was issued following an Iraqi warrant made “as part of an investigation in which security forces seized bombing materials and arrested individuals”.
Hashemi, who is being tried in absentia in a Baghdad court and was last known to be in Istanbul, is charged along with several bodyguards with killing six judges and senior officials. He has challenged the legitimacy of the trial and said his life is at risk in Baghdad.
“The Interpol Red Notice against Tareq al-Hashemi will significantly restrict his ability to travel and cross international borders,” Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble said in a statement. “This case also clearly demonstrates the commitment of Iraqi authorities to work with the world police community via Interpol to apprehend individuals facing serious charges,” he said.
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Iraqi court acquits Hizbullah fighter

May 8, 2012

Posted on May 8, 2012 |

The Central Criminal Court of Iraq on Monday ruled that Ali Musa Daqduq, member of Lebanese Islamic Resistance, Hizbullah, be released from custody over lack of evidence.

“No document was provided that indicate the guilt of Daqduq, and all of what was shown to the court, were copies and not orginals. There were no testimony and charges had no foundation,”Daqduq’s lawyer Abdulmahdi al-Mutairi told AFP.
The ruling has angered pro-Israel lawmakers in the United States. Both Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga) had slammed Obama for Ali Musa Daqduq being included among the 1000 Iraqi detainees handed-over to Iraqi government by the US occupation forces before their withdrawal on December 31, 2011. Both Israel-Firsters wanted Ali Musa Daqduq to be brought to the US and let him rot inside Guantanamo Bay concentration camp along with other Muslim inmates.
According to White House spokesperson, Tommy Vietor, Washington tried to bring Daqduq to the US but the Iraqi government refused to allow it.
Ali Musa Daqduq was arrested by US forces on March 20, 2007 while he was in Iraqi city of Basra on pilgrimage. He was accused for the Israeli Mossad false flag operation in which four US soldiers were abducted and killed in Karbala in 2007.
The Zionist-controlled mainstream media never exposed the Israeli covert operations in Iraq under US occupation. A Jordanian daily reported that Israeli Mossad with active collaboration from US forces had killed 530 Iraqi nuclear scientists and academics.
In October 2006, CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper, reported Israeli snippers killing US soldiers. On March 28, 2005, Americans arrested 19 Mossad agents who fired twice on a US Marine checkpoint. The Marines beat up the Mossad agents and tore off their Star-of-David necklaces. (The US media incorrectly said the agents were Americans.) The Mossad agents said they were employees of Zapata Engineering, which helps the CIA conduct interrogations, and also manages US ammo dumps and US motor pools in Iraq.
Mossad and CIA killed US soldiers and blamed Muslims for the murders in order to demonize Muslims and enrage American troops so that the slaughter of innocent Iraqi Muslims and Christians continued.

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Huge Amount of Weapons Aboard Italian Ship in North Lebanon

May 8, 2012

Local Editor
The Lebanese army intelligence has seized on Monday night a large quantity of weapons hidden inside cars aboard an Italian ship at Tripoli port, north of Lebanon, Lebanese security sources told Al-Manar TV.
The security sources revealed the involvement of Lebanese parties in the smuggling of weapons seized in the port of Tripoli.

As Safir daily said the ship docked in Tripoli port coming from the Egyptian port of Alexandria en route from Germany, adding that the army moved the car to al-Qubbeh base and launched a probe. “The two Rapid cars were imported by the agent A. M,” it said.

The daily reported that one of the cars contained 15 boxes of ammunition each containing 1,000 bullets used for different kinds of machineguns. It added that the ammunition was for 9 mm and 12.7 mm machine guns and Kalashnikovs bullets.

This comes just days after the Lebanese Army Marines confiscated Lutfallah II arms shipment off the Lebanese port of Batoun while it was carrying 300,000 pounds of weapons within three containers. Reports said the cargo ship, which was flying the flag of Sierra-Leone, had left Libya and was bound to Syria.

The Lebanese judicial authorities were continuing their investigations with the detainees to unfold the direction of the ship, and the party that stands behind the load of weapons that were on board. An official arrest warrant was issued against one of the suspects.
Source: Al Manar TV
08-05-2012 – 09:21 Last updated 08-05-2012 – 09:36 |
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Egypt electoral committee suspends work after parliament criticism

May 8, 2012

Published Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Egypt’s presidential elections committee said it would stop its work in preparation for presidential elections due later this month after what it said was an insult to the committee by members of parliament during its session on Monday. The committee said in a statement it would not meet on Tuesday as planned with presidential candidates and media figures pending “suitable conditions for the meeting.”

It was not immediately clear whether this would affect the timeline for Egypt’s landmark elections due on May 23 and 24.

The elections committee said members of parliament had expressed distrust and insulted its judges, and it called on the ruling army council to intervene to allow the panel to continue its work.
“If some seek to complicate the situation and stir strife then (the committee) apologizes for not continuing its work in the manner that satisfies it and that realizes the hopes of the Egyptian people,” the statement said.
A senior member of the presidential elections committee, Hatem Bagato, confirmed the contents of the statement to Reuters, but gave no other details.
(Reuters)

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Damascus replied with a one word on the Qatari initiative: Rejected.

May 8, 2012

Qatar Conciliates Syria, Receives Rejection
Local Editor
The Qatari regime seeks the Syrian satisfaction.

This isn’t a dream. However, after the failure of all attempts to topple the Syrian regime, Qatar sought to open dialogue with Damascus.

“Al-Akhbar” Lebanese daily revealed Tuesday that “days ago, an Arab figured arrived suddenly to Damascus International Airport.”
“The figure requested a quick appointment with the Syrian leadership to display a message from Doha, under the title “the Qatari-led initiative to resolve the Syrian crisis”.”
According to the daily’s sources, the initiative is comprised of several points:
-First, reconciliation and turning the page of conflict between the two countries.
This will open the door to a new phase of cooperation so that Doha will lead the efforts and initiatives to resolve the internal Syrian crisis.

- Second, the initiative suggests a map solution of several items on top of which are: a Syrian Prime Minister from the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood Movement, and a Qatari invitation to the Syrian opposition to hold a conference in Doha.
In this context, Qatar pledges to pressure on the Syrian opposition to accept a dialogue with the Syrian regime.
- The initiative also offers other items that assure to the opposition guarantees from the Syrian regime. This would help the opposition move from fighting the Syrian regime to open a climate of dialogue and positive interaction with it.
In response, Damascus replied with a one word on the Qatari initiative: Rejected.
According to “al-Akhbar” sources, Damascus position from Doha isn’t based on acting as a mediator to solve the crisis. Syria wants Qatar to declare explicitly that it retreated from arming the opposition and plotting with the foreign agenda to destabilize Syria. Out of these titles, Syria isn’t ready not to listen to any other Qatari word.
“
Through this move, it is clear that the Doha wanted to test, on behalf of other countries, Damascus readiness to accept a Syrian Taef Accord for national reconciliation,” sources told the daily.
This would be similar to the Lebanese Taef held in Saudi Arabia in the early nineties of the last century to stop the Lebanese civil war.
The sources further uncovered that months ago, such a project was offered to Syria, in details, by Arab, regional, and Western countries through Moscow.
“However, Damascus rejected,” the sources concluded.
Source: Al-Akhbar daily, Translated and Edited by moqawama.org
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WELL BEFORE THEY WERE POISONED, I ALWAYS SAID THEY BOTH WOULD BE POISONED BY THE JEWS - BOTH SHEIKH AHMED DEEDAT AND YASSER ARAFAT!

(Anyway, didn't the Knesset not order Arafat's murder?)

What Killed Yasser Arafat?
Tests Hint at Possible Arafat Poisoning

Nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera discovers rare, radioactive polonium on ex-Palestinian leader's final belongings.

By Al Jazeera

July 03, 2012 "Al Jazeera" - -It was a scene that riveted the world for weeks: The ailing Yasser Arafat, first besieged by Israeli tanks in his Ramallah compound, then shuttled to Paris, where he spent his final days undergoing a barrage of medical tests in a French military hospital.

Eight years after his death, it remains a mystery exactly what killed the longtime Palestinian leader. Tests conducted in Paris found no obvious traces of poison in Arafat’s system. Rumors abound about what might have killed him – cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, even allegations that he was infected with HIV.

A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed that none of those rumors were true: Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004.

More importantly, tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.

“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.

Unsupported polonium

The institute studied Arafat’s personal effects, which his widow provided to Al Jazeera, the first time they had been examined by a laboratory. Doctors did not find any traces of common heavy metals or conventional poisons, so they turned their attention to more obscure elements, including polonium.

It is a highly radioactive element used, among other things, to power spacecraft. Marie Curie discovered it in 1898, and her daughter Irene was among the first people it killed: She died of leukemia several years after an accidental polonium exposure in her laboratory.

At least two people connected with Israel’s nuclear program also reportedly died after exposure to the element, according to the limited literature on the subject.

But polonium’s most famous victim was Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy-turned-dissident who died in London in 2006 after a lingering illness. A British inquiry found that he was poisoned with polonium slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant.

There is little scientific consensus about the symptoms of polonium poisoning, mostly because there are so few recorded cases. Litvinenko suffered severe diarrhea, weight loss, and vomiting, all of which were symptoms Arafat exhibited in the days and weeks after he initially fell ill.

Animal studies have found similar symptoms, which lingered for weeks - depending on the dosage – until the subject died. “The primary radiation target… is the gastrointestinal tract,” said an American study conducted in 1991, “activating the ‘vomiting centre’ in the brainstem.”

Scientists in Lausanne found elevated levels of the element on Arafat’s belongings - in some cases, they were ten times higher than those on control subjects, random samples which were tested for comparison.

The lab’s results were reported in millibecquerels (mBq), a scientific unit used to measure radioactivity.

Polonium is present in the atmosphere, but the natural levels that accumulate on surfaces barely register, and the element disappears quickly. Polonium-210, the isotope found on Arafat's belongings, has a half-life of 138 days, meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months. “Even in case of a poisoning similar to the Litvinenko case, only traces of the order of a few [millibecquerels] were expected to be found in [the] year 2012,” the institute noted in its report to Al Jazeera.

But Arafat’s personal effects, particularly those with bodily fluids on them, registered much higher levels of the element. His toothbrushes had polonium levels of 54mBq; the urine stain on his underwear, 180mBq. (Another man’s pair of underwear, used as a control, measured just 6.7mBq.)

Further tests, conducted over a three-month period from March until June, concluded that most of that polonium – between 60 and 80 per cent, depending on the sample – was “unsupported,” meaning that it did not come from natural sources.

Source:

Al Jazeera

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Not For Profit - For Global Justice

"O liberty! O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!" - Madame Jeanne-Marie Roland - (1754-1793) - Source: November 8, 1793, her last words before being executed on the guillotine, quoted in Alphonse de Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

Justice Louis D. Brandeis

- (1856-1941) US Supreme Court Justice

July 03 / 04, 2012

Click Here For Op-Ed Articles

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Julian Assange, Infinite Justice

Barack Obama, his mother, and the CIA

By William Blum

Take Note! When you fuck around with God's country you pay a price!"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31755.htm

What Killed Yasser Arafat?
Tests Hint at Possible Arafat Poisoning

By Al Jazeera

Nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera discovers rare, radioactive polonium on ex-Palestinian leader's final belongings.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31751.htm

Gingrich Speaks At Rally For Iranian 'Terror' Group

Video

Former Republican presidential candidate and House Speaker Newt Gingrich expressed his support for the MEK, an Iranian opposition group considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31750.htm

How the Israel lobby erodes US sovereignty

By Ahmed Moor

From writing laws to funding presidential campaigns, conservative Israelis have a strong pull on US politics.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31756.htm

How the US Rendered, Tortured and Discarded One Innocent Man

By Clara Gutteridge

Suleiman joined the growing list of disappeared prisoners held at undisclosed locations with no access to a lawyer, tracked by a handful of global NGOs.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31752.htm

The Longest War
Overcoming Lies and Indifference

By Kathy Kelly

We must think hard about ways to democratize our country, and reverse the "unwarranted influence" over our society which, half a century ago, a Republican president was warning us already belonged to the military industrial complex.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31753.htm

We Must Bury Imperialism in Africa or Perish

By Gerald A. Perreira

There can be no doubt that one of the gravest enemies of Africa has been the imposition of European materialist ideologies and political systems - whether they emanate from right or left.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31754.htm

Some Outrageous Facts about U.S. Inequality

By Paul Buchheit

Studying inequality in America reveals some facts that are truly hard to believe. Amidst all the absurdity a few stand out.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31757.htm

Hard News

82 "insurgents" killed in operations in Afghanistan: gov't: Afghan police and army, backed by NATO-led coalition forces, have killed up to 82 Taliban insurgents during operations in seven provinces within the past 24 hours
http://is.gd/djyOAm

Afghan suicide car bomb kills at least seven: A suicide car bomb attack outside a university in southern Afghanistan on Monday killed at least seven people and wounded more than 20, officials said.
http://is.gd/KV7hxS

Ministry of Defence names three soldiers killed by Afghan police: Three servicemen killed on Sunday 1 July 2012 have been named as Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2) Leonard Perran Thomas of The Royal Corps of Signals.
http://is.gd/OrgcGj

Terror of 'incorruptible' Afghan who turned his gun on British troops: In a matter of seconds three soldiers lay dead while a fourth was wounded. Their attacker, an Afghan man in a police uniform, was also shot but survived and is currently under guard until he can be questioned.
http://is.gd/iRj3GC

Clinton apologizes to Pakistan for airstrike deaths, says supply lines to re-open: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized Tuesday for the NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year -- and announced that Pakistan has in turn agreed to re-open supply lines into Afghanistan that have been closed since the incident.
http://is.gd/zBGxu0

Musharraf: The U.S. has turned its back on Pakistan - Freeland File - Video - Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf tells Reuters' Op-ed Editor James Ledbetter that the reason for the change in his country's relationship with the U.S. lies in America's deep ties with India.
http://is.gd/gw3g5D

36 killed in Iraq ahead of Shiite rituals: A truck bomb blamed on Al-Qaeda killed 25 people at a crowded market in central Iraq on Tuesday while attacks elsewhere claimed 11 lives, the latest victims of a spike in nationwide unrest.
http://is.gd/CjlLKU

US Kills 5 people in Yemen: A US drone killed five suspected Al-Qaeda militants in the Yemeni province of Shabwah on Tuesday, when two missiles pulverised the car they were travelling in, tribal sources said.
http://is.gd/AMjVVd

Syria running torture centre network - rights group: - Syrian intelligence agencies are running a network of torture centres across the country where detainees are beaten with batons and cables, burned with acid and sexually assaulted, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Tuesday.
http://is.gd/JF8Y2Y

Russia accuses West of distorting Geneva Syria accord: - Russia on Tuesday accused the West of seeking to "distort" the agreement reached last weekend in Geneva on a plan for a political transition to end the escalating conflict in Syria.
http://is.gd/c2qUxD

Syria's Assad regrets downing Turkish jet: President tells Cumhuriyet newspaper he would not allow the tensions between the two countries to turn into open combat.
http://is.gd/tk4Ma3

Report: Israeli warplanes attack facility in South Lebanon: Lebanese TV station LBC says jet fighters targeted device near town of Zrariye; incident represents rare disturbance along the border, which had remained mostly quiet since 2006 war.
http://is.gd/48XPmk

Iran marks 24th anniversary of downing of Flight 655: The U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, killing all 290 passengers and crew members, including 66 children.
http://is.gd/5TqDuc

U.S. Homeland Security allocates $9.7 million to Jewish nonprofits: Organizations and facilities considered vulnerable to terrorist attacks to receive funding as part of grant program's seventh allocation.
http://is.gd/2kgxp3

US Army admits to investigating Bradley Manning supporters: The US Army has confirmed that they are investigating the Bradley Manning Support Network, an international activism group that advocates on behalf of the imprisoned accused whistleblower.
http://rt.com/usa/news/army-bradley-manning-accused-227/

Twitter says US government requests keep rising: More requests for user information in the first half of 2012 than in the entirety of 2011, predominantly from US.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/07/20127371613243748.html

Pena Nieto set to become Mexico's president: Candidate from PRI party takes lead, while Leftist candidate Lopez Obrador threatens to challenge the outcome.
http://is.gd/3ofVUZ

For Mexicans, It Was the Economy, Stupid: Income per person in Mexico has grown by just 0.9 percent annually. This is terrible for a developing country, and less than half the rate of growth of the Latin American region during this period - which was itself not stellar. If we just look at per capita growth since the last election, in 2006, Mexico finishes dead last of all the countries in Latin America.
http://is.gd/JKsuTf

George Monbiot: We were wrong on peak oil. There's enough to fry us all: A boom in oil production has made a mockery of our predictions. Good news for capitalists - but a disaster for humanity
http://is.gd/v73fAi

Economists: Austerity looms large for France: According to a report by France's national audit office on Monday, Paris needs to come up with EUR 33 billion (USD 42 billion) in savings next year to meet its European deficit goal of three percent of gross domestic product.
http://is.gd/PdjWNJ

The European Financial Transactions Tax: Robin Hood or Sheriff of Nottingham?: Germany, France, Italy, and Spain take time out from acute crisis talks to agree on a long term policy solution: taxing financial transactions.
http://is.gd/5E5FbJ

As long as the rich can speculate on food, the world's poor go hungry: To overcome poverty we have to overcome the causes of poverty, and the big causes of poverty today are untouched by aid. Poor countries are still forced to pay off unpayable debts. The global poor are facing ever-higher food prices, driven by speculation. And climate change is already destroying lands and livelihoods.
http://is.gd/JSjC3q

"Let us be peace and joy"

Tom Feeley

Cost Of War

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq "1,455,590"

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's War On Iraq: 4,807

Number Of International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan : 3,071

Cost of War in Iraq & Afghanistan
Total Cost of Wars Since 2001

$1,348,611,117,463

http://www.costofwar.com/

Arafat was nuked by Israel

Wednesday, July 4, 2012 at 3:12PM Gilad Atzmon

It is Israel's nuclear project that must be dismantled IMMEDIATELY

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Did Israel Nuke Arafat?

Friday, July 6, 2012 at 9:20AM Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon

Since we now have conclusive evidence that Arafat was poisoned by radioactive polonium 210 and since Israel is the prime suspect in Arafat’s 2004 assassination, surely it is time to point the finger at Israel and its leadership and to demand explanations.
Already in 2004, Silvan Shalom, at the time Israeli Foreign Minister, rejected as “scandalous and false” the idea that his country had a role in Arafat’s death. However, this is despite the facts that Israel had earlier threatened Arafat, blaming him for Palestinian violence and, after losing 15 citizens to suicide bombings in September 2003 and had decided to “remove” Arafat – though without elaborating publicly precisely how this might be achieved. As if this were not enough, an Israeli newspaper quoted Avi Dichter, at the time Shin Bet director as saying that ‘it would be better to kill Arafat than exile him.
This week we learned that a Swiss institute, which recently examined Arafat’s clothing, had found “surprisingly” high levels traces of polonium-210, the same substance which killed former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Surely such findings should also encourage MI5 to re-examine Litvinenko’s death and his close ties with Israel and the Russian Oligarchs. Is it possible that polonium -210 was, at the time, the lethal method of choice amongst Israeli assassins?
But a positive answer to this question leaves me only confused. What could have led Israel to the peculiar decision to nuke its prime enemies by planting polonium in their food? What could they have in mind when they decided to use a substance that can be provided by only a very few states and would leave radioactive traces forever? Do they really think that the Goyim and the Arabs are that stupid? I am afraid that the answer may as well be in the affirmative. Israel knows, and exults in the fact, that it gets away with murder – and quite easily too.
Still, we must here note that Israel has all along denied any involvement in Arafat’s death. On Wednesday, Avi Dichter, said that it was for Palestinians to investigate:

The body is in their hands. It is in Ramallah, and really, all the keys are in their hands.

Meanwhile Israel Army Radio confirmed that introducing polonium into food was the only way to kill someone with that particular poison and asked Dichter, whose agency had overall responsibility for monitoring the Palestinians, whether it would have been possible with Arafat.

You’re asking me as his cook?

was Dichter’s jocular answer.

Actually, it’s no joke. Israel certainly wasn’t the cook but is clearly in the frame for being the chef in this gastronomic debacle. Dichter continued: “We were focused on more serious things. Arafat’s food did not interest us. I think it interested those around him, in order, really, to keep his health up, as he was indeed known to be unwell. But the Shin Bet, or the State of Israel, was not involved in Yasser Arafat’s food.”
I agree with Dichter. It is more than likely that Israel wasn’t directly involved in the preparation Arafat’s final hummus, but we, nonetheless, should be concerned here with the strong possibility that Israel may have, probably thorough a third party, found a way to pepper Arafat’s food with the radioactive substance.
Pressed on the poisoning scenario, Ditcher said:

Yasser Arafat had many enemies, domestically and abroad. But let them investigate … The Palestinians know well how to investigate what goes on in their house. Let them investigate and find out.

Dichter is obviously correct, Arafat indeed had many enemies, but the obvious question here is how any of his enemies could put their hands on a radioactive substance available to just a few states. And I guess that we all know of one possible suspect – and so does Dichter
http://youtu.be/ipShd1Ol0y0

The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics and Israeli brutality..
The book can be ordered on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

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Did Israel Nuke Arafat? OF COURSE, YES! (BAFS)

France opens enquiry into claims of Arafat poisoning

By Pauline Talagrand | AFP – 3 hours ago

French prosecutors have opened a murder enquiry into Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's 2004 death near Paris following claims he may have died of polonium poisoning, sources told AFP Tuesday.

The probe comes after Arafat's family launched legal action in France last month following reports the veteran Palestinian leader may have died from radioactive polonium.

Arafat's widow Suha and his daughter Zawra lodged a murder complaint on July 31 in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Arafat died at age 75 at a military hospital near Paris in 2004.

"A judicial murder enquiry has been opened, as expected following the complaint from Mrs. Arafat," a source close to the matter told AFP.

Confirming the enquiry, Pierre-Olivier Sur, a lawyer for Arafat's widow and daughter, said they were "happy" at the decision but would not comment further "so as to leave the judges to lead all investigations necessary to find the truth...."

The Palestinian Authority also welcomed the move, with senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat expressing hope that "we will reach the full truth on Arafat's death and who stands behind it."

"We hope the French investigation will satisfy our desire for truth, and that there will be a serious investigation to reveal the whole truth, in addition to an international investigation to identify all the parties involved in Arafat's martyrdom," he told AFP in Ramallah.

Allegations that the Nobel Peace laureate was poisoned were resurrected last month after Al-Jazeera news channel broadcast an investigation in which experts said they found high levels of polonium on his personal effects.

Polonium is a highly toxic substance which is rarely found outside military and scientific circles, and was used to kill former Russian spy turned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 shortly after drinking tea laced with the poison.

Suha Arafat has said she backs exhuming her late husband's remains from his mausoleum in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

A Swiss radiology lab at the Lausanne University Hospital Centre said on Friday it has received Suha Arafat's go-ahead to test his remains for poisoning by polonium.

French news website Slate.fr on Tuesday published a copy of the medical report into Arafat's death and said his symptoms were not consistent with polonium poisoning.
Arafat was sent to the Percy military hospital in Clamart outside Paris after suffering from nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, acute diarrhea and an abnormally low amount of platelets in the blood.

Doctors at the hospital conducted a wide range of tests but were unable to determine the exact cause of his illness.

A few days after his arrival in France, Arafat lapsed into a coma and he died on November 11, 2004. No autopsy was conducted.

"The hypothesis of polonium does not stand up to scrutiny," Marcel Francis-Kahn, the former chief of rheumatology at Paris's Bichat hospital, told Slate.fr.

"All experts know that poisoning by radioactive material does not lead to the symptoms seen in Arafat," he said, noting that he also suffered no traditional effects of radiation poisoning such as hair loss and a massive drop in white blood cells.

At the time of Arafat's death, Palestinian officials alleged he had been poisoned by long-time foe Israel, but an inconclusive Palestinian investigation in 2005 ruled out poisoning, as well as cancer and AIDS.

Israel has consistently denied the allegations, accusing Suha Arafat and Palestinian officials of covering up the real reasons for the death of the former leader, who led the struggle for Palestinian statehood for nearly four decades.

Following the news of a French enquiry, Israel said it "does not feel this investigation is of any concern to it despite all the hare-brained allegations made against us," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

"I hope this enquiry throws light on every aspect of this affair," he added.

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War and politics from a left-Christian perspective: The Sabra and Shatila Massacre—New Revelations

The Sabra and Shatila Massacre—New Revelations

The New York Times, not known for being a fountain of truth when it comes to Middle East reporting, has stepped out of character and published an op-ed piece on the 30^th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre that contains some striking revelations. The massacre in the two Palestinian refugee camps took place in 1982 over a three-day period from September 16-18. Those killed were mainly women, children and elderly men. The slaughter was carried out by Phalangist militia though under the auspices of the Israeli military, which not only controlled the area but even lit up the night sky with flares as the murderers went about their task. Details about the massacre itself is available here.

But the new, never-before-released material concerns conversations between Israeli and American officials that were occurring quite literally as the massacre was in progress*. What the author of the piece, Seth Anziska, informs us is that American diplomats, both in Washington and Tel Aviv, called for a halt to the atrocities but that they were “browbeaten” by the Israelis. Of particular interest is a meeting in Israel on September 17 between Israeli officials, including Ariel Sharon, and US Envoy to the Middle East Morris Draper. I’m only going to provide excerpts, but you can access the full article here. (Hat tip to our friend msa.)

Mr. Draper opened the meeting by demanding that the I.D.F. pull back right away. Mr. Sharon exploded, “I just don’t understand, what are you looking for? Do you want the terrorists to stay? Are you afraid that somebody will think that you were in collusion with us? Deny it. We denied it.” Mr. Draper, unmoved, kept pushing for definitive signs of a withdrawal. Mr. Sharon, who knew Phalange forces had already entered the camps, cynically told him, “Nothing will happen. Maybe some more terrorists will be killed. That will be to the benefit of all of us.” Mr. Shamir and Mr. Sharon finally agreed to gradually withdraw once the Lebanese Army started entering the city — but they insisted on waiting 48 hours (until the end of Rosh Hashana, which started that evening).

Excerpt from transcript of meeting of Sept. 17, 1982

The story goes on about what seems to have been a rather heated exchange between Draper and Sharon, with the latter proclaiming at one point, “So, we’ll kill them. They will not be left there. You are not going to save them. You are not going to save these groups of the international terrorism.” The position of the Israelis was that the camps were overrun with terrorists, which was nonsense—and the Americans knew it was nonsense—since PLO forces under Yasser Arafat had been evacuated out of Lebanon, mainly in August. What remained by September 16 was an unarmed, and extremely vulnerable, civilian population. Anziska goes on to comment:

By allowing the argument to proceed on Mr. Sharon’s terms, Mr. Draper effectively gave Israel cover to let the Phalange fighters remain in the camps. Fuller details of the massacre began to emerge on Sept. 18, when a young American diplomat, Ryan C. Crocker, visited the gruesome scene and reported back to Washington.

Years later, Mr. Draper called the massacre “obscene.” And in an oral history recorded a few years before his death in 2005, he remembered telling Mr. Sharon: “You should be ashamed. The situation is absolutely appalling. They’re killing children! You have the field completely under your control and are therefore responsible for that area.”

On September 18, as news of the massacre was first coming out in the media, President Ronald Reagan expressed his “outrage and revulsion over the murders.” But as Anziska comments, “the belated expression of shock and dismay belies the Americans’ failed diplomatic effort during the massacre. The transcript of Mr. Draper’s meeting with the Israelis demonstrates how the United States was unwittingly complicit in the tragedy of Sabra and Shatila.”

Israeli colonel takes pot-shot at US soldier—excerpt from secret talking points memo drawn up by Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger regarding meeting with Israeli Ambassador Moshe Arens on Sept. 16, 1982

In a way, it was the beginning of the plummeting of America’s prestige and moral influence in the world, and particularly in the Middle East. On April 18, 1983, the US embassy in Beirut was bombed, and on October 23 that same year the US Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed, with 241 Marines killed. Anziska comments:

The archival record reveals the magnitude of a deception that undermined American efforts to avoid bloodshed. Working with only partial knowledge of the reality on the ground, the United States feebly yielded to false arguments and stalling tactics that allowed a massacre in progress to proceed.

The lesson of the Sabra and Shatila tragedy is clear. Sometimes close allies act contrary to American interests and values. Failing to exert American power to uphold those interests and values can have disastrous consequences: for our allies, for our moral standing and most important, for the innocent people who pay the highest price of all.

The only part of Anziska’s article I would take issue is his comment about Israel being a “close ally” of America. Israel is not our ally. Israel is our mortal enemy, and the sooner Americans wake up and realize this the better.

Also see:
Reflections on the Sabra and Shatila massacre, by Franklin Lamb, whose wife, Janet Stevens, died in the attack upon the US embassy in Beirut.

* AMERCANS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN BEHIND OR MONITORING EVERY SINGLE ISRAELI OPERATION, LIKE THEY DID DURING THE ATTACK ON THE USS LIBERTY!

Daily Mail: Israel is “the leader in assassinations”

Jonas E. Alexis

August 2, 2018

671

…by Jonas E. Alexis

The Daily Mail is just waking up from the fact that Israel, “a country born in bloodshed, has become the leader in assassinations.”[1] Taking its cues from Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, the Daily Mail continues to say:
“Not only have Mossad’s secret agents killed more people than the agents of any other state since World War II, but the pace has rapidly increased, with some 800 operations in the past decade…
“One operation in 1968 was directly inspired by the film The Manchurian Candidate, with Mossad hiring a Swedish-born psychologist to brainwash a Palestinian prisoner into murdering Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
“The psychologist picked a suitable prisoner and spent three months hypnotising him with the simple message: ‘Arafat bad. He must be removed’. The prisoner, known only as Fatkhi, was trained to shoot at pictures of Arafat, hidden in a specially prepared room. On December 19, 1968, a Mossad team smuggled Fatkhi across the River Jordan, from where he was supposed to infiltrate Arafat’s headquarters.
“Then they waited. Five hours later, news came. Fatkhi had wasted no time. He had gone straight to a police station and accused Mossad of trying to brainwash him. The operation was an abject failure.”[2]

The Mossad, as we all know, has a history assassinating perceived enemies across the Middle East and even Europe. Not only that, the diabolical organization has a history of using anyone they think would give them a political leverage. You remember Otto Skorzeny? The Jewish Daily Forward tells us that he was “one of the Israeli spy agency’s most valuable assets” and
“was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s personal favorites among the party’s commando leaders. The Führer, in fact, awarded Skorzeny the army’s most prestigious medal, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, for leading the rescue operation that plucked his friend Benito Mussolini out from the hands of his captors.”[3]
The question then becomes: how far does Israel have to go in order to force its covert activities on virtually throughout the planet?[4] Yossi Melman, an intelligence and security columnist for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, and Dan Raviv, the Washington correspondent for i24News, tell us:
“It is striking that Israel does not try to deny that its agents trampled on the sovereignty and laws of many countries in search of justice against mass murderers.”[5]
Did you catch that? Israel will violate the laws of any country in order to get their dirty work done. The blatant contradiction is that Otto Skorzeny worked for the Mossad! Why didn’t they kill him? Why did they hire him as their hitman? And these people want us all to believe that they are fighting Nazis? There are some things that are so patently dumb that only the Mossad and Israeli officials will believe them.

[1] “Poison toothpaste, prisoners hypnotised to kill: How Mossad, Israel’s secret service, has become the world leader in assassins with 800 operations in the last decade,” Daily Mail, July 28, 2018.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, “The Nazi Who Became a Mossad Hitman,” Forward, March 27, 2016.
[4] Mossad even conducted covert activities in India! Ian Black, “The truth about the Mossad,” Guardian, February 19, 2010.
[5] Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, “Why the Mossad failed to capture or kill so many fugitive Nazis,” Washington Post, September 22, 2017.

Friday, 1 June 2012

FILISTIN, PALESTINE, LEBANON, SYRIA, SABRA AND SHATILA, YASSER ARAFAT, HULAGU ARIEL SHARON, EHUD OLMERT.

PALESTINE, LEBANON, SABRA AND SHATILA, YASSER ARAFAT.

Ehud Olmert - Ariel Sharon brothers in arms, followers of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of most radical, racist, & militant Zionism

HABIBI, THE POPES ARE COMPLICIT IN ALL THESE MASSACRES!

Hulagu with his Christian queen Dokuz Khatun. Hulagu conquered Muslim Syria, in alliance with Christian forces from Cilician Armenia, Georgia, and Antioch

Archive for the ‘Sabra and Chatila’ Category

You can now pre-order Gilad Atzmon’s New Book on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

Archive for May, 2012

On the Jewish Heart

Are you Falash Mura or Beta Israel?

Unsupported polonium

By Gilad Atzmon

Did Israel Nuke Arafat? OF COURSE, YES! (BAFS)

France opens enquiry into claims of Arafat poisoning

The Sabra and Shatila Massacre—New Revelations

…by Jonas E. Alexis

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