Saturday 15 May 2010

QUMSIYEH: Who are the Palestinians?

Via A4P
May 15, 2010

The Palestinians by Ismail Shammout
The Palestinians by Ismail Shammout

by Mazin Qumsiyeh  -  The Ambassadors Online Magazine -  January 2002
This item was sent to the MEGA (Middle East Geneticists Association) mailing list with subject title “Genetics & Politics.” It is a copy of a letter sent to the Society of Histocompatability & Immunology by Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, a distinguished Palestinian-American scientist.
 Dear President Bray, President-elect Zeevi, and Society of Histocompatability and Immunology Officers,
I am asking that you print this in the journal as a response to the unfair treatment of Dr.Arnaiz-Villena et al following publication of their paper and to read and act on my comments.

Arnaiz-Villena et al published a paper in this journal titled “The origin of Palestinians and their genetic relatedness with other Mediterranean populations (Human Immunology. 62(9):889-900, 2001).  It is one of at least 13 papers published in this journal by Dr.Arnaiz-Villena and colleagues (hundreds published elsewhere).  The paper demonstrated with ample evidence the similarity of certain Jewish populations to Palestinians. After some pressures because the data appears inconsistent with Zionist ideology and mythology (including the preposterous claims that Palestinians are recent immigrants to the “land of Israel” and Jews as a distinct race), the paper was pulled from web pages and the society took an unprecedented and in my humble opinion illegal action of penalizing an author (removing him from the editorial board) to satisfy a political constituency within the society.

The data provided by the paper is ironically consistent with data published in the same journal by Israeli scientists (Amar et al “Molecular analysis of HLA class II polymorphisms among different ethnic groups in Israel” Human Immunology, 1999, 60:723-730).  Amar et al showed that “Israeli Arabs” (Palestinians who are Israeli citizens) are closer to Sephardic Jews than either is to Ashkenazi Jews. The data also showed that Ethiopian Jews are genetically very distant from all. Yet, Amar et al incredibly concluded that “We have shown that Jews share common features, a fact that points to a common ancestry.” Amar et al also failed to include Slavic populations in the study which would have revealed similarities between Ashkenazi and these populations in the areas around the Black Sea (see below).

Unfortunately, misuse of genetics is not new.  Francis Galton coined the term eugenics in 1883 (Greek: eu means “good” and genic derives from the word for “born”). Galton defined it as “the science of improvement of the human race germ plasm through better breeding.” At the height of the eugenics movement in the 1920s, the Encyclopedia Britannica (1926) entry on eugenics emphasized that the term connoted a “plan” to influence human reproduction.

Between 1907 and 1960 in the United States at least 60,000 people were sterilized without their consent pursuant to state laws to prevent reproduction by those deemed genetically inferior (especially mentally retarded or those with psychological problems). At the peak of these programs in the 1930s, about 5,000 persons were sterilized annually.  Based on the American development (especially the works of the American champion of Eugenics, Harry Hamilton Laughlin), the Eugenics of the Nazis grew to eclipse and the American system and then to become even much more and contribute to the mass murder of Jews, Gypsies and others. These examples (& Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union) are well studied by societies determined not to repeat these horrendous laws.  Few now believe it is useful or desirable to limit diversity and enhance ideas of racial purity or protecting the gene pool of a particular population.  So how is this relevant to Zionism and Jewish nationalism?

The founders of Zionism were Eastern European Jews (Ashkenazi) who argued that they are fulfilling the ingathering of the Jews to “their ancestral homelands.” Many argued that assimilation and interbreeding with communities where Jews exist were very dangerous.  Many worked feverishly to establish links (however tenuous) between Ashkenazi Jews are and the ancient Israelites (and named their new country Israel) as evidenced by the published works of Bonne-Tamir and others.  Much was spent to explain away the physical differences between Ashkenazi Jews (light skins, fair smooth hair), and Sephardic (oriental) Jews and massage the data to fit the pre-ordained conclusions.  Here is an example.

An article titled “Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish Populations Share a Common Pool of Y-chromosome Biallelic Haplotypes” was published in PNAS, vol. 97, no. 12, June 6, 2000i. The article is from the laboratory of Bonne Tamir in Israel and is co-authored with 11 other authors. PNAS publishes articles based on communication from respected scientists and not by the traditional peer review process (although those communicating the article are encouraged to have them peer reviewed). This particular article was communicated by Arno G. Motulsky.

Of course Ashkenazi Jews would be closer to Arabs than either is to the Europeans studied in the PNAS paper.  But Ashkenazim are also clearly closer to Turkic/Slavic than either is to Sephardim or Arab populations.  The authors avoided studying Slavic groups that researchers have identified as closely related to hypothetical Slavic ancestral populations of modern Ashkenazi communities.  The article seems to have avoided discussing this particularly problematical issue and insisted in the conclusion to reiterate the contention made in the introduction that Jews of today are by and large descendant from the original Israelites. As Daniel Friedman wrote:

“The relative abundances of specific haplotypes within the Ashkenazi population included in Hammer’s study appear to have significant differences from the reconstructed “ancestral Jewish population” and “Separate analysis is also necessary to determine the genetic contribution of the various central Asian Turkic tribes which so strongly influenced European history.”

Italian researches studied many more populations including more diverse Turkish and Eastern European populations (American Journal of Human Genetics, 61:1015-1935).  The study looked at Y chromosome polymorphisms (genetic variations) in 58 populations including European, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African.  That study clearly shows that Ashkenazi Jewish samples clustered distinct from Sephardic Jews and closer to Turkic samples.  Overall, the genetic data in that study were congruent with linguistic distances.  The authors concluded that genetic data do not justify a single origin for the currently disparate Jewish subpopulations (Ashkenazi and Sephardi).  It seems odd though that authors who are accepting of Zionist claims or are Jewish make conclusions not even supported by their own data while authors from other backgrounds based on similar data (showing clear links of Ashkenazim to Turkic populations) make differing conclusions.

The claims of a “single Jewish origin” flies in the face of incredibly rich data from historical and archaeological sources including: language (e.g. Yiddish origin and history and absence of use of Aramaic in ancient Khazar Jewish sources), the conversion of Yemenite Arab populations to Judaism and Christianity. There is ample historical evidence that Levantine people and Eastern European Jewish people do share ancestry as well as evidence for significant population mixing.  Greek and Turkish populations exported their people throughout the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Asia Minor and the Levant (e.g. the Ottoman Empire and the Hellenistic periods). Similarly Slavic populations have exported people into Asia Minor and the Levant.  There was thus tremendous mixing of populations.

Some studies on Eastern European Jewish people have been used to support the idea that the Zionist colonization of Palestine represented a return of a race of Jewish people to their homeland. Valid scientific research must not be shunned by political pressure groups intent on preventing any rational discussion and stifling apparent conflict with the aims of Zionism. Similarly, scientists should not be allowed to publish statements and conclusions not supported by the data simply because they appear “politically correct” at the moment or do not generate an outcry.  A statement such as that by Amir et al that “We have shown that Jews share common features, a fact that points to a common ancestry” should not be allowed to stand. The correct statement from their own data is that some Jews (Sephardim) are more similar to Palestinians than either group is to other Jews (Ashkenazim or Ethiopian Jews).

Of course the transition from any kind of genetic evidence to justify dispossession of the native Palestinians by Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe is in no way justified regardless of population genetics. After all, one would have to be totally immune to basic elements of justice to allow dispossession of people who are native in every sense of the word and whose ancestors farmed the land for hundreds of years (if not thousands) based on any kind of perceived separatedness/uniqueness of gene pools of the new immigrants/settlers. To use “genetic” tools (regardless of their distortion or validity), to justify denying Palestinian people the right of self-determination is of course a travesty of justice. Genetics and eugenics has been used successfully in many other instances to justify the unjustifiable. Distortions of the science of genetics was used for racist and ethnic cleansing many times before. Unfortunately this particular use may not be the last one either.

Sincerely,
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Genetics
Yale University School of Medicine
Email: mazin.qumsiyeh@yale.edu

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Hamas: Creating a Zionist entity was a major crime against Palestine

[ 15/05/2010 - 02:43 PM ]

DAMASCUS, (PIC)-- The Movement of Hamas stated Saturday that the establishment of a Zionist entity in Palestine was a major crime against the Palestinian people and the Arab and Muslim nations that lost a precious part of their land.

In a press release on the 62nd anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe), Hamas said that the national struggle and the many sacrifices that have been made since 1948 protected the Palestinian people’s identity and their right to defend their land against the occupation.

“The painful memories which our people have witnessed on the days of the Nakba are not confined to those unpleasant times, but they have expanded farther into other stations where tens of thousands of our people were slain by the Zionist war machinery,” Hamas highlighted.

The Movement also emphasized on this anniversary that the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their cities and villages they were uprooted from is inalienable and does not end by prescription, adding that this right belongs to the entire Palestinian people and neither a group of individuals nor agreements can waive it.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

If The Secret Police Ran A Jewish State

Free Thought Manifesto

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Special Place in Hell
If the secret police ran the Jewish state, any and every move could be explained in two words and never more than two. Security reasons.

By Bradley Burston
Published 14:44 10.05.10
Latest update 16:53 10.05.10
Courtesy Of
"Haaretz NewsPaper"


If a Jewish state were run by the secret police, Israelis could disappear without a trace. No contact with lawyers. Court-ordered muzzles on broadcast and print news media.
If a Jewish state were run by the secret police, there were be gag orders forbidding journalists to write even of the existence of the gag orders.
Thank God such a thing couldn't happen here.
Israeli flag
Photo by: Emil Salman
If a Jewish state were run by the secret police, its agents would meet Spain's most prominent clown on his arrival at the airport. They would confiscate his passport, interrogate him on and off for six hours, and tell the Interior Ministry to order him expelled without entry.
Thank God such a thing wouldn't happen anywhere.
Because if the secret police ran the Jewish state, it would also run – and run with - the Interior Ministry. Which, in turn, would undermine and overrule the Foreign Ministry and even the Prime Minister's Office, changing the course of Israel's international diplomacy, its global public relations, and its relationship with Washington.
And because if the secret police ran the Jewish state, any and every move could be explained in two words and never more than two. Security reasons.
Moreover, if a Jewish state were run by the secret police, the chief of the secret police would hold an effective veto over the resumption and the substance of peace talks with the Palestinians, or over such issues as easing a crippling embargo on every one of Gaza's million and a half people.

No way we would let that happen here.
Or, if the defense ministry of the Jewish state were run by a furtive autocrat, in close cooperation with the secret police, the army might decide to bypass decisions of the High Court of Justice on such issues as the West Bank barrier or highway use by Palestinian motorists – thus gutting the court, and the separation of powers, of meaning.
And if, by some twist of fate, the Jewish state were run by the secret police, we would, all of us, be in danger of becoming Prisoners of Zion, our movements monitored and curtailed, our freedoms of the press, of free assembly, of due process, of religious expression, all placed in doubt.
We can only thank our lucky stars that none of this can ever befall us.
Enough of this fantasizing for one morning. Time to get back to work.
Time to grab a cup of coffee and leaf through the gag orders.
Posted by Cavalier Zee at 8:00 AM
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

What's to Stop Israel from Going to War in Lebanon Again?

Al-Manar

15/05/2010 The Zionist entity is trying its best to transfer calming messages to Lebanon and Syria not only through foreign politicians who are lately flooding into the region but also through it media and army officials.

Israeli media has considered then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak’s decision to withdraw from Lebanon as a right on saying that the 2000 withdrawal was still perceived as justified, despite the war in 2006 and despite the arguments that the hasty retreat exposed Israeli society's vulnerability ("spider webs" is the adjective Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah used in his speech in Bint Jbail two days after the Israeli occupation army's exit).

Moreover, Barak said this week that why this withdrawal didn't happen 10 years earlier.

Israeli daily Haaretz reported Friday that Lebanon was the burning issue on the security agenda in the 1990s, even though the scope of the damage appears modest in comparison to the troubles that came later: the second intifada, from September 2000 on, and the Second Lebanon War in 2006. “Problematic combat norms were inculcated in the Israeli army in Lebanon, and the forces' attention was distracted from other vital areas.”

Barak made a logical decision that also paid off for him politically. On March 1, 1999, the day after Brig.-Gen. Erez Gerstein was killed by a Hezbollah roadside bomb, Barak declared his intention to leave Lebanon within a year of his government's swearing-in. This announcement helped to tilt the race against Benjamin Netanyahu, and two months later Barak scored a decisive election victory.

It's true that Barak imposed the unilateral withdrawal on the army's officers, but many of them are now prepared to admit that he was right and they were wrong.

Israeli Brig.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Tamir, in his book, describes the Israeli army in Lebanon as a sluggish army that was slow to grasp its situation, and says it waged a war of attrition it could not win. The stay in Lebanon, wrote Tamir, was "a systemic failure that led the IDF to beat a hasty unilateral retreat without a security or political accord."

However, Haaretz added that Hezbollah's victory celebrations fed the Palestinians' conclusion that they could expel Israel from the West Bank by force, and this contributed to the outbreak of the second intifada.

And still, with zero international legitimacy, no diplomatic objective, and no long-term military plan, this was an unwinnable war and it was best to end it.

"The Lebanese tragedy has come to an end. Israel will set a very high threshold for a response throughout Lebanon," Barak promised when the last Israeli soldier left. It was a pledge he did not keep - and some will say that this is where the seeds of the 2006 misadventure were planted.

Haaretz said, “Hezbollah took advantage of the relative quiet to build positions along the border, which served as a convenient point to launch the capture of the two occupation soldiers in 2006. At the same time, it also built up an elaborate inventory of rockets that it fired at Israel during the war. The postwar reckoning included much criticism of Israel's policy of counting on Hezbollah's rockets to rust from disuse. In fact, a very similar process, with even graver potential consequences, has been going on since the end of the war. The Islamic organization has armed itself with approximately 45,000 missiles and rockets, including some that could traverse all of Israel - and this time, too, Israel is sitting by quietly.”

In addition to the erosion of deterrence vis-a-vis Hezbollah, the Israeli army has neglected its intelligence-gathering activities, particularly on the tactical level, along the border. It has allocated too few resources and forces to securing the border and hasn't been serious enough about preparing for the next round in Lebanon. For all of these things, it paid a high price in 2006.

“Now the parties are gearing up for the fourth campaign. The challenge facing the Israeli army now is not resistance attacks on a force holding onto a dubious defense zone, but a potential military campaign involving thousands of rockets and missiles fired at the Israeli home front. Apparently, the enemy's sense that Israel is unpredictable is dampening any interest in risking another confrontation at the present time,” the report added.

Brig.-Gen. Itai Baron, head of the Dado Center for Military Thinking, said this week in a lecture at the Fisher Institute, "In many ways, the other side thought that we lost our heads in the war in Lebanon and in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza."

However, Lebanon could still ignite as an outgrowth of developments on the "main front" - the struggle to halt the Iranian nuclear program. In that case, it's doubtful whether the Israeli army's response will be good enough, despite the intensive effort to make improvements since 2006.

The most important question in the north for now is how Israel can avoid repeating past mistakes, so that the next few years do not bring a new variation of the errors of 2006 ("We can deal with the rockets"), 1996 ("There is no alternative to an IDF presence in the security zone" ) - or, worst of all, 1973 ("A political accord can wait, our intelligence will be able to warn us in time before we are attacked, and if worst comes to worst - we'll break the Arabs' bones").

Jumblatt Warns Lebanese Not to Trust Israeli Assurances

15/05/2010 Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt said in an interview published in Lebanese daily As-Safir on Saturday that Israel should never be trusted when it says it will not attack Lebanon or Syria.

"Whether this reassurance is serious or not, it is a duty to remain cautious at this stage, particularly that experience with Israel hasn't been encouraging," Jumblatt told As-Safir.

"We can never trust it. Israel can never abandon its aggressive intentions," he said. "Such caution calls for a quick and full coordination between the Lebanese government, the resistance and the army."

He also recalled that despite Israeli assurances in 1982, “Israel invaded Lebanon and reached Beirut under the pretext of an attempt to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London.”

Jumblatt’s comments come two days after Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told the press in Beirut that “all concerned parties are willing to work toward peace in the [Middle East].”

Moratinos, who was touring the region this week, passed on the message from officials in Tel Aviv that “Israel has no intention of escalating tensions with Syria and Lebanon, and [Tel Aviv] wants to withdrawal from the Lebanese part of the Ghajar Village and resume negotiations.”

Jumblatt, also the Democratic Gathering bloc leader, expressed caution about the Israeli assurances, saying past experiences with the country have never been encouraging.

Jumblatt said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent visit to Syria entailed “a very important dimension” and was designed to send “a highly significant message” to the world that Syria cannot be isolated.

Meanwhile, Public Works and Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi is scheduled to visit Damascus on Monday for talks with the assistant of the Syrian president's deputy, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Nassif.

Aridi told As Safir that the visit comes as a continuation of discussions and exchange of views in the aftermath of Jumblatt's talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

GORDON DUFF: ASSASSINATION IN DUBAI, ISRAELI’S WARNING TO THE WORLD


May 15, 2010 posted




Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman

“WE CAN KILL ANYONE, ANYWHERE FOR ANY REASON…ARE YOU LISTENING PRESIDENT OBAMA”

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

When Israel sent 27 Mossad agents to a 5 star hotel in Dubai to murder Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a minor Hamas figure, it had nothing to do with Hamas or Dubai.  It was a warning to President Obama and anyone else that nobody is safe and no reason is small enough to not justify a killing if key interests are involved, money, drugs, power and, least of all, the security of Israel.  Mahmoud is said to be an “arms smuggler” who is traveling the world to get weapons into Lebanon for Hamas.  As Lebanon has an open border with Syria, the primary Hamas weapons source, the idea of smuggling is insane.  Hamas orders weapons on the phone and they are driven over in trucks.
With historical researchers now putting the murders of President Kennedy and his brother Robert at the hands of Israel and moves to reopen the investigation of 9/11, an operation now increasingly showing the handprints of the Mossad at every juncture, the world’s most active assassination squads now represent a threat to every national leader, politician, diplomat and even journalist that speaks up.  The undercurrent of threats has circled the earth since the Dubai assassination, not a bungled Mossad operation at all, as Israel claims, but a slap in the face for Britain, Germany, Australia and the other countries whose passports were forged and a threat to President Obama that he faces something much more serious than a deluge of laundered Israeli cash opposing his next election.

Enemies of Israel used to be Muslims advocating aggressively for Palestine, many pushing for violence.  Today it is reporters, business competitors or anyone whose death or economic destruction will enhance a scheme, push through a business deal or open a door for a “friend” to rise to influence.  Weapons can be murder, financial ruin, mysterious illnesses, the deaths of children or friends, all easily attributed, using the control of the world’s press, to “natural causes” of one kind or another.  What the public doesn’t know, others have known all along, know well.  We call this “terrorism.”

Dubai was a reminder, like the Detroit “crotch bomber” and the “Time Square Fizzler.”
Israel itself is a massive arms supplier and developer of security technologies.  They control most of the world’s airports, you know, the ones where terrorists on the “no fly lists” move freely from country to country with impunity.  A major industry in Israel has been to develop advanced technologies to prevent exactly the problems that happen under their noses every day.  Who runs these companies?  The massive defense industries in Israel, industries tied to arming South Africa during sanctions for apartheid, even helping South Africa develop nuclear weapons and now peddling German built submarines to North Korea are run by members of the Mossad and IDF.  This is allowed by Israeli law.

Since the 1973 war, Israel has never suffered a serious threat but has been involved in minor “low intensity conflicts” related to its attempt to convince 5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel to evaporate or die.  Israel’s stated goal is to force other Middle Eastern countries to take on their entire Islamic population as refugees and replace them with “guest workers” from Thailand, the Philippines and other nations where drastically lower wages can turn Israel into a state much like Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.  Instead of paying “slave labor” with petro-dollars, US foreign aid will pick up the bill, this and a massive arms industry.

With “bulletproof” extradition laws protecting financial criminals, banksters from around the world flock to Israel to spend their declining years in safety and luxury, waited on hand and foot.  The lives and safety of these workers is a concern as “the only democracy in the Middle East” is more secretive and controlling than Stalin’s Russia.

PUTTING A TARGET ON PRESIDENT OBAMA

Mitchell Bard, head of AICE, the America Israeli Cooperative Enterprise in his recent article, “Israel’s Apocalypse” warns of an imaginary future in which President Obama works to destroy Israel:
In 2012, Obama is narrowly reelected. He is angered by the defection of Jewish voters disenchanted with his Middle East policy. Unfettered by electoral concerns, he is prepared to use his remaining years to consolidate the relationships he has built with Arab states and further reassure the Muslim world of America’s friendship.
After delaying their intended 2011 announcement, the Palestinians declare independence and ask the world to recognize Palestine and to force Israel to allow the establishment of its capital in Jerusalem.  Israel protests and says that it will no longer honor its past agreements with the Palestinians. It closes its borders and reasserts the unity of Jerusalem.
Every country at the UN except Micronesia recognizes Palestine. Having pledged in 2010 to facilitate the establishment of a Palestinian state within two years, and frustrated with the failure of his peace initiative and furious with what he views as Israel’s intransigence, Obama announces U.S. recognition of Palestine. The General Assembly admits Palestine as a member.
The United States demands that Israel reopen borders and enter negotiations on the division of Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Iran announces it has built its first nuclear weapons. As many had forecast, sanctions proved useless and Obama was unwilling to use military force to stop Iran’s program. Israel is warned that any attack on Iran will be opposed by all means necessary to protect American interests in the region.
The Saudis declare that they will use all their resources to ensure the Arab states have a deterrent capability. The Arab League and the United States begin furious negotiations to head off a nuclear arms race in the region and reach an agreement with Iran to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for Israel doing the same. Israel rejects the idea.
The United States votes with the other Security Council members to impose sanctions on Israel if it does not open its nuclear facilities to inspectors and agree to destroy its weapons. A second resolution calls for additional sanctions if Israel does not open border crossings to Palestine and agree to withdraw from East Jerusalem and to allow Palestinian control over the Temple Mount. Israel defiantly rejects both resolutions.
Following the Europeans’ lead, the Obama administration announces a trade embargo against Israel and also declares a cutoff of all military aid and cooperation until Israel satisfies UN demands.
The pro-Israel community expresses “concern” and asks members of Congress to oppose the administration policy. A handful of Republicans protest, but the Democratic majority is unwilling to challenge the president’s foreign policy beyond signing a letter expressing America’s continued commitment to Israel’s security. Israeli leftists and American Jewish progressives applaud the administration and say Israel needs “tough love” to save it from itself.
Obama tells the press the Israeli lobby is jeopardizing U.S. interests. Administration officials quietly warn Jewish leaders if they continue to criticize the president he will go on prime time television and tell the nation that Israel and its supporters are endangering American soldiers fighting in the Middle East and undermining national security. Only a handful of Jewish gadflies continue to speak out against Obama’s policy.
Before the year is out, Israel capitulates. It recognizes Palestine, agrees to divide Jerusalem and begins the process of dismantling its nuclear arsenal.

This fanciful scenario has one purpose.  It is a message to the president that standing up to Israeli abuses and Israeli plots can lead to one thing, destruction.  The language is clear, Israel sees President Obama as a “clear and present danger” to their plans to dominate the Middle East and grow rich on the sinking America and Europe into hopeless debt by their control of the Federal Reserve and key banking institutions.

None of Bard’s claims are rational or real.  In itself, his admission of Israel’s nuclear arsenal forces the United States to institute immediate sanctions today as required by International Law and UN Resolutions.  Nobody sees America doing this.

FORCING OBAMA TO  HELP WITH ISRAEL’S COVER-UP OF 9/11

The unraveling of 9/11 from an “Arab plot” to an Israeli/Mossad “false flag” attack on the United States is the biggest threat to Israel.  Every day one issue or another involving 9/11 from the “dancing Israeli’s,” Mossad operatives filming the attacks with advance notice to the phony “art students” in the WTC to the horrific admission that Building 7 was “pulled” are some of hundreds, even thousands of facts that stamp “Mossad” on 9/11.

Of late, despite taking a strong stand against Israeli pressure, President Obama has repeatedly asked for powers to control “conspiracy oriented” news stories on the internet and elsewhere.  There is only one conspiracy, 9/11, and the victim was the United States.  9/11 was always a conspiracy, one that 7 years of public information and a full debunking and rescinding of the 9/11 Commission Report has put at the door of Israel and a group of American traitors in government, oil, banking, defense and the media.  Yes, the media, you can’t say that enough times.
There is one unspoken subject in Washington and that is 9/11.  The Republican party, on a daily basis, does and says almost anything imaginable.  Things once whispered in backrooms are now shouted in the halls of congress with all decorum disappearing when the obscene profits of America’s medical monopoly came under threat.   Not one of the 447 members of congress who signed letters in “blind obedience” to Israel responded to members of the 9/11 Commission when they asked for a criminal investigation against government officials who perjured themselves, falsfied documents and withheld vital information.  Call this the coincidence of a lifetime.

THE POLITICS OF MURDER

With 447 members of congress, every single one of them swearing they know nothing of Israel’s enormous nuclear arsenal, vowing eternal allegiance to Israel over the United States and virtual control of newspapers, electronic news media, thousand of internet news sites, movies, magaizines and television shows, the ability to spin anything from assassination to mass murder into a “poor threatened Israel” yarn has endangered the life of every public figure in the world who stands up for their beliefs.

447 members of congress led by Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsay Graham along with Josef Lieberman and “Hanoi John” McCain are not among them.

Maybe they poison your dog because you didn’t vote for an appropriation that would have lined the pockets of an Israeli contractor.  Maybe you asked a wrong question at the wrong time and your car was stolen or one of your children was beaten up.  Never speak up and fly in a private plane.  That has been a death sentence for many.

This is the Dubai message, reinforcing years of behind the scenes terrorism, things as small as a denied mortgage or big as an airliner flying into a skyscraper.  For every lie on TV or in a newspaper there is an act of brutal thuggery somewhere.  For every free trip to Israel and a young boy in underwear waiting in a hotel room, there is a rock through a window.  To any Jew who stands up for what is right, their is a burned Synagogue and an anti-Semitic slogan painted on a wall.

Dubai was a reminder, a reminder to keep a lid on 9/11, a reminder to keep a lid on Detroit and a reminder to keep arresting Paksitanis over the “Times Square Fizzler” just as was arranged beforehand.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

ME mourning Israel occupation

   

Sat, 15 May 2010 13:07:47 GMT



A Palestinian girl attends a rally in the Gaza Strip, marking the 62nd anniversary of the 1948 Israeli occupation. Reuters photo

Marches continue across the Middle East to mark the Israeli seizure of the Palestinian lands as well as its expulsion and killing of hundreds of Palestinians.

The thousands-strong rallies entered their second day on Saturday. Marchers gathered in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, marking the 62nd anniversary of the May 15, 1948 Nakba Day or 'the day of the catastrophe,' the Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported.

The Israeli war forced more than 800,000 out of 1.4 million Palestinians "out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries and the remaining countries of the world," said the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics in a demographic report.

Last year records by the United Nations revealed that currently some 4.7 million Palestinians, less than half of their entire population, lived in refugee camps at home or abroad.

The Saturday demos are also expected to condemn Israel's occupation of the West Bank, al-Quds (East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip in 1967.



River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Salah, Prayer, If Only You Could Hear‏

BY Nahida

Listen …
The dignified roses
Extending out their hands
Calling you to pray
Come and join the crowd
God is The Greatest
Most Gracious, Most Kind

If Only You Could Hear 


If you can
Just sit for a moment
And listen …
To the birds
Singing songs of praise

Listen …
To the breeze
Whispering to the trees
“Would you pray with me tonight?”
“Yes, with all my heart,
Love, joy and delight”
The trees replied

Listen …
Can you hear the rhythm
Of the stone’s heartbeat?
"I love you God"
Their words with every beat

Listen …
Can you hear the silence
In the tranquil summer night
Deep … deep .. silence
Is the language of the heart

Listen …
Rain drops tap-dancing
Tip-top … drip-drop
Tiny, elegant steps
A never-ending story
Proclaiming God’s wonders
And His majestic glory


Listen …
Can you feel the serenity
And graceful prayer
Of golden wheat grains
While bowing down their heads
Giving mother earth
A great big kiss

Listen …
Can you hear the rainbow
Stretching up and down
Reaching out to heaven
Then bending like a clown
Amazing colours
Almost divine



Listen …
The dignified roses
Extending out their hands
Calling you to pray
Come and join the crowd
God is The Greatest
Most Gracious, Most Kind

Listen …
Atoms are dancing
Going round and round
Joyful in their orbits
What an awesome band
Praising their creator
Joining hand in hand


Listen …
Numbers are standing
Magnificent is the sign
Starting from the zero
Infinite is the line
Unique in their performance
United through design
Praying in adoration
Humbly kneeling down

Listen …
Galaxies are twirling
Wrapped up in cosmic light
Wearing magical dresses
Glowing through the night
All shapes colours and sizes
 amazing is the sight
Glorifying their Designer
The source of peace
And essence of delight

--
nahida

Margaret Atwood believes in dialogue, unless she is criticized, and she likes submissive natives as well

Source

My previous post, Novelistic Scabs, criticizing Atwood and Ghosh, didn't get approved in the comments to her posting of the two's "acceptance speech" for the Dan David prize on Atwood's blog. It was deleted twice.

She does allow critical views. My post wasn't more critical than other comments she let through. It was more detailed, and rather than merely challenging them on moral grounds, it also paid close attention to how poor the logic of their arguments was. I guess that was just too painful. So much for openness to views not her own, that she so pretentiously described as her trademark and the reason for accepting the prize!

But half a million dollars can sooth a lot of wounds to a writer's ego.

Oh, by the way, she went to the West Bank. If you're interested in how one can make literary experiments, nouveau roman and poliphonic turds out of apartheid, go and read her collection of "Israelis said, Palestinians said" cliches.

There, in the Occupied West Bank, Atwood had an amazing discovery:

Nor was there an avoidance of the situation: on the contrary, people really wanted to talk about it. These people were from many areas, but self-selected, of course. (That is: There are a lot of people from extremes and semi-extremes who would not have talked to me, and certainly not freely).
Some people didn't avoid talking about the situation with a visitor who tours the West Bank and meets them in the process of explicitly pretending to be interested in the situation. Can you imagine? But what about those "from the extreme and semi-extremes." who wouldn't talk to her? Why not call them extremists, given that this is what she wants to say? How did Atwood realize that some people don't care whether she understands them? Did they refuse to meet with her? Or is it simply her projection? She doesn't say. What exactly does she mean by saying that people "from the extreme and semi-extremes" would not be speaking "freely"? What opposition between freedom and lack of it is being presented?

People from the semi-extremes are people who shun conversation, or make preconditions, or if they speak, they do not speak "freely." Presumably, their "extreme" politics gets in a way of providing Atwood with decontextualized shreds of discourse. That is, presumably, people from "extremes and semi-extremes" tend to maintain their right to speak in their own voice, to make sense and present a coherent speech rather than to become formelss material for someone's else discourse. That means they do not speak "freely." To speak freely consists on providing Atwood with cliches such as

'A war of the strong against the weak will always fail.’ ” “There are no stereotypes that fit.” “It’s like a roll that’s stuck in your throat: you can’t swallow it, you can’t cough it up.”
That is, "freedom," for Atwood, is willingness to submit, to be someone else's raw material, not to make sense but to be the object one makes sense of. To speak freely is to speak like one speaks to a therapist, hesitantly at first, but with increasing openness once one realizes "the other" is a blank stare, without any identity or content, the ideal, apolitical, neutral listener:

there was some initial tentativeness about me—where did I stand, did I have preconceptions? Being neither an Israeli, nor Jewish, nor Muslim, nor Christian, nor American, was probably facilitating.
Free speech is therefore the opposition of politics, that is of speech that is engaged in the demand of freedom. Free speech is speech free from the constraints imposed by a concern for freedom. Lack of freedom is the condition of those who insist of a measure of control of their position in the conversation. They are constrained by, made "unfree", presumably, by their claim to speak as one who is free, or as one who wants to be free; they might not even speak to her. The main opposition that structures Atwood's impression of the native is thus the one between "speaking freely" and speaking as a political Subject who demands freedom. That is, what Atwood's calls the freedom of the native, is in fact the freedom of the ethnographic visitor to control the representation of the native.

I assume that a quite a few Palestinians told her not to bother dropping by, given that she accepted a prize at Tel-Aviv University that violated the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Painful! But again, half a million dollars can sooth a lot of wounds to a writer's ego.
Posted by Gabriel @ 10:52 AM

Margaret Atwood Cashes In

Pulse

By Jennifer Matsui

Children in Gaza sit next to the empty desks of fellow students whose lives were snuffed out by Israeli terror

Novelist Margaret Atwood’s decision to travel to Tel Aviv to share a literary prize worth a million dollars has ignited a controversy in which the septuagenarian author and vice-president of the literary human rights organization PEN International has come under fire by Palestinian rights activists. Ms Atwood’s acceptance of the Dan David Prize, whose previous laureates include Al Gore and Tony Blair, is viewed by Ms Atwood’s critics as a betrayal to the ideals she supposedly represents, and an unwitting endorsement of Israel’s race exclusive policies.

The Canadian author’s insistence that refusing the blood-spattered trophy would be tantamount to “censorship” rings as false as her commitments to justice as an anti-apartheid activist, and as a writer who has made tyranny and oppression recurring themes in her novels, elevating her from fiction writer to public intellectual. “False” because “justice for some” is hardly an ethical stance with any merit, and certainly not one that will maintain her status as an “oppositional intellectual”. Sadly, this “intellectual” has made no effort to research the subject of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land and its unyielding, systematic oppression of the Palestinian people (as many Jewish and Israeli scholars and activists themselves have bravely condemned). Otherwise, she would use the occasion of the invitation to denounce an increasingly murderous regime and call upon its people to support sanctions, boycotts and divestments until their government accepted the rule of International law and reversed its policy of displacement and expulsion of Arab people from their ancestral lands. Instead the once outspoken author has chosen to put monetary interests ahead of the principled moral stances she has taken in the past, in order to lay claim to a tainted prize given each year to fame-hungry “artists” looking to boost sagging sales of their product while making all the appropriate noises to the press about free speech.

Ms Atwood’s blandly centrist posturing is symptomatic of a malady particular to the cosseted and fossilized members of a wealthy nation’s cultural elite, for whom “free speech” is a largely unexamined term that by default, advocates the right of establishment opinion makers laboring for the warlord and robber baron class to set the agenda of public discourse. Thus the multi-billion dollar media conglomerate behind South Park and its wealthy creators are portrayed as underdog champions of free speech, bravely confronting an encroaching Islamic Goliath, just as the Canadian author’s flaccid, self-serving justifications for fence-sitting is spun into a battle against “censorship”. It’s hard to pinpoint Ms Atwood’s definition of the word “censorship” unless it means, “Can I just enjoy my windfall without having to listen to a howling mob of Debby Downers”?

On the surface, Ms Atwood’s Tel Aviv itinerary seems a worthy endeavor undertaken by an energetic senior citizen who has put aside her basket of knitting to embark on a fact finding mission devoted to sniffing out the roots of a decades-long conflict, while indulging her recent interest in issues related to water scarcity. How she will gather facts on the ground from a plush Tel Aviv hotel suite surrounded by her sycophantic handlers remains to be seen. Her new friends in Tel Aviv will likely remind her that “Jews made the desert bloom”, omitting the part about how Israel diverts water supplies from the Palestinians to nourish the soil beneath its illegal settlements. Unlike Ms Atwood, I am no poet. However, I can’t help but indulge the thought that so much spilled blood must have had a hand in making Israel’s ill-gained desert outposts a shimmering oasis of well-watered lawns, swimming pools and flower beds on one side, and a parched, barren human cattle pen on the other.

Last year Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami defended his decision to accept the Jerusalem Prize in a rambling, incoherent public statement to his detractors that ultimately demonstrated his worthiness to be be recipient to this dubious honor. As this year’s winner of the Dan David Prize, Ms Atwood is Israel’s most recent stooge-laureate of a cynically motivated, prize-giving institution that lures artists from overseas to be unwitting apologists for its government’s long standing system of ethnic cleansing. Sadly, Ms Atwood has fallen into the same trap, and like her Japanese prize-coveting counterpart, has released a factually deficient statement accusing her critics of being intolerant, politically motivated advocates of censorship, while she, the feisty Grande Dame of capital ‘L’ literature rises above her host nation’s open-air prisons where the view on the ground reveals deficiencies on both sides of the conflict. Something tells me the feminist author would take a less even-handed approach to the subject of domestic violence.

It’s from this lofty perch that Ms Atwood declares herself an ‘artist’ (emphasis on the last syllable) and more importantly, an “individual”. Unlike her more earthbound detractors, this ethereal entity insists, by virtue of her divinely held privileges, that she is a “neutral observer”, and as such, more intellectually equipped to grasp the situation on the ground, while hovering celestially above the rest of humanity. She might want to consider the possibility that those pretty cloud-like bursts of white phosphorous dumped on civilians fleeing from relentless ground and air assaults are anything but neutral – as are the well-heeled and carefully vetted representatives of Tel Aviv’s cultural elite with whom she will have lively discussions over tea and crumpets about scarce water resources, global warming and the burdens of being the Mid-East’s only “democracy” (sic). Throw in a Palestinian bird enthusiast and score valuable PR points for demonstrating your nation’s “diversity”. (“See? We don’t discriminate against our non-Jewish (non) citizens. We grant special privileges to a handful of them, allow them access to water, even sparing them the cattle prods when they wander without permits into our cocktail parties”.) While ‘bird enthusiasm’ is a noble and worthy career choice, you have to wonder why Palestinians engaged in fields closer to Atwood’s own were not on the guest list. Maybe it’s because (as the Open Letter from Gaza students states):
In the Gaza concentration camp, students who have been awarded scholarships to universities abroad are prevented every year from pursuing their hard-earned opportunity for academic achievement. Within the Gaza Strip, those seeking an education are limited by increasing poverty rates and a scarcity of fuel for transportation, both of which are direct results of Israel’s medieval siege. What is Tel Aviv University’s position vis-a-vis this form of illegal collective punishment, described by Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, as a “prelude to genocide?” Not a single word of condemnation has been heard from any Israeli academic institution!
Ms Atwood, whose scholarly credentials on the subject of conflict in the Middle East has so far been limited to glancing at the op-ed columns in her daily newspaper, repeats the same half-truths, obfuscations and outright lies that are routinely and mechanically recited in the establishment media – namely, that the crisis currently playing out in the Middle East is the result of two warring powers of roughly equal stature, stubbornly rejecting compromise.
I sympathize with the very bad conditions the people of Gaza are living through due to the blockade, the military actions, and the Egyptian and Israeli walls. Everyone in the world hopes that the two sides involved will give up their inflexible positions and sit down at the negotiating table immediately and work out a settlement that would help the ordinary people who are suffering. The world wants to see fair play and humane behaviour, and it wants that more the longer the present situation continues and the worse the conditions become.
According to this cursory, lackluster analysis, the people imprisoned within the occupied territories have had a hand in creating the intolerable conditions they live under despite the fact their free and fair elections have been overturned by Israeli authorities, their leaders routinely imprisoned or targeted for assassination, or installed as paid stooges to carry out Israel’s security operations. By Ms Atwood’s lazy reckoning, the Palestinians themselves are somehow complicit in their own misery. Never mind that one side has no military, no air defenses, only limited and largely illusory political autonomy, and whose already scant institutions and infrastructure lie in a still smoldering pile of rubble. Meanwhile this deliberately starved population only survives on the meager, “diet”-inducing rations their Israeli occupiers call “humanitarian assistance”. Inflexible indeed. Israel’s long standing commitment to derailing every attempt to negotiate a peace settlement by refusing to halt or dismantle settlements is yet another inconvenient fact Ms Atwood prefers to overlook in a statement that reads more like a hastily signed condolence card than confirmation of a principled, well-reasoned stance.

Ms Atwood’s powers of keen and relentlessly fine-tuned observations – the hallmark of her deservedly lauded fiction – are nowhere in evidence outside the rarefied air of her novel writing efforts. When it comes to facts (Israel is guilty of war crimes and is in violation of countless UN resolutions, not to mention its Apartheid style of governance that grants democracy for a few and apartheid for the many) the Canadian novelist has a tin ear, playing mostly deaf to the chorus of condemnation that has dogged her since accepting the prize. Antoine Raffoul, a London based architect and founder of ’1948: Lest We Forget’ – a Palestinian rights organization publicly addressed her (and co-laureate Amitov Ghosh) in an open letter, politely pleading the case that their presence in Tel Aviv was in opposition to the values that the two authors presumably uphold as human rights advocates.

“We writers belong to a space one can call ‘Republic of writers’ and do not do cultural boycotts,” Atwood sniffed in response, conveniently overlooking her support of sanctions and cultural boycotts of Apartheid-era South Africa.

More recently, the author pulled out of the fledgling Emirates Airline international festival of literature to protest the organizers’ decision to withdraw their invitation to an author whose book was considered too controversial. Curiously, the free speech advocate couldn’t spare a similar show of solidarity with the blacklisted Palestinian writers she is unlikely to meet in Israel.

According to Atwood, “writers” are members of that elite, oft-awarded coterie of establishment liberals who lend their support to fashionable causes while attending cocktail receptions in their honor; a term that in other words doesn’t apply to rabble like Mr Raffoul, or the group of Palestinian students whose passionately articulated open letter to the author was greeted with a dismissive acknowledgment of having received it. Not surprisingly, The Republic of Writers, like its warm ally Israel, doesn’t grant citizenship to its Palestinian members, or anyone outside the highly fortified, well-appointed compound where Queen Margaret reigns as self-crowned head of state.

The prickly monarch goes on to dismiss criticism of her decision to accept half of a million dollar prize from a foundation run by a photo booth tycoon with ties to Zionist organizations. Dan David, the billionaire philanthropist for whom the prize is named, was overruled by his foundation’s board of trustees when early on in his philanthropic career he nominated Muslim-bashing Italian xenophobe Oriana Fallaci a prize for journalism. Clearly, the choice of Margaret Atwood as blood money beneficiary for her “moderate” (but no less ideological) brand of selective advocacy for human rights is meant to thwart unwanted scrutiny on this generous endowment at the hands of a right wing entrepreneur who conceals his zealotry behind a blandly institutional cloak of high culture. Mr David’s critics allege the tycoon is aiding and abetting his government’s propaganda efforts by dipping into his own personal slush fund to launch a charm offensive aimed at silencing Israel’s critics.

Ms Atwood’s disingenuous claims that the prize is “is a cultural event” and not “as has been erroneously stated, an “Israeli” prize from the State of Israel, nor is it a prize “from Tel Aviv University, but one founded and funded by an individual” proves she is either woefully unskilled at using a search engine, or that she has deliberately overlooked her billionaire benefactor’s unsavory, or at least questionable business and political ties in order to claim a cash prize. With its lucrative ties to the Israeli defense industry, Tel Aviv University is hardly a benign institution, nor one that is unaffiliated with Mr David’s philanthropic enterprises. Laureates are required to donate ten percent of their prize money to the university. Ms Atwood and her co-laureate Amitov Ghosh, whether they realize it or not, are not only aiding Israel’s propaganda efforts, but helping to directly fund its war machine.

It’s probably too late to hope that Ms Atwood’s atrophied powers of reasoning and compassion will compel her to recognize the ironies inherent in her host nation’s insistence that “Never Again” means business-as-usual when applying Nazi methodology to rid one’s country of a despised ethnic group. Based on her own reasoning, Ms Atwood might consider attending the next conference Iranian president Ahmadinejad hosts, where invited dignitaries debate the existence of the Holocaust. After all, how is this Iranian led peanut gallery aimed at burnishing its president’s standing among anti-US allies any different from the political stage craft Israel is orchestrating to shore up international support for its own beleaguered leadership? By her own admission, there is no topic off-limits to “dialogues across borders”, so why draw the line at holocaust denial? Or for that matter, Dubai book festivals?

Jennifer Matsui is a freelance writer living in Tokyo, Japan. This piece was contributed to PULSE by the author.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Russia: other members of the Quartet have contacts with Hamas

[ 14/05/2010 - 10:47 PM ]

MOSCOW, (PIC)-- The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Thursday that international communication had been opened with Hamas explaining that Moscow views Hamas as a movement that retains the confidence, sympathy and trust of a large segment of the Palestinian people.

Andre Neterenko, spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement that "Moscow does not consider Hamas an artificial organisation; rather it considers it one which relies on the confidence of a large portion of the Palestinian people who sympathise with it." He went on to highlight that "it is well known that Hamas won the majority of votes during the parliamentary elections held in the Palestinian territories in 2006 and which the international community deemed free and fair."

The Russian official emphasised that "contacts between us and Hamas are maintained regularly; just as it is well known that other members of the international Quartet on the Middle East have contact with Hamas in one way or another. However, for some incomprehensible reason, they shy away from admitting so publicly."

An earlier meeting between Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and the leader of Hamas' political bureau, Khaled Meshaal was met with disappointment and condemnation from Israel which has unleashed its anger on Medvedev. Israel's foreign minister has also rejected the invitation by Medvedev and Turkish Prime Minister, Abdullah Gul, to involve Hamas in the peace process.


Hamdan asks world community to amend its stands

[ 15/05/2010 - 07:24 AM ]

BEIRUT, (PIC)-- Osama Hamdan, the representative of Hamas in Lebanon, has called on the world community to amend its stands toward Hamas following the meeting in Damascus between Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Hamas supreme leader Khaled Mishaal.

Hamdan told Al-Jazeera TV network on Friday that what Medvedev had said about not ignoring Hamas constituted a step forward and an opportunity before the world to amend its stands regarding Hamas.

He said that the Israeli dismay at the Medvedev-Mishaal meeting reflected Israel's concern following its recent crisis with the USA, noting that Europe was also disturbed by Israel's practices, which together with Russia and the UN constitute the international quartet committee on the Middle East.

Medvedev expressed keenness on the release of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit but he also expressed understanding at the movement's demand for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, Hamdan said, noting that Hamas told the Russian head of state that it was interested in concluding the prisoners' exchange deal and that Israel was the one impeding it.

Zahhar: Hamas to brief European countries on its stands



River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Netanyahu will be pleased. Now UK has an upper-class coalition “fagging” for Israel

Netanyahu will be pleased. Now UK has an upper-class coalition “fagging” for Israel


By Stuart Littlewood

15 May 2010

Stuart Littlewood views the Zionist roots of Britain’s senior coalition party, the Conservatives, especially its leader David Cameron and the foreign secretary, William Hague, both self-confessed Israel stooges. He asks whether Nick Clegg, leader of the junior coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, will have the guts to neutralize the Conservatives’ Zionism and uphold his party’s position on Gaza and war crimes.

“I am proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel; and I am proud of the key role CFI plays within our Party.” – David Cameron, UK Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader

Conservative leader David "I'm-a-Zionist" Cameron didn't win the election but has managed to seize power by slipping between the sheets with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. This distasteful union should give them enough votes to survive in Parliament for the five years they have set themselves.

The glamour-boy duo, Cameron and Clegg, come from similar privileged backgrounds – top public schools and “Oxbridge”. Cameron is a product of Eton, the infamous Bullingdon Club and Oxford; Clegg arrived via Westminster and Cambridge.

Cameron, of course, is the boss of the coalition. Clegg is merely deputy prime minister, a post usually regarded as a non-job. “Birds of a feather: Cameron hires a new fag,” quipped one blogger.


"The spectacle we are more likely to be treated to is Cameron and his trusty lieutenant William Hague, fagging for the US and Israel."

For those unfamiliar with the peculiar practices of the English public school (public here meaning expensively private for the upper-class), “fagging” is where junior boys do menial tasks and act as a general dogsbody for senior boys such as lazy prefects eager to practice their bullying techniques and hone their cruel streak in preparation for later life.

I suspect Clegg is too rebellious to make a useful fag.  The spectacle we are more likely to be treated to is Cameron and his trusty lieutenant William Hague, fagging for the US and Israel. Within hours of taking office Britain’s new Foreign Secretary Hague was summoned by Washington to receive instruction on polishing Obama’s shoes and ironing Clinton’s slip.

No doubt he’ll soon be in Tel Aviv pressing Netanyahu’s suits, dusting his mantlepiece and filling the coal scuttle.

Cameron’s “new era” politics

In agreeing to support the most pro-Israel party in Britain Clegg said nothing about Middle East policy while Cameron promised a "new era" in British politics.

As everyone knows, Cameron and most of his party voted for the Iraq war. They, in my view, are not fit to govern. They say they "were misled". Ordinary citizens, however, were not misled and found ample information freely available to contradict the lies the warmongers were telling them. The truth is that the Conservatives, like the Labour government at the time, failed to exercise due diligence and go the extra mile to make sure of the facts before taking this country into a war we could ill afford against people who posed no threat. Or, you might suppose, they obeyed orders from a foreign power.

Either way, a few did their duty to Britain, the majority didn't.

What is even more disgusting is the way Cameron's Conservatives constantly preach family values while happy, apparently, for innocent families elsewhere – in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine - to be vapourised, blown to smithereens and terribly maimed in their countless thousands, or terrorized and starved into submission by sanctions and blockades.


"Cameron is ... more concerned about the security and prosperity of Israel's murdering land-grabbers than the plight of their victims, the Christian communities in the Holy Land and their Muslim neighbours."

Now, incredibly, they are considering inflicting the same collective punishment on Iranians for developing a domestic nuclear programme which they are perfectly entitled to.

Furthermore, Cameron has failed to clean up his party, and I don't mean the scandalous expense-fiddling. Thanks in large part to the Channel 4 TV’s “Dispatches” programme we know that the Conservative Party, like Labour, has its palm greased by the Israel lobby.  Cameron is a self-declared Zionist pledged to defend the state of Israel come what may. It seems he's more concerned about the security and prosperity of Israel's murdering land-grabbers than the plight of their victims, the Christian communities in the Holy Land and their Muslim neighbours.

He’s a very confused fag.

An organization called the Conservative Friends of Israel claims it "works to promote its twin aims of supporting Israel and promoting Conservatism. With close to 2,000 activists as members – alongside 80 per cent of Tory MPs – CFI is active at every level of the party." Cameron endorses it enthusiastically: “I am proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel; and I am proud of the key role CFI plays within our Party.”

Back in 2006 The Jewish Chronicle reported on the backers bankrolling Cameron's bid for power. That report was sent to the Committee on Standards in Public Life as an example of how the pro-Israel lobby infiltrates government and undermines the very principles for which the committee, as the nation’s watchdog, had been established to uphold. The committee ignored it. Corruption runs deeper than you think here.

It is bad news all round that Hague is the new foreign secretary. He is, in his own words, "a longstanding friend of Israel and someone who joined Conservative Friends of Israel at the age of 15". He once said: “The unbroken thread of Conservative Party support for Israel that has run for nearly a century from the Balfour Declaration to the present day will continue."

Hague’s appearance bears a startling resemblance to a neo-con skinhead, so he must fit into the Washington scene nicely. He said in an interview during the election campaign that the most urgent issue facing him, should he find himself in the Foreign Office, would be the Iranian nuclear programme. "We have consistently been the party arguing for tough sanctions and a strong European approach over the last few years, and are very frustrated that this hasn't emerged strongly enough." He wants Britain to give Iranians a good kicking by adopting the same sanctions regime against Iranian financial institutions as the United States and seeking European agreement on blocking investment in Iran's vast oil and gas fields.

So why isn’t he just as eager to put the boot in against Israel on account of its massive nuclear weapons stockpile, which is a grave threat the region and even Europe, and the regime’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (which Iran has signed)?

He’s a very confused skinhead.

Another thing. All states which are party to the Geneva Conventions are obliged to seek out and either prosecute or extradite those suspected of having committed grave breaches of the conventions and bring them, regardless of nationality, to court.  
 
"Grave breaches" means willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and other serious violations of the laws of war – the sort of atrocities that are committed wholesale by Israel in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

But in order to protect the unsavoury foreign prefects they fag for, the Conservatives, like Labour, are planning to abandon our solemn obligations under international law. Their shadow attorney-general said, before the election, that the Conservatives “will change the law if this government [i.e. Labour] doesn't... There is support for this from David Cameron and William Hague downwards."

In short, Cameron and Hague hope to create a safe haven here in the UK for all psychopaths and bloodthirsty guttersnipes wanted for war crimes, especially Israel's top brass.

On the all-important foreign affairs front Nick Clegg, therefore, will have an almost impossible task trying to keep the Cameron-Hague wing of the coalition in check and focused on Britain’s best interests.

Is there a silver lining?

I’m sorry to be the bringer of such gloomy news. However, there may yet be a glimmer of hope beneath this unremitting black cloud.


"... without the Liberal Democrats, Cameron's Conservatives are doomed. So it will be interesting to see how far Clegg's lads can go in neutralizing the Zionist Tendency that stains our politics."

The Liberal Democrats' stated policy on Gaza is

  • to prosecute and compel the appearance of witnesses to investigate war crimes arising out of Israel’s attack on Gaza, whether by Israel, Hamas or any other party;
  • the existing EU-Israel Association Agreement should be suspended since Israel has continued its illegal blockade of Gaza;
  • the update for Israel’s Association Agreement with the EU should also continue to be suspended;
  • the EU should review whether Israel is in enduring breach of Article 2 of the Association Agreement; and
  • there should be an arms embargo on Israel by Britain and the EU.

What's more, Nick Clegg wrote a punchy article "Lift the Gaza blockade" last December in The Guardian. In it he said:

What has the British government and the international community done to lift the blockade? Next to nothing. Tough-sounding declarations are issued at regular intervals but little real pressure is applied. It is a scandal that the international community has sat on its hands in the face of this unfolding crisis…

The EU has huge economic influence over Israel, and it believes the blockade must be lifted. At the same time as exercising leverage over Hamas, it should make clear that the web of preferential agreements which now exists between the EU and Israel – from Israeli access to EU research and development funds to recently improved access for Israeli agricultural products – will be brought into question if there is no rapid progress…

Gordon Brown and the international community must urgently declare that enough is enough. The blockade must end.

The question is, does Clegg have enough leverage to shame his new work colleagues, Cameron and Hague, into taking the action Brown neglected to?

Of course, that would infuriate the nasty prefects. But without the Liberal Democrats, Cameron's Conservatives are doomed. So it will be interesting to see how far Clegg's lads can go in neutralizing the Zionist Tendency that stains our politics.

I assume Clegg has taken note of Israel’s threats to attack the Free Gaza flotilla, which soon sails to deliver humanitarian aid and break the evil blockade. Is it too much to ask that he insists Cameron orders the Royal Navy to provide an escort in order to guarantee the freedom of the seas and protect British and other nationals who are doing what he, Clegg, has been urging, what the world wants to see and what the contemptible international community should have done long ago?



Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian