[Reader-list] The People Of Israel Must Liberate Themselves By Liberating Palestine

[Asit Das]

Holocaust survivors indict Israel’s massacre in Gaza 26 August 2014

In a letter published as an advertisement Saturday in the *New York Times*,
over 350 survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and descendants of survivors
issued a stinging condemnation of “the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and
the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine.”

The statement went on to denounce the US government for funding Israel’s
war machine and other Western states for protecting Israel diplomatically.
“Genocide begins with the silence of the world,” it warned.

The Holocaust survivors pointed with alarm to disturbing parallels to
Nazism emerging within Israeli society, including “the extreme, racist
dehumanization of Palestinians,” open calls for genocide against the
Palestinians by “politicians and pundits,” and the fact that “right-wing
Israelis are adopting Neo-Nazi insignia.”

The correctness of this assessment found speedy confirmation in the form of
Facebook
postings by Israeli rightists telling those who had signed the declaration
to “go back to Auschwitz” or “go die in the gas chambers,” and lamenting
that “Hitler didn’t finish the job.”

Significantly, the statement was drafted as a repudiation of a vile
advertisement published over the name of Elie Wiesel that compared Hamas,
the Islamist ruling party in Gaza, to the Nazis, accusing it of engaging in
“child sacrifice” by using civilians as “human shields.” This is the lie
employed by the Israeli state to justify its slaughter of over 2,100
Palestinians, including 577 children, since July 7.

The signatories to the letter by Holocaust survivors declared themselves
“disgusted and outraged” by Wiesel’s “abuse of our history… to justify the
unjustifiable” mass killings in Gaza.

Wiesel, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, serves as a
semi-official US state propagandist, specializing in exploiting the
Holocaust as a means of justifying crimes against humanity carried out by
Israel and US imperialism. Answering Wiesel’s moral hypocrisy in invoking
the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis to defend Israel’s mass murder of
Palestinians, the statement concluded, “‘Never again’ must mean NEVER AGAIN
FOR ANYONE!”

The brutality of the latest Israeli war on Gaza has shocked and outraged
people all over the world, including many Jews. The wanton killing of
civilians and the massive destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, mosques
and infrastructure such as water, electricity and sanitation give the
impression of an Israeli regime that has lost its head.

This slaughter flows inexorably from the logic of Zionism and the
principles upon which the Israeli state was founded. It is by no means an
aberration, following a decades-long series of one-sided bloodlettings,
from the Deir Yassim massacre of 1948 through to successive rounds of mass
killing in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

The current military campaign against the 1.8 million Palestinians of Gaza,
however, is among the most brutal, and it has been accompanied by a wave of
right-wing hysteria and chauvinism that at times echoes the politics of the
Nazi regime itself. This only serves to underscore that 66 years after the
founding of the state of Israel, the Zionist project has reached a dead
end, and no amount of bombs, missiles and shells can overcome its
intractable contradictions.

Zionism as a movement has always fed off of the defeats of the working
class and pessimism generated by the crimes of the capitalist system. It
developed a mass following thanks to World War II and the Nazi Holocaust,
combined with the betrayals of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy.

Before then, Jewish workers and intellectuals had looked to the workers’
movement and the struggle for socialism as the means of eradicating all
forms of oppression, including anti-Semitism. Israel was based on the
negation of this perspective.

Zionism’s ethnic and religious nationalism and the establishment of the
state of Israel were justified with the contention that the Holocaust was
inevitable and that its repetition could be prevented only through the
establishment of a Jewish state based upon the dispossession of the
Palestinians. The atrocities of the Nazis were invoked as a defense against
any criticism of the crimes against humanity carried out by the Israeli
state itself, which in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere employed tactics that
resembled nothing so much as the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Thus, the letter signed by the Holocaust survivors and descendants of
survivors strikes at the heart of Zionist ideology. It embodies the
universalist, humanitarian, liberal and even socialist ideals with which
the Jewish people had been identified for generations—ideals that made them
a target of Nazism and the political right, and which today provoke the
fury of their counterparts within Israel itself. In this sense, it is
indicative of a deep-going crisis developing within Israeli society.

The political prescription offered by the letter is a “full economic,
cultural and academic boycott of Israel.” The *World Socialist Web Site* is
not in agreement with this approach. It amounts to a moral appeal to the
capitalists in the US and Europe to exert pressure on their Israeli
counterparts to accept the so-called “two-state solution”—an unviable trap
for the Palestinian people—as a more sustainable means of defending their
profit interests.

Inasmuch as Israel’s crimes would be impossible without the support of the
United States and the other major powers, the call for a boycott raises the
obvious question of “why stop at Israel?” Why not a boycott of the US,
Britain, etc.?

And rather than an academic boycott, those opposed to the crimes being
carried out in Gaza should fight for the maximum interaction with Israeli
academics and intellectuals as part of the fight to develop a principled
opposition to the Israeli state.

Most importantly, there is a working class and a class struggle in Israel,
one of the most socially polarized countries on the planet. It is to this
social force—the working class—that those seeking to put a stop to the
unending war and social reaction embodied in Zionism must turn.

The only way out of the present bloody morass lies through the struggle to
unite Jewish and Palestinian workers within Israel with the Arab working
class of the region as a whole, drawing the fight against Zionism into the
mainstream of the fight against imperialism and the struggle for the
socialist transformation of society on a world scale.

Bill Van Auken

*Blaming God For ‘All-Living-Things' Massacre In Je richo Set Hair Raising
Precedent *


*By Jay Janson*

25 August, 2014
*Countercurrents.org*

*A*nother slaughter of men, women and children in the land of the Bible.
Probably some or many have heard the voice of God demanding it.

At first glance this article will seem to be an impropriety, a critical
discussion of someone else's  religion.  But the Old Testament of the Bible
is part of the Christian Bible and your author was raised as a Catholic.
And personally, the Old Testament story of God asking after Cain's brother,
taught to me by nuns prior to my first holy communion at age seven, made a
lasting and life affecting permanent impression. I always imagine Him
asking me about my Korean, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Congolese, Latin
American, Iraqi, Syrian, Libyan, Afghani, Somaili, Yemeni brothers, for
whom I, as an American, have responsibility for their having been murdered.

For some seemingly inexplicable and illogical reason, the far more ancient
Bible of the Jews, with its running examples of an eye-for-an-eye
tooth-for-a-tooth in obvious and direct contradiction to the teaching of
Jesus, which prohibits even raising one's hand in anger against another
person, is worshiped as much or more than the New Testament of Jesus'
revolutionary teachings. I recently scanned on line a whole season of
Sunday sermons at New York's prestigious interdenominational Christian
Riverside Church, and found the name of Jesus unmentioned in sermon after
sermon on teachings from the Old Testament or Jewish Bible.

So here goes your long serious student of the teaching of Siddhartha
Gautama (called the ‘Buddha' or enlightened one), but still a follower of
Jesus, wondering out loud about how the genocidal orders of God written in
the Old Testament factor out in our astounding age of exploration of the
nearby reaches of the universe.

Half way thru the last millennium yours truly, as a novice musician,
enjoyed jamming or so to say improvising, on the famous African American
spiritual, Joshua Fit' the Battle of Jericho. 'One two three four…
Joshua Fit' the Battle of Jer ree koh,  Jer ree koh,  Jer ree  koh  (tah
daaah  dat ),
Joshua Fit' the Battle of Jer ree koh,  and the walls came a tumblen' down'
...

At the age of seventeen, your author had not yet read the Bible in its
original words. I just knew stories from the Bible in illustrated large
type children's books, and had heard this swinging tune sung in church by
gospel and children's choirs.
Eventually, while still a teenager, I did come to read in the Bible's Book
of Joshua that Joshua obeyed God's command that no living thing be left
alive once Jericho was conquered by God's help and will.  I remember
thinking, ‘Wow this is heavy!' But I just let it go, though it was a jolt
to know that such an incomprehensible and mass murderous attribution to
God's will is stated in the Bible. Two billion of us are taught to believe,
or at least say we believe, the Bible is the ‘word of God' - something like
a rule book to live by.
Fast forward to the time of university study of world literature,
philosophy and the English language, which of course contains many words
that are defined by a knowledge of the Bible.  A student is to learn and
master what is part of his curriculum.  I just let go of any annoying
questions about sentences in the Bible, which be contradictory to
morality,  common sense, logic and common law. I thought, with no
disrespect to anyone who worshiped the Bible, first written by scribes of a
desert people at a time when the earth was thought to be flat, that it
should not be taken as anything more than the written tradition and history
of one specific Middle Eastern people - who heard the voice of God, Who,
since then has apparently held His silence. I mean this is the space age.
Today, we know our planet Earth, with its homo sapiens specie, is most
likely only one planet among millions with intelligent life forms.

So I began to wonder about those worshipers and children shaking
tambourines and singing "Joshua ‘Fit the Battle of Jericho!"  It is hard to
imagine those singing so joyously “and the wall(s) come a' tumblen' down,"
know what happened after the wall was down (shudder), as described in
chapter six of the Book of Joshua 6:20-21

“ ... and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down
flat, so that the people went up into the city,
every man straight before him, and they took the city.
6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and
woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the
sword.”

The Book of Joshua continues with:

"11:11. They struck every person who was in it with the edge of the sword,
utterly destroying them; there was no one left who breathed... 12 Joshua
captured all the cities of these kings, and all their kings, and he struck
them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; just as Moses
the servant of the Lord had commanded. 14 ... They left no one who
breathed. 15 Just as the Lord had commanded Moses his servant, so Moses
commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did; " [from the New Standard American
Bible]

Whew! but wait, this is only one of many quotes from the Old Testament or
Jewish Bible that call for the slaying of 'everything that breathes,' that
I would come across later, without any intention at all to look for them.

The fourth book of the Torah or Bible, Deuteronomy 20:16–18 reads: “Only in
the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an
inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you
shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and
the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has
commanded you …”15 "And Moses said to them,  17 “Now therefore, kill every
male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man
intimately. 18 “But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare
for yourselves."

The First Book of Samuel reads:

“Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to
them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants,
cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” 3 Now go and smite Amalek, and
utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man
and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

I would like describe the personal circumstances within which I, starting
at age eighty, came to discover these last quotes and began to ask about
them.

I was in hospital waiting to have a stress test, and in the waiting room
lay a Bible. To kill time, I picked it up and opened it arbitrarily about
in the middle. I had opened it to the Books of Samuel. Now as the story of
Saul continues past the above quote, it turns out that Saul did not kill
some valuable animals as instructed by the prophet Samuel as being God's
will and command. The prophet Samuel denounces Saul as disobedient. Saul
protests that his intention was to sacrifice  the animals to God, and
Samuel says God would rather you follow his orders. At that point it had
become my turn for the stress test, and I stopped reading. After the test,
I noticed a doctor in the corridor with a yamaka atop his head, and I told
him that I had just read by happenstance Book 1 of Samuel and would love to
ask him how Jewish parents deal with relating that God is said to have
ordered the massacre of an entire community even the tiny children and
animals. To my dumbfounded surprise this doctor of medicine sworn to
protect life and apparently doing so, replied, “God's orders have to be
obeyed." "They were evil people,” the doctor added, looking me straight in
the eye and continued walking down the corridor.

In my mind I wanted to write him off as a weirdo, but did so uneasily.
Earlier, I had gotten the same answer from a Rabbi and a Yeshiva University
grad student regarding the Jericho slaughter of children.

The year before, on a bus, a rather elderly Rabbi sat down in the seat next
to me. After chatting about whatever for a bit, I said I would like to take
advantage of this meeting a distinguished Rabbi (head of a West Side
Manhattan congregation he had told me), to ask a question that I, as a
father of children, always wondered about,  “What do you tell small
children about the killing of even the little children in Jericho?" (In my
mind, I was thinking how frightened I would been as a child hearing that
the little children and animals were killed by ‘command of God,' and
imagining it being carried out )
“They were evil people, and God's orders have to be obeyed,” the rabbi
quietly explained looking straight ahead.
? “But why were they evil,” I asked (so taken aback that I forgot to ask
why innocent children be included, and the full bearded pleasant enough
looking Rabbi, responded, “They were worshiping the wrong God.” I started
to say, but what if someone would aim to kill us for worshiping the wrong
God, and that this could go on forever, as the Rabbi, smiling at me
politely, got up to get off at his stop.

The year before this encounter, a handsome red-bearded young man, wearing
the large black fedora wide-brimmed dress hat common for orthodox Jews in
New York, had approached me on the street in Spanish Harlem very politely
introducing himself as a graduate student at Yeshiva University, and had
asked me if perhaps I knew whether or not I had any Jewish ancestry. I said
didn't think so, but not for sure, as I had a great grandfather who was of
dark complexion and known to have been always on the run from police in
Poland, whereupon, he produced literature for people with some possibility
of having Jewish blood. I smiled and said I wasn't interested in this vague
possibility, but was glad for the opportunity to ask an expert student of
Judaism a question (the same question I would ask the Rabbi a year later).
He seemed not interested in the question, maybe because he was busy on this
class project of searching for people that might become Jews, but while
hurrying off had answered quickly more or less the same as the Rabbi would
later answer me, shrugging his shoulders and opening his arms wide as he
moved away from me while I was pressing him about a child's reaction to
such hearing of adults running a sword through little children and their
animals.

After the third try in the hospital with the Jewish doctor, I had decided
there must to a way for Jews and Christians to explain why ‘even the
children and the animals' were ordered killed without frightening a child
being taught the Torah or Bible.

As an archival research peoples historian who worked a bit with Howard
Zinn, I found that in that brutal ancient time in Middle East history and
elsewhere, killing the male children, who would grow to be warriors and
probably be taught vengeance, and killing the women,  who would give birth
to more warriors, was a logical precaution for the conquering society's
future protection.

I thought to write to progressive journalist, publisher and editor of
Tikkum magazine, Rabbi Michael Lerner, a dear friend of a mutual friend Sid
Peck, one of the three organizers of the anti-Vietnam war demonstration in
Washington that brought down the Johnson administration. Rabbi Lerner had
personally endorsed the Howard Zinn's and Ramsey Clark founded ‘King
Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign.'

Rabbi Lerner wrote back that he had written a whole book about this
uncomfortable subject, titled A Jewish Renewal. I found a copy in the New
York Public Library and read it, and here from page 91, after relating the
genocidal terrorism demanded by Moses and sundry other similar ghastly
“show-no-mercy” instructions the Bible describes as those of God, my friend
Rabbi Michael pounces nicely with “I confront these passages and the entire
“ Joshua tradition” not to judge those who adopted it, but to say in the
most unequivocal terms: This is not the voice of God, but the voice of pain
and cruelty masquerading as the voice of God.”

Great! but we have been brought up with these stories “masquerading” as
true stories of God. We sing about them, look at masterpiece paintings of
them,  read them quoted in secular literature, and they remain planted in
our consciousness as biblical truth. A lot of the time we are told these
stories as children with the frightening and ghastly parts, like for
instance, what happened to the children of conquered Jericho, left out?

On page 45 one finds Rabbi Michael's breathtakingly comforting “What kind
of a God would order what Abraham heard ordered?” referring to the Biblical
story of an angle staying Abraham hand about to slay his son at God's
order. Genesis 22:1-16

Rabbi Lerner seems to be in accord with Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz, Chief
Rabbi of the United Kingdom from 1913 until his death in 1946,  a period
encompassing both world wars and the Holocaust. Hertz interprets Genesis
22:1-16  as demonstrating to the Jews on the contrary that human sacrifice
is abhorrent. Rabbi Hertz, "Unlike the cruel heathen deities, it was the
spiritual surrender alone that God required." Hertz points out that in
Jeremiah 32:35, God, Jehovah via Jeremiah, states that the later Israelite
practice of child sacrifice to the deity Molech "had [never] entered My
mind that they should do this abomination." (Because of this "abomination"
and others, Jehovah, via Jeremiah  gives the Israelis into the hands of the
Assyrians as punishment. "Jeremiah 32:28. Therefore thus saith Jehovah:
Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the
hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it:" ) [Binding
of Isaac - Wikipedia]

Other passages in the Bible give a history of kings sacrificing their sons
to placate God or plead for his protection in battle. This Biblical fact
puts Abraham hearing or dreaming he heard God tell him to kill his son in a
different context. And as far as God testing the loyalty of  his worshipers
goes, the story of Job being tested includes the death of all his children,
who are not restored as part of God's well earned satisfaction and
bountiful rewards. Seems normal to ask, why does the God of the Jews, Who
everyone else is taught to be the only God there is for all Mankind, have
to do loyalty checks, on the humans He has created?  There are, after all,
religions in Asia, Africa and North America that teach of a God or gods
that are described as confident of their creations' loyalty and having an
understanding of human frailty.

Your author has run some searches on various nations in Asia, Africa and
North America and found many religious beliefs that fit our age of outer
space exploration very well.

Why in the twenty-first century, shall these anxiety causing passages not
be helpfully annotated accordingly in all editions? I mean, given the
relief of what both Rabbis Lerner and Hertz offers us, why are a billion
worshipers of the Bible and perhaps another billion nominal worshipers,
still saddled with horrifying stories of God ordering the wiping out of
children and the sacrifice of someone's firstborn. Apparently, they need
not be so awfully convoluted and difficult to sort out to make fit for
child, mom and dad consumption as Biblical teaching?

Back on page 47 of A Jewish Renewal, the reader would have read, “we get a
different reading of the Torah, one that sees this cruelty as part of God's
will, so that our task is to be faithful to God's cruelty but to disallow
human cruelty.” And on the next page Rabbi Lerner wrote about
“distinguish[ing] between the word of God and the unconscious legacy of
pain presenting itself as if it were the voice of God.”

For Michael's insistence that what we have learned to waltz with is
opprobrious and fraudulent, the reader might come to be anticipating some
sort of showdown with the popular consumption of the Bible as we know it
through its stories. Unfortunately, however, the following  two hundred and
fifty pages disappointingly seem to temporize and leave readers to make
their own judgement about Rabbi Lerner's powerful statements in the first
hundred pages.

Recently, while waiting to be called in the dental school of a prestigious
Jewish hospital, I became engaged in conversation with a fellow patient who
turned out to be Israeli. I mentioned having come close to being invited to
join the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra but  choose to go on a State
Department Cultural Exchange Tour of the Soviet Union instead of taking up
the invite to audition with Lenny Bernstein (who I had already worked
under) for the Israel job. I asked her about life in the Israel I had
missed out on living in, and that got her talking at length quite
emotionally until at one point she became distraught and cried out wildly,
“They should kill all the Palestinians! all of them!” so loudly that I
thought best to terminate our conversation about Israel for the shock on
the faces of the largely African Americans and Hispanics in the dental
school waiting room.

I thought, now, this was only one person's distraught outcry, but I wasn't
looking for it, or expecting this insanity from an obviously low income,
although very upset Israeli. Of course all these above related personal
surprising experiences are but one persons experiences, someone else will
have entirely different experiences.  But still, your author asks himself
whether the lady in the dentist school office was perhaps influenced by the
wild genocidal taking of lives written of in the Holy Torah and Bible?

I feel the same suspicion regarding influence of the Biblical stories of
God ordered genocide in the following Jerusalem Post headlined report:
Rabbi Lior: Jewish law permits destruction of Gaza to bring safety to
Israel
“Rabbi Dov Lior, a national- religious leader and the chief rabbi of Kiryat
Arba and Hebron, published a letter on Monday saying that Jewish law
permits destroying the entire Gaza Strip to bring peace to the south of the
country.” [
http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Rabbi-Lior-Jewish-law-permits-destruction-of-Gaza-to-bring-safety-to-Israel-368605
]

But interestingly, for all the homicidal violence related in their (our)
Bible, Jews have been a completely non-violent people for more than 2000
years, while Christians have been often exterminating Jews and Muslims and
massacring each other in the name of a gentler God.  All the more striking
is the genocide practicing military of a nation proclaiming itself to be a,
or the, Jewish nation, presently repeating the merciless Christmas
slaughter of 2008 on its captive population of Gaza.

University study installs a warm respect for the intellectualism and
gentleness of Jews, and for their geniuses within the firmament of stars of
human endeavor. Anyone with half an education can reel off names of the
inordinate number of renowned Jewish scientists, philosophers, inventors,
composers, physicians, artists, singers, musicians, educators, actors,
movie producing moguls, and comedians revered as seminal contributors to
Western civilization.

This respect does not fit with an amazing irrepressible feeling that a
yamaka now can now suggest a helmet more than purity of mind, as so many
Jews in the US seem to feel forced to go along with whatever horrors this
Zionist state, representing a colonial powers crime against humanity and
against a captive population of the British Empire, perpetrates.

Chalk it up to the aftereffect and fallout of the beyond comprehension
creepy chilling freaky massive human genocidal insanity that was the
Holocaust?

No, as a historian, no! Chalk it up to something a more fundamental and
underlying cause, namely, the Colonial Powers' business as usual. For few
Jews seem interested that the Holocaust was facilitated by all fifty top US
corporations heavily investing in and joint venturing with the Nazis to
build up the Wehrmacht of a prostate Germany to world's number one military
power in five short years while Hitler continually was making clear his
intentions for Jews, communists and the USSR. This lack of interest might
be attributed to the fact that the same corporate America also facilitated
the use of Holocaust survivors, denying them refuge in the wide USA, but
claiming to be helping them by throwing them into another lethal
predicament for the sake of a imperialist outpost in the middle of Arab
oil. Citizens of the US-created Israeli state be not wanting to bite the
hand that financially and militarily feeds.
[see US Economic Facilitation of Holocaust and Middle East Destabilizing
Partition
<http://www.minorityperspective.co.uk/2012/12/06/us-economic-facilitation-of-holocaust-and-middle-east-destabilizing-partition/>
http://www.minorityperspective.co.uk/2012/12/06/us-economic-facilitation-of-holocaust-and-middle-east-destabilizing-partition/

The story is told in detail in a scrupulously documented long article, on
the economic facilitation of the Holocaust, WWII and Partition also
published as:

US Invested Heavily in Hitler Facilitating Holocaust Used Survivors to
Destabilize Arabia in Three Parts: History, Deception and Imagining by Jay
Janson. June 9, 2011, by Counter Currents, Kerala, India
Synopsis: Israel is in bed with a US business elite that once heavily
invested in Hitler, was itself anti-Semitic in outlook, coldly indifferent
and even complicit during the Holocaust its investments made possible. A
popular quip in Yiddish goes,“with such friends, who needs (voice rising in
pitch) enemies?” Arabs saved Jews from Christian persecutions in 637, 1187,
1492. Now Christians are persecuting Arabs. Needed! Jewish-Arab Semitic
solidarity. ]

As to the neocolonial genocide-backing media citing Zionist claims on the
Holy Land, we can chose between the following Biblical quotes and what
Jewish Albert Einstein thought.
Exodus 23:31
“I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the
Philistines, and from the desert to the River. I will hand over to you the
people who live in the land and you will drive them out before you.”
Ezekiel 47:19
“On the south side it will run from Tamar as far as the waters of Meribah
Kadesh, then along the Wadi of Egypt to the Great Sea. This will be the
south boundary.”
Genesis 15:18
"On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your
descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river,
the Euphrates ."

here is what Einstein confided to a close friend in a letter dated January
1954, "For me the unaltered Jewish religion like all other religions is an
incarnation of the most primitive superstitions."

And one might add that amazingly, according to the Ottoman Empire census of
1850, there were less than twenty thousand Jews in all Palestine for so
many thousand having migrated to the more developed Europe.

Also see God Gave Them Someone Else's ‘Land Of Milk & Honey'
<http://www.countercurrents.org/janson081011.htm>To Conquer Twice? by jay
janson
www.countercurrents.org/janson081011.htm, Counter Currents, Kerala, India

Einstein along with Martin Buber and hundreds or thousands of Jewish
intellectuals had vigorously warned against partition, and as the expected
and prepared lethal violence was set off by the criminal UN ‘Plan' creating
a separate ethnic state unfolded, Einstein wrote in the New York Times of
December 4, 1948: “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our
times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom
Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization,
methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist
parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former
Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in
Palestine.

A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin.
This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken
no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use
the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands
attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the
fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and
kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of
Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed but the
terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this
massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents
present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at
Deir Yassin. .. they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism,
religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties
they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the
destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed
corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model. During the last years of
sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a
reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up
for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children
join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread
robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy
tribute.  The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the
constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built
no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. …a
Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike),
and misrepresentation are means, and a "Leader State" is the goal. … it is
imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in
this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American
Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose
to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to [Menachem]
Begin."

Writing to Neturei Karta International to ask how many Orthodox Jews oppose
the existence of Israel as it does, brought the following response
"Torah-true, religious Jews who are against the Zionist State number close
to a million worldwide and comprise the majority of Orthodox communities."

A very welcomed and logical clarification was included in Neturei Karta's
answer, "Judaism is a religion, not a nation or race, and so non-religious
Jews can say whatever they want, but not in the name of JUDAISM."

Something else that has been submerged into obscurity, is that until US
world hegemonic business interests bankrolled right wing Zionists into
leadership, the majority of Zionists, religious and secular, were
socialists and communists opposed to colonialism. My first summer job as an
undergraduate student in 1951 was playing with some members of the
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for Yiddish Theater at the socialist Workmen's
Circle Camp on Sylvan Lake NY.  The camp of the communist wing of Workmen's
Circle was on the opposite side of the lake. Although the kind of right
wing terrorists, Einstein had denounced had been long in charge in Israel
and committed to a Greater Israel, the wonderful people at the Workman's
camp were by my recollection international socialists and of course by
large, Zionists. I, as the only Goyim, besides a Chinese dishwasher, was
exposed to a joyous basic education in Sholem Aleichem Jewish humor,
dietary laws, politics and customs, perhaps the happiest summer of my life.
The musician, a close friend, also Goyim, who took that position in Israel,
that I might have taken, related to me, his having had a super unhappy year
of a steadfastly isolated existence in Tel Aviv and having been turned off
by the much worse treatment of Arab Israelis he witnessed.

In any case Israel was really created by the Christian colonial powers that
occupied or controlled most of the world at the time and still do today as
the Christian neocolonial powers. My next article 'Until the Partition is
Recognized as a Colonial Crime Against Humanity …' will seek to make this
clear.

Maybe if the New Testament were the only Bible of Christians, Christians
would not have been so overwhelming in number apostate to Jesus' teaching
of non-violence, and Mahatma Gandhi might not have ever commented, “I like
your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike
your Christ.”

With reports in recent years of Buddhist monks leading mobs in deadly
attacks on citizens in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, the irreligious and homicidal
use of organized religion by the inhumane business interests that have
controlled society in most of the world for centuries, seems all
encompassing.

Perhaps a more profound understanding and use of the sacred scripture of
all influential religions would make it more difficult for mega genocidal
thieving and enslaving amoral private speculative banking backed
neocolonialism and its imperialist militarized media to overcome Mankind's
natural spirituality and humanity.

*Jay Janson* is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician
and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media
published in China, Italy, UK, India and the US; now resides in NYC; First
effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering
seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media
published in Hong Kong's Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to
various projects of his; Global Research; Information Clearing House;
Counter Currents, Kerala, India; Minority Perspective, UK; Dissident Voice,
Ta Kung Pao; Uruknet; Voice of Detroit; Mathaba; Ethiopian Review;
Palestine Chronicle; India Times; MalaysiaSun; China Daily; South China
Morning Post; Come Home America; CubaNews; TurkishNews; HistoryNews
Network; Vermont Citizen News have  published his articles; 300
<http://www.opednews.com/author/author1723.html>of which are available at:
click http://www.opednews.com/author/author1723.html ; Weekly column, South
China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily,
1989.  Is coordinator of the  King Condemned US Wars International
Awareness Campaign  <http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/>: (King
Condemned US Wars) http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/ and website
historian of  Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign
<http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/>
http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/ featuring a
country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining.

 *The People Of Israel Must Liberate Themselves By Liberating Palestine*

*By Dr. Ludwig Watzal*

25 August, 2014
*Countercurrents.org*

The archbishop of South Africa and an icon in the anti-Apartheid struggle,
Desmond Tutu (1) , published an article in the Israeli daily "Haaretz" from
14 August 2014, in which he called on the Israeli people to liberate
themselves by liberating the oppressed people of Palestine. Tutu asked a
crowd at a demonstration to chant with him against the illegal occupation
of Palestine and all the cruelties against the Palestinian people that were
committed by the Zionist occupying regime in Palestine. But he also told
the demonstrators that ""We are not opposed to Jews."

Tutu called for a worldwide support of the BDS movement, which calls on
international corporations and organizations to withdraw their investments
from companies that do good businesses with Israel. According to Tutu, 17
EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing
in illegal Israeli colonial settlements. Besides a call for divestments,
the BDS calls for boycott and sanctions against Israel as long as the
Zionist occupation regime strangles the People of Palestine.

The archbishop condemned those in Palestine for firing missiles at Israel,
but he blamed even more the Israeli side for causing thousands of death and
devastating devastations in the Gaza Strip. "The State of Israel is
behaving as if there is no tomorrow." Tutu was also very clear "that the
people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and
freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world."
According to the late Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University,
Baruch Kimmerling, the Palestinian People have the right to use any weapons
at their disposal to fight for their freedom and self-determination.

Tutu's plea for non-violence might have worked in South Africa, but will it
also work under the prevailing dominance of Zionist ideology? Will his
appeal be heard by a right-wing nationalist government or an ideologically
intoxicated population that calls for the separation between Israelis and
Palestinians or for the expulsion of the Arab minority from the State of
Israel? "Death to Arabs" or "Arabs to the Gas" are common political slogans
at demonstrations. Haven't just over 10 000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv
for the re-occupation of the Gaza Strip? Who in Israel could bring about a
mind-set shift, when people like Gideon Levy be in fear of his life by just
holding up the horror-mirror of Gaza to his compatriots?

With all due respect for the political achievements of Archbishop Tutu,
Israel is not South Africa. The European Jewry had to go through the hell
of the Holocaust, which makes the difference in the attitude of the Western
governments in their support of whatever brutal occupying regime over the
Palestinian people reigns in Israel. Successful boycotts that have been
applied in South Africa will not lead to the same results in Israel. To get
anywhere politically in Israel, one has to get rid of the racist and
colonial ideology of Zionism. Without this ideological superstructure
Israel could be a state like any other. Wasn't that the vision the founder
of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, dreamed of, when he wrote his pamphlet "The
Jewish State"? Why doesn't the international community help to make Herzl's
dream come true, so Israelis and Palestinians can finally live together
peacefully in a secular and democratic bi-national state?

*Dr. Ludwig Watzal *works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He
runs the bilingual blog between the lines.
http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de/

1. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.610687




 *The Continual And Unconscionable Failure To Punish Israel For Its *
*Evil Crimes Against Humanity Results From Collective Cowardice  **And
Constitutes Criminal Cooperation And Culpable Complicity*

*By William Hanna*

25 August, 2014
*Countercurrents.org*

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have
acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence
of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible
for evil to triumph.”

*Haile Selassie *, former Emperor of Ethiopia (1892-1975)

After more than sixty years of being paralysed into silence by the Zionist
venom — the stigma of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial — that prevented
condemnation of incalculable cheating, lying,  stealing, murdering, and
ruthless violation of the legal and natural human rights of the Palestinian
people by a nation devoid of conscience, humanity, or any of the noble
principles of the religion to which it claims to belong, the world in
general and the West in particular have once again been witness to Israel's
latest arrogant, barbaric, and contemptuous assault on international law
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“This country exists as a fulfilment of a promise made by God Himself. It
would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”

*Golda Meir *(Israeli Prime Minister 1969-1974), *Le Monde, *15 October 1971

The concept of legitimacy cannot be claimed on the basis of some Biblical
narrative written thousands of years ago by scribes (ancient Jewish
record-keepers) intent on inventing a Jewish people and creating a Jewish
nation. Genuine legitimacy, like respect, cannot be feigned, fabricated,
purchased or purloined: it has to be earned with commendable conduct and
well intentioned cooperation in the affairs of all humankind.

Genuine legitimacy for a Zionist Apartheid Israel, therefore, cannot be
established by the silencing of demands for accountability for contemptible
and illegal behaviour with impunity; it cannot be established by devilish
duplicity, rambunctious denial of obvious criminality, or the deprivation
of human and political rights for others; it cannot be established by
numerous self-serving false flag operations such as the 1954 Lavon Affair
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lavon.html
<http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lavon.html>, the 1967 USS
Liberty Incident http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ussliberty.html
<http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ussliberty.html>, the 1968
Operation Trojanhttp://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/deception.html
<http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/deception.html>, and even the
frequent and deliberate targeting of Jewish people and organisations with a
view to laying the blame on various groups ranging from radical Muslims to
even harmless environmentalists; it cannot be established by a Fascist
ideology based on the “supremacy” of a “chosen people” whose colonial
Apartheid objectives include the savage military ethnic cleansing of the
indigenous people of Palestine; it cannot be established by the continual
bribing and corrupting of the elected representatives of other nations; and
it cannot be established by forever committing crimes against humanity to
legitimise the illegitimate because the time will certainly come — as it
did for the Nazis — when there has to be a reckoning that demands justice
and punishment.

In view of Israel's latest diabolical and devastating spree codenamed
Operation Protective Edge —  some 17,000 homes bombed and destroyed, over
2,000 civilians killed including 500 children, and over 500,000 people made
homeless — the time for that reckoning has to be now! People everywhere,
including all those Americans who are either politically illiterate or
naively oblivious to reality and the true facts, have to be resolute in
deciding that goodwill towards Israel and tolerance for its crimes against
humanity can no longer permitted because of regret over the Holocaust. Jews
do not have a monopoly on suffering as is witnessed by the fact that — and
that is not counting the millions of injuries and fatalities resulting from
Israeli-induced conflicts — twelve million children under the age of five
die annually from preventable diseases and malnutrition. People must
determine that “never again” shall be equally applicable to Palestinians as
it is to Jews; that Israelis, like the Nazis, must be made accountable and
punishable for their war crimes; and that collective cowardice, criminal
cooperation, and culpable complicity with regards to Israel are an
irresponsible dereliction of duty to all humanity.

The collective cowardice resulting from the fear of being stigmatised as
anti-Semites or Holocaust deniers is an irrational and immoral reaction to
the well financed and orchestrated Zionist campaign for the promotion of
guilt-inducing reminders of the Holocaust — otherwise known as the
Holocaust industry. Current and future generations cannot be held hostage
in perpetuity by zionist Israel for crimes committed by past generations.
Furthermore, past persecutions of the Jewish people does not grant
Judaeo-Zionism the automatic right to now ethnically cleanse the
Palestinian people. Shrill and constant cries of anti-Semitism to silence
criticism of Apartheid Israel are now so commonplace that they have — like
the child who cried wolf too often only to be ignored when there actually
was one — have become meaningless and rightly irrelevant.

Criminal cooperation is the provision to Israel of preferential access to
U.S. and European Union markets including the latter's failure to enforce
laws prohibiting the import of Israeli goods produced in the Occupied
Territories; criminal cooperation is investment in Israel which in 2012
alone rose 14.5% to $73.9 billion with American investors accounting for
$19.7 billion followed by $9 billion from the Cayman Islands — a global tax
shelter that serves as corporate headquarters for many companies such as
Coca-Cola, Oracle and Intel http://www.veooz.com/news/YH2aPHB.html
<http://www.veooz.com/news/YH2aPHB.html>; criminal cooperation is the
acceptance by politicians of pro-Israel political action committee
contributions which in the U.S. alone are quite astronomical
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/super-pac-contributions_n_1822290.
html
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/super-pac-contributions_n_1822290.html>.
Israel's ability to bribe and corrupt politicians does not extend to the
people, therefore it is up to the people to show their disapproval in the
only possible and peaceful way: they must effectively boycott Israeli goods
by joining the BDS campaign at http://www.bdsmovement.net
<http://www.bdsmovement.net/>; they must boycott companies who invest in
Israel; they must crusade against individuals or organisations that
associate with, or support Israel; and they must continually lobby their
politicians especially those that have accepted the accursed Israeli new
shekel and demand justice and respect for the human rights of Palestinians.

Culpable complicity with Israel's barbarous criminality takes many forms
including nations who either abstain or vote against UN resolutions
condemning Israel's persistent persecution of the Palestinian people — the
U.S. has used more vetoes on behalf of Israel than it has on behalf of
itself
http://www.projectfreethought.org/2013/09/vetoes-in-the-un-security-council/
<http://www.projectfreethought.org/2013/09/vetoes-in-the-un-security-council/>;
culpable complicity includes the provision of military-related equipment to
Israel with the knowledge that it will be used for the continued oppression
of the Palestinian people in the illegally Occupied Territories — From 2009
to 2018, the U.S. is scheduled to give Israel (the largest recipient of
U.S. assistance) $30 billion in military aid
http://aidtoisrael.org/section.php?id=379
<http://aidtoisrael.org/section.php?id=379>; and culpable complicity
includes the hypocritical double standards by which Israel's criminality is
either judged or just completely ignored as compared to other less useful
international law violators whom Western nations do not regard as being
within their sphere of influence.

If what has just occurred in Gaza is not unconditionally condemned and
punished, then it will most certainly reoccur as it has been doing for over
60 years. Israel's parasitic inclinations will not be satisfied until every
drop of drinkable water which it has not already stolen, becomes too
contaminated for Palestinians to drink; Israel will not be satisfied until
its air, land and sea blockade of the Occupied territories — that prevents
the import of vital food and medical supplies — has induced malnutrition,
disease and death amongst the imprisoned and persecuted population; Israel
will not be satisfied until all Palestinian children have been traumatised
by the experience of seeing their parents being hounded, humiliated,
imprisoned without due process, and in many cases simply murdered; Israel
will not be satisfied until those same children are further traumatised by
being arbitrarily arrested, interrogated without adult or legal council
support, beaten, terrorised, and forced into signing confessions (written
in a language they do not understand) that incriminate parents and
relatives who are then held indefinitely under the misused Administrative
Detention Orderhttp://www.btselem.org/topic/administrative_detention
<http://www.btselem.org/topic/administrative_detention>; Israel will not be
satisfied until every Palestinian home, hospital and school has been
reduced to rubble with bombs supplied by courtesy of U.S. taxpayers; and
Israel will not be satisfied until every drop of Palestinian blood has
soaked into the stolen Palestinian lands on which more illegal Jewish
settlements will be built. And no, this is not an anti-Semitic exaggerated
rant, it is a fact that has been endlessly reiterated by racist Israeli
leaders who want Palestine and not peace
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/concentrate-and-exterminate-israel-parliament-deputy-speakers-gaza-genocide-plan
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/concentrate-and-exterminate-israel-parliament-deputy-speakers-gaza-genocide-plan>
.

Any western leaders — especially U.S. presidents — who may have ever
thought that Israel wanted peace, must have been faint-hearted, foolish or
complete frauds. So far most political and religious  leaders including the
Pope and apart from retired Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu have failed to
unconditionally condemn Operation Protective Edge. Justice and retribution
will only be achieved by the people. *The people of the world have to
inform the criminal Zionist Apartheid state of Israel in the strongest
possible terms that finally it is now definitely very much a case of
“ENOUGH ALREADY!”*

** Illustration by kind permission of Dees Illustration Studio ( *
*DDees.com * <http://ddees.com/>*)*


*William Hanna* is a freelancer with a recently published book the *Hiramic
Brotherhood of the Third Temple.*

*Fuelling The Public's Appetite For War: Oil, Blood, Confusion And Fear*

*By Colin Todhunter*

25 August, 2014
*Countercurrents.org*

Back in 2003, Tony Blair stated that Saddam Hussein could hit Britain with
a missile within 45 minutes. He also said that Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction. The national security of Britain was said to be under
threat. Subsequently, Britain took part in an invasion that had been
planned long before the evidence had been cooked up to fit the policy, and
over a million Iraqis lost their lives. Let’s not forget, before that
Britain was complicit in applying sanction that led to the deaths of around
500,000 children under five.

Fast forward over a decade and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has
said that Iraq Islamic State militants are turning large swathes of Iraq
and Syria into launch pads to stage terror attacks on Western nations. In
an article in the Sunday Times, he said that with the "barbaric ideology"
of the Sunni insurgents, "sooner or later they will seek to strike us on
British soil."

He went on to attack the British jihadist who allegedly killed US
journalist Bernard Foley for undermining the values which British people
stand for:

"It is horrifying to think that the perpetrator of this heinous act could
have been brought up in Britain. It is an utter betrayal of our country,
our values and everything the British people stand for."

Hammond and other government ministers have stated the threat from the
Islamic State militants could last for several years.

The day before Hammond spoke, Home Secretary Theresa May announced she was
preparing new laws to tackle Islamist militants at home and to stop them
going abroad to fight. May went quite a bit further than Hammond by saying
that that Britain faced a long struggle against a deadly extremist ideology
that could take even decades. She added that new powers would be designed
to restrict the militants’ behaviour in Britain, ban involvement in groups
preaching violence and require prisons, broadcasters, schools and
universities to take a greater role in combating the radicalization of
Muslims.

*Foley video: A timely outpouring of outrage and fake morality*

The alleged murder of US journalist James Foley captured on video is
causing a timely outpouring of anger in Britain. Such sentiment is being
ignited courtesy of senior British politicians who it seems can always be
relied on to beat the war drums on cue from Washington.

Hammond’s statements are designed to garner mass support for a resurgence
of Western military intervention across the Middle East, most notably
possible direct intervention in Syria, which Washington has wanted for some
time. What Hammond or May will not tell the British public is that the US
has failed in its aim to use ISIS and other groups to defeat Assad and that
Washington wants air strikes to weaken Assad under the pretext of
destroying ISIS, the monster it created. Indeed, the US’s top general,
Martin Dempsey, has noted that ISIS could not be defeated without attacking
their base in Syria.

We saw in Libya how NATO illegal air strikes and ‘mission drift’ allowed a
path to be bombed to Tripoli to help its proxy forces oust Gaddafi. Tens of
thousands lost their lives and Libya’s social and political infrastructure
now lies in ruins. US air strikes could this time open the path to Damascus
for its (trained and bussed-in) militant forces in Syria, again, as in
Libya, under the guise of rooting out barbarism and protecting lives.

What Hammond and May will also not tell the British public is that Western
special forces on the ground have been directing the war against Syria and
that the US, Turkey, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have for a
long time been heavily arming militants along both Syria's border with
Turkey in the north and with Jordan in the south. Tony Cartalucci’s recent
article shows this to be the case and draws our attention to a number of
news articles [
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-begins-selling-syria-intervention-using-isis-pretext/53969741
].

First, the Daily Telegraph's March 2013 article titled "US and Europe in
'major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb'" reported that
3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia had been sent in
75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan. The
shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the US,
with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and
Jordan.

Second, the New York Times March 2013 article "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels
Expands, With CIA Aid" stated that, with help from the CIA, Arab
governments and Turkey had sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s
opposition fighters. This aid included more than 160 military cargo flights
by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes.

Third, the Washington Post's September 2013 article "U.S. weapons reaching
Syrian rebels" reported that the CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels
in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by
the Obama administration.

Where did all the equipment and money go to? Cartalucci provides details of
how the West and its allies have been instrumental in organizing and
funding the war in Syria and implies it is no coincidence that we now have
a well-equipped and organised ISIS.

*What Philip Hammond or Theresa May will not tell the public*

However, Hammond and May would never inform the public that the West funded
and created ISIS to do its bidding in Syria and also to put pressure on an
increasingly independently-acting government in Iraq, which refused the US
to allow its troops to remain in the country with immunity from prosecution.

Sensationalist videos of decapitations of westerners serve a purpose. They
manipulate public sentiment, stir up anti-Islamist sentiment and get a
war-fatigued public to support even more wars of empire under the lie of
protecting civilians, a bogus ‘war on terror’ or rooting out barbarism and
evil.

In turn, Muslims in Britain face further demonisation. Politicians and the
media say their communities should be ‘monitored’ in the name of
‘secularism’ and ensuring liberal democratic ‘freedoms’ (while at the same
time stripping away such freedoms, not least by mass surveillance of the
entire British population and the over application of stringent anti-terror
laws). Those who advocate this often tend to narrowly focus on issues of
multiculturalism and Muslims’ failure to adopt to ‘our’ way of life, while
neatly sidestepping why it is that Muslims have become a such a key focus
of concern in Britain: it is in Muslim lands that the machinations of
empire and imperialist wars of occupation and intervention are being played
out.

Hammond and May would not wish to draw the public’s attention to the actual
reasons as to why the US, Britain and other allied countries have actually
attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria. They will spin the public a
yarn about women’s rights or a war on terror in Afghanistan, removing
despots from power in Libya or Syria or protecting human life - while then
going on to attack or help destabilize countries, resulting in the loss of
hundreds of thousands of lives.

Not for a moment will they tell the public that their taxes are really
being used to help rich, powerful corporations gain even greater riches and
power by using emotive videos and the language of fear as a pretext to grab
natural resources and destabilize regions and countries in order to do so.

Not for a minute would they admit that Washington and London’s aim is to
balkanise Iraq and to attack and weaken Iran and its allies in Syria,
Lebanon, Gaza and across the region. Then after getting rid of Putin’s
allies in the region, proxy forces will be used to destabilise Russia via
its borders to the south, just as is happening now to the north in Ukraine
(under the lie of Russian aggression!)

Not for a moment will they tell the public that Britain has been involved
in destabilizing countries or reveal the full extent to which it has helped
in inflicting mayhem and terror on innocent populations via supplying arms,
covert operations or direct military intervention. Not for a moment will
they draw attention to the hypocrisy of huge arms deals Britain carries out
with its despot allies (the kind it says it despises) in the Middle East
which enriches (taxpayer-subsidized) British arms companies.

*Keeping the public confused and ignorant*

Part of the battle for the public’s hearts and minds is to keep people
confused, to play on their ignorance and confusion by lying to them about
what is happening and to ensure they continue to live in fear of a threat
to ‘national security’. Most of the public remains blissfully ignorant and
easily manipulated by the psych-ops directed at them through the corporate
media.

Hammond talks of ‘British values’ and how heinous, barbaric acts betray
such values. What does Hammond perceive ‘British values’ to be?

The opposite of barbarity: compassion, caring, the compulsion to ‘do the
right thing’.

How best to assess values than by actions? Given the narrative thus far, we
might conclude that the actions of Britain as a state have very little to
do with ‘compassion’ or doing ‘the right thing’.

Moreover, if ordinary members of the British public think that Hammond or
May really ultimately have their welfare or best interests at heart, they
should think again.

BP, Goldman Sachs, General Electric, Bank of America, Chevron, Barclays,
etc, are the ones that really set Anglo-US policy agendas via Brookings
Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, International Crisis Group,
Chatham House, etc. Ultimately, they are Hammond and May’s constituents,
not the voters.

The rich and powerful have off-shored millions of jobs as well as their
personal and company tax liabilities to boost their profits and have
bankrupted economies. They are driving the ‘globalisation’ agenda. There is
little or no care for the plight of ordinary folk either at home or abroad.

What has this agenda resulted in? Austerity, unemployment, powerlessness,
privatization, deregulation, banker control of economies, corporate control
of food and seeds, the stripping away of civil liberties, increased mass
surveillance, wars to prop up the US dollar.

Who has benefited? Monsanto, Occidental Petroleum, JP Morgan, Boeing and
the rest of the corporate cabal centred on Wall Street and the City of
London.

It’s the ability to maximise profit by shifting capital around the world
that matters to powerful corporations, whether on the back of distorted
free trade agreements, which open the gates for plunder, or through
coercion and militarism, which merely tear them down. Whether it is the
structural violence of neoliberal economic policies or actual military
violence, the welfare of ordinary folk does not enter into the equation.
They are regarded as mere fodder and minds to be manipulated for the
greater good of profit for the few.

Local people, local economies and self-sufficiency are being swept aside
via a system based on high-energy input production, consumption and
distribution that relies on oil. For example, small organic-based family
farms are being be cast aside in favour of giant agritech concerns where
petro-chemical inputs are used on corporate-owned seeds for monoculture
crops or commodities grown for shipment over long distances or for export.
Oil is central. And this process is symptomatic of an environmentally
unsustainable model of ‘growth’ and ‘development’ that seeks to
‘structurally adjust’ agriculture and economies by taking away control from
people at the local, community level. It is also symptomatic of the fact
that in a world of plenty, local food self sufficiency is being eroded and
almost one billion people are undernourished because the bottom line is
corporate profit, power, control and ultimately oil to fuel the system. And
global capital’s sacrificial pawns, whether small farmers, the hungry
billion or ordinary families just trying to live and get by in
geopolitically strategic locations like Syria, Gaza or Iraq are regarded as
collateral damage.

In an oil-thirsty, oil-dependent, increasingly war-driven system of
corporate-driven 'globalisation', the other bottom line is that ordinary
folk do not count.

So we should not be fooled by made-for-media outpourings of fake concern
for our safety or fake morality about good and evil that are designed to
create fear, outrage and support for militarism. The result will be more
war and slaughter for pipelines and power. The result will be further
repression under the guise of preventing terror at home.

Politicians and government agencies should be held to account for their
actions, for their funding of militant groups, for their wars,
destabilizations and covert wars. Instead they try to get us to fall into
line, to remain ignorant of their deeds, to believe ‘there is no
alternative’ to ‘what is’ or to accept a pack of lies, deceptions and
crimes under the guise of globalization or democracy.

US social commentator Walter Lippman once said that ‘responsible men’ make
decisions and have to be protected from the ‘bewildered herd’ - the public.
He added that the public should be subdued, obedient and distracted from
what is really happening. Screaming patriotic slogans and fearing for their
lives, they should be admiring with awe leaders who save them from
destruction.

Hammond, May and politicians like them play their role well.

*Colin Todhunter *: Originally from the northwest of England, Colin
Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the
Deccan Herald (the Bangalore-based broadsheet), New Indian Express and
Morning Star (Britain). His articles have also appeared in various other
newspapers, journals and books. His East by Northwest website is at:
http://colintodhunter.blogspot.com


The Outlaw State of Israel (Part I)

PALESTINE / ISRAEL
<https://www.transcend.org/tms/category/palestine-israel/>, 25 August 2014

*by Richard Falk and Akbar Ganji – Al Jazeera*

*Since 1948 Israel has drawn a long list of military aggression, human
rights violations and war crimes.*

Israel has become an outlaw state. In his book, *The Law of Peoples*
<http://www.amazon.com/The-Law-Peoples-Public-Revisited/dp/0674005422>,
John Rawls defines an outlaw state as one that systematically violates the
universal principles of human rights, and commits aggression against other
nations. Israel is guilty of repeated such violations as well as several
massive acts of aggression, making it reasonable and responsible to
identify it as an outlaw state.

*Israel’s military aggressions against other countries*

Israel was born in 1948. Resolution 181
<http://www.1948.org.uk/un-resolution-181/> of the United Nations General
Assembly is widely regarded as the most convincing legal basis for founding
the State of Israel. At that time Palestinians were awarded 45 percent of
historic Palestine, while 54 percent was allocated to Israel, and 1 percent
was set aside as a special zone to be used for the internationalised city
of Jerusalem.

After the 1948 War with the neighbouring Arab nations, Israel’s territorial
gains reduced the Palestinian share to only 22 percent. In the 1967 War,
Israel occupied the remaining Palestinian territory, which had been
administered since 1948 by Jordan and Egypt, and since that time has
encroached on occupied Palestine in major unlawful ways, rendering
impossible the project of a Palestinian state.

Additionally, Israel has launched a series of brutal aggressive attacks
against Gaza (2008-09, 2012, 2014) violating international law, the UN
Charter, and the laws of war.

Further aggravating Israel’s reputation are numerous acts of aggression
against several other sovereign states:

Military attacks on Iraq in June 1981
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm>
that
destroyed Osirak nuclear reactor that was under construction to disrupt
Iraq’s nuclear programme and to perpetuate Israel’s regional monopoly over
nuclear weaponry.

Invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, coupled with the Israeli occupation
of southern Lebanon until 2000. In September 1982 Israel was complicit in
the Sabra and Shatila massacre
<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre.html>
carried
out by Maronite Phalangist militia units in which between 1500 and 3000
Palestinian women, children, and disabled persons were murdered in cold
blood.

Military attack on the PLO Headquarters in Hamman, Tunisia
<http://articles.latimes.com/1985-10-02/news/mn-16021_1_israeli-warplanes> in
October 1985, killing 60, which was condemned
<http://articles.latimes.com/1985-10-05/news/mn-1071_1_united-states> by
the UN Security Council.

Invasion of southern Lebanon in 2006
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War> that resulted in the 33
days warfare directed at Hezbollah, the destruction of residential sections
in the southern Beirut, applying the “Dahiya Doctrine” – the
rationalisation given for unlawful Israeli reliance on disproportionate
military power used against the Palestinian people.

Attacks on October 2, 2007 on Syria
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-story-of-operation-orchard-how-israel-destroyed-syria-s-al-kibar-nuclear-reactor-a-658663.html>destroyed
its nuclear reactor in Deir ez-Zor region.

The attack in May 2010 in international waters on the Turkish passenger
ship Mavi Marmara that was part of the Freedom Flotilla bringing
humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza in defiance of the
international blockade, killing nine Turkish nonviolent peace activists.

Three unlawful military attacks on Syria in 2013
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/world/middleeast/israel-airstrike-targeted-advanced-missiles-that-russia-sold-to-syria-us-says.html?_r=0>
 and 2014
<http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/06/23/israel-bombs-targets-in-syria-in-response-to-boy-death/>
.

Repeated military attacks in Sudan in 2009
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/03/exclusive-three/>, 2011
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/04/20114613459633638.html>, and
2012
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/sudan-denies-iran-link-to-khartoum-plant-allegedly-attacked-by-israel-1.473075>,
supposedly to disrupt the supply of weapons to Hamas in Gaza, causing many
deaths.

In addition, Israel has occupied Syria’s Golan Heights since 1967, built
unlawful settlements, and established a permanent presence. Israel has
refused to withdraw from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as called for by
unanimous Security Council Resolution 242.

Israel secretly and illegitimately acquired an arsenal of an estimated 300
nuclear
<http://www.newyorker.com/rational-irrationality/what-about-israels-nukes>
warheads,
becoming the only nuclear power in the Middle East, and the only country in
the world that refuses to acknowledge its possession of nuclear weapons.

*Systematic violations of human rights and the apartheid regime*

Former US President Jimmy Carter declared in his book *Palestine: Peace not
Apartheid*
<http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Peace-Apartheid-Jimmy-Carter/dp/0743285034>
that
Israel’s occupation regime in the West Bank possesses the systematic
discriminatory features of an apartheid regime. As well, the Palestinian
minority resident in Israel is subject to fifty discriminatory laws that
restrict their individual and collective rights. The Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court treats apartheid as a crime against humanity.

Palestinians in the West Bank have been living without the protection of
law or the possession of rights since 1967, being subject to military
administration and the oppressive practices of the Palestinian Authority,
while the unlawful settler population enjoys the full protection of
Israel’s rule of law.

As Gideon Levy, the progressive Israeli journalist writes
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/opinion/israel-own-worst-enemy-levy/>,
Israel is “only a democracy for its Jewish citizens who are quick to fall
in line with the mainstream every time Israeli tanks roll across the
border.” Jewish citizens of Israel who dare oppose their country’s
aggressions are often attacked and threatened. Palestinian Israelis are
treated worse, harshly restricted and subject to acute suspicion whenever a
security issue arises.

*Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians*

Not only does Security Council Resolution 465
<http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/5AA254A1C8F8B1CB852560E50075D7D5> speak
twice of “Palestinian or Arab territories occupied since 1967″, but also
declares and affirms that the Jewish settlements in the Palestinian
territories represent a violation of Fourth Geneva Convention
<https://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Fourth_Geneva_Convention.html>.
The defiant refusal to dismantle the settlements – unlawful under Article
49(6) – and the refusal to remove the separation wall as mandated by the
International Court of Justice are grave violations of this convention, and
as such amount to war crimes.

Israel removed its military forces and settlers from the Gaza Strip in its
“disengagement” initiative in 2005, but in actuality kept effective control
of Gaza, and remained bound by the obligations as an occupying power
contained in international humanitarian law.

In effect, Israel transformed the conditions of life in Gaza from direct
military administration to life imprisonment of the population in the
largest open-air jail on earth. Israel retained its total control of Gaza’s
entrances and exits, of its airspace and offshore waters, disrupting life
within the prison walls by lethal periodic violent incursions. Most
Palestinian people living in Gaza have effectively been locked in ever
since 1967, unconditionally since 2007. During this period, Israel has
periodically launched massive military operations against Gaza; imposed and
maintained an illegal blockade; committed frequent acts of cross-border
violence; and committed numerous grave war crimes:

Israel attacked Gaza in 2008-2009
<http://www.dci-palestine.org/content/fatalities-and-injuries>, killing
more than 1400 Palestinians, injuring 5300, creating 51,000 internal
refugees, destroying 4000 homes, inflicting $4bn economic damage
<http://www.amnesty.org/ar/library/asset/MDE15/015/2009/en/8f299083-9a74-4853-860f-0563725e633a/mde150152009en.pdf>,
and disallowing the delivery of materials needed for reconstruction efforts.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2012
<http://www.alhaq.org/documentation/weekly-focuses/757-voices-from-the-gaza-strip-a-year-after-operation-pillar-of-defense>
killed
173 and injured 1,221, provoked by the Israeli targeted assassination of
the Hamas military leader, Ahmed Jabari, as he was delivering a signed
truce document.

Israel’s 2014 aggression against Gaza launched on July 8 has so far killed
more than 2,000 Palestinians
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/israel-orders-army-gaza-after-rocket-fire-2014819131442120578.html>,
injured nearly 10,181, with 75-80 percent of the casualties being
civilians. This massive Israeli military operation has caused more than
660,000 Gazans to be internally displaced, highlighting the denial of any
right of Palestinians to leave the combat area throughout the military
onslaught that has terrorised the entire population of Gaza. It is
estimated that 459 Palestinian children
<http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_19_08_2014.pdf> were
killed and as many as 3,000 injured.

In contrast, Israel’s losses in this attack have led to 68 Israeli deaths,
of whom 65 were soldiers. The casualty disparity and the ratio of military
to civilian deaths are significant indicators of how to apportion moral
responsibility of the carnage caused.

*__*
The Outlaw State of Israel (Part II)

PALESTINE / ISRAEL
<https://www.transcend.org/tms/category/palestine-israel/>, 25 August 2014

*by Richard Falk and Akbar Ganji – Al Jazeera*

*Unconditional US support for the state of Israel has precluded a peace
settlement and destabilised the Middle East.*

In Part I of this article we described the reasons as to why Israel has
become an outlaw state. In this part we discuss US support for Israel and
its consequences.

*The US as Israel’s servant*

The United States has supported Israel without reservations since its
founding in 1948. According to an agreement
<http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/rm/144753.htm> between the two countries,
that has become a law in the US
<http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/rm/176684.htm>, the US has committed itself
to preserve Israel’s strategic and military superiority in relation to
other countries in the Middle East. From 1949 till today, the US has
provided Israel with nearly $122bn
<http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf> in aid, calculated by
reference to fixed dollars.

Counting the aid to Israel in 2003 dollars, from 1949 – 2003 the US has
provided Israel with $140bn worth of military assistance, which has been
increasing since 2003. The basic annual commitment to Israel is $3.1bn,
which is far more than military aid that has been given to any other
country in the world, and this figure is an understatement, hiding a
variety of supplemental appropriations and other benefits accorded uniquely
to Israel.

In effect, the US has been subsidising Israel’s aggressions, and ignoring
military assistance legislation that seeks to withhold such aid to
countries that are not acting defensively and in accordance with
international law.

The Obama administration has even increased
<http://www.njdc.org/blog/post/israelaid021412> the aid to Israel through
its reliance on various special appropriations. Most recently Congress
appropriated an additional $225m for further development
<http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/01/politics/congress-israel-iron-dome/> of
the Iron Dome derence system.

The US Senate has even approved a resolution
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/senate-votes-to-back-possible-strike-on-iran-nuclear-weapon-program/>
according
to which if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear sites in the future defying
international law, the US is obligated to help Israel. It reads in part,
“If the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in
legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the United
States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with
United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to
authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic
support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory,
people, and existence.”

Of course, the language as written of “legitimate self-defence” is
understood to mean any action taken by Israel that is alleged to be
“defensive”, whether or not in conformity to international law, which
limits such claims to situations of response to prior armed attacks.

Among the many UNSC resolutions that seek to criticise or condemn Israel
for its actions against the Palestinians, almost all have been vetoed by
the US. In fact, the US government opposes virtually every resolution
approved by any UN organ, including UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), if it
is deemed to be critical of Israel, and this includes even initiatives to
establish fact-finding commissions of inquiry to determine whether charges
of war crimes are well-founded.

When Israel attacks the defenceless and completely vulnerable Palestinian
people, the US justifies such high-intensity and disproportionate violence
as “self-defence”, obstructs the issuance of a UN call for an immediate
ceasefire, and gives diplomatic and material aid and comfort to Israeli
aggression from start to finish.

After the fact-finding “Goldstone Report” on Israel war crimes in Gaza in
2008-2009 was approved by UNHRC, the US and Israel successfully intervened
with the Secretary General to prompt him to urge the non-implementation of
the report in relation to Israeli accountability for war crimes. The US
government also used its leverage to prevent even the discussion of this
important report in the UNSC. When recently, the UNHRC approved a
resolution to investigate Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, the US cast the only
negative vote.

Amnesty International has reported
<http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/mounting-evidence-deliberate-attacks-gaza-health-workers-israeli-army-2014-08-07>
that
the evidence of systematic attacks by Israel’s military forces on schools
and hospitals in Gaza during the current warfare is overwhelming. It
includes targeting civilians who have sought shelter from Israeli attacks
in United Nations schools and other buildings marked with the UN logo.

Human Rights Watch has reported
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/04/gaza-israeli-soldiers-shoot-and-kill-fleeing-civilians>
on
evidence of intentional shooting of Palestinians who were fleeing their
homes, even after they had been ordered to do so by Israel’s military, and
has declared such behaviour to be a war crime.

We can only comprehend this partisan pattern of US policy toward Israel by
taking account of the leverage exerted on the government by the formidable
lobby working on behalf of Israel known. Former President Jimmy Carter and
the former President of Ireland and former Head of the UNHRC Mary Robinson have
condemned
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/05/gaza-blockade-must-end-un-first-step-settlement>
this
one-sidedness of US policy toward Israel and Hamas, insisting that as a
first step Israel immediately ends without conditions the blockade of Gaza,
allowing the people of Gaza to have finally some semblance of a normal life.

*Consequences*

The US policy toward Israel has had dire consequences:

It has completely discredited the US government’s claim to act as an
impartial arbitrator between Israel and the Palestinians.

Hatred and resentment toward the US has been increasing throughout the
region, not only because of its blind support of Israel, but also because
of its military onslaughts against Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, and drone
attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.

According to a poll
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/egypt-jordan-turkey-top-list-countries-dislike-u-s-survey-article-1.1868199>
conducted
right before the current war, 85 percent of Egyptians and Jordanians, 73
percent of Turks, and 66 percent of Palestinians view the US unfavourably,
while 84 percent of Israelis have a positive view of the US

What Israel has done in the region with the support of the US has
contributed greatly to the growth of extremism and discord throughout the
Middle East. If such policies are not reversed even more chaos, extremist
violence, bloodshed, and devastation are likely to emerge in the future.

The Middle East and North Africa have been unstable for decades, and the
consequences of the intensifying instability are spreading to other regions
and endangering world peace.

These policies of unconditional support for Israel are going against the US
national interests. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the mother of all
problems in the Middle East. Israel has undermined all efforts to find a
peaceful solution by way of diplomacy. It has rejected both the Arab
Initiative of 2002 and the roadmap proposed by the Quartet
<http://www.quartetrep.org/quartet/> – the US, Russia, the European Union,
and the UN – which require Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders with
the expectation that a sovereign and independent Palestinian state would
emerge.

What is required of Israel as a precondition for peace - set forth in
Security Council Resolution 242 and reaffirmed since its unanimous adoption
in 1967 - enjoys support worldwide. It should be understood that ending the
occupation of the Palestinian territories is not by itself sufficient to
achieve a sustainable peace. Of paramount importance is also some
arrangement that acknowledges the rights of several million Palestinian
refugees who were forcibly expelled over the course of many years from
Israel, most dramatically in the 1948 Nakba, the Palestinian national
catastrophe*.*

There are also serious questions at this time as to whether the two-state
solution is a viable and desirable goal, if it ever was. The question of
Palestinian self-determination as the proper foundation for a sustained
just peace is more open to debate and reflection in 2014 than ever before.
Israel’s expansionism has put the international two-state consensus under
question, and the international community, along with representatives of
the Palestinian people must now consider new ways to achieve a just peace
for both peoples, which cannot be realised without upholding Palestinian
rights.

We believe that a crucial step in this direction is the widespread
acknowledgement that Israel has become an outlaw state, and that
appropriate adjustments to this reality must be made.

______________________

*Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international
relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton
University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and
activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Council> (UNHRC)
appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Special_Rapporteur> on “the
situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories> occupied since
1967.”Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at
the local campus of the University of California in Global and
International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age
Peace Foundation. His most recent book is*Achieving Human Rights* (2009).*

*Akbar Ganji is one of Iran’s leading political dissidents and has received
over a dozen human rights awards for his efforts. Imprisoned in Iran until
2006, he is the author of The Road to Democracy in Iran, which lays out a
strategy for a non-violent transition to democracy in Iran.*

Go to Original – aljazeera.com
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/outlaw-state-israel-part-ii-2014820134316991129.html>

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