With Daniel Pearl Act, US warns others to respect press freedoms, of WSJ only

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Eric Verlo

President Obama signed off on the Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act, surrounded by friends and colleagues of the former WSJ reporter who was slain in pursuit of al-Qaeda, while infiltrating Pakistan as if working for one of America’s loudest War-on-Islam propaganda drummers wasn’t pushing it. Taking the theme of don’t-kill-journalists at face value however, are there provisions in the act to exclude the US and its allies?

Because our forces have intimidated or outright killed I think what amounts to the high score of journalists in our war zones. If we’re concerned exclusively with reporters who’ve been decapitated, I’m sure those victims of our high caliber overkill outnumber Daniel Pearl too.

No, I suppose we’re only talking about protecting our journalists, the embeds, the only ones of which we approve. What have embeds proven to be but the new Army Press Corps? This is the same indemnity we claim for our soldiers. Try to shoot one of those and we obliterate entire clans based on rumors of who did it. If we capture someone alive, we put them on trial for combating us illegally. We dismiss laws of war that spell out that belligerents may only shoot at opponents shooting back. If they’re unarmed, or surrendering, or leaving the battle unarmed, or eating dinner with their family, they are not fair game. But we do it, and when journalists try to document our crimes we kill them.

Daniel Pearl worked for the WSJ. It’s the leading Neocon pro-war mouthpiece, only just ahead of the NY Times and the Washington Post, among newspapers with authority. If Pearl’s tracking of al-Qaeda didn’t help US intelligence outright, his reports were certainly serving the war propaganda machine.

When the Jewish community highlights the plot line that Pearl was killed because he was a Jew, it unveils a purposeful vaguarity the Israeli lobby likes to pretend is a distinction between American Jews and Zionists. The argument has it that all Jews may or may not support Israel, and yet critics of Zionism are accused of being anti-Semitic. Because, I’ll assert, AIPAC, the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal are determined to behave as if they have everyone’s support. Was Daniel Pearl a Zionist, he worked for it, and aimed to assail its declared arch-enemy under the pretext of journalist objectivity.

You can’t make the same accusation of the independent journalists being silenced wherever our military is operating. In our own country America is even keeping its own photo-journalists from being able to document the oil spill in the gulf.

The Daniel Pearl Act mandates that reports of inhibitions to journalists, especially if they are suspected of being systemic, be investigated and condemned with all the ensuing world police bells and whistles. I think that language smacks of the mandate to label “genocide” only where the US sees it.

Darfur, for example. Or the Balkans. Examples with which few fellow nations agree. To justify our interviention. Never Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and of course I could go on.

This ACT is a political weapon of semantics to pretend right is on our side, Orwellian doublespeak to ordain preemptive drone attacks.

If President Obama had meant this legislation to address freedom of the press sincerely, he would have appended the names of all the journalists who we’ve killed, ourselves or by proxy. The list would have run into the footnotes, and it would have meant investigating ourselves. Not going to happen.

This Israel public relations jig is up

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO COLLEGE- The news from the ISRAEL TODAY lecture is all good. If you’d been there, you might wonder how my takeaway from such a bilious gathering could be upbeat. I’ll tell you. The Palestinian voice was well represented, Israel’s presentation was Old Testament, and the writing on the wall grows ever more clear. And I got a few nice pics.

The Audience
To begin, I would certainly have preferred everyone had acted with more decorum. That is, if there had been impressionable attendees there. As it was, the seats were only half occupied. Except for the young men with “JEW CREW” on their backs, or girls with Hebrew script across their pullovers, there were almost no CC students. The audience was one third voices for Palestine, and two thirds vitriolic Jew, amazingly indignant to disruption of their world view. No one was there to listen, except to cheer for what they already believed. But I’m certain it was an eye opener for all.

My friends and I were sure to supplement the speaker’s pauses with color to augment his heavily loaded statements. For example, when Gil Artzyeli described the objective and feat of Israel’s 2006 incursion into Lebanon “to silence them,” and did that not prove effective? Who could refrain from adding “you killed them.” The 2/3 supporters grew more and more angry. But the speaker had an inopportune manner of posing rhetorical questions, which we couldn’t resist answering.

It almost got us kicked out. I spent the duration with security guards poised right behind me, ready to escort me out of the room. I learned it would be more prudent to avoid the back row at opportunities like this, because you can be pulled out of your chair, or distracted into involuntary conversation with security personnel more readily than if you were well ensconced among the other attendees.

Those voicing support for Palestinians were made to wait until question and answer portion to voice their objections. Even then, the pro-Israel audience would cut them off. It became impossible to ask a complex question without interruptions of “What is your question? State your question!” They hounded everyone who wasn’t setting the speaker up for a softy. It was a ruthless crowd with the civility of Tea Partiers. When the pro-Israel attendees took their turn posing questions, no one interrupted. When it was a detractor, their time suddenly became too valuable to entrust to us. Even a CC student from Gaza, who hasn’t been permitted to visit his family in two years, was not given a hearing.

I’m positive that as these rude people think on how the event transpired, they will not be able to help feeling ashamed. Our interactions were spirited and engaging, addressed to a speaker with the hubris to take us on. We interrupted the speaker, but never tried to drown him out. Our adversaries on the other hand tried to flat out shut their fellow audience members up.

That crowd is immovable. I’ve no optimism for influencing their resolve. On the other hand, their rigidity was laughable. Their logic will not sway anyone new. They were positively shrill about their speaker being permitted to deliver his message as abridged. “Let him speak!” they shouted, as if their attention was rapt by information they’d never heard before, a preposterous notion. I’m neither Palestinian nor American Jew, but this was Israel Foundation Myth for Dummies. I can only think that this crowd sat tightly clenched, thrilled that the others among the audience were forced to listen to their dogma.

The Presentation
Old school. Palestinians offered their own statehood, but rejected it. Israel is pretext for Arab countries to oppress their peoples. No such thing as a Palestinian, Jewish presence in Judea has been continuous, Palestinians teach their children to hate, Israelis teach love, etc, etc. The old greenhouses of Gaza story was the example given to show that Palestinians don’t want to help themselves. Arab neighbor states are blamed for not resettling the Palestinians. Gaza is free, it is not occupied.

Would you believe Israel justifies the force it used in Lebanon and Gaza based on what NATO was permitted to do in Bosnia? Those were war crimes too! Israel accuses its critics of anti-Semitism because they don’t take other militaries to task for their crimes. But really Israel gives itself the latitude to commit crimes commensurate with the worst.

And here’s a wild gem! Israel owes its enormously successful economy (no mention of US foreign aid or direct sponsorship by Jewish American interests) to, among progressive business practices, the fact that all Israelis, both men and women, have to serve compulsory military service. It gives them the skills and discipline to excel in business and strengthen Israel. Mr. Artzyeli showed a video clip taken from CNBC, recommending that such a policy in American would certainly greatly improve its prospects for an economic recovery!

A word about the delivery of the presentation. Though impeccably dressed Gil Artzyeli affected the presence of someone wearing a Tony Soprano tracksuit. He sat back on his heels, his eyes directed to the ceiling as he dismissed his questioners. When a Palestinian girl raised a specific instance of an IDF strategy deployed in Lebanon, wondering how it was not a war crime. Artzyeli ignored it completely, making an aside to someone up front that the he wasn’t about to dignify that accusation with a response.

It’s kinda the problem Israel is having, isn’t it?

The Jig is Up
Over the last weeks I’ve had a chance to participate in three presentation by Israeli officials. The sum experience has fortified me with hope. With world opinion against them, and now the Goldstone Report, Israel is on the run.

The first lecture by Uzi Landau was on the offensive, directed toward Iran. It went over poorly. The Q&A revealed that Landau hadn’t connected the dots at all. The audience he had hoped to rally became only more concerned about Israeli nukes than Iran’s.

The second presentation delivered by Nir Barkat was an encouragement to the Denver Jewish community to support Jerusalem, with donations, travel, and by encouraging emigration. There the audience was equally smug and oblivious to the notion that increased settlements constituted violations of international law. But Israel’s continuous push for Jewish immigrants provides the clue to what Barkat inadvertently confirmed. Jews are leaving Jerusalem. The balance of the population is shifting toward the non-Jew.

This third event with the Deputy Consul General took the rhetoric down to basics, a demonstration of how far Israel is slipping. The dogma behind Zionism’s right to its own state, and their right to defend themselves, used to go without saying. Today Gil Artzyeli was forced to defend the most basic assumptions. The Jewish diaspora, their right to return, the expanding borders, the wall, the military retaliation. I was thrilled to see arguments slip back past the basics.

The Jewish American communities may still be a resolute, but their numbers are not large. It appears to me that the compatriots they’ve recruited, from the Christian right and the neoliberal conservatives are receding quickly.

The image of the much-oppressed Jew is becoming eclipsed by the militant arrogant Zionist, earning no one’s sympathy.

A few pictures from the event:

Castigated for raising his voice, Ed Nace insisted on standing for the duration of the lecture, to lend omniscience to his objection.

Colorado College Poli-Sci professor, and Middle East specialist Bob Lee rose several times to forbid the impromptu participation by the audience. Here he calls for security to remove Ed.

Security reconsidered asking Ed Nace to leave as he informed them in his booming voice that he was a Colorado College alum.

Would you believe Mr. Artzyeli trotted out the old Farfur the Mouse clip, depicting Muslim children being taught to admire suicide bombers. It’s a favorite example whose relevant context was long ago dismissed.

Footnote
One lamentable observation I had regarded a member of the chaplain’s office at CC, who is also a peace community activist. She was not at liberty to take sides on the Palestinian – Israel discussions for fear of alienating the Jewish students. I do not personally doubt her motives, nor her sympathies for the victims of injustice in Palestine.

However, when our 85 year-old Ed Nace raised his voice, or stood angrily, the chaplain’s assistant moved to calm him down. She may have thought he needed assistance, but in reality his stubborn act was working. His offense at the slanders against Palestinians, his incredulity that such a one-sided presentation was being allowed, and his indignation at the ferocity with which he was being silenced, expressed itself as a hard-of-hearing old man who was not about to be bullied. His performance, even inadvertent, worked to disrupt the lecture and temper the smug untruths being passed as academic fact. But Ed’s act was not made any easier by a colleague trying to calm him down. To his credit, Ed persevered and was able to put a human emotional context to Mr. Artzyeli’s slick propaganda.

The chaplain is no doubt schooled in nonviolent communication. She needs to bone up on effective nonviolent theater. Non-confrontational communication isn’t going to bring racist bullies like Artzyeli to heel. Zionist Apartheid is going to fall when it is condemned and pilloried.

Israel sends deputy consul general to CC

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The Israel Today event changed the speakers on us, instead of the Israeli Consul General to Los Angeles, it’s the Deputy Consul Gil Artzyeli. But the act’s still on. Get to Gaylord hall sometime before noon, it’s the conference room at the Southeast corner of the Worner Center building. We’ll stand outside with our repudiation of Mr. Artzyeli’s message, then go inside to assure the discussion steers toward being honest. I found this quote by Artzyeli, addressing the Denver Jewish community earlier this year about the Gaza incursion:

“This is not a war for territory … The first war is to protect the citizens of Israel, the second war is against Iran and the third war is against lies and disinformation.”

Any takers? My first question, if I’m given the chance: Mr. Artzyeli, are you here only to speak, or will you listen?

Cyndy Kulp put together a handout for the occasion:

Human Rights Issues in “Israel Today”

Israel is a pariah nation condemned by the UN and much of the international community for its multiple violations of international human rights law, including:

• Continuing the occupation of the Palestinian people

• Building housing settlements on confiscated land

• Seizing additional land and property from Palestinians to build “The Wall”, highways for the exclusive use of Israelis, and military areas, etc.

• Using extremely disproportionate and indiscriminate force in the invasion of the Gaza Strip during “Operation Cast Lead” in Dec. 2008

• Inflicting heavy casualties on Palestinians, many civilians and children with no way to escape the bombing

• Refusing to compensate the 5.8 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants who were displaced from their homes and properties during 1948

Israeli Diplomats, like our speaker today, should not be given a public platform from which to promote their views as long as they refuse to recognize and cooperate with international laws.

HERE ARE FURTHER DETAILS:

? In June 1967, the Israeli military invaded the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. These areas of historic Palestine under military control are the “Occupied Territories,” comprising some 3.5 million Palestinians, and they are systematically being incorporated into the state of Israel in violation of international law.

? Life under occupation is very harsh. The Palestinians have virtually no human or civil rights. Unemployment is rampant. In order to go about their daily lives, the people in the Occupied Territories must line up and go through multiple checkpoints manned by the Israeli army. Proper paperwork, including Palestinian ID’s, and permits are required to pass through, and many people are denied entry, even into East Jerusalem which is Palestinian territory and home to many hospitals, schools, and employers.

? Israel has built 200+ settlements in the West Bank, and over 400,000 Israelis have moved onto Palestinian land. Many of the settlers are armed and aggressive extremists, and their actions are regularly protected by Israeli Defense Forces.

? Israel has seized a majority of the West Bank land as military bases, settlements, security areas, “land reserves,” by-pass roads linking settlements with Israel, and other areas forbidden to Palestinians. Palestinians are confined to small fragmented areas resembling Bantustans in an Israeli version of Apartheid.

?? Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem is questioned by the international community, and contrary to what the Israelis would like you to believe, Jerusalem does not belong to Israel. This is why other nations have their embassies in Tel Aviv instead.

? East Jerusalem was declared as an occupied territory in UN Security Council Resolution 242 which specifically emphasized the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Yet Israel continues to seize homes and land and allow Israeli settlers to move into East Jerusalem.

? Over 10,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed, leaving 30,000 people homeless. Housing demolitions and displacement are common for Palestinian families, and they are powerless to protect their properties or get legal permission to build homes.

? The Gaza strip remains under siege today. Despite the withdrawal of Israeli settlers in 2005, Israel still controls entry into Gaza. People cannot leave and cannot get the goods and services they need. They are literally locked into a ghetto.

? In Dec. 2008, Israel invaded the Gaza strip, causing massive destruction and Palestinian causalities. The vast majority of the Palestinians killed in Israel’s operation were innocent civilians rather than combatants, according to a new report by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. Of the 1,387 deaths, 773 were non combatants. 320 of these were under the age of 18, and 109 were women.

? Nine Israelis were killed during the Gaza war — four by rocket fire on southern Israel, including three civilians and one soldier, while the other five were soldiers killed in combat, primarily from “friendly fire” incidents.

? The Goldstone Report which investigated the Gaza Invasion for the UN concluded that both Israel and the Palestinians had committed violations of International Law, but that Israel because of it’s huge army and sophisticated weaponry was more culpable and guilty of Crimes Against Humanity in it’s 2008/09 Gaza onslaught.

? U.S. aid has made Israel’s army one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Israel is using U.S. F-16 fighters and Apache helicopters in attacks against Palestinian civilians. This violates the U.S. Foreign Arms Export Act. Over $3 billion in US foreign aid is given to Israel, and most of it is used for military operations.

There Will Be No Security For ISRAEL Until There Is Justice For PALESTINE.

Resources For more information:
• Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
• B’tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
• Bethlehem University
• Mazin Qumsiyeh
• Machsom Watch
• Breaking the Silence
• Women in Black
• Sabeel

• Stop the Wall Campaign

• US Campaign to End the Occupation

–END THE OCCUPATION
–COMPLY WITH INTERNATIONAL LAWS
–FREEZE SETTLEMENTS
–NEGOTIATE AN EQUITABLE SOLUTION ON LAND AND WATER

The US claims to be an “honest broker” –fair to both sides– in the so-called peace process. At the same time, the U.S. proclaimed itself the unswerving ally of Israel. These roles are contradictory. Massive U.S. aid funds the occupation. Since 1949, the U.S. has given Israel well over $100 billion in grants, loans and other assistance. This amounts to over $15,000 per Israeli citizen. ?
A genuine peace with a minimum of justice requires an independent and viable Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 (West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem). Jerusalem should be shared as the capital of both Israel and Palestine. Palestine should be an equal neighbor alongside Israel with peace and security for both peoples. ?

Boycott Israeli propaganda lecture at CC

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Since the damning UN Goldstone Report about Gaza, Israel has intensified its US PR speaking engagements, but social justice activists have risen to the challenge: in London, the Israeli Ambassador had to flee a citizens arrest, the ambassador to Turkey was pelted with eggs, while another minister met similar trouble at a university in Holland. No wonder last week’s appearances by Uzi Landau at CU-Denver and Nir Barkat at DU were conducted behind rows of policemen. This week Colorado Springs gets a chance to confront an Israeli lecture circuit propagandist. On Thursday November 12 at noon, Israel Consul General Jacob Dayan visits Colorado College Gaylord Hall, to speak on “Israel Today.”

I do not know enough about Jacob Dayan to accuse him of war crimes, although before his current appointment he served as Chief of Staff for Tzipi Livni, who does stand accused of crimes against humanity. By his own words, Dayan is a genocide denier and an advocate of illegal acts.

Being Consul General to Los Angeles is no small assignment; the city’s population represents the largest Jewish community outside of Tel Aviv. Jacob Dayan is responsible for shoring up vital US support for Israel’s unpopular actions. While the subject of Thursday’s presentation sounds bucolic –you might think CC schedules periodic “(Countryname) Today” updates for all its homesick students– a survey of Mr Dayan’s current campus addresses points to an agenda much less agreeable.

First of all, Jacob Dayan’s appearance is sponsored by the same organizations which hosted Landau and Barkat in Denver, both of whom are actively engaged in violations of international law. The underwriters are the Institute for the Study of Israel in the Middle East, the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, the University of Denver, and Hillel.

(Last week, DU’s Hillel members serenaded Pro-Palestinian demonstrators with an endless stream of songs in Hebrew, while holding signs which read REMEMBER 9/11 and AMERICANS AGAINST TERRORISM.)

According to Jacob Dayan’s bio, his main themes stress the significance of the Israel Christian friendship. He most recently collected American rabbis from all extremes of the Jewish community, to send them as a delegation to Israel, so

that they will stand in the front lines of their communities and will strongly tell the true story of the state of Israel and of a democracy that is defending itself … And by standing on the front lines in the fight against extremism, they are defending the entire enlightened world and showing what a strong ally the state of Israel has with the U.S.”

Dayan’s current talking points are more focused: Iran is greatest threat to Western Civilization, All terrorists believe in fundamentalist Islam, and, paraphrased at UCLA:

The recent conflict in Gaza wasn’t a war between Israelis and Palestinians, nor between Israelis and Arabs, but a clash of civilizations pitting Israel against Iran and extremist groups supported by the Islamic state.

COME THURSDAY, AT NOON OR BEFORE, to give this Jacob Dayan a war propagandist reception. Colorado Springs needn’t always be counted on for stupidly following the call for war. We’re jingoists, most of us, and Christian Zionists many, but that shouldn’t translate to occupier oppressor. We’re American racists in our own right, we can leave semitic racism to the Israeli Zionists.

Let’s echo the international calls to Boycott Israel. Follow university campuses across the world to call for Boycott, Sanctions and Divestiture of Israel, until the Palestinian people are returned their human rights. Until Israel ceases its blockaid of Gaza, ceases its illegal collective punishment, its extrajudicial executions, its torture, and disproportionate use of military force.

Zionists accuse their critics of anti-Semitism because America and Britain commit these crimes too. So of course activists must not ignore that we have blood on their own hands. But that doesn’t grant Israel carte rouge.

As long as Israel sends envoys to urge American support for an attack on Iran, antiwar activists must protest. COLORADANS FOR PEACE URGES YOU: Send Jacob Dayan packing. We can protest his arrival outside, and lambaste him with ridicule inside. If his lecture-circuit colleagues are any indication, Dayan’s message is a sitting duck for critical thought.

Colorado reps support Israel war crimes

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Eric Verlo

All 7 of Colorado’s US representatives voted to put their congressional stamp of approval on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, joining 337 more yeas for House Resolution 867, Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the “Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.”

What are US Congressmen doing standing between Israel and every other nation (except for the US and its territories) united in wishing to enforce international law? Did you elect your representative to brownshirt for Zionism? Below are lists of the 344 yeas (179 of the Dems), and the 36 nays.

WHO VOTED TO SUPPRESS THE GOLDSTONE REPORT: To recommend that the US use its veto in the UN Security Council to reject the will of the UN General Assembly:

(At best these legislators are bowing to the tremendous pressures imposed by AIPAC and other Jewish community lobbies. At worst, they believe a state can use disproportionate force and collective punishment against a civilian population under the pretext of defending itself.)

Aderholt, Adler (NJ), Akin, Alexander, Altmire, Andrews, Arcuri, Austria, Baca, Bachus, Barrow, Bartlett, Barton (TX), Bean, Berkley, Berman, Berry, Biggert, Bilbray, Bilirakis, Bishop (GA), Bishop (NY), Bishop (UT), Blackburn, Blunt, Boccieri, Boehner, Bonner, Bono Mack, Boozman, Boren, Boswell, Boyd, Brady (TX), Braley (IA), Bright, Broun (GA), Brown (SC), Corinne Brown, Ginny Brown-Waite, Buchanan, Burgess, Burton (IN), Butterfield, Buyer, Calvert, Camp, Campbell, Cantor, Cao, Capito, Cardoza, Carnahan, Carney, Carter, Cassidy, Castle, Castor (FL), Chaffetz, Chandler, Childers, Chu, Cleaver, Clyburn, Coble, Coffman (CO), Cohen, Cole, Conaway, Connolly (VA), Costa, Costello, Courtney, Crenshaw, Crowley, Cuellar, Culberson, Cummings, Davis (CA), Davis (IL), DeGette, DeLauro, Dent, L. Diaz-Balart, M. Diaz-Balart, Dicks, Donnelly (IN), Doyle, Dreier, Driehaus, Edwards (TX), Ehlers, Ellsworth, Emerson, Engel, Etheridge, Fallin, Fattah, Flake, Fleming, Forbes, Fortenberry, Foster, Foxx, Frank (MA), Franks (AZ), Frelinghuysen, Fudge, Gallegly, Garrett (NJ), Gerlach, Giffords, Gingrey (GA), Gohmert, Gonzalez, Goodlatte, Granger, Graves, Grayson, Al Green, Gene Green, Griffith, Guthrie, Hall (TX), Halvorson, Hare, Harman, Harper, Hastings (FL), Hastings (WA), Heller, Hensarling, Herger, Herseth Sandlin, Higgins, Hill, Himes, Hinojosa, Hodes, Hoekstra, Holden, Hoyer, Hunter, Inglis, Inslee, Israel, Issa, Jackson (IL), Jackson-Lee (TX), Jenkins, Johnson (IL), Sam Johnson, Jordan (OH), Kagen, Kanjorski, Kennedy, Kildee, Kilroy, Kind, King (IA), King (NY), Kingston, Kirk, Kirkpatrick (AZ), Kissell, Klein (FL), Kline (MN), Kosmas, Kratovil, Lamborn, Lance, Langevin, Larsen (WA), Larson (CT), Latham, LaTourette, Latta, Lee (NY), Levin, Lewis (CA), Lewis (GA), Linder, Lipinski, LoBiondo, Lowey, Lucas, Luetkemeyer, Lummis, Daniel Lungren, Mack, Maffei, Maloney, Manzullo, Marchant, Markey (CO), Markey (MA), Marshall, Massa, Matheson, Matsui, McCarthy (CA), McCarthy (NY), McCaul, McClintock, McCotter, McHenry, McIntyre, McKeon, McMahon, McMorris Rodgers, McNerney, Meek (FL), Melancon, Mica, Michaud, Miller (FL), Miller (MI), Miller (NC), Gary Miller, Minnick, Mitchell, Mollohan, Moore (KS), Moore (WI), Moran (KS), Murphy (CT), Murphy (NY), Tim Murphy, Murtha, Myrick, Nadler (NY), Napolitano, Neal (MA), Neugebauer, Nye, Oberstar, Olson, Ortiz, Paulsen, Pence, Perlmutter, Perriello, Peters, Peterson, Petri, Pitts, Platts, Poe (TX), Polis (CO), Pomeroy, Posey, Putnam, Quigley, Radanovich, Rangel, Rehberg, Reichert, Reyes, Richardson, Rodriguez, Roe (TN), Rogers (AL), Rogers (KY), Rogers (MI), Rohrabacher, Rooney, Ros-Lehtinen, Roskam, Ross, Rothman (NJ), Roybal-Allard, Royce, Ruppersberger, Rush, Ryan (OH), Ryan (WI), Salazar, Loretta Sanchez, Sarbanes, Scalise, Schakowsky, Schauer, Schiff, Schmidt, Schock, Schrader, Schwartz, Scott (GA), Scott (VA), Sensenbrenner, Serrano, Sessions, Sestak, Shadegg, Shea-Porter, Sherman, Shimkus, Shuler, Shuster, Simpson, Skelton, Slaughter, Smith (NE), Smith (NJ), Smith (TX), Smith (WA), Space, Spratt, Stearns, Sullivan, Sutton, Tanner, Taylor, Teague, Terry, Thompson (CA), Thompson (MS), Thompson (PA), Thornberry, Tiahrt, Tiberi, Titus, Tonko, Tsongas, Turner, Upton, Van Hollen, Visclosky, Walden, Walz, Wasserman Schultz, Watson, Waxman, Weiner, Westmoreland, Wexler, Whitfield, Wilson (OH), Wilson (SC), Wittman, Wolf, Yarmuth, Young (AK), Young (FL)

WHO VOTED AGAINST: Hoping the UN resolution will be allowed to prompt Israel to investigate the conduct of its IDF soldiers in Gaza, or face war crimes prosecution.

Baird, Baldwin, Blumenauer, Boustany, Capps, Carson (IN), Clarke, Clay, Davis (KY), Dingell, Doggett, Edwards (MD), Ellison, Filner, Grijalva, Hinchey, EB Johnson, Kilpatrick (MI), Kucinich, Lee (CA), Lynch, McCollum, McDermott, McGovern, Miller, George, Moran (VA), Olver, Pastor (AZ), Paul, Price (NC), Rahall, Snyder, Stark, Waters, Watt, Woolsey.

Stop Jewish A-bomb. Say what? Whose?

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- Barkat Protest. Tony’s sign proved effective right out of the bag. Tony had no sooner pulled it out when a pro-Israel organizer saw “STOP JEWISH A-BOMB” and immediately scolded Tony for his sloppy choice of words. “Your sloppiness reveals the anti-Semite you are.” We chased after him, demanding why it’s alright to say “Muslims” mustn’t have nukes.

Indeed, the Israeli lobby has become more careful to say in public that “Iran” must not have nuclear weapons. But not far behind that argument, is the rationale that radical Islam must not, and Muslims themselves cannot be trusted. According to Uzi Landau last week, Islam is the nemesis of our (yours and my) Judeo-Christian civilization.

Tony’s sign was designed to point at this hypocrisy. As well, of course, to remind all parties that Israel is a nuclear power. As much as it’s an alarmist about a nuclear Middle East, Israel possesses an estimated 200 nuclear warheads. But I didn’t expect the slogan to provoke the confession that a choice of words, Jewish versus Israel, Muslim versus Iran, was a mere matter of sloppiness. It is not.

For the most part, the crowd protesting Nir Barkat’s speech were on message. Barkat’s mission was to promote tourism to Jerusalem, and to rally the Jewish community to reverse the trend of Jews leaving his city. Those outside protested the demolition of Palestinian homes, and the building of new settlements. Some of the protesters were Palestinian, and all were pro-Palestinian. We were admonished for straying from the focus, in particular with our signs urging US OUT OF AFGHANISTAN.

Strangely, the counter-protesters supporting Barkat had a singular message, besides I HEART ISRAEL. It was about terrorism. Not just against Israel, but all terrorism. You’d not believe the signs borne by the pro-Israeli demonstrators: God bless US troops, Remember 9-11, Americans against Terrorism. They show up to support the Mayor of Jerusalem, but their message is about the Global War on Terrorism. I think it’s rather interesting to see Israel’s relationship to that meme authenticated by members of the Jewish community.

Inside, someone was able to unfold a sign which read “Barkat: Destroyer of Palestinian Homes” until quickly asked to conceal it. The questions for Nir Barkat posed by the moderator were mostly softballs. Barkat’s presentation was mostly to urge Jewish migration to Jerusalem, or at least, come for a visit.

(Work in progress: more by morning)

Thief of Jerusalem to speak in Denver

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Eric Verlo

In Israel’s continuing PR barrage to elevate US jingoism against Iran, the regime has sent another official to lobby the Denver Jewish community. This time Mayor Hickenlooper and Governor Ritter are welcoming the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, to speak at the University of Denver. If you oppose Israel’s continued appropriation of occupied Jerusalem, which Barkat calls “the Jewish people’s eternal capital,” you’ll want to join Palestinian activists and the CFP, to protest Israel’s ongoing propaganda campaign. Come Tuesday, November 3, to the D.U. Newman Center for Performing Arts, 6PM.

Zionist Right Wing launches new effort to fire another Left university professor

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Tony Logan

University of California- Santa Barbara Sociology and Global Studies Professor, William Robinson, is under attack from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for having spoken out against Israeli military atrocities in Gaza. Their position is quite simple and is that he should either shut up or be fired. See The Robinson Case

A quick view of his defense site shows that this professor and his supporters are quite aware of the nature of this enemy of free speech they are up against. See Academic Freedom in the News The Anti-Defamation League perversely spends much of its time trying to shut people up and defame them, so to speak. As another example of how this works, see the recent Right Wing attacks against President Obama himself for having shook hands with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Below is a passage of a news report about Obama and Hugo Chavez’s meeting last week.

‘Obama returned to Washington early Sunday evening. But even before he got back, Obama was facing condemnation from some Republicans about how he dealt with Chavez. “I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen kind of laughing and joking with Hugo Chavez,” said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.’

While the Anti-Defamation League itself is not trying directly to remove Obama from office (they love Obama’s selection of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff way too much!), they do have a campaign going full steam to falsely label Hugo Chavez as being antisemitic. See ADL’s report below…

“What is troubling about Venezuela is that anti-Semitism is being used as a political tool,” Mr. Foxman said. “Anti-Semitism is fostered by those at the highest levels of government, trickled down the government apparatus and left unchallenged by officials in the Chavez regime, the government-controlled media, and civic and religious leaders who support the regime in Venezuela.

“We are encouraged by the many expressions of support for the Venezuelan Jewish community coming from opposition politicians and independent media outlets, who we believe more accurately reflect the views and feelings of the vast majority of the Venezuelan people.”

That is an excerpt from their website’s ADL Report: Venezuelan Jewish Community Under Threat

Coming after the US coup attempt and kidnapping of Hugo Chavez, one rather imagines that the ADL has the whole situation backwards. It is not the Chavez government that is anti-Semitic at all, but rather that it is the Right Wing Zionist Movement that is anti-Chavez. They want him removed just like they want all radical Left antiwar professors removed from their academic posts inside the US. And the ADL campaign against Venezuela’s current government moves hand in hand with the Republican campaign against Obama for shaking hands and laughing alongside Hugo Chavez. Both the Republican Right and the ADL simply want to stifle all views critical of US foreign policy and Israeli government policy.

This Israeli-made campaign to silence and trash all critics of the Jewish State hegemony in the Middle East promoted in US foreign policy even has been seen down to the level of covert attacks on American blogs like this one. That is why we now express our own solidarity with UCSB professor William Robinson. We will not, and should not, let them silence us all. They have many tools of intimidation and censorship and we need to bring to the light of day all of them.

Yes, they may succeed at silencing an individual critic of Israel here and there but our Movement to expose the reactionary nature of US foreign policy use of Israeli Zionist Jewish State propaganda grows stronger over time. People around the globe are simply getting fed up with the racism and imperialism that are political cornerstones of the Israeli and US governments. The truth will continue to rise up through the blankets of neo-con and Zionist propaganda for having yet more of their bloodshed and pillage.

Visit Professor Robinson’s website

Israel’s plans to make Palestinians homeless in Jerusalem in order to make ‘parks’ for the Jewish community

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Tony Logan

caterpillar-bulldozer Ethnic cleansing disguised as plans to give a city more ‘open (Green) space’? Yes, that’s the Jewish State’s plan for Jerusalem. Voice of America reports that Palestinian Residents Brace for Demolition of Homes in East Jerusalem but forgets to add that the American government is enabling this ethnic cleansing by Israeli authorities.

Third class citizens in the Jewish Apartheid State

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Tony Logan

israeli against Indigenous Palestinians are not really even second class citizens within the ‘Jewish Apartheid State since certain elements of the Jewish community are given second class status themselves. Even calling Israel’s Palestinians Third Class citizens is kind of a stretch since they correctly believe and feel that the Jewish community will try to expel them at the first opportune moment. Discrimination against their culture, heritage, religion, and language is everywhere. Israel’s forgotten Palestinians Israel is a classic colonialist Apartheid State. Even the rather conservative ex-Prez Jimmy Carter can see and admit that.

Bishop Williamson and Auschwitz 1.0

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Eric Verlo

I am curious as to why a Roman Catholic bishop would risk a second excommunication over the historic particulars of the Holocaust. Bishop Richard Williamson is being labeled a “Holocaust Denier” because he questions the extent, and mechanism, of the official version of the Holocaust. Because Williamson is also criticized for his skepticism about the official 9/11 narrative, and for his praise for the Unabomber’s manifesto, I want to take a closer look, and wonder what is he reading?

Here’s what the outspoken Williamson told Swedish SVT in a November 2008 interview, as transcribed by the BBC:

“I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against, is hugely against, six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler… I believe there were no gas chambers [during World War II]”

First, I’m compelled to pose a naive question: If we can all agree that Jews died in huge numbers by incomparable horrors at the hands of the Nazis, would it matter what the exact death toll was, or which killing method predominated? Why? What is the need for laws to restrict historians who are trying to reconstruct the record from emerging facts? Must preemptive “anti-defamation” laws mandate that historians stick to the official “untold” number and “indescribable” evil?

Even if we postulate, albeit cynically, that Holocaust reverence is critical to upholding American public support for Israel‘s “right to exist” in the Middle East, how could a revision of the casualties, in any case a horrific magnitude, make an difference?

Millions of Jews fell victim to the Third Reich. No one is denying it, and historical revision is not trying to bring the Holocaust victims back to life. Holocaust Remembrance of the Jewish victims has remained a political priority around the world, advocating commemoration in education, literature, civic life, and pop culture. Why then, an aversion to scrutiny?

Last week a fellow Society of St. Pius X member, Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz was ejected from SSPX for coming to Williamson’s and the Pope’s defense.

While the usual politicians and Jewish community leaders are voicing their indignation, can we ask, are the Bishop’s beliefs really at odds with accepted orthodoxy? The media will reiterate that the Six Million figure has always been beyond dispute. All the while, official scholarship has been recording otherwise. In Germany, revisionist historians are jailed for Holocaust Denial. Yet bit by bit, mainstream historians have been able to publish divergent theses which withstand legal refutation.

For the sake of argument, let’s dismiss all the “deniers” as kooks, and look only at the traditionally vetted voices.

On the subject of Auschwitz, where four million of the total six million Jews were believed to have perished, Der Spiegel managing editor Fritjof Meyer a continued critic of revisionism, summarized in Osteuropa 52, 5/2002, p. 631:

“In 1945, the Soviet Investigatory Commission numbered four million victims in the National Socialist work and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a product of war propaganda. Under coercion, camp Commandant Höß named three million and recanted. Up until now, how many people actually fell victim to this singular mass murder could only be estimated. The first Holocaust historian, Gerald Reitlinger, assumed one million, while the latest state of research estimated it to be several hundred thousand fewer.”

Naturally even Meyer touched off a firestorm by integrating the sum of official scholarship into the big picture. The difficulties which historians face in reaching variant findings are explained by another mainstream scholar, noted Hitler historian Dr. Werner Maser, Professor for History and International Law, Munich University, Falsification, Legend, and Truth about Hitler and Stalin, Olzog, Munich 2004, on p.332

“To be sure, […] the extermination of the Jews is considered to be one of the best researched aspects of contemporary history […], but that is not the case. […] Indeed, whole regions remain as much terra incognita as ever, […] German historians exhibit timidity about taking on the horrible issue and possibly bringing to light details that do not agree with the accounts which have multiplied for a very long time.”

And about the deterrence of the Holocaust Denial laws:

“The sword of Damocles hovers over historians (not only in Germany) who portray the controversial phases of history as they ‘actually were’ – and identify the frequently even officially codified ideological specifications as falsifications of history.”

The question of the gas chambers is raised by the absence of evidence. According to major Holocaust authority Dr. Arno J. Mayer, Professor of Modern Jewish History at Princeton University, in Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The “Final Solution” in History, Pantheon, New York 1990, p. 362:

“Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable. Even though Hitler and the Nazis made no secret of their war on the Jews, the SS operatives dutifully eliminated all traces of their murderous activities and instruments. No written orders for gassing have turned up thus far. The SS not only destroyed most camp records, which were in any case incomplete, but also razed nearly all killing and crematory installations well before the arrival of Soviet troops. Likewise, care was taken to dispose of the bones and ashes of the victims.”

Justifiably, scholars are skeptical that the complete absence of evidence should be taken as proof of its existence and total suppression. Some camps were overrun before the Germans could destroy any part of them. Mayer continues, p. 163:

“In the meantime, there is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors in the existing sources. […] Much the same is true of for the conflicting estimates and extrapolations of the number of victims, since there are no reliable statistics to work with. […] Both radical skepticism and rigid dogmatism about the exact processes of extermination and the exact number of victims are the bane of sound historical interpretation”

In light of the before-sited Wannsee Conference documents now being considered post-war forgeries, Mayer explains, p 163:

“To date there is no certainty about who gave the order, and when, to install the gas chambers used for the murder of Jews at Auschwitz. As no written command has been located, there is a strong presumption that the order was issued and received orally”

With no written record of a “Final Solution,” and the implausibility of a completely vaporized paper trail, mainstream scholars have had to improvise an explanation for how an extermination directive was disseminated. University of Vermont Professor Raul Hilberg, member of US Holocaust Memorial Council, author of The Destruction of the European Jews, (Holmes & Meyer, New York 1985), was quoted in Newsday, Feb. 23, 1983:

“But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction [of the Jews] not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They [these measures] were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus mind reading by a far-flung [German] bureaucracy.”

Hilberg himself ran into trouble with the authorized version, because he refused to corroborate tales of Jewish rebellion against their Nazi jailers. His group-think theory extended to the Jews themselves, putting emphasis on their acceptance of being exploited as war industry slave labor.

“I had to examine the Jewish tradition of trusting God, princes, laws and contracts […] Ultimately I had to ponder the Jewish calculation that the persecutor would not destroy what he could economically exploit. It was precisely this Jewish strategy that dictated accommodation and precluded resistance.”

That’s where the extermination camp thesis becomes less probable than the work camp. Perhaps the Jews didn’t resist because they were being worked, not gassed. Worked to death, of course, but dying as more a consequence of wartime Germany’s depleting resources, than from a deliberate eradication effort. Evidence is plentiful of the work camps and dead bodies.

And isn’t that the answer to my innocent question? To doubt whether the murder weapon was a pistol or a knife, means calling into question the crime entirely. That’s why revisionists are decried for being “deniers.” While we presume the distinction makes little difference, because clearly a murder was committed regardless, the prosecutor constructing the accusations wants to prove his motive and not another.

There are many details about which historians have begun to disagree. Many of the witness accounts have been proven to be unreliable. Even Elie Wiesel was compelled to reclassified his memoir as a novel. The Holocaust as later generations have come to know it was not as the WWII generation saw it. Even those soldiers who encountered the atrocities themselves.

Professor Hilberg recounts studying at Brooklyn College under Hans Rosenberg, a fellow Jew. Even in the wake of the haunting newsreels of the concentration camps, Hilberg records that Rosenberg remarked in a 1948 lecture:

“The most wicked atrocities perpetrated on a civilian population in modern times occurred during the Napoleonic occupation of Spain.”

I don’t really subscribe to the idea that the Holocaust is diminished by learning that the WWII concentration camp victims died from systemic and despotic abuse, starvation and exhaustion. But those holding the secrets believe that the concept of the Holocaust being the greatest evil perpetrated upon mankind falls apart if cracks are allowed to form in the accepted narrative.

Perhaps the German population, and for that matter, the Catholic Church, did not intercede more vigorously because there was no premeditated extermination program. We can say now that German reinforcements being sent to the Russian Front knew they were being sent to their deaths, but this is only with hindsight.

Is this Bishop Williamson’s interest in revisiting the Holocaust, to rehabilitate the church’s role? I doubt it. The Catholic church cannot escape culpability for its instrumental role in support of the Nazis, guilty of ware crimes and crimes against humanity, initiating a war of aggression being the chief charge at the Nuremberg Trials for example, before even taking into account the concentration camps.

Perhaps the American industrialists and bankers who knew about the camps did not interfere because they understood the camps were for the supply of slave labor. Isn’t this a key enigma of the Holocaust, as we grapple with it? How could we have not known? How could this have been allowed to happen?

Perhaps the signs above the camp gates which read ARBEIT MACHT FREI, work earns freedom, meant what they said. They might have been inescapable ironies, but not the cruel mockery of which we accuse the Germans.

Why would factories like IG Farben and Krupp want to liquidate their valuable cheap workforce? Why would camps meant to exterminate have infirmaries? Why would the wardens treat inmates for illness while simultaneously sending incoming transports to directly to ovens?

Today the popular conscience has been saturated with the ghostly images of the concentration camp victims. How to explain the emaciated inmates discovered by the liberating troops, many of whom could not be saved from dying, even under the administration of the liberators? Dr. Arno J. Mayer concedes this explanation, p. 365

“[…] the whole of Auschwitz was intermittently in the grip of a devastating typhus epidemic. The result was an unspeakable death rate. […] There is a distinction between dying from ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ causes and being killed by shooting, hanging, phenol injection, or gassing. […] from 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably overall, more Jews were killed by so-called ‘natural’ causes than by ‘unnatural’ ones.”

This is not to diminish the crime of the Holocaust one iota. The German people, the industrialists, the church, the anti-Semites, are far more guilty because the crime against the Jews was banal and common. It was not devised by agents of unspeakable evil.

Other aspiring genocidal nations and peoples cannot excuse their acts because their methods fall demonstrably below the mythic proportions of the Holocaust.

Secret Israeli database shows large scale Jewish theft of Palestinian land

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Tony Logan

Israeli theft of Palestinian land
Zionism is racism, and Zionism is theft of land and property based on racism. The Zionist ‘Jewish State’ continues to thieve off other peoples’ lands and properties and Haaretz.com has just published material showing how the Israeli government in its own documents was hiding the extent of the theft for Jews of Arab properties from the general world public. See Secret Israeli database reveals full extent of illegal settlement

To learn more about this systematic theft by the Israeli Jewish community, one can go to the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, too, and do some studying.

One would think the IDF would welcome the press…

Posted on January 19, 2009 by Brother Jonah

If in fact they were committing lawful actions.

Instead we have multiple incidents of the Independent Reporting, as in not the reporters embedded into the IDF, being met with IDF gunfire.

The one incident which makes the point the clearest about the
Restrictions On Reporting From Gaza

* The Israeli authorities are not allowing foreign journalists free entry into Gaza.
* The Foreign Press Association recently held a lottery for the first eight foreign media organisations to be given access to Gaza. Sky did not win a ticket in this first round.
* Sky News, like other foreign media outlets, is relying on local Palestinian freelancers inside Gaza to give us the latest information.
* Some military details may be subject to censorship by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). This is standard for all media organisations operating out of Israel.

…is the one in which 3 Palestinian children who were Murdered by the IDF because their father dared to report from Gaza things that the Israeli Propaganda Ministry, some of whom have been posting rather heavily on this forum, Did Not Want Published.

Incidentally, the woman who reported this in the Pittsburgh paper is Jewish.

Voice of Palestinians loses 3 daughters to Israeli shell[/b]
Saturday, January 17, 2009
By Sadie Gurman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For weeks, Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish watched war devastate his town in northern Gaza, huddling at home with his eight children as shells exploded and fire roared just outside their door.

From his home in Jebalia via speakerphone, Dr. Abu al-Aish shared his fears Thursday evening with a Squirrel Hill audience. “Today, Gaza was completely dark because of the flames from the explosions and the destruction,” he told the crowd gathered at the Jewish Community Center to voice concern over the ongoing fighting.

YouTube Video of Israeli TV speaking with Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish

He said he lives in constant worry for the safety of his family. “I am sitting helpless, looking in my children’s eyes, while they’re wondering which one of us will be lost. â€¦ I am helpless in front of my children. If I lost them, what would be my life?”

Hours after connecting with his Pittsburgh audience, Dr. Abu al-Aish’s home was hammered by an Israeli artillery shell, killing three of his daughters and a niece and severely injuring two daughters. Eighteen of his relatives were in the home at the time.

Israeli TV said initial reports indicated that a sniper had fired either from the family’s building — which friends quoted on TV said they doubted — or from nearby. The Israeli infantry responded with a tank shell.

Throughout the 21-day war, Dr. Abu al-Aish has been providing Israeli TV viewers with updates on the medical crisis unfolding in Gaza. For many, he is the voice of Palestinian suffering. But yesterday, his report was different.

“I want to know why my daughters were harmed,” he said on TV. “This should haunt [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert his entire life.”

Dr. Abu al-Aish was able to arrange transfer of his two injured daughters to Israeli hospitals, a rarity in this conflict. The Israeli army for the first time allowed a Palestinian ambulance to travel straight to the Erez border crossing, where the injured were transferred to Israeli ambulances. From there, they were taken by helicopter to Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv.

Gazan officials identified Dr. Abu al-Aish’s daughters fatally injured as Bisan, 22; Mayer, 15; and Aya, 14. His dead niece was Nour Abu al-Aish, also 14.

Dr. Abu al-Aish, 55, is a longtime peace activist who has promoted joint Israeli-Palestinian projects and studied the war’s affects on children. “What is happening is not the right way, from both sides,” he said Thursday night to his Squirrel Hill audience. The tragedy stunned those who took part in the Jewish Community Center discussion.

“When you know people, it makes a big difference,” said Nancy Bernstein. “We happened to hear this man, with his children around him, and now, his children are dead. It’s very shocking.”

Others said the deaths underscored the need for a swift end to the violence. “If the Israeli government had announced a cease-fire this morning, Ezzeldeen’s kids would be alive,” said Dr. Naftali Kaminski, a UPMC associate professor of medicine and pathology and longtime friend of the Palestinian doctor. He said he learned of the deaths from a nephew in Israel.

“This is a guy who, all of his life, was dedicated to two things: One is peace and reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians, and the other one is taking care of his patients,” Dr. Kaminski said. “This is devastating.”

There was also a 22 year old woman murdered in the attack.

I put in emphasis and Extra Emphasis on certain key elements in the story, because I know the IDF supporters habit of hiding behind the “Anti-Semitism” argument to deflect criticism.

Perhaps here I should point out that same Scriptural “right of return” touted loudly by the Knesset would also apply to the Palestinians in equal measure.

Because the Samaritans are Israel too…

Either the Scriptures are false, in which case Israel doesn’t exist, or they’re true, in which case both Israel AND Palestine have equal rights to exist.

Israel declined December cease-fire offer because it meant opening the Gaza border

Posted on January 12, 2009 by Eric Verlo

A US media blackout is keeping the Gaza solidarity demonstrations out of the news, while repeating the mantra of Israel’s right to defend itself. Behind the media lies, the diplomatic records speak another story: Israel Rejected Hamas Cease-Fire Offer in December. Colorado Springs’ own Rabbi Donald Levy has been decrying in the local press how Israel is criticized “so deeply and so repeatedly…simply for defending its borders.” Speaking for the Jewish Community, Levy explained to KRDO how all Jews feel some connection to Israel, and that the community hopes recent events will lead to the destruction of Hamas.

The “destruction of Hamas?” Hamas members are the democratically elected representatives of Palestine! It’s one thing to call for “wiping Israel [an apartheid theocracy imposed upon Arabs] from the map.” Even Hamas is not cheerleading for a liquidation of all Israeli Likud Party members!

Nonviolent vigils will be death of Gazans

Posted on January 11, 2009 by Eric Verlo

GAZA PROTESTS PROLIFERATE! Demonstrators are occupying Israeli consulates, storming embassies, harassing pro-Israeli rallies, and spilling blood on Zionist memorials. Not that anything is working so far. Meanwhile, in non-stories for the press, the usual non-confrontational passivists are lighting candles in memory of the slain. Are they anticipating, in their non-violent wisdom, the eminent extinction of the Palestinians of Gaza? Pacifists seem more comfortable to commemorate the ideological sacrifice of martyrs sooner than advocate for the survival of the endangered.

Others are not content to mourn Zionism’s ultimate triumph. Here’s the best analysis yet I’ve encountered for antiwar strategists.

In Caracas, the protests have the support of the state. Venezuelan president Chavez expelled the Israeli Ambassador and called his nation’s Jews to repudiate Israel’s inhumanity in Gaza:

“Now I hope that the Venezuelan Jewish community speaks out against this barbarism. Do it. Don’t you strongly reject all acts of persecution?”

Here is the Free Palestine Alliance statement released January 9, 2008:

The Massacre Intensifies:

As we prepare this thirteenth FPA statement, the Zionist army was continuing what it does best the wholesale slaughter of children and unarmed civilians. As would be expected of the current state of affairs of the US-controlled international scene, the massacre of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is continuing despite yesterday’s feeble UN Security Council resolution that calls for Israel to immediately stop its attack. Actually, the US-Zionist leadership went the other way — more and more attacks. The Israeli Zionist army was given additional orders to escalate the conquest as it enters into a third phase of obliteration. Simultaneously as the Israeli cabinet was giving orders for a higher kill and destruction ratio, the US Senate was not going to be outdone by Zionists. It had to add to its long and shameful record. So it secretly issued a fast-tracked resolution fully supporting the ongoing massacre and giving Israel the needed cover. We ask, is this Senate resolution in the best interest of the people of the US?

But is it not the legacy and norm of the US-Israeli alliance to discard the will of the people of the US and the world. Is it not their norm to discard any and all UN resolutions that may remotely disagree with their strategic plans? The examples are far too many to list, including both UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions dating as far back as 1947.

Yesterday’s UN resolution was approved by 14 of the 15 nations that currently sit on the Security Council, with the US abstaining. As would be expected, the resolution did not address the deadly siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, nor did it condemn outright the fascistic actions of the Zionist polity.

Sadly, Palestinian victims have now reached at least 800 murdered and more than 3,300 injured. And these numbers are certain to climb substantially. Yesterday alone, fifty Palestinians were found murdered under their destroyed homes, some with their bodies already beginning to decompose. The Red Cross reported finding 4 near-death children slumped near and over their decomposing dead mothers. These children, like many others, were reported by the Red Cross to have been left without rescue in starvation and thirst for four full days around their killed mothers due to attacks on rescue workers.

On the very same day the UN Security Council resolution was issued, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that serves approximately 800,000 Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip decided that it was forced to fully halt its services. This decision came following the killing of one of UNRWA’s truck drivers, and due to the extreme conditions imposed by the Zionist army on relief workers. The UNRWA also strongly condemned the Israeli cover-up used to justify the bombardment of the Al-Fakhoura school that murdered and injured over 100 children and their parents.

Come Out in Force Tomorrow:

The people of the US have a moral obligation to turn out in massive numbers tomorrow, Saturday, from Washington, DC to San Francisco, Los Angeles and in between, to send a clear message that this campaign of murder must stop at once. In DC, we will be right there to send a message to the Bush administration, the incoming Barak administration, and to the entire US Congress. In San Francisco, where the United Nations took its first founding steps, we can highlight the charade of UN resolutions and international diplomacy, pointing to the double standards and outright racist behavior of the US and its allies. In Los Angeles and all other cities and towns, we can and must mobilize to join in protest in the largest possible numbers. This is the time to stand for what is moral and just. We cannot continue funding Israel while the people of the US are in dire need for funds right here to rescue homes and towns from collapse.

Rather than pay for the destruction of the Gaza Strip, let us pay for the construction of roadways, parks, and schools.

Rather than destroy thousands of Palestinian homes, let us fix the collapsing housing market and keep people in their own homes.

Rather than send more people homeless, let us protect folks from evictions and foreclosures.

Rather than kill doctors, nurses, and relief workers, let us build hospitals and provide health care to the millions without it.

This is our time to let Obama know that he could very easily stimulate both the economy and the morality of the US by stopping all funds used to kill babies and their mothers. Instead, we can invest these same funds in the education and upbringing of millions of impoverished children, right here in the US.

This is indeed our time, folks, and we must come out to lead the US Congress and administrations to the moral high ground. The interest of the US and its people is best served by supporting the construction of US infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals, and by creating jobs at a living wage. Rather than kill Arab unionists, let us support strengthening unions and their demand for a respectable life and wages.

This is our time to show that Palestine is but a symbol for ALL just struggles. Struggles we all wage every day in various forms. The massacre against the Palestinian people should focus a very bright spotlight on what is wrong with US policies: US tax dollars are being sent to the Israeli army under US diplomatic cover, and are being used to boost corporations that manufacture military hardware, to conquer and destroy countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than rescuing a failing nation from its impending economic depression.

Signs of Defeat:

We regard the UN Security Council Resolution as a fig leaf void of legitimacy. For one thing, it came 13 days following the massacre, and after more than 4,100 Palestinian casualties between killed and injured. It appears that key power-brokers at the UN had hoped that by waiting long enough (13 days) without action, the Zionists could in fact secure a political and military victory.

While the resolution attempts to provide a diplomatic cover for the Israelis and the US as a way out of their unattainable goals, it is nonetheless a clear indication that the ongoing conquest is unable to achieve any Zionist political gain. In fact, politically speaking, the US-Zionist-Arab regime tripartite axis is only achieving the very opposite of what they had intended through this massacre: (1) the Palestinians have achieved massive international, Arab, and Palestinian support; (2) the possibility for appointing a client regime in the Gaza Strip is non-existent; (3) the sustenance of the Abbas PA in its current formation has become very uncertain; and (4) the little legitimacy some Arab regimes have is that much more diminished.

To the extreme dismay of the US and Zionist leaders, the UN resolution demands an immediate stop to the attacks and the opening of all crossings; and it opens the gates for humanitarian aid. Hence, rejected by the Zionist leadership at once. Due to the weight of the pressure on US Arab allies, who could not under any circumstance return home empty-handed, the US had no choice but to abstain rather than give its usual veto — a way to give the US-supported despots a piece of paper to wave in the face of a sea of millions and millions in protest everywhere. Ironically, the gravity of the massacre made a full circle, compromising the stability of the alliance that is responsible for its implementation. The more violent the attack, the more stubborn the resistance, the more widespread the support, and the weaker the grip of despotic regimes.

Let us join the millions who have taken to the streets thus far, including today, in thousands of towns and cities in the world. There are those who are volunteering as doctors, nurses, and rescue workers, with many already killed and injured; there are those who are giving blood to hospitals and to the Red Cross and Red Crescent; those who are protesting; many are writing, painting, dancing and singing for freedom and liberation; and there are those who are holding sit-ins, and those who are giving flowers of appreciation to the Venezuelan government for their principled stance. All are out, and all are outraged.

Come and join!

Take your stand and come out tomorrow. Make it known that this massacre cannot continue!

All Out in Solidarity with the Palestinian People!

The Free Palestine Alliance

January 9, 2009

And this report from A.N.S.W.E.R. about Sunday’s march on DC:

From Washington, DC to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Worldwide–Hundreds of Thousands March to Let Gaza Live!

On Sat., Jan. 10, hundreds of cities, and hundreds of thousands of people, responded to the call for an International Day of Emergency Action to support the people of Gaza. Outside the United States, marches took place in London, Edinburgh, Cairo, Athens, Kuala Lumpur, Beirut, Seoul, Mexico City, Jakarta, Montreal, Paris, Barcelona, Marseilles, Lyon, Oslo, Berlin, Bern, Karachi, Nablus, New Delhi, Amman, Sarajevo, Ramallah, Stockholm, and Tokyo. The protests continue to grow — today, another 250,000 took to the streets in Spain and more than 100,000 in Algeria.

In the U.S., the Day of Action was initiated on just one week’s notice by a call from the ANSWER Coalition, Muslim American Society Freedom, Free Palestine Alliance, National Council of Arab Americans, and Al-Awda – International Palestine Right to Return Coalition. In Washington DC, over 20,000 took to the streets in the freezing rain to demand, “Let Gaza Live!” The streets were so backed up that thousands of people in buses and cars were still arriving after the march had left Lafayette Park.

The demonstration began with a rally at the White House. Featured speakers included former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was just on a humanitarian relief mission attempting to bring supplies to Gaza when the boat she was on was intentionally struck by an Israeli military vessel; Mahdi Bray, Executive Director, Muslim American Society Freedom; Rev. Graylan Hagler, National President of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice; Mounzer Sleiman, Vice Chairman, National Council of Arab Americans; Ralph Nader; Paul Zulkowitz, Jews Against the Occupation; Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition; Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney and co-founder, Partnership for Civil Justice; and others.

The spirited march then led to the Washington Post, where demonstrators denounced the paper for its biased pro-Israeli coverage of the massacre and its complete blackout of protest activities in the United States.

In San Francisco, 10,000 took part in the march and rally. The rally included a huge outpouring from the local Arab community, and energetic participation from Bay Area youth.

A crowd of 2000 demonstrators confronted a heavy police presence in downtown Orlando for the “Let Gaza Live: Florida Statewide March for Palestine” called by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition/Florida—just six days prior. The demonstration is the largest anti-war demonstration in Florida in more than a decade and certainly the largest ever protest in Florida calling for a free Palestine. Police tried to intimidate marchers by initially searching all bags, forcing protesters to remove sticks from signs, and denying the use of amplified sound. Organizers and protesters challenged and pushed back their unwarranted scare tactics, and the protest turned out to be a powerful success.

In Los Angeles, 10,000 people participated in a regional mass march and rally to “Let Gaza Live” at the Westwood Federal Building. Hundreds of Palestinian flags and signs reading “Stop bombing Gaza!” and “The real terrorists: U.S./Israel war machine!” lined all sides of the street and the lawn in front of the federal government headquarters. It was the largest protest and the first major march in Southern California since the Israeli bombing campaign and invasion began.

A funeral procession led the march with makeshift coffins draped with Palestinian flags, representing the hundreds of people killed by Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza. Hundreds of children followed, along with a huge, hand-made Palestinian flag, in a contingent organized by the Palestinian American Women’s Association.

The worldwide movement is continuing to grow with more protests today, Jan. 11. There will be countless other actions in the days to come. Today in New York City, the police carried out a violent assault against those marching in mid-town Manhattan in support of the people of Palestine. A number of people were injured and arrested.

With the support of the United States, the Israeli military machine has expanded its invasion into urban areas of Gaza. The death toll among Palestinians is now nearly 900, with many thousands wounded. The injured and hungry of Gaza have no relief. We must do everything in our power to deepen and broaden this movement in the coming days.

Arab dictator allies of US line up in support of Israeli terrorism against Gaza

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Tony Logan

Silence. Or worse yet even, efforts to blame Hamas instead of Israel for the new slaughter in Gaza. That’s what the US allied Arab dictatorships imposed on the Arab world offer their people. Complicity. Many of these Sunni Arab elites (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, et cetera) are eager for the US to hammer the Shiite led Iranians, and have no solidarity at all with their own poor let alone the Palestinian poor of Gaza…. or Palestinians elsewhere for that matter. This is the opening battle of the war to bring about regime change in Iran for the Washington, D.C. rat class, and the Arab dictatorships controlled by the US government are fully behind the effort.

Meanwhile the corporate media in the US and Britain keep a tight lid on the spin of the actual news, all in support of their own imperialist ruling cabals. At least, the European Union and the United Nations have had the decency to tokenly oppose this slaughter by this Jewish/ Christian Corporate Alliance centered in the US, Great Britain, and Israel. Everybody around the globe pretty much knows who holds the big guns, and it is the US government and its immediate side kicks that do. Everybody realizes that there is always the big price to pay if one gets too out of line with what these gangsters want from them.

The US antiwar community, dominated by phony ‘Peace’crat types, are immobilized. It seems that the script promised by the ‘Peace’crats with an Obama victory were as false as they come. They all voted for Obama and now don’t know what exactly to do? Really going out and protesting against their rulers is something that might make them embarrassed and scares them no end. Locally, not a word from the office clowns of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace De-Commission, with them only wanting to turn the other cheek from reality, though reality just keeps on beating them about their public face.

So now we know why the Arab World hates us so? It has to do with their own gang of thugs kept in power by the US government. The US and Israel have even turned the Arabs into hating the PLO, now that the leader of the PLO, Abbas, is totally controlled by our sorry leaders in Washington, D.C. What a mess! And the world keeps on just getting more and more dangerous, more and more messed up, day after day. Nobody has any ‘national security’ these days, thinks to the Democratic and Republican gangsters that almost all voting Americans backed in the last election.

This Israeli bombing of mainly children Arab youngsters living in the most horrible poverty and isolation in Gaza, is their work. Aren’t you proud you voted for this, if in fact you did? Haven’t heard a word from Obama, have you? What does he care if a community of overwhelmingly young children is shut off, starved to death, and then bombed? He’s not for change at all. He’s simply for allowing the Jewish community of Israel to be allowed to steal yet more land from the Arabs that owned it.

Barack Obama and the globalization of American racism

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Tony Logan

Clinton blackface
Barack Obama is about to be put into the White House to try to save America’s business community from its own rampant incompetence and greed. The American ruling class has turned to a Black man to play the role of their modern Super Man, so does that mean that racism has been overcome in the US at long last?

First all, Barack Obama is not a new phenomena at all. American racism has become globalized and that has allowed many Latinos and Blacks to become integrated parts of The System here in our country. We have Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powel, and Ricardo Sanchez as examples of that process, among many others. Before we saw, too, the thorough integration of the Jewish community into US elites, but that did not necessarily mean the end of American racism or even the weakening of it. America’s racism has been merely transformed into a racism based on hating foreigners of color instead of so much hating the traditional internal victims of America’s White fetish with its own self congratulatory idea of racial-cultural purity.

Here in Colorado, our little school kids are taught all about ‘Colorado Indians’, they are lectured about MLK, and here Cesar Chavez repeated to them over and over. The mantra is not to hate others of color that have US citizenship. The real message has morphed into hating others of color outside our national boundaries instead. They haven’t been Americanized, you see? You wouldn’t want them to be seen over at the food court or other stores at the local Mall, now would you? So we now have a new type of globalized racism that is now much more acceptable in High Society for White racial hatred to concentrate on, rather than concentrating on the internal ‘Darkies’ amongst our clean and sweet and superior White society.

Look to Barack Obama’s team to try to get away with world wide image renewal of American capitalism, as well as national ‘Black face’ to be applied further on racist imperialist America, even as the racism gets even further globalized through the Pentagon. Gooks to ragheads to the backward followers of pedophile Muhammad, the Pentagon always leads the way in this globalization of American White racial hatred of the others. Barack will keep that going for sure! Indians, Niggers, and Spicks have become a big NO! No! No! now. We can’t think of ourselves this way any more. We have become an enlightened society through our globalization of hatred. It has been removed to the outside of our gated American borders! Don’t you feel better now? Electing Barack Obama will make us all feel so much more civilized!

The trouble with all this supported (by the racial and economic elites) narrative is that it is merely a con to cover up the game…. the American elite game plan to rule over ‘the others’ worldwide. The trouble is that their is no sincerity to the pretended denouement of racial prejudice, but merely a way to pass our own US internal racial atrocities to other places… places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, where millions die to make White America feel great and superior. American racism has become globalized and outsourced. How sick! The fact that the great Gook Killer, John McCain will not be at the head of this Empire is small consolation at all, as the White Empire sails on through Barack Obama at the helm.

Shlomo Sand and shattering a national mythology

Posted on October 9, 2008 by Tony Logan

Shattering a ‘national mythology’ Shlomo Sand’s book is titled “When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?” and you probably will not find it stacked up on tables for sale in Barnes and Noble or Borders. I don’t expect it to be readily available for Colorado Springs librarian patrons either. Ask for it though.

The Haaretz interview:

Actually, most of your book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from.

Sand: “My initial intention was to take certain kinds of modern historiographic materials and examine how they invented the ‘figment’ of the Jewish people. But when I began to confront the historiographic sources, I suddenly found contradictions. And then that urged me on: I started to work, without knowing where I would end up. I took primary sources and I tried to examine authors’ references in the ancient period – what they wrote about conversion.”

Experts on the history of the Jewish people say you are dealing with subjects about which you have no understanding and are basing yourself on works that you can’t read in the original.

“It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period. I knew that the moment I would start dealing with early periods like these, I would be exposed to scathing criticism by historians who specialize in those areas. But I said to myself that I can’t stay just with modern historiographic material without examining the facts it describes. Had I not done this myself, it would have been necessary to have waited for an entire generation. Had I continued to deal with France, perhaps I would have been given chairs at the university and provincial glory. But I decided to relinquish the glory.”

Inventing the Diaspora

“After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom” – thus states the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence. This is also the quotation that opens the third chapter of Sand’s book, entitled “The Invention of the Diaspora.” Sand argues that the Jewish people’s exile from its land never happened.

“The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of ‘the people of the Bible’ that preceded it,” Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.

“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land – a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.”

If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?

“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'”

And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?

“The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba’s rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions – pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all.”

How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were originally Berbers who converted?

“I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina’s Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism.”

Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria – a huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga River, which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of today to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the 10th century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated by Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear.

Sand revives the hypothesis, which was already suggested by historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to which the Judaized Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.

“At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe – three million Jews in Poland alone,” he says. “The Zionist historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small number of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish people of Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and Slavs who were pushed eastward.”

If the Jews of Eastern Europe did not come from Germany, why did they speak Yiddish, which is a Germanic language?

“The Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the East, and thus they adopted German words. Here I base myself on the research of linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated that there is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the Middle Ages and Yiddish. As far back as 1828, the Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinson) said that the ancient language of the Jews was not Yiddish. Even Ben Zion Dinur, the father of Israeli historiography, was not hesitant about describing the Khazars as the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and describes Khazaria as ‘the mother of the diasporas’ in Eastern Europe. But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck.”

Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?

“It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: ‘We came, we won and now we are here’ the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist.”

Is there no justification for this fear?

“No. I don’t think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don’t mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens.”

In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

“I don’t recognize an international people. I recognize ‘the Yiddish people’ that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddishist civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this ‘Yiddish people.’ I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty. But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to recognize it.

“From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation.”

What is so dangerous about Jews imagining that they belong to one people? Why is this bad?

“In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation – I will have done my bit.

“We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it.”

The question is whether for those conclusions you had to go as far as the Kingdom of the Khazars.

“I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous, and that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of this country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to write history and examine texts. This is what I have done.”

If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its land from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?

“To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open, progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it is necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the number of memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But also, for example, to add an hour in memory of the Nakba [literally, the “catastrophe” – the Palestinian term for what happened when Israel was established], between Memorial Day and Independence Day.”

The Jewish State murders yet another young Arab boy

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Tony Logan

Total impunity. Two countries have it today, and we all know which two those are. Palestinian Boy, 10, Shot Dead As Israeli Troops Fire On Demonstration (Punch on skull at left for full image of Zionist State)

Racist Jewish Israel keeps killing kids

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Tony Logan

Israeli terrorism It is a sad state for the world Jewish community to now be about the leading group of racists in the world these days.

Quite simply, Jewish Israel refuses to give equal rights to its Arab population, continues an occupation of Arab Lands with the goal of annexing them, puts Arabs in the occupied territories into ghettos, and runs continual racist pogroms targeting for murder and injury the Arabs under Jewish domination. See Haaretz.com for the latest.. Palestinians: IDF troops wound 9 at boy’s funeral in West Bank They had already murdered the 11 year old boy, but that was not enough for the racist troops of Israel.

What is this Zionism then? The word is RACISM. Racist terrorism like that practiced by Israel and the US breeds a countering terrorism. The Japanese and Germans learned that the hard way in WW2 when the US and its allies responded to racist fascist terrorism by in turn terrorizing German and Japanese civilians.

Tel Aviv University Poll shows that 81% of Jewish population backs Jewish terrorism against Arabs fighting for freedom

Posted on January 6, 2008 by Tony Logan

Yes, the Jewish population of Israel is highly supportive of using terrorism against Arab leaders. In fact, 81% is the exact number found by a poll taken by the prestigious Tel Aviv University, and these 81% actually supported increasing the use of terrorism by Jewish military forces, not doing away with it or even just maintaining it at current levels!

Why does the Israeli Jewish community (as well as the US one) think that it is quite alright to do as they do? Simply because the US government is not only supporting Jewish terrorism itself, but is implementing and increasing their own use of terrorism and IDF style tortures throughout the Muslim World, too. The two groups feed off each other’s advocacy and use of criminality.

Poll: 81 percent of Israelis back increasing IDF targeted killings at Haaretz.com

Oh, and while there at Haaretz.com, be sure to click on the trailer of the Let’s Go To War and Pulverize Iran Before they Drive Jews Into The Sea film featured so promiently there. It’s pure ‘entertainment’, but will be taken as being news and important information by jingoistic meatheads around the US and Israel!

Not all of the Jewish faith are Zionists who desire the US to attack Iran

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Tony Logan

Meeting between Orthodox Jewish leaders and the President of Iran, New York City, September 23, 2007

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, spokesman of Neturei Karta International, issued the following statement on the eve of the group’s meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“It is always our pleasure to visit with President Ahmadinejad. This will be the third such meeting, in addition to our many visits to Iran in the past. We have each time emphasized to the Iranian leadership that, despite media hysteria and the statements of some misinformed Jews, we have found the Iranian people and their leaders to be friendly and respectful.”

“Likewise, although we as Jews are not to be involved in politics, (According to Jewish law, Jewish people are required to be loyal citizens to the countries wherein they reside), We have found the Iranian President to be a deeply religious man, dedicated to a peaceful world, based on mutual respect, fairness and dialogue.”

“Judaism seeks peace. Unfortunately, there are some Jews today, influenced by the barely century old, philosophy of Zionism, who feel that the proper Jewish response to enemies, be they real or fantasized, is aggression and calls for violence and unfortunately attempts to drag other nations down the path of war.”

“It as sad that so few have actually attempted to speak to the Iranian President or seek the true opinion of Iranian Jewry who live in peace and practice their faith throughout that nation. We have met this man who has demonstrated time and again that he is sincerely interested in the well being of Iran’s Jewish community and has deep respect for world Jewry and their Torah faith, The Zionist attempt to socially isolate this man and his people is immoral and disastrous”

“Zionism is antithetical to Torah beliefs. It believes in creating our own sovereign entity which is expressly forbidden due to the Divine decree of exile. This ideology leads to aggression against nations and is incarnated in the State of “Israel”. This State continually oppresses other people in the name of Judaism and the entire Jewish people. This movement has exacerbated anti Semitism throughout the world. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad understands this distinction between traditional Judaism and Zionist distortion.”

“We view our approach to Iran as a model for all Jews and all mankind. The Torah is the Almighty’s blueprint of mercy and justice for all creation. We have followed this modal in our dealings with the Iranian President and found in him an individual dedicated to these same ideals. There is much to be gained by talking and listening and everything to be lost by raising the rhetoric in the direction of war.” Â The grave tragedy of our era is the inordinate power garnered by Zionism, whose acceptance of force as the only means to reconcile conflicts, has influenced some to abandon Torah fundamentals. We hope and pray that they too will adopt the traditional Jewish approach of dialogue, respect and reconciliation.”

“War is a horrible thing. The dark clouds of a future conflict are now on the horizon in the Middle East. Torah Jewry hopes and prays that this may yet be averted.”

In conclusion says Rabbi Weiss, “Out of great respect to the Iranian Nation and their leadership we proudly welcome the Honorable President Ahmadinejad to New York, WELCOME!”

——————————————————————————–

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Posted on April 15, 2007 by Tony Logan

Today is a day chosen by the Jewish government of Israel in the ’50s as a day for remembrance of the millions of Jews who died in Europe during World War Two. The date was chosen because it corresponds to the day the Warsaw Ghetto uprising began, one of the most heroic efforts of resistance to tyranny in the history of all mankind.

The horror of the holocaust against the Jewish community occurred over 60 years ago, but humankind should never forget the victims. They were victims of the apathy of US and non fascist Europe, as well as the fascist movement itself. A horrrible attempt was made to totally eliminate Jewish culture and the Jewish people themselves, and the whole world lost out as well. We now all suffer from the lack of having the Jewish culture of that era still with us today.

May the Jewish victims rest in peace and let us move to stop yet more future Holocausts from occurring again, whether it be against the Jewish community or any other community as well.

Conservative Jews and Catholics- fraternal hypocrites

Posted on January 7, 2007 by Tony Logan

For centuries the Catholics persecuted the Jews, but today they have an unholy alliance which allows the majority tendency in today’s Jewish faith, the Zionist Jews, to blame Muslims for being anti-Jewish pogromists. What’s involved? Silence and pretense, in short. The Catholic hierarchy gets to continually pretend that it never had anything to do with the fascist and Nazi crimes of genocide, while the Jewish Zionists get to pretend that they are threatened by a supposed Muslim tendency towards committing just exactly that same crime. All the while keeping their traps closed about the Catholic mainstream..

Look how quiet the Jewish community was when an ex-Nazi took over the Pope position. Look how loud they get when somebody innocuous like Jimmy Carter comes along to write a book most Zionists feel quite uncomfortable with because of some truths voiced. A Catholic archbishop in Slovakia this week talked about how lovely it was when the Nazis ruled his region and not a peep is heard from the world Jewish community. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps from Slovakia in that time frame. All the Jewish establishment’s hysteria is reserved instead for one man in Iran whose country the Israeli government wants to bomb back to the Stone Age on behalf of the US. One would think that it was Persians that persecute the Jews in pogroms for centuries, and not the Catholics and other Christian sects.

The Zionist refrain of…They want to drive us into the sea… has now morphed into they want to use a nuclear bomb on us, so we have to use one on them FIRST. All a bunch of garbage used to support US colonialism and imperialism in the Middle East, now entirely backed up by the Jewish Apartheid regime. Screaming loudly that Jews are supposedly under a danger of a Muslim anti-Jewish attack from Iran, Catholics and Jews get to unite to steal Muslim oil while pontificating about justice and freedom. Israel and Bush’s conservative Catholic supporters, united to launch their newest aggression against another Muslim country. No time to talk about the Pedophilic Church of Rome hierarchy, and no time to talk about the Zionist Jewish crimes against humanity in the Unholy Land. Just the total silence of the united fraternal hypocrites, conservative Catholics and Jews.

The US government just got to have Saddam Hussein hanged in a disgusting charade. What would have been much more just, would have been to have the Iranians hold these show trials, and then have them hang Hussein, Bush, Rumsfield, and others of their ilk afterwards. After all, these were the allies that initiated an unprovoked war against their country via iraq, that used chemical weapons on Iranians, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens. And most of Jewish Israel applauded all this, and then has sat back smugly claiming to now feel threatened by this victim of their US sponsor- Iran.

Jewish Zionists get to push for a secular regime in the US, while pushing for a Jewish Apartheid theocracy in Israel for themselves. That is the core of their other hypocrisies of hugging up to their Catholic and Protestant fundy sponsors here in America. They want one thing for themselves (secular freedoms in the US), and another thing for others (religious and racial persecution administered by themselves in Israel/ Palestine upon others).

The Catholics want the ability to preach on moral issues to others, while whitewashing their church’s immorality on issues like abortion, priestly pedophilia, the Rwanda genocide’s Catholic participation, and their enthusiastic role in the Nazi ranks and other pogroms against Jews throughout their entire history. Today, the Jewish Zionists and Catholic conservatives march together in hatred of today’s other, the Muslim. They have become today’s, fraternal, colonial, imperialist hypocrites. The Catholic Church no longer serves Spanish imperialism against the Native Americans and Jews, but have united in a New Crusade together against the Muslim world on behalf of American imperialism. Oil for Moses and Christ, not gold robbed from murdered ‘Indians’. Religion in service to the Empire.

	LL on Owl City writes lyrics most fo…
	lizzie on The ‘success maker…
	gary cummings on Common Dreams? Or is it censor…
	kennetha on The Stiles Unit of Beaumont
	Cristian on Shlomo Sand and shattering a n…
	Vic Currier on Why should you attend the Denv…
	Vic Currier on Sovereign constitutional oath…
	Robyn KenyaStar Prui… on White Native Americans
	Debra Gill on The Stiles Unit of Beaumont
	Xaldyn on The ‘success maker…

Not My Tribe

The Myth of Middle Ground

Tag Archives: Jewish community