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By Ali Abunimah

Ten years ago, as Israel was planning its unilateral “disengagement” or “separation” from the Gaza Strip, the so-called international community and the then-thriving peace process industry indulged in fantasies that the small territory might become a prosperous “Singapore on the Mediterranean.”

Israeli strategists had no such illusions. Although they did withdraw their 7,000 settlers from Gaza in 2005, they never intended to set Gaza free.

Israeli forces were merely moved from the interior to the perimeter, replacing direct occupation with what eventually became a hermetic siege.

One of the key advisers to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister who took the decision to “disengage,” was Arnon Soffer, the Haifa University demographer – known as Arnon the Arab Counter for his obsession with the “demographic threat” supposedly posed by the births of Palestinians. (His last name, soffer, means “someone who counts” in Hebrew.)

In a notorious interview in The Jerusalem Post a decade ago, Soffer set out a nightmarish vision of Gaza’s future, but one that was horrifyingly prescient (“It’s the demography, stupid,” 21 May 2004 – note the original interview is not online but a 2007 follow up which recounts his 2004 statements can be found here).

In my 2006 book One Country (85-86), this is how I explained Soffer’s vision, quoting his words from the interview:

[Then deputy prime minister Ehud] Olmert called the unilateral solution Israel’s “great hope,” but Arnon Soffer … offered a less optimistic prognosis. “Unilateral separation doesn’t guarantee ‘peace,’” he warned, “it guarantees a Jewish-Zionist state with an overwhelming majority of Jews.” What will be the price of this achievement? The “day after unilateral separation,” Soffer said, “the Palestinians will bombard us with artillery fire – and we will have to retaliate. But at least the war will be at the fence – not in the kindergartens of Tel Aviv and Haifa.” Soffer was unambiguous about Israel’s response: “We will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is fired over the fence, we will fire ten in response. And women and children will be killed and houses will be destroyed.” Further down the line, “when 2.5 million people live in a closed off Gaza,” Soffer predicted, “it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will be even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”

I quoted Soffer in a piece I wrote after the 2008-2009 Gaza massacre and do so again now because his words still serve as the most accurate, chilling explanation of the present reality.

But there is an even more horrifying sentence in Soffer’s interview that I didn’t include in my book or earlier piece. “If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist,” he said. “The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”

“Kill and kill and kill”

A decade later, we can say with certainty that Israel is not a “normal” society. It is clear that in order to “kill and kill and kill,” Israeli society has had to dehumanize Palestinians to an unprecedented extent.

This is perhaps what explains the pervasive cry of “death to the Arabs,” the relentless incitement by politicians and public figures, and the intolerance for any dissent from the crushing consensus in favor of the Gaza slaughter. There is a level of dehumanization that allows lawmaker Ayelet Shaked, a rising star, to call for the slaughter of mothers in Gaza because they give birth to “little snakes” and face no negative repercussions.

And so now there have been three major Gaza massacres (and many smaller ones) since the disengagement: 2008-2009’s “Operation Cast Lead,” the November 2012 massacre, and the ongoing horror that has claimed more than 825 lives in 18 days of relentless bombardment.

Much of Israeli society has decided that this is a price worth paying to maintain a “Jewish state.” And the major US pro-Israel Jewish groups have made the same choice.

“Liberal” Zionist Peter Beinart recently lamented that the leaders of the “organized American Jewish community” were ready to defend Israel no matter what they did.

“The more ghastly the photos from Gaza become, the more adamantly they insist that Israel bears no responsibility for them,” he recently wrote on his Facebook page. “Can anyone say, with confidence, that there is any action the Israeli government could take that American Jewish leaders would not seek to justify? I can’t, and that terrifies me.”

Regular massacres

It is time for everyone to understand what Soffer and the American Jewish leaders Beinart takes aim at have understood and embraced: the price of a “Jewish state” is the permanent and irrevocable violation of Palestinians’ rights, and if that means regular massacres, then so be it.

As I explain in my recent book The Battle for Justice in Palestine, Israel cannot exist “as a Jewish state” without violating the rights of all Palestinians to varying degrees (read the relevant excerpt).

The massacre in Gaza is at the extreme end of the spectrum of abuses necessary to maintain Jewish sectarian rule in Palestine, but it is part of the same policy that requires employment and housing discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and outright land theft and ethnic cleansing in the Naqab (Negev) and the occupied West Bank.

If you support Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state” in a country whose indigenous Palestinian people today form half the population, then you, like Soffer, must come to terms with the inevitability of massacres.

If you oppose the horrific, repeated massacres in Gaza, then join the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), a movement that aims to decolonize Palestine and restore to all the people all their legitimate and inalienable rights.

Ali Abunimah is Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

26 July, 2014
Electronicintifada.net

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Despite the conclusion by US intelligence that there is no evidence of Russian involvement in the destruction of the Malaysian airliner and all lives onboard, Washington is escalating the crisis and shepherding it toward war.

Twenty-two US senators have introduced into the 113th Congress, Second Session, a bill, S.2277, “To prevent further Russian aggression toward Ukraine and other sovereign states in Europe and Eurasia, and for other purposes.” https://beta.congress.gov/113/bills/s2277/BILLS-113s2277is.pdf The bill is before the Committee on Foreign Relations.

Note that prior to any evidence of any Russian aggression, there are already 22 senators lined up in behalf of preventing further Russian aggression.

Accompanying this preparatory propaganda move to create a framework for war, hot or cold with Russia, NATO commander General Philip Breedlove announced his plan for a deployment of massive military means in Eastern Europe that would permit lightening responses against Russia in order to protect Europe from Russian aggression.

There we have it again: Russian Aggression. Repeat it enough and it becomes real.

The existence of “Russian aggression” is assumed, not demonstrated. Neither Breedlove nor the senators make any reference to Russian war plans for an attack on Europe or any other countries. There are no references to Russian position papers and documents setting forth a Russian expansionist ideology or a belief declared by Moscow that Russians are “exceptional, indispensable people” with the right to exercise hegemony over the world. No evidence is presented that Russia has infiltrated the communication systems of the entire world for spy purposes. There is no evidence that Putin has Obama’s or Obama’s daughters’ private cell phone conversations or that Russia downloads US corporate secrets for the benefit of Russian businesses.

Nevertheless, the NATO commander and US senators see an urgent need to create blitzkrieg capability for NATO on Russia’s borders.

Senate bill 2277 consists of three titles: “Reinvigorating the Nato Alliance,” “Deterring Further Russian Aggression in Europe,” and “Hardening Ukraine and other European and Eurasian States Against Russian Aggression.” Who do you think wrote this bill? Hint: it wasn’t the senators or their staffs.

Title I deals with strengthening US force posture in Europe and Eurasia and strengthening the NATO alliance, with accelerating the construction of ABM (anti-ballistic missile) bases on Russia’s borders so as to degrade the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent, and to provide more money for Poland and the Baltic states and strengthen US-German cooperation on global security issues, that is, to make certain that the German military is incorporated as part of the US empire military force.

Title II is about confronting “Russian aggression in Europe” with sanctions and with financial and diplomatic “support for Russian democracy and civil society organizations,” which means to pump billions of dollars into NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that can be used to destabilize Russia in the way that Washington used the NGOs it funded in Ukraine to overthrow the elected government. For 20 years Russian government negligence permitted Washington to organize fifth columns inside Russia that pose as human rights organizations, etc.

Title III deals with military and intelligence assistance for Ukraine, putting Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova on a NATO track, expediting US natural gas exports in order to erase European and Eurasian energy dependence on Russia, preventing recognition of Crimea as again a part of Russia, expanding broadcasting (propaganda) into Russian areas, and again “support for democracy and civil society organizations in countries of the former Soviet Union,” which means to use money to subvert the Russian federation.

However you look at this, it comprises a declaration of war. Moreover, these provocative and expensive moves are presented as necessary to counter Russian aggression for which there is no evidence.

How do we characterize a bill that is not merely thoughtless, unnecessary, and dangerous, but also more Orwellian than Orwell? I am open to suggestions.

Ukraine as it currently exists is an ahistorical state with artificial boundaries. Ukraine presently consists of part of what was once a larger entity plus former Russian provinces added to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet leaders. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia permitted Ukraine’s independence, under US pressure Russia mistakenly permitted Ukraine to take with it the former Russian provinces.

When Washington executed its coup in Kiev last year, the Russophobes who grabbed power began threatening in word and deed the Russian populations in eastern and southern Ukraine. The Crimeans voted to reunite with Russia and were accepted. This reunification was grossly misrepresented by Western propaganda. When other former Russian provinces voted likewise, the Russian government, kowtowing to Western propaganda, did not grant their requests. Instead, Russian president Putin called for Kiev and the former Russian provinces to work out an agreement that would keep the provinces within Ukraine.

Kiev and its Washington master did not listen. Instead, Kiev launched military attacks on the provinces and was conducting bombing attacks on the provinces at the moment the Malaysian airliner was downed.

Washington and its European vassals have consistently misrepresented the situation in Ukraine and denied their responsibility for the violence, instead placing all blame on Russia. But it is not Russia that is conducting bombing raids and attacking provinces with troops, tanks, and artillery. Just as Israel’s current military assault against Palestinian civilians fails to evoke criticism from Washington, European governments, and the Western media, Kiev’s assault on the former Russian provinces goes unreported and uncriticized. Indeed, it appears that few Americans are even aware that Kiev is attacking civilian areas of the provinces that wish to return to their mother country.

Sanctions should be imposed on Kiev, from which the military violence originates. Instead, Kiev is receiving financial and military support, and sanctions are placed on Russia which is not militarily involved in the situation.

When the outbreak of violence against the former Russian provinces began, the Russian Duma voted Putin the power to intervene militarily. Instead of using this power, Putin requested that the Duma rescind the power, which the Duma did. Putin preferred to deal with the problem diplomatically in a reasonable and unprovocative manner.

Putin has received neither respect nor appreciation for encouraging a non-violent resolution of the unfortunate Ukrainian situation created by Washington’s coup against a democratically elected government that was only months away from a chance to elect a different government.

The sanctions that Washington has applied and that Washington is pressuring its European puppets to join send the wrong information to Kiev. It tells Kiev that the West approves and encourages Kiev’s determination to resolve its differences with the former Russian provinces with violence rather than with negotiation.

This means war will continue, and that is clearly Washington’s intent. The latest reports are that US military advisors will soon be in Ukraine to aid the conquest of the former Russian provinces that are in revolt.

The presstitute nature of the Western media ensures that the bulk of the American and European populations will remain in the grip of Washington’s anti-Russian propaganda.

At some point the Russian government will have to face the fact that it doesn’t have “Western partners.” Russia has Western enemies who are being organized to isolate Russia, to injure Russia economically and diplomatically, to surround Russia militarily, to destabilize Russia by calling the American-funded NGOs into the streets, and in the absence of a coup that installs an American puppet in Moscow to attack Russia with nuclear weapons.

I respect Putin’s reliance on diplomacy and good will in the place of force. The problem with Putin’s approach is that Washington has no good will, so there is no reciprocity.

Washington has an agenda. Europe consists of captive nations, and these nations are without leaders capable of breaking free of Washington’s agenda.

I hope that I am wrong, but I think Putin has miscalculated. If Putin had accepted the former Russian provinces requests to reunite with Russia, the conflict in Ukraine would be over. I am certain that Europe would not have joined Washington in any invasion with the purpose of recovering for Ukraine former provinces of Russia herself. When Washington says that Putin is responsible for downing the Malaysian airliner, Washington is correct in a way that Washington doesn’t suspect. Had Putin completed the task begun with Crimea and reunited the Russian provinces with Russia, there would have been no war during which an airliner could have been downed, whether by accident or as a plot to demonize Russia. Ukraine has no capability of confronting Russia militarily and had no alternative to accepting the reunification of the Russian territories.

Europe would have witnessed a decisive Russian decision and would have put a great distance between itself and Washington’s provocative agenda. This European response would have precluded Washington’s ability to gradually escalate the crisis by gradually turning the temperature higher without the European frog jumping out of the pot.

In its dealings with Washington Europe has grown accustomed to the efficacy of bribes, threats, and coercion. Captive nations are inured to diplomacy’s impotence. Europeans see diplomacy as the weak card played by the weak party. And, of course, all the Europeans want money, which Washington prints with abandon.

Russia and China are disadvantaged in their conflict with Washington. Russia and China have emerged from tyranny. People in both countries were influenced by American cold war propaganda. Both countries have educated people who think that America has freedom, democracy, justice, civil liberty, economic wellbeing and is a welcoming friend of other countries that want the same thing.

This is a dangerous delusion. Washington has an agenda. Washington has put in place a police state to suppress its own population, and Washington believes that history has conveyed the right to Washington to exercise hegemony over the world. Last year President Obama declared to the world that he sincerely believes that America is the exceptional nation on whose leadership the world depends.

In other words, all other countries and peoples are unexceptional. Their voices are unimportant. Their aspirations are best served by Washington’s leadership. Those who disagree–Russia, China, Iran, and the new entity ISIL–are regarded by Washington as obstacles to history’s purpose. Anything, whether an idea or a country, that is in the way of Washington is in the way of History’s Purpose and must be run over.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries Europe faced the determination of the French Revolution to impose Liberty, Equality, Fraternity upon Europe. Today Washington’s ambition is larger. The ambition is to impose Washington’s hegemony on the entire world.

Unless Russia and China submit, this means war.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

25 July, 2014
Paulcraigroberts.org

 

By Robert Barsocchini

European colonizers invaded the North American continent, surrounded Native Americans, herded them into ghettos, tortured and exterminated them – men, women, children, and babies alike – stole their land, and took it over for themselves . Under now-binding international law, those were war crimes.

It was, indeed, also war crimes for Native Americans in the ghettos to shoot arrows (or anything else) out from the ghettos and towards the populations of the colonizers that had them surrounded and were massacring them out of existence.

However, only people who support the colonization and extermination of Natives spend as much time condemning the arrow-shooting as they do the instigating and obviously much worse, more important crimes: those of the self-proclaimed “superior” invading people, who herd Natives into ghettos, torture and exterminate them, steal their land for themselves, and cover their cancer-like campaign of murderous expansion by calling it self-defense against “savages” who should be supplanted by the superior beings.

Because Israel is committing these crimes, Israeli propagandists and their supporters crucially need our attention off of them and on “Hamas” and “rockets”, the contemporary versions of Native “savages” and their pathetic, near-worthless arrows, which the savages shoot from their ghettos and towards the people and the populations of the people terrorizing, torturing and exterminating them and stealing their land, the Israeli government .

The world has endured many campaigns of extermination of “savage” indigenous peoples by “superior” races, from the USA to Canada to Australia.

One such campaign is being carried out by Israeli colonizers against the indigenous Palestinian peoples. The campaign is being illegally funded , indeed, made possible , by US taxpayers.

Israeli historian Dr. Ilan Pape here confirms that the parallel between European crimes against Native populations and Israel’s crimes against the native Palestinians is apt. Leading scholar on the conflict Dr. Norman Finkelstein, whose grandparents were exterminated in the Holocaust and whose work has been highly praised by the preeminent Holocaust scholar, Raul Hilberg, also makes the comparison.

The world, its people and legal institutions, do not accept I srael’s campaign against the Natives, and demand that it stops immediately.

The only reason it does not: the USA keeps it going and uses threat of force to block the legal requirement, by the International Court of Justice , that states do all they can do end Israel’s brutal campaign.

In From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp instructs that to stop a dictatorial regime, its power sources must be severed. In the case of Israeli dictatorship over Palestine, the power source is the USA.

Do what Amnesty International urges ( sign their petition ) and stop the USA’s illegal arming of Israel, and we will end Israeli state terrorism against, and Israeli colonization and blockading of, Palestine.

Free Palestine.

“Hamas”

The title of this section is in quotation marks because Israeli propagandists intentionally label as “Hamas” any person or group in Palestine that suits their propaganda purposes, whether the people they are referring to are civilians, are part of Hamas, or are militants totally unaffiliated with Hamas or even acting in open defiance of it.

Israelis want us to believe that Hamas is responsible for all rocket fire into Israel. This is false. Israel wants us to believe this because Hamas is, as Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, and many others have noted , the freely democratically elected government of Gaza. If the government carries out an attack, that is reason, in Israel’s self-serving and dishonest interpretation of international law, to invade Gaza and kill “Hamas”, which means Hamas and anyone else, including thousands of children.

Let us look at an example of how this works, and is currently working:

Before the massacre Israel carried out in Gaza in 2008/09 , it said it was launching a major invasion of Gaza to stop “Hamas” rocket attacks.

However, problems with this claim immediately arise when the truth is taken into account:

Israel had already broken the ceasefire and invaded Gaza.

Hamas did fire rockets into Israel before Israel’s planned Gaza massacre operation started, but, as BBC documents, those rockets were in response to an illegal, unprovoked, lethal attack against Hamas members by Israel, which violated the ceasefire. This was, to use Bibi Netanyahu’s phrasing, a “triple war crime” by Israel, as it 1) added to Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza, 2) was unprovoked aggression, the supreme crime, as well as outright mass murder, and 3) violated a specific ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that Hamas was, as documented by Amnesty International and others, “ very careful to observe “:

BBC’s Robin Lustig :

Israeli forces crossed into the Gaza Strip and killed six Hamas fighters.

Hamas responded by launching rockets and mortar shells into Israel.

It is true that, as documented in the above BBC article, groups unaffiliated with and acting in direct defiance of Hamas had fired projectiles into Israel before Israel’s triple war crime violated the ceasefire with Hamas.

But, in addition to Amnesty International and other human rights groups, Western and Israeli media also documented that Hamas itself, the government of Gaza, was both carefully observing the ceasefire and doing “ everything it could ” (Amnesty) to prevent non-governmental groups from carrying out those attacks:

Reuters: “ Hamas arrests militants after rocket fire ” (July 10, 2008)

Haaretz: “ Hamas: Continued rocket fire by Fatah armed group harms Palestinian interests ” (June 27, 2008)

Israel Killing Hamas members (which it then did) for attacks by non-governmental groups that Hamas was doing everything it could to prevent, would be like Israel killing members of the US, British, Canadian, or French governments because citizens of each of those countries, independent of their governments and in total defiance of them, have joined lethal Islamic jihads in the Middle East, which they have:

Daily Beast: “ Americans Join Syrian Jihad, Sparking U.S. Intelligence Fears “
Daily Mail: “ More Brits signing up to fight with jihadist militants in Iraq and Syria than for the UK Army Reserve “
CBC News: “ Canada’s young men joining foreign jihad: Are we doing enough to stop it? “
Daily Mail: “ France unveils plan to stop youths joining jihad “
If Israel were to invade any or all of those countries, say the USA, and kill Obama, Biden, Kerry, Clinton, and others, and claim it was because citizens discussed in the above report were US government officials or were being sponsored by the US government, that would be both false and ridiculous, and would be accepted by no one. It should likewise be accepted by no one when Israel does this to Hamas, the government of Gaza.

Israel Murdered Hamas Members Knowing How They Would Respond – With Rockets

We should note that when Israel broke that ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and murdered Hamas members, Israel knew Hamas would use the best technology it had, unguided projectiles, to respond.

This is revealing of what the Israeli government is willing to sacrifice – namely, one or two Israeli civilians – to obtain a pretext for its larger, planned invasion of Gaza intended to, in Richard Goldstone’s words , “terrorize the civilian population” and “diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Racism as a Tool

Israel encourages the racist grouping-together of all Palestinian resistance organizations.

Dr. Finkelstein notes this issue, remarking that Hamas is simply “used… as short-hand for all Palestinian armed groups”.

The way Israel groups vigilantes in with the government of Gaza is the equivalent of saying that the Israeli terrorists who recently burned a Palestinian boy to death are part of the Israeli government, and using that as a justification to invade Israel and kill members of the Israeli government. It is a false claim and thus a false justification, but by Israel’s logic, Hamas could use it, invade Israel, and kill members of the Israeli government.

Even the argument that Hamas members should be killed because they have committed human rights violations (they have) is also ridiculous. So have Israeli government members, to a far greater extent (the European Union views nuclear Israel as the greatest threat to world peace), as have US government members and many, many others, also, obviously, to far greater extents than Hamas.

To say that because government members have committed human rights violations means that their countries can be invaded and they can be killed is to declare open season for every country to invade every other country and start slaughtering government officials. Since Israel knows only it can do that to Hamas and not the other way around – because Israel is the fourth largest military in the world and Hamas has next to nothing – Israel is simply asserting the right of the strong to dominate and repress the weak, a theme espoused by the strong once or twice before in human history.

Dr. Norman Finkelstein on the contemporary equivalent of Native Americans shooting arrows out from European-imposed concentration camps:

“Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel appear to be indiscriminate or targeted at civilian population centers,” Human Rights Watch’s first press release stated, “which are war crimes.” On this point, Amnesty concurred. But are projectile attacks by Hamas (used here as short-hand for all Palestinian armed groups) war crimes or even illegal? In fact, the law is more ambiguous than often allowed.

International law prohibits an occupying power from using force to suppress a struggle for self-determination, whereas it does not prohibit a people struggling for self-determination from using force. [1]

Human Rights Watch has argued that, even if its [Palestine’s] civilians are being relentlessly targeted [by Israel], a people does not have a legal right to carry out “belligerent reprisals”—that is, to deliberately target the civilians of the opposing state until it desists. “Regardless of who started this latest round, attacks targeting civilians violate basic humanitarian norms,” HRW’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa director stated in the first press release. “All attacks, including reprisal attacks, that target or indiscriminately harm civilians are prohibited under the laws of war, period.” Not so. International law does not—at any rate, not yet—prohibit belligerent reprisals. [4] The United States and Britain, among others, have staunchly defended the right of a state to use nuclear weapons by way of belligerent reprisal. [5] By this standard, the people of Gaza surely have the right to use makeshift projectiles to end an illegal, merciless seven-year-long Israeli blockade or to end Israel’s criminal bombardment of Gaza’s civilian population. Indeed, in its landmark 1996 advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons, the ICJ ruled that international law is not settled on the right of a state to use nuclear weapons when its “survival” is at stake. But, if a state might have the right to use nuclear weapons when its survival is at stake, then surely a people struggling for self-determination has the right to use makeshift projectiles when it has been subjected to slow death by a protracted blockade and recurrent massacres by a state determined to maintain its occupation.

One might legitimately question the political prudence of Hamas’s strategy. But the law is not unambiguously against it, while the scales of morality weigh in its favor. Israel has imposed a brutal blockade on Gaza. Fully 95 percent of the water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption. By all accounts , the Palestinian people now stand behind those engaging in belligerent reprisals against Israel. In the Gaza Strip, they prefer to die resisting than to continue living under an inhuman blockade. Their resistance is mostly notional, as makeshift projectiles cause little damage. So, the ultimate question is, Do Palestinians have the right to symbolically resist slow death punctuated by periodic massacres, or must they [as all colonizers want their victims to do] lie down and die?

When we look back on what was done to Native Americans, we don’t focus all of our attention on how horrible the natives were for brutally resisting dispossession and extinction and exhibiting racism against the white colonizers. We mainly focus on the horror of what the invading colonizers did, and virtually universally accept that it was very wrong.

Israeli massacres against Palestinians are now, and will continue to be, studied with horror and revulsion, as are the European massacres of Native Americans such as Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears .

Nat Turner’s slave uprising killed many white civilians who were part of the slave-owning society. Though this was horrible and probably hurt the slaves’ cause, we don’t look back and focus as much condemnation on slave rebellions as we do on the far greater violence and repression committed by the slave-owners, for obvious reasons.

When Israel complains about the “rockets”, it is like slave plantation owners crying about slave uprisings. Israel, embarrassingly, creates self-sympathy campaigns such as this one to show the world how ruthlessly the savages fire the rockets at poor Israel . The plantation owners wallow in self-pity and lament their plight and victimization by keeping a log, in front of the plantation, to track how long it has been since the last traumatizing slave uprising, and publish pieces in newspapers to tell everyone how hard it is to have slaves who don’t passively accept their lot in life.

As son of an Israeli General Miko Peled has suggested, when we hear Israelis moaning about the horrible “rockets”, we should ask them what they are doing to pressure their government to decolonize and de-occupy Palestine and end its macabre blockade of Gaza, a blockade Amnesty International refers to as a “flagrant violation of international law.”

Indiscriminate Weapons

Dr. Finkelstein:

It might be said that, even if Israel cannot use force to suppress the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, Hamas’s use of indiscriminate projectiles and its targeting of Israeli civilians still constitute war crimes. Here, it is useful to first recall another instance of HRW’s [Human Rights Watch’s] egregious double standard. In 2008, HRW issued a report entitled Flooding South Lebanon: Israel’s use of cluster munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006 . The report found that Israel dropped as many as 4.6 million cluster munitions on south Lebanon during the 2006 war. It was, in HRW’s words, “the most extensive use of cluster munitions anywhere in the world since the [US use of cluster bombs in the] 1991 Gulf war,” while relative to the size of the targeted area the density of the attack was historically unprecedented. Some 90 percent of these cluster munitions were dropped during the final three days “when Israel knew a settlement was imminent” (HRW), the UN ceasefire resolution having already been passed but not yet gone into effect. But, although finding that Israel committed “extensive violations” of the laws of war, HRW did not go beyond stating that Israel’s massive resort to cluster munitions was “in some locations possibly a war crime.” Yet, the evidence HRW itself assembled showed that cluster munitions are indiscriminate weapons; the cluster munitions carriers used by Israel were, on HRW’s own terms, indiscriminate; and the cluster munitions were fired indiscriminately and deliberately targeted civilian population centers.

Israel is also currently firing flechette dart explosives in Gaza , which is illegal to do there, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, because of the dense population and the indiscriminate nature of the weapon.

Palestinians do not have the technology of discriminate weapons, for an alternative to rudimentary projectiles, that they can shoot out from their ghettos to resist Israeli occupation, colonization, and terror, and Israel is not going to give them to them, nor is Israel or the US going to give Palestinians a multi-billion dollar “Iron Dome” system like Israel has to help protect Palestinians from Israeli rockets.

What Israel wants for the Palestinians is the same thing European colonizers wanted for the Native Americans: for them to be helpless, hopeless, and unable to resist, so that they will accept being conquered and dispossessed, or will simply go away, i.e., assist in their own ethnic cleansing.

Statements by Hamas and other groups are used to conclude that Hamas uses the unguided projectiles to intentionally target civilians.

But statements (and actions) from Israelis illustrate directly that this is what Israel does.

Examples:

Israeli Reserve Major General Oren Shachor : “If we kill their [Palestinian] families, that will frighten them.”
Israelis refer to their attacks against Gaza as “mowing the lawn”. Since when you mow a lawn you cut every blade of grass, not individual blades, this is another clear call for terrorism against a civilian population, and possibly genocide .
In 2009, Israel sprayed UN humanitarian relief centers with lethal white phosphorous. They did this after the UN provided the Israeli army with the GPS coordinates of the center, and while the UN was on the phone with the Israeli army telling them not to bomb the center because civilians were sheltering there and there were no militants present. Human Rights Watch confirmed that there were no militants present. For details on this, see “ Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorous in Gaza “, by Human Rights Watch.
Israel also sprayed several other civilian shelters, including hospitals and schools, with white phosphorous, and Human Rights Watch likewise confirmed that no militants were present.
White phosphorus burns at 1,500 degree Fahrenheit. Imagine turning an oven to five hundred degrees, then increasing that threefold to 1,500, and gripping the red-hot coil.
This was part of what Richard Goldstone described as Israel’s operation to “terrorize the civilian population” of Gaza.
Israel also says that civilian homes of Hamas members and members of the families of Hamas are legitimate targets. But every Israeli has to serve in the military. By Israel’s admission, then, all Israeli homes and all Israelis are legitimate targets, thus there are no civilians for Hamas to target, if that is their goal. That is, unless Israel simply intends its statements as a double standard that only applies to the savages.

More on Racism

While Israeli propagandists and their supporters want all of our attention on racist rhetoric issued by their victims, Israeli society is virulently racist.

Few US citizens realize that Israeli youth are imbued with , and exhibit , vicious racism, all of them are required to serve in the military, and many are sent into Gaza to slay Gazans, including civilians. Israeli Reserve Major General Oren Shachor : “If we kill their [Palestinian] families, that will frighten them.”

This boiling racism by Israelis helps explain such highly frequent occurrences as when, the other day, Israelis looked through their top-of-the-line, US-provided optical gear, saw four fleeing Palestinian ten year-olds alone on a beach, and blew them away with giant guns, chasing the kids with multiple shots until they were all dead.

It also explains why Israelis enjoy watching footage of Gaza being indiscriminately bombed , and why Israelis want to use white phosphorus chemical explosives to target UN shelters for Palestinian civilians.

These are the type of terrorist massacres that were perpetrated by European colonizers against savage native babies, whose skulls the colonizers split open with axes and hatchets.

Oh, but the colonizers, the poor things, could barely go a day without the savages harassing them unmercifully, for what reason, god only knew.

The Israelis, as did the Europeans colonizers, indoctrinate themselves into self-perception as victims, while the occupied Arabs are viewed as inhuman monsters.

Israelis, also like the European colonizers, sometimes delude themselves into believing that what they are doing is good for, or desired by, the savages.

This delusion is nothing new. Japanese imperialists, who killed about 20 million people in China, including in the Rape of Nanking, said , in internal Japanese documents, that they were bringing “Earthly paradise” to China.

European colonizers created a seal of a Native American saying “ Come Over and Help Us “. Here is how they helped them – the same way the Israelis are helping the Palestinians.

…

Although both sides in the conflict exhibit racism, only one side is being illegally occupied and colonized . Although both sides endure terrible violence, it is overwhelmingly and disproportionately endured by the Palestinians, at the hands of Israeli state terrorists and occupiers.

Who Uses Human Shields?

Remember, Israel lies about Hamas using human shields. In Israel’s 2008/09 massacre in Gaza, Israel said Hamas used human shields, but the human rights organizations and missions found that Israel, not Hamas, used human shields .

Using Palestinian civilians, including children , as human shields is a regular practice for Israel that continues.

Dr. Finkelstein (at 6:20) on Israel’s 08/09 Gaza massacre:

As everybody knows, the main claim that Israel is making in defense of its attacks in Gaza… was the claim that Hamas was using human shields. And that became almost an accepted wisdom of what happened in Gaza. So, just allow me to quote from Amnesty International that addressed in great detail this question of the human shields. It says: “Contrary to repeated allegations by Israeli officials of the use of human shields, Amnesty International found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian fighters directed the movement of civilians to shield military objectives from attacks. It found no evidence that Hamas or other armed groups forced residents to stay in or around buildings used by fighters, or that fighters prevented residents from leaving buildings or areas which have been commandeered by militants. Amnesty International delegates interviewed many Palestinians who complained about Hamas’s conduct, and especially about Hamas’s repression and attacks against their opponents, including killings, torture, and arbitrary detentions, but did not receive any accounts of Hamas fighters having used them as human shields. In the cases investigated by Amnesty International of civilians killed by Israeli attacks, the deaths could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters shielding among civilians as the Israeli army generally contends.” And it goes on at some length.

Finkelstein then notes that the Amnesty report is remarkable because, just a few years ago, Amnesty International refused to utter “one critical word about Israel”, even though everybody knew what it was doing.

The Amnesty quote is from Amnesty’s report, 22 Days of Death and Destruction , on Israel’s massacre in Gaza, page 11.

In the report, Amnesty condemns Hamas for putting civilians at risk by operating out of cities. However, the Israeli army also keeps installments and headquarters in populated Israeli areas such as Tel Aviv, thereby, by Israel’s own admission, using its civilian population as human shields for legitimate military targets.

If Palestinians had the ability to target those military installments with multiple-thousand pound bombs and flechette explosives, as Israel uses in densely populated Gaza, then Amnesty could likewise condemn Israel for putting civilians at risk by operating out of densely populated civilian areas in Israel.

And also remember, it is Israel, not Palestine, that far more often breaks the ceasefires and starts rounds of violence , often with the intention of trying to create a pretext for a broader operation of terrorism.

Balanced Reporting

Virtually the entire world , including all major human rights organizations and the highest court in the world, demands that Israel immediately and completely withdraws from and ends its illegal blockade of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which is:

Amnesty International:

The area compromising the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] is made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip – areas that Israel occupied in 1967 and has continued to control during the more than four decades since then.
Source: “ Trigger Happy – Israel’s Use of Excessive Force in the West Bank “, by Amnesty International, February, 2014, page 6
The UN vote affirming all of this every year usually goes about 165 to 2, the world against the US and Israel.

We must keep in mind that shows such as this one on RT that offer one or two voices defending Palestine and counter it with one or two voices defending Israel’s presence in the OPT are imbalanced, and present a false depiction of reality. To correctly portray the actual balance on the issue, one would have to have 165 defenders of the world consensus for every two defenders of Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine.

This is similar to the issue of reporting on climate change. Since 1991, there have been about 13,950 peer-reviewed articles published that affirmed human-caused climate change, and only about 24 that tried to deny it.

Thus, the BBC was recently criticized by British MPs for presenting a fifty-fifty balance on the issue, which is, as in the case of the Israel/Palestine conflict, an incorrect portrayal of reality, both in terms of the global consensus on resolving the Israel/Palestine issue and the amount of violence perpetrated, which is disproportionately and overwhelmingly carried out against Palestine by Israel.

…

All of the above having been said, please sign this petition to help Amnesty International bring about a UN-imposed, comprehensive arms embargo on Israel and Palestine. Dr. Finkelstein also supports the comprehensive embargo against both sides.

The way our society treated Native Americans was wrong and horrid. Let’s stop repeating our mistake by enabling Israel to do the same thing to the Palestinians. Another disproportionate, horrific, Wounded Knee -like massacre is being committed by Israel in Gaza at this very moment, with 608 Palestinians, mostly civilians, killed, as well as 27 Israelis killed , all but two of them soldiers.

For more information on this issue, see:

Israel v. Gaza: The Big Picture – by Washington’s Blog

Confused About Hamas, ‘rockets’, war in Gaza? Those plus: Israeli occupation, lawful versus unlawful war, Israel illegal weapons, targeting hospitals – by Carl Herman

Knowing war law exposes ALL US/UK/Israel war ‘reasons’ as BS propaganda; Oaths require leaders’ arrests – by Carl Herman

Facts All US Citizens Need to Know About Israel and Palestine

Robert Barsocchini is an investigative journalist, historical researcher, and writer for the film industry.

25 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Rania Khalek

“The Israelis are using a wide variety of sophisticated modern weapons against a basically naked civilian population,” said renowned Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert in a phone interview with The Electronic Intifada on Tuesday, 22 July.

“This is state terrorism at a very sophisticated and very high level,” he added.

Speaking over the phone from al-Shifa hospital where he is helping to treat the wounded, Gilbert described the horrors he has witnessed in Gaza in recent days as the bodies of mostly Palestinian women and children are brought to the hopsital torn to shreds by an Israeli arsenal deliberately aimed at civilians.

War on children

With the Gaza death toll quickly approaching 700, the United Nations says some 80 percent are civilians, among them at least 168 children. Over the last few days alone, Israeli forces have on average killed at least one child in Gaza per hour. Children also make up one-third of the more than 4,000 wounded, many with debilitating injuries that Gaza hospitals are ill-equipped to properly treat due to dire shortages caused by the Israel’s illegal siege.

“One of these kids would have a whole cross-professional team in an American hospital or Norwegian hospital,” said Gilbert.

Israel, it seems, is waging a war on children.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza are internally displaced, access to clean drinking water is increasingly scarce and electricity is practically non-existent, explained Gilbert. Gaza is a man-made humanitarian catastrophe.

Bombing hospitals, killing paramedics

Israel has bombed at least 25 health care facilities, killing and injuring several medical workers, said Gilbert, whose repeated appeals for the UN to step in and protect Palestinian hospitals from Israeli attacks that clearly violate international law have been resulted in meaningful action on the ground.

“[Medical facilities] are being targeted and they’re being bombed and the patients and the staff are getting killed,” said Gilbert.

“What would have happened if Palestinian fighters had bombed an Israeli hospital and killed five patients?” Gilbert commented. “The world would have turned upside down. What is this second-hand, or even third-hand or fourth-hand citizenship in the world for the Palestinians?”

Yesterday the prestigious medical journal The Lancet published an open letter co-authored by Gilbert and signed by several doctors and scientists strongly denouncing Israel’s crimes against Gaza’s health sector.

“Israel is saying that they are bombing Gaza to get rid of tunnels and terrorists,” said Gilbert. “I see no tunnels and terrorists in Shifa hospital. I see only ordinary people like you and me.”

The following full transcript of the interview with Dr. Gilbert has been edited for clarity.

Rania Khalek: Some crazy things happened on what’s yesterday for you all. There was a UN school that was shelled, several mosques have been hit. So I’m wondering how things are going at the hospital amid all the chaos.

Mads Gilbert: It’s demanding, but the Palestinians are keeping their high spirit. The hospital is working and it’s receiving patients, the caseloads are coming, the injured have been taken care of, the killed are taken to the morgue.

The relatives are crowding into the hospital and what is new since last time we talked is of course the huge Shujaiya massacre in which we don’t know yet how many were killed but it was a large number of Palestinians killed during this night of immense bombardment of Shujaiya, which is a city of around 60,000 people. And that night we received 400 patients from midnight until the next morning. We received among them I think it was 47 killed. So of course that was a very dramatic night.

And in the early morning hours, as the sun rose up, the refugees or those who had been trapped in this bombardment, came wandering to Shifa, many with bare feet and very pale and shocked and devastated and they had lost their homes and many had lost their family members. And they sought refuge in the garden of Shifa and suddenly Shifa had not only the patients and their families, but they had a large group of refugees, internally-displaced persons actually in the middle of its garden.

So the garden was crowded with hundreds of homeless Palestinians who had been through a hellish night. I talked to some of them and it was heartbreaking to hear their stories of how they had been trapped in their houses, extremely careful of the bombardment of course, desperately calling to get some help to get evacuated. I talked to several families who had injured family members who could not be evacuated by the ambulances and actually bled to death before they could be evacuated.

So that was a very dramatic night and morning and we worked continuously. The whole fabulous, incredibly hardworking staff at Shifa did I would say an outstanding job to try and accommodate all of these. People are exhausted but they’re standing tall and they show up for their shifts despite the fact that they get no salaries.

The framing of Gaza is often forgotten.

There is almost no water, ninety percent of the water is undrinkable. The water supply to the residential areas if very very limited. There is almost no electricity. Gaza is running on generators and battery charged lights. When you’re sitting there working on some report or your on the Internet, suddenly it’s time for the electricity to disappear and there will be eight hours of blackout.

RK: I was going to ask about the bombing of the hospital yesterday. It wasn’t the first hospital that was bombed, but it was the intensive care unit that was targeted?

MG: It was.

RK: Are you at all concerned at Shifa?

MG: Of course. But bear in mind that twenty-five different medical institutions have been attacked by the Israeli occupation forces and nine medical staff have been killed or injured.

Three have been killed — one doctor, one pharmacist and one administrative worker — and six have been injured. And as I said, twenty-five medical facilities, among them thirteen primary health care centers, eight ambulances. We have the bombing of the [Mobarat] hospital, killing three handicapped patients.

And then came of course the horrible bombing of al-Aqsa hospital, which is totally in contravention to all international laws. And they claimed, as they always claim, that it was used as a hide out for some anti-tank positions for the Palestinian fighters.

I don’t know if you saw us on Huffington [Post] Live tonight. There was a debate about Gaza. I was participating on Skype from Gaza and the [World Health Organization] boss in Gaza. He was challenged by the anchor in the US, that the Israelis said that the reason they had to shell the hospital was that the Palestinians had an anti-tank position close to the hospital.

He then replied that they had immediately sent down an investigative group consisting of several [United Nations] experts and OCHA [UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] people and they could find absolutely no trace of any weapon. The hospitals in Gaza have never ever been proven to conceal or hide or harbor any militant needs, be it fighters or weapons. This is just another of the many lies which the Israeli propaganda machine is spewing out. Israel is puking it out around the clock.

So al-Aqsa hospital [was] attacked, absolutely horrible, and it caused me and the Ministry of Health to send out a press release yesterday calling for the international community to consider the attacks on health facilities as war crimes under international law and called upon the international community and the United Nations to take immediate actions to prevent further attacks on medical facilities, ambulances and patients.

I myself have repeatedly appealed and urged the UN to place [inaudible] a UN flight at all hospitals in Gaza and to escort ambulances and to have international observers at all health facilities in Gaza. This has not been followed up, they’re sort of coming and going every now and then. I don’t think it is a lack of willingness from the local UN staff, but I think this is at a higher level.

You could ask UN headquarters in New York, why are you not protecting the Palestinian civilian hospitals and the ambulances? They’re being targeted and they’re being bombed and the patients and the staff are getting killed. Turn around, do it the other way, put up the mirror. What would have happened if Palestinian fighters had bombed an Israeli hospital and killed five patients? The world would have turned upside down.

What is this second-hand or even third-hand or fourth-hand citizenship in the world for the Palestinians?

RK: Let me ask you about the injuries you’re seeing. Is it the same injuries as before? Last time we talked you mentioned most of the injuries were shrapnel wounds. Is it the same or are the injuries you’re seeing now more from bombing homes? What’s happening now?

MG: The Israelis are using a wide variety of sophisticated modern weapons against a basically naked civilian population. They have no shelters, which is largely uncommunicated I think in the picture of Gaza. Whereas we see all these reports about individual shelters and home shelters and big cover shelters in Israel, and that’s fine. But Israel has never allowed Palestinians to build shelters and they don’t have early warning systems like sirens and they don’t have a civil defense that is really capable of defending the civilians.

So they are easy prey for this large arsenal of very powerful and carefully engineered weapons used by the Israeli armed forces.

So what we see are a variety of injuries caused by a man-made hand. The large artillery shells are causing devastating amputations. The explosions cause burns and blast injuries, meaning that the power wave of the explosion hits the body and can rupture internal organs so they start to bleed.

We just had a patient now, a young man, who had shrapnel openings. I could fit my fist into the shrapnel opening into his abdomen. He had maybe a hundred, small and large, the largest being large enough to accommodate my hand. One of them went down to his thigh and had ripped off the muscles attached to his leg.

We had a very young shebab [boy] also with a shrapnel that had penetrated his brain, which was very professionally extracted by the neurosurgical team here at Shifa. They are extremely good staff and doctors. They are doing surgery at a high level.

We had a young man who had a shrapnel, he was sitting in his home yesterday in central Gaza at the family’s apartment. It was shelling close to his apartment and the shrapnel traveled through the window and through his neck and caused an open fracture of the mandible [of the jaw] and also ripped open his carotid artery. So that was life-threatening bleeding. He was treated. We just went [on a] night round to look at him. He had a repair of his carotid artery and he had a reconstruction of the shattered jaw with metal plates and very small screws, like tiny nails to put into and reconstruct it. And he had an opening of the air pipe to breathe directly through the hole on the neck instead of directly through the mouth.

He of course was looking like a football and had a very severe edema, but he will survive. He was clenching the fist when we asked him, both eyes totally closed by the edema and unable to speak because of the large jaw injury, but he communicated with us and was taken good care of in the ICU.

I saw a little girl tonight, what was her name? Shumaiya, 4 years old, lost her mother and two of her siblings in an attack on Shujaiya, penetrating shrapnels to the abdomen, laparotomies, meaning opening the abdomen twice already. She will have another operation tomorrow.

And next to her laid Madeleine, 14. Two of her uncles were killed. She had severe burns on those arms and open fractures. I could go on forever.

That’s why I wrote in the open letter. I said, Mr. Obama, if you have a heart, come to see us. Spend one night in Shifa, I will dress you up as a cleaner and I’m sure it’s going to change your whole perception of what this is all about. You are so alienated to these empty words of “I regret so much that civilian casualties, blah blah,” that you don’t even have any empathy that can in any sense influence your political decisions. Instead you provide new tens of millions of dollars to this merciless Israeli war machine. Come on. Come visit us. Come and explain to the mothers and fathers, come and explain to Shumaiya why her mother had to be killed and her two siblings had to be killed.

Israel is saying that they are bombing Gaza to get rid of tunnels and terrorists. I see no tunnels and terrorists in Shifa hospital. I see only ordinary people like you and me and our children.

RK: Yesterday there were several families that were wiped out in their homes. Is that what you’re seeing at Shifa as well, entire families?

MG: Yes, of course we see that. We had three dead come in today. We had the Baker family yesterday that was shelled next to the hospital. I believe three were killed or died on admission. That was very close, just a block away from Shifa and the whole building was shaking when the F-16 rockets hit. And that was the same family who lost the four shebab, the four boys playing football on the beach.

RK: Their home was bombed yesterday?

MG: Yeah, their whole family residential block was bombed and we had forty injuries coming into the hospital immediately because it was so close. I believe three were killed, the rest were more or less injuries. We did four or five major surgeries. There were shrapnels and bleedings and screams and the whole clan came to the hospital and it was really a moment of chaos and horrible scenes. Within an hour or two we had sorted and patched up and selected those to have surgery and did operations on them and they filled up the ICUs, and so passes the day.

RK: Lastly, I want to ask you, is there anything in the past two days since I spoke to you last that has really struck you as something that you feel people need to know about, other than everything you’ve already said?

MG: The UN count is now 100,000 internal refugees in Gaza — 100,000 people who have either lost their homes or been threatened by Israeli attack forces to leave their homes and they have more or less nowhere to go. The family homes are so crowded now.

This is state terrorism at a very sophisticated and very high level.

If you go on Al Jazeera English, there is a piece by Richard Falk today. You know him?

RK: Yes I do.

MG: He has a very, very powerful piece today where he uses the same term I’ve been using, mainly state terrorism. He’s talking about the unspeakable acts of violence.

I’m at a loss for words to explain to your leaders [why] it is that these Palestinian people are constantly being exposed to merciless killings from this huge power which has another huge power behind it that seems to have a circle of empathy which is just outside their own. The government of Israel is not having any human core in the sense that they include the rest of humankind in their ideal system.

It seems that the Palestinians have been excluded as worthy of the same value systems as they [Israelis] apply to themselves.

This is of course the core problem, two core problems. Number one, Israeli apartheid which we see in the numbers I gave you last time. And number two, Israeli impunity. Impunity and apartheid are two key words to understand the current situation.

To conclude, let me give you the latest update. As of tonight, 622 killed since 6 July, and 160 of these 622 killed are children.

There are 3,099 injured. Of these 1,213 are children. Now imagine 1,200 injured children, just to care for them, just to comfort them, just to follow up with feeding, with cleaning, with rehabilitation, with pain relief. It takes a whole team. One of these kids would have a whole cross-professional team in an American hospital or Norwegian hospital. Here, they have their family around them, that’s their most important asset. But 1,200 injured children, it’s an enormous task for any health care system. And 698 women injured. We’re up to 1,800-1,900 injured children and women.

In the ICU, there are 104 injured, and for the last 24 hours we had 64 killed and 489 injured — for the last 24 hours.

During that night of the massacre in Shujaiya, the 20th of July, we had 141 killed and 452 injured; 47 of these killed came to Shifa. We had horrendously heartbreaking scenes when the families were reunited with their dead ones. And still nobody knows how many dead are lying in the rubble of the bombed houses in Shujaiya.

Last night they bombed a high-rise building, I think it’s 12 stories high. When they shot the first rocket, the front wall fell off in a way. In one of the apartments, the fifth or sixth floor, there was a family of two adults and five children screaming to be released. And then came the second rocket and they were all killed. We got them in charred. Five children and two adults. Terrorist, hmm? Tunnels? Hamas?

These are people. These are people. They are covered by international law. They are covered by the UN declaration for human rights. But Israel is exempted, has this phenomenous impunity that makes it seem like both you and I are paralyzed in the domain of Israeli control.

RK: Every time I talk to you it’s just heartbreaking and awful. I really hope the next conversation we have isn’t so dark.

MG: Can I just give you the light side? The light side is the resilience of the Palestinians. This is not a suffering people. This is not a begging people. They stand up. They stand tall.

My love and my immense admiration for the staff and the volunteers in Shifa. And not to forget the paramedics — the sacrifice, the risk in every mission they do out in this dark city of death and destruction from the Israeli attack forces. My deepest admiration.

Shifa hospital stands tall. People are tended to. The surgeons, the operating room scrub nurses, they work day and night. Nobody dies because nobody tried to rescue them. If they die it’s because the injury was too devastating for a body to sustain or if they came to us too late.

RK: Thank you for all that you do and I hope this is over soon.

Rania Khalek is an independent journalist reporting on the underclass and marginalized.

24 July, 2014
Electronicintifada.net

By Justin Podur

 

Q: Didn’t Hamas start this fighting by provoking Israel?

A: According to this interpretation of events: 1. Palestinians killed Israeli teens -> 2. Israel responded -> 3. Hamas began rocket fire -> 4. Israel attacked Gaza.

A longer cycle. The first problem with this sequence is that if you go a little further back, you find further provocations and attacks by Israel, further responses by Palestinians, and so on, going back decades. For example, on May 15, 2014, Israeli soldiers murdered two Palestinian teens in Beitunia, for no apparent reason (see: http://electronicintifada.net/tags/beitunia-killings ). Even if you see the conflict as a ‘cycle of violence’, the primary responsibility lies with the more powerful party, since it is the more powerful party that will determine the course of both war and peace in any ‘cycle’. Israel is by far the more powerful party. The question of ‘who started it’ is really a question about who is responsible. Israel can stop this massacre at any moment.

Ilan Pappe wrote recently that “The only chance for a successful struggle against Zionism in Palestine is the one based on a human and civil rights agenda that does not differentiate between one violation and the other and yet identifies clearly the victim and the victimizers.”

Revenge does not apply to innocents. But the second problem is more important. It is immoral to see the killings of the Israeli teens as a ‘response’ to, or ‘revenge’ for, the killings of the Palestinian teens in May. It is also immoral to see the torture and burning alive of a Palestinian teenager by Israeli settlers as a ‘response’ to the killings of the teens. The only acceptable moral response to crimes like murder is to bring the individuals responsible to justice. Justice, according to the law, does not allow revenge against other people.

An offshore prize? There may be yet another reason for these constant assaults on Gaza: offshore gas deposits that Israel wants to access, but without having to deal with a Palestinian government that could negotiate some benefit for it. Nafeez Ahmad wrote about this in the Guardian on July 9/14 ( http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jul/09/israel-war-gaza-palestine-natural-gas-energy-crisis ). He quotes Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, who in 2007, as Israeli army chief of staff, said:

“A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority [PA] will, by definition, involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas installations, Israel – or all three… It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.”

Substitute the word “Palestinians” for “the radical Islamic movement”, and you have a more honest statement of what these attacks may be about: “drilling without consent”.

The unity government. The real target of Israel’s current attack is more likely the unity government agreement between Hamas and Fatah, which was recognized even by the US. Ilan Pappe ( http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562 ) wrote:

“The present genocidal wave has, like all the previous ones, also a more immediate background. It has been born out of an attempt to foil the Palestinian decision to form a unity government that even the United States could not object to.

“The collapse of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s desperate “peace” initiative legitimized the Palestinian appeal to international organizations to stop the occupation. At the same time, Palestinians gained wide international blessing for the cautious attempt represented by the unity government to strategize once again a coordinated policy among the various Palestinian groups and agendas.”

Q: Wait, what is the unity government?

A: Beginning last July (2013), there was another “peace process” that was initiated by US Secretary of State John Kerry, involving Netanyahu on the Israeli side and Mahmoud Abbas, from Fatah, whose electoral mandate expired in 2009 (a point I’ll return to). The deadline set for an agreement was April 2014. Over the course of this “peace process”, Israel continued to build settlements in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory Israel is militarily occupying.

When the April 2014 deadline arrived, Abbas had no agreement from Israel to show, only new settlements and new preconditions for talks. At that point, Abbas agreed to join Hamas in a unity government and prepare for new elections, which would be the first since 2005/6, when Abbas won the presidential election (2005) and Hamas won the legislative elections (2006).

Even though Israel had offered Abbas nothing, when the unity government proposal arose, Netanyahu said that Abbas could have peace with Israel or with Hamas, but not both – but he had already shown that Israel had no interest in peace, regardless of what Abbas did.

It is worth noting just how favorable the unity government agreement was, to both Abbas and, potentially, to Israel, as Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote in the July 17/14 NYT: Hamas transferred formal authority to Ramallah, giving up official control of Gaza. But “Israel immediately sought to undermine the reconciliation agreement by preventing Hamas leaders and residents from obtaining the two most essential benefits of the deal: the payment of salaries to 43,000 civil servants who worked for the Hamas government and continue to administer Gaza under the new one, and the easing of the suffocating border closures imposed by Israel and Egypt that bar most Gazans’ passage to the outside world.” Qatar offered to pay the salaries. The UN offered to deliver the salaries. But the US allowed Israel to block both efforts.

Q: But why did Hamas reject the ceasefire offers?

A: A frequently used negotiating tactic is to make demands that the other side cannot meet. Israel’s ceasefire terms are to temporarily cease the shelling, bombing, and killing until the next time they decide to resume it, while Gaza’s borders remain closed, its water, electricity, and its people’s freedom of movement remain completely under Israeli control. Hamas’s conditions have been published in English on the Electronic Intifada and elsewhere ( http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-factions-reportedly-set-10-conditions-10-year-truce-israel ). Sometimes they are presented as 10 conditions, sometimes as 5 conditions, but they boil down to one: the siege of Gaza must end. The siege has driven the Palestinian economy into tunnels – tunnels that Israel is now invading Gaza to destroy. The siege is killing the society, and each round of Israeli attack further destroys the infrastructure that enables people to survive, infrastructure that cannot be rebuilt – because of the siege. Returning to Nathan Thrall in the NYT: “For many Gazans, and not just Hamas supporters, it’s worth risking more bombardment and now the ground incursion, for a chance to change that unacceptable status quo. A cease-fire that fails to resolve the salary crisis and open Gaza’s border with Egypt will not last. It is unsustainable for Gaza to remain cut off from the world and administered by employees working without pay.”

Q: Civilian deaths have been kept to a minimum by Israeli doctrine, haven’t they?

A: Israel’s doctrine is to inflict punishment on the population in order to get them to turn on their leaders. In Rania Khalek’s words ( http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-deliberately-targeting-civilians-gaza )

“The Dahiya doctrine (which refers to the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut that Israel purposely decimated in its 2006 assault on Lebanon) is Israel’s preferred method of warfare. Under this doctrine, the Israeli army deploys overwhelmingly disproportionate force against civilian infrastructure to restore Israel’s deterrence and turn the local population against its enemy, i.e. Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

“In the lead up to Operation Cast Lead, senior Israeli army General Gadi Eisenkot disclosed Israel’s plans to expand the Dahiya doctrine, telling an Israeli newspaper, “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases.” He added, “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”

“Two months later Israel pulverized the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,400 people, including almost 400 children, some of whom were deliberately murdered while raising white flags.”

Q: Even if 80% of deaths have been civilians, 20% have been militants, right?

A: Israel defines militants in an expansive way. Civilian police are defined as militants. Rania Khalek again:

“Using precision guided missiles, the Israeli army claims it is only bombing people and infrastructure “affiliated with Hamas terrorism” — and the international community is buying it.

“What is not being discussed, however, is who and what constitutes a Hamas affiliate.

“Hamas is more than just a militant organization, it is the political party that was democratically elected in 2006 to govern the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Hamas’s control means that almost everyone and everything in Gaza can be considered a Hamas affiliate. This unchallenged loose definition has enabled Israel’s war architects to widen the definition of legitimate targets to include civilians and civilian infrastructure, including mosques, schools, hospitals, banks, electricity lines and residential homes, all of which have been targeted.

“Aside from a weak condemnation issued by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, the international community has largely accepted Israel’s methodology, completely abandoning defenseless Palestinian civilians as they’re being maimed and slaughtered by one of the world’s most powerful armies.”

Q: Such civilian deaths as have occurred have occurred because militants hide among civilians, right?

A: There is nowhere for anyone to hide in Gaza. Gaza is one of the most densely populated 360 sq km strips of land on earth. Israel defines everyone in Gaza as a militant. Israel and Egypt have ensured that no one can leave Gaza. Israel is now shelling and bombing Gaza. Civilians have no place to hide from Israeli bombs and shells. There is nowhere civilians can go to prevent Israel from defining them as militants, and there is nowhere anyone can go in Gaza to be safe from bombs – Israel bombs houses, apartments, UNRWA compounds, hospitals – the story of ‘militants hiding among civilians’ is simply an Israeli excuse for bombing and killing civilians freely.

Q: Surely you cannot expect Israel to stand by while the rockets continue to terrorize them?

A: As a moral and legal question, occupying powers do not have a right to defend themselves, except by leaving. As a practical question, is Israel behaving in a way that will stop rocket attacks? Brian Dominick has answered this question, in response to a blog post by Juan Cole ( http://radicalreboot.tumblr.com/post/91670379821/israels-real-motives-in-operation-gazaunderattack ):

“…there are obvious ways to thwart rocket attacks that put Palestinian noncombatants at no or far less risk, all of which Israel ignores in favor of a widespread campaign of death dealing. These alternatives have the downside, from the Israeli hardline viewpoint, of failing to terrorize and traumatize Palestinians. These ways include but are likely not limited to:

“Opening Gaza borders to (inspected) trade so the commercial viability of the Gaza tunnel system is undermined and factions must make their own tunnels just for smuggling weapons. This reduction would likely be dramatic, and it would also bring Israel into compliance with international law that bans the collective punishment of civilians. It would also mean an end to Israel’s murdering of commercial smugglers.

“Help the Hamas government suppress rocket fire from factions not beholden to or remotely respectful of ceasefires between Hamas and Israel—the ones doing most of the rocket attacks between periodic uber-crises. (I don’t personally love the idea of Israel choosing factions, but this would be an indication of Israel actually wanting rocket attacks to end.)

“Israel could actually pursue peace and a solution to the overall crisis that actually respects Palestinian demands. That is, stop giving their enemies reasons to actively fight them, and watch support for the remaining fighters all but evaporate. I can’t guarantee this would work, but it has never been tried.

“Stop targeting Hamas’s civilian, non-operational leadership for assassination, which draws profound resentment from the Palestinian people and consistently, as Juan Cole notes, strengthens Hamas’s hand in both Gaza and the West Bank.

“The… way we know rocket suppression is nowhere on Israeli hawks’ agenda is that each such operation in the past six or more years has resulted in a tremendous spike in the number of rockets fired, often resulting in more rockets than would be launched during relative calm for months at a time. This is a predictable result of air strikes and incursions, which won’t after all restrict the rocket fire nearly as effectively as ceasefires historically have.”

Q: The civil wars in Iraq and Syria, the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the conflicts in Sudan and Congo and Nigeria have claimed many more lives than this conflict. Isn’t it hypocrisy for people in the world be so upset over a few hundred dead Palestinians in the face of these much larger death tolls?

A: This question is a major logical failure. If a murder of a complete innocent cannot be a moral response to another murder, as above, then a big mass murder in an unrelated conflict cannot excuse a smaller mass murder here. The deaths caused by the Syrian regime in the Syrian civil war, or by the rebels there, or by ISIS in Iraq, or the Iraqi government, cannot be used as an excuse for Israel’s killings in Palestine. In Ilan Pappe’s words ( http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562 ):

“I will concede that all over the Middle East there are now horrific cases where dehumanization has reaped unimaginable horrors as it does in Gaza today. But there is one crucial difference between these cases and the Israeli brutality: the former are condemned as barbarous and inhuman worldwide, while those committed by Israel are still publicly licensed and approved by the president of the United States, the leaders of the EU and Israel’s other friends in the world…

“Those who commit atrocities in the Arab world against oppressed minorities and helpless communities, as well as the Israelis who commit these crimes against the Palestinian people, should all be judged by the same moral and ethical standards. They are all war criminals, though in the case of Palestine they have been at work longer than anyone else.

“It does not really matter what the religious identity is of the people who commit the atrocities or in the name of which religion they purport to speak. Whether they call themselves jihadists, Judaists or Zionists, they should be treated in the same way.

“A world that would stop employing double standards in its dealings with Israel is a world that could be far more effective in its response to war crimes elsewhere in the world.”

Q: Palestine was never a country. The Arabs attacked Israel in 1967…

A: The problem with this question is that it misunderstands the parties to the conflict. The questioner has slipped from “Israel and the Palestinians” to “Israel and the Arabs”. “The Arabs” are not a party to this conflict – Arab-speaking countries of the Gulf, North Africa, and the rest of the Middle East are not under Israel’s occupation, nor are they refugees from Israel’s founding in 1948. The Palestinians are. The Palestinians are the victims of the current Israeli operations, not “the Arabs”.

The most succinct summary of how the situation has developed, and the relative power of the parties to this conflict, can be viewed in the Disappearing Palestine map:

http://www.juancole.com/images-ext/2010/03/map-story-of-palestinian-nationhood.jpg

Juan Cole, who recently posted about the map, describes some of the background and the accuracy of the map here: http://www.juancole.com/2010/03/map-story-of-palestinian-nationhood.html

For other questions about the background of Israel/Palestine, please see Stephen Shalom’s Q/A on the background of the Israel/Palestine conflict. http://www.peacenowar.net/Palestine/News/Q&A.htm

Q: Who is winning?

A: Writing in the NYT on July 18/14, Jodi Rudoren, like many others, makes much of the difference between this Israeli attack on besieged Gaza and previous attacks, like 2009 and 2012. In 2009, Rudoren writes, “Israel quickly bisected the tiny coastal enclave and blockaded Gaza City, where they engaged in gun battles with Hamas fighters. On Friday, the troops operated mainly in farmland within about a mile of Gaza’s northern, southern and eastern edges, and quickly announced they had uncovered more than 20 tunnel exit points. Setting the bar relatively low helps hold back public expectations, provide the military with achievable goals, and build international legitimacy.” In this analysis, Hamas is isolated and weaker because in previous rounds, Hamas could count on more support from Syria’s government (right now in the middle of a civil war) and a friendly government in Egypt (which was never that friendly, but which has now, under Sisi, returned to the traditional pattern of working for Israel and isolating the Palestinians since the 2013 coup). Israel, and consequently, the Western media, are focused on “the tunnels” – into which much of Palestinian life has been driven because of the siege – as the enemy. Israel claims that Hamas’s fighters are a threat because of these tunnels.

While these differences do exist, the main elements are exactly the same. Israel is unlikely to send soldiers into tunnels to fight in close quarters with Palestinians. There are too many risks for that, and very little cost to Israel to continuing its high-tech, indiscriminate killing from a distance. This has been referred to by an analyst (Roni Bart) as “a kind of rolling-fire induced smokescreen”, a “new policy” as of 2009 which “caused a large number of casualties among the civilian Palestinian population”, because “most of the fighting took place in built up and populated areas”. (Roni Bart, “Warfare-Morality-Public Relations: Proposals for Improvement”, Strategic Assessment, June 2009 Vol. 12, No. 1)

Israel’s ability to keep this up depends on several factors. One is the regional factor, which is now providing few restraints (civil war in Iraq and Syria, a pro-Israel regime in Egypt). Another factor is how difficult it is for Western leaders to sell the war to Western civil society. In this attack, a gap may have opened up between the Israeli public and the Western public at large, as the picnics, outrageous comments, trophy photos and the like that are being shared in social media and collected in Western media show – see for example ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html ). At some point, the atrocities will reach a level that will trigger Western leaders to get Israel to stop.

Q: Is there anything to do?

A: Israel is a part of the West. Its economy and politics are fully integrated with the West. It simply cannot do this without support from the US, Canada, and Europe. If you go to demonstrations against Israel’s attacks, whether this one or the next ones, join the BDS Movement (bdsmovement.net), write letters to politicians or to media outlets, you will be up against an organized an organized, extensive, pro-Israel effort. You will have to do your homework and realize there are people preparing professional talking points about every historical fact and argument you come across. It may be years before anything improves, and things may get still worse. But Israel depends on international support, including from the public, more than most – that is why they devote so much energy and effort to politicians and the media in the West. This is a conflict where activists can make a difference.

Justin Podur is a writer and activist based in Toronto.
24 July 2014
teleSUR English

 

By Hussein Al-alak
The first Holocaust of this century is taking place in Mosul, Iraq, and the British Government is strangely silent. Churches have been destroyed, the population branded like the Jews of NAZI occupied Europe and now, for the first time in 2000 years, Iraq’s Church bells have fallen silent.

Reports have flooded the media, how the Christians and the Shiite of ISIS occupied Mosul, were ordered to pay a higher tax, leave or face death by the sword.

Like their NAZI predecessor’s, the property of minorities has been confiscated and many of those fleeing have been stopped at check points, where armed ISIS militia have threatened harm to people, in exchange for the few personal possessions, grabbed while in the hurry to flee.

Like the Synagogues of NAZI occupied Poland, Churches and other holy shrines have been demolished, burned to the ground, and precious artifacts looted to fund the global Jihadist movement.

Priests, Nuns and the few civilians seeking sanctuary, have also been turned out on to the streets and forced to seek refuge further north, in to Kurdish controlled area’s.

No one is immune from the brutality of ISIS, not even the elderly, women and children. Pictures have emerged from inside of Mosul, of Iraq’s Turkmen being crammed into cargo lorries, with scene’s inside the vehicles echoing the historic indignity of the 20th century, from the trains which entered the gates of hell itself, Auschwitz.

ISIS have also sought to continue the legacy of those in NAZI occupied Europe, where inside Iraq’s new Warsaw or Krackow Ghetto, have cut the water supply to those suspected of hiding remaining Christians or Shiite, or for those minorities still visible but unable to flee.

The Vatican itself has released the names of those Iraqi Muslims, who having been raised in a multi-ethnic community, decided to defy the segregation policies of the Islamic State but for some, their efforts may be seen as being in vain, as those Iraqi’s were
soon put to death by those, who some in the West, still view as heroes.

Other acts of resistance are also being recorded, where daubed over the red ISIS inscribed “N” for Nazarene, which ISIS placed on the homes of Christian’s, brave Mosul residents have been writing in black “We are all Christians” now.

But why has the British Government remained so silent, especially after its long time criticisms of Syria’s Human Rights record, its relentless hostility to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the fact that Queen Elizabeth 2nd, who heads Britain’s Church of England, has come out in “solidarity” with the “persecuted Christian community of Mosul”.

For many people, it’s felt the British Government, cannot accept certain responsibilities, one being the possible involvement of British and other European citizens in the first Holocaust of this century. In the case of the United Kingdom, a minimum of 500 citizens are currently known to be fighting for ISIS but this figure has been disputed by Government officials and is believed to be much higher.

Over the past couple of years, British newspapers have also shown, what many describe as being a sympathetic approach to British ISIS recruits, with parallels having been drawn with those men who died fighting Fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

And no British city has been immune from ISIS recruitment either, in Manchester alone, one British Pakistani ISIS member was killed in Syria, while a British Somali family has a son and two teenage daughters currently somewhere in either Iraq or Syria.

In the past, the British Government has sought to discourage people from going over to fight, with threats of enforcing prevention of terrorism legislation and promises to revoke citizenship but as the situation in Mosul has now proven, the level of crimes being committed, has become much more serious.

The International body Human Rights Watch, recently warned that “the laws of war ban all parties to a conflict from targeting, intentionally damaging, seizing or destroying religious, cultural and historic properties” while “discrimination on the grounds of religion is strictly prohibited. Murder of civilians, taking hostages, as well as pillaging, constitute war crimes”.

The Geneva Convention itself states that food and water be provided and the refusal to do so, constitutes a war crime. The Nuremberg Trials also found itself able to convict members of Hitler’s NAZI establishment, on the grounds, that withholding such essentials as water, was in itself a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment.

What many are finding ironic about the British Governments silence over the ISIS actions in Mosul, is that the British Government was one of the founding countries which established these international laws and while in the past, Britain showed enthusiasm for prosecuting Germany’s NAZI war criminals, now they seem suddenly struck dumb, on how to prosecute their own.

Hussein Al-Alak is a British based journalist and is chairman of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign UK.

24 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

After days of placing hostile blame for the downing of the Malaysian airliner on Russia, the White House permitted US intelligence officials to tell reporters that there is no evidence of the Russian government’s involvement.

Obviously, the US satellite photos do not support the Obama regime’s lies. If the White House had any evidence of Russian complicity, it would have released it to great fanfare days ago.

We are fortunate that the analytical side of the CIA, in contrast with the black ops side, retains analysts with integrity even after the purge of the agency ordered by Dick Cheney. Incensed that the CIA did not immediately fall in line with all of the Bush regime’s war lies, Cheney had the agency purged. The black ops side of the agency is a different story. Many believe that it should be defunded and abolished as this part of the CIA operates in violation of statutory US law.

Don’t hold your breath until Washington abolishes black-ops operations or the Obama regime apologizes to the Russian government for the unfounded accusations and insinuations leveled by the White House at Russia.

Despite this admission by US intelligence officials, the propaganda ministry is already at work to undermine the admission. The intelligence officials themselves claim that Russia is, perhaps, indirectly responsible, because Russia “created the conditions” that caused Kiev to attack the separatists.

In other words, Washington’s coup overseen by US State Department official Victoria Nuland, which overthrew an elected democratic Ukrainian government and brought extreme Russophobes into power in Kiev who attacked dissenting former Russian territories that were attached to Ukraine by Soviet communist party leaders when Russia and Ukraine were part of the same country, has no responsibility for the result.

Washington is innocent. Russia is guilty. End of story.

The day previously, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, one of the Obama regime’s brainless warmonger women, angrily turned on reporters who asked about the Russian government’s official denial of responsibility. Don’t you understand, she demanded, that what the US government says is credible and what the Russian government says is not credible!

Rest assured that the owners of the media and the editors of the reporters received calls and threats. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reporters have lost their jobs for doing their jobs.

There you have it. America’s free press. The American press is free to lie for the government, but mustn’t dare exercise any other freedom.

Washington will never permit official clarification of MH-17. Today (July 23) the BBC (the British Brainwashing Corporation) declared: “Whitehall sources say information has emerged that MH17 crash evidence was deliberated tampered with, as the plane’s black boxes arrive in the UK.”

After making this claim of tampered with black boxes, the BBC contradicted itself: “The Dutch Safety Board, which is leading the investigation, said ‘valid data’ had been downloaded from MH17’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR) which will be ‘further analyzed’. The board said: ‘The CVR was damaged but the memory module was intact. Furthermore no evidence or indications of manipulation of the CVR was found.’”

The BBC does not tell us how the black boxes are simultaneously in British and Dutch hands, or how they got into British and Dutch hands when the separatists gave the black boxes to the Malaysians with the guarantee that the black boxes would be turned over to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for expert and non-politicized examination.

So where are the black boxes? If the Malaysians gave them to the British, Whitehall will tell whatever lie Washington demands. If Washington’s British puppet actually has the black boxes, we will never know the truth. Judging from the hostile and unsupported accusations against Russia from the bought-and-paid-for Netherlands prime minister, we can expect the Dutch also to lie for Washington. Apparently, Washington has succeeded in removing the “investigation” from the ICAO’s hands and placing the investigation in the hands of its puppets.

The problem with writing columns based on Western news reports is that you have no idea of the veracity of the news reports.

From all appearances, the Obama regime intends to turn the “international investigation” into an indictment of Russia, and the Dutch seem to be lined up behind this corrupt use of the investigation. As the Washington Post story makes clear, there is no room in the investigation for any suspicion that Kiev and Washington might be responsible. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/malaysia-flight-17-prosecution-faces-major-evidentiary-and-legal-obstacles/2014/07/22/a8c7ebe4-11db-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9_story.html

By continuing to trust a corrupt West that is devoid of integrity and of good will toward Russia, the separatists and the Russian government have again set themselves up for vilification. Will they never learn?

As I write, more confusion is added to the story. It has just come across my screen that Reuters reports that Alexander Khodakovsky, “a powerful Ukrainian rebel leader has confirmed that pro-Russian separatists had an anti-aircraft missile of the type Washington says was used to shoot down the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and it could have originated in Russia.” Reuters says that this separatist commander (or perhaps former commander as later in its report Reuters describes Khodakovsky as “a former head of the ‘Alpha’ anti-terrorism unit of the security service in Donetsk”) is in dispute with other commanders about the conduct of the war.

Khodakovsky makes clear that he doesn’t know which unit might have had the missile or from where it was fired. He makes it clear that he has no precise or real information. His theory is that the Ukrainian government tricked the separatists into firing the missile by launching airstrikes in the area over which the airliner was flying and by sending military jets to the vicinity of the airliner to create the appearance of military aircraft. Reuters quotes Khodakovsky, “”Even if there was a BUK, and even if the BUK was used, Ukraine did everything to ensure that a civilian aircraft was shot down”

Not knowing the nature of Khodakovsky’s dispute with other commanders or his motivation, it is difficult to assess the validity of his story, but his tale does explain why Ukrainian air control would route the Malaysian airliner over the combat area, a hitherto unexplained decision.

After the sensational part of its story, Reuters seems to back away a bit. Reuters quotes Khodakovsky saying that the separatist movement has different leaders and “our cooperation is somewhat conditional.” Khodakovsky then becomes uncertain as to whether the separatists did or did not have operational BUK missiles. According to Reuters, Khodakovsky “said none of the BUKs captured from Ukrainian forces were operational.” This implies that Russia provided the working missile to the separatists if such a missile existed.

I find the separatists’ reply convincing. If we have these missiles why to the fools in Kiev send aircraft to bomb us, and why is their bombing so successful? The separatists do have shoulder fired ground to air missiles of the kind that the US supplied to Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. These missiles are only capable for low flying aircraft. They cannot reach 33,000 feet.

According to Reuters, the reporting of its story was by one person, the writing by a second, and the editing by a third. From my experience in journalism, this means that we don’t know whose story it is, how the story was changed, or what its reliability might be.

We can safely conclude that the obfuscations are just beginning, and like 9 /11 and John F. Kennedy’s assassination, there will be no alternative to individuals forming their own opinion from researching the evidence. The United States government will never come clean, and the British government and presstitute media will never stop telling lies for Washington.

Washington’s bribes and threats can produce whatever story Washington wants. Keep in mind that a totally corrupt White House, over the objections of its own intelligence agencies, sent the Secretary of State to the United Nations to lie to the world about Iraqi weapons of mass production that the White House knew did not exist. The consequences are that millions were killed, maimed, and displaced for no other reason than Washington’s lie and rising instability in the Middle East.

The Obama regime lied on the basis of concocted “evidence” that Assad had used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, thus crossing the “red line” that the White House had drawn, justifying a US military attack on the Syrian people. The Russian government exposed the fake evidence, and the British Parliament voted down any UK participation in the Obama regime’s attack on Syria. Left isolated, the Obama regime dared not assume the obvious role of war criminal.

Blocked in this way, the Obama regime financed and supplied outside jihadist militants to attack Syria, with the consequence that a radial ISIL is in the process of carving out a new Caliphate from parts of Iraq and Syria.

Keep in mind that both the George W. Bush and Obama regimes have also lied through their teeth about “Iranian nukes.”

The only possible conclusion is that a government that consistently lies is not believable.

Since the corrupt Clinton regime, American journalists have been forced by their bosses to lie for Washington. It is a hopeful sign that in their confrontation with Marie Harf some journalists found a bit of courage. Let’s hope it takes root and grows.

I do not think that the United States can recover from the damage inflicted by the neoconservatives who determined the policies of the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama governments, but whenever we see signs of opposition to the massive lies and deceptions that define the US government in the 21st century, we should cheer and support those who confront the lies.

Our future, and that of the world, depend on it.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

24 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Why hasn’t Washington joined Russian President Putin in calling for an objective, non-politicized international investigation by experts of the case of the Malaysian jetliner?

The Russian government continues to release facts, including satellite photos showing the presence of Ukrainian Buk anti-aircraft missiles in locations from which the airliner could have been brought down by the missile system and documentation that a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet rapidly approached the Malaysian airliner prior to its downing. The head of the Operations Directorate of Russian military headquarters said at a Moscow press conference today (July 21) that the presence of the Ukrainian military jet is confirmed by the Rostov monitoring center.

The Russian Defense Ministry pointed out that at the moment of destruction of MH-17 an American satellite was flying over the area. The Russian government urges Washington to make available the photos and data captured by the satellite.

President Putin has repeatedly stressed that the investigation of MH-17 requires “a fully representative group of experts to be working at the site under the guidance of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).” Putin’s call for an independent expert examination by ICAO does not sound like a person with anything to hide.

Turning to Washington Putin stated: “In the meantime, no one [not even the “exceptional nation”] has the right to use this tragedy to achieve their narrowly selfish political goals.”

Putin reminded Washington: “We repeatedly called upon all conflicting sides to stop the bloodshed immediately and to sit down at the negotiating table. I can say with confidence that if military operations were not resumed [by Kiev] on June 28 in eastern Ukraine, this tragedy wouldn’t have happened.”

What is the American response?

Lies and insinuations.

Yesterday (July 20) the US Secretary of State, John Kerry confirmed that pro-Russian separatists were involved in the downing of the Malaysian airliner and said that it was “pretty clear” that Russia was involved. Here are Kerry’s words: “It’s pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia into the hands of separatists. We know with confidence, with confidence, that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point and time, so it obviously points a very clear finger at the separatists.”

Kerry’s statement is just another of the endless lies told by US secretaries of state in the 21st century. Who can forget Colin Powell’s package of lies delivered to the UN about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” or Kerry’s lie repeated endlessly that Assad “used chemical weapons against his own people” or the endless lies about “Iranian nukes”?

Remember that Kerry on a number of occasions stated that the US had proof that Assad crossed the “red line” by using chemical weapons. However, Kerry was never able to back up his statements with evidence. The US had no evidence to give the British prime minister whose effort to have Parliament approve Britain’s participation with Washington in a military attack on Syria was voted down. Parliament told the prime minister, “no evidence, no war.”

Again here is Kerry declaring “confidence” in statements that are directly contradicted by the Russian satellite photos and endless eye witnesses on the ground.

Why doesn’t Washington release its photos from its satellite?

The answer is for the same reason that Washington will not release all the videos it confiscated and that it claims prove that a hijacked 9/11 airliner hit the Pentagon. The videos do not support Washington’s claim, and the US satellite photos do not support Kerry’s claim.

The UN weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq reported that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. However, the fact did not support Washington’s propaganda and was ignored. Washington started a highly destructive war based on nothing but Washington’s intentional lie.

The International Atomic Energy Commission’s inspectors on the ground in Iran and all 16 US intelligence agencies reported that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. However, the fact was inconsistent with Washington’s agenda and was ignored by both the US government and the presstitute media.

We are witnessing the same thing right now with the assertions in the absence of evidence that Russia is responsible for the downing of the Malaysian airliner.

Not every member of the US government is as reckless as Kerry and John McCain. In place of direct lies, many US officials use insinuations.

US Senator Diane Feinstein is the perfect example. Interviewed on the presstitute TV station CNN, Feinstein said: “The issue is where is Putin? I would say, ‘Putin, you have to man up. You should talk to the world. You should say, if this is a mistake, which I hope it was, say it.’”

Putin has been talking to the world nonstop calling for an expert non-politicized investigation, and Feinstein is asking Putin why he is hiding behind silence. We know you did it, Feinstein insinuates, so just tell us whether you meant to or whether it was an accident.

The way the entire Western news cycle was orchestrated with blame instantly being placed on Russia long in advance of real information suggests that the downing of the airliner was a Washington operation. It is, of course, possible that the well-trained presstitute media needed no orchestration from Washington in order to lay the blame on Russia. On the other hand, some of the news performances seem too scripted not to have been prepared in advance.

We also have the advanced preparation of the youtube video that purports to show a Russian general and Ukrainian separatists discussing having mistakenly downed a civilian airliner. As I pointed out earlier, this video is twice damned. It was ready in advance and by implicating the Russian military, it overlooked that the Russian military can tell the difference between a civilian airliner and a military airplane. The existence of the video itself implies that there was a plot to down the airliner and blame Russia.

I have seen reports that the Russian anti-aircraft missile system, as a safety device, is capable of contacting aircraft transponders in order to verify the type of aircraft. If the reports are correct and if the transponders from MH-17 are found, they might record the contact.

I have seen reports that Ukrainian air control changed the route of MH-17 and directed it to fly over the conflict area. The transponders should also indicate whether this is correct. If so, there clearly is at least circumstantial evidence that this was an intentional act on the part of Kiev, an act which would have required Washington’s blessing.

There are other reports that there is a divergence between the Ukrainian military and the unofficial militias formed by the right-wing Ukrainian extremists who apparently were the first to attack the separatists. It is possible that Washington used the extremists to plot the airliner’s destruction in order to blame Russia and use the accusations to pressure the EU to go along with Washington’s unilateral sanctions against Russia. We do know that Washington is desperate to break up the growing economic and political ties between Russia and Europe.

If it was a plot to down an airliner, any safety device on the missile system could have been turned off so as to give no warning or leave any telltale sign. That could be the reason a Ukrainian fighter was sent to inspect the airliner. Possibly the real target was Putin’s airliner and incompetence in implementing the plot resulted in the destruction of a civilian airliner.

As there are a number of possible explanations, let’s keep open minds and resist Washington’s propaganda until facts and evidence are in. In the very least Washington is guilty of using the incident to blame Russia in advance of the evidence. All Washington has shown us so far are accusations and insinuations. If that is all Washington continues to show us, we will know where the blame resides.

In the meantime, remember the story of the boy who cried “wolf!” He lied so many times that when the wolf did come, no one believed him. Will this be Washington’s ultimate fate?

Instead of declaring war on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and Syria, why did Washington hide behind lies? If Washington wants war with Iran, Russia, and China, why not simply declare war? The reason that the US Constitution requires war to begin with a declaration of war by Congress is to prevent the executive branch from orchestrating wars in order to further hidden agendas. By abdicating its constitutional responsibility, the US Congress is complicit in the executive branch’s war crimes. By approving Israel’s premeditated murder of Palestinians, the US government is complicit in Israel’s war crimes.

Ask yourself this question: Would the world be a safer place with less death, destruction and displaced peoples and more truth and justice if the United States and Israel did not exist?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

22 July, 2014
Paulcraigroberts.org

 

By William Hanna
On 26 November 1947, when it became apparent to Zionists and their supporters that the UN vote on the Partition of Palestine would be short of the required two thirds majority in the General Assembly, they filibustered for a postponement until after Thanksgiving thereby gaining time to threaten the loss of aid to nations such as Greece — which planned on voting against — into changing their votes. U.S. President Truman — also threatened with loss of Jewish support in the upcoming Presidential election — later noted that “The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed me.”

On 29 November 1947 the UN voted for a modified Partition Plan — despite Arab opposition on grounds that it violated UN charter principles of national self-determination — recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States with a Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem. The resolution’s adoption prompted the 1947–48 conflict including atrocities by Zionist terror gangs whose genocidal brutality was responsible for the murder of thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians and the forced exodus of more than 700,000 others. At the time, the consensus of opinion was that Israel’s contentious creation had been permitted as a conscious and wilful act of Holocaust compensation which included toleration of its crimes against humanity. Since then, Israel has steadfastly adhered to that successful tactic of blackmail, bribery, and bullying to suppress and silence — with accusations of anti-Semitism/Holocaust denial — any criticism of its blatant human rights violations and arrogant disregard for international Law.

The fear of being branded an anti-Semite is now a universal phobia which Zionist Apartheid Israel reinforces with Gestapo-style vigilance that has permeated through universities, corporate media outlets, and parliaments. This is most evident in the United States where the American Israel Public Affairs committee (AIPAC) is active on college campuses with a Political Leadership Development Program of pro-Israel activities including reports on faculty members, students, and college organisations critical of Israeli policies. The “miscreants” — exposed in AIPAC’s College Guide and the pro-Israel Campus Watch — are then subject to harassment, suspension, or even dismissal.

AIPAC’s lobbying of the U.S. government includes provision of in-depth policy position papers focussing on Israel’s illusionary strategic importance to the United States. The Congressional Record is monitored daily and comprehensive records are kept of all members’ speeches, informal comments, constituent correspondence, and voting patterns on Israel-related issues. AIPAC itself estimates that more than half of Congress and Senate members (who place Israeli interests above those of their own country) can always be relied upon for unflinching support. Every year some 70 to 90 of them are rewarded with “AIPAC-funded” junkets to Israel. The irony behind AIPAC’s erosion of American democracy is that it is in effect financed ($3 billion annual U.S. aid to Israel) by American taxpayers of whom 50 million are living below the poverty line with 47 million of them receiving food stamps.

The insidious cancer of AIPAC is also being spread (with more free junkets) by “Friends of Israel” groups in most European parliaments; by the Australian Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC); and by the recently formed South African Israel Public Affairs Committee (SAIPAC) which will endeavour to silence criticism by a people already familiar with the iniquities of Apartheid.!

Furthermore, the mainstream corporate media — apart from being mostly owned or influenced by friends of Israel — is also fettered by the fear of offending the Zionist lobby which insists that even the term Apartheid Israel is anti-Semitic. This media stranglehold is tightened even further by Zionist media watch organisations such as Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and Britain’s BBC Watch, who waste no time in vilifying any negative reports on Israel.

Despite being a nation in a profound existential crisis, Chutzpah Israel continues claiming to be a Jewish social democracy with exemplary ethical values. Such claims serve as a smokescreen for the endless lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering while ensuring a lack of accountability for its heinous crimes by undermining the process of Western democratic governance. Instead of unconditionally condemning Israel for its latest assault on the Gazan Palestinians, Western leaders confirm they have been bought to betray the moral values of their constituents by mealy-mouthing the false premise of “Israel’s right to defend itself” with its overwhelming military might. Presumably therefore, Palestinians — who are occupied, persecuted, and blockaded in open prisons (without a single tank, warplane or warship) — are not allowed to desist and defend themselves.

Israel has no such right (God-given or otherwise) because for over sixty years it has been the aggressor with a genocidal brutality matching that of the Nazis. Zionism’s goal of creating a “Greater Israel” requires the “Final Solution” expulsion of non-Jews even if it means that — as was recently enunciated by the Israeli Interior Minister — “Gaza should be bombed into the Middle Ages.” During WW2, innumerable lives and resources were expended to defeat Nazism. Yet today, nothing is done while an even more insidious form of evil slowly destroys the concept of democratic governance and what little is left of human decency.

The time has come for the “Silent Majority” to finally give voice to their outrage — without demonstrations or violence — by repeatedly emailing their elected representatives. Lowlife politicians who have their inbox regularly swamped with thousands of emails will quickly realise that ignoring the will of the majority to serve minority Zionist and corporate interests alone, will not be enough to get them reelected. THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE MADE TO CONTINUE PAYING FOR THE WEST’S GUILT COMPLEX OVER THE HOLOCAUST.

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

22 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ramzy Baroud

On the 13th day of Israel’s so-called Operation Protective Edge, stories of entire families collectively pulverized, women and children keenly targeted by Israeli soldiers saturate the media. Until now, 430 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 18 Israel soldiers been killed at the hands of the Resistance. In Shejaiya, elders, mothers and children scrambled for cover as shells mercilessly rained down, stealing the souls of countless innocents.

The destruction is overwhelming, and everywhere, Palestinians lament there is nowhere that is safe. Regardless, resolve is strong and the people of Gaza will not resign themselves to surrender.

The resistance movement in Gaza is often misrepresented intentionally at times, and at other times innocuously. In the heat of the information battle that has ensued since Israel unleashed its latest war many facts and essential context have gone missing.

Historically, Gaza has been a hub for uninterrupted popular resistance since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the hands of Zionist militias, and later the Israeli army, in 1947-48. An estimated 200,000 of Palestine’s then nearly 800,000 refugees were forced there, with most enduring squalid and humiliating conditions.

Despite the shock of war and the humiliation of defeat, Gazans fought back almost immediately. There was no Fatah, no Hamas, and no siege – in comparison to its current definition – and Gazans didn’t organise around any political factions, or ideologies. Rather they assembled in small groups known to Gazans as Fedayeen – freedom fighters.

These were dispossessed refugees still unaware of the complexity of their political surroundings, and the Fedayeen were mostly young Palestinian refugees fighting to return to their home. But their operations grew bolder day by day. They would sneak back into their towns – which then eventually became part of Israel – with primitive weapons and homemade bombs. They would kill Israeli soldiers, steal their weapons and return with the new weapons the second night.

Some would secretly go back to their villages in Palestine to ‘steal’ food, blankets and whatever money they had failed to retrieve in the rush of war. Those who never returned received the funerals of martyrs, with thousands of fellow refugees marching with symbolic coffins to graveyards. Hundreds never returned and few bodies were ever recovered.

Following every Fedayeen strike, the Israeli army would hit back at Gaza’s refugees, inspiring yet more support and recruits for the growing commando movement.

The prowess of those young refugee fighters was on full display in November 1956, when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and large swathes of Sinai following the Suez Crisis. Egyptians fought the Israeli army with much courage, but the Palestinian garrison based in Khan Younis – now a major target in the latest Israeli war – refused to surrender.

When the fighting was over, Israel moved into Khan Younis and carried out what is now etched in the Palestinian collective memory as one of the most horrific mass killings in Gaza’s history – a massacre of 124 men and boys in the Rafah refugee camp known as al-Amiriyah School Massacre

“The victims were herded into the school under the batons of the soldiers”, reflects Dr Ahmed Yousef, in a recent article. “Those who survived the beatings were met with a hail of bullets and the demolition of the building over their heads. The bloodstains stayed on the school walls for years to remind us children of Israel’s crime.”

Yousef, then a child in a brutalized Rafah, would later become a top adviser to Hamas’ first Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh in Gaza. His article, originally published in Arabic, was entitled: “The resistance will not surrender… we will be victorious or die.”

Are there any surprises in how the past is knitted both to Gaza’s present and future? It should also be of no surprise that Palestine’s mightiest resistance today, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was formed by a small group of school kids in the central Gaza Strip.

These were poor refugees who grew up witnessing the brutality of the occupation, and the abuse it invited into their daily lives. (The group adopted the name of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, an Arab preacher who fought British colonialism and the Zionist forces until he was killed by British forces in a Jenin orchard in 1935.)

The first young men who started al-Qassam were all killed shortly after the inception of their group. But what they started has since become a massive movement of thousands of fighting men and woman which, as this article was being written, were keeping Israeli forces in northern Gaza at bay.

Resistance in Gaza, as in any historical inevitability, can never be interrupted. Successive Israeli governments have tried extreme measures for decades before the so-called Operation Cast Lead of 2008-9.

After the 1967 war, Ariel Sharon was entrusted with the bloody task of “pacifying” the headstrong Strip. Then the head of Israel’s Defense Forces’ southern command, he was nicknamed the “Bulldozer” for good reason.

Sharon understood that pacifying Gaza would require heavy armoured vehicles, since Gaza’s crowded neighbourhoods and alleyways weaving through its destitute refugee camps were not suited for heavy machinery. So he bulldozed homes, thousands of them, to pave the way so tanks and yet more bulldozers could move in and topple more homes.

Modest estimates put the number of houses destroyed in August 1970 alone at 2,000. Over 16,000 Palestinians were made homeless, with thousands forced to relocate from one refugee camp into another.

The Beach Refugee Camp near Gaza City sustained most of the damage, with many fleeing for their lives and taking refuge in mosques and UN schools and tents. Sharon’s declared objective was targeting “terrorist infrastructure”. What he in fact meant to do was target the very population that resisted and aided the resistance.

Indeed, they were the very infrastructure he harshly pounded for many days and weeks. Sharon’s bloody sweep also resulted in the execution of 104 resistance fighters and the deportation of hundreds of others, some to Jordan, and others to Lebanon. The rest were simply left to rot in the Sinai desert.

It is the same “terrorist infrastructure” that Sharon’s follower, Benjamin Netanyahu, is seeking to destroy by using the same tactics of collective punishment, and applying the same language and media talking points.

In Gaza, the past and the present are intertwined. Israel is united by the same purpose: crushing anyone who dares to resist. Palestinians in Gaza are also united with a common threat: their resistance, which, despite impossible odds seems likely to intensify.

Just by taking a quick glance at the history of this protracted battle – the refugees versus the Middle East’s ‘strongest army’- one can say with a great degree of conviction that Israel cannot possibly subdue Gaza. You may call that a historical inevitability as well.

Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar in People’s History at the University of Exeter.

22 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org