Lieberman Compares Iran to Nazis, Iran Deal to Munich Pact…Again

August 6, 2016, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)  

By Richard Silverstein

Lieberman: “This is what we’ll do 

to Khamenei if we get our hands 

on him!” (Jonathan Sindel/Flash90)

Over the past few days, a tempest has been brewing after Pres. Obama defended his Iran nuclear agreement by correctly noting that the entire Israeli defense and intelligence leadership acknowledges that it has improved Israeli and world security. This apparently angered defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, who couldn’t

Nobel peace laureates call for Israel military boycott over Gaza assault

8 November 2012, Guardian guardian.co.uk (UK)

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem

Letter with 52 signatories including artists and activists also denounces US and EU 'complicity' through weapons sales

(A man looks at the ruins of a Hamas police station destroyed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/EPA)

A group of Nobel peace prize-winners, prominent artists and activists have issued a call for an international military boycott of Israel following its assault on the Gaza Strip this month.

The letter also denounces the US, EU and several developing countries for what it describes as their "complicity" through weapons sales and other military support in the attack that killed 160 Palestinians, many of them civilians, including about 35 children.

The 52 signatories include the Nobel peace laureates Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel; the film directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach; the author Alice Walker; the US academic Noam Chomsky; Roger Waters of Pink Floyd; and Stéphane Hessel, a former French diplomat and Holocaust survivor who was co-author of the universal declaration of human rights.

"Horrified at the latest round of Israeli aggression against the 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged and occupied Gaza Strip and conscious of the impunity that has enabled this new chapter in Israel's decades-old violations of international law and Palestinian rights, we believe there is an urgent need for international action towards a mandatory, comprehensive military embargo against Israel," the letter says.

"Such a measure has been subject to several UN resolutions and is similar to the arms embargo imposed against apartheid South Africa in the past."

The letter accuses several countries of providing important military support that facilitated the assault on Gaza. "While the United States has been the largest sponsor of Israel, supplying billions of dollars of advanced military hardware every year, the role of the European Union must not go unnoticed, in particular its hefty subsidies to Israel's military complex through its research programmes.

"Similarly, the growing military ties between Israel and the emerging economies of Brazil, India and South Korea are unconscionable given their nominal support for Palestinian freedom," it says.

The letter opens with a quote from Nelson Mandela: "For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

The other signatories include John Dugard, a South African jurist and former UN special rapporteur in the occupied territories; Luisa Morgantini, former president of the European parliament; Cynthia McKinney, a former member of the US Congress; Ronnie Kasrils, a South African former cabinet minister; and the dramatist Caryl Churchill.

MYSH: ISRAELI VISUAL ARTIST’S MEDITATION ON JEWISH SUFFERING, PSYCHIC TRAUMA AND ISRAELI RACISM

May 28th, 2012 Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)

A Problem of Self-Image' (Mysh)

I was just looking through my Facebook Newsfeed and discovered the Israeli graphic artist, Mysh. The first work of his I saw was this breathtaking cartoon, A Problem of Self-Image, which speaks so profoundly to elements of the Israeli psyche and explains how historical trauma has led to political dysfunction. In fact, this to me has the classic feeling of R. Crumb‘s comic about nuclear war in which a survivor of a nuclear attack walks through a nuclear winter landscape with a TV in one hand and a plug in the other looking for an outlet. These brilliant images bring with them a shock of recognition, almost a shiver of the soul as you both see the image and absorb its meaning.

A few translations and explanations are in order for the graphic. First, the child in the mirror is based on the famous Holocaust era photo of the young Jewish boy raising his hands in surrender. Looking into the mirror is the Israeli strong-man/bully who’s just smashed in the faces of a few African refugees in Tel Aviv. The fat man’s body is covered with tattoos of a sort which say:

Death to Sudanese
Whatever doesn’t work using force will work using violence.
The only good Arab is a dead Arab.
Run over the Orthodox.
Russians back to Russia, Ethiopians back to Ethiopia.

Title: Shavuot night/ Kristallnacht Tel Aviv 2012 caption: 'It's great you've come to make a minyan, Mireleh.'

Though I’m tempted to offer my own commentary on the image, I’m also leery of over-analyzing it since its eloquence speaks for itself. Suffice to say, that Mysh tells us that the average Israeli racist, the types that smashed windows and beat up refugees in Tel Aviv, lives with a psyche not just wounded by the Holocaust, but poisoned by it. He is a prisoner of his past and fated to inflict his suffering on anyone who is less strong than he is. We all know who those victims have been and will be.

The second cartoon features two Israeli politicians who recently made rabidly racist smears of African immigrants: Kahanist MK Michael Ben Ari and Likud MK, Miri Regev. Both addressed and incited the crowds of pogromists who later rampaged through the African neighborhood in south Tel Aviv. Regev in particular said that the refugees were a “cancer” in Israel’s body. The background of the cartoon is that the night of the Tel Aviv pogrom was also the first night of Shavuot, usually a night of meditative study of Jewish sacred texts.

In the cartoon, a white-hooded Yishai welcomes Regev to a Ku Klux Klan like night-time party. One of the words of tikun leyl Shavuot is crossed out, which turns the phrase into the Night of Glass [Kristallnacht]. As Regev reaches out to take the noose Yishai offers, he smiles and says to her: “Thanks for making a minyan, Mireleh.”

In Jewish religious practice, “making” a minyan allows the prayer service to commence. But here the minyan allows the pogroms to begin. The satiric reference to the minyan also alludes to the Orthodox religious beliefs espoused by Yishai and many of the extreme Israeli right which are used to fortify their racist attitudes.

Where has this wonderful artistic voice come from? Mysh or Michael Rozanov, was born in Riga, Latvia in 1977 and emigrated to Israel as a teenager. He became a visual artist and his oeuvre includes graphic illustration and film and animation work both for TV and cinema. He studied at Israel’s leading art school, Bezalel, and now teaches there.

Related articles
Tel Aviv 2012 – Berlin 1938 (richardsilverstein.com)

Students cheer Nazis at Holocaust Remembrance Day play

April 23, 2012, The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com (Israel)

News of youngsters’ behavior at Cameri performance of ‘Ghetto’ prompts debate about educational failures

By Aaron Kalman

The Cameri Theater (Photo credit: Moshe Shai/Flash90)

“You embarrassed the Jewish people and the Holocaust,” actor Oded Leopold said from the stage of the Cameri Theater last Thursday, lashing out at hundreds of high school students after they repeatedly disrupted a play dealing with the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The students’ behavior, news of which only hit the Israeli media on Monday, prompted an intensive bout of national radio debate and soul-searching about indiscipline, educational failures, poor parenting and lost values among Israeli youth.

During the play “Ghetto,” which portrays the life of Jews in the Vilna Ghetto in the early 1940s at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre, students in the audience made fun of the actors and shouted offensive remarks toward the stage. Some laughed and cried out encouragement during scenes depicting Jews being killed by Nazis, and when a kapo beat a Jew. Calls of “hit him harder” and “well done” were heard from the audience.

When the two-hour play ended, Leopold, who played the kapo, silenced the post-performance applause and addressed the audience. “I hope what goes on in your heart is different from what came out of your mouths,” Leopold said. “It was disgraceful behavior, embarrassing yourselves most of all. You also embarrassed the Jewish people and the Holocaust,” he said.

Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Monday condemned the students’ behavior, calling it “a disgrace that pains the heart.”

Students from four different high schools were in attendance — two from Rishon Lezion, one from Tel Aviv and one from Ramle.

Most of the actors cried when the play was over, Leopold told Maariv. “We cried because we were frustrated and offended.” When acting out scenes from the ghetto, you are “very vulnerable,” he said.

Avi Kalma, director of the Cameri’s educational department, told Maariv that it was normal for students to disrupt plays from time to time, but what happened on Thursday was different. “You would think it was a comedy” based on the students’ reactions, he said, noting that thousands of students saw the play that week and only this group acted in such a manner.

Some of the actors, including Natan Datner and Rami Baruch, said the educational staff “didn’t lift a finger” to try to stop the catcalls. You expect students to know who’s good and who’s bad, “but they didn’t,” said Baruch.

But Rinat Meron, a teacher from Rishon Lezion, wrote a letter condemning Leopold’s castigation. The actor’s reaction was extreme, she wrote to the theater’s management. “Reactions from students are not in any way a disgrace to the Jewish people.”

Other educators from the schools involved did not defend the students’ behavior.

“Four of my students were removed by the teachers from the play,” Hili Tropper, principal of Branko Weiss High School in Ramle, told Army Radio. One of the teachers is the daughter of survivors, he said. “There was a very harsh talk with everyone immediately following the event,” Tropper added, adding that there was still work to be done in addressing the episode.

The play “Ghetto,” written by Joshua Sobol, has been performed across the globe, including New York and London, winning many awards. It premiered in Hebrew in 1984 and in English in 1989.

“STUPID AND MEAN AND BRUTAL”

21 April 2012, Gush Shalom גוש שלום http://zope.gush-shalom.org (Israel)

Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי

“In blood and sweat / A race will arise to us / Proud and generous and brutal…” Thus wrote Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the founder of extreme right-wing Zionism, who was also a writer and a poet. Present-day Likud leaders see him as their forefather, much as Stalin saw Karl Marx.

The world “brutal” stands out, because it seems implausible that Jabotinsky really meant it. His Hebrew was not very good, and he probably meant something like “hard” or “tough”.

If Jabotinsky saw today’s Likud, he would shudder. His was a 19th century mixture of extreme nationalism, liberalism and humanism.

Paradoxically, brutality is the only one of the three traits that is prominent in our life today, especially in the occupied Palestinian territories. There is nothing there to be proud of, and generosity is something associated with the despised leftists.

THE ROUTINE, everyday brutality that governs the occupied territories was caught on video this week. A searing flash in the darkness.

It happened on Route 90, a highway that connects Jericho with Beth She’an along the Jordan River. It is the main road of the Jordan valley, which our government aims to annex to Israel one way or another. It is reserved solely for Israeli traffic and closed to Palestinians.

(There is a Palestinian joke about this. During the post-Oslo negotiations, the Israeli team insisted on retaining this road. The Palestinian chief negotiator turned to his colleagues and exclaimed: “What the hell, if we have got 89 other roads, why insist on this one?”)

A group of young international pro-Palestinian activists decided to demonstrate against the closure of the road. They invited their Palestinian friends to a jolly bicycle ride along it. They were stopped by a unit of the Israeli army. For some minutes they faced each other: the cyclists, some with Arab keffiyehs (headdresses) draping their shoulders, and the soldiers with their rifles.

The drill in such a situation is for the army to call the police, who are trained for this job and who have the means for non-lethal crowd dispersal. But the commander of the army unit decided otherwise.

What happened then was shown on a video clip taken by one of the protesters. It is clear, unambiguous and unequivocal.

The officer, a lieutenant-colonel, is standing opposite a fair-haired young man, a Dane, who was just looking on, neither saying nor doing anything. Nearby, protesters and soldiers are standing around. No sign of violence anywhere.

Suddenly the officer raises his rifle, holding it horizontally, one hand on the butt and one on the barrel, and then he drives the squared-off end of the magazine hard into the young Dane's face. The victim falls backward on the ground. The officer grins with satisfaction.

IN THE evening, Israeli TV showed the clip. By now, almost every Israeli has seen it a hundred of times. The more one sees it, the more one is shocked. The sheer brutality of this completely unprovoked act makes one flinch.

To veterans of demonstrations in the occupied territories, there is nothing new in this incident. Many have suffered brutality in many different forms.

What was unusual in this case was that it was caught on camera. And not a hidden camera. There were quite a lot of cameras around. Not only those of the protesters, but those of army photographers, too.

The officer must have been aware of this. He just did not give a damn.

The undesired publicity caused a national uproar. Obviously it was not the act itself that upset the military and political leadership, but the publicity it attracted. Coming at the same time as the glorious defense of Tel Aviv airport by 700 policemen and policewomen against the terrifying invasion of some 60 international human rights activists, such additional publicity was definitely unwanted.

The army Chief of Staff condemned the officer and promptly suspended him. All senior officers followed suit, the Prime Minister himself spoke out. As is well known, our army is “the most moral in the world”, so what had happened was the unpardonable act of a single rogue officer. There will be a thorough investigation, etc etc.

THE HERO of the affair is Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner (“Iron Man”, in German).

Far from being exceptional, he seems to be the quintessential army officer, indeed the quintessential Israeli.

The first thing TV viewers noticed was the kippah on his head. “Well of course,” many murmured to themselves. For decades the national-religious movement has systematically infiltrated the officers’ corps of the armed forces, starting from officers’ induction courses and climbing up, with the aim of having one of their number end up as the army Chief of Staff. By now, kippah-ed lieutenant colonels are common – a far cry from the kibbutzniks who dominated the officers corps at the birth of our army. At the time of the incident, Eisner was a deputy brigade commander.

The national-religious movement, to which the core of the settlers belong, was also the home of Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin and of Baruch Goldstein, the mass-murderer of the Muslims in the mosque in Hebron.

One of the pillars of this movement is the yeshiva Merkaz Harav (“Center of the Rabbi”), where Eisner’s father was a prominent rabbi. During the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlers by Ariel Sharon, Eisner Jr. was among the protesters. Last year Eisner was photographed on the very same spot on Road 90 fraternizing with extreme rightist demonstrators, who also protested on bicycles there.

He did not take the rebukes lying down. With unprecedented impertinence, he attacked the Chief of Staff, the Commander of the Central Front and his division commander for suspending him. He waved his bandaged hand to prove that he was attacked first and acted in self-defense. He even produced confirmation from some doctor that one of his fingers was broken.

That is highly improbable. First of all, the way he holds his rifle in the video would have been impossible with a broken finger. Second, the video shows that his act was not in reaction to any violence. Third, there were several army photographers around, who shot every detail (to be used as evidence if protesters were brought to trial in a military court). If any act of violence had taken place, their videos would have been displayed by the army the same day. Fourth, Eisner similarly struck two women protesters in the face and one male protester on the back- unfortunately off camera.

He fervently insists that he did the right thing. After all, he did break up the demonstration, right?

But he was not entirely without remorse. He publicly admitted that it “may have been a mistake to act this way in the presence of cameras”. With this the army and many commentators wholeheartedly agreed: they did not criticize his brutality, but his stupidity.

AS AN individual, Eisner is not very interesting. If armies refrained from enlisting stupid people, where would we be?

The trouble is that Eisner is not an exception, but rather a representative of a norm. There are some excellent people in the army, but Eisner typifies many officers who come out of the military melting pot.

And not only in the army. To paraphrase Jabotinsky: our educational system now produces “a race / stupid and mean and brutal”. How could it be otherwise after 60 years of relentless indoctrination and 45 years of occupation? Every occupation, every oppression of another people, corrupts the occupier and makes the oppressor stupid.

While still a teenager I worked as a clerk for an Oxford-educated, Jewish-British lawyer, many of whose clients were members of the British colonial administration. I found them mostly nice, intelligent and courteous with an engaging sense of humor. Yet the British administration acted with an astonishing lack of intelligence.

At the time I was a member of the Irgun, whose aim was to drive them out of the country. At my home there was an arsenal of guns, which were used to kill them.

Living between the two worlds, I constantly asked myself: how can these nice English people behave so stupidly?

My conclusion was that no colonial masters can behave intelligently. The colonial situation itself compels them to act against their better nature and their better judgment.

As a matter of fact, during the first years of the Israeli occupation, it was widely praised as “enlightened” and “liberal”. The then Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, gave orders to treat the Palestinians as generously as possible. He let them trade with the enemy and listen to enemy broadcasts to their heart’s content. In a gesture without precedent, he kept open the bridges between the West Bank and Jordan, an enemy country. (I joked at the time that Dayan, never having read a book, did not know that this was unthinkable.)

Behind this policy there was no benevolence – just a belief that if the Arabs were allowed to live their daily lives in peace, they would not rise up, but put up with an eternal occupation. Indeed this worked more or less for some 20 years. Until a new generation started the first intifada and the occupation became – well, stupid, mean and brutal. Along with the officers in charge.

TWO DAYS ago, Israel observed the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. In this connection, I would like to quote Albert Einstein, a Jew and a Zionist:

“Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our two thousand years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us.”

Israel’s dumb Zionist atomic bomb

8 April 2012, Alternative Information Center (AIC) http://www.alternativenews.org (Israel)

Uri Yaakobi-Keller

One of the most recent “achievements” about which the Israeli government brags is the diversion of international attention to Iran and its development of nuclear weapons, a situation perceived as an end of the world by the Israeli mainstream.

It is possible that, to a certain extent, this is indeed an achievement of the Israeli public relations machine, and as evidence the world was a bit more apathetic than usual to last month’s Israeli bombings of Gaza (not that the world is normally so sensitive). However, the overall Israeli position toward Iran, just like its “achievement”, contains the fundamental flaws existing in the overall Israeli perspective.

Zionism, which established and rules Israel, is a not so special national movement in comparison to others like it from the 19th century. Like similar movements, it aspired to establish national hegemony and what has forever guided it is military force and not all sorts of contentions concerning justice or rights. The Zionist explanation, which transformed into Israeli public relations, is that the Holocaust of European Jews occurred as “we were not sufficiently strong to prevent it”.

According to this, the behaviour of the Zionist movement - and the state of Israel which was controlled by parts of the Zionist movement and its supporters - was forever founded on an obsession with power and military rule, all the while ignoring the long-term situation and political implications of Israeli actions.

To this day the Israeli mainstream does not understand what is so bad about the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, as numerous other movements and countries in the world did much worse things. On the face of it there is a modicum of truth in this contention; only a few years earlier, at the end of World War II, the deportation of peoples on an ethnic basis was still occurring in Europe itself. What Israel finds difficult to understand is that whilst there were indeed times in which deportations and horrific acts were accepted, today these acts are now defined as “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” and they are finally considered a barbaric anachronism – so that today not all problems can be solved with the sword.

The Israeli obsession with power and the blindness it inflicts on the Zionist state led Israel to numerous strategic, tactical and political errors in the past. So it was, for example, in Lebanon, where Israel offhandedly declared war against Hizbullah only because it could, and so it was with the strengthening of the Hamas movement by Israel in order to weaken the PLO and Fatah, and so it was with the fundamental Israeli error which led to the current situation.

Decades ago already Israel clarified to the world that it possesses nuclear weapons. The step of attaining nuclear arms appears in the Israeli mainstream as a substantial achievement for the Israeli military power. It is almost pitiful that a majority of Israelis do not understand that as a direct result, the other regional powers also wish to gain similar weapons.

The Americans managed to sufficiently bribe Egypt so it wouldn’t go down this route; this is, of course, before the American puppet regime of Mubarak fell, so who knows what will occur now. Syria was apparently never sufficiently strong and wealthy to develop such weapons. The Saudi power has always been founded on petroleum money and friendship with the United States. Iran, in contrast, is simply doing the most logical thing – if Israel, the most aggressive country in the region for the past six decades, is doing it, there is no reason that Iran will not attempt to attain nuclear bombs (which will, of course, force Egypt and Saudi Arabia to reconsider their previous decision on this matter).

In a recent article in Haaretz, Uri Avnery notes there is no chance that Israel will attack Iran – the United States will not permit it due to the implications of war with Iran on the price of oil, and because Iran’s nuclear weapons are almost a done deal and Israel must begin to get used to the idea. This is almost true. The coming months, with a heating up of the American presidential election campaign and a short time following the November 2012 elections, are the most dangerous period from the perspective of Israeli actions.

While all candidates for the American presidency are competing to be virulently pro-Israeli, Israel traditionally feels the most freedom (whilst ignoring, which is also a tradition, the long-term political implications of its actions). It is not by chance that Operation Cast Lead occurred just a bit less than four years ago – only a few months after the election of a new American president, and that the most deadly attack on Gaza since then is happening now. There is too big of a chance that the two clowns of Netanyahu-Barak, who control Israel, in a typical Zionist move lacking all long-term thought, will decide to attack Iran in order to grasp at Israel’s dying military hegemony in the region.

The implications of such a move will be disastrous for Israel in the best case scenario, and for the entire world in the worst case, and in any event will not prevent the Iranian attainment of nuclear weapons, but will simply delay it. Israeli missed the real opportunity to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East when it decided to develop its own nuclear weapons.

Translated to English by the Alternative Information Center (AIC)

NETANYAHU IS PREPARING ISRAELI PUBLIC OPINION FOR A WAR ON IRAN

15 March 2012, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

In response to Netanyahu's AIPAC speech, Haaretz's editor-in-chief says that what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war.

By Aluf Benn

Since his return from Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has mainly been preoccupied with one thing: Preparing public opinion for war against Iran.

Netanyahu is attempting to convince the Israeli public that the Iranian threat is a tangible and existential one, and that there is only one effective way to stop it and prevent a "second Holocaust": An Israeli military attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, which is buried deep underground.

In his speech before the Knesset on Wednesday, Netanyahu urged his colleagues to reject claims that Israel is too weak to go it alone in a war against a regional power such as Iran and therefore needs to rely on the United States, which has much greater military capabilities, to do the job and remove the threat.

According to polls published last week, this is the position of most of the Israeli public, which supports a U.S. strike on Iran, but is wary of sending the IDF to the task without the backing of the friendly superpower.

Netanyahu presented three examples in which his predecessors broke the American directive and made crucial decisions regarding the future of Israel: the declaration of independence in 1948, starting the Six Day War in 1967 and the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981.

The lesson was clear: Just as David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol and Menachem Begin said "no" to the White House, Netanyahu also needs not be alarmed by President Obama's opposition to an attack on Iran. Netanyahu believes that, as in the previous incidents, the U.S. may grumble at first, but will then quickly adopt the Israeli position and provide Israel with support and backing in the international community.

If Netanyahu had submitted his speech as a term paper to his father the history professor, he would have received a very poor grade. In 1948, the U.S. State Department, headed by George Marshall, opposed the declaration of independence and supported a United Nations trusteeship for Palestine. But President Truman had other considerations.

Like Obama today, Truman was also a democratic president contending for his reelection, who needed the support of the Jewish voters and donors. Under those circumstances, Truman rejected Marshall's advice, and listened to his political adviser Clark Clifford, who pressured him to recognize the Zionist state. And indeed, Truman sent a telegram with an official recognition of Israel just 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion finished reading the Scroll of Independence. The U.S. opposition to the recognition of Israel was halted at the desk of the president, who repelled the explanations by the Secretary of State and the "Arabists" in his office.

In 1967, the official U.S. position called on Israel to hold back and refrain from going to war, but a different message was passing through the secret channels: go "bomb Nasser," reported Levi Eshkol's envoys to Washington, Meir Amit and Avraham Harman. This message tipped the scales in favor of going to war. In 1981, Begin did not bother asking the Americans their opinion before attacking Iraq, but lulled them to sleep and launched a surprise attack.

In these past incidents, Israel acted against the U.S. position formally, but made sure that the Americans will accept the results of the action and support it in retrospect. And indeed, the U.S. recognized Israel in 1948, allowed it to control the territories annexed in 1967, and made do with weak condemnations of the attack on the Iraq nuclear reactor in 1981.

That being the case, then Netanyahu is hinting that in his Washington visit, he received Obama's tacit approval for an Israeli attack against Iran – under the guise of opposition. Obama will speak out against it but act for it, just as the past U.S. administrations speak against the settlements in the territories but allow their expansion. And in this manner Netanyahu summarized the visit: "I presented before my hosts the examples that I just noted before you, and I believe that the first objective that I presented – to fortify the recognition of Israel's right to defend itself – I think that objective has been achieved."

This morning, the editor-in-chief of the Israel Hayom newspaper, Amos Regev, published on his front page an enthusiastic op-ed in support of a war against Iran. Regev writes what Netanyahu cannot say in his speeches: that we cannot rely on Obama – who wasn't even a mechanic in the armored corps - but only on ourselves. "Difficult, daring, but possible," Regev promised. We need not be alarmed by the Iranian response: the arrow would take down the Shahab missiles, and Hezbollah and Hamas would hesitate about entering a war. The damage would be reminiscent of the Iraqi scuds in the 1991 Gulf War - unpleasant, but definitely not too bad. The analysts are weak, but the soldiers and the residents of the Home Front have motivation. So onward, to battle!

To use Netanyahu's "duck allegory", what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war, and not just a "bluff" or a diversion tactic. Until his trip to Washington, Netanyahu and his supporters in the media refrained from such explicit wording and made do with hints. But since he's been back, Netanyahu has issued an emergency call-up for himself and the Israeli public.

More on this topic
Netanyahu: Gaza violence shows Israel cannot afford to be lax on Iran nuclear threat
Obama: Window for diplomatic solution to Iran nuclear standoff is 'shrinking'

DEBUNKING ANTI-IRAN PROPAGANDA: THE MYTH OF THE "NEW HOLOCAUST"

By Benjamin Schett*

6 March 2012, The Centre for Research on Globalisation -- CRG http://www.globalresearch.ca (Canada)

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29626

In a pattern of propaganda now well-established in the mainstream media, fear-mongering against Iran is reaching an all-time peak. A case in point includes ongoing accusations that Iran is in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, despite statements to the contrary from U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta as well as a number of American intelligence officials[1].

In addition, claims that Iran is involved in terrorist activities were released by the Obama administration, fabricating an Iranian conspiracy with the goal to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S.

(For details, see: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27094)
Most recently, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of having planned terrorist attacks in India, Georgia and Thailand.

(For details, see: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29320)
As it stands, the intensification of propaganda is fuelling an anti-Iranian proxy conflict in Syria and creating the serious danger of aggression against Iran in the coming months by Israel's extremist government and/or the Obama administration. These media fabrications also do not question why the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran would increase worldwide tensions so much more than the hyper-developed nuclear weapons programs of countries like Israel and the United States. (Notwithstanding the fact that there is no existing proof that suggests that Iran is doing anything other than developing a peaceful civilian atomic program.)

Opponents of possible armed aggression against Iran are regularly accused of repeating the mistakes from the period prior to World War II, namely of not taking seriously the purportedly dangerous eliminatory "anti-Semitism" of the Iranian regime. This charge is echoed by the Anti-Defamation League, one of the biggest pro-Zionist U.S. groups, who is lobbying for taking any "necessary" measures in order to overthrow the Iranian government and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic and anti-Israel views place him and the Iranian regime among the foremost threats to Jews and the state of Israel."[2]
Moreover, Israeli President Shimon Peres called Iran a "danger to the entire world" while addressing the German Bundestag in a speech marking Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2010.

The symbolism of such actions is clear: whoever refuses to participate in the campaign against Iran is neglecting the threat of a new Holocaust, the insinuation being that if Iran were to get nuclear weapons, it would use them against the state of Israel.

First of all, suggesting that the current situation in Iran is even remotely comparable to the crimes committed by the Nazis inexcusably downplays the suffering of Jews, Roma, Communists, Slavic nations and other victims of Fascism.

In addition, while the strategic motivation behind arguments made by Israeli decision-makers is clear, the facts are not. In fact, the alleged statements made by Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to be "wiped of the map" were proven to be fake thanks to a false translation from Farsi into English. (See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155) This has been well known already for some time, although it does not seem to faze the war propagandists.

The other question that should be asked by anyone investigating accusations against the Iranian government of being the "foremost threat against Jews" is how do Jews actually live in Iran? If the Iranian president is supposed to be some kind of reborn Hitler, would that not be reflected in imposed anti-Jewish legislature in his country, calls for pogroms, etc.?

The evidence on Jewish life in Iran, from various sources, including Jewish and American mainstream is revealing. For example, a website belonging to the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture (FASSAC) acknowledges that:

"While Jewish communities in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria have all but vanished, Iran is home to 25,000 – some here say 35,000 – Jews."[3]

This makes Iran’s Jewish community the largest in the Middle East, outside of Israel. Furthermore, many Iranian Jews show pride in their mixed Jewish-Iranian heritage and would not consider emigration:

"Jewish leaders say their community has far stronger roots in Iran than other Middle East Jewish communities, which were virtually eradicated by massive immigration to Israel in the 1940s and 1950s. Esther, the biblical Jewish queen who saved her people from persecution in the fifth century B.C., is reputed to be buried in Hamadan, in western Iran. The grave of the Old Testament prophet Daniel lies in southwestern Iran."

As we see, Jewish roots in Iran date back to biblical times: "The Jews trace their heritage in Iran to the Babylonian Exile of the 6th century BC..."[4]. Indeed, several Persian kings enjoy a positive reputation in the Old Testament because of their friendly attitude towards the Hebrew people.

Today, Jewish religion and culture is still present in everyday life in Iran:

"Tehran has 11 functioning synagogues, many of them with Hebrew schools. It has two kosher restaurants, and a Jewish hospital, an old-age home and a cemetery. There is a Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament. There is a Jewish library with 20,000 titles..."

It can't be denied that there must have been considerable concern among Iranian Jews in the time following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, as it was hard to predict how things would develop under the new radically anti-Zionist leadership, and many chose to emigrate on this account. Nonetheless:

"Khomeini [the spiritual leader of the Islamic Revolution] met with the Jewish community upon his return from exile in Paris and issued a ''fatwa'' decreeing that the Jews were to be protected. Similar edicts also protect Iran's tiny Christian minority."

The Iranian leadership seems to draw a clear line between Zionism as a political ideology (inspired by Western European colonialist ideas in the 19th century), and Judaism. This conclusion can be underlined by several statements President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made throughout recent years. In a Christmas message to the people of Great Britain, broadcast by Channel Four, Ahmadinejad started his speech with the following lines:

"Upon the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, Son of Mary, the Word of God, the Messenger of mercy, I would like to congratulate the followers of Abrahamic faiths, especially the followers of Jesus Christ, and the people of Britain."

The religious pathos might not be to everybody's taste, but the more relevant question would be whether these could realistically be the lines of a fanatical preacher of hate, as he is portrayed by mainstream media in the West. In fact, by addressing the "followers of Abrahamic faith", president Ahmadinejad expresses his respect for the three religions of the book: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Critics might argue that a conciliatory message prepared for a Western audience might serve the purpose of leaving the people outside Iran in the dark about its real hidden agenda. Thanks to the Internet, it is not necessary to speak Farsi to get an impression of what Ahmadinejad is saying in front of an audience in his own country. In a speech delivered in May 2007 in the city of Esfahan (available on YouTube with English subtitles), he explains to the crowd what his response is to people who accuse him of being anti-Semitic on account of his heavy criticism of the Israeli regime:

"Some officials from that country (USA)... said all kinds of things. One of them was: "They [the Israeli leaders] are Jewish, why are you anti-Jewish?" I said: I am not anti-Jewish at all... But they are lying. They are not Jewish, but a bunch of corrupt criminals abusing the name of Judaism."[5]

In May 2006, the National Post published an article claiming that the Iranian parliament had passed a sumptuary law forcing religious minorities, Jews included, to follow a specific dress code:

"It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean)."[6]

However, the story turned out to be a hoax and the National Post issued an apology by its editor-in-chief[7]. But the intention of this falsification is obvious: it was meant to remind people of the yellow star that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany, and thereby create fears of similar events happening in Iran that might lead to some kind of new Holocaust.

One of the particularly critical Jewish responses to this provocation came from Iran’s Jewish Member of Parliament, Moris Motamed. (It should be noted that Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians all have their own guaranteed seat in the Iranian Parliament (Majilis), which is one of the results of Khomeini's fatwa calling for the protection of these religious minorities). As Motamed outlined in an interview with Counterpunch:

"Unfortunately, this was fake news published in a Canadian newspaper. I considered this news a big insult to the religious minorities of Iran. I refuted the story vigorously, to the point that the source of the news and the Canadian government officially apologized to the Iranian government."[8]

The same Motamed, who officially represents the Iranian Jewish community, does not criticize Iran’s nuclear program, unlike many foreigners who claim to act in favour of Judaism by encouraging "strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities":

"As a Jewish Iranian, I consider enrichment of peaceful nuclear technology the obvious right of Iranian society. What is sad here — and I’m so sorry about it — is that before the Islamic Revolution, we witnessed... western Europe and America pressuring Iran to obtain nuclear technology and establish a nuclear power plant. Now the idea is brought up: "Why do you want nuclear technology? What is the point of nuclear technology for you when you have rich resources like fuel and gas and oil?" My question here is why at that earlier time, the problem of natural resources was not brought up?"

In further demonizing the Iranian state, Western media and pro-Zionist lobbyists accuse Ahmadinejad of making ambiguous statements about the Holocaust. Clearly, however, holocaust denial does not represent the official position of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Otherwise it couldn't be explained why in 2007 the Iranian state television broadcast a series emphasising the suffering of Europe’s Jews in the Second World War, in what can be likened to an Iranian version of "Schindler’s List":

"The central character is an Iranian diplomat, who provides false Iranian passports to enable Jews to flee the Nazi-occupied France, a sort of Iranian Schindler. He even has a love affair with a Jewish woman."[9]

This Iranian diplomat saving Iranian Jews, named Abdol Hossein Sardari, actually existed in real life and has been honoured in past decades by Jewish organisations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.[10]

It should not be the goal of this article to make a final judgement on Jewish life in Iran, because this would be an almost impossible enterprise without having the personal experience of how life looks when belonging to a religious minority in a very religious country. But it is important to put the collected information into perspective. It is apparent Iranian Jews have the right to freely practice their religion and to maintain their culture and traditions. Jewish institutions such as synagogues, Jewish libraries, hospitals and restaurants are well-established across the country.

By contrast, the impression we get from one of America's closest Middle Eastern allies, the totalitarian Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (a rival of Iran), looks very different. Neither Jewish nor Christian worship is allowed, and Saudi school textbooks spread hateful messages such as the following, according to Daily Mail:

"In one, for ninth-graders, students are taught the annihilation of the Jewish people is imperative. One text reads in part: 'The hour (of judgment) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. There is a Jew behind me come and kill him.'"[11]
This is not the first time that the U.S. government is fighting alongside extremists against states that they perceive as barriers to the proliferation of their economic, geopolitical and imperial agendas, while at the same time pretending to combat "terrorism", "ethnic cleansing" and other crimes against humanity.

All things considered, the hypocrisy is plainly clear. It is therefore not only necessary but also imperative to oppose the dangerous propaganda and warmongering spread by the most aggressive factions within the U.S. and Israeli establishments, and ensure that truth prevails over rampant militarization.

*Benjamin Schett is an independent Swiss-based researcher and student of East European History at the University of Vienna. He can be reached at schettb@gmail.com

Notes

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-01-08/iran-nuclear-weapons/52451620/1.
[2] http://www.adl.org/main_International_Affairs/ahmadinejad_words.htm.
[3] http://www.sephardicstudies.org/iran.html.
[4] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/293359/Iran.
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEDqygQMoZ8&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL77FD8F72F884C7F8.
[6] Original article: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=398274b5-9210-43e4-ba59-fa24f4c66ad4&k=28534&p=1.
[7] http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=6df3e493-f350-4b53-bc16-53262b49a4f7
[8] http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/07/14/talking-to-iran-s-only-jewish-member-of-parliament.
[9] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7119474.stm.
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdol_Hossein_Sardari.
[11] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2077658/The-Arabic-textbooks-children-chop-hands-feet-Sharia-law.html.

Settler Extremists Provoke Violence, Threaten Muslim Sovereignty Over Temple Mount, Seeking Final Day of Reckoning

22 February 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)



Over the past week or so there have been some strange doings on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. As the lyrics of the old song go:

There’s something happnin’ here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I’ve go to beware

It appears that a growing band of Israeli messianic settlers have banded together to orchestrate a crisis on the Temple Mount. Their ultimate goal seems to be taking Jewish control over the sacred ground, including two of the holiest sites in Islam, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

For many years, there have been radical settler groups preparing for such a day. Ateret Cohanim maintains a yeshiva which is training priests to resume the Temple rituals including animal sacrifice. Dov Hikind’s wife earns $150,000 a year as its U.S. fundraiser. They’re also breeding cattle in the hopes of find that miraculous red heifer which would serve as a sign that God is ready to resume Jewish rites on this sacred ground.

The settlers know that for Jews to rebuild the Temple would mean a holy war in the Holy Land that would likely dwarf the Crusades for passion and bloodletting. For these Jews, such an eventuality would bring the days of the coming of the Messiah closer, thus making the human suffering not just acceptable, but even desirable.

These Temple activists are also fundraising on behalf of their messianic Armageddon. Here, they’re raising $10,000 to preserve “Jewish rights” on the Temple Mount. The website says there is no written budget because the uses to which the funding would be put would be “sensitive.” Therefore such documentation is for “internal” purposes only. You can imagine what this means. They’re likely raising a lot of their funding from the types of American Jews giving to the Hebron Fund and Central Fund of Israel.

There is a political echelon in the radical settler movement which is preparing the ground for such a Jewish takeover. It’s led by Moshe Feiglin, who recently took nearly a quarter of the vote in the Likud leadership primary by running to the right of (!) Bibi Netanyahu. Flyers were publicly posted throughout Jerusalem two weeks ago calling for Jews to make aliyah en masse to the Temple Mount. The term aliyah in the Temple context is a historic term used to denote Jewish pilgrims who went to the sacred spot for worship on Jewish festivals. In other words, it would only be used today by someone who saw himself as commanded to rebuild and renew Jewish worship there. To do this, one must first evict or destroy the Muslim holy sites there as was done by Hindu nationalists to a mosque in Ayodiyah, India.

The extremist site, The Temple Mount is Ours, calls for a mass pilgrimage ”in order to strengthen claim of Jewish sovereignty” to the site. You can see in the video above from February 19th and this one what is the result of such settler provocation. The last time such a thing was attempted, Ariel Sharon instigated the Second Intifada and propelled himself into the prime minister’s chair. Feiglin is smart enough to understand that such political grandstanding can be the making of an Israeli prime minister.

But he’s also smart enough to understand that by identifying himself too explicitly with this movement he could get himself investigated by the police and possibly jailed. So he deftly denied credit for the flyer and made his own visit to the Temple Mount earlier than the time specified in the flyer.

A Feiglin associate in this interview posted by IMRA denies that the founder of the Manhigut Yehudit ["Jewish Leadership"] movement wants to rebuild the Temple. Instead, he claims Feiglin only wants to prepare the Jews for the moment when the Messiah will come and accomplish this task. I’m afraid this sort of nuance is justifiably lost of Muslims who mistake a Jew who wants to lay the groundwork for stealing their holy site from them, with a Jewish Messiah who will actually do this. Feiglin’s representative rather ominously states in the interview that it’s the founders’ dream to “make” all Jews share in his vision, and that this is what will bring the Messiah and a rebuilt Temple.

Strangely, the representative of Feiglin’s group adamantly maintained that it had no obligation to publicly renounce the flyer. Further, he said it had no plans to file a complaint with the police about the document it claims was a fraud. This is generally diametrically opposite from the way most political parties operate in Israel. In similar circumstances, they would file a complaint and ask the police to investigate in order to clarify to the public their rejection of the message and the act of fraud. The fact that Manhifut Yehudit behaved so differently in this case raises major questions about its relationship to the flyer and those who created it.

The settler agitators are camouflaging their covert campaign for Jewish sovereignty, couching it in terms of religious liberty. No one, they seem to think, can reject a call for Jews to have the same access to the Temple Mount that Muslims enjoy. The only problem with this notion is that Muslims for generations have controlled the area. Until the type of agitation initiated by Sharon, access was relatively open. In fact, I can remember visiting both holy mosques during my stays in Israel in 1972-73 and 1979-1980. It was only after Muslims became afraid that Jews wanted to take control from them that relations went bad.

There will be some among you who will say: C’mon. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Feiglin barely has a following. Hardly anyone takes him seriously. He leads a bunch of radical kooks. No Israeli in their right mind would come anywhere near these cockamamie ideas.

That’s all well and good. But I’m not buying. History is full of examples of kooks whose ideas began by being spurned by the mainstream, until they weren’t. While this will agitate some of our friends, remember Hitler’s beer hall putsch in 1923? What did they think of him then? Crackpot, right? Threw him in jail, where he proceeded to write Mein Kampf and plan his takeover of the German state.

OK, so you don’t like that analogy. How about one closer to home? In 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank and reunited Jerusalem after the War. On Passover 1968, Rabbi Moshe Levinger held his first Passover seder in Hebron. There were no settlements then. The Greater Land of Israel was only a gleam in his eye. But every great movement begins with a small spark. And from that spark comes a terrible conflagration.

After that Seder, the messianic nationalists who founded Gush Emunim provoked a crisis. Instead of waiting for government approval, they re-established the Gush Etzion settlement which had been destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948. This had been one of the more traumatic incidents of the war in which a group of Jews had been slaughtered by the Arab army in the battle for Jerusalem. While Levinger’s re-occupation of the Etzion bloc on behalf of Israel was an enormously popular nationalist statement, it also ignited the decades of hate and mistrust that have inflamed relations with the Palestinians ever since.

Later in 1975, Gush Emunim organized the aliyah to Sebastia, where they created a new settlement, Elon Moreh. After numberous attempts were rebuffed by the IDF, the Israeli government in the form of Shimon Peres, signed an agreement legalizing the new settlement, which in turn opened the floodgates for the massive expropriations and settlement growth that followed. This was the first example of government capitulation to the settler movement and was the model the movement used in all its subsequent confrontations.

This is the history of the settler enterprise. They begin with an inch, and within a year or a decade they’ve taken not just a mile, but an entire city or nation. But they recognize that in the case of the Temple Mount they are dealing with an even more sensitive subject. One that has no national consensus as the settlement enterprise perhaps did in 1967.

National polls show that while Israeli Jews overwhelming want to rebuild the Holy Temple, only 30% are willing to see the government take active steps to do so. In other words, while most Israelis harbor vague religious hankerings to restore the glory of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Most realize that to do so would start a religious war the likes of which the region hasn’t seen for centuries. In fact, in this report Jordan, which is nominally responsible for the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem warns Israel not to attempt to change the status quo or risk grave consequences.

So the settlers must mount a carefully calibrated campaign to achieve their goal. It must start with small incremental steps that lead to larger ones. One of these is the call for full Jewish access to the sacred confines of the Temple Mount. To dramatize this, they’ve enlisted the willing help of their U.S. Jewish water carriers, the Zionist Organization of America. ZOA put out a bizarre press release calling for all the mainstream American Jewish groups to take up this cause of religious liberty by criticizing the Israeli government for its supposedly high-handed tactics in denying Jews access:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) believes that unfettered access and freedom to pray at a holy site is a basic, universally recognized right, which certainly should be accorded to Jews in the Jewish State of Israel…Yet, Israeli police and security personnel, hoping to appease Muslim extremists including the Wakf authority on the Temple Mount, have been engaging in blatantly discriminatory and humiliating behavior toward Jewish visitors.

…The ZOA strongly urges the ADL, AJ Committee, the Orthodox Union, Emunah, AMIT, RZA and other groups to work to end bias and discrimination on the Temple Mount against identified Jews.

The group is playing the role of key interlocutor among American Jews on behalf of settler extremism. They published this press release in coordination with the flyer I mentioned above which called for a mass rally to the Mount:

…[To] purify this place of the enemies of Israel, thieves of [Holy] lands, in order to rebuild the Holy Temple on the ruins of [their] mosques

The flyer was so egregious, so incendiary that police immediately cancelled access to the site for Jews and blamed Moshe Feiglin for provoking the hysteria. As soon as Feiglin denied responsibility for the flyer, ZOA immediately took down its press release, only to republish it four days later, after the incident had blown over.

The press release and accompanying rhetoric pulls out all the guilt-inducing stops in the Jewish conscience. It accuses Israeli police, responsible for determining who and how many Jews will enter the Temple confines, with organizing “selektzias,” (the Nazi term for lining up concentration camp inmates to determine who would live and who would die) in which they line up Jews before entering the Muslim sacred grounds. Note below how the ZOA both inappropriately exploits Holocaust rhetoric and shamelessly excuses the offense at the same time:

Identified Jews are shunted to the side to wait separately in what some have come to cynically call “the selekzia,” alluding to the Nazis’ orderly process of deciding which Jews would live and which Jews would go to their demise. [While ZOA does not condone inappropriate use of Holocaust imagery, especially in matters relating to Israel, it is telling that Jews subjected to systematic abuse on the Temple Mount would even contemplate using this term.]

The ZOA claimed police were looking for “Jewish traits” in determining who could enter and who couldn’t:

Identifiably Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount are singled out for biased treatment…Remarkably, if your appearance or behavior openly shows you are a Muslim you are treated with respect [!]

All of this is meant to conjure up the Holocaust in Jewish consciousness in much the same way that settlers evacuated from Gush Katif wore orange armbands with Jewish stars that denoted they were being treated by the Israeli police and IDF the same as Jews sent to the gas chambers during World War II.

The press release also exhibits historical amnesia by erasing past incidents of Jewish and non-Jewish terror associated with the holy site contested by two major religions:
There is no security basis for targeting Jews on the Temple Mount…

Overall, this is a tremendously effective bit of political-religious theater in an Israel context. The secular government has little response to it other than invoking its own civil authority, which isn’t a very resonant concept when compared with the Holocaust. That is why the settlers have vanquished the secular authorities at every turn and all but dominated the political realm.

The current campaign for the right of Jews to freely access the Temple Mount is two-pronged. There’s a grassroots cadre who agitate on the spot by lining up and demanding physical access. Their efforts have been successful at causing serious rioting over the past few days which involved Israeli police invading the sacred confines of the mosques. This, of course, is a severe breach of the sanctity of the place, all of which the settlers want.

Israeli police official testifies before Knesset committee on Temple Mount Jewish access
The grassroots element is supported by an official political effort backed by far-right Knesset members. Members of the Interior Committee in fact, have dragged before them the senior Israeli police officer responsible for maintaining order on the Mount. They publicly excoriated him for the demeaning treatment he’s allegedly offered Jewish Temple visitors. All this serves as a pincers movement against the civil authorities. They’re beset on the one side by the activists in the street and on the other by the political leaders demanding the government take their hands off these poor Jews doing nothing worse than demanding their God-given right to visit the Holy Temple.

But given the history since 1967, we know where this will lead. The police will eventually back off. The settlers will become more provocative and brazen. Confrontations will become more violent and more frequent. Till there is some sort of defining catastrophic moment.

In 1984, the Jewish Underground attempted to foment such a crisis by bombing the Mount and destroying the mosques. Fortunately, the conspiracy was exposed and the members arrested before they could carry out their plans. Of those arrested, most were eventually pardoned, which again shows the impotence of civil authority in the face of the religious zeal of the settler movement.

We don’t know what the settlers have in mind to provoke such a crisis this time around. But the angrier they can make the Muslims in Jerusalem, the more violence they can provoke, the closer will come the Final Day of Reckoning.

Let any who dismiss this as a far-fetched fantasy beware. Such fantasies have a way of becoming not just reality, but nightmare reality in the pathological hot-house environment of the Middle East.

Human rights march in Tel Aviv to counter anti-NGO legislation

1 December 2011, + 972 http://972mag.com (Israel)

The true essence of the foreign funding bill is its subjugation of all Israeli civil society organizations to the government’s whims. On Friday, December 9, 2011, Israeli civil society fights back at the human rights march

By Ehud Uziel*

Originally published at HaOkets

The revised Akunis-Kirschenbaum foreign funding bill backed by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Lieberman is genius. Their proposed amendment to the income tax law will obligate a 45% taxation rate on donations from “a foreign state entity” to Israeli nonprofit organizations. The amendment will leave room for only one type of exemption for NGOs: those that also receive funding from the government. Those who do not already receive government funding must refer to a special Knesset “exemptions” committee that will decide whether to grant the tax exemption or not. This bill is genius because it doesn’t contribute a single thing to the Israeli public but makes all the headlines.

It’s genius because it redefines what is central and what is marginal in Israeli society, without drawing too much opposition, since it doesn’t impact the majority. It’s genius because it destroys civil society in Israel, but directs the public debate to focus exclusively on “NGOs that are anti-Israel.”

The essence of the bill is not a war on human rights organizations, or on criticism of government policy and the occupation, or even on foreign government donations. The true essence of the law is making all civil society organizations in Israel that seek foreign donations subordinate to the state and its government – since those organizations that aren’t also funded by the state will have no choice but to refer to the special Knesset “exemptions” committee and request the state’s benevolence. If this law is passed it will become much more difficult for an NGO to remain independent and not depend on the state’s generosity, whether it focuses on women’s rights, disability rights or the rights of Palestinians under military law.

The subjugation of civil society organizations to the state takes place in many countries, and NGOs fear the state in many countries. These are not democratic countries and their regimes are much more concerned with themselves than with their citizens. Proposed laws such as the Akunis-Kirschenbaum bill seek to divert the debate from legitimate criticism of policy to a struggle over the very ability to voice criticism; from a fundamental discussion about social justice and freedom and questioning military control of another people – to an inane conversation about the legitimacy of donations being made to human rights organization by the European Union, and whether these 2 million Euros are different from the 150 million Euro donated by the EU to scientific research in Israel.

The best response we can provide is the human rights march next Friday, December 9, 2011. All those who continue to demand social justice will be there. All those who demand freedom and human rights will be there and all those who continue to demand the sustenance and expansion of Israeli democracy will be there. Everyone who understands that freedom of expression, thought and ideas – even those ideas which are most critical and unaccepted by society – are what constitute the most profound foundation of democracy.

In a letter sent by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) to the Foreign Minister last week, we cautioned against his misleading the public by comparing this bill to legislation in the US and Canada. The differences are huge. For example, the US only requires transparency and reports on donations from foreign entities, which already exists in Israel, and there is no clause in the US regarding taxation rates.

ACRI also helped draft and encouraged Members of Knesset from all factions to push a new bill, “Basic Law: Social Rights” onto the legislative table in the Knesset. This meticulously drafted bill obligates the state to provide basic services to all its residents. We cannot only react but rather we must continue to combine opposition with initiatives. It is not sufficient to protest “Enough!” (of the witch hunt) but we must also demand “More!” (social justice).

The Human Rights March will transform the defense of democracy into the demand for social and civil justice. The march is the place to be for all those who care about what is really important: cultivating a healthy civil society with social legislation, the guarantee of freedom and the maintenance of Israeli democracy.

*Ehud Uziel is Campaign Director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Israeli station airs footage of soldiers attacking handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinian

1 December 2011, Mondoweiss http://mondoweiss.net (USA)

Via Sama News

http://www.samanews.com/index.php?act=Show&id=112284&utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=99ab316d85-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

شاهد الفيديو..جنديان اسرائيليان ينكلان بفلسطيني..سنكسر رجليك ويديك ونحرمك من الحركة

القدس المحتلة / سما / نشرت القناة الثانية الاسرائيلية خلال نشرتها التلفزيونية الليلة الماضية فيديو لجنديين اسرائيليين يقومان بالتنكيل وبتعذيب فلسطينيين.
هذا وباشرت الشرطة الامنية الاسرائيلية التحقيق في الفيديوهات، وحسب ما ظهر في الفيديو الذي نشرته القناة الثانية والذي تداوله الجنود في هواتفهم الخليوية، ان الجنديين يقومان بالبداية بالاستهزاء بالشاب ليتطور الأمر الى حد الاعتداء عليه والتنكيل به.
ويظهر الفيديو ان الجندي الاسرائيلي يضرب الشاب الفلسطيني ويسأله:" لماذا تسبب المشاكل للجنود"، فأجابه الفلسطيني:"لست انا بل اصدقائي"، فقام الجندي بتوجيه صفعة ثانية للشاب، وقال له"لماذا تكذب؟"، عندها تدخل جندي اسرائيلي اخر كان معصوب العينيين وقام بضربه قائلا:"هذه الصفعة مني لصديقك فلتوصله له"، واستمرا في ضربه، وهدداه بكسر يديه ورجله ومنعه من التحرك، في الوقت الذي كان الشاب يصرخ من شدة ألمه مطالبا بالتوقف عن ضربه، وانه يشعر بالموت جراء الاهانة والتعذيب.
شاهد الفيديو..

PALESTINIAN CHILDREN IMPRISONED IN VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

1 December 2011, Alternative Information Center (AIC) המרכז לאינפורמציה אלטרנטיבית
http://www.alternativenews.org (Israel)

Jana Grunewald for the Alternative Information Center

In September 2009 Israel established the Military Youth Court. Two years later, in September 2011 Israel finally met its obligations under international law and raised the age of majority in the military courts from 16 to 18. However, none of these changes brought major improvements in practice and the abuse of Palestinian children arrested and detained by Israeli authorities continues…

(Scores of Palestinian children are in Israeli prisons/photo: flickr/jpmacor)

Since the beginning of the Second Intifada in September 2000, Israel started to deploy administrative detention orders on children. According to international law, administrative detention is only permitted on a very limited scale, especially in concern of minors. In Israel, however, Palestinian children are being detained systematically ever since. Every year there is an approximately 700 Palestinian children arrested by the Israeli military and prosecuted in its courts.

Currently 164 Palestinian children are kept in Israeli detention, mostly being charged with stone throwing. Although it is forbidden by Israeli law to imprison any human being under the age of 14, 35 of the children detained are aged between 12 and 13. It is alarming that minors are arrested and incarcerated in violation of Israeli and international legislation. What is even more disturbing though is the way children are treated during their arrest, interrogation and detention.

Several NGOs that investigated the treatment of minors in Israeli imprisonment, report on physical as well as mental abuse. In many cases minors are arrested in their home during the night and marched off by soldiers without any parental company. The interrogation as well takes place in the absence of a parent and/or an attorney. In many cases, several hours or even days pass until the arrested minors are interrogated at all. While waiting for the interrogation the children concerned are often denied necessary human needs such as sleeping, eating, drinking and going to the toilet. During all stages of the arrest violence is likely to be involved, including choking, punching, slapping, kicking and hair pulling. In addition to that minors are threatened with further violence and even sexual assault.

Another major problem is the fact that there is no alternative to remand until the end of proceedings according to military law, which is mainly applied on Palestinian child detainees. In consequence many children confess to crimes they supposedly committed in order to prevent longer terms of detention. The confessions, minors are forced to sign, are often written in Hebrew, a language that many Palestinian children cannot read.

About 93% of the children convicted of stone throwing between 2005 and 2010 are sentenced to imprisonment, which shows that there is hardly any alternative punishment to incarceration. The length of detention varies greatly, ranging from a few days up to 20 months. The experiences made in detention harm the children’s development severely. Once they are released, the majority of young ex-detainees suffer from various problems, including social, financial and emotional difficulties.

The mistreatment of Palestinian children in Israel’s courts and prisons is constantly ignored. Even the mere awareness of minors enduring imprisonment is missing, which made a current event very obvious: When in October this year Gilat Shalit was freed in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, no one talked about the minors detained; neither did Israel’s authorities nor the international community, nor did Hamas.

Race to a million "mixed" couples

7 November 2011, Alternative Information Center (AIC) המרכז לאינפורמציה אלטרנטיבית

http://www.alternativenews.org (Israel)

Uri Yacobi Keller for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)

Jewish Israelis who advocate for separation between Jews and Arabs feel threatened by mixed couples, like the one on the Israeli reality show "Race for the Million." How might romantic connections and chance encounters between Jews and Palestinians happen in Israel, which is increasingly becoming openly racist?

Participants in the Israeli reality TV show, "Race to a Million."

Walla! Culture recently ran a story pointing out that one of the couples competing in the popular Israeli reality TV show, “Race for the Million,” is “mixed”. Meaning: a male, Muslim Palestinian citizen of Israel and a Jewish Israeli woman who dare to openly flaunt their romantic relationship on prime time television.

But before this couple came to Walla!’s attention, they were under fire from an organization called LEHAVA (“flame” in Hebrew, it’s an acronym for “Preventing [Jewish] Assimilation [with non-Jews] in the Holy Land”), which has published a pamphlet calling for a boycott of the show.

In a short interview with Walla! Culture Benzi Goopstein, the chairman of LEHAVA, remarked, “[Jewish] assimilation is the continuation of the Holocaust.” He also claimed that mixed couples result in violence against women.

However, Mr Goopstein did concede that “allegedly” the mixed couple “looks nice” on TV.

Suffice it to say that Mr Goopstein’s comparing romantic relationships between Jews and Arabs to the systematic genocide of millions of people is, at the very least, a slight exaggeration. And never mind that banning “mixed” romantic relationships between Jews and Germans was a fundamental of the Nazi regime’s discriminatory, anti-Semitic policies.

What I would like to expand on here is this: the very day I heard about the whole thing I went, as I often do, to a certain bar in downtown West Jerusalem. This bar is owned by Jews and Palestinians and its customers are Jews and Palestinians. And it is not uncommon to hear English, Spanish, German, French and other languages there. On the evening that I went, I noted two Palestinian girls chatting in Arabic over beers, some Arab guys, a few Germans, and many Jewish Israelis in various stages of drunkeness.

The place opened about a year ago during the football world cup. Without anyone forcing them, Jews, Palestinians, and “others,” sat down together to watch men chasing balls across a field. The bar has been running ever since.

But it’s just a bar. The fact that Jews and Palestinians drink beer there together, have some sort of fun, flirt with each other and, perhaps, do even more than that, is not artificial or encouraged by anyone. Nor is it very interesting or important to anyone. It happens because they’re young people doing what young people do.

That, more than any demonstration, is threatening to the likes of Mr Goopstein.

This bar is still far from representing the vast majority of the Jerusalem or Israeli nightlife. The Israeli public is, most definitely not on “our” side--it remains a base for the mainstream Israeli politicians who seek to continue occupation. But that same public also watches television where, in reality shows, there happen to be Jews and Palestinians who share their lives in peace. And that same public includes young people who go to bars to have fun where they might end up meeting Palestinian youth who are there for the same reason.

The road from randomly drinking beer together to a meaningful, substantial reduction in racism in Israeli society is still extremely long. And as long as these social meetings between Jews and Palestinians remain as nothing more than “fun” (or reality television) and are not accompanied by loud political contemplation, they hold little importance or political interest.

But if it annoys the likes of Mr Goopstein, it could be some sort of start.

Translated by the Alternative Information Center (AIC)

Documentário: “DIFAMAÇÃO: A INDÚSTRIA DO ANTISSEMITISMO”

3 novembro 2011/Vermelho http://www.vermelho.org.br (Brasil)

Assim como Norman Finkelstein, um professor estadunidense (e judeu) escreveu um livro no qual expõe como funciona o que ele chama de “A indústria do holocausto”, Yoav Shamir, um cineasta israelense (e judeu), realizou o filme documentário Defamation (Difamação) que revela o que poderíamos chamar de “A indústria do antissemitismo”.

Por Yoav Shamir, no Redecastorphoto

Trata-se de um filme imprescindível para entender os interesses que movimentam essa “indústria”.

A verdade, como podemos depreender deste documentário, é que o antissemitismo passou a ser a fonte de riqueza e poder para muitos grupos oriundos das comunidades judaicas estadunidenses que, aliados aos interesses da extrema direita israelense, não desejam seu fim, nem seu abrandamento.

Muito pelo contrário, para desfrutar de seus privilégios (e para justificar suas políticas antipalestinas, no caso de Israel), esses grupos procuram fazer de tudo para que o antissemitismo nunca deixe de estar em pauta.

Se não houver mais o perigo real (como o documentário nos dá a entender que é o que ocorre na prática), é preciso recriá-lo através de todos os mecanismos emocionais possíveis.

O documentário também deixa claro que há muitos judeus, religiosos ou não, que não concordam com a manipulação do sofrimento de seus antepassados para o benefício espúrio de grupos de poder da atualidade.

Assistam o filme:

Polish-Jewish sociologist compares West Bank separation fence to Warsaw Ghetto walls

1 September 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

Sygmunt Bauman says Israel 'terrified of peace' and 'taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts,' in interview with Polish weekly 'Politika.'

By Roman Frister

Sygmunt Bauman, the Jewish sociologist and one of the greatest philosophers of our time, castigated Israel harshly this week, saying it did not want peace and was afraid of it.

Bauman said Israel was "taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts," and compared the separation fence to the walls surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in the Holocaust.

In a long interview to the important Polish weekly "Politika," Bauman said Israel was not interested in peace. "Israeli politicians are terrified of peace, they tremble with fear from the possibility of peace, because without war and without general mobilization they don't know how to live," he said.

"Israel does not see the missiles falling on communities along the border as a bad thing. On the contrary, they would be worried and even alarmed were it not for this fire," the Polish-British sociologist said.

Bauman, who lived in Israel briefly, referred to an article he wrote in Haaretz, in which he expressed concern that the younger Israeli generation was being raised on the understanding that the state of war and military alert were natural and unavoidable.

The Polish public has not heard such a diatribe against Zionism and Israel since the anti-Semitic propaganda campaign the Communist regime conducted after the Six-Day War.

Not surprisingly, leading Jewish figures came out against it.

"Politika" published the criticism alongside the letter of Israeli ambassador in Warsaw Zvi Bar, who rejected Bauman's "half truths" and "groundless generalizations."

Bauman, who was born in Poland in 1925, has been living in England since he left his lecturer's chair at Tel Aviv University in 1971.

He is seen as one of the greatest sociologists of our time and has dealt extensively with the ties between the Holocaust and modernism, globalization and consumer culture in the postmodern era.

Some of his books have been translated into Hebrew, including "Liquid Love."
His grandson is attorney Michael Sfard, of the human rights group Yesh Din.

LA EDUCACIÓN EN CHILE Y EL HOLOCAUSTO PALESTINO

16 julio 2011/Rebelión http://www.rebelion.org (México)

Revisado por Caty R.

Nelly Marzouka

"Cada país puede absorber solamente un número limitado de judíos si no quiere tener problemas estomacales. Alemania ya tiene demasiados judíos".
(Chaim Weizmann. Jefe de la Organización Sionista Mundial)

“Si la colonización de Palestina se ha caracterizado por una serie de expolios, debemos detenernos a examinar la actitud del movimiento sionista no sólo para con sus víctimas palestinas, sino también para con los propios judíos”.
(Ralph Schoenman. Historia oculta del sionismo, capítulo VI: El sionismo y los judíos)

En el transcurso de las marchas estudiantiles, el presidente del Colegio de Profesores, Jaime Gajardo, hizo un comentario en el que se preguntaba: “si Hinzpeter tiene alguna formación en alguna escuela de Israel, porque aquí se están repitiendo los mismos métodos con los que se ha reprimido actualmente a los jóvenes, que nos recuerdan los métodos sionistas del apartheid. Muchas de las herramientas, los recursos y las maneras que se utilizaron eran propias de los movimientos sionistas.

Acto seguido se originaron una serie de reclamos al Presidente del Colegio de Profesores en los que se le acusa de:

1.- “El señor Gajardo definitivamente es un fascista, al referirse con esas expresiones al pueblo israelí. Le exijo la renuncia. Sus disculpas posteriores no valen de nada después de las atrocidades que dijo y que son propias de un fascista (Gustavo Hasbún, diputado de UDI).

2.- “Dichos antisemitas” (Lorena Fries, Directora del Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos)

3.- “Ni siquiera ha habido un arrepentimiento en algo tan doloroso como la persecución judía. Los comentarios alusivos al pueblo judío hicieron perder ‘toda autoridad moral’ al dirigente (María José Hoffmann, Presidenta de la Comisión de Educación).

4.- “No se puede atacar a una persona por su religión. Escuchar al señor Gajardo es casi escuchar a Hitler en los peores momentos cuando todos sabemos lo que pasó después, que fue el Holocausto” (Lily Pérez, Senadora de RN).

Esta polémica surgida reiteradamente debido a la desinformación (o a una intencionada mala información), presente ahora en nuestro país a propósito de las expresiones del Presidente del Colegio de Profesores, amerita la siguiente información y análisis:

Antisionismo no es antisemitismo. Al contrario, el sionismo es una ideología política antisemita, “judeofóbica” y racista, tanto en sus postulados teóricos como en la práctica. El sionismo sostiene que todos los judíos son sionistas, sin respetar la opción de libre elección por parte de los judíos de otra ideología que no sea la sionista. El sionismo y el nazismo postulan que los judíos y los no judíos deben vivir separados. Otra de las muchas concordancias entre los nazis y los sionistas es la de identificar el judaísmo como una etnia y/o raza. Al contrario, ser judío es pertenecer a una de las grandes religiones monoteístas, con valores universales tales como el islam y el cristianismo

El término semita alude a una denominación bíblica de los pueblos que según la Biblia provienen de Sem, hijo de Noé, por eso los árabes y los antiguos hebreos son semitas. Cabe señalar que los antiguos hebreos que procedían de Ur, Caldea, o sea, Mesopotamia, transitaron durante el lapso de 73 años por Palestina (que ya estaba habitada por los cananeos, antecesores de los palestinos), como ya hemos dicho, también eran semitas. Pero no existe una cohesión nacional ni una continuidad histórica entre aquellos hebreos semitas bíblicos y los actuales invasores sionistas-israelíes cuyo origen étnico es europeo.

Afortunadamente, ya existen diversas personas y organizaciones de la comunidad religiosa judía, que no comulgan con esta ideología racista (definida así incluso por la ONU) que ha hecho tanto daño, no solo en cuanto a la limpieza étnica del pueblo palestino expulsando a la población nativa, negando su identidad, aniquilándola y manifestando “que se vayan a los países árabes”. Sino también a la propia comunidad religiosa judía, durante ese holocausto al aliarse con las alas fascistas y nazis en la consecución de su objetivo. El cual consistía únicamente en realizar una emigración masiva de europeos pertenecientes a la comunidad religiosa judía con el propósito de crear el Estado de Israel en 1948, en el lugar de la Palestina Histórica y no precisamente colaborar en el salvamento y ayuda de esta comunidad religiosa, que innegablemente fue perseguida al igual que otros colectivos, durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Israelita o israelí es el que pertenece al nuevo Estado de Israel, fundado sobre la base de la expulsión y exterminio del pueblo palestino. Es por ello que también el sionismo obliga y presiona para que todo judío considere este Estado como su Patria o “tierra prometida” y generar la Aliah o “retorno al país de sus supuestos antepasados bíblicos” de hace 2.000 años. Mientras los autóctonos dueños de la Palestina Histórica, languidecen en campos de refugiados ya sea en su propia tierra, en países árabes o exiliados y repartidos por todo el mundo, incluso en este lejano rincón del mundo, con el objeto de tornar cada vez más difícil que ejerzan su derecho al retorno amparado por el derecho internacional y las resoluciones de la ONU.

Resulta sumamente grave, serio y preocupante que personas que representan a diversas organizaciones, pasando desde la UDI, al Instituto de Derechos Humanos, que en lo que respecta al actual holocausto palestino nada expresan hacia el sufrimiento del semita pueblo palestino, continuando con la representante de la comisión de Educación, que confunde a la comunidad religiosa judía con la ideología sionista y a la senadora de RN que la condena hacia el sionismo como ideología que ha sido la causante de la limpieza étnica palestina, y por ende de la ausencia de paz en el mundo, resulta que le recuerda a Hitler, cuando justamente sionistas y nazis poseían y poseen coincidencias en su ideología y aplicación de métodos con el propósito de extinguir a sus respectivos colectivos. Todos, sin excepción, han reaccionado desviando la atención y confundiendo los términos sionista/judío, que son opuestos, en vez de ejercer una condena al sionismo de ayer y de hoy. Tal como antaño lo era merecedor el nazismo. A modo de ejemplo:

En Noviembre de 2010, un senador de la república, refiriéndose a la exvocera del gobierno, manifestó: “Parece salida de las juventudes hitlerianas”. Frente a este dicho no escuchamos reclamos por parte de la colonia alemana en Chile, ni a representantes de instituciones haciendo similitudes entre ser nazi y ser alemán, ya que en este caso, todos estamos bien informados y educados en el hecho de que ser alemán corresponde a un concepto de ciudadanía de nacionalidad, y en cambio nazi corresponde a una abominable ideología. No todos los alemanes eran nazis, así como no todos los judíos son sionistas, y más aún, no todo sionista profesa la religión judía. Es por ello que al pretender hacer referencia al concepto de Educación, en un concepto y visión integral del ser humano, corresponde que interioricemos que el hecho de ser judío es pertenecer a una gran religión, tal como ser cristiano o musulmán, pero ser sionista también corresponde a una abominable ideología fascista al igual que el nazismo, ni más ni menos.

En conclusión, el pasado holocausto de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que apuntó hacia la comunidad religiosa judía, gitanos, homosexuales, etc., no puede contener la justificación moral de otros holocaustos como el del pueblo palestino, que ya lleva más de 63 años. Al contrario, los verdaderos representantes del pasado Holocausto, nos hacen recordar que esto debe mantenerse presente, para que nunca más, vuelva a repetirse. A continuación un breve video de la exposición de Norman Filkenstein, politólogo estadounidense descendiente de polacos de fe judía sobrevivientes del gueto de Varsovia. Crítico con la visión del Holocausto judío en su explotación para fines políticos-económicos sionistas-israelíes para lograr de este modo la total limpieza étnica palestina, en vez de contribuir al verdadero bienestar de los propios sobrevivientes, así como al de toda la humanidad, al no traducirse en un modelo y enseñanza de “Nunca más”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkQ1QX0zTbc

Bibliografía sugerida:
La limpieza étnica de Palestina . Ilán Pappé. Ed. Crítica 2008

Impropiedad de la voz antisemitismo . Simón Royo. Rebelión 21/10/2006. http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=39718

Reflexiones de un judío disidente sobre el sionismo . Tim Wise. Rebelión 27/11/2001. http://www.rebelion.org/hemeroteca/sociales/wise271101.htm

Israel, Palestina y el Holocausto. Marcos Roitman Rosenmann. Rebelión 12/02/2002. http://www.rebelion.org/hemeroteca/sociales/roitmanpales120202.htm

El mito del judío errante. Gilad Atzmon. Tlaxcala 2/09/2008 http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=5793&lg=es

El pueblo judío fue una invención . Jonathan Cook: Entrevista con el historiador y catedrático judío Shlomo Sand sobre su libro ¿Cuándo y cómo se inventó el pueblo judío? Tlaxcala 06/10/2008 http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=6081&lg=es

El sionismo no solo es racista, sino antisemita. Red Judía Antisionista Internacional (IJAN) Rebelión 08/10/2008 http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=73966

Judíos unidos contra el sionismo. Neturei Karta http://www.nkusa.org/activities/zionist_violence/martyrYDeHaan.cfm

Judaísmo versus Antisemitismo sionista-israelí . Nelly Marzouka. Rebelión 10/09/2006 http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=37378

Sionismo Antisemita. Nelly Marzouka. Los pobres de la tierra.org. 23/04/2003 http://www.lospobresdelatierra.org/palestinalibre/sionismoantisemita.html