30 november 2012, The Israeli Communist Party http://www. maki.org.il המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית‎  الحزب الشيوعي الاسرائيلي‎ (Israel)

לקראת הדיון באו"ם: במרכז תל-אביב הפגינו למען המדינה הפלסטינית שישי, 30 נובמבר 2012 18:24

כאלף בני אדם השתתפו בעצרת שנערכה אמש (חמישי) ברחוב רוטשילד, מול "היכל העצמאות", שבמרכז תל-אביב למען מדינה פלסטינית עצמאית לצידה של ישראל. העצרת נערכה ביוזמה של מספר ארגונים ובהם פורום ארגוני השלום, חד"ש, גוש שלום, שלום עכשיו, ונציגים ממרצ. המפגינים קראו קריאות תמיכה ברעיון שתי מדינות לשני עמים ונשאו שלטים שעליהם נכתב "מדינה פלסטינית - אינטרס ישראלי" ו"שתי מדינות לשני עמים". המפגינים גם ביכרו על המהלך הפלסטיני באו"ם ואמרו כי זה צעד חשוב בדרך להקמת שתי מדינות זו לצד זו. הם מחו על כוונת ישראל להתנגד לצירופה של פלסטין לאו"ם כמדינה משקיפה. מאחורי הנואמים הונפו דגלי ישראל ופלסטין.   שורה ארוכה של נואמים לקחו חלק באירוע, ובהם: נבילה אספניולי, מס' 5 ברשימת מועמדי חד"ש בבחירות הקרובות. סופיאן אבו-זיידה, בכיר בפתח ושר לשעבר בממשלה הפלסטינית, שהשתתף אף הוא בהפגנה בתל אביב. "אני שמח לבוא ישר מעזה לתל אביב ולפגוש חברים שכבר לפחות 20 שנה אנחנו נפגשים ומנסים להשיג את השלום", אמר אבו-זיידה. "כמה אני שמח שברגע שיש הפגנות ברמאללה ובעזה גם בתל אביב חוגגים את היום הזה שהפלסטינים מקבלים מעמד של מדינה לא חברה באו"ם. אני רוצה להודות לכל אלה שבאו לכאן. המסר שעובר לפלסטינים זה שעדיין יש אנשים בישראל שמאמינים בשתי מדינות לשני עמים. יש שפויים בישראל. יש אנשים שמאמינים שצריך לשים קץ לכיבוש. די, נמאס לנו. הפלסטינים רוצים מדינה שתחיה בשלום לצדה של מדינת ישראל" ד"ר נאווה זוננשיין, מנהלת בית ספר "וואחד אל סאלאם" בנווה שלום, אמרה בנאומה: "באנו לכאן לתמוך בך, אבו מאזן, ובעם הפלסטיני. אתה בחרת במאבק לא אלים ואנו מכבדים את זה, בעוד הממשלה מדברת עם מי שיורה טילים. הפלסטינים לא יכולים לחכות יותר, בואו נעבוד יחד לשינוי המציאות". בעצרת הופיעה הזמרת מירה עווד, שאמרה כי היא מאושרת לעמוד תחת שני דגלים. "אני מאושרת מיוזמת אבו מאזן ועצובה מאוד מהאטימות והסירוב הלא מובן לתת סוף סוף צ'אנס לעם הפלסטיני להתקדם בחיים". הצבעה היסטורית באו"ם באולם העצרת הכללית של האו"ם בניו יורק נערכה אמש (חמישי) ההצבעה ההיסטורית של בקשת הרשות הפלסטינית להכיר בה כמדינה משקיפה שאינה חברה באו"ם. הבקשה התקבלה ברוב גורף של 138 מדינות תומכות מול תשע מתנגדות בלבד. בין התומכות בבקשה הפלסטינית נרשמו סין, הודו, רוסיה, יפן וחלק גדול ממדינות אירופה - צרפת ואיטליה בראשן, כמו גם אוסטריה, ספרד, פורטוגל, נורבגיה, דנמרק, קובה, ונצואלה, אירלנד ועוד. בפתח הדיון נשא יו"ר הרשות הפלסטינית, מחמוד עבאס (אבו מאזן), נאום בו האשים את ישראל במעשים ברבריים כלפי הפלסטינים. בהמשך נאומו, שב אבו מאזן והתייחס למבצע "עמוד ענן" ובתגובת העולם למערכה. לדבריו, "התוקפנות הישראלית נגד עמנו ברצועת עזה הוכיחה שוב כמה דחוף זה לשים קץ לכיבוש הישראלי, ולאפשר לעמנו לזכות בחירות ובעצמאות. תוקפנות זו גם הוכיחה את דבקותה של הממשלה הישראלית במדיניות הכיבוש, בכוח הזרוע ובמלחמה, שבתורם מחייבים את הקהילה הבינלאומית לשאת באחריותה כלפי העם הפלסטיני וכלפי השלום". "לא באנו לכאן כדי לעשות דה-לגיטימציה למדינה שהתבססה לפני שנים – ישראל - אלא כדי לאשר את הלגיטימיות של מדינה שצריכה כעת להשיג את עצמאותה, וזוהי פלסטין", אמר עוד אבו-מאזן. "באנו ליזום ניסיון אמיתי ואחרון להשיג שלום. המהלך שלנו לא מכוון להריסת מה שנשאר מתהליך המשא-ומתן, שאיבד את מטרתו ואת האמינות שלו, אלא לנסות ולהפיח בו חיים חדשים ולהציב עבורו בסיס מוצק. בשם אש"ף, אני אומר: לא נוותר ולא נתעייף. הנחישות שלנו לא תדעך, ונמשיך לפעול להשגת שלום צודק. עם זאת, מעל לכל ולמרות הכול, אני מדגיש שעמנו לא יוותר על הזכויות הלאומיות הבסיסיות שלו, כפי שהוגדר בהחלטות האו"ם. לא נקבל כל דבר שהוא פחות מעצמאות המדינה הפלסטינית, עם מזרח ירושלים כבירתה, בכל השטחים הפלסטינים שנכבשו ב-1967, הדורש לחיות בביטחון לצד מדינת ישראל, עם פתרון לבעיה הפלסטינית על בסיס החלטה 194, בהתאם לחלק האופרטיבי של יוזמת השלום הערבית". עוד בנושא: http://maki.org.il/he/occupation/135-news/14717 http://maki.org.il/he/occupation/135-news/14723

Hadash, women and peace groups rallies for UN bid in Tel Aviv and Nazareth

29 november 2012, The Israeli Communist Party http://www. maki.org.il המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית‎  الحزب الشيوعي الاسرائيلي‎ (Israel)

Hadash and Israeli peace organizations said Wednesday they would hold demonstrations in Tel Aviv to support Palestine's bid to upgrade its status at the UN. Another rally was held in Nazareth by Israeli and Palestinian women organizations.

A coalition of Hadash and Israeli peace organizations said in a statement they would rally on Rothschild Blvd. in Tel Aviv on Thursday ahead of the vote in the General Assembly. "We are citizens in the state of Israel, and we support the UN bid," the statement said.

"We support Palestinian non-member status at the United Nations which will help both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. The continuous conflict between two people has killed thousands of children, women, and innocent people," the statement said.

From the Hadash public campaign: "Israel said yes to the Palestinian State" (Photos: Hadash)

"The conflict will not be solved by force, and the only solution is negotiations which will lead to Palestine's independence, and Israel's as well”, wrote Nava Sonnenschein, co-founder of the School for Peace of Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam village. Among groups taking part in the initiative are the School of Peace and the village of Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam, Hadash (The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel), the Forum of Peace Organizations, Psychoactive, Gush Shalom, One Voice, Peace Now, Machsom Watch, Combatants for Peace, Ir Amim, Friends of the Earth and the Association of Arab Environmentalists.
The rally in support of recognition of Palestine at the UN, to be held Thursday, November 29, in Tel Aviv, at 6:00 pm opposite "Independence Hall" on 16 Rothschild Blvd. Another rally was held by the Democratic Women Movement in Israel and the Union of Palestinian Women in the occupied territories in Paulus VI road, Nazareth, on Wednesday, November 28.

President Mahmoud Abbas will address the UN General Assembly in New York before it votes on upgrading the PLO's status, Foreign Ministry official Omar Awadallah said Wednesday.

‘WE LOST EUROPE,’ SAYS ISRAELI OFFICIAL

November 29, 2012, Mondoweiss http://mondoweiss.net (USA)

Philip Weiss

Haaretz says that Germany has backtracked on decision to oppose Palestinian non-member status at the U.N., and will abstain. "We lost Europe," an Israeli Foreign Ministry official says.

Early Thursday morning, just hours before the vote -- scheduled to take place around 11:00 P.M. (Israel time) -- Germany changed its mind, deciding to abstain from voting rather than opposing the Palestinian initiative, as Israel had assumed it would.

"The decision wasn't taken lightly," Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said. "Germany shares the goal for a Palestinian state. We have campaigned for this in many ways, but the recent decisive steps towards real statehood can only be the result of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians," the German official said.

Ma'an says Israeli peace groups are for the Palestinian bid:

Israeli peace organizations said Wednesday they would hold demonstrations in Tel Aviv to support Palestine's bid to upgrade its status at the UN..

The statement was also signed by groups like Peace Now, Israel's centrist peace organization, and Machsom Watch, which monitors Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank.

Jewish Voice for Peace is for it:

This vote will not create an independent Palestinian state. It could, however, give Palestinians the ability to hold Israel accountable in the International Criminal Court. Despite its limitations as a tool to achieve a fair resolution, Jewish Voice for Peace supports the move.

A successful bid will show that the majority of the world’s countries support Palestinian political and social rights.

Meanwhile, Israel and the United States are lobbying furiously against it. Both countries, which say they support Palestinian independence, have worked at nearly every turn against a just and lasting peace for both peoples.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Bernard Avishai that he supports the statehood initiative, to save Israel:

“I believe,” Olmert wrote me, intending his statement to be made public, “that the Palestinian request from the United Nations is congruent with the basic concept of the two-state solution. Therefore, I see no reason to oppose it. Once the United Nations will lay the foundation for this idea, we in Israel will have to engage in a serious process of negotiations, in order to agree on specific borders based on the 1967 lines, and resolve the other issues. It is time to give a hand to, and encourage, the moderate forces amongst the Palestinians. Abu-Mazen"—an alias for Abbas—"and Salam Fayyad need our help. It's time to give it.”

Zionists are already seeking to discount the anticipated victory. Mark Leon Goldberg at Open Zion says Palestine can't take Israel to the International Criminal Court because that court is only for African countries, and Israel can pressure its way out. "The ICC is primarily a legal institution, but it is not sealed off to the dynamics of international power politics." More:

An investigation of Israel would be a radical departure from the cases the court currently pursues. The seven cases before the court all deal with African countries with barely functioning justice systems, and are the result of primarily intra-state, rather than inter-state, violence. ... [T]he court is simply not accustomed to pursuing charges against a western country with a strong legal system for its conduct in international conflict.

Even if the court could get over these hang-ups, pursuing charges against Israelis would be tantamount to political suicide for the court. It would not be unreasonable to think that several European countries would hold back their funding for the ICC, which is already cash-strapped.

Thanks to Ilene Cohen.

British Expert: Israel Forced to Drop Invasion Plans due to Palestinians' Unexpected Reaction

11 Muharram 1434 / Monday 26 Nov 2012 / 6 Azar 1391, Fars News Agency http://english.farsnews.com (Iran)

TEHRAN (FNA)- Palestinians' unexpectedly powerful response to the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip made Tel Aviv drop its war plans, a British expert said.

"My analysis of events and this short (Israeli) aggression is that things did not go on as Israelis had planned," Lauren Booth told FNA on Monday.

She further said the Israeli war on Gaza might even push Egypt to new stances against Tel Aviv. She reminded that Israeli Ambassador to Cairo Yaakov Amitai was summoned at the order of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi after the start of the Gaza invasion, and said such political interaction might even lead to the expulsion of the Israeli envoy.

"In such a case, (expulsion of the Israeli envoy) we will witness a new Egypt which will be confronting Israel."

Mursi summoned the Israeli ambassador to Cairo right after the aggression against Gaza to show protest against Israel's large-scale strike on the Gaza Strip.

Egypt also recalled its Ambassador to Israel Atef Mohamed Salem after Tel Aviv started bombing Gaza.

Cairo also ordered Egypt's UN representative to call for an emergency meeting over Israel's intensifying military operations against the Gazans.

Israel triggered an 8-day fighting by assassinating the military chief of the ruling Hamas group on November 14 followed by dozens of airstrikes on Gaza.

In response, Palestinian groups fired over 1,500 missiles and rockets at Israel.

Palestinian resistance groups targeted Tel Aviv and areas near Jerusalem for the first time in the history of confrontations between the two sides, launching a rocket attack in a major escalation of hostilities as Israel pressed forward with relentless airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

Israel called up thousands of reservists and massed troops along the border with Gaza, signaling a ground invasion of the densely populated seaside strip could be imminent.

But the attack on the Israeli settlement, along with an earlier strike on Zionists' capital Tel Aviv, frightened the Israeli regime, made it drop its aggression plans and ask for third party mediation.

Eventually, a Cairo-mediated ceasefire agreement, which took effect on Wednesday November 21, ended the Israeli attacks, which killed more than 165 Palestinians and injured about 1,269 others.

The Coalition Against Racism: Upper Nazareth Mayor should be indicted for racist statements

23 november 2012, The Israeli Communist Party http://www. maki.org.il המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית‎  الحزب الشيوعي الاسرائيلي‎ (Israel)

Activists from the Coalition Against Racism in Israel demanded that Upper Nazareth Mayor Shimon Gafsou should be "indicted for racist statements" after he sent a letter to Interior Minister Eli Yishai claiming that Nazareth is full of "Israel-hating residents whose place is in Gaza and not here." Mayor of Jewish-Arab Upper Nazareth claims Arab-majority Nazareth is becoming "a nest of terror in the heart of the Galilee, a center for the spread of hatred of Israel that supports and backs every anti-Israel initiative."

(The protest held by Hadash on Saturday, November 17, 2012, in Nazareth against deadly military operation in Gaza/Photo: Al Ittihad)

Gafsou accuses Nazareth mayor Ramez Jeraysi, a leading member of the Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel), of walking at the head a rally which protested deadly Operation Pillar of Defense. "Our boys are fighting in Gaza and the mayor of Nazareth, who is a member of Hadash, supports the terror group," he said. "This is a grave matter." Gafsou said that the present government in Nazareth is a "fifth column" and that the entire city is turning into "a hotbed of terror within Israel, a center for distributing hatred of Israel that supports and backs any anti-Israel group."

A protest was held by Hadash on Saturday, November 17, 2012, in Nazareth where Hadash leader MK Mohammed Barake said "I accuse the Israeli government for the spilling of both Israeli and Palestinian blood, and I mourn victims on both sides. Civilians must be pulled from the cycle of horror. [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu is mistaken if he thinks the [Gaza] operation will bring quiet. This will not happen." 1500 participants took part in the Nazareth rally, both Jews and Arabs.

Related:

More protests against deadly Gaza operation in Tel Aviv Nazareth and Haifa

AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS: END THE VIOLENCE AND SECURE A JUST PEACE

November 21, 2012, Shalom Rav http://rabbibrant.com (USA)
A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen

Received from my friend and colleague Rabbi Brian Walt:

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An immediate end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, “Operation Pillar of Defense,”matters. An immediate end to the violence—the onslaught of missiles, rockets, drones, killing, and targeted assassination—matters. An end to Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza matters. An end to Israeli’s 45-year occupation of Palestine matters. A resolution of the issue of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in 1948, many of whom live in Gaza matters. Equality, security, and human rights for everyone matters.

We write as individuals who recently traveled to the West Bank with the Dorothy Cotton Institute’s 2012 Civil and Human Rights Delegation, organized by Interfaith Peace-Builders. We cannot and will not be silent. We join our voices with people around the world who are calling for an immediate cease-fire. Specifically, we implore President Barack Obama to demand that Israel withdraw its forces from Gaza’s borders; make U.S. aid to Israel conditional upon Israel’s adherence with relevant U.S. and international law; work with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to bring an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and to secure a just peace that ensures everyone’s human rights.

In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.” As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared in 1993, “Enough of blood and tears.” Enough!

We deplore the firing of rockets on civilian areas in Israel. We also deplore and are outraged by the asymmetry, the disproportionality, of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, evidenced by the growing number of Palestinian civilian deaths and casualties. This is not a conflict between equal powers, but between a prosperous occupying nation on one hand, armed and sanctioned by 3 billion dollars in annual U.S. military aid, and on the other, a population of 1.7 million besieged people, trapped within a strip of land only 6 miles by 26 miles, (147 square miles) in what amounts to an open-air prison.

United States military support to Israel is huge. From 2000 to 2009, the US appropriated to Israel $24 billion in military aid, delivering more than 670 million weapons and related military equipment with this money. During these same years, through its illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, Israel killed at least 2,969 Palestinians who took no part in hostilities.

During our trip to the West Bank, we witnessed for ourselves the injustice and violence of the Israeli occupation and the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians, in violation of international law and UN resolutions.

In the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, for just one example, we observed a weekly nonviolent protest. The neighboring Israeli settlement of Halamish was illegally built on Nabi Saleh’s land. This settlement has also seized control of the Nabi Saleh’s water spring, allowing villagers to access their own spring water for only 7-10 hours a week. Demonstrators of all ages participated in the protest, including several who, in recognition of the civil rights veterans in our delegation, carried posters with quotations from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We watched in horror as heavily armed members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded to this peaceful assembly with violence, strafing the demonstrators with a barrage of tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, gas grenades, and even a round of live ammunition.

The IDF assault in response to these weekly nonviolent demonstrations can be deadly. Rushdi Tamimi, a young adult Nabi Saleh villager, died this past week while he was protesting Israel’s attack on Gaza. The IDF fired rubber bullets into Rushdi’s back and bullets into his gut, and slammed his head with a rifle butt.

Israel’s assault on Gaza is exponentially more violent than what we witnessed in the West Bank, but the context–the oppression of the Palestinian people—is the same. Most of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees expelled from their homes in Israel in 1948. This dispossession of the Palestinians that they call the Nakba (The Catastrophe) continues on the West Bank where Israel has built extensive Jewish settlements on confiscated Palestinian land. We saw with our own eyes how this settlement expansion and the systemic discrimination has further dispossessed the Palestinian people and is creating a “silent transfer” of Palestinians who are either forced or decide to leave because of the oppression. This injustice—Israel’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people—has to be addressed by honest and good-faith negotiations and a genuine agreement to share the land. The alternative is a future of endless eruptions of aggression, senseless bloodshed, and more trauma for Palestinians and Israelis. This surely matters to all people of good will.

To President Obama, we say, use the immense power and authority United States citizens have once again entrusted to you, to exercise your courage and moral leadership to preserve lives and protect the dignity and self-determination, to which the Palestinian people and all people are entitled. Israel relies upon the economic, military, and strategic cooperation and support of the United States. You have the power to not only appeal to Israel to show restraint, but to require it.

Feeling ourselves deeply a part of “We the People,” sharing so much of your own tradition of organizing for justice and peace, we believe it is just, moral and in keeping with the best spirit of Dr. King to urge you to:

§ Call for an end to violence by all parties and an immediate cease-fire for the sake of all people in the region.

§ Use your power to demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF cease the bombardment of Gaza and withdraw their armed forces immediately.

§ Join with the international community in using all diplomatic, economic, and strategic means to end Israel’s illegal, brutal siege of Gaza.

§ Insist that the United States condition aid to Israel on compliance with U.S. law (specifically the U.S. Arms Export Control Act) and with international law.

§ Work with the leaders of Israel and Palestine to secure an end to Israel’s occupation and to negotiate a just peace.

As citizens of the United States, we are responsible for what our government does in our name, and so we will not be silent. Justice, peace and truth matter. The future of the children of Israel and Palestine matter. We cannot be silent and neither can you.

Members of the The Dorothy Cotton Institute 2012 Civil and Human Rights Delegation:

(List in formation)

Donnie I. Betts, Filmmaker, Denver, CO

Rabbi Joseph Berman, Chair, Boston Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, Boston, MA

Laura Ward Branca, Senior Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY

Prof. Clayborne Carson Director Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

The Rev. Richard L. Deats, Ph.D. Editor Emeritus, FELLOWSHIP magazine, Nyack, NY

Kirby Edmunds, Coordinator, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY

Jeff Furman, National Advisor, Dorothy Cotton Institute

Prof. Alan Gilbert, University of Denver, Denver, CO

Dr. Vincent Harding, Historian, Activist, Friend and Colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Denver, CO

Robert. L. Harris, Jr., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Sara Hess, Ithaca, NY

Rev. Lucas Johnson, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Atlanta, GA

Dr. Marne O’Shae, Ithaca, NY

The Rev. Dr. Allie Perry, Board Member, Interfaith Peace-Builders, New Haven, CT

Dr. Paula M. Rayman, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Watertown, MA

Dr. Alice Rothchild, American Jews for a Just Peace, Cambridge, MA

Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Freeman Fellow, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Boston, MA

Dr. James Turner, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Rabbi Brian Walt, Palestinian/Israeli Nonviolence Project Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY

PUPPET STATE AMERICA

November 19, 2012, Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca (Canada)

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

paulcraigroberts.org

The United States government and its subject peoples think of the US as “the world’s only superpower.” But how is a country a superpower when its entire government and a majority of the subjects, especially those members of evangelical churches, grovel at the feet of the Israeli Prime Minister? How is a country a superpower when it lacks the power to determine its own foreign policy in the Middle East? Such a country is not a superpower. It is a puppet state.

In the past few days we have witnessed, yet again, the “American superpower” groveling at Netanyahu’s feet. When Netanyahu decided to again murder the Palestinian women and children of Gaza, to further destroy what remains of the social infrastructure of the Gaza Ghetto, and to declare Israeli war crimes and Israeli crimes against humanity to be merely the exercise of “self-defense,” the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, the White House, and the US media all promptly declared their support for Netanyahu’s crimes.

On November 16 the Congress of the “superpower,” both House and Senate, passed overwhelmingly the resolutions written for them by AIPAC, the Israel Lobby known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the only foreign agent that is not required to register as a foreign agent. The Global News Service of the Jewish People reported their power over Washington with pride. http://current.com/19su0kc Both Democrats and Republicans shared the dishonor of serving Israel and evil instead of America and justice for the Palestinians.

The White House quickly obeyed the summons from the Israel Lobby. President Obama announced that he is “fully supportive” of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told the media on November 17 that the White House “wants the same thing as the Israelis want.” This is an overstatement as many Israelis oppose the crimes of the Israeli government, which is not the government of Israel but the government of the “settlers,” that is, the crazed land-hungry immigrants who are illegally, with Netanyahu’s support, stealing the lands of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s Israel is the equivalent of the Lincoln Republicans 150 years ago. Then there was no international law to protect Southern states, who left the voluntary union, a right under the Constitution, in order to avoid being exploited by Northern business interests. Subsequently, the Union army, after devastating the South, turned on the American Indians, and there was no international law to protect American Indians from being murdered and dispossessed by Washington’s armies.

Washington claimed that its invasion forces were threatened by the Indian’s bows and arrows. Today there is international law to protect the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza. However, every time that the world tries to hold the Israeli government accountable for its crimes, Israel’s Washington puppet vetoes the UN decision.

The notion that Israel is threatened by Palestinians is as absurd as the notion that the US is threatened by Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, and Iran. No government of any of these countries has ever made a threatening statement against the US. Even had such a statement been made, it would be meaningless. If a Superpower can be threatened by such impotent and distant counties, then it is not a superpower.

Demonizing a victim is a way of hiding state crimes. The American print and TV media is useless as a check on state crimes. The only crimes reported by the media are assigned to “terrorists,” that is, those who resist US hegemony, and to Americans, such as Bradley Manning and Sibel Edmonds, who liberate truth from official secrecy. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks remains in danger despite the asylum granted to him by the President of Ecuador, as Washington has little regard for international law.

In the US the exercise of the First Amendment is coming to be regarded as a crime against the state. The purpose of the media is no longer to find the truth, but to protect official lies. Speaking the truth has essentially disappeared as it is too costly to journalist who dare to do so. To keep one’s job, one serves Washington and the private interest groups that Washington serves.

In his November 19 defense of Israel’s latest war crimes, President Obama said: “no country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down from outside its borders.” But, of course, numerous countries do tolerate missiles raining down from the US. The war criminal Obama is raining down missiles in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, and has rained missiles on Libya, Somalia, Iraq and Syria as well. Iran might be next.

The German assault on the Warsaw Ghetto is one of the horror stories of Jewish history. Such an event is happening again, only this time Jews are perpetrators instead of victims. No hand has been raised to stay Israel from the goal of the operation declared by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai to be “to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-pounds-gaza-from-air-as-troops-assemble-8326924.html

ISRAEL’S GAZA RAMPAGE: IT’S NOT JUST WAR

November 21, 2012, CounterPunch http://www.counterpunch.org (USA)

An Interview With John Pilger

by Dennis Bernstein

Dennis Bernstein: Noted Documentary Filmmaker, John Pilger, is somebody who knows a great deal about the Gaza Strip, and about the extreme conditions Palestinians there have been forced to endure under a Brutal Israeli Occupation. Pilger has actually made two films about it with the same name, twenty-five years apart: “Palestine is Still the Issue.” Pilger, a London based Australian journalist, is a widely respected, Emmy award winning documentarian. His articles regularly appear world-wide in newspapers such as like the Guardian of London, the Independent, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times.

JP: Thank you Dennis.

DB: You know a great deal about the situation. You’ve made not one film, Palestine is the Issue, but two. Let me get your initial response to we’re continuing to hear reports of massive bombing and injury, and death to civilian life, to children.

JP: Well, the first thing is the….we should be disgusted. That is a normal, human response, to this. And the second is that we ought not to be surprised, but we should understand this has nothing to do with Hamas, or rockets. It is an ongoing assault on the Palestinian people. And especially the people of Gaza, which began a very long time ago and the plan is to effectively get rid of them as an entity. And I’m not exaggerating, it’s often difficult to reach back to the history in times like this, but it’s very important that we contextualize it.

The infamous Plan D that was executed in the late 1940s just before Israel came into being was to expel the population of Palestine; to get rid of them. And 369 villages were attacked, the people thrown out, the record is there. Historical record is very clear, Israeli historians, Benny Morris through, have documented this, the Hebrew archives have thrown it up.

The sum of it is that we see a form of genocide under way in Palestine. And this is the later stage. And what your listeners should be in no doubt about is that although Israelis are doing the bombing, it’s really the United States that is really pushing the buttons. Because it’s only Israelis who are flying, the American planes. Those are American planes supplied for this very exercise, and if you look at the response of President Obama you understand that this is, in effect, an American/Israeli assault on a people who live in effectively in an open prison.

The United Nations special reporter, Richard Falk has likened their situation to the Warsaw Ghetto. When in Warsaw and Poland the Jewish Ghetto there rose up against the Nazis, who were crushed. These days fascism is not a word easily used, nor should it be. But we have as close to a fascist state in Israel, and those historic parallels that Faulk draws, actually to be correct. So we’re seeing an historical process at work here, and it is up to the rest of the world to recognize that, and do something about it.

DB: John, you’ve, as I mentioned in the introduction made not one film but two films with almost the same name, about twenty-five years apart. And that’s Palestine is the Issue…why did you…

JP: Palestine is Still the Issue…

DB: And tell us about what that means, and why you did two films and what it means that they could almost have the same name twenty-five years apart.

JP: Well, the first film was in the late seventies and the second film was in about 2003. When I came, I’d been reporting the middle east and Palestine for quite a considerable time and when I came to make the second documentary what struck me, looking at the first documentary years before that nothing had changed that the title still applied, Palestine is Still the Issue.

It is the single issue in the middle east, because it is an issue of the most fundamental justice. It is, as I just explained, it is an issue of people fighting for their lives, literally, against an enemy that is an anachronism. Israel is….as the world was decolonizing, that is, the old empires were shedding their colonies. That’s not to say a new empire wasn’t arising, the U.S. empire. But the old colonies were being given at least a normal independence.

Against this historical tide, a new colony rose, and that’s Israel. It’s an utter anachronism. It is not in any way, in any sense, at peace with its region. It’s at war with its region. In fact, its raison d’etre is war with its region. If it were to come to peace with its region then almost its reason for existing would stop. And this centers on the oppression and expulsion of Palestinians. The theft of their land, the theft of their resources, these are all facts. They’re not opinions, they’re facts. And they have been on the historical record for a long time. To almost everybody in the middle east, even in some of the more odious regimes, governed by some of the more odious regimes such as in the gulf, ordinary people regard Palestine as still the issue.

This center of turmoil and war, and a flashpoint, a permanent flashpoint in the world, would lose that volatile and very dangerous status when the Palestinians were given the fundamental justice to which they have a right. And it’s Israel and the United States backed by Europe, but basically Israel and the United States that stands in that way. And that’s why to ordinary people in the streets from Tehran to Cairo, and Damascus to Beirut, Palestine is still the issue. And it should be the issue in Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and London and wherever.

DB: One gets the feeling, John Pilger, the Israelis now, in conjunction with the United 
States, are using the Gaza strip as a testing ground for the latest kind of weaponry, technology, jamming equipment. The drones are covering the Gaza strip now, they are flying low. One has the sense that they are testing weapons here and equipment for larger wars.

JP: Yes, well, that has always been the case, of course. These kind of aggressive wars, going right back, have always been laboratories. The infamous example is Vietnam, or even before that Korea when napalm was tested. And phosphorous bombs were tested later on. And now we have these high tech weapons exemplified by the drones. What better to test them on a people you wish to extinguish? And you are quite right to describe it that way. It is as much experimental as anything else. It certainly has no, absolutely nothing to do with a few tin pop rockets fired out of the prison, the open air prison, into Israel.

So, yes, it is an experiment, but it is an American experiment. It is an American/Israeli experiment. And those who voted in President Obama, recently, might reflect on that. No president has been more enthusiastic in his support for this project than Obama. From the time after he was voted in, in 2008, before he was inaugurated, when he gave his approval for what was known as Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400 people in Gaza, to the present day.

So there lies the political problem. This is not happening, as far as the United States is concerned, as a consequence of some dictator-looking figure in the White House. If anything, we’ve had to put up with the very benign images of Obama and his family and entourage for quite a long time. It is happening under a so-called liberal president. Netanyahu is a fascist, there is no question about that, but he is America’s fascist. And I cannot emphasize that enough.

All this would be resolved if there was an honest broker in the form of a great power, that helped to broker a regional peace or at least gave it support to regional peace, or at the very least did nothing. Certainly did not give,….supply the weaponry, and the logistics, and all the rest of it for one side to do what it is doing. All this would be resolved if that honest broker in the form of the United States existed. But that is a fantasy.

DB: Now you used a word “genocide”….some have used ethnic cleansing, apartheid. The Israelis, many in the U.S. call that hyperbole. But when you say that, the things that I think about is that this is perhaps the most environmentally devastated piece of land in the world. Ninety percent of the drinking water has been poisoned. There is structural damage that make it impossible for children to grow up healthy. Are those the things, I assume it’s not hyperbole for you, are those the things that you think about when you think about genocide and ethnic cleansing? It’s not just war.

JP: It’s not. I’ve reported genocide. I’ve reported genocide in Cambodia and I’ve reported it in East Timor. It is a fact. And I think all those Americans, Jewish Americans in whose name Israel claims to act must consider this. There is a responsibility there. They must consider this. I think it’s gone so far beyond the situation where any of us can stand back anymore. We’ve had a great deal of energy expended over what’s to be done about Syria. Well, that’s a very nasty regime in Syria and it’s a very nasty civil war in Syria. But really the issue here is what to be done about a state that is propped up and I mean propped up, because its economy is in shambles, by the United States. That is an extension of the United States. That’s something I would have thought that 
American citizens ought to reflect on, especially those in whose name Israel claims to speak.

DB: Now, we’ve both talked a lot about the nature of western and U.S. journalism. I’ve been watching it non-stopped for the last couple of days, and I’ve seen them be biased before, in this context, but I have never seen it so bad. Where they cannot….you, it seems like western journalists, U.S. journalists know better than to mention the name of a children, or of a child or a family, that was wiped out by the Israeli military. We hear tears on the Israeli side from the fear of being hurt, but the slaughter and the suffering of Palestinians and the children….half the people in the Gaza strip, if not more, are under 18, are children. We don’t hear about it.

JP: Yeah. These are very barbaric times, Dennis. And the media accurately reflects that. It’s because it is part of the barbarism. In a way we should probably stop the historical parallels there, because these are almost uniquely barbaric times. We have facades of democracies, circuses claiming to be elections. We have people who are very nice to their children, and who are journalists and who write and broadcast this propaganda. These are barbaric times and the media is, and has always been, an extension of established power.

Established power in the United States and Europe is siding with the most lawless state on earth. I mean, that’s again, a fact. You total up the number of international, security council resolutions, general assembly resolutions that this state has willfully ignored; it is an utterly lawless state. It is a colonial anachronism. And it is causing great suffering to the people of a particular part of the middle east, the Palestinians. Now, if we contort our intellect and moral sensibility enough, I suppose you could come around to seeing it in a sort of a strange way. But the truth of it is this is a barbaric situation. The media that as you describe, ignores the suffering of Palestinians, Palestinian children is itself barbaric.

DB: You know, you mentioned Richard Falk, Princeton emeritus professor, the investigator for the United Nations on human rights violations in the occupied territories as it is put, in terms of his mandate; when I interviewed him four years about the bloody slaughter then, he began to refer to this kind of attack, on what many people called the largest open air prison in the world, it becomes a new kind of war crime. Because people who have already been refugees, one, two, three and four times over don’t even have the right to flee, or not the right but the possibility. So it is sort of a hammer and an anvil operation.

JP: Yes. Yes. Having been in Gaza I can assure you that it is a very small place, it’s a long sliver of land, it’s so congested, so densely populated, that there is no where to go. There is the sea, but you’re not allowed to go beyond a certain limit. The Israelis will attack you if you do that. The other way, you can’t go the other way. You can’t go and join your compatriots in the rest of Palestine, that’s not allowed.

I’m astonished that Palestinians have retained their humanity, in the way they have. They’re…I won’t say resilience because I don’t know how you can keep on being resilient, frankly. But they certainly, …they care for each other. And their anger is what is being done to the children. And most of the children in Palestine now are traumatized, most of them. As you rightly mentioned half of them are under seventeen or eighteen, or something. I think it’s lower than that actually, half the population.

I’ve been in clinics run by some very fine Palestinian organizations that try to treat these traumatized children and looked at all these kids draw pictures of war and horror, and people being killed, and bodies being dismembered. When the Israelis are not bombing them, blowing them up with their American weaponry they are forever flying over them making aerial sounds that drive people crazy, that prevent people from sleeping, that cause children to bed wet night after night. A kind of imposed traumas that none of us living elsewhere would regard as anything, if it happened to our own families, as barbaric. And that’s why Richard Faulk’s likening of the situation in Gaza, and that’s not exact of course, with the Warsaw ghetto, it’s appropriate.

DB: And, of course, the Warsaw ghetto fighters all fought hard, most died. But they died with some dignity. And one has the sense, that these bottle rockets that are being sent over to Israel are an expression of that dignity and that unwillingness to, after all these years, take it. Give up. They won’t give up.

JP: Well, yeah. If you are going to defend yourself…I mean the fighters in the Warsaw ghetto were amazing in what they achieved. Simply amazing. I wouldn’t want to draw exact parallels there because apart from these shoddy rockets, all the Palestinians have is small arms and they know they can’t win militarily. And they know that any attempt to try and force a confrontation, a direct confrontation with Israel would lead to huge blood shed amongst their own people.

You know, this is a time when the propaganda of the media tells us “Something must be done about Syria,”…..”Something must be done about Iran.” All the west’s demons must be dealt with. We have the absurd situation of an invasion or a war approaching against Iran over nuclear weapons it does not possess. Which the combined agencies of, intelligence agencies of the United States, confirm it does not possess. And yet the one nuclear power in the middle east which has something like 500 thermo nuclear warheads, which is Israel, is simply off the agenda. Are we in a sort of intellectual and moral madhouse? It would appear so.

DB: And the impression, of course, conveyed by the main stream press both with Palestine and with Iran is that the Israelis are bending over backwards to show restraint.

JP: Well, you know, recognizing the sources of propaganda is the first thing. I mean it’s the converse of information being power. Real information is power for people. The other side of that is recognizing the source of lies. And I think large numbers of people in western countries recognize that the so-called main stream media is a source of, is the sort of ventriloquist of power. A power that is causing great grief in the world. I do believe, I’ve always felt as a journalist the public has been way ahead of the media.

Sometimes that’s difficult because television is still a very powerful medium. And as you’ve described the sheer bias of television in the United States means that not even the names of people, of whole families annihilated or most of the families annihilated can be mentioned. You know, what is being stolen here is not just simply Palestine, yet again, but our own consciousness. If we allow this, then there is something of us that goes. That’s really at stake here.

DB: That’s a poignant point to leave it on.

Dennis Bernstein is the host of Flashpoints Radio on Pacifica Radio.
John Pilger is a film-maker and investigative journalist. He is the author of Freedom Next Time