President without shame
By Ira Glunts
17 May, 2008
In a talk eerily reminiscent of his “Axis of Evil” speech, President George W. Bush told the Israeli Knesset on May 15 of his commitment to vanquish any group that opposes his vision of American hegemony in the Middle East. He specifically included Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda as the enemies in his “war against terror and extremism.” Oddly he did not include the Taliban, whom the US military is currently fighting in Afghanistan, on his list of Muslim enemies. Perhaps this is because his Israeli hosts do not perceive the Taliban as an immediate threat to their security.
It is difficult to know whether Bush’s exaggerated bellicosity derives from his desire to please the Israelis, play to his political base in the United States, or is simply another occasion for him to engage in the type of ominous saber-rattling that has been characteristic of his administration. President Bush emphasized his dedication and resolve to press on with his aggressive foreign policy by proclaiming that the war on terror is “an ancient battle between good and evil.” Considering the current unstable political situation in both Gaza and Lebanon, plus the diplomatic crisis in US/Iranian relations, one has to wonder if the President’s words signify that the US has immediate plans for an increased military engagement in the region.
Bush began his remarks by praising Ariel Sharon as “one of Israel’s greatest leaders” and reiterating his provocative statement that the former Israeli Prime Minister was “a man of peace.” Sharon, who is considered the major architect of the Israeli settlements, is reviled among Palestinians. Apparently oblivious to how his Sharon statement compromised his credibility, Bush compounded his flight of fancy by telling his listeners that “Israel has always worked tirelessly for peace.” I imagine that many of the members of the Knesset in their self-serving obtuseness may actually believe that this is true, but to the rest of the world this is simply a statement that Israel will not, at least under Bush’s watch, be required to make any concessions to its enemies.
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On Independence Day, Israeli Arabs Reminded of Their Place
by Jonathan Cook
But in a sign of how far Israel still is from coming to terms with the circumstances of its birth, this year's march was forcibly broken up by the Israeli police. They clubbed unarmed demonstrators with batons and fired tear gas and stun grenades into crowds of families that included young children.
Although most of the refugees from the 1948 war – numbering in their millions – ended up in camps in neighboring Arab states, a few remained inside Israel. Today one in four Palestinian citizens of Israel is either a refugee or descended from one. Not only have they been denied the right ever to return to their homes, like the other refugees, but many live tantalizingly close to their former communities.
The destroyed Palestinian villages have either been reinvented as exclusive Jewish communities or buried under the foliage of national forestation programs overseen by the Jewish National Fund and paid for with charitable donations from American and European Jews....
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Related
Palestinian-Americans mark 60th anniverary of Nakba at UN rally 
May 16, 2008
Link
Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel
by nepos libertas
Tue May 13, 2008
"On Friday May 14, 1948 -- the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired -- the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was signed by members of the National Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, representing the Jewish community in the country and the Zionist movement abroad. It went into effect at midnight, Tel Aviv time.
Eliahu Epstein of The Jewish Agency sent a letter to President Truman, dated May 14, 1948 announcing the event. Truman responded with recognition of Israel by the United States only 11 minutes after the declaration in Tel Aviv."1
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Tell Me More, May 16, 2008 · Palestinian American Nina Cullers and her family lost their home and way of life when Israel became an independent nation in 1948. As Israel marks its 60th anniversary, Cullers reflects on how that event affected her life as a Palestinian.
Listen Now [10 min 30 sec] :
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Frank Israeli Film Examines 1982 Beirut Massacres
Did Hezbollah Thwart A Planned
Bush/Olmert Attack On Lebanon?
Hitler argued that the Invasion of Poland was critical to defend the Homeland, and he used fake intelligence reports to do it
Bush's Grandfather arranged loans for Hitler and profited from concentration camp slave labor
All the President's Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush
Dear Mr. Bush,
Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush, of your words today:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!
The All-American Nazi
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Related Weekly report of Israeli war crimes, 5/14/08
IOF troops shoot at Palestinian protesters at Biet Hanon | |
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GAZA, (PIC)-- At least nine Palestinian children and a woman were wounded on Thursday after IOF troops stationed at the Beit Hanon (Erez) crossing point north of Gaza Strip opened their fire at thousands of Palestinian citizens demonstrating near the crossing to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba and protest against the Israeli economic siege on the Strip. Hamas Movement called for the rally to mark the occasion, challenge the Israeli occupation, and in a clear demonstration of an exemplary Palestinian steadfastness and determination to get rid of the occupation. IOF troops stationed at the border crossing opened fire at the Palestinian demonstrators and Palestinian youth replied with stones. There were a number of casualties and . Palestinian ambulances were dispatched to the clashes scene, and immediately rushed the wounded Palestinians to nearby hospitals. |
Israel's 60th anniversary
As Western leaders mark the rogue state of Israel's 60th birthday with a back-slapping show of friendship, what exactly is there to celebrate?
Please download and / or circulate this handy reminder of 60 years of Israeli racism, ethnic cleansing and oppression, and 90 years of betrayal by Britain and the West.
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When we see how Zionist ideology is used and the purposes it serves in Israel, America and Germany, we can obtain a better understanding of the deplorable situation in each case and perhaps some improvements.
Theodor Herzl, the leading ideologist and organizer of the Zionist movement, wrote in his book Der Judenstaat which was published in 1895: “No nation in history has had to endure such struggles and suffering as ours … because of old prejudices lying deep down in the soul/minds (Gemüt) of all other nations … And the longer it takes before they appear the more ferocious they break out. Our only hope for escaping the persecutors is a state for a Jewish nation.”1
Herzl’s assertion about the unique suffering of Jews and the prejudices of all other nations cannot be empirically confirmed, but that was not his concern. His interpretation of Jewish history was likely to convince many Jews and encourage them to take part in the struggle for a state. Many others would pay lip service to the ideology because they shared Herzl´s goal. The first task for the movement was to convince Jews that they were a nation and hinder the assimilation that was underway. The leaders of the movement came out strongly for the colonization of Palestine, a beautiful country where the inhabitants were to a considerable extent well-off and could rest their claim to the land on the fact that it had been inhabited by Arabs for more than 1000 years. Herzl and the later leaders of the movement asserted that all or almost all of the indigenous people would have to leave their country.
Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST May. 15, 2008
The IDF plans to escalate its operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after US President George W. Bush leaves Israel on Friday, senior defense officials said Thursday.
At the same time, Israel is continuing its dialogue with Egypt over the cease-fire proposal that Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman presented in Jerusalem earlier this week and which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is said to be leaning toward accepting.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak is scheduled to travel to Sharm e-Sheikh next week to participate in the World Economic Forum and to hold talks with Suleiman and possibly President Hosni Mubarak regarding the proposal, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Olmert is scheduled to visit Egypt for talks with Mubarak the following week.
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Israel protests UN chief Ban Ki-Moon's use of term 'nakba'
The Nakba is our Holocaust
'May You Live In Interesting Times'
To the Heart
Resisting the Nakba
The viciousness of Israel is testament to its knowing that Palestinians will always remain steadfast and defeat its past and present attempts to erase them, writes Joseph Massad
One of the most difficult things to grasp in the modern history of Palestine and the Palestinians is the meaning of the Nakba. Is the Nakba to be seen as a discrete event that took place and ended in 1948, or is it something else? What are the political stakes in reifying the Nakba as a past event, in commemorating it annually, in bowing before its awesome symbolism? What are the effects of making the Nakba a finite historical episode that one bemoans but must ultimately accept as a fact of history?
I will suggest to you that there is much at stake in all of this, in rendering the Nakba an event of the past, a fact on the ground that one cannot but accept, admit, and finally transcend; indeed that in order to move forward, one must leave the Nakba behind. Some have even suggested that if Israel acknowledges and apologises for the Nakba, the Palestinians would forgive and forget, and the effects of the Nakba would be relegated to historical commemorations, not unlike the one we are having this year.
In my view, the Nakba is none of these things, and the attempt to make this year the 60th anniversary of the Nakba's life and death is a grave error. The Nakba is in fact much older than 60 years and it is still with us, pulsating with life and coursing through history by piling up more calamities upon the Palestinian people. I hold that the Nakba is a historical epoch that is 127 years old and is ongoing. The year 1881 is the date when Jewish colonisation of Palestine started and, as everyone knows, it has never ended. Much as the world would like to present Palestinians as living in a post-Nakba period, I insist that we live thoroughly in Nakba times. What we are doing this year is not an act of commemorating but an act of witnessing the ongoing Nakba that continues to destroy Palestine and the Palestinians. I submit, therefore, that this year is not the 60th anniversary of the Nakba at all, but rather one more year of enduring its brutality; that the history of the Nakba has never been a history of the past but decidedly a history of the present.
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Real News Video: Palestinians commemorate al-Nakba--the catastrophe
Palestine Street - The Lost Bride (also see links to parts 2 -4)
Arab, Israeli students of the Hebrew University hold a protest commemorating the Nakba
Memory for forgetfulness
We remain
An irreducible fact
Nakba ongoing
Remembering the Nakba, 60 years later
Rare pics from Nakba
Last update - 02:35 16/05/2008
Israel protests UN chief Ban Ki-Moon's use of term 'nakba'
By Rotem Sela, TheMarker Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
The Israeli mission to the United Nations is seeking clarifications after an official communique released by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's bureau made specific reference to the word "nakba," according to a report broadcast on Israel Radio early Friday morning.
The report said the UN chief telephoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to express his solidarity with the Palestinians on the day they mark the "nakba," the Arabic word meaning "catastrophe" that is used in reference to the founding of the state of Israel.
Danny Carmon, Israel's deputy ambassador to the UN, told Israel Radio that the term "'nakba' is a tool of Arab propaganda used to undermine the legitimacy of the establishment of the State of Israel, and it must not be part of the lexicon of the UN."
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Bush hails Israelis as 'chosen people' but ignores Palestinians on 'catastrophe' day
May 15th, 2008
In January of last year, I wrote an op-ed in Haaretz suggesting that Israel ought to beware of riding in President Bush’s back seat, precisely because his Administration is pursuing a Middle East policy that is anything but sober. The “friendship” he offers is hardly likely to help Israel resolve any of its security dilemmas. And listening to what Bush said in his address to the Knesset, today, sobriety clearly remains a long way off: “Masada will never fall again,” he intoned, as in, “Remember the Alamo!” Having visited the iconic site at which Jewish Jihadists of yore are said to have committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans, Bush was plainly moved to substitute war cries for serious policy. Long on the vacuous militancy that has characterized his entire tenure, Bush reprised the infantile posturing that compared talking to Hamas with appeasing the Nazis (uh, is that what Olmert is doing by negotiating a cease-fire with it via Egypt?), branding Iran the fount of global terrorism and warning that “Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations,” Bush told the Israeli parliament to mark its 60th birthday. “For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Don’t talk to Hamas or Iran, don’t allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, etc. etc. But what exactly is he offering? Is he going to bomb Iran? And then what? There’s no policy here, just testoterone. And the fruits of his posturing, as we noted yesterday, are abundantly clear just across the border, in Lebanon, where Hizballah is able to run the game on its terms, helped, not hindered, by a Lebanese government following Bush’s confrontational lead. And let’s not even talk about Iraq, where Bush’s chief accomplishment has been an unprecedented empowering of Tehran.
Here’s what I wrote in Haaretz last year, it seems to be as relevant as ever:
In the Galilee, Jonathan Cook hears how erasing all traces of Palestine and its people was the lynchpin of the Zionist agenda
Amin Mohamed Ali (Abu Arab), 73, is a refugee from the village of Saffuriya, three miles northwest of Nazareth. The village, home to 5,000 Palestinians, was one of the largest in the Galilee and among the first to be bombed from the air, according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. It was occupied on 16 July 1948. Most of its refugees ended up in Lebanon, but some fled to nearby Nazareth, where they established a neighbourhood, Safafra, named after their village. Abu Arab's home overlooks his family's former lands, now farmed by a Jewish community called Zippori. His old home was destroyed, now covered by a pine forest planted by the Jewish National Fund. He is one of the founders of the Saffuriya Cultural Association and organised this year's Nakba procession to Saffuriya.
"It started at Iftar, the meal breaking the fast at the end of the day during the holy month of Ramadan, when two Jewish planes flew overhead dropping bombs. We ran outside to see what was happening and, afraid the houses would collapse on us, fled into the fields and nearby caves to hide. We thought it would be over in a few minutes and we could return, but the attack lasted two hours. I later heard that three people were killed by the bombs.
"Some of the men had guns and they returned to the village while the rest of us stayed in the fields. I was with my father, who was sick, my mother, three brothers and a sister. Later, during the night, the armed men came back to tell us that Jewish soldiers were advancing from the west. We stayed out in the fields and by daybreak could see that the soldiers had taken over the village and were placing explosives in the houses. My father realised it was hopeless to stay and we fled north towards Lebanon to wait out the fighting and return when it was safe.
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Palestinians are increasingly rejecting the crumbs of a two-state solution in favour of justice for all in a single state, Palestine, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah
As Israel ostentatiously celebrates the passage of 60 years since its creation in Palestine in 1948, more than nine million Palestinians at home and in exile are commemorating the Nakba, the violent seizure of their ancestral homeland by Zionist Jews and the dispossession, expulsion and dispersion of the bulk of Palestinians to the four corners of the globe.
This year, activities are taking place in many parts of the world where Palestinian refugees and expatriates reside, dreaming of and awaiting a return to their homeland that appears nowhere on the horizon of political reality.
Palestinians, irrespective of their political affiliations, are not only reasserting the legal and moral status of their right to return to the homes and villages from which they were expelled at gunpoint, or otherwise made to flee 60 years ago, but are also emphasising to all who will listen, including their own leaders, that the right of return remains -- and will always be -- the heart, soul and centrepiece of the Palestinian issue.
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Adrian Hamilton
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Yesterday was the day when, 60 years ago, Israel was launched as a new state by the UN. Today is the day the Palestinians mourn what they regard as Nakba, the "catastrophe". President Bush arrived in Jerusalem to attend the 60th Israeli anniversary dinner yesterday. Presumably he will not be attending any of the Palestinian Nakba functions today.
Which really says it all about those six decades. Israel celebrates as Bush arrives to talk of a peace that almost all of its citizens say they want, but virtually none believe will actually happen. The Palestinians mourn, fobbed off with promises of economic assistance and the dream of a separate state, whilst knowing full well that when it comes to it, the West will always side with Israel in any fundamental quarrel with the Arabs.
"Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than the 43rd President of the United States," Vice-President Dick Cheney told a Washington reception for Israel's 60th birthday last week. Which is no more than the truth. Over the last five years, and particularly since 9/11, the US President and the Vice-President have accepted totally Israel's view of its security needs, its insistence on expanded borders and its refusal to take back Palestinian refugees.
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THURSDAY, MAY 15th, from Midnight until 6pm (EST) - Join us for this historic international radio reflection of the Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe. Content will be hosted by the International Middle East Media Center in Bethlehem (Palestine), in collaboration with CKUT 90.3fm in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), CHRY 105.5fm in Toronto (Ontario, Canada), and KBOO 90.7fm in Portland (Oregon, USA). Including contributions from Pacifica Radio and Democracy Now!
Thursday, May 15th, 2008, commemorates 60 years of the Palestinian Nakba. In 1948 eighty-five percent of the Palestinians living in the areas that became the state of Israel became refugees. More than 500 Palestinian villages were depopulated and later destroyed to prevent the return of the refugees. Today there are a total of 7 million Palestinian refugees, dispersed throughout the world - the largest and longest running refugee problem yet unresolved.
60-years later, Israel continues to occupy and colonize Palestinian land through the construction of Jewish only settlements and the Wall in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip has been turned into one large prison. Israel violates international law and commits ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity. And Palestinians abroad are the world's oldest refugee population, making-up more than one fourth of all refugees.
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Siege hits Palestinians before they are born
Reuters demands explanation from Israel for death of cameramen
In the fourth of five films from Gaza, multimedia reporter Clancy Chassay meets Samir who lost his brother and two footballing friends during Israeli rocket and shell attacks on their playing fields
Clancy Chassay
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday May 15 2008
VIDEO
George Bisharat, IMEU, May 15, 2008
Sixty years ago, with Israel's establishment, Palestinians entered a nightmare from which they have never awoken. By joining Israel's celebration of its sixtieth anniversary, President Bush neglects this crucial reality, and underscores our government's insensitivity to Palestinian rights.
Israel's founders didn't simply plant flags in an empty country. Instead, they coveted a state where close to a million Palestinians outnumbered Jews two to one and where Jews owned only 6% of the land. A Jewish state could not be established in this milieu. Exploiting Palestinian opposition to the United Nations partition plan, Zionist militias, and later Israeli troops, forcibly exiled about 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland, or terrorized them into flight. Israeli historian Benny Morris documented twenty four massacres of unarmed Palestinian civilians in this period.
Palestinians refer to the violent destruction of their society as the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic). Each May for six decades, Palestinians worldwide have mourned the Nakba, as if it were a discrete historical event. In fact, the Nakba has never really ended. Instead, the mass expulsions of Palestinians upon Israel's founding were only the first and most convulsive phase in a protracted process - the displacement of native Palestinians in favor of Jewish settlers. Long ago, Zionists set out to conquer Palestine "dunum by dunum, goat by goat" (a dunum is the local unit of land). This necessarily violent process continues today.
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© Steve Bell 2008 steve.bell@guardian.co.uk
Bush in Israel for anniversary amid little hope for peace talks
May 15 2008: It's thought that the US president's presence will not do much to promote the flagging peace process
link
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By Suzanne Baroud It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. At the risk of sounding terribly cliche, I have to say that my understanding of war, the pain of war, the humanity that is able to rise above war, the valiant spirit of mothers and children caught in the midst of war….were ever so slight until I stumbled upon the miraculous work of the award-winning war photographer called Zoriah. What an amazing and talented artist. What wonders this man captures with his camera. It is as if he has an enchanting ability to transport the viewer of his work right to the heart and soul of the many conflicts he has covered. I cannot remember being so moved by a photograph and the story which it imparts. I always felt that I had a keen understanding of the tragedy in Iraq, the catastrophes of Palestine and Afghanistan, but after witnessing Zoriah’s works of pure genius, my understanding seems deeper and closer then ever before. The wisdom in the eyes of Gaza’s children, the knowing expression of an elderly man wasting away in a Baghdad hospital, I leave Zoriah’s work with a profound sense of grief and admiration that is rarely felt. It is like I too have been there. ***
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mparent7777_1- CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
- Marc Parent