Omri Schwarz wrote:
> Roger Alexander <[email protected]> writes:
>
> > One ownders how many times Mr. McVay is going to spam the NG with this defamatory
> > tripe.
>
> That defamatory tripe is composed mostly
> of Giwer’s own posts. Giwer’s a nut, Roger,
> and your defense of him only shows you for
> the idiot you are. Giwer was known as a nut
> long before you got your first internet account.
> —
> Omri Schwarz —
Giwer generally tries to state the facts, and to put them
into a context which may be somewhat idiosyncratic
but rational. So far as I am able to determine,
he is not a nut. I don’t know anything of substance about the holocaust,
nor about biblical history, so I am again unable to judge whether he is right
or wrong about these subjects. To the limited extent I have
been exposed to biblical history, it seems to me he is
right so far as I can check.
Again, so far as I can tell, he has no self interest involved.
You, for example, are an Israeli Jew. You post about
the real or imagined grievances of another era, because
of course, the grievances of the last fifty years have all
been on the Palestinian side. You support the nausea
which is Israel. This behavior is despicable. For an
intelligent person with a pretense of a moral upbringing
to do this is a moral sellout. Giwer is not a sell out,
so nut or not, I have respect for him, none for you.
So far as McVay is concerned, he was bought and paid for
before he ever started his site. Giwer is right about him,
McVay knows it and can’t stand it, so he trashes
Giwer with those repeated spams. The guy doesn’t even
have the brains to figure out something new to say,
for God’s sake.
RLA
From [email protected] Tue Mar 13 20:05:07 EST 2001
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Subject: International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime
of Apartheid
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[[Needless to say, Israel did not ratify or even just sign this
Convention.
The reason for that will be evident.]]
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime
of Apartheid
Adopted and opened for signature, ratification by General Assembly
resolution 3068 (XXVIII) of 30 November 1973
Entry into force 18 July 1976, in accordance with article XV
The States Parties to the present Convention,
Recalling the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, in which
all
Members pledged themselves to take joint and separate action in
co-operation
with the Organization for the achievement of universal respect for, and
observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without
distinction as to race, sex, language or religion,
Considering the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that
all
human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and that
everyone
is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration,
without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour or national
origin,
Considering the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial
Countries and Peoples, in which the General Assembly stated that the
process
of liberation is irresistible and irreversible and that, in the
interests of
human dignity, progress and justice, an end must be put to colonialism
and
all practices of segregation and discrimination associated therewith,
Observing that, in accordance with the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, States particularly
condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent,
prohibit
and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their
jurisdiction,
Observing that, in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the
Crime of Genocide, certain acts which may also be qualified as acts of
apartheid constitute a crime under international law,
Observing that, in the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory
Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, “inhuman acts
resulting from the policy of apartheid” are qualified as crimes against
humanity,
Observing that the General Assembly of the United Nations has adopted a
number of resolutions in which the policies and practices of apartheid
are
condemned as a crime against humanity,
Observing that the Security Council has emphasized that apartheid and
its
continued intensification and expansion seriously disturb and threaten
international peace and security,
Convinced that an International Convention on the Suppression and
Punishment
of the Crime of Apartheid would make it possible to take more effective
measures at the international and national levels with a view to the
suppression and punishment of the crime of apartheid,
Have agreed as follows:
Article I
1. The States Parties to the present Convention declare that apartheid
is a
crime against humanity and that inhuman acts resulting from the policies
and
practices of apartheid and similar policies and practices of racial
segregation and discrimination, as defined in article II of the
Convention,
are crimes violating the principles of international law, in particular
the
purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and
constituting a serious threat to international peace and security.
2. The States Parties to the present Convention declare criminal those
organizations, institutions and individuals committing the crime of
apartheid.
Article II
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term “the crime of
apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial
segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall
apply
to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing
and
maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other
racial
group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
(a) Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the
right
to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of
serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or
dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or
degrading
treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a
racial group or groups;
(b) Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living
conditions
calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in
part;
(c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a
racial group or groups from participation in the political, social,
economic
and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of
conditions
preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular
by
denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and
freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized
trade
unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to
their
country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement
and
residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right
to
freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
(d) Any measures, including legislative measures, designed to divide the
population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and
ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of
mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the
expropriation of
landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members
thereof;
(e) Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or
groups,
in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
(f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of
fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
Article III
International criminal responsibility shall apply, irrespective of the
motive involved, to individuals, members of organizations and
institutions
and representatives of the State, whether residing in the territory of
the
State in which the acts are perpetrated or in some other State, whenever
they:
(a) Commit, participate in, directly incite or conspire in the
commission of
the acts mentioned in article II of the present Convention;
(b) Directly abet, encourage or co-operate in the commission of the
crime of
apartheid.
Article IV
The States Parties to the present Convention undertake:
(a) To adopt any legislative or other measures necessary to suppress as
well
as to prevent any encouragement of the crime of apartheid and similar
segregationist policies or their manifestations and to punish persons
guilty
of that crime;
(b) To adopt legislative, judicial and administrative measures to
prosecute,
bring to trial and punish in accordance with their jurisdiction persons
responsible for, or accused of, the acts defined in article II of the
present Convention, whether or not such persons reside in the territory
of
the State in which the acts are committed or are nationals of that State
or
of some other State or are stateless persons.
Article V
Persons charged with the acts enumerated in article II of the present
Convention may be tried by a competent tribunal of any State Party to
the
Convention which may acquire jurisdiction over the person of the accused
or
by an international penal tribunal having jurisdiction with respect to
those
States Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.
Article VI
The States Parties to the present Convention undertake to accept and
carry
out in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations the decisions
taken
by the Security Council aimed at the prevention, suppression and
punishment
of the crime of apartheid, and to co-operate in the implementation of
decisions adopted by other competent organs of the United Nations with a
view to achieving the purposes of the Convention.
Article VII
1. The States Parties to the present Convention undertake to submit
periodic
reports to the group established under article IX on the legislative,
judicial, administrative or other measures that they have adopted and
that
give effect to the provisions of the Convention.
2. Copies of the reports shall be transmitted through the
Secretary-General
of the United Nations to the Special Committee on Apartheid.
Article VIII
Any State Party to the present Convention may call upon any competent
organ
of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the
United
Nations as it considers appropriate for the prevention and suppression
of
the crime of apartheid.
Article IX
1. The Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights shall appoint a group
consisting of three members of the Commission on Human Rights, who are
also
representatives of States Parties to the present Convention, to consider
reports submitted by States Parties in accordance with article VII.
2. If, among the members of the Commission on Human Rights, there are no
representatives of States Parties to the present Convention or if there
are
fewer than three such representatives, the Secretary-General of the
United
Nations shall, after consulting all States Parties to the Convention,
designate a representative of the State Party or representatives of the
States Parties which are not members of the Commission on Human Rights
to
take part in the work of the group established in accordance with
paragraph
1 of this article, until such time as representatives of the States
Parties
to the Convention are elected to the Commission on Human Rights.
3. The group may meet for a period of not more than five days, either
before
the opening or after the closing of the session of the Commission on
Human
Rights, to consider the reports submitted in accordance with article
VII.
Article X
1. The States Parties to the present Convention empower the Commission
on
Human Rights:
(a) To request United Nations organs, when transmitting copies of
petitions
under article 15 of the International Convention on the Elimination of
All
Forms of Racial Discrimination, to draw its attention to complaints
concerning acts which are enumerated in article II of the present
Convention;
(b) To prepare, on the basis of reports from competent organs of the
United
Nations and periodic reports from States Parties to the present
Convention,
a list of individuals, organizations, institutions and representatives
of
States which are alleged to be responsible for the crimes enumerated in
article II of the Convention, as well as those against whom legal
proceedings have been undertaken by States Parties to the Convention;
(c) To request information from the competent United Nations organs
concerning measures taken by the authorities responsible for the
administration of Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories, and all
other
Territories to which General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14
December
1960 applies, with regard to such individuals alleged to be responsible
for
crimes under article II of the Convention who are believed to be under
their
territorial and administrative jurisdiction.
2. Pending the achievement of the objectives of the Declaration on the
Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, contained in
General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV), the provisions of the present
Convention shall in no way limit the right of petition granted to those
peoples by other international instruments or by the United Nations and
its
specialized agencies.
Article XI
1. Acts enumerated in article II of the present Convention shall not be
considered political crimes for the purpose of extradition.
2. The States Parties to the present Convention undertake in such cases
to
grant extradition in accordance with their legislation and with the
treaties
in force.
Article XII
Disputes between States Parties arising out of the interpretation,
application or implementation of the present Convention which have not
been
settled by negotiation shall, at the request of the States parties to
the
dispute, be brought before the International Court of Justice, save
where
the parties to the dispute have agreed on some other form of settlement.
Article XIII
The present Convention is open for signature by all States. Any State
which
does not sign the Convention before its entry into force may accede to
it.
Article XIV
1. The present Convention is subject to ratification. Instruments of
ratification shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United
Nations.
2. Accession shall be effected by the deposit of an instrument of
accession
with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Article XV
1. The present Convention shall enter into force on the thirtieth day
after
the date of the deposit with the Secretary-General of the United Nations
of
the twentieth instrument of ratification or accession.
2. For each State ratifying the present Convention or acceding to it
after
the deposit of the twentieth instrument of ratification or instrument of
accession, the Convention shall enter into force on the thirtieth day
after
the date of the deposit of its own instrument of ratification or
instrument
of accession.
Article XVI
A State Party may denounce the present Convention by written
notification to
the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Denunciation shall take
effect
one year after the date of receipt of the notification by the
Secretary-General.
Article XVII
1. A request for the revision of the present Convention may be made at
any
time by any State Party by means of a notification in writing addressed
to
the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
2. The General Assembly of the United Nations shall decide upon the
steps,
if any, to be taken in respect of such request.
Article XVIII
The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall inform all States of
the
following particulars:
(a) Signatures, ratifications and accessions under articles XIII and
XIV;
(b) The date of entry into force of the present Convention under article
XV;
(c) Denunciations under article XVI;
(d) Notifications under article XVII.
Article XIX
1. The present Convention, of which the Chinese, English, French,
Russian
and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the
archives
of the United Nations.
2. The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall transmit certified
copies of the present Convention to all States.
_________________________________________________________________
No Return = No Peace March and Rally, New York City, 7 April 2001,
From [email protected] Tue Mar 13 20:05:07 EST 2001
Article: 259637 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Palestinian leaders downplay Israeli claims about relaxing siege
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Palestinian leaders downplay Israeli claims about relaxing siege
Occupied Jerusalem: 13 March, 2001 (IAP News) – Palestinian leaders
today
downplayed Israeli claims about relaxing the military and economic
blockade on Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, dismissing
Israeli reports as being “propaganda” and “without substance.”
PA information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo accused the zionist occupation
regime of launching a verbal public relations campaign to create a
favorable atmosphere ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s
upcoming visit to the United States, while making no changes on the
ground.
The Israeli propaganda machine has beefed up its rhetoric in responce to
international criticism of its latest seige of Palestinain towns and
villages, saying they have actually “eased” the siege. But facts on the
ground reveal a different picture.
“As of now, there are no signs suggesting that the siege is being
relaxed.
Quite the contrary, in some areas, the siege is being tightened,” said
Rabbo.
The Palestinian official’s remarks were corroborated by villagers in the
Hebron and Nablus areas who reported that they were turned back to their
respective villages by Israeli soldiers manning roadblocks near the
places
of their residence.
The zionist occupation regime on Monday claimed her troops were relaxing
the siege on Nablus, Tulkarm, Jenin and Hebron but keeping it on
Ramallah,
alleging that a Palestinian guerilla cell was hiding in Ramallah and
preparing to carry out an attack inside 1948 mandate Palestine.
Palestinian officials scoffed at the zionist occupation regime claim,
describing it as “a concocted lie aimed at justifying their criminal
blockade of our towns and villages.”
Sharon defended the internal siege on the West Bank, saying it was
necessary to thwart attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers.
_______________________________________________________________
Proudly Serving Palestine and Al-Quds
Islamic Association for Palestine
=======================================
Of course, Zionist means liar. Israelis wouldn’t tell the truth
even if it were in their interest. They expect to have to lie
to the world where they can’t conceal.
BTW, Sharon could have security for his settlers if he put them
in Tel Aviv. HInt, hint.
RLA
From [email protected] Tue Mar 13 20:05:07 EST 2001
Article: 259638 of soc.culture.canada
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
From: Roger Alexander <[email protected]>
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Subject: Re: Ramallah = Warsaw Ghetto
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<Xyir6.28$%[email protected]>
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Well, that’s mighty God damned White of you
Massa Medved. Mighty White.
Might I just remind you that these are Palestinians
in Palestine? That you have no right to be there and further no
right whatever to tell them what they can and cannot do
Your arrogance is beyond belief.
RLA
medve[email protected] wrote:
> In talk.politics.mideast torresD <[email protected]> wrote:
> > What is it with Israel?
> > First they place a chokehold on Palestinian
> > areas, and then fire on the people trying to
> > get out.
>
> Any Arab who wants to walk out of Ramallah is welcome to do so and
> will not be harmed. Those who bring bulldozers to try to break the
> barriers that the army has placed there will be stopped.
>
> > What is the difference between
> > the Gaza Strip, West Bank & Warsaw Ghetto?
>
> Read the above.
>
> > Israeli’s this is not Worthy of YOU!!
>
> Stop the crap. You hate Israel and have no respect for it
> whatsoever, so the “worthy” in your sentence above is just a ruse.
> You just hate it when Israel defends itself.
From [email protected] Tue Mar 13 20:05:08 EST 2001
Article: 259641 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Re: Plowing fields and roads in a life and death Palestinian struggle
for freedom By Ray Hanania
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
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If you are trying for stupid post of the year, this is anexcellent entry.
RLA
Kim Bebbington wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2001 18:11:49 -0800, Michael Berenstein
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >Roger Alexander wrote:
> >
> >Ramallah, Palestine — The hot sun beats down on a hillside field the
> >
> >> size of
> >> a baseball diamond where a Palestinian man in a light shirt and baggy
> >> old
> >> pants tugs on the leather straps that navigates his horse and plow
> >> through
> >> the dry brown dirt and large rocks.
> >> About 20 yards away at an intersection that connects two Palestinian
> >> towns, a thousand Palestinians have gathered to peacefully call on
> >> Israel to
> >> end a three month siege
> >
> >This is a clear case of anti-arab, pro-zionist propaganda. How much are you
> >paid, rascalous jewish zionist racist nazi?
> >Check your numbers and adhere to the truth. Ever heard about the word
> >”library”?
> >In truth there were thousand palestinians plowing their fields, and only
> >one man piecefully asking “israelis” to abandon the orders of their nazi
> >commanders and fill the trenches.
> >
> >Everyone has a cell phone, including the priests and Imams who join
> >
> >> in
> >> the protest, the leaders at the head of the protest, a
> >
> >Wrong! That single palestinian man didn’t have cell phone, he’s too poor.
> >
> >> . TV camera crews loiter nearby, waiting
> >> for
> >> “something” to happen.
> >
> >Wrong. TV camera just happend to be around by a chance. It was forgotten by
> >zionazis’ controlled media trolls.
> >
> >
> >> Many of the people there have come to protest.
> >> Others
> >> have come to watch.
> >
> >Watch what? Nothing was going to happen as many palestinians were
> >peacefully plowing their fields.
> >
> >> No one is doing anything,
> >
> >If plowing is doing nothing for you, zionazi servant, than you are nothing
> >more than a stinky servant of zionazis.
>
> Give roggie credit – He regards the ploughing of fields as a
> provocation. Anyone ploughing their fields is inciting violence and
> deserves to be shot!
>
> (Oh, I suppose I should add two conditions: The farmer must be an
> Israeli and the shooter must be a Syrian…)
From [email protected] Tue Mar 13 20:05:09 EST 2001
Article: 259643 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Re: Ramallah = Warsaw Ghetto
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And of course, the Israelis have no right to be there in the first place.
No right to put settlers there in the second place, and finally no right to
complain when those settlers are gently urged to leave using no more
force than necessary sort of a “molliter manus imposuit”.
If you would just get out of the West Bank, you would find that
it was not necessary for you to maintain checkpoints.
Obviously, you believe you have the right to all of it, therefore
you maintain military there to help the ongoing expulsions.
You are real pieces of work, you Israelis.
RLA
Red Herring wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2001 00:43:57 -0000, “torresD” <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >What is it with Israel?
> >First they place a chokehold on Palestinian
> >areas, and then fire on the people trying to
> >get out.
>
> Nonsense. There is no chokehold on Pallie-occupied areas of the Eretz
> Yisrael. Anyone who wants to get in or out of the areas can do so by going
> through an IDF checkpoint. This only presents a problem for terrorists and
> their supporters, not ordinary Pallies.
> >
> >What is the difference between
> >the Gaza Strip, West Bank & Warsaw Ghetto?
>
> Are you trying to say that the nazis fired tear gas and rubber-coated
> bullets at the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants?
>
> Why do all Pallie advocates inevitably reveal themselves as Holocaust
> revisionists?
>
> >
> >Israeli’s this is not Worthy of YOU!!
> >
> >Israeli Troops Fire at Palestinians
> >Calling those that strongly disagree with
> >the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people,
> >Anti-Semitie is dodging the issue.
>
> Can one be a Holocaust revisionist without being an anti-semite?
>
> >By NASSER SHIYOUKHI, Associated Press Writer
> >RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) –
> >
> >Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rubber-coated
> >bullets Monday at hundreds of Palestinians using
> >a bulldozer to try to break through an Israeli army
> >blockade, part of a new chokehold on Ramallah.
>
> Se Vis Pacem Para Bellum
From [email protected] Tue Mar 13 20:05:09 EST 2001
Article: 259644 of soc.culture.canada
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<Xyir6.28$%[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
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And Mr. McVay is spamming the NG with this stuff.
Giwer beats him every time on facts so he is reduced
to namecalling. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were
original namecalling, but No! He has to put up the same
tired stuff every time. He is getting to be as bad as
Matthew Ackerman.
RLA
“Kenneth McVay, OBC” wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Matt Giwer <[email protected]> wrote:
> > No Israeli is worth a chimp’s fingernail. Remember that.
>
> Mr. Giwer is, as far as I can determine, a troller whose only
> interest is in causing fights. While he can sound superficially
> plausible, he has lied** about what has been said in exchanges (while
> accusing others of lying), refused to document claims, pretended not
> to see posts which contain documented refutation of his claims (even
> when they have been emailed to him), engaged in actual libel*, and
> generally conducted himself with such complete lack of intellectual
> and factual integrity that there seems to be no point in taking
> the time to read and respond. For detailed and documented
> evidence of this, please refer to
> https://nizkor.org/hweb/people/g/giwer-matt/
>
> If you do not enjoy the luxury of a news filter, simply delete Mr.
> Giwer’s articles unread. With a few moments’ practice, they are easy
> to identify.
>
> Mr. Giwer’s handlers report that he has responded well to training, and
> now reacts in the prescribed manner, changing his userid each time the
> bell is sounded.
>
> Followups to Giwer trolls should be redirected to Mr. Giwer’s special
> newsgroup, alt.bonehead.matt-giwer, where they will be appropriately
> ignored (the group has no users – it’s just a convenient toilet for
> Matt’s vomitus). If your site does not carry alt.bonehead.matt-giwer,
> redirect non-Holocaust articles to alt.politics.white-power,
> an equally vapid dumping ground for Giwerundian babblings.
>
> Crawler bait: [email protected] Matthias Giwer
> Lincoln James <[email protected]> Matthias Giwer
> Kainee <[email protected]> Matt Giwer
> Rabbi Moshe Dreckschreiber
> Rabbi Dr. Gedalia Pashkvilkemacher
>
> —
>
> “Denial of Science & The Science of Denial”
> The Techniques of Holocaust Denial
> https://nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial
From [email protected] Tue Mar 13 20:05:09 EST 2001
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Subject: Re: Israel’s attack on Christianity
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
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Welll, I didn’t think about that before I put the sucker up.
I think you’re right.
RLA
William Black wrote:
> Roger Alexander <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]…
> > Israel’s attack on Christianity
> >
> > Hassan Tahsin, guest contributor
> >
> > June 13, 1997, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
> >
> > This article appeared in the Saudi Gazette, for which the author is a
> > senior
> > columnist
>
> Now there’s a newspaper that’s not afraid to speak the truth, as long as
> the degenerates ruling Saudi Arabia tell them what the truth is…
>
> Don’t they execute Christian missionaries in Saudi anyway?
>
> —
> William Black
> ——————
> On time, on budget, or works;
> Pick any two from three
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:40 EST 2001
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
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Subject: Re: Birzeit University and Community March for an End to Collective
Punishment
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
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[email protected] wrote:
> In talk.politics.mideast David Lee Makowsky <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Why is Israel so stupid and acting so suicidal by keeping Bir Zeit
> > University open and also allowing such marches?
>
> Cuz they are a pluralistic liberal democracy.
>
> > [email protected]
Really? Where is the pluralism? In the “Jewish state”?
Give me a break.
The reason why Israel doesn’t just go into area “A”
so-called and break heads is manifold, but for openers,
there is international opinion, even in its presently
more or less emasculated state (by the US),
and there is the problem of losing the odd soldier.
Yes I know they are all odd…
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:41 EST 2001
Article: 259649 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Sharon’s National Unity Government: Shoring Up the “Iron Wall” by Jeff
Halper
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Sharon’s National Unity Government: Shoring Up the “Iron Wall”
MERIP Press Information Note 50
by Jeff Halper
March 13, 2001
(Jeff Halper is coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions, editor of News From Within and professor of anthropology at
Ben-Gurion University.)
Ariel Sharon’s governing coalition, embracing both Shimon Peres and
hardline
rejectionists, exposes the contradictions in the conventional left-right
distinctions in Israeli politics. Over seven years after the Oslo
accords,
it is clear that Israeli leaders never envisioned a truly viable and
sovereign Palestinian state, only a “peace” that granted Palestinians a
limited independence within overall Israeli control. The three million
Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories constitute the major
obstacle preventing Israel from the objective of continued control,
since
Israel can neither incorporate them as citizens nor rule them
indefinitely
under an increasingly repressive apartheid regime. The Oslo process,
capped
by the July 2000 Camp David summit and the Taba meetings in January,
offered
a form of occupation-by-consent. But when the occupation policies of
settlement, closure and military control did not break Palestinian
resistance and led instead to the second intifada, the broad moderate
left-center-right “consensus” in Israeli politics decided to reassert
more
direct authority.
Sharon’s “national unity” government represents a closing of ranks
around
the rock-bottom refusal of Zionism and Israel to entertain the
possibility
of truly sharing this land with the Palestinians — either in one state
or
in two. The role of the Sharon government is to generate such despair
among
the Palestinians that they will sue for surrender. It will strive to
dash
Palestinian hopes for a viable, sovereign state, to defeat the
Palestinians
once and for all. In this respect, “national unity” draws upon important
historical precedent.
DOCTRINE OF DESPAIR
In a famous article entitled “The Iron Wall,” published in 1923, Ze’ev
Jabotinsky articulated a cardinal principle of the Zionist enterprise:
Zionism should endeavor to bring about a Jewish state in the whole land
of
Israel, regardless of the Arab response. Jabotinsky realized that
Palestinians were a national group with national aspirations, but was
willing to grant them only a kind of autonomy within a Jewish state
covering
the entire territory. He knew full well that this could not be
accomplished
without resistance. “Every indigenous people,” Jabotinsky wrote, “will
resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves
of
the danger of foreign settlement. This is how the Arabs will behave and
go
on behaving so long as they possess a gleam of hope that they can
prevent
‘Palestine’ from becoming the Land of Israel.”
For Jabotinsky, the trick was to extinguish that “gleam of hope.”
According
to his doctrine of the “iron wall,” the Palestinians will agree to
limited
civil and national rights only after their resistance is broken. “The
sole
way to an agreement,” wrote Jabotinsky, “is through the iron wall, that
is
to say, the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be
influenced by Arab pressure…A voluntary agreement is unattainable…We
must either suspend our settlement efforts or continue them without
paying
attention to the mood of the natives. Settlement can thus develop under
the
protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population,
behind
an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down.”
Though Jabotinsky is often dubbed an extremist figure, historian Avi
Shlaim
contends that his “iron wall” doctrine became central to Israel’s
approach
to the Palestinians. Addressing the Jewish Agency Executive after the
outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936, David Ben-Gurion, first prime
minister
of the state of Israel and grandfather of the modern Labor Party, said:
“A
comprehensive agreement is undoubtedly out of the question now. For only
after total despair on the part of the Arabs, despair that will come not
only from the failure of the disturbances and the attempt at rebellion,
but
also as a consequence of our growth in the country, may the Arabs
possibly
acquiesce to a Jewish Eretz Israel.” Ben-Gurion not only agreed with
Jabotinsky, but argued that peace was only desirable if it advanced the
Zionist agenda: “It is not in order to establish peace in the country
that
we need an agreement…peace for us is a means. The end is the complete
and
full realization of Zionism. Only for that do we need an agreement.”
THE IRON WALL COALITION
Applied to the current context, Shlaim’s historical work suggests that
adherence to the iron wall approach might be a better way to categorize
political figures than support for or opposition to the Oslo accords.
Shlaim’s analysis lumps what we might call the “Ben-Gurion” Laborites —
those Labor Party stalwarts, including Shimon Peres, who supported
participation in the Sharon government — together with Likud, the
direct
descendant of Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin’s Revisionists. What unites
them
is their common acceptance of the “iron wall” approach to the Arab world
—
and to Palestinians in particular. On the other side of the iron wall
are
the moderate “doves” of both Labor and Meretz, the more radical Jewish
left
and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Yitzhak Rabin and Peres have been
characterized in Israel as “yonetz,” an ambivalent and confused mixture
of
“dove” and “hawk.”
The broad middle-right coalition encompasses both Likud and Peres and
mainstream Labor, the latter epitomized by Defense Minister Binyamin Ben
Eliezer, another Laborite army general. “National unity” includes other
sectors of Israeli society as well: the Sephardi Shas party, other
orthodox
parties, the Russian immigrant parties and the far right, like Rehavam
Ze’evi’s Moledet, which advocates “transferring” Palestinians out of the
Occupied Territories. Sharon’s government can muster 73 votes out of the
Knesset’s 120 — more if we include some right-wing factions that did
not
join for various reasons.
The Sharon-Peres-Ben Eliezer bloc believes it is possible to build
Jabotinsky’s “iron wall.” Their reading of the political map leads them,
as
it did in 1993, to the conclusion that the Palestinians are defeated.
Israel
enjoys the almost unanimous support of the US Congress and media, as
well as
the Bush administration. US backing renders irrelevant the periodic
protests
of other international parties, including the UN and the European Union.
Dependency on the US and Europe on the part of Arab and Muslim
countries, as
well as considerable common interests with Israel, effectively nullify
them
as well. Israel exists in an absolutely protected bubble. The “national
unity” coalition considers that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has lost
the
confidence of the people and is on the verge of collapse. As in 1993,
the PA
will only be useful if it finally “settles” with Israel. Sharon’s idea
of
“settling” does not include 88-96 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza
and
pockets of East Jerusalem — the ideas bandied about by Barak and
Clinton —
but rather the 42 percent of the West Bank currently classified as Areas
A
and B, the 60 percent of Gaza containing large Palestinian population
centers and none of East Jerusalem. So far the Palestinian street is the
only effective force for frustrating the “iron wall” approach — and it
is
being ruthlessly suppressed.
A FUTURE OF “NATIONAL UNITY”
Since Israeli control of the Occupied Territories is virtually the only
issue upon which “national unity” can be based, it is not surprising
that
Sharon’s “national unity” government has no political program other than
to
engineer the surrender of the Palestinians. As Doron Rosenblum, an
Israeli
commentator, put it: “We have never had a government for more
pessimistic
reasons than this one: its agenda is completely hidden and unknown…It
is
making no promises other than to ‘bring back security’.”
But the Sharon government will not be long-lived. The cabinet is
unwieldy,
consisting of eight parties and 26 ministers, and financial and other
domestic issues could cause its collapse in the months ahead. At any
rate,
general elections must be held by November 2003. With Sharon’s election,
the
Knesset also abolished direct election of the prime minister. Israel
will
revert to the old system, whereby voters vote only for party lists, and
the
leader of the largest vote-getting party then forms the government. This
arrangement will restore the parliamentary dominance of two or three
large
party blocs (Labor, Likud and perhaps Shas), instead of the extreme
fragmentation of the the past two Knessets that undermined the stability
of
the Netanyahu and Barak governments. The Labor-left bloc has far fewer
potential partners than the Likud-Shas bloc, and will find it difficult
to
form a government in future elections. But since Labor garners more
votes
than Likud, both Labor and Sharon see the abolition of direct election
as a
way of blocking Netanyahu’s return to power.
Two conclusions may be drawn from all this. First, the vast majority of
parties in the Knesset are committed to the “iron wall” approach, making
further repression of the Palestinians more likely. Last week, the
Israel
Defense Forces isolated Ramallah, Birzeit University and some 33
villages,
digging deep trenches and stationing tanks in the roads, and the
Jerusalem
municipality has announced it will begin demolishing dozens more
Palestinian
homes. Second, even if the Labor Party had a plan beyond the “iron
wall,” it
probably could not form a government that could transcend that policy in
practice. We are likely to see national unity governments in Israel —
formal or de facto — for some time to come. A just and lasting peace
will
not emerge from within Israel; only international pressure can save the
Palestinians from being crushed by the iron wall.
(When quoting from this PIN, please cite MERIP Press Information Note
50,
“Sharon’s National Unity Government: Shoring Up the ‘Iron Wall,'” by
Jeff
Halper, March 13, 2001. He can be reached at [email protected])
—–
For analysis of the factors contributing to Sharon’s election, see:
MERIP Press Information Note 46: Israel Elects Sharon: Contradictions of
a
Creeping Apartheid:
http://www.merip.org/pins/pin46.html
MERIP Press Information Note 41: Beyond the Bibi Bill: Israel’s
Electoral
System and the Intifada:
http://www.merip.org/pins/pin41.html
For analysis of the occupation policies behind the current uprising, see
Jeff Halper’s “The 94 Percent Solution: A Matrix of Control,” in Middle
East
Report 216 (Fall 2000). The article is accessible online at:
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer216/216_halper.html
For more historical analysis, see Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and
the
Arab World (W.W. Norton, 1999).
_______________________________________________________________
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:41 EST 2001
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Subject: Sharon: A Practical Manual : Uri Avnery:
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Uri Avnery:
Sharon: A Practical Manual
People in Israel and abroad, who believe that I am somewhat of an
expert on Sharon, have asked me how to deal with him. Here are some
practical suggestions:
1. Don’t underrate him. That is the first rule. Over the course
of
time, many have made that mistake and paid for it dearly. That is what
happened, recently, to the two twin wizards, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud
Barak. Sharon does not belong in the same league as Haim Ramon and he is
not
a Barak look-alike. He belongs in another league altogether.
2. He will not be a primus inter pares. In theory, cabinet
ministers
are equal, the Prime Minister being only the first among them. In the UK
and
other countries, the chief of the government is indeed called so: Prime
Minister or First Minister. This principle was undermined in Israel,
when
the law for the direct election of the Prime Minister was enacted. Some
believe that the wheel can be turned back by the annulment of that law.
All
this does not concern Sharon. Even if he were merely the Minister for
Tourism, he would have been the dominant figure in the government,
because
of his intrinsic weight. For example, he never gives up on a matter that
is
important to him. When the government rejects his proposal, he puts it
on
the agenda again and again, in one form or another, until the
composition of
the meeting is right and his proposal is accepted. Now, as a Prime
Minister
elected directly by a crushing majority, his standing will be even
higher.
The composition of the government itself is not really important – it
will
approve everything he wants.
3. Don’t pay attention to what he says, pay attention only to what
he
does. Sharon does not tell the truth, nor does he lie. As Voltaire said,
he
uses words only to hide his thoughts. When he prepares for war, he
speaks of
peace. The words serve to make the listener relax, put him to sleep, get
him
confused, mislead him, deceive him, divert his attention. According to
the
biblical injunction: “And with ruses make war.” (So says the Hebrew
original.) Ben-Gurion wrote about him: “If he would get rid of his
faults,
such as not telling the truth…he would be an exemplary military leader.”
At
another time Ben-Gurion asked him if he had weaned himself from “telling
untruths”. Many people believe that he did not tell Menachem Begin the
truth, either. All this was to obtain their approval for operations he
wanted to undertake.
4. How will he operate? The center of gravity will shift from the
television studios to “Sycamores Farm”, his private estate. This is, for
the
time being, the end of the era when television displaced the Knesset and
the
parties as the sole political arena. Most work will be done in private
conversations between Sharon and his assistants and by the transmission
of
his orders.
5. What is his real world-view? Sharon believes in the classical
Jewish-Zionist premises. His world is divided between Jews and Goyim
(non-Jews), all Goyim being potential enemies. Jews are allowed to use
all
possible means available, otherwise the Goyim will destroy them.
Universal
values are nonsense. It’s us against all of them, all of them against
us. As
a popular Israeli song goes: “All the world is against us, but we don’t
give
a damn.” Or, to quote the Bible: “The people shall dwell alone” (Numbers
23,9).
6. What is his Zionist outlook? Sharon continues the classical line
of
Ben-Gurion, i.e. an ethnic Jewish state without fixed borders, that uses
every opportunity to expand and settle. This outlook was expressed
brilliantly by Moshe Dayan in a famous funeral speech after a friend was
killed by Arabs: “Who are we that we should argue against their (the
Arabs’)
hatred? …Before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and the
villages in which they and their forefathers have lived…We are a
generation
of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon we cannot plant
a
tree and build a house. Let us not shrink back when we see the hatred
fermenting an filling the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, who
dwell
all around us. Let us not avert our eyes, so that our hand shall not
slip.
This is the destiny of our generation, the choice of our life: to be
prepared and armed, strong and tough, otherwise the sword will slip from
our
fist and our life will be snuffed out.” And, lest it be understood that
this
is the destiny of his generation only, Dayan added in another speech, at
a
meeting of young people on the Golan: “Let no Jew say: this is the end
of
the job. Let no man say: we are approaching the end of the way. No, on
no
account…This is a process that has gone on for a hundred years. We have
to
contribute our part, as much as possible, but not to say: here we are,
we
have finished.”
7. Can he make peace? The world always longs for the man of the
Right
who will make peace. That makes it easy, because the man of the Right
will
bring his camp with him, while the support of the Left is assured. (For
the
same reason, it is easier for a government of the Left to make war or
break
strikes.) The example of Charles de Gaulle causes people to think that a
Rightist general is the ideal person to make peace. But Sharon is no de
Gaulle. His mental world is quite different. However, he is quite
capable of
making a temporary agreement or a partial settlement, if that gives him
an
advantage in pursuing the war.
8. What is his principal aim? Since his aim is to expand the
homogenous
Jewish State and settle on the land, the enemy is the Palestinian
people.
Sharon will use every means – brute force, ruses, creating divisions –
to
break their resistance.
9. So what will he do? Nobody but he knows. He always has grand
designs, which he is ready to put into effect when circumstances allow.
They
are always based on a simplistic perception, and therefore liable to
flounder on the rock of reality. It is probable that he has not given up
his
plan of inviting the Palestinians to topple the King of Jordan and
establish
“Palestine” over there. If there were no settlements on the Golan
Heights,
he could offer the Syrians a separate peace, in order to outflank the
Palestinians. He is toying with the idea of a grand alliance with
Russia,
especially if the Americans try to put pressure on him. Against the
Americans he will use all possible ruses, so as to prevent them from
sabotaging his plans.
10. Can his coalition partners divert him from his course? That is
a
ridiculous idea. The Labor party is joining him in a state of
bankruptcy, he
has a deep contempt for Shimon Peres. Between Sharon and Ze’evi there is
no
difference, save one: Sharon knows that the eviction of multitudes of
Arabs
is possible only in special circumstances, and until then it is better
to
keep quiet. He believes that Ze’evi’s frequent declarations about the
“transfer” of Arabs are a big mistake.
11. Maybe he will change? A person like Sharon does not change.
When it
serves his aims, he can pretend to have changed, as he did in the last
election campaign, when he depicted himself as the good old grand-father
who
loves children and sheep. His appearance as a heavy-set farmer aids him
in
this. But this is a ruse like all the others.
_________________________________________________________________
No Return = No Peace March and Rally, New York City, 7 April 2001,
_________________________________________________________________
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:41 EST 2001
Article: 259655 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Israel tries to assassinate Marwan Barghouthi, Fatah leader
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>From Jerusalem Post, 3/13/01 – jpost.com
(09:05) Report: Liquidation attempt on Fatah head
Palestinians are reporting that Israel failed in an
assassination attempt on Fatah leader Marwan
Barghouti yesterday.
A bullet fired from a weapon equipped with a silencer
hit a man standing next to the West Bank Fatah leader
during the course of a demonstration march,
Palestinians sources said.
The march was held on the outskirts of Ramallah.
The man died of his wound, according to a report on
Army Radio this morning.
The IDF Spokesman said in response that no live
ammunition was fired in the Ramallah vicinity yesterday
they had no knowledge of the incident.
Barghouti was not seen in areas watched by the IDF,
according to the spokesman,
The Fatah leadership is threatening to escalate the
intifada, saying any and all means were valid in attacks
against Israeli residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza
Strip.
The Fatah is calling for a Ôday of rageŐ tomorrow.
The IDF has begun relaxing the blockade imposed on
4 Palestinian cities but maintained a tight grip on
Ramallah and the surrounding area after capturing three
members of a terror cell who had planned a car bomb
attack inside Israel.
To read more about the ongoing developments in the
territories, click here, and here.
(Margot Dudkevitch contributed to this report)
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:42 EST 2001
Article: 259657 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: United Methodist News Service : A Nation Under Siege
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The United Methodist Church has made strong statements against Israeli
occupation. One of their articles appeared today in an
inter-denominational
news service that a lot of conservative and fundamentalist churches
receive!
It concludes: “The closure of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is a
crime
that must be stopped.”!!
(poster’s remark, RLA)
C U R R E N T F E A T U R E S T O R Y
by the Editors of ReligionToday
March 13, 2001
A Nation Under Siege
A special Religion Today commentary from the United Methodist News
Service.
Ten Palestinian men were standing by the wall at the
Israeli checkpoint north of Bethlehem. I couldn’t see
their faces because the Israeli soldiers made them stand
facing the wall with their arms above their heads. The
fault of these men, who ranged in age from 25 to 35, was
that they had sneaked out of Bethlehem to go to Jerusalem
five miles away to find a day’s work. However, they were
caught before they could sneak back to their homes in
Bethlehem.
When my turn at the checkpoint came, I showed my U.S.
passport. The soldier smiled at me and wished me a nice
day. I passed through the checkpoint without humiliation,
but that Sunday evening I kept wondering what happened to
the 10 Palestinian men. How long did they have to stand
out in the street with their arms over their heads on
this cold February night?
They were definitely luckier than the two Palestinian
construction workers who were killed by settlers on their
way to work in an Israeli settlement near Bethlehem, and
perhaps more fortunate than those caught by Israeli
soldiers trying to sneak in through the fields and
consequently brutally beaten up. Some, instead of getting
home that evening, had to stay that night in a hospital
treating their wounds.
These heartbreaking scenes could be witnessed on the
outskirts of every Palestinian city and village. All major
Palestinian cities and towns have been under a stricter
siege for the last four months, since the latest wave of
violence began. Approximately 3 million people are trapped
in their cities and villages. They are not allowed to
travel to Israel, and frequently they are not allowed to
travel to other Palestinian cities. In some cases, such as
in Hebron and in Beit Jala, Palestinians cannot even
travel by car from one neighborhood to another within the
same city.
One must ask the question: Is the siege a security
measure or is it a crime against a whole population?
Israelis claim that the closures are necessary to stop
Palestinian terrorism. In reality, the closures increase
hate, bitterness and mistrust, which lead to increased
acts of violence and revenge that snuff out the lives of
many innocent Israelis and Palestinians.
Over and over again, it has been proven that the siege
is a collective punishment imposed largely upon a
Palestinian population that is not engaged in acts of
revenge and violence against Israelis. The few
Palestinians who plan violence against Israel know how to
avoid checkpoints and army camps, and they enter the
heart of Israeli cities with unusual skill and ease.
Closures do not stop terrorists; they only stop
hard-working Palestinians from getting to their jobs and
fields.
The siege is having a devastating effect on every
aspect of Palestinian life. Take, for example, what is
happening in the city of Hebron. Because of the presence
of 100 Jewish families there, all 40,000 Palestinian
inhabitants of the city are under strict curfew. This
means that no Palestinian vehicle can go in or out of the
city during the curfew, not even ambulances that may need
to transport critically ill or severely injured
Palestinians.
A case in point is Sawsan Ahmad Jaber, a Palestinian
woman who was in a coma. Her mother could not find an
ambulance to take her to the hospital, so Jaber was
placed in a garbage truck and driven over rough roads for
hours before reaching the hospital. In normal
circumstances, the drive to the hospital would have taken
five minutes. Jaber received the needed treatment, but
another citizen of Hebron was not as fortunate. Ahmed Abd
Alkhader Sbitani, who found an ambulance to take him to
the hospital, died because Israeli soldiers refused to let
the vehicle pass through the checkpoint.
The closures are slowly strangling all aspects of
Palestinian life: economic, social, educational and even
religious.
As pastor of a church in Jerusalem, I can see how the
closures stand in the way of freedom of religion.
Palestinian Christians who wish to worship in Jerusalem
cannot cross Israeli checkpoints to get to their churches.
The Arabic Sunday night service at our church died out
because Palestinian Christians couldn’t come from
Bethlehem or Ramallah to attend it. Only a small fraction
of Muslims from the occupied territories who attempt to
worship at Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem make it through
Israeli checkpoints. In protest, many conduct worship
services near the checkpoints.
A serious casualty of the siege is the education of
Palestinians on all levels and especially that of
schoolchildren. Kawthar Salam, a reporter from Hebron,
reports: “As of today, 41 schools are closed; three of
these schools have been turned into military bases.
Israeli soldiers use the schools to fire live ammunition,
plastic bullets and tear-gas canisters at Palestinian
stone throwers. This means that 14,000 Palestinian
students are denied an education. Now they stay in homes
that are much like prison cells. These children are being
abused. But they are getting a different kind of
education; the Israelis are teaching them hate and
violence. This is not good for our children, and it is
not good for the future of our coexistence in this land.”
At Bethlehem Bible College, where I serve as dean of
students, we often suspend or cancel evening classes
because teachers and students cannot make it through the
checkpoints.
The true purpose of the closure is to break the will of
the Palestinian people and to bring their leadership to
its knees. In this way, the Israelis aim to force the
Palestinians to make major concessions in ongoing peace
negotiations. A whole nation is severely punished and
bruised in order to accommodate the expansionistic
passions of another nation.
The closure of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is a
crime that must be stopped. Peace and reconciliation
between Israelis and Palestinians cannot be realized as
long as one side of the divide functions as the jailer of
the other side. Men and women who yearn for peace and
justice in this land must act to stop the closure of the
Palestinian territories and pray for an end to this evil
occupation.
A United Methodist News Service Commentary By the Rev.
Alex Awad. Rev. Awad and his wife, Brenda, are
missionaries with the United Methodist Board of Global
Ministries, serving at Bethlehem Bible College and East
Jerusalem Baptist Church. After six years of repeated
applications to the Israeli government, Awad, a
Palestinian American, received an official visa for his
missionary work in 1995. Commentaries provided by United
Methodist News Service do not necessarily represent the
opinions or policies of UMNS or the United Methodist
Church. http://umns.umc.org
To view this story on-line, go to:
http://news.crosswalk.com/religion/item/0,1875,332478,00.htm
———–
Get all the latest news from our redesigned News Channel:
< http://news.crosswalk.com >.
———–
News from ReligionToday is Copyrighted by Crosswalk.com.
Content may be reproduced provided proper credit is
given to religiontoday.crosswalk.com. Please go to
http://www.crosswalk.com/info/copyright to be sure you
meet all legal requirements.
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:42 EST 2001
Article: 259660 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Re: Ramallah = Warsaw Ghetto
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<Xyir6.28$%[email protected]> <[email protected]> <3sBr6.118$%[email protected]>
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I am not a redneck although my neck is red, and I do live in the South.
Weather is fine here, today was sunny and about 70. You demonstrate
the most unbridled arrogance I have seen lately. Scary actually.
RLA
[email protected] wrote:
> In talk.politics.mideast Roger Alexander <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Well, that’s mighty God damned White of you
> > Massa Medved. Mighty White.
> > Might I just remind you that these are Palestinians
> > in Palestine? That you have no right to be there and further no
> > right whatever to tell them what they can and cannot do
> > Your arrogance is beyond belief.
>
> The arrogance that is beyond belief is of you, a southern US redneck,
> who has never in his life met an Israeli or a Palestinian, has only
> seen the area in pictures, and relies for his “information” solely on
> biased sources, thinking that you understand the situation in the area
> at all. Crawl back under that rock, you anti-semitic slime.
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:42 EST 2001
Article: 259680 of soc.culture.canada
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
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Subject: Israeli army accused of using nail bombs
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http://www.iol.co.za/html/frame_news.php?click_id=79&art_id=qw984460981635B253
Israeli army accused of using nail bombs
The Independent | March 13, 2001
Gaza City – The Palestinian security chief for the Gaza Strip,
Abdelrazek al-Majaida, accused the Israeli army on Monday of
using new nail bombs “which cut human flesh to shreds”.
“After autopsies were carried out on Palestinians killed by the
Israeli army, it was revealed (the army) used bombs filled with
steel nails which easily pierce human flesh and tear it to shreds
on the way out,” General Maijada said in a statement.
An Israeli military spokesperson said that the army has “adapted
its weapons to existing threats and to the security situation in the
field,” but did not confirm the accusations.
Majaida said that “Ziad Ayyad, who was killed by the Israeli
army Saturday at the Karni crossing point, and Mustafa
al-Ramlawi, killed on March 2 also in the Gaza Strip, were the
victims of such bombs”.
On Monday, the number of people killed since the intifada, or
Palestinian uprising, erupted on September 28 rose to 436: 357
Palestinians, one German, 13 Israeli Arabs and 65 other Israelis.
– Sapa-AFP <end>
=================================
I suppose the stalwart defenders of Israel’s defensive tactics will
tell us that this is a necessary defensive tactic.
Or will they, as usual when some new nausea appears,
just keep quiet? We’ll see.
Can anyone doubt:
ISRAEL IS A HORRIBLE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE
ARE HORRIBLE TOO!
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:43 EST 2001
Article: 259681 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Re: Ramallah = Warsaw Ghetto
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<Xyir6.28$%[email protected]> <[email protected]> <3sBr6.118$%[email protected]>
<[email protected]> <ysCr6.126$%[email protected]>
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[email protected] wrote:
> In talk.politics.mideast Roger Alexander <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I am not a redneck although my neck is red, and I do live in the South.
> > Weather is fine here, today was sunny and about 70. You demonstrate
> > the most unbridled arrogance I have seen lately. Scary actually.
>
> Yes, slimy, talk about the weather. Skip the part of not having
> ever talked to an Israeli or a Palestinian. Don’t mention the fact
> that you have never visited even close to the area in question.
> You’re not even good as an anti-semite – too transparent.
I am not rich, so visiting Palestine is out of the question. But so far
as knowing what is going on, I think I do. Had you any question
about my facts, you would voice them. I note that you tried for
a long time to maintain that the US only gives Israel $3 billion a year,
when no informed person agrees with that figure, and the most
conservative say $5 or $6 billion.
Your Zionist arrogance came through when you told the Palestinians
through this NG that they could walk out of Ramallah, but not
to try to get rid of the trenches. Nauseous.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:43 EST 2001
Article: 259683 of soc.culture.canada
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
From: Roger Alexander <[email protected]>
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Subject: Re: Ramallah = Warsaw Ghetto
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“Kenneth McVay, OBC” wrote:
> In article <3sBr6.118$%[email protected]>, <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >The arrogance that is beyond belief is of you, a southern US redneck,
> >who has never in his life met an Israeli or a Palestinian, has only
> >seen the area in pictures, and relies for his “information” solely on
> >biased sources, thinking that you understand the situation in the area
> >at all. Crawl back under that rock, you anti-semitic slime.
>
> Mr. Alexander doesn’t like Jews. The strife in the Middle East has
> provided him with a handy platform from which to throw his spittle.
>
The low tone of this remark is like much of what Mr. McVay does,
personal attack coupled with unfounded accusation. I like people
for who they are not what group they belong to. That is true for
Catholics, Jews and Muslims. I have practiced with Catholics and
Muslims. I opposed the British violence against the Catholics
of northern Ireland, and pointed out that they would leave when
the cost of maintaining the terrible discrimination equalled the
profit to be made from the continuation. My people, some of them
are English, none are Irish. So I hope I won’t be taken as prejudiced
against the British. I opposed the other apartheid in South Africa,
where some of the Boers are descended from FRench Hugenot,
as are some of my people on both sides. I hope no one will think
I am prejudiced against the French Hugenot.
The situation in Palestine today is extraordinarily awful. Yet Mr.
McVay has never raised his voice against the killing, the destruction
of homes, orchards, and crops, the virtual imprisonment of the
Palestinian people in their towns, nor any of the other nausea
which Israel is committing on a continuous basis. I suspect he cannot,
his livelihood depending on his support for the Holocaust Industry,
which in turn provides support for Israel.
RLA
>
> He defends and justifies violence by Arabs, and condemns Israeli
> violence. It seems clear that it is not the violence Mr. Alexander
> does not like, it is the Jews. His approach to a sad and complex
> situation is entirely one-sided…
>
> Just another two-bit bigot.
>
> —
> Breakthrough System Delivers Daily Cash! Click Here To Learn More
> http://www.ngtools.com/fmain.php?D=kmcvay&A=sig
> ..and receive a FREE report:
> “How To Make A Comfortable Living On The Internet.”
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:43 EST 2001
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Subject: Israel accused of polluting Gaza
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Israel accused of polluting Gaza
Concerns that groundwater could be contaminated
By Frank Gardner in Gaza
The Palestinian environment minister, Dr Yousif
Abu-Safiya, has accused Israel of pumping waste water
and sewage into Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip.
The minister said on Tuesday that Israel had pumped half a
million cubic meters of waste water into a riverbed across
its border over the last two weeks.
After nearly six months of
border closures and
economic despair,
Palestinians living in the
Gaza Strip thought life could
not get any worse – but it
has.
According Dr Yousif
Abu-Safiya, Israel is
pumping 30,000 cubic meters
a day of waste water into
Gaza Valley.
This narrow dried up
riverbed runs from Israel
across the Gaza Strip and into the Mediterranean.
Palestinian officials fear that the next time it rains,
the water
will wash whatever is in the valley out into the sea.
Harmful chemicals
Dr Abu-Safiya says this would pollute the beaches and
drive the fish further out to sea where Palestinian
fisherman are unable to follow them because of Israel’s
blockade of the coast.
But he said the biggest hazard was from harmful chemicals
getting into the Gaza Strip’s natural groundwater.
He said the underground water was the main water source
for 1.25 million Palestinians and if it became polluted,
it
would be unfit for either human or agricultural use.
The minister said this alleged pollution by Israel,
violated
international agreements and could even threaten the
environment of the Mediterranean.
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:44 EST 2001
Article: 259687 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Palestinians Seek U.N. Security
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MARCH 13, 01:39 EST
Palestinians Seek U.N. Security
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Palestinians sought an immediate Security
Council meeting in a fresh attempt to win approval for establishing a
U.N. force to protect Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian U.N. envoy said in a letter Monday that Israel’s
“bloody military campaign” has gotten worse since December, when the
council defeated a resolution to authorize a U.N. observer force after
an intense U.S. campaign against it.
“The Palestinian people under Israeli occupation are now suffocated and
besieged,” Nasser al-Kidwa said, citing new Israeli restrictions on the
movement of people and goods, including roadblocks, trenches and the
bulldozing of paved roads.
He urged the Security Council “to consider the increasingly dangerous
situation on the ground … with the aim of taking the necessary
measures, including the establishment of a United Nations observer
force.”
Israel opposes a U.N. force, arguing instead for continued direct
negotiations between the two sides to end the fighting that has killed
425 people since Sept. 28, including 349 Palestinians, 57 Israeli Jews
and 19 others.
Israel’s mission to the United Nations said Monday the Palestinians had
started the violence and that to now ask for international intervention
was cynical and unacceptable.
Earlier Monday, Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo asked the
Security Council to review Israel’s tightening blockade of Palestinian
territories and create an international force to protect the
Palestinians.
Bangladesh’s U.N. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury presented al-Kidwa’s
letter to the council Monday afternoon on behalf of the Non-Aligned
Movement of developing countries, which spearheaded the Palestinian’s
unsuccessful campaign three months ago for a U.N. force.
“The council listened very attentively, but there was no decision
taken,” Ukraine’s deputy ambassador Valeri Kuchynski said.
The United States mounted a campaign to block the original Palestinian
proposal because Israel objected to it.
Despite a personal appeal from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the
Palestinians failed to get the necessary nine “yes” votes for a U.N.
force in the 15-member council on Dec. 18.
Since then, the makeup of the Security Council has changed, with five
new non-permanent members.
China’s deputy U.N. ambassador Shen Guofang, whose country backs the
Palestinians, said after Monday’s council meeting that “the situation
is really … deteriorating, and we hope that the council would discuss
the issue … and hopefully we can take some measures.”
===========================================
Let us all hope that the Security Council puts a stop to the Israeli
strangulation
of the Palestinians. Their plight is terrible.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:44 EST 2001
Article: 259688 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Nation Under Siege
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The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and
Democracy (MIFTAH)
Nation Under Siege
Ariel Sharon’s “100-day plan,” during which a total Israeli military
siege is imposed across the Palestinian territories, is nothing short of
collective imprisonment; the crime: being a Palestinian.
Drafted by Lt. General Shaul Mofaz, and approved by Israel’s newly
elected unity government, the plan (implemented on Sunday, March 12th,
2001) is threefold. First, it aims to dichotomize the Palestinian
territories into 60 units, each ‘guarded’ by Israeli army posts and
surrounded by trenches, leaving thousands of Palestinian towns and
villages in complete isolation from each other, and, indeed, from the
rest of the world. Second, the residents of the besieged towns and
villages will be ‘monitored’, and their behavior evaluated against
Israel’s “security requirements.” And third, should there be any
indication of a “threatening activity,” (as defined by Israel itself)
Israeli forces reserve the “right” to conduct missions inside Areas A
(under full Palestinian control). Israel’s multiple siege policy is
posing serious and irreparable disruptions to the economic, political,
and social life of the Palestinians. 274 schools have been completely
shut off, Palestinian universities are not operating, hundreds of towns
and villages are suffering from serious shortages in food and medicine,
Palestinian government institutions have been paralyzed, and the daily
movement of Palestinians has been restricted to the boundaries of
isolated ‘Bantustans’. The Sharon-Mofaz strategy has pushed the limits
of Israeli oppression up to a level where an entire nation is sentenced
to a slow and painful death; rising poverty, rising unemployment,
deprivation of medical care, food and water shortages, lack of
education, and a complete strangulation of political and social life.
The Palestinian people’s aspirations for development, prosperity, and
peace have (for the time being) been reduced to a modest, yet desperate,
wish: to get out of prison.
For further information, please contact: Public Information Department
MIFTAH Tel: 00972-2-585 1842 WWW.MIFTAH.ORG
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:45 EST 2001
Article: 259756 of soc.culture.canada
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
From: Roger Alexander <[email protected]>
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Subject: Re: Nation Under Siege
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
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“E. Barry Bruyea” wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2001 20:13:44 GMT, [email protected] (David Goldman)
> wrote:
>
> >>Crawl back in your hole; at least Israel has a freely elected
> >>government and not an appointed warlord.
> >
> >What does “at least” mean?? South Africa also had a freely elected
> >Afrikaaner government. So do many other countries. Does that make them
> >good governments? Besides, elections aren’t everything. The Zionist
> >state is run by a junta of military personnel, except for Pretty Boy
> >Shimmy Peres, of course.
>
> I realize you have to think that, even if it’s a false premise,
> otherwise you couldn’t justify the propaganda.
why shouldn’t he think it. It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it true in fact
that
Israel is run by one or both of two Ashkenazi branches, and that their
policies differ only at the margin, the central theme of both
of them being the completion of the taking of Eretz Yisroel,
and the expulsion of the Palestinians? While I realize that
dichotomies are often false, don’t you think that Israel can either be
described
as a country in which the mass of people approve this mad aggression,
and they are thus responsible personally as war criminals,
or that the mass of Israelis are more or less sheep, so that the
leadership alone is responsible for the crimes, so that the
mass of Israelis are either criminals or dolts.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:45 EST 2001
Article: 259757 of soc.culture.canada
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
From: Roger Alexander <[email protected]>
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Subject: Re: Nation Under Siege
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Omri Schwarz wrote:
> Roger Alexander <[email protected]> writes:
>
> > The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and
> > Democracy (MIFTAH)
>
> Stop the violence and the siege will end.
> —
> Omri Schwarz —
You know, for a bright individual, you are without a conscience.
You know why there is violence, and you know that if the
Palestinians stop protesting, Israel will merely proceed onward with
its plans to complete the Eretz Yisroel project.
You truly are sucks.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:45 EST 2001
Article: 259758 of soc.culture.canada
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
From: Roger Alexander <[email protected]>
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Subject: Re: Nation Under Siege
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<[email protected]>
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Omri Schwarz wrote:
> Howard Aubrey <[email protected]> writes:
>
> > Omri Schwarz wrote:
> >
> > > Roger Alexander <[email protected]> writes:
> > >
> > > > The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and
> > > > Democracy (MIFTAH)
> > >
> > > Stop the violence and the siege will end.
> >
> > Withdraw to the legal borders and the violence will end.
>
> Only as part of a FINAL peace treaty.
>
> —
> Omri Schwarz —
>
More deception. You know that Israel has no intention of making peace
which will include withdrawal to the Green Line. Indeed, had Israel
ever made this offer to the Palestinians it would likely have resulted
in peace.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:46 EST 2001
Article: 259759 of soc.culture.canada
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
From: Roger Alexander <[email protected]>
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<[email protected]>
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It’s working on that, we will agree.
RLA
David Lee Makowsky wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Howard Aubrey <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> # Omri Schwarz wrote:
>
> # > Roger Alexander <[email protected]> writes:
>
> # > > The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and
> # > > Democracy (MIFTAH)
>
> # > Stop the violence and the siege will end.
>
> # Withdraw to the legal borders and the violence will end.
>
> What Howard does not realize in his attempt to bash Israel (in Giwer
> like fashion I might add) is that for Israel to get to the legal
> mandatory borders it would have to _EXPAND_!!!
> —
> There are three types of people in the world. Those that are good at
> math and those that are not.
>
> [email protected]
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:46 EST 2001
Article: 259760 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Two dead as Israeli blockade ‘eased’
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Two dead as Israeli blockade ‘eased’
Palestinians say the blockade has only eased slightly
A Palestinian youth has been shot dead in continuing
clashes with Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip.
The incident happened after Israel’s announcement that its
blockade of some Palestinian towns was being eased.
Hospital officials said Ahmed Banar, aged 19, died of
gunshot wounds.
In a separate incident, a Palestinian woman reportedly
died
on her way to hospital after Israeli troops refused to let
her
car though a road block near the West Bank town of Jenin.
Amina Nassir, a diabetes sufferer, died while making a
detour on foot to reach the hospital, her son was quoted
as
saying.
More than 400 people, mostly Palestinians, have been
killed since a Palestinian uprising began in late
September.
A Palestinian man died on Tuesday in similar
circumstances when he was stopped at an Israeli roadblock
outside Nablus after suffering a stroke.
Criticism of blockade
The Israeli army on Tuesday began easing a blockade on
some West Bank towns, but Jenin is not one of them.
The move was in response to
criticism of Israel from the
international community. A
European Union delegation
appealed directly to Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
to relax the blockade.
After meeting the Israeli
leader, EU External Affairs
Minister Chris Patten said all
the measures imposed on the
West Bank and Gaza Strip
could not be justified on
security grounds.
Washington, too, has restated its opposition to the
sealing
off of the territories, which has left many Palestinians
unable to get to their jobs and sparked warnings of an
impending humanitarian crisis.
The Israelis maintain the blockade is designed to prevent
attacks by Palestinian militants.
‘Reduced violence’
The Israeli authorities say the recent clampdown was
imposed because suspected Palestinian militants in the
West Bank town of Ramallah were planning to bomb
nearby Jerusalem.
In the past week Ramallah – a
town of more than 50,000
people and the Palestinians’
political and commercial
centre in the West Bank – as
well as Jenin and Jericho
have been sealed off.
Israel says controls have
now been relaxed on
Ramallah and four other
towns: Tulkarm, Qalqilya,
Bethlehem and Hebron.
An Israeli army spokesman said there had been a “relative
reduction in violence”, but warned: “If terrorism resumes,
we will take the necessary measures.”
Residents of the towns, however, reported only a slight
easing of restrictions on Tuesday.
The blockade has cost the Palestinian economy millions of
dollars, unemployment has soared and hundreds of
thousands of people are now reliant on food aid to
survive.
Arab foreign ministers have agreed to do more to relieve
the situation, following Palestinian criticism that only
$8m
of a promised $1bn in aid had reached those in need.
===================================
Apparently the ‘easing’ is no more than a publicity ploy.
Israel can say any damned thing and have the press
in the US slavishly follow.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:46 EST 2001
Article: 259763 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: VAMPIRE KILLERS By Israel Shamir
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VAMPIRE KILLERS
By Israel Shamir
Folk stories about vampires provide readers with various remedies to the
calamity of a ghoulish attack. A fistful of graveyard dirt is favoured,
garlic is beneficial, and the cross is most efficient. But these
remedies don’t always work. In Roman Polansky’s hilarious horror comedy,
The Fearless Vampire Killers, the hero tries to scare off a Jewish
vampire by a sign of the cross. The Jew smiles at him with a kind
understanding smile, straight from Fiddler on the Roof, and bares his
fangs. The cross does not ward him off. Polansky’s work comes to mind
as I follow the new wave of Holocaust controversies.
The ‘revisionist historians’, who are considered by their adversaries to
be ‘Holocaust deniers’, are currently meeting in Beirut to compare
their notes on Nazi genocide. The American Jewish establishment,
including the Zionist Organization of America and the Anti-Defamation
League, has demanded a ban on the conference. The ZOA is not against
revisionism as such. This organization pioneered the art of denying
history and published, at the expense of American taxpayer, a booklet
called ‘Deir Yassin: History of a Lie’.
Deir Yassin was a peaceful village the Jewish terrorist groups Etzel and
Lehi attacked on the 9th of April 1948, and massacred its men, women and
children. I do not want to repeat the gory tale of sliced off ears,
gutted bellies, raped women, torched men, bodies dumped in stone
quarries or the triumphal parade of the murderers. Existentially, all
massacres are similar, from Babi Yar to Chain Gang to Deir Yassin.
ZOA revisionists have utilized all the methods of their adversaries, the
‘deniers’: they discount the eye-witness accounts of the survivors, the
Red Cross, the British police, Jewish scouts and other Jewish observers,
who were present at the scene of massacre. They discount even Ben
Gurion’s apology, since after all, the commanders of these gangs became
in their turn prime ministers of the Jewish state. For ZOA, only the
testimony of the murderers has any validity. That is, if the murderers
are Jews.
If the Jews are the victims, these same American Zionist organizations
spare no effort in challenging revisionism. This morally dubious
position was no doubt of great comfort to those who gathered in Beirut.
By their flawed logic, if the Israelis are telling a tall tale about
what happened in 1948, perhaps the Jewish memories of the Holocaust are
also flawed. It is misplaced energy. Sure, they scored a few hits, and
the tales of soap manufactured from human fat or Wiesel’s fiery furnaces
were laid to rest. But these Revisionists also question the actual
number of Jewish victims. If only a thousand Jews or Gypsies were
murdered by the Nazis, it was a thousand too many. It is hardly an
important issue, as the very definition of victim is based on
interpretation.
A good example of “victim definition” was provided in last weekend’s
Haaretz. When the Gulf war ended in 1991, there was one reported Israeli
victim of the war. Today, there are officially one hundred Israelis who
are recognized as victims of the Gulf war, and their dependents receive
a pension at Iraqi expense. Some of the victims died of stress, some
could not remove their gas masks and suffocated. The Haaretz article
asserted that many more claims were declined by the Israeli authorities.
That is why Michael Elkins, the ex-BBC Jerusalem correspondent and an
Israeli citizen is correct in arguing that the number of victims,
whether there were six or three million dead is not an issue.
The ‘revisionists’ risked their lives and fortunes trying to undermine
what they call ‘the Myth of the Holocaust’. One can understand their
interest. Nowadays, one may openly doubt the Immaculate Conception or
(maybe) challenge the founding myths of Israel. Yet the cult of the
Holocaust retains a unique, court-enforced prohibition against any
investigation that might cast a doubt on its sacred dogma. Dogmas have
a way of attracting critical minds. Still, behind this red muleta, the
charging bull’s horns meet thin air. The arguments on gas chambers and
soap production could be very interesting, but they are quite
irrelevant. Where then is the matador?
A courageous step was taken by Dr Norman Finkelstein in his best-selling
expose “The Holocaust Industry”. There is, however, an important
distinction between Dr Finkelstein and the ‘revisionist historians’
gathered in Beirut. Dr Finkelstein, a son of holocaust survivors, stayed
away from the possibly illegal statistical controversy and concentrated
on the ideological construct of the Holocaust cult.
A fat lot of good it did him. A Jewish organization called ‘Lawyers
without Borders’ has already sued him in France. These lawyers were at
perfect peace, when the Israeli legal machine pronounced a six months
probationary sentence on a Jewish murderer of a Gentile child. They did
not move a finger when a 15-year-old girl Suad was placed in solitary
confinement, refused legal aid and subjected to mental torture. They are
visibly absent from Israeli military courts where a single Jewish
officer can mete out long imprisonment sentence to a Gentile civilian
based on undisclosed evidence. Apparently, these lawyers are aware of
certain borders.
Finkelstein set out to explore the secret of our discrete Jewish charm,
a charm that opens American hearts and the coffers of Swiss bankers. His
conclusion is that we do it by appealing to European and American guilt
feelings. “The Holocaust cult[1] has proven to be an indispensable
ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world’s most
formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has
cast itself as a victim state, and the most successful ethnic group in
the US has acquired victim status”. Finkelstein carries out a brilliant
analysis of the Holocaust cult, and comes to a startling discovery: it
is but a shabby construct of a few clichés stitched together by the
sorrowful voice of Elie Wiesel in a limo.
Finkelstein is not aware of the magnitude of his discovery, as he still
believes that the Holocaust cult is a great concept, second only to the
invention of the wheel. It solved the eternal problem of the rich and
influential, warding off the envy and hate of the poor and exploited. It
allowed Mark Rich and other swindlers to cheat and steal, it allowed the
Israeli army to murder children and starve women with impunity. His
opinion is shared by many Israelis. Ari Shavit, a well-known Haaretz
writer, expressed it best in 1996, when the Israeli Army killed over a
hundred civilian refugees in Kana, Lebanon: “We may murder with
impunity, because the Holocaust museum is on our side”. Boaz Evron, Tom
Segev and other Israeli writers have articulated the same notion.
One can sum up the thesis of Dr Finkelstein as follows. The Jews
succeeded to square the circle, and solved the problem that befuddled
aristocracy and the run of the mill millionaires. Namely, they disarmed
their opponents by appealing to their compassion and guilt feeling.
I admire Dr Finkelstein for his continued belief in the good heart of
his fellow Man. I trust he also believes in fairies. In my own
estimate, compassion and guilt feelings can maybe get you a free bowl of
soup. Not uncounted billions of dollars. Dr Finkelstein is not blind. He
noticed that the Gypsies, another victim of the Nazis, received next to
nothing from a ‘compassionate’ Germany. The capacity of Americans to
feel collective guilt towards their Vietnamese victims (5 million
killed, one million widows, Coventry-style destruction laced with Agent
Orange) was recently expressed by Defence Secretary William Cohen:
‘There is no place for apology (let alone compensation). A war is a
war’. Despite having all the facts at his disposal, Dr Finkelstein
grasps his cross and tries to frighten the vampire away.
What is the source of power that fuels the Holocaust Industry? This is
no idle or theoretical question. The making of yet another Palestinian
tragedy is now in high gear, with the slow strangulation of its cities.
Every day, a tree is uprooted, a house is demolished, a child is
murdered. In Jerusalem, the Jews celebrated Purim by a pogrom of
Gentiles, and it made page six in the local papers. In Hebron, the
Kahane boys celebrated Purim at the tomb of the mass murderer Goldstein.
This is no time to pussyfoot.
In The Sirens, Bloom expresses the feelings of his creator James Joyce
towards the bloody concept of Irish liberation by farting at the epitaph
of an Irish freedom fighter. My grandparents, my aunts and uncles died
in the WWII. But I swear by their memory, if I thought that guilt
feelings over the Holocaust cult caused the death of a single
Palestinian child, I would turn the Holocaust memorial into a public
urinaire.
The shabbiness of the Holocaust cult and the ease of its victories in
sucking billions is solid proof of the real power behind this industry.
This power is obscure, unseen, ineffable, but quite real. It is not a
power derived from the Holocaust, but rather, the Holocaust cult is a
display of raw muscle by those who wield real power. That is why all
efforts of the revisionists are doomed. The people, who promote the
cult, could promote anything, as they dominate all public discourse. The
Holocaust cult is just a small manifestation of their abilities. This
power would just smile in the face of Dr Finkelstein’s revelations.
——————————————————————————–
[1] Dr Finkelstein distinguishes between «holocaust”, the historical
event, and the Holocaust, the ideological construct. I took the liberty
to rename it “the Holocaust cult” in the interests of lucidity.
Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist. His articles The Rape
of Dulcinea, The Test Failed, Galilee Flowers could be found on many
Internet sites, www.thestruggle.org, www.antiwar, www.NileMedia etc. He
can be reached at [email protected], or write P.O.B. 23714 Tel
Aviv 61236
You may freely publish the articles of Israel Shamir in the Web, or
distribute it by other means. The hardcopy publications should apply for
a permission from the author.
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:47 EST 2001
Article: 259784 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Re: Nation Under Siege
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
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The genocidal tendencies of the Zionists are patent.
RLA
meshehu wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (David
> Goldman) wrote:
>
> > Sorry, but withdrawal from occupied territory is a regular requirement
> > of international law, regardless of the prerequisites of the dying
> > Zionist state…….
>
> Oh look, another dipshit with latent genocidal tendencies pipes up.
>
> Lakek otanu Goldman.
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:47 EST 2001
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Death fuels anger over Israeli siege
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
15 March 2001
Israel’s blockade of the occupied
territories claimed another life
yesterday, adding momentum to a
Palestinian effort to attract world
attention to the worsening siege
conditions under which they live.
Palestinian medical officials said a
diabetic woman, Amira Nassir, died
after she was stopped by Israeli
soldiers at a roadblock while travelling
to a hospital in the West Bank town of
Jenin. The Israeli army said
she was allowed through and soldiers
offered to call an ambulance, but
it is sure to be claimed by the
Palestinians as another example of the
abuses – ranging from deaths and
beatings to economic collapse –
caused by an illegal Israeli policy of
collectively punishing civilians by
placing them under siege.
Palestinian human rights activists say
there have been 11 deaths
caused by the Israeli army denying
Palestinians access to medical care
and six cases of women giving birth at
checkpoints.
In the past few weeks, the Israeli army
has extended the blockade – a
move it says is needed to prevent
guerrilla attacks. At the same time,
Israel has come under pressure from the
United States, the United
Nations and the European Union to ease
the siege, not least because of
concerns that it adds to Palestinian
militancy and perilously
undermines the Palestinian Authority.
The EU commissioner for external
affairs, Chris Patten, spelt this out
during a visit this week to meet Yasser
Arafat and Israel’s Prime
Minister, Ariel Sharon. He was quoted
in Ha’aretz newspaper as
saying: “What does wrecking the
Palestinian economy and increasing
poverty have to do with security? And
if the Palestinian government
collapses, who are you going to
negotiate with?”
news | World | Middle_East | 2001-
======================================
There is to me a sense of unreality about this madness. No other
country (save China) is allowed
to oppress others. The US attacked Iraq, over oil, of course. We
attacked Serbia twice.
There was nothing that Serbia did which was in the league of what Israel
does routinely.
Yet the United States Congress, almost to a man supports Israel. This
is an outrage.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:47 EST 2001
Article: 259882 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Two third of Jews support the idea of expelling Arabs
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Two third of Jews support the idea of expelling Arabs
Jerusalem, AFP
About two third of the Jewish Israelis support the idea of expelling
Arabs
to other Arabic countries if Israel is not subjected to international
condemnation because of that.
The question was asked “Do you agree with deporting all the Arabs in the
West Bank and Gaza if Israel does not pay a diplomatic price for that?”
Of
the respondents, 65% said yes, 26% said no, and 9% did not tell their
opinions.
Fifty four percent of the respondents said that the Arabs will never
retire
>from the idea of destroying Israel, 34% said that Arabs wish to reach a
final settlement with Israel, and 12% did not say their opinions.
The survey was conducted for the Israeli daily Ma’ariv and the results
were
published in yesterday’s edition. The survey included 500 Jews. One
million
Arab Israelis were not represented in the survey. The margin of error
was
4.5%.
Rahavam Ze’evi; Israeli parliament (Knesset) member and leader of the
Israeli Moledet party whose plank explicitly advocates expelling all
Arabs
>from their homeland; welcomed the news. He announced that “The Israelis
have
realized that it is impossible to live in a country with two
nationalities.
The solution for that is their separation, or deportation.”
Israeli minister without portfolio, Michael Eitan, from the office of
the
Prime Minster, said that other polls in Israel showed that 79% of
Israelis
wanted peace with Arabs and that 65% of respondents supported Oslo in
the
other polls.
On the occasion of the new Jewish year, Ma’ariv asked Jewish Israelis
about
their opinions of the biggest success that Israel achieved. Heading the
list
was the 28% of the respondents who thought that it was the 1967 war; in
which Israel occupied the Palestinians. Peace with Egypt and peace with
Jordan were thought of as the biggest achievements by two groups, each
representing 17% of the Jewish Israelis. Destroying the Iraqi nuclear
reactor was number four on the list with 11% of respondents thinking of
it
as the biggest achievement.
Al Hayat, www.alhayat-j.com September 21, 1998
========================================
I wonder what the results would be now. And to think that
posters here seriously put forth the notion that Israelis were
no longer Zionists. Brigns to mind the old conundrum:
Q. How does a leopard change his spots?
A. By moving from place to place.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:48 EST 2001
Article: 259885 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: WE DIDN’T SEE; WE DIDN’T KNOW Tanya Reinhart
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“But in Germany too, most of the
Germans were not Nazis. The
majority just chose not to know.”
Prof. Tanya Reinhart
Tel Aviv University
WE DIDN’T SEE; WE DIDN’T KNOW
Tanya Reinhart*
[Yediot Aharonot, 14 March, translated from original Hebrew]:
The Palestinian people have many symbols, and one of them is Bir Zeit
university near Ramallah – the secular intellectual center of the
society.
For years, Bir Zeit has also been a symbol of the spirit of coexistence
between the two peoples. Even during the darkest periods of the
occupation (when the university would be immediately closed by a
military order), they called for a solution based on recognizing the
rights of both peoples. Even when their position was far from being
popular in their community, and there were those who accused them
of collaboration, they called for cooperation with Israeli peace forces
which opposed the occupation. In the eighties, I acquired, like many
others, my political education in the way of civil and democratic
struggle from the young and idealistic lecturers of Bir Zeit.
There is no doubt that Bir Zeit had an important role in the triumph
of the spirit of compromise and reconciliation within the Palestinian
society, at the eve of Oslo, when the Palestinian people extended
their hand to peace with us, with hope and faith.
Last week, Bir Zeit too returned to the claws of the military
administration. Bulldozers ruined the only road which connects Ramallah
with Bir Zeit and some thirty other villages. From now on, nobody
enters and nobody leaves – no ambulances, no supply trucks, no students
and lecturers who live in Ramallah. Bir Zeit ghetto joined the Gaza
ghettoes, the prison camps of Jerico, Jenin and Tubas which are
surrounded by ditches and many other. This week the areas south and
west of Ramallah were also isolated, and ghetto Ramallah moved from
“breathing encirclement” to “choking encirclement”.
In the new military language, the ghettoes are called “territorial
cells”. The newspapers of last weekend expose the IDF’s plans for
the near future: Since Oslo, “the IDF regarded the occupied territories
as if they were one territorial cell”, and this placed some constraints
on the IDF and enabled a certain amount of freedom for the PA and
the Palestinian population. The new plan is a return to the concept
of the military administration during the pre-Oslo years: the occupied
territories will be divided into 64 isolated territorial cells, each
of which will be assigned a special military force, “and the local
commander will have freedom to use his discretion” as to when and
who to shoot. The IDF has completed already the division of Gaza into
territorial cells, “but so far there has only been isolation, and
not yet treatment inside the cells” (Alex Fishman, Yediot Ahronot,
March 9.01).
Now, after the forced restraint of the elections period is over, the
IDF and the political system are ready for the “treatment” phase.
And we’re talking about a comprehensive “treatment”, which includes
not only starvation, imprisonment and “local discretion” in shooting,
but also preplanned personal elimination of the Palestinian leadership
and destruction of the social infrastructure.
We, who grew up with the memory of the holocaust, have set it for
ourselves as the only standard of evil. Indeed, no crime equals and
compares to the systematic and preplanned elimination of six million
people. But it seems that what we have internalized of this memory
is that any evil whose extent is smaller is still within the “OK”
standards.
For five months, there has been a process of slow, but systematic
and preplanned, elimination of Palestinians in the occupied
territories. We won’t find it in the statistics of the dead. Israel
couldn’t get away with thousands of dead. So, soldiers who were
carefully trained for the job are conducting a manhunt – aiming at
the eyes or knees, in order to injure but not kill, in a daily quota
which doesn’t distinguish between demonstrators and passersby.
At least 12,000 injured were reported so far, many of them blind,
crippled and maimed. Their fate is to die slowly, far away from the
cameras. Some because there are no hospitals to care for them, others
because they won’t be able to survive, crippled, in the starvation
and infrastructure destruction which is inflicted on their people.
But our hands are clean – those who die because of their handicap
don’t enter the statistics of evil.
There aren’t six million Palestinians in the occupied territories,
and the ideology of evil is different as well. Blunt and direct Nazi
ideology is only found in the Messianic centers of the settlers in
the territories. The army and the government are just protecting the
living space of the settlers. And the rest are just deeply disappointed
with the Palestinians, who failed to grasp how profound our desire
for peace is.
But in Germany too, most of the Germans were not Nazis. The majority
just chose not to know.
*Tanya Reinhart is a Professor at Tel
Aviv Univesity and can be reached at
[email protected]
======================================
There was a time I thought the majority of Israelis really wanted
peace with the Palestinians (on really, really favorable terms, of
course,
that is in the blood), but I no longer think this. I have come to
the reluctant conclusion that the ordinary Israeli considers him/her
self as so much better than Palestinians that the death or injury
of a Palestinian (or a hundred or ten thousand Palestinians)
is nothing to worry about. In other words your typical Israeli
has the morals of a rat. They are scum. The only way to
deal with Israel is to use superior force, and given that the
US is in their pocket, this is impossible at present. That means that
there is a lot of education of moral people in this country to do.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:48 EST 2001
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Subject: Sharon’s National Unity Government: Shoring Up the “Iron Wall”
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MERIP Press Information Note 50
Sharon’s National Unity Government: Shoring Up the “Iron Wall”
Jeff Halper
March 13, 2001
(Jeff Halper is coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions, editor of News From Within and professor of anthropology at
Ben-Gurion University.)
Ariel Sharon’s governing coalition, embracing both Shimon Peres and
hardline
rejectionists, exposes the contradictions in the conventional left-right
distinctions in Israeli politics. Over seven years after the Oslo
accords,
it is clear that Israeli leaders never envisioned a truly viable and
sovereign Palestinian state, only a “peace” that granted Palestinians a
limited independence within overall Israeli control. The three million
Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories constitute the major
obstacle preventing Israel from the objective of continued control,
since
Israel can neither incorporate them as citizens nor rule them
indefinitely
under an increasingly repressive apartheid regime. The Oslo process,
capped
by the July 2000 Camp David summit and the Taba meetings in January,
offered
a form of occupation-by-consent. But when the occupation policies of
settlement, closure and military control did not break Palestinian
resistance and led instead to the second intifada, the broad moderate
left-center-right “consensus” in Israeli politics decided to reassert
more
direct authority.
Sharon’s “national unity” government represents a closing of ranks
around
the rock-bottom refusal of Zionism and Israel to entertain the
possibility
of truly sharing this land with the Palestinians — either in one state
or
in two. The role of the Sharon government is to generate such despair
among
the Palestinians that they will sue for surrender. It will strive to
dash
Palestinian hopes for a viable, sovereign state, to defeat the
Palestinians
once and for all. In this respect, “national unity” draws upon important
historical precedent.
DOCTRINE OF DESPAIR
In a famous article entitled “The Iron Wall,” published in 1923, Ze’ev
Jabotinsky articulated a cardinal principle of the Zionist enterprise:
Zionism should endeavor to bring about a Jewish state in the whole land
of
Israel, regardless of the Arab response. Jabotinsky realized that
Palestinians were a national group with national aspirations, but was
willing to grant them only a kind of autonomy within a Jewish state
covering
the entire territory. He knew full well that this could not be
accomplished
without resistance. “Every indigenous people,” Jabotinsky wrote, “will
resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves
of
the danger of foreign settlement. This is how the Arabs will behave and
go
on behaving so long as they possess a gleam of hope that they can
prevent
‘Palestine’ from becoming the Land of Israel.”
For Jabotinsky, the trick was to extinguish that “gleam of hope.”
According
to his doctrine of the “iron wall,” the Palestinians will agree to
limited
civil and national rights only after their resistance is broken. “The
sole
way to an agreement,” wrote Jabotinsky, “is through the iron wall, that
is
to say, the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be
influenced by Arab pressure…A voluntary agreement is unattainable…We
must either suspend our settlement efforts or continue them without
paying
attention to the mood of the natives. Settlement can thus develop under
the
protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population,
behind
an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down.”
Though Jabotinsky is often dubbed an extremist figure, historian Avi
Shlaim
contends that his “iron wall” doctrine became central to Israel’s
approach
to the Palestinians. Addressing the Jewish Agency Executive after the
outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936, David Ben-Gurion, first prime
minister
of the state of Israel and grandfather of the modern Labor Party, said:
“A
comprehensive agreement is undoubtedly out of the question now. For only
after total despair on the part of the Arabs, despair that will come not
only from the failure of the disturbances and the attempt at rebellion,
but
also as a consequence of our growth in the country, may the Arabs
possibly
acquiesce to a Jewish Eretz Israel.” Ben-Gurion not only agreed with
Jabotinsky, but argued that peace was only desirable if it advanced the
Zionist agenda: “It is not in order to establish peace in the country
that
we need an agreement…peace for us is a means. The end is the complete
and
full realization of Zionism. Only for that do we need an agreement.”
THE IRON WALL COALITION
Applied to the current context, Shlaim’s historical work suggests that
adherence to the iron wall approach might be a better way to categorize
political figures than support for or opposition to the Oslo accords.
Shlaim’s analysis lumps what we might call the “Ben-Gurion” Laborites —
those Labor Party stalwarts, including Shimon Peres, who supported
participation in the Sharon government — together with Likud, the
direct
descendant of Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin’s Revisionists. What unites
them
is their common acceptance of the “iron wall” approach to the Arab world
—
and to Palestinians in particular. On the other side of the iron wall
are
the moderate “doves” of both Labor and Meretz, the more radical Jewish
left
and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Yitzhak Rabin and Peres have been
characterized in Israel as “yonetz,” an ambivalent and confused mixture
of
“dove” and “hawk.”
The broad middle-right coalition encompasses both Likud and Peres and
mainstream Labor, the latter epitomized by Defense Minister Binyamin Ben
Eliezer, another Laborite army general. “National unity” includes other
sectors of Israeli society as well: the Sephardi Shas party, other
orthodox
parties, the Russian immigrant parties and the far right, like Rehavam
Ze’evi’s Moledet, which advocates “transferring” Palestinians out of the
Occupied Territories. Sharon’s government can muster 73 votes out of the
Knesset’s 120 — more if we include some right-wing factions that did
not
join for various reasons.
The Sharon-Peres-Ben Eliezer bloc believes it is possible to build
Jabotinsky’s “iron wall.” Their reading of the political map leads them,
as
it did in 1993, to the conclusion that the Palestinians are defeated.
Israel
enjoys the almost unanimous support of the US Congress and media, as
well as
the Bush administration. US backing renders irrelevant the periodic
protests
of other international parties, including the UN and the European Union.
Dependency on the US and Europe on the part of Arab and Muslim
countries, as
well as considerable common interests with Israel, effectively nullify
them
as well. Israel exists in an absolutely protected bubble. The “national
unity” coalition considers that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has lost
the
confidence of the people and is on the verge of collapse. As in 1993,
the PA
will only be useful if it finally “settles” with Israel. Sharon’s idea
of
“settling” does not include 88-96 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza
and
pockets of East Jerusalem — the ideas bandied about by Barak and
Clinton —
but rather the 42 percent of the West Bank currently classified as Areas
A
and B, the 60 percent of Gaza containing large Palestinian population
centers and none of East Jerusalem. So far the Palestinian street is the
only effective force for frustrating the “iron wall” approach — and it
is
being ruthlessly suppressed.
A FUTURE OF “NATIONAL UNITY”
Since Israeli control of the Occupied Territories is virtually the only
issue upon which “national unity” can be based, it is not surprising
that
Sharon’s “national unity” government has no political program other than
to
engineer the surrender of the Palestinians. As Doron Rosenblum, an
Israeli
commentator, put it: “We have never had a government for more
pessimistic
reasons than this one: its agenda is completely hidden and unknown…It
is
making no promises other than to ‘bring back security’.”
But the Sharon government will not be long-lived. The cabinet is
unwieldy,
consisting of eight parties and 26 ministers, and financial and other
domestic issues could cause its collapse in the months ahead. At any
rate,
general elections must be held by November 2003. With Sharon’s election,
the
Knesset also abolished direct election of the prime minister. Israel
will
revert to the old system, whereby voters vote only for party lists, and
the
leader of the largest vote-getting party then forms the government. This
arrangement will restore the parliamentary dominance of two or three
large
party blocs (Labor, Likud and perhaps Shas), instead of the extreme
fragmentation of the the past two Knessets that undermined the stability
of
the Netanyahu and Barak governments. The Labor-left bloc has far fewer
potential partners than the Likud-Shas bloc, and will find it difficult
to
form a government in future elections. But since Labor garners more
votes
than Likud, both Labor and Sharon see the abolition of direct election
as a
way of blocking Netanyahu’s return to power.
Two conclusions may be drawn from all this. First, the vast majority of
parties in the Knesset are committed to the “iron wall” approach, making
further repression of the Palestinians more likely. Last week, the
Israel
Defense Forces isolated Ramallah, Birzeit University and some 33
villages,
digging deep trenches and stationing tanks in the roads, and the
Jerusalem
municipality has announced it will begin demolishing dozens more
Palestinian
homes. Second, even if the Labor Party had a plan beyond the “iron
wall,” it
probably could not form a government that could transcend that policy in
practice. We are likely to see national unity governments in Israel —
formal or de facto — for some time to come. A just and lasting peace
will
not emerge from within Israel; only international pressure can save the
Palestinians from being crushed by the iron wall.
(When quoting from this PIN, please cite MERIP Press Information Note
50,
“Sharon’s National Unity Government: Shoring Up the ‘Iron Wall,'” by
Jeff
Halper, March 13, 2001. He can be reached at [email protected])
—–
For analysis of the factors contributing to Sharon’s election, see:
MERIP Press Information Note 46: Israel Elects Sharon: Contradictions of
a
Creeping Apartheid:
http://www.merip.org/pins/pin46.html
MERIP Press Information Note 41: Beyond the Bibi Bill: Israel’s
Electoral
System and the Intifada:
http://www.merip.org/pins/pin41.html
For analysis of the occupation policies behind the current uprising, see
Jeff Halper’s “The 94 Percent Solution: A Matrix of Control,” in Middle
East
Report 216 (Fall 2000). The article is accessible online at:
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer216/216_halper.html
For more historical analysis, see Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and
the
Arab World (W.W. Norton, 1999).
—–
Press Information Notes are a free service of the Middle East Research
and
Information Project (MERIP). To subscribe to the MERIP PIN distribution
list, simply respond to [email protected] and provide your address in
the
text message box, indicating “SUBSCRIBE PIN” in the subject line. To
unsubscribe, indicate “UNSUBSCRIBE” in the subject line. Thank you!
====================================
When someone tells me I “must read” something, I generally don’t.
So I nearly never say it when I post. I do think this is a seminal
post,
one which puts the Israeli enterprise in perspective.
It explains why the Israelis are so absolutely rotten to the
Palestinians.
What it doesn’t explain is how a group of intelligent people can
act with no morality whatever. For that, perhaps a look at cults
and cultlike groups might be a good start.
However the Israelis got this way, it should be clear that they
are true monsters on the face of the earth.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:48 EST 2001
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Subject: Israeli army overruns village, fire tear-gas into homes, scores
suffocated
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Israeli army overruns village, fire tear-gas
into homes, scores suffocated
Islamic Association for Palestine
Posted Wednesday March 14, 2001 – 12:58:49
PM EST
Bethlehem: – In scenes underscoring Israeli
brutality against Palestinians,
the Israeli occupation army on Wednesday
overran the small village of
Tku’, five miles south west of Bethlehem,
firing numerous stun grenades
and tear gas canisters on and into
villager’s homes.
Palestinian sources said as many as 50
villagers, including many children,
were hospitalized, mostly as a result of
tear gas suffocation and of shock.
Villagers told the “Voice of Palestine” that
as many as a hundred stun
grenades and tear gas canisters were fired,
and that a big cloud of tear
gas formed over the village.
Israeli occupation soldiers who arrived at
the small village in six armored
vehicles wore special masks against tear
gas.
A spokesman for the Israeli occupation army
was quoted as saying that a
contingent of the Israeli army was on a
training exercise at the village.
When asked about the reported firing of tear
gas into Palestinian houses,
the spokesman said “I have no knowledge of
this.”
© 2001 Islamic Association for Palestine.
This news item is distributed via Middle East News Online
(MiddleEastWire.com). For information about
the content or for permission to redistribute, publish or use for
broadcast, contact our syndication
department.
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:48 EST 2001
Article: 259893 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: US Journalists Consistently Ignore Israeli State Terrorism by Sheldon
L. Richman
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US Journalists Consistently Ignore
Israeli State Terrorism
by Sheldon L. Richman
Many people in the media have such a
romantic view of Israel that they lose
all objectivity. For example, they
would have no trouble believing an
allegation of an Arab attack on
defenseless Israeli civilians. But they act as if
Israeli attacks on Arab civilians
were impossible.
Syndicated columnist Paul Greenberg
has written, “There are terrorists and
there are terrorists. There are those
who choose their targets carefully for
political effect. They’re low, but
they’re several steps above the ones who
scrupulously avoid military targets
and assault a whole people
indiscriminately, like Yasser
Arafat’s child murderers and Meir Kahane’s
rhetoric. ” Greenberg’s point is
that, except for a fringe character like Kahane,
no Israeli would ever “assault a
whole people indiscriminately; ” that when
Israel is forced to engage in
violence, it is always surgically targeted against
the guilty.
Faith Without Evidence
This is an article of faith that
requires no evidence for most journalists. During
the late Persian Gulf war, Iraq’s
inexcusable Scud missile attacks on Israel
brought the predictable outpouring of
selective indignation from the news
media. Television and newspaper
coverage was intense. The networks
showed the damage to an apartment
house and automobiles, as the mayor of
Tel Aviv charmingly reminded American
viewers that such is life in Israel.
The ubiquitous Benjamin Netanyahu,
Israel’s then deputy foreign minister,
fully exploited the opportunities
presented by live television interviews after
the attacks. He said they again
demonstrated why his country cannot deal
with the Palestine Liberation
Organization and repeated the canon that Israel
is surrounded by hostile countries.
During the war, a National Public
Radio newsman could scarcely control his
amusement as he reported that Iraq
justified the Scud attacks by saying that
Israel’s military reserve allows no
distinction between civilians and soldiers.
That journalist’s scorn is typical of
the double standard that characterizes
coverage of Middle East events.
Yet neither Saddam Hussain nor PLO
extremists are unique in overlooking this
distinction. The Israelis have been
doing the same thing for more than 50
years, with more deadly weapons, in
such places as southern Lebanon.
In 1978, after a major Israeli
incursion into Lebanon, Chief of Staff Mordechai
Gur bluntly told the press, “For 30
years, from the War of Independence until
today, we have been fighting against
a population that lives in villages and
cities. ” Gur cited as examples of
Israel’s previous campaigns against civilians
the bombing of villages on the east
side of the Jordan valley and the shelling
of towns in the Suez Canal area in
the years after the Six-Day War. These acts
of terror drove more than a million
and a half Jordanians and Egyptians from
their homes.
“The Israeli army has always struck
civilian populations.”
At the time of the Israeli general’s
statement, Israel’s most respected military
journalist, Ze’ev Schiff, wrote, “The
importance of Gur’s remarks is the
admission that the Israeli army has
always struck civilian populations,
purposely and consciously. The army,
he said, has never distinguished
civilian [from military] targets …
[but] purposely attacked civilian targets even
when Israeli settlements had not been
struck.”
This is the policy that Moshe
Sharett, Israel’s first foreign minister, critically
dubbed “sacred terrorism.” (A book of
extracts from Sharett’s diary, Israel’s
Sacred Terrorism, is available from
the AET book club.) The doctrine is found
in the thinking of Israel’s founding
prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and in
the military actions approved by both
major governing blocs. In 1981, when
the Labor Party criticized then Prime
Minister Menachem Begin for his
bombing of Beirut, which killed
civilians indiscriminately, he responded by
listing some of the civilian attacks
perpetrated by previous Labor
governments. “There were regular
retaliatory actions against civilian Arab
populations,” Begin said.
According to the Jerusalem Post,
former Laborite foreign minister and
ambassador to the UN Abba Eban
justified the attacks on civilians by arguing
“there was a rational prospect,
ultimately fulfilled, that afflicted populations
would exert pressure for the
cessation of hostilities. ” This would seem to
qualify those Israeli attacks as
purposeful terrorism waged against Arab
civilians by any reasonable notion,
but not by the de facto definition
observed by mainstream American
media, which inherently excludes Israel.
American commentators seem ignorant
of or blind to Israeli attacks on
civilians-such as those carried out
repeatedly in Egypt, Gaza, and Jordan in
the 1950s and 1960s, and, with even
greater frequency, against civilians in the
occupied territories and Lebanon in
the 1970s, 1980s and today. Nor do US
observers or “terrorism experts” seem
to be aware of the abuse of Muslim and
Christian civilians during the 1948
war, such as the mass expulsions at
gunpoint of the inhabitants of Lydda,
Ramle and a large number of other
Palestinian villages. (See Benny
Morris’s new book, 1948 and After: Israel
and the Palestinians.) It took the
fullscale invasion of Lebanon and the
ghastly bombardment of Beirut in 1982
to get the media to notice, even briefly.
Since then, they have lapsed into
their previous pattern.
The Power of the Biased Media
The power of the biased US media over
public opinion was well demonstrated
by the coverage of the Scud attacks.
The New York Times quoted Steven L.
Spiegel, a UCLA professor and
long-time apologist for Likudist policies in
Israel, as saying, “Through
television, millions of Americans … watched
Israelis put on their gas masks …
and they experienced just about everything
the Israelis did…. I think many
Americans will have a lot more sympathy for
some of Israel’s security problems
after this.”
It is also safe to say that Americans
would have a lot more sympathy for the
security problems of Palestinian and
Lebanese civilians if the major US media
would provide even a modicum of
information and photo coverage of Israeli
policies to turn these civilians,
through terrorism, against their leaders and
each other.
In fact, the media’s ignoring of the
decades-long Israeli terror campaign
against Arab civilians is something
more than careless reporting. It betrays a
systemic bias which implies that
Arab, particularly Palestinian, deaths, no
matter how gruesome matter little,
while the endangerment of Israeli Jews is an
intolerable crime that takes
precedence over all other considerations such as
journalistic balance, elementary fair
play, and the right of the American public
to have access to all of the facts in
order to make its own, informed decisions.
Sheldon Richman is a writer and
editor based in the Washington, DC area.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001 WRMEA
& Sheldon L. Richman
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:49 EST 2001
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Subject: Sharon Gives All Needed Signs for Disaster By Ramzy Baroud
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Sharon Gives All Needed Signs for Disaster
Middle East News Online
By Ramzy Baroud for Middle East News Online
Posted Monday March 12, 2001 – 11:47:39 AM
EST
All forms of torture against Palestinian
prisoners are expected to be
legalized as indicated by official Israeli
sources to the British Sunday
Times. Legalizing torture, once more, after
a brief interruption is one of
the newly formed government’s top
priorities.
According to the Times, Sharon’s
administration is sympathetic to the
demand of reinstating torture, and is easily
capable of persuading Knesset
approval once a proposal is introduced.
Such reports might not appear as shocking,
once one learns that torture
against Palestinian detainees as defined by
international law was never
prohibited in its entirety.
What’s even more serious and alarming than
torturing thousands of
Palestinian prisoners through the infliction
of physical or psychological
pressure, is the systematic torture
inflicted on an entire nation, whose life
inside isolated and fragmented villages and
towns assimilates to a great
extent that of a maximum security prison.
Sharon who was rightfully dubbed the
“Bulldozer” for his annihilating
policies and razing of Palestinian houses
throughout his infamous military
career, has just started his first term as a
prime minister with two
strategies in mind, both banned by
international law.
First is his intention to reinstate the use
of torture against Palestinian
prisoners.
Despite of the highly publicized decision of
the Israeli high court to
prohibit “certain forms” of torture in 1999,
torture continued to be widely
used against Palestinians prisoners. The
ruling, which seemed to be an
attempt to defer international criticism of
Israel’s torture policy
perpetrated since 1967, left a great deal of
leeway for Israel’s internal
intelligence, Shin Bet.
According to recent reports composed by the
Israeli human rights
organization B’Tselem, 85 percent of
Palestinian prisoners undergo
different forms of torture.
The Palestinian human rights organization,
Al Dameer reported that since
1987, at least 30,000 Palestinian detainees
were exposed to torture by
Israeli interrogators.
Yet the sentimental value of the Sharon
administration’s endeavor to
legitimize all of forms of torture is more
significant that actualizing the
anticipated decision. Pushing for such a law
just three days after his
inauguration provides an early reading of
the “Bulldozer’s” future policies.
The bid to legalize torture by Sharon’s
government coincided with another
classic example of Israel’s collective
punishment scheme, which if
understood properly is very similar to the
torture law which Israel
currently contemplates.
Israel is designing a much more choking
closure on the Palestinian
territories in what has been named the “100
days war.” While Palestinian
prisoners are often arrested based on
“administrative detention” that
ranges from 3 to 6 months, which could be
renewed and result in years in
jail without trial, the Palestinian people
will now experience a similar
course of torture of 100 days, also
renewable if Israel’s generals deem
necessary.
The “100 days war’s” initiative is not only
illegal under the Fourth Geneva
Convention and international law which
prohibit policies of starvation and
abuse of civilians under occupation, but it
also warns of new massacres
under the eyes and ears of the international
community.
During his war against Lebanon in the early
1980’s Sharon resorted to the
policies of siege and closure, preventing
the presence of the press and
allowing for massacres to be committed to
forever silence the resistance.
Lebanese and Palestinians in many parts of
South Lebanon were forced
to eat homeless dogs to survive, as the
international community paid little
attention to the Israeli affairs in Lebanon.
Yet here once again Sharon corners his prey,
the Palestinians, this time
with much more force and influence, not as a
defense minister but as the
prime minister and the leader of a national
unity government.
Tanks were sent to tighten the siege of
already isolated towns and villages
throughout the West Bank, main and hidden
roads were blocked with
piles of dirt and heavy concrete blocs.
Jerusalem has been isolated further
as a new checkpoint between the occupied
city and the West Bank town
of Ramallah has just been situated.
Less than one week in office, Sharon gave
all the signs that warn of a real
disaster.
“Concerned” western countries often express
their concern and offer
insufficient condolences after Israel
inflicts harm on Palestinians.
Now the international community has no
excuse. The man’s massacres in
the last five decades speak for themselves.
Now he is in a position that
would allow him to bring even more
devastation.
Moreover, Arab countries who are meeting in
a Jordan summit later this
month share the responsibility of what could
possibly take place in
Palestine at the hands of Sharon and his
old-time generals.
Needless to say, torment and despair have
struck the Palestinian
population in the West Bank and Gaza months
before Sharon even came
to power. But Sharon sees his predecessor
Ehud Barak’s practices trivial
and ineffective. He has his own formula and
his own agenda.
But what good will counting the dead do once
the hurricane is over? It is
time to stand before the Bulldozer before he
razes everything, including
any chance for real peace in the Middle
East.
© 2001 Middle East News Online. This news
item is distributed via Middle East News Online
(MiddleEastWire.com). For information about
the content or for permission to redistribute, publish or use for
broadcast, contact our syndication
department.
===================================
As the article states, torture never really stopped, but the more
extreme forms were certainly muted.
For small favors, many Palestinians are grateful. While Sharon can
“legalize” it, he cannot legitimate
it. Sort of like Israel itself, don’t you think?
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:49 EST 2001
Article: 259900 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Testimony of the victims
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My name is Audi Al-Zalmout. I live in the village of Beit Fourik
near
Nablus. My family has olive groves not far from the village, which
have been
cared for by my family for generations. The olives are our main
source of
income. Not long ago my father, who was 75, went out to the groves
to pick
the olives from our trees. It was still early in the morning, but
already he
had gathered the olives from four trees. He had gone out very early
because
we had been having many problems with the settlers from Eitamar.
They would
come in gangs with guns to burn and uproot our trees. They began
taking more
and more land for the settlement. Our trees were already in danger.
We did
not know that my father would also be in danger. The settlers came
in the
early morning. They did not want to use their guns because they
were afraid
the sound would bring many villagers out to the fields. Instead
they beat my
father, my father who was kind and cared for his family even in his
old age.
They threw him on the ground and threw rocks ant his head until
they had
crushed his skull. Later when I went out to help him I found a man
lying on
the ground. If it were not for the scarf my mother had made for him
I would
not have been able to recognize him.
For all those who have fallen victim to hatred and inhumanity, for
those
loved ones who are left behind to mourn, for the souls of those
whose hearts
are cold,
Lord, hear our prayer.
My name is Mona Al-Jaj. I am from Al Fawar Refugee Camp. One
evening when my
husband was away from home I felt very sick and began to go into
labor with
our third child. Because of the curfew my neighbors were all in
their homes
afraid to come out. I needed to get to hospital. Our camp had been
cut off
>from electricity and it was very dark out, so I left my children
asleep in
their beds and snuck out of our home and into the darkness. There
were no
cars on the road. The soldiers fired at any cars that dared to
approach the
dirt barrier that blocked the road. They would throw gas grenades
or rip
apart the tires of the cars with their bullets, even if the
passengers were
women; even women about to give birth. I had to go on foot, despite
my
pain. Twice I feel, tripping over the rubble and debris left by the
Israeli
bulldozers. Finally, somehow, I reached the main road which is more
than a
kilometer from the camp. Suddenly a car approached. The driver had
brought a
shovel and was bold enough, under cover of darkness, to clear away
some of
the Beit Haggai barrier and get his car through. Miraculously we
were able
to escape detection by the soldiers. By this time I had been on the
road for
more than an hour. I knew it would not be long before my baby would
be born.
With this brave manâ?Ts help I was able to reach Aliya hospital in
Hebron
where I gave birth to a son.
My name is Amina Balout. I am from the village of Rantis north of
Bir Zeit.
One afternoon about 2 weeks ago I began to go into labor. I knew
that it
would take us a long time to get to hospital in Ramallah, so I told
my
husband immediately. Normally it is about a 40-minute drive. But
these are
not normal times. They had set up many roadblocks between Rantis
and Bir
Zeit about 3 months ago. The main entrance to Rantis has been
completely
blocked. The only way out of the village now is over an unpaved
track
through the fields, which are very muddy this time of year. My
husband, my
mother, and my sister came with me in the taxi. We had not gone
very far
when a jeep from the Israeli Defense Force and another from the
security
stopped our taxi and would not allow it to pass. We argued with
them
insisting that they let us through. After about 30 minutes the rain
had
become so bad it would have been impossible for us to go back to
Rantis. The
soldiers finally let us pass. We continued on the road until we
reached the
next roadblock near the Jewish settlement of Halamish. Soldiers
aimed their
rifles at the taxi and ordered us to stop. My husband and the
driver got
out. While they argued with the soldiers for another 30 minutes my
pains
became harder and harder. I was screaming from pain. When finally
they let
us pass we had not gone far before we ran into a long line of cars
waiting
near the village of Um Safa. The taxi driver drove past the line of
cars
until he came to a military jeep. The soldiers aimed their rifles
at the car
and ordered everyone to get out. We shouted that there was a woman
about to
give birth, but the soldier said he would have to get permission
>from his
commanding officer before he could let us pass. While he was away I
could
feel the baby coming. I began screaming, â?oThe baby is coming, the
baby is
coming.â?? By the time the soldier had returned I had already
delivered my
baby in the van. My mother and sister wrapped the baby in a blanket
and gave
her to me to hold against my body to keep warm. An officer finally
came and
saw the baby and allowed us to pass. About 200 meters down the road
another
jeep stopped us. The soldier aimed his gun at us and demanded to
know who
had let us pass. The officer who had permitted us to go on saw what
was
happening and ran quickly to order the soldier to allow us to pass.
We kept
on in the direction of Bir Zeit where we came to another long line
of cars.
The taxi passed them all until 4 soldiers stopped us. My husband
and mother
opened the windows and shouted that they had someone with them who
had just
given birth. They ordered us to wait. One of the soldiers came
around and
opened the door of the van. When he saw me there he began to laugh.
They
ordered us all to get out. My mother became very angry and slammed
the door.
They tried to open it but my mother continued to scream at them to
let us
pass. They insisted that we all get out of the taxi. What could we
do? We
had to get out. I was holding my baby who was still attached to me
by its
cord. I collapsed on the ground. I could not stand up. I was too
weak. My
husband told me later that the soldiers just stood there and
laughed again.
Finally another soldier came and shouted for them to stop and to
let us
drive on. Nobody noticed that my house slipper had fallen off. It
was left
on the ground at the roadblock. Around 8:30 in the evening we
arrived at
the hospital in Ramallah. We had left Rantis at 5:00. We named our
baby
Sabreen, which comes from the word for â?oPatienceâ??.
For the welfare of the unborn children who struggle to be born, for
the
women who must suffer needlessly, for the will to survive even the
worst
hardships, for those who show compassion, for the kindness of
strangers,
Lord, hear our prayer.
My name is Nawal. My father founded the Everest Hotel in Beit Jala
near
Bethlehem. He named it this because it sits on the top of a
mountain. On a
good day you can stand on the balcony and see Jordan. â?oI am in
exclusive
charge of the kitchen and the menu for the restaurant here. When
times were
better we would serve 500 people at once. Many tourists came here
and we
held many wedding banquets for the local people. But you donâ?Tt
see even one
tourist now, and there is nothing to celebrate. For months now I
have not
seen a single person here. This place â?” I can hardly describe
what it used
to be like. I used to be so busy in the kitchen from morning to
night. I
didnâ?Tt even have time to stick my head out and see what was going
on in the
dining room. And now, look, we have moved the ping-pong table to
the center
of the room. The hall is empty anyway. The whole family used to
work here.
What are we doing now is the same thing our leaders on both sides
are
doing â?” playing ping-pong.â??
For all those who have been forced into unemployment, who long for
the
return of a strong work ethic and traditional family values,
Lord hear our prayer.
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:49 EST 2001
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Every so often I tell the group the same thing, my latest was not above
two weeks ago, perhaps less.
No one pays me anything, no one has ever paid me anything, no one has
promised to pay
me anything and I do not expect to receive any compensation in any form for
posting here.
It is demeaning even to have to write this, which I suppose was the intent
of the posters.
My posts are designed to tell the truth. If you have a question about the
truth
of any post, I invite you to post your comments.
Most Zionists and their sympathizers here cannot bear to deal with the
truth about
Israel, it is simply too strong stuff for the nonZionist, Jew or Goy. So
they attack
the character of the person posting the articles. The ad hominem attack is
in reality
an affirmation that the person attacked has told the truth about their
criminal
enterprise. The reader should mark this.
RLA
coman wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Tell us, Roger Alexander, do you receive monetary support from Saudi
> >> and/or other Arab sources for what has obviously become a full time
> >> occupation on your part?
> >
> >Please try and keep up, he’s already said sorry for that one…
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Keep up? Have you read his multitude of pro Arab posts over and
> extended period of time?
>
> He still has not answered the question. I take his continued
> silence to be an affirmative reply.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:49 EST 2001
Article: 259902 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Re: Racist Israeli Pigs Terrorize marketers and destroy E. Jerusalem
market
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<[email protected]> <[email protected]>
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People’s Pizza wrote:
> meshehu <[email protected]_echad.com> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]…
> > In article <[email protected]>, “People’s Pizza”
> > <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > David Lee Makowsky <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > > news:[email protected]…
> > > > How often do we have to teach these anti-semitic morons the meaning of
> > > > “anti-semite”?
> > >
> > >
> > > I already know what anti-Semite means, it’s an old European term which
> > > described racist attacks against Jews in Europe at a time when there
> were
> > > very few Arabs, Assyrians etc living in Europe (other Semitic peoples).
> > > However this term is now largely mis-understood and irrelevent when used
> in
> > > the context of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle since Arabs are Semitic
> also
> > > if not more so.
> >
> >
> > None of this changes the fact that “anti-semite” has a specific
> > definition, which is – prejudice against and/or hatred of Jews.
> >
> > In reality though, calling someone an anti-semite these days, is just a
> > more economical (and polite) way of saying “small-minded jew-hating
> > bigot”.
>
> ………Which shows the term has run its course and is now largely
> irrelevant. You need a new term to describe anti-Jewish bigotry.
Actually, the term is seldom used to describe antiJewish bigotry.
(at least on these boards) Here Zionist bigots use it to avoid having
to confront their own racism and terrible acts of oppression.
Perfect example of Orwellian use of language.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:50 EST 2001
Article: 259904 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: EUROPE TURNS HEAT ON ISRAEL
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EUROPE TURNS HEAT ON ISRAEL
France leads call for action over
blockades of Palestinian cities
and human rights abuses as EU
seeks greater role in Middle East
Ian Black in Brussels and Suzanne Goldenberg in Jerusalem
The Guardian – 14 March 2001:
Israel could have a key agreement with the European
Union suspended if it does not end human rights abuses
and blockades of Palestinian areas in the West Bank
and Gaza.
In their first practical response to the Middle East
crisis, EU governments are considering punitive
measures to underline that the policies of the new
Likud prime minister, Ariel Sharon, are not
acceptable, the Guardian has learned.
Robin Cook and fellow EU foreign ministers are to
review options next Monday after Chris Patten, the
commissioner for external relations, warned Israeli
leaders yesterday that their economic stranglehold
must be lifted.
“It does not seem to us that everything that is being
done in the West Bank and Gaza can be justified in
security terms,” Mr Patten said during a visit to the
area with Anna Lindh, the foreign minister of Sweden,
the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency.
France is leading calls for tough diplomatic action
against Israel, seeking to boost the EU’s role in a
region traditionally dominated by the US at a time
when the new Bush administration has not made its
policies clear.
In a strongly worded paper on the Middle East
submitted to EU governments last month, the French
foreign minister, Hubert V=E9drine, argued: “Europeans
have shrunk from making the effort needed to overcome
their contradictions and apprehensions [and] are not
prepared to pay the political price of a genuine role,
and have become accustomed to their role as bit
players.
“The EU should make the US recognise that it is
legitimate for Europe to take its own approach to
peace. If the union really wishes to pay a role, it
must escape from the situation where defining a common
position comes down to seeking the lowest common
denominator in platitudinous declarations or
ritualised diplomatic tours.”
The EU could decide to suspend all or part of its 1995
association agreement with Israel – which includes
high level political dialogue, cooperation in several
key areas and valuable trade preferences worth
millions of pounds a year – with immediate effect.
Britain and Germany would be unlikely to favour such
action but France would have the backing of Spain and
Greece.
EU diplomats said last night that other less drastic
measures under consideration included suspension of
cooperation with Israel in the areas of science and
technology or agricultural liberalisation talks.
The EU-Israel agreement was only ratified last year
after the previous Likud prime minister, Binyamin
Netanyahu, was replaced by the Labour leader, Ehud
Barak, who was in turn defeated by the hardline Mr
Sharon last month.
Israel bowed to its critics yesterday by easing its
blockade of cities in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip. Two roads to the West Bank town of Ramallah
were reopened.
But the Palestinian information minister, Yasser Abed
Rabbo, said the changes were cosmetic and aimed “at
deceiving the world that the closure has been lifted”.
Washington warned Israel on Monday that if the
economic pressure brought about a collapse of the
Palestinian Authority, then it would harm prospects
for peace.
The Israeli army sealed off the West Bank and Gaza
when the intifada erupted, blocking more than 100,000
workers from jobs in Israel that are the lifeline of
the economy.
Since then, the army has intensified its stranglehold
on Palestinian cities, sealing off roads with concrete
blocks and mounds of earth, positioning armoured
personnel carriers at the entrances to towns and, in
the last few weeks, digging an 11-mile waterless moat
around the desert town of Jericho.
Mr Patten said the EU urged Mr Sharon to transfer =A336m
in tax revenues it has withheld from the Palestinian
administration. He said the siege, which has cost the
Palestinian economy at least =A31bn and driven up
unemployment, was counter-productive.
“If the economy continues to deteriorate in the West
Bank and Gaza and if more people lose their jobs, if
the Palestinian administration is undermined as a
potential centre of authority, it will be more
difficult to deal with security issues,” Mr Patten
said.
In his visit to the Gaza Strip on Monday, Mr Patten
also issued a warning to Yasser Arafat, saying the EU
did not want to continue its financial bail-out unless
the Palestinian leader ended corruption and imposed
some order on the Palestinian Authority.
=================================
And high time too. The only language that Israel understands
and responds to is pure force. They are truly Hobbesian
actors. No morality there, no milk of human kindness,
not even any thought of reciprocity in action, just
brute, brutal arrogant force. They use it, they respond to it,
nothing else. Israelis are the scum of the earth.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:50 EST 2001
Article: 259905 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Open bridge no more By Daoud Kuttab
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the following appeared in the Jerusalem Post and the Jordan Times
Open bridge no more
View From The East By Daoud Kuttab
(March 15) – The new Jordan River bridge that has been built with
Japanese money is impressive in its structure. Towering high, the new
bridge, along with a short stretch of four-lane highway, is scheduled
to be completed today. The contractors seem to be on time, but it is
unlikely that any Japanese or Jordanian official will be cutting the
ribbon of the new structure any time soon.
The bridge, built at a level much higher than the existing landscape,
looks like overkill. The trickle of water that flows underneath
clearly gives the impression that the major purpose of the bridge is
not simply to cross what is left of the waters of the Jordan River,
but to indicate the Japanese support for the need for heavy flow of
people and goods between Palestine to the west of the Jordan River
and the Kingdom of Jordan to the east.
No dignitaries will be making the trip to inaugurate the new crossing
point because the number of people crossing it has dwindled faster
than the trickles of water flowing under the huge bridge.
The bridge has three names. Israelis refer to it as Allenby Bridge,
honoring the British officer who crossed it during World War I, thus
ending 400 years of Turkish rule and replacing it with British
colonial rule. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which came into being
in the middle of the 20th century, gave the bridge the name of its
longest-living ruler, King Hussein. The Palestinian Authority, which
came partially into control of the bridge as a result of the Oslo
Agreements, calls it the Karameh Crossing in reference to the battle
between Palestinian fedayeen and the Israeli army which tried to
invade their encampment on the east bank in the late Sixties.
Regardless of the name, the opening of the bridge for the movement of
people back and forth was part of the policy of then Israeli defense
minister Moshe Dayan. Dayan’s open-bridge policy was aimed at leaving
a release valve for Palestinians so that they would not explode from
the pressure cooker of the Israeli occupation.
To be sure, the open-bridge policy was no picnic. Humiliating Israeli
policy, which included strip searches, X-rays of shoes and men’s
headdresses and going through every piece of clothing, made the short
trip (especially in the summer) a hell of an experience. What was
once a 90-minute trip from Amman to Jerusalem became an all-day
affair. The procedures eased and the strip searches were canceled
once the PA with its flag and police became juniors to the Israelis
who continued to have overall control of the crossing point.
For better or worse, the bridge was never closed (except for
holidays). Those leaving for a visit, to work abroad or to study,
always knew they could go and return. Summer and holiday visitors
>from Jordan also knew they could return. The bridge stayed open
despite wars (1973 and 1982), internal crises, intifada, shootings,
killings. Sure, political activists were often barred from travel,
but for everyday Palestinians, there was never a time when they
couldn’t make the trip, or were afraid that if they crossed from one
direction to the other, they would be trapped.
Until now.
The recent months have witnessed the most dramatic change on the
Jordan river crossing since 1967. First it became difficult to cross
because Jericho was a closed area. Taxi drivers found alternative
ways to circumvent the Israeli checkposts. So the Israeli army dug
trenches around Jericho so that cars couldn’t enter. People continued
finding alternatives, including walking to Jericho and from there to
the bridge and freedom.
Then came the new regulation; the bridge itself was closed to
traffic, except for special cases. Special permits are now needed to
make the trip to Jordan. VIP permits to members of the PA have been
revoked.
Haj Ismael, a taxi driver who has been working the bridge route on
the Jordanian side, confirms that never in 34 years has the situation
been this bad. There is a drop of more than 80 percent of passengers,
he said to me on Monday.
The result not only has reduced the number of travelers, but it has
even affected business in Jordan. Business people interviewed on the
new Internet radio Ammannet ( www.ammannet.net) blamed the major drop
in business over the Id al-Adha holiday to the absence of the
visitors who normally come to see relatives.
The present closed-bridge policy means either that the Israeli
leadership is willing to take its chances with a major explosion, or
it expects a radical solution soon in which it will forever give up
control over the Jordan River crossing despite the $8 million the
Japanese laid out to make it a major crossing for people and goods.
Let us hope and pray that the latter is the case, otherwise, may God
help all of us once the explosion takes place.
===========================
Every day I think I have catalogued the extent of the Israeli
meanness. And every day they confound me. They are such
busy, busy monsters, bent on making life Hell on earth for the
Palestinians. This of course, makes them devils,
but as Matt Giwer says, you knew that.
RLA
From [email protected] Thu Mar 15 23:24:50 EST 2001
Article: 259906 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: UC Berkeley students demand that regents divest from Israel
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http://www.sfbg.com/News/35/24/24ogdivest.html
Unfair shares
UC Berkeley students demand that regents divest from Israel
By Camille T. Taiara
Less than a month into the second intifada sparked by recently elected
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s September 2000 visit to the
Al-Aksa
Mosque and the Temple Mount in eastern Jerusalem, UC Berkeley students
have
launched an Israel divestment campaign targeting the very institution
that
holds the purse strings to their education: the UC Regents.
“The people who run our universities are not just tacitly supporting but
are
actually benefiting from the exploitation of Palestinians,” said Snehal
Shingavi, a UC Berkeley graduate student.
What UC Berkeley students demand is that the school system pull shares
from
companies that either have branches or subsidiaries in Israel or do $5
million per year or more in business there. So far 13 such companies
have
been identified, including General Electric, Raytheon, Cisco Systems,
Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, and AOL Time Warner.
Investments in these firms represent at least 11 percent of the UC
system’s
$59 billion investment profile, totaling $6.2 billion – or $1.7 billion
more
than all direct U.S. federal aid to Israel combined.
The students’ campaign could draw attention to the increasingly violent
conflict. Since Sept. 28, 2000, 400 Palestinians have been killed,
compared
with fewer than 70 Israelis.
Palestinian towns in the West Bank and Gaza are separated by Jewish-only
settlements and militarized Israeli highways flanked by security zones.
It’s
impossible for Palestinians to travel from one section of the occupied
territories to another without going through several checkpoints.
Student activists, who have formed Students for Justice in Palestine
(SPJ),
re-created some of these conditions when they set up a mock checkpoint
at UC
Berkeley’s Sather Gate Feb. 6, the day Sharon was elected prime
minister.
They held a teach-in the next day that attracted 150 participants, and
they
distributed a petition to present to the regents for their upcoming
meeting
in Los Angeles March 14 and 15.
SJP carried out another action on campus March 6, this time setting up a
mock refugee camp. It also began sending delegations to Davis, Santa
Barbara, and Los Angeles to train other UC students to set up similar
movements. More delegations are planned for the University of
Massachusetts
at Amherst, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Columbia
University,
and possibly Harvard University, later this month.
“It’s a very touchy subject, because once you start talking about it,
you
are going to criticize the state of Israel,” said Ehssan Vandaei, a
22-year-old Iranian American undergraduate. “It’s very hard for even
very
open-minded, progressive-leaning people to look at it from the
perspective
of the state of Israel having been created in the context of colonialism
and
equating Zionism in practice with imperialism and apartheid.”
Indeed, Chancellor Robert Berdahl took out a half-page ad in the Feb. 12
issue of the Daily Cal condemning the mock Israeli checkpoint as having
“created an atmosphere that many in our community felt was hostile.”
Berdahl
and others in the university also attempted to shut down a student-run
class
this semester called “Occupied Palestine.”
But student activists say they are not approaching the crisis from an
anti-Jewish perspective, but rather within the context of the growing
movement of liberation struggles against neoliberalist globalization.
Many
are veterans of movements like the antisweatshop struggle, the effort to
revive affirmative action, and the movement to free Tibet. Only about 10
percent of SPJ’s 30 to 40 core activists are of Arab descent.
Activists like Vandaei are surprised by the amount of support they have
received, including that of some leftist Jews both on and off campus.
Still, the student proposal will almost certainly generate controversy,
even
among progressives in Berkeley. In the past, debates over U.S. policy in
the
Middle East have led to bitter divisions on the Berkeley left. A 1984
ballot
initiative urging the president and Congress to cut U.S. support to
Israel
by the amount Israel was spending on new settlements in the West Bank
and
Gaza put many friends and allies in Berkeley Citizens Action on
different
sides of a hard-fought campaign.
“I think the best thing that Israel could do would be to get out of the
occupied territories. But we don’t want to cut ourselves off from
reaching
Jews who aren’t sure where they’re at,” says Rabbi Burt Jacobson of the
Kehilla Community Synagogue.
But SJP continues to build coalitions in support of divestment wherever
it
can.
“I think we’re being realistic about the fact that the universities will
not
divest quickly,” Vandaei admitted. “We’re not dealing with a system that
people in America were already kind of familiar with and knew was wrong
[like South Africa in the 1980s]. But I can definitely say that the
momentum
is on our side.”
E-mail Camille T. Taiara at [email protected]
_________________________________________
Once the students get started, it is only a matter of time.
RLA
From [email protected] Mon Mar 19 15:29:36 EST 2001
Article: 259950 of soc.culture.canada
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Israeli Stun Grenade Burns Palestinian Children
Reuters | March 15, 2001 8:13AM
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Six Palestinian children suffered burns on
Thursday
when Israeli soldiers threw a stun grenade into a West Bank schoolyard
in new
violence after an Israeli pledge to ease its blockade on Palestinians.
Doctors in the divided town of Hebron said three of the six children
sustained burns to the head, hands and back and the other three were
suffering from minor blisters and shock.
The Israeli army said it was checking the report. It was not clear why
the
stun grenade was thrown but witnesses said there were no clashes in the
area
at the time.
“Why did they throw the grenade into the yard? This is only a
provocation,”
said teacher Mohammed Hawaismah as parents carried children out of the
school
and into ambulances.
Israel promised earlier on Thursday to slightly relax its blockade of
Palestinians, but vowed not to make such “gestures” to Palestinian
leaders
and security forces whom it accuses of fomenting violence.
Palestinian leaders say the easing of the blockade was only cosmetic and
shopkeepers and ordinary workers in Arab East Jerusalem declared a
one-day
strike which closed shops and schools.
ISRAEL TAKES CAUTIOUS STEPS
Announcing plans to ease the restrictions on Palestinians, Israel said
it
would let in building materials, allow fishing off the Gaza Strip and,
where
security would not be compromised, allow free passage in parts of the
West
Bank and Gaza.
It said in a statement after a meeting of Sharon’s security cabinet that
Israel wanted to make life easier for ordinary people but not for those
responsible for violence.
Trenches that were dug by the army, encircling West Bank cities such as
the
commercial hub of Ramallah, remain in place.
Sharon has been under pressure to ease the plight of Palestinians from
the
European Union, Russia and the United States, where he is due to meet
President George W. Bush on Tuesday for the first time since they both
took
office.
About 10,000 Palestinians marched in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya at
a
funeral for a 17-year-old Palestinian whose body was found by friends in
an
orange grove on Thursday morning at a place where stonethrowers clashed
with
soldiers on Wednesday.
Palestinian doctors said X-rays of the body showed he had been hit by a
rubber-coated metal bullet. The Israeli army said troops used “riot
control
means” during Wednesday’s violence.
After the funeral, mourners marched to a nearby Israeli checkpoint where
some
threw stones at soldiers. The army fired rubber-coated metal bullets in
return but there were no reports of serious injuries.
The Qalqiliya teenager’s death brought the toll to 346 Palestinians, 65
Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs killed since a Palestinian uprising began
in
September after peace talks became deadlocked.
In other violence, the army said Palestinians threw two anti-tank
grenades at
patrolling soldiers, but no one was hurt. It said soldiers had disabled
two
anti-tank land mines planted on a road near a Jewish settlement in
southern
Gaza overnight.
EASED MOVEMENT OF GOODS AND PEOPLE
The army said was starting to allow free movement of goods, including
dynamite for the Palestinian construction industry, and of people in
some
areas.
Palestinians say Israel’s closure policies are collective punishment for
the
uprising and accuse it of turning Palestinian cities into detention
camps.
Israel says the blockade strengthens security after nearly six months of
bloodshed.
Israeli army chief Shaul Mofaz said officers were holding regular talks
with
their Palestinian counterparts to try to ensure there was no surge in
the
confrontations.
“The key is also in the hands of the Palestinians with the hope they
will
reduce the level of violence and terror and return to the negotiating
table,”
Mofaz told Army Radio.
Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, an aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, said
Israel’s easing of restrictions “hid a plan that Sharon intends to hit
the
Palestinian Authority.” He gave no details. <end?
From [email protected] Mon Mar 19 15:29:37 EST 2001
Article: 259984 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Some useful quotes from Albert Einstein
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Friends,
I came across the following interesting and fully-referenced quotations
by Albert Einstein. They might be useful in some discussions.
Raja
1.
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 2,000
years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us.
Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): letter to
Chaim Weizmann, Nov. 25, 1929
———————————–
2.
I believe firmly that the Jews, considering the smallness and dependency
of their colony in Palestine, are not threatened by the folly of power.
Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): letter to
Maurice Solovine, Mar. 16, 1921, in Albert Einstein: Letters to Solovine
[1987] tr. W. Baskin
———————————–
3.
I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the
basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state.
Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature
of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and
a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the
inner damage Judaism will sustain ? especially from the development of a
narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already
had to fight strongly.
Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): “Our Debt
to Zionism,” speech before the National Labor Committee for Palestine,
New York, Apr. 17, 1938 (repr. in Out of My Later Years [1950] ch.52)
———————————–
4.
No one has the moral right to call himself a Christian or a Jew if he is
prepared to commit murder upon the instruction of a given authority, or
if he permits himself to be used for the purpose of initiating or
preparing such a crime in any way whatsoever.
Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): writing
in 1928, per Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel [1972]
ix
———————————–
5.
The world is a dangerous place to live in not because of those who do
evil but because of those who watch and let it happen.
Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): quoted in
Time magazine, “Terror and Pity”, Sep. 2, 1996
———————————–
From [email protected] Mon Mar 19 15:29:37 EST 2001
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Subject: Freud, Zionism, and Vienna By Edward Said
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Politics: Freud, Zionism, and Vienna
Posted on Saturday, March 17 @ 14:23:32 EST
by webmasterContributed by: webmaster
By Edward Said
This is a parable worth a few lines here,
although it derives from a
rather peculiar personal experience of mine
which has attracted
unusual, if undeserved, media and public
attention. Ordinarily, I
don’t use myself as an example, but because
this one has been so misrepresented and
also because it might illuminate the context
of the Palestinian-Zionist struggle it took place
in, I have permitted myself to use it. In
late June and early July 2000, I made a personal
family visit to Lebanon, where I also gave
two public lectures. Like most Arabs, my
family and I were very interested to visit
South Lebanon to see the recently evacuated
“security zone” militarily occupied by
Israel for 22 years, from which troops of the Jewish
state were unceremoniously expelled by the
Lebanese resistance. Our visit took place on
3 July, during which day-long excursion we
spent time in the notorious Khiam prison,
built by the Israelis in 1987, in which
8,000 people were tortured and detained in
dreadful, bestial conditions. Right after
that we drove to the border post, also abandoned
by Israeli troops, now a deserted area
except for Lebanese visitors who come there in
large numbers to throw stones of celebration
across the still heavily fortified border. No
Israelis, neither military nor civilians,
were in sight.
During our 10-minute stop I was photographed
there without my knowledge pitching a
tiny pebble in competition with some of the
younger men present, none of whom of
course had any particular target in sight.
The area was empty for miles and miles. Two
days later my picture appeared in newspapers
in Israel and all over the West. I was
described as a rock-throwing terrorist, a
man of violence, and so on and on, in the
familiar chorus of defamation and falsehood
known to anyone who has incurred the
hostility of Zionist propaganda.
Two ironies stand out. One was that although
I have written at least eight books on
Palestine and have always advocated
resistance to Zionist occupation, I have never
argued for anything but peaceful coexistence
between us and the Jews of Israel once
Israel’s military repression and
dispossession of Palestinians has stopped. My writings
have circulated all over the world in at
least 35 languages, so my positions are scarcely
unknown, and my message is very clear. But,
having found it useless to refute the facts
and arguments I have presented and, more
important, having been unable to prevent my
work from reaching larger and larger
audiences, the Zionist movement has resorted to
shabbier and shabbier techniques to try to
stop me. Two years ago they hired an obscure
Israeli-American lawyer to “research” the
first ten years of my life and “prove” that even
though I was born in Jerusalem I was never
really there; this was supposed to show that
I was a liar who had misrepresented my right
to return, even though — and this is the
stupidity and triviality of the argument —
the invidious Israeli Law of Return allows any
Jew anywhere the “right” to come to Israel
and live, whether or not they had even set
foot in Israel before.
Besides, so crude and inaccurate were this
lawyer’s methods of investigation that many
people whom he interviewed wrote in and
contradicted what he said; none of the
journals, except one, that he approached for
publication accepted his article because of
its misrepresentations and distortions. Not
only was this campaign an effort to discredit
me personally (the editor of the journal
that published it said openly that he had printed
the silly rubbish produced by this hired gun
simply because he wanted to discredit me
personally precisely because I have a lot of
readers) but quite amazingly it was meant to
show that all Palestinians are liars and
cannot be believed in their assertions about a right
to return.
Fast upon the heels of this orchestrated
effort there came the business of the
stone-throwing. And here is the second
irony. Despite Israel’s 22-year devastation of
south Lebanon, its destruction of entire
villages, the killing of hundreds of civilians, its use
of mercenary soldiers to plunder and punish,
its deplorable use of the most inhuman
methods of torture and imprisonment in Khiam
and elsewhere — despite all that, Israeli
propaganda, aided and abetted by a corrupt
Western media, chose to focus on a
harmless act of mine, blowing it up to
monstrously absurd proportions that suggested that
I was a violent fanatic interested in
killing Jews. The context was left out, as were the
circumstances, i.e. that I simply threw a
pebble, that no Israeli was anywhere present,
that no physical injury or harm was
threatened to anyone. More bizarrely still, a whole,
again orchestrated campaign was mounted to
try to get me dismissed from the university
where I have taught for 38 years. Articles
in the press, commentary, letters of abuse and
death threats were all used to intimidate or
silence me, including those by colleagues of
mine who suddenly discovered their
allegiance to the state of Israel. The comedy of it all,
the total lack of logic that tried to
connect a trivial incident in South Lebanon to my life
and works, was to no avail, however.
Colleagues rallied to my side, as did many
members of the public. Most important, the
university administration magnificently
defended my right to my opinions and
actions, and noted that the campaign against me
wasn’t at all about my having thrown a stone
(an act rightly characterised as protected
speech), but about my political positions
and activity that resisted Israel’s policy of
occupation and repression.
The latest episode in all this Zionist
pressure is in some ways the saddest and most
shameful. In late July 2000, I was contacted
by the director of the Freud Institute and
Museum in Vienna to ask if I would accept an
invitation to deliver the annual Freud
lecture there in May 2001. I said yes, and
on 21 August received an official letter from
the Institute’s director inviting me to do
so in the name of the board. I promptly accepted,
having written about Freud and for many
years been a great admirer of his work and life.
(Incidentally, it should be noted that Freud
was an early anti-Zionist but later modified his
view when Nazi persecutions of European Jews
made a Jewish state seem like a
possible solution to widespread and lethal
anti-Semitism. But I believe that his position
vis-ŕ-vis Zionism was always an ambivalent
one.)
The topic I proposed for my lecture was
“Freud and the Non-European” in which I
intended to argue that although Freud’s work
was for and about Europe, his interest in
ancient civilisations like those of Egypt,
Palestine, Greek and Africa was an indication of
the universalism of his vision and the
humane scope of his work. Moreover, I believed
that his thought deserved to be appreciated
for its anti-provincialism, quite unlike that of
his contemporaries who denigrated other
non-European cultures as lesser or inferior.
Then without warning on 8 February of this
year, I was informed by the Institute’s
chairman, a Viennese sociologist by the name
of Schülein, that the board had decided to
cancel my lecture, because (he said) of the
political situation in the Middle East “and the
consequences of it.” No other explanation
was given. It was a most unprofessional and
lamentable gesture very much in
contradiction with the spirit and the letter of Freud’s
work. In over 30 years of lecturing all over
the world this had never happened to me,
and I immediately responded by asking
Schalein in a one-sentence letter to explain to me
how a lecture on Freud in Vienna had
anything to do with “the political condition in the
Middle East.” I have of course received no
answer.
To make matters worse, the New York Times
published a story on 10 March about the
episode, along with a grotesquely enlarged
version of the famous photograph in South
Lebanon last July, an event that had taken
place well before the Freud people had invited
me in late August. When Schalein was
interviewed by the Times, he had the gall to bring
up the photo and say what he never had the
courage to say to me, that it (as well as my
criticism of Israel’s occupation) was the
reason for the cancellation, given, he added, that
it might offend Viennese Jewish
sensitivities in the context of Jörg Haider’s presence, the
Holocaust, and the history of Austrian
anti-Semitism.
That a respectable academic should say such
rubbish beggars the imagination, but that he
should do so even as Israel is besieging and
killing Palestinians mercilessly on a daily
basis — that is indecent.
What in their appalling pusillanimity the
Freudian gang did not say publicly was that the
real reason for the unseemly cancellation of
my lecture was that it was the price they paid
to their donors in Israel and the US. An
exhibition of Freud’s papers mounted by the
Institute has already been in Vienna and New
York; now the hope is that it will be put on
in Israel. The potential funders seem to
have demanded that they would pay for the
exhibition in Tel Aviv if my lecture were
cancelled. The spineless Vienna board caved in,
and my lecture was cancelled accordingly,
not because I advocate violence and hatred,
but because I do not!
I said at the time that Freud was hounded
out of Vienna by the Nazis and the majority of
the Austrian people. Today those same
paragons of courage and intellectual principle
ban a Palestinian from lecturing. So low has
this particularly unpleasant brand of Zionism
sunk that it cannot justify itself by open
debate and genuine dialogue. It uses the shadowy
mafia tactics of threat and extortion to
exact silence and compliance. So desperately
does it seek acceptance that it reveals
itself in Israel and through its supporters
elsewhere, alas, to be in favour of effacing
the Palestinian voice entirely, whether by
choking Palestinian villages like Bir Zeit,
or by shutting down discussion and criticism
wherever it can find collaborators and
cowards to carry out its reprehensible demands.
No wonder that in such a climate Ariel
Sharon is Israel’s leader.
But in the end these thuggish tactics
backfire, since not everyone is afraid, and not every
voice can be silenced. After 50 years of
Zionist censorship and misrepresentation, the
Palestinians continue their struggle. And
everywhere, despite poor media coverage,
despite the venality of institutions like
the Freud Society, despite the cowardice of
intellectuals who put their consciences to
sleep, people speak up for justice and peace.
Immediately after Vienna cancelled my
invitation, the London Freud Museum invited me
to deliver the lecture I was to have given
in Vienna. (After being driven from Vienna in
1938, Freud spent the last year of his life
in London.) Two Austrian institutions, the
Institute for the Human Sciences and the
Austrian Society for Literature invited me to
lecture in Vienna at a date of my choosing.
A group of distinguished psychoanalysts and
psychoanalytic critics (including Mustafa
Safouan) wrote a letter to the Freud Institute
protesting the cancellation. Many others
have been shocked at such naked bullying and
have said so in public. Meanwhile,
Palestinian resistance continues everywhere.
I still believe it is our role as a people
seeking peace with justice to provide an alternative
vision to Zionism’s, a vision based on
equality and inclusion, rather than on apartheid and
exclusion. Each episode such as the one I
have described here augments my conviction
that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have
any alternative to sharing a land that both claim.
I also believe that the Al-Aqsa Intifada
must be directed towards that end, even though
political and cultural resistance to
Israel’s reprehensible occupation policies of siege,
humiliation, starvation and collective
punishment must be vigourously resisted. The Israeli
military causes immense damage to
Palestinians day after day: more innocent people are
killed, their land destroyed or confiscated,
their houses bombed and demolished, their
movements circumscribed or stopped entirely.
Thousands of civilians cannot find work,
go to school, or receive medical treatment
as a result of these Israeli actions. Such
arrogance and suicidal rage against the
Palestinians will bring no results except more
suffering and more hatred, which is why in
the end Sharon has always failed and resorted
to useless murder and pillage. For our own
sakes, we must rise above Zionism’s
bankruptcy and continue to articulate our
own message of peace with justice. If the way
seems difficult, it cannot be abandoned.
When any of us is stopped, ten others can take
his or her place. That is the genuine
hallmark of our struggle, and neither censorship nor
base complicity with it can prevent its
success.
From [email protected] Mon Mar 19 15:29:37 EST 2001
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Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Israel=92s?= lifting of the Siege is Purely Cosmetic
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The Palestine Monitor, An Information Clearinghouse
IN FOCUS # 5 Israel’s lifting of the Siege is Purely Cosmetic
March 15, 2000
On Tuesday March 13, the Israeli government announced that it was
lifting
the blockades of several Palestinian cities, namely Qalqilya, Tulkarem,
Bethlehem and Hebron but the blockade placed Sunday in Qalandiya and
other
areas would remain in place to due security considerations.
It would be easy to breathe a sigh of relief if this announcement were
something Palestinians could believe to be true. But, despite the
Israeli
government’s attempt to be seen as rational and even benevolent, the
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories did not hold their collective
breath. It may be said, and in fact it was, that the blockades were only
being “eased” or “relaxed” but they were certainly not lifted.
For example, the Israeli soldiers cleared the dirt roadblocks along the
Ramallah-Birzeit Road that were the site of a large local protest
against
the Israeli siege on Monday. However, according to eyewitnesses, the
Israeli
checkpoint is still there-blocking the road, and the soldiers have
returned
to their work routinely, stopping cars and students, checking ID’s and
harassing villagers on their way to and from Ramallah. This remains the
same
for the other areas. Palestinians movement is still restricted. Soldiers
and
jeeps, cement blocks and dirt barricades, are still being used to
continue
the humiliating collective punishment of the civilian population.
Sharon only partially “lifted” the blockades when public international
pressure was placed on Israel. On Tuesday March 12, the United States
Government spokesman stated that Israeli blockades of Palestinian cities
are
ineffective at stopping “terror” attacks and the recent tightening of
blockades around Palestinian cities only serve to harm the civilian
population. Even the international media picked up on the tightening of
West
Bank closures after Sunday’s extra-sealing of the Ramallah area.
Nevertheless, despite the international condemnation and media coverage,
one
thing must be clear. The structure of siege remains. Israel has not
ended
its siege of the OPT, nor has it changed it overall approach to
containing
the West Bank. The Palestinian cantons, Bantustans, ghettos, camps and
prisons, still exist; entirely cut off from one another by settlements,
bypass roads and security fences. The Palestinian enclaves are still
isolated and Israeli soldiers still man checkpoints in 91 different
areas of
the West Bank. Nothing has changed. Israel still retains, the ability to
tighten or relax the illegal policy of closure.
For more information, contact Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi at +972 50-254-218
or
visit www.palestinemonitor.org
===================================
>From all I’ve read, the idea is to take the heat off Sharon while he is
in
Washington.
RLA
From [email protected] Mon Mar 19 15:29:38 EST 2001
Article: 260111 of soc.culture.canada
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I sincerely hope you will come to my aid the next time
the idiot Kim Bebbington quotes (or puts up a made up quote)
me for some proposition. Haven’t noticed you exactly
jumping to do that in the past.
RLA
Martin Goldstein wrote:
> These quotes of Albert Einstein have NO MEANING whatsoever, unless
> reprinted with FULL context. Of course Roger is unaware of that fact!
>
> M.G.
>
> Roger Alexander wrote:
>
> > Friends,
> >
> > I came across the following interesting and fully-referenced quotations
> > by Albert Einstein. They might be useful in some discussions.
> >
> > Raja
> >
> > 1.
> > 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 2,000
> > years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us.
> >
> > Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): letter to
> > Chaim Weizmann, Nov. 25, 1929
> > ———————————–
> > 2.
> > I believe firmly that the Jews, considering the smallness and dependency
> > of their colony in Palestine, are not threatened by the folly of power.
> >
> > Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): letter to
> > Maurice Solovine, Mar. 16, 1921, in Albert Einstein: Letters to Solovine
> > [1987] tr. W. Baskin
> > ———————————–
> > 3.
> > I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the
> > basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state.
> > Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature
> > of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and
> > a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the
> > inner damage Judaism will sustain ? especially from the development of a
> > narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already
> > had to fight strongly.
> >
> > Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): “Our Debt
> > to Zionism,” speech before the National Labor Committee for Palestine,
> > New York, Apr. 17, 1938 (repr. in Out of My Later Years [1950] ch.52)
> > ———————————–
> > 4.
> > No one has the moral right to call himself a Christian or a Jew if he is
> > prepared to commit murder upon the instruction of a given authority, or
> > if he permits himself to be used for the purpose of initiating or
> > preparing such a crime in any way whatsoever.
> >
> > Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): writing
> > in 1928, per Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel [1972]
> > ix
> > ———————————–
> > 5.
> > The world is a dangerous place to live in not because of those who do
> > evil but because of those who watch and let it happen.
> >
> > Albert Einstein (German-born Am. physicist, 1879-1955): quoted in
> > Time magazine, “Terror and Pity”, Sep. 2, 1996
> > ———————————–
From [email protected] Mon Mar 19 15:29:38 EST 2001
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Subject: USS Liberty, never forget By Anayat Durrani
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USS Liberty, never forget By Anayat Durrani
On June 8, 1967, on the fourth day of Israel’s attack on
neighboring Arab countries, an American intelligence ship called
the USS Liberty with 294 men aboard incurred an all-out assault
by Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats.
The unprovoked air and sea attack would last 75 minutes. After
the smoke cleared, the severely damaged USS Liberty emerged
with 34 dead crewmen and 171 wounded. The ship would
miraculously remain afloat despite taking over 821 rocket,
cannon and machine-gun holes.
The story of the USS Liberty is a tragic one. It is a tragedy not
only for the events that befell the brave crew of the USS Liberty
that fateful day but also because of the controversy that has
surrounded this incident for nearly 34 years.
The attack was met immediately with denial and covered up by
Israel and the United States. The Israelis called it a “tragic
case of misidentification,” claiming they mistook the USS Liberty
for an out-of-service Egyptian horse carrier called El Quseir. The
American government accepted the Israeli excuse saying it was
an accident, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
Survivors and many former top US officials like Secretary of State
Dean Rusk and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State Admiral
Thomas Moorer said it was a carefully orchestrated and
deliberate attack by Israel against an American ship. Yet, the
United States has denied the USS Liberty a congressional
investigation. The ship remains the only major maritime incident
in US history that has not received a public investigation by the
US Congress.
“They fear the Israeli and Jewish reactions. Also, I think that
there is so much pro-Israel propaganda that many American
Jews really believe that the attack was a tragic accident and that
any attention to this story comes from anti-Semites. That claim
alone is enough to stifle discussion,” says Ennes who was
officer-of-the-deck on the bridge the day of the attack.
In his book, Assault on the Liberty, Ennes explained that before
the attack he witnessed more than 6 hours of surveillance by
Israeli aircraft that circled the USS Liberty thirteen times;
sometimes close enough that they “exchanged friendly waves.”
The USS Liberty was on a peaceful mission in the area, a safe
distance from the fighting, in international waters off the Sinai
Peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea. The ship was clearly
identified by Israel as a US intelligence ship and officers even
heard Israelis recognize the ship as American on their radio
frequencies. The ship also had an American flag hoisted high
above it.
The remaining survivors of the USS Liberty continue to
courageously tell their story amidst claims that the survivors are
liars, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israeli. To this day, Israel insists
the incident was an “innocent mistake”. However, there is
evidence gathered by intelligence analysts and others that
supports the charge that Israel deliberately attacked the
intelligence ship to prevent it from monitoring Israeli plans to
invade the Golan Heights the following day.
“Thirty four of our shipmates were killed and their killers still
give a false account of what happened. Israel did apologize and
paid damages, but they continue to lie. We just want them to
stop lying,” says Ennes. “Our 34 dead shipmates are entitled
to the truth being in the historical record.”
Joe Meadors was a signalman on the bridge of the USS Liberty
that day. When the ship’s regular size American flag was shot
down, Meadors and another crewman immediately replaced it
with an even larger American flag. But the attack continued.
Meadors remembers when he first discovered the identity of their
attackers.
“I didn’t know the attackers were Israeli until I saw the Israeli
flag flying from one of the torpedo boats that I saw from a
distance of about 100 yards as it sailed slowly up our port left
side,” says Meadors.
Many questions remain unanswered. During the attack, the
White House blocked air rescue for over 90 minutes until Navy
jet aircraft were ordered in at which time the Israelis ceased their
attack and withdrew. The US Sixth Fleet was less than 300 miles
away during the attack but did not come to the aid of the USS
Liberty, despite guarantees that air support would be provided
within ten minutes if help were needed. It would take more than
16 hours before the first American forces reached the USS
Liberty.
“The question of why it took more than 16 hours for the Sixth
Fleet to come to our assistance is one that we have been trying
to get answered for many years,” says Meadors.
Because the attack was never investigated, Meadors says it is
premature to say whose decision it was to attack the ship. But
there is evidence pointing to who ordered the attack. “We do
have a CIA document that was prepared as a result of receiving
information from an informant in the Israeli War Room who tells
us that Moshe Dayan personally ordered the attack,” says
Meadors.
Though the United States has released thousands of
documents on the USS Liberty, Ennes says they have still not
released all. “They claim that some documents we seek cannot
be identified. In other cases the government claims that release
of certain documents would `embarrass an ally’.”
Yet the survivors have forged on, determined to show that truth
will ultimately stand the test of time. With the establishment of
the USS Liberty Veterans Association in 1982 and a website
created as a memorial to the USS Liberty, they have publicized
the true story of the USS Liberty in hopes of keeping it alive in the
public conscience. The surviving crewman say they will never get
closure until they receive a congressional investigation and
acknowledgement from Israel that the attack was in fact
deliberate.
“All we want is the truth to be told after a complete and
comprehensive public Congressional investigation that routinely
follows an incident of this kind. Nothing more and certainly
nothing less,” says Meadors.
Arabia on Line © 2000 all rights reserved
The story was published on March 18, 2001
From [email protected] Mon Mar 19 15:29:38 EST 2001
Article: 260236 of soc.culture.canada
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Subject: Israeli Army Attacks Peaceful =?iso-8859-1?Q?Women=92s?= Protest
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Israeli Army Attacks Peaceful Women’s Protest
Today at 12:00 p.m, Israeli soldiers at Al Ram checkpoint fired tear gas
canisters and sound bombs directly at Palestinians participating in a
peaceful women’s march. Women were also beaten with the butts of rifles
by
the soldiers. 15 women have been transported to nearby hospitals.
The march was organized by the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees
to
protest the continued Israeli imposed closure and siege on the Occupied
Palestinian Territories. Eyewitnesses report that the march from
Ramallah
to Al Ram checkpoint was completely peaceful from the Palestinian side,
with
not a single stone thrown.
On the phone from Al Ram, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, President of the Union
of
Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC) said, “This incident is
proof
that even peaceful protests organized by women are encountered by the
viciousness of the Israeli army”. The UPMRC first aid team was on site
and
delivered emergency treatment to the injured. Sunna Qaud and Moammar
Orabi,
both UPMRC first aid workers were both hit in the head by sound bombs
and
Dr. Barghouthi was hit in the leg with a tear gas canister.
The list of injured includes, but is not limited to:
Vivian Aliat Hanneh, 37 years old who sustained four injuries in both
legs
Pascal Zambarano, Member of the Italian Ministry of Cooperation
Ghaleb Muhammad Hamayil, 8 years old
Leila Ahmed Odeh Abu Nijim, 45 years old
Imad Hafez Ghosheh, 42 years old
Munira Rujdi Zuraikqi, an actress, 37 years old
For more information call Mustafa Barghouthi at 050-254-218
Visit www.palestinemonitor.org
From [email protected] Mon Mar 19 15:30:32 EST 2001
Article: 533817 of soc.culture.jewish
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Subject: Re: #Zionist Fuhrer risks Jewish lives!!!!!
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This post, unlike the rabid rant of Michael Medved against Mr. Goldman,
is fairly rational and deserves a reply.
Judaism in toto amounts to a group strategy for survival and success.
Its tenets require a considerable separation from the larger society
in which the group finds itself. This inward turning always has the potential
for turning from real world rationality into ethnic paranoia. This appears
to have happened in the case of Zionism. I use the analysis commonly
associated with cults when I speak about it. But since the group is large,
and some of the traits of a cult are absent, cult analysis leaves something
wanting.
Cult language, though, is useful. Here a member of the Zionist cult
tries to use the Judaic traits of ingroup solidarity to shame a member
of Judaism not already swept up in the cult. He is, of course, doomed to fail,
but he knows that. What he is actually doing is trying to reinforce
the group identity of Jews who might read David Goldman’s post,
and to say to them that he is outside the group. Goldman, on the other hand,
is asserting that he is a member of the Judaic group, and _all_ Zionists
are not. The Zionists cannot bear to be so treated.
RLA
Alegro wrote:
> David, let me make it succinct and simple. You are lost in the wilderness of
> your disconnected mind. You are alone, David, in your rantings about
> “Zionism.” Your only support comes from admitted Jew-haters, both Arab and
> Gentile.
> You are an insignificant speck of dust on the coats of your fellow Jews.
> No one pays you attention when you live. No one will remember you when you
> die. No one will say Kaddissh for you, David.
> No one.
> (Come back, David, while there is still time for you to rejoin the Jewish
> people. Please…)
>
> “David Goldman” <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]…
> > Here is what is going on. Succinct and simple. The Zionist idolatrous
> > gangsters DON’T CARE HOW MANY JEWS ARE HARMED BECAUSE OF THEIR NAZI
> > BEHAVIOR TOWARD THE PALESTINIANS!! JEWS, WAKE UP! END THE ZIONIST
> > OCCUPATION OF YOUR MINDS AND HEARTS!! The Zionist leaders are demons!
> > They are emissaries from Satan himself! They rejoice in the deaths of
> > Jews! Flee the satanic force of the Zionist State! Restore the rights
> > of the Palestinians in their country! Let them live freely in
> > Palestine!
> >
> > >Arafat aide warns of more terror if
> > > blockade is not lifted
> > > By Lamia Lahoud and Margot Dudkevitch
> >
> > > JERUSALEM (March 14) – While the IDF slightly
> > > eased its blockade of Ramallah yesterday, Fatah
> > > leaders declared today another “day of rage” and a
> > > senior adviser to Palestinian Authority Chairman
> > > Yasser Arafat warned the government that unless it
> > > lifts the “siege” by this Saturday, “Israelis will not
> > > be safe anywhere in Israel.”
> >
> > > Senior PLO and PNC official Bassam Abu Sharif
> > > said if the blockade is not lifted by Saturday,
> > > Israelis should stay away from cafes, restaurants,
> > > bus stops, and other public places.
> >
> > > “I am for peace. I don’t want Israelis to die,” Abu
> > > Sharif told The Jerusalem Post in a telephone
> > > interview from Amman. “Therefore, I advise Mr.
> > > Sharon to lift the siege… People are suicidal; no
> > > one can stand the arrogance of Israeli soldiers
> > > anymore.”
> >
> > > He said his warning was based on intelligence
> > > reports that individuals are ready to commit suicide
> > > attacks and are preparing to carry out a wave of
> > > such attacks everywhere in the center of Israel
> > > where Israelis feels safe.
> >
> > > Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said the blockade
> > > is aimed at thwarting terrorist attacks and is not
> > > collective punishment against the Palestinians.
> >
> > > Abu Sharif called on the Sharon government to lift
> > > the blockade before March 17, but would not say
> > > why he specified this date.
> >
> > > “It is not the PA,” he said. “Individuals are ready to
> > > blow themselves up.”
> >
> > > Palestinian officials also said that extremists are
> > > gaining influence and are getting more and more
> > > support for terror attacks inside Israel. “More and
> > > more Palestinians want the Israelis to suffer,” he
> > > said.
> >
> > > Fatah and other Palestinian factions which comprise
> > > the intifada leadership have called for a “day of
> > > rage” today to protest the closure. Palestinian
> > > sources said they expect bloody riots today, since
> > > the Palestinians will try to break through the army
> > > barricades.
> >
> > > However, West Bank Fatah leader Marwan
> > > Barghouti said the demonstrations will be peaceful
> > > marches to the barricades, as on Monday when
> > > Palestinians tried to remove the checkpoints.
> > > Barghouti admitted that the peaceful demonstrations
> > > were far more effective and were bringing people
> > > into the street who never participated in the uprising
> > > before. “These people are participating now in the
> > > demonstrations… they feel the siege ever since the
> > > IDF closed off Ramallah,” he explained.
> >
> > > Barghouti said the whole world is trying to
> > > convince Israel to lift the blockade of Ramallah,
> > > and ease the economic restrictions. But he ruled out
> > > any trade-off on the basis of “security for bread.”
> >
> > > “Sharon must understand that the Palestinians insist
> > > on security [in exchange] for independence,” he
> > > said.
> >
> > > Palestinian officials said that was the reason Arab
> > > foreign ministers had agreed to a Palestinian
> > > request to pay the $1.3 billion pledged for the
> > > uprising in monthly payments of $40 million.
> >
> > > A senior army official said yesterday that the PA is
> > > not interested in quelling the violence, as Arafat is
> > > hoping to gain international support by continuing to
> > > portray the Palestinian people as victims of Israeli
> > > aggression in order to receive financial support in
> > > the upcoming Arab summit in Amman. He added
> > > that Arafat also hopes to persuade the United
> > > Nations to dispatch a multinational force to the
> > > area.
> >
> > > The IDF is prepared for a long-term confrontation
> > > with the Palestinians, and has not ruled out the
> > > possibility of an escalation in terrorist activities
> > > with more shooting incidents on the roads and
> > > attempts to perpetrate large-scale attacks, a senior
> > > army source said yesterday. While there has been a
> > > decrease in the number of shooting incidents in
> > > recent days, the violence has not come to a
> > > complete halt at any time since it broke out last
> > > October, he said.
> >
> > > According to the official, the Palestinians appear to
> > > have no shortage of weapons and ammunition. The
> > > majority of attacks against Israeli targets were not
> > > carried out with weapons Israel handed over to the
> > > PA, he noted, adding that as in the Gaza Strip, many
> > > of the attacks perpetrated in the West Bank were
> > > similar to those carried out by Hizbullah.
> >
> > > Meanwhile, the IDF has increased morning and
> > > afternoon patrols on the Judea and Samaria roads
> > > used by Jewish residents.
> >
> > > Since October, there have been 115 bombing
> > > incidents in the West Bank that killed eight Israelis
> > > and injured 185, along with 2,257 shooting
> > > incidents, compared to some 4,000 such incidents in
> > > Gaza. In preparation for a possible long-term
> > > confrontation, the IDF is boosting defense measures
> > > in the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria,
> > > and plans to introduce electronic devices,
> > > watchtowers, and other means.
> >
> > > In addition, the army has purchased 1,000 flak
> > > jackets it is distributing to regional councils, and is
> > > assisting in bulletproofing vehicles.
From [email protected] Tue Mar 13 20:05:06 EST 2001
Article: 259587 of soc.culture.canada
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