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Saturday 25 December 2010

Isn't it time for America to re-evaluate its "special relationship" with Israel?

A mere eleven minutes after Israel declared its independence in 1948, US President Harry Truman recognised the newly created state.  That instantaneous public support has never really wavered and ever since then the two countries have shared a "special relationship", one that is unlike any other. America has stood by Israel through thick and thin; right or wrong; supporting it on all fronts: financially, politically, diplomatically and militarily. However, many observers have for a long time now believed that this has become a toxic association, whereby America's entrenched and unwavering support for Israel is actually doing the United States more harm than good. In 2003 the European Commission conducted a poll across Europe in which 59% of those interviewed said they felt that Israel, America's staunchest ally, was in fact the greatest threat to world peace.

Seven years on, a slow realisation finally seems to be dawning on Americans that it is time for a serious re-evaluation of their country's "special relationship" with Israel; at last, the discourse is beginning to take place where it really counts, in the United States of America. On 9th February 2010 there was an Intelligence Squared debate at New York University in which the motion was, "The US should step back from its special relationship with Israel". At the start of the debate the audience poll was 33% in favour of pulling back on the special relationship; by the end of the debate that figure was 49%.

This is by no means a new call. In their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued that Israel is now "increasingly a strategic liability" (p15) which has done considerable harm to US interests and that, as such, "It is time for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country…" (p341) In that respect, "treating Israel as a normal state means no longer pretending that Israel and America's interests are identical, or acting as if Israel deserves steadfast US support no matter what it does". (p341) There is nothing particularly radical about this call for the normalisation of relations and yet when the book was published in 2007, the thesis was met with widespread hostility and aggression.

Today, however, public perception has shifted incrementally and powerful ripples seem to be spreading throughout the political, academic, media and public arenas. It seems as though people are far more ready now than ever before to discuss the danger that Israel poses to world peace, and are far more willing to examine critically the role that America plays in supporting the Zionist state. This change seems to have come about largely as a result of the negative public perception of Israel's horrific attack on the civilian population of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9. Perhaps for the first time, people saw Israel for what it was capable of and the lengths it was willing to go to in order to advance its own aims. The result is that more people appear to be more open to having the moral legitimacy of Israel and its actions brought into question, as well as asking why America sits back and lets Israel act with such apparent impunity. Serious discourse on this subject is long overdue and action is required immediately if America is to repair the damage to its international standing and credibility, especially if it hopes to maintain its role as a legitimate global leader.

This report looks briefly at how the special relationship between the two countries manifests itself, how this relationship affects America adversely and where the call for change is coming from. (MEMO)
Download the full report from here
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Wednesday 22 December 2010

Israel breaking records around the globe...

Read this for the first time or the 10th, it is still worth reading. - Ken O'Keefe


Israel, a country the size of New Jersey can make almost EXCLUSIVE claim to the following achievements:

• Israel was established upon the ruins of another nation that it destroyed; Palestine
• Israel hold the world record in the number of towns & villages it ethnically cleansed...500+
• Israel holds the world record in the number of refugees it deported...4 million +
• Israel holds the world record in the number of homes it demolished...60 thousand +
• Israel is the country with the highest record of UN condemnation...500+ times
• Israel is the country with the highest number of protective US Security council vetoes...100+ times
• Israel has killed more innocent civilians per capita than any other country...50 thousand+
• Israel has imprisoned more civilians per capita than any other country...250 thousand+
• Israel has rendered more innocent civilians handicapped per capita than any other country...50 thousand+
• Israel has injured more innocent civilians per capita than any other country...200 thousand+
• Israel has only two countries to defend its policies in the United Nations. These countries are America & Micronesia. The population for Micronesia as of June 2008 is only 108,000
• Israel is the only country on Earth that denies the right of return of refugees
• Israel is the only country on Earth that still occupies a whole other country & parts of two other countries
• Israel is the only country on Earth that publicly, steals the water of its neighbors
• Israel is the only country on Earth that has legalized home demolishing as a method of collective punishment
• Israel is the only country on Earth that uproots trees as a method of collective punishment
• Israel is the only country on Earth that deliberately targets civilian infrastructure and justifies it
• Israel is the only country on Earth that legalized assassination
• Israel stands unique in using human shields in military operations
• Amongst all countries, Israel is the only one that has legalized torture
• Israel is the only country on Earth that builds illegal settlements in occupied lands
Israel is the only country on Earth that publicly jails activists without trial
• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Israel has created the highest number of checkpoints
• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Israel holds the world record in the number of curfew it has installed on the Palestinians
• Israel is the only country on Earth whose checkpoints deny women access to hospitals, they give birth alone and babies usually die
• Israel is exceptional in being the only country on Earth whose checkpoints deny patients access to hospitals, and they end up dying
• Israel is the only country on Earth whose checkpoints are where wedding parades come to an end
• Israel is the only country on Earth who check points schoolchildren, denies them access to school, and puts an end to their classes
• Israel is one of two countries that, against International Law, use cluster bombs and depleted uranium bombs. America is the other...what a surprise huh?
• Israel holds the world record in the number of soldiers refusing to serve in the army
• Israel despite being a rich country, receives the highest financial aid, more than the sum aid to all sub-Saharan Africa!
• Israel claims its enemies want to wipe it off the map, but it has indeed wiped a whole country called Palestine off the map!
• Israel is the country that has introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East. But the only country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty
• Israel is the only country that still has a segregation wall
• Second to South Africa, Israel is the only country to establish an apartheid regime
• Israeli engineers developed the worlds' first iron gates on roads
• Israeli engineers developed the worlds' first cities turned into jails with gates and opening hours
• Israeli engineers developed the worlds' first apartheid walls
• Israeli engineers developed the worlds' first electrified segregation fences
• Israeli engineers developed the worlds' first 'eyes specific' rubber bullets
• Israeli engineers developed the worlds' first abortion efficient, infant killing tear gas
• Israeli engineers developed the worlds' first humiliation guaranteed human cages
• Israel is the only country on Earth that has a political party that publicly advocates ethnic cleansing of native citizens (Palestinians)
• Israel is the only country on Earth that still has racist laws that discriminate against native citizens (Palestinians)
• Israel is the only country on Earth known to have a memorial dedicated to a terrorist where his followers gather and dance
• Israel is the only country on Earth that imprisons kids for political reasons
• Israel is the only country on Earth where you get a one month community service for intentionally, smashing the head of a child! How much more proof do people need to see that Israel is a terrorist nation?????!!!!!!!!!!
• Israel is the only country on Earth that does not hold its soldiers accountable for shooting peace activists in cold blood
• No other country on Earth has towns and cities allocated exclusively for one ethnic group
• The only country on Earth, where people live in homes stolen from living refugees is, Israel
• The only place on Earth where people cultivate fields stolen from living refugees is, Israel
• Israel has the highest number of towns built upon ethnically cleansed villages, whose former residents are living refugees
• Israel ranks amongst the top countries in lack of security

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Tuesday 21 December 2010

Two years after Israeli war crimes in Gaza: Israeli lawlessness and oppression continue

Palestinians are mere ‘Things’ whose lives have ‘No value’


In 1982 Moshe Dayan said “Israel should tell the Palestinians in the territories that “we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we shall see where this land leads”. How true to date what was said in 1982 - The remarks apply to Palestinians and the Arabs too

It was two years ago, between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009, Israel unleashed its carnage on the starving Palestinian population in Gaza. The United States, the great patron of Israel together with Britain, France and Russia did nothing to stop the Israeli slaughter while the Arab dictators, some collaborated with Israel, while others remained silent.
Helpless world simply watched the television footages of day, Israeli barbarity. A United Nations fact-finding report accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza. As usual the report is gathering dust in the UN shelves.

A pall of smoke rises after an explosion from an Israeli missile strike on the Islamic University in Gaza City, December 29, 2008. Pic. courtesy: Google
Gaza is a small beach side strip of around 365 sq miles by the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli occupation

Sandwiched between Egypt and Israel this territory with about 1.5 million Palestinians is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Most of the inhabitants are refugees who owned their lands and homes in what we now call Israel. They were chased out at gunpoint by Jewish terror gangs, and their lands grabbed to set up the Jewish state of Israel in Palestine in 1948. During the June 1967 Israeli war of aggression, Gaza was brought under Israeli occupation. Since then the people there were subjected to untold oppression, cruelties and miseries besides daily killings, arbitrary arrest and torture. Decades of Israeli oppression and humiliation produced angry young men most of whom are fighting back though with limited means.

Unable to face the fierce Palestinian opposition, Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years and handed over control of the Rafah border, Gaza’s sole contact with the outside world, to Egypt while Palestinian Forces, monitored by European Union officials, too were stationed.

Almost four decades of systematic Israeli oppression and repeated border closures have driven Gazans to poverty and inevitably around 80 percent of the population depends on food aid for day-to-day subsistence. Without such aid they would die in a matter of days.

Elections

In a spotless democratic election, held in January 2006 under the supervision of former US President Jimmy Carter who described it as free and fair, Hamas was elected with an overwhelming majority.

Israel, the US and their European and Arab collaborators wanted Hamas crushed at any cost as they did not want democracy in the Middle East. Israel, backed by US and Europe, stopped all donations and cut off the flow of all money to starve Palestine into submission.
The Arab regimes too joined this financial blockade knowing very well the misery they were causing to the Palestinians who needed this money to keep body and soul together.


Bombed Gaza Strip

In the midst Israel, under the guise of trying to free a captured soldier, bombed Gaza Strip in June 2006 with its F-16 fighter planes and helicopter gunships and artillery fire from tanks surrounded and turned Gaza into a virtual slaughter house. Within days roads, bridges, power plants, water supply, universities, schools, hospitals, play grounds, mosques and even tombs and ministry buildings were bombed and destroyed causing untold misery to the people already starving.

In an unprecedented lawlessness, and the violation of international law, Israel started mafia-style abduction of Hamas Cabinet Ministers, Mayors and Parliamentarians.

As usual there was deafening international silence at this Israeli barbarity. Egypt joined Israel in closing the border and virtually sealed and cut off Gaza from the rest of the world.
Since June 2007, 90 percent of Gaza’s local industries too were forced to shut down, leaving 70,000 labourers jobless.

There was no fuel to keep the plant running because Israel imposed a complete lock-down with no movement in or out of the Gaza Strip for people, or any kind of shipments in of vital food, fuel supplies and medicines. It was a slow death. Palestinians in Gaza and even in the West Bank were made virtual prisoners in their own homes and in a dire economic situation while Israel continued its air strikes in the densely populated city.

This was a grave war crime and it should be pointed out that in the aftermath of World War II German leaders were sentenced to death for lesser crimes.

This situation continued for 20 long months until January 17, 2008 when Israel imposed a complete blockade and shut down Gaza’s only power plant plunging the entire territory into chaos. They were only allowed to breathe the air which Israel could not blockade.
People started queuing for bread, but there was no bread, as it cannot be made without electricity. Connections with the outside world started fading as mobile phones and laptops ran out of battery power.


Latheef Farook
There was no water because the pumps needed electricity. People could not go to work because there was no fuel for cars and buses. Hospitals with generators ran out of fuel to power them, halting all surgery procedures.

In desperation, Palestinians tried to enter Egypt through the Rafah crossing, but the Egyptian border guards drove them out. Over 1,000 Palestinians went out to the streets begging the world to end this cruel enforced starvation to death.

Destructive weapons

Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery said “The message of Jews, the US and Europe to Palestinian is that “you will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the Hamas Government and elect candidates approved by Israel and the US.
It was on these starving Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli unleashed its military might, from December 27 to January 18, 2009, using US supplied latest of bunker buster missiles, F16 bombers and other latest of destructive weapons. Helpless world watched television footages of the slaughter of innocent men, women, children and the aged?

During the 22 days of its carnage Israel killed, 1,334 Palestinians, one-third of them children, injured 5,450, one-third of them children, displaced 100,000, made homeless 50,000, destroyed 4,100 residential homes and buildings, damaged 17,000 damaged (together accounting for 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza), destroyed 29 educational institutions, destroyed or damaged 92 mosques, destroyed 1,500 shops, factories and other commercial facilities, 20 ambulances, ruined 35-60 percent of agricultural land and caused an estimated damage of US$ 1.9 billion in total estimated damages.

Two years later today plight of the Palestinians in Gaza remains unchanged. Israel remains lawless and arrogant. Champions of human rights in Washington, London, Paris and the so-called brothers in the Middle East have no time for the Palestinians.

The writer is a senior journalist who, after working for almost ten years in the Ceylon Daily News and the Ceylon Observer, led a group of journalist to Dubai in 1979 to launch Gulf News. He returned home after a quarter century working in the Gulf and now based in Colombo. 



Monday 20 December 2010

Book Review; Palestine in Pieces: Graphic perspectives on the Israeli Occupation

Palestine in pieces: Graphic perspectives on the Israeli Occupation is the most recent contribution by Kathleen and Bill Christison in their long standing effort to bring into the public domain the realities and horrors of the Palestinian people's plight as a colonised and oppressed nation living under the belligerent occupation of Israel.

It is an insightful, authoritative and comprehensive account of the physical manifestations of the political and ideological reality of Zionism in the context of occupation and as an "aggressive, exclusivist movement of Jewish redemption intended from the beginning to sweep everything non-Jewish from its path." Zionism's objective of total Jewish implantation across Palestine is highlighted by its destructive expansionism, the vanguard of which is the settlements and which thus form the cornerstones of the occupation. Palestine in Pieces persuasively demonstrates that from this ideology and its perceived need to protect and ensure the permanence of the ever expanding settlements flows all of Israel's increasingly repressive methods of consolidating its occupation and domination of Palestinians and their land. It argues that the long term goal of policies such as house demolitions, land appropriation, impediments to movement, the West Bank wall, sieges, killings, the system of bypass roads and the strangulation of the economy is to cause hardship and misery enough that Palestinians will voluntarily emigrate. Additionally and most significantly as the title of the book alludes, it is to "so fragment the Occupied Territories that any sustainable presence in the land by Palestinians as a nation will be negated."

Through this book, the authors endeavour to counter the Zionist propaganda which began at its inception and which continues to this day; misinformation and fictions that down play the significance of 1948 and attempt to negate the very existence of Palestinians as a people. This is demonstrated by Israeli map making practices which attempt to literally erase proof of the existence of Palestinians from the world stage. For this reason, the authors have included several maps; of Palestine-Israel, Jerusalem, Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank and the pathway of the West Bank Separation Barrier. Such erasures and denial is no doubt accompanied by and allows the denial of basic Palestinian human rights; of the existence of their suffering and of their right to independence to name but a few.
A key theme of Palestine in Pieces is that of bearing witness; breaking the taboo and silence that surrounds the Palestinian occupation and giving a voice to those without one. As former CIA political analysts and respected authors on Palestinian issues as well as having visited the Occupied Territories numerous times - almost yearly since 2003, Bill and Kathleen Christison offer a perspective of objectivity and authority supported by three decades of activism. They are a reservoir of first hand knowledge and here they provide personal accounts of their experiences of the occupation through which we are allowed to hear the stories and daily struggles of individual Palestinians. This real life look at the people 're-humanises' them and allows a western audience to more readily identify with them and to view them as more than mere statistics or 'the other' as is often the case in western media. Through these stories, the hope is to "…resist watering down our truths into vague and generalized abstractions; we maintain the urgency and intensity in the concrete." The anecdotes that chronicle their journey tell the story of great loss but also of the determination, resilience, humanity and the power of the Palestinian spirit in the face of great adversity.
Through their writing they are able to evoke images of stark change over time - images of the land itself; of a vast Palestinian wilderness; fertile lands, mountains and breathtaking beauty pillaged, as Israeli expansionism seeks to overtake it. It allows you to visualise a hopelessness and misery; "It is the poverty that hits you in the face, although that is only the surface: donkey carts everywhere, children in bare feet or only flip-flops walking through cold puddles in the winter rain, flea markets on many corners selling old clothes and run-down shoes - and the walls covered everywhere with endless graffiti in Arabic."
The catalogue of more than 50 photographs is worth a thousand times as many words. They visually hammer home the vivid reality of the situation emphasising, as with much of the book, the real human cost and impact of the occupation. The strategic positioning and enormity of settlements like Maale Adumim as well as their apparent luxury juxtaposed against the rural sparcity of Palestine is seldom seen. And images of the imposing, prohibitive permanence of the wall as it divides communities; checkpoints, bars, gates and razor wire that pens people in and the bulldozers, house demolitions, anguish and desolation are all clearly captured.
The pictorial and illustrative distinction of the book in combination with its brevity aims at rapidly educating those with little or no knowledge of the occupation or the goals of Zionism and as such, it is an invaluable contribution to existing literature. The perspective it lends to the occupation, its astute political observations and commentary underpinned by the courage, conviction and humanism of the authors makes it a convincing read. (MEMO)
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Thursday 9 December 2010

MPs Debate the detention of Palestinian children in the West Bank

(CAABU) Alister Burt, the government's minister for the Middle East, expressed concern over Israel's repeated human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories and criticised the Israeli government for its policy of using secret evidence to convict Palestinian children in the West Bank.


The minister went on to criticise the Israeli policy of denying Palestinian prisoners access to their families while under detention and said that Israel 'risked undermining its own interests' through these actions.


The minister made his remarks as part of the government's response to a 90-minute Westminster Hall debate on the detention of Palestinian children and the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.


The debate was secured by Sandra Osborne MP following a trip by members from the Britain-Palestine All Party Group to the occupied West Bank. the delegation, organised by the Council for Arab British Understanding, spent four days in the occupied territory during which MPs witnessed the highly questionable treatment of child detainees by an Israeli military court.


Ian Lavery MP told the hall "I am a parent, and I have children. The way children were treated in the military courts was absolutely savage, and cannot be justified. Kids as young as 12, and up to 16 were frightened out of their wits. They had not seen their parents since they were detained. They were snatched at the dead of night, bound, put in the back of an Israeli army truck, kicked and beaten, and taken to a detention centre with no parents, no lawyers and no one at all to protect them."


Israel's policy of arrest and detainment of children in the West Bank, some as young as 12, has drawn heavy criticism from a number of NGOs working in the occupied territories. B'tselem reports that since September 2000 around 6500 Palestinian children have been detained in Israeli prisons, many on charges as minor as stone throwing.


A report published by Defence for Children International in June 2009 detailed widespread and repeated human rights violations against child detainees by the Israeli authorities. The report listed as common practices; torture or the threat of torture, restriction of access to legal-aid, prolonged separation from family members, the signing of confessions under duress, the signing of confessions in a foreign language and the restriction of access to an interpreter.


Richard Burden MP said that Israel's actions were "contrary to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and to the provisions of the Geneva convention" and that he couldn't envisage any situation "in which a child, whatever they are alleged to have done, should be manacled, shackled and denied the right to see their parents. We cannot start discriminating against someone on the basis of the offence for which they are being tried."


Mr Burden's comments were in sharp contrast with those of Gutu Bebb MP, who argued that context was "crucial" to the debate and that on occasion, specifically when a state finds its self threatened, it should be licensed to use means that contravene international law. He cited Britain's conduct in Northern Ireland to support his argument and summed up by stating that sometimes "specific circumstances called for unacceptable behaviour".


Graham Morris MP pointed out that "In 2008, bail was denied in 91% of all cases involving Palestinian children." And "Between 2001 and 2008, over 600 complaints were filed against Israeli Security Agency interrogators for alleged ill-treatment and torture. To date, there has not been a single criminal investigation" Stephen Twigg, the Shadow Minister for the Middle East, said that he deplored the methods employed by the Israeli government in the detainment and imprisonment of children, not only because they violated the universal principles of human rights, but also because they exacerbated tensions and undermined prospects for peace in the region.


He stated that the UK had a special responsibility when it came to upholding human rights and that the protection of such rights should be at the centre of all UK foreign policy. He concluded by urging the minister to press both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to uphold these rights in the West Bank.


Sandra Osborne MP, who opened the debate, concluded by asking the minister to confirm on behalf of the government that Israel was in breach of the 4th Geneva Convention, that he would raise the matter personally with the Israeli prime minister and that he would make every effort to view the situation for himself when he next visited the West Bank.


The minister responded by expressing concern over a number of Israeli policies, including its use secret evidence in its prosecution of suspects, its tendency to withhold Palestinian access to lawyers and its practice of trying Palestinians under military law and Israeli settlers under civil law.


He promised the hall that the Foreign Office raised all of its concerns with the Israeli government and encouraged them to take these concerns seriously.


However, the minister admitted that often his office received no formal response from the Israelis and those responses they did receive often failed to address the issues in any detail.


He went on to say that the Foreign Office "understands" why the Israeli government chooses to not to acknowledge, let alone address, serious British concerns yet he failed to clarify the nature of this understanding and indeed why his government tacitly accepted this sort of conduct from one of its key allies. (MAP)

Wednesday 1 December 2010

United Nations lost its soul and justice collapsed - November 29,1947 Resolution Partitioning Palestine

At the turn of the last century Palestine, now turned into Israel, was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. About 95 percent of the population in 1896 were Arabs who owned ninety percent of the land. It was such a peaceful place that there was hardly anyone spoke loud and using a dirty was unheard of.

In 1897, the first World Zionist Congress in the Swiss city of Basle decided to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Ten years later in 1907 Britain decided at the London Colonial Conference to establish a hostile power which would keep the Middle East   in turmoil.  
This common conspiracy brought Britain and the Zionist Jews together .The two jointly manipulated and brought down the   Ottoman Empire during World War 1 .As planned, Palestine was brought under British Mandatory Authority in 1917 paving the way for Jewish migration especially from Russia to settle in Palestinian lands after driving them out. 

As expected unarmed Palestinians, unaware of the British and Zionist Jewish conspiracies,   resisted. Migrant Jews responded by forming terrorist brigades such as   Hagana, Stern    Irgun and Zvai Leumi, led by Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, godfathers of terrorism, and started killing Palestinians village after village.

Designed to destroy the Palestinian resistance  Menachem Begin went on a murderous rampage and   butchered hundreds of innocent Palestinian men, women and children –   254 in Deir Yassin alone -a village a few miles off Jerusalem. The Deir Yassin massacre has been one of the most barbarous crimes ever committed against humanity and could be coupled with the infamous “My Lai massacre in Vietnam”.

The helpless Palestinians rose up in protest and the British authority cruelly crushed the uprising.  When the uprising proved alarming, the British turned to its well cultivated loyal royal Arab stooges – tribal and military dictators.

Frightened Palestinians ran for their lives and ended up in refugee camps in neighbouring countries where they still languish in appalling conditions. Once sufficient numbers of Jews were brought in the Zionists   manoeuvred UN to partition Palestine.
On November 29 1947, the United Nations, blackmailed by US President Truman, passed a resolution partitioning Palestine offering migrant Jews who robbed Palestinian lands.  In the proposed Jewish state too the Arabs had a majority as; of    the total population of 1,008,900 the Arab-Jew ratio was 509,780 to 499,020.  

Emboldened by the Partition Resolution, the Zionists committed a series of reprehensible massacres against the Palestinian Arabs. The US supplied the Zionist terror gangs with weapons then as they do now. Since then up to its 2008/2009 genocide in Gaza, Israel has committed more than 60 massacres. Perhaps Lebanon’s Hezbollah is next in the line?

In the midst of Zionist carnage   the state of Israel was proclaimed on 14 May 1948, over a much larger part of the country than that was allotted to the Zionists by the UN Partition Resolution. It was the upshot of inhuman force, created in violation of the principles of the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the very resolution under which the Israelis now claim sovereignty. Fifteen minutes after the proclamation of the Zionist state, recognition came from the White House   followed by Kremlin both of whom, played very crucial role in the creation of this entity.

Since then Israel   turned the Middle East into a killing field with its repeated massacres and invasions. In 1956 Israel   invaded Egypt with Britain and France .In 1967 Israel invaded and captured Sinai and Gaza South Lebanon, West Bank and East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. All in cooperation with it’s US and European supporters.

This is the only entity where a Rabbi, Jewish priest, supposed to follow in the footsteps of the Prophet Moses and occupying Palestinian land could proudly say that the lives of one million Palestinians are not worth a fingernail of a Jew and gets away with it.
In the mid 1970s Zionism was declared by the UN as a form of racism.  Reiterating this three and half decades later today here is what Israeli daily HAARETZ said on Tuesday 9 November 2010;”

In a sermon given on Saturday on laws concerning what non-Jews are permitted to do on Shabbat, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said: "Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel."Rabbi Yosef added; why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, and they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat." According to Yosef, death has "no dominion" over non-Jews in Israel. "With gentiles, it will be like any person - they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant... That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”    This Shas Party is  an important member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition  and two key portfolios, of the Interior and of Construction and Housing, are held by Shas members   Eli Yishai and Ariel Atias.

Aggression, massacres and lawlessness have been an ongoing program and thus the history of Israel has become history of crimes, conspiracies, bloodshed, murders, appalling massacres and lawlessness.

Today Jews from any part of the world could settle down in the occupied Palestinian lands whereas the Palestinians still holding the keys to their houses and title deeds for the lands were not permitted to return. Israel, the only country without a permanent border, is also the only entity in known history which repeatedly elects mass murderers and war criminals as prime ministers.

Almost a century after they started arriving   and 63 years establishing their state   the world changed but Zionist Jews   remain unchanged. They continue to kill    Palestinians with impunity ,grab  Palestinian lands for settling migrant Jews  , establish  exclusive Jewish settlements in Palestinian lands with American tax payers’ money ,demolishing Palestinian homes, destroying their farm lands and deprive them of their livelihood, imprison and  horrible  torture  of Palestinians ,there are    more than 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails , imposed economic blockade on Gaza along with Egypt throttling  more than 1.5 million  Palestinians there  and the crime list continues under the  most   inhuman Israeli military occupation in West Bank and Gaza.

Over the years today Israel, the most condemned country by the United Nations with more than 120 UN resolutions, has become the sole source of instability threatening not only the region but the entire world. The UN   remains ineffective in the face of Zionist crimes due to US and European support.

The leaders of the West and even the Middle East simply need to listen to the dictates of international Jewry which controls the political, economic, financial,   media, entertainment and establishments   in the West and thus the world.

The situation is such that the United States, United Kingdom and Europe in general have become collaborators in all Israeli crimes against Palestinians in the region. However what   is disgusting is that even some Arab leaders,   abandoned   Palestinian, under pressure from US,   and some developing countries have conveniently dropped the Palestinians in their rush to embrace   the Zionists!

Palestinians have no one to turn to.   They are demonised as terrorists by the Western media. However they have two most powerful weapons in their hands-patience and justice.  They firmly believe in the age old saying that the Mill of the God Grinds Slowly, but surely, as proved time and again in human history. (by Latheef Farook) 

Latheef Farook is a senior journalist who, after working for almost the years in the Ceylon Daily News and the Ceylon Observer, led a group of journalist to Dubai in 1979 to launch Gulf News. After almost quarter century he returned home and now based in Colombo.

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URGENT: War criminals not welcome - Oppose changes to universal jurisdiction

Dear all,

The recently published Police Reform Bill includes proposals which, if passed, will make it much more difficult to obtain an arrest warrant for anyone accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Currently, for a magistrate to issue an arrest warrant, serious evidence must be presented against the person concerned. The proposed change adds a political dimension to a legal decision and introduces a source of delay when urgent action may be required to stop a suspect escaping justice. Britain has a duty to seek out and prosecute those responsible for war crimes.
PSC and other NGO's are calling for MPs to vote against these proposed changes. The current law fully complies with the Geneva convention and the proposed changed will allow politicians to interfere with requests to issue arrest warrants for war criminals.
If passed the new legislations would allow the DPP, who is appointed and "superintended" by a government minister, the Attorney General, would have a veto over whether a suspected war criminal to be arrested, no matter how clear the evidence. And the DPP could find themselves under immense pressure from their boss, the Attorney General, to refuse an arrest warrant application if it was for someone from what the government considered an 'ally' country.
The situation is now critical. We are asking everyone to contact their MPs and insist that they vote against these proposals.
Even if you have already emailed your MP on this issue previously, it is important that you take 2 minutes to send them a new message, asking them to vote against the formally proposed changes. PSC have set up an easy to usee-tool to allow you to send a model letter to your MP.
Follow up your email by arranging a meeting with your MP at their next surgery. You can find your MP's contact details at: http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/
For more information:  Read the PSC briefing on why we should oppose changes to the law.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) aims to raise public awareness about the occupation of Palestine and the struggle of the Palestinian people. PSC seek to bring pressure on both the British and Israeli government to bring their policies in line with international law. PSC is an independent, non-governmental and non-party political organisation with members from communities across the UK. Join PSC today!

Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Box BM PSA, London, WC1N 3XX
Tel: 020 7700 6192
Fax: 020 7609 7779
Email: info@palestinecampaign.org
Web: www.palestinecampaign.org

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