Israel decision to build new settlements

Clinton and Hague attack Israel decision to build new settlements
US and UK react to Binyamin Netanyahu's approval of plans for 3,000 new homes on occupied territory in the West Bank
Paul Harris in New York
Saturday 1 December 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/01/hillary-clinton-william-hague-israel-settlements

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and British foreign secretary, William Hague, have launched attacks on an Israeli decision to build fresh settlements on occupied territory in the West Bank.

The Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to approve the construction of 3,000 new homes is widely seen as a response to the United Nations vote earlier this week that recognised a Palestinian bid to be a "non-member observer state".

The US, with Israel, strongly opposed that move, while Britain abstained in the vote. But now both countries have criticised the Israeli settlement decision, saying it hurts the chances of a two-state solution and the search for peace in the troubled region.

"Let me reiterate that this administration, like previous administrations, has been very clear with Israel that these activities set back the cause of a negotiated peace," Clinton said, in remarks delivered at the Saban Center think tank in Washington on Friday.

Hague said he was "extremely concerned" at the plans, which have been reported in the Israeli press as including a four-square-mile area just east of Jerusalem that is seen as vital to keeping open a viable land corridor between the city and any future Palestinian state.

Hague asked Israel to reverse the decision and said the prospect of a successful two solution was receding. "Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and undermine trust between the parties," he said in comments Saturday. "If implemented, these plans would alter the situation on the ground on a scale that makes the two-state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, increasingly difficult to achieve."

Hague added: "They would undermine Israel's international reputation and create doubts about its stated commitment to achieving peace with the Palestinians."

Israel had strongly opposed the Palestinian bid for improved recognition at the UN, saying that the tactic was a blow for peace negotiations. It had secured strong and vocal support from the US, its traditional ally, and a handful of other nations, but was unable to derail the move which was celebrated wildly on the streets of the West Bank.

Palestinian politicians reacted to the new settlement decision with dismay. "This would be the last nail in the coffin of the peace process," the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, told Sky News.

The firm US and British line on the Israeli decision is unlikely to mark any real shift in allegiances or policy. Clinton backed up her criticism of Israel with another strong admonition of the Palestinians and said that they had acted wrongly and unilaterally in gaining improved recognition at the UN.

"Palestinian leaders need to ask themselves what unilateral action can really accomplish for their people. President [Mahmoud] Abbas took a step in the wrong direction this week, to say the least. We opposed his resolution," Clinton said.

The fresh spat over settlements comes at a time when all sides appear to regard the prospect of a peace settlement in the region as a distant dream. Any future Palestinian state remains deeply divided between the more moderate and secular rule of Abbas in the West Bank and the militant Islamic group Hamas, which governs in the tiny and isolated Gaza Strip.

In Friday's address, the US secretary of state said Hamas had "condemned those it rules to violence and misery" and now faced a choice.

"Hamas knows what it needs to do. If it wishes to reunite the Palestinians and join the international community it must reject violence, honor past agreements with Israel and recognize Israel's right to exist," Clinton said, adding: "America has showed that it is willing to work with Islamists who reject violence and work towards real democracy, but we will never work with terrorists."

Despite the criticism over settlement building, Clinton reiterated American support for its traditional Middle East ally.

"Americans honor Israel as a homeland dreamed of for generations and finally achieved by pioneering men and women in my lifetime," she said. "What threatens Israel threatens America. What strengthens Israel strengthens us."

Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction under the Roadmap For Peace plan in 2002. But it has failed to comply with that commitment despite repeated and widespread international condemnation.

Fresh trouble continues to break out in Gaza, after Hamas and Israel spent eight days trading rocket and missile fire earlier this month.

That conflict ended with an Egyptian-brokered truce but there have been repeated flare-ups since. On Saturday a Palestinian who was shot and wounded by Israeli troops on Friday, while protesting at the Gaza Strip boundary fence, died in hospital. Five others were also wounded in the incident.

Palestinians win upgraded UN status

Palestinians win upgraded UN status by wide margin
29 November 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20550864

The UN General Assembly has voted to grant the Palestinians non-member observer state status - a move strongly opposed by Israel and the US.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the assembly the vote was the "last chance to save the two-state solution" with Israel.

Israel's envoy to the UN said the bid pushed peace process "backwards", while the US said the move was "unfortunate".

The assembly voted 138-9 in favour, with 41 nations abstaining.

Hundreds of Palestinians celebrated on the streets of Ramallah, in the West Bank, after the result was announced.

'Birth certificate'

"Sixty-five years ago on this day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 181, which partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two states and became the birth certificate for Israel," Mr Abbas said shortly before the vote in New York.

"The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine," he said.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, said "the only way to reach peace is through agreements" between the parties, not at the UN.

"No decision by the UN can break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel," he said.

Opponents of the bid say a Palestinian state should emerge only out of bilateral negotiations, as set out in the 1993 Oslo peace accords under which the Palestinian Authority was established.

Speaking after the vote, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, urged the Palestinians and Israel to resume direct peace talks and warned against unilateral actions.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the vote "unfortunate and counter-productive", saying it put more obstacles on the path to peace.

"By going to the UN , the Palestinians have violated the agreements with Israel and Israel will act accordingly," said the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Twitter.

The UK abstained from the vote, as did Germany. The Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands and Panama were among the nations voting with the US and Israel.

In the West Bank, crowds celebrated the vote by waving flags and chanting "God is great!"

"For the first time, there will be a state called Palestine, with the recognition of the entire world," Amir Hamdan was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

"Today the world will hear our voice," he added.

Symbolic milestone

The Palestinians are seeking UN recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967.

While the move is seen as a symbolic milestone in Palestinian ambitions for statehood, the "Yes" vote will also have a practical diplomatic effect, says the BBC's Barbara Plett, at the UN.

It would allow the Palestinians to participate in debates at the UN and improve their chances of joining UN agencies and bodies like the International Criminal Court.

Last year, Mr Abbas asked the UN Security Council to admit the Palestinians as a member state, but that was opposed by the US.

Mr Abbas was much criticised by many Palestinians for remaining on the sidelines of the conflict earlier this month in Gaza and efforts to achieve a ceasefire with Israel.

His Fatah movement, based in the West Bank, is deeply split from the militant Hamas movement which governs Gaza.

Gaza's Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh said in a statement sent to the BBC that Hamas' "support for the UN bid is based on the 'rule of non-recognition of the occupier'... and the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland".

“Flatten” Gaza like Hiroshima

“Flatten” Gaza like Hiroshima and “mow” the population, Israeli public figures urge
Ali Abunimah on Sun, 11/18/2012
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/flatten-gaza-hiroshima-and-mow-population-israeli-public-figures-urge

Among the latest horrifying examples of incitement to mass murder by Israeli public figures, Gilad Sharon, the son of former prime minister and notorious war criminal Ariel Sharon, has called for the Israeli army to “flatten” Gaza as the US flattened the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 with an atomic bomb.

“The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences,” wrote Sharon in the extremist publication The Jerusalem Post. Sharon elaborated:

We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.

Sharon added that “There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip.”

As of Sunday night, the end of the fifth day of Israel’s air assault on Gaza, more than 70 Palestinians, half of them civilians, had been killed in hundreds of Israeli airstrikes.

“Don’t give a hoot about Goldstone”

Meanwhile in a message to soldiers, Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari of the National Union party exhorted soldiers to kill without thought or mercy.

“Brothers! Beloved soldiers and commanders - preserve your lives! Don’t give a hoot about Goldstone! There are no innocents in Gaza, don’t let any diplomats who want to look good in the world endanger your lives[;] at any tiniest concern for your lives - Mow them!,” Ben-Ari was quoted as saying by the website HaKol HaYehudi.

Ben-Ari was referring to the UN-commissioned Goldstone report that documented war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel’s 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza which left more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead.

“We love you alive and smiling, not, heaven forefend, ‘just’ and dead in Gaza - Sodom [-] there are no righteous men, turn it into rubble. Paint it red! We are worried about you and rely on you. We all do, all of the Nation of Israel,” Ben-Ari added.

The phrase “the Nation of Israel” refers to all members of the Jewish religion, not to citizens of the State Israel, notes Dena Shunra who translated Ben-Ari’s comments.

On 15 November, the second day of an Israeli assault, Ben-Ari addressed a hate rally in Tel Aviv, calling for more bloodshed in Gaza. New video of that rally, which this blog reported on previously, shows Ben-Ari in action.

Ben-Ari is also notorious for his incitement against Africans and for his hatred of Christians. In July he tore up a New Testament, calling it “abominable” and threw it in the trash.

Read more examples of incitement to violence by Israeli public figures, for example the prominent rabbi who says the Israeli army “must learn from the Syrians how to slaughter the enemy.”

All of these inciters will no doubt be pleased that in the bloodiest attack of Israel’s assault so far, 11 Palestinians from a single family, including four young children and an 81-year-old woman, were killed on Sunday when an Israeli bomb flattened their home.

Peace was within reach before Israeli attack

Long-term peace was within reach before Israeli attack
16 November, 2012
http://rt.com/news/peace-settlement-hamas-israel-882

Israel has chosen to attack Gaza in order to avoid reaching a longer-term peace settlement that was being negotiated with the help of Hamas’ military leader Ahmen Jabari, who was assassinated in an Israeli attack Wednesday, says Israeli activist.

Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin spoke to RT confirming that Ahmen Jabari was involved in peace settlement negotiations with Israel and was due to send Hamas’ version of a peace draft to Baskin on Wednesday evening before he was killed.

RT: So you're saying that a draft of a permanent truce agreement already existed. What went wrong then?

Gershon Baskin: It was initially drafted 8 months ago. It was presented to the Israelis, Hamas, Egyptian intelligence and the UN for deliberation. Both Israelis and Hamas decided not to agree. Over the last months the ceasefires got shorter and shorter and the intensity of the fighting increased. And I decided together with my counterpart in Hamas, we were instrumental in negotiating a prisoner exchange deal that led to freedom of Gilad Shaid, the Israeli soldier held in captivity by Mr. Jabari, we decided to push forward. My Hamas counterpart wrote a new version of the draft and he was presenting it to Hamas leaders. In fact on Wednesday morning he was presenting it to Ahmed Jabari himself. I was supposed to receive later that evening the copy of the draft in Arabic for me to deliver to the Israelis who were waiting for it along with Egyptian intelligence.

RT: Why do you think Israel approved the assassination of the Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari?

GB: There is a legitimate argument within the Israeli security assessment on whether or not making a truce with Hamas strengthens Hamas at a time when we know Ahmed Jabari and his colleagues are not peace activists. They don’t want peace with Israel they are committed to Israel’s destruction. For tactical reasons they had decided that a ceasefire was in their interests because each round of violence brings about the death of 10 and 25 combatants in Gaza and they didn’t see any value when no real damage was happening to Israel from their rockets attacks. So they wanted to at least have a time-out, where they could reconsider new moves. Some Israelis thought that by having a truce with them would strengthen them. There were people who believed that what we need to do is systematically weaken Hamas, so they would fall out of power. And there are those that believe we need to create deterrents strong enough that Hamas won’t attack Israel. The rocket attacks on the civilian population in Israel are intolerable and they needed to take action. I believe personally that we tried everything, we have assassinated leaders, we assassinated military commanders, we have put on an economic siege, we have bombed them, and we have tried everything except a dialogue, except an attempt to reach an understanding with mechanisms for verification and for compliance with the involvement of Egyptian military intelligence. I think it has a chance to work. But now we have to postpone it for some time.

RT: What is Israel's endgame here? What are they hoping to achieve?

GB: I don’t know how you define an end game at this point. They stated that the aim is to create deterrence. How do you determine that you created enough deterrence? Is it when you have killed enough people? Destroyed enough of the infrastructure? Destroyed enough buildings? I don’t know how you define it. What we have here is a bigger chance of escalation for a ground operation. We have to recall that Hamas rockets that they shoot into Israel are what we call a statistical weapon. They usually fall into open space, but they can fall onto a school bus, supermarket, apartment building and we can have major casualties. And if it does happen we will have a ground operation.

False narrative of how Gaza escalation started

‘Washington Post’ prints false narrative of how Gaza escalation started
Alex Kane on November 15, 2012
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/washington-post-prints-false-narrative-of-how-gaza-escalation-started.html

You know the drill by now: an escalation occurs in the Gaza Strip that is automatically blamed on Palestinian fighters. The New York Times does it, as the Electronic Intifada's Maureen Murphy points out, and now the Washington Post prints a story with a similar narrative.

Here's how the Post reports on how the bombardment in Gaza started:

The latest round of fighting began Saturday, when militants from a non-Hamas faction fired an antitank missile at an Israeli jeep traveling along the Israel-Gaza border, injuring four Israeli soldiers. Israel responded with shelling and firing that Gaza medical officials said killed at least four people, including two children, and wounded about two dozen others. Militants then fired about 130 rockets and mortar rounds at population centers of southern Israel over several days. After mediation from Egypt, the flare-up appeared to have waned by Tuesday.


But that's not how "the latest round of fighting began." The Institute for Middle East Understanding published an excellent timeline that shows how the fighting actually began:

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8

Following a two-week lull in violence, Israeli soldiers invade Gaza. In the resulting exchange of gunfire with Palestinian fighters, a 12-year-old boy is killed by an Israeli bullet while he plays soccer.

Shortly afterwards, Palestinian fighters blow up a tunnel along the Gaza-Israel frontier, injuring one Israeli soldier.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10

An anti-tank missile fired by Palestinian fighters wounds four Israeli soldiers driving in a jeep along the Israel-Gaza boundary.

An Israeli artillery shell lands in a soccer field in Gaza killing two children, aged 16 and 17. Later, an Israeli tank fires a shell at a tent where mourners are gathered for a funeral, killing two more civilians, and wounding more than two dozen others.


As you can see, the escalation began when Israel killed a 12-year-old boy. The rockets and missiles fired in response were what the Gaza-based militant group Popular Resistance Committees called a "revenge invoice."

It's Terrorism When It Happens in Israel

Peter Hart
11/16/2012
http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/11/16/its-terrorism-when-it-happens-in-israel/

On NBC Nightly News (11/15/12) , correspondent Martin Fletcher gives viewers a sense of the suffering on both sides of the Israel/Gaza conflict:

FLETCHER: Terror in Israel.

(SHOUTING)

FLETCHER: "There is another one," a soldier screams.

(SHOUTING)

FLETCHER: More than 200 missiles fired at Israel today.

And in Gaza, despair.

(SHOUTING)

FLETCHER: Burying an infant killed in an Israeli attack.


Frightened Israeli soldiers are being terrorized. And Gazans burying a child? Something else, apparently.

Hamas military chief killed in Gaza air strike

Barney Henderson, and Chris Irvine
14 Nov 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/9677782/Hamas-military-chief-killed-in-Gaza-air-strike.html

Hamas has said that Israeli air strike in Gaza which killed Ahmed Jabari, the head of its military wing, "has opened the gates of hell".

Jabari, who is the most senior Hamas official to be killed since an Israeli invasion of Gaza four years ago, was killed in an air strike on a vehicle, in a dramatic resumption of Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian militant leaders.

Jabari has long topped Israel's most-wanted list, the Associated Press reported, and was blamed for in a string of attacks, including the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit in 2006.

His son was also reportedly killed in the targeted air strike, according to Osama Hamdan, a Hamas representative in Lebanon, talking to Al Jazeera in Doha.

"We will respond [to the assassination], this I have to say clearly," he said.

"The Israelis are working to target the local leaders and political leaders in Gaza. We are expecting acts and reactions from the Palestinians."

The network also spoke to Avital Leibovitch, an IDF spokesman, who confirmed Jabari was targeted.

"The first target we targeted was Ahmad Jabari. A short time ago we completed another phase in the operation which included 20 different targets of rocket launcher pads," Leibovitch said.

"Israel is exercising its right to protect itself, and Jabari has a lot of Israeli blood on his hands."

At least six Gazans were killed in more than 20 Israeli air strikes, according to Hamas.

Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence service confirmed it had carried out the attack, saying it had killed Jabari because of his 'decade-long terrorist activity'

Israeli officials had said in recent days that they were considering assassinating top Hamas officials following a wave of heavy rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army said that the military was prepared for a ground operation in Gaza, with a spokesman saying: "All options are on the table."

Another Israeli military spokesman, Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai, said the aerial assault on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday could draw cross-border Palestinian rocket attacks and stretch into days of fighting.

"The days we face in the south will, in my estimation, prove protracted," he told Channel 2 TV. "The homefront must brace itself resiliently."

Asked if Israel might send ground forces into Gaza, Mordechai said: "There are preparations, and if we are required to, the option of a entry by ground is available."

After the hit on Jabari, Israeli forces had hit "close to 20 targets" used for launching rockets, especially those with a range of 25 miles or longer, saying the strikes had caused "significant damages" to Hamas and Islamic Jihad's infrastructure.

As Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza, a military source warned that many of Gaza's militant arms dumps were within located within residential areas.

"A significant number of munitions depots are within civilian, residential buildings," he told AFP.

The strike prompted an outpouring of grief and anger, with armed men firing weapons into the air outside Shifa hospital in Gaza City, and mosques throughout the city calling prayers to mourn the commander's death.

The Qassam Brigades issued a furious communique in response to Jaabari's death, saying Israel had "opened the gates of hell on itself."

And Fawzi Barhum, a spokesman for the political wing of the ruling Islamist movement said it was tantamount to a "declaration of war."

"The occupation committed a dangerous crime and crossed all the red lines, which is considered a declaration of war," he said in a statement.

"The occupation will pay dearly for this and we will make it regret the moment they thought about it."

Meanwhile, witnesses reported seeing dozens of Israeli tanks massed along the border east of Gaza City.

Egypt's foreign ministry condemned the strikes while the UK Foreign Office urged restraint from both sides.

Egytian state television later said the country had withdrawn its ambassador from Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for an urgent Arab League meeting, according to Egyptian news agency MENA.

"Barakat al-Fara, the Palestinian ambassador in Cairo and the Palestinian representative in the Arab League, announced that based on instructions from President Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian state had asked for an urgent meeting of the Arab League to discuss the Israeli offense on Gaza strip," MENA said.

Earlier in the day, an Israeli official said they may try to topple Abbas if he carries out a plan to ask the United Nations this month to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority.

The upgrade would give the Palestinians a place in the world body akin to that of the Vatican – short of full membership as a sovereign state but as close as they can get without the full recognition that Israel says can only come from a peace treaty.

A draft document from the office of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, seen by Reuters, said Israel must confront this challenge by means that could include "toppling (Abbas) and dismantling the Palestinian Authority".

Lieberman said in a speech at the settlement of Ariel in the occupied West Bank that if the Palestinian upgrade request was accepted by the UN General Assembly – as is widely predicted – it could force Israel to punish the Palestinians.

"If the ... proposal is adopted at the United Nations General Assembly, as far as we are concerned this would be a complete breaking of the rules and it will elicit an extreme response from us," Lieberman said on Wednesday.

Newspaper reports say Israel instructed its ambassadors to warn it may revoke all or part of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which set up the Palestinian Authority under an interim peace agreement.

Egypt

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zepezauer_Mark/Egypt_Boomerang.html

Egypt
excerpted from the book
Boomerang
How our covert wars have created enemies across the Middle East and brought terror to America.
by Mark Zepezauer
Common Courage Press, 2003

p67

In 1952, CIA officers in Cairo held a series of meetings with coup plotters in the Egyptian army, including Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser. The officers hoped to overthrow King Farouk, the corrupt and buffoonish puppet monarch backed by the British, while the U.S. hoped to replace Britain as the dominant foreign power in the region. These overlapping interests insured that the coup took place in July of that year. Nasser, only 34, remained behind the scenes initially, with a General Neguib as the titular head of the new government. The younger man became prime minister in 1954 and assumed the presidency of Egypt in 1956 following a referendum.

Nasser's first priority, which dovetailed nicely with Washington's interests, was to get British troops removed from the Suez Canal, where they had been stationed since 1882. As the canal no longer held much strategic value to Britain (after the loss of India), an agreement was reached in October 1954. For the first time in two and a half thousand years, Egypt was no longer under foreign occupation of any kind. This was a great catalyst for Nasser's growing reputation as a hero to Arab nationalists, fanned by his marathon radio broadcasts in colloquial Arabic.

Israel, however, viewed the presence of 80,000 British troops on the canal as a welcome buffer with Egypt. The Israeli secret service, the Mossad, sent agents to sabotage British installations and plant bombs in public buildings, hoping to scuttle the negotiations by blaming the terrorism on Egyptian nationalists. This scheme was derailed when the agents were caught and exposed. France was also upset when, shortly after the British departure from Egypt, Algerian nationalists launched a revolt against French colonial rule; Paris was convinced (with help from the Mossad) that Nasser had encouraged them. To counter Egyptian influence, France then began selling arms to Israel in defiance of a regional arms embargo. In February 1955 Israel, citing cross-border harassment by Palestinian refugees, attacked an Egyptian army outpost in Gaza, killing 40 soldiers and a number of civilians. Yet an Israeli historian has cited documentary evidence that Egypt was making a serious effort to keep the Gaza border calm.

In fact, Israel had been planning an invasion of the Sinai Peninsula since at least 1953, according to the diaries of Prime Minister Moshe Sharett. The Gaza attack precluded any hope of a peace agreement. At that point, as General Moshe Dayan put it, "one of these days a situation will be created which makes military action possible."

Egypt's relations with Washington had begun to sour as Nasser refused to be bribed. U.S. antagonism was further aroused when he balked at buying arms with strings attached, and so turned to East Bloc sources. This in turn led Nasser to rely further on Soviet financing, and so the fear of a pro-Russian tilt became a self-fulfilling prophecy-the 1950s version of "If you ain't with us you're against us."

In July 1956, Secretary of State Dulles reneged on a previous commitment to help Egypt build the Aswan Dam, and blocked international funding as well. In response, Nasser exercised his right to re-establish Egyptian sovereignty over the British-built Suez Canal-which was then closed to Israeli shipping. And in response to that, the British and the French made a secret deal with Israel to invade Egypt and seize back the canal. But this deal was made behind the backs of the Americans, and Israeli agents lied to their CIA counterparts about the impending invasion.

On October 29, 1956, the Israelis used their French-supplied arsenal to launch a surprise attack on Egypt, seizing the Sinai.

The plan was to falsely announce that Egypt had attacked Israel, after which Israeli troops would occupy the Sinai Peninsula all the way to the east bank of the Suez Canal. Then British and French troops would intervene to prevent a wider war, and hopefully, the whole thing would be so humiliating to Nasser that his people would rise up against him. Britain and France bombed Egyptian territory, and then sent troops to back up the Israelis.

The Eisenhower Administration was outraged, not only by Israeli duplicity, but also by the Europeans' attempt to reestablish their influence in a region where the U.S. now wished to call the shots. In order to counter that influence, the U.S. was even willing to cooperate briefly with the Soviets in condemning the Suez attacks in the UN. Stymied by a U.S. threat to withdraw aid, the Israelis reluctantly withdrew from the Sinai and Gaza, with UN monitors placed on the Egyptian border.

Egypt regained control of the canal, subject to international guarantees of Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba.

Nasser emerged an even bigger hero than before, and began to talk of uniting the Arab world into one big federation. This set off alarm bells in Washington. Nasser's pan-Arabian dreams were short-lived, and amounted only to a brief federation with Syria, (which lasted until the next coup in that country undid the deal). The U.S. countered this alarming spurt of Arab unity by encouraging Jordan and Iraq to band together against the new United Arab Republic, rather than joining it. And no less than eight separate assassination plots were soon launched against Nasser, involving, at various times, America, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. These involved at least one CIA assassination plot in 1957. According to the memoirs of former CIA officer Wilbur Crane Eveland, the story goes that Eisenhower had mused that he wished the "Nasser problem" could be "eliminated"- which the CIA chief, Allen Dulles, took as an order to kill. The plot never came to fruition, as Dulles ostensibly realized he had misinterpreted his boss. However, this account bears a marked similarity to other cover stories explaining away known CIA death plots, so it should perhaps not be taken at face value. Britain's secret service MI6 also plotted with the Mossad to kill Nasser on several occasions.

The Nasser problem continued, however, and in June 1967, 11 years after the Suez crisis, Israel tried the same trick again, this time successfully. The Israelis also had territorial designs on the West Bank and the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights, in order to secure control over the headwaters of the River Jordan and the aquifers of its basin. General Moshe Dayan later recounted how Israel had deliberately provoked firefights with Syrian forces. Israeli troops probed the Syrian frontier with tractors, then claimed that the inevitable Syrian reprisals constituted attacks on "peaceful farmers." This cat-and-mouse game intensified in the year leading up to the Six Day War.

As tensions increased, the Soviets informed the Syrians that Israel was "massing troops" on its border, though only a single tank division had been sent several months before, following an earlier skirmish. But for its part, the Israeli government had threatened to invade Damascus if the Syrians did not suppress Palestinian raids. Nasser also called on the Syrians to do so, aware that neither he nor they had the power to prosecute a war with Israel. But as the putative leader of Arab nationalists, he was being goaded by the Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians to do something about Israeli provocations, and to stop "hiding behind" UN troops.

Eventually Nasser requested that UN forces depart from Gaza; instead the UN withdrew all its troops from the Sinai region.

Egypt then moved two token divisions into the Sinai, far from adequate for any offensive action. In solidarity with Syria, Nasser then announced a blockade of ships bringing weapons to Israel through the Gulf of Aqaba. This was the pretext the Israelis required. Though only 5% of their imports came through Aqaba, Israelis told the world that Egypt's "economic stranglehold" threatened their very existence.

Israel also announced at the time that the Arabs had struck first, though that claim too was later abandoned for the more credible formulation that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had launched a "pre-emptive strike", with the ostensible motivation being a massing of Egyptian troops. But as Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin admitted a year later, "I don't believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel and we knew it." Or as one Israeli cabinet member put it, the "pre-emptive strike" story was "invented of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories."

Most of the Egyptian air force was destroyed on the ground and Israel seized the Sinai and Gaza, as well as the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. The latter three territories are occupied to this day. Many in the Israeli government had interpreted certain U.S. statements as giving a "green light" to their invasion plans; at the very least, they found "an absence of any exhortation to us to stay our hand." But U.S. support for the Israeli invasions went further than that; U.S. warplanes, painted with Israeli markings, helped with reconnaissance photography of Arab targets. President Johnson also moved the Sixth Fleet into the eastern Mediterranean, and secretly authorized shipments of spare parts to the Israeli military, while publicly calling for a regional arms embargo. After the war, the U.S. also vetoed a UN resolution calling for Israel to return to its previous borders.

The Johnson Administration was so happy to see Israel strike a decisive blow at perceived "Soviet proxies" in the region that it was even willing to overlook an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in the middle of the Six Day War. For years the attack on the U.S. ship, which killed 34 sailors, has been a mystery, the details covered up by both the U.S. and Israel. A recent book by author James Bamford posits that the American spy vessel had evidence that Israel had massacred Egyptian prisoners of war, and that the IDF destroyed the ship in order to cover up evidence of this war crime.

The Six Day War ended in a cease-fire, which Nasser abrogated the following year, beginning intermittent skirmishes with Israel over the Sinai. The war significantly escalated tensions in the Middle East, leading to an accelerated arms race. As Nasser put it, "The problem now is that while the United States' objective is to pressure us to minimize our dealings with the Soviet Union, it will drive us in the opposite direction altogether. The U.S. Ieaves us no choice." And indeed, though Israel had decisively defeated the Arabs, U.S. military assistance to Tel Aviv increased dramatically, as did East Bloc arms sales to Egypt. Nasser did show some interest in a land-for-peace swap-indeed, he had explored peace negotiations with Israel in the 1950s before the provocative attack in Gaza-but he died suddenly of a heart attack in September 1970.

He was succeeded by Anwar el-Sadat, who had been on ? the CIA payroll since 1960. Despite this, the Nixon J Administration was slow to work with Sadat, viewing Egypt through a Cold War prism. Sadat made a formal peace offer to Israel in February 1971, but Israel responded by expanding settlements in the occupied Sinai. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger preferred to keep Egyptian-Israeli relations in a stalemate, hoping that the Russians would pressure Sadat into further compromise. Even after Sadat purged pro-Soviet elements from the Egyptian government, Kissinger couldn't be bothered. Sadat's intention, later realized, was to convert Egypt to a U.S. client state. He sent Soviet advisors home and intervened to prevent a communist takeover of Sudan. But frustrated by Washington's indifference to his lost sovereignty over the Sinai, Sadat launched a new war on Israel in 1973 with Syrian support.

Both Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi King Fahd warned the Israelis in advance of the coming attack, but Tel Aviv refused to believe the Arab states were strong enough to pull it off. This easily preventable war led to serious losses on the Israeli side, as Egypt regained control of the Suez Canal. At this point the U.S. suddenly became amenable to a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Egyptian conflict, though Kissinger's ineffectual shuttle diplomacy produced few results for the remainder of his tenure. This eventually led to Sadat's famous trip to Jerusalem and the Camp David Accords, sponsored by the Carter Administration.

Egyptian peace with Israel was bought with billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds. Egypt became the second largest recipient of U.S. aid (after Israel), now totaling some $4 billion annually. Sadat bought peace by agreeing to vague promises that the Israelis would later negotiate peace with the Palestinians. In fact, the Israeli Knesset voted on "policy guidelines" stating that Israel had no intention of honoring these promises. The resolution stated that after a "transition period" agreed to at Camp David, Israel would "act to fulfill its rights to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria [their names for the West Bank] and the Gaza district." These "rights" were indeed fulfilled with increased repression and settlements in the West Bank. Israel also broke Camp David pledges regarding water rights, all of which engendered only weak protests from Sadat.

For its part, Israel bought peace by returning (almost) all of the Sinai and removing Jewish settlements from those lands.

Prime Minister Begin then exploited peace with Egypt (and later with Jordan) by using his freed-up forces to launch new strikes against Palestinian positions in Lebanon. And for its part, the U.S. used the Camp David talks to derail the international consensus in favor of a multilateral peace conference including Europe, the East Bloc and the Arab states. In this way, Washington alone remained in charge of any "peace process."

The Camp David Accords were deeply unpopular both in Egypt and throughout the Arab world. Sadat also alienated his citizens through his economic policies, privatizing many state holdings and cutting food subsidies and other services in accord with World Bank and IMF advice. A hero in the West, he was widely despised at home. There was little public mourning when he was assassinated in 1982, in contrast to the millions who thronged the streets for Nasser's funeral. Sadat was killed by Islamic militants within his own elite guard units while he reviewed a military parade. According to author Douglas Valentine, the guards had been trained by CIA agent William Buckley. Buckley himself sat in the stands during the assassination; also sitting nearby was Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, who had the presence of mind to duck.

Mubarak has ruled with the proverbial iron fist ever since. Egypt had been a police state under Nasser and Sadat, but human rights abuses reached new heights during the Mubarak regime. Mindful of Sadat's fate, he has cracked down on Islamists, moderates as well as radicals. This, of course, has had the effect of making the Islamic movement in Egypt ever more militant, in marked contrast to states like Yemen and Jordan where they are allowed to compete for parliamentary seats. Many of Egypt's most radical Muslim fighters were trained by Western intelligence services for use in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Egyptian arm of the Islamic Jihad has forged ties with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network, staging terror attacks against foreign tourists, as well as operating in the U.S.

Egypt under Mubarak uses its billions in U.S. military aid to detain, beat and torture dissenters, opposition politicians and journalists; many have died in custody. Thousands of political prisoners and pro-democracy activists are held in overcrowded, disease-ridden prisons, without charges or trials. Press restrictions, including newspaper shutdowns, are widespread. Arab nationalists view Egypt as a well-bribed client state of the U.S. and an obstacle to self-determination for its own people as well as its Palestinian neighbors. Nevertheless, the "Lion of Egypt" was re-elected to a fourth term in 1999 with just under 94 percent of the vote; his party holds 97 percent of the legislative seats. He has never named a vice president.

But however much the people of Egypt chafe under Mubarak's regime, their plight pales beside the 54-year occupation suffered by the residents of Palestine.
*
Boomerang!
Mark Zepezauer

Hardcover $29.95
Paperback $16.95

From the author of The CIA’s Greatest Hits comes a gripping read exposing U.S. terror that has finally come home to roost. From Afghanistan to Turkey, from the Caspian Sea to the Sudan, the U.S. has ripped through one country after another in the Middle East and elsewhere, manipulating and marauding for its own benefit. Zepezauer takes his title from Herbert Hoover's comment made right after Pearl Harbor: "You can't keep sticking needles in a rattlesnake and expect not to get bitten."

From the Publisher

Mark Zepezauer is an author and cartoonist based in Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of Take the Rich Off Welfare and The CIA's Greatest Hits as well as the cartoon panel US History Backwards. On his shoulder he carries a Siamese cat.

From the Author

For years, critics of US foreign policy had warned that we were endangering our own security by supporting repressive governments and terrorist forces abroad--that sooner or later it would come back to haunt us. When it finally happened, we were told that it was unpatriotic to ask why. I felt just the opposite--that it was unpatriotic to pretend that our foreign policies had nothing to do with it. I wanted to counter the "blame America last" crowd, who would bend over backwards to avoid finding any fault with our actions.

I wanted to write a book that would make it clear that the answer to "why do they hate us?" is "well, wouldn't you?" Not because I hate America, but because I love my country enough to want us to stop harming innocents and making needless enemies. If you know someone who has no idea of the history of our crimes in the Middle East and Central Asia, you can give them this book to help explain it. If you do know something about the topic, there may be some new information here that will open your eyes. But either way, we owe it to our children and grandchildren--and the children of Southwest Asia--to understand how we got to this point, before this cycle of violence spins out of control.

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Common Courage Press (October 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1567512232
ISBN-13: 978-1567512236

Hardcover: http://www.amazon.com/Boomerang-Mark-Zepezauer/dp/1567512232/thekonformist
Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Boomerang-Created-Enemies-Brought-America/dp/1567512224/thekonformist

Reporting Israeli Assault Through Israel's Eyes

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4081
Media Advisory
Reporting Israeli Assault Through Israel's Eyes
Attack on humanitarian flotilla prompts little media skepticism
6/1/10

On May 31, the Israeli military attacked a flotilla of boats full of civilians attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip. Reports indicate that at least nine and as many as 16 of the activists on board were killed, though details remain sketchy due to Israel's censorious limitations on media coverage. Much of the U.S. media coverage has been remarkably unskeptical of Israel's account of events and their context, and has paid little regard to international law.

The New York Times (6/1/10) glossed over the facts of the devastating Israeli siege of Gaza, where 1.5 million people live in extreme poverty. As reporter Isabel Kershner wrote, "Despite sporadic rocket fire from the Palestinian territory against southern Israel, Israel says it allows enough basic supplies through border crossings to avoid any acute humanitarian crisis."

Asking Israel to explain the effects of its embargo on the people of Gaza makes little sense, especially when there are plenty of other resources available. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported (IRIN, 5/18/10):

As a consequence of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, 98 percent of industrial operations have been shut down since 2007 and there are acute shortages of fuel, cash, cooking gas and other basic supplies....

Water-related health problems are widespread in the Strip because of the blockade and Israel's military operation in Gaza, which destroyed water and sanitation infrastructure, including reservoirs, wells, and thousands of kilometres of piping....

Chronic malnutrition has risen in Gaza over the past few years to reach 10.2 percent....

In Gaza, Israel's blockade is debilitating the healthcare system, limiting medical supplies and the training of medical personnel and preventing serious medical cases from travelling outside the Strip for specialized treatment.

Israel's 2008-2009 military operation damaged 15 of the Strip's 27 hospitals and damaged or destroyed 43 of its 110 primary healthcare facilities, none of which have been repaired or rebuilt because of the construction materials ban. Some 15-20 percent of essential medicines are commonly out of stock and there are shortages of essential spare parts for many items of medical equipment.


Those facts, though, aren't persuasive to everyone. The Washington Post's June 1 editorial page had one of the most appalling takes on the killings: "We have no sympathy for the motives of the participants in the flotilla--a motley collection that included European sympathizers with the Palestinian cause, Israeli Arab leaders and Turkish Islamic activists."

Many of the analysis pieces in major papers focused on the fallout for Israel and the United States, rather than the civilians killed or the humanitarian crisis they were trying to address. The Post's Glenn Kessler (6/1/10) framed the U.S. response, not the Israeli attack, as the complicating factor: "Condemnation of Israeli Assault Complicates Relations With U.S." Kessler lamented, "The timing of the incident is remarkably bad for Israel and the United States," while a Los Angeles Times account (6/1/10) called the raid "a public relations nightmare for Israel." The New York Times' Kershner wrote (NYTimes.com, 5/31/10) that "the criticism [of Israel over the attack] offered a propaganda coup to Israel's foes, particularly the Hamas group that holds sway in Gaza."

Other news accounts presented misleading context about the circumstances leading to Israel's blockade. Kershner (New York Times, 6/1/10) stressed that "Israel had vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where Hamas, an organization sworn to Israel's destruction, took over by force in 2007." The Associated Press (6/1/10) reported that "Israel and Egypt sealed Gaza's borders after Hamas overran the territory in 2007, wresting control from Abbas-loyal forces"--the latter a reference to Fatah forces affiliated with Mahmoud Abbas.

Both accounts ignore the fact that Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006, which led the United States and Israel to step up existing economic restrictions on Gaza. An attempt to stoke a civil war in Gaza by arming Fatah militants--reported extensively by David Rose in Vanity Fair (4/08)--backfired, and Hamas prevailed (Extra!, 9-10/07).

Much of the U.S. press coverage takes Israeli government claims at face value, and is based largely on footage made available by Israeli authorities--while Israel keeps the detained activists away from the media (not to mention from lawyers and worried family members). The Washington Post (6/1/10) reported the attack this way:

Upon touching down, the Israeli commandos, who were equipped with paint guns and pistols, were assaulted with steel poles, knives and pepper spray. Video showed at least one commando being lifted up and dumped from the ship's upper deck to the lower deck. Some commandos later said they jumped into the water to escape being beaten. The Israeli military said some of the demonstrators fired live ammunition. Israeli officials said the activists had fired two guns stolen from the troops.

As Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald wrote (5/31/10): "Just ponder what we'd be hearing if Iran had raided a humanitarian ship in international waters and killed 15 or so civilians aboard."

The Times' June 1 report included seven paragraphs of Israel's account of what happened on board the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, where the civilians were killed; the paper reported that "There were no immediate accounts available from the passengers of the Turkish ship" because the Israeli base they were taken to "was off limits to the news media and declared a closed military zone."

The Times piece also showed little interest in international law, mentioning Israel's claim regarding the legality of their actions but providing no analysis from any international law experts to support or debunk the claim: "Israeli officials said that international law allowed for the capture of naval vessels in international waters if they were about to violate a blockade."

According to Craig Murray (5/31/10), former British ambassador and specialist on maritime law, the legal position "is very plain": "To attack a foreign flagged vessel in international waters is illegal. It is not piracy, as the Israeli vessels carried a military commission. It is rather an act of illegal warfare."

Quote of the Month: Dennis Kucinich

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made the following statement on the House Floor about H. Res 867, which condemns the ‘Goldstone Report’ or the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict:

“Today we journey from Operation Cast Lead to Operation Cast Doubt. Almost as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes, pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist.

“Because behind every such deception is the nullification of humanity, the destruction of human dignity, the annihilation of the human spirit, the triumph of Orwellian thinking, the eternal prison of the dark heart of the totalitarian.

“The resolution before us today, which would reject all attempts of the Goldstone Report to fix responsibility of all parties to war crimes, including both Hamas and Israel, may as well be called the 'Down is Up, Night is Day, Wrong is Right' resolution.

“Because if this Congress votes to condemn a report it has not read, concerning events it has totally ignored, about violations of law of which it is unaware, it will have brought shame to this great institution.

“How can we ever expect there to be peace in the Middle East if we tacitly approve of violations of international law and international human rights, if we look the other way, or if we close our eyes to the heartbreak of people on both sides by white-washing a legitimate investigation?

“How can we protect the people of Israel from existential threats if we hold no concern for the protection of the Palestinians, for their physical security, their right to land, their right to their own homes, their right to water, their right to sustenance, their right to freedom of movement, their right to the human security of jobs, education and health care?

“We will have peace only when the plight of both Palestinians and Israelis is brought before this House and given equal consideration in recognition of that principle that all people on this planet have a right to survive and thrive, and it is our responsibility, our duty to see that no individual, no group, no people are barred from this humble human claim.”

Source:

http://warincontext.org/2009/11/04/us-house-rejects-goldstone-report/

“My Hell in an Israeli Jail"

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/%E2%80%9Cmy-hell-israeli-jail%E2%80%9D-israel-prison-population-90-percent-black-africans

“My Hell in an Israeli Jail”: Israel Prison Population 90 Percent Black Africans
It should come as no surprise that a settler state based on the rule of one ethnic group would be steeped in racist public policies. But the sheer scope of Israel's institutional oppression of Africans shocked human rights activists imprisoned for attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. “The first day I was there, I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison,” said a Black British activist. “The prison population continues to grow daily with Africans falling victim to the Israeli judiciary system.”
07/21/2009
by Voice Online, UK

“Africans, like Palestinians, are being persecuted by the Israeli government.”

Black British filmmaker Ishmahil Blagrove has launched an outspoken attack against the “racist” Israeli government after being abducted from the high seas and imprisoned for seven days.

Jamaica-born Blagrove, who lives in West London, was one of six British nationals taking part in a mercy mission to Gaza who were seized from the vessel Spirit of Humanity on June 30 by Israeli military forces.

The ship, which Blagrove says was illegally boarded in international waters, was bringing a cargo of medicines, children’s toys and reconstruction materials to the devastated people of Gaza.

“I’m not concerned with the time that I spent in jail because I am now free, however, there are still thousands of people being persecuted as we speak,” said Blagrove.

“I went on the voyage to deliver medical aid, toys and film a documentary about Palestinians living in Gaza post the 22-day bombing last year however, I was unable to fulfill my mission and have now returned with a bigger story to tell. Africans, like Palestinians, are being persecuted by the Israeli governmentand the world needs to know.”

Sailing from Larnaca, Cyprus, with a crew of 21 human rights activists, humanitarian workers and journalists from 11 different countries, those on board included Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

“We were surrounded by four Zodiac Special Forces, which are Israeli gunships.”

Blagrove told how Israeli warships surrounded their vessel threatening to open fire if they did not turn back.

“We were 18 miles of the coast of Gaza and 23 miles outside the international water boundaries. The Israelis made contact with us via radio at approximately 1.30 am. Our ship had been given security clearance by the port authorities in Cyprus so we posed no threat, yet the Israeli government insisted that we aborted our journey.

“When we refused to be intimidated, they jammed our instrumentation and blocked our GPS, radar, and navigation systems, putting our lives at risk.

“Before we knew it we were surrounded by four Zodiac Special Forces, which are Israeli gunships and helicopters were also flying over our heads. They stormed our ship and took us against our will to Ashdod Port in Israel.

“They confiscated and destroyed all our equipment including all our medical aid and toys and eventually we were all taken to Ramla High Security Prison where we were imprisoned.”

“Most astonishingly the prison was full of black Africans.”

Describing his experience inside Ramla, Blagrove said: “Without insulting the memory of those that have survived the Nazi concentration camps, the prison we were kept in can only be described in that manor. But most astonishingly the prison was full of black Africans. I was absolutely dumbfounded!

“Israel operates under a right-wing racist government that discriminates anyone that is non-Jewish.

“The first day I was there, I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison. The next day 300 more Africans were taken in and the prison population continues to grow daily with Africans falling victim to the Israeli judiciary system.

“There were Africans from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ethiopia and so on. The prison population in Israel is 90 percent black, which is why I was so welcomed by fellow inmates. There are thousands upon thousands of Africans inside the Israeli prisons.

“I was told atrocious stories. Real harrowing tales and countless inmates that have been transferred from one prison to the other informed me and that every prison is the same and the government is refusing to send them back to their own country.”

“I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison.”

Haunted by the conditions of the prison, he said: “I shared a seven foot by seven foot cell with 14 others. We were constantly being barked at and threatened with physical abuse. If you disobey, prisoners are stripped naked and put inside a hole with no lights or heating. We were seen as sub-human.

“In the corner of the room there was a white plastic bag full of single slices of bread, which was our breakfast, lunch and dinner. If we were lucky they occasional gave us a cup of yoghurt to share.

“The toilets are two tubes and to pass your waste you have to aim and squat. The smell was indescribable because it was a mixture of sweat, urine and feces.”

Explaining that the government officials tried to force him to sign documents in Hebrew, which is illegal as all prisoners must be able to understand what they are consenting too, Blagrove said: “My fellow passengers and I were only kept for seven days because they knew the world was watching.”

“I shared a seven foot by seven foot cell with 14 others.”

Quoting Martin Luther King, Blagrove stated: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I want people to realize that social injustice is an international struggle and one man’s suffering in any region around the world cannot be ignored by others.

The filmmaker, who is currently make a documentary about African roots in Cuba, added: “The Israeli government has been very clever in stopping the truth being told about their regime because whenever anybody speaks out they are instantly labeled anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish.

“I challenge anybody to go and investigate the crimes against humanity inside Israeli prisons and the people of Gaza.”

“I am disturbed that the mainstream British media, and in particular the BBC, has chosen to ignore what is taking place in Israel.

“If we had been kidnapped by Iranians it would have been front page on every newspaper and David Milliband would have made a public statement including Gordon Brown and Barack Obama.

“There is a conspiracy of silence to protect Israel from the crimes it commits. The biggest lie ever told is that Israel is defending themselves from Palestinians who are trying to kill them. Until people broaden their minds and really unearth the truth this problem will not go away.”

We may have to kill war journalists

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/05/right-wing-military-writer-we-may-have-to-kill-war-journalists/

Right-wing military writer: We may have to kill war journalists
Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Former soldier Ralph Peters has carved out quite a niche for himself in the world of publishing. His work regularly lands on the pages of The New York Post and has cropped up in USA Today. He's even a special contributor to Fox News.

But after today's showing, in his latest column for the Journal of International Security Affairs, Mr. Peters seemingly treads very close to finding himself at odds with his journalistic colleagues.

After all, reporters don't really like it when the editorial page calls for consideration of grinding them into bloody chunks as a matter of war policy.

In his latest essay, in a segment titled "The killers without guns," Peters suggests that the media is responsible for "saving" Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, but that media had "failed to defeat" the U.S. government's charge toward Iraq.

"Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar," he gallingly charges.

It culminates:

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

Because, of course, in Peters' mind America can do no wrong:

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters.

Jason Linkins over at Huffington Post evicerates this stunning outpouring of hatred.

I must say, considering the line-up of Neoconservative half-stars that is the Journal of International Security Affairs editorial board, this tripe is not surprising.

This reporter, in a rare editorial capacity, can only personally hope the emergence of such breathtaking savagery disguised as intelligent discourse will serve as an example to other rational thinkers as to how dangerous hyper-militarism and hawkish Neoconservatism really is.

Why no neocon assassinations?

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4324.shtml

Why no neocon assassinations? Because the ‘war on terror’ is a hoax
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 5, 2009

According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.

If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.

The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells is that not a single neocon has been assassinated.

I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my country’s government for engaging in political assassination. The US and Israel have set a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow.

The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders. It is reasonable to assume that al Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of America’s wars in the Middle East in the same way.

Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, neocons are highly visible and are soft targets compared to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.. Neocons have been identified in the media for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their names are available online.

Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to contemplate, but it would be child’s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon. Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist problem.

If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon or former government official.

Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed.

The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion.

There were no al Qaeda in Iraq until the Americans brought them there by invading and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who kept al Qaeda out of Iraq. The Taliban is not a terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan under Muslim law.. The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are the Americans Bush sent to Afghanistan to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet state on the Afghan people.

Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little remains of Palestine after Israel’s illegal annexations. Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same sense that the Israeli government and the US government are terrorist organizations. In an effort to bring Hamas under Israeli hegemony, Israel employs terror bombing and assassinations against Palestinians. Hamas replies to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual rockets.

Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial expansion.

The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorist organizations” for no other reason than the US is on Israel’s side of the conflict. There is no objective basis for the US Department of State’s “finding” that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. It is merely a propagandistic declaration.

Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of civilians terror. What Americans and Israelis call terror is the response of oppressed people who are stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets loyal to the oppressors. These people, dispossessed of their own countries, have no State Departments, Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or voices in the mainstream media. They can submit to foreign hegemony or resist by the limited means available to them.

The fact that Israel and the United States carry on endless propaganda to prevent this fundamental truth from being realized indicates that it is Israel and the US that are in the wrong and the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Afghans who are being wronged.

The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists for Fox “News” are forever claiming that Iran arms the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents and Hamas. But where are the arms? To deal with American tanks, insurgents have to construct homemade explosive devices out of artillery shells. After six years of conflict, the insurgents still have no weapon against the American helicopter gunships. Contrast this “arming” with the weaponry the US supplied to the Afghans nearly three decades ago when they were fighting to drive out the Soviets.

The films of Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza show large numbers of Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging out the dead and maimed, and none of these people are armed. A person would think that by now every Palestinian would be armed, every man, woman, and child. Yet, all the films of the Israeli attack show an unarmed population. Hamas has to construct homemade rockets that are little more than a sign of defiance. If Hamas were armed by Iran, Israel’s assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers.

Hamas is a small organization armed with small caliber rifles incapable of penetrating body armor. Hamas is unable to stop small bands of Israeli settlers from descending on West Bank Palestinian villages, driving out the Palestinians, and expropriating their land.

The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed.

The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated arms to the Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. These assertions are propagandistic justifications for killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.

When Gaza and Sports Collide

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jan/23/gaza-sport-football-protests

Politics on the pitch: When Gaza and Sports Collide
By Dave Zirin

In January 2008, Egyptian soccer star Mohamed Aboutreika followed a goal by raising his shirt to reveal the slogan "Sympathise with Gaza". His actions were meant to put a spotlight onto the economic embargo that Israel had imposed on Palestinians in Gaza after the election of the Hamas government.

Days before the ceasefire halted the carnage in Gaza city this month, history repeated as Sevilla (Spain) striker Fredi Kanoute raised his shirt after scoring a goal to reveal a shirt that said "Palestine" in multiple languages. Kanoute is not an obscure player. In 2007, he was named African player of the year, even though he was born in France (his family is from Mali).

After earning a £3,000 fine for his political gesture, famed Barcelona coach, Jose Guardiola stood up for him, saying: "The fine is absolutely excessive. If they always banned these type of things, then journalists would not be able to write columns. ... Every war is absurd, and too many innocent people have died for us to be fining people for things like this."

Welcome to 2009, when Israel's offensive on Gaza, ceasefire or no, is finding expression in the sports world. It's a development that should give supporters of Israel's actions in Gaza a great deal of pause.

Kanoute's actions come on the heels of an event in Ankara, Turkey when the Israeli basketball team, Bnei Hasharon, had to flee the court from what the Associated Press described as "hundreds of fist-pumping, chanting Turkish fans".

Before the game could begin, angry chants of "Israeli killers!" came down from the crowd, as Palestinian flags appeared in their hands. Then, in a scene that would look familiar to George Bush, off came the shoes, and footwear rained down from the stands (the shoes didn't hit any players).

A melee then began between 1,500 police officers and Turkish fans, as the fans advanced toward the court. Both Hasharon and the Turkish team Turk Telecom were hurried to the locker rooms where they remained for two hours.

Hasharon forfeited the contest. It says something that Israel found reckoning on the basketball court long before any kind of International Criminal Court.

According to sports historians, a sporting event hasn't been actually stopped in such a manner - with fans turning the stands into a site of protest - since 25 July 1981, when South Africa's Springbok rugby team had to cancel a game in New Zealand when fans occupied the field of play to protest apartheid.

Israel has historically been adamant that any comparisons between the Israeli state and South Africa are absolutely false and even antisemitic. Jimmy Carter provoked their outrage of course when he published his book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

But this parallel, when related to sports, should not be taken lightly. One of the most effective tools against apartheid South Africa was the South African Non-Racialised Olympic Committee, which attempted to use sports as a way to highlight and broadcast the inequities of the South African government. Sports can bring a political spotlight and unwanted attention onto a society like few other forces in the international community, galvanising, attention, passion and, as we saw in Turkey, anger.

Israel hasn't helped itself in this regard by making sports a target in the war. On 9 January, the IDF bombed Gaza's Palestine National Stadium. The stadium was also the head of the Palestinian Football Association. The structure was built in 2005 partially with funds from Fifa. The facility will now need to be rebuilt again (in 2006 it was also bombed). It was meant to be a symbol of a Palestinian state, something that united the West Bank and Gaza as an expression of unity. Now it is rubble.

In addition, perhaps fearing a repeat of Ankara, the Israel Football Federation is preventing any club matches from being played in Palestinian towns. As Jimmy Johnson, who works in Jerusalem for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions told me: "These are not Palestinian clubs from the West Bank, East Jerusalem or Gaza, but for Palestinian citizens of Israel, sometimes called Arab Israelis, who are almost 20% of the population, vote in Israeli elections, etc."

This has gotten little press in the US, but in the soccer-mad Middle East, it is altogether insult on top of injury.

Sports, which we are told repeatedly represent a sacredly apolitical space, a place to flee the headaches of the real world, has now been thrust into the heart of a conflict raw with politics in a way we haven't seen in quite some time. Protests against Israeli actions in Gaza are sure to continue in sporting events outside the US. But the ramifications could very easily be felt inside our borders, as political leaders come to the White House and tell the new administration tales of sports fans gone wild.

Dave Zirin is the author of the book: A People's History of Sports in the United States. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by going to dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com

Israel 'admits' using white phosphorus munitions

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5556027.ece

January 21, 2009
Israel 'admits' using white phosphorus munitions
Children play with a flaming lump, allegedly containing white phosphorus, in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday
Martin Fletcher in Jerusalem

The Israeli military came close to acknowledging for the first time yesterday its use of white phosphorus munitions during the war in Gaza, but continued to insist that it did not breach international law.

As fresh evidence emerged of Gazan civilians being burned by phosphorus, Avital Leibovich, the army spokeswoman, said its use was “legal according to international law...All the munitions we were using were legal, like the French, American and British armies. We used munitions according to international law.

“They [Hamas] were committing war crimes by putting the civilians in the front line,” she said. “If Hamas chooses to locate training camps, command centres...in the middle of the [civilian population]...look how populated it is...naturally they are endangering the lives of civilians. Hamas is accountable for the loss of the civilians.”

Major-General Amir Eshel, the army's head of strategic planning, said that firing shells to provide a smoke screen was legal. “It is the most nonlethal kind of weapon we used. I don't see any issue with that,” he said.

The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had privately admitted using phosphorus bombs, and that the Judge Advocate General's Office and Southern Command were investigating.

The Times first accused Israeli forces of using white phosphorus on January 5, but the IDF has denied the charge repeatedly. Phosphorus bombs can be used to create smoke screens, but their use as weapons of war in civilian areas is banned by the Geneva Conventions.

Yesterday reports emerged from Gaza about the killing of five members of the Halima family, when a single white phosphorus shell dropped on their house in the town of Atatra on January 3. Two others were in a coma and three were seriously wounded, according to doctors and survivors.

Salima Halima, 44, who is in Gaza City's Shifa hospital, said that the chemical burst in all directions after hitting her living room.

Nafiz Abu Shahbah, a doctor who trained in Britain and America, said he was sure white phosphorus was responsible. Her wounds at first appeared superficial “but it eats at the flesh, it digs deeper and gets to the bone...The whole body becomes toxic,” he said.

In the Jabaliya refugee camp, the Associated Press found a crater that was still producing acrid smoke days after the war ended, and in the town of Beit Lahiya a lump of white phosphorus burst into flames after some boys dug it up from beneath some sand.

Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, expressed outrage at Israel's destruction of Gaza yesterday, when he became the first world leader to visit the Palestinian territory since the end of the war. “This is shocking and alarming,” he declared while visiting a UN warehouse that was still smouldering after being hit on Thursday, allegedly by white phosphorus shells. “I'm just appalled.”

Visibly angry, he condemned Israel's “excessive” use of force, and demanded that those responsible for shelling schools and other facilities run by the UN Relief and Works Agency during the 22-day offensive should be held to account. “It is an outrageous and totally unacceptable attack on the United Nations,” he said.

Israel has apologised for attacks on UN facilities but insisted in almost every case that Hamas fighters were using the buildings for cover.

Gaza homeless toll 'hits 50,000'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7838618.stm

Monday, 19 January 2009
Gaza homeless toll 'hits 50,000'
The BBC's Aleem Maqbool views the damage in one Gaza City neighbourhood

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been left destitute by Israel's three-week offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, the UN estimates.

The United Nations says that some 50,800 people are now homeless and 400,000 are without running water.

Correspondents in Gaza City say entire neighbourhoods have been flattened and bodies are still being recovered.

Israel says it will allow 143 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid into Gaza plus 60,000 litres of fuel.

An International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman said on Monday evening that 10 ambulances carrying medical supplies had travelled into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south.

Earlier, Israeli spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC: "Medicines, foodstuffs, energy, all will be reaching the Gaza Strip in the volume that is required and in an expeditious manner."

The BBC was unable to verify whether the food and fuel convoys reached Gaza.

Palestinian medical sources say at least 1,300 Palestinians have been killed and 5,500 injured during the conflict. Thirteen Israelis have been killed since the offensive began on 27 December.

Israel called a ceasefire on Saturday, saying it had met its war aims. Hamas later declared its own truce, with one of its leaders claiming a "great victory" over Israel.

Scrap metal

As the ceasefire continues to hold, Palestinians in Gaza have been returning home to assess the damage.

The BBC's Christian Fraser travelled to Jabaliya on the northern edge of Gaza City, where the Israeli tanks first crossed over the border. He says entire neighbourhoods have disappeared.

He met 67-year-old Fatma Umanim, sitting beside the remains her collapsed house, her neighbours building a makeshift shelter for her next to the rubble.

Our correspondent says an industry is growing out of the destruction in broken wood and scrap metal - Gaza's poorest salvaging whatever they can.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, is planning to visit Gaza on Tuesday to inspect the damage, but that his trip "could be subject to change", Israeli officials said.

The director of operations in Gaza for Unrwa, the UN relief agency, John Ging, said most important now was how to get basic supplies into the territory.

"We have a big recovery operation ahead of us, reconstruction - none of it will be possible of course, on any scale, until we get crossing points open," he told the BBC.

Unrwa was keen to reopen its schools, Mr Ging said, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been sheltering.

Quick pullout

Divisions among Arab countries have re-emerged at an Arab League summit in Kuwait that has been dominated by the crisis in Gaza.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Hamas had invited the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip by refusing to extend a six-month truce that expired in December.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad said Arab leaders should adopt a resolution declaring Israel a terrorist entity, and support what he called the "Palestinian resistance".

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for immediate reconciliation talks among Palestinian factions, along with parliamentary and presidential elections.

Analysts say Mr Abbas is facing challenges to his legitimacy, with Hamas claiming his term is over and many of his supporters angered by criticisms he made of the militant group while it was under fire from Israel.

Previous talks on a unity government have broken down, and the two sides remain divided over the timing of possible elections.

Israelis and Palestinians give their views on Israel's ceasefire announcement

The league discussed a proposal for a $2bn (£1.3bn) fund for reconstruction in Gaza, with Saudi King Abdullah saying his country would donate $1bn.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he wanted troops to leave Gaza "as quickly as possible", and some have already left.

Anonymous Israeli officials, quoted by AP news agency, said the withdrawal would be completed before US President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday.

But analysts say big questions remain, such as who will police Gaza's southern border with Egypt and how much power Hamas still has.

Hamas has said it would hold fire for a week to give Israel time to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip.

But a spokesman for Hamas' military wing, Abu Ubaida, said its rocket capabilities had not been affected by the conflict and that "the enemy will receive more rockets".

CONFLICT IN FIGURES

More than 1,300 Palestinians killed
Thirteen Israeli deaths
More than 4,000 buildings destroyed in Gaza, more than 20,000 severely damaged
50,800 Gazans homeless and 400,000 without running water

Fresh evidence of Israeli phosphorus use in Gaza

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/17/israel-gaza-phosphorus-civilians

Fresh evidence of Israeli phosphorus use in Gaza emerges
Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk
Saturday 17 January 2009

Fresh evidence of the firing of white phosphorus weapons by Israeli forces in Gaza has emerged from witnesses heard by the Guardian and first hand accounts by human rights groups of their use against civilians.

Graphic descriptions of attacks by Israeli forces near the Gaza town of Khan Younis are contained in footage shot by Fida Qishta for the International Solidarity Movement and obtained by the Guardian.

A woman described how on Tuesday Israeli forces "started to fire phosphorus bombs against the people, of course, they are civilians ..."

A man added: "A fire broke out and we have to leave out. Fires broke out on the top of the houses. We all jumped out with our women and daughters put off the fire. They were doing that, to help the special forces to occupy the houses. after we put off the fires, they started to shoot towards us. Then they started to raze the houses".

He said the fires were caused by phosphorus bombs and missiles.

Israeli artillery also fired white phosphorus shells at Gaza City, Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, said yesterday.

Three white phosphorus shells were fired at the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City on Thursday, according to people there.

Phosphorus shells burst in the air billowing white smoke before dropping the phosphate shell. Each shell contain more than 100 wavers which, when ignited, pump out smoke for about 10 minutes.

Contact with the shell remnants cause severe burns, sometimes burning the skin to the bone, consistent with descriptions by Ahmed Almi, the Egyptian doctor at the Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis after attacks last Tuesday. Almi said after an hour the entire body of one victim was burned.

Chemicals in smoke produced by white phosphorus shells and burning chemical particles can cause severe respiratory problems.

According to the report from the International Solidarity Movement, many patients at the Khan Younis hospital were suffering from serious breathing difficulties after inhaling smoke.

The use of white phosphorous as a weapon – as opposed to its use as an obscurant and infrared blocking smoke screen – is banned by the Third Convention on Conventional Weapons which covers the use of incendiary devices. Though Israel is not a signatory to the convention, its military manuals reflect the restrictions on its use in that convention.

Instead of producing high velocity burning fragments like conventional white phosphorus weapons used to in the past, M825A1 rounds of the kind identified as being fired by Israeli forces produce what he called a "series of large slower burning wedges which fall from the sky", said Neil Gibson, technical adviser to Jane's Missiles and Rockets.

Israel's use of heavy artillery in residential areas of Gaza City violates the prohibition under the laws of war against indiscriminate attacks and should be stopped immediately, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.

"Firing 155mm shells into the center of Gaza City, whatever the target, will likely cause horrific civilian casualties," Garlasco said.

Trend Alert® - Israel War

Trend Alert® - Israel War
To Ignite Terror
Israel War to Ignite Terror, Threaten Global Economy and possibly
Spark World War III, Trends Institute Warns
By Gerald Celente

CAIRO, 14 January 2009 ­Israel's invasion of Gaza sets up the United States and any other nation supporting Israel as terror targets, predicts Gerald Celente. The Trends Research Institute Director also warns that should Israel continue the invasion, or take the war beyond Gaza, the world risks both a 1973-style oil shock and global conflict.

"Regardless of whose side you take, what you believe in, who did what to whom and when this is just the latest chapter of 'Crusades 2000'," said Celente, who coined the term in 1993 and has written about it extensively. Yet, unlike preceding Crusades confined to the Holy Land, the trend seer says the current violence will spread globally. (See "Crusades 2000," Trends Journal, Fall 1993; Trends 2000 Warner Books 1997; "Crusades 2000," Trends Journal, Spring 2006.)

Armed and Dangerous

World news sources report a Middle East up-in-arms and seething at the lopsided Israeli massacre that has left over 1,000 Palestinians dead, thousands wounded, and Gaza in ruins. In comparison, three Israeli civilians and less than a dozen Jewish soldiers have been killed; scant damage has been inflicted on Israel.

The incessant US media and government message focuses on Israel's "right to defend itself" while minimizing or ignoring the long sequence of Israeli provocations leading up to its invasion while also failing to cite the real tally from the preceding mutual hostilities. In the months prior to Israel's December 27th attack, homemade Hamas projectiles fired into Israel killed no one. (Over the past several years prior to the invasion, 13 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. Between 2005 and 2007 alone, the Israeli Defense Force killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.)

Also largely absent from United States war coverage are the contributing factors Palestinians claim precipitated their primitive Qassam rocket launches into Israel. Chief among them, Israel's 18-month starvation blockade of 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians squeezed into densely populated Gaza (described by the Vatican as "a big concentration camp") and Israel's pre- invasion assassination of six Palestinian officials.

According to the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and other government and NGOs, Israel's response has been both disproportionate and illegal. Among the condemnations, Israel's military has been accused of firing white phosphorus artillery packed shells on civilians. The UN special envoy for human rights accused the Israeli army of " committing a shocking series of atrocities by using modern weaponry against a defenseless population - attacking a population that has been enduring a severe blockade for many months."

For its part, since the onset of hostilities, the United States had prevented approval of a UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire. And when the United Nations Security Council voted for a "durable and fully respected" cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, "leading to the full withdrawal" of Israel's forces from the Palestinian territory, the US abstained from voting. (The New York Times reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "placed a phone call to President Bush" and that "Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had been forced to abstain" from the UN resolution.)

"Major trends are brewing that if not quickly corrected or stanched, will lead to disaster," Celente forecasts, citing fears among Israel's neighbors that they could be the next victims.

"Throughout 2008, reports had been circulating that Israel was planning a military strike against Iran's major nuclear complex at Natanz, and The New York Times all but confirmed it on January 11th," Celente said. "While President Bush has made scores of disastrous foreign policy decisions during his reign, he should be congratulated for turning down Israel's request for specialized bunker-busting bombs needed to take out the nuclear facility."

An attack on Iran by either Israel or the US will spark the onset of World War III, predicts Celente.

"If oil producers sympathetic to the Palestinian cause cut the flow of oil, or if they cut supply in fear of being the next Israeli target, the world will go from a terrible recession immediately into the 'Greatest Depression'," Celente said.

(OPEC used the oil weapon in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, embargoing the US and other countries who sided with Israel.)

Beyond escalating economic dangers, Washington has placed itself in terror's bulls-eye Celente said, pointing to last weeks US Senate and House passage offering "unwavering commitment" for Israel. "Today, we reaffirm that Israel, like any nation, has a right to self-defense when under attack," said House speaker Nancy Pelosi. "The rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, which were increasing in frequency and range, constituted an unacceptable security threat to which Israel had a responsibility to respond."

Should Washington continue its "unwavering commitment" to Israel while taking direct measures to destroy Palestinians, Americans should also be aware that those left standing will seek revenge, Celente said. "News reports of US supplied ships bringing munitions to Israel to be used against Palestinians, and Israel's claims that the UN school they shelled killing some 50 civilians was the fault of a US-supplied weapon malfunction will not be forgotten by those seeking revenge," said Celente.

Trendpost: Stay abreast of ongoing Middle East developments.
Assess them by weighing the facts and gleaning the truth lurking behind the propaganda smokescreen. Should an oil embargo ensue, product scarcities will cause frenzy buying of food and fuel.

Gold prices will spike, the dollar will crash and global panic will most likely break out.

Reporting from CAIRO: John Anthony West, Executive Editor, the Trends Journal.

Publisher's Note: To make accurate trend forecasts, we do our utmost to seek facts that are generally accepted as truth. The more reliable the data, the more accurate the forecasts. The purpose of a trend forecast is to provide guidance on what to expect and how to plan for what may transpire. We do not pass judgment on what is right or wrong, good or bad, what we want or hope for it's just "what is."

© MMIX The Trends Research Institute ®

Trends Research P.O. Box 660 Rhinebeck, NY 12572