by shergald
Wed Aug 4th, 2010 at 01:06:10 PM EST
A sampling.
While we wait for the Netanyahu games to begin, anticipating the resumption of Israel's building of homes on Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the further emptying of the Jordan Valley of its remaining Palestinian villages, and the development of the future Apartheid state of Israel, it seems like a good time for people to take a look at the reality on the ground as far as the dwindling peace activist movement is concerned. Actually, the problem is its silence or lack of publicity. Here's some.
These photos were shared this morning by the British site, Bristol to Gaza showing a little of what the reality is in Palestine, or whatever is left of it today, August 4, 2010.
by shergald
Sun Aug 1st, 2010 at 10:40:53 AM EST
ADL Comes Out Against Ground Zero Mosque
Who would have guessed? Once a venerable if checkered organization at the forefront of fighting bigotry in general and anti-Semitism in particular in the US and Europe, the Anti-Defamation League under Abe Foxman has stooped to a new low and essentially acknowledged its support of Islamophobia, prejudice against Muslims.
The Anti-Defamation League came out against Ground Zero Mosque. So much for religious tolerance.
by shergald
Tue Jul 27th, 2010 at 11:37:30 AM EST
First came this urgent email from Dr. Yeela Raanan, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV, no link, tel +972 54 7487005, email yallylivnat@gmail.com):
Thousands of police evacuating and demolishing the village of El-Araqib in the Israeli Negev
Thousands of police are in the village of el-Araqib right now - beginning a mass evacuation, demolition, and erasure of this historical Bedouin village.
If you have access to the media, please send them to this village as soon as possible!
The village of el-Araqib is between Rahat and Beer Sheva, and in a location that the Goldberg commission deemed outside of the areas allowed for the Negev Arabs... an area designated only for Jews... the JNF (Jewish National Fund) is planting a forest on this village lands - to make sure that the Bedouin cannot live on their village lands or use them for agriculture. The villagers turned to the Israeli courts, as the JNF were planting this forest at the bequest of the Israeli government, but against Israeli law... the people of El-Araqib won the court battle... But this morning it seems that the Government of Israel has started a war -- of the Government against its own citizens.
by shergald
Sun Jul 25th, 2010 at 11:23:16 AM EST
Because according to Jacob Weisberg, Newsweek columnist, "The very idea is repellent."
Really? Let's listen to some of what he has to say:
by shergald
Tue Jul 20th, 2010 at 09:07:00 AM EST
English language subtitles begin at 2 minutes, 15 seconds.
by shergald
Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 01:54:43 PM EST
That's Netanyahu speaking about the United States in 2001. Other titles used for this story that also seem appropriate include ''The Real (And Deceitful) Face of Benjamin Netanyahu" (Israel TV) or just, "Tricky Bibi" (Gideon Levy, Haaretz).
The above title is from a Washington Post article dated yesterday, but this report on it is from the Huffington Post. It reported that a newly released video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "could add some additional strain to the sometimes tense relationship between him and President Obama," this mainly because it shows Netanyahu boasting about his ability to control American politics, and presidents presumably, in Israel's favor, and toward the Likud position given Netanyahu's lifetime perspective.
(The video is in Hebrew and may be accessed on this page.)
by shergald
Fri Jul 16th, 2010 at 03:40:31 PM EST
....Democratic candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania, USA (Specter's seat). Europeans need to appreciate what the American public has to deal with in its elections: the lobbies.
Whether you call it the Israel Lobby or AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) or the Neocons, there's no question that as a result of Sestak's past criticisms of Israel, they are now an albatross around his neck. Check out this political ad paid for by a new (old) group of Washington pro-Israel Neocons just resurrected as the The Emergency Committee for Israel. If you ask whether Sestak is in the process of being AIPAC'ed just as Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) was several years ago, this time with the Neocons leading the way, it turns out to be a silly question. Of course. Watch the attack video just released by this Neocon group:
by shergald
Wed Jul 14th, 2010 at 02:30:03 PM EST
Trailer for the documentary, Midnight on the Mavi Marmara
by shergald
Mon Jul 12th, 2010 at 01:12:54 PM EST
The dead can still speak through their writings. And no one's writings are more relevant to what is going on today in Netanyahu's Israel and the Palestinian territories than those of the late Tanya Reinhart.
Tanya Reinhart, a former Professor at Tel Aviv University, Utrecht University, and New York University, is now dead. But before her death, she established herself as one of the most insightful analyst/writers about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her capacity to take apart historical agendas, to relate past to the present, and to deconstruct realities and get behind Israel's hasbara (propaganda) effort were widely appreciated by the public, as in her last book, The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003.
If I may paraphrase a review, The Road Map to Nowhere is essential reading to understanding the state of the Israel/Palestine crisis since 2003 and the propaganda that infected its coverage. It argued that the Bush Road Map failed to bring real progress and that, under the cover of diplomacy, Israel was using the Road Map to strengthen its grip on the remaining occupied territories. Israel not only failed to give any attention to the required freeze on settlements, but settlement building, as in the 90s, accelerated. Reihart's book was called "an urgent and searing exposé of the "peace process" by a prominent Israeli thinker."
by shergald
Wed Jul 7th, 2010 at 02:52:40 PM EST
Just one day before Bibi Netanyahu took off for his meeting with Obama in Washington, DC, reports came out of the West Bank about the further ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families from the Jordan Valley. For years, Israeli armed forces deprived those families of water resources and the ability to subsist off their own lands, but now, the lands themselves are in question.
In successive announcements earlier this year, Netanyahu claimed that the Jordan Valley, along with East Jerusalem, the Jordan border region, and the settlement blocs, were not up for negotiation.
After his meeting with Obama, in front of the press, Netayahu refused to follow Obama by mentioning the two states solution as the road to peace. Instead, he voiced some ambiguous notions about what the Palestinians must do, since of course they are the impediment to peace, not the occupation and colonialism that has characterized the past 42 years of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
by shergald
Mon Jul 5th, 2010 at 08:32:43 AM EST
The Jerusalem Post, among other news sources, published this story back in February, 2010: "NYT editor defends reporter's Israel posting." Then Tovah Lazaroff wrote,
Questions raised following report that Ethan Bronner's son is in the IDF: Can a foreign correspondent cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if his son is an IDF soldier? The New York Times, in an opinion column on Saturday, answered "Yes" to that question when its executive editor Bill Keller defended the paper's Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner, whose son is in the Israeli army.
Ethan Bronner not only has a son in the IDF, but he is married to an Israeli.
Is this Ethan Bronner's son?
Who knows, but there is certainly the possibility that he is serving somewhere in the Palestinian territories in a similar role.
by shergald
Mon Jul 5th, 2010 at 06:22:30 AM EST
Originally posted on June 3, 2010
The journalist in question is Max Boot. Who is Max Boot and just how does he get access to high brass military personnel like David Petraeus?
Wikipedia describes Boot as....."a Senior Fellow at the ,Council on Foreign Relations a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and a regular contributor to other publications such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. He blogs for Commentary Magazine on its page Contentions. He serves as a consultant to the U.S. military and as a regular lecturer at U.S. military institutions such as the Army War College and the Command and General Staff College."
Right Web, a website which "tracks militarists' efforts to influence US foreign policy," however, writes this about Boot: "Max Boot is an award-winning writer who promotes militant U.S. security policies similar to those backed by Neoconservative writers like Charles Krauthammer and Michael Ledeen. Boot holds privileged perches in the U.S. news media and foreign policy communities.... An example of Boot's inflammatory writing style was his review of the "Goldstone Report," the UN investigation led by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone whose report was released n late 2009."
In short, Max Boot is a pro-Israel Neoconservative, and in this story, we have General Petreus answering to him on matters related to his recent comments concerning the fact that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is endangering the lives of American soldiers in the field in Iraq and Afganistan.
by shergald
Wed Jun 30th, 2010 at 05:57:19 PM EST
Ambition and orthodoxy (Kagan's hero is also Dershowitz's) was just posted by Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss:
by shergald
Mon Jun 28th, 2010 at 09:38:36 AM EST
In order to continue its colonization of the Palestinian territories (minus Gaza) or all of original Palestine, Israel must maintain a war footing, while casting itself as a victim of terrorism fighting for its very existence. In this deception, maintaining Hamas as its arch-enemy is an essential ingredient, perhaps its only red herring left to distract the world.
In this context, Noam Chomsky [in In These Times] gets to the bottom of the Gaza Flotilla massacre and shows us what it was really all about.
by shergald
Fri Jun 25th, 2010 at 09:47:28 AM EST
June 25, 2010
For west coast Americans, Richard Silverstein (Tikun Olam), in conjunction with other peace activist organizations, has organized a conference in Seattle about the recent Gaza Freedom Flotilla,
by shergald
Mon Jun 21st, 2010 at 09:20:14 AM EST
....Will Allow In All Goods Except For Weapons
Substantiating the ruse that the siege of Gaza and the restriction of goods and food into Gaza is about Israel's security needs is this report from the Associated Press yesterday: Some reported the announcement as a win for the peace activists, who have sent boats and flotillas to break the inhumane siege of Gaza over the past two years. After the slaughter of nine Turkish peace activists on the Mavi Marmara on the last flotilla, it was just impossible for Israeli hasbara to control the press, as more and more people around the world became cognizant of what Israel has been doing to the Gazan Palestinians.
by shergald
Sat Jun 19th, 2010 at 09:59:19 AM EST
Neoconservatism is often described as a right-wing political philosophy that emerged in the USA, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries through military power if necessary. Although neoconservatives claim to be liberal on economic issues, the right shift of this movement seems entirely based on its radical foreign policy. The Bush Doctrine, for example, is a often perceived as a Neoconservative project and the Iraq War an example of its implementation after 9/11.
However, according to Harvard professor Stephen Walt, the Neoconservative movement is not what it seems to be, but that it has always been an Israel-centric movement to involve the US in foreign adventures that seem advantageous to Israel, and not for the idealist purpose of spreading democracy around the world. In this regard, there is plenty of evidence that the trillion dollar Iraq war was engineered by Neocons situated in the Defense Department, that it was done for Israel's sake on falsified evidence of Saddam's WMDs and terrorist connections.
But Neocon influences did not end with Iraq, but went on to push for an attack on Iran, and then, now, Turkey, which is being singled out for its criticism of Israel based on recent events. As Walt put it, "the critic of my friend is my enemy," hence, the anti-Turkey focus of recent Neocon efforts to support Israel.
by shergald
Wed Jun 16th, 2010 at 11:19:00 AM EST
Richard Silverstein (Tikun Olam), after reviewing the geriatric makeup of the commission Israel assigned to investigate the Gaza Flotilla massacre, could only conclude that: "the fix is in." The average age of the panel is 85 years, at least some of participants being recruited from nursing homes. But that is not as damning as the well-known biases they carried through in their more lucid times.
