The Israeli Nightmare

Land Destroyer

Peace in Israel is the establishment's worst nightmare. 
an editorial by Tony Cartalucci

November 10, 2012 - Israel is an excuse, a mandate, a perpetual casus belli, and both an ideological as well as literal beachhead in the Middle East. Created and propped up by the West, in particular the US and United Kingdom, it has served as the medium through which Western foreign policy flows in and out of the Arab, and to a greater extent, the Muslim World.

It is through a carefully cultivated strategy of tension that this perpetual casus belli is maintained. Without the constant perceived fear of Israel's demise and the "moral imperative" to prevent it, real or imagined, it would be difficult to justify Western involvement in nations that otherwise pose no perceivable threat to America or Europe. A "clash of civilizations" is likewise being created within the West itself to augment this paradigm, but it has yet to "come of age," and still depends heavily on Israeli-Arab tensions to sustain itself.

Image: Israel does not bulldoze homes because it thinks it will eventually eliminate its enemies by doing so. To maintain a perpetual strategy of tension to justify perpetual meddling by neo-colonialists in the Middle East, Israel bulldozes homes specifically to create more enemies. To think otherwise, would be to falsely assume Israel's current leadership is actually invested in the self-preservation of the nation-state. They are not. 

....

It is clearly in the best interests of Western corporate-financiers seeking to remain involved in the Middle East and reassert hegemony over the region, to keep this strategy of tension viable and as heated as possible. The policies of Israel are so ham-handedly provocative, it is surprising that more people do not see the truth behind them - that Israel's heavy-handed belligerence is a calculated decision to keep the tension ratcheted up as high as possible. For what other reason could a nation-state want to deliberately, slowly, and systematically bulldoze the homes of impoverished men, women, and children? Self-preservation by eliminating it enemies? Or the perpetual creation of new enemies?

It is not just a theory that the West and Israel purposefully cultivate and exploit the hatred incurred by their calculated, blatantly provocative policies.

Like a dam straddling a river, the force of tension against the dam produces energy from which those who constructed it, benefit. The hatred, fear, and violence perpetuated between the Jewish people and their perceived enemies has been a prominent driving force behind Wall Street and London's century-long campaign of invasion, occupation, subversion, and exploitation across the Muslim World.

A recent example of this was using regional hatred toward Israel to implement the opening phases of the US-engineered "Arab Spring." Because any regime Israel feigned support for would be instantly poisoned by a political "touch of death," Israel openly and oafishly feigned support for Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, claiming it had sent weapons and riot control gear to assist his government in suppressing "anti-American/anti-Israeli" protesters. In reality, the protests in Egypt's streets were planned years in advance, beginning as early as 2008 in New York City by confabs organized by the US State Department.

Rachel Corrie, U.S. activist killed by Israel bulldozer, brought it "upon herself," court says

CBS News

An Israeli court ruled Tuesday that the military was not at fault for killing a U.S. activist crushed by an army bulldozer during a 2003 demonstration, rejecting a lawsuit filed by her parents.

The bulldozer driver has said he didn't see 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, a pro-Palestinian activist, who was trying to block the vehicle's path during a demonstration in the Gaza Strip against the military's demolition of Palestinian homes.

The military deemed her March 2003 death an accident, but Corrie's parents said the driver acted recklessly and filed a civil lawsuit two years later.

Explaining the district court's ruling, Judge Oded Gershon said Corrie "put herself in a dangerous situation" and called her death "the result of an accident she brought upon herself." He said the military conducted a proper investigation and rejected the Corrie family's request for a symbolic $1 in damages and legal expenses.

Corrie's family, who flew in from the U.S. for the verdict, lamented the court's ruling. Their lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said he would appeal the ruling to Israel's Supreme Court.

"We are of course, deeply saddened and deeply troubled by what we heard today," said her mother, Cindy Corrie of Olympia, Washington. "I believe this was a bad day. Not only for our family but for human rights, the rule of law, and also for the country of Israel."

Corrie's sister, Sarah, held up a picture of her sister lying lifeless in bulldozer tracks. The family's lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein pointed at it: "How did the bulldozer not see her?" he asked. To say that the driver did not see her "is lies to the living and also lies to the dead."

The home demolitions were part of an unsuccessful campaign to halt thousands of attacks on soldiers and Jewish settlers in southern Gaza, along the border with Egypt, in the preceding 3 ½ years. On the day Rachel Corrie died, she and other activists had entered a closed military zone to protest the demolition policy.

According to the U.N. agency handling Palestinian refugees, the military had left more than 17,000 Gazans homeless in the four years after a Palestinian uprising against Israel erupted in September 2000. The demolitions drew international condemnation at the time.

In her death, Corrie became the embodiment of what Palestinian activists say is Israel's harsh repression of nonviolent protest to occupation. Israel says by entering conflict zones to try to interfere with military activities, activists recklessly choose to risk their lives.

Her parents have relentlessly pursued her case since going to court in 2005 after a military investigation cleared the driver.

They say they have spent $200,000 to fly in witnesses, attend 15 hearings and translate more than 2,000 pages of court transcripts.

At the news conference, Cindy Corrie read a passage from one of her daughter's letters, biting her lip as her husband, grim-faced, held a microphone for her.

"Life is very difficult. Human beings can be kind, brave and strong, even in the most difficult of circumstances," Rachel Corrie wrote. "Thank you for existing, for showing how good people can be, despite great hardship."

The Corrie case was the first civil lawsuit of a foreigner harmed by Israel's military to conclude in a full civilian trial. Others have resulted in out-of-court settlements.

Rachel Corrie's parents describe ruling as 'bad day for human rights' - video

Guardian

Cindy and Craig, the parents of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003, say the judge's ruling that Israel wasn't responsible for her death has 'deeply saddened and deeply troubled' the family. Cindy Corrie told a press conference it was a bad day for human rights, humanity and the law

Are Israeli Settlements Legal? Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah vs. Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin

Democracy Now!

An Israeli government committee has affirmed the country’s self-proclaimed right to build settlements throughout the occupied West Bank and recommended the legalization of dozens of settler outposts that have not received government authorization. The International Court of Justice has already ruled that all of Israel’s West Bank settlements are illegal, but Israel has said it would only consider dismantling scattered outposts that it has not officially approved. The settlers have used the outposts to seize even more Palestinian land than has already been taken. We host a debate between Jonathan Tobin, senior online editor of Commentary magazine, and Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. [includes rush transcript]

Israeli settlers assault UN delegation in al-Khalil

 Qassam

Jewish settlers threw stones and rubbish on a number of foreign law professors, who are participating in a conference about Palestine's membership in the U.N. which is being held at al-Khalil  University, while they were touring the old city near the Jewish settlement of Beit Hadasa.
 

The delegation visited the old city over two days to see how the Israeli occupation soldiers and Jewish settlers deal with Palestinians.

They were guided by Muhammad al-Jarbeeni, a lecturer at the university and an activist in defending al-Khalil, to see for themselves the measures and restrictions against Palestinian residents  in the old city, the rough treatment by the occupation army and the harassment by the settlers.

The visiting delegation were also briefed on the closure of Shuhada street and the effect it is having on the local residents and the residents of Tel al-Romaidah.

Lecturer and researcher at Oxford University, Abbas Sheblaq said that the situation in the old city is a clear proof of the fascistic way used by the occupation to uproot Palestinians and the Israeli mentality which aims to eliminate the other.

He further described the occupations practices in al-Khalil as worse than what the defunct apartheid regime's practices in South Africa, adding that what the media relates about the practices of the occupation and its settlers does not exceed 5% of the facts there.

For his part, Guy S.Goodwin-Gill, Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College (Oxford University) said that he has been to many areas of armed conflict around the world, but he has never seen anything like what he saw in al-Khalil’s old city.

Israel cuts ties with UN human rights body

Al Jazeera

Co-operation with UN Human Rights Council suspended as punitive measure for probe of illegal West Bank settlements.

Navi Pillay, UN commissioner for human rights, said
West Bank settlement expansion is linked to violence

Israel has said it has severed contacts with the UN Human Rights Council after the group's launch last week of an international investigation into Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The decision, announced by a foreign ministry spokesman on Monday, meant that the fact-finding team the council planned to send to the West Bank will not be allowed to enter the territory or Israel, said spokesman Yigal Palmor.

"We are not working with them anymore," Palmor said about the Geneva-based forum. "We had been participating in meetings, discussions, arranging visits to Israel. All that is over."

The international investigation was launched on Thursday, with the United States isolated in voting against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli leaders swiftly condemned the UN body, saying it was hypocritical and biased against Israel.
"They systematically and serially make all kinds of decisions and condemnations against Israel without even symbolically considering our positions," Palmor said.

He said Israel would continue to cooperate with other UN bodies.

Settlement status

The UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel's planned construction of new housing units for Jewish settlers in the

West Bank and East Jerusalem, saying they undermined the peace process and posed a threat to the two-state solution and the creation of a contiguous and independent Palestinian state.

About 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Palestinians want the territory for an independent state along with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Palestinians say settlements, considered illegal by the International Court of Justice, the highest UN legal body for disputes, would deny them a viable state.

Israel cites historical and Biblical links to the West Bank and says the status of settlements should be decided in peace negotiations.

Barghouti and Waskow debate BDS on Democracy Now

MondoWeiss

Excellent point made in the comments section on MondoWeiss by Phan Nguyen:

This is the second time Waskow has argued against BDS in a debate on Democracy Now. He did so two years earlier against Omar Barghouti.

His arguments are specious, but here I just want to point out his false suggestion that Martin Luther King would never support a boycott against an entire country:

Even when Dr. King clearly, publicly, vigorously opposed the Vietnam War, he did not call for a boycott of all American products and producers. He didn’t do that in Europe or in the United States. He targeted where he was aiming. And I think BDS, as presently framed, doesn’t target.

In reality, MLK supported full boycott, divestment and sanctions against Apartheid South Africa as early as 1962:

From a joint statement by MLK and Chief Albert J. Lutuli, dated 9 October 1962 and again on 10 December 1962, addressed to the international community:

Urge your Government to support economic sanctions;
Don’t buy South Africa’s products;
Don’t trade or invest in South Africa;
Translate public opinion into public action by explaining facts to all peoples, to groups to which you belong, and to countries of which you are citizens until AN EFFECTIVE INTERNATIONAL QUARANTINE OF APARTHEID IS ESTABLISHED.

From a speech in London, December 1964, en route to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize:

Our responsibility presents us with a unique opportunity. We can join in the one form of non-violent action that could bring freedom and justice to South Africa—the action which African leaders have appealed for—in a massive movement for economic sanctions.

In a world living under the appalling shadow of nuclear weapons do we not recognize the need to perfect the use of economic pressures? Why is trade regarded by all nations and all ideologies as sacred? Why does our Government, and your Government in Britain, refuse to intervene effectively now, as if only when there is a bloodbath in South Africa—or a Korea, or a Vietnam—will they recognise the crisis?

If the United Kingdom and the United States decided tomorrow morning not to buy South African goods, not to buy South African gold, to put an embargo on oil; if our investors and capitalists would withdraw their support for that racial tyranny, then apartheid would be brought to an end. Then the majority of South Africans of all races could at last build the shared society they desire.

From a speech in New York for Human Rights Day, 10 December 1965:

Today, in our opulent society, our reliance on trade with South Africa is infinitesimal significance. No real national interest impels us to be cautious, gentle, or a good customer of a nation that offends the world’s conscience…

The time has come to utilize non-violence fully through a massive international boycott which would involve the USSR, Great Britain, France, the United States, Germany and Japan. Millions of people can personally give expression to their abhorrence of the world’s worst racism through such a far-flung boycott. No nation professing a concern for man’s dignity could avoid assuming its obligations if people of all States and races were to adopt a firm stand. Nor need we confine an international boycott to South Africa. The time has come for an international alliance of peoples of all nations against racism.

Israeli Settlers Stealing Essential Water from Palestinians, UN Reports

'Intimidation, threats and violence' used to control water in West Bank

Common Dreams

The UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released a report showing that Israeli settlers in the West bank have taken over dozens of natural springs from Palestinians there, preventing access to essential water sources.

Israeli soldier stands next to a man-made
pool containing water from a spring
located near the West Bank village of
Nabi Saleh

The report shows that Palestinians are kept from accessing the springs by acts of "intimidation, threats and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers".

***

Settlers Taking Over Palestinian Springs: UN report (Agence France-Presse):

The report said an OCHA survey carried out in 2011 identified a total of 56 springs that were under total or partial control of Israeli settlers, most in the part of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control.

"Springs have remained the single largest water source for irrigation and a significant source for watering livestock" for Palestinians, OCHA said, noting that some springs also provide water for domestic consumption.

"The loss of access to springs and adjacent land reduced the income of affected farmers, who either stop cultivating the land or face a reduction in the productivity of their crops."
The report said in most cases where settlers were trying to limit Palestinian access to springs, they have undertaken to turn the area into a tourist attraction, constructing pools, picnic areas and signs carrying a Hebrew name for the spring. [...]

OCHA said the takeover of springs was an extension of settlement activity in the West Bank, which it pointed out is illegal under international law.

And it added that settler actions including "trespass, intimidation and physical assault, stealing of private property, and construction without a building permit," are also violations of Israeli law.

***

Settlers Grab Palestinian Water Wprings: U.N. Report (Reuters):

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had surveyed 530 springs in the West Bank and found that 30, mostly in areas where Israel retains military control, were taken over by the settlers.

It added that Palestinians currently had limited access to 26 other springs where settlers had moved in and threatened to take control. [...]

"The loss of access to springs and adjacent land reduced the income of affected farmers, who either stop cultivating the land or face a reduction in the productivity of their crops," the report said. [...]

"Settlers have developed 40 springs as tourist sites, deployed picnic tables and benches and given them Hebrew names ... It is generating employment and revenue for the settlements and it is a way of promoting or advertising settlements as a fun place," OCHA researcher Yehezkel Lein said. [...]

In 2009 a spring named Ein el Qaws, located near the village of Nabi Saleh, was taken over by settlers from Halamish, forcing villagers to obtain their irrigation water from other sources, the report and residents said.

"The spring was used to irrigate hundreds of olive and fruit trees in the village and the children used to swim in it, now if we try to go to the spring, the settlers and soldiers come and kick us out," said villager Nariman Tamimi.

‘No amount of reading and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality’— Remembering Rachel Corrie

MondoWiess

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, the peace activist whose life was cruelly cut short in 2003 by the Israeli military when the IDF crushed her with a bulldozer. Corrie was just 23 years old when killed while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Gaza, but her memory continues to inspire many long after her death.

To those who knew her, Corrie was thoughtful, sensitive, and courageous. The ISM remembered Corrie:

It rained on Kufr Qaddoum where attack dogs clenched in their jaws the peaceful freedom fighters of Palestine, an image reminiscent of a segregated America.

It drizzled as the folks of Al Ma’sara demanded the wall to fall, an echoing cry humanity heard from Germany.

Puddles formed along Shuhada Street in Al Khalil where Apartheid still lurked despite South Africa’s continued victories.

And it watered on Gaza, where the dust never seems to settle between the murderous attacks of the Zionist military.

It is fitting to honor Corrie with a poem, as she is known for her letters and emails from Palestine to her family, compiled in a book edited by her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie. So let us remember Corrie with an excerpt from an email sent by Corrie to family and friends, while in Rafah.  The email was published in Let Me Stand Alone:

Hi friends and family, and others,

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I’m not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me – Ali – or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, 'Kaif Sharon?' 'Kaif Bush?' and they laugh when I say, 'Bush Majnoon', 'Sharon Majnoon' back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn’t quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: “Bush mish Majnoon' … Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say, 'Bush is a tool,' but I don’t think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago.

Palestinians prepare to lose the solar panels that provide a lifeline

Guardian

Israel is planning to demolish 'illegal' solar panels that are the only source of electricity for Palestinians in West Bank villages

A Palestinian man looks at a solar panel in
the southern West Bank village of Imneizil.

Two large solar panels jut out of the barren landscape near Imneizil in the Hebron hills. The hi-tech structures sit incongruously alongside the tents and rough stone buildings of the Palestinian village, but they are fundamental to life here: they provide electricity.

Imneizil is not connected to the national electricity grid. Nor are the vast majority of Palestinian communities in Area C, the 62% of the West Bank controlled by Israel. The solar energy has replaced expensive and clunky oil-powered generators.

According to the Israeli authorities, these solar panels – along with six others in nearby villages – are illegal and have been slated for demolition.

Nihad Moor, 25, has three small children. The family live in a two-room tent kitted out with a fridge, TV and very old computer. She also has a small electric butter churn, which she uses to supplement her husband's small income from sheep farming.

"The kids get sick all the time. At the moment, because of a change in the weather, they all have colds. Without electricity I wouldn't even be able to see to help them when they need to use the [outdoor] toilet at night," Moor says. "I don't want to imagine what life would be like here if [the panels] were demolished."

Imneizil's solar system was built in 2009 by the Spanish NGO Seba at a cost of €30,000 to the Spanish government. According to the Israeli authorities, it was built without a permit.
Guy Inbar, a spokesperson for the Israeli authorities in the West Bank, explains:

"International aid is an important component in improving and promoting the quality of life of the Palestinian population but this does not grant immunity for illegal or unco-ordinated activity."

The problem for Palestinian communities here is that permission to build any infrastructure is very hard to come by. According to figures from the civil administration quoted by the pressure group Peace Now, 91 permits were issued for Palestinian construction in Area C between 2001 and 2007. In the same period, more than 10,000 Israeli settlement units were built and1,663 Palestinian structures demolished.

Israel ‘to legalize outposts on private Palestinian land’

RawStory
(Agence France-Presse)

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking ways to legalise unauthorised settlement outposts built on privatePalestinian land, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Tuesday.

According to the paper, Netanyahu told ministers from his rightwing Likud party on Sunday that he would order Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman to set up a task force to explore ways of legalising such construction.

The decision to set up a task force was taken after heavy pressure from the settler lobby and rightwing activists following the demolition in early September of three structures in the Migron outpost near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the report said.

The decision to demolish Migron and other outposts built on private Palestinian land was taken in February when Netanyahu and three other ministers met with Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, Haaretz said.

At the meeting, they agreed to raze all such outposts while at the same time working to retroactively legalise any illegal construction in both settlements and outposts built on state land.

According to a timetable submitted to the High Court, the government is to have demolished the Givat Asam outpost by the end of the year, as well as parts of three others: Givat HaRoeh, Ramat Gilad and Bnei Adam.

The issue of construction on private Palestinian land has been the subject of lengthy court battles, one of which saw the Supreme Court in August order the government to raze Migron by the end of March 2012.

Israel considers settlement outposts built in the West Bank without government approval to be illegal, and often sends security personnel to demolish them. They usually consist of little more than a few trailers.

The international community considers all settlements built in the occupied West Bank, including annexed Arab east Jerusalem, to be illegal.

Israeli Home Demolition Terrorism

 SteveLendmanBlog

Co-founded (with Meir Marglit) and directed by Jeff Halper, the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) "is a non-violent, direct-action organization established in 1998 to resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories."

ICAHD also helps rebuild homes. In addition, it resists "land expropriation, settlement expansions, by-pass road construction, policies of 'closure' and 'separation,' " as well as destruction of agricultural land and crops. It also works for peace, equity, and ending Israel's illegal occupation.

Access its web site through the following link:

http://www.icahd.org/

It estimates over 24,800 West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza houses demolished since 1967 (4,247 during Cast Lead, according to the UN).

It classifies demolition types as:

-- punishment for actions associated with the structures (about 8.5%);

-- administrative for lacking building permits (about 26%);

-- land-clearing/military demolitions for any reason, including achieving IDF goals or accompanying extrajudicial assassinations (about 65.5%); and

-- other undefined reasons.

In fact, Israel's demolition and displacement policies are serious international law breaches for any reason. Nonetheless, they continue as official state policy to steal Palestinian land for Israelis, an issue Western media ignore, as well as other Israeli crimes of war and against humanity.

On June 27, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee passed a first draft of a law requiring Palestinians to pay house demolition costs with no judicial review.

ACRI and Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights petitioned the committee, calling the measure extreme, adding that without judicial review "there is no option for the owners to demolish the structure themselves," a much cheaper procedure.

Moreover, this legislation gives administrative authorities "unbalanced" demolition freedom, including to bulldoze homes in "structurally disadvantaged communities such as Bedouins in unrecognized communities" and Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

A "softened version of the bill" lets courts decide whether costs should be imposed and how much. It's expected to become law.

On July 21, a new UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report documented alarming numbers of West Bank Area C demolitions and forced displacements, saying more occurred (342) so far in 2011 than in 2009 and 2010 combined.

Based on field visits to 13 Area C communities, the report said "restrictive policies and practices of the Israeli authorities, including movement and access restrictions, settlement activity and restrictions on Palestinian construction" force most Palestinians to leave.

It added that thousands more are at risk because 3,000 demolition orders have been issued, including against 18 schools.

On July 18, ICAHD reported "a new wave of demolition orders, stop-building orders, property confiscations, settler harassment and multiple warnings of imminent eviction(s) by the Israeli Civil Administration...."

Most affected are Jerusalem periphery Bedouin communities, "exhausted of alternative coping strategies." As a result, they're appealing for international protection against demolitions, forced displacements and relocations, what many of them have experienced before.

Khan al Ahmar and Wadi Abu Hindi communities (near Maale Adumim settlement) are especially targeted. Since May, all Wadi Abu Hindi structures got stop-building orders. The community was also told that their land was expropriated for the Separation Barrier.

Khan al Ahmar got four new stop-building orders and notification that final stop-work/demolition orders for 10 - 12 houses will be executed. Moreover, Jahilin community residents fear they may be next.

More Land Theft Planned

On July 22, Haaretz writer Akiva Eldar headlined, "IDF Civil Administration pushing for land takeover in West Bank," saying:

According to an internal IDF document, new construction is planned "not only around settlement blocs like Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion, but also in strategic areas like the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea."

Prepared by Lt. Col. Zvi Cohen, it says the custodian of government property may take possession of undefined ownership lands, including in the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea. Doing so, however, will further cantonize Palestine, making it harder than ever to establish an independent continuous territory state.

In response, Rabbis for Human Rights said:

"(A) politically motivated land policy must not come at the expense of the rights of a population subjected to occupation, which is excluded from the decision-making processes of those shaping its destiny. The procedures empower the ability to use the mechanism Israel set up for declaring 'state lands' for the purpose of dispossessing Palestinian communities and individuals of their rights and lands."

According to Dror Etkes, an activist monitoring settlement construction, the IDF document reveals how political and military officials work against Palestinians' interests. Nearly always, procedures for declaring state lands benefit settlers alone.

"That's the main way Israel enforces its discriminatory land policy which aims to evict the Palestinians from most of the West Bank and take possession of these territories."

Moreover, Israel's Interior Ministry recently authorized "the enlargement of 2,000 illegal homes" in East Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood.

And now this, according to Haaretz writer Jack Khoury. On July 27, he headlined "Israel sues 34 Bedouin(s) for costs of repeated demolitions of their homes," saying:

The unprecedented suit seeks 1.8 million NIS (New Israeli Shekels) in damages. About 3.4 NIS = one dollar.

Despite Bedouins and other Palestinians building on their own land, the Israel Land Administration (ILA) claims those charged built homes in Al-Arakib, northeast of Be'er Sheva, "on what had been state land since the time of Ottoman rule."

It ended in 1918. Israel became a state in 1948. ILA's claim is bogus, offensive and illegal, but it's not deterred from its longstanding policy to steal as much Palestinian land as possible, destroying their property and dispossessing them lawlessly.

According to ILA:

"The squatters against whom the suit was brought, of the Abu Madigham and the Abu Jaber families, already have houses built on land the state gave them in the area of Rahat." It said they keep returning to disputed land, despite court orders prohibiting them from doing so.

Israeli audacity gives chutzpah new meaning, calling Palestinian land "disputed," prohibiting them from living on it, demolishing their property when they do, and now suing them for demolition costs.

ILA also claimed Bedouins use PR deception, accusing Israel of repression when they're in breach of the law. It said the disputed land was leased until 1998 for seasonal agricultural activities. However, "defendants ousted the leasees and began squatting on the land."

5.8 million Israelis Get 100 Billion In US Tax Dollars While American States Are Falling Apart

Norway government-run pension fund drops Africa Israel group shares

Hareetz


Oslo says EUR450bn oil fund has excluded two Israeli firms for ethical reasons.

Norway’s 450 billion euro oil-riches fund has excluded two Israeli firms involved in developing settlements, as well as a Malaysian forestry firm, on ethical grounds, Norway’s finance ministry said on Monday. The excluded companies are Africa Israel Investments and its engineering subsidiary Danya Cebus, both of which are controlled by energy and real estate magnate Lev Leviev. The Malaysian firm is Samling Global.


The ministry said that the oil fund, which is essentially a form of pension fund, has already sold all its holdings in these companies.


The central bank-managed fund follows ethical guidelines set by the government and does not invest in companies that produce nuclear weapons or cluster munitions, damage the environment or abuse workers’ rights. Nor will it invest in companies that build in the settlements, it appears.

Africa Israel controls Danya Cebus, “a construction company involved in developing settlements in occupied Palestinian territory,” the fund said in a statement.

Danya Cebus has carried out construction projects, as a hired contractor, in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem, and in the settlements Ma’aleh Adumim, Modi’in Ilit ‏(shown in the picture‏) and Adam.

The vast fund, which invests the Nordic nation’s oil and gas wealth in foreign stocks and bonds to save for future generations, holds more than 1% of all global stocks. It owned shares worth 7.2 million Norwegian crowns (‏€1.16 million) in Africa Israel Investments at year-end 2009.

“The Council on Ethics emphasizes that the construction of settlements in occupied areas is a violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War,” it said.

“Several United Nations Security Council resolutions and an International Court of Justice advisory opinion have concluded that the construction of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is prohibited under this Convention,” Finance Minister Sigbjoern Johnsen said in the statement.

Rachel Corrie's family claim Israeli military withheld vital video evidence

Guardian
Harriet Sherwood

The family of Rachel Corrie, the US activist killed in Gaza while protesting against house demolitions in 2003, on Monday claimed the Israeli military authorities withheld video evidence during the Corries' civil lawsuit and misled US officials on crucial details.

Craig Corrie, Rachel's father, told a press conference in Jerusalem that the footage from a surveillance camera near the scene of his daughter's death submitted to the court was "incomplete". Additional video material obtained by the family showed Rachel's body in a different spot to the place identified by some military commanders, he said.

He also alleged that the Israeli military had misled US officials on the position of Rachel's body when she was killed.

Rachel, from Olympia, Washington state, was killed while attempting to protect the home of a Palestinian family in the Rafah area of Gaza from being demolished by Israeli troops in March 2003. Her family and other activists who witnessed the incident say she was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer.

Following Rachel's death the then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, promised US president George W Bush a "thorough, credible and transparent" investigation.

An internal Israeli military investigation, which was never published nor released to the US government nor the Corries, concluded that the two soldiers who operated the bulldozer had not seen Rachel and that no charges would be brought. The case was closed.

In March last year the Corrie family launched a civil case, accusing the military of either unlawfully or intentionally killing Rachel or of gross negligence. Hearings in the case ended on Sunday and a verdict is due to be delivered next April.

Palestine’s ‘last village’ faces the bulldozers

Global Research
Jonathon Cook

Lifta to make way for Jewish vacation homes

On a rocky slope dropping steeply away from the busy main road at the entrance to West Jerusalem is to be found a scattering of ancient stone houses, empty and clinging precariously to terraces hewn from the hillside centuries ago.

Although most Israeli drivers barely notice the buildings, this small ghost town -- neglected for the past six decades -- is at the centre of a legal battle fuelling nationalist sentiments on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

Picking his way through the cluster of 55 surviving houses, their stone walls invaded by weeds and shrubs, Yacoub Odeh, 71, slipped easily into reminiscences about the halcyon days in Lifta.

He was only eight years old in January 1948 when the advancing Jewish forces put his family and the 3,000 other Palestinian villagers to flight.

Over the coming months, as the Jewish state was born, they would be joined by 750,000 others forced into exile in an event that is known by Palestinians as the “nakba”, or catastrophe.

Despite the passage of time, Lifta’s chief landmarks are still clear to Mr Odeh: the remains of his own family’s home, an olive press, the village oven, a spring, the mosque, the cemetery and the courtyard where the villagers once congregated.

“Life was wonderful for a small child here,” he said, closing his eyes. “We were like one large family. We played in the spring’s waters, we picked the delicious strawberries growing next to the pool.

“I can still remember the taste of the bread freshly baked by my mother and coated with olive oil and thyme.”

The village not only occupies a unique place in Mr Odeh’s affections. It has also come to symbolise a hope of eventual return for many of the nearly five million Palestinian refugees around the world.

In the words of Ghada Karmi, a British academic whose own family was forced from their home close by, in the Jerusalem suburb of Katamon, Lifta “remains a physical memorial of injustice and survival”.

The reason is that Lifta is the last deserted village from 1948 still standing in modern-day Israel.

More than 400 other villages seized by Israel war were razed during and after the war of 1948 in what historians have described as a systematic plan to make sure the refugees had no homes to return to.

Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian who examined the 1948 war in his book the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, has termed the villages’ destruction an act of “memoricide” -- erasing for Israelis all troubling reminders of an earlier Palestinian presence.

The destroyed villages’ lands were used by the new state either to build communities for Jewish immigrants or to plant national forests, said Eitan Bronstein, spokesman for Zochrot, an Israeli group dedicated to teaching Israelis about the nakba.

A handful of other Palestinian communities, such as the old city of Jaffa and Ein Hod near Haifa, survived the wave of demolitions but were quickly passed on to new Jewish owners to be reinvented as artists’ colonies.

Only Lifta was neither destroyed nor reinhabited, its homes standing as a solitary, silent testament to a vanished way of life, said Mr Bronstein.

But even that small legacy is under imminent threat from the bulldozers.

In January the Israel Lands Authority, a government body responsible for Lifta’s lands, announced a plan to build a luxury housing project over the village, including more than 200 apartments, a hotel and shops.

The project, said Meir Margalit, a Jerusalem city councillor, would be targeted at wealthy foreign Jews, mainly from the United States and France, looking for summer vacation homes in Israel.

The developers have promised to incorporate some of the old buildings into the complex, although most observers -- including leading architects -- say that little of the orginal Palestinian village will be recognisable after the project is completed.

Instead, according to Mr Bronstein, Lifta will belatedly suffer the same fate as the hundreds of villages destroyed by Israel decades ago. “The message is that we are finishing what we started in 1948,” he said.

Esther Zandberg, a commentator on architecture for the Israeli Haaretz daily, agreed: “Although it is termed a preservation effort, it is in effect, paradoxically, an erasure of all memory of the original village.”

Critics have been joined by Shmuel Groag, one of the project’s original architects, who has accused the developers of failing to respect the basic rules of conservation in their treatment of Lifta.

Flash Mob's Major Production at Portland Apartheid Supporter 'New Seasons'

Salem-News
Tim King

I think people are eventually going to learn, the way we all learned about South Africa...

With all of the stories about terrible things taking place in the world, it is good to know that flash mobs are out there to embarrass the holy living sh*t out of retailers that want to grease their palms with blood money from Israel.

It's no secret, Israel isn't just slightly over the line in terms of human rights violations and highly documented war crimes, the Zionist government of Netanyahu is almost primeval in its treatment of human beings. The folks at New Seasons in Portland know what is going on, and their stance in support of oppressive Israeli occupation is baffling.

We learned yesterday that Israel's government may reserve their most vicious public assaults for American Jews who dare to voice support for human rights. (see: Israel's Crap Treatment of an American Jew)

Many of us actually understand that the goal of peace can never be reached under the current system. George W. Bush turned the U.S. into a nation guilty of committing Genocide. 

After all, Iraq is an unjustified conflict against a civilian population that has a lot of oil. One point five million human lives eradicated by the U.S. led forces? Just imagine how greed transcends right down to the thought that fewer people mean more resources for the nation committing the acts. Fewer human beings to disagree? I saw two types of people up close in Iraq; they were either highly compliant, or bound, hooded and subdued.

The U.S. right wing nearly proclaims the country's 'Christianity' while at the same espousing a system of religions freedom, which is supposed to exist. However President Bush compared the war on Iraq to the Crusades (two wholly unjustified extended periods of bloodshed). Then, just as now, Genocide always happens for the simple reason; because of religious hegemony and oppression.

Israel, like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, admits that religious freedom is denied - it is written as such. By national doctrine they exist to serve the needs of only one faith, i.e. the 'Jewish State of Israel'. The same goes for the 'Islamic Republic of Afghanistan'. I wouldn't call the Afghan government Genocidal; in fact it was the scene of a Genocidal invasion and war from the former Soviet Union, which the Afghan Mujaheddin banded together and won. Unfortunately, the Afghan struggle for freedom led to destroyed ancient Buddhist statues and a near eradication of Jews. On that note, I had never looked into whether there are any Jewish people living in Afghanistan at all. Here is what Wikipedia says:

"Jews have lived in Afghanistan for at least 2,000 years, but the community has been reduced greatly because of emigration. Afghan Jewish communities now exist mostly in Israel, Pakistan and the United States. Today, it is believed that there is only one Jew, Zablon Simintov, residing in Afghanistan. He cares for a dilapidated synagogue in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, and receives aid from sympathetic Muslims and Jews around the world." (see: History of the Jews in Afghanistan - rom Wikipedia)

One guy! This is Afghanistan; America's big Middle east 'project', hearts and minds, all of that. I now wish I had gone to see that dilapidated synagogue when I was in Kabul, what a story that would have been. My question is this; if Israel had reduced the Muslim population of Palestine to a single sad broken down mosque, would it be cared for with the proceeds of sympathetic Jews? Would the Muslim running it survive a single day?

In Palestine, the backers of the Genocide are Jews, in Iraq they are Christians, in Afghanistan they are Muslims, and in Sri Lanka they are Buddhists, and good luck to you if you happen to live in one of the latter three places listed, and fail to fit in. But never assume that these terrible behaviors represent the actual religions or their people at large. Not in any case, including Northern Ireland.

Since the people of opposing religions tend to represent different cultures, at least perceptually, it is racism, and as soon as the killings begin en mass, then it is Genocide. The first defense of the Genocidal groups as I have learned in my years of writing, is to accuse the writer of being against the religion of the majority.

The people in this Portland, Oregon flash mob carry the virtues of what is right in this world, they are drawing attention to what is wrong. That is what we are supposed to do as human beings.

Israel came to power in 1948 and then attacked neighboring Arab countries in 1967 in the Six Day War and used their victory to justify a major land grab. Since then Israel has progressively encroached on the remaining Palestinian areas, forcing them to drive on separate roads, and be subjected to a different set of laws than those that govern Jews. This is what U.S. taxpayers are funding. Israel is obviously very guilty of years of violent and deadly ethnic cleansing. Background: Murdering Babies is 'Permissible' When They're Palestinian - Alison Weir Salem-News.com

Background on Israeli Occupation: The activists understand that: all of Palestine has been militarily absorbed by Israel, which didn't exist as a government until 1948. Gaza is an isolated coastal strip bordered by Israel on the east and Egypt to the south. The West Bank and Golan Heights are also Palestine, and everything else is Israel. So, you have Palestinians who live in occupied Palestine; Palestinians who live in Israel that are Israeli citizens, and Palestinians in Gaza who have been locked in an open air concentration camp for years.

Every time a person buys a Nestle product, they are funding the diesel fuel of a bulldozer that will mow down a Palestinian family home, sometimes with people inside, almost always illegally. And when they use Caterpillar construction equipment, they directly fund the destruction of Palestine's homes.

All Israeli settlement products are directly funding colonies that exist atop ancient Palestinian villages. The settlers regularly harass the native Palestinians and school kids aren't safe, families aren't safe. The settlers train with deadly weapons and fire homemade rockets into Palestinian neighborhoods. And before people start ranting about Hamas rocket attacks, remember that these rogue attacks from Gaza have killed exactly 28 Israeli people. That is terrible, nobody should have died and the deaths of the Israelis are no less significant than any others, but they are far, far fewer in comparison to Palestinian deaths at the hands of the Israelis, like more than a 100 to 1, far more.

Israel built division walls across Palestinian farmland and they shoot farmers with sniper rifles when they try to work their land, even in the legal zones. The Israeli navy regularly attacks and harasses, detain, confiscate, arrest, etc., the poor fishermen of Gaza who try to earn a meager living in restricted waters. A great writer and peace activist who was killed recently in Gaza, Vittorio Arrigoni, regularly protested the treatment of the fishermen.

And that is all just one tiny glance at the problems people have living under Israel's highly aggressive illegal 'army' called the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). 

Learn more about BDS, take part.

In a Google search just now, I saw that anti-BDS sites have high ranking. The first thing I read was, "BDS leaders want to destroy Israel and vilify Jews in the process". They're so completely full of it. Salem-News.com has an overt reputation for reporting the truth and everything else be damned. 

I can go on forever about this, instead I will let you enjoy this super cool video featuring a unique concept known as 'humanity' that is often the missing guest. 

New Seasons, you guys need to drop your products that violate BDS and if you do it we will bring the television cameras to Portland and give you substantial coverage, all on is, to show people that anything and everything is possible once the right amount of education has been applied. 

Please do the right thing. I predict that if you drop just a few of your products, that you will earn many customers for life, and those are who you need.

The Portland BDS Coalition Mobs New Seasons Grocery demanding a total Boycott of Israeli Products

'Judaism Yes, Zionism No': Ultra-Orthodox Jews march against Israel

Gaza: A View From the Ground

Global Research

Here in Palestine, disgust expressed by civil society reformers about Barack Obama's May 19 policy speech on the Middle East and North Africa confirms that political reconciliation between Washington and fast-rising Arab democrats is impossible.

Amidst many examples, consider the longstanding U.S. tradition of blind, self-destructive support for Israel, which Obama has just amplified. Recognizing a so-called ‘Jewish state’ as a matter of U.S. policy, he introduced a new twist that denies foundational democratic rights for 1.4 million Palestinians living within Israel. For a Harvard-trained constitutional lawyer to sink so low on behalf of Zionist discrimination is shocking. For although Obama mentioned the “1967 lines” as the basis for two states and thereby appeared to annoy arch-Zionist leader Benjamin Netanyahu, this minimalist United Nations position was amended with a huge caveat: ‘with land swaps.’

Obama thus implicitly endorses illegal Israeli settlements (with their half-million reactionary residents) that pock the West Bank, confirming its status as a Bantustan for 2.5 million people, far more fragmented than even the old South African homelands. Another 1.6 million suffer in the isolated Gaza Strip.


Map of Israel.

Obama also claimed, “America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator,” stretching credulity.

The Arab Spring Gets In The Way

“He was with the dictators until the very last minute,” rebuts Ramallah-based liberation activist Omar Barghouti, regarding both Tunisia's Ben-Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. “He's missed the point of the Arab Spring. It's not just about the street vendor, it is about social justice. The pillage of the resources of the region by the U.S. has to come to an end.”

Resource extraction and Israeli empowerment explain Obama's recent flirtation with unreformable Libyan and Syrian tyrannies, as well as ongoing U.S. sponsorship of brutal regimes in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. So it was impossible for the U.S. president to avoid a subtle confession: “There will be times when our short-term interests don't align perfectly with our long-term vision of the region.”

“There will be times”? That's the understatement of the year, considering “short-term interests” reflect the corrupted character of corporate-purchased U.S. politicians. (Obama needs to raise $1-billion to finance his re-election campaign next year.) Pursuit of such narrow interests gets Washington into perpetual trouble, including bolstering Israeli aggression, becoming dependent upon oil from despotic regimes, and dogmatically imposing free-market ideology on behalf of U.S.-dominated multinational capital.

I am witnessing the results firsthand in Gaza and the West Bank, and was lucky to even get here, for last Tuesday, the day after I arrived at the main regional airport in TelAviv (with my white skin, multiple passports and non-Muslim surname), my friend Na'eem Jeenah also tried to enter Israel en route to Palestine with South African papers. For four hours the Israeli border police detained Jeenah, a Johannesburg leader of the Palestine Solidarity Committee. Intervention by concerned SA diplomats couldn't appease immigration officials, who forced him to board a flight to Istanbul where he waited for another day before returning home.

Apartheid – Israeli Style

South Africans who get through immigration invariably confirm conditions here that deserve the label ‘Israeli apartheid.’ Last month, Judge Richard Goldstone's reputation-wrecking reversal on the UN Goldstone report, regarding the Israeli army's intentional killing of Gaza civilians during the January 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” invasion, cannot disguise 1400 dead, of which no more than half were Hamas-aligned officials.

That massacre was, according to Israeli journalist Amira Hass, a chance for the army to practice high-tech urban warfare against a caged populace, replete with white phosphorous, combat robots, drones and other terror weapons.


Erez (Gaza border) protest on Nakba day, 15 May 2011.
Just as I crossed Gaza's northern Erez border post last Friday, Israeli Defense Force soldiers fired on unarmed marchers who are Palestine's unique contribution to the Arab Spring, leaving two wounded. The Sunday before, tens of thousands of these brave people, especially refugees, mobilized using FaceBook and walked to several 1967 lines, resulting in fifteen murders by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers.

Along with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions non-violent struggle against Israeli power, this Satyagraha-style movement, adopting strategies and tactics pioneered in Durban, South Africa by Mahatma Gandhi a century ago, must strike fear in the hearts of TelAviv securocrats. No longer can they portray their enemies as rocket-launching Islamic fundamentalists who worship Osama bin Laden.

What I also learned from Palestinian civil society activists is that the pillaging of this region by the West is being planned by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, following similar support to dictators last year – though with unintended consequences! – in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Evidence includes two documents presented by the IMF and World Bank to an April 13 Brussels donor conference, spelling out Palestine's wretched economic fate in technocratic terms. The IMF insists on lower civil service wages, electricity privatization, subsidy cuts and a higher retirement age. The World Bank advocates a free-trade regime which will demolish the tiny manufacturing base.

In his speech last Thursday, Obama endorsed an IMF/Bank document on the regional economy to be tabled at this week's G8 meeting of industrial powers in France. Although Washington promised $1-billion in debt relief, it comes with conditions such as “supporting financial stability, supporting financial modernization and developing a framework for trade and investment relations with the EU and the USA.”

Go ahead and snigger, but absurd as this sounds in the wake of the recent U.S.-centred world financial meltdown, Obama's gift is actually an “attempted bribe of the Egyptian democratic revolution,” says Barghouti. In any case there is another $33-billion of Mubarak's “Odious Debt” yet to be cancelled, and reparations to be paid.

Concludes Barghouti, “If anything, the U.S. has played a very negative role. The best thing Obama can do for the region is leave it alone. We've seen U.S. democracy-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, so no thank you.” •

Patrick Bond is based at the UKZN Centre for Civil Society, Durban, South Africa, and traveled to Palestine courtesy of TIDA-Gaza and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. His full report on the dangers of neoliberal influence in Palestine is available on the palestine.rosalux.org website.

Get rid of Zionism

American Task Force on Palestine

The 45th year of occupation is now beginning. The depth of the entanglement, from which there is apparently no way out without bloodshed, is as great as the obedience of the intelligentsia: Just as European colonialism was collapsing once and for all, the local intelligentsia found a way to collaborate with the claims of Israel's governments, leaving us today with both a right-wing coalition and a right-wing opposition.

Few people understood at the time that remaining in the territories in any fashion would give rise to a desire for control. The astute ones were Pinhas Lavon during his last lucid hours, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon momentarily, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz.

There were of course a handful of political parties - Rakah, the New Israeli Left and Matzpen. But in the center of the political map, those who argued in favor of withdrawal from all the territories came down to Prof. Jacob Talmon, Prof. Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, writer Amoz Oz and a few others. The vast majority of the intelligentsia trailed along behind the generals and the politicians. That's how it is: Intellectuals work at honing the government's arguments. Few of them dare to oppose it.

As a rule, arguments don't play a central role in politics; they merely help the government implant itself in its citizens' language. For example, the claim that Israel faced an existential threat in 1967 was a propaganda lie. It would have been possible to unravel the complicated situation caused by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, but Israel and the United States decided to exploit the Egyptian mistake.

Today, these things can be discussed in academic discourse. But political discourse, aided by the intelligentsia of that period, is exempt from questions - even about those thousands of graves from the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Moreover, the politicians and the intellectuals claimed that Israel, as a "victim of aggression," had the right to alter its borders. But the main aggressor in that narrative was Egypt, and it got back all its land, up to the last grain of sand, in the peace treaty that followed the 1973 war. The legal argument was shelved.

There were also military arguments about "strategic borders," and those were nonsense, too: No Israel Defense Forces general, either from that General Staff or those that followed, really believed in them, because the Yom Kippur War dealt Israel a harsh blow despite "defensible borders." This truth also applies on the Golan Heights, to this very day.

So we are left with the West Bank, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to lead us with his dual rationale: This is the land of our forefathers, and also, Hamas will attack Ben-Gurion Airport. There is no connection between these two arguments. As a rule, dual arguments serve as props to bolster each other's weakness. But the mixture of strategy and messianism explains the power Israeli politics has to drug its subjects.

The "Land of Israel" is a phantasm. Withdrawing from "parts of it" is presented as a "concession" even by supporters of the move. But the only concession we needed to make, even back in 1967, was giving up the messianic claim that this is our land, from the Bible, and therefore we have a right to it. In comparison with this claim, the Serbs, with their preoccupation over the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, are rational, secular people.

Life is in no need of "ancestral rights." Most of us were born here. That has no connection with the Bible, which for the most part is a very nice book. It has no connection with the prayers of the religious. We don't need religion, either as a menu in a restaurant or as a strategic analysis.

Had masses of Israelis had the sense to say that on the morning after the occupation, instead of choosing that of all moments - with the help of professors, poets and writers - to "discover our undivided country," we would be in a different situation today. Liberation from Zionism is not a dirty word. In any case, what lies behind Zionism nowadays are interests related to water, real estate, strategic relations with the U.S. and a huge army hungering to justify its existence.

If our fathers erred in their use of myth, we should part from it, for the sake of our sons and daughters. We don't have to leave this place or give up our lives. But for their sake, we have to get rid of Zionism.