Joint Harvard-MIT Petition for Divestment from Israel,
Refuse and Resist
"We, the undersigned are appalled by the human rights abuses against Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government, the continual military occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory by Israeli armed forces and settlers, and the forcible eviction from and demolition of Palestinian homes, towns and cities. We find the recent attacks on Israeli citizens unacceptable and abhorrent. But these should not and do not negate the human rights of the Palestinians. As members of the MIT and Harvard University communities, we believe that our universities ought to use their influence - political and financial - to encourage the United States government and the government of Israel to respect the human rights of the Palestinians. We therefore call on the US government to make military aid and arms sales to Israel conditional on immediate initiation and rapid progress in implementing the conditions listed below. We also call on MIT and Harvard to divest from Israel, and from US companies that sell arms to Israel, until these conditions are met: Israel is in compliance with United Nations Resolution 242 which notes the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war, and which calls for withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from occupied territories. Israel is in compliance with the United Nations Committee Against Torture 2001 Report which recommends that Israel's use of legal torture be ended ..."

Israel's Sacred Terrorism,
written by Livia Rokach, A study based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary, and other documents. Foreword by Noam Chomsky,
"Popular support of Israel over the last quarter of a century has been based on a number of myths, the most persistent of which has been the myth of lsrael's security. Implying the permanent existence of grave threats to the survival of Jewish society in Palestine, this myth has been carefully cultivated to evoke anxious images in public opinion to permit, and even encourage, the use of large amounts of public funds to sustain Israel militarily and economically. "Israel's security" is the official argument with which not only Israel but also the U.S. denies the right of self-determination in their own country to the Palestinian people. For the past three decades it has been accepted as a legitimate explanation for lsrael's violation of international resolutions calling for the return of the Palestinian people to their homes. Over the past thirteen years Israel has been allowed to evoke its security to justify its refusal to retreat from the Arab and Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Security is still the pretext given by successive Israeli governments for widespread massacres of civilian populations in Lebanon, for expropriations of Arab lands, for the establishment of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, for deportations, and for arbitrary detentions of political prisoners. Although the security of the Arab populations in the whole region has been repeatedly threatened over these years by overt and covert warfare, terrorist plots and subversive designs, and although UN resolutions demand the establishment of secure borders for all states in the region, so far only lsrael's security has been at the center of international discussion."

Israeli Court Says Reservists Must Serve,
Yahoo! News (from Associated Press), Dec 30, 2002
"Israel's Supreme Court ruled Monday that army reservists cannot refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while four Palestinians were killed by troops in ongoing violence. Another Palestinian died under unclear circumstances in the West Bank city of Hebron. Palestinians said an 18-year-old was taken away by Israeli border police and beaten, then was brought back and died. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. In its ruling, the high court sidestepped a decision on whether Israel's 35-year occupation of the disputed territories violates international law. Eight reservists contended that Israel's occupation is illegal, and therefore they have the right to refuse duty there. The court ruled that reservists cannot choose their assignments. Since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting 27 months ago, more than 500 Israeli soldiers have refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza, saying they are unwilling to help perpetuate military rule over another people. Dozens of soldiers have been sent to military jails for periods ranging from a few days to a month or more. Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, and withdrew from Palestinian population centers as part of interim peace deals in the mid-1990s. But it reoccupied most areas in June, as part of an offensive against Palestinian militants who have been attacking Israelis with bombs and guns. The court said accepting the reservists' demands could further deepen the rifts in Israeli society. 'The considerations of state security and the integrity of Israeli society must be considered against the arguments of conscience and belief,' Justice Dorit Beinisch wrote."

Sharon takes on rabbis over Jewish identity. Religious and secular clash over right to settle in Israel,
The Guardian (UK), December 31, 2002
"Ariel Sharon has called on religious leaders to make it easier to become a Jew to revive the immigration that provides a buffer to the burgeoning Arab population. The prime minister's remarks follow a call by one of his own cabinet for a ban on immigration by secular Jews, exposing a deep divide in the government between those who say an influx from the former Soviet Union threatens Israel's religious identity and those who increasingly fear the high Arab birthrate. The ultra-orthodox health minister, Nissim Dahan, revived debate on the issue by declaring that secular Jews and those who do not qualify as Jewish under religious law, which is more stringent in its definition than government legislation, should not be allowed to settle in Israel. 'We prefer a Jew overseas to a gentile in Israel,' he said. But Mr Dahan was quickly shot down by the prime minister, who said: 'It should be possible for anyone who wants to become a Jew to do so.' Israel's establishment is split on the issue. At the heart of the disagreement is the decade-long wave of immigration in which about 1 million Russians and citizens of the former Soviet republics have come to Israel under the 'grandfather clause' of the Law of Return, which permits anyone with a Jewish grandparent to obtain Israeli citizenship. The clause was introduced in 1970 as a response to the Nazi definition of a Jew as anyone with a Jewish grandparent. Orthodox rabbis say that up to 70% of the arrivals in recent years do not qualify as Jewish under religious law, which requires an individual's mother to have been Jewish. The government estimates that 25% of all Russian immigrants are not Jewish according to religious law and need to convert. Most do not, partly because the process is laborious and partly because the Russian community tends to be secular. The interior minister and leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai, says such figures threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. 'By the end of the year 2010 the state of Israel will lose its Jewish identity,' he said. 'A secular state will bring ... hundreds of thousands of goyim [gentiles] who will build hundreds of churches and will open more stores that sell pork. In every city we will see Christmas trees."

Bulldozing history,
Globe and Mail, December 31, 2002, Page A10
"Early this month, the Israeli army ordered property seizures and house demolitions in Hebron. I hope that Canadian architects, and everyone who values the global architectural heritage, will join Palestinian and Israeli architects who have come together in protest against this planned destruction of historic buildings in the West Bank city. These buildings, in the Jaber neighbourhood, date from the Mamluk to the Ottoman period (15th to 19th centuries). They form an integral part of the fabric of the old town. Incredibly, this destruction is being proposed despite an uncompleted rehabilitation project for historic Hebron receiving an Aga Khan award for architecture in 1998. The clearance is intended to link two Jewish settlements. As many as 103 buildings (Palestinian homes) will be affected. Apart from the human misery being created, it represents a cavalier disregard for global heritage and warrants condemnation by the world community."

Holocaust survivors protest IDF treatment of Palestinians,
Christian Science Monitor, December 31, 2002
"Ha'aretz reports that a group of Holocaust survivors, calling itself the 'Forum of Holocaust survivors and descendants to halt the deterioration of Israeli humanism' has begun a petition to protest the way Israeli defense forces are treating Palestinians. The petition reads 'Israeli society is descending into a quagmire of violence, brutality, disrespect for human rights, and contempt for human life' and that 'domination of another people against its will contradicts the lessons of the Holocaust, morally, humanely, and politically.' 'Palestinian terror is a despicable crime,' says the petition by Zvi Gil, the forum coordinator, and journalist Raoul Teitelbaum, immediately following that obvious statement with 'we cannot clear our conscience in light of the mass, arbitrary destruction of civilians' homes, uprooted olive trees, and orchards shaved to the ground. We cannot accept the extensive disruptions of daily life and abuse, for its own sake or not, at the checkpoints.' News of the petition comes as Israeli human rights group B'Teselem released a new report yet again accusing Israeli troops of beating Palestinians and continuing to use Palestinians as human shields, even though the Israeli Supreme Court has granted an injunction against the practice and the IDF has repeatedly promised to stop. Meanwhile, Palestinians officials accused IDF troops of beating a Palestinian teenager to death on Monday. Witnesses allege the youth was working at a gas station in south Hebron when an Israeli jeep patrol arrived. Soldiers pulled the youth into their jeep and drove off. The witnesses allege the soldiers returned 15 minutes later, driving through the gas station, pushing the youth's body out without stopping. Israeli officials say they are investigating the incident. The Boston Globe reports that such incidents are some of the 1,200 cases of Palestinian civilian deaths at the hands of Israeli soldiers in more than two years of fighting, according to Palestinian and international human rights monitoring groups. Human rights activists and military specialists says the deaths are 'the result of a military that has not properly investigated civilian deaths and has created an atmosphere in which soldiers are not held accountable.'"

Background/ Israel's watchdog turns on its master,
Ha'aretz (Israel), January 1, 2003
"The Central Elections Committee, the government watchdog meant to oversee the democratic process, appeared to have turned on its master this week, raising fears over the direction of Israeli democracy as the panel quashed the Knesset candidacy of Israel's best known Arab lawmakers, while giving a green light to a former senior aide and onetime successor to Meir Kahane. In short order, the Central Elections Committee flew in the face of recommendations by the Attorney General and the Supreme Court justice that chairs the panel, allowing former extremist Kach movement leader Baruch Marzel to remain on the ballot for the January 28 elections, then disqualifying the candidacy of Arab legislator Ahmed Tibi. Early on Wednesday, the committee again defied the advice of its chairman, narrowly striking down the candidacy of firebrand Arab lawmaker Azmi Bishara. Ironically, the law under which Tibi and Bishara were banned was last strengthened in order to bar the avowedly anti-Arab Kahane from politics. As amended in 1985, the law states that 'A candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objects or actions, expressly or by implication, include one of the following: 1) negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people; 2) negation of the democratic character of the State; 3) incitement to racism.' The language of the law points to bedrock tensions in a society struggling to balance clashing aspirations and demands ... The committee action was the latest in a series of recent moves which have sparked fierce discussion over the future of democracy in Israel. Last month, a rarely enforced censorship statute was invoked to prohibit the showing of a prominent Israeli Arab actor-director's documentary film on IDF actions in the Jenin refugee camp. An effort is also underway to curb and perhaps outlaw the Islamic Movement, an Israeli Arab political organization active largely in the north. Concern for the democratic process has also risen as a result of burgeoning police probes into allegations of bribery, blackmail, granting of sexual favors, and involvement of racketeers in the December 8 Likud Knesset primary elections. Civil liberty issues have meanwhile been raised in published drafts of the platform of the far-right National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose leaders openly advocate what they call 'voluntary transfer' of Palestinians. The draft platform also reportedly calls for a state which is 'Jewish first and foremost, and which is also democratic' ... Arab politicians and pollsters warned Wednesday that if the court allows the disqualifications to stand, a sharply-felt boycott by Arab voters would likely ensue. The very fact that parties are being disqualified from Knesset candidacy is in itself an indication that Israeli democracy is threatened, observes Ha'aretz commentator Avirama Golan."


Israel's human shields draw fire. Human rights groups return to court over army's use of Palestinian civilians,
Guardian (UK), January 2, 2003
"Basem Maswadeh knew he was in trouble when an Israeli soldier pushed him into the barber's chair and reached for the clippers. The humiliation of a shaved head - or, more accurately, having chunks of hair ripped out by the brutal wielding of the shears - was the start of an ordeal that culminated with Mr Maswadeh and two friends standing in a Hebron street as Israeli troops shot over their shoulders at stone-throwing Palestinians. 'The soldiers hid behind our backs as they pushed us forward,' said Mr Maswadeh. 'Then they put their guns on our shoulders and began shooting. We felt our eardrums burning, but when we tried to put our hands over our ears, they beat our hands away. The noise was terrible because the gun was right next to my ear.' The soldiers fired dozens of plastic bullets, using the three Palestinian men as shields, before the crowd dispersed. In May, as Israeli human rights groups sought a supreme court order barring soldiers from seeking protection behind human shields after their widespread use during the army's assaults on Jenin and other West Bank cities, the military admitted the policy was illegal and said it would stop. But human rights groups will return to court on Sunday to argue that the army has only ended such abuses selectively, and is in breach of court orders. 'The method is the same each time,' says Israel's most prominent human rights group, B'Tselem. 'Soldiers pick a civilian at random and force him to do dangerous tasks that put their lives at risk' ... The army says it has issued an order barring the use of human shields, but it contends that another policy, known as the 'neighbour procedure', can continue because it is not illegal. The 'neighbour procedure' involves soldiers 'requesting' of civilian that they enter buildings and demand that wanted men inside surrender. Human rights groups say that almost no one does such a thing voluntarily."

Israel: Germs, gas and A-bombs. Fingers on all the buttons. The world's best-known and most efficient 'secret' manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction is not Iraq, not even North Korea, but Israel, Neil Sammonds looks at a nuclear, biological and chemical warfare programme that even the Israeli Knesset cannot get access to, let alone the United Nations,
Index on Censorship, January 3, 2002
"In September 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear site, revealed to the Sunday Times that the nuclear military programme based there had produced 'over 200' nuclear warheads. Days later he was tricked into flying to Rome where he was abducted by Mossad agents and secretly transported to Israel. In November 1986, he was tried in camera and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment, 14 of which were spent in solitary confinement. In 1999, in response to a petition from Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the government released about 40 per cent of the trial documents. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that Israel has the world's fifth largest stockpile of nuclear warheads (more than Britain, which it believes has 185). In February 2000, Knesset member Issam Mahoul said Israel had '200 to 300' nuclear weapons; in August of that year, the Federation of American Scientists said that Israel could have produced 'at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200'; the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates 200. Other sources, including Jane's Intelligence Review, estimate between 400 and 500 thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. What Dimona is to Israel's nuclear programme, the Israeli Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) at Nes Ziona is to its chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programme. The high-security facility is absent from aerial survey photographs and maps, on which it has been replaced by orange groves. Except for token visits to Dimona by a Norwegian team in 1961 and a US team in 1969, there has been no international scrutiny. Even the Knesset is denied access. However, the 1993 report by the Office of Technology Assessment for the US Congress states that Israel has 'undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities' and is 'generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme'. Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies states that Israel has conducted extensive research into gas warfare and is ready to produce biological weapons. According to an exhaustive study by Karel Knip, a Dutch journalist, the IIBR's work has included the synthesis of nerve gases such as tabun, sarin and VX. The October 1992 crash an of El Al cargo plane in Amsterdam that caused at least 47 deaths and caused hundreds of immediate and subsequent mysterious illnesses led to the disclosure in 1998 that flight LY1862 was carrying chemicals including 50 gallons of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) - enough to produce 594 pounds of sarin. The DMMP was supplied by Solkatronic Chemicals Inc of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and was destined for the IIBR. Avner Cohen has catalogued reported uses of biological weapons by Jewish forces during the 1948 war in Palestine. The Israeli historian Uri Milstein alleged that 'in many conquered Arab villages, the water supply was poisoned to prevent the inhabitants from coming back.' Milstein states that one of the largest of such covert operations caused the typhoid outbreak in Acre in May 1948. The Palestinian Arab Higher Committee reported in July 1948 that there was some evidence that Jewish forces were responsible for a cholera outbreak in Egypt in November 1947 and in Syrian villages near the Palestinian-Syrian border in February 1948. In May 1948, the Egyptian ministry of defence stated that four 'zionists' had been captured while trying to contaminate artesian wells in Gaza with 'a liquid which was discovered to contain germs of dysentery and typhoid'. In 1954, it was widely reported that defence minister Pinchas Lavon had proposed using BW for special operations. Cohen says: 'Israel has presumably employed biological or toxin weapons for special operations.' In 1955, Prime Minister Ben Gurion ordered the weaponisation and stockpiling of chemical weapons in case of a war with Egypt. Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky claims that lethal tests have been performed on Arab prisoners at the IIBR. There are allegations that Israel has used CBW on numerous occasions: Chemical defoliants used by the army against Palestinian lands, including Ain el-Beida in 1968, Araqba in 1972 and Mejdel Beni Fadil in 1978; Armed nuclear missiles in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars; Chemical weapons in the 1982 war on Lebanon, including hydrogen cyanide, nerve gas and phosphorus shells; In the 1980s lethal gases against Palestinian civilians and Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli Jewish prisoners. Discussing delivery systems, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists states that Israel's F-16 squadrons based at Nevatim and Ramon are the most likely carriers of nuclear warheads and that a small group of pilots has been trained for nuclear strikes ... Israel also has three Dolphin-class submarines, the Dolphin, the Leviathan and the Tekuma, which are reportedly modified to carry nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. It is widely believed to possess a tactical nuclear capability, including small nuclear landmines, and strategic nuclear warheads that it can fire from cannons. The UN Security Council regularly calls on Israel 'urgently to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.' Israel has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, but is one of only four countries in the world - with Cuba, India and Pakistan - not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Arafat: Israel building Berlin Wall Arafat described the wall as 'unacceptable' Palestinian leader,
BBC (UK), January 4, 2002
"Yasser Arafat has accused Israel of constructing a 'Berlin Wall' around Jerusalem. French newspaper Le Parisien reported the comments in an interview with Mr Arafat which was also published on its web site. In the following excerpts, Mr Arafat told the newspaper that international bodies must intervene if there is to be peace in the Middle East ... . 'Right now, the Israelis do whatever they want, and their sole aim is to strangle us. They are destroying us so that they are better able to start building a wall. The wall will be longer than 350 km. The line followed by the wall cheats considerably with regard to the 'green line' which was established as a border in 1967' ... How can they be allowed to build this 'Berlin Wall' around Jerusalem, the Holy City of three religions? It's unacceptable! Public opinion needs to realise what's happening."

Israel's image of liberal democracy takes a battering,
Telegraph (UK), January 4, 2003
"Angie Zelter, a human rights activist from Norfolk, had a lesson in the Israeli government's tough new policy towards foreigners when she flew in to Tel Aviv this week. She had been summoned to appear in a trial of a Jewish settler who allegedly assaulted her but the trial had been cancelled and the authorities decided to deport her immediately. She was bundled in a blanket on to an Austrian Airlines plane, where she sat on the floor of the cabin, shouting that she did not want to go. The pilot refused to take off with her and she was held in an airport cell for three days. With the help of the British embassy, she secured a court hearing against her deportation, but the judge ruled she was a danger to state security. She flew back to London on Thursday. 'Every state has the right to deport whoever it wants,' said her lawyer, Shamai Leibowitz. 'But this case was unusual and shocking in that the judge did not need a word of evidence to rule that she was a threat and should be sent home.' The case of Mrs Zelter, 52, is just one of hundreds where Israel's formerly open policy of letting just about anyone in on a tourist visa has been replaced by one of deep suspicion of anyone who looks as if they might be helping or offering support to the Palestinians. From humble backpackers to doctors and aid workers, all have been deported or held in cells while embassies or employers try to get them out. Rabbi Arik Asherman, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, knows Mrs Zelter well and worked with her during the autumn olive harvest, a time of frequent clashes between Palestinian farmers and Jewish settlers. 'We worked closely with the Israeli security forces. It is beyond me that she should be kicked out,' he said. 'All she did was organise the Palestinians to reach their fields but perhaps some people see even that as a threat.' Developments in the Israeli courts and politics have given Israel's image of a liberal democracy a battering. Activists believe that the tensions in Israel - between Left and Right, religious and secular, Jews and Arabs - have reached crisis point. Rabbi Asherman chooses his words carefully. 'We have seen over the past year some very worrying signs of growing intolerance,' he said. 'On the whole our society still has a very high tolerance for dissident opinions - more than the US after September 11 - but I do see signs that this could change, and change very quickly' ... Politics has swung massively to the Right and the subject of the expulsion of the Palestinians - previously considered taboo - is openly discussed by the extreme Right parties, though always under the code of 'voluntary transfer'. The latest focus of fear is Israel's Arab minority, 20 per cent of the population. With elections scheduled in three weeks the central election committee, dominated by politicians of the Right, disqualified two of the most outspoken Arab members of the Israeli parliament - Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi - from running again. This decision has become a watershed in relations between the Israeli establishment and the Arab minority and reflects Israel's fear of an Arab 'enemy within'. The case is to be heard by the Supreme Court next week and there are strong indications that it may reverse the bans. But this will not hide the fact that the decision to bar the unruly Arab members of the Knesset was popular - supported by 70 per cent of Israelis, according to opinion polls - and betokens the breakdown of one of the planks of Israeli democracy."

Fears mount as Israel's 'Berlin Wall' threatens to imprison the West Bank It is eight metres high and up to 220 miles long -- and, say Palestinians, it is part of a blatant plan to seize their assets and force them off their land,
Sunday Herald (South Africa)
"It makes the Berlin Wall look like the work of amateurs. Israel is building a barricade in and around the occupied Palestinian West Bank which will be four times the size of communist Germany's claim to fame -- and light years ahead of it technologically. The eight-metre-high wall is made out of huge, grey, concrete slabs and has watchtowers built into it every 300 metres or so. On either side of it are military roads, complete with tanks and armoured Jeeps, trenches, some six metres wide and four metres deep, barbed wire, cameras, motion sensors, electrified fencing and exclusion zones of between 35 and 50 metres. In parts, special material will be laid to detect infiltrators' footprints. In all it is about 100 metres wide and has been and will continue to be built entirely on Palestinian land. It's difficult to say exactly how long the finished wall will be as Israel has not released complete maps. Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations have had to deduce its path using military orders for land seizures and lists of which illegal Israeli settlements will be to the west of the wall. Their conclusion is that it will run the entire 220-mile length of the West Bank and could even encircle it and be built not just on the border between the West Bank and Israel, but on the border between the West Bank and Jordan as well, effectively making the West Bank a huge open-air prison . It will not be a straight wall. It will twist and turn, jutting, at times, tens of miles into the West Bank to include settlement clusters and corridors. Huge walled arms are expected to punch deep into the occupied territory, especially around the holy cities of Nablus and Hebron which have been settled by extremist, religious Jews. Nor will it follow the green line, the 1949 armistice line between Israel and the Arab states which now delineates Israel and the West Bank and -- according to the Palestinians -- should be used as the basis of a border between and independent Palestine and Israel ... To include as many of the settlements as possible in Israel and exclude as many of the Palestinians as possible, the wall will have to do a series of spectacular twists and bends . Its first phase, the 70-mile-long northern part of the wall has been under construction since July. To date, 15 Palestinian villages have found themselves stuck between the wall and the green line and a further 15 villages have found themselves cut off from their farm land, now on the 'Israeli' side of the wall, and thus their livelihoods and way of life. In one area, a contiguous 90sqkm has already been seized. Homes have been demolished and farmland destroyed to make way for the wall. Hundreds of homes in Palestinian towns such as Qalqiliya and Tulkarem now look out on the wall and have its cameras look into their rooms. Qalqiliya will be surrounded by the wall on three sides. The only entrance into and out of the town is an Israeli-manned checkpoint, one metre wide for pedestrians and about five metres wide for cars."

Top Lawyer Urges Death For Families Of Bombers Lewin: 'A Policy Born of Necessity',
by Ami Eden, [Jewish] Forward, June 7, 2002
"A prominent Washington attorney and Jewish communal leader is calling for the execution of family members of suicide bombers. Nathan Lewin, an oft-mentioned candidate for a federal judgeship and legal advisor to several Orthodox organizations, told the Forward that such a policy would provide a much-needed deterrent against suicide attacks. Under the proposal, which Lewin unveiled in the current issue of the opinion journal Sh'ma, family members would be spared if they immediately condemned the bombing and refused financial compensation for the loss of their relative. (Lewin's article appears on the web at http://www.shma.com/may02/nathan.htm.) While a 20-month spate of suicide bombings has been met in the Jewish community with calls for increasingly Draconian preventive measures, Lewin appears to be the first Jewish communal leader to approve publicly of the concept of executing innocent civilians in the hopes of curbing terrorism ... Lewin argued that the biblical injunction to destroy the ancient tribe of Amalek serves as a precedent in Judaism for taking measures that are 'ordinarily unacceptable' in the face of a mortal threat ... Several leading Jewish figures, including Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, argued that the plan represented a legitimate if flawed attempt to strike a balance between preventing terrorism and preserving democratic norms. But the proposal was strongly condemned by the head of the Reform movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, and the executive vice chairwoman of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Hannah Rosenthal ... In an article that appeared in the Sh'ma journal alongside Lewin's essay, Brandeis University Jewish studies professor Arthur Green wrote, 'I only wonder how long it will take [Lewin], by the force of this proof-text, to go all the way and suggest that the Palestinian nation as a whole has earned the fate of Amalek [genocide]' ... Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, rejected the notion that Lewin should be elbowed out of communal life. They argued that his proposal represented a legitimate attempt to forge a policy for stopping terrorism. Foxman declined to take a stand on the actual proposal, citing his policy of deferring to Jerusalem on Israeli security issues. Though they declined to endorse the controversial proposal, top officials at the O.U. and Agudath Israel of America, for whom Lewin has done legal work, expressed sympathy for Lewin's efforts to curb what they described as an unprecedented wave of suicide attacks in Israel. '[Lewin] is not a Kahanist; he is not a nut,' said Richard Stone, chair of the O.U.'s Institute of Public Affairs ... Rabbi William Altshul, headmaster of the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Washington, D.C., told the Forward that he did not regret the decision to honor Lewin this week at the school's annual dinner ... Even as several observers rejected the notion of blackballing Lewin, they offered substantive critiques of his argument. Dershowitz, author of 'Why Terrorism Works' (Yale University Press, 2002), and terrorism researcher Steven Emerson, who both favor the limited use of torture to extract information about an impending terrorist attack, said that they balked at the execution of innocent civilians ... Dershowitz argued that the same level of deterrence could be achieved by leveling the villages of suicide bombers after the residents had been given a chance to evacuate (an idea Lewin disparagingly likened to "using aspirin to treat brain cancer"). Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Orthodox Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, N.J., a trained lawyer known for hawkish views on Israeli security issues, argued that a policy of mass deportations, rather than executions, could serve as an effective, but less deadly, deterrent against future attacks. Several observers defended Lewin by noting that the United States killed tens of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Moral Defense of Israel,
Ayn Rand Institute
[This links to an entire web page with various articles in defense of the brutal, racist Jewish state; Ayn Rand was Jewish, as are many in her "Objectivist" movement, including current Executive Director, Israeli-born Yaron Brook] This ARI web page includes titles such as "Israel Morals Match Rand Ideology"] See also "Ayn Rand on the Death of Innocents in War", also War, Nuclear Weapons and "Innocents" : "With full moral certainty we must urge our government to defend our lives, even if that requires nuclear weapons and hundreds of thousands of deaths in terrorist countries." Also, "The Immorality of a "Compassionate War" on Terrorism" "On the first day of bombing Afghan military targets, our Air Force was busy delivering charity food packages stamped 'This food is a gift from the United States of America.' We have already lavished on the Afghans more than 450,000 aid packages. Not only is such alms-giving expensive (the President has pledged $320 million worth of food and medicine), but it also betrays an obscene inversion of morality."

A Decision That Hurts Israeli Democracy,
by David Newman, New York Times, January 6, 2003
"Even amid conflict, Israelis have always applauded themselves for allowing anyone to run for office - including those who reject the very raison d'être of a Jewish state. Only rarely has a political party been banned from the elections, the most notable being Kach, the extreme rightist anti-Arab party founded by Meir Kahane. But now, with a round of Knesset elections three weeks away, Israel has much less reason for pride. While Mr. Kahane's successor, Baruch Marzel, was allowed to run for office as the No. 2 candidate for another extreme rightist party, the two most prominent Arab legislators in the outgoing Knesset, Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara, were barred by the Central Election Committee last week. The committee, composed of representatives of the parties that have Knesset seats and two neutral members (both of whom opposed the decision), described Mr. Tibi and Mr. Bishara as consistently expressing opposition to the existence of a Jewish state (as contrasted with a state of 'all its citizens' in which everyone is equal, Jew or Arab). Under Israeli law, such opposition bars a person's candidacy. Mr. Bishara was also accused of supporting armed resistance in the occupied territories, an accusation he denied. Mr. Marzel, whose candidacy was in danger because of his association with the banned Kach, could run, the committee members decided, because he had assured them that he no longer held to the racist policies of Kach - even though he is often shown on television promoting 'transfer,' a code word for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. The final decision on Mr. Tibi's and Mr. Bishara's candidacies now rests with the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear the candidates' appeals tomorrow. But even if the court overturns the ban, Israeli Arab voters' faith in the election system has been broken. The message could not be clearer: if you are a Jewish extremist, you can go on the campaign trail. But if you belong to the Arab minority and do not openly toe the government line, you cannot be part of the election game ... Even if the Supreme Court allows Mr. Tibi and Mr. Bishara to run, Israeli Arabs will remain reluctant to vote, because the message of the election committee has been heard loud and clear in Arab towns and villages. Who can blame them? No Israeli prime minister has ever given leaders of the Arab parties significant positions of power. [David Newman is professor of political geography at Ben Gurion University of the Negev].

Israel Plans to Close W. Bank Universities After Tel Aviv suicide blasts, Cabinet targets campuses said to be used for recruiting militants,
Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2002
"Angered by the deadliest suicide attack in nearly a year, Israel vowed Monday to shut down three universities in the Palestinian territories and restrict the travel of Palestinian leaders in an effort to crack down on militants ... . Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet decided to shut down three West Bank Palestinian universities: Bir Zeit near Ramallah, An Najah in Nablus and Islamic College in Hebron, according to Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin. Prisoners interrogated by Israel have described those campuses as recruitment grounds for militant organizations, Gissin said ... The Palestinian Central Council was to meet Thursday in Ramallah to review a draft of the Palestinian constitution, but Israeli officials said Monday that they will block the meeting. Israel also forbade a Palestinian delegation to travel to London later this month to discuss reform and eventual statehood with international mediators."

EU Condemns Israel,
Macedonian Press Agency, January 8, 2003
"The Greek presidency of the EU condemned the decision of the Israel Government to block the departure of Palestinian officials for London, as well as the movements of senior Palestinians in general, does not contribute to the efforts made by the international community to carry forward the reform process and to bring an end to the violence. According to a communique from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this decision perpetuates hatred and extremism."

Liberman's Supreme Soviet Purging Israel of Dissenters,
by Uri Avnery, antiwar.com, January 8, 2003
"[A]n important [Israeli] party, represented in the Knesset, has mentioned my name in its official election platform. Under the heading 'Legislation and strict supervision of organizations and activists of the extreme left', the National Union party's program says: 'We shall anchor in legislation more severe measures, including the cancellation of citizenship, against people like Uri Avnery, Leah Tsemel and refuseniks of all kinds, who are defaming the country abroad' ... The leader of the National Union party is Avigdor (Ivette) Liberman, a person brought up in the Bolshevik education system of Stalin and who has absorbed – as we can see – the racist and power-hungry attitudes of the red tyrant. He has come here when everything was ready, to a state that we have created (literally) with our blood, and now demands, no more no less, to cancel our citizenship. To be angry, because Liberman, together with National Religious leader Effi Eytam and some of the Likud leaders, is in the vanguard of the dirty column that is besieging Israeli democracy. Last week they succeeded in inducing the majority of the politicians in the General Election Committee to disqualify two Arab Knesset-members (Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara) and an Arab election list (Balad) from participating in the elections, expelling in practice 20% of Israel's citizens from the political arena ... Liberman's program shows clearly that something similar is happening now in our country. They started with the incitement against the Arab citizens and their expulsion from the political system. Now they speak of eliminating the 'extreme left'. Is there any doubt, that in the next stage they will demand the elimination of all the left, 'moderate' and 'patriotic' as they may be? And then, following the historic precedents, it will be the turn of the "liberal" Likud members. An apocalyptic vision? Not really. The President of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, this week compared our situation with Nazi Germany. In the presence of the President of Israel, the Chief Justice, himself a Holocaust survivor, said that 'if it has happened in the country of Kant and Beethoven, it can happen everywhere. If we do not defend democracy, democracy will not defend us!' (It will be interesting to see how he will conduct himself next week, when he will have to decide on the Tibi-Beshara expulsion case.) In Israel, we don't like to make comparisons with the dark regimes. The memories are too fresh, and nobody in Israel advocates genocide. But undoubtedly, parties and leaders who openly advocate 'transfer', would have been called anywhere else in the world Neo-Fascists ... For 54 years, the State of Israel has prided itself of being 'the only democracy in the Middle East'. All Israeli propaganda abroad, and especially in the United States, is based on this slogan. Now Liberman and the Libermen come and try to destroy Israeli democracy, our creation, and to set up a kind of Fascistan, somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Palestinians Under 35 Banned From Israel,
Las Vegas Sun (from Associated Press), January 07, 2003
"Israel banned Palestinians younger than 35 from entering the country to work Tuesday, even if they have permits, the latest punitive measure after a double Palestinian suicide bombing in Tel Aviv killed 22 bystanders. Israel also drew complaints from Britain by banning Palestinian negotiators from attending a London session planned for discussing reform in the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli government has said it would close three Palestinian universities in response to the attacks, but took no action Tuesday ... On Tuesday, Israel further tightened restrictions, saying only Palestinian workers age 35 and over could enter Israel, the military said. Before the current conflict erupted in September 2000, more than 100,000 Palestinian workers crossed into Israel every day, providing a key source of income for the West Bank and Gaza. When the fighting began, Israel at first banned all Palestinians from entering for security reasons, saying that would keep attackers out of the country. Now, only about 25,000 workers and 8,000 merchants have permits to enter, said Ophir Chacham, spokesman for Israeli military administration. The new ban meant that most workers with permits would be idled. Early Wednesday, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian taxi driver near the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, witnesses said. They said the man was watching Israeli tanks moving through the area when he was shot. The Israeli military had no immediate comment."

No 'Jewish character' in Nazareth,
by Odai Basharat, Ha'aretz (Israel), January 10, 2002
"What's new is that since 1992, since the establishment of the Rabin government, an unprecedented delegitimization campaign has been waged against the country's Arab population. The prime minister's reliance on Arab MKs in the establishment of his government cost him his life. Israelis are prepared to accept Arabs as citizens, even as ones who have equal rights, but they are not willing to accept them as citizens who wield genuine influence which can determine the course of major issues facing the state. In this respect, the Jewish character of the state is vigilantly protected. And since it cannot be acknowledged explicitly that Arabs have no right to fashion the state's policies, heavy-handed hints are thrown out here and there, such as the call for a 'clear majority' which was heard in 1999 when there was discussion about a national referendum concerning the fate of the Golan Heights, and the goal was really to nullify any impact made by Israel's Arab population. Not only the right objected vehemently to the 'impudence' of Arabs who sought to influence Israel's national agenda. What is called the 'left' accepted, at least tacitly, this prohibition against Arab influence. Among members of Israel's 'left,' calls were heard favoring the rule of a Jewish majority on issues of national import. The Central Elections Committee's disqualification of Knesset members Tibi and Bishara, and the latter's Balad party, has only one goal: to minimize the Arab population's political clout. We will struggle against this effort, because our future is at stake; and all of Israel's democratic forces should join this campaign, because what begins with Arabs could end in places that cannot be foreseen."

Interview of Ilan Pappe,
Samizdat, February 5, 2003
[IN FRENCH: Free translation]

A Challenge To Israel's Nuclear Blind Spot,
Washington Post, March 11, 2002
"No matter the subject, Israelis love to debate. On any given day, you can hear a nation of self-styled pundits engaged in ferocious discussion, often at high volume. All topics, from the political to the personal, are fair game. All except one: the nuclear weapons that Israel possesses but refuses to acknowledge. A thick canopy of ambiguity shrouds Israel's nuclear program, held in place by legal restrictions that generally prohibit the disclosure of state secrets -- including public discussion of Israel's nuclear weapons. The only way journalists and academics have been able to address the issue is by attributing any facts to 'foreign sources' -- a device that allows Israel to pretend it is keeping the world guessing about its nuclear capability. This deliberate policy of obfuscation is called 'nuclear opacity.' This week that policy will be challenged -- not by some foreign enemy of Israel, but by one of its own. Avner Cohen is an Israeli scholar who has been living in the United States for three years because he fears arrest for publishing a political history of Israel's nuclear weapons program. Today, he plans to leave his home in Takoma Park and fly back to Tel Aviv, where he intends to confront the powerful defense establishment in the name of academic freedom. There is a surreal aspect to this, because the broad facts of the matter are widely known. Israel constructed its first nuclear device on the eve of the 1967 Middle East War, and now, according to CIA estimates, has between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or any other accord that would require it to account for the nuclear material it produces at its Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert. And yet, publicly, Israel will only say that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East ... Avner Cohen wants to discuss that policy of opacity in public. Cohen hasn't been back to Israel since 1998, when his book about the political history of Israel's nuclear bomb program was published in the United States without the approval of the Israeli censor. The book, 'Israel and the Bomb,' includes no technical or operational details about Israel's nuclear arsenal, only a meticulously researched history of Israel's decision to go nuclear, based on declassified public documents and Cohen's interviews with key players in the effort. But the book doesn't attribute anything to 'foreign sources,' and angry Israeli defense officials have threatened in the press to prosecute Cohen if he ever returns home again."

[Is this what so many Jews have promised as Jewry's "mission to the world?"]
Israel unleashes its death squads,
Sunday Tasmanian, January 19, 2003
"Israeli death squads have been authorised to enter 'friendly' countries and assassinate opponents in a move that raises the prospect of political killings in Australia. Agents of the Israeli secret service Mossad have been given free rein to kill those deemed to be a threat to the Jewish state – wherever they are hiding. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has until now refused permission for assassinations on the home ground of allies, has reversed the policy as part of a more aggressive approach to terrorism. The move was revealed by former Mossad agents in a series of interviews with US news agency United Press International. It was later confirmed by US intelligence officials. They said the policy raised the potential for killings in countries with close ties to Israel, including the US, Britain and Australia ... A third source said Mr Sharon wanted 'greater operational maneuverability' for Mossad. Asked if that meant assassinations within allied countries, he said: 'It does' ... Israel has in the past sent hit squads to kill opponents in hostile countries such as Lebanon, and snatch squads have been used extensively throughout the world. Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina in 1960, taken to Israel and executed. In 1986, scientist Mordechai Vanunu was snatched in Rome and transported to Israel after revealing details of Israel's nuclear weapons program. He was sentenced to 18 years jail, only being released from solitary confinement in 1998. One of the few known cases of Mossad hitmen carrying out an assassination on friendly soil occurred on July 21, 1973, when a Mossad team shot dead Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi as he walked home from the cinema with his pregnant wife in the Norwegian ski resort of Lillehammer. The assassins apparently mistook Bouchikhi for Hassan Salameh, a PLO intelligence chief suspected of masterminding the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Gullow Gjeseth, who led a Norwegian Government inquiry into the shooting, said: 'This was much more than a murder. This was a violation of Norwegian sovereignty.' In January 1996, Israel paid undisclosed damages to Bouchikhi's family, but refused to admit responsibility for the killing. Mossad is thought to have struck again in October 1995, when the head of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, Fathi al-Shikai, was gunned down on the streets of Malta. The hit, though never formally claimed, had all the trademarks of the agency. A return to such killings is expected to raise concerns among Israel's Western allies. The assassinations are likely to be carried out by a unit of Mossad's secret Metsada department called the Kidon, a Hebrew word meaning 'bayonet'. The agents will have to answer to Mr Dagan, who has been described by a CIA agent as having a 'real killer instinct'. Officially, Israel has refused to confirm or deny the policy change." [Same story at London's Daily Telegraph and the Australian]

Israel Razes Dozens of Palestinian Shops in West Bank,
FoxNews, January 21, 2003
"Israeli forces staged the biggest demolition in the West Bank in years on Tuesday, destroying 62 shops in a Palestinian village. Also Tuesday, Israel's Supreme Court relaxed a ban on soldiers using Palestinians as 'human shields' or ordering Palestinians to knock on doors of Islamic militants' houses. Human rights advocates denounced the decision. In Gaza, Palestinians fired rockets at two Jewish settlements, damaging buildings but causing no casualties, settlers and the military said. In the village of Nazlat Issa, next to the West Bank border with Israel, seven bulldozers guarded by 300 soldiers destroyed shops and market stalls. Dozens of protesters threw stones at troops, who fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets. Other demonstrators chanted 'Down with the occupation.' Israel says the shops were built illegally. The mayor of the village accused Israel of waging war on the Palestinian economy. The 170-shop market in Nazlat Issa drew many Israeli customers before the outbreak of fighting in September 2000. The market is a main source of income for the village's 2,500 residents, said the mayor, Ziad Salem, adding that Israeli officials informed shop owners the market would be bulldozed. Israeli troops have demolished hundreds of Palestinian homes, many in the Gaza Strip, in the past 28 months of fighting. In Gaza alone, more than 5,700 Palestinians have been made homeless, according to Palestinian officials. Many of the buildings were razed in military offensives, with Israel saying the structures provided cover for Palestinian gunmen. Since July, Israel has also demolished dozens of homes of Palestinians involved in bombing and shooting attacks on Israelis. Human rights groups say the demolitions constitute collective punishment, while Israel says they are an important deterrent. In August, human rights groups had praised a Supreme Court injunction against Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as protection in raids on suspected Islamic militants. The court on Tuesday amended the ruling to say soldiers could use Palestinians if the Palestinians agree. There have been numerous Palestinian complaints about Israeli practices that endanger them, and while the military denies using Palestinians as human shields, journalists have documented the practice."

Photographers Say They Were Beaten by Israeli Police Men Claim They Were Threatened,
Editor and Pulbisher (from Associated Press), January 22, 2003
"Photographers for The Associated Press and the French news agency Agence France-Press (AFP) were beaten by two Israeli border policemen as the journalists tried to photograph troops driving quickly down the street Tuesday with two Palestinian teens clinging to the hood of their jeep. Nasser Ishtayeh, a Palestinian photographer for the AP, was not seriously injured, but he suffered bruises on one ear and the side of his face and visited a local clinic for examination. The AP complained to the Israeli army and demanded the incident be investigated and the soldiers punished. The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident. Ishtayeh, who has worked for the AP for nine years, had headed out with Jafar Ishtayeh, a photographer with AFP, to check out a report that youths were throwing stones at Israeli forces during a curfew. The Ishtayehs are distant relatives. Not far from the scene, the two saw a jeep driven by four Israeli paramilitary border policemen speeding down the road with two teenage Palestinian boys hanging from the hood of the vehicle, grabbing onto a protective metal grate in front of the windshield to keep from falling off. The two were not tied to the jeep in any way, Nasser Ishtayeh said. Ishtayeh said it appeared the policemen were using the boys as human shields against a group of about 20 stone-hurling youths about 550 yards down the road -- which would be a violation of Israeli military orders and a Supreme Court ban of the practice. The two journalists pulled to the side of the road, and standing beside an armored car clearly marked with 'TV' signs in thick tape, they tried to photograph the jeep, according to Nasser Ishtayeh. The policemen sped up to the two photographers, got out, and aimed their rifles at them before they could take any pictures. The Israelis beat the two men's faces with their fists, Ishtayeh said, and demanded to know if the two had taken any pictures of them. Nasser Ishtayeh said one policeman tightened the camera strap around his neck. 'We are here in Nablus, and we see you all the time,' the policeman said, according to Ishtayeh's account. 'If we see a picture of us published anywhere, we're going to kill you like this,' the soldier said, gesturing with his hand as if running a knife across his neck. Anne Gwynne, 65, a British woman spending three months in the West Bank with a pro-Palestinian activist group called the International Solidarity Movement, said she tried to help Ishtayeh and his colleague. 'I saw the soldiers kicking the photographers and beating them and shouting at them,' she said. "I tried to stop that. A soldier kicked and beat me with a rifle butt on my back. He was shouting, cursing.'"

Israel's New Policy of Terrorism on American Soil,
Etherzone
"A recent UPI report outlined Israel’s new policy of assassinating suspected terrorists on American soil. In other words, Israel is now going to officially carryout terrorism on U.S. soil. Isn’t that what murder is? As an American citizen you cannot murder, why should agents of a foreign government have any such right in your country? The UPI report read, 'Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, former Israeli intelligence officials told United Press International.' UPI claims to have verified this information with a dozen informants. The report goes on to say that Israel will go forward with this policy, 'even if it risks complications to Israel's bilateral relations.' Such a policy by Israel that has no regard for the national sovereignty of the United States requires a reevaluation of an existing allied relationship. It is a callous disregard for not only the laws of the United States, but also the security, safety, and rights of its citizens. What Israel terms as targeted assassinations is really the commencement of a low-grade war against its enemies. By carrying out acts of war on American soil, Israel will be committing acts of war against the United States. Bringing its war to America, Israel is endangering the lives of Americans, including American Jews. Surely, as Israel’s campaign of terror is carried out against its enemies, there will be retaliatory action in the United States by Islamic militants. Are synagogues and Jewish schools immune from such horror? They will likely be the first targets. While less than three percent of Americans are Jews, and respectively three percent are Muslims, do we want them battling it out in our streets? By proclaiming its license to kill on American soil, Israel places itself on the list of rogue nations diametrically opposed to the United States. Terrorism may be acceptable in the third world. It is not acceptable in the United States. This policy by definition is state sponsored terrorism. Maybe there should be weapons inspectors taking a look at Israel’s nuclear program next? How exactly do we determine the innocence of the murdered victims? Since Israel now has no regard for the nation where it murders perceived terrorists, it is safe to say that they would also have no regard for the nationality of the alleged terrorist. What if some of them are American citizens? Are we going to allow a foreign nation to murder U.S. citizens too? The UPI report also says, 'Israeli hit teams, which consist of units or squadrons of the Kidon, a sub-unit for Mossad's highly secret Metsada department, would stage the operations'. If Israeli hit teams are in place in the United States, what will prevent them from targeting U.S. officials that aren’t willing to send billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel? Far fetched, not really when we’re talking about a nation that is openly planning terrorism in the United States. Yes, openly, because a story this sensitive would have never leaked unless it was meant to be leaked. If Israel is going to have a policy of terrorism on U.S. soil then it is not only plausible that it will kill American citizens that it considers to be enemies, but it is also likely that they will attack American targets and try to blame it on the enemies of Israel. It’s bad enough that according to a PBS Transcript Senator Graham of the Select Committee On Intelligence said that classified evidence reveals that foreign governments were involved in the September 11th attacks. Now another nation is threatening to expand its terrorism to America."

The Zionist Hate Machine,
Indymedia

'Cloned baby' said to be in Israel,
BBC (UK), January 30, 2003
"The company which claims to have created the world's first cloned baby has said the child is well, and now living in Israel. The announcement triggered the collapse of a private legal hearing in the United States. Representatives of Clonaid told the court in Florida that the baby was in Israel and therefore outside the court's jurisdiction. In the absence of any DNA proof, many scientists have dismissed Clonaid's claim that a baby has been cloned. The company is funded by the French-based Raelian sect, which believes humans were cloned by aliens. The case against the company was brought by Miami lawyer Bernard Siegel, who argues that if Clonaid has actually created a cloned baby it should be taken into care for its own welfare. The court was told that Clonaid no longer had any contact with the parents of the baby, because continued ties with the family would lead to the child's identification and subsequent removal by the authorities. Clonaid's chief executive, Dr Brigitte Boisselier, testified under oath that the baby, named Eve, was living in Israel. Warning Dismissing the case on Wednesday, Circuit Judge John Frusciante warned Clonaid of the implications of cloning."

Academic Boycott: In Support of Paris VI,
by Tanya Reinhart [a professor of Linguistics in Tel Aviv],
Dissident Voice, January 29, 2003
"In April 2002, following the Israel's 'operation' in Jenin, first calls for institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities appeared in England and in France. The British petition called to freeze European Union contracts with Israeli university as long as Israel continues its present policy. What started as the individual voice of concerned academics, has become lately a formal resolution of a French university ... Bodies ranging from the Jewish Lobby, to conservative parties all came up with the standard anti-Semitism accusations.'"Several hundred protesters, including the philosophers Bernard Henri-Lèvy and Alain Finkielkraut, a leading Paris politician, the Nazi-hunting lawyer Arno Klarsfeld and Roger Cukier, the president of the Jewish umbrella organisation CRIF, waved banners and chanted slogans outside the campus entrance' (Guardian Jan 7, 2003). Threats of potential consequences and budgetary cuts if the university does not retract its decision came from official governmental sources. Under this pressure a second discussion of the resolution was scheduled for this week. But Paris VI did sustain the pressure. In the board meeting on Monday January 27, 2003, the previous resolution was reconfirmed with an overwhelming majority. A similar resolution was subsequently approved by two other French universities in Grenoble and in Montpellier ... Most of the Israeli academics, just like their colleagues in France, supported the boycott of apartheid South Africa, which contributed to the end of apartheid. This means that they recognize boycott as a legitimate means for the international community to enforce a change, when serious breaches of moral and civil principles occur. The question, then, is whether the analogy between Israel and South Africa's apartheid is correct. I believe that even much before its present atrocities, Israel has followed the South-African Apartheid model. Behind the smokescreen of the Oslo 'Peace process', Israel has been pushing the Palestinians in the occupied territories into smaller and smaller isolated enclaves-- a direct copy of the Bantustans model. Unlike South Africa, however, Israel has managed so far to sell its policy as a big compromise for peace. Aided by a battalion of cooperating 'peace-camp' intellectuals, they managed to convince the world that it is possible to establish a Palestinians state without land-reserves, without water, without a glimpse of a chance of economic independence, in isolated ghettos surrounded by fences, settlements, bypass roads and Israeli army posts -- a virtual state which serves one purpose: separation (Apartheid). But what Israel is doing under Sharon far exceeds the crimes of the South Africa's white regime. It has been taking the form of systematic ethnic cleansing, which South Africa never attempted. Since April last year (following the Jenin 'operation') we are witnessing the daily invisible killing of the sick and wounded being deprived of medical care, the weak who cannot survive in the new poverty conditions, and those who are bound to reach starvation. Since the US is backing Israel, and the European governments are silent, it is the moral right and duty of the people of the world to do whatever they can on their own to stop Israel and save the Palestinians. In fact, a boycott on Israeli institutions, economy and society is already taking place and growing: consumers boycott, tourism boycott, divestment movement in the US campuses, and cultural boycott."

The Attack On Liberty.In 1967, Israeli Forces Bombarded a U.S. Intelligence Ship, Killing 34 Americans and Leaving a Legacy of Suspicion, Washington Post, February 1, 2003; Page C01
"On June 8, 1967, in one of the periodic explosions of violence we've learned to expect in the Middle East, an American intelligence ship named the USS Liberty was attacked with rockets, cannon fire and torpedoes while in international waters off the town of El Arish in the Sinai desert. Thirty-four Americans were killed and 171 injured in what would remain the largest post-World War II loss of U.S. lives in the Middle East until the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983. But unlike that latter attack, or the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the suicide bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden, Yemen, which killed 17 less than three years ago, the attack on the Liberty was not made by terrorist bombs but by the jet fighters and torpedo boats of the nation of Israel. The attack on the Liberty has never been fully explained. Official reports by both the Israelis and the U.S. Navy declared it accidental: 'a case of mistaken identity' during the Six-Day War. But today, dozens of Web sites still argue one side or another, and they're multiplying ... The attack on the Liberty was not simply a case of a single bomb going astray. According to those who survived, it continued for nearly two hours. It involved rocket and napalm attacks by multiple flights of Israeli jet fighters, a simultaneous torpedo attack by three vessels of the Israeli navy and the machine-gunning of lifeboats tossed overboard as the Liberty survivors prepared to abandon their wounded ship. Last month, during a program on the Liberty at the Middle East Institute here, Parker said those on record as believing that the Israeli attack was deliberate include former secretary of state Dean Rusk, former CIA chief Richard Helms, Adm. Thomas Moorer (a former chief of naval operations) and a host of former directors of the National Security Agency, as well as then-President Lyndon B. Johnson ... Meanwhile a BBC documentary last June presented documents purporting to link the attack and its subsequent coverup to a mysterious covert operation the United States and Israel planned against Egypt, complete with nuclear weapons. As the United States prepares for war in Iraq, the attack on the Liberty looms like a specte ... "They tried to kill all the witnesses,' Phil Tourney, president of the Liberty Veterans Association, said recently. 'They didn't want any one of us left alive.' The official reports have been repeatedly rejected as insufficient by Liberty survivors and a sizable group of historians and scholars, who contend that the Israeli attack was deliberate. It was intended, many say, to erase the Liberty before its electronic eavesdropping could discover events Israel was anxious the world not know. They say as well that a coverup (if not a conspiracy) has kept the truth about the incident from the American public for more than 35 years. They point to crucial NSA intercepts of Israeli radio signals known to have been made during the attack -- intercepts that remain classified by the U.S. government in the name of national security. That restriction has already lasted more than a decade longer than the one that cloaked 'Ultra' -- the most crucial and tightly held code-breaking operation of World War II. 'There has never been a real investigation,' says James Bamford, author of 'Body of Secrets,' a critically praised 2001 investigative history of the NSA that includes perhaps the most concise documented account of the attack on the Liberty. Disinformation was a major strategy employed by the Israelis in the Six-Day War from the beginning, he says, and the U.S. government, preoccupied at the time with the Vietnam War and the Cold War, chose to avoid looking closely at what happened to the Liberty. 'An investigation is what we did after the Cole bombing when we sent agents to Aden, or after the bombings at the embassies in Africa, when we sent agents there to find who was responsible,' Bamford says. 'Nobody was ever sent to Israel to ask questions about the Liberty. We just took the Israelis' word for what happened.' A Navy court of inquiry, Bamford says, 'concerned itself with the ship's response to the attack. They never even questioned most of the survivors about why all those Americans died. And neither has Congress to this day.' And unlike the two U.S. pilots who face possible court-martial for the 'friendly fire' bombing of Canadian troops last year in Afghanistan, no Israeli has ever been tried or reprimanded for the 205 U.S. casualties on the Liberty ... Bamford, who clearly won the cooperation of many at the NSA in writing 'Body of Secrets,' points out that a special public law exempts the NSA from the Freedom of Information Act so that only Congress or the White House has access to what's classified there. At the Johnson library, tape recordings of LBJ's phone calls and office meetings are slowly being declassified, but it will be more than a year before archivists deal with those of June 1967. There is no certainty even then that anything dealing with the Liberty will come to light. But as debate continues about the U.S. role in the Middle East, a growing chorus of voices is asking why an incident as central to our current involvement in the region as the attack on the Liberty continues to be shrouded for 'national security' after so many years."

Profile. Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky Israel's great dissembler,
Redress, March 12, 2001
"We have chosen to profile Anatoly Sharansky, the Israeli deputy prime minister and leader of Yisra'el Ba'aliyah, the Russian immigrants' party in Israel, because he encapsulates the paradox of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel, a paradox that is the hallmark of Zionists throughout the world. That is, how can a people that has suffered so much over the ages, from pogroms in Europe to Nazi genocide, emulate their historical oppressors and be so lacking in empathy with their victims, the Palestinian Arabs? ... In 1973 he applied for an exit visa to Israel, but, like all Soviet citizens who had worked in the military-industrial complex, he was refused on security grounds. He then became involved in an Israeli-sponsored worldwide campaign to put pressure on the Kremlin to give special treatment to Soviet Jewish citizens by allowing them to emigrate to Israel, irrespective of whether or not they had worked in the defence sector. In 1977 he was arrested on suspicion of spying for the US, and in the following year he was found guilty as charged and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment. He was released in 1986 in a US-Soviet spy exchange. Prior to his emigration to Israel, Sharansky liked to portray himself as a symbol of the struggle for human rights, and since then he has made much of his status as a former 'victim of totalitarian oppression'. However, his belief in human rights, nurtured at the height of the Cold War, appears to have been heavily tainted with the culture of the Soviet-American power struggle, which justified the cynical use of practically anything as ammunition in the superpower rivalry for global dominance. Unlike most of us, Sharansky apparently does not believe that human rights are universal and indivisible, that is, applicable to all human beings everywhere and irrespective of their race, colour or creed. Not only does he oppose any Israeli concessions that may eventually lead to the realization of the Palestinians' right to self determination, but he advocates policies that could only mean the dispossession of more Palestinians living in Israel, and the illegally occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. No wonder that he was one of the very few people to have amicable relations with the former ultra right-wing prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. Sharansky began his political career in Israel by becoming head of the Zionist Forum, an organization dedicated to lobbying on behalf of Soviet immigrants. However, not content with being a mere 'welfare worker', in 1995 he founded the Yisra'el Ba'aliyah party, with the immediate aim of bringing in another million Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and of encouraging a further million Jewish citizens of the United States and the European countries to immigrate to Israel. For him, the value of peace with the Palestinians is measured solely by the extent to which it would work towards achieving the overriding goal of encouraging Jewish citizens of other states to immigrate to Israel."

Israeli Repression and the Language of Liars,
by Tim Wise, AlterNet, May 8, 2002
"[T]he term is repeatedly used to describe Israel – as in 'the only democracy in the Middle East.' This, despite the fact that Israel has no constitution; despite the fact that Israel is defined as the state of the Jewish people, providing special rights and privileges to anyone in the world who is Jewish and seeks to live there, over and above longtime Arab residents. This, despite the fact that Israel bars any candidate from holding office who thinks the country should be a secular, democratic state with equal rights for all. This, despite the fact that non-Jews are restricted in terms of how much land they can own, and in which places they can own land at all, thanks to laws granting preferential treatment to Jewish residents. This, despite that fact that even the Israeli Supreme Court has acknowledged the use of torture against suspected 'terrorists' and other 'enemies' of the Jewish state ... The Soviet Union also had elections, of a sort. And in those elections, most people could vote, though candidates who espoused an end to the communist system were barred from participation. Voters got to choose between communists. In Israel, voters get to choose between Zionists. In the former case, we recognize such truncated freedom as authoritarianism. In the latter case, we call it democracy ... If what we see in Israel is indeed democracy, then what does fascism look like? I’m sorry, but I am over it. As a Jew, I am over it. And if my language seems too harsh here, that’s tough. Because it’s nothing compared to the sickening things said by Israeli leaders throughout the years ... [I]n my Hebrew School, where we were taught that Jews were to be 'a light unto the nations,' instead of this dim bulb, this flickering nightlight, this barely visible spark whose radiance is only sufficient to make visible the death-rattle of the more noble aspects of the Jewish tradition. Unless we who are Jews insist on a return to honest language, and an end to the hijacking of our culture and faith by madmen, racists and liars, I fear that the light may be extinguished forever."

Auto-Emancipation,
by Leon Pinsker, 1882
(Influential early Zionist work)

Israeli officer tried for sabotaging raid,
Guardian (UK), February 3, 2003
"An Israeli military intelligence officer has been court-martialled for refusing to obey an order he said targeted innocent Palestinians in retaliation for a suicide bombing, and was therefore illegal. The trial of the officer, who has been identified only as Lieutenant A, has divided the prestigious intelligence corps unit 8200. The officer was accused of deliberately withholding military intelligence needed to plan an air force attack on a Fatah office in the West Bank city of Nablus. The military high command ordered the assault in the wake of dual suicide bombings in Tel Aviv last month that claimed 23 lives. The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv quoted colleagues of the lieutenant as saying he became suspicious about the order when he was asked to identify a building and find out how many people were likely to be in it at the time of the attack. It is more usual for intelligence officers to be asked to identify specific individuals the army wants to target and their whereabouts. The newspaper said that the officer took this to mean that the Israeli military intended 'to cause random casualties, and he balked at the order'. He continued to hold back intelligence at his disposal because he feared that the operation 'would lead to the death of innocent Palestinians', the newspaper added. Without the intelligence, the raid was abandoned. Lieutenant A was court-martialled by his unit commander. He argued in his defence that the order was illegal because it was primarily aimed at killing Palestinian civilians, not known fighters. The unit commander rejected the plea, dismissed Lieutenant A from the intelligence service and transferred him to low-level administrative work. But the case has divided the Israeli military. Senior officers said the young officer should have expressed his concerns to a superior officer, not unilaterally withheld intelligence and foiled the mission. The unit's commanders have also argued that it is not for intelligence officers to determine what is legal. They are merely obliged to provide the information; the decision on how to use it lies with combat units on the ground. But junior officers pointed to a law enacted after the Kafr Kassem massacre of 47 Arabs by Israeli border policemen in 1956. 'We are taught that law says it is illegal to kill except in very specific circumstances. This case is being widely talked about in the army now and there's a lot of people who think he was right to do what he did,' said one officer. 'You do not have to be the triggerman to be guilty of a crimr' ... In December, Israel's high court rejected a claim by eight reserve soldiers that they were not obliged to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. The eight argued that it would be illegal for them to obey orders that maintain 'a system which consists entirely of collective punishment of a civilian population'".

IDF kills teen in Nablus; Gaza woman dies in demolished home,
Ha'aretz (Israel), February 6, 2003
"IDF forces Wednesday demolished the home of a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and his 65-year-old stepmother was crushed to death inside after apparently failing to hear warnings to leave the premises, Palestinian security officials said. In the West Bank, troops killed a Palestinian policeman in a raid on his base in Qalqilya. Witnesses said the man was shot as he and others fled. According to Israeli military sources, he had refused orders to halt ... Palestinian security officials said the family home of Baha Saeed, a militant from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, was blown up by the IDF, and that the body of Saeed's step-mother Kamila, 65, was found under the debris. She had apparently not heard IDF warnings to leave. 'She was partly deaf and apparently she was not aware of what was happening,' said Khaled Saeed, one of Kamla's stepsons. 'Israeli troops were acting in a brutal way, they got us all out of the house so fast and in an aggressive manner, they gave no chance for us to see who was out and who was in,' he said, adding that three of his brothers were detained by troops."

Belgium Appeals Court rules Sharon can be tried for genocide. FM Netanyahu recalls ambassador from Belgium for consultations, Ha'aretz (Israel), February 12, 2003
"Benjamin Netanyahu recalled Israel's ambassador from Brussels, Yehudi Kinar, for consultations in response to a 'scandalous' ruling by Belgium's supreme appeals court Wednesday that a genocide lawsuit against Ariel Sharon could go ahead once he no longer enjoyed immunity as prime minister. The supreme court also said investigations could proceed against former IDF division head Amos Yaron, who does not have the same immunity as Sharon. Yaron, director-general of the Ministry of Defense, was the only other one named in the original complaint filed with Belgian prosecutors two years ago. 'This decision is scandalous, and it legitimizes terror and damages those who fight terrorism,' Netanyahu said in a statement. 'Belgium is hurting not only Israel but the entire free world, and Israel will respond to it very severely' ... Danny Shek, a senior official from Israel's Foreign Ministry, who attended the court hearing, said that the court proceedings cast 'a shadow on the relations between Belgium and Israel in the past year and a half.' The supreme court ruling opened the way for survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees to press their case against the prime minister. The Palestinians had appealed against a lower court ruling last June that Sharon could not be prosecuted for the massacre in the Sabra and Chatilla camps in Beirut because he was not in Belgium. The plaintiffs are using a Belgian human rights law that claims universal jurisdiction allowing the country's courts to try crimes against humanity and genocide, no matter where they were committed."

Sharon Faces Belgian Trial After Term Ends,
New York Times, February 13, 2003
"Israeli officials reacted with outrage today to a decision by Belgium's highest court that Belgium could try Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for war crimes once he leaves office. Benjamin Netanyahu, the foreign minister, lashed out at the decision as 'an affront to truth, justice, and the right of the state of Israel to defend itself against terrorism.' 'We in Israel and the Jewish people as a whole have had enough of blood libels on the soil of Europe, and we are going to fight this one with everything we have,' he said. Israel recalled its ambassador for consultations, while Mr. Netanyahu summoned Belgium's ambassador for a dressing-down. Israeli officials said that ambassador replied that he was not authorized to speak about the matter. Human rights group were delighted by the court's decision. They hailed it as permitting victims of genocide and war crimes to pursue justice regardless of where in the world the crimes were perpetrated. The Israeli case is one of many pending in Belgium that involve violations of human rights. Mr. Sharon and a senior official in the defense ministry, Amos Yaron, are being sued by survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon by Lebanese Christian militiamen, who were backed by invading Israeli forces. Mr. Sharon was defense minister at the time of the massacre, in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. An Israeli commission later held Mr. Sharon indirectly responsible. He resigned his post but was not prosecuted ... Other Israeli officials were equally harsh. The justice minister, Meir Sheetrit, referred to Belgium as 'this small and insignificant nation,' wondering how it could present itself as 'the judge for the whole world.' Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, dispatched a severe letter to Belgium's king. Mr. Sharon remained silent today about the matter. Several Israeli officials said that Israel might work to block new Belgian efforts to increase American investment."

Shin Bet grabs laptop from Palestinian's U.S. lawyer,
Haaretz (Israel), February 19, 2003
"An American lawyer in Israel to collect testimony from Palestinians in a case against the Israeli government, had his personal computer confiscated yesterday at Ben-Gurion International Airport by members of the Shin Bet security service. The attorney, Stanley Cohen, represents U.S. citizens of Palestinian origin in claims submitted in American courts against the Israeli government. Cohen has spent the past two weeks gathering evidence in the territories for the purpose of submitting the material to a federal court in Washington. The court will be hearing a claim submitted by Cohen and a group of lawyers on behalf of 19 American Palestinians against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and members of the outgoing cabinet, Israel Defense Forces officers, U.S. President George W. Bush and American weapons manufacturers that supply arms to the IDF ... Cohen, a 48-year-old American Jew, made a name for himself in 1995, when he represented Hamas leader Mussa Abu Marzuk who was facing an Israeli extradition request. The extradition request was rejected and Abu Marzuk was released following 22 months in detention in the United States ... [Cohen said:] 'This is a critical blow to attorney-client relations and I advise the Israeli authorities not to make any use of the data in the computer against my clients. I intend to add myself to the claim I filed in Washington on behalf of the Palestinians.'"

[Walt Disney, declared by the Jewish community to have been an "anti-Semite," is probably rolling over in his grave because of what the Disney "world" has become" from Disney's Jewish CEO, Michael Eisner, on down.]
Disney's Shamrock mulls $100 mln Israel fund,
Forbes, Feberuary 24, 2003
"Shamrock Holdings of California Inc, the investment arm of Disney heir Roy Disney, is examining the possibility of setting up a $100 million investment fund in Israel, a financial sector source said on Monday. The fund could eventually reach $250 million with part of the money coming from abroad, the source said, adding that Shamrock Chairman Stanley Gold was planning to meet Israeli institutional investors this week. Potential investors include insurers Migdal Insurance Holdings , which is controlled by Italy's Generali , and Israel's Phoenix Insurance ... . Shamrock's other main investments in Israel are mobile phone service provider Pelephone and Tadiran Communications."

rael Forms Hard-Line Government,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), February 26, 2003
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ended weeks of political bargaining Wednesday with an agreement establishing a coalition government dominated by fierce opponents of Palestinian statehood, clouding hopes for any peace initiative ... Sharon has already offered the foreign affairs portfolio to outgoing Finance Minister Silvan Shalom - a 45-year-old Likud stalwart with little diplomatic experience and aspirations of succeeding Sharon ... Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz kept his post in the new government. A proponent of the military crackdown on the Palestinians, Mofaz has said he would like to see Palestinian Yasser Arafat expelled. Right-wing firebrand Tzahi Hanegbi was named internal security minister. In 1980, Hanegbi received a six-month suspended sentence for leading a chain-wielding attack on Arab students at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, where he was student union chairman. Hanegbi has since expressed regret. Yisrael Katz, who is to become agriculture minister, was convicted in the same university attack. In addition to Sharon's 40-seat Likud faction, most of whose members are hawkish, the coalition includes the six-seat National Religious Party, a patron of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, and the seven-seat National Union, which has members who advocate pushing the Palestinians out of the West Bank. The coalition also includes the moderate Shinui Party, giving it a comfortable majority of 68 in the 120-seat Knesset. Shinui supports peace efforts in principle, but its leaders say the issue is moot for now and are instead focusing on a domestic agenda of reducing the influence of religion in Israel. The coalition's guidelines are not expected to include acceptance of the so-called "road map" to peace put forth by the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia, which calls for a Palestinian state and an end to Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank and Gaza. 'This means we don't have a road map any more,' said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat. He said he hoped President Bush would 'see the light' and press Israel for moderation."

[Jews again are apparently intent upon fulfilling stereotypes: they sue, sue, sue. Jewish lawyer culture -- towards self-aggrandizement and censorship -- runs amuck. There are Jews suing Iran for Palestinian violence against Jews in Israel, there are Jews suing the U.S. government for not having bombed Auschwitz, Jews suing the U.S.. Army for Holocaust-era complaints, and on and on.]
Israeli soldiers sue over film,
BBC, February 26, 2003
"Five Israeli reserve soldiers are suing an Israeli Arab film director they accuse of libelling troops who fought in the battle for the Jenin refugee camp. They accuse Mohammed Bakri of libellously portraying them and their comrades as war criminals in the film Jenin, Jenin, which was recently banned in Israel. Over eight days of fighting in April 2002, 53 Palestinian gunmen and civilians were killed along with 23 Israeli soldiers as they searched for militants. Speaking about his film, Mr Bakri has suggested that his critics are not prepared to accept his version of the 'truth'. The soldiers, who are also suing two Israeli cinemas which screened it after its October release, are claiming 2.5m shekels ($500,000) in damages. 'We received an emergency call-up order and went out to fight in order to defend our homes,' one of the reservists told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. 'We fought slowly, day after day, in order to avoid harming the civilian population. This film portrays us as war criminals' ... The cinemas which showed it before the ban are being sued for screening images of the soldiers without their permission."

The Great Wall of Denial,
by Gila Svirsky, Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel), February 28, 2003
"The lives of Palestinians in the occupied territories have been thoroughly disrupted since Sharon came to power, far more than under any preceding Israeli prime minister. The mystery, however, is not the reign of terror - this is no mystery under Sharon - but the indifference of Israeli citizens to that behavior. How is it possible that through two and a half years of increasingly cruel conduct of our army, the Israeli public has had almost nothing to say about soldiers... *** urinating on school computers and defecating on the rugs of homes they have garrisoned for use; *** accidentally demolishing the homes of innocent people that happen to be near the homes deliberately destroyed *** preventing the residents of entire cities from leaving their houses for weeks on end (no exceptions - not for chemo, dialysis, childbirth, buying food, attending school, or visiting your sick mother); *** damaging 27 Palestinian ambulances beyond repair and wounding 187 medical personnel [www.palestinercs.org] ; *** and assassinating people without the niceties of trial and due process, not to mention reckless shootings in which 126 innocent children aged 13 or younger (including 19 toddlers and infants aged 5 or younger!) have lost their lives [www.btselem.org]. Why, I am trying to understand, are we Israelis so blind to this brutality? Where are the expressions of revulsion by decent Israelis? Why don't the major newspapers report these heart-wrenching stories (not just the liberal and much smaller-circulation Ha'aretz)? Why didn't a single Jewish political party in the recent election criticize the government for its policy of collective punishment? Why are the brave young men and women who refuse to carry out these crimes disparaged in the media, while even Peace Now and the Meretz party don't come to their support? Why are only a handful of people willing to apply the label 'war crime' to the deeds of the army - deeds that merit this designation under any objective reading of the international instruments of law? The lack of outrage and compassion in Israel is difficult to understand. Is it a reflection of the fact that Israelis are uninformed? Or are they aware and indifferent? I believe that Israelis do know the truth. They know because some stories - the most poignant - do reach the media. A month ago, they saw a scene on Israeli TV of a young boy on crutches forced everyday to scale a muddy checkpoint wall to get to school. They know because they do reserve duty in the territories - or their family and friends do - and some even brag about the dirty tricks they saw or did. They know because some watch CNN, the BBC, or other foreign media, even when they dismiss these reports as anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic. But enough stories do get through for Israelis to know what is happening, to understand the brutal reality. So the question is, why is there indifference? ... Furthermore, innocent bystanders have been killed on our side, too, making it harder for Israelis to feel compassion for those they regard as supportive of the attacks. Nevertheless, the completely lopsided balance of power and suffering has not penetrated the consciousness of the Israeli public as a whole. The violence on both sides is reprehensible, but most Israelis behave as if only our people are its victims them, are the perpetrators of the crimes. Third, much blame goes to our political and rabbinical leaders who engage in fear mongering and dehumanization of the other. Racism is rampant in Israel, from popular Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who called all Arabs 'snakes', to President Katsav who told a group of bar-mitzvah boys, 'The Palestinians don't behave as if they come from the same planet as we do.' The National Union Party, a member of Sharon's new government, openly advocates ethnic cleansing - the 'transfer', as they call it, of all Arabs from Israel and the territories. Is it any wonder that so few pay attention to the suffering of those who have been devalued and dehumanized? Meanwhile, our military leaders repeat the mantra that 'The IDF is the most moral army in the world.' There may be many more reasons for Israeli indifference. Eitan Felner, former Director of the B'Tselem human rights organization, referred to Israel's behavior as typical of an adult who has been abused as a child and consequently becomes an abusive adult, just as Jews were abused in Europe and now take it out on others [NY Times, date?]. Many Israelis believe they hold exclusive rights to the category 'Suffering Victims', and are unable to view themselves as having inflicted suffering and victimhood on others. But the important question is, how do we penetrate the numbness of Israelis, soldiers and civilians alike, about the wrongness of our actions - wrong morally and stupid strategically. As virtually everyone has recognized by now, the brutal policies only create more bitterness and desire for revenge. How do we get the message across to Israelis that the government is undermining our security in the territories with each act of humiliation and cruelty? How do we convey to Israelis that we are behaving in some ways like the persecutors of Jews have behaved from time immemorial? Israeli peace and human rights activists have been wracking our brains over how to accomplish this."

An End to the Israel Experiment? Unmaking a Grievous Error,
by Kirkpatrick Sale, CounterPunch, March 3, 2003
"Now that Ariel Sharon has been returned to power and his regime endorsed in its brutal occupation of Palestine, it seems to me that the time has come to ask whether the 50-year-old experiment known as the state of Israel has proven to be a failure and should be abandoned. Two things seem abundantly clear from the long months of multi-ethnic carnage in the Middle East. The first is that Israel cannot live in peace with the Palestinians unless it finally establishes a dictatorial apartheid rule and confines them in Arab bantustans. The second is that the Palestinians will not live in peace with Israel, not even if they achieve their promised statehood, for they share the deep, decades-old hostility to the Jewish state that has not abated but increased throughout the Arab world in recent years. We may disregard as hollow the rhetoric claiming that Israel would be accepted if it was confined to its pre-1967 borders, which is something that it will not do, anyway. With the Likud electoral victory, we can expect, even if eventually some American-brokered peace plan is nominally agreed upon, that Israel will fortify its borders, continue occupying Palestinian territory at will, bolster its support for West Bank settlements, and keep on using military retaliation for any Palestinian acts of sabotage or terror. And that Palestine, though most of its armed organizations will have been decimated, will be unable or unwilling to stop such acts, including suicide bombing, newly fueled by the hatred stemming from the present Israeli occupation. Israel will win this little war against the intifada, and Palestine will be effectively disembowled, but there will not be peace. In fact, there is guaranteed to be more violence. And there will continue to be violence as long as Israel exists amidst a population that for the most part abhors, and in only a few quarters tolerates, its presence. We all understand the reason for Israel's existence in the first place. Guilt, and reparation. But was it not a certain recipe for unrest and disorder to forcibly establish a Jewish homeland in the Middle East and, in effect, put down 2 million Jews in the middle of 200 million Arabs? What would have happened if it was decided in 1948 that 2 million African-Americans should be returned to, say, a partitioned Ghana, supported by an annual $6 billion in aid from the American government? Or, perhaps more to the point, if those African-Americans, who arguably deserve reparation of some kind, were established in that part of the Middle East, approximating the present borders of Israel, that their African ancestors settled from about 100,000 years ago on? Their claims of priority would vastly outrank any Biblical ones for the Jews, but it is hard to think that they would have been welcomed by the Arabs there, and tolerated only if they had superior military power and the support of the U.S. Yes, I am arguing that the original idea of a Jewish state, from the Balfour Declaration on down, was a mistake, and to establish it in an Islamic Middle East essentially by force and with the emiseration of millions of natives was a tragic mistake. We are reaping the awful results of that error today."

Back Home Background / Vicious circle in the Gaza Strip,
Haaretz (Israel), March 4, 2003
"Overpopulated, underprivileged Gaza, the stepchild of Israel and the Palestinians alike, is presenting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new government with its first military policy challenge, a literally vicious circle of violence so inconclusive that it has raised an outcry among the very Israelis the policy was designed to protect. In the West Bank, there has been ongoing debate among Palestinians over the efficacy of mounting attacks in Israel proper. In the Gaza Strip, however, Palestinian rage over civilian casualties in IDF raids - estimated to constitute as much as 30 percent of total Palestinian casuaties in Gaza violence involving Israel - has kept support for Hamas gunners at fever pitch ... Increasingly, however, Sderot [an Israeli town] residents as well as military analysts are calling into question the wisdom of a strategy which has resulted in large numbers of Palestinian civilian deaths, bolstering the motivation of Hamas to launch new terror strikes ... Monday's IDF raid on a central Gaza refugee camp left eight Palestinians dead, among them a teenage boy and a pregnant woman who was killed when IDF engineers demolished the house of a militant who had lived next door, causing her house to collapse as well, crushing her to death. The funerals for the eight sparked furious demonstrations of support for Hamas and for new rocket attacks against Sderot ... Hamas, true to form, vowed fresh vengeance ... Gaza has long been a hotbed for Islamic fundamentalism. The more than one million Palestinians in the Strip live in a sector that is one of the most densely-populated areas on the face of the earth, with a birth rate to match."

[New bureaucratic forms of discrimination in Jewish Israel.]
Identity crisis. You can register as any of 132 nationalities on your ID card - except `Israeli',
Haaretz (Israel), March 5, 2003
"If anyone ever decided to collect all the identity cards ever issued by the Interior Ministry and study the various entries listed under the 'nationality' heading, they would be in for a surprise. They would find that Israel has citizens or permanent residents described - at least in their identity cards - as 'Assyrians' and 'Tatars.' They would find 'Senegalese,' 'Bolivians' and 'Canadians.' But as hard as they might try, they would not be able to find any identity cards in which the bearer is described as 'Israeli.' The Interior Ministry's list of possible nationalities offers 132 authorized options for registration of nationality on a ministry-issued identity card. The choices include over a hundred different countries, as well as a selection of ethnic groups and religions. One country not appearing on the list, however, is the State of Israel. The nationality entry appearing on identity cards was nullified two months ago by the Knesset; until then, most citizens of Israel were simply described as 'Jewish' ... The list remained secret. Having despaired of their direct entreaties to the ministry, several academics and public figures, all of whom belong to the association - petitioned the Tel Aviv District Court three weeks ago. They asked the court to instruct the Interior Ministry to disclose the list, as required by the Freedom of Information Law ... The reasons for the Interior Ministry's efforts to suppress the information may lie in nine categories that might be construed as somewhat out of the ordinary among the 132 nationality options. They refer to the registration of unclear cases: 'Not registered,' 'Transfer error,' 'Under investigation,' 'As yet unregistered,' 'Under examination,' 'No nationality,' 'Unknown,' 'Not known' and 'Undetermined.' The significance of each of these entries may be comprehensible only to ministry officials. In a few cases, the entry was chosen at the request of the bearer of the identity card (as in the case of atheists), but usually they indicate that in terms of the Interior Ministry, there is some problem or other with 'the Jewish identity' of the bearer of the card (improper conversion, missing documents, etc.)."

[Israel's keen strategy to end suicide bombings:]
World Bank criticises Israel. Many Palestinians live on $2 a day,
BBC (UK), March 5, 2003
"Israeli-imposed closures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are continuing to cause severe economic problems for Palestinians, according to a new report from the World Bank. It says more than half the Palestinian population is now living on less than two dollars a day and that only massive foreign aid is preventing full economic collapse. This is an attempt by the World Bank to quantify in facts and figures the enormous human suffering the conflict with Israel is causing the Palestinian people. 'I have less interest in apportioning blame, than looking at the consequences of the conflict,' Nigel Roberts, director of the World Bank in Gaza and the West Bank, told BBC News Online. The report indicates that the main cause has been Israel's closure of routes from Palestinian areas into Israel and the imposition of curfews and closures in Palestinian towns and villages ... [T]he Bank stresses that the actions of the Israeli Government are the key to the Palestinian economy ... Half the workforce is without a job and 60% - about two million people - live on less than $2 a day, compared with 21% before the intifada."

Background / Palestinians: Israelis 'deserved' Haifa bombing,
by Danny Rubinstein, Haaretz (Israel), March 6, 2003
"Satisfaction among Palestinians following the Wednesday's bus bombing in Haifa was much greater than after previous attacks. This was the impression received by a group of Palestinian journalists who carried out interviews in the West Bank and Gaza Strip ... Even senior Palestinian Authority officials, who condemned the attack, added that it was only to be expected considering Israel's 'daily slaughter,' as a spokesman for the PLO in Ramallah said. Palestinian sources gave details Wednesday on the overall number of Palestinian deaths during the intifada, and particularly the number killed over the last few days. According to data from Dr. Moussa Bargouti, one of the leaders of the National Party, and an activist for citizens' rights in Ramallah, some 85 percent of Palestinians killed since the start of the intifada were civilians. Other Palestinian sources said that since the last suicide bombing, on Jauary 6 in Tel Aviv's old central bus station, 156 Palestinians have been killed - including 17 children - and only 40 of them were armed. During the last few days, for example, a pregnant woman and a 75-year-old man were killed in the Gaza Strip, as well as a deaf youth in Tul Karm."

Israeli raid kills old man on donkey,
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), March 6, 2003
"A 75-year-old man is the latest in a growing number of Palestinian civilians to fall victim to Israel's crackdown in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Relatives said the man was shot while riding a donkey near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. His death came a day after an Israeli tank and helicopter raid on a Gaza refugee camp which killed eight people, including a pregnant woman and two youths. Nuha Maqadma, 38, a mother of 10, was crushed when her house collapsed as Israeli troops blew up a nearby building belonging to a political leader of the Hamas resistance movement ... [T]he apparent upsurge in civilian casualties is attracting criticism within Israel itself. On Tuesday the Ha'aretz newspaper reported that 25 of the 72 Palestinians killed by Israel in February were civilians, including three children under 10. A separate report suggested Israeli commanders were unwilling to authorise investigations into killings by their troops. This week the mounting wave of civilian casualties attracted rare criticism from the United States."

Foreign Ministry fumes over BBC report,
Jerusalem Post, March 6, 2003
"[Israeli[ Ministry officials were furious with the British Broadcasting Corporation after a BBC report cast doubt on the authenticity of an Israeli statement that said the suicide bomber in Wednesday's attack carried a letter linking the attack to the September 11 attacks. Foreign Ministry officials said it was unthinkable that the BBC should attribute ulterior motives to the Israeli and question their integrity when the BBC 'routinely accepts Palestinian lies.'"

Israeli Troops Raid Gaza Refugee Camp. Palestinian rescuers inspect a burned three-story building during the Israeli Incursion into the Jabalya refugee camp northern Gaza Strip,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), March 6, 2003
"Israeli troops hunting Islamic militants after a deadly suicide bombing stormed this refugee camp Thursday in a raid that left 11 Palestinians dead and 110 wounded. On Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, killing 14 Israelis and an American teenager. That attack and Israel's deadly incursion into Jabalya camp marked an escalation of violence in the volatile Mideast at a time when a U.S. offensive against Iraq appeared to be drawing closer. Eight of those killed in Jabalya, including three boys ages 12, 13 and 14, died in disputed circumstances. Palestinian witnesses said the eight were killed by an Israeli tank shell fired toward camp residents crowding around a burning building ... Doctors said tank shell shrapnel caused most of the injuries and that 29 of the 110 wounded were in serious condition - including 12 minors. A Reuters cameraman and photographer were among the wounded."

[Again and again and again: non-Jews are garbage in the Jewish state. Thank God for the only "democracy" in the Middle East. Israel is a racist hellhole. Period]
Gov't sells expired protective kits to foreign workers,
Haaretz (Israel), March 12, 2003
"The defense establishment is selling gas masks and atropin injections that have passed their expiry dates to foreign workers, according to a study conducted by Haaretz. The study revealed that the gas masks on sale to foreign workers were manufactured in 1982, whereas the gas masks distributed to Israeli citizens are from 1984 and later. The atropin injections for foreigners are from 1995, while Israelis are getting injections made in 1996 and later. Not only are the gas masks and injections outdated, and hence unfit for use, but the foreign workers are being made to pay NIS 200 for the kits. Half of this will be reimbursed when they return their kits, while the remainder of the sum will remain with the defense establishment. There are an estimated 200,000 foreign workers in Israel. The state ruled that these workers were not eligible for free gas-mask kits, but decided in January that the foreigners would be allowed to purchase kits at special distribution centers set up countrywide at Hamashbir Lazarchan branches and post offices. The foreign workers who showed up to buy kits were not told the masks they were buying were different from those distributed to Israelis, and were given no information about the expiry issue. In contrast, Israeli citizens have been instructed by the Home Front Command to replace masks manufactured prior to 1984 and atropin injections made before 1996. Each gas-mask kit comes with a 22-number bar code, with the third and fourth digits indicating the year of manufacture of the mask. The 13th and 14th digits denote the injection's production date. Foreign workers have said that their requests to replace kits purchased in the past with new ones were rejected, with the workers being required to pay the full sum for their new kits."

Photographs of Israeli atrocities

[Pulling the U.S. into war: Some things never change.]
USS LIBERTY SURVIVOR ANSWERS QUESTIONS AFTER VIEWING 'DEAD IN THE WATER',
by Delinda C. Hanley, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, p. 84, April 2003 [paper edition]
"The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) sponsored a sold-out showing of the BBC documentary 'USS LIBERTY Dead in the Water' on Feb. 22 at Visions Cinema in Washington, DC. Over 250 viewers from both the Arab-American community and the neighborhood joined LIBERTY survivors to watch this gripping film, a finalist in the Vancouver Film Festival, which is available from the AET Book Club for $30. During the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS LIBERTY, killing 34 Americans. 'Dead in the Water' presents startling new evidence that the Israeli attack was no accident, and that it very nearly caused World War III. The film provides convincing evidence that because the United States believed that the unmarked fighter jets that attacked the USS LIBERTY were Egyptian, a punishing U.S. response was only narrowly averted when fighter jets were recalled minutes from bombing Cairo. Israel, the film charges, meant to sink the LIBERTY and blame Egypt, to draw the United States into their 1967 war. That would have pulled in Russia, and a world-wide conflict could have ensued. In the question-and-answer session after the film, LIBERTY survivor John Hrankowski, fielded questions from an audience worried that, once again, Israel was drawing the U.S. into a conflict that could inspire World War III. One person asked Hrankowski how American reporters agreed to suppress the story at the time (even President Lyndon Johnson was shocked that the attack on an American ship was only on the last pages of THE NEW YORK TIMES!)." [To contact the LIBERTY Association write to PO Box 53347, Washington, DC 20009 or call (202) 222-0173]

American Teens Volunteer in Israeli Army,
Grand Forks Herald (Nebraska) (from Associated Press), Mar. 15, 2003
"When Omer Friedman told his parents he was leaving California to join the Israeli army for three years, they offered to buy the 18-year-old a new car if he reconsidered. The bribe didn't work. Friedman joined 19 other Americans in a volunteer program that brings American Jews to Israel for army service, and closer to a bloody conflict that has killed thousands in just 29 months. He could see combat as early as July ... Friedman's decision to leave the United States comes as many of his Israeli counterparts dream of escaping the Jewish state's stagnant economy, brutal conflict with the Palestinians and potential dangers associated with a U.S.-led war with Iraq ... More than 200 soldiers have been killed during 29 months of fighting, and several of them have been Israeli-Americans. More than 2,200 Palestinians have also been killed. Yeela Porat, 18, from Sunnyvale, Calif., scrapped college plans and her job at Starbucks to enlist in the Israeli army. Her fellow employees didn't understand why she would want to leave. 'They think it has to be political ... but it's not. It has to do with a feeling of where you belong, and you can't explain that to them,' said Porat, who was born in Israel but left as a child. More than 100,000 Americans live in Israel, holding dual citizenship. The volunteer program, which began four years ago, has brought dozens of Americans to the Israeli army ... Many say they'll stay in Israel after their service, but some are keeping their options open. Israel encourages Jews of all nationalities to immigrate. Yossi Nachemi left his family in Chicago for the Israeli army. For the 21-year-old, coming to Israel was a dream realized. He changed his name from Joe Osgood to the name his grandfather gave up decades ago, and signed up for the army. He initially hid his plans from his parents. 'I feel like I'm fighting not only for Israel, but for the Jewish people,' he said. Chen Bloom, 19, from Boston, said she often received strange looks from Israelis when she told them she'd volunteered. 'People say 'what were you thinking?'' she said, shrugging. 'I feel I'm making a difference.' Other acknowledge there's also the draw of adventure, and the urge to escape the boredom of suburbia."

WARNING VERY GRAPHIC: THE BLOODY REALITY THE "CONTROLLED MEDIA" WILL NEVER LET YOU SEE....AND THIS IS WHAT RACHEL CORRIE DIED FOR.....THIS WAS HER CAUSE!, GoOff, March 18, 2003

[This is pathetic. These Jews are hell-bent upon fulfilling the most sinister of stereotypes about Jews. In this case, even as Jews destroy the non-Jewish other, they're angling to their snug victim role -- with attendant financial reparations from the impoverished real sufferers. Time for a class action suit by Palestinians against Israel that has stolen their land -- and against the world-wide clan that has brought this monster to fruition. The Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people is unrelenting, omnipresent, total.]
Back Home. Their day in court,
Haaretz (Israel), March 21, 2003
"Hundreds of Israelis whose businesses have suffered because of the intifada are trying to sue the Palestinian Authority for damages. The courts are sympathetic and the money is there, but some legal experts believe the plaintiffs won't see a penny of it. 'Even though I hold left-wing views, I have no great love for the Palestinian Authority,' says Yoram Cohen, one of the owners of Moment Cafe in Jerusalem. Cohen is suing the PA for NIS 3.5 million for damages caused to the coffee house in a terrorist attack last March. Says Saeb Erekat, the PA's minister for self-government, 'Israelis who sue the PA are doing a very grave thing. They are trying to plunder the money of Palestinian children, poor people and the ill.' 'I was hurt, and at this stage I have to see to my own needs,' Cohen says. 'I don't want to be the patsy who suffers, and as far as I am concerned I don't care where the money comes from. I see myself getting money from the PA and not from some poor Palestinian toddler.' More than 200 people who were affected by terrorist attacks and about 100 companies have recently filed suits against the PA in Israeli courts. They are demanding a total of about NIS 2 billion for direct or indirect damage they have sustained as a result of the Palestinian terrorism of the past two and a half years. The Egged bus cooperative is demanding compensation of NIS 52 million for the buses that were blown up in suicide bombing attacks, 60 hotels are asking for NIS 150 million for business they have lost, 11 insurance companies want NIS 400 million for claims they have had to honor, Kenes (an organization that organizes conferences) is demanding NIS 25 million for canceled meetings, and Moment is seeking NIS 3.5 million. Thirty tour guides who have been rendered unemployed because of the drastic drop in tourism are soon to file suit, along with dozens of Jerusalem building contractors. Two weeks ago, 75 of those who were affected by the terrorist attack on the number 18 bus in Jerusalem in February 1996 filed a damage suit of NIS 545 million against the PA. So sweeping is the flood of suits that a law firm hired to file them has prepared a standard form for plaintiffs. Those who wish to join in need only add their names. And this is just the beginning."

In Israel, distress signals from Ethiopians,
By Ben Lynfield, The Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2002
"The gap between black and white Israelis seems, with some exceptions, to be growing. For Ethiopians, it is visible in impoverished neighborhoods, soaring unemployment, and the highest high-school dropout rate of any Jewish group in Israel. Twenty-six percent of Ethiopian youths have either dropped out or do not show up for classes most of the time, raising concerns that the community's current difficulties may become chronic. Drug use, including glue-sniffing, is on the rise, and criminal activity, hardly known among Ethiopians before they came to Israel, has been growing. Ethiopian Jews, who number just over 1 percent of the more than 6 million Israelis, arrived mostly in two waves: during the early 1980s and then in a dramatic US-backed airlift a decade ago. Most started almost from scratch in education and job skills. There were also cultural differences. 'In Ethiopia, children look down when their teacher talks,' Mr. Ishete says, in contrast to native Israeli children, who look their teachers right in the eye. For the Ethiopians, 95 percent of whom were subsistence farmers, the leap to 21st-century, first-world Israel was so enormous as to be hard to grasp, he adds. But not everyone is sympathetic. Israeli mayors unabashedly urge the government to keep Ethiopian immigrants away from their cities ... Asher Elias, a staff member at the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews (IAEJ) [says:] "Ethiopians have lots of motivation to become Israelis, but they are not accepted ... In jobs, in education, people feel they are discriminated against because they are black. I'm not saying it is right or wrong, but it is what we are feeling, and that is enough.' A low point in the relationship between Ethiopian Jews and Israelis came in 1996, when it was revealed that Israeli hospitals had thrown out all blood donated by Ethiopians. 'These were donations to help other Israelis,' Mr. Elias says. '[Ethiopians] said to each other: 'What do they think? That we are not humans?' 'Habad, one of Israel's stronger orthodox religious groups, doesn't recognize Ethiopians as Jews or allow their children into its kindergartens ... Israelis are developing a negative image of Ethiopians, warns Yair Tsaban, who was immigration minister during the second immigration wave. 'The absorption of the Ethiopians could be a source of pride for the country,' he says. 'But if the Ethiopian immigrants are associated with crime and violence in the minds of other Israelis, there can be alienation. People could ask 'Why have they been brought here?'"

Fingers on all the buttons. The world's best-known and most efficient 'secret' manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction is not Iraq, not even North Korea, but Israel,
Indexonline, January 3, 2003
"In September 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear site, revealed to the Sunday Times that the nuclear military programme based there had produced 'over 200' nuclear warheads. Days later he was tricked into flying to Rome where he was abducted by Mossad agents and secretly transported to Israel. In November 1986, he was tried in camera and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment, 14 of which were spent in solitary confinement. In 1999, in response to a petition from Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the government released about 40 per cent of the trial documents. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that Israel has the world's fifth largest stockpile of nuclear warheads (more than Britain, which it believes has 185). In February 2000, Knesset member Issam Mahoul said Israel had '200 to 300' nuclear weapons; in August of that year, the Federation of American Scientists said that Israel could have produced 'at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200'; the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates 200. Other sources, including Jane's Intelligence Review, estimate between 400 and 500 thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. What Dimona is to Israel's nuclear programme, the Israeli Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) at Nes Ziona is to its chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programme. The high-security facility is absent from aerial survey photographs and maps, on which it has been replaced by orange groves. Except for token visits to Dimona by a Norwegian team in 1961 and a US team in 1969, there has been no international scrutiny. Even the Knesset is denied access. However, the 1993 report by the Office of Technology Assessment for the US Congress states that Israel has 'undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities' and is 'generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme'. Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies states that Israel has conducted extensive research into gas warfare and is ready to produce biological weapons. According to an exhaustive study by Karel Knip, a Dutch journalist, the IIBR's work has included the synthesis of nerve gases such as tabun, sarin and VX. The October 1992 crash an of El Al cargo plane in Amsterdam that caused at least 47 deaths and caused hundreds of immediate and subsequent mysterious illnesses led to the disclosure in 1998 that flight LY1862 was carrying chemicals including 50 gallons of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) - enough to produce 594 pounds of sarin. The DMMP was supplied by Solkatronic Chemicals Inc of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and was destined for the IIBR. Avner Cohen has catalogued reported uses of biological weapons by Jewish forces during the 1948 war in Palestine. The Israeli historian Uri Milstein alleged that 'in many conquered Arab villages, the water supply was poisoned to prevent the inhabitants from coming back.' Milstein states that one of the largest of such covert operations caused the typhoid outbreak in Acre in May 1948. The Palestinian Arab Higher Committee reported in July 1948 that there was some evidence that Jewish forces were responsible for a cholera outbreak in Egypt in November 1947 and in Syrian villages near the Palestinian-Syrian border in February 1948. In May 1948, the Egyptian ministry of defence stated that four 'zionists' had been captured while trying to contaminate artesian wells in Gaza with 'a liquid which was discovered to contain germs of dysentery and typhoid'. In 1954, it was widely reported that defence minister Pinchas Lavon had proposed using BW for special operations. Cohen says: 'Israel has presumably employed biological or toxin weapons for special operations.' In 1955, Prime Minister Ben Gurion ordered the weaponisation and stockpiling of chemical weapons in case of a war with Egypt. Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky claims that lethal tests have been performed on Arab prisoners at the IIBR. There are allegations that Israel has used CBW on numerous occasions: Chemical defoliants used by the army against Palestinian lands, including Ain el-Beida in 1968, Araqba in 1972 and Mejdel Beni Fadil in 1978; Armed nuclear missiles in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars; Chemical weapons in the 1982 war on Lebanon, including hydrogen cyanide, nerve gas and phosphorus shells; In the 1980s lethal gases against Palestinian civilians and Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli Jewish prisoners."

Israel simply has no right to exist/ Peace might have a real chance without Israelis' biblical claims Special report: Israel and the Middle East,
by Faisal Bodi, The Guardian (UK), January 3, 2001
"Several years ago, I suggested in my students' union newspaper that Israel shouldn't exist. I also said the sympathy evoked by the Holocaust was a very handy cover for Israeli atrocities. Overnight I became public enemy number one. I was a Muslim fundamentalist, a Jew-hater, somebody who trivialised the memory of the most abominable act in history. My denouncers followed me, photographed me, and even put telephone calls through to my family telling them to expect a call from the grim reaper. Thankfully, my notoriety in Jewish circles has since waned to the extent that recently I gave an inter-faith lecture sponsored by the Leo Baeck College, even though my views have remained the same. Israel has no right to exist. I know it's a hugely unfashionable thing to say and one which, given the current parlous state of the peace process, some will also find irresponsible. But it's a fact that I have always considered central to any genuine peace formula. Certainly there is no moral case for the existence of Israel. Israel stands as the realisation of a biblical statement. Its raison d'être was famously delineated by former prime minister Golda Meir. 'This country exists as the accomplishment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be absurd to call its legitimacy into account.' That biblical promise is Israel's only claim to legitimacy. But whatever God meant when he promised Abraham that 'unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the Euphrates,' it is doubtful that he intended it to be used as an excuse to take by force and chicanery a land lawfully inhabited and owned by others. It does no good to anyone to brush this fact, uncomfortable as it might be, under the table ... By the time the UN accepted a resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947, Jews constituted 32% of the population and owned 5.6% of the land. By 1949, largely as a result of paramilitary organisations such as the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gang, Israel controlled 80% of Palestine and 770,000 non-Jews had been expelled from their country ... Far from being a force for liberation and safety after decades of suffering, the idea that Israel is some kind of religious birthright has only imprisoned Jews in a never-ending cycle of conflict. The 'promise' breeds an arrogance which institutionalises the inferiority of other peoples and generates atrocities against them with alarming regularity. It allows soldiers to defy their consciences and blast unarmed schoolchildren. It gives rise to legislation seeking to prevent the acquisition of territory by non-Jews. More crucially, the promise limits Israel's capacity to seek models of coexistence based on equality and the respect of human rights. A state based on so exclusivist a claim to legitimacy cannot but conceive of separation as a solution. But separation is not the same as lasting peace; it only pulls apart warring parties."

May 11, 2002 "Nobody Should Preach to Us Ethics, Nobody!" Israel, a Light unto Nations?,
By Kathleen Christison, Former CIA political analyst, Counterpunch, May 11, 2002
"In the never-ending propaganda show designed to depict Israel as a moral nation victimized by immoral terrorists and anti-Semites, CNN recently ran a film clip of the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin declaiming, as only he could, 'Nobody should preach to us ethics, nobody!' And, of course, few do. It's the general assumption among the vast majority of Americans that no on can preach ethics to Israel, that light unto nations. No nation is more ethical or more innocent--or so we are told. But I can't get something I recently saw off my mind. Every so often in the midst of a deluge of information something leaps out at you as unique--utterly electrifying, utterly horrifying, almost mind-altering in a way. One's senses become dulled after months, years, of reading about and seeing images on television of innocents dead from Palestinian terrorist attacks, of other innocents dead from Israeli tank or sniper fire, of cities and refugee camps devastated, in recent weeks of the entire civilian infrastructure of Palestinian society destroyed. But one searing article leapt out the other day that has stuck in my craw, and I cannot let go of it. In an article in the May 6 issue of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz entitled 'Someone Even Managed to Defecate into the Photocopier,' Amira Hass--an honest, courageous Israeli woman who has spent years living among Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza--described the scenes of destruction at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture left behind after Israeli military forces lifted their siege of the towns of Ramallah and its suburb al-Birah, where the ministry is located. Entering the building after its month-long occupation by an Israeli military unit, ministry officials, foreign cultural attaches, and reporters found a scene of grotesque vandalism. Equipment from the local radio and television station had been hurled from windows in the multi-story building, electronic equipment was destroyed or had been stolen, furniture was broken and piled up on heaps of papers, books, computer disks, and broken glass. Children's paintings had been destroyed. And then there was this, as described by Hass: 'There are two toilets on every floor, but the soldiers urinated and defecated everywhere else in the building, in several rooms of which they had lived for about a month. They did their business on the floors, in emptied flowerpots, even in drawers they had pulled out of desks. They defecated into plastic bags, and these were scattered in several places. Some of them had burst. Someone even managed to defecate into a photocopier. The soldiers urinated into empty mineral water bottles. These were scattered by the dozen in all the rooms of the building, in cardboard boxes, among the piles of rubbish and rubble, on desks, under desks, next to the furniture the soldiers had smashed, among the children's books that had been thrown down. Some of the bottles had opened and the yellow liquid had spilled and left its stain. It was especially difficult to enter two floors of the building because of the pungent stench of feces and urine. Soiled toilet paper was also scattered everywhere. In some of the rooms, not far from the heaps of feces and the toilet paper, remains of rotting food were scattered. In one corner, in the room in which someone had defecated into a drawer, full cartons of fruits and vegetables had been left behind. The toilets were left overflowing with bottles filled with urine, feces and toilet paper. Relative to other places, the soldiers did not leave behind them many sayings scrawled on the walls. Here and there were the candelabrum symbols of Israel, stars of David, praises for the Jerusalem Betar soccer team.' This is not a tale we are ever likely to see in the American press, so the vast majority of Americans who think with Menachem Begin that nobody can preach to Israel about ethics, that Israel's army is the only moral army in the world and always employs the doctrine of 'purity of arms,' will go on thinking that way. But I cannot. I am forced to ask some questions that that American majority will no doubt never hear: Can it, for instance, be called terrorism if an entire unit of the Israeli army forsakes purity of arms and spends a month crapping on floors, on piles of children's artwork, in desk drawers, on photocopiers? Is this self-defense, or 'rooting out the terrorist infrastructure'? Is it anti-Semitic to wonder what happened to the moral compass of a society that spawns a group of young men who will intermingle their own religious and national symbols with feces and urine, as if the drawings and the excrement both constitute valued autographs? Do they think Israeli shit is cleaner, holier than anyone else's? Why are my taxes paying for this army? How can Palestinians ever make peace in the face of filth and disrespect like this?"

The Secret Arsenal of the Israeli State,
MSNBC
"DIMONA: Once described as a 'textile factory,' the Dimona Center actually produces about 40 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium every year and has been doing so for 10 and possibly 20 years Israel has produced enough plutonium at Dimona to construct between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons ... Israel could [also] ... have as many as 35 thermo-nuclear weapons."

A-G's directive denies citizenship to Jews who converted in Israel
by Mazal Mualem, Haaretz (Israel), March 26, 2003
"People who move to Israel and convert here are no longer eligible to receive citizenship under the Law of Return, according to a new directive formulated by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein in December. The order, which was formulated in conjunction with the Interior Ministry's legal advisers, also denies citizenship under the Law of Return to anyone who resided in Israel illegally. Until now, people who converted here were eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return. The Interior Ministry said it has no data on how many such people received citizenship last year, but there have always been people who come here specifically for the purpose of converting, undergoing rigorous Orthodox conversion courses that culminate in conversion by the Orthodox rabbinate. The new directive was drafted in response to a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by a foreign worker who, after living here for several years, converted and then applied for citizenship under the Law of Return. In their response to the court, Rubinstein and the Interior Ministry said that over the last few years, many foreign workers, including illegal ones, have 'exploited' conversion as a tool with which to obtain Israeli citizenship."

Israelis Victims No Longer?,
CounterPunch, March 28, 2003
"When, after the wars of 1967 and 1973, Israel held onto conquered land (in defiance of U.N. resolutions) and continued to dispossess Palestinians, [Holocaust survivor Primo] Levi urged the Israelis not to use a 'sacred history of suffering' as the rationale for their 'tribal aggression'----a very different position to that taken by another Auschwitz survivor, Eli Wiesel. Through his writings and his witness to that terrible moment, Wiesel has earned iconic status as the quintessential moral man. However, his embrace of the temptation that Primo Levi spurned is seldom recognized. No matter how brutal Israeli actions become, Wiesel is silent or defensive, always reserving his sympathy for Jews. His public utterances reveal a chilling indifference to the plight of Palestinians. Last fall, even as the UN was trying to pave the way for peaceful disarmament, Wiesel was calling with pious insistence for war against Iraq. Historical amnesia allows him to forget that before the establishment of Israel, Arabs, unlike Europeans, were, on the whole, hospitable to their Jewish minorities. It is a stance that comes perilously close to the one satirized by the Israeli novelist Amos Oz in The Slopes of Lebanon: 'Our sufferings have granted us immunity papers, as it were, a moral carte blanche. We were victims and have suffered so much. Once a victim, always a victim, and victimhood entitles its owners to a moral exemption' ... Manipulation of the Holocaust has had, for many years, a distorting effect on US political discourse. A majority of American Jews and their cultural and political organizations continue to regard criticism of Israel as prima facie evidence of anti-Semitism. In May last year, writing in the New York Review of Books, Professor Tony Judt confronted the myth of 'the small victim community,' arguing that 'since 1967 Israel has changed in ways that render its traditional self--description absurd. It is now a colonial power, by some accounts the world's forth largest military...by comparison, Palestinians are weak.' Calling him Israel's 'dark id,' Judt warned that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has encouraged a contempt and cynicism towards Palestinians that will be 'hard to shake.' Israeli novelist and poet Yitzhak Laor paints an even bleaker picture. The 'fat, old, pork-eating hedonistic General' is how he describes Ariel Sharon -- seeing him as emblematic of both the corruption and the decline of democracy. Palestinians have been erased from Israeli consciousness and with the Left and the peace movement on the ropes Laor holds out little hope of the country transforming itself from within. 'Does anybody think that Israel is capable of getting itself out of this mess without help?' he asks. While the United States is the only country with the authority to rein in Sharon, it is unlikely to oblige now that powerful Zionists are shaping George Bush's policy in the Middle East -- and critics are too easily silenced when opposition to the Israeli government is equated with anti-Semitism."

In Israel: Netanyahu’s nephew victimised for refusing military service,
By Harvey Thompson, goOff.com, March 29, 2003
"Jonathan Ben-Artzi, a 20-year-old physics student, has served a total of 214 days in military imprisonment for refusing to fight in the Israeli army. He has now spent more time in prison—stretching seven sentences—than any other Israeli conscientious objector and was recently designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. What has made Ben-Artzi’s case especially sensitive for the Israeli authorities is that his uncle is the former prime minister and now Likud Finance Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu. Jonathan Ben-Artzi expanded on his case in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper on March 11. His account underlines the brutal and intimidating treatment handed out by the Israeli state against its own citizens who refuse to participate in its murderous offensive against the Palestinians ... Called up to the AIC on November 10 after completing his fourth sentence, Jonathan was not allowed to address the committee. According to his parents, Jonathan had prepared to read the following statement: 'According to Amnesty International, more than 50 children under the age of 12 have been killed by Israeli Army fire, during the first seven months of 2002 alone. You have not sentenced even one of the perpetrators of these crimes. But you’re sentencing me for the fifth time, just because I refuse to take part in such activities.'”

The soldier is evil, the soldier is Israel,
by Amira Hass, Haaretz (Israel), April 3, 2003
"Last Thursday, someone from the village of Salem, east of Nablus, called and said the soldiers had been holding 'hundreds of people - women, adults and children - for the past three hours' and were not allowing them to pass. Rifles held at an angle of 60 degrees and fingers on the trigger make the soldiers' intentions clear. It's almost standard practice, say residents of the three villages east of Nablus - Salem, Dir al-Khateb and Azmut: An IDF force positions itself at the foot of the hill of the new Askar refugee camp, alongside what was once a short asphalt road that reaches the three villages and is now a mess of mud and piles of torn-up tarmac. The force holds up people for no apparent reason, the residents say, from both directions - from the west, to Nablus, or from the east, from Nablus to the villages. The soldiers often force people to backtrack; and they frequently accompany their actions with offensive speech and insults. Some even use force. A military source was convinced that the directives are to check only that men between the ages of 16 and 40 have permits from the Civil Administration to move from the villages to Nablus and vice versa, and that there are no intentions to prevent women, the elderly and children from passing through the checkpoints. The reality on the ground is different: Without explanation and without any apparent checks, the soldiers do indeed hold these people up - for 10 minutes, or an hour or two, and more, all day, twice a day - men and women. This is the only thoroughfare for these three villages, and it's only for pedestrians (in fact, it's only for able-bodied pedestrians, as life-threatening danger lurks for anyone who has even a little difficulty walking). The sick and pregnant women also have to make the journey on foot, and go through a series of explanations and attempts to persuade the soldiers to allow them to continue to climb or wait for the ambulance that is slow to arrive. There is no commercial way of ferrying agricultural produce and food to and from the villages because there is no authorized thoroughfare for Palestinian vehicles - contrary, by the way, to an explicit promise made by the IDF to the High Court of Justice some two years ago in response to a petition against the closure policy submitted by an association of doctors: The IDF promised that every blocked and enclosed Palestinian community has a thoroughfare for direct vehicle traffic. In practice, most villages are blocked to rapid movement of emergency vehicles. The IDF is not honoring its promise to the High Court, and the soldiers are operating contrary to what their commanders are promising to the media. At most of the roadblocks that are manned by soldiers and include obstacles (mounds of dirt or ditches designed to prevent vehicular traffic), alongside which army patrols sometimes stop, the soldiers are adding to the institutionalized difficulty - the fruits of a policy from above - and are improvising insults and harassments of various kinds ... Even if the Palestinians are able to recognize the extraordinary 'good soldier,' even if only one soldier in every four is abusive, he is the one who determines what the day will be like. He is the one who is etched in memory. He is Israel."

[Sexual assault statistics from the Jewish homeland: "The Light unto the World."]
Aid centers: Most sexual assault victims in 2002 were minors; one-third were under 12,
by Ruth Sinai, Haaretz (Israel), April 8, 2003
"More than 2,300 girls and boys under the age of 12 were victims of sexual assault in the past year, constituting 30 percent of the new cases reported to the sexual assault aid centers. Almost 26 percent of the victims were 13 to 18 years old ... Forty percent of the sexual assaults were carried out in the victim's home. 'The home, of all places, which should be a safe, protective and supporting place, is where many of the horrors take place,' states the report. About half of the victims refrained from going to the police. The most prevalent attack - 26 percent of the new calls - was rape, including gang rape. About 16 percent of the callers complained about incest by fathers (6.5 percent), brothers (2.6 percent) or other relatives. Some 14 percent complained of indecent acts. About 30 percent of the 110 gang rape victims who called the Tel Aviv aid center were men. Out of 519 calls reporting non-gang rape to this center, 25 percent were men. Some 20 percent of the victims of indecent acts reported in Tel Aviv were men. 'The sexual assault of boys, male youths and men is a hushed-up crime, which is almost completely absent from discourse in Israeli society,' the report states. 'It does not occur to the victims that anyone would listen to their ordeal.' The centers operate a hotline and support groups, and accompany the victims during the criminal procedures ... According to the report, the largest group of victims - constituting 19 percent - were attacked by family relatives, 4.2 percent were attacked by a spouse, and 14 percent by a friend or acquaintance. Only 12 percent of the assaults were perpetrated by a complete stranger."

[In Israel, non-Jews -- indigenous Arabs and European, Asian, and African "immigrant workers" -- are treated like animals. This is the country U.S. soldiers are dying for in Iraq.]
'They kick the workers in the head until they bleed',
By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz (Israel), April 8, 2003
"'Approximately one thousand Bulgarian men are living under inhumane conditions on construction sites in Israel. They are beaten, prevented from seeking medical help, and in the past year, have been shot at along the Israel-Palestinian border while they worked. Their passports are collected as they step off the plane, and are returned to them two years later, when their contract expires.' These are the opening lines of an article appearing this week on the cover of '24 Hours' a widely distributed newspaper in Bulgaria. The article is based on the first-person account of a Bulgarian construction worker who worked in Israel until the fall of 2002. The worker, who spoke anonymously, had been recruited for work in Israel by Bacheisky, a company whose manager told the newspaper that he has sent over 2000 workers to Israel, and had never heard any complaints. Bacheisky is a local agent for Yitzhak Tsarfati of Rishon Letzion, who owns a company that supplies construction and manpower services in Israel. Despite his claim of never having heard complaints from workers sent to Israel, numerous complaints have been heard, although it seems as if everyone who has heard them prefers to remain silent: the workers are usually too scared to go to the police or to the support organizations; the contractors are satisfied with the disciplined workers, whose diligence and professionalism has gained the Bulgarians a sterling reputation; and the Israeli and Bulgarian diplomats prefer to know as little as possible, for their own reasons. Serious charges of kidnapping, imprisonment and beating of four workers were submitted to the police over two-and-a-half years ago, but the file has been gathering dust in the prosecutor's office. 'Our workers don't run away,' assures the headline in a brochure put out by Tsarfati, in which he also offers contractors $5,000 in compensation for every runaway. Tsarfati's workers have made a name for themselves. They do not run away from their employers, unlike Romanian and Chinese workers, who have broken their contracts. Denia Sibos, an Israeli contracting firm, has had to contend with over 700 runaways, says Gideon Shavlovich, a project manager who is intimately familiar with the trade ... The question is what methods does Tsarfati use to guarantee that his crews won't run away. 'I have recently received disturbing reports about a manpower contractor, Yitzhak Tsarfati of Rishon Letzion, who treats the workers that he brings from Bulgaria with severe violence. It has been alleged that he imposes a reign of terror that is intended to prevent them from running away from him..." wrote MK Yuri Stern (National Union-Yisrael Beitenu) this week to Police Major General Yaakov Ganot, who oversees immigration cases. 'The workers are too frightened to complain, partly because Mr. Tsarfati threatens to hurt their families in Bulgaria, where he has widespread businesses and connections,' writes Stern, a former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Workers Committee. ... All of the workers interviewed for this article stipulated that they would only talk on condition that their names would not be revealed. One consented to have the physical signs of his beating photographed. In order to avoid his identification, Ha'aretz omitted descriptions of many of the instances. Two of the men asked that the car that transported them to the interview site wait outside their residence with its lights off. One worker said that he was beaten in public, on the grounds of his dormitory, in order that his friends would see, and be frightened. Others said they were beaten in the shower room of their dormitory. 'They're really poor wretches. The most terrifying methods are used against them. Their families are under threat,' says a building supervisor in a large construction firm. The executive director of the Contractor's Association, Major General (res.) Yehuda Segev, says that after hearing rumors about the ostensible 'terror' used against the workers, he called in Tsarfati for a conversation, partly to ask him how it is that his workers do not run away ... Hundreds of Tsarfati's 800 workers are housed in caravans in the Lod industrial zone, living in conditions that to the visitor from the outside seem dismal and crowded. The site is encompassed by a high concrete wall, with guards posted around the encampment in the evening hours. Workers on the site report that 40 men share a single shower. In other sites in Israel, his workers say that they have no heating or air-conditioning, and anyone who wants a television or satellite antenna must buy it himself. Workers report 'penalties' of up to $150 that are imposed on anyone who refuses to go to work because he doesn't feel well, or is late coming back from shopping or going out with friends. The workday begins at 6 A.M., and ends at 6 P.M. or later, with half an hour off for lunch. On days that they work until 9 P.M., the workers receive another quarter-hour break for dinner ... A no less disturbing aspect of the affair is Tsarfati's connections with Emanuel Zisman, the man who served as Israeli ambassador to Bulgaria until November 2002, as well as with his predecessor, David Cohen. Zisman and Cohen's names appear as character references in Tsarfati's brochure, along with their cell phone numbers."

Doing the US's Dirty Work. The Colombian Paramilitaries and Israel,
By Jeremy Bigwood, Narco News Bulletin, April 8, 2003
"I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis." -Carlos Castaño, Mi Confesión, 2002
"According to his recently published autobiography, Carlos Castaño was only 18 years old when he arrived in Israel in 1983 to take a year-long course called '562.' Castaño, a Colombian, had come to the Holy Land as a pilgrim of sorts, but not to find peace. Course 562 was about war, and how to wage it, and it was something Carlos Castaño would eventually excel at, becoming the most adept and ruthless paramilitary leader in Latin America’s history ... In the 1980s, these paramilitary groups were disparate and poorly trained, sometimes involving themselves in bloody internecine turf battles. In order to take the offensive against the steady advances of the leftist guerrillas, the paramilitaries needed both unification and political/military training. While these paramilitaries essentially worked towards the same goals as US foreign policy, the US government could not directly support them because of their death squad tactics. But others could. Exactly how Carlos Castaño got to Israel is still a mystery, as is precisely which entity trained him there. But whoever set it up, the Israeli course '562' definitely had a strong effect on Castaño. 'Something clicked in me, and I began to behave differently...My perception of this war changed radically after my trip to Israel,' he said in his best-selling autobiography, which is a series of interviews edited by Spanish journalist Mauricio Aranguren Molina ... Most importantly for the eager student, he 'received lectures on how the world arms business operates, and how to buy arms.' And of course, there was also a military component: 'I received instruction in urban strategies, how to protect oneself, how to kill someone or what to do when someone is trying to kill you... We learned how to stop an armored car and use fragmentation grenades to enter a target. We practiced with multiple grenade launchers, and learned how to make accurate shots with RPG-7s, or shoot a cannon shell through a window.' 'We also took complementary courses on terrorism and counter-terrorism, night vision equipment, and parachuting. We also learned how to make homemade bombs. In short, we learned what the Israelis know, but, in all sincerity, very little of all of this has been applied to the war in Colombia. I got a very good basic education, and there I learned how to do the most important thing – I learned how to control fear' ... Castaño summarizes his epiphany in Israel in the following terms: 'Upon returning to Colombia, I had become another person... I learned an infinite amount of things in Israel and to that country I owe part of my essence, my human and military achievements, although I repeat, in Israel I didn’t only learn about things related to military training. There I became convinced that it was possible to destroy the guerrillas in Colombia. I started to understand how a people could defend itself against the whole world. I understood how to bring into the 'cause' a person who had something to lose in the war, with the aim of converting him into the enemy of my enemies.' By 1985, shortly after Castaño returned to Colombia, some of the paramilitary groups that were springing up had become completely dependant on the monies from drug trafficking. Indeed, some paramilitary units had merely evolved as such from drug protection rackets ... But apparently this training by fellow Colombians was not enough, and in 1987 the Israelis were called in to help, probably through Colombian Army intermediaries. In the mainstream media the 16 Israeli and some British trainers were presented as 'mercenaries,' perhaps because of the bias of the Colombian DAS agents who wrote a report on them. These foreign military trainers were far too well connected to be ordinary 'mercenaries'—they clearly acted with some government approval, most definitely that of Israel, and probably of some US entity also – as we shall see below. Castaño, who attended these courses, said that members of the Colombian Army had actually arranged the courses, which featured the training by a famous Israeli officer, Yair Klein. Again, it was Castaño ally Henry Perez who picked the candidates - along with drug kingpin Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha. According to his book, Carlos Castaño took part in the courses, and their organization occupied five of the 50 scholarships. According to the DAS document: A group of five Israelis taught the course called 'PABLO EMILIO GUARIN VERA' in the 'El Cincuenta' school of Puerto Boyocá. The instructors were in the area for a period of 45 days after having entered the country through Cartegena (Bolivar). Initially, they stayed in the "El Rosario" residence of Puerto Boyocá and later in a rustic house on the Isla de la Fantasía (Fantasy Island)... Another thirty scholarships were awarded so that the best students could undergo further training in Israel, just as Castaño had done: 'According to what these instructors said, they were going to send the best 30 students for further schooling in a special course that would be taught in Israel.' Thirty paramilitaries being sent to Israel would have clearly required the permission of the Israeli Defense Forces - the Israeli government. It is hard to imagine anything else for a country continually at war. And there was also a Nicaraguan Contra connection: 'TEDDY, the Israeli interpreter told our source that they should shorten and speed up the course because they had promised to train the Nicaraguan Contras in Honduras and Costa Rica' ... In Colombia you see the black assault rifles everywhere. Both the US-backed Army and the National Police use them. These are not, as you might imagine, US M16s, but they are the famous Israeli Galil assault rifle, an imitation of the Russian Kalashnikov series but marketed in Latin America using the smaller, but faster (and messier) .223 round - the same as the M16. The Galil has been manufactured by the Israeli Military Industries since 1972 and has been a considerable success. But the Israelis themselves do not use many Galils in their own operations inside (and outside) Israel, because they get M16s free from the US. But in Latin America, the Galil is the main weapon of both the Guatemalan and Colombian governments. In the Guatemalan case, the US did not wish to be seen overtly supplying the Guatemalan military as it conducted countless massacres in the countryside during the 1980s. So Israel stepped in and not only supplied the weapons, but also built a munitions factory in Coban, a mountainous, but relatively unconflicted region of the country. While the Israelis made out well on the deal, it was not so sweet for the Guatemalans: the factory was most of the time immersed in humid clouds, and the resulting ammunition was often damp, producing misfires. But in Colombia, Israeli Military Industries didn’t merely set up a munitions factory to make bullets; they set up an entire Galil assault rifle factory in Bogotá. Of the Colombian version of the weapon, only the barrel is imported from Israel. Who pays for this? Colombia? Think again. The Isreali assault rifles are paid for through US military aid to both Israel and Colombia. As such, it is yet another way the unwitting US taxpayer is underwriting the Colombian bloodletting."

Correspondent: ISRAEL'S SECRET WEAPON,
BBC (transcript), March 17, 2003
"This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.01 Correspondent Theme Music 00.00.11 Music 00.00.11 Graphic Which country in the Middle East has undeclared Nuclear weapons? 00.00.16 Graphic Which country in the Middle East has undeclared biological and chemical capabilities? 00.00.21 Graphic Which country in the Middle East has no outside inspections? 00.00.26 Graphic Which country jailed its nuclear whistleblower for 18 years? 00.00.31 Title page ISRAEL'S SECRET WEAPON" [Discussion of Israeli nuclear weapons whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu].

Jewish Group Probed for Blast at Palestinian School,
Reuters, April 9, 2003
"An explosion wounded 20 students at a Palestinian high school in the West Bank on Wednesday, and Israeli police said they were investigating whether it was the work of Jewish vigilantes. Lutfi Abu Oun, mayor of the village of Jaba'a, said two of the teenagers were seriously hurt and all of the wounded were taken to hospitals in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus. School headmaster Ismail Salah said the explosion tore through a classroom for 16-year-old boys just as they returned from a midday recess. Desks and chairs were thrown about and splintered, and pools of blood and glass shards littered the floor, witnesses said. An unknown Jewish group calling itself 'Revenge of the Infants' claimed responsibility for the blast in a message sent to Israeli reporters' pagers, police said."

Foreign cameramen finally receive work permits,
by Annette Young, Haaretz (Israel) , April 11, 2003
"In the face of growing international criticism, the government has reversed its decision and agreed to issue work permits to foreign cameramen on the grounds they are not taking away jobs from their Israeli counterparts. Members of the foreign media were informed Wednesday of the decision, which followed heavy lobbying from members of the Foreign Press Association, capped off by a visit earlier this month to Israel by delegates from the International Press Institute (IPI) who met senior government officials. "We are very happy that the government has righted this wrong," said Tami Allen-Frost, the deputy chairwoman of the Foreign Press Association. From early 2002, foreign cameramen have run into problems when it comes to obtaining work permits, ever since the Government Press Office (GPO) transferred this function to the government's Employment Service. Some 15 cameramen - including those working for NBC, BBC, CNN and ITN - have found it difficult to obtain work permits on the grounds that they are foreign nationals. The Employment Service regarded cameramen as technical operators, arguing the networks should employ Israelis instead. However, foreign media representatives and the IPI insisted that under an international agreement, all camera operators should be treated as journalists, as is the case for stills photographers ... However, there was still no sign of resolving the impasse between the foreign media and the government over the accreditation of Palestinian journalists. As a result, foreign correspondents wishing to cover the intifada are limited in what they can cover, since Israeli cameramen are usually barred by Israeli authorities from entering Palestinian territories."

[The following grotesquely fraudulent statement is brought to you by the world's most famous "anti-hate" organization. The ADL serves as a front organization for racist Israel. Read the truth about Israeli "colorblindness" and its "democracy" here, or here.]
Israel: The Facts,
Anti-Defamation League,
"Civil Rights Israel is a colorblind society, comprised of Jews and non-Jews from at least 100 different countries from diverse ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Democracy is the cornerstone of the State. Israel ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. It guarantees the freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture. Israel safeguards the Holy Places of all religions. All Israeli citizens, regardless of religion, ethnicity or color are accorded full civil and political rights, and equal participation in all aspects of Israeli social, political and civil life."

[It's open season on American peace activists in Israel. Murdering them is now a weekly occurence.]
British peace activist shot by IDF troops in Gaza Strip,
by Tsahar Rotem, Haaretz (Isarel), April 12, 2003
"Israel Defense Forces troops firing from a tank critically wounded a British man Friday as he and other activists in a pro-Palestinian group approached an army position on the edge of a Gaza refugee camp, witnesses said. The Briton, Thomas Hurndall, 21, from Manchester, suffered a head injury that left him comatose and hooked up to a respirator, said doctors. He was the second foreigner to be harmed in a week. A third member of the group, the International Solidarity Movement, was killed while trying to stop an Israeli army bulldozer a month ago, near where Hurndall was shot Friday. The IDF had no comment about Friday's shooting... . The activists wanted to set up a protest tent on the road, in an attempt to block incursions, said Hamra and Khalil Abdullah, a Palestinian who works with the group but who is not a member. Along the way, the protesters were joined by several children, the witnesses said. When the group was about 200 yards away from three tanks, soldiers opened fire from a tank-mounted machine gun, the witnesses said. Hurndall and another foreign activist tried to get two children out of the line of fire, Hamra and Abdullah said. 'Thomas grabbed one of their hands and as soon as he did that a tank fired at him, hitting him in the head,' Hamra said. The photographer said the children were not throwing rocks at the troops and that he saw nothing that would have provoked the troops. Hurndall was declared brain dead after arriving at Rafah Hospital, said Dr. Ali Musa ... A few blocks from where Friday's shooting occurred, American activist Rachel Corrie, 23, was killed on March 16 while trying to stop an Israeli army bulldozer. Witnesses said the bulldozer ran her over and then backed up. The army said the driver did not see her and that her death was an accident. Corrie, a student in Olympia, Washington, was the first member of the group to be killed in 30 months of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. Last week, Bryan Avery, 24, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was shot in the face while walking with a fellow activist in the West Bank town of Jenin."