[Israel turns its bombs towards the Iranian government because the Jewish state doesn't like its hostility to Zionist oppression and racism. A "conventional" state is one that kneels to Middle East Judeocentrism and its hundreds of nuclear bombs.]
ISRAEL MULLS MISSION AGAINST IRAN'S NUKES,
MENEWSLINE, September 26, 2003
"For the first time, Israel's military has raised the prospect of an operation to destroy Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program. Senior government and military officials, alarmed by the failure of the international community to move against Iran, have issued warnings that Israel would consider unilateral action to stop Teheran's development of nuclear weapons. The clearest warnings yet came on the eve of another effort by the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate suspected Iranian violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The suspected violations include the unauthorized enrichment of uranium. "The fact that a country like Iran, an enemy [of Israel] and which is particularly irresponsible, has equipped itself with nonconventional weapons is worrisome," Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said. "The combination in this case of a nonconventional regime with nonconventional weapons is a concern." "At the moment there is continuing international diplomatic activity to deal with this threat, and it would be good if it succeeds," Ya'alon added. "But if that is not the case we would consider our options."

[Note: May have a long download time.]
Israeli Defense Force Home Demolition -- online "Flash" movie,
The International Solidarity Movement (Palsolidarity)

Senior U.S. diplomats press Israel on settlements,
By Zvi Zrahiya, Haaretz (Isarel), September 30, 2001
"A senior U.S. diplomat said on Monday that Israel's refusal to stop building settlements in the West Bank threatened its future as a democratic Jewish state. The warning came in a speech by William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, at the U.S.-Arab Economic Forum in Detroit, a conference exploring ways of fostering growth, development and trade between the United States and the Arab world. "As Israeli settlements expand and their populations increase, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how the two peoples will be separated into two states," Burns said. "The fact is that settlements continue to grow today, encouraged by specific government policies and at enormous expense to Israel's economy, and this persists even as it becomes clear that the logic of settlements and the reality of demographics could threaten the future of Israel as a Jewish democracy." Burns was referring to experts' predictions that Jews will become a minority in the area encompassing Israel, the West Bank and Gaza by 2020. Burns added that Israel's settlement policy ran counter to the goal, supported by U.S. President George W. Bush, of creating a contiguous Palestinian state alongside Israel, with the two eventually living side by side in peace."

[Judeocentric propagandist/columnist Richard Cohen concedes some problems. Among them, Israel is CORRUPT.]
Israel Is Losing,
By Richard Cohen, Washington Post, October 7, 2003
"In the perpetual war against Israel, its enemies are winning. The economy is awful. Parents do not want their children to go out. The beach is presumed safe, but not a cafe or restaurant. A commute on a bus (I have done it) is gut-wrenching. You watch everyone. What does a suicide bomber look like? The last one, the one who blew up a Haifa restaurant, was a 29-year-old woman, a law school graduate. She killed Arab and Jew alike. Even safe places are no longer safe. So I cannot blame Israel for striking back. It assassinates Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders and militants. It razes the homes of suicide bombers. It has Yasser Arafat bottled up and may deport or kill him. It has bombed purported terrorist camps in Syria. But nothing Israel has done has brought it peace and security. If you read the Israeli press, the despair is palpable. To some, especially those on the left, Israel has become virtually a dysfunctional society. The government can't protect its people. Corruption is endemic. Religious zealots have inordinate influence, and their vision, a Greater Israel, compels the building or thickening of West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements. With every suicide bombing, the rational course -- a withdrawal from Palestinian areas -- seems like weakness rather than wisdom. Israel must return to the so-called Green Line -- the border before the 1967 Six Day War. It must dismantle most of the settlements. It must do this because occupation is corrupting and, in the long run, impossible. The more Israel expands or retains settlements, the more it gets stuck in a quagmire where the enemy is everywhere. From September 2000 until recently, some 17,400 attacks were recorded in the territories -- and 40 percent of all fatalities. Even when terrorists struck in Israel proper, they invariably came from the West Bank. Yet Ariel Sharon recently decided to include two major settlements on the Israeli side of the fence that is being built to separate the Jewish state from the West Bank. By extending the fence to encompass the settlements, Sharon is only ensuring the continuation of his problem. He needs to get out. For a people of the book, for a country created by history as well as by men, Israel acts as if nothing that went before has any bearing on what is happening now. But history admonishes Israel. The only places where a Western culture has successfully transplanted itself are those where great population pressure and genocidal methods were used to extirpate the indigenous peoples. This is what happened in the United States. Genocide is out of the question. Neither the world nor Israeli morality would permit it. Yet Israel keeps lengthening the odds against itself. Instead of withdrawing to where Jews are a clear majority, it continues to cling to settlements where Jews are outnumbered. Every settlement, every day of occupation, puts Israel in greater and greater danger. Each settlement is a provocation. The deportation or killing of Arafat will do nothing but make him a martyr and exacerbate the chaos. The man himself is only a symptom of Israel's problem. The idyllic Zionist dream is in tatters. No one wants to go to Israel. On the contrary, people want to leave. For every suicide bombing, countless others are thwarted -- 22 in the past month, according to Zeev Schiff, the esteemed military correspondent for the newspaper Haaretz. Israel lashes out. It has now bombed Syria. What next? Iran? This is not strategy. It is fury."

Israel Demands Withdrawal of Food Report,
Bell South (from Assoicated Press), October 10, 2003
"Israel on Thursday demanded the withdrawal of a United Nations report on the food situation in the Palestinian territories, claiming the author is politically biased. Yaakov Levy, Israel's ambassador in Geneva, wrote to the chairwoman of the U.N. Human Rights Commission demanding that Jean Ziegler's report be "deemed unfit for presentation" to the commission when it meets in the spring. The move follows an interview with Ziegler on French television channel LCI, in which he said he was a member of the board of directors of the Tel Aviv-based Alternative Information Center, which describes itself as "a Palestinian-Israeli organization which disseminates information, research and political analysis ... while promoting cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis based on the values of social justice, solidarity and community involvement." Levy wrote in his letter that "Ziegler showed his true colors. He openly admitted for the first time to membership in a politically biased non-governmental organization." Ziegler, a Swiss sociology professor and former lawmaker, is the U.N.'s independent expert on the right to food. He visited Israel and the Palestinian territories in July and later said the Palestinians had been "reduced to begging" by Israeli security measures. "There is a permanent, grave violation of the right to food by the occupying forces. There is a catastrophic humanitarian situation, and really it is absurd," he said at the time. "Markets don't function, peasants don't go to the field, and they are humiliated in a very, very shocking way." Israel had earlier complained because Ziegler had presented his findings to the media before he had given them to the Israeli government. "Mr. Ziegler abused the credentials he possesses ... in order to embark on a media campaign to blast the state of Israel," Levy said. He added that he believes U.N. authorities should "consider Mr. Ziegler unfit for future assignments" ... Unusually, the Israeli government had welcomed Ziegler's visit and allowed him to go where he wanted and ask questions of Israeli officials. In the past, the government has refused to cooperate with visits by U.N. human rights experts, insisting that their mandates are biased. Its cooperation with Ziegler may have stemmed from his earlier high-profile criticism of Swiss banks for their handling of Nazi assets during World War II."

Why Sharon is dangerous,
By Gideon Samet, Haaretz (Israel), October 10, 2003
"Why? Because he doesn't even try to keep his promise of peace, and has made his promise of security worthless. Because he is a bloody adventurer who scoffs at dangers, even if you pay the price. Because this week he revived the incitement against the left over a memorandum of understanding that was drafted together with senior Palestinian figures. Because the moves of an especially skilled tactician are especially dangerous. Plenty of familiar reasons for Sharon being a political ticking bomb spring immediately to mind."

Israel ready to launch preemptive strike on nuclear sites in Iran,
ptd.net, October 11, 2003
"Israel's spy agency Mossad has drawn up preemptive attack plans on six sites in Iran it suspects are being used to prepare nuclear weapons, Der Spiegel magazine says in its Monday edition, citing Israeli security officials. A special Mossad unit received orders two months ago to prepare plans for attacks on half-a-dozen targets, the magazine said. Complete destruction of the targets by F-16 fighter bombers was deemed achievable by Mossad, it said. Israel, which is accused by Arab neighbours of possessing nuclear weapons of its own, has come to regard Iran as its chief military threat since the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq."

[Here is our ticket to world catastrophe:]
Israel Adds Subs to Its Atomic Ability. Officials confirm that the nation can now launch nuclear weapons from land, sea and air. The issue complicates efforts to rein in Iran,
By Douglas Frantz, Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2003
"Israel has modified American-supplied cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads on submarines, giving the Middle East's only nuclear power the ability to launch atomic weapons from land, air and beneath the sea, according to senior Bush administration and Israeli officials. The previously undisclosed submarine capability bolsters Israel's deterrence in the event that Iranan avowed enemy develops nuclear weapons. It also complicates efforts by the United States and the United Nations to persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program. Two Bush administration officials described the missile modification and an Israeli official confirmed it. All three spoke on condition their names not be used. The Americans said they were disclosing the information to caution Israel's enemies at a time of heightened tensions in the region and concern over Iran's alleged ambitions. Iran denies developing nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is solely for generating electricity. Iranian leaders are resisting more intrusive inspections by the United Nations, setting the stage for a showdown in coming weeks. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency has given Tehran an Oct. 31 deadline to accept full inspections and prove it has no nuclear arms program. Arab diplomats and U.N. officials said Israel's steady enhancement of its secret nuclear arsenal, and U.S. silence about it, has increased the desire of Arab states for similar weapons. "The presence of a nuclear program in the region that is not under international safeguards gives other countries the spur to develop weapons of mass destruction," said Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's ambassador to the United States. "Any future conflict becomes more dangerous." Late last month, Egypt joined Saudi Arabia and Syria at the U.N. General Assembly in criticizing the U.S. and U.N. for ignoring Israel's weapons of mass destruction while pressuring Iran. A senior Iranian official raised the same issue at a nonproliferation conference in Moscow in September. "Stability cannot be achieved in a region where massive imbalances in military capabilities are maintained, particularly through the possession of nuclear weapons that allow one party to threaten its neighbors and the region," said Ali Asghar Soltanieh. Israel will not confirm or deny that it possesses nuclear arms. Intelligence analysts and independent experts have long known that the country has 100 to 200 sophisticated nuclear weapons. Israel, India and Pakistan are the only countries with nuclear facilities that have not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which was initiated in 1968 to stop the spread of nuclear weapons through inspections and sanctions. India and Pakistan also have nuclear bombs. Iran and Arab states with civilian nuclear programs have signed the treaty. The Arab countries have refused to agree to tougher inspections because Israel will not sign it, U.N. officials said. "A big source of contention is Israel," said a senior official trying to win acceptance of the additional inspections. "This is a magnet for other countries to develop nuclear weapons." Israel and its U.S. backers regard its nuclear weapons as a centerpiece of the country's security. The development of the arms over several decades, with tacit U.S. approval, has been rarely mentioned, but it is becoming an increasingly compelling component in discussions about lasting peace in the Middle East ... Israel's nuclear stockpile confers military superiority that translates into a high degree of freedom of action, from bombing a suspected terrorist camp in Syria last week to the destruction of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 ... To avoid triggering American economic and military sanctions, U.S. intelligence agencies routinely omit Israel from semiannual reports to Congress identifying countries developing weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton administration even barred the sale of the most detailed U.S. satellite photographs of Israel in an effort to protect that country's nuclear complex and other targets. The Bush administration's determination to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons means Israel's worst-kept secret is likely to loom large in negotiations with Tehran ... Recent interviews with officials in Washington and Tel Aviv provided the first confirmation that Israel can now deliver nuclear weapons from beneath the sea .... The consensus in the U.S. intelligence community and among outside experts is that Israel, with possibly 200 nuclear weapons, has the fifth- or sixth-largest arsenal in the world."

Israel jails Canadian `refusenik'. Reserve medic won't serve in West Bank, Gaza. `We simply have to break the circle of violence',
by MITCH POTTER, Toronto Star, October 9, 2003
"A Canadian-born Israeli reserve soldier has been jailed for refusing to serve in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, citing "reasons of conscience." Dan Goldenblatt, 33, a Montreal native, declined the order to deploy to the territories Tuesday morning after returning from a funeral for a friend killed in last weekend's Palestinian suicide bombing in the Israeli port city of Haifa, in which 19 civilians died. Officers at the Israeli Defence Forces base at Yokneam immediately tried Goldenblatt, a paratrooper battle medic, sentencing him to 28 days. His detention began yesterday at an Israeli military prison near the northern Israeli town of Atlit. "Until today, I have never refused to obey an order. I always came when called, with my army boots, hat and uniform," Goldenblatt said in a written statement to his superiors obtained by the Star. "For reasons of conscience, I refuse to take part in acts of occupation. I refuse to give any Palestinian even the slightest additional reason to participate in terrorist acts, to hate my country. I refuse to participate in the policy of revolving and stupid revenge of the current government of Israel, which believes in power and lacks initiative or hope," Goldenblatt said. "And I refuse to guard the poisonous and extremely costly settlements, which are the foundation of the policy of oppression and occupation. "I believe with all my heart that in refusing to serve in the occupied territories, I am serving the State of Israel in the most important manner." In a dramatic declaration last month, 27 Israeli pilots vowed to abstain from flying "assassination strikes" in densely populated Palestinian areas. Goldenblatt was a toddler when his Montreal-born parents moved to Israel in the early 1970s. His family has always maintained close ties to Canada, his father said in an interview last night. "I'm proud of him, I agree with him 100 per cent, but at the same time I'm not happy about it," David Goldenblatt, 62, said. "The question is what happens after 28 days? The army has jailed several dozen so-called `refuseniks,' and at least one of them keeps having his detention renewed. He's spent months in jail." David Goldenblatt said the irony is he once served as an Israeli military prosecutor, yet he feels helpless to assist his son ... In his written statement, Goldenblatt cited the death of his friend, Zvi Bahat, who was killed in Saturday's suicide attack at Maxim Restaurant in Haifa. The bomber, Goldenblatt noted, was revealed to be a woman, a young Palestinian law clerk from Jenin, whose own brother and cousin were killed in earlier IDF operations. "How is it possible that a young woman can carry out such an awful suicide bombing?" Goldenblatt wrote. "The only possible answer is that she was driven by an utter lack of hope, that the result of 36 years of occupation is this utter lack of hope for a better life, freedom, self-respect — in short, all of the things that all of us hope for and expect. "We have turned the lives of women and children into hell, but we are shocked, enraged and demand retribution when the people who are the products of our occupation take action against us." David Goldenblatt, who has a sister living in Toronto, said he is concerned something will be lost in the translation when the Canadian family learns of his son's incarceration. "It's a problem. My sense is the overwhelming majority of the Canadian Jewish community gets its views from the Israeli government," he said. "I would tell them that at this point, it doesn't even matter who is right. We simply have to break the circle of violence."

[Gaza is a giant concentration camp where Israelis may recklessly slaughter Arabs without getting their hands dirty, like spearing fish in a bowl.]
Israeli Raids in Gaza Kill 10, Wound 100,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), October 20, 2003
"In the bloodiest day in the Gaza Strip in months, Israeli warplanes and helicopters pounded militant targets Monday, killing 10 Palestinians, including seven in a refugee camp where a car was destroyed, and wounding about 100. The violent Islamic movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad threatened revenge, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged more raids and the State Department advised U.S. citizens to defer travel to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. With prospects for Mideast peace efforts further clouded, U.S. officials confirmed that John Wolf, the head of the team monitoring implementation of the troubled U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, was not planning to return to the region soo ... Residents said Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at the main street, destroying a car. An Israeli army statement said the vehicle was carrying members of a Palestinian terrorist squad fleeing after a failed attempt to breach the border fence with Israel a few miles to the northeast. But Israel's Channel 10 TV said that none of the dead were militants, characterizing the refugee camp strike as a "mistake." Residents said one of the dead was a doctor who was treating victims when a second missile struck. The identity of the other victims was not immediately known. Hundreds of camp residents carried charred pieces of the vehicle aloft and chanted, "Revenge, revenge." In Gaza City, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a building in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood, the same structure that was hit in an earlier airstrike Monday, residents said. Eleven people were wounded, they said. Israeli military sources said the attack was meant to finish the work of the first one. The first three airstrikes Monday destroyed two weapons labs and warehouses of Hamas, the military said. Four children and a 70-year-old woman were among 25 wounded. Two missiles exploded on a street crowded with schoolchildren. During three years of violence, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have caused dozens of civilian casualties."

Death Urged For Israeli Authors Of Geneva Peace,
rense.com (from AFP), October 21, 2003
"A right-wing Knesset member Tuesday accused high-profile Israeli leftists who drafted an unofficial peace plan with the Palestinians of "treason" and demanded they be sentenced to death or life imprisonment. "Those who initiated the Geneva agreement have perpetrated a crime of treason necessitating a death sentence or life imprisonement," Shaul Yahalom, who heads the radical National Religious Party (NRP), wrote in a letter to Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, according to a copy obtained by AFP. The symbolic Geneva peace plan was drawn up last week between Israeli left-wingers, including former justice minister Yossi Beilin, and leading Palestinians such as former information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo."

[Israel rides the U.S. like a drugged donkey.]
Israel Rejects U.N. Call to Remove Fence,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), October 22, 2003
"Israel rejected an overwhelming call by the United Nations to dismantle a massive barrier being built in the West Bank, with a top official dismissing the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday as hostile to the Jewish state. "The fence will continue to be built," said Vice Premier Ehud Olmert. Israel says the wall is needed to keep suicide bombers out of the country. The Palestinians say Israel is using the barrier as a pretext to take Palestinian land. In Jerusalem, meanwhile, Israel's police minister toured a disputed holy site - the first visit by a senior Israeli official since Israeli-Palestinian fighting erupted there three years ago. Muslim administrators of the site called the visit a provocation, though Police Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said it was coordinated with them ... The General Assembly's call to dismantle the West Bank barrier was passed late Tuesday after more than six hours of negotiations. The compromise resolution wasn't legally binding, but was seen as a gauge of world opinion. Palestinians praised the measure, which passed with 144 countries in favor and four opposed, including the United States. There were 12 abstentions. Olmert, speaking to Israel radio Wednesday, dismissed the resolution as an example of the world's hostility toward Israel ... Asked if Israel would stop building the barrier, Olmert laughed and said: "You have a sense of humor." "We have to worry about Israel's security and it is clear that we will not act according to the instructions of a hostile, automatic majority ... who has always acted against Israel," Olmert said. "If the whole world is on one side, and America and Israel on the other side, I'm proud to be on the American side," he added ... An electrified fence was surrounded by coils of razor wire, with an asphalt patrol road running along the Israeli side. "Mortal danger - Military Zone. Any person who passes or damages the fence endangers his life," a sign read in three languages."

''If this is press freedom, who needs repression?'',
By Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, Yellow Times, October 22, 2003
"If you think Israel and the U.S. respect press freedom and are shining examples to the Arab world, Reporters Without Borders' "World Press Freedom Ranking" for 2003, released October 20, might cause you to think again. The journalism advocacy group has "singled out" the two countries "for actions beyond their borders." As such, their rankings distinguish between their behavior at home and abroad. Among 166 countries, the U.S. is ranked 31st for domestic freedom of expression, but plummets to 135 regarding behavior beyond its borders, likewise with Israel, which is ranked 44th and an appalling 146th respectively. "The Israeli army's repeated abuses against journalists in the occupied territories and the U.S. army's responsibility in the death of several reporters during the war in Iraq constitute unacceptable behavior by two nations that never stop stressing their commitment to freedom of expression," said Reporters Without Borders. The organization -- which compiled its rankings by asking journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists to fill out a questionnaire evaluating respect for press freedom in a particular country -- ranked U.S. behavior towards the media in Iraq below that of Iraq itself, as well as below 13 other Arab countries. Israel's respect for press freedom in the occupied Palestinian territories is worse than that of all but 5 Arab countries (Tunisia, Oman, Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia). These rankings are particularly grim considering that the Arab world is unfortunately not exactly a torch-bearer of press freedom -- Comoros, which led the way this year, was ranked 79th, followed by Kuwait at 102. In the introduction to its 2003 Annual Report, Reporters Without Borders stated: "In the Palestinian Territories, the Israeli army used excessive and undue force against journalists. Three journalists -- an Italian and two Palestinians -- were killed while doing their job, to all appearances by the Israeli army. The army's attitude, deliberate administrative delays and fierce attacks by Israeli officials on the international media were all part of a strategy of harassing journalists, Palestinian or foreign … Israel had the record for journalists arrested, including more than a score of Palestinians." The organization added that Israel, among other countries, "abused" its state of emergency "to arrest journalists and ban newspapers." Further extracts from the 2003 Annual Report concerning Israel, including restrictions on its own media, "pressure and obstruction" in the occupied territories, and details of journalists being killed, wounded, imprisoned and arrested, can be read by clicking here.

State of alert: Israel is running out of time,
by Jonathan Freedland, Jewish Chronicle (UK, paper copy), October 10, 2003, p. 33
"The plain fact is this: In the land some call Greater Israel and others call historic Palestine -- the combiend area covered by Israel, the West Bank and Gaza -- Palestinians and Jews are already roughly equal in number. By the year 2020, Jews will make up just 40 per cent. That is the simple, demographic truth of it. We can wish it were otherwise, but that's how it is. There will then be three options: Either a round of the most intense ethnic cleansing, as Israelis drive milions of Palestinais from their homes -- a scenario Jews should find unconscionable and which the world would not tolerate nor ever forgive. Or Israel could construct a formal apartheid state, in which a Jewish minority would rule over an Arab majority permanently denied the vote -- a prospect that, once again, Jews should find repulsive and which would guarantee Israel the same pariah status enjoyed by 1980s South Africa. Or, finally Israel could remain a democracy, giving everyone the vote -- but with the Jews as an ever-diminishing minority. It would no longer be a Jewish state, no longer be Israel, and my Yom Kippur speaker's worst fears would have been realised. So you can see the choices: a Jewish state lacking all morality, or a state lacking a Jewish identity ... Zionists of every stripe need to see what is happening. The longer Israel holdson to the occupied territories, the further away a two-state solution becomes. That does not mean more room for Israel: it means a choice between the countru's Jewish charactter or losing its Jewish majority."

Harry Potter star launches scathing attack on Israel,
by Gaby Wine, Jewish Chronicle (UK, paper copy), Septembe 12, 2003, p. 6
"Actress Miriam Margolyes has slammed Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, suggesting at a peace meeting that 'the attitude of Israelis has filtered through from Auschwitz' ... Speaking afterward to the JC, the actress -- best known for her role as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films -- described herself 'a very proud Jew. I expect the highest standards. I made a private visit to Gaza and it was a shattering experience. I know this is an unpopular message, but I haven't got time to make moral compromises."

Rabbi Rambo,
By Susan Silverman, Jewish Magazine
"'Tonight's guest is Rabbi Rambo!" "Rabbi Rambo?" I thought to myself, what kind of joke is this? A pleasant, more serious voice began to speak. "Good evening to our radio audience. I'm Avraham Geva, and this evening I'm privileged to host a distinguished guest whom most of you know and love, former Special Forces commando, Rabbi Lazer Brody…" "Impossible!" I yelled at the windshield. Everybody knows that ultra-orthodox rabbis don't serve in the army. My preconceptions, knocked into me by typical Israeli prejudice, were soon shattered into a zillion tiny pieces. My hour-long drive from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv seemed to transpire in seven or eight minutes. I was literally glued to the broadcast. Brody is known affectionately as a street rabbi, since he prefers to be accessible to people from all walks of life rather than limit himself to the confines of a closed congregation ... Brody is a combat veteran of two wars and tens of anti-terrorist missions, and has twice received citations of honor. Although very tight-lipped about his military past, he nods and flashes a shy grin, acknowledging that he received his nickname of "Rabbi Rambo" for his part in a near suicidal mission which led to the destruction of four deadly Russian-assisted terrorist rocket batteries in West Beirut, 1982. When the Israel-Lebanon conflict erupted in 1982, he was among the first to be mobilized. While fighting in the streets of Beirut, he developed a burning spiritual thirst. Soon after the war, he left his farm on the Samarian ridge to study Torah in Jerusalem. Nine years of intensive Talmudic, ethics, and legal studies, led to his rabbinical ordination in 199 ... His rare combination of Special-Forces experience and rabbinical education has rendered him a leader in the field of high-stress situation counseling ... Gradually, the word about this remarkable emotional therapist with his unique system of therapy is leaking out of Israel. Rabbi Brody's method - known as "SAC", or "spiritual awareness counseling", enhances self-realization, inner strength, and healthy interpersonal relationships by way of spiritual growth."

Masked Israeli troops arrest two militants in raids on two Palestinian hospitals,
by ALI DARAGHMEH, sfgate (from Associated Press), October 25, 2003 "Dozens of Israeli troops wearing black ski masks and armed with assault rifles raided two West Bank hospitals before dawn Saturday, arresting two suspected Palestinian militants, including a critically injured patient, witnesses and the military said. Around 3 a.m., troops pulled up in jeeps and swept into the two hospitals in the city of Nablus, confining doctors and other staff to rooms for more than an hour as they kicked open doors in room-to-room searches, witnesses said. The operation followed several similar raids in recent weeks, including cases where soldiers arrested militants hiding in hospitals. It raised fears among doctors and human rights groups that, after three years of fighting, hospitals were no longer neutral ground. In Nablus' Anglican Hospital Saturday, soldiers entered the intensive care unit and snatched Khaled Hamed, a 25-year-old member of the militant Hamas group who was badly injured Wednesday when explosives inside a car he was riding in went off accidentally. One man was killed in the blast and another injured. Dr. Annan Abdel Hak said Hamed lost two fingers in the blast and suffered bleeding in his brain and light burns on his body. "I explained to the soldiers how critical his condition is," said the doctor said. "Then they removed the machines from his body." Hamed had planned suicide bombing attacks, a military source said, adding that troops took him in a military ambulance to an Israeli hospital where he was in stable condition. Elsewhere in the city, troops stormed Rafidiyeh Hospital and arrested an armed member of the violent Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group of militants with links to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. The military said troops found the man, whom Palestinians identified as Jawad Ishtayeh, 27, hiding in the hospital's cellar and armed with a pistol. Palestinian security sources said the man was not a patient and was apparently using the hospital as a hide-out. An American peace activist witnessed the arrest raid in the hospital, where he was recovering from light gunshot wounds to his leg. He said he was hurt along with a fellow activist from Australia by Israeli army gunfire after dark Friday during clashes in the city's Balata refugee camp. "Around 3 a.m. I was woken up with a flash light shining in my face. I opened my eyes and had an M-16 pointed in my face," said Mark Turner, 24, from Boulder, Colo. He said soldiers in black ski masks and bullet proof vests stood at the foot of hospital beds for more than an hour, pointing guns at staff and patients and warning people not to make a sound. Phone lines were cut, and soldiers made some doctors and nurses to lie on the ground and told patients to put their hands in the air, Turner said. Another soldier filmed patients with a hand-held video recorder. As they left, Turner looked from a hospital window and saw one man being arrested. Saturday's raids were the third and fourth Israeli military sweeps of Palestinian hospitals in the last two months."

[Note: approximately 18% of the formal "Israeli" population is Arab. Second /third / no, fourth class citizens, where do you think they fit in the following economic problems? This article doesn't say.]
'IF THERE'S MONEY FOR THE SETTLERS, THEN THERE SHOULD BE MONEY FOR US. ' Israel's age of austerity. The Israeli government adopted an austerity budget in September, cutting social welfare to pay for defence and settlements. Israelis were already suffering from the worst recession since 1953. Now one family in five does not have enough to eat,
By Joseph Algazy, Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2003
"SINCE the beginning of the summer, ministers, civil servants, shoppers and passers-by on the avenue in front of the finance ministry in Jerusalem have had to file past a row of tents where men, women and children are living. These people - single mothers, the homeless and the unemployed - are the main victims of the current anti-social policies of Ariel Sharon's government. Vicki Knafo, the woman who started the protest movement, is a 43-year-old divorcee raising her three children on 1,200 shekels ($270) a month that she earns as a part-time cook in a crèche. Until July she received supplementary benefit of around 2,700 shekels ($605) to bring her income up to the official minimum. But after the government's recent austerity measures she gets 1,200 shekels less. Early in July she set out from her home in the Negev desert town of Mizpeh Ramon to walk the 200km to Jerusalem. It took her a week. Others have followed her, sometimes taking their children with them. Among them is Ben Abraham, aged 59, who has a dog but no home. His T-shirt bears the message: "My dog has a kennel - what do I have?" The police intervene violently whenever these protesters attempt to speak to ministers. A group of Negev Bedouins who have set up a tent nearby are protesting against the systematic destruction of their villages, which is intended to drive them from their ancestral lands into city slums that some people call "reservations". There is another campsite of the unemployed and homeless in Tel Aviv. It was set up in August 2002 in one of the richest districts on Kikar Medina (State Square), which the protesters call Kikar HaLehem (Bread Square). Dozens live there, with their children, in old buses or tents. So far, all attempts by the local authority and property owners to have them removed have failed ... These protesters are the tip of the iceberg, for Israel is in acute economic crisis. From 1992 to 1995 growth was above 7% a year, thanks to the Oslo Accords and the arrival of Jews who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union. It has fallen continuously ever since, and the second intifada has plunged the country into deep recession ... Avraham Shochat, a Labour member of the Knesset and former finance minister, says talk of a turnaround in the economy is "nonsense". It "will be achieved only if there is a political turnaround in the Middle East. Without that, there will be no new investments by foreigners or Israelis." He believes the economy will not see growth of 2.5% in 2004 unless the level of friction with the Palestinians is lowered. In July the number of registered unemployed went above 220,000, which is 14,000 more than in June. As a result, 34 towns (29 Arab and 5 Jewish) had a rate above the symbolic threshold of 10% ... Under-25s will have to check in at the labour exchange every day, to force them to take the place of Israel's 250,000 immigrant workers, more than 50,000 of whom have been expelled by the police. These were ruthlessly exploited, often working up to 14 hours a day and seven days a week for a monthly wage of $500 to $600 - a form of modern slavery that Israelis are not willing to accept ... According to another poll published by the humanitarian charity Latet (Giving), the number of Israelis applying for food aid jumped by 46% in a year. The main applicants are single-parent and large families. Public opinion was shocked by the simultaneous announcement of the huge profits made by Israel's banks. The largest, Bank Hapoalim, announced net profits of 335m shekels ($75m) for the second quarter of 2003, an increase of 59%. Israel Discount Bank's profit rose to 116m shekels ($26m) for the same period, 36.5% more than in 2002. The combined profits of the five largest banks (Hapoalim, Leumi, Discount, Hamizrahi and BenLeumi) for the first half of 2003 are 1,400m shekels ($314m), 130% higher than the first half of 2002.".

Palestinian olive trees sold to rich Israelis,
By Alan Philps, Telegraph (UK), November 28, 2002
"Israel's Defence Ministry is investigating reports that Palestinian olive trees uprooted to make way for a security fence are being sold illegally to rich Israelis and town councils, sometimes for thousands of pounds each. The illegal trade in olive trees has flourished as Israeli contractors, supported by armed guards, clear Palestinian agricultural land where an 80-mile electronic fence is being built to seal off the West Bank. Thousands of olive trees have been dug up to make way for the 150-ft wide barrier and security zone. Its route usually passes inside Palestinian territory, not along the old pre-1967 border, and thousands of Palestinian farmers say their livelihood is being taken away. Sale of the olive trees emerged after the owner of a contracting company offered two reporters from a popular Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, 100 large olive trees for £150 each. The reporters found one enormous tree, said to be 600 years old, on sale at an Israeli plant nursery for £3,500. They said the trade was conducted with the complicity of an official in the civil administration, the Israeli military government in the occupied territories. Olive trees are extremely hardy, can live for hundreds of years and will often stand transplanting. Gnarled old specimens which are claimed, with some exaggeration, to have been alive at the time of Jesus are much sought after for gardens of the rich or city parks ... While the trees may be ornaments to Israelis, olives are the lifeblood of Palestinian agriculture, almost the only crop which grows on the stony hillsides of the West Bank without irrigation. Most Palestinians are unemployed after two years of violence and their staple diet is bread and olive oil. About 11,000 Palestinian farmers will lose all or some of their land holdings to the fence. Sharif Omar, from the village of Jayous, near the Israeli town of Kochav Yair, said: "I have lost almost everything. I have lost 2,700 fruit and olive trees. And 44 of 50 acres I own have been confiscated for the fence." His village lost seven wells, 15,000 olive trees and 50,000 citrus and other fruit trees. "This area is the agricultural store for the West Bank. They are destroying us," he said. Israel is offering compensation for confiscated agricultural land but Palestinians are unlikely to apply, as they still hope to get their land back. The Palestinian Agriculture Ministry says 200,000 olive trees have been destroyed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the past two years to provide security for settlers. The £90 million fence will prevent suicide bombers infiltrating into Israel. But some Israeli border communities say depriving Palestinians of their livelihood will make for worse, not better, neighbours."

[As the JTR contributor who sent this in notes: "Folks finally catching on, eh?!" Everyone's getting fed up with Zionism and Judeocentrism -- although those that rule culture are in the Jewish Pocket and are implicitly censorial. How come a majority of Americans aren't also up in arms about Israel? Because Judeocentrism owns them.]
Poll controversy as Israel and US labelled biggest threats to World peace. Europeans believe the US contributes the most to world instability along with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea,
by Andrew Beatty, EUOBSERVER; BRUSSELS, October 31, 2003
"Over half of Europeans think that Israel now presents the biggest threat to world peace according to a controversial poll requested by the European Commission. According to the same survey, Europeans believe the United States contributes the most to world instability along with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea. The specially commissioned poll which asked citizens 15 questions on "the reconstruction of Iraq, the conflict in the Middle East and World peace", has caused controversy in Brussels. The European Commission is coming under fire for publishing the results of a number of questions - relating to Iraqi reconstruction - while failing to publish the results which revealed the extent of mistrust of Israel and the United States in Europe. A Commission spokesperson today (30 October) denied that the decision to withhold some of the results until next Monday was politically motivated, adding that some of the results not yet published are still "unstable". He did, however, add that a decision was made to publish a preview of the questions pertaining to the reconstruction of Iraq, to coincide with the Iraqi donors conference in Madrid, which took place at the end of last week. This admission has raised questions about whether the Commission sought to suppress the results which would have came at a particularly sensitive moment. One pollster involved in the survey told the EUobserver that some questions being raised about the poll were unfounded. "The questions were decided upon by both the polling organisations and the European Commission", the source said. Israeli officials dismissed the results of the poll as propaganda. According to El Pais, a massive 59 percent of Europeans said they believed that Israel is the biggest obstacle to world peace. The poll, conducted by Taylor Nelson Sofres/ EOS Gallup Europe, was conducted between 8 and 16 of October."

[Judeocentrism is destroying its protective mask: the accusation of "anti-Semitism." The level of its absurdity it now champions erodes the WHOLE of the accusation. Organized Judeocentrism is censorial, blind, and totalitarian. The Simon Wisenthal Center is fast becoming a Jewish turkey, and the Jewish community best be getting rid of it.]
Israel outraged as EU poll names it a threat to peace,
by Peter Beaumont, Observer (UK), November 2, 2003
"Israel has been described as the top threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran, by an unpublished European Commission poll of 7,500 Europeans, sparking an international row. The survey, conducted in October, of 500 people from each of the EU's member nations included a list of 15 countries with the question, 'tell me if in your opinion it presents or not a threat to peace in the world'. Israel was reportedly picked by 59 per cent of those interviewed. The leaking of the results of the poll to El Pais and the International Herald Tribune has sparked a bitter row, with a major Jewish human rights and lobbying group, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, demanding that the EU be excluded from the Israel-Palestinian peace process and accusing Europe of suffering the worst outbreak of 'anti-semitism' since World War Two. The results appear to be a mark of the widespread disapproval in Europe of the tactics employed by the government of Ariel Sharon during the present intifada. Israeli Ministers and spokesman have also been at pains recently to insist that a definition of modern 'anti-semitism' should include criticism of the way the state of Israel chooses to protect itself, defining that criticism as an overt attack on Israel's survival ... Reacting to the poll, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which claims 400,000 members in the US alone, has begun ordering a petition to condemn the European Commission and demand the EU no longer be represented in the so-called Quartet group trying to mediate an end to violence between Israel and Palestine. The poll also comes against a background of an increase in anti-semitic attacks in Europe in the past year, although the evidence in countries such as France suggests that many are being committed by young Islamists. 'This poll is an indication that Europeans have bought in, "hook, line and sinker", to the vilification and demonisation campaign directed against the state of Israel and her supporters by European leaders and media,' said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Centre's founder. 'This shocking result that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace, bigger than North Korea and Iran, defies logic and is a racist flight of fantasy that only shows that anti-semitism is deeply embedded within European society, more then at any other period since the end of the war,' he added."

[A genuine Jewish Nazi War Crime, part of Israeli army history. Gang rape, torture, and murder. Per modern Jewish Holocaust ritual, isn't it time to seek extradition to an Arab country of all the Israeli rapists, murderers, and war criminals? And what else is there in Israeli history all these decades kept under lock and key?]
'I saw fit to remove her from the world',
By Aviv Lavie and Moshe Gorali, Haaretz (Israel), October 29, 2003
"There was a particularly festive atmosphere at the Nirim outpost on August 12, 1949, the eve of Shabbat. A week of dusty patrols and pursuits of infiltrators in the sands of the western Negev desert was at an end, and the commander of the hilltop site, Second Lieutenant Moshe, gave the order to make the preparations for a party. The tables in the large tent that was used as a mess hall were arranged in rows, sweets of various kinds were laid out on them and even a bit of wine was poured, though not enough to get drunk on. At exactly 8 P.M. the soldiers took their places and platoon commander Moshe recited the blessing over the wine. He then gave a Zionist pep talk, reiterating the importance of the unit's mission and the troops' contribution to the infant state. At the order of his deputy, Sergeant Michael, Private Yehuda read from the Bible. When he finished the soldiers burst into song, told jokes, ate and drank. A merry time was had by all. Shortly before the end of the party, at about 9:30, the platoon commander asked for quiet. He got up and, with a smile on his face, reminded the soldiers about the Bedouin girl they had caught earlier that day during a patrol in their sector. They had brought her to the outpost and she was now locked up in one of the huts. Platoon commander Moshe said he was putting forward two options for a vote. The first was that the Bedouin girl would become the outpost's kitchen worker; the second was for the soldiers to have their way with her. The proposals got an enthusiastic reception. A melee ensued. The soldiers raised their hands and the second option was accepted by majority vote. "We want to fuck," the soldiers chanted. The commander decided on the order: Squad A on day one, Squad B on day two and Squad C on day three. The driver, Corporal Shaul, asked jokingly, "And what about the drivers? Are they orphans?" The platoon commander replied that they were part of the staff squad, together with the sergeant, the squad commanders, the cooks, the medic and he himself, of course. He added a threat - if any of the soldiers touch the girl "the tommy [tommy gun] will talk." The soldiers took this as a warning not to violate the order the commander had decreed. The party ended, the soldiers went off to their tents. The officer ordered the platoon sergeant to bring a folding bed to the tent they shared and to place the Bedouin girl on it. Sergeant Michael did as he was told, entered the tent, closed the flap and shut off the lantern. Thus began one of the ugliest and most appalling episodes in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. Even at a remove of 54 years, it is difficult to understand how an event of this kind could have happened with the participation, active or less active, of dozens of soldiers in uniform. ... Until the morning of Friday, August 12. At about 9 A.M. that day, Second Lieutenant Moshe set out on a patrol in the southwestern section of the sector, in a vehicle known as a "command car." With him were two squad commanders, Corporal David and Corporal Gideon, and three soldiers: privates Moshe, Yehuda and Aziz. The driver was Corporal Shaul. All the men were armed. On the way they came across an Arab who was holding an English rifle. When the Arab spotted them he threw down the rifle and started to run up the dune. One of the soldiers opened fire at him with a submachine gun. The Arab was hit and died on the spot. His rifle was taken as booty. A short time later, the patrol encountered three Arabs - two men and a girl. There are different versions regarding the girl's age. According to some accounts she was a young girl aged between 10 and 15; others say she was between 15 and 20. Platoon commander Moshe ordered the soldiers to seize the Arabs and search them. The soldiers found nothing. Officer Moshe then ordered the soldiers to bring the girl into the vehicle. Her shouts and screams were to no avail. Once she was inside the vehicle the soldiers scared off the two Arabs by shooting in the air. On the way back to the outpost they came across a herd of camels grazing. Officer Moshe ordered the soldiers to shoot the animals. Six camels were shot dead; their carcasses were left to rot in the field. After the girl calmed down a bit, the soldiers exchanged a few words with her - especially Corporal David. They also talked among themselves, and the word "fuckable" came up in the conversation ... [T]he platoon sergeant, Michael, removed the girl from the hut and pulled off the traditional garment she was wearing. He then made her stand, completely naked, under the water pipe that the soldiers used as a shower, then soaped her and rinsed her off. The pipe was outside and everyone at the outpost was able to witness the spectacle ... In short order a group of soldiers gathered around the hut. They milled around the guard and demanded that he let them go inside. At first he refused, but finally relented. In fact, he was the first to go in. He spent about five minutes in the hut and emerged buttoning up his trousers. He was followed by Private Albert, who was also in the hut for about five minutes, and then Private Liba ... Corporal Gideon, who would be one of the main prosecution witnesses in the trial, testified that after the girl told Officer Moshe what she told him, he said to the others that she must be washed so she would be clean for fucking. Gideon, who lives in Givatayim and works as a tour guide, declined to be interviewed for this article. At about 5 P.M., the platoon commander ordered Private Moshe, who was a barber by profession, to give the girl a haircut. That was done in the presence of the commander and the sergeant. Her hair, which had spilled down to her shoulders, was cut short and washed with kerosene. Again she was placed under the pipe, naked, before the scrutinizing eyes of the officer and the sergeant. Afterward she was dressed in the same jersey and shorts and sent back to the hut. Then came the party, after which Officer Moshe and Sergeant Michael closeted themselves with the girl in their tent. After about half an hour, Officer Moshe ordered her taken out of the tent, because "there is a stink coming off her." Sergeant Michael called Private David and the two of them removed the bed from the tent, with the girl lying on it in a state of unconsciousness ... At about 6 A.M. the next day, Private Eliahu was on guard duty and saw the girl leaving the hut. He asked her where she was going and she told him, weeping, that she wanted to see the officer. Private Eliahu showed her the way to Officer Moshe's tent. She complained to him that the soldiers had "played with her." He threatened to kill her and sent her back to the hut. A short time later, while shaving at the water pipe, Sergeant Michael asked the platoon commander what to do with her. Officer Moshe ordered him to execute the girl. Michael ordered Corporal David to have two soldiers get shovels and accompany him. Michael and David removed the girl from the hut and had her get into the patrol vehicle. Just before the vehicle left the outpost, one of the soldiers shouted that he wanted back the short pants the girl was wearing. Officer Moshe ordered her to be stripped and the pants returned to the soldier. She now wore only the jersey, her lower body exposed. Eliahu and Shimon dig a grave The vehicle set out, driven by Corporal Shaul. Also in the vehicle were Sergeant Michael, Corporal David, the medic, and the two soldiers who were to be the gravediggers, Privates Eliahu and Shimon, with their shovels. They drove about 500 meters from the outpost. The driver, Shaul, stayed in the vehicle, while the others, with the girl, moved off a little way into the dunes. Privates Eliahu and Shimon set about digging a grave. When the girl saw what they were doing, she screamed and started to run. She ran about six meters before Sergeant Michael aimed his tommy gun at her and fired one bullet. The bullet struck the right side of her head and blood began to pour out. She fell on the spot and did not move again. The two soldiers went on digging. Sergeant Michael went back to the vehicle. Pale and trembling, he laid down his weapon and said to Shaul, "I didn't believe I could do something like that." Shaul said that maybe the bullet didn't kill her and that she was liable to lie in torment for a few hours, buried alive. He asked Michael to do him a personal mercy by going back to the girl and shooting her a few more times, to ascertain that she was dead. The sergeant did not manage to carry out that mission. Corporal David came over, took the tommy gun and fired a few bullets into the girl's body ... The following is the report, dated August 15, 1949: "Nirim Outpost. To: Company Commander. From: Commander, Nirim Outpost. Re: Report on the captive In my patrol on 12.8.49 I encountered Arabs in the territory under my command, one of them armed. I killed the armed Arab on the spot and took his weapon. I took the Arab female captive. On the first night the soldiers abused her and the next day I saw fit to remove her from the world. Signed: Moshe, second lieutenant."

Our Place in the World: Wall more about control than security,
By ASSAF ORON, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 24, 2003
"Expatriate Israelis, and Americans sympathetic to the Israeli cause, complain about the U.S. media's "anti-Israeli bias." Indeed, upon arriving from Israel last year, the image of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict portrayed by U.S. media appeared to me so distorted as to be almost unrecognizable. But the direction of the distortion was rather surprising. This is the image I keep receiving here: On one side is a democracy stuck in an impossible region and trying to make the best of it. On the other is a demonic entity called the Palestinian Authority, whose heads seem bent on continuing to terrorize Israel's defenseless civilians. Everything Israel's army does is clearly out of self-defense, and as long as there's terror, there's justification to do even more. How odd, I tell myself. This is exactly the worldview I've been spoon-fed by my establishment and education system from the day I remember myself. The only true part in this image is that my compatriots in Israel are at risk of terror attacks. All the rest is blatantly false. For starters, the Palestinian Authority is a powerless, almost meaningless body, whose leaders cannot cross the street in Ramallah without permission from an Israeli soldier. Even at its heyday, the authority's power relative to Israel's was akin to that of the King County Council compared with the U.S. government. This little piece of knowledge alone collapses the entire image. It also raises serious suspicions as to who has been shaping the current reality. That is not all: The ongoing "security fence" project is presented here as a defense measure and claims against it are made to sound as whining. Reporters fail to tell us that this is not a fence but a huge system of walls and ditches. Masked by a clever campaign of deceit, this system is gradually crisscrossing the Palestinian heartland. It rips apart some Palestinian towns and encroaches on the outskirts of others. Were the American public presented with pictures of the massive walls and fences already surrounding the town of Kalkilia, many might wonder whether this is about security or about repression and control. Millions of Americans now sense the frustration of having their genuine concerns for security abused by officials with hidden agendas, with the willing cooperation of mass media. I have lived practically all my life in this frustration. In the '80s I served in Lebanon, believing there was "no choice." Time and again I was a soldier in the Occupied Territories, depriving Palestinians of their basic rights. The excuse was that "we don't want to do it" but "the Arab culture is different" and we have to "wait until they mature." After long years I've learned to know better, but many people will never forgive me for speaking out loud. Does any of this sound familiar? My army's current philosophy is that making Palestinian civilians suffer somehow will prevent terror, and so it is a worthwhile "price to pay." But what is the price and who pays? A few brave Israeli journalists keep us informed. They write about towns and villages that have become open-air prisons, about the daily death of babies, the sick and the elderly due to prevention of medical care, about devastating poverty and malnutrition, about the fears and traumas of Palestinian children robbed of their childhood. The conclusion from their writing is inescapable: The terrible Palestinian suicide bombings are, first and foremost, the result of Palestinian civilization disintegrating under the pressure of Israel's army. If only a fraction of these stories appear in America, not as contentious "allegations" but with the indisputable credibility that these journalists have earned, the public's entire perspective might change. Here, away from the stress, fear and hatred experienced by Israelis, people would be free to see that my army's policy is not only morally forbidden; it is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. The major force driving the mysterious "cycle of violence" would be exposed. Ask any American journalist on the ground in the Occupied Territories, and they'll confirm what's written here. But their employers back in America, home of the brave, are afraid. More Israeli essayists warn that the Israeli civilization, too, is on the verge of collapse. What would such a collapse look like? God knows. When the region's top military power starts losing it, anything might happen. The U.S. media must now let the truth from the Holy Land be heard loud and clear, even if it means receiving well-orchestrated campaigns of angry letters. Believe it or not, time is running out for the Jews and Palestinians living there ... Assaf Oron, who is doing graduate studies in Seattle, is an Israeli human rights activist and conscientious objector."

Israel to get remote-control bulldozers,
New Zealand Herald, November 2, 2003
"Israeli forces will soon be able to carry out demolition of Palestinian buildings by remote control, an Israeli high-tech concern said. Palestinians and human rights groups, including Amnesty International, condemn demolitions as collective punishment that has made thousands of Palestinian civilians homeless. The Technion Institute of Technology said in a statement it had adapted US-made, armoured D-9 bulldozers to operate without drivers and they would be deployed by the Israeli army "in the very near future". The army declined to comment. Israel views the bulldozing or dynamiting of family homes of Palestinian suicide bombers or houses under which arms smuggling tunnels have been found as essential security and deterrent measures against a three-year-old Palestinian revolt. Several Palestinian civilians have been killed and dozens injured inside or next to demolished houses, Palestinian officials and medics say ... A camera attached to the adapted D-9 bulldozer transmits pictures to a remote control box with which an operator can control the vehicle's movements, Technion said. Israel has for decades used remote-control military devices, including grenade launchers and drone surveillance aircraft that pinpoint wanted militants on the ground before an air strike. It is renowned for cutting-edge military technology and has exported some of it."

[More Israeli "fascism."]
Israel's security service to vet reporters,
By JOSHUA BRILLIANT, Interest Alert, (from UPI), November 3, 2003
"The Israeli government decided to have Shabak (Israel's internal security agency) check all journalists' requests for press cards and "recommend" who should be denied accreditation. Such accreditation is vital in Israel in order to properly cover the country. The new regulations, announced Sunday, aroused strong protests. The prestigious Israel Press Council said in a statement, Monday, "This idea is befitting dark regimes." "These are the kind of small steps that gradually lead a democratic state to becoming a fascist regime," the Council's outgoing president, Hebrew University Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, maintained. The plastic press cards that the Government Press Office issues are almost always the sole form of identification for journalists. Without it one would have difficulties entering government offices, party meetings or crossing a police line at the site of a terrorist attack. The new regulations say that Israeli and foreign journalists' requests for press cards for 2004 will be forwarded "for an initial examination by the competent security authorities." A request may be rejected "on security grounds" and in such cases a person may submit another application after six months have elapsed. The head of the Journalists' Association in Jerusalem, Yaron Enosh, said the terminology used means that a person whose request is denied "won't know why he is not getting the card" ... Foreign journalists have complained of various government obstacles to covering the occupied territories. Palestinian journalists do not get press cards, Seaman confirmed. The GPO has discriminated against media whose coverage it did not like or who failed to heed "friendly advice." "If we interview a Hamas member, are we (going to be branded) collaborators? It is a worrying form of censorship," said the FPA's Vice Chairman Tami Allen-Frost of the British Independent Television News. The Israel Press Council, which is made up of journalists and prominent public figures, noted it would be the first time in Israel's history that "journalists will have to be checked by the Shabak. ... It is another in a series of steps that the GPO took in recent years, including restrictions of the freedom of action and work of foreign and Palestinian journalists and the imposing of a boycott on media organizations."

Judge proposes Rabbi Ginsburg retract inciteful statements,
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz (Israel), November 5, 2003
"Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Noam Solberg on Wednesday proposed that Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg explicitly and publicly retract his offensive statements about Arabs, in return for an end to all criminal proceedings against him. Ginsburg, a member of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement, and a former head of a yeshiva in the West Bank city of Nablus, was indicted in July on charges of encouraging racism against Arabs in his book, "Tsav Hasha'a - Tipul Shoresh" ("Order of the Day - Radical Treatment"), which was published in 2001. According to the proposal, Ginsburg would publicly announce a retraction of his inciteful statements and state his support for social and political equal rights to all the state's citizens, regardless of religion, race or gender. Ginsburg, through his attorney Naftali Wurzberger, said he would consider the proposal. Among others, the charges cite a conversation in the book between Ginsburg and a student. The student asks: "So an Arab has no right to exist in Israel?" Ginsburg replies: "Here in the Land of Israel, he has no right." In another place in the book the student asks: "What is the rabbi's opinion about the Arabs as a nation and a people, as our enemies and our foes?" Ginsburg replies: "There is something called the Third World or another name for more primitive nations. Clearly, they are lower on the world's cultural ladder; but the murderousness and anti-Semitism are not a function of primitiveness, since the Germans were the most enlightened and educated and also the most bestial in every way." In the past, Ginsburg had praised the massacre carried out in 1994 by Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslim worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Ginsburg had declared that Goldstein's deed constitutes "a fulfillment of a number of commandments of Jewish law...[including] taking revenge on non-Jews." He was held in administrative detention for a period of two months in 1996 for his pronouncements, but the State Prosecution decided not to charge him and let him go."

The Jewish World / `Israel is bad for the Jews',
By Eliahu Salpeter, Haaretz (Isrel), November 6, 2003
"While Israeli ministers and Jewish activists continue to describe every criticism of Israel - such as a problematic public opinion poll showing that Europeans see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the greatest threat to world peace - liberal Jewish circles in the West are facing a different political threat. Recently, several articles appearing in the West (most of them written by Jewish commentators) questioned whether it was a mistake to establish the State of Israel along ethnic lines - as a Jewish state. The settlements, it has been written, have ended any possibility of geographic separation between Jews and Palestinians, and therefore the remaining solution, in practice, is to establish a binational state. A specific reference to this idea appears in the October issue of the influential New York Review of Books in an article by (Jewish) commentator Tony Judt. At the end of a detailed analysis of the status of the conflict, he writes: "The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews... but the depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews ...to convert Israel from a Jewish state to a binational one would cause far less disruption to most Jews and Arabs than its religious and nationalist foes will claim ... a binational state in the Middle East would require a brave and relentlessly engaged American leadership. The security of Jews and Arabs alike would need to be guaranteed by international force ... but the alternatives are far, far worse." Similar ideas are appearing in other journals, also reflecting the disappointment over Israel's policy in the territories. The veteran Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently wrote: "In the perpetual war against Israel - its enemies are winning, but history admonishes Israel..." And in the leftist liberal journal, The Nation, there was an article this month by Daniel Lazar titled "The One-State Solution" and that refers to one state for two peoples - Jewish and Palestinian. The article concludes: "Hounded by rabbis, terrorized by suicide bombers, hemmed in by nationalism, Israelis see no alternative but to throw in their lot with a strongman like Sharon. The logic is irresistible, but suicidal - unless somebody can figure a way out of the ideological cage." The Jewish Week, printed in New York and among the most widely circulated publications, featured a column last Friday by its editor and publisher, Gary Rosenblatt, in which he wrote: "Israel's military approach to the Palestinian conflict - respond to attacks and defeat the enemy - does not work when applied to U.S. campus ideological clashes over the Middle East. And the more strident the pro-Israel position, the less likely tens of thousands of American Jewish college students are to be sympathetic to the Jewish state. A Hillel director on the West Coast, who asks not to be named, stressed that `strident pro-Israel advocates who are unwilling to concede that Israel has a problem with settlements, occupation, and other controversial stands, only end up making more Jewish students skeptical. If you insist you are always right, you lose credibility'." Large Jewish organizations in the United States continue to stand behind Israel, but many rank and file members feel increasingly displeased with the aggressive policy of the government of Israel and the growing strength of religious-nationalist influences in Israel. Anti-Semitic entities in Europe and the U.S. are using Israel's policy in the territories. It backs up their propaganda, but it is highly doubtful that this is indeed evidence of a corresponding rise in the scale of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is not the main reason behind the increased criticism of Israel among liberal circles in Europe. Indeed, there are today more incidents of anti-Semitism in Europe, and clearly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contributes to that. It should be noted that the support for Jews (and Israel) in the 1950s and 1960s, which was born of feelings of guilt, has dropped considerably in a generation that no longer remembers the Holocaust. However, the proper comparison to make when assessing anti-Semitism is not between 2003 and 1963, but between 2003 and 1933, when Europe was calm and prior to Hitler's rise to power. Even that comparison will highlight the political and social changes for the better in the Jews' situation. Constant emphasis on the "perpetual presence" of anti-Semitism achieves the opposite results. It is both despairing and may also weaken the hand of those combating anti-Semitism. The fact that Islam (even non-fundamentalist Islam, as evidenced by outgoing Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad's remarks) disseminates images borrowed from Christian-European anti-Semitism does not contradict the vast differences that still exist between the two forms of anti-Semitism. Christian anti-Semitism grew out of religious grounds and later adopted political and racist attributes and objectives. The other anti-Semitism, contemporary Muslim, was born out of political reasons and is now taking on racist attributes. Associating contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism with classic Western anti-Semitism is very convenient for extremists, both European and Israeli. It is true that there is a lot of hypocrisy in the demands of anti-Semites that Israel and the Jews act with more tolerance and morality than other nations. But they are not the ones who determined that Israel should be a light unto the nations; that is a demand made throughout the generations by Jewish ethics and that is the bond we asked the nations of the world to redeem in 1948. We should therefore not complain if the world now demands that we redeem that bond. There is of course a double standard in this, but it is also recognition, for or better or worse, of the status of the "chosen people." In this context it is fitting to quote Tomas Masaryk, who established independent Czechoslovakia (and a friend of Zionism) who cautioned his people: "Nations fall with the fall of ideas with which they were established.

Israel Imposes Security Checks on Media,
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK, Guardian (UK), Monday November 3, 2003 6:01 PM "Israel will force journalists to undergo stringent checks from its internal Shin Bet security service as a requirement for accreditation, the head of the Government Press Office said Monday. Israeli and foreign journalists criticized the decision as an attempt to inhibit freedom of the press. The Foreign Press Association said that while it understands Israel's security problems, there is no evidence that journalists pose a risk. The new policy gives Israeli authorities ``unreasonable veto power'' over who can be a foreign correspondent, the association said in a statement. Citing security concerns, press office director Daniel Seaman said he decided to give a list of more than 17,000 accredited journalists to the Shin Bet for security checks beginning Jan. 1. Until now, only Palestinian journalists were checked by the Shin Bet, Seaman said. Under the new policy, Israeli and foreign journalists will also have to undergo a security check, although it will not be as thorough as that given to Palestinians, he said. ``I am sure that they (the Shin Bet) have the intelligence information regarding people who could present a danger ... and therefore they have to give their opinion,'' Seaman told Israel Radio. The press office stopped issuing credentials to Palestinian journalists - many of whom work for foreign press agencies - shortly after Israeli-Palestinian fighting erupted three years ago ... Based on the Shin Bet's assessment, the press office will decide whether journalists can hold on to the credentials, Seaman said. The credentials are needed to enter government buildings, attend news conferences and meet with government officials in their offices ... FPA deputy chairman Tami Allen-Frost said the Shin Bet's past blacklisting of Palestinian journalists showed there was ``almost no transparency'' in the security service, and it refused to provide explanations for its decisions. The new measure ``constitutes an utter violation of freedom of the press and the dramatic reversal of the openness that has prevailed in Israel for decades,'' the association said. The new regulations ``appear to be another step in a two-year campaign to harass and intimidate the foreign press.''

Now Europeans see Israel as a threat to their existence. For the first time, moral critique and self defence have coincided,
by Martin Woollacott, Guardian (UK), November 7, 2003
"Ever since its foundation, Israel has been troubled by the thought that it might have as much to fear from supposed friends as from avowed enemies. That is one reason why Israelis are often anxious monitors of public opinion in North America and Europe. Their anxiety, and perhaps their anger, showed a peak last week when the European Union's polling organisation released figures showing that Europeans reckoned Israel was a greater threat to world peace than any other country. The results reinforced the Israeli sense that the distance between them and the Europeans continues to grow and that the United States is their only reliable partner. Most of the protests about the poll were disingenuous, since they were couched in terms suggesting that a sampling of public opinion somehow represents an act of European policy. But the poll itself was certainly suspect. The question 7,500 Europeans answered was too general. In particular, it left open whether the countries on the list were threats through grave fault of their own or, if they were, whether they shared that fault with another state or society with which they were in conflict. An EU spokesman this week confirmed that the poll unit had no plans to ask that particular question again in the near future. Flawed as the question was, and misdirected as some of the protests were, the poll results, nevertheless, do suggest - along with other evidence - that there has been a critical change in European perceptions of Israel. Europeans have, of course, always seen the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians as a moral issue ... What is new since September 11 is that Europeans sense a threat to their existence, and not just to their interests ... Now, because there could be terrorist acts on a new scale, they sense that devastation is indeed a possibility ... But, viscerally, Europeans believe they would be much safer if there were such a settlement, and a majority probably believe that Israel is much more to blame for the lack of it than the Palestinians. Since European opinion was already running against Israel on other grounds, a coincidence of moral critique and self defence emerges. This, it may be speculated, was what was really measured by the poll. Europe's feeling of vulnerability and its alienation from Israel have been deepened by the difficult situation in Iraq; by the durability of the Sharon government; by the judgment that the Israeli right is likely to stay in power beyond Sharon; and by the American government's feebleness and complicity in Israeli policies ... The Jerusalem Post ludicrously described the poll as indicative of Europe's "profound intellectual and ideological malaise" ... Israel, in any case, will have to accept that it is properly subject to the rigorous scrutiny of those who may suffer, as much as Israelis themselves, the bad consequences of their decisions."

Ghandi on Palestine, [Mahtma Ghandi]
SEGAON, November 20, 1938, Harijan, 26-11-1938 (Vol. 74, pp. 239-242)
"My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews. But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home."

[Imagine. If you're caught holding binoculars, you'll be shot dead. We might next logically expect the rule that when Jews pass through an Arab town if anyone looks up at them they'll be machine-gunned.]
Soldiers can shoot Gazans spying on Netzarim,
By Amos Harel, Haaretz (Israel), November 5, 2003
"Soldiers stationed near the Gaza settlement of Netzarim may shoot to kill if they spot a Palestinian observing Israel Defense Forces activity via binoculars, according to new rules of engagement recently issued by the IDF for that area. The new rules are apparently a response to the attack on Netzarim two weeks ago, in which three IDF soldiers, including two women, were killed. The subsequent investigation revealed that the two terrorists, one each from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, had conducted lengthy observations of IDF activity in the area before the attack. Indeed, a senior Islamic Jihad official said this week that the organization gathered intelligence on IDF activity in the area for three months before the attack. That is also why, immediately after the attack, the IDF razed three multistory buildings that had apparently served the Palestinians as lookout posts ... After a new batch of reservists who arrived in Netzarim this week was briefed on the orders, one complained to his commanders that this practice seemed trigger-happy. When the order was not changed, the reservist complained to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and ACRI's legal advisor, Dan Yakir, sent a letter of protest to the IDF Judge Advocate General. Yakir charged that the new order is blatantly illegal, since it permits "killing people even if they constitute no apparent risk." Sources in the IDF's Southern Command acknowledged that the new rules are different from those in effect in most of Gaza, which permit shooting to kill only if an armed Palestinian enters a special security zone and behaves in a way that indicates intent to carry out an attack. However, they said, the Netzarim rules are in force in other "major war zones" in the Gaza Strip."

[The extra-horrible thing about this story is that the Israeli Jewish Army murders Arabs with impunity on a regular basis. ]
Quest for truth over Gaza death,
By John Sweeney, BBC (UK), November 6, 2003
"James Miller was a cameraman on the side of the underdog. He had a great eye, and he used his talents as a warrior against inhumanity wherever he found it: in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe. Israel is investigating Miller's death On 2 May this year he was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in Rafah, in the occupied Gaza Strip. James was a friend of mine. We had worked and played in some of the hottest war zones on the planet, and six months on I still find it impossible to imagine that he is no longer with us. He was very, very good in a war zone so that to James' friends it seemed incredible that he had been killed in some stupid accident of war. White flag The evidence suggests that did not happen. On the last evening of filming he walked out of a house with his reporter Saira Shah and his fixer Aboud. It was night. They were seeking parley with an Israeli armoured personnel carrier to gain permission to leave the border hot zone without being shot at. James was shining a torch onto a white flag. A first shot rang out. The team froze. By chance, the team were being filmed by an agency stringer from APTN. The videotape proves that there is no crossfire. Night vision The night was deadly quiet. Sophy Miller says her husband was unlawfully killed. They were wearing helmets and flak jackets littered with TV signs. They did not look like Islamic terrorists. The Israeli army has, thanks to the Americans, some of the best night vision technology in the world. Their kit turns nights into day. Thirteen seconds later a second shot rings out. James was shot in the front of his neck by an Israeli bullet and was mortally wounded. He died soon after. A criminal investigation by the army into his death is continuing but his widow, Sophy Miller, is adamant. The Israeli government and army have chosen not to talk to us. Suspicious deaths What gives cause for grave concern is that James' is not the only incident in Rafah. In seven weeks during the war with Iraq three internationals were killed or maimed. Rachel Corrie, a young American peace activist, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer. No Israeli soldier has been charged with misconduct. A month later British photographer and peace activist Tom Hurndall was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier. He is all but brain-dead. Rafah sits on one of the fault lines of the Middle East, bang on the border with Egypt. The border itself is controlled by the Israelis. Despite their overwhelming firepower, the Israelis feel vulnerable here. Palestinians in Rafah dig tunnels to Egypt. The Israelis say the tunnels are used to smuggle arms, weapons, bombs for Islamic extremists, who are strong in Rafah. We showed the APTN film of James' shooting to a serving Israeli soldier. He said: "That's murder."

[Yet another sign of increasing Israeli "fascism."]
Israeli hip-hop takes on Mideast politics,
By Joshua Mitnick, USA TODAY, November 6, 2003
"Thousands of teenagers shrieking at the sight of Israel's hottest pop idol packed a soccer field in this Tel Aviv suburb late this summer, two days after twin suicide bombings killed 15 and wounded dozens. Wearing baggy sweat pants, a baseball cap pushed off-center and a glittering, rhinestone-studded Star of David necklace, Kobi Shimoni (known by the stage name Subliminal) swaggered on stage as if he were the Israeli incarnation of Eminem. With a booming rhythm track and an Israeli flag draped from the DJ stand, the show turned out to be as much a patriotic pep rally as a rapper's delight. "Who has an Israeli army dog tag, put your hands in the air!" Subliminal called out in a mix of Hebrew and English. Hundreds of hands shot up. "Who is proud to be a Zionist in the state of Israel, put your hands in the air! Hell yeah!" The patriotic appeal at the concert won chants of support from the rocking crowd, mostly adolescents grappling with weekly terrorist attacks and a crippling economic recession. With sidekick Yoav Eliasi (aka The Shadow), Subliminal has parlayed nationalist themes into a chart-topping album, transformed the Star of David into a fashion statement and helped integrate the music of urban America into the fold of Israeli pop. A voice for teens For Subliminal, the music has generated tens of thousands of record sales. For Israeli teens, it has given voice to their outrage at the state of affairs in their country. Hip-hop, a quintessentially American art form, is helping bolster national morale in a country bruised by three years of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians ... Of the top hip-hop acts, Subliminal's grim prognosis seems most in sync with the nationalistic shift in Israeli sentiment over the years. On the cover of his hit album The Light and the Shadow, an inferno engulfs Subliminal's head ... The angry lyrics and Subliminal's right-wing political convictions have drawn fire from Israeli cultural critics, who call him a militarist and a fascist ... With a trio of best-selling albums in the last year and hourly radio play on Israeli pop radio, hip hop has established a beachhead on the local music scene. Record companies say they've been swamped with demos from artists hoping to become the next Subliminal. But because politics has become an inseparable ingredient of the genre, record executives say they judge new talent on the manifesto as much as the music. "There's no reason to release an album of hip-hop unless it has something to say. If the artists don't establish an identity, I won't release it," says Gadi Gidor, an artists-and-repertoire executive at Helicon, the label that produced Subliminal's album."

[All this Holocaust stuff is supposed to give Jews a higher moral ground. It does not. "Anti-Semitism" has had real causes throughout history: the deeds and actions of Jews. Look around you today. The organized Jewish community -- screwed with its dead roots into Israel -- is morally bankrupt and corrupt. The Holocaust has become the Jewish Shield to hide its collective moral failures from public view. Israel today is the expression of a collective Jewish illness. To this woman's credit, she clearly sees the parallels of Nazi and Jewish oppression.]
"Living With the Holocaust". The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors,
By Sara Roy, March for Justice, November 7, 2003
"Some months ago I was invited to reflect on my journey as a child of Holocaust survivors. This journey continues and shall continue until the day I die. Though I cannot possibly say everything, it seems especially poignant that I should be addressing this topic at a time when the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is descending so tragically into a moral abyss and when, for me at least, the very essence of Judaism, of what it means to be a Jew, seems to be descending with it. The Holocaust has been the defining feature of my life. It could not have been otherwise. I lost over 100 members of my family and extended family in the Nazi ghettos and death camps in Poland--grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, a sibling not yet born--people about whom I have heard so much throughout my life, people I never knew. They lived in Poland in Jewish communities called shtetls. In thinking about what I wanted to say about this journey, I tried to remember my very first conscious encounter with the Holocaust. Although I cannot be certain, I think it was the first time I noticed the number the Nazis had imprinted on my father's arm ... My home was filled with joy and optimism although punctuated at times by grief and loss. Israel and the notion of a Jewish homeland were very important to my parents. After all, the remnants of our family were there. But unlike many of their friends, my parents were not uncritical of Israel, insofar as they felt they could be. Obedience to a state was not an ultimate Jewish value, not for them, not after the Holocaust. Judaism provided the context for our life and for values and beliefs that were not dependent upon national boundaries, but transcended them... I visited Israel many times while growing up. As a child, I found it a beautiful, romantic, and peaceful place. As a teenager and young adult I began to feel certain contradictions that I could not fully explain but which centered on what seemed to be the almost complete absence in Israeli life and discourse of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, and even of the Holocaust itself. I would ask my aunt why these subjects were not discussed, and why Israelis didn't learn to speak Yiddish. My questions were often met with grim silence. Most painful to me was the denigration of the Holocaust and pre-state Jewish life by many of my Israeli friends. For them, those were times of shame, when Jews were weak and passive, inferior and unworthy, deserving not of our respect but of our disdain. "We will never allow ourselves to be slaughtered again or go so willingly to our slaughter," they would say. ... Despite many visits to Israel during my youth, I first went to the West Bank and Gaza in the summer of 1985, two and a half years before the first Palestinian uprising, to conduct fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation, which examined American economic assistance to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. My research focused on whether it was possible to promote economic development under conditions of military occupation. That summer changed my life because it was then that I came to understand and experience what occupation was and what it meant. I learned how occupation works, its impact on the economy, on daily life, and its grinding impact on people. I learned what it meant to have little control over one's life and, more importantly, over the lives of one's children. As with the Holocaust, I tried to remember my very first encounter with the occupation. One of my earliest encounters involved a group of Israeli soldiers, an old Palestinian man, and his donkey. Standing on a street with some Palestinian friends, I noticed an elderly Palestinian walking down the street, leading his donkey. A small child no more than three or four years old, clearly his grandson, was with him. Some Israeli soldiers standing nearby went up to the old man and stopped him. One soldier ambled over to the donkey and pried open its mouth. "Old man," he asked, "why are your donkey's teeth so yellow? Why aren't they white? Don't you brush your donkey 's teeth?" The old Palestinian was mortified, the little boy visibly upset. The soldier repeated his question, yelling this time, while the other soldiers laughed. The child began to cry and the old man just stood there silently, humiliated. This scene repeated itself while a crowd gathered. The soldier then ordered the old man to stand behind the donkey and demanded that he kiss the animal's behind. At first, the old man refused but as the soldier screamed at him and his grandson became hysterical, he bent down and did it. The soldiers laughed and walked away. They had achieved their goal: to humiliate him and those around him. We all stood there in silence, ashamed to look at each other, hearing nothing but the uncontrollable sobs of the little boy. The old man did not move for what seemed a very long time. He just stood there, demeaned and destroyed. I stood there too, in stunned disbelief. I immediately thought of the stories my parents had told me of how Jews had been treated by the Nazis in the 1930s, before the ghettos and death camps, of how Jews would be forced to clean sidewalks with toothbrushes and have their beards cut off in public. What happened to the old man was absolutely equivalent in principle, intent, and impact: to humiliate and dehumanize. In this instance, there was no difference between the German soldier and the Israeli one. Throughout that summer of 1985, I saw similar incidents: young Palestinian men being forced by Israeli soldiers to bark like dogs on their hands and knees or dance in the streets. In this critical respect, my first encounter with the occupation was the same as my first encounter with the Holocaust, with the number on my father' s arm. It spoke the same message: the denial of one's humanity. It is important to understand the very real differences in volume, scale, and horror between the Holocaust and the occupation and to be careful about comparing the two, but it is also important to recognize parallels where they do exist. As a child of Holocaust survivors I always wanted to be able in some way to experience and feel some aspect of what my parents endured, which, of course, was impossible. I listened to their stories, always wanting more, and shared their tears. I often would ask myself, what does sheer terror feel like? What does it look like? What does it mean to lose ones whole family so horrifically and so immediately, or to have an entire way of life extinguished so irrevocably? I would try to imagine myself in their place, but it was impossible. It was beyond my reach, too unfathomable. It was not until I lived with Palestinians under occupation that I found at least part of the answers to some of these questions. I was not searching for the answers; they were thrust upon me. I learned, for example, what sheer terror looked like from my friend Rabia, eighteen years old, who, frozen by fear and uncontrollable shaking, stood glued in the middle of a room we shared in a refugee camp, unable to move, while Israeli soldiers were trying to break down the front door to our shelter. I experienced terror while watching Israeli soldiers beat a pregnant women in her belly because she flashed a V-sign at them, and I was too paralyzed by fear to help her. I could more concretely understand the meaning of loss and displacement when I watched grown men sob and women scream as Israeli army bulldozers destroyed their home and everything in it because they built their house without a permit, which the Israeli authorities had refused to give them. It is perhaps in the concept of home and shelter that I find the most profound link between the Jews and the Palestinians, and perhaps, the most painful illustration of the meaning of occupation. I cannot begin to describe how horrible and obscene it is to watch the deliberate destruction of a family's home while that family watches, powerless to stop it. For Jews as for Palestinians, a house represents far more than a roof over one's head; it represents life itself. ... In the context of Jewish existence today, what does it mean to preserve the Jewish character of the State of Israel? Does it mean preserving a Jewish demographic majority through any means and continued Jewish domination of the Palestinian people and their land? What is the narrative that we as a people are creating, and what kind of voice are we seeking? What sort of meaning do we as Jews derive from the debasement and humiliation of Palestinians?"

[The Jewish community is corrupt in its blind allegiance to Monster Israel. The wall is being chipped away. Chip by chip. Stage by stage. Taboo crumbles after taboo crumbles. The next step is the NEXT forbidden topic : Jewish identity -- which gave birth to Zionism -- is ITSELF racist.]
Zionism as a Racist Ideology. Reviving an Old Theme to Prevent Palestinian Ethnicide,
By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON, CounterPunch, November 8/9, 2003
"In its drive to establish and maintain a state in which Jews are always the majority, Zionism absolutely required that Palestinians, as non-Jews, be made to leave in 1948 and never be allowed to return. The dirty little secret is that this is blatant racism. But didn't we finish with that old Zionism-is-racism issue over a decade ago, when in 1991 the UN repealed a 1975 General Assembly resolution that defined Zionism as "a form of racism or racial discrimination"? Hadn't we Americans always rejected this resolution as odious anti-Semitism, and didn't we, under the aegis of the first Bush administration, finally prevail on the rest of the world community to agree that it was not only inaccurate but downright evil to label Zionism as racist? Why bring it up again, now? The UN General Assembly based its 1975 anti-Zionist resolution on the UN's own definition of racial discrimination, adopted in 1965. According to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, racial discrimination is "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life." As a definition of racism and racial discrimination, this statement is unassailable and, if one is honest about what Zionism is and what it signifies, the statement is an accurate definition of Zionism. But in 1975, in the political atmosphere prevailing at the time, putting forth such a definition was utterly self-defeating. So would a formal resolution be in today's political atmosphere. But enough has changed over the last decade or more that talk about Zionism as a system that either is inherently racist or at least fosters racism is increasingly possible and increasingly necessary. Despite the vehement knee-jerk opposition to any such discussion throughout the United States, serious scholars elsewhere and serious Israelis have begun increasingly to examine Zionism critically, and there is much greater receptivity to the notion that no real peace will be forged in Palestine-Israel unless the bases of Zionism are examined and in some way altered. It is for this reason that honestly labeling Zionism as a racist political philosophy is so necessary: unless the world's, and particularly the United States', blind support for Israel as an exclusivist Jewish state is undermined, unless the blind acceptance of Zionism as a noble ideology is undermined, and unless it is recognized that Israel's drive to maintain dominion over the occupied Palestinian territories is motivated by an exclusivist, racist ideology, no one will ever gain the political strength or the political will necessary to force Israel to relinquish territory and permit establishment of a truly sovereign and independent Palestinian state in a part of Palestine. Recognizing Zionism's Racism A racist ideology need not always manifest itself as such, and, if the circumstances are right, it need not always actually practice racism to maintain itself. For decades after its creation, the circumstances were right for Israe ... [T]he issue of racism rarely arose, and the UN's labeling of Israel's fundamental ideology as racist came across to Americans and most westerners as nasty and vindictive. Outside the third world, Israel had come to be regarded as the perpetual innocent, not aggressive, certainly not racist, and desirous of nothing more than a peace agreement that would allow it to mind its own business inside its original borders in a democratic state. By the time the Zionism-is-racism resolution was rescinded in 1991, even the PLO had officially recognized Israel's right to exist in peace inside its 1967 borders, with its Jewish majority uncontested. In fact, this very acceptance of Israel by its principal adversary played no small part in facilitating the U.S. effort to garner support for overturning the resolution. (The fact of U.S. global dominance in the wake of the first Gulf war and the collapse of the Soviet Union earlier in 1991, and the atmosphere of optimism about prospects for peace created by the Madrid peace conference in October also played a significant part in winning over a majority of the UN when the Zionism resolution was brought to a vote of the General Assembly in December.) Realities are very different today, and a recognition of Zionism's racist bases, as well as an understanding of the racist policies being played out in the occupied territories are essential if there is to be any hope at all of achieving a peaceful, just, and stable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The egg of Palestine has been permanently scrambled, and it is now increasingly the case that, as Zionism is recognized as the driving force in the occupied territories as well as inside Israel proper, pre-1967 Israel can no longer be considered in isolation. It can no longer be allowed simply to go its own way as a Jewish-majority state, a state in which the circumstances are "right" for ignoring Zionism's fundamental racism. As Israel increasingly inserts itself into the occupied territories, and as Israeli settlers, Israeli settlements, and Israeli-only roads proliferate and a state infrastructure benefiting only Jews takes over more and more territory, it becomes no longer possible to ignore the racist underpinnings of the Zionist ideology that directs this enterprise"

Guest columnist: Israel must choose between right and wrong,
By Avraham Burg, Seattle Times, November 9, 2003
"The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly. There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement it. Nor is this merely an internal Israeli affair. Diaspora Jews, for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity, must pay heed and speak out. If the pillar collapses, the upper floors will come crashing down. The opposition does not exist, and the government coalition, with Ariel Sharon at its head, claims the right to remain silent. In a nation of chatterboxes, everyone has suddenly fallen dumb, because there's nothing left to say. We live in a thunderously failed reality. Yes, we have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvelous theater and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the NASDAQ. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer-security programs or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed. It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more, Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun ... A structure built on human callousness will inevitably collapse in on itself. Note this moment well: Zionism's superstructure is already collapsing like a cheap Jerusalem wedding hall. Only madmen continue dancing on the top floor while the pillars below are collapsing. We have grown accustomed to ignoring the suffering of the women at the roadblocks. No wonder we don't hear the cries of the abused woman living next door or the single mother struggling to support her children in dignity. We don't even bother to count the women murdered by their husbands. Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated. We could kill a thousand ringleaders and engineers a day and nothing would be solved because the leaders come up from below — from the wells of hatred and anger, from the "infrastructures" of injustice and moral corruption. If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained and immutable, I would be silent. But things could be different, and so crying out is a moral imperative ... Avraham Burg was speaker Israel's parliament from 1999 to 2002 and is a Labor Pary member."

Several thousand march in Rome against Israeli wall Saturday,
ptd.net (from Agence France-Presse), November 8, 2003
"Several thousand people marched through central Rome on Saturday to protest against Israel's construction of a security barrier across the West Bank. Organisers claimed more than 30,000 took part in the "Stop the Wall" march and rally, whose speakers included Fatwa Barghuti, the wife of jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghuti, and an Israeli peace activist, Michal Schwarz, from the Israeli movement for democratic action ... The UN General Assembly has demanded that Israel dismantle the barrier, part of which has already been completed. Israel maintains the wall will stop Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel, but the Palestinian Authority fears the real aim is to dictate the borders of its promised state."

As the Arabs see the Jews,
His Majesty King Abdullah [1882-1951,of Jordan], The American Magazine, November, 1947
"I am especially delighted to address an American audience, for the tragic problem of Palestine will never be solved without American understanding, American sympathy, American support. So many billions of words have been written about Palestine—perhaps more than on any other subject in history—that I hesitate to add to them. Yet I am compelled to do so, for I am reluctantly convinced that the world in general, and America in particular, knows almost nothing of the true case for the Arabs. We Arabs follow, perhaps far more than you think, the press of America. We are frankly disturbed to find that for every word printed on the Arab side, a thousand are printed on the Zionist side. There are many reasons for this. You have many millions of Jewish citizens interested in this question. They are highly vocal and wise in the ways of publicity. There are few Arab citizens in America, and we are as yet unskilled in the technique of modern propaganda. The results have been alarming for us. In your press we see a horrible caricature and are told it is our true portrait. In all justice, we cannot let this pass by default. Our case is quite simple: For nearly 2,000 years Palestine has been almost 100 per cent Arab. It is still preponderantly Arab today, in spite of enormous Jewish immigration. But if this immigration continues we shall soon be outnumbered—a minority in our home. Palestine is a small and very poor country, about the size of your state of Vermont. Its Arab population is only about 1,200,000. Already we have had forced on us, against our will, some 600,000 Zionist Jews. We are threatened with many hundreds of thousands more. Our position is so simple and natural that we are amazed it should even be questioned. It is exactly the same position you in America take in regard to the unhappy European Jews. You are sorry for them, but you do not want them in your country. We do not want them in ours, either. Not because they are Jews, but because they are foreigners. We would not want hundreds of thousands of foreigners in our country, be they Englishmen or Norwegians or Brazilians or whatever. Think for a moment: In the last 25 years we have had one third of our entire population forced upon us. In America that would be the equivalent of 45,000,000 complete strangers admitted to your country, over your violent protest, since 1921. How would you have reacted to that? Because of our perfectly natural dislike of being overwhelmed in our own homeland, we are called blind nationalists and heartless anti-Semites. This charge would be ludicrous were it not so dangerous. No people on earth have been less "anti-Semitic" than the Arabs. The persecution of the Jews has been confined almost entirely to the Christian nations of the West. Jews, themselves, will admit that never since the Great Dispersion did Jews develop so freely and reach such importance as in Spain when it was an Arab possession. With very minor exceptions, Jews have lived for many centuries in the Middle East, in complete peace and friendliness with their Arab neighbours. Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and other Arab centres have always contained large and prosperous Jewish colonies. Until the Zionist invasion of Palestine began, these Jews received the most generous treatment—far, far better than in Christian Europe. Now, unhappily, for the first time in history, these Jews are beginning to feel the effects of Arab resistance to the Zionist assault. Most of them are as anxious as Arabs to stop it. Most of these Jews who have found happy homes among us resent, as we do, the coming of these strangers. I was puzzled for a long time about the odd belief which apparently persists in America that Palestine has somehow "always been a Jewish land." Recently an American I talked to cleared up this mystery. He pointed out that the only things most Americans know about Palestine are what they read in the Bible. It was a Jewish land in those days, they reason, and they assume it has always remained so. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is absurd to reach so far back into the mists of history to argue about who should have Palestine today, and I apologise for it. Yet the Jews do this, and I must reply to their "historic claim." I wonder if the world has ever seen a stranger sight than a group of people seriously pretending to claim a land because their ancestors lived there some 2,000 years ago! If you suggest that I am biased, I invite you to read any sound history of the period and verify the facts. Such fragmentary records as we have indicate that the Jews were wandering nomads from Iraq who moved to southern Turkey, came south to Palestine, stayed there a short time, and then passed to Egypt, where they remained about 400 years. About 1300 BC (according to your calendar) they left Egypt and gradually conquered most—but not all—of the inhabitants of Palestine. It is significant that the Philistines—not the Jews—gave their name to the country: "Palestine" is merely the Greek form of "Philistia." Only once, during the empire of David and Solomon, did the Jews ever control nearly—but not all—the land which is today Palestine. This empire lasted only 70 years, ending in 926 BC. Only 250 years later the Kingdom of Judah had shrunk to a small province around Jerusalem, barely a quarter of modern Palestine. In 63 BC the Jews were conquered by Roman Pompey, and never again had even the vestige of independence. The Roman Emperor Hadrian finally wiped them out about 135 AD. He utterly destroyed Jerusalem, rebuilt under another name, and for hundreds of years no Jew was permitted to enter it. A handful of Jews remained in Palestine but the vast majority were killed or scattered to other countries, in the Diaspora, or the Great Dispersion. From that time Palestine ceased to be a Jewish country, in any conceivable sense. This was 1,815 years ago, and yet the Jews solemnly pretend they still own Palestine! If such fantasy were allowed, how the map of the world would dance about! Italians might claim England, which the Romans held so long. England might claim France, "homeland" of the conquering Normans. And the French Normans might claim Norway, where their ancestors originated. And incidentally, we Arabs might claim Spain, which we held for 700 years. Many Mexicans might claim Spain, "homeland" of their forefathers. They might even claim Texas, which was Mexican until 100 years ago. And suppose the American Indians claimed the "homeland" of which they were the sole, native, and ancient occupants until only some 450 years ago! I am not being facetious. All these claims are just as valid—or just as fantastic—as the Jewish "historic connection" with Palestine. Most are more valid. In any event, the great Moslem expansion about 650 AD finally settled things. It dominated Palestine completely. From that day on, Palestine was solidly Arabic in population, language, and religion ... May I also point out that Jerusalem is, after Mecca and Medina, the holiest place in Islam. In fact, in the early days of our religion, Moslems prayed toward Jerusalem instead of Mecca. The Jewish "religious claim" to Palestine is as absurd as the "historic claim." The Holy Places, sacred to three great religions, must be open to all, the monopoly of none. Let us not confuse religion and politics ... I have the most complete confidence in the fair-mindedness and generosity of the American public. We Arabs ask no favours. We ask only that you know the full truth, not half of it. We ask only that when you judge the Palestine question, you put yourselves in our place. What would your answer be if some outside agency told you that you must accept in America many millions of utter strangers in your midst—enough to dominate your country—merely because they insisted on going to America, and because their forefathers had once lived there some 2,000 years ago? Our answer is the same. And what would be your action if, in spite of your refusal, this outside agency began forcing them on you? Ours will be the same."

Apartheid in the Holy Land,
by Desmond Tutu, The Guardian (UK), April 29, 2002
"In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders. What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes? I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: "Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews." My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden? Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured. The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty, will not provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only intensify the hatred. Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or - I hope - to strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders. We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land? My brother Naim Ateek has said what we used to say: "I am not pro- this people or that. I am pro-justice, pro-freedom. I am anti- injustice, anti-oppression." But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures? People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe." Desmond Tutu is the former Archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission."

U.N.: Israeli Barrier Cuts Into W. Bank,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), November 11, 2003
"The planned path of Israel's security barrier will carve off 14 percent of the West Bank, trap 274,000 Palestinians in tiny enclaves and cut off another 400,000 from their fields, jobs, schools and hospitals, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday. The contentious string of walls, razor wire, ditches and fences has further enflamed already high tensions between Palestinians and Israelis. The United States has also criticized the barrier's planned route deep into the West Bank, saying it could harm efforts to set up a Palestinian state. Israel has said it is building the barrier to keep out Palestinian militants responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis over the past three years of violence. But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday it is also meant to prevent "tens of thousands" of ordinary Palestinians from sneaking out of the West Bank and moving into Israel - as officials say has occurred in recent years. Palestinians say the snaking barricade is an Israeli attempt to seize West Bank land Palestinians claim for a future state. About 90 miles of the barrier has been completed so far around the northern West Bank, mainly following the invisible boundary with Israel. The unbuilt southern section of the fence, almost 430 miles long, will dip up to 14 miles into the West Bank in some cases, according to the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The dips appear aimed at incorporating some Jewish settlements into the "Israeli" side. Altogether, the barrier will carve off 14.5 percent of the West Bank, affecting roughly 680,000 people, nearly one-third of the Palestinians living in the West Bank, the report said."

[The Jewish norm: endemic hypocrisy -- one standard for Jews, another for everyone else:]
For Zionists, Time To Choose,
By Paul Gottfried, VDare, November 12, 2003
"In a provocative essay in the New York Review of Books (October 23), “Israel: The Alternative,” New York University historian Tony Judt depicted the idea of an exclusively Jewish state as an “anachronism" ... He went on: “But one nationalist movement, Zionism, was frustrated in its ambitions. The dream of an appropriately sited Jewish national home in the middle of the defunct Turkish Empire had to wait upon the retreat of imperial Britain: a process that took three more decades… “The problem with Israel, in short, is not—as is sometimes suggested—that it is a European ‘enclave’ in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on…” Judt, however, added that Israel is different in one key respect from its European prototypes. It is a democracy, “hence its present dilemma” in having to dominate the Palestinians against their wishes. Judt argued that this situation has created serious difficulty for Jews outside of Israel. How can Jews who extol “pluralism”—by which Judt seems to mean “diversity”— in their native lands while simultaneously defending an Israeli polity that rejects that “pluralism”? And what happens if Americans start believing that “Israel's behavior has been a disaster for American foreign policy.” Judt’s gloomy conclusion: “The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews.” Judt saw two major strategic alternatives for the Israelis. Maintaining an ethnically-specific nation-state. In this case, they have to choose between three tactical options: a] trying to dominate the currently-controlled area, with its ominous demographic problem. Or ,b] retreating to the pre 1967 boundaries—in effect trading demographic for geographic risk. Or, c], keeping the current area and expel the Arab populations. (He made it clear he thinks this last quite possible.) But Judt preferred his second major strategic alternative: Abandoning the nation-state ideal: “The time has come to think the unthinkable… a single, integrated, binational state of Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians.” He argued: “Israel…is an oddity among modern nations…because it is a state in which one community—Jews —is set above others, in an age when that sort of state has no place…. In a world where nations and peoples increasingly intermingle and intermarry at will…where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel falsely constrained if we had to answer to just one of them…In today's ‘clash of cultures’ between open, pluralist democracies and belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno-states, Israel actually risks falling into the wrong camp.” Having committed this incorrectness, Judt is now in the crosshairs of a powerful lobby. Andrea Levin of the Jerusalem Post wrote that Judt (who is Jewish) was “pandering to genocide.” On NRO, David Frum accused Judt of “genocidal liberalism,” noting “one must hate Israel very much indeed to prefer such an outcome [a binational state] to the reality of liberal democracy that exists in Israel today.” And the assault on Judt goes on: only on Monday, NRO, continuing the magazine’s new role of Likudnik lickspittle, published an extraordinary demand from the Jerusalem Post’s Saul Singer that American “[e]ditors and producers should be as intolerant of such musings as they are of racism, and for the same reason: Both reek of the genocides of the last century.” Note that this censorship only applies to the U.S. In Israel, such notions are debated all the time. But should Israel be regarded as a “liberal democracy” without accepting demographic developments which many Zionists apparently deem appropriate to Western countries? Allan Dershowitz, in his recent mini-book The Case For Israel, never allows that there is a case to be made for ethno-national Christian states as well a Jewish one. Abe Foxman, Edgar Bronfman, Tom Lantos, and their legion of counterparts in Western Europe apparently propose quite separate paths of development for the Jewish and Christian states. They apparently think that Israel is entitled to an interwar-style path of ethnic particularism. The West is ordered to take a deethnicized path. ... But, unlike his hysterical opponents, Judt believes that what is sauce for the Christian West must also be (more or less) sauce for Israel. He is at least an honest Jewish liberal."

[The world Jewish community has made this conscious choice: where Israel goes, it will follow. And Israel is dragging Jews, and the whole world, towards Hell.]
Israel on road to ruin, warn former Shin Bet chiefs,
by Chris McGreal, Guardian (UK), November 15, 2003
"Four former directors of Israel's Shin Bet security service have given unprecedented warnings that the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is leading the country to catastrophe by failing to pursue peace with the Palestinians. The criticisms, which follow a warning by the army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, a fortnight ago that the government's harsh treatment of Palestinian civilians was "strengthening terrorist organisations", provide further evidence that confidence in Mr Sharon is crumbling in the security establishment. The former Shin Bet chiefs - Yaakov Perry, Ami Ayalon, Avraham Shalom and Carmi Gilon - made their criticisms in an interview with the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. "We are heading downhill towards near-catastrophe," Mr Perry said. "If we go on living by the sword, we will continue to wallow in the mud and destroy ourselves." Mr Shalom called the government's policies "contrary to the desire for peace". The former intelligence chiefs said Mr Sharon's insistence on a complete halt to "terrorist attacks" before peace talks could begin in earnest was either misguided or a ploy to avoid negotiations and continue the policies of Israeli expansionism. "[The government] is dealing solely with the question of how to prevent the next terrorist attack," Mr Gilon said. "It [ignores] the question of how we get out of the mess we find ourselves in today ... It is clear to me that we are heading toward a crash." The former intelligence chiefs agreed on a need to take swift steps towards ending the occupation by dismantling some Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. "We need to take the situation into our own hands and leave Gaza with all the difficulty that that entails, and to dismantle illegal settlements," said Mr Perry. "There will always be some [settler] groups ... for whom the land of Israel nestles in the hills of Nablus and inside Hebron and we will have to clash with them." Mr Shalom backed Gen Ya'alon's earlier view that Israel's treatment of ordinary Palestinians was wrong. "We must once and for all admit there is another side, that it has feelings, that it is suffering and that we are behaving disgracefully ... this entire behaviour is the result of the occupation," he said. So far, the government shows little sign of changing tack. Mr Sharon has accused his critics of playing into the hands of terrorists. The present director of the Shin Bet, Avi Dichter, continues to argue for maintaining stringent restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. The defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, said in a recent interview that the army could defeat the armed Palestinian groups, although he warned it could take generations. But Mr Perry said Israelis should listen to those with more experience. "Why is it that that every one, Shin Bet directors, chiefs of staff, former security personnel, after a long service in the security organisations, become the advocates of reconciliation with the Palestinians?" he asked. "Why? Because we know the material, the people in the field and, surprisingly enough, both sides."

[The Dual Loyalist pilgrimage. The "United Jewish Communities of North America" is corrupt and morally bankrupt. Period.]
U.S., Canadian Jews Head to Jerusalem,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), November 16, 2003
"More than 4,000 U.S. and Canadian Jews on Sunday began a four-day convention in Israel, the largest of its kind, planning to discuss issues like immigration and anti-Semitism and show support for the embattled country. Some of the participants plan a visit to a settlement in the West Bank, but organizers insisted it was not a political statement. The General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities of North America, an umbrella organization that donates more than $200 million annually to Israel, brings together North American leaders and more than 3,000 Israelis. Organizers said it was the largest general assembly in the more than 70-year history of the group. At a news conference Sunday, convention leaders said they stood by the Israeli government, which is embroiled in a three-year-old battle with Palestinian militants. "We're going to support whatever they do," said Stephen Hoffman, the group's president and chief executive officer. Addressing the opening session of the convention Sunday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appealed to American and Canadian Jews to move to Israel. "We need you," he said. Sharon denounced the twin bombings of synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey on Saturday and declared, "Our enemies have yet to understand that the Jewish people cannot be broken" ... One of the dozens of tours available on Tuesday will be a visit to settlements in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank. Hoffman said the visit is not a political statement. Gush Etzion was chosen because it is close to Jerusalem, he said. "It's a reality of current Israel, and we decided to include that reality among the tour options," Hoffman said. Critics have said that the conference presents a sanitized view of Israeli life. Writing in the Haaretz daily, West Bank reporter Gideon Levy said that if he were a delegate, he would be "deeply insulted" because organizers "treat me like a fool." Levy, who writes about Palestinian hardships under Israeli occupation, said the participants "won't see a refugee camp, a city under curfew, a checkpoint or an ambulance that has been blocked from passing through." He asked, "How can one visit Israel and skip all this?"

Istanbul attacks and hidden agendas,
By K Gajendra Singh, Asia Times, November 18, 2003
"The two synagogues attacked in Istanbul on November 15 in which at least 23 people died are located in the center of Istanbul's Jewish community, which has thrived throughout history in Turkey. Ottoman Sultan Fethi , who conquered Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, and named it Istanbul in 1453, in Turkish tradition allowed all religious communities to live as protected people, and he even settled many Jews in the new capital. When they were expelled from Spain, the Ottoman empire gave them shelter. Even after the gut-wrenching events of World War I, when the Ottoman empire collapsed, Armenians were massacred and Christians exchanged with Turks in Greece, the Jews continued to live in Turkey, mostly in Istanbul, and around the time of World War II, republican Turkey gave shelter to many Jews, including hundreds of professors escaping Nazi Germany. They provided financial acumen, as earlier Armenians and Christians had in trade and industry ... A Jew, Jefi Kamhi, was even elected a member of parliament in 1995. Turkey recognized Israel in 1948, the first Muslim country to do so. After the 1967 Middle East war and even after the 1973 one, when Arabs exploited the oil weapon, Turkey did not disrupt relations with Israel ... Its informal alliance with Israel was useful and the latter's influence with Washington could be exploited for US grants of sophisticated arms and equipment. There may be some truth in the threat perceptions and that the arms would be used to counter external threats, but militarism has been used to impose a Jacobin version of secularism on Turkey to keep down leftists, Islamists and Kurds. And much of the Turkish population was not too happy. However, in the November 2002 elections, the people had their say and gave two thirds of the parliament's seats to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has Islamist roots and less tolerance for the army's role in the state's affairs. Also, more than 90 percent of the population opposed the US-led invasion of Muslim Iraq, which the military was very keen to join. In 1996, Turkey and Israel went public and signed an agreement for military cooperation. Much has been written about this evolving relationship, with some political analysts calling it an "axis" an "entente" even an "alliance". Naturally, the maximum criticism came from countries in the Middle East who began to criticize and even condemn Jerusalem and Ankara for forging an alliance against them. The military cooperation agreement does not make explicit commitments for mutual assistance in the event of an armed conflict, but a careful interpretation of the provisions shows that it opened the door to much enhanced cooperation between the countries, which could reach levels usually reserved for serious allies. Of course, the Israelis would like to go much further. Israel buys water from Turkey, and Turkey is a popular destination for Israeli tourists, nearly 300,000 visited last year ... This secular country has seen a surge in support for Islamic sentiments and parties, as elsewhere. Public opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq played a major role in Turkey's parliament refusing the US request in March to open a second front into Iraqi Kurdistan in the north by using Turkish soil. The blasts could be an act of revenge for the daily killings of Palestinians and the Israelis building a much-opposed wall that encroaches on Palestinian land. Such attacks would please Muslims and earn the goodwill of angry and frustrated Muslim youth all over the world, and attract many of them to their cause. It also sends a very stern warning to Turks to keep out of Iraq. Turkey had pledged to send up to 100,000 troops to Iraq, but in the face of stiff opposition from within Iraq, including from the US-appointed Governing Council, the decision has been reversed."

[Why, did you ask, do Muslims hate America?]
Israel gets new F-16I fighter/bomber,
by Arieh O'Sullivan, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 14, 2003
"Pilots of the newest F-16I long-range fighter/bomber which is to roll off the assembly line in Texas Friday are itchy to get their hands on the $45 million jet. The rollout ceremony marks the interim phase in this $4.5 billion dollar deal, the largest arms deal ever taken in the history of the state. Lockheed Martin won the tender, beating rival Boeing, in 1999 to supply 102 of the advanced fighter jets which are aimed at strengthening the IAF's long reach, being able to reach nations like Iran and Libya. The aircraft have been supplemented to Israel's specifications and are different from any other F-16, even in the service of the US Air Force. They are being paid for from the annual US military grants given to Israel, which this year stands at about $2.2 billion. The next phase is transporting the jets to Israel. The first is expected to arrive next month and gradually the whole squadron will be in place at the Ramon base deep in the Negev. A total of three squadrons will be delivered by 2008 ... With the arrival of the 102 F-16Is, Israel will have a total of 362 of the jets – the largest fleet in any country in the world behind the United States."

Leftist protests jam Paris streets,
By Arthur Neslen, Al-Jazeera, November 16, 2003
"The streets of Paris were brought to a halt in a blaze of colour, music and optimism as 100,000 people demonstrated against capitalist globalisation at the end of the second European Social Forum. “The message of our protest is that we want a Europe that has rights for all its citizens in a world without war,” Pierre Khalfa, a march organiser told Aljazeera.net on Saturday ... One section of the march carried 30m-high grey polystyrene blocks in a representation of the so-called apartheid wall being built by Israel across the West Bank. Israel's so-called apartheid wall was a focus of protesters' anger “The wall is cutting off the lives of Palestinians,” said Haima, a 23-year-old Parisian student, holding up one block. “To see the reality of the wall has more meaning for people than to read about it in the papers.” Lina Jamol, a 25-year-old researcher of Syrian origin who lives in London, said she was also marching for Palestine. “I want our governments to impose sanctions on Israel, enforce the Israel-EU trade agreement, which states that goods from the occupied territories must be labelled, and end the arms embargo against the Palestinians,” she said. “I would also like to think that people in the Arab world will be excited when they see demonstrations like this, because it shows that Western people aren’t turning a blind eye to the Palestinians, even if their governments are.”

Ethiopians protest Israeli racism,
Al-Jazeera, November 17, 2003
"Some 2000 Ethiopian Jews have protested in Jerusalem against what they see as racism by the Israeli government. The immigrants demonstrated on Sunday outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's offices as part of a campaign to persuade the government to allow their relatives to join them in Israel. The protesters carried photos of their relatives and demanded the lifting of immigration restrictions. Most of their relatives left behind belong to the Falash Mura community, Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity about a century ago and who are concentrated around Addis Ababa and the northeastern Gondar province. The government gave the green light in February for some 20,000 of them to immigrate under Israel's law of return, which says that Jews anywhere in the world have the right to make the aliyah (ascent) to Israel and claim citizenship. But Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, from the secular Shinui party, has said that he will not allow them to arrive en masse without assurances that more candidates will not seek to immigrate by citing familiy ties. During Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1991, about 35,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel. Their community in Israel now numbers about 80,000, including several hundred in West Bank settlements, but doubts about their Jewishness have sparked intense debate among religious authorities and Israeli society. The essentially rural Falash Mura community has had to bridge a wide cultural gap and has faced a difficult integration into Israeli society. The Ethiopians suffer from discrimination and high unemployment."

“AN OCCUPATION THAT CREATES CHILDREN WILLING TO DIE.” Facility 1391: Israel's Guantanamo,
by Jonathan Cook, Le Monde Diplomatique (France), November 2003
"FACILITY 1391, a concrete fortress in central Israel on a rise overlooking a kibbutz, is almost obscured by high walls and fir trees. Two watchtowers give armed guards extensive views of surrounding fields. From the outside it looks like many other police stations built by the British in the 1930s across the Mandate of Palestine. Today many serve as military bases, their location revealed by signposts showing only a number. Facility 1391, close to the Green Line, the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank, is different. It is not marked on maps, it has been erased from aerial photographs and recently its numbered signpost was removed. Censors have excised all mention of its location from the Israeli media, with the government saying that secrecy is essential to "prevent harm to the country's security". According to lawyers, foreign journalists divulging information risk being expelled from Israel. But, despite government attempts to impose a news blackout, information about more than a decade of horrific events at Facility 1391 are beginning to leak out. As a newspaper described it, Facility 1391 is "Israel's Guantanamo" (a reference to the Camp X-Ray prison for al-Qaida and Taliban captives run by the United States on occupied Cuban territory). In October 2003 a panel of international legal experts, led by Richard Goldstone, a judge in South Africa's constitutional court who has also been chief prosecutor of the international tribunals for former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, called CampX-Ray "a black hole" into which inmates disappeared, to be stripped of basic rights under the Geneva Conventions. The report added that "states cannot hold detainees, for whom they are responsible, outside of the jurisdiction of all international courts". Although Facility 1391 has received none of the publicity of the US prison, it more flagrantly violates international law. Unlike CampX-Ray, its location is not publicly known; there aren't even long-distance photographs of its inmates of the kind taken at GuantanamoBay. Unlike the US prison, Facility 1391 has never been independently inspected, not even by the International Red Cross. What happens there is a mystery. Justice Goldstone was able to declare that inside CampX-Ray there were "662 people without any access to due process" of law, but no one, apart from a few senior Israeli government and security officials, knows how many inmates there are in Facility 1391. Testimonies from former inmates suggest it is crowded with detainees, many of them Lebanese captured during Israel's 18-year occupation of south Lebanon. Four months after the first revelations of its existence, the Israeli courts have yet to make the government reveal any substantial information about it. "Anyone entering the prison can be made to disappear, potentially for ever," says Leah Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who specialises in advising Palestinians. "It's no different from the jails run by tinpot South American dictators." What little information is available suggests that interrogation methods using torture are routine. A high-profile detainee, Mustafa Dirani of the now defunct Lebanese Shia militia Amal, has alleged that he was raped by his interrogators. Israel recently admitted that he had been moved to Facility 1391 after he was kidnapped from Lebanon by Israeli agents in 1994. The first chinks in the secrecy about the prison were prised open by Tsemel last year, after the Israeli army's reinvasion of West Bank cities in Operation Defensive Shield, April 2002. Until then it seems to have been used almost exclusively for captive foreign nationals, mainly Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians and Iranians. It is not known how many of them have been held there. The Friends of Prisoners Committee in Nazareth claims 15 Arab foreign nationals have gone missing from Israel's prison system. There are many instances of kidnappings, particularly from Lebanon, assumed to have been carried out by Israel. Four Iranian government officials who disappeared in Beirut in 1982 have never been accounted for. In recent prisoner exchange negotiations between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hizbollah, their families have requested information from Israel. But after the mass arrests in April 2002, which stretched Israel's detention facilities to bursting, a number of Palestinians were also sent to Facility 1391. For a while the disappearance of these detainees was concealed in the general chaos after the army sweeps. By October 2002, however, Tsemel and an Israeli human rights group, Hamoked, were demanding information in the courts. They presented habeas corpus writs, effectively demanding that the missing Palestinians be produced to prove they were alive. Cornered, the Israeli authorities admitted that the missing men were being held in a secret facility but would give no more details ... Hannah Friedman, director of the Public Committee Against Torture, says her group has recorded a steady rise in such cases in Israeli jails during the intifada. A recent survey showed that 58% of Palestinian prisoners reported overt violence, including beatings, kicking, shaking, being forced into painful positions and having handcuffs intentionally tightened. Such practices and worse are commonplace in Facility 1391 ... Foreign nationals in Facility 1391 are the responsibility of a special wing of Israeli military intelligence known as Unit 504. The treatment of these prisoners has been revealed by documents submitted to the courts in Dirani's law suit. He was seized from his home in Lebanon in May 1994 in an attempt by Israeli intelligence to get information on the whereabouts of an airman, Ron Arad, whose plane crashed over south Lebanon in 1986. Dirani held Arad for two years before allegedly selling him on to Iran. Dirani, who was moved to Ashmoret prison near Netanya a year ago, spent eight years in Facility 1391, along with another famous inmate, Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid of Hizbullah. In the first months of Dirani's capture, when hopes of extracting information about Arad were high, he was tortured by a senior army interrogator known only as "Major George". Although torture was at that time legal in Israel, Dirani is suing the state and "George" for two incidents of sexual abuse. In one, "George" allegedly ordered a soldier to rape Dirani; in the other, he is accused of inserting a wooden baton into Dirani's rectum. Dirani's accusations have been corroborated by affadavits from soldiers who served in the prison. One interrogator says: "I know that it was customary to threaten to insert a stick if the subject did not talk." A petition signed by 60 officers in defence of "George" does not deny that such practices were employed, only that it is unfair to victimise him for using working methods standard in the prison. "George" has admitted that it was normal practice for detainees to be naked while being interrogated ... "It would be quite astounding if Israel, the US's most loyal ally, which we now know has at least one secret prison, wasn't offering its services to the US," says Kerstein. "Israel has decades of expertise in torturing and interrogating Arab prisoners - exactly the skills the Americans now need since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq."

Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 ... Were they part of a massive spy ring which shadowed the 9/11 hijackers and knew that al-Qaeda planned a devastating terrorist attack on the USA?,
Neil Mackay investigates, Sunday Herald (UK), November 2, 2003
"There was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes. Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis – and at least two of them were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA. Their discovery and arrest that morning is a matter of indisputable fact. To those who have investigated just what the Israelis were up to that day, the case raises one dreadful possibility: that Israeli intelligence had been shadowing the al-Qaeda hijackers as they moved from the Middle East through Europe and into America where they trained as pilots and prepared to suicide-bomb the symbolic heart of the United States. And the motive? To bind America in blood and mutual suffering to the Israeli cause. After the attacks on New York and Washington, the former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked what the terrorist strikes would mean for US-Israeli relations. He said: “It’s very good.” Then he corrected himself, adding: “Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy [for Israel from Americans].” If Israel’s closest ally felt the collective pain of mass civilian deaths at the hands of terrorists, then Israel would have an unbreakable bond with the world’s only hyperpower and an effective free hand in dealing with the Palestinian terrorists who had been murdering its innocent civilians as the second intifada dragged on throughout 2001. It’s not surprising that the New Jersey housewife who first spotted the five Israelis and their white van wants to preserve her anonymity. She’s insisted that she only be identified as Maria. A neighbour in her apartment building had called her just after the first strike on the Twin Towers. Maria grabbed a pair of binoculars and, like millions across the world, she watched the horror of the day unfold. As she gazed at the burning towers, she noticed a group of men kneeling on the roof of a white van in her parking lot. Here’s her recollection: “They seemed to be taking a movie. They were like happy, you know ... they didn’t look shocked to me. I thought it was strange.” Maria jotted down the van’s registration and called the police. The FBI was alerted and soon there was a statewide all points bulletin put out for the apprehension of the van and its occupants. The cops traced the number, establishing that it belonged to a company called Urban Moving ... By 4pm on the afternoon of September 11, the van was spotted near New Jersey’s Giants stadium. A squad car pulled it over and inside were five men in their 20s. They were hustled out of the car with guns levelled at their heads and handcuffed. In the car was $4700 in cash, a couple of foreign passports and a pair of box cutters – the concealed Stanley Knife-type blades used by the 19 hijackers who’d flown jetliners into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon just hours before. There were also fresh pictures of the men standing with the smouldering wreckage of the Twin Towers in the background. One image showed a hand flicking a lighter in front of the devastated buildings, like a fan at a pop concert. The driver of the van then told the arresting officers: “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.” His name was Sivan Kurzberg. The other four passengers were Kurzberg’s brother Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. The men were dragged off to prison and transferred out of the custody of the FBI’s Criminal Division and into the hands of their Foreign Counterintelligence Section – the bureau’s anti-espionage squad. A warrant was issued for a search of the Urban Moving premises in Weehawken in New Jersey. Boxes of papers and computers were removed. The FBI questioned the firm’s Israeli owner, Dominik Otto Suter, but when agents returned to re-interview him a few days later, he was gone. An employee of Urban Moving said his co-workers had laughed about the Manhattan attacks the day they happened. “I was in tears,” the man said. “These guys were joking and that bothered me. These guys were like, ‘Now America knows what we go through.’” Vince Cannistraro, former chief of operations for counter-terrorism with the CIA, says the red flag went up among investigators when it was discovered that some of the Israelis’ names were found in a search of the national intelligence database. Cannistraro says many in the US intelligence community believed that some of the Israelis were working for Mossad and there was speculation over whether Urban Moving had been “set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists”. This makes it clear that there was no suggestion whatsoever from within American intelligence that the Israelis were colluding with the 9/11 hijackers – simply that the possibility remains that they knew the attacks were going to happen, but effectively did nothing to help stop them. After the owner vanished, the offices of Urban Moving looked as if they’d been closed down in a big hurry. Mobile phones were littered about, the office phones were still connected and the property of at least a dozen clients were stacked up in the warehouse. The owner had cleared out his family home in New Jersey and returned to Israel. Two weeks after their arrest, the Israelis were still in detention, held on immigration charges. Then a judge ruled that they should be deported. But the CIA scuppered the deal and the five remained in custody for another two months. Some went into solitary confinement, all underwent two polygraph tests and at least one underwent up to seven lie detector sessions before they were eventually deported at the end of November 2001. Paul Kurzberg refused to take a lie detector test for 10 weeks, but then failed it. His lawyer said he was reluctant to take the test as he had once worked for Israeli intelligence in another country. Nevertheless, their lawyer, Ram Horvitz, dismissed the allegations as “stupid and ridiculous”. Yet US government sources still maintained that the Israelis were collecting information on the fundraising activities of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mark Regev, of the Israeli embassy in Washington, would have none of that and he said the allegations were “simply false”. The men themselves claimed they’d read about the World Trade Centre attacks on the internet, couldn’t see it from their office and went to the parking lot for a better view. Their lawyers and the embassy say their ghoulish and sinister celebrations as the Twin Towers blazed and thousands died were due to youthful foolishness. The respected New York Jewish newspaper, The Forward, reported in March 2002, however, that it had received a briefing on the case of the five Israelis from a US official who was regularly updated by law enforcement agencies. This is what he told The Forward: “The assessment was that Urban Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it.” He added that “the conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local Arabs”, but the men were released because they “did not know anything about 9/11”. Back in Israel, several of the men discussed what happened on an Israeli talk show. One of them made this remarkable comment: “The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event.” But how can you document an event unless you know it is going to happen? We are now deep in conspiracy theory territory. But there is more than a little circumstantial evidence to show that Mossad – whose motto is “By way of deception, thou shalt do war” – was spying on Arab extremists in the USA and may have known that September 11 was in the offing, yet decided to withhold vital information from their American counterparts which could have prevented the terror attacks. Following September 11, 2001, more than 60 Israelis were taken into custody under the Patriot Act and immigration laws. One highly placed investigator told Carl Cameron of Fox News that there were “tie-ins” between the Israelis and September 11; the hint was clearly that they’d gathered intelligence on the planned attacks but kept it to themselves. The Fox News source refused to give details, saying: “Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.” Fox News is not noted for its condemnation of Israel; it’s a ruggedly patriotic news channel owned by Rupert Murdoch and was President Bush’s main cheerleader in the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. Another group of around 140 Israelis were detained prior to September 11, 2001, in the USA as part of a widespread investigation into a suspected espionage ring run by Israel inside the USA. Government documents refer to the spy ring as an “organised intelligence-gathering operation” designed to “penetrate government facilities”. Most of those arrested had served in the Israeli armed forces – but military service is compulsory in Israel. Nevertheless, a number had an intelligence background. The first glimmerings of an Israeli spying exercise in the USA came to light in spring 2001, when the FBI sent a warning to other federal agencies alerting them to be wary of visitors calling themselves “Israeli art students” and attempting to bypass security at federal buildings in order to sell paintings. A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report suggested the Israeli calls “may well be an organised intelligence-gathering activity”. Law enforcement documents say that the Israelis “targeted and penetrated military bases” as well as the DEA, FBI and dozens of government facilities, including secret offices and the unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel. A number of Israelis questioned by the authorities said they were students from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, but Pnina Calpen, a spokeswoman for the Israeli school, did not recognise the names of any Israelis mentioned as studying there in the past 10 years ... Certainly, it seems, Israel was spying within the borders of the United States and it is equally certain that the targets were Islamic extremists probably linked to September 11. But did Israel know in advance that the Twin Towers would be hit and the world plunged into a war without end; a war which would give Israel the power to strike its enemies almost without limit? That’s a conspiracy theory too far, perhaps. But the unpleasant feeling that, in this age of spin and secrets, we do not know the full and unadulterated truth won’t go away. Maybe we can guess, but it’s for the history books to discover and decide."

[So where's the New York Times article about Israel's "Facility 1391," fascistic barbarity in the name of Jews everywhere?]
Facility 1391: Israel's secret prison It has been removed from maps and airbrushed from aerial photographs. But Facility 1391 certainly exists - you just have to ask the Palestinians and Lebanese who have been imprisoned and tortured there,
by Chris McGreal, Guardian (UK), November 14, 2003
"The men under the black hoods all have the same question once the blindfolds and manacles are off: Where am I? A voice filtering through a narrow slit in the steel door told Sameer Jadala he was "in Honolulu", Raab Bader that he was "in a submarine" and "outside the borders of Israel", Bashar Jadala that he was "on the moon". None of them imagined it at the time, because only a handful of the political and security establishment knew such a thing existed, but they were prisoners in Israel's Guantanamo: Facility 1391 ... Facility 1391 has been airbrushed from Israeli aerial photographs and purged from modern maps. Where once a police station was marked there is now a blank space. Sometimes even the road leading to it has been erased. But Israel's secret prison, inside an army intelligence base close to the main road between Hadera and Afula in northern Israel, is real enough. For 20 years or more it has been housed in a large, imposing, single-storey building designed by a British engineer, Sir Charles Taggart, during the 1930s as one of a series of garrison forts designed to contain growing unrest in Palestine. Today, the thick concrete walls and iron gates are themselves protected by a double fence overseen by watchtowers and patrolled by attack dogs. The prison has held Lebanese abducted by the Israeli army as hostages, Iraqi defectors and a Syrian intelligence officer who tried to defect but was accused of spying and chose to remain in another prison rather than return home and face a firing squad. More recently, scores of Palestinians were incarcerated in 1391 for interrogation, which finally led to the almost accidental disclosure of a prison the state decreed did not exist. Those who have been through its gates know it is no illusion. One former inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was raped twice - once by a man and once with a stick - during questioning. But most of those who emerge say the real torture is the psychological impact of solitary confinement in filthy, blackened cells so poorly lit that inmates can barely see their own hands, and with no idea where they are or, in many cases, why they are there. "Our main conclusion is that it exists to make torture possible - a particular kind of torture that creates progressive states of dread, dependency, debility," says Manal Hazzan, a human rights lawyer who helped expose the prison's existence. "The law gives the army enough authority already to hide prisoners, so why do they need a secret facility?" Unlike any other Israeli prison, the International Red Cross, lawyers and members of the Israeli parliament have been refused access. One leftwing MP, Zahava Gal-On, describes Facility 1391 as "one of the signs of totalitarian regimes and of the third world". The Israeli government declines to discuss the secret prison other than to issue a standard response: "Facility 1391 is situated on a secret military base. The base is used by the security services for various classified activities and thus its location is kept confidential." But it is not just human rights lawyers and leftwing MPs who have a problem. Ami Ayalon is a former head of Israel's intelligence service, the Shin Bet. He was told about 1391 but says he refused to have anything to do with it. "I knew there was a facility not under the responsibility of the Shin Bet, but under the responsibility of the military. I didn't think then, and I don't think today, that such an institution should exist in a democracy," he says."

Unfair Tilt Toward Israel,
By Michael Lerner and Cornel West, Washington Post, November 11, 2003
"In mid-September, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joined Democratic Rep. Howard Berman of Los Angeles and several dozen other congressional Democrats in an extraordinary attempt to stop debate in the presidential primaries about America's approach to Middle East conflict. In a letter to candidate Howard Dean, the liberal Democrats criticized Dean's statement that if the United States wanted to play a positive role in bringing Israel and Palestine to peace, it would have to take a more neutral stance. Pelosi and others insisted that these words were a violation of America's traditional tilt toward Israel, and that they could be interpreted as abandoning the U.S. commitment to Israel's survival. Of course Dean had neither intended nor implied any such thing. In fact, Dean has not been particularly courageous on Middle East peace issues, so the public hand-slap sent a powerful message: Democrats can be against the war in Iraq, but they dare not question America's almost blind support for Ariel Sharon's government. Privately, some Democrats say they are doing this to ensure that their party does not lose the support of Jewish campaign contributors, who play a disproportionate role in the finances of the party. Pelosi, they say, was trying to reassure these contributors that the party would stay loyal to Israel. Yet in precluding a serious public discussion of our Israel-Palestine policy, the liberal Democrats who are normally the champions of free speech are actually hurting the best interests of the United States, Israel and the Jewish people. The United States has repeatedly been the object of anger and terrorism from people who refer to the oppression of Palestinians by a U.S.-funded Israeli government as a major reason for their antagonism. President Bush promised that the war in Iraq would give him new leverage with Israel to push for a peace settlement. But the road map proposed for this purpose has proved seriously flawed, in part because it allows acts of terrorism to derail the process, and in part because it fails to state from the outset whether the Palestinian state it envisions is in all of the West Bank and Gaza or just in the little sliver that Ariel Sharon would give. The Bush administration has passively acquiesced in Israel's refusal to free political prisoners (most of them never charged or given a trial), and has made only token protests against Israel's construction of a wall through the West Bank, demolitions of Palestinian homes and the targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants (usually carried out in ways that kill more innocent civilians than targets). Last month the United States vetoed a U.N. resolution that challenged Israel's right to expel or murder Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. The State Department offered vague warnings when Israel announced an expansion of existing West Bank settlements. These policies put all Americans at risk and do nothing to move peace forward."

[Is Israel a "degraded society?" Emphatically, yes. The Israeli army increases its Nazification program. Israel and Jewish Neurosis drags the world to catastrophe. And it is the Jewish Lobby in America that has forced the Jewish state's "dehumanization" policies upon the American public, also corroding its own moral fabric.]
War raising ethical issues for Israelis in military,
By Molly Moore, Seattle Times, November 19, 2003
"The hunt for suspected militants sent Sgt. Lirom Hakkak bashing his way through a wall into a Palestinian family's threadbare living room, his M-16 rifle ready. He noticed the grandmother first, her creased face so blanched with terror that she appeared on the verge of collapse. A middle-aged couple huddled close by, trembling. "They could be my parents," Hakkak, 22, recalled thinking. In that split second of recognition, he said, "you really feel disgusting. You see these people and you know the majority of them are innocent and you're taking away their rights. You also know you must do it." With the Israel Defense Forces in the fourth year of battle with the Palestinians, the most dominant institution in Israeli society is also embroiled in a struggle over its own character, according to dozens of interviews with soldiers, officers, reservists and some of the nation's pre-eminent military analysts. Officers and soldiers have begun publicly criticizing specific tactics that they consider dehumanizing to both their own troops and Palestinians. And while they do not question the need to prevent terrorist acts against Israelis, they are voicing concern over a strategy they say has forsaken negotiation and relied almost exclusively on military force to address the conflict. Nearly 600 members of the armed forces have signed statements refusing to serve in the Palestinian territories. Active-duty and reserve personnel are criticizing the military in public. Last month, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, told columnists from Israel's three leading newspapers that the road closures, curfews and roadblocks imposed on the Palestinian civilians were creating explosive levels of "hatred and terrorism" among the populace. Last week four former heads of the Shin Bet domestic-security service said the government's actions and policies during the Palestinian uprising had gravely damaged Israel and its people ... While such public comments have infuriated Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a former general who favors stringent measures against the Palestinians, they reflect the anxieties of many active-duty soldiers and reservists over whether the military is provoking more terrorist attacks than it is preventing. In addition, members of the armed forces said they feared that some of the harsher tactics — especially assassinations of suspected Palestinian militants, which often also cause civilian deaths — are degrading Israeli soldiers, and by extension, Israeli society ... "You're in a situation where you need to be blind," said Hakkak, the Israeli sergeant. "You do things as a machine, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. The things you've done affect you in a very serious way." A growing toll Nearly 900 Israelis have been killed during the conflict — more than 250 of them soldiers. Almost 2,500 Palestinians have been killed. It is difficult to determine how many of those casualties were civilians, with estimates by Palestinian human-rights groups and Israeli research groups ranging as high as 85 percent and as low as 48 percent. No verifiable independent count exists. Cpl. Mati Milstein — an American from Santa Fe, N.M., who moved to Israel and joined the army four years ago — recalled detaining a Palestinian and his son recently at a Gaza Strip checkpoint near a Jewish settlement. He said he trained his M-16 rifle on the father and ordered him out of his car as the "young son watched in horror." After a thorough search of the vehicle yielded nothing, Milstein took the man's ID card, ambled over to his shaded and fortified checkpost and gossiped with a colleague, keeping his M-16 trained on the father and son, who remained standing under the wilting sun. "I held them for 20 minutes — because I could," he recalled. "Then I let them go because I got bored with the game." "I didn't think about the implications until afterward," said Milstein. "I didn't feel good about what I did — that I couldn't keep myself from sinking to this." Last year Milstein decided to tell his story in the newsletter of the Jewish Federation of Greater Albuquerque, N.M. "There's a mystique about the army — that we are the most moral army in the world, we only do good things," Milstein said. "But this is what's happening. I think it's important for people to know." He thought it particularly important to tell other Jews because, he said, "they don't really know what's going on." "There are terrorists stopped and terrorist attacks prevented," he said. "In that respect, there is a very clear purpose and reason for being there. But I don't think we should be there. All the incidents that happen at checkpoints make the Palestinian population hate us more. It counteracts the useful work of tracking suicide bombers. It strengthens the hand of the armed Palestinian groups. It makes it easier for Hamas to justify its attacks on Israelis." Brig. Gen. Yiftah Spector is one of the most decorated pilots in Israeli history, a triple ace credited with downing 15 enemy planes in wars spanning three decades. In recent years, Spector became a revered flight instructor for the air force. Last month scores of Palestinians were killed or wounded when pilots attempting to kill militant leaders dropped bombs or fired missiles into crowded urban neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip. Spector and 26 other current and former Israeli air force pilots signed a letter stating their opposition to executing "illegal and immoral orders to attack." They refused "to take part in air force strikes in civilian population centers" and "to continue to hurt innocent civilians." The air force commander, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, grounded all the pilots and fired the nine instructors, including Spector, his longtime friend and colleague. "Deaf, blind and stupid" Spector, 63, was undeterred. In an interview a few days after personally surrendering his wings to Halutz, he said: "I am the public. I can speak my heart." "If we continue, there are going to be greater and greater dilemmas and there will be more and more mistakes," said Spector. The government, he said, is "deaf, blind and stupid" for relying exclusively on military force to resolve the conflict."

[The "Jewish" Military Garrison state is apparently intent upon destroying the Holy Land in every possible manner. Moses himself would drop dead with lung cancer. Question: have Jews proven to be a worthy steward of the land of three Biblical faiths?]
GA / Green activist warns of looming crisis,
By Daphna Berman, Haaretz (Israel), November 19, 2003
"There are 1,100 air-pollution related deaths a year in the Tel Aviv area alone, environmentalist Eilon Schwartz told a crowd full of GA delegates munching on cheese sandwiches yesterday afternoon. "That's far more than anyone dies of terrorist attacks," he said. Schwartz, who is the director of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel, was featured as part of a GA "lunch and learn" program focusing on Judaism and the environment. "Every fresh water source in Israel is polluted," he said. "We have third world population growth and first world consumption rates." a Jewish textual study of Jerusalem, and a discussion of intermarriage.

[Wiesel is a weasel -- a moral fraud who's grown rich off the "Holocaust Industry." The Jewish state IS "terrorism." And this is just another of the countless expressions of Jewish hatred of Christianity. Israel is a moral Hellhole. The Jewish Lobby shits with impunity upon all and everything. Hey, Pope. Kick back. Tell Wiesel he's a Jewish "terrorist." ]
Elie Wiesel criticizes pope's comments on Israel,
Haaretz (Israel), November 18, 2003
"Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel took issue with Pope John Paul II's criticism of a security barrier under construction by Israel, saying in a newspaper interview yesterday that the pontiff's remarks politicize terrorism. Wiesel's comments came after John Paul criticized Israel on Sunday for building a wall between itself and the Palestinian territories. "From the spiritual leader of one of the largest and most important religions in the world, I expected something very different, namely a statement condemning terror and the killing of innocents, without mixing in political considerations and, above all, without comparing these things to a work of pure self-defense," Wiesel told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. "To politicize terrorism like that is wrong," Wiesel said. The pontiff, in comments during his Sunday appearance in St. Peter's Square, also condemned recent acts of terrorism. "I also renew my firm condemnation for every terrorist action carried out in these recent times in the Holy Land," John Paul said Sunday. "At the same time, I must note that unfortunately in those places, the dynamism of peace seems to have stopped. The construction of a wall between the Israeli and Palestinian people is seen by many as a new obstacle on the road toward peaceful cohabitation," the pope said. "In reality, the Holy Land doesn't need walls, but bridges." The pope has often condemned terrorism spawned by religious intolerance. He has decried the more than three years of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, although hasn't spoken much about the conflict recently. Israel says it is building the barrier, in some areas deep in the West Bank, to keep out Palestinian militants. The Palestinians fear an Israeli land grab."

Number of returning Israelis continues to drop,
By Gideon Alon, Haaretz (Israel), November 19, 2003
"Colette Avital, chair of the Knesset Immigration Absorption Committee, called a meeting Tuesday to protest the Finance Ministry's intent to cancel financial benefits to Israelis returning from abroad after a stay of two years or longer. But the statistics about Israelis abroad presented by Nadia Prigat, in charge of returning Israelis at the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, "stole the show." Prigat told the committee that, based on estimates by the Central Bureau of Statistics, 760,000 Israelis are living abroad - 600,000 adults and 160,000 children. According to Prigat, some 60 percent of them live in North America, 25 percent in Europe, and 15 percent elsewhere. Prigat had no statistics as to the number of Israelis who had left during the three years of the intifada, but she noted that an estimated 550,000 Israelis (400,000 adults and 150,000 children) were living abroad in 2000. With regard to the numbers of Israelis who have returned to Israel over the past 13 years, the numbers are clearer. Fifty percent of the Israelis who returned during that period did so after a stay abroad of between two and five years. "These people came back because they were unable to sink roots abroad and missed home," Prigat explained. Most of those who leave Israel, and the 50 per cent who returned, are between 25 and 44 years old. A large number of them are academics."

[The Jewish state has a total population around 6 million, nearly 20% Arabs. Israel is a very tiny country. But it is a enormous Kill Factory. Who dies by these weapons? Anyone not Jewish.]
Israel's weapons exports skyrocket, making it friends and money,
by PETER ENAV, San Francisco Chronicle, November 18, 2003
"With an arsenal ranging from the Uzi to attack drones and airborne early warning systems, Israel has quietly transformed itself into one of the world's top defense exporters. Defense News has ranked Israel as No. 3 based on 2002 contracts, and an Israeli expert told The Associated Press the country was now considered to be in the top five. Growing sales to Turkey and India, two major new markets for Israel, have driven the surge. The country's success as a weapons exporter comes against the backdrop of three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence that has stifled Israel's economic development and deepened its isolation. Until this summer, Israel's Defense Ministry refused to publish statistics on arms sales, although some figures had been provided in background briefings. The subject remains sensitive, especially because of some critics' charges that Israel passes on American military technology to third countries. Defense Ministry figures show Israeli weapons export contracts were worth $4.1 billion in 2002 -- up from $2.6 billion the previous year. Israel's overall exports are around $30 billion. In June, Defense News ranked Israel 3rd in defense exports, behind only the U.S. and Russia. The magazine, a U.S. weekly specializing in military issues, said those countries had defense exports of $13.2 billion and $4.4 billion, respectively. But there is no consensus on the exact numbers, in part because some countries use contracts for their totals and others use actual deliveries. Efraim Inbar of Tel Aviv's BESA Center for Strategic Studies estimated that the top five defense exporters -- not necessarily in this order -- were now the United States, Russia, France, Britain and Israel ... A major reason for Israel's recent surge was a $700 million deal to upgrade Turkish tanks, according to Barbara Opall-Rome, Tel Aviv correspondent of Defense News. In addition to India and Turkey, other large markets for Israeli weapons systems include the United States, Singapore and Sri Lanka. Some Israeli weapons have gone to controversial buyers -- the Pinochet regime in Chile, for example, or Li Peng's China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. Today, Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi says, a parliamentary committee must give its approval for all Israeli weapons transfers, and the Defense Ministry prevents weapons systems from going to countries with checkered political records. Some 200 arms manufacturers operate in Israel, but five companies -- the state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries, or IAI, Israel Military Industries and Rafael, and privately held Elbit and Elrisa -- account for about 90 percent of all foreign sales ... Israel has also benefited from its ties to the United States and access to U.S. technology. Much of Israeli avionics is based on U.S. know-how ... Shichor noted that the Israeli air force regularly trains over Turkish airspace, and Israeli and Turkish intelligence services share information about military developments in Syria and Iran. "Turkey is very important to Israel's interests," he said. "Weapons sales have helped to warm the relationship."

[The state of Israel, beacon to world Jewry, is a cesspool of bribery -- which is a national institution. It is a Hellhole of plenty else too, but the human mind can only absorb vast gulfs with reasonable limits.]
Heading toward a banana republic,
By Nehemia Strasler, Haaretz (Israel), Novmebr 20, 2003
"'Those on the take in the public sector - in municipalities, the Israel Lands Administration and cabinet ministries - who used to get generous handouts in the era of affluence are now forced to make do with a lot less because of the difficult economic situation in the business sector.' Clearly, those on the take are a minority among the public sector workers, a minority that spoils things for the majority of honest, dedicated workers. To evade the harsh word "bribery," Israelis have adopted the term macher (wheeler-dealer). But how does the macher persuade the clerk to speed up the process of getting the permit, or reducing the debt, or to ignore the fact that the plant in question is working without a smoke detector? Will nice words and smiles do the trick? ... The excessive bureaucracy, which grinds citizens to a pulp, is one reason for the thriving macher system, which has penetrated every walk of life - municipalities, the Land Registration Office, the ILA, the Interior and Industry ministries, income tax, customs and the NII. Another, more problematic reason is the change in the norms of conduct. Anyone who conducts his affairs honestly is considered a fool. This is a dangerous plunge toward a corrupt economy, which has already wreaked havoc in South Asia, Russia and Argentina. When people see how the prime minister and his sons are acting, and what they are being investigated for, they have a kind of justification. If it's permitted up there, why is it forbidden down here?"

Sharon broke vow to Bush,
by Chris McGreal, The Guardian (UK), November 14, 2003
"The Israeli government has admitted in a secret memorandum that Ariel Sharon has failed to honour commitments to President George Bush to dismantle Jewish settler outposts in the West Bank. The memorandum, which originated in the Israeli foreign ministry and was leaked to Reuters, is an admission of duplicity by Mr Sharon, who gave face-to-face commitments to Mr Bush to dismantle the outposts to show good faith toward the US-led "road map" peace process. The memo says: "International criticism is growing because of our lack of creative ideas for getting out of the conflict. "Our claim that Israel has fulfilled its side of the 'road map' is seen as lacking credibility because not only have we not evacuated the illegal outposts, we are working in every way to whitewash their existence and build more." At the Aqaba summit in June, Mr Sharon told Mr Bush he would remove Jewish settler outposts which even Israeli law recognises as illegal. The prime minister justified the move to his supporters by saying he was not giving ground to the Palestinians, merely enforcing Israeli law. But after symbolically shutting about a dozen of the 100 or more outposts, the government quietly abandoned the closures. In any case, some outposts were declared erased when they had been permitted to move a few hundred metres away. Others were re-established after a few weeks."

[World Jewry supports this rogue, obscenely criminal state. Why?]
Israel admits it lied over missile raid on camp,
by Chris McGreal, Guardian (UK), November 21, 2003
"The Israeli military has admitted that it lied about a rocket attack on a Gaza refugee camp, which according to the army led to no casualties, but which the Palestinians have claimed killed 14 civilians. A leftwing member of the Israeli parliament, Yossi Sarid, forced the confession from the air force chief after he threatened to release evidence that the military had used a weapon more destructive and indiscriminate than it had publicly claimed. A month ago, the air force launched an assassination strike against a Hamas activist who was driving through Nuseirat refugee camp. The Palestinians claimed that the attack caused a large number of civilian casualties, but the air force commander, Major General Dan Halutz, produced video footage of the car being hit by two missiles that showed no one standing near the wrecked vehicle as the rockets struck. The military said that Hellfire missiles were used, producing a concentrated explosion over a small area. Gen Halutz likened the effect of the missiles to "two grenades". The video footage was widely shown on Israeli television. But the army now admits that it lied in briefings to the Israeli and foreign press, because the second rocket was not a Hellfire missile. The military refuses to identify the weapon used, on the grounds of "operational security". But the speculation is that it was an American-made Flechette, which is illegal under international law because it fires thousands of tiny darts over hundreds of metres, causing horrific injuries. Israel has used similar weapons in Gaza in the past. A political source said the air force had also admitted that the weapon was not fired from an Apache helicopter as it had originally claimed. The source said the information raised the possibility that the Israelis were using a new type of aircraft or weapon. Evidence from the attack scene indicated that the second missile exploded in the air, not on impact, suggesting an intention to cause casualties in a wide area instead of just destroying the vehicle. The truth began to emerge a fortnight ago when Mr Sarid, a Meretz party MP, asked the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, in a parliamentary hearing, what kind of ammunition was used in the attack on Nuseirat. Mr Mofaz refused to answer. Mr Sarid said that he had obtained information that the missiles were not, as the military claimed, small explosives. He threatened to go public with the information if questions on the issue were evaded. The military reportedly tried to prevent him discussing the issue. But he said: "I will not allow anyone to gag " ... · The family of Tom Hurndall, a British peace activist who was left brain damaged after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier, says a cheque from the Israeli government to cover his treatment and repatriation costs has bounced. The family waited months for the £8,370, but on receipt the London branch of the Bank of Israel said there were insufficient funds in the government account."

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians hold anti-Israel protest for Jerusalem Day,
by Siavosh Ghazi, Middle East Times, Novembe 21, 2003
"Hundreds of thousands of Iranians protested against Israel here on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, marking the Jerusalem Day initiated by the late Ayatollah Khomeini to support the Palestinians. The demonstrators, including families, ferried in to central Tehran by thousands of buses and private cars, chanted slogans against Israel, the United States and its ally Britain. Effigies of US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were set ablaze on major avenues around Tehran University. "Death to Israel, Death to Britain, Death to America," chanted the protesters, some of them wearing the black-and-white keffiyeh chequered headscarf of the Palestinians. "We want to make Israel understand that the Palestinians are not alone," said one student, giving her name as Zohreh. Several top Iranian officials, including President Mohammad Khatami, parliament speaker Mehdi Karubi and judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi, took part in the demonstration. The protests were inaugurated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic republic. Jerusalem Day is supported by both the conservative and reformist movements in Iran. "Israel has no future. Those who are counting on a tumour are wrong. The Islamic world must help so we are able to solve the question of Palestine," influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said. "We are not those who say the Jews should be thrown into the sea, there are Jews who came to Israel to make homes. That is a fact. But every person living in Palestine must have a vote," he added. Iran does not recognise Israel and advocates the creation of a single multi-faith state comprising Israel and the Palestinian territories, whose rulers would be elected not only by its inhabitants but also the five million Palestinian refugees living across the world."

See also:

Israel and Zionism, pt. 8

Israel

Crime in Israel