This is what disrupting a public meeting looks like

US Ambassador to Israel, Michael Oren is booed, heckled, and disrupted repeatedly as he attempts to give a speech at UC Irvine in Southern California on February 8, 2010. --video courtesy Stand With Us

by Becky Johnson
February 18, 2010

Santa Cruz, Ca. -- This is what disrupting a public meeting looks like. I ought to know a thing or two about disrupting a public meeting having been the photographer who captured Robert Norse's "disruption" of a Santa Cruz City Council meeting when he made a fleeting hand gesture, a "Nazi" Salute when he objected to the Mayor's shutting off of oral communications without allowing the last speaker to speak.

On February 8th, The Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was the invited speaker at an event held at UC Irvine. A large group of people who appeared to be the Muslim Student Union, attended the event. At various intervals, one person from their group would stand up and start yelling at Ambassador Oren. The MSA members would loudly cheer and clap when they did this. No sooner had one disrupter been escorted from the auditorium, another would stand up and yell.

These people and this group INTENDED to disrupt the event, and the message Ambassador Oren came to say. Their interference made it impossible to proceed in a normal fashion. It was impossible to conduct ordinary business with the disruption ongoing. The disruption was sustained. And this tactic of disruption and intimidation of political opponents and Jews is reminiscent of the Brownshirts in Germany which gave Hitler his rise to power.

The heart of democracy is persuasion. We are a diverse nation, which in turn, is connected and interwined with other nationalities. To remain a democracy, and to accomodate diverse voices, bullying tactics like those used by the MSU at UC Irvine must not be tolerated!

Ellen Cantarow: Apologist for Land Theft

PHOTO: Jerusalem as seen through the window of the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic Mosque built on top the ruins of the Jewish Temple on Israel's Temple Mount

NOTE TO READER: A close ally of mine sent me this article. It is currently published on the Counterpunch website, a site known for publishing attacks on the State of Israel and for promoting anti-semites like Stephan Pearcy and Norman Finklestein. I already published a piece about the eviction of two Arab families from properties in East Jerusalem after a protracted legal dispute was adjudicated in Israeli courts. That account can be found here. Below, I have imbedded my comments within the article to show both Cantarow's bias, where she has included misinformation, and where she commits glaring omissions. Read on for my imbedded comments. ---- Becky Johnson, editor

Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

By ELLEN CANTAROW

November 10, 2009

found online at: www.counterpunch.org/cantarow11102009.html

"Disputed” is a word often used about East Jerusalem and homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Would the international community have considered the homes of American blacks attacked by the Ku Klux Kla as “disputed”? Or those of Jews ejected by Brown Shirts in the early 1930s?

BECKY: Did the KKK go into US courts, present evidence of ownership, win a court decision, and the legally issue an unlawful detainer?

The rule of law exists to protect the victims of war and occupation by imposing sanctions and responsibilities on invaders. It is not to be stretched for the convenience of the US at Guantanamo, Russia in Chechnya, Israel in Gaza, or in East Jerusalem. Under the law East Jerusalem and all the Arab homes it contains are part of the occupied West Bank.

BECKY: So why do E. Jerusalem Arabs vote in Israeli elections, are counted in the Israeli census, and, despite the option being available, generally shun voting in PA elections? Also, unlike Palestinians on the W. Bank and Gaza, E. Jerusalem Arabs also receive free health care from the Israeli government.

Despite endless palm-greasing, casuist apologetics, semantic distortions and brute force, Israel’s responsibilities towards the territories it occupies remain articulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Chapter 5 of the 1907 Hague Convention IV. Occupying states are forbidden to seize the land and property of those they occupy, and forbidden to settle their citizens on occupied soil.

BECKY: Jews have lived in E. Jerusalem for thousands of years. Does Cantarow claim that no Jew should be allowed to live there? Who is she writing to? American audiences that don't know the history of the region? The property in question was owned by Jews who had their land illegally confiscated by the State of Jordan in 1948. Does Cantarow's version of "history" only start in 1953? Apparently. And all her talk about "international law" is gobbledy-gook in relation to this issue. Many, many Jews own property in E. Jerusalem and always have. It is clearly NOT against International law for Jews to own property there. As long as Israel did not displace any Palestinians, no international law has been broken.

But Israel and its US patron have small regard for legal niceties, instead preferring Thucydides’ maxim: “The strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must.”

Late afternoon, October 16, 2009. Nasser Ghawe, 46, barrel-chested, with an expressive face and a ready smile, calls out to his little girl when she strays too far down the street. “Come here, darling,” he says, scooping her up in his arms and cradling her. We’re seated on plastic chairs in the gathering dusk at one side of a street in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The mother watches tiredly as Nasser talks with us.

The usual courtesy cups of strong Arabic coffee aren’t offered here; the family has none. For nearly eleven weeks they have been living on the street opposite the house that was theirs for 53 years. On August 2 Israeli soldiers threw them out; minutes later, settlers from the violent organization Kach (“Thus”, founded by the late Meir Kahane), moved in and have been there ever since.

BECKY: The Kach party was declared illegal by the Israeli government in 1994. According to the website Cantarow promotes, "...two groups of Sephardic Jewish settlers known as the Oriental Jews Association and the Knesseth Yisrael Association used documents from the Ottoman period to successfully claim FALSE ownership of the land." These Jews who took over the property were the proper owners as determined by the Israeli courts. Also, the eastern part of Jerusalem, i.e., north, south and east of the city's 1967 borders, there are today some 200,000 Jews and 270,000 Arabs living in intertwined neighborhoods. Yet Cantarow (who knows better) tries to make readers think any Jew living there is illegal.

And so the Ghawes are once again refugees, re-living a nightmare they had thought was buried in the Nakba. They watch from the street as settlers carry on life in their former home. When we visited, a guard hired by the settlers picked limes and gave them to one of the Ghawe women: “I am not against Arabs,” he said, “This is just my job.”

BECKY: An equally compelling story could have been told half a century earlier. After Jordan illegally occupied the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Shimon HaTzadik in 1948, the land came under Jordanian control and the Jewish-owned land was handed over to the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property. In the mid-1950s the Jordanian government settled Arabs there. They took over the homes of the Jews and paid rent to the Jordanian Custodian. Cantarow doesn't tell readers THAT part of the history of the land and how THAT violated International law.

In 1948 Ghawe’s grandparents fled from Ein Sfarand near Lydda. Ein Sfarand was bulldozed into the ground along with over 450 other Arab villages.

BECKY: Actually, Israel set up a commission, The Guardian of Absentee Assets, which dealt with all abandoned properties. They distinguished between public land, privately-owned land, and re-patriated many Arabs with their property when they returned and petitioned to get their land back. Lands belonging to Palestinian Arab villagers in the areas taken over by Israel in 1967 generally remain in Palestinian Arab hands. To determine that these lands do not belong to anyone, the state checks the land registries, aerial photographs showing the lands to be uncultivated and then when convinced that these lands have no ownership, advertises in Arabic in the Arab newspapers that the state has declared these lands as its own and anyone having any kind of legal deed to contest this is invited to do so. If any Arab is able to produce a land deed proving the land is theirs, then the state leaves the land to the Arab. If there are still any doubts, then the issue is taken to court". But Cantarow wants readers to believe that all Arab land was confiscated and bulldozed.

Pretty national parks and kibbutzim erased any trace of the traditional Arab architecture, agriculture and the rest of life which once characterized Palestine. Hebrew names – Lod, for example, for Lydda - replaced the Arabic ones. The Ghawes fled to East Jerusalem where UNWRA (The United Nations Works Relief Agency) housed them as refugees. In 1956 they returned their refugee cards and rented a house from a local Palestinian builder.

There they stayed in peace for nearly twenty years. In the early 70s settler organizations began trying to seize the homes of the Ghawes and those of over two dozen other Sheikh Jarrah families including the Hannouns who lived down the street and around the corner.

BECKY: That is, after Israel won the 1967 war, the TRUE owners sought to regain their property in Israeli courts.

For 37 years the families staved the settlers off in court. In 2006 the Ghawes were evicted but settlers didn’t move in; the Israeli police simply put locks on the doors. The Ghawe family shattered the locks and moved back in. The Hannouns put up a website and appealed to the international community for protection. According to one of the older Hannoun children, 20-year-old Sharihan, some 1000 internationals came through to sleep in their home, in much the same way as internationals now come to help Palestinians with their harvests. (The website - http://www.standupforjerusalem.org – gives essential historical background.)

BECKY: Their "background history" starts in 1956!

When we visited, the Ghawe family was living on a plywood platform under an improvised roof – white sheets stitched together and strung up on poles. In the dim interior we could see mattresses and a simple bed. Children’s drawings were tacked to an improvised wall. There were also stuffed animals, a TV set on a card table, a generator, and other necessities of life – small testimonies to the family’s efforts to impose some normality in the midst of lunacy.

BECKY: This is just for propaganda purposes. At night, when the reporters and photographers have all gone home, the family goes to where they REALLY live. Indoors!

That afternoon Sheikh Jarrah looked like Williamsburg, Brooklyn – settler men strolling about in long black caftans, leggings, fur hats; settler women in long-sleeved shapeless dresses, wigs and hats. A special large enclosure had been erected for the settlers’ holiday festivities, its lights beaming across the area as dusk descended. Many baby-strollers announced a race to the finish with the arabushim. (The settlers address Israel’s “demographic problem” viscerally. Thirty years ago settlers from Gush Emunim – Bloc of the Faithful, the radical right-wing spearhead of Israel’s drive to settle the West Bank -- told me with pride that their own large families would win against the Arabs).

BECKY: And Arafat said "The womb of the Arab woman, is my strongest weapon."

In 1979 I reported from Kiryat Arba, a major Gush Emunim stronghold. A settler interviewee whispered with pride that Meir Kahane had an apartment there. For the Gush settlers, Arabs were at very least inferior. One woman said she believed in a “chain of being”: on top, Jews. Then, lesser human specimens. Then animals, vegetables, minerals. Somewhere in the lower reaches of lesser humanity were Arabs. “Let them bow their heads. If they won’t, they should leave,” was a frequent Gush statement about the untermenschen.

BECKY: 3:112 of the Koran is featured just before the pre-amble to the Hamas Foundational Covenant. It is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78, which describe Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been "...cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son" (5:78). Judaism, by contrast, teaches that all people are "God's children" and that God loves all his children equally, Jew and gentile alike.

At that time the Gush had just established a “squat” in the former Hadassah Hospital in Hebron. Miriam Levinger, the wife of the Gush leader, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, said the squatters were there to stay. Israel let them. Israel’s US patron did nothing but continue its usual $3 billion annual largesse.

BECKY: The United States, under Jimmy Carter in 1979, helped broker the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. As part of the deal, Israel gave up 94% of the land it acquired in the 1967 war to Egypt. In exchange, the US agreed to pay Israel $3 billion a year for their defense, and pay Egypt $2 billion a year...just because. This money has NOTHING at all to do with the above housing dispute.

Today’s visitors to central Hebron can observe the results: the central Palestinian market lies emptied and closed after years of settler pogroms. One of many hate-filled graffiti reads: ARABS TO THE GAS CHAMBERS. (For essential information about these settlers see the late Robert I. Friedman’s Zealots for Zion, Rutgers University Press, 1992, and Lords of the Land by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Nation Books, 2005, 2007).

BECKY: Hebron was an ancient Jewish City. Even the name, comes from the Hebrews. Yet Cantarow wants readers to believe the ARABS are native and the JEWS are "settlers" or invaders.

Thirty years ago Kach was considered a pariah organization. (In 1988 Israel barred Kach from elections because of Kach’s stated desire to expel all Arabs from Israel. In 1994 the US declared it a terrorist group). Gush Emunim was also considered “lunatic fringe”. But Labor and Likud alike bowed to Gush demands, enabling settlements like Gush Etzion, Kiryat Arba and Elon Moreh – the rest of Israel’s West Bank “settlements” (whole cities and red-roofed California-style suburban sprawl) followed. “The lunatic fringe” is now the mainstream, dominating Israel’s armed forces and its political life.

BECKY: Why shouldn't Jews live on the West Bank? Arab Muslims live within Israel proper.

Down the street and around the corner from the Ghawes we found the Hannoun family’s house. A line of Israeli flags fluttered triumphantly along the arch of its roof. A dark-green synthetic material hung behind a crude fencing of wire mesh, obscuring the entire front of the house. Through tatters in the green fiber we saw the settlers’ Shabbat candles glimmering. 20-year-old Sharihan Hannoun sat on a lawn chair on the sidewalk with other family members. She wore a black, long-sleeved sweater, jeans and sneakers. A blue hijab framed a pleasant young face with dark, arching eyebrows.

Sharihan said the army arrived at five in the morning August 2nd. One of the police shoved a gun through a window. He shouted, “Open the door!” “They break the door,” said Sharihan, “broken everything they see, threw all the tables, the chairs, and then come to me and hit me with a gun. Even my little brother, they put a gun in his back. My father say, ‘Don’t touch my son, he’s only eight years old.’ But they threw my father and my little brother outside and then go to my mom room. She say, ‘Let me wear my clothes, I cannot be in the street in pajama… [But] they refused. And they let her to walk on the broken glass ‘cause they broken everything they see . . . I sat and I put my arms around the door. [I said], ‘This is my house, I will never leave.’ But [the soldier’s] body is strong. He beat me.”

BECKY: In court, the Hannouns were ordered to pay rent in order to stay. They refused. Then the true owners were forced to issue this unlawful detainer. They could have stayed and paid rent. They could have moved once they lost their case. They opted to violate the court order, refused to pay rent, and refused to move out when ordered. So they were forcibly evicted. Not a surprise.

In the street, their cell phones and cameras confiscated, the family watched as the soldiers displayed their “purity of arms”: they tossed out all the furniture. Then they began playing football, something that particularly astonished Sharihan. “They didn’t care. They kick us outside, they eating my little brother chocolate and playing football. My brother say, ‘I want to sleep in my house.” And I can’t do anything for him.”

The day we visited, the family had been living for two months and ten days on the streets, with periodic help from relatives (bathing, toilet, etc.)

BECKY: I doubt this is true. This is what they SAY.

The Palestinian Authority put the family up in a hotel during Ramadan, then refused to pay anymore. On our visit, Sharihan had just returned from her classes. How could she study in these circumstances? A shrug: “I study in the street. I don’t have another place. I have to study and, like, have a normal life. I can’t give up. If they took my house it is not the end for me.”

BECKY: See? Even the PA doesn't help them.

I returned four days later to record Sharihan’s story. The next day she was to leave for the US with other Palestinian representatives of Sheikh Jarrah: all had been granted visas. Sharihan was to be interviewed by press in the US, and also to testify before the UN. Friends kept arriving to say goodbye and wish her luck. Did she want to stay in the US? “I want to return to my country. I want to open hospital, for old people. I think everyone forget what the old people do when they younger.” And how did the exams go? She beamed: “I am second in my class.”

Days after our visit, the settlers danced in triumph in front of their victims while the latter banged pots and pans to make them leave. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=234466) The Jerusalem municipality has approved plans by Florida billionaire Irving Moskowitz, to build twenty apartments in Sheikh Jarrah. [http://middleeastprogress.org/2009/07/debating-jerusalem/ ] The settler organization, Nahalat Shimon International, also filed plans this past August with the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission to demolish Palestinian homes and build a 200-unit settlement. On Nablus Road, not far from Sheikh Jarrah, I saw that one Arab street name had been whited out. All that was left was a Hebrew name at the top of the sign, and the English one at the bottom.

Ellen Cantarow, a Boston-based journalist, has written from Israel and the West Bank since 1979. This article is part of a series, “Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape,” about non-violent Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation. She can be reached at ecantarow@comcast.net

The Moral Inversion of Richard Goldstone

photo: Gaza Islamic University Campus in Gaza 2009 after the end of the bombing

NOTE TO READER: I was lucky enough to hear Melanie Phillips speak at Merrill College at UCSC a few years back. Her clear understanding of the situation and her plain language cut through the propaganda, and delivered a message worth hearing. Since then, I've followed her writings and have not been disappointed. Her book "Londonistan" has been both praised and rebuked as her message is effectively delivered. Here she writes about the biased Goldstone Report which will be presented to the United Nations September 29th. --Becky Johnson, editor

The Moral Inversion of Richard Goldstone
by Melanie Phillips
September 16, 2009

So now we can see how Richard Goldstone thinks he has preserved his judicial reputation while perpetrating a blood libel against Israel. He has produced a report which, as anticipated, finds that Israel committed all the ‘war crimes’ during Operation Cast Lead of which his Mission members had decided it was guilty before even starting their deliberations, along with the NGOs whose unremitting hostility and malice towards Israel and history of peddling Palestinian propaganda as fact did not deter the Mission from uncritically accepting their evidence as the truth, thus finding Hamas guilty of no crimes at all -- except one. That was, by an amazing coincidence, the one set of crimes it committed which the world was forced to acknowledge actually happened ­ the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel with the sole intention of killing Israeli civilians. By referring to this en passant, devoting minimal attention to it in the course of his 570- page report the vast majority of which is devoted to allegations against Israel, he engineered the ‘even-handed’ headline he needed to maintain his credibility:

There is evidence that both Israeli and Palestinian forces committed war crimes in the recent Gaza conflict, the official UN report says.

With this cynical veneer, Goldstone does worse even than establish a moral equivalence between the instigators of genocidal violence and those who were attempting to defend themselves against it. He presents Israel, the victims of such aggression, as war criminals and the Palestinians, the actual instigators of terror, as its victims. This is not moral equivalence but moral inversion.

He acknowledges no such crimes by Hamas within Gaza itself -- not least against other Palestinians -- such as turning the entire population of Gaza into hostages by siting its rockets and terrorist infrastructure amongst that population and additionally using them as human shields.

(To clarify, this is quite different from the intra-Palestinian violations of human rights he found took place as a result of the violence between Fatah and Hamas).

Even worse, he presents the Palestinian aggressors as victims of Israel, requiring Israel to make reparation to those from whose houses and streets it was being attacked. No reparations to Israel are required from any Palestinians, even though Goldstone accepts that Hamas committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by firing thousands of missiles at its civilians.

To cover himself completely against the fact that the degraded aim of the mission he headed was to delegitimise Israel, his report claims at the start that his mandate from the President of the UN Council on Human Rights was:

... to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.

Now this is curious, since UN Resolution S-9/1 which established the mandate for the Goldstone commission said the Human Rights Council:

Decides to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission.

So the UNHRC mandate explicitly limited Goldstone to investigating solely Israel, which it deemed guilty of human rights violations during Cast Lead -- a mandate whose terms as set out in the UNHRC resolution cannot be changed; while Goldstone’s report cites a mandate which is quite different from that resolution, which is ascribed not to the Council but to the President, and which encompasses all such violations during Cast Lead. Goldstone himself said he had changed the terms of the mandate in ‘informal discussions’. It looks therefore as if he and the UNHRC President unilaterally tore up both the Council’s mandate and UN regulations to provide Goldstone with the fig-leaf to disguise the moral bankruptcy of the entire process.

Of the countless distortions, errors and absurdities in this travesty of a report, the following jumped out at me from an initial reading.

1) The first error is in the title itself: HUMAN RIGHTS IN PALESTINE AND OTHEROCCUPIED ARAB TERRITORIES: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

But Gaza is not occupied by Israel, as is quite clear from even a cursory look at the Hague Convention which lays down the criteria for occupation. For Goldstone to say that Gaza is still occupied demonstrates either an ignorance of international law quite remarkable for a professor of international law, or that he is signed up to the ideology which deliberately uses such mis-statements to delegitimise Israel.

2) Par 27: Goldstone describes Gaza as blockaded by Israel. He makes no mention of Gaza’s border with Egypt which Egypt keeps closed. Is Goldstone as ignorant of topography as he appears to be of international law? Unlikely, since he also states (par 8) that

the Mission sought and obtained the assistance of the Government of Egypt to enable it to enter the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing.

3) Par 30: ‘The data provided by non-governmental sources with regard to the percentage of civilians among those killed are generally consistent and raise very serious concerns with regard to the way Israel conducted the military operations in Gaza.’

But Goldstone does not mention that Israel provided a detailed breakdown of the Palestinians killed in Gaza and stated that the vast majority of these were Hamas or other terror operatives. Even the UN eventually acknowledged that some 75 per cent of the dead in Gaza were Hamas terrorists.

4) Pars 33-34 Goldstone says he does not accept that the Gaza police targeted by Israeli military strikes were ‘part of the terrorist infrastructure’; and that therefore the attacks on police buildings

constituted deliberate attacks on civilian objects in violation of the rule of customary international humanitarian law whereby attacks must be strictly limited to military objectives.

But as Jonathan Halevi has reported for the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs:

-- Among the 343 members of the Palestinian security forces who were killed, 286 have been identified as terror organization members (83 percent). Another 27 fighters belonging to units undergoing infantry training raises this total to 313 (91 percent).
-- Lumped under the rubric of the ‘Palestinian police’ are all the security bodies that fulfilled combat and terror roles against Israel, the intelligence and preventive intelligence bodies, as well as those active in policing and maintaining order. Those serving in all of the Palestinian security apparatuses in 2007 and 2008 took part in terror activity and fighting against the IDF.
-- In the December 27, 2008, attack on an officer training course at Gaza police headquarters, 89 dead were counted. Of these, 60 (67 percent) belonged to Hamas and almost all were members of its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades. The total number of terror activists and fighters among those killed at police headquarters was 81 (91 percent).

Indeed, Goldstone himself goes on to say he accepts that

there may be individual members of the Gaza police that were at the same time members of Palestinian armed groups and thus combatants

yet he nevertheless still finds that these were somehow ‘civilian objects’!

5) In attempting to discover whether Palestinian civilians were adequately protected by Hamas, Goldstone says delicately (par 35) that the mission

was faced with a certain reluctance by the persons it interviewed in Gaza to discuss the activities of the armed groups.

A ‘certain reluctance,’ eh? Like a ‘certain reluctance’ to be thrown off the top of a tall building? Maybe the utter dislocation of this report from reality is also due to the fact that

as part of Israel’s refusal to cooperate, it banned the panel members from entering the country. The panel made two visits to Gaza, entering from Egypt, but conducted the bulk of their research from Geneva.

Mmnn, yes, Geneva, home to the UNHRC, is as everyone knows where every conscientious and objective researcher goes to.... manufacture libellous claims to delegitimise Israel...er... find those authoritative first-hand accounts of what actually went on in Gaza.

6) Then there is Goldstone’s treatment of the mortar shelling of al-Fakhura junction in Jabalya next to an UNRWA school. This was the site of the infamous accusation by the UN that Israel had shelled the school itself, killing more than 40 civilians sheltering there. The UN eventually admitted that this was entirely false and the school had not been shelled at all. Israel had instead returned mortar fire at the street next to the school from where firing was still continuing, killing a small number of Hamas terrorists and an even smaller number of civilians who were standing near to the Hamas mortar position.

But Goldstone concludes:

Par 688... The Mission notes that the attack may have been in response to a mortar attack from an armed Palestinian group but considers the credibility of Israel’s position damaged by the series of inconsistencies and factual inaccuracies.

So the fact that Israel was the victim of an incendiary libel by the UN, which said falsely that its school had been hit and inflated the number of casualties -- a lie that went round the world inciting hysteria and violence against Israel and Jews -- is totally ignored; instead Israel is pilloried for its (undoubtedly) chaotic response as it gradually pieced together what had actually happened.

7) Goldstone says:

Par 209. Since 1967, about 750,000 Palestinians have been detained at some point by the Government of Israel, according to Palestinian human rights organizations.

This claim was taken straight from Sahar Francis, director of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. As Elder of Ziyon observes, however, the figure is ludicrous:

In order for the 750,000 number to be accurate, it would mean roughly 500 arrests a week every week since 1967. In order for 50,000 new prisoners to appear this year, it would mean around a thousand arrests a week. The PCHR [Palestinian Commission on Human Rights] keeps track of the number of Palestinian Arabs arrested every week. Taking the past two months as examples, we see the date of the weekly report and the number of arrests:

8/26 --- 16
8/19 --- 28
8/12 --- 17
8/5 --- 25
7/29 --- 14
7/22 --- 21
7/15 --- 10
7/8 --- 18
7/1 --- 28

This doesn't quite add up to tens of thousands of arrests a year.

And yet, like the rest of the claims made by these NGOs, Goldstone just shoved it straight into his report. (For more reputable and authoritative facts about Cast Lead, see here.)

In short, Goldstone adduces no evidence of Israeli war crimes at all. He merely recycles the claims made by hostile NGOs peddling unverifiable Palestinian propaganda as fact ­ including more than 30 references to Human Rights Watch, the anti-Israel organisation of which Goldstone himself was until recently a member of the board.

As such, the Palestinians who used other Palestinians as hostages, booby-trapped their civilian areas and used women and children as human shields are given a virtually free pass by Goldstone. Israel, which conducted an operation that was targeted with astonishing precision against terrorists operating inside civilian areas, taking every possible precaution to safeguard civilian life by repeatedly dropping leaflets and making cell-phone calls beforehand to warn residents to evacuate, is accused by Goldstone of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Through such moral inversion and the reproduction of distortions, lies, smears, errors and omissions Goldstone has thus anathematised a country’s defence against terrorism and genocidal aggression. But then, he doesn’t accept that in Cast Lead Israel was defending itself. Astoundingly, he characterises the aim of Cast Lead thus:

1674 The operation fits into a continuum of policies aimed at pursuing Israel’s political objectives with regard to Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a whole. Many such policies are based on or result in violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Military objectives as stated by the government of Israel do not explain the facts ascertained by the Mission, nor are they congruous with the patterns identified by the Mission during the investigation.

The implication is that Cast Lead had a ‘political objective’ of subduing Gaza. But it was provoked solely by the 6000-rocket attack from Gaza. It was not ‘political’. It was undertaken to defend the lives of its citizens. Having stated that the impact of Cast Lead

cannot be understood and assessed in isolation from developments prior and subsequent to it

Goldstone proceeds to omit the key ‘development’ that explained Israel’s military action -- the rocket bombardment from Gaza of its citizens. He thus presents Israel as the aggressor and Hamas as the victims. What malice.

This disreputable piece of work will in turn embolden and empower Hamas and Palestinian terrorism, provide the jihadis of the UN and their accomplices with the means further to persecute Israel and endorse its genocidal attackers, and incite the Arab and Muslim world still further to aggression and to war.

With this report, Goldstone demonstrably forfeits his claim to legal, moral or intellectual credibility. He should be disowned by the legal profession.

Update: In an earlier version of this post, I said the report only required Israel to investigate the allegations made against it and to be referred to the International Criminal Court if these investigations were not satisfactory. In fact, it makes the same requirement of the Palestinians in respect of the far fewer allegations made against them.

This article can be read at its source at:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5334541/the-moral-inversion-of-richard-goldstone.thtml

UN report on Gaza War claims Hamas didn't use human sheilds

VIDEO: Hamas praises civilians who volunteered as human shields in Gaza Conflict

by Becky Johnson
Sept 16, 2009

Santa Cruz, Ca. -- The United Nations Human Rights Council has released a new report on Israel's Gaza incursion last winter. While the report does condemn Hamas for firing rockets into sovereign Israel directly at civilian targets, most the report focuses on Israeli war crimes. Daniel Carmon, Israel's deputy UN Ambassador, has called the report "biased" and "one-sided." Even the title reflects that bias. "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza Conflict." Words like "occupied Arab territories" assume ownership in what is actually disputed territories. Nor does the report seem to care about human rights in Israel evenly, as reflected by the title.

The investigation was led by South African judge, Richard Goldstone. Goldstone said Israel's blockade of Gaza, which began prior to the assault, amounted to "collective punishment" for the 1.5 million Gazans, most of whom rely on aid to survive." The summary said Israel's operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, not just Hamas militants. And that Israel committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions.

Setting aside for the moment that the population of Gaza is really 1.1 million people, the report claims that "there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity." One of the claims that Israel made during the conflict was that Hamas was using civilians as "human shields." The report claims they couldn't find a single instance of that happening. In the video above, Hamas praises women, children, and old men for serving as human shields even unto death.

HONEST REPORTING has challenged this report and has issued a list of the following errors in the report.

• Israel did not deliberately target the civilian population of Gaza and, in fact, made efforts to prevent civilian casualties that no other army in the world would have done.
• Contrary to the assertions of Goldstone, Hamas did use Palestinian civilians as human shields.
• The Goldstone Report is not objective and is, in fact tainted by bias and politicization, both from the UN Human Rights Council and members of the mission itself.
• The report relied upon the contributions of anti-Israel non-governmental organizations and unreliable Palestinian "eyewitnesses."
• Israel respects human rights and has a sophisticated legal and judicial system. Hamas does not. Yet the report has created an unjust equivalence of a democratic state with a terror organization.

Palestinian "Policemen" killed in Gaza Operation were Trained Terrorists

Photo: Anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan, speaks at a rally January 10, 2009 in San Francisco, Ca.


NOTE TO READER: "Peace" groups in the United States have claimed that Israel's Gaza incursion last winter, killed 343 "innocent" security personnel. In this report, which appeared September 13th at the Jerusalem Center for public affairs, Jonathon Halvi details the connections between Hamas security personnel and their involvement in militant, terrorist organizations that regularly attack Israel. 91% of the policemen killed in Gaza fit this description. ---- Becky Johnson, editor

SOURCED HERE.

Vol. 9, No. 8 13 September 2009

Palestinian "Policemen" Killed in Gaza Operation Were Trained Terrorists

Jonathan D. Halevi

• After international human rights organizations accused Israel of killing innocent Palestinian "traffic policemen" during the Gaza operation, a detailed investigation shows that a decisive majority of the Palestinian "policemen" were members of the military wings of the Palestinian terror organizations and fighters who had undergone military training.

• Among the 343 members of the Palestinian security forces who were killed, 286 have been identified as terror organization members (83 percent). Another 27 fighters belonging to units undergoing infantry training raises this total to 313 (91 percent).

• Lumped under the rubric of the "Palestinian police" are all the security bodies that fulfilled combat and terror roles against Israel, the intelligence and preventive intelligence bodies, as well as those active in policing and maintaining order. Those serving in all of the Palestinian security apparatuses in 2007 and 2008 took part in terror activity and fighting against the IDF.

• In the December 27, 2008, attack on an officer training course at Gaza police headquarters, 89 dead were counted. Of these, 60 (67 percent) belonged to Hamas and almost all were members of its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades. The total number of terror activists and fighters among those killed at police headquarters was 81 (91 percent).

• The human rights organizations which reported on Palestinian casualties in Gaza failed to mention the affiliation of hundreds of Palestinian security personnel who were members of terrorist organizations and who were trained fighters, thus artificially inflating the list of "civilians" killed by the IDF.

After international human rights organizations accused Israel of killing innocent Palestinian "traffic policemen" during the Gaza operation (Dec. 27, 2008-Jan. 18, 2009) who were not involved in fighting or in terror, a detailed investigation shows that a decisive majority of the Palestinian "policemen" were members of the military wings of the Palestinian terror organizations and fighters who had undergone military training.

Among the 343 members of the Palestinian security forces who were killed, 286 have been identified as terror organization members (83 percent). Another 27 fighters belonging to units undergoing infantry training raises this total to 313 (91 percent).

Who Were the Palestinian "Policemen"?

The official list of the slain Palestinian policemen was published for the first time on the police website on February 24, 2009.¹ The term "Palestinian police" was incorporated in the interim accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (1995) pursuant to the Israeli demand that sought to avoid awarding the Palestinians the trappings of an independent state. Lumped under the rubric of the "Palestinian police" were all the security bodies that fulfilled combat and terror roles against Israel, the intelligence and preventive intelligence bodies, as well as those active in policing and maintaining order.

Following the Hamas victory in the parliamentary elections of January 2006, Hamas established a new security force - the Executive Force - subordinate to the Ministry of Interior, which was a military force intended for "qualitative missions" in the fight against Israel and elements opposed to the regime. Hamas ally Jamal Abu Samhadana, who headed the Popular Resistance Committees terror organization, was placed in charge of this force.

Following the June 2007 military coup that enabled Hamas to take over the Gaza Strip, Hamas authorities conducted a reorganization of the Palestinian security forces, known as the "Palestinian police." Its main components include:

• The Police - infantry forces that are intended also to fight against Israel, comprised of the Rapid Intervention Force, the Executive Force, the Naval Police, and the Military Police
• National Security - an infantry force
• Security and Protection - a skilled force loyal to the Hamas regime and charged with providing security for the leadership and sensitive institutions
• Internal Security - the preventive intelligence apparatus
• Civil Defense - evacuation and rescue forces

An analysis of the lists of Palestinians slain in 2007 and 2008 reveals that those serving in all of the Palestinian security apparatuses took part in terror activity and fighting against the IDF.² The Hamas leadership presented these organizations alongside "the Palestinian Resistance" as the spearhead of the continued armed struggle and the jihad for liberating all of Palestine.

How Many Slain Palestinian "Policemen"?

The Palestinian police published an official list of 231 "policemen" killed in the course of the Gaza operation. Ihab al-Ghussein, spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, later divulged that the number of Palestinian "police" killed totaled 230, the Security and Protection apparatus lost 50, National Security and Internal Security had 10 slain, and Civil Defense 11. This makes a total of 301 killed among the various Palestinian security apparatuses of the Hamas government.³

This study examined the official published lists of policemen as well as the lists of fatalities put out by the Palestinian human rights organizations PCHR and El-Mizan, as well as additional information published in open sources (such as the websites of the Palestinian Authority, the Hamas government, and the Palestinian press). The total data listed the names of 343 who were defined as Palestinian "policemen" or "security personnel" killed during the course of the Gaza operation.

The Connection between the Palestinian Security Forces and the Palestinian Terror Organizations

An analysis of the list of slain Palestinian security forces shows that of the 343 killed, 258 (75.2 percent) were Hamas members, almost all of them members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.⁴ Twelve more were members of the Popular Resistance Committees, eight belonged to the military wings of Fatah, three were members of Islamic Jihad, four were defined as "fighters" whose organizational affiliation is unknown, and one belonged to the "Army of the Umma," an extreme Islamic terror organization identified as an al-Qaeda offshoot.

In the official fatality list published by the Palestinian police, only one policeman was listed as a member of the traffic division, senior NCO Hussein Naim Hussein Abbas, who was also a member of the al-Qassam Brigades.

Another 27 fighters belonged to units undergoing infantry training intended for fighting against Israel. Thus, the total number of terror activists and fighters among those killed from the Palestinian security apparatuses totals 313, or 91 percent of the fatalities.

In the December 27, 2008, attack on an officer training course at Gaza police headquarters, 89 dead were counted, according to the PCHR. Of these, 60 (67 percent) belonged to Hamas and almost all were members of the al-Qassam Brigades. Two belonged to the military wings of Fatah and one to the Popular Resistance Committees. Eighteen came from units that were undergoing infantry training intended for fighting against Israel. Thus, the total number of terror activists and fighters among those killed at police headquarters was 81 (91 percent).

Ten Examples of "Policemen" from Hamas' Military Wing

Among those killed in the IDF attack on police headquarters on December 27 were the following members of the military wing of Hamas:

1. Omar Bakr Shimali (b. 1988) was a member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Shimali began as an activist in the Hamas student organization (al-Kutla al-Islamiya). He was assigned to a "Special Unit" and was stationed at front-line positions. At the same time, Shimali was active in the military police and worked at police headquarters.⁵
2. Mohammed Khaled Shahiber (b. 1987) joined the al-Qassam Brigades in 2007 and was stationed at front-line positions.⁶
3. Bilal Mahmoud Omar (b. 1989) joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 2006 and at the same time was active in the Hamas security apparatus. In 2007 he joined the al-Qassam Brigades and was assigned to forward positions. He served as a security guard at the home of Police Commander Tawfik Jabber.⁷
4. Sidqi Ismail Hamad (b. 1983) was active in Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and in mid-2008 joined the al-Qassam Brigades. He served as a bodyguard for Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. He was an officer with the rank of lieutenant in the Security and Protection apparatus.⁸
5. Mohammed Tawfik al-Nimra (b. 1986) joined Hamas in 2003 and also swore loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2006 he joined the al-Qassam Brigades and was stationed in front-line positions.⁹
6. Mohammed Ziad al-Nabih (b. 1981) joined Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in 1995 and the al-Qassam Brigades in 2004.¹⁰
7. Nasser Abdallah al-Ghara (b. 1962) joined Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in 1989, and in 2004 he joined the al-Qassam Brigades. He was active in the engineering unit that was engaged in preparing explosive charges.¹¹
8. Nahez Salim abu-Namous (b. 1989) joined the al-Qassam Brigades in 2007 and underwent infantry and mortar training.¹²
9. Hussam Muhammed al-Majaida (b. 1982) joined Hamas in 2004 and a year later the al-Qassam Brigades. He was active in the Executive Force of the Palestinian Police established by Hamas in 2006.¹³
10. Hassan Maher Hassan Aruk (b. 1985) was active in the al-Qassam Brigades and was stationed in front-line positions.¹⁴

No "Friendly" Fire Incidents Among Palestinians

The Palestinian terror organizations reported on the intensive fighting they conducted against IDF forces within densely populated urban areas of Gaza. There are reports about the launching of many hundreds of mortar shells in populated Palestinian areas, the launching of antitank missiles at Palestinian houses entered by IDF forces, small arms fire and machine gun fire at IDF forces within Palestinian neighborhoods, the detonation of powerful explosive charges near Palestinian houses, booby-trapped houses, and setting explosive charges along transportation arteries.

Nevertheless, I have yet to encounter a single report about a Palestinian who was killed or even lightly wounded by "friendly" Palestinian fire. All the Palestinians killed and wounded were attributed exclusively to the IDF, while none of the human rights organizations speculate about this manifest miracle. On the other hand, in all of Israel's wars, the IDF sustained a number of losses from "friendly" fire, including four out of the ten soldiers killed in the Gaza operation.

Implications

The charges made against the IDF for presumably killing "traffic cops" and "innocent policemen" fulfilling a civilian role are incorrect. The decisive majority of the Palestinian "police" were members of the military wings of the Palestinian terror organizations (primarily Hamas) and fighters who had undergone military training. The recruitment of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades members into the official security services allowed the Hamas government to pay their salaries out of the government budget.

The human rights organizations which reported on Palestinian casualties in the Gaza operation failed to mention the affiliation of hundreds of Palestinian security personnel who were members of terrorist organizations and who were trained fighters, thus artificially inflating the list of "civilians" killed by the IDF.

* * *

Notes

1. http://police.ps/ar/articles.php?action=listarticles&id=3

2. http://www.jcpa.org.il/Templates/showpage.asp?FID=528&DBID=1&LNGID=2&TMID=99&IID=19183

A similar study on the 2008 fatalities has been completed and will be published shortly.

3. http://www.moqawmh.com/ara/index.php?act=News&id=2649

4. A table (in Hebrew) analyzing each name appears on the Jerusalem Center's Hebrew website at: http://www.jcpa.org.il/JCPAHeb/SendFile.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=2&GID=475

5. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1342

6. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1352

7. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1287

8. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1396

9. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1399

10. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1402

11. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1406

12. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1393

13. http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/sohdaa5.php?id=1380

14. http://www.sabiroon.org/news/specialNewsDetails.php?code=730&category=7

* * *

Col. (res.) Jonathan D. Halevi is the research director for the Orient Research Group and a research fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Halevi previously served as a senior adviser for political planning in Israel's Foreign Ministry and as head of the data and information branch in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit. This Jerusalem Issue Brief is based on his report published in Hebrew on May 24, 2009.

IDF reports a 251 death discrepancy and places verified civilian deaths at 25%

Photo: An IDF soldier prays in Gaza in 2009

NOTE TO READER: The Israeli Defense Forces just published its verified death list for the 2009 Gaza operation, Operation Cast Lead, in which they dispute previous death tolls issued by Palestinian organizations. The Palestine Center for Human Rights has put the death toll from that conflict at 1417, 926 civilians, 236 "fighters" meaning armed combatants or 65% civilian death toll. Since the IDF spent over 6 months preparing its list, exhaustively cross-checked its lists of known Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, etc. with their own lists. They monitored funerals in Gaza and took note of which deaths were dubbed "martyrs" for Hamas, and they were able to weed out the approximately 400 or so "natural" deaths which occur each month in Gaza. A final note is that PCHR claims 116 women lost their lives in the conflict, and the IDF claims 49 women perished from the conflict. Even if we take the PCHR's higher number, that means that only 8% of the deaths were women. The IDF figures are even lower at 4%. If the IDF REALLY were bombing civilians indiscriminately as many "Peace" organizations claim, why aren't more of the deaths women?

--Becky Johnson, editor

FROM THE INDEPENDENT MEDIA REVIEW AND ANALYSIS SITE:

Read the report from its source here.

IDF SPOX Ann - 260309 - Gaza Strip Casualties

Vast Majority of Palestinians Killed in Operation Cast Lead
Found to be Terror Operatives

Following the publication of reports that introduced false information originating from various Palestinian sources, and in order to remove any doubt regarding the number of Palestinians killed in Operation Cast Lead, the IDF wishes to introduce the accurate figures to the public. The figures were gathered following the examination of various intelligence sources and after the names and numbers were thoroughly cross-referenced and examined.

According to the data gathered by the Research Department of the Israel Defense Intelligence, there were 1166 names of Palestinians killed during Operation Cast Lead. 709 of them are identified as Hamas terror operatives, amongst them several from various other terror organizations. Additionally, there are 162 names of men that have not yet been attributed to any
organization. Furthermore, it has come to our understanding that 295 uninvolved Palestinians were killed during the operation, 89 of them under the age of 16, and 49 of them were women.

The IDF wishes to emphasize that its objective during Operation Cast Lead was to target the Hamas terror organization and not the citizens of the Gaza Strip. It must be stressed that the fighting took place in a complex battlefield, defined by the Hamas terror organization itself. The Hamas terror organization placed the primary fighting scene at the heart of civilian neighborhoods, as it booby-trapped homes, fired from schools, and used civilians as human shields.

The IDF took extensive measures in order to prevent harming uninvolved civilians, including the dropping of leaflets, broadcasting warnings in local Palestinian media, and placing numerous phone calls to homes. The procedure of making use of warning shots and the briefing of the commanders to take extra precaution in populated areas were also among the measures
taken by the IDF.

It's not the settlements, stupid

Photo of Modi'in Illit incorporated 2008 in the West Bank, Israel.



NOTE TO READER: The Settlements issue has been a thorny one, and not easily understood by bumper sticker rhetoric. President Obama's speech in Cairo threw the issue on the front burner, and angered Jews due to his erroneous comment that Israel's settlements violated agreements made with the United States government. They didn't. But here is Sarah Honig with a brilliant article which highlights the stupidity of blaming the conflict on Jews living in Judea. ---Becky Johnson, editor

FROM: "Another Tack: It's not the settlements, stupid"

September 4, 2009

Sarah Honig, THE JERUSALEM POST

FOUND AT: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804481114&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Without historical context there can be no real understanding of existential issues, certainly not of essential continuities. That's why those who seek to obfuscate and skew do their utmost to erase telltale fundamental perspectives and present whatever they focus upon as cogent isolated concerns.

Case in point: US President Barack Obama's fixation on settlements, whether they be a collection of squatters' makeshift lean-tos on a stony hill in the middle of a barren nowhere or entire populous urban quarters of Jerusalem.

The real issue is a layer deep beneath surface palaver. It's a layer which Arabs implicitly understand, which Jews pretend (or prefer) not to understand, and which Obama righteously denies. To paraphrase what Bill Clinton hectored during his first presidential campaign: "It's not the settlements, stupid."

Settlements are mere transitory pretexts, alleged irritants which in fact conceal a far darker but basic truth.

Obama hints at it when he admonishes against creating "new facts on the ground" ahead of the deal he proclaims he's about to concoct. Peace is feasible providing Israelis effectively stay inanimate and refrain from altering reality beyond the non-border (1949's armistice line, a.k.a. the Green Line). Otherwise they jeopardize Obama's magic remedy to all that ails the region but which thus far eluded cure by lesser healers than himself. His unspoken apparent assumption is that whatever betokens Israeli/Jewish life and vitality perforce undermines harmony and bliss. Bottom line priority - weaken Israeli/Jewish interests.

THIS HAS been the Arab subtext since the very advent of Zionism, though at different intervals the casus belli assumed different facades. In all instances the pro forma grievance was that Jews were "changing facts on the ground," just as now.

On occasion, as currently, the outcry centered on settlements, or more specifically on land purchases. (Jews weren't always accused of robbing Arab land. Sometimes their crime was buying stretches of wasteland.) At times it was immigration.

Often, it was both, as in the days of the infamous White Paper, published by Britain just months before the outbreak of World War II, when the Holocaust was about to be kick-started. Germany's Jews were already shorn of citizenship and stateless. Hitler's threats were well recorded, shouted in the world's face and hardly kept a secret.

Besides its draconian curbs on Jewish land ownership, the Neville Chamberlain government's White Paper also set a limit of 10,000 Jewish immigrants annually for a five-year period. It magnanimously allowed an additional 25,000 quota for the entire five years to allow for "refugee emergencies." Any post-1944 Jewish entry would necessitate Arab permission.

It must be recalled that Jews were at the time fleeing in all directions to escape Hitler's hell. The White Paper encompassed all the goodwill the international community could reluctantly muster, lest "changes on the ground" occur that would rile the Arabs in and around the Jewish homeland.

The fault wasn't Britain's alone. Obama's White House predecessor was fully complicit. Franklin Roosevelt unreservedly shared the predispositions of his European counterparts. Likewise, Obama isn't the sole pro-Arab Western leader today. He is unreservedly in line with kindred European Union pompous pontificators. The unholy Allied prewar mind-set has been revived.

In his day Hitler tauntingly invited the world's democracies to take his Jews, if they were so fretful about them. He knew that for all their high-minded rhetoric, these countries wouldn't accept his provocative challenge. After 1938's Anschluss, their representatives met in Evian-les-Bains, on Lake Geneva's French shore, to decide what to do with Nazism's desperate victims, who were pounding on their gates in search of asylum. They never even called them Jews, lest they incur the fuehrer's wrath.

IT TURNED into a great Jew-rejection fest. Britain bristled at any suggestion of allowing Jews into Eretz Yisrael, mandated to it to administer as the Jewish national home. Progenitors of today's Palestinian terrorists made sure endangered Jews wouldn't be sheltered, and his majesty's government appeasingly assented. The vast empty spaces of Canada, Australia and New Zealand were likewise off bounds. American humanitarianism consisted of tossing the undesirable hot potato into the international arena, because the Jews weren't wanted in the land of the free either.

Indeed, FDR toyed with the notion of shipping German Jews to Ethiopia or Central Africa. The UK favored the jungles of Venezuela or Central America. Mussolini changed direction northward. Instead of exposing Berlin's urbane Jews to the rigors of the tropics, he opined that the Siberian arctic might be a preferable hardship.

The competition was on: who'll suggest a more remote and less hospitable exile in which to dump those whom the British Foreign Office shamelessly labeled "unwanted Jews." The motivation wasn't much more beneficent than Hitler's initial choice of Madagascar.

During all that time, it needs to be stressed, immigration into British mandated Eretz Yisrael hadn't stopped. Only Jewish immigration was targeted and impeded. Arab immigration continued unhindered. Itinerant Arab laborers streamed here from the entire Arab-speaking world - from the Maghreb to Syria. The Jews created what was dubbed locally as "prosperity." Arabs drifted to partake in it. But nobody objected. They were counted as natives. The UN actually recognized as "Palestinian refugees" any Arabs who sojourned here two years prior to 1948. Much of the Arab population on Israel's Coastal Plain, for example, is originally Egyptian and arrived with British acquiescence.

Hence the Mandate-era recorded a population explosion in some Arab villages, ranging quite unnaturally between 200 percent and 1,040%, according to Prof. Moshe Prawer's research into Arab migration here from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, etc. The Brits and their allies didn't consider the Arab influx as "changing facts on the ground," possibly because enlightened Jews didn't riot.

The bete noire that once was aliya is today called settlement. But intrinsically the two are one and the same - antagonism toward Jewish presence. The Jews are anathema, as is any habitat for them. If both are curtailed then Jewish existence is undercut. That was and still remains the Arab endgame aim.

Today's unofficial settlement freeze won't satisfy Israel's supposed peace partners, just as the British White Paper proved insufficient for their 1939 forebears. The ultimate White Paper goal was the creation of a single binational state with power-sharing according to the proportion of Jews to Arabs as would exist in 1949. Restrictions on Jewish immigration would preclude any "changes on the ground" until then - just what Obama purports to prevent with the ban on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria.

The Arab Higher Committee rejected said White Paper, demanding "a complete and final prohibition" on all Jewish immigration and unequivocal absolute repudiation of the Jewish national home. Translated into today's diplomatic parlance, this is equivalent to "the unconditional end to all settlement activity" and the refusal to recognize the right of a Jewish state to exist.

What was is what is. It's just not about the settlements.

AIPAC "Spy" case FBI Jew hunt?

Photo: Larry Franklin, former Pentagon Analyst in July 2009 interview in the Forward

“I was asked about every Jew I knew in OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], and that bothered me,” Franklin said. His superiors at the time were both Jewish: Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, whom Franklin believes was a target of the investigation. “One agent asked me, ‘How can a Bronx Irish Catholic get mixed up with…’ and I finished the phrase for him: ‘with these Jews.’” Franklin answered, “Christ was Jewish, too, and all the apostles.” “Later I felt dirty,” he added." ---Larry Franklin, interview in The Forward, July 1, 2009

NOTE TO READER: I've been following the AIPAC "spy" case for a long time. I always thought it was bunk. The two members of AIPAC who were arrested and accused of "spying" were given information from a Pentagon official. They were not part of the United States government, but US citizens and openly members of AIPAC. The law used to prosecute them was a little-used provision which hadn't been utilized in 100 years and had never been used to prosecute private citizens. Finally, there was no evidence that the information passed on to allied government officials in Israel and more generally to members of the press in the US did any harm to the United States. I've suspected that anti-semites launched this inquiry and made the charges in the first place. Here is a Washington Post editorial which raises the same question. ----Becky Johnson, Editor

The AIPAC Case and Prejudice

By Gary Wasserman

Monday, August 10, 2009

found at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/09/AR2009080902092.html

The conspiracy case against two former AIPAC lobbyists came to an inglorious end in May when the government dropped all charges after 3 1/2 years of pre-trial maneuvers.

It was a curious case: First, the lobbyists, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under an obscure section of the Espionage Act of 1917, a law that had been used only once before -- unsuccessfully and never against private citizens for disclosing classified information. Second, they were targets of a bizarre sting in which they were fed false information suggesting that the lives of U.S. and Israeli operatives in Iraq were at risk and that American officials were refusing to take steps to protect them. The accusation was not that they brokered this information to some foreign enemy but that they offered it to everybody they could, hoping, among other things, to get a reporter from The Post to publish it so that it might draw the attention of the right U.S. officials and save U.S. lives. In short, even if the two were guilty as charged, they look more like whistle-blowers than spies.

But the most curious element of the case is why it was ever brought. Why set up a sting unless you believe there's some underlying pattern of wrongdoing to be exposed? What were the counterespionage people after?

After three years of working on a book on this case, I am still not sure. But now the wired informant in the middle of the affair, Larry Franklin, has raised the specter of bias. The former Pentagon analyst who leaked the bogus tip to the lobbyists told the Washington Times last month that investigators "asked about every Jew I knew" in his office. Anti-Semitism was "part of this investigation and may have been an initial incitement of this investigation."

If so, Ground Zero would be the 23-year-old case of Jonathan Pollard. Here one had a real spy, an American Jew working for the Navy who, out of concern for Israel as well as cash, copied and delivered thousands of classified documents. After his arrest in the 1980s, the belief took hold within counterintelligence circles that he was part of a larger spy ring. This led to the search for a "Mr. X," a high-ranking national security official who had helped direct Pollard to needed documents and continued to operate within the government. So the creation myth was born.

That no Mr. X was ever found is beside the point. More relevant is that Pollard could support an operational frame for organizing and understanding a murky, dangerous world. This anti-Zionist concept holds that Israeli objectives run contrary to U.S. national interests; that many American Jews, including those in senior policymaking positions, suffer from divided loyalties; and that pro-Israel political influence holds sway over U.S. government decisions.

While this politically incorrect frame is not going to be discussed in public speeches, its outline appears with a vengeance in the Rosen-Weissman case.

Franklin was apparently sent out by his FBI handlers to tempt Jews. He tried Adam Ciralsky at CBS News, who had once sued the CIA for anti-Semitism, and Richard Perle, who was on his way to vacation in France, as well as Pentagon employees who had done nothing more than work with Franklin. All turned down the offer of information.

But the bait tempting the AIPAC lobbyists was tastier. After not seeing them for a year, Franklin asked for a meeting, and in an Arlington coffee shop he told Weissman that both American and Israeli agents in Iraq were being targeted by Iran. Could they please use their contacts to tell our White House to stop this plot, he asked, because no one was listening to him? And by the way, this is secret. The lobbyists fell for the plea to save lives. They told the Israelis, they told The Post and they tried to tell the National Security Council. And they were charged with conspiracy.

Ironically, the Rosen-Weissman prosecution makes a botch of the anti-Zionist frame. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the mightiest of the Zionist organizations, looks pathetically vulnerable. Its stature wasn't enough to keep the most pro-Israel administration in recent history from pursuing for four years a ramshackle conspiracy case. Seemingly untouchable AIPAC was touched hard by wiretaps, raids on its offices and subpoenas. Under government pressure, intimidated AIPAC leaders fired the two lobbyists, cut off their legal fees at times and distanced themselves, and their allies on the Hill, from even verbal support.

After years and millions of dollars spent investigating the nefarious "Israel Lobby," the case produced no stolen secrets, no money changing hands, no covert meetings, no high-level, dual-loyal officials, no harm to the national interest and no spies. Pardon me, but where's the corned beef?

If a powerful lobby threatens national security, shouldn't the patriotic supporters of that organization be informed of the evidence? Or if government officials have allowed prejudice to covertly victimize innocent people shouldn't that behavior be made transparent? Or, if an important ally is using ethnic ties to turn supporters into spies, shouldn't the public know?

Of course the case hasn't been all bad for conspirators. The same year AIPAC fired its lobbyists, it used the troubles to raise a record $45 million. And having opponents exaggerate a lobby's power ends up enhancing that power.

Both the FBI and AIPAC have to be pleased to see this case go away; one to conceal mistakes and biases, the other to hide weakness and disloyalty to its own.

The writer is a professor of government at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.

Jewish Occupation or Roots in Judea and Samaria?

Photo: 8th century B.C.E. Hebrew inscription

NOTE TO READER: This post came from Israel's Women in Green. WIG is a pro-Israel group, so named to be a response to Women in Black, an anti-Israel group. WIG is very activist, supports Jewish life on the West Bank and Gaza due to historical and Biblical text. Here, WIG member, Yoram Ettinger writes about the historical connection the Jewish people have with the West Bank, which, up until the illegal Jordanian occupation (1948 - 1967) had been called for millenium Judea and Samaria. ---- Becky Johnson, editor



Jewish Occupation or Roots in Judea and Samaria?
Straight from the Jerusalem Cloakroom #226,

July 31, 2009

by Yoram Ettinger, Jerusalem

1. President Obama's claim ­ enunciated during his June 4, 2009 speech at Cairo University ­ that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history [The Holocaust] that cannot be denied," ignores thoroughly-documented Jewish roots in the Land of Israel in general and in Judea & Samaria in particular.

2. World renowned travelers, historians and archeologists of earlier centuries, such as H. B. Tristram (The Land of Israel, 1865), Mark Twain (Innocents Abroad, 1867), R.A. MacAlister and Masterman ("Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly"), A.P. Stanley (Sinai and Palestine, 1887), E. Robinson and E. Smith (Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1841)), C.W. Van de Velde (Peise durch Syrien und Paletsinea, 1861), Felix Bovet (Voyage en Taire Sainte, 1864) ­ as well as Encyclopedia Britannica and official British and Ottoman records (until 1950) refer to "Judea and Samaria" and not to the "West Bank." The latter term was coined by the Jordanian occupation of Judea and Samaria following the 1948/9 War.

3. The term "Palestine" was established by Greek Historian Herodotus, and adopted by the Roman Empire, in an attempt to erase "Judea" from human memory. "Palestine" was a derivative of the biblical Philistines, arch rivals of the Jewish nation, non-Semites who migrated to the area from the Greek islands and from Phoenicia in the 12th century BCE ("Plishtim" ­ the invaders - is the Hebrew word for "Philistines").

4. Most Arabs (Semites from the Arabian Peninsula), who reside between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, have their origin in a massive 19th-20th century migration from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and other Moslem countries.

5. Almost all Arab towns and villages in Judea and Samaria have retained biblical Jewish names, thus reaffirming Jewish roots there. For example:

*A-Dura is biblical (and contemporary) Adora'yim, site of King Rehoboam's and a Maccabees' fortress.
*A-Ram is biblical Haramah, Prophet Samuel's birth and burial site.
*Anata is biblical (and contemporary) Anatot, the dwelling of the Prophet Jeremiah.
*Batir is biblical (and contemporary) Beitar, the headquarters of Bar Kochba, the leader of the Great Rebellion against the Roman Empire, which was crashed in 135CE.
*Beit-hur is the biblical (and contemporary) Beit Horon, site of Judah the Maccabee's victory over the Assyrians.
*Beitin is biblical (and contemporary) Bethel, a site of the Holy Ark and Prophet Samuel's court.
*Bethlehem is mentioned 44 times in the Bible and is the birth place of King David.
*Beit Jalla is biblical (and contemporary) Gilo, where Sennacherib set his camp, while besieging Jerusalem.
*El-Jib is biblical (and contemporary) Gibeon, Joshua's battleground known for "Sun, stop thou in Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ayalon," Joshua 10:12.
*Hebron - named after Hevron, Moses' uncle and Levy's grandson ­ was King David's first capital for 7 years, the burial site of the 3 Jewish Patriarchs and 3 Jewish Matriarchs.
*Jaba' is the biblical (and contemporary Geva, site of Jonathan's (son of King Saul) victory over the Philistines.
*Jenin is the biblical (and contemporary) Ein Ganim, a Levite town within the tribe of Issachar.
*Mukhmas is biblical (and contemporary) Mikhmash, residence of Jonathan the Maccabee and site of King Saul's fortress.
*Seilun is biblical (and contemporary) Shilo, a site of Joshua's tabernacle and the Holy Ark and Samuel's youth.
*Tequa' is biblical (and contemporary) Teqoah, hometown of the Prophet Amos and currently known for its home grown Ginger.
*Etc.

Are these sites "occupied" by the Jewish State or are they the epitome of Jewish moral high-ground and Statehood?

Somewhere between 328 and 3,500 were killed

Photo of an anti-Israel protester in Los Angeles Aug 13, 2006 carrying a "bloody" doll

BANNED FROM INDYBAY.ORG

NOTE TO READERS: In my long running battle between Santa Cruz Indymedia and later Indybay.org, many posts of mine have been deleted. If you follow the link below, it will take you to the article to which I was responding. Readers can note that my post, which was censored, violated no editorial guideline at indybay.org. In fact, my post added important sources for readers to consider regarding the Lebanese Christian Phalanx massacre in Lebanon at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. This is the so-called "Israeli" massacre in which no Israeli soldier participated. Ariel Sharon, a general at the time, was held responsible by the Israeli Knesset because they ruled he could have stopped it from happening and didn't. He was forced to resign as a result. Below is my banned post. --Becky Johnson Aug 3 2009


posted at and then banned from : http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/11/1779828_comment.php#1780130

Somewhere between 328 and 3,500 people were killed

by Becky Johnson Wednesday, Nov. 02, 2005 at 9:51 AM

Santa Cruz, Ca.

The number of people killed at Sabra and Shatila is disputed. Here are a few wide ranging sources from Al Jazeera to the Kahane Commission and some NGO reports. Since there is so much dispute, beware of anyone who claims that they are the ultimate authority on the death toll. ---Becky Johnson

from: http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_sabra_shatila.php

"Estimates of the number killed range from 460 according to the Lebanese police, to 700-800 calculated by Israeli intelligence. Palestinians claim 3,000 to 3,500 dead and call the action "genocide".

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B26B8CE1-49E1-47FF-9ED5-8E1AE1305CC4.htm

The International Committee for the Red Cross initially counted 1500 bodies at the time, but by 22 September this count had risen to 2400. The next day, another 350 corpses were uncovered, raising the total to 2750.

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/8602b2469fdd471f85256af4005687e3?OpenDocument

The Lebanese Red Cross personnel counted over 3,000 bodies not including those buried under rubble placed over them by the bulldozers on Saturday morning.

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/MiddleEast/TerrorInUSA/faq/Sabra.asp

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival war of words

Photo from a San Francisco rally in January 27 2007__photo_by_Alison

by Becky Johnson
July 24, 2009

Santa Cruz, Ca. -- Tammi Benjamin, of Scholars for Peace in the Mideast has been spearheading a series of e-mail discussions with Peter Stein, the Executive Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. At issue is the decision by the SFJFF to play the film "Rachel" by Simone Bitton as its North American debut, and host a speech by Rachel Corrie's mother, Cindy Corrie. The first showing is scheduled for Saturday, July 25, 2009 during the Jewish Sabbath. The first of two showings, and where Cindy Corrie will be speaking, starts at 1:30PM at the Castro Theater at 429 Castro St, SF. The American Friends Service Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace are listed as co-presenters. So far, Stein and the SFJFF have held fast and the "Rachel" screening is going forward.

HERE IS AN ACCOUNT OF THE SCREENING WHERE DR. MIKE HARRIS SPOKE FOR 10 MINUTES PRIOR TO CINDY CORRIE'S TALK.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

SF Jewish Film Festival Audience Jeers Pro-Israel Speaker but Cheers for Ahmedinejad

The controversy about the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival's invitation to Cindy Corrie hit a fever pitch this week. An editorial in "j", our local community newspaper, endorsed the same opinion previously expressed here. In addition, the president of the SFJFF board resigned and two prominent local foundations issued a stinging criticism of the Film Festival's decision to invite Mrs. Corrie.

But things were to get even more interesting. I was personally invited by Peter Stein, the executive director of the SFJFF, to make a brief statement prior to the film to discuss why many of us objected to this program. While I knew that this would be a hostile audience, I didn't anticipate objections from many dedicated activists within the pro-Israel community who felt that this would let the Film Festival off the hook by allowing them to claim that they had "balanced" the program. However, StandWithUs fully supported this appearance, realizing that this was a unique opportunity to present our viewpoint, even knowing that the majority of the audience would be hostile.

And everything that happened yesterday was exactly as anticipated. Not only had the event's co-sponsors, Jewish Voice for Peace and American Friends Service Committee, sent out appeals to their members to show up in force, but Cindy Corrie herself sent out a similar e-mail. So the crowd's reaction was no surprise, and you can see it for yourself here.


The film, of course, was utterly lacking in context. One brief mention that the IDF teams were looking for explosives-smuggling tunnels. No mention of the terror war. An interesting point near the end of the film when an Israeli anarchist from Jaffa is interviewed-- he talks about resistance and a few other similar phrases about idealism, then said that some of the words don't translate well into Hebrew-- the audience laughed at that line.

Peter Stein didn't ask any hard questions of Cindy Corrie-- it was a total softball interview. He did ask her what she thought of the controversy here, she said it surprised her, talked about some of the Jewish community supporting her the first time that the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie was pulled from the theater in New York. She thinks it has less to do with her appearance than with discussions in the Jewish community about Israel, and those whose allegiance to Israel "leads them to support the status quo".

She took maybe 3 questions from the audience, each devolved into about a 10-15 minute answer, everything of course building on the sympathy factor. She did not address any specific political issues except that as far as the investigation into her daughter's death she was told by US officials that she will never get anyone in the US gov't to agree to investigate this fully, because it involves Israel.

I did not get to ask her the question I wanted to ask, which was as follows:

"Mrs Corrie, I'm sure you and I agree that too many people have died in this conflict. We all want peace, but some of us have different concepts of what "peace" means. My concept is that of a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine, living side by side in peace and mutual recognition. What is YOUR concept of peace?"

I don't know what her answer would be; but, based on the responses to my talk, I know what the audience's answer is. So the question that needs to be asked of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is this:

If you are attracting an audience that jeers a pro-Israel speaker, and cheers not only for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel but also at the mention of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is that the kind of programming that is appropriate for a JEWISH Film Festival?

The full text of my remarks is below:

The Jewish Film Festival is an important cultural institution in our community. Yet, as Peter noted, this year there has been an uproar from not only our local Jewish community, but also from Jewish communities around the country and overseas, over the Film Festival’s choice of this film and speaker.

My presence here should in no way be considered as either endorsing, or even adequately balancing, this event. These few minutes cannot in any way provide an appropriate response to the next two hours.

I came here today to give voice to a different perspective—the perspective of the wider spectrum of the Bay Area and global Jewish communities, including our own community institutions such as the Jewish Community Relations Council, and ‘J”, our community’s newspaper which voiced strong concerns about today’s program, and including the respected Taube and Koret Foundations which have expressed strong opposition to this program as being inappropriate for a Jewish Film Festival.

All of us here know that Rachel Corrie tragically died when she intentionally put herself in harm’s way during an IDF counter-terrorism operation in the Gaza Strip. But many of us don’t know the names of other young American victims—Abigail Leitel, a 14 year old Baptist girl from New Hampshire, murdered when a suicide bomber blew up a bus in Haifa on March 5, 2003. David Gritz age 24, Benjamin Blutstein age 25 and UC Berkeley student Marla Bennett, age 24, all murdered on July 31, 2002 by a suicide bomber in the cafeteria at Hebrew University.

And there are Israeli Rachels. Rachel Levy, age 17, was murdered in Jerusalem on March 29, 2002 by a suicide bomber. Rachel Thaler, age 16, died Feb 27 2002 as a result of injuries when a suicide bomber exploded himself in the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem 11 days earlier. And there are more—too many more—Israeli Rachels.

And none of them were engaged in anything more risky than riding a bus, or going to buy a slice of pizza or a cup of coffee. And, just as Rachel Corrie should be alive today, so should all of these young men and women.

They were all murdered before Rachel Corrie came to Gaza. That’s why the young IDF soldier was operating that bulldozer in Rafah. It wasn’t to wantonly destroy Palestinian homes. It was to destroy the tunnels used to smuggle explosives for murdering Israelis—tunnels that even now, the so-called “Free Gaza” members proudly boast of touring and photographing.

The International Solidarity Movement recruited Rachel Corrie at the height of the terror war and instructed her to ignore IDF security warnings. You will hear that they are a peace group. You won’t hear that ISM defined peace in a 2003 press conference as the destruction of Zionism and the Jewish State. You will hear that ISM supports non-violence. You won’t hear that ISM collaborates with terrorists, including Hamas, and even aided the terrorists who took over the Church of the Nativity in 2002. Nor will you hear that ISM leaders called suicide bombing “noble” and that they support terrorism as ”legitimate armed struggle.”

And, as ISM co-founder George Rishmawi said, “If some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice.” They have used Rachel’s accidental death to accuse Israel of intentionally murdering innocents.

You will hear Israel’s counter-terrorism measures demonized, but not why they were necessary. You won’t hear about the organized, savage suicide bombing war that Palestinians unleashed against Israel in 2000-- a war that murdered over 1000 Israelis (mostly civilians) and wounded over 7,000 others, using bombs filled with razor blades, nails and rat poison; a war fought not for a Palestinian state that Arafat had already rejected, but against Israel's very existence.

And you will not hear about another foreign volunteer who was killed near Gaza. Carlos Chavez, a 20-year-old from Ecuador, was shot in the back while he planted potato seeds at a communal farm in Israel, about 100 meters from the Gaza border. His murder occurred on Jan. 15, 2008—2.5 years after Israel had completely withdrawn from Gaza. His crime was simply being in the state of Israel; the same crime for which the Hamas charter threatens all Israeli Jews with death.

You won’t hear about the incessant, anti-Semitic incitement that pervades Palestinian media, schools, and mosques, instilling hatred of Jews, celebrating those who kill them as heroes and martyrs, and denying Israel’s very right to exist. You won’t hear about the founding document of Hamas, which they still stand by today, and which openly calls for the murder of Jews everywhere. I have copies of excerpts from their charter right here, but it’s easy to find online. You won’t hear about the 8,000 rockets that have been launched into from Gaza into Israel, a small country just the size of New Jersey. You won’t hear about a Palestinian leadership that has failed its people miserably by using the billions they have received in foreign aid to build bombs and rockets, rather than schools and hospitals.

This episode should lead to some serious and thoughtful discussion about the role, and the responsibility, that a JEWISH Film Festival should take within our community. A Jewish Film Festival should not be presenting a film and speaker that demonize Israel, and that are being co-sponsored and promoted by groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and American Friends Service Committee, that support boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, or, as AFSC did, host dinner for Mahmoud Ahmedinejad;-- —or perhaps even attract an audience that would applaud that.

No mother should have to bury her child—not Cindy Corrie, not Marla Bennett’s mother Linda, and not Carlos Chavez’ mother Gloria de las Mercedes. As you watch this film and hear from Rachel’s mother, remember how much context is completely missing from the film. Above all, remember the mothers of all the other Rachels as well, and the price they have had to pay simply for being Jews living in the only Jewish country in the world. Thank you very much.