A DOCTOR IN GALILEE: April is the Cruelest Month

A DOCTOR IN GALILEE: Tearful April Mornings.

In rural Palestine we belittle men who cry. Only women let their tears flow freely. It is considered less than manly. Real men are stoic and conceal their pain, physical as well as emotional. At least in public, I try to conform to the dictates of village culture in matters that do not impinge greatly on my personal freedom. Perhaps that is why I rarely attend funerals in Arrabeh. But also I attend few weddings. Now that the village is large enough for weddings and/or funerals to be daily occurrences I avoid both extremes of village social interactions. Instead I celebrate and grieve privately on YouTube, enjoying a daily portion of Arabic song and dance on or commiserating with fellow peace and justice seekers on our various cyberspace powwows.A rural tradition I have come to observe recently is early rising: I am up each morning at the crack of dawn, just as the seven youthful muezzins commence blaring their cacophonous calls for prayer from the loudspeakers atop their minarets, strategically dispersed around the village to reach its every bedroom. Not that I have anything against praising the good Lord early in the morning. In fact on occasion I enjoy a visit on my tape recorder with Sheik Kaid, the old village muezzin and my former Arabic language teacher who used to dock me points for not appearing at the mosque for the Friday noon group prayer. After I came back from my studies in the States and before he went on his mosque building spree resulting eventually in six additional mosques in the village, I took the trouble of making my own recording of his beautiful call for the dawn prayer. I did it one early calm summer morning when there was nothing to disturb the village peace. It was when the sheik still did not have a loudspeaker; he sang his praise of God and call of the faithful to the mosque from the lofty balcony of the old minaret in the center of Arrabeh in the serene calm of Galilee. Only an occasional rooster would crow, a dog bark or a donkey bray. It was before the advent of electricity, the innovation that threw the roosters’ timing off and made them crow every time an electric light is switched on in the village.

Once the muezzin’s morning competition in praising God is over calm returns except for the melodious singing of blackbirds in my garden. By then I have prepared my morning cup of coffee and switched my computer on. I start with a quick glance at my email inbox for any special messages, loaf around cyberspace for a few minutes, and then proceed with the morning’s writing assignment for the next few hours.

On Saturday, April, 09, 2011 I connected to The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice  to check if the website had acknowledged the piece of bitter sarcasm I had just added on my blog about the last two sessions of the Corries’ court case against the State of Israel. Bam! Rachel’s glorious smile went right through to my heart. I was devastated. How could I have such emotional crush, fatherly as it was, on a young woman I never met in person? I craved for a hug from that beautiful woman to quench my longing for her. It was two months since the last time I had held Rhoda, my daughter, in my arms. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Here was Rhoda being run over by the blade of that D-9 Caterpillar. Oh, my God! How can they do that to my sweetheart? I held Rachel closer to my heart to protect her from the biblical cruelty she sacrificed herself to protect other humans from. I squeezed hard and broke out crying. I was afraid I might wake my wife. I gulped silently for air and let my tears flow quietly down my unshaven face. What kind of man was I? I had to take control of myself. I gave Rhoda a tight hug and kissed Rachel on the cheek before I opened my eyes and walked over to the washbasin to splash some cold water on my face. I refilled my coffee cup, went back to my computer and wrote a couple of emotional pages in my novel about Galilee, Palestine and Israel.

After a breakfast of fresh citrus fruits and fried eggs from my two surviving free-range chickens I puttered around in the garden for a while. By now I felt exhausted. I took a rest. [How did He manage to slug at it for six days straight before taking a rest? Perhaps He didn’t have much on His mind. Bad thoughts are more exhausting than ditch digging; take it from one who practices both regularly. It must have been before the Internet and all its disturbing tidings.] Soon I was up again with my laptop. I saw another video, this one posted by Kate on Mondoweiss, the online periodical that proclaims itself as the locus for “The war of ideas in the Middle East” and hence the place where I occasionally give expression to my frustration and bitter protesting. April 9th is the memorial day of the Deir Yassin massacre. [He simply couldn’t have seen this video and kept quiet. Please, don’t be upset with me. I am giving Him the benefit of the Doubt. After all, He must have slept on the job and didn’t see the actual event in 1948, just as he did earlier when the holocaust was in progress. But at least, later on, when He found out about the holocaust He tried to do something about it; He compensated His favorite children politically and financially. Never mind that He screwed us, the Palestinians, in the process.] Here is the link for it should you want to rid your body of excess salt and accumulated fluid. I for one cried my eyes out: http://mondoweiss.net/2011/04/63rd-anniversary-of-the-deir-yassin-massacre.html

The over-half-an-hour-long video opens and ends with the saddest o‘ud music. In between it maintains a balance between Arab and Jewish narrators and covers a range of relevant information, from the three existing Deir Yassin memorials in New York, Scotland, and Wales to the orphanage and school established by the grand Palestinian philanthropist, Hind el-Hussainy for Deir Yassin’s children. In an entry in her diary she specifies 138 Palestinian liras as her total savings at the time. But she had the goodwill and the moral reserve to make a go of it after she found the 55 lost children let loose by the Irgun and the Stern gangs at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem.

I am pleased that Hiam Hussein, the proud daughter of the neighboring Galilee Palestinian village of Deir Hanna, has done Hind justice in playing her role in Julian Schnabel’s controversial new film, Miral. It is a film based on the autobiographical novel by the same name written by his girlfriend and former Dar el-Tifl el-Arabi resident, Rula Jebreal, another proud Palestinian with local roots, Haifa to be exact. Also I noted with displeasure that the video producers gave no credit to my own brother, Prof. Sharif Kanaana of Beir Zeit University, to the best of my knowledge the first researcher to document the actual number of Deir Yassin Palestinian residents murdered by the Zionist armed gangs and the Haganah and to stipulate that the numbers previously quoted were inflated by both sides of the conflict for their own convenient ends: by the crime perpetrators to sow panic among Palestinians and by the victims to maximize the blame for the crime.

Mind you, I am beating around the bush here. I am speaking of tangential issues to avoid crying again: The mere sight of the serene stone homes, now housing the Givat Shaul Mental Health Center, released a flood of tears. When I got to the part where a former Deir Yassin resident, likely the wife, the daughter and the sister of the village’s stonecutters of old and the descendent of seven centuries worth of stonecutting toil and sweat, was aided to walk next to her villages current barbwire perimeter and she reached to touch a tree branch to her face, I nearly collapsed stifling my urge to sob and to scream out my pain.

The next morning, Sunday, April 10, I rose before the muezzins. By the time the village regained its morning quiet I was scouting the Internet for fresh news. A mailing from a friend contained a title that piqued my curiosity: “Juliano Mer Khamis Predicted His Assassination,” it said. I clicked and followed the link to a half-minute long English language You Tube video that said it all exactly as it would actually happen to him. Here is that link. See for yourself what raw courage is.  For some ten minutes I shook with silent tears of outrage and disappointment. How could someone be so stupidly misguided? And to kill such an enlightened bright promise presumably in the name of Islam! Seven guys in Arrabeh alone had just finished noisily shouting the praises of God’s mercy and justice to be totally discredited by the bullet of a “fucked-up Palestinian” as Juliano had put it! . And the guy is not only insightful. He is a good actor; you can see it even in the half-minute video. And his blonde wife is reportedly pregnant with twins. Oh God! Now I am sobbing for the orphaned unborn twins.

That indeed was the ultimate conspiracy. Juliano was literally the embodiment of integration and understanding, himself the product of interracial love and idealism. I had met his parents, the Russian Jewess Arna and the Christian Palestinian Saliba, both protesting commitment to higher ideals of revolutionary justice, humanitarianism, and internationalism, all under their communist convictions before that pipedream turned sour. And I had met Juliano on more than one occasion. I remember him informing an audience in New York that, as a parachute trooper in the IDF before he discovered peaceful resistance, he took it for granted to carry an extra handgun in his backpack to plant on any civilian Palestinian he may kill. He was an acquaintance, not close enough for me to claim him as a friend. Now I was crying for having failed to open my heart wider for this former soldier, this brave comrade in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality.

The weekend before his senseless murder my wife and I had planned to travel to Jenin to see his adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland performed at the Freedom Theater, his life’s unique project and answer the world’s barbarity, to occupation and to apartheid. Alas, a friend dissuaded us from taking the trip with the explanation that on Saturdays it would take several hours to clear the checkpoint at the border. There were that many Palestinian shoppers from Galilee making the trip on their day off to take advantage of the cheaper prices in the depressed economy of the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Now I was crying for the poor Palestinian brothers and sisters who toil endless hours to wind up with worthless produce, not intrinsically worthless but rendered so by the imposed boundaries and regulations. That was what Juliano tried to tear down. Why didn’t I bother to know him more closely? Why had I never hugged him or kissed his handsome face? I had to hear him posthumously on You Tube to fall in love with him! What a rotten deal we both have had.

Saturday, the 16th of April I slept late. The night before I had stayed up past midnight at a nephew’s wedding celebration. Juliano would have felt at home at the banquet hall: a mix of village locals and communists from across the land, Arabs and Jews. The groom is one. My sister, mother of the groom, had spent the better part of a week dancing the local feminine style, alternatively clapping her hands and twirling them over her head. Finally her rheumatism kicked in and her wrist swelled up with an acute flare of inflammation. We call that “repetitive motion injury.” Doctors are striking. I had to rush over at three in the morning to put her arm in a splint and give her a painkiller. Was she crying in physical pain or for her last gosling abandoning the nest?

By sunrise I was up but not fully alert, still dazed and in a contemplative mood. A dove was romancing another on the red bougainvillea bough sweeping across the full width of my view through the window of my study. I opened the window to hear their melodic chatter. An announcement on the mosque’s loudspeaker lamented the death of a young man in another car accident. It ruined my joyous repose and I decided to check the news. Quickly I reached http://mondoweiss.net/2011/04/gaza-mourns-vittorio-arrigoni.html/ Another stab in the heart of solidarity, freedom and moderation. I read and reread all the standard platitudes: “One of the most passionate supporters of justice for Palestine.” “Full of the joy of life.” “The man with the big smile and gentle nature.” I never met Vittorio Arrigoni, but he had a cause: “Stay Human,” he was known to admonish all concerned. Why would anyone kill such a refreshing soul? And why the torture and willful cruelty?. Who stands to gain from this or from the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis? Or from the murder of the settler family in the outpost next to Awarta in the occupied West Bank for that matter? Not who the press reports say it is, I am sure. Check with me in fifty years when the secret documents are released and I will score another I-told-you-so point, I am sure. Or else join me in signing the appeal to keep the Wikileaks founder free.

I run the video, a collection of photos of the Italian freedom fighter set to music: He is handsome, muscular and imposing with a disarming smile and a big tattoo. Just like my son, Ty, nearly of the same age. I haven’t seen my boy for four months. What keeps me away from him and his kids, God damn it? Then I reach Carlo Latuff’s cartoon portrait of Vik holding the hand of Hanthala, Naji El-Ali’s immortal symbol of Palestinian diaspora, dispossession, resistance and survival against all odds. The floodgates open again and I cry my eyes out, not only for Vik but also for Hanthala who lost another friend and protector and for all those among us who have not learned to heed those two friends’ admonition to “Stay Human.”

I wanted a fruit. I headed to the citrus side of my garden. On the way I walked over with the key and opened the cage for my dozen new chickens. I had learned a lesson: Freedom may cost a chicken its life. Only in the security of the full light of day can my chickens be safe from the murderous mongooses. I rummaged through the navel orange branches for the last fruits of the season. The perfumed scent of the flowers was overwhelmingly pleasant. Still, picking the very last orange of the season on my tree saddened me. Unexpectedly, the pleasure of admiring my citrus trees in full bloom in the rays of the rising sun evoked sadness in my heart. And my flowering apple trees and ripening kumquats and all the red poppies underneath them. How long will I have the pleasure of connecting to my chickens and trees and to the poppies in my field? Avigdor Lieberman and his fascist followers claim them as their sacred property. After all, geographically, I live in Israel and he thinks it is his exclusive property: “Israel Beitainu –Israel is our home,” he proclaims victoriously.

How many times must I repeat: “Stay Human!”
“Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.”

POSTED BY HATIM KANAANEH, MD, MPH AT 8:52 PM

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Desmond Tutu: We Must Boycott and Isolate Israeli Universities

Desmond Tutu: We Must Boycott and Isolate Israeli Universities — Signs of the Times News.

The University of Johannesburg’s Senate will next week meet to decide whether to end its relationship with an Israeli institution, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, on the grounds of that university’s active support for and involvement in the Israeli military. Archbishop Desmond Tutu supports the move. He explains why

“The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own.

We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less than human if we did so. It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice.” – Nelson Mandela, December 4 1997

Struggles for freedom and justices are fraught with huge moral dilemmas. How can we commit ourselves to virtue – before its political triumph – when such commitment may lead to ostracism from our political allies and even our closest partners and friends? Are we willing to speak out for justice when the moral choice that we make for an oppressed community may invite phone calls from the powerful or when possible research funding will be withdrawn from us? When we say “Never again!” do we mean “Never again!”, or do we mean “Never again to us!”?

Our responses to these questions are an indication of whether we are really interested in human rights and justice or whether our commitment is simply to secure a few deals for ourselves, our communities and our institutions – but in the process walking over our ideals even while we claim we are on our way to achieving them?

The issue of a principled commitment to justice lies at the heart of responses to the suffering of the Palestinian people and it is the absence of such a commitment that enables many to turn a blind eye to it.

Consider for a moment the numerous honorary doctorates that Nelson Mandela and I have received from universities across the globe. During the years of apartheid many of these same universities denied tenure to faculty who were “too political” because of their commitment to the struggle against apartheid. They refused to divest from South Africa because “it will hurt the blacks” (investing in apartheid South Africa was not seen as a political act; divesting was).

Let this inconsistency please not be the case with support for the Palestinians in their struggle against occupation.

I never tire of speaking about the very deep distress in my visits to the Holy Land; they remind 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 we did when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. My heart aches. I say, “Why are our memories so short?” Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their own previous 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 all the downtrodden?

Together with the peace-loving peoples of this Earth, I condemn any form of violence – but surely we must recognise that people caged in, starved and stripped of their essential material and political rights must resist their Pharaoh? Surely resistance also makes us human? Palestinians have chosen, like we did, the nonviolent tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

South African universities with their own long and complex histories of both support for apartheid and resistance to it should know something about the value of this nonviolent option.

The University of Johannesburg has a chance to do the right thing, at a time when it is unsexy. I have time and time again said that we do not want to hurt the Jewish people gratuitously and, despite our deep responsibility to honour the memory of the Holocaust and to ensure it never happens again (to anyone), this must not allow us to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians today.

I support the petition by some of the most prominent South African academics who call on the University of Johannesburg to terminate its agreement with Ben-Gurion University in Israel (BGU). These petitioners note that: “All scholarly work takes place within larger social contexts – particularly in institutions committed to social transformation. South African institutions are under an obligation to revisit relationships forged during the apartheid era with other institutions that turned a blind eye to racial oppression in the name of ‘purely scholarly’ or ‘scientific work’.” It can never be business as usual.

Israeli Universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime, by active choice. While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation. BGU is no exception. By maintaining links to both the Israeli defence forces and the arms industry, BGU structurally supports and facilitates the Israeli occupation. For example, BGU offers a fast-tracked programme of training to Israeli Air Force pilots.

In the past few years, we have been watching with delight UJ’s transformation from the Rand Afrikaans University, with all its scientific achievements but also ugly ideological commitments. We look forward to an ongoing principled transformation. We don’t want UJ to wait until others’ victories have been achieved before offering honorary doctorates to the Palestinian Mandelas or Tutus in 20 years’ time.

Source: Times Live – South Africa

As of 9-25-10, 200 academics from 22 universities have signed the petition

Obama @ the UN: The Overwhelming Arrogance of American Imperialism

From WSWS.org

Obama at the UN: The arrogant voice of imperialism

By Bill Van Auken
24 September 2010

President Barack Obama used his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Thursday to defend US wars and state terror abroad and to proclaim that the economic crisis has been resolved thanks to his Wall Street bailout.

The US president received a noticeably tepid response from the assembled UN delegates. While in his first address to the body last year, he was able to pose as a fresh alternative to the crimes carried out by the Bush administration, by now it has become clear to most on the international stage that his administration’s policies are largely in continuity with those of its predecessor.

In its tone and its content, the Obama speech was the authentic and arrogant voice of US imperialism.

Parroting remarks delivered by George W. Bush from the same podium, Obama began by invoking September 11, 2001, once again exploiting the terrorist attacks of that day to justify the acts of military aggression committed by both US administrations in the intervening nine years.

In the same breath, he referred to Wall Street’s financial meltdown of September 2008, as an event that “devastated American families on Main Street,” while “crippling markets and deferring the dreams of millions on every continent.”

These two events were presented as the source of the core challenges confronting the US administration. Supposedly in response to the first, the Obama administration has continued and escalated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan, while reaffirming Washington’s “right” to carry out unilateral military aggression anywhere on the planet.

In response to the second, the administration continued the massive bailout begun under Bush, committing more than $12 trillion to propping up the US banks and financial institutions, while holding none of those involved responsible for the criminal forms of speculation practiced on Wall Street.

Obama claimed that the so-called Wall Street reform legislation passed by his administration would ensure “that a crisis like this never happens again.” It does nothing of the kind, placing no serious limits on the speculative activities and profitability of the big banks and leaving Wall Street to continue with “business as usual.”

“The global economy has been pulled back from the brink of a depression,” Obama told his UN audience. This statement flies in the face of the grim conditions confronting working people on every continent. This includes the US itself, where the official unemployment rate remains near 10 percent, the unemployed and underemployed account for 17 percent of the workforce, some 30 million people, and one out of every seven Americans is living below the poverty line.

While profits have returned to pre-crisis levels, the reality is that none of the underlying contradictions that have given rise to the deepest world economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s has been resolved. They have only grown in intensity. The response of the ruling classes throughout the world has been to redouble their attacks on the working class in an attempt to force it to pay for this crisis.

Obama followed his assertion about the economy being pulled back from “the brink” with an even more absurd claim that he would not “rest until these seeds of progress grow into a broader prosperity, not only for all Americans, but for peoples around the globe.”

In the US, throughout Europe and in much of the rest of the world, governments are pursuing unprecedented austerity policies that are ripping up basic social rights and dramatically lowering the living standards of working people. Meanwhile, Obama himself spoke before a global poverty summit the day before his speech, warning the world’s poorest that Washington was determined to break their cycle of “dependency.”

The US president’s lies about the economy were followed by the fraudulent claim that the military operations his administration is pursuing abroad are aimed at upholding “our common security.”

Obama said that he is “winding down the war in Iraq” and will pull out all of its occupation troops by the end of next year. At the same time, he declared Washington’s intention to forge “a lasting partnership with the Iraqi people,” by which he means maintaining a US protectorate over the oil-rich country in order to advance the geo-strategic interests of American capitalism.

He said that the drawing down US troops in Iraq had allowed the US military to be “refocused on defeating al Qaeda and denying its affiliates a safe haven” in Afghanistan. This is another lie. US military and intelligence officials acknowledge that there are no more than 100 al Qaeda members in all of Afghanistan. The nearly 100,000 US troops deployed in that country are not combating “terrorism,” but asserting US neo-colonial control in a bid to advance Washington’s quest for hegemony in Central Asia.

In one of the speech’s more chilling passages, Obama bragged that “from South Asia to the Horn of Africa, we are moving toward a more targeted approach” in the war on terror, that did not require “deploying large American armies.” In other words, while constrained in its ability to carry out another major military occupation, US imperialism is pursuing its policies by means of assassinations, drone missile attacks and the deployment of elite killing squads, and has arrogated to itself the right to target and kill its perceived opponents anywhere on the planet.

Obama used the speech to once again threaten Iran. Only days before his appearance at the UN, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech urging elements within the Iranian ruling elite to carry out regime change in the country. He reiterated the vow made in his speech last year that Iran “must be held accountable” for its alleged violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

At least a quarter of Obama’s address was dedicated to the US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian “peace talks” that appear to be on the brink of yet another breakdown in the face of Israeli intransigence and provocation.

For all the hackneyed rhetoric about the “Holy Land” and “our common humanity,” the Obama administration is pursuing these negotiations as a means of solidifying support among the Arab regimes for its escalating threats of aggression against Iran and to further its domination of the Middle East.

The content of the speech made clear the US administration’s unwavering complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. Obama urged that a limited moratorium declared by the Israeli government be extended beyond September 26, when it is set to expire. He said Israel should do this because it “improved the atmosphere for talks,” not because the entire settlement activity in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is a violation of international law and multiple UN resolutions. In the same breath, the US president asserted that “talks should press on until completed,” presumably regardless of what Israel does.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has insisted that his government will not extend the moratorium, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had initially insisted that his delegation would be forced to walk out if it does not. An ever-pliant servant of Washington, Abbas has since indicated that he might back down on this threat.

The rest of Obama’s remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian question had an Orwellian flavor, in which Israel was presented as the victim. “The slaughter of innocent Israelis is not resistance—it’s injustice,” Obama declared. He made no mention of the slaughter of 1,400 Palestinians in the US-backed siege of Gaza in 2008-2009 or the criminal attack on the Gaza aid flotilla that killed nine Turkish civilians last May. The day the US president spoke, the UN issued a report charging that Israel’s actions were illegal and employed an “unacceptable level of brutality,” meriting war crimes prosecution.

The US president concluded his speech with an exaltation of “democracy” and “human rights,” which again echoed similar language employed by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

In Bush’s case, this phony democratic rhetoric was employed to justify US imperialism’s drive for dominance in the Middle East, where Washington demonstrated its commitment to “human rights” by carrying out mass killings, the detention of tens of thousands without charges or trial, and the infamous acts of torture at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantánamo.

In Obama’s case, the posturing as the global champion of democratic rights is no less contemptible. The target, however, appears to have shifted.

The Council on Foreign Relations, the establishment thinktank that enjoys close ties to the administration and the State Department, spelled this out. Noting Obama’s “full-throated endorsement of democracy as the best form of government,” it commented: “Yet the appeal of such an idea faces challenges at bodies like the UN. This is not, for example, the future world that Chinese leaders envision.”

Indeed, Obama followed his celebration of democracy by calling attention to his upcoming trip to Asia, ticking off the countries he will visit—India, Indonesia, Korea, Japan—and praising each for having promoted “democratic principles in their own way.” The itinerary includes the four largest countries that US strategists envision as bulwarks against the expansion of Chinese influence.

On the same day that Obama delivered his speech, the New York Times published a front-page article on the increasingly tense US-China relationship that was clearly based on the perspective of the US administration. The Times reported that “rising frictions between China and its neighbors in recent weeks over security issues have handed the United States an opportunity to reassert itself—one the Obama administration has been keen to take advantage of.”

It noted that Washington has inserted itself into territorial disputes between China and Southeast Asian countries, organized provocative joint military exercises with South Korea near Chinese waters and has solidified its alliance with Japan, largely in opposition to China’s influence.

Under conditions of rising conflicts between Washington and Beijing over currency and trade relations, Obama’s praise for “democracy” at the UN represents a thinly veiled threat of new and far more catastrophic eruptions of American militarism.

Gordon Duff: America, Apartheid Or Apocalypse?

It Can’t Happen Here – But It is

Gordon Duff: America, Apartheid Or Apocalypse? | Sabbah Report.

To millions of Americans, the “end times” seem to be on us. The BP disaster in the Gulf may leave 25% of America virtually uninhabitable, eco-systems destroyed for sure but maybe much more, a destroyed sea floor, toxic gas clouds moving inland and warnings of something worse, a geological disaster of biblical proportions sitting offshore like a ticking time bomb. Millions of American believe the president is a foreign born Muslim, a puppet of the terrorists while millions believe he is working for Israel. Every speech, every state visit, everything done is seen to support one side or another, sometimes both. The destruction of the American presidency is only part of it, part of a program of racial division, fear, hate and a descent into class warfare and violence.

The end result of the disasters, political infighting, religious extremism, the total collapse of trust in America’s system of government and the infiltration of terrorist elements into every institution, America’s military and political core, financial terrorists working to destroy America’s standard of living, its industrial base, its currency and, eventually the last of its freedoms will be the division of America, starting with an apartheid state and ending in “Balkanization” and the world’s largest nuclear arsenal being unleashed on the world. This has been heard before, it is a story that faith based broadcasting has been sending out to the American people for the past thirty years. The biblical flood began when the money disappeared.

ECONOMIC APOCALYPSE

The serious side is the economic meltdown. Even with the hundreds of billions Americans borrowed to give to our “banksters” who our “congress critters” decided were too big to allow to fail, we have no banks, simply depositories for stolen money while it waits to be shipped overseas. Money is taken in, none loaned out, not for jobs in America anyway. All the government did was to push the burgeoning debt left us by the Bush/Cheney failures even higher, topping $13 trillion dollars this month, money we owe to pay back money we never got from people who had no right to print it in the first place.

More and more Americans are becoming aware of the fact that our system, the Federal Reserve, is nothing but a racket where foreign bankers, all thinly disguised Rothschilds, sell us our own money while maneuvering us into debt, really a massive mortgage on America’s future, we can never keep up the payments on. America has been systematically destabilized, the most powerful nation in the history of the earth, living on borrowed money and, frankly, borrowed time.

TOO MUCH TO STOMACH, BP BUYING OUR GOVERNMENT AND LIEBERMAN CONTROLLING THE INTERNET

When Americans look at television and see half their politicians crying about BP, a company that laid waste to more of the planet than any in history, they see a world upside down. They know their politicians take money, everyone knows this, but to think they would be brazen enough to scream out “yes, we are crooks, what are you going to do about it?” is more than that. It is an announcement that anyone in government can do anything they want, anything, and never answer for it, not even face reelection problems. The more crooked a politician, the more favorable press he gets, the more the Israel lobby supports him, the more the Tea Baggers support him, the more “heroic” he is portrayed by the pundits and fear mongers.

Things have gotten so bad that Senator Josef Liebermann (I-srael) has introduced a bill that would allow the internet to be closed down in case of “emergency.” Liberman talks about terrorism or espionage but the real problem was that the “corporate press” got caught lying over the Freedom Flotilla massacre and millions of Americans have turned to the internet for the news, news sometimes bizarre, conspiratorial and fringe, often however, much more accurate and truthful than the newspapers and TV networks. His bill, written in Tel Aviv, is designed to make Americans who depend on the internet for news and communication feel helpless, isolated and ready to turn to violence.

Picture yourself going to the computer. Your email is blocked, nothing in, nothing out. You are looking at one screen, the same thing on every computer in the country. The logo, a simply, DHS, Department of Homeland Security. In the middle of the screen is a new search engine, “Safety Friendly Family Approved Searches.” Below that are approved news stories, linking you to ABC, CNN, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, the WSJ, NYT, WP and Family Security Matters.org. Below that is a warning:

“Your microphone and webcam are in active mode. Do not attempt to mute, shield or disable under penalty of law.”

Senator Lieberman is trying to start a civil war, more than just planting the seeds, this is a provocation, a clear and present danger to American freedom.

BUILDING THE MECHANISM OF APOCALYPSE, THE MOVE TO APARTHEID

Let’s talk about “social cohesion.” Israel has shipped their five million Palestinians to Jordan, Lebanon or Gaza to have social cohesion, one country, one race, one religion, no room for outsiders, no matter how long they have been around. America did the same thing with the Indians (Native Americans), eventually wiping most of them out in a series of wars, treaties and resettlement programs. However, America’s problems with social cohesion are far greater than Israel’s or even those of America during the pioneering years. Today, we are a society divided on, not only race and ethnicity but region, religion and, worst of all, extremist political views. The government that is supposed to join us together and the constitution that is meant to guarantee our belief in equal justice for all have been ground into the dust, twisted, bought, obliterated and disfigured.

America is heading for a meltdown. Another civil war is possible, even likely. 40% of states are bankrupt. This means they can’t pay police or teachers or fix roads except with borrowed federal money. It also means their pension plans, all that is meant to keep millions of Americans out of dire poverty in retirement, are gone. The states lost their pension plans in the 2007 collapse. Only federal bail outs, which aren’t going to happen, will cover this massive shortfall. Eventually, workers, hundreds of thousands of families who worked and saved for financial security will be told it isn’t there anymore. This isn’t the future, it happened, its real and it can’t be hidden very long.

There is no federal government to step in and carry the load. Wars have left it drowning and political corruption has crippled America to where it is no more stable than many of the nations of Africa. Hiding behind years of scare tactics, terrorism, tiny countries with nuclear weapons, or the real problem of Mexico’s collapse under the rule of drug lords and the millions flooding into our country, financial criminals have looted America and a worldwide criminal conspiracy of financial criminals, headquartered in Tel Aviv and New York, protected by congress and Mossad death squads traveling the world with German passports. The press, something we generously call either the “mainstream media” or “corporate controlled press” isn’t just a mechanism for censorship, its part of a long term effort to destroy the faith Americans have in their own ability as people to rule themselves and trust, not the criminals presented to vote for in elections, but their own ability to reject the lot of them.

THE MANY FACES OF THE AMERICAN TALIBAN

Radicalization of America has been the goal all along. Who would have ever believed that internet conspiracy theory would end up being, not only more believable, but more fair and certainly more balanced than traditional media sources that have been discredited to such a degree in recent months. A key area of division in America has been religion. For awhile, financed by the Israeli lobby and the “bankster” criminal elements, the “neo-cons” were able to build a bridge uniting Evangelical Christians with Christian Zionists, groups that are, from a scriptural standpoint light years apart. To this, the abortion/women’s rights issue drew many Catholics to abandon their traditional values and join with these groups which had shared little in common with them. Catholics are urban, typically well educated with a Euro-centric culture, while Evangelicals shun higher education for religious instruction.

The first American Taliban may have been the Puritans but they have been eclipsed in American history by the atavism of the Mormon Church, whose beliefs deeply parallel the most frightening and profound heresies of Islam, church over state, no rights for women and an undercurrent of violence unrivaled by any sect seen in a western society since the Albigensians. Mormons, chased across America, seized much of the Southwest and set up a defacto government, one with little in common with the rest of America. As the Mormon regions of America come into conflict with the massive Hispanic Catholic population, the roots of dissolution, border wars, draconian race laws and eventually full apartheid will take hold. It will start in Arizona and spread through the American West.

Perhaps the largest threat is the religious theory of Zionism. Originally a race theory based on Jewish racial superiority and political supremacy, offshoots of Zionism have entered Evangelical Christian belief systems creating the heresy known as Christian Zionism. Original Zionism, a violent and radical offshoot of Judaism is more racial than religious or political in nature. Though a minority of American Jews practice Zionistic beliefs, most are coerced into either financial support or even into sending children into military servitude in Israel in order to avoid social ostracism.

As the result of the founding of Israel in Judea or Palestine, a slow decline in social,cultural and intellectual traditions has infected the Jewish community in America, one known for the advancement of social causes and broad advocacy of American freedoms. With the increased radicalization of America and her economic decline, many Jews have looked to Israel as an anchor, failing to take into account the role Israel has played in the onset of the entropy they fear. This situation could be equated with burning down your home to save your garage.

Christian Zionists have only anecdotal similarities with the Judaic variety. They tend to be rural, poorly educated, envious and resentful, not only of what they call “elites” but many other groups as well but primarily African Americans. The basis of Christian Zionism is hatred of African Americans. All other monikers or descriptions are a subterfuge to escape the labels these same groups had been associated with in the past, Klan, racist or bigot.

Hiding behind tortured and obscure biblical references and using bizarre stories of disaster and apocalypse, stories oddly well supported by current times, these simple rural people unable to grasp much of the complex modern world. They have been melded into a political front serving the interests of Israel, a state they understand poorly, and the class of economic criminals, many associated with Israel but also with the movement in America called “conservatism.” Their political role has been to serve as a vocal and sometimes violent front for the economic oligarchy, a very real monied elite, that has assumed broad control over America’s policitcal and social life.

THE DOOM SO MANY PRAYED SO HARD FOR IS HERE

America’s security has been tied, for 65 years, to NATO. Today, our newspaper and TV gurus are telling us to dissolve NATO. With the breakdown of the alliance between Israel and Turkey, Israel, who controls 444 members of congress and 50% of America’s wealth has demanded that America either throw Turkey out of NATO or leave herself. As yet, Israel is allowing the United States to remain in the United Nations because America’s security council veto, used hundreds of times to save Israel from sanctions for war crimes or nuclear proliferation violations, is vital to the welare of Israel.

This week, Israel was discovered on the verge of bombing Iran. Little real damage would have been done. Iran has no nuclear infrastructure tied to weapons manufacture. The intent would be, as Israel had planned it, to enter Iran from the north where there are few defenses, bomb useless and remote targets, safe targets so all planes could return and claim a major victory, destroying that which did not exist. As Saudi Arabia has already been set up as the fall guy, said to have allowed the attack in advance, something the Saudis deny, they would become hated among Muslim nations.

Israel’s plan is to force Iran to attack Saudi Arabia, close the Straits of Hormuz and push America and Western Europe into total collapse. With 60% of the world’s oil supply eliminated, world financial and currency markets would collapse and the world’s armaments industry would explode with orders. Israel is the third largest exporter of weapons. Israel prides itself as the inventor of “game theory,” the method of strategic planning making use of deception, manipulation, “false flag attacks,” assassinations, bribery and blackmail in a complex chess match meant to bring the world to a chaotic state subject to their mathematical models. Israel is filled with Nobel Prize winners. This is what they work on.

The apolcalypse that Christian Zionists prayed for, the “end times” though to begin with a series of natural disasters has been hurried along. Pushing for a nuclear war has always been a part of it but the possiblity, not yet proven, that the BP disaster in the Gulf could eventually turn the Gulf Stream and leave Europe uninhabitable is a continual subject of discussion with America’s religious broadcast community.

HOW DESTABILIZATION BECOMES APARTHEID

With collapse in the trust in America’s institutions, a Supreme Court with five neo-Fascist judges, congress with 444 “Israeli-firsters,” and millions of Americans believing the president is the Anti-Christ, one more economic disaster, the one Israel is attempting to stage right now, would make the 2007 collapse seem like a joke. With the broadcast media having worked the country into fear, distrust and ready to pick up weapons to use against their neighbors, all carefully staged, the scripts have been passed out.

You will know when you see the face of Sarah Palin on every network, perhaps in a pantsuit with a miltiary cut. Do you think she will be wearing a beret? There will be a flag behind her and the Star Spangled Banker will fade to silence as she makes the announcements.

Nuclear arsenals will be seized by patriotic groups from within our military, led by Israeli commandos and helped by our armies of private defense contractors. Those secret “FEMA/UN” prisons will suddenly turn out to be real, with local police in riot gear, American flags on their cars and uniforms, hunting down journalists, activists and, eventually, the educated.

Senator Lieberman will pull the plug on the internet. Private logins will carry arrest lists.

After the educated classes and politially progressive groups are rounded up, then the African Americans and Hispanics will be cataloged, given travel restrictions. Pass laws will be enacted.

Then, surprise of surprises, they will start rounding up Jews.

Welcome to the hell of your own making.

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

The Crucifixion of Kindness (again & again & again)

The Crucifixion of Kindness

by Gilad Atzmon

Panic is detected in Israel. Strategic affairs minister, Moshe Boogi Ya’alon who served as acting PM during last week’s massacre in the high seas said yesterday that “someone failed to prepare a standard operating procedure.” A senior IDF official was quick to respond “If there wasn’t a standard operating procedure, why didn’t he make sure there was one. He was the acting prime minister and it was his responsibility.” War criminal Tzipi Livni is also unhappy with the Government for failing to take responsibility. Two days ago she led a no confidence vote in the Israeli Knesset.

Seemingly the Israelis are starting to blame each other. This may look like a positive move, however, not a single Israeli is yet to ask for forgiveness. Seemingly no one in Israel grasps the scale of the atrocity in the high seas. No one in Israel comprehends the level of outrage amongst the nations. Israelis, are instead concerned with their Hasbara failure, their military operational mistakes and so on. Up until now, they fail to see that in the high seas, they have managed to kill Christ again. [note a word to the wise: to avoid being called a Christ-killer, stop acting like one]

Killing Christ is realised symbolically as an assault on goodness, a crime against kindness and innocence. The cold blooded slaughter of peace activists in international waters has a very similar effect. It is an assault on compassion, righteousness and humanism. It is an attack on everything Christianity and Islam happen to value. As much as Israelis, Zionists and Neocons are insisting on  spreading the deceptive myth of a Judeo-Christian alliance, it is this last Israeli crime that made it clear that the Jewish State shares nothing with humanism, Christianity or Islam. Israel in fact stands against any recognised Western value.

Though the contemporary  Israeli has no ethnic or biological lineage to the  ancient  Israelites, the merciless ideology repeats itself.  Since, the Zionist project defines itself as  a revival of the  Biblical Israelite nation, it shouldn’t take us by surprise that the  lethal Biblical ideology  also comes to life. It is implemented daily  against Palestinian  women, children, elders and now against an international humanitarian convoy.

If we want to understand what happened to the Palestinian solidarity movement last week, we  could start by elaborating on a mass shift of consciousness. This goes beyond politics, psychology or sociology, it is actually a spiritual metaphysical shift. As I have been predicting for many years, we now start to see hope and liberation through the Palestinians and their righteous  struggle. We understand that the Palestinians are at the forefront of the battle against evil. And we obviously stand behind them as one person. Interestingly enough,  politicians are way behind. They still fail to notice the rapidly emerging worldwide public awareness that something is deeply sick in the Israeli society and its lobbies around the world. Our politicians will probably join us later, when their Zionist money runs out.

By equating Christ’s murder with last week’s massacre in the high seas, we can then understand the total failure of the Israeli Hasbara machine. Instead of standing up and admitting that something went horribly wrong at sea, Israeli officials reverted to the usual spin. The Turkish activists had become ‘Jew haters’, ‘Al-Qaeda terrorists’, and the Mavi Marmara had become a ‘Boat of Hate’. This tactic is unfortunately too familiar. It has been employed by Rabbinical Judaism for two thousand years, especially against the memory of Christ.

I guess that Christians and Muslims will be shocked and outraged to find out that Yesh’u (יש”ו), the Hebrew name for Jesus, is an abbreviation that corresponds to the “May his name and memory be blotted out”*,  an expression used for deceased enemies of the Jewish people like Hitler and Stalin. In the Hebraic culture, Jesus, the kindest of all people, the son of God, is regarded as the ultimate enemy. If Jesus is cornered with Hitler, it shouldn’t surprise us that Hasbara officials insist to stick Peace activists with Al-Qaeda. Seemingly, in the modern Israelite philosophy one becomes a Yesh’u hate  figure once hit by an Israeli bullet.

The Judaic hatred towards Jesus, as reflected by the Hebraic abbreviation Yesh’u is pretty revealing in the context of the latest Israeli massacre. Rather than accepting its crime and genuinely repenting, Israel attempted to portray the Turkish martyrs as the ultimate Jewish enemies. Seemingly, this attempt failed completely. The Free Gaza flotilla is now making it into a symbol of hope and compassion. Israel, on the other hand shoved itself into a corner. This is a tragic prophecy that fulfilled itself. Israel will never recover, it simply can’t.

*ימח שמו וזכרו

“While Israel Kills and Maims… The Outrage at Helen Thomas” By ALISON WEIR

Thanks to  Counterpunch!

June 9, 2010

Whenever Israel commits yet another atrocity, its defenders are quick to redirect public attention away from the grisly crime scene.

Currently, there are headlines about allegedly anti-Semitic comments made by senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Pundits across the land evince outrage at her off-the-cuff 25-second statement made to a man who appears to be holding a camera right in her face.

Thomas issued a public apology for her words, but this was insufficient to assuage the wounded feelings of powerful antagonists, and she has now retired from a long and distinguished career.

Before we examine her comments and evaluate their possible validity, let’s look at other recent events having to do with Israel.

On May 31st Israeli commandos killed at least nine unarmed volunteers attempting to take humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

According to eyewitness reports and forensic evidence, many of these aid volunteers were shot at close range, including a 19-year-old American citizen killed by four bullets to the head and one to the chest fired from 18 inches away.

Israel immediately imprisoned eyewitnesses and hundreds of other aid participants, confiscated their cameras, laptops, and other possessions, and prevented them from speaking to the press for days. Among the incarcerated were decorated U.S. veterans and an 80-year-old former ambassador who had been deputy director of Reagan’s Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism.

When they finally emerged and were able to tell their stories, many described horrific scenes of Israeli commandos shooting people in the head, of those tending the injured being shot in the stomach, of people bleeding to death while flotilla participants waved white flags and pled for help.

They also described being beaten brutally by Israeli forces, again and again – including those on ships that, in the U.S. media’s judgment, experienced “no violence.” A 64-year-old piano tuner from California, Paul Larudee, described hundreds of Israeli commandos boarding his ship. When he refused to cooperate with them, soldiers then beat him numerous times both on board the ship and after he was imprisoned on land.

Eventually he was taken by ambulance to an Israeli hospital. He wasn’t treated, however, and Larudee believes he was taken there because Israel didn’t want media to see his black eye, pronated joints, bruised jaw and body contusions.

Marine veteran Ken O’Keefe described similar beatings while in Israeli custody. In his case, the public was able to see his bloodied, battered face in video clips and still images – but only on the Internet, since American mainstream media failed to report on his press conference or to publish the many still photos of his injuries.

Other gruesome photos available to the American public only on the Internet are of Emily Henochowicz, a 21-year-old American student whose eye and eye socket were recently shattered by Israeli forces. She has since had her eyeball removed, three metal plates inserted in her face, and her jaw wired shut.

Henochowicz was not on the flotilla; she was taking part in a nonviolent demonstration against the Israeli assault when an Israeli soldier shot a high-velocity teargas canister into her face.

A Swedish citizen standing with Henochowicz said, “They clearly saw us. They clearly saw that we were internationals and it really looked as though they were trying to hit us. They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face.”

Henochowicz is not the first to have been shot by such a canister.

Thirty-year-old Basem Ibrahim Abu Rahmeh died when an Israeli soldier shot one at him at close range while Abu Rahmeh participated in a demonstration against Israeli confiscation of Palestinian farmland. A video of this is also available on You Tube; U.S. networks have also chosen not to broadcast this.

Californian Tristan Anderson was shot in the head by a similar canister while he was taking photographs following another demonstration. Part of Anderson’s brain was removed and he was in a “minimally responsive state” for 6-7 months.

He is now in a wheelchair, has almost no movement in his left arm and leg, is blind in one eye, and his mental functioning is significantly reduced. Photos of the shooting are also available on the Internet.

Since at least 2006 Israeli forces have closed off Gaza to the outside world, essentially imprisoning 1.5 million men, women, and children, and denying them foodstuffs, medicines, and building materials, as documented by such agencies as Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Christian Aid, which said that Israel was using food and medicine as weapons.

One of the multitudinous victims of this illegal siege is five-year-old Taysir Al Burai, who suffers from an acute neurological disorder and requires round-the-clock care. According to the UK Guardian, he could be cured if Israel would allow him to leave Gaza, but to date his parents’ repeated requests have been denied.

Another victim is 7-month-old Mohammad Khader, whose swelling in the brain required specialized treatment unavailable in Gazan hospitals depleted by the Israeli siege. His distraught parents’ applications asking Israel to allow them to travel abroad were similarly denied. Their tiny son died a few days ago.

Such stories go on and on. [Recently, a couple in their 50s were run over by a settler. They had nine children].

Thomas’ “outrageous” statement

Yet, the rage we see in the U.S. media is directed against none of this. People shot in the head, eyes and brain parts destroyed, the elderly beaten, small children and infants caused to suffer and die, parents to grieve – none of this has caused a hint of anger. In fact, most of it has been considered of too little importance even to report.

Instead, media reports are filled with outrage at “anti-Israel” words spoken by 89-year-old Helen Thomas.

In Thomas’s lifetime Israel has ethnically cleansed over a million people, replaced them with colonists from around the world, committed dozens of massacres, tortured thousands of people, killed and maimed untold numbers of children, mangled limbs, and committed outrages on women, old people, the weak and the infirm.

It has assassinated people throughout the world, invaded numerous countries, spied on the U.S., killed and injured 200 American servicemen (the anniversary is this week), and tortured and imprisoned Americans. All while receiving more American money than any other country on earth.

For years, long before her recent words, Thomas has been the target of Israel’s vicious American volunteers, the Zionist blogosphere abounding with nasty slurs on her looks and her Lebanese ancestry, this latter also consistently emphasized by the media, despite her Kentucky birth and upbringing.

One of the reasons for the ferocious animosity toward her is the fact that Thomas is one of the very few mainstream reporters to challenge the neocon engendered lies that led the U.S. into wars that have caused massive death, destruction and tragedy and to continue to expose ongoing policies of violence and cruelty.

As the same groups and individuals who pushed the US into attacking Iraq have in recent years been escalating their efforts to push the U.S. to now similarly decimate Iranians under the pretext that Iran might be developing nuclear weapons, Thomas’s questioning attempted to elicit from Obama the fact that Israel already posses nuclear weapons. While the rest of the press corps has conspired in the cover-up of this fact and others, Thomas worked to expose them.

Not surprisingly, the many people complicit in these manipulations, such as former Bush spokesperson Ari Fleischer, have led the charge against her.

It is useful to examine the video and context of Thomas’s allegedly “anti-Semitic” comment.

A man, apparently holding a camera right in her face, asks for her comments about Israel. She says, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land…” He interrupts her and asks where they should go. She responds, “They should go home. To Germany, Poland, America, and everywhere else.”

While Thomas has since apologized for her hasty words and many Israelis have the right to continue living where they are, the reality is that Israeli settlers did, indeed, come from elsewhere; they are, in fact, illegally occupying Palestinian land (a fact acknowledged even by the U.S. State Department); and international law does require that they leave.

Many commentators evince particular anger at Thomas’s inclusion of Germany and Poland as places to which Israeli colonists should return, suggesting that Hitler is still in control and waiting to pounce.

The happy fact is, however, that World War II and the Nazi holocaust ended well over half a century ago. In Poland today there is a vibrant Jewish revival with a 10-foot tall Menorah being lit in the center of Warsaw during Hanukah, and Germany has become, according to the New York Times, “a country where Jews want to live.” In fact, in recent years more Jews have chosen to immigrate to Germany than to Israel.

Thomas’s call for colonists to return to America (this destination was left out of many articles) is far from outrageous given that a great many West Bank settlers are from the U.S.

Overall, reporting on the incident has largely departed from the standard journalistic practice of quoting people from both sides of an issue. Quotes from Thomas supporters are missing, even though the You Tube page featuring the infamous video contains a large number of comments supporting her. In contrast, quotes from Thomas’s detractors, almost all of them Zionists, are ubiquitous, but generally fail to divulge the speakers’ frequent conflicts of interest.

For example, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz quotes Jeffrey Goldberg without mentioning that Goldberg is an Israeli citizen who served as a prison guard at an Israeli prison that held hundreds of Palestinians without charge, some killed in cold blood by the prison commander.

Mainstream media organizations do not seem to have investigated reports that the man who videotaped Thomas, Rabbi David Nesenoff, also made an offensive video featuring himself and another man impersonating a buffoonish Catholic priest and Mexican immigrant.

Similarly, news reports that a high school had disinvited Thomas as a graduation speaker almost never inform readers that many of the school’s parents and students wished Thomas to remain, even though this unreferenced group may represent a majority of the school. Members of this group have created a Facebook page, “Helen Thomas should have been our graduation speaker,” that states:

“The purpose of this group is to quietly but firmly protest the ability of a small minority to impose its will on the larger group through engaging or threatening to engage in disruptive discourse. This group affirms a belief in reasonable discussion and feel that in this scenario, a clear minority was able to override a larger majority by distorting the issues and discussion.”

It is not known who will take over Thomas’s front-row seat at White House briefings. Given the record of the current press corps, it is likely that Israel partisans are breathing a sign of relief.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. Photos and videos referenced in the article can be viewed on the website (http://ifamericansknew.org) She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org

Another Reason to STOP ISRAEL: Palestinian Children in Israeli Jails Sexually Abused – Aljazeera

Israel faces child-abuse claims – Middle East – Al Jazeera English

An international children’s rights charity has said it has evidence that Palestinian children held in Israeli custody have been subjected to sexual abuse in an effort to extract confessions from them.

The Geneva-based Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected 100 sworn affadavits from Palestinian children who said they were mistreated by their Israeli captors.

Fourteen of the statements say they were sexually abused or threatened with sexual assault to pressure them into confessions.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the West Bank, Nour Odeh, met one of the children, identified only as “N”, who said he suffered sexual abuse at the hands of his interrogators.

Dismissive attitude

DCI officials say that when they complain to the Israeli military about the treatment of the children, their allegations are dismissed as untrue.

Now the organisation has submitted its evidence to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture to try and increase pressure on Israel to stamp out the alleged abuse.

According to our correspondent, Israel has two sets of laws: one for its citizens and another for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

IN DEPTH

Blog: Children behind Israeli bars Amnesty report slams global abuses The price of impunity UN Gaza children’s camp attacked

All Palestinians, minors and adults, are tried in military courts.

Children between the ages of 12 and 16 are tried in Israeli military courts as children.

From 16 years onwards, Palestinians are tried as adults.

Human-rights groups have criticised Israel’s detention policy with regard to children, which denies them access to their families or lawyers during the detention process.

Palestinian children arrested by Israel are not permitted to see their lawyers until they are in court.

There are currently 340 Palestinian children in Israeli jails, mostly convicted of throwing stones.

An Israeli military order stipulates that stone throwing carries a maximum jail sentence of 20 years, and there is no appeals process for decisions by Israeli military courts.

Israeli reaction

The Israeli military, in a written response, rejected DCI’s allegations, saying the detention of minors is consistent with international law.

It said all court hearings involving minors in the West Bank were conducted before a special military court which specialises in dealing with issues pertaining to minors.

“Allegations regarding violence in the course of questioning should be raised during the trial or in a formal complaint,” the military said.

“Regarding the presence of a lawyer during questioning of a minor, the Youth Law does not require such a presence, even within the state of Israel.”

Bana Shoughry-Badarne, head of the legal department at the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, an Israeli human-rights group, says there is a huge issue of impunity in Israel with regard to complaints against the security services.

“Our latest report, from 2009, shows that from the 600 complaints that were submitted to Israel’s attorney-general, all of them were dismissed,” she told Al Jazeera from Jerusalem.

“There was not even one criminal investigation.”