Bush Record Of Illegalities Suggests Possible Role In 9/11 WTC, Pentagon Strikes

Mar 6, 2007

By Sherwood Ross

The trouble with thinking 9/11 was an inside job staged by George W. Bush & Co. is that it defies belief any U.S. president might be capable of such an iniquitous crime against his own people.

Yet, subsequent Bush actions, such as lying the nation into war against Iraq, makes one wonder if the man didn’t create the 9/11 massacres to justify his attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.

After all, his record reveals him to be a serial liar, warmonger, tyrant, torturer, and usurper of his peoples’ civil liberties. Just off the top, here are some illegal GWB actions that betray what he is really about.

# Bush lied the U.S. into what former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called an “illegal” war on Iraq. This conflict has killed 650,000 civilians, wounded over a million more, drove nearly 2-million from their country, and turned life into a living hell for the rest. The death toll there is already equal to about 240 WTC massacres, yet Bush persists in waging the war.

# Bush okayed $1.5-trillion for new weapons' research including grisly weapons that would thrill mad scientists, such as sound waves that crush a victim's internal organs. Another gem is "rods from god" to hurl tungsten poles down from Earth orbit down upon its victims at 7,200 miles an hour, striking with the atomic fury. He is illegally militarizing space. These are not the dreams of a humanist.

# Bush has allowed illegal radioactive ammunition fired in Afghanistan and Iraq that poison civilian populations and U.S. troops, as well as cluster bombs. Does this evince concern for human life?

# Bush has made himself master of the greatest spy apparatus the world has ever known at a cost to taxpayers of $50-billion annually. He authorized NSA to spy illegally on Americans, allegedly to catch terrorists. If this was the true reason, why did he also eavesdrop on UN officials?

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# Bush authorized CIA agents to go to foreign countries to kidnap "suspects" and dump them in distant prisons to be tortured with no warrants signed to seize them, no charges brought against them, and no lawyers to defend them. In his secret prisons there may be many thousands held illegally, and tortured, while all the time he lies to the world "we don't torture." Is this a man with empathy for others?

# Bush is also funding hundreds of biotechnology labs to create deadly strains of exotic killer diseases at a cost to taxpayers of $40-billion. Many operate in secret, illegally violating transparency rules. On Bush’s watch, anthrax germs from a military laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md., were mysteriously unleashed upon two of his political opponents in the U.S. Senate that killed five people and sickened 17 others and temporarily shut down the Congress.

Peculiarly, the perpetrators of the anthrax panic and the massacres at the WTC and Pentagon have not been caught. “Why not?” Is it just possible the White House doesn’t want the killers apprehended?

For all these, and many other reasons, it’s worth hearing out the arguments of those who claim the 9/11 events were staged by the White House to rush a frightened nation into war.

In the March/April issue of "Tikkun", a bimonthly "Jewish Critique of of Politics, Culture & Society," author Dr. David Ray Griffin asserts the Administration never proved the 9/11 attacks were made by Osama bin Laden. Griffin, a professor of philosophy and theology at Claremont Graduate College, Calif., and author of “The New Pearl Harbor”(Olive Branch Press) writes the FBI has “no hard evidence” of his culpability.

Griffin asks why WTC building 7, not struck by an airplane, collapsed upon itself in the same manner as buildings 1 and 2, why no steel remained standing? And he notes steel does not melt until it reaches 2800 degrees F. and the jet fuel used by the airliners that hit WTC burned at only 1700 F.

Collapse of the three towers, he said, “manifested many standard features of the kind of controlled demolition known as implosion, such as: sudden onset; straight-down collapse; collapse at virtually free-fall speed, indicating the lower floors were offering no resistance; total collapse, indicating that the massive steel columns in the core of each building had been broken into many pieces; the production of molten metal, and the concurrence of multiple explosions.”

“Dozens of people, including journalists, police officers, WTC employees, emergency medical workers, and fire-fighters reported hearing explosions in the Twin Towers,” Griffin writes. One fire captain said he heard a series of explosions from the top floor down, one after another, “boom, boom, boom.” And a paramedic described them as akin to a “professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear ‘Pop, pop, pop, pop.”

“Complete collapses of steel-frame high-rise buildings have never been brought about by fire plus externally caused structural damage,” Griffin tells “Tikkun” readers. “Such collapses have only been caused by explosives used in controlled demolitions.”

If you wonder how saboteurs might plant explosives in the three WTC towers without being detected, Griffin notes on Web site “9.11 Truth” President Bush’s brother Marvin and his cousin Wirt Walker III “were both principals in the company in charge of security for WTC.” The firm, Securacom, was also responsible for electronic security at United Airlines, whose flights struck WTC.

Among Griffin’s charges, the most startling may be that Osama bin Laden, who was already one of America’s “most wanted” criminals, was treated in July, 2001 --- two months before 9/11 --- in the American Hospital in Dubai, and visited by the local CIA agent.

Does this explain why bin Laden was not caught and likely never will be caught? Is it possible this “renegade” from a prominent Saudi Arabian family having long ties to President Bush Sr. is in fact a fall guy whose alleged crimes gave Bush an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq?

Congress needs to conduct a real investigation of 9/11. It may not only uncover ample grounds for impeachment but for criminal prosecution. Given GWB’s track record for criminal activity, treason cannot be ruled out.


Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based columnist who covers military and political subjects. Reach him at sherwoodr1 @ yahoo.com

Israeli Crimes Excesses - Long Since Growing Out of Control

Related

Report: 13 Palestinians killed, 188 injured by Israeli army fire during February 2007
---

lundi, mars 05, 2007

Hiyam Noir PalestineFreeVoice Mars 5 2005

Israeli State Terrorists
Use Palestinians as Human Shields
a Crime Against International Laws

Israeli state terrorist unites continue to use illegal tactics in their raid operations on the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

In spite of that their own court - the Israeli high court ruling in the 2005 prohibited the use of civilians in military operations it appears that such illegalities continues.An image of a young Palestinian man, dressed in shorts and only a T-shirt on a cold winter morning - was recently published - he was seen walking in front of a heavily armed Israeli squad during recent military incursion in Nablus.

The young Palestinian man was led by one Israeli occupation squad to the front door of a Palestinian home. Sameh Amira 24, then waited while the Israelis trespassed the property and then he move inside, before being forced to lead them up to the buildings entrance.Sameh Amira claim he was woken up by Israeli unites at dawn - around 5am and was ordered by the Israelis to walk - together with other members of his family over to a neighbouring building.

_________

Human rights groups have decried the tactic as it exposes innocent civilians in the front line of fire. After delay for over three years, Israel’s High Court of Justice made a decision to has rule that the military’s use of Palestinian "human shields" in the Occupied Territories is illegal and a violation of international law.

The court has specifically banned using neighbours to knock on the doors of private homes or residential buildings to contain suspected militants.The "neighbor procedure"as its been called has been widely practiced in the West Bank throughout the five past years of 2nd Palestine Intifada.

__________

The Israelis are using a range of different illegal procedures ( according to International laws considered to be war crimes) - exploiting the civilian Palestinian population to the needs of the occupant of Palestine territories.

• Using neighbours to knock on the doors of private homes or residential buildings to contain suspected militants

• One is sending Palestinians into buildings to ensure that there no booby-traps.

• Another illegal practice is the practice of forcing Palestinian ambulances to drive in front of Israeli squads

• One is to rest rifles on the shoulders of civilian Palestinians to deter fire when Israeli state terrorists carry out urban operations.

An Israeli high court judge said that "You cannot exploit the civilian population for the army's military needs, and you cannot force them to collaborate with the army." This response from the high court of " Israel" came to a May 2002 petition by human rights groups, that was filed in response to reports during a major West Bank incursion in the year of 2002.

The Israeli High Court ruled an injunction against the policy in 2002 - however human rights groups continued to document numerous cases of the Israeli violations, at least one of which resulted in the death of a Palestinian used as a human shield. The injunction was narrowed in late 2003 to allow the use of "prior warning," which permitted Israeli state terrorists to use Palestinians as shields when carrying out operations if the civilians "volunteered" to assist the occupant..

According to the Israeli courts written decision, it is impossible to achieve "genuine" consent under military occupation."It is hard to judge when [a Palestinian’s] consent was given freely and when it was the result of overt or covert pressure - A basic principle of the rules of belligerent occupation in international law is the prohibition on using protected residents as part of the army's military effort. The civilian population must not be exploited for the army's military needs."

__________

The provisions of the law on belligerent occupation are found in international humanitarian laws, also known as the laws of war or the laws on armed conflict. As such, they take into account the military and security concerns of the occupying power, balancing them against the rights of those who find themselves under its authority. The sources for the obligations under international humanitarian law applicable to belligerent occupation are found in:

• The Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague Convention) and its annexed Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War Land (Hague Regulations) of 18 October 1907;

• The Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention) of 12 August 1949

• Article 75 of the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I);Rules of customary international law.

In fact, most of the basic rules on occupation are of a customary law character, and are universally binding - none allow for any derogation.
"The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations."International law considers the use of human shields to protect targets a war crime.

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"Wipe Israel off the map" meme was fabricated

Submitted by johnnyasia on March 6, 2007 - 7:34am.

I am deeply disturbed that so many of our leaders, from both parties, believe the fabricated "wipe Israel off the map" quote that has become the mantra of the neocons, as they lie to America and the world
in an attempt to start yet another war.

Read what Ahmadinejad actually said

"you can see both the MEMRI translation and Juan Cole's are virtually identical and make no mention of Israel being "wiped off the map".
---------------------

Not only does our media keep chanting the fabricated "wipe Israel off the map" meme, but they ignore important news about Iran,
such as this recent meeting:

U.S. Religious Leaders Urge Bush to Talk to Iran

Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Thu Mar 1, 3:11 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 1 (OneWorld) - A delegation of U.S. religious
leaders called Monday for Washington to negotiate with Tehran,
following the delegation's landmark two-and-a-half-hour meeting with
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

''It was a very cordial meeting,'' said Reverend Shanta Premawardhana
of the National Council of Churches, an ecumenical coalition that
includes more than 100,000 local congregations and 45 million people
in the United States.

Premawardhana said the Iranian president told the group of United Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Quaker, and Mennonite leaders that Iran has no intention to acquire or use nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad also said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved through political--not military--means.

''The Iranian government has already built a bridge toward the
American people by inviting our delegation to come to Iran,'' the
religious leaders said in a statement. ''We ask the U.S. government to
welcome a similar delegation of Iranian religious leaders to the
United States.''

• Hot Off the Presses
• US-Iran Attack Plan
• 
  

Related
Zionist Imposed Internet Etiquette: 'Democratic' Underground

Who Told Giuliani the WTC was Going to Collapse on 9/11?

URL

Meet Eliot Cohen, Condi's New Deputy: "As Extremist a Neocon and Warmonger as It Gets"

March 6, 2007

By GARY LEUPP

Afghanistan constitutes just one front in World War IV, and the battles there just one campaign. . . . First, if one front in this war is the contest for free and moderate governance in the Muslim world, the U.S. should throw its weight behind pro-Western and anticlerical forces there. The immediate choice lies before the U.S. government in regard to Iran. We can either make tactical accommodations with the regime there in return for modest (or illusory) sharing of intelligence, reduced support for some terrorist groups and the like, or do everything in our power to support a civil society that loathes the mullahs and yearns to overturn their rule. It will be wise, moral and unpopular (among some of our allies) to choose the latter course. The overthrow of the first theocratic revolutionary Muslim state and its replacement by a moderate or secular government, however, would be no less important a victory in this war than the annihilation of bin Laden [emphasis added].

The guy who wrote that, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on November 20, 2001, was Eliot Cohen, a professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. As the Director of the Strategic Studies department at SAIS, he has been called "the most influential neoconservative in academe."

More recently (April 5, 2006) Prof. Cohen published a prominent op-ed in the Washington Post attacking the scholarship of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government Academic Dean Stephen M. Walt and University of Chicago Political Science Professor John J. Mearsheimer and their academic paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

The study, Cohen contended in his "Yes, It's Anti-Semitism" piece, betrayed "obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews," accusing Jews of "disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments." It collected "everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group" while ignoring "any exculpatory information." This from a man who almost immediately after 9-11 declared that "the obvious candidate" as a regime to "target" was Iraq, which had "helped al Qaeda"---and thereby unfairly and wrongly, and oblivious to exculpatory information, linked Saddam Hussein to 9-11.

(You can write stuff like that in the Wall Street Journal, and never have to say you're sorry afterwards when sober investigation shows what you'd written was total bullshit. The 9-11 hijackers and Saddam were all Arabs, so what's wrong with connecting them and exploiting ignorance and bigotry to get the war you want against Iraq?)

And now this man who thinks we're in the middle of World War IV (against the Muslim world), and who's written a book entitled The Supreme Command arguing that presidents need to control their sometimes reluctant generals, has been appointed by Condoleezza Rice as the new Counselor of the State Department. The meaning of the move isn't yet clear, given some recent indications that the U.S. might be willing to talk with Iran. But given the military buildup in the Persian Gulf; the appointment of Admiral William Fallon to head Central Command; the intensifying disinformation campaign about Iran conducted by the Bush administration and its embedded reporters and reports of significant opposition within the military towards an attack on Iran; the appointment at least signals the continuing vitality of the neocon movement within the U.S. government whose current urgent project is the Iran attack.

According to the official definition, "The Counselor of the Department is a principal officer who serves the Secretary as a special advisor and consultant on major problems of foreign policy and who provides guidance to the appropriate bureaus with respect to such matters. The Counselor conducts special international negotiations and consultations, and also undertakes special assignments from time to time, as directed by the Secretary." The post was vacant from 2001 to 2005. Cohen was preceded by Philip Zelikow, another academic, who is not considered a neocon but a "realist" occupied with trade matters. On the other hand Salon's Glen Greenwald calls Cohen "as extremist a neoconservative and warmonger as it gets."

The man wants the "overthrow" of the Iranian regime. He wants the president to (Churchill-like) force his hesitant generals to do the right thing and attack Iran. (His Supreme Command book is especially significant in light of reports that high-ranking officers have threatened resignations if the U.S. launches an assault on Iran, and that the president has actually read the book.)

So here's a man to watch, as Bush/Cheney policy towards Iran evolves. Others are Elliott Abrams (Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy), and Abram Shulsky (head of the Pentagon's "Iran Directorate"), both students of Leo Strauss and comfortable proponants of using "noble lies" to manipulate public opinion to generate support for more imperialist wars. They may be desperate men at this point, when they read, for example, the recent Washington Post/ABC poll that shows 63% of Americans do not trust the Bush administration "to honestly and accurately report intelligence about possible threats from other countries."

They may well fear that if they can't "take the current when it serves"---by their use of noble lies, their ongoing paid, corrupt, discrete if obvious presence in the mainstream press--they will lose their ventures. Their usefully ignorant, manipulable cruel cowboy has less than two years left in the saddle, and great deeds cry out to be done!

The neocon agenda is plain enough. If only the dissident generals can be silenced! If only the assailants of the Israel Lobby can be quieted by bullying accusations of anti-Semitism! If only the war-weary American people can be made to understand that it's "moral and wise" to attack Iran! Because it's planning genocide! Because it's planning what Hitler couldn't do---wipe out the Jews! Then we can defeat the Evil which is Iran! And Syria! And the Shiite population of southern Lebanon!

The antiwar movement's agenda should be equally plain. Expose this agenda, its sensationalism and illogic, and the key figures working overtime towards its fulfillment. Question all reports by "unnamed government sources" and reporters like the New York Times' Michael R. Gordan (once---as a coauthor with Judith Miller---a vehicle for the dissemination of lies about Iraq) that charge Iran with supporting attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. (47% of Americans polled think the Bush administration has "solid information" the Iranian government is doing so, while 44% disagree. That latter figure needs to grow.) Challenge politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who, bending over backwards to please the Lobby, criticize the Iraq War while competing with Bush to embrace a hawkish stance towards Iran. Having never really challenged the essentialist anti-Muslim straight-of-hand that linked 9-11 to Iraq, they embrace the notion that Muslim Iran constitutes an "existential threat" to Israel (if not to the U.S.) and tell applauding AIPAC audiences that they agree "no option should be off the table" in dealing with Iran.

The neocons determined to reconfigure the "Greater Middle East" through the use of "shock and awe" military force may be down as a result of public revulsion at the results of their initial criminal ventures. But they aren't out, as Cohen's appointment dramatically shows. That's a big problem for the future of this country and the planet.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

Police to investigate abuse claims in 22 Texas youth prisons

Police sent to 22 Texas youth prisons

By JIM VERTUNO, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 35 minutes ago

Police were sent to 22 Texas Youth Commission facilities and the agency headquarters Tuesday to investigate claims that young inmates were sexually abused and that agency officials covered it up.

Jay Kimbrough, appointed by the governor to look into the allegations at a West Texas youth prison, said the officers would conduct interviews at the prisons and halfway houses, secure equipment and collect documents if necessary.

He also issued a warning to agency employees.

"If you are part of this gig, you need to move on or we're going to find you and prosecute you," Kimbrough said.

The Texas Youth Commission houses offenders ages 10 to 21 who are considered the most dangerous, incorrigible or chronic. Its new board of directors chairman pledged Tuesday that the agency would cooperate with the investigations.

"I'd like to assure everyone that the board is very, very interested in a new direction of the Texas Youth Commission," Don Bethel said. "We are going to cooperate with everyone."

Late last month, state lawmakers questioned agency staff about an investigation in 2005 that had found evidence that high-ranking officials at the West Texas State School in Pyote had repeated sexual contact with some of the 250 boys and young men housed there. An internal investigation found prison staff members had complained about the abuse to their supervisors but that no one took action for more than a year.

The Texas Senate asked Republican Gov. Rick Perry last week to fire the board and take over the troubled agency.

Perry instead demoted the board's chairman and appointed Kimbrough, his former deputy chief of staff, as a special master to conduct an independent investigation. He also ordered the agency's acting executive director to design and implement a rehabilitation plan.

The recently appointed acting executive director, Ed Owens, said the agency will have a "zero tolerance policy of any type of mistreatment of youth."

Oppose AIPAC's cynical congressional resolutions on refugees

ACTION:

The lobby representing Israeli apartheid continues to draft resolutions that are contrary to US national interest and that sabotage peace efforts based on human rights and justice. The latest AIPAC's resolution is on “Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries”:

"House and Senate lawmakers introduced resolutions last week affirming the need for any future Arab-Israeli peace agreement to address the rights of the 850,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries in the wake of the Israel's 1948 War of Independence. The resolutions call upon President Bush to instruct United States representatives participating in international forums on Middle East and Palestinian refugees to include a similarly "explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish, Christian, and other refugees" from Arab and Muslim countries. Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Joseph Crowley (D-NY) and Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) sponsored the House version of the resolution, while Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Trent Lott (R-MS), Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Norm Coleman (R-MN) sponsored the Senate version." (from http://www.aipac.org/Legislation_and_Policy/default.asp )

This cynical resolution ignores the fact that Jews also came to Palestine (and to the US) from Russia, Poland and other places and that their issues are not at all equivalet to Palestinian refugees. It is a racist resolution that assumes Arabs are interchangeable.

Write to your representatives in Congress today by going to http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=2284

Use this opportunity to educate your member of Congress on this most fundamental of human rights for Palestinians, their right to return to their homes and lands. For the real issues on refugees, please visit:
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html

Ask that Congress affirm rights of all refugees to return to their homes and lands based on International law.

For a specific response to the Zionist argument claiming an exchange of population and "Jewish refugees" being exchanged for "Arab refugees", here is an excerpt from the appendix to the article referenced above:

"While some Jews were expelled from Arab countries, the majority left voluntarily, invited, enticed and even intimidated into going to Israel to swell the Jewish population as part and parcel of the Zionist program. Most of this happened not between 1947-1948 (the years of active violence that resulted in the Palestinian refugees being ethnically cleansed; see http:/ ? palestineremembered.com) but in the 20 years after. This was always part of the Zionist plan to gather the Jews regardless of where they lived (not only from Arab countries but all countries) and settle them on land that belongs to native Palestinians (Christians and Muslims). Israel has never fought for Jews to stay where they are or to return to their homelands.

Zionists always claim that Palestinian refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into Arab lands to which they fled. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, states that everyone “has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” The Geneva Conventions stipulate the right of refugees to return to their homes. U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (adopted in 1948), which specifically applies to Palestinian refugees, states in Paragraph 11, “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” Israel was admitted to the U.N. (Resolution 273) as a member-state only on condition that it abide by Resolution 194. Israel has consistently refused to do so. It is the will of the Palestinian people that they be repatriated to their homeland. Criticizing neighboring countries because they could not absorb more refugees than they have already is an Israeli attempt to sidestep the real issue of the Palestinian right of return.

In his book The Gun & the Olive Branch, David Hirst describes in detail covert Israeli operations to scare Iraqi and Egyptian Jews into fleeing their homes for the “sanctuary” of Israel. Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former CIA operative, wrote about the Zionist crimes against Arab Jews in Iraq (Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews, 231). Zionists of European origin, like David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Abba Eban, often made derogatory statements regarding Arab Jews, whom they considered to be inferior. The program to bring them in was more motivated more by ideology than by real interest in their welfare. Israeli historian Tom Segev devoted almost a fourth of his book to documenting the miserable treatment these immigrants received (Tom Segev, 1949: the First Israelis, translated by Arlen Neal Weinstein, Free Press, New York, 1986).

In any case, the Palestinian refugees did not expel Jews from their homes in Arab countries. In fact, some actions by Mossad and Zionist agents were needed to increase Jewish flight, according to documents analyzed by Tom Segev. Palestinian human rights should not be contingent on the actions of states (Israel or the Arab States) over which they had no control. There are Israeli Jews of Arab origin who do demand restitution for their property and Palestinians fully support their claims and internationally recognized right of return. The Israeli government, however, has never been willing to fight for their rights, because it knows that by doing so it would implicitly recognize that expulsion and dispossession are wrong, whether the victims are Jews or Palestinians. The governments of Morocco, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen (unlike Israel) always stated that those who left are welcome to return.

On December 11, 1975, the Iraqi government even took full-page advertisements in newspapers around the world (New York Times, the Toronto Star, Le Monde) asking the 140,000 Iraq-born Jews who were in Israel and around the world to return. Egyptian President Sadat extended an invitation for Egyptian Jews to return to Egypt in September 1977, just weeks before his peace trip to Israel (See Chicago Daily News, September 10-11; also see the Oregonian, Portland, July 18, 1977). Israel has never extended an invitation to Palestinians to return to their homeland. In either case, Israeli Jews with claims in Arab countries should take them up with those countries, and Jews should be treated with respect, dignity and equality wherever they live. Israel, however, was not interested in discussing this issue when a peace agreement with Egypt was signed (Egypt had a sizable Jewish presence).

In summary, there is no validity to the attempt to negate Palestinian human rights based on the migration of Jews brought into Palestine, whether from Arab countries or the Soviet Union, under the Zionist program to colonize Palestine. One has to also remember that Jews from Arab countries as well as Eastern Europe also settled in the US and Canada. Their issues and their questions are legitimate areas of exploration (e.g. Jews have a right to be treated equally in their own countries, like any other religious group, and this must be defended and fought for). Their rights also follow international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (including their right to chose to return to their countries) but certainly nullify no other similar rights for other people, whether Russians or Palestinians. Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed have inalienable right to repatriation. This must be their choice and is enshrined in common logic as well as international law and is not subject to dictates of apartheid and separation envisioned by a colonial settler movement."

Mazin Qumsiyeh
http://pac-national.org
http://justicewheels.org
http://qumsiyeh.org