The unsung hero of the Virginia Tech massacre

Why haven't you heard about this brave person, but get endless coverage of the American professor who left Israel 20 years ago? Simple. He's a Muslim.
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Waleed Shaalan

muslimmatters.org

Waleed Shaalan, a 32-year-old graduate student, came to the United States from northern Egypt last year to study engineering. He lived among other Egyptian students in Blacksburg, Va., and was planning on bringing his wife and one-and-a-half-year-old son to America in May to live with him.

He was gunned down on Monday while he was studying in Norris Hall, but witnesses say he died a hero.

According to Randy Dymond, a civil engineering professor at Virginia Tech, Mr. Shaalan was in a classroom with another student when the gunman entered and opened fire.

Mr. Shaalan was badly wounded and lay beside the other student, who was not shot but played dead, as the gunman returned two times searching for signs of life. Just as the gunman noticed the student, Mr. Shaalan made a move to distract him, at which point he was shot a second time and died. The student believed that Mr. Shaalan purposefully distracted the shooter to save him, Mr. Dymond said.

"Waleed was bright, energetic and caring," Mr. Dymond said. "The reason we are in higher education is because there are students who are the bright light to the future. Waleed was one of them."

Equally social and studious, Mr. Shaalan was active in the Muslim Student Association at Virginia Tech, and he especially enjoyed participating in the group's community activities.

The Egyptian Consul has notified Mr.Shalaan's wife and parents, all of who live in Egypt. Mr. Shaalan's body will be flown back to his country in the near future, the vice consul, Mohamed Elghazawy, said.

"This is a very emotional time for his entire family, but especially his mother and father," Mr. Elghazawy said.

Dark Matter: The Psychology Of Mass Murder

Clarification to This Article
The frequency of psychosis among mass shooters was not clearly stated in an April 17th Style article. Psychosis is common among perpetrators of mass shootings as a whole. It is less common among shooters who are well organized and therefore kill more victims.

By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 17, 2007; C01

We always want there to be an answer, except there never is. We always want there to be a solution, and there is never one of those, either.

Something like Virginia Tech happens, people want to know: Why?

Evil, that's what some call it; mass murder, mass shootings, serial killings. The shooter on the Texas tower, Charles Manson, the Green River Killer, the Clutter family killers. People search religious texts to divine the dark mysteries of man, looking for a spiritual answer to physical violence. Others delve into psychiatry, grasping for an answer Freud missed, something about childhood violence and sexual dysfunction and rage. Nowadays they trace neurons through the cerebral cortex with glow-in-the-dark chemicals and talk about brain injuries and paranoid schizophrenia and thorazine drips.

All anybody has ever found, in the research of evil, is shadows and darkness, misfiring neurons and reverberating psychic pain.

Michael Welner, an associate professor of psychiatry at New York University, looking at it from the medical end, says, "There has never been a neuro-anatomical localization of mass shooting behavior."

Jack Levin, the director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and conflict at Northeastern University in Boston, author of more than two dozen books on murder and criminology: "We're still in the dark about where this comes from."

He co-wrote "Mass Murder: America's Growing Menace," in 1985. At the time, he recalls, "there was zero" research about mass killers, serial killers and the like -- the truly frightening icons of America's violent ways.

Since then there have been lots of books about serial killers, lots of brain research and many more mass shootings. There are MRIs and talk about high levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine and plunging levels of serotonin. There's research into the limbic system, a primitive part of the brain that controls emotions and behavior. New medications have revolutionized psychiatric care for depression, even psychotics.

None of it really touches the psychology of mass murder.

"In mass shootings, the killer is often killed themselves, so we don't really have the ability to interview and analyze them -- all you can really do is work off their behavior," says Neil S. Kaye, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. "The problem with that is that mass killers do this for multiple reasons, and even when you develop a profile of people at risk, 99 percent of them never go out and do anything bad."

Some of the research tells us the obvious: About 95 percent of mass killers are men, they tend to be loners, they feel alienated. They look normal on the outside and are really, really angry inside.

And yet, there are some minor lessons to be learned from this grotesque taxonomy.

Mass murder -- like yesterday's -- is starkly different from serial killings, the other type of murder that fascinates and frightens.

Serial killers, forensic psychiatrists say, derive sexual gratification from their killings. The Ted Bundys, the Jeffrey Dahmers, the John Wayne Gacys -- they don't want to be caught. They often enjoy taunting police. The violence is, in its own perverse way, about pleasure.

"Serial killers are more like drug addicts than anything else," Kaye says. "They need to ramp up the excitement each time, they're getting reinforcement from their acts. They're running on the dopamine side of the brain. They're running on highs."

It's not that way for mass killers -- guys who take out a gun and try to kill as many people as possible. They're not looking for highs -- they're depressed, angry and humiliated. They tend to be rejected in some romantic relationship, or are sexually incompetent, are paranoid, and their resentment builds. They develop shooting fantasies for months or years, stockpiling dreams and ammunition. The event that finally sets them off, Welner says, is usually anticlimactic -- an argument, a small personal loss that magnifies a sense of catastrophic failure.

"But they don't 'snap,' as you so often hear people say," Welner says. "It's more like a hinge swings open, and all this anger comes out."

They plan everything about the killings, he says, except how to get away.

"It's about suicide," Welner says. "It's about tying one's masculinity to destruction."

It's also rare for them to be truly psychotic, he says. Psychotics hear voices and people from outer space and talking dogs. These are shooters like Russell Weston Jr., who ran into the Capitol building and killed two police officers. He believed he was being told to do so by alien radio transmissions.

Perhaps these sorts of taxonomies are the building blocks of actual knowledge, and someday they will matter.

For now, there are no real answers, no real solace, no real consolation.

The answers to heartbreak, to unending loss, are only what we make them to be. They are only the best we can do.

29 now dead at Virginia Tech, number expected to rise

Massacre at Virginia Tech

29 Confirmed Dead

Fatalities Expected to Rise; Suspected Gunman Among the Dead

Apr. 16, 2007— - At least 25 people are dead in what may be the biggest mass killing on a college campus in American history -- and the death toll may rise.

Police at Virginia Tech said that the shootings happened at a dormitory and a classroom on opposite sides of the university campus in Blacksburg, Va.

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said that one person was killed in the first shooting, which occurred just after 7 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a large dormitory. Flinchum said that at least 20 more people were killed in a later shooting at Norris Hall, an academic building.

The gunman, whose identity has not been released, is among the dead. Flinchum wouldn't say whether the shooter had killed himself.

ABC News has confirmed that there were two separate bomb threats last week at Virginia Tech that targeted engineering buildings. The first was directed at Torgersen Hall, while the second was directed at multiple engineering buildings. Students and staff were evacuated, and the university had offered a $5,000 reward for information into the threats.

Not all the students involved in the shootings are dead. Two local hospitals have reported treating 21 people.

University president Charles Steger said that police have not officially tied together the two shootings.

Steger described today's events as an incident of "tragic proportions" and said, "the university is shocked and horrified that this would befall us."

The campus is closed today and classed are canceled today and tomorrow. Families seeking to reunite with their children have been directed by the university to the Inn at Virginia Tech.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Five years after Jenin: family members continue to search for bodies

Five years after Jenin: family members continue to search for bodies
Five years have elapsed since the battle and massacre in Jenin Refugee Camp. The memories and scars live on in the northern West Bank where a mother is still searching for the body of her disabled son, Jamal Al Fayad. He was buried, as so many were, under the debris of the hundreds of houses destroyed by American-made bulldozers, F-16s and Apache helicopters.

From Remembrance to Resistance: Deir Yassin Massacre Day 2007 Commemorations

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage. Visit http://www.deiryassin.org/

Runtime 32 Minutes

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Marks & Spencers - Oxford Street (Marble Arch end) London
Thursday April 5th - 6-8 pm

Every Thursday evening a group of activists picket the UK store Marks & Spencers. They have been there for six years now despite constant harassment from the police and Zionist counter demonstrators and a stream of derision from sections of the solidarity community.

Why Marks and Sparks? Because unlike all the other British companies which invest in Israel, M&S doesn't do it just for the money, M&S does it for the love. But why the opposition? Because M&S has for years been viewed in the UK as a 'Jewish' store so, unlike other Israel-investing concerns, M&S gets a free pass. Does this deter the picketers? Not one bit.

On Thursday April 5th saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and bassist Yaron Stavi will join us with their instruments for a Deir Yassin commemoration. Gilad's sax and Yaron's bass will accompany a recitation of the names of the dead of Deir Yassin as first performed by the London Palestinian community in 2002.

Contact: Paul Eisen - paul@eisen.demon.co.uk

Video: 1967 mass murder of unarmed Egyptians by Israelis

Video: 1967 mass murder of unarmed Egyptians by israelis
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Normally I embed videos here.

Google, the owners of this blogging service, have been sued by Viacom, "Zionist-owned Viacom sues Google.

These cowards responded by making it impossible to embed any Google-owned YouTube videos.

Who says the Israel Lobby doesn't call the shots in America?

Related
AIPAC launches attack on state pension funds

Death in Haditha

Eyewitness Accounts in Report Indicate Marines Gunned Down Unarmed Iraqis in the Aftermath of a Roadside Bombing in 2005

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 6, 2007; A01

U.S. Marines gunned down five unarmed Iraqis who stumbled onto the scene of a 2005 roadside bombing in Haditha, Iraq, according to eyewitness accounts that are part of a lengthy investigative report obtained by The Washington Post.

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the squad's leader, shot the men one by one after Marines ordered them out of a white taxi in the moments following the explosion, which killed one Marine and injured two others, witnesses told investigators. Another Marine fired rounds into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

"The taxi's five occupants exited the vehicle and according to U.S. and Iraqi witnesses, were shot by Wuterich as they stood, unarmed, next to the vehicle approximately ten feet in front of him," said a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on the incident that runs thousands of pages.

One of the witnesses, Sgt. Asad Amer Mashoot, a 26-year-old Iraqi soldier who was in the Marine convoy, told investigators he watched in horror as the four students and the taxi driver fell. "They didn't even try to run away," he said. "We were afraid from Marines and we saw them behaving like crazy. They were yelling and screaming."

The shootings were the first in a series of violent reactions by Marines on the morning of Nov. 19, 2005 that left 24 civilians -- many of them women and children -- dead, in what some human rights groups and Iraqis have called a massacre by U.S. troops.

The report, which relied on hundreds of interviews with Marines, Iraqi soldiers and civilian survivors conducted months after the incident, presents a fragmented and sometimes conflicting chronicle of the violence that day. But taken together, the accounts provide evidence that as the Marines came under attack, they responded in ways that are difficult to reconcile with their rules of engagement.

Four Marines were charged with murder last month in connection with the civilian deaths in Haditha: Wuterich, who faces 13 counts of unpremeditated murder; Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz; Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt; and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Each faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

Through their lawyers, three have argued that they behaved appropriately while taking fire on a chaotic battlefield, and that the civilian deaths were a regrettable but unavoidable part of warfare in an especially dangerous area. Dela Cruz's attorney has declined to comment.

The Marine Corps also has charged four officers with failing to investigate and fully report the slayings: Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, Capt. Randy W. Stone and Lt. Andrew A. Grayson.

The Marines told investigators that they believed they were authorized to fire freely inside two houses they raided in the minutes following the taxi shootings, after concluding that insurgents were firing on them. After an officer ordered them to "take" one of the homes and Wuterich commanded them to "shoot first, ask questions later," the Marines considered the houses "hostile," according to sworn statements to investigators.

Marine officials have accused the troops of failing to identify their targets before using grenades and guns to kill 14 unarmed people in the houses, including several young children in their pajamas, in a span of about 10 minutes, according to the documents.

Safah Yunis Salem, 13, who said she played dead to avoid being shot, was the only person to survive the Marine attack on the second house. Her sister Aisha, 3, was shot in the leg and died; her brother Zainab, 5, was killed by a shot to the head. She said she lost five other members of her family in the room, including her mother.

"He fired and killed everybody," Safah said. "The American fired and killed everybody."

Numerous Marine officers in the chain of command in Iraq -- including a major general -- knew about the civilian deaths almost immediately but did not launch an investigation for months, according to interview transcripts. Some lower-level officers did not believe that the Marines had done anything inappropriate, while high-ranking officers had limited information about the incident and did not inquire further.

Neal Puckett, one of Wuterich's attorneys, declined to comment on the case yesterday, saying he is "deeply disturbed that any media have access to what sounds like the entire investigation."

Wuterich told investigators in a February interview: "I want to make clear that we did not go in intentionally to spray everyone we saw. We were taking fire."

Marine Corps and NCIS officials declined to comment on details of the case because it is ongoing.

A Routine Mission Turns Violent

The report provides a detailed narrative of the events leading to the violence in Haditha. The day began about 6 a.m., when Lance Cpl. Salvador A. Guzman Jr. awoke at Firm Base Sparta and members of his squad learned they would be bringing fresh Iraqi troops to a traffic checkpoint in Haditha. He bumped into Lance Cpl. Miguel "T.J." Terrazas, who joked that "we were going to get hit by an improvised explosive device one day because we travel so much," Guzman told investigators.

The Marines left the base at about 6:45 a.m. and made the personnel changes by about 7 a.m.; then they turned their four-vehicle convoy around and headed back. Sharratt, in the turret of the first Humvee, waved a white sedan over to the side of "Route Chestnut," and as it slid to the south shoulder a blast rocked the neighborhood.

Terrazas, who was driving the fourth Humvee, was killed instantly by the remotely detonated propane tank, which shredded the front of the vehicle and launched it into the middle of the road. Another Marine, severely injured, was trapped in the wreckage.

Marines who rushed to help told investigators they took enemy rifle fire from several locations on the north and south sides of the road. Navy Hospitalman Brian D. Whitt said he could see bullet impacts near his feet and noticed men with rifles disappearing from atop a house to the north. Some of the fire appeared to be coming from behind the white taxi.

The Marines concurred that they were under fire from all sides, indicating that the incident was part of a complex insurgent attack that lasted much of the day.

One Marine and two Iraqi soldiers told investigators that the men who had been in the taxi were standing in a line outside it, some with their hands in the air, when Wuterich began to fire on them.

Wuterich said the men got out of the car, and he shot them because he considered them a threat. But Dela Cruz said the men were standing in a line when they started to fall.

"As I crossed the median I saw one of the Iraqi civilians, who was standing in the center of the line, drop to the ground," Dela Cruz told investigators. "Immediately afterwards another Iraqi standing by him raised his hands to his head. I then heard other small arms fire and looked to my left and saw Sgt. Wuterich kneeling on one knee and shooting his M16 in the direction of the Iraqi civilians."

Dela Cruz told investigators that he pumped bullets into the bodies of the Iraqi men after they were on the ground and later urinated on one of them.

Minutes later, a Quick Reaction Force arrived from the Marine base, bringing Lt. William T. Kallop, the first officer on the scene. Kallop told investigators he began to receive enemy fire almost immediately. About that time, Cpl. Hector A. Salinas spotted a man firing at the squad from the corner of a house on the south side of the road.

"Salinas then stated that he could see the enemy so Kallop told them to 'take the house,' " according to an NCIS summary of an interview with Kallop. The interview provides the first evidence that an officer ordered the attack.

Richard McNeil, a lawyer who represents Kallop, declined to comment about him or his role, but he warned that "typically in an NCIS investigation, the narratives are always slanted to the interpretation of the government."

Wuterich, Salinas, Tatum and Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza formed a team to attack the house, launching grenades first and then busting through the door.

"I told them to treat it as a hostile environment," Wuterich told investigators. "I told them to shoot first, ask questions later."

Defense attorneys have argued that the men were following their "rules of engagement" when they shot into the homes, using effective techniques in a difficult environment.

The Marine division's rules-of-engagement card in effect at the time in western Iraq instructed Marines to "ALWAYS minimize collateral damage" and said that targets must be positively identified as threats before a Marine can open fire. It also told Marines that "nothing on this card prevents you from using all force necessary to defend yourself."

After entering the first house through a kitchen, Tatum told investigators, he heard what he believed was an AK-47 rifle being "racked," or readied to fire, around a corner. He and Salinas tossed grenades into the room, according to the documents. Waleed Hasan, 37, was killed. Khamisa Ali, 66, was shot dead in the hallway before four others were killed in a bedroom by grenades and rifle fire.

Nine-year-old Eman Hamed told investigators that a grenade landed near her grandfather's bed and exploded, sending shrapnel through the room. Her mother and 4-year-old brother were killed as she huddled, injured, with another brother, Abid, 6, who survived. "All rooms," Abid told investigators. "They were shooting in all rooms."

Several Marines said they quickly cleared the home by fire, shooting through the dust, debris and darkness to eliminate what they believed was a threat.

From there, Wuterich, Mendoza and Tatum said, they moved to a second house after suspecting that insurgents might have escaped. Mendoza told investigators that the Marines approached the second house the same way they did the first, treating it as hostile, according to his sworn statement. Mendoza said he shot a man, 43-year-old Yunis Rasif, through the house's glass kitchen door.

"I fired because I had been told the house was hostile and I was following my training that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot," Mendoza told investigators. The Marines then entered the house and tossed grenades before firing into a back bedroom, which they later found was filled with women and children.

"Knowing what I know now, I feel badly about killing Iraqi civilians who may have been innocent, but I stand fast in my decisions that day, as I reacted to the threats that I perceived at the time," Tatum said. "I did not shoot randomly with the intent to harm innocent Iraqi civilians."

Jack Zimmerman, Tatum's attorney, declined to comment yesterday but decried the publication of the documents. "The ethical rules that govern lawyers prohibit me from even discussing the matter," he said.

Mashoot, the Iraqi soldier who was with the Marines, said he thought the attack on the houses was warranted because the entire convoy was taking fire. Investigators noted that he believed the Marines "had justification" because they were "defending themselves."

Another group of Marines, including Dela Cruz, simultaneously went to the north side of the road and found a dwelling that they believed was the "trigger house" for the roadside bomb. They took several Iraqis into custody, according to the documents, but did not shoot anyone in a search of several houses. Another man was shot after Marines observed him running along a ridgeline.

A few hours later, Sharratt, Wuterich and Salinas approached a third and fourth house after noticing men they said were peering at them suspiciously.

The investigative reports show that what happened there is unclear. Iraqi witnesses said the Marines angrily separated men and women into two lines before marching the men into the fourth house and shooting them. The three Marines told investigators they were searching for the men they had seen and separated the women into a safe area before Wuterich and Sharratt entered the house.

Sharratt told investigators that he saw a man raise an AK-47 rifle as if to shoot him. Sharratt said his gun jammed, but he grabbed his 9mm handgun and shot the attacker. He told investigators he saw another man with a rifle and shot him and two others because he "felt threatened." Wuterich also shot at the men, he said.

Sharratt has been charged with unpremeditated murder in three of the slayings.

Gary Myers, a lawyer representing Sharratt, declined to comment yesterday.

At First, No Inquiry

The military did not launch an inquiry of the Haditha deaths until a Time magazine reporter began to inquire about the incident two months later. Marine officers told investigators the reason was simple: Nothing in the reports they received from the field caused them to believe that a probe was warranted.

Investigators appear to have found little evidence that Marines on the ground or at headquarters tried to conceal the day's events. But Dela Cruz told investigators that Wuterich asked him to back up claims that the men in the taxi were trying to flee before they were shot.

Puckett, Wuterich's lawyer, challenged Dela Cruz's assertion: "Staff Sergeant Wuterich adamantly denies asking anybody to lie or change their story."

The documents show that Marines in Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, reported the incident to their base as it was happening and made clear that there were a significant number of civilian casualties. Though at first the Marines classified eight of the civilians as insurgents, they quickly reported that at least 15 civilians had been killed in what they called "crossfire" with the enemy.

The events came amid heavy insurgent attacks in Haditha that day that ultimately prompted Marines to call in airstrikes on suspected insurgent homes. The hectic nature of the day caused some early reports to be confused and inaccurate, Marines told investigators.

The Kilo Company commander, McConnell, told his Marines on the day of the attacks that they had done a good job, according to an investigative summary in the NCIS report. Investigators wrote that McConnell did not want to question his Marines on a day they lost a comrade but that he informed his superiors about the civilian deaths.

"There was never a hint whatsoever that these kids did anything improper. Not one," said Kevin McDermott, a lawyer who represents McConnell.

Marine officers said Chessani, the Marines' battalion commander, informed his superior, the regimental commander, of the civilian casualties the day they occurred and was told by that officer, Col. Stephen W. Davis, that no investigation was needed.

"There was nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, including the number of civilian dead, that would have triggered anything in my mind that was out of the norm," Davis told military investigators, according to a transcript. "There is nothing about this incident that jumped out at any point to us."

Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, the division commander, told investigators he learned about the civilian casualties on the day they occurred and believed that they were the result of a roadside bomb and the ensuing gunbattle between Marines and insurgents. Huck visited Haditha three days later and was briefed on the incident.

"Nothing in the brief caused any concern to me," Huck told investigators. "I do not recall if the brief discussed the number of Iraqis killed that day, but I do recall the brief discussing Marines clearing houses following the IED attack."

McConnell and Chessani have been charged in the case; Huck and Davis have not. Attempts to reach Chessani or an attorney for him were not successful.

In December 2005, the Marines authorized $38,000 in condolence payments to the families of the civilians killed in the first two houses, and Chessani, in early February, explained the payments in a memo. "The enemy chose the time and place of his ambush. Without callous disregard for the lives of innocent bystanders, the enemy would not have chosen to fight from the bedrooms and living rooms of civilian-occupied houses," he wrote.

The official inquiry began two weeks later, after the Time reporter sent a list of questions about the incident to Marine officials in Iraq. In his e-mail, the reporter raised the possibility that Marines had massacred civilians and executed the men from the taxi, based in part on a videotape made by an activist a day after the incident.

Huck told investigators he dismissed the allegations, believing they were part of an insurgent campaign to smear the Marines. Other Marine officers, such as Davis, also believed that the allegations were outlandish.

But Maj. Samuel H. Carrasco, then a battalion operations officer, said he and the battalion executive officer suggested an investigation to Chessani. Carrasco told investigators that "Lt. Col. Chessani then shouted, 'My men are not murderers.' "

The first investigation, by Army Col. Gregory Watt, ordered by Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, then the top field commander in Iraq, essentially supported the Marines' accounts of events. Watt determined that the troops had reason to be suspicious of the men in the white car and concluded that while they did not positively identify targets in the houses, it might have been "unrealistic to expect" on the battlefield that day.

He also found no indication that the Marines "intentionally targeted, engaged and killed noncombatants," but he suggested a criminal investigation nonetheless. The NCIS investigation began March 12, leading to last month's charges.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

AMERICA SUPPORTS ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS

U.S. WON’T CONDEMN MASS MURDER

By Richard Walker

On Nov. 11, the United States for the 38th time since 1972 used its veto in the UN Security Council to protect Israel from condemnation for murdering Palestinian civilians in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

The deaths of the 19 civilians, who included nine children, four women and six men, all from one family, and the injuring of 40 others came at the end of a five-day Israeli military operation in which a total of 50 Palestinians were killed. The 19 who died were asleep in adjoining homes when Israeli artillery shells blew apart their dwellings.

The UN resolution condemning Israel for the atrocity had the support of nine members of the 15-member Security Council. Britain, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia abstained, but the United States used its veto power to prevent the resolution’s passage.

Aside from a condemnation of Israel, the resolution called for the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Gaza.

There had been several drafts of the resolution offered. The final one also condemned Hamas, calling for an end to the firing of rockets into Israeli territory.

Still, U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton (right) claimed the last
draft was “one-sided and politically motivated.” He complained that it did not use the term “terrorism” to describe the Palestinian government of Hamas.

French Ambassador to the UN Jean Mar de Sabliere said he was disappointed by America’s decision because the final draft resolution was a balanced one. Even the word “massacre” had been removed to make it more palatable to the United States and Israel.

Arab observers were quick to assail Bolton’s use of the veto, describing it as a deliberate attempt to protect Israel. In their view, it sent the wrong message to the Arab world. Moderate Palestinians, who are opposed to Hamas, viewed the U.S. move as yet another example of its lack of concern for the killing of innocent Palestinians and its acquiesence to the Israeli government.

Within the corridors of the UN, America’s heavy use of its veto power to give cover to Israel is regarded as nothing new. Some recent vetoes included a U.S. refusal to pass a resolution condemning Israel for the building of a massive barrier wall. The International Criminal Court in The Hague and major human rights organizations worldwide have described the wall as a criminal act because it splits Palestinian villages and forces some Palestinians off their property.

In 2002, a resolution condemning Israel for the killing of three UN staff in Gaza and the West Bank was blocked by then U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte. In language now familiar in American vetoes he described the resolution as “one-sided and politically motivated” and added that its backers, especially Syria, were more intent on condemning Israeli occupation than protecting UN staff. Negroponte unsuccessfully lobbied Syria to remove a reference to Israel in the resolution and to use generalizations to describe the deaths of the UN staffers.

Most members of the Security Council felt Israel also deserved criticism for blowing up a World Food warehouse containing 500 tons of food in Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. Only five permanent members of the Security Council have a right of veto—Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States—and while Britain has recently abstained on resolutions condemning Israel the United States has taken the lead in blocking resolutions.

Between 1972 and 1997, for example, the United States vetoed 29 resolutions critical of Israel. Had U.S. officials not done so the total number of resolutions condemning Israel throughout that period would have risen to 95.

The 66 resolutions that were passed in that time frame represented a unique number in UN history. As a rule, Israel has ignored the UN, always certain in the knowledge that its vassal state, the United States of America, will manage somehow to block any resolution that would require Israel to concede territory to the Palestinians or to negotiate on other disputes with neighbors like Syria or Lebanon.

The first U.S. veto in Israel’s favor was cast in 1972 by the then-U.S. Ambassador to the UN George H. W. Bush. A year later, America again blocked a resolution that would have called for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories as part of previously recommended UN General Assembly proposal for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement.

Henry Kissinger, as secretary of state, was fond of using America’s veto power, but his record in no way matched that of his successor, George Schultz, during the Reagan years. In fact, the Reagan administration, until this present one, stands alone in blocking 18 UN resolutions critical of Israel. In 1982 alone, Schultz promoted the use of the veto nine times to prevent the UN Security Council from condemning Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, its killing of civilians and its unwillingness to give up parts of south Lebanon that were at the center of the recent conflict.

(Issue #48, November 27, 2006)

Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003

Iraq Massacre: AP Tells US Mil To Shove It

AP, U.S. military spar over atrocities report

The Associated Press is standing by its report that six Sunni men were burned to death in Baghdad Friday by Shiites, even though U.S. military officials have accused the wire service of relying on a source who "is not who he claimed he was," an Iraqi police captain.

Military officials also say they cannot confirm that the incident took place and have asked AP to retract or correct the story, which was repeated by media around the world and cited as a grim example of Shiites taking revenge for a deadly bombing that killed more than 200 people a day before.

"The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question," AP International Editor John Daniszewski said in a statement e-mailed to On Deadline this afternoon.

He added that "we have conducted a thorough review of the sourcing and reporting involved and plan to move a more detailed report about the entire incident soon, with greater detail provided by multiple eye witnesses."

"The police captain cited in our story has long been known to the AP reporters," Daniszewski wrote.

"The AP stands by its story."

But a U.S. military spokesman has told the AP in a letter that "neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident ... and could find no one to corroborate the story."

"Unless you have a credible source to corroborate the story of the people being burned alive, we respectfully request that AP issue a retraction, or a correction at a minimum," Navy Lt. Michael Dean, the spokesman, wrote to the AP on Monday.

Full texts of both Daniszewski's statement and Dean's letter follow if you click read more.

The dispute stems from this story, which the AP distributed to its clients Friday.

Questions raised by the U.S. military spokesmen have sparked considerable discussion in the blogosphere, particularly among conservative commentators. Michelle Malkin is among those who have raised questions about whether AP was led astray by an Iraqi correspondent. Curt at Flopping Aces has been among the most active in chronicling the accusations.

Update at 4:50 p.m. ET. More reporting and detail from the AP:

The wire service has sent out a new story about the reports of the burnings. This new story, which acknowledges the challenges to AP's earlier reporting from U.S. military authorities, says that additional witnesses interviewed today told reporters that they had seen the atrocities.

"On Tuesday, two AP reporters also went back to the Hurriyah neighborhood around the Mustafa mosque and found three witnesses who independently gave accounts of the attack," the story says. "Others in the neighborhood said they were afraid to talk about what happened."

Lt. Dean's letter to the AP:

Dear Associated Press:

On Nov. 24, 2006, your organization published an article by Qais Al-Bashir about six Sunnis being burned alive in the presence of Iraqi Police officers. This news item, which is below, received an enormous amount of coverage internationally.

We at Multi-National Corps - Iraq made it known through MNC-I Press Release Number 20061125-09 and our conversations with your reporters that neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident after investigating it and could find no one to corroborate the story. A couple of hours ago, we learned something else very important.

We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story, police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team.

Also, we definitely know, as we told you several weeks ago through the MNC-I Media Relations cell, that another AP-popular IP spokesman, Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq, supposedly of the city's Yarmouk police station, does not work at that police station and is also not authorized to speak on behalf of the IP. The MOI has supposedly issued a warrant for his questioning.

I know we have informed you that there exists an MOI edict that no one below the level of chief is authorized to be an Iraqi Police spokesperson. An unauthorized IP spokesperson will get fired for talking to the media. While I understand the importance of a news agency to use anonymous and unauthorized sources, it is still incumbent upon them to make sure their facts are straight. Was this information verified by anyone else? If the source providing the information is lying about his name, then he ought not to be represented as an official IP spokesperson and should be listed as an anonymous source.

Unless you have a credible source to corroborate the story of the people being burned alive, we respectfully request that AP issue a retraction, or a correction at a minimum, acknowledging that the source named in the story is not who he claimed he was. MNC-I and MNF-I are always available and willing to verify events and provide as much information as possible when asked.

Very respectfully,
LT Dean
Michael B. Dean
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer

Daniszewski's statement today:

The Associated Press denounces unfounded attacks on its story about six Sunni worshipers burned to death outside their mosque on Friday, November 24. The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question.

AP reporters who have been working in Iraq throughout the conflict learned of the mosque incident through witnesses and neighborhood residents and corroborated it with a named police spokesmen and also through hospital and morgue workers.

We have conducted a thorough review of the sourcing and reporting involved and plan to move a more detailed report about the entire incident soon, with greater detail provided by multiple eye witnesses. Several of those witnesses spoke to AP on the condition that their names would not be used because they fear reprisals.

The police captain cited in our story has long been known to the AP reporters and has been interviewed in his office and by telephone on several occasions during the past two years.

He is an officer at the police station in Yarmouk, with a record of reliability and truthfulness. His full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein.

The AP stands by its story

Posted by Mark Memmott at 03:54 PM/ET, November 28, 2006 in Media, Mideast | Permalink

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/11/us_military_and.html

UN rights chief warns of 'climate of impunity' in Middle East

Wed Nov 29, 1:54 PM ET

United Nations (UN) human rights chief Louise Arbour faces the assembly during a Session of the Human Rights Council, at the UN Office in Geneva. Arbour warned of a "climate of impunity" operating in the Palestinian territories and urged Israel to carry out credible and transparent probes into civilian deaths resulting from military action.(AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)

Wed Nov 29, 1:54 PM ET

UN human rights chief Louise Arbour warned of a "climate of impunity" operating in the Palestinian territories and urged Israel to carry out credible and transparent probes into civilian deaths resulting from military action.

Arbour told the UN Human Rights Council that Israel had both the right and the duty to defend its population against rocket attacks but it must do so within the bounds of human rights and humanitarian law.

"The human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is grave and worsening, within a general climate of impunity," Arbour said in a verbal report on her recent mission to the region.

"Overall I was struck throughout my visit by the sense of vulnerability and abandonment that was expressed to me by virtually all the civilians that I met, both in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories," she added.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said she had urged Israel to ensure "transparent, credible and independent investigations" in cases where lethal force had resulted in the sort of civilian casualties suffered in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun.

"This would be central to break the culture of impunity and contribute to solidify the rule of law," she told the UN Human Rights Council.

Nineteen Palestinians were killed on November 18 in Israeli shelling of private homes in Beit Hanun, which Israel blamed on a technical malfunction.

The UN's human rights office announced Wednesday that South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, who headed that country's Truth and Reconciliation after the end of the apartheid regime, will lead a fact-finding mission into the Beit Hanun incident set up by the Council.

The mission is meant to recommend ways "to protect Palestinian civilians against further Israeli attacks."

The mission was supported by 32 countries mainly from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, but opposed by eight including Canada, Britain and Germany while six more, including France, Switzerland and Japan, abstained.

Arbour said that during her meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, she had stressed the need for the Palestinian Authority to stop rocket attacks by militants on Israeli communities and prosecute those responsible.

"Every effort must be made to enable the Palestinian Authority to discharge that responsibility," she told the 47 member states in the Council.

"At the same time I stressed that as long as the rockets continue to hit its territory, Israel has the right and indeed the duty to defend its population and to ensure the protection of its citizens," Arbour said.

"However, this must be done in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law," she added.

Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Itzhak Levanon, praised Arbour's approach as "balanced" and urged the Council to adopt the same outlook.

"The High Commissioner's initiative to visit both sides, Palestinians and Israelis, permitted her to see firsthand that human suffering is the monopoly of neither side, that human distress is equal on both sides of the divide, and also that placing blame on one-side only is a distortion of reality," he said.

An Israeli television network reported last week that authorities had been secretly in contact with the families of Palestinian victims about possible compensation should the relatives agree not to bring the shelling before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061129/wl_mideast_afp/unrightsmideastunrest_061129185404

Israel is fighting an unwinnable war

Nov 28, 2006


By: Jamal Bittar / The Arab American News


Israeli aggression and brutality in Gaza over the last month are nothing new - Israel has been practicing both with impunity against the Palestinians for decades now. In fact, Israel exists today because it succeeded in carrying out the plan of the early Zionists, which was to ethnically cleanse the indigenous Arab population. It did so in 1948 with massacres and the threat of massacres - 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, and 2,000 to 3,000 Palestinians were massacred in about 30 villages. About 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since it became a state in 1948.

Israel believes that the only response to Arab riots and guerrilla warfare is to intensify the military struggle. Israel is exploiting every move by Hamas deemed to be hostile to Israel to brand Hamas as a terrorist organization hell-bent on the destruction of Israel. Comparison can be found in the war over Algerian independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The French fought valiantly and brutally in Algeria. They won the military contest but by the end could no longer justify to themselves or the outside world that it was worth being there. They had few allies when it was all over. The political, emotional, and financial costs for France were enormous.

Israel now faces many of the same difficulties as did the Diaspora Jews for many centuries. The Zionist state will have to live with uncertainty, insecurity, and the remaking of its safety year by year, perhaps even day by day. Of course, such instability is not Israel’s lot alone. Many other states and nations live in lasting discomfort and even danger. The difference is that Zionism did not ask those who took up its cause to live with uncertainty. It promised them just the opposite. The chaos today seems to give the lie to the pledge made by the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, when the Jews were told that they could look forward to the happiness and stability of a national home of their own. They would find peace and acceptance in the land where their ancestors had once fashioned their religion and culture. But it was not to be. Instead, from its very beginning to this very day, Zionism has confronted a century of war.

The Western world believes that Israel has a right to exist as a refuge for Holocaust survivors and as a compensation for Jewish suffering in the past because of discrimination in Europe and because of the Holocaust. But the genesis of the state of Israel began in the 19th century; the earliest European settlements were in 1882 and the growth rate of Zionist Jews migrating into Palestine from Europe was a steadily increasing curve well before Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany. Further, no more than two percent of Holocaust survivors chose to migrate to Israel. Thus, the connection between the Holocaust and the state of Israel exists only in the propaganda use Israel has made of the Holocaust. The state of Israel has exploited the suffering that was the Holocaust to justify its existence.

The West must also understand that Palestinians too are victims of the Holocaust, as their land has been taken, and is being taken, to pay for the sins of Europeans. The world has left the Palestinians powerless. They do not have tanks, missiles, and helicopters. They can’t fight back. Yet they must. They must defend themselves from attack and all they have to sacrifice is their lives. Everyone in Palestine is ready to do so. Israel has made them become a nation of suicide bombers.

Whenever the Israeli hard liners are given the slightest leeway, they establish new settlements, sometimes in the guise of beefing up older communities, sometimes for some other reason, such as contributing to Israel’s security by protecting lines of communication. Among the Palestinians, the anger at the loss of more and more of the West Bank into the hands of Israeli settlers, and the loss of more and more water into the swimming pools and gardens of beautiful model suburbs, has passed the explosion point. Not only have scores of farmers gone bust in the last year, unable to export crates of tomatoes and cucumbers to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt , and Jordan; without basic supplies and money to pay workers, everything from tailor shops to construction firms has ground to a halt. The Israelis, who keep gun ships off the coast, have curtailed the range of fishing boats. Tourism to places such as Bethlehem, which hosted half a million visitors in previous years, has dried up.

Is there any hope for the future? Yes, but only if Israel abandons its messianic dream and remembers that great ideological problems cannot be resolved. The time has come for Israel to make a clear-cut and pragmatic choice in its own interest. It must end its creeping annexation. Otherwise, the riots and the guerrilla warfare will continue. Palestinians have to control their own roads, borders, and economy. An enduring peace requires sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque, sacred land that was in Muslim hands from the seventh century until 1967. An acceptable settlement must also provide an agreement for the return of the Palestinian refugees who fled Israel.

Unless these changes occur, the Palestinians appear set to go on fighting for their land. Israeli hard liners must believe it - for the very essence of the Zionist dream is crumbling before them.


The writer is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio

http://www.arabamericannews.com/newsarticle.php?articleid=6889

Iraq: Locals Accuse U.S. of Massacre in Ramadi

November 25, 2006


U.S. military tank fire killed scores of civilians in Ramadi, capital of Al-Anbar province, late Monday night, according to witnesses and doctors. Anger and frustration were evident at the hospitals and during the funerals in the following days.

Iraqi doctors and witnesses at the scene of the attack said U.S. tanks killed 35 civilians when they shelled several homes in the Al-Dhubat area of the city.

Ramadi, located 110 km west of Baghdad, has been beset with sporadic but intense violence between occupation forces and insurgents for several months.

On Tuesday, hundreds of people carried the 35 coffins of the dead to a graveyard in a funeral procession which closely resembled an angry demonstration.

"We heard the bombing and we thought it was the usual fighting between resistance fighters and the Americans, but we soon realised it was bombing by large cannons," 60-year-old Haji Jassim explained to IPS at the burial. "We weren't allowed by the Americans to reach the destroyed houses to try to rescue those who were buried, so certainly many of them bled to death."

Jassim claimed that everyone killed was innocent, that they were not fighters. He said that when he and others attempted to reach the rubble of the destroyed homes, located near mosques whose minaret's loudspeakers had broadcast pleas for help, "There was a big American force that stopped us and told us the usual ugly phrases we hear from them every day."

Jassim, speaking with IPS while several other witnesses listened while nodding their heads, said that ambulances did not appear on the scene for hours because "we realised that the Americans did not allow them to move," and that as a result, "there were people buried under the rubble who were bleeding to death while there was still a chance to rescue them."

Jassim then burst into tears and walked away saying prayers to Allah to bless the souls of the dead.

A doctor at Ramadi's main hospital, Abdullah Salih, told reporters that 35 bodies had been brought in and he also believed that others had not been retrieved since access had been limited by ongoing U.S. military operations.

Another doctor, Kamal al-Ani, said that in addition to the dead, another 17 wounded had been brought into the hospital.

The scene at the hospital was tragic as doctors confirmed the reason of death for many as severe bleeding that had gone on for several hours. Most of the doctors were unwilling to discuss too many details for fear of U.S. military reprisals.

"You can notice the number of dead is at least twice as high as the number of wounded," one of the doctors, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. A local Iraqi policeman who identified himself as Khalif Obeidi told IPS that tanks had destroyed several houses in the area during the U.S. raid, killing more than 30 civilians.

"We know that those killed were innocent," said Obeidi, "although there have been attacks on the Americans from near that area in the past."

Residents of the city and relatives of the dead who were at the funeral were furious.

"There is no other way for the Sunnis than to fight," Ali Khudher, a 25-year-old carpenter who lost a relative in the attack told IPS. "It is a religious war and no one can deny that now."

Others who attended the mass funeral chanted anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Iranian and even slogans against the Islamic Party which is now part of the Iraqi government.

Tempers run high in Ramadi also because the city has often been the scene of large-scale U.S. military operations and their inherent forms of collective punishment.Last June, thousands of residents were forced from their homes due to military operations, according to Maurizio Mascia, programme manager for the Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), a non-governmental group based in Amman, Jordan that provides relief to refugees in Iraq.

At that time, Mascia told IPS, "The Americans, instead of attacking the city all at once like they've done in their previous operations in cities like Fallujah and Al-Qa'im, are using helicopters and ground troops to attack one district at a time in Ramadi."

Mirroring a complaint heard often from residents of Ramadi, Mascia said, "The main dangers for the population are the MNF (multi-national force) at the checkpoints and the snipers: both usually shoot at any movement that they consider dangerous - causing many victims among civilians."

In a phone conversation with IPS, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad said he had no specific details of the incident and that "the U.S. military has been conducting ongoing patrols and security details in Al-Anbar for months now. Our efforts are always to attack the terrorists and protect the civilian population."

http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/11/25/6544.shtml

Palestinian Solidarity in a Time of Massacres

November 22, 2006

By Gilad Atzmon


Let's face it; while the Palestinian and Arab resistance evolves into an absolute example of the ultimate heroism and collective patriotism, the Palestinian solidarity movement in the UK and around the world is not exactly what could be called a profound success story. In fact, it would be erroneous to state that this is really the fault of those who dedicate their time and energy to it. Supporting the Palestinians is a complicated subject. Though the crimes against the Palestinians have taken place in broad daylight and are not some well-kept secret, the priorities of the solidarity movement are far from being clear.

When thinking about Palestinian society we are basically used to thinking of some sharp ideological and cultural disputes between the Hamas and PLO. Not that I wish to undermine that staunch disagreement, but I am here to suggest an alternative perspective that perhaps could lead towards a different understanding of the notion of Palestinian activism and solidarity both ideologically and pragmatically.

I maintain that Palestinian people are largely divided into three main groups and it is actually this division that dictates three different political narratives, with three different political discourses and agendas to consider:

The three groups can be described as follows:

1. The Palestinians who happen to live within the Israeli State and possess Israeli citizenship - The Israelis have a name for them; they call them 'Israeli Arabs'. These Palestinians are largely discriminated by Israeli law in all aspects of their lives; their struggle is for civil rights and civil equality.

2. The Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories - In most cases those Palestinians are locked behind walls and barbed wire in Bantustans and concentration camps in the so-called 'Palestinian Authority Controlled Area' (PA). Practically speaking, those people live under a criminal occupation. For three decades these people have been terrorised on a daily basis by Israeli soldiers in roadblocks and incursions, they are subject to air raids and artillery bombardments. Their civil system is shattered, their educational system is falling apart, their health system is extinct. These Palestinian people are craving for a single day with no casualties.

3. The Diaspora Palestinians - Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed over the course of the years and denied return to their homes by the racially orientated Israeli legal system (the Law of Return and Absentee Laws). The Israelis do not have a name for them, they simply deny their existence. The Diaspora Palestinians live all over around the world. According to the UN statistics every third refugee is a Palestinian. Millions of exiled Palestinians live in the region in refugee camps, the others can be found in every corner of the globe. The Diaspora Palestinians know their rights and they want to be able to come home if they so choose, they demand their right of return.

Confronting very different realities, the three groups above have managed to develop three competing political discourses: The 1st group, the so-called 'Israeli Arabs', struggle for equality. The means they have to achieve their goals are largely political. They search for a voice within the racially orientated Israeli society.

The 2nd group, namely the 'PA inhabitants', battle against the occupation. They fight for liberation. Their means are political, civil resistance as well as armed struggle (in fact it is within the 2nd group where the bitter struggle for hegemony between the PLO and the Hamas is taking place).

Being out of Israel and lacking international support as well as adequate political representation, the 3rd group is still ignored by the entire Israeli political system and even by major players within the international community. The exiled Palestinians are largely neglected and their demand for the right of return is yet to be addressed properly.

Apparently, the Palestinian discourse is fragmented. It is divided into at least three different, sometimes opposing discourses. Cleverly, not to mention mercilessly, on their behalf, it is the Israelis who maintain this very state of fragmentation. It is the Israelis who manage to stop the Palestinian political and cultural discourse from integrating into a single grand solid narrative. How do they do it? They apply different tactics that maintain the isolation and conflict between the three distinct groups. Within the State of Israel the Israelis maintain a racially orientated legal system that turns the Israeli Palestinians into 10th class citizens. When PA inhabitants are concerned, the Israeli military maintains solid and constant pressure on the civilian population. Gaza is kept starving, it is bombed on a daily basis. Some of it is flattened. More than a few observers regard the situation in the PA as nothing but slow extermination and genocide.

In order to humiliate the 3rd group, the Israelis enforce a racist legislation that welcomes Jews to the country but rejects others (Law of Return). In practice it is a racially orientated system that stops exiled Palestinians from returning to their land.

Paradoxically enough, the more pain the Israelis inflict on any of the groups, the further the Palestinians get from establishing a grand narrative of resistance. Similarly, the more vicious the Israelis are, the further the Palestinian Solidarity movement is getting from establishing a unified agenda of activism. Indeed the Palestinian solidarity campaigner is confused and asks himself what campaign to choose. Who should be supported? The division of the Palestinian discourse into three conflicting narratives makes the issue of solidarity rather complicated.

Seemingly, different Palestinian solidarity groups follow different political calls and Palestinian causes. Some call for an end to the Israeli occupation, others call for the right of return. Some call for equality. Many of the solidarity campaigners are divided amongst themselves. Those who call for the right of return and 'one State' are totally unhappy with what they regard as a watery and limited demand for the 'end of occupation'. Seemingly, Palestinian solidarity is trapped.

Joining one call and not another is actually surrendering to a discourse that is violently and criminally imposed by the Israelis.

This is exactly where Zionism is maintaining its hegemony within the Palestinian solidarity discourse. It is Israeli brutality that dictates a state of ideological fragmentation upon the Palestinian solidarity discourse. Whatever decision the Palestinian activist is willing to make is set a priori to dismiss a certain notion of the Palestinian cause. It is indeed painful to admit that it is the Israelis who have set us into this trap. Our work, discourse and terminology as activists are totally shaped by Israeli aggression.

The Battle Is Not Lost

However, there is a way around that complexity. Rather than surrendering to the Zionist practice which splits the Palestinian solidarity discourse, we can simply redefine the core of the Palestinian tragedy, which is now turning into a global crisis.

Once we manage to internalise that the discourse of solidarity with Palestinians is dominated by the malicious and brutal Israeli practices, we are more or less ready to admit: it is the Jewish State: a racist nationalist ideology that we must oppose primarily. It is Jewish State and its supporters around the world that we must tackle. It is Zionism and global Zionism that we must confront immediately.

Yet, this is exactly where the solidarity campaigner loses his grip. To identify the Palestinian disaster with the concept of 'Jews Only State' is a leap not many activists are capable to do for the time being. To admit that the Jewish State is the core of the problem implies that there may be something slightly more fundamental in the conflict than merely colonial interests or an ethnic dispute over land. To identify the 'Jews Only State' as the core of the problem is to admit that peace is not necessarily an option. The reason is rather simple: the 'Jews Only State' follows an expansionist and racially orientated philosophy. It leaves no room for other people as a matter of fact and principle.

Yet, once we come to grips with this very understanding, once we are enlightened and realise that something here is slightly more fundamental than merely a battle between an invader facing some indigenous counter freedom fighting. We are probably more or less ready to engage in a critical enquiry into the notion of Zionism. We are more or less ready to grasp the notion of the emerging secular emancipated Jewish collective identity. We are ready to confront the modern notion of Jewishness (rather than Judaism).

Once we are brave enough to admit that Zionism is a continuation of Jewishness (rather than Judaism), once we admit that Israel draws its force from a racist ideology, harboured in national chauvinism and blatant expansionism, once we admit that Zionism, which was once a marginal Jewish ideology, has become the voice of world Jewry, once we accept it all, we may be ready to defeat the Zionist disease. We do it for the sake of the Palestinians but as well for the sake of world peace.

The Gatekeepers

Let's try to think of an imaginary situation in which a dozen exiled German dissident intellectuals insist upon monitoring and controlling Churchill's addresses to the British public at the peak of the Blitz. Every time Churchill speaks his heart calling the British people to stand firm against Germany and its military might, the exiled dissident Germans raise their voice: "It isn't Germany, Mr Prime Minister, it is the Nazi party, the German people and the German spirit are innocent." Churchill obviously apologises immediately.

I assume that you all realise that such a scene is totally surreal. Britain would never allow a bunch of German exiles to control its rhetoric at the time of a war against Germany. Moreover, dissident German intellectuals would not have the Chutzpah to even consider telling the British what should or what shouldn't be the appropriate rhetoric to use at time of a war with Germany.

However, when it comes to the Palestinian solidarity discourse, we are somehow far more tolerant. In spite of the fact that it is the 'Jews Only State' that we struggle against, we allow a bunch of self-appointed Jewish leaders and activists to become our gatekeepers. As soon as anyone identifies the symptoms of Zionism with some fundamental or essential Jewish precepts a smear campaign is launched against that person.

I have been closely monitoring the Jewish left discourse for more than a few years now. I might as well admit that I can think of at least one good reason behind Jewish anti-Zionist activism. I do understand the need of some humanist Jews to stand up and say, 'I am a Jew and I find Zionism disgusting.' At a certain stage of my life I myself was saying just that. As some of you know, I totally admire Torah Jews for doing just that. However, when it comes to predominantly Jewish socialist and secular left groups, I am slightly confused.

Moshe Machover, a legendary Israeli dissident and a Jewish Marxist who happens to be the intellectual mentor of the British progressive Jewish activists, expressed the following view just a few days ago when he stated a complaint he had with a petition:

"anti-Semitism is a Palestinian problem, as it pushes Jews into the arms of Zionism. This has long been understood by all progressive Palestinians. Anti-semitism is an objective ally of Zionism, and the common enemy of Palestinians, Jews, and all humankind."

Indeed anti-Semitism may be a problem, yet, is it really a Palestinian problem? Should the Palestinian solidarity campaign engage in fighting anti-Semitism? Shouldn't we leave it to ADL and Abe Foxman? I think that we better try to do whatever we can to save the people of Beit Hanoun. This is where we are needed. I am certain that the vast majority of the Palestinian activists know that I am right.

Every PSC campaigner I have ever spoken to admits to me that only very few Palestinians find interest in the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. In fact, the statement by Machover provides the reason. According to Machover, those amongst the Palestinians who fail to see that anti-Semitism is the problem are nothing but reactionary, as only the 'Progressive' Palestinians acknowledge that anti-Semitism is indeed a problem. Let me tell you, the Palestinians I know do not like it when Machover or anyone else calls them reactionaries just because they are not that concerned with anti-Semitism. Reading Machover, it is rather clear that such views serve as a body shield for Jewish secular collectivism and the Zio-centric historical narrative. If to be honest, there is not much reason for any Palestinian to join a movement predominated by the obsession with anti-Semitism.

May I tell you, I am not an historian. I am academically trained as a philosopher and particularly as a continental one. I am interested in the notion of essence. For me to attack Zionism is to aim towards a thorough realisation of the essence of Zionism. To a certain extent I am indeed an essentialist. This is pretty worrying for those who try to reduce the discourse into positivistic exchange regarding numbers and historical facts. I am interested in the spirit of Zionism. I'm concerned about that which transforms the Israelis and their supporters into ethically blind killing machines.

Beyond Chutzpah

You may have heard of the book I am holding in my hand. Probably, it's the ultimate Zionist tract: Alan Dershowitz's The Case For Israel. I don't know whether any of you have ever considered reading this banal not to say idiotic text. I did, it fell into my hands a few days ago.

Shockingly enough, this book is structured as a beginner's guide for the Zionist enthusiast, a kind of "Israel for Dummies". It teaches the nationalist Jew how to be an advocate and defend the 'case of Israel'. We know already that Norman Finkelstein has managed to prove beyond doubt that the text is academically a farce. Yet, there is something revealing in this text.

The book is a set of deconstructions of 'the anti-Zionist argument'. It starts with the heaviest ideological and moral accusation against Israel and it gets lighter, more historical and forensic as you progress.

Dershowitz launches with the 'million Shekels' question "Is Israel a Colonial, Imperialist State?" To a certain degree Dershowitz manages to tackle the question. He asks, "if it is indeed a colonial state, what flag does it serve?" Fair enough, I say, he may be right. I myself do not regard Zionism as a colonial adventure. However, hang on for a second, Mr. Dershowitz. It seems you might be getting off the hook easily here. Our problem with Israel has nothing to do with its colonial characteristics. Our problems with the 'Jews Only State' have something to do with its racist, expansionist and nationalist qualities. Our problems with Israel have something to do with it being a Fascist State supported by the vast majority of Jewish people around the world.

Now if you, Scottish activists stop for a second, ask yourselves why Dershowitz starts his book tackling the colonial aspect of Israel rather than facing its Fascist characteristics. My answer is simple. We are afraid to admit that Israel is indeed a Fascist State. It is predominantly the politically correct groups that furnish Dershowitz with a Zionist fig leaf. In fact, it is the Jewish gatekeepers on the left who have managed to reduce Zionism merely into a colonial adventure. Why did they do it? I can think of two reasons:

1. If Israel, the 'Jews Only State' is wrong for being a racially orientated adventure, then 'Jews for peace', 'Jews against Zionism', 'Jewish Socialists', 'Jews Sans Frontieres' etc. are all wrong for the very same reason (being a racially orientated adventure).

2. To regard the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a colonial dispute is to make sure it fits nicely into their notion of working class politics. May I suggest that a universal working class vision of Israel implies that the Jewish State is nothing but a Fascist experiment.

I would use this opportunity and appeal to our friends amongst the Jewish socialists and other Jewish solidarity groups. I would ask them to clear the stage willingly, and to re-join as ordinary human beings. The Palestinian Solidarity movement is craving for a change. It needs open gates rather than gatekeepers. It yearns for an open and dynamic discourse. The Palestinians on the ground have realised it already. They democratically elected an alternative vision of their future. Isn't it about time we support the Palestinians for what they are rather than expecting them to fit into our worldview?


From a talk for the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in Edinburgh.

Gilad Atzmon can be reached at atz@onetel.net.uk

www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/politics.html