The Zionist Project in Palestine

Saturday, April 14, 2007

When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionists had concluded that forcible "population transfer" (Ethnic Cleansing) was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." To excuse the "Jewish state" from any WAR CRIMES perpetrated against the Palestinian people (specially the ones committed during the 1948 war), Zionists have concocted a myth that the Palestinian people had willingly left their homes, farms, and businesses, and as a result they have forfeited their right to return.

BASED On Declassified Israeli Documents & Personal Diaries

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The Zionist Project in Palestine: Colonial Settlement, Land Robbery and Ethnic Cleansing

Nizar Sakhnini, 7 October 2005

About 8,000 Jews were living in Palestine before 1882. Creation of a “Jewish State” in such a small country with such a small Jewish community, which owned virtually no land to settle on, was practically impossible. Consequently, building an exclusive Jewish State in Palestine implied bringing Jews from the four corners of the world, acquisition of the land and ethnically cleansing it from its indigenous Arab population.


COLONIAL SETTLEMENT:

Hovevei Zion, the precursor of the Zionist Organization, sponsored the first wave of pioneer settlers, which started in 1882 and ended in 1903. About 35,000 immigrants arrived in Palestine within this wave. Almost half of them left within several years of their arrival.

Eliezer Ben Yehuda, a fanatical Zionist, was one of the settlers of the first wave. When his ship arrived in Jaffa in 1882, he found himself watching the Arab passengers on board and suddenly he realized that they were far more at home in the “Promised Land” than he was. Eventually he found that he could not swallow his doubts so he left “Eretz Yisrael” and became a Territorialist, believing that the Jews should seek a country in a land other than Palestine. (Karen Armstrong, Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today’s World. Macmillan, London, 1988, pp. 60-64)

The second wave started in 1904 and ended with the break of WWI in 1914. It brought about 40,000 immigrants to Palestine. As with the first wave, nearly half of them left the country in later years.

According to Bar-Zohar, when the first immigrants from the Russian Zionist societies came to Palestine “it was no land flowing with milk and honey that greeted them… The hard labor, malaria, and hunger claimed many victims. Of those who survived, many decided to leave that accursed land on the first available ship. Later, Ben-Gurion was to contend that of every ten immigrants who arrived with the Second Aliyah, nine later left the country”. (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, pp. 13-14)

This 2nd wave included a number of Socialist Zionists. Prominent among the new Socialist Zionist immigrants was Ben Gurion. Another socialist Zionist, Yitzhak Ben Zvi (2nd President of the State of Israel) arrived in Palestine within this wave as well.

The 3rd wave, which started in 1919 and ended in 1923, brought another 40,000 settlers. As conditions improved under the British Mandate in Palestine, few of them returned to their countries of origin.

The 4th wave, 1924 – 1929, brought 82,000 immigrants of who 23,000 left in later years.

In order to boost Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Zionist Organization entered into negotiations with the Nazis to facilitate emigration of German Jews. As a result of these negotiations, an agreement was signed, which allowed tens of thousands of German Jews to immigrate to Palestine. The 5th wave of Jewish immigrants, which took place during the period 1929-1939, brought 250,000 settlers and the 6th brought another 150,000 who arrived in Palestine between 1939 and 1948. (For a detailed discussion of the Transfer Agreement, see: Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: The Untold Story of the Secret Pact Between the Third Reich & Jewish Palestine. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1984)

The total number of Jews in Palestine in 1946 was 608,225 and the total land owned by them was 1,585,365 donums, which represented less than 7% of the area of Palestine. (Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, Appendix I, pp.841-843)

The ethnic cleansing operations perpetrated during the 1948 war and the Absentees Law as well as the Law of Return issued in 1950 facilitated confiscation of Arab homes and lands to build settlements for more colonial settlers who flooded Palestine following the creation of Israel.

LAND ROBBERY:

A pre-meditated and pre-planned campaign of land theft started shortly following the ethnic operations of 1948. A law was passed in the Israeli Knesset in 1950, the “Absentees Property Law ”. According to this law, any body that was not present directly before, during or after the war was, regardless of the reason, defined as “absentee” and his land as surrendered. Thus it was confiscated.

About 20 percent of the Palestinians in Israel were internally displaced in the 1948 war – in other words, while remaining in Israel, have been prevented from returning to their homes and villages. These displaced persons were considered as “absentees” and became refugees in their own country while their lands were confiscated.

More significantly was the fact that Palestinian Arabs who were driven out or obliged to leave during the war in 1948 were not allowed to return to their homes and lands. Those who tried to return were considered “infiltrators” and were shot to death by Unit 101 of the IDF, a company of paratroopers, which was formed under the command of Ariel Sharon.

Another law, “The Land Requisition Law”, was passed in 1953 to “legitimize” the expropriation of Arab lands. According to this law acts of theft and robbery of land were legal.

Moshe Smilansky, one of the pilgrim fathers of Zionism, published an article stating that: “When we came back to our country after having been evicted two thousand years ago, we called ourselves ‘daring’ and we rightly complained before the whole world that the gates of the country were shut. And now when they [Arab refugees] dared to return to their country where they lived for one thousand years before they were evicted or fled, they are called ‘infiltrees’ and shot in cold blood. Where are, Jews? Why do we not at least, with a generous hand, pay compensation to these miserable people? Where to take the money from? But we build palaces...instead of paying a debt that cries unto us from earth and heaven... And do we sin only against the refugees? Do we not treat the Arabs who remain with us as second-class citizens? Did a single Jewish farmer raise his hand in the parliament in opposition to a law that deprived Arab peasants of their land? How does sit solitary, in the city of Jerusalem, the Jewish conscience!” (From Haven to Conquest, p. 834)

ETHNIC CLEANSING:

Subjecting Palestinian Arabs to ethnic cleansing was an integral part of the implicit and explicit political Zionist thought and parlance all along.

In his diaries, Herzl made it clear that “the existing landed property was to be gently expropriated, any subsequent resale to the original owners was prohibited, and all immovables had to remain in exclusively Jewish hands. The poor population was to be worked across the frontier ‘unbemerkt’ (surreptitiously)… This population was to be refused all employment in the land of its birth… In 1901, the 5th Zionist Congress founded the Jewish National Fund. According to the by-laws of the JNF, acquired land became inalienable Jewish property and could no longer be sold or leased to non-Jews…” (Documented article published by L.M.C. Van Der Hoeven Leonhard in Libertas, (Holland) Lustrum, number 1960, pp. 1-5, reproduced in Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, pp. 115-124. See also, Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, pp. 21-22)

David Ben-Gurion believed that the Zionists had to exert pressure to force the British to act. But if necessary, he wrote in his diary, “We must ourselves prepare to carry out the removal of the Palestinians”. (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 4, citing Ben-Gurion's Diary - published in Hebrew - vol. IV, p. 299)

In a report to the Jewish Agency Executive on 12 June 1938, Ben-Gurion stated “I am for a compulsory transfer; I don't see anything immoral in it...” (Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, London: Croom Helm, 1979, p. 263)

Encouraged by the possibility of establishing a Jewish state as a result of the partition plan proposed by the Peel Commission in its report published in July 1937, a “Population Transfer Committee” was appointed by the Jewish Agency to come up with plans to rid the Jewish State of its Palestinian Arabs. Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund, who served on the Population Transfer Committee, developed a plan for this purpose. In his report, Weitz wrote that the transfer of the Arab population from the Jewish areas “does not serve only one aim - to diminish the Arab population. It also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is to evacuate land now cultivated by Arabs and thus release it for Jewish settlement.” (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 4, citing CZA, Minutes of the Population Transfer Committee, 22 Nov., 1937)

The Peel Commission’s partition plan, which proposed to divide the country between the “Jewish colonists and the indigenous Arab population” was discussed in the meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive held on 12 June 1938. Partition as proposed by the Peel Commission would leave over 200,000 Arabs in the proposed “Jewish State”. The Jewish Agency Executive was discussing the problem of how best to get rid of these Arabs. The seventy-five year old Zionist leader, Menahem Ussishkin, stated that “There is no hope that this new Jewish State will survive, to say nothing of develop, if the Arabs are as numerous as they are today.” Berl Katznelson of Ben-Gurion’s Mapai party saw only disaster in a Jewish State with a large Arab minority and proposed a development plan to eliminate the Palestinian Arabs. He urged negotiations, with neighboring Arab States that might be persuaded to receive the expellees. (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, pp. 1-2, citing CZA, Executive Proceedings, 12 June 1938)

Other “Transfer Committees” were appointed during the 1948 war. An unofficial “self-appointed” committee, headed by Joseph Weitz, started its activities as of the end of March 1948. After the creation of the state of Israel the Provisional Government appointed an official committee the recommendations of which were submitted to Ben-Gurion in due course and were being implemented under the cover of war.

One of the key questions from June 1967 onwards was not whether Israel should maintain a presence in the newly acquired territories, but how it could be maintained without adding over one million Palestinians to the Arab minority of Israel. The old Zionist dilemma of non-Jews in a Jewish state had to be resolved. Against this background of Zionist expansionism, transfer ideas were revived in public debates, in popular songs, in articles in the Hebrew press and, most importantly, in cabinet discussions and government schemes and policies. (Nur Masalha, A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians 1949 - 96. London: Faber and Faber ltd., 1997, pp. 60 - 61)

New proposals for ethnic cleansing were outlined in an article entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, which appeared in the World Zionist Organization's periodical Kivunim in February 1982. The article was written by Oded Yinon, a journalist and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs and former senior Foreign Ministry official.

In his article, Yinon called for Israel to bring about the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings. He called for a policy of Israel that aims at bringing about “the dissolution of Jordan; the termination of the problem of the [occupied] territories densely populated with Arabs west of the [River] Jordan; and emigration from the territories, and economic-demographic freeze in them.” He added, “we have to be active in order to encourage this change speedily, in the nearest time”.

Yinon believed, like many advocates of transfer in Israel, that “Israel has made a strategic mistake in not taking measures [of mass expulsion] towards the Arab population in the new territories during and shortly after the [1967] war.... Such a line would have saved us the bitter and dangerous conflict ever since which we could have already then terminated by giving Jordan to the Palestinians.”

Moreover, Yinon suggested to encompass the whole Arab world, including the imposition of a Pax Israela on, and the determination of the destiny of, Arab societies: re invading Sinai and “breaking Egypt territorially into separate geographical districts.” As for the Arab East: “...the total disintegration of Lebanon into five regional, localized governments as the precedent for the entire Arab world...the dissolution of Syria, and later Iraq, into districts of ethnic and religious minorities....” (Ibid, pp. 196 - 198, citing Oded Yinon, A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, [Hebrew], Kivunim, Jerusalem, No. 14, February 1982, pp. 53 - 58)

Failure of the different efforts to “transfer” all the Palestinians did not mean that such efforts were abandoned. Benjamin Netanyahu told Bar-Ilan University students on 16 November 1989 that the government had failed to exploit internationally favorable situations, to carry out “large-scale” expulsions at a time when “the damage [to Israel's public relations] would have been relatively small...” Netanyahu was referring to the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989 when world attention and the media were focused on China. He added, “I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people.” Netanyahu later denied making the remarks but the Jerusalem Post presented a tape recording of his speech. (Ibid, p. 190, citing The Jerusalem Post, 19 November, 1989; Michael Palumbo, Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd., 1990 pp. 302 - 303)

After decades of Zionist efforts, Arab “demographic threat” was still haunting Israel. A conference was held on 19-20 December 2000 at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya to deal with the issue. The conference was the first of what became a series of annual conferences dealing with the strength and security of Israel. A major part of the recommendations was related with the ‘demographic threat’ posed by the Arab citizens of Israel. (For a detailed account on the conference and its recommendations see: The Herzliya Conference on the Balance of National Strength and Security in Israel, Journal of Palestine Studies, # 121, Volume XXXI, Number 1, Autumn 2001, pp. 50-61)

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Israel Land Laws (Preliminary List)

1. 1943 Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance. Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 34, p. 190.
2. 1945 British Mandate Defense (Emergency Regulations). The Palestine Gazette 1442, no. 2 (27 Sept. 1945): 1058.
3. 1948 Abandoned Areas Ordinance, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 1, Ordinances, 5708 (1948), p. 25-26.
4. 1948 Emergency Regulations Concerning Absentee Property, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 1, Ordinances, 5708 (1948), p. 8.
5. 1949 Emergency Regulations (Security Zones), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 3, 5079 (1949), p. 56.
6. 1949 Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste [Uncultivated] Lands), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 2, 5709 (1948/49), pp. 71-77.
7. 1949 Emergency Law Requisition (Regulations) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 4, 5710 (1949/50), p. 3.
8. 1950 Absentees’ Property Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 4, Ordinances, 5710 (1949/50), pp. 68-82.
9. 1950 Development Authority (Transfer of Property) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 4, Ordinances, 5710 (1949/50), p. 151.
10. 1951 State Property Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 5, p. 45.
11. Amendment to the Emergency Land Requisition (Regulations) Law of 1949.
Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 6, 5712 (1951-1952), p. 103.
12. 1953 Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 7, 5713 (1952/53), pp. 43-45.
13. Absentees’ Property (Amendment) Law, 5716 (1956), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 10, 5716 (1955-56), p. 31.
14. Amendment to the Emergency Land Requisition (Regulations) Law of 1949. Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 9, 5715 (1954-55), p. 109.
15. 1958 Prescription Law (No. 38), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 12 (1958), pp. 129-33.
16. 1965 Absentees’ Property (Amendment No. 3) (Release and Use of Endowment Property) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 19 (1953), p. 55.
17. Israel Land Law 1969. Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 23, p. 283.
18. 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters (Regulation) Law (Consolidated Version), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 27 (1973), p. 176.
19. 1976 Absentees’ Property (Compensation) (Amendment) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, (1976).
20. Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 7 Laws of the State of Israel, 5713 (1952-1953), pp. 43-45.
21. The Negev Land Acquisition (Peace Treaty with Egypt) Law 1980, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 34, p. 1990.

Bush, AIPAC and Palestine

April 2, 2007

The Political Economy of a Disaster

By JAMES PETRAS

On Monday, March 26, 2007 in Northern Gaza a river of raw sewage and debris overflowed from a collapsed earth embankment into a refugee camp driving 3,000 Palestinians from their homes. Five residents drowned, 25 were injured and scores of houses were destroyed.

The New York Times, Washington Post and the television media blamed shoddy infrastructure. The Daily Alert (the house organ of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations) blamed the Palestinians who they claimed were removing sand to sell to construction contractors thus undermining the earth embankment. The disaster at Umm Naser (the village in question) is emblematic of everything that is wrong with US-Israeli politics in the Middle East. The disaster in this isolated village has its roots first and foremost in Washington where AIPAC and its political allies have successfully secured US backing for Israel's financial and economic boycott of the Palestinian government subsequent to the democratic electoral victory of Hamas.

AIPAC's victory in Washington reverberated throughout Europe and beyond ñ as the European Union also applied sanctions shutting off financing of all new infrastructure projects and the maintenance of existing facilities. At the AIPAC conventions of 2005 through 2007, the leaders of both major American parties, congressional leaders and the White House pledged to re-enforce AIPAC's boycott and sanctions strategy. AIPAC celebrated its victory for Israeli policy and claimed authorship of the legislation. In addition to malnutrition, the policy undermined all public maintenance projects.

Equally central to the disaster, Israel's massive sustained bombing attack on Gaza in the summer of 2006, demolished roads, bridges, sewage treatment facilities, water purification and electrical power plants. Northern Gaza was one of its many targets, putting severe strain on already precarious infrastructure and government budgets ñ including the maintenance of sewage treatment plants and cesspools.

The Israeli economic blockade of Gaza increased unemployment, poverty and hunger to unprecedented levels. Out of work Gazans reached over 60% of the population ñ large families with young children were reduced to one meal a day. Family heads desperately looked for any way to earn funds to buy a pound of chickpeas, oil, rice and flour for bread. It is possible that forced by the AIPAC- induced US-EU boycott and Israeli bombing and blockade, that some desperate workers removed some sand around the cesspool. The pretext cited by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) for blaming the Palestinian victims for their own suffering, and exonerating the Israelis, AIPAC and their congressional clients.

The PMAJO has justified thirty-nine years of Israeli occupation and criminal neglect of Gaza's basic sewage treatment facilities. Israel spends less than 2% on a per capita basis for basic services in the Occupied Territories that it is obligated under international law to provide responsibly than it spends in Israel. The United Nations and Israeli human rights groups have documented Israel's callous lack of responsibility toward the Palestinian civilians under its brutal occupation. It is not surprising that the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations can think of nothing better than to blame the destitute Palestinians for the collapse of a primitive earth embankment and the horrific
deaths.

To the extent that any Palestinian leader can be held responsible, the finger points to the US and Israeli-backed PLO and its titular head Abbas who receives whatever ëhumanitarian' aid flows into Palestine. The tens of millions of dollars of Palestinian import taxes held by Israeli banks were handed over to Mahmoud Abbas , to arm the anti-Hamas vigilantes. Over the past two decades the US-backed ëmoderate' PLO leaders and crony ëcapitalists' have diverted tens of millions of dollars and euros to their private overseas bank accounts, with the acquiescence of their European, US and Israeli patrons. What is a bit of Palestinian corruption if it means propping up an incompetent group of
pliant ëleaders'?

The plight of the Umm Naser villagers deluged by their own sewage was neither an act of fate nor a result of local negligence or theft: It was a direct consequence of all that is wrong in US-Middle East politics, the taking sides with a brutal colonial power and its powerful voices and organizations in Washington. Umm Naser is written large throughout Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon: Millions of Arab villagers suffer the consequences of pre-emptive wars to secure Greater Israel as both President Bush and Vice President have publicly stated in justifying their aggression.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and the State: Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, will be published in October 2005. He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu

The story of Pharaoh shows how to profit from the enslavement of another nation

Haaretz, Israel

Pharaoh: The ruler as an idiot

By Yossi Sarid

Tonight, when we are all gathered around the table and telling about the Exodus, let us pay attention to Pharaoh, whose story is the story of the folly and shortsightedness of rulers. So much attention has been devoted to the leadership of Moses, who was one of a kind, that the leadership of Pharaoh, who was one of many like him, is shunted aside. Did the scriptures intend to compare two types of leaders so that those who are led would see? We hereby recommend reading the Haggadah this evening as a present-day text.

If the leadership of Moses was based on a great vision of saving a nation from its oppressors, the leadership of Pharaoh was based on a petty accounting of how to profit from the enslavement of another nation.

The Egyptians embitter the lives of the Israelites with hard work, and force them to build Pithom and Ramses. Imperial history has always built treasure-cities, which immediately surround themselves with a security fence for defending against the fury of the forced and overworked laborers.




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Moses opens his national and personal march toward freedom with an attack. He strikes an Egyptian man from the civil administration or the border police who is beating a Hebrew, and inters his body in the sand. Moses flees to the land of Midian, and from that moment he's a wanted man.

From the time the uprising erupts, it becomes clear the king is an idiot, and not much time will pass until the slaves go free in spite of him. He conducts a losing battle and trips on every bump on the road. When Moses and Aaron come to him for the first time, urging him to let their people go, he dismisses the two authoritatively: "Get you to your burdens." The king is still certain that if he only makes things hard for the Hebrews, they will prefer survival and a livelihood over sacrifice and redemption. From now on, he won't even give them straw for the bricks.

God is familiar with these foolish types who have no idea where they and their subjects are living. The more he hardens their hearts, the blinder they become. The 10 plagues begin to land on Pharaoh one after the other, but he refuses to be impressed. Blood floods the entire land of Egypt, Pharaoh and his magicians swallow frogs, the lice suck the marrow of man and beast, and the king does not give in. He does not agree to allow the Israelites to leave. As soon as the threat of one plague is removed, Pharaoh immediately refuses once again. He still does not understand that the next plague will be more lethal.

Only when Egypt fills up with wild animals does Pharaoh begin to sober up, but there is still a long way to go. And before the landing of the locusts, protest demonstrations begin. The citizens of Egypt want the affair to end. "How long?" they ask. "Do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed?"

Like his fellow rulers, Pharaoh knows how to count demonstrators and to read surveys. He offers additional gestures: The men will leave, but without the children. And when the plague of darkness falls he offers another concession: "Let your little ones also go with you," but without the flocks and cattle. When Moses and Aaron reject this offer too, the king gets furious, stops the negotiations and threatens to prevent them from leaving: "See my face no more, for on the day you see my face you shall die."

And then the last and terrible plague strikes, the plague of the first born. "And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead." And what common sense failed to achieve was achieved by bereavement.

Only now, after a fateful delay, does the king agree to a general exodus from Egypt - men, children, flocks and cattle. Up to the bitter end those blind rulers will never understand that anger is not appeased with miserly concessions and stingy gestures, and that national aspirations for independence cannot be destroyed.

And even at the last moment, when the tortured nation was already on the way to its independence, the enslavers change their minds and chase the new situation as though the wheel of history could be turned back. Then the sea sweeps over them, and they plummet like lead in the mighty waters.

What is left to us when we don't read the story of the Exodus properly? We are left with a belly full of matza balls and with "Pour out thy wrath."

How Palestine became “Israel’s Land”

March 30, 2007

By Sonja Karkar of Women for Palestine

For Palestinians, theirs is not the land of conquest, but the land of their roots going back to time immemorial. Such a lineage does not rely on a biblical promise like the Jewish claim that God promised the land to Abraham and his descendants, and is therefore, the historical site of the Jewish kingdom of Israel. It belongs to the people of Palestine by the simple fact of their continuous residence repeated through birth and possession going back to the earliest Canaanites and even those people living there before recorded history. They were there when the Israelites invaded the land, occupied it, and held it intermittently as wave after wave of other conquerors came and went, and they were still there when the Romans put an end to Jewish Palestine by destroying Jerusalem in 135AD. If a religious basis is sought, then the Palestinians can lay claim to being the descendants of Abraham’s son Ishmael who is regarded the forefather of the Arabs. But actually, Palestinian rights are enshrined in the universally accepted principle that land belongs to its indigenous inhabitants. Thus, the modern day struggle for this land by European Jewish immigrants who have no connection with Palestine other than through their religion is a colonial enterprise that seeks sovereignty for an “external Jewish population” to the exclusion of the indigenous Palestinians who, regardless of faith – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – have lived together for centuries.

Although eager to accept the UN Partition Plan of 1947 which recommended that 56% of the land be set aside for a Jewish State, 42% for an Arab state and 2% for an internationalised Jerusalem and its surrounds, the world has not said a word about the land that was seized by Zionist terrorists before the State of Israel was proclaimed on 14 May 1948. Through a series of shocking massacres, the territory assigned to the Jews suddenly became 77% resulting in more than 750,000 Palestinians being forcibly expelled and dispossessed of their homes, personal property and their homeland. The Jewish State then came into being without waiting for the United Nations Commission - prescribed in the Partition resolution - to hand authority progressively over to the Jewish and Arab leaders for their respective states. And after the 1948 war, Israel declared Jerusalem its capital in contravention of its internationally-recognised status of corpus separatum – a status that is still recognised. Effectively, the new state of Israel was not only created in violation of, it continued to violate, the very resolution which Israelis now look to as giving them sovereignty. The Arab state imposed by the UN Partition Plan without consultation and in contradiction to the UN charter - which should have upheld the majority indigenous Palestinians’ right to self-determination - has since been deliberately and methodically whittled away by Israel, leaving nothing but isolated non-contiguous parcels of land to some 4 million Palestinians.

Around 170,000 Palestinians remained in what became Israel, the largest number of whom resided in the Galilee area, originally a designated part of the Arab state under the Partition Plan. These Palestinians also became the victims of Israel’s land grab policy. Over 438,000 acres, which was more than the total Jewish land holdings at the time, were confiscated and a further 400,000 acres were marked for confiscation. After Israel won the 1967 war, the total territory of Palestine came under Israel’s rule. It annexed East Jerusalem, despite the Holy City’s internationally recognised status and began implementing its Jewish settlement program with a vengeance. The Palestinians in Israel were increasingly aware of their precarious position politically and declared a national strike, known as “Land Day” on 30 March 1976 against Israel’s continuing ruthless land expropriation. An affinity was quickly felt between Palestinians everywhere and “Land Day” was adopted as a sort of national Palestinian day which is commemorated by Palestinians and their supporters around the world each year. This awakening of national consciousness had an unequivocal political message: end the occupation and allow self-determination of the Palestinians in a sovereign state living in peace side by side with Israel.

Thirty-one years later, the message is till resonating, but the Palestinians are further away from seeing a solution than ever before. Daily, Israel is taking a bit of land here and a bit of land there, to make all of Palestine “Israel’s Land”. The problem then will be, what to do with 5 million Palestinians with no land? There are only a few possible, but criminal solutions - transfer, collective imprisonment, apartheid, and/or ethnic cleansing. Alternatively, Israel can disengage from the West Bank to the 1967 borders or agree on a single, democratic state for all. Without a just solution, the struggle for Palestine’s land will continue.

The International Law of Genocide: The case of Palestine

Mar 28, 2007

By James Risser
james.risser@gmail.com

In response to a comment that queried the existence of an active genocidal project on-going in Palestine, I have decided to write this brief diary on the subject, listing the relevant statutory language from the International Criminal Court and their definitions of the terms.

This is what the international crime of genocide is, as defined by the International Criminal Court. I shall leave it up to reader to render an opinion on whether the Palestinians are suffering from it or not. Of course, this same set can also be applied to the Iraqis under American occupation as well. So, it is directly relevant to any prosecution of the Bush Crime Family for their activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran (forthcoming).

Of course, America is not a signatory to the ICC.

Needless to say, there is no requirement that a signatory be charged with all five articles; a standard indictment may only have, say, Article 6(e) should children be transferred from one canton to another, or from one village to another, for example.

Note: the ICC begins footnoting this section with 2 and not 1; i have retained their numbering scheme.

Article 6

Genocide

Introduction

With respect to the last element listed for each crime:

–The term "in the context of" would include the initial acts in an emerging pattern;– The term "manifest" is an objective qualification;

– Notwithstanding the normal requirement for a mental element provided for in article 30, and recognizing that knowledge of the circumstances will usually be addressed in proving genocidal intent, the appropriate requirement, if any, for a mental element regarding this circumstance will need to be decided by the Court on a case-by-case basis.

Article 6 (a)
Genocide by killing
Elements

1. The perpetrator killed[fn 2] one or more persons.

2. Such person or persons belonged to a particular national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

3. The perpetrator intended to destroy, in whole or in part, that national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.

4. The conduct took place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against that group or was conduct that could itself effect such destruction.

Article 6 (b)
Genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm
Elements

1. The perpetrator caused serious bodily or mental harm to one or more persons.[fn 3]

2. Such person or persons belonged to a particular national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

3. The perpetrator intended to destroy, in whole or in part, that national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.

4. The conduct took place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against that group or was conduct that could itself effect such destruction.

Article 6 (c)
Genocide by deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction
Elements

1. The perpetrator inflicted certain conditions of life upon one or more persons.

2. Such person or persons belonged to a particular national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

3. The perpetrator intended to destroy, in whole or in part, that national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.

4. The conditions of life were calculated to bring about the physical destruction of that group, in whole or in part.[fn 4]

5. The conduct took place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against that group or was conduct that could itself effect such destruction.

Article 6 (d)
Genocide by imposing measures intended to prevent births
Elements

1. The perpetrator imposed certain measures upon one or more persons.

2. Such person or persons belonged to a particular national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

3. The perpetrator intended to destroy, in whole or in part, that national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.

4. The measures imposed were intended to prevent births within that group.

5. The conduct took place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against that group or was conduct that could itself effect such destruction.

Article 6 (e)
Genocide by forcibly transferring children
Elements

1. The perpetrator forcibly transferred one or more persons.[fn 5]

2. Such person or persons belonged to a particular national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

3. The perpetrator intended to destroy, in whole or in part, that national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.

4. The transfer was from that group to another group.

5. The person or persons were under the age of 18 years.

6. The perpetrator knew, or should have known, that the person or persons were under the age of 18 years.

7. The conduct took place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against that group or was conduct that could itself effect such destruction.

________________
[fn 2] The term "killed" is interchangeable with the term "caused death".

[fn 3] This conduct may include, but is not necessarily restricted to, acts of torture, rape, sexual violence or inhuman or degrading treatment.

[fn 4] The term "conditions of life" may include, but is not necessarily restricted to, deliberate deprivation of resources indispensable for survival, such as food or medical services, or systematic expulsion from homes.

[fn 5] The term "forcibly" is not restricted to physical force, but may include threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such person or persons or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment.

Spotlight On The Palestinian Struggle: New Pressure To Relinquish Rights

By Jamal Juma’

30 March, 2007
Stopthewall.org

Palestinians in our homeland and the diaspora remember the 30th of May as Land Day. On this day in 1976, six Palestinians were killed and a hundred injured by Israeli forces as Palestinians went on strike against a massive land confiscation scheme in the Galilee. Land theft and colonization continues in the Galilee, Naqab and the West Bank until today.

More than 30 years later, we will again be out on the streets and in the fields confronting the Occupation. Over 20 protests and demonstrations will unite the people in villages and cities across the West Bank in a week of continuous mobilization, while Palestinians on the other side of the Green Line will hold protests against the ongoing racism and colonization of their lands. But is the world willing to see our protests and the reality on the ground?

In the West Bank, including Jerusalem, the Israeli Apartheid Wall, settlements and their road systems are de facto confiscating over half of our land and most of our water resources and agricultural fields. Israeli apartheid is creating something worse than Bantustans: Palestinian residential areas surrounded by 8-meter high cement walls and sealed by gates, checkpoints and terminals.

Never have Israeli crimes been so evident and well-known all over the world. To dozens of UN resolutions has been added the decision of the International Court of Justice calling for the Wall to be dismantled. Violations of human rights and international conventions are reported daily. Lately, high level officials and envoys from the UN, the US and European states have to line up if they are to receive appointments with the Fatah-wing of the new Palestinian authority “government”. By now, they should be well aware of our ghettoization as well.

Diplomacy of the unipolar world focuses on Palestine, but with what purpose? The US-Israeli axis toed by Europe has never been willing to allow any of our rights to be implemented. Thus, skepticism shrouds whether the hectic diplomatic agenda in Ramallah is aimed at furthering our rights or justice in the region.

Rather than any concern for the Palestinian people, US elites are increasingly bound up in a discourse of “negotiation” in response to new realities. Iraq and Afghanistan have turned into veritable quagmires for the “alliance of the willing”. Moreover, the mounting body tolls and expenses and never-ending scandals of corruption, outright lies and torture have convinced more and more countries to withdraw their troops. Oil profits are definitely flowing from Iraq but at the same time, the sectarian divides fuelled by the US turn against them as resistance movements. The lost occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan have put the US in the Middle East in the hands of Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively the Shia and the Sunni regional powers.

While some still push to drive the madness further and to attack Iran, others look for diplomatic solutions. It is not only voices from the region that have suggested a move on Palestine as a pre-condition to get the US out of the Middle Eastern trouble; the home-made White House Baker report has stated the same. Our homeland and people have become the political card which is expected to save global imperialism from drowning in the Middle East.

If the US were willing to force Israel to grant us our rights, it would not require the current intense schedule of meetings. Our rights are internationally recognized and detailed; it only needs that the step be taken to implement them. The diplomatic traffic aims at finding a solution that appeases the Arab world and international public opinion without demanding anything from Israel. The question is how to coax the Arab world into normalization with Israel while bypassing our claims for our land and the right of our refugees to return to our homes. Not surprisingly, renowned experts of Middle East negotiations surface in the discussions as the neo-con strategy shows signs of strain. Baker’s able “multilateral” policy that shaped a 34-member alliance in the first gulf war has definitely given greater benefit to US hegemony than the current US policy. At the same time, another expert of normalization between Israel and the Arab world, Jimmy Carter, has joined the debate with his controversial book on Palestine.

US policy might slowly move from the stick to the carrot again, but the final aims of control over the Arab world and support for the Zionist agenda to continue its racist control over all of Palestine are beyond doubt. Pressure on the upcoming Arab summit has thus far been unsuccessfull in taking out the Right of Return from the Arab Peace Initiative. Now, efforts are being made to arrange direct meetings between Israel and leading Arab states. A new Camp David, a new “peace” between Israel and the Arab world on the back of our rights, is sought.

In the meanwhile, the newly formed Palestinian government has to be integrated into these plans to ensure it underwrites the formula. The ongoing sanctions against the Palestinian people represent the backdrop of international pressure and such efforts.

In this situation, it is neither Palestinians nor those in the Arab world that strive for justice and self-determination that need a deal. The ongoing resistance in Palestine and Iraq is the unpredictable factor that might change the cards on the table. It is time to underline the principles of our struggle and the baselines for peace and justice: the end of the occupation, equality for all of our people within our homeland, the right of return to their homes for our refugees, Jerusalem, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and cultural and economic center of Palestine as our capital, are integral parts of our right to self-determination. It is only when diplomacy is forced to see and change the reality on the ground in Palestine and accepts the pillars of our struggle, human rights and international law that justice comes closer.

The demonstrations and protests all over Palestine for Land Day are thus yet another call to our leadership and the wider region that they at least second, if not lead, the steadfastness and resistance of the people. Approximately 97 villages in the West Bank are completely isolated and slated for destruction or ethnic cleansing and some 4,500 houses are under demolition order to make space for Israeli colonization. Dispossessed farmers watch industrial estates growing on their land in a system designed to exploit and control. Six out of ten Palestinians live below the poverty line. Yet the calls that lead the demonstrations do not ask for food or survival. It is the calls for dignity and rights – the full implementation of our rights – that brings the people onto the streets. Another popular Intifada is inevitably building up as long as our rights are ignored and our future confiscated.

Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign – www.stopthewall.org

PLANNING FOR ETHNIC CLEANSING IN PALESTINE

Nizar Sakhnini, 25 March 2007

Zionist ethnic cleansing operations of 1948 were planned way before 1948. Ethnic cleansing was part and parcel of the Zionist plans for the creation of the Jewish State they had in mind.

The Haganah, an illegal military organization, was formed in 1920 headed by an elected political leadership and was transferred to the joint authority of the Jewish Agency Executive and the Va'ad Leumi in 1929. The Arab rebellion in 1936-39 was quelled by the British forces in cooperation with the Haganah. Palmach, the Haganah’s strike force, was formed in 1941.

In 1931, a group of the Haganah members seceded from the organization and became knows as the Irgun Tzeva'i le'umi or its acronym, Etzel.

In 1940, a small group led by Abraham (Yair) Stern, seceded from Etzel and began to operate separately under the name "Etzel in Israel" (the Stern group).

In 1939 differences of opinion emerged between Stern and Raziel, then commander of the Irgun, which led to a split in the organization and the establishment of the new organization Irgun Zvai Leumi Beisrael, which later became to be known as the Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Lehi). Yitzhak Shamir was one of the leaders of Lehi.

By the end of WWII, Haganah, Etzel, and Lehi joined together to carry out terrorist actions against the mandate government in Palestine. Moshe Sneh, head of the Haganah national headquarters, laid down the foundations for an alliance with Etzel and Lehi, which grew into the “Hebrew Resistance Movement”. (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, p. 130)

In 1948, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) was founded incorporating all the three terrorist organizations.

Military operational plans for occupation and ethnic cleansing were also prepared ahead of time.

Plan A was prepared in February 1945 at a time when the Zionist leadership was hoping for an unconditional support from a post-war British Labor government which would enable them to take over the country during a period of "transitional minority rule".

Plan B was introduced in May 1947, after the British had referred the Palestine question to the UN. Since partition was expected to be rejected by the Arabs, the strategic objective of Plan B was to frustrate any interference by the neighboring Arab forces.

Plan C (Plan Gimmel) was worked out in November 1947 when partition became a distinct possibility. It had more specific operational objectives than the two earlier plans.

In March-April 1948, Plan C was replaced by Plan D (Plan Dalet). Zero hour for Plan D was to arrive when British evacuation had reached a point where the Haganah would be reasonably safe from British intervention and when mobilization had progressed to a point where the implementation of a large-scale plan would be feasible. (Netanel Lorch, The Edge of the Sword, pp. 87 – 89, reproduced in Walid Khalidi, From Heaven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971. Second Printing, Washington, 1987 pp. 755 - 760)

The possibility of retreat from partition and imposing an international trusteeship in Palestine to replace the mandate made it necessary to launch plan D in early April, before the end of the mandate.

Efforts to acquire the weapons and equipment needed for the battle began as of the end of WW II. Ben-Gurion arrived in New York on 1 July 1945 for this purpose. He held a secret meeting with 18 Jewish American millionaires to discuss a ‘vital’ matter. The meeting was held at the home of his friend the millionaire Rudolph Sonnenborn who was among those who attended the meeting. Ben-Gurion explained his plans to acquire millions of dollars in arms to defend the Jewish State that had yet to be created. Each of the eighteen millionaires undertook to do everything within his power for the project. This was the beginning of the Sonnenborn Institute. As a cover, Sonnenborn was engaged in shipping equipment and medicines for hospitals, but secretly he collected millions of dollars to buy arms and many ships to serve illegal immigration. (Michael Bar-Zohar, op. cit., pp. 126 - 127)

In the months following the ZC in 1946, Ben-Gurion dedicated himself to studying military problems. Back in December, in the course of the Zionist Congress, Ben-Gurion had summoned Ya’acov Dori and Israel Galili for a series of conversations. Dori was one of the founders of the Haganah. Galili was the chief officer in the Haganah’s national command. Now, in the spring of 1947, he appointed Galili head of the national command and made Dori commander-in-chief. He summoned the former chief of operations, Yigael Yadin, and re-appointed him to head the Operations Branch in the national command. (Ibid, pp. 141 and 145 - 146)

On 30 Sept. 1947, Ben-Gurion sent his assistant, Munia Mardo, to Europe to seek out sources of arms supplies. Three days later, he decided to purchase airplanes and recruit military experts from abroad. On Oct. 6, Ben-Gurion summoned the head of Ta’as, the local arms and munitions works, and told him to order all the raw materials he required immediately. On 7 November, the Haganah published its order concerning ‘the national structure’, thereby laying the foundations for the establishment of the IDF in due course. (Ibid, pp. 146 - 147)

When the UN issued its resolution # 181 on 29 November 1947 calling for partition, Ben-Gurion was ready for action. The action included: ethnic cleansing, occupation of the largest possible part of Palestine by force and declaration of a Jewish State in that part as a first step for expansion in the future.

Centenarian's tale of Palestine

By Hashem Ahelbarra


Fatma Mahmoud lost her husband and six of her children [al Jazeera]



Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the story of the Palestinian people has been one of dispossession, refugee camps and unfulfilled dreams.

Life has been far from easy for residents of Gaza's Khan Younis refugee camp.

But in the course of a life lasting more than 100 years, one woman has been through more than most.

Fatma Mahmoud enjoys telling her granddaughter the ups and downs of a life that has already spanned a century. Her eyesight has faded, but her memory is still strong.

These days she is confined to a makeshift brick room in the camp.

'We lost everything'

She said: "I was born a long time ago, the Turks were still here. I remember when the British came and also when the Turks were forced to leave Palestine.

"I think I got married at the age of 20. I was at home with the kids when the Jews forced us to leave Jaffa.

"I think I was in my 50s. Now I have not seen my home town for 60 years."

She remembers the streets of Jaffa, her neighbours, her garden and the day that changed her life and those of thousands of Palestinians.

Fatma said: "I was a pretty woman, life in Jaffa was beautiful and when the Jews drove us out of our land, we lost everything.

"We fled the city on foot - I remember marching for long days."

The only belongings she brought from Jaffa were an old wardrobe and a container that served for kneeding dough and baking bread for her children.

Exodus

She has Egyptian and Israeli documents attesting she is in her 90s. After a phone call to her daughter based in Saudi Arabia and the only one alive of all her children, she confirms her mum is a centenarian.

After the 1948 exodus, she sought refuge in Gaza, went with her husband to Sinai in Egypt for a few years and returned to Gaza in 1975.

Her husband and six of her children died.

Itidal Ragab, Fatma's granddaughter, said: "My father died at a young age, I was three years old and my sister was four. So my grandmother looked after us. She often tells me she wishes he'd had a son to look after her now that she is old. I'm very hurt when she departs."

Time has taken its toll on her frail body, she is blind, unable to walk - a face from Jaffa that bears the signs of a tumultuous century.

When will hunting season in Israeli killing fields (Palestine) end?

Mar 17, 2007

Palestine: Israeli Killing Fields

By Dr. Elias Akleh


Zionism is a newer name for an ancient racist, expansionist, and imperialist political movement, whose aim was, and still is, the establishment of a strong “Jewish-only” empire (Greater Israel) in the Middle East, which was considered the heart of the ancient world, and the center of all trade.

To accomplish this goal ancient Israelite self-proclaimed “prophets” had introduced false religious beliefs and interpretations of scriptures into Judaism to nationalize the religion, and to misguide the Jews into believing in a prejudiced racist and war-loving god, who favors one group of people over all the rest of his creations, and –as a real estate agent- promised the Jews a piece of land, and promised to protect and to lead their armies to cleanse this promised land (from Nile to Euphrates) from all the heathens (Goyim) through genocide in return he asks them to build him a pathetic temple when he has the whole universe as his house. These false religious beliefs sanctioned theft, murder, torture and exploitation of other people, whom this prejudiced god had allegedly created to be only servants to the Jews.

Unfortunately many Jews – the believers in Judaism from all nations and not just the descendents of Abraham- fell victims to these false religious beliefs, and thus had volunteered themselves and their children, out of religious conviction and duty, to be drafted into armies to inflict mayhem and terror on all other nations in an attempt to actualize this false religious goal. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 in the heart of the Arab World, and the destructive ruthless genocidal wars against Palestinians and Arabs, consuming the souls of innocent people as well as their own souls, are continuation of their terror campaign towards that goal (Greater Israel).

In ancient times, the Old Testament tells us that “god of Israelites” had instructed their prophet Samuel to anoint Saul as the first king of Israel, and to order him to fulfill god’s wish of annihilating all Philistinian tribes in the Promised Land. Samuel instructed Saul to: “Now go and attack Amalikites (a Philistinian tribe) and utterly destroy all that they have and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (Samuel 15: 1-33). There go Moses’ divine Ten Commandments “You shall not kill” and “You shall not covet your neighbor’s possessions” out of the window. Saul perpetrated the genocide but spared the king “Agag” and the best of the livestock. Samuel, the so-called god’s prophet, hacked king “Agag” into pieces, and informed Saul that god is angry with him since he did not complete the genocide as he was instructed.

Since then genocide of non-Jews (Goyims) had been sanctified as a divine duty. Ancient Palestine was turned into killing fields for the Israelites, who raided all Philistinian tribes burning and leveling their cities, slaughtering every living soul without exception, and killing all their animals. The Old Testament is full of descriptions of these Israeli massacres. The Greater Israel dream was harshly shattered by the Persian and Roman armies, who defeated the Israelites, imprisoned them as slaves, sent them into Diaspora, and forbade them from returning to the Palestine.

For almost two thousand years the majority of the Jews forgot about the ancient Greater Israel dream, and concentrated on integrating themselves into the countries they were living in. During the crusaders campaigns (1095-1291) European Christians, while on their way to Palestine driven by false religious duty to cleanse the Holy Land from “heathens” by the sword, started attacking the Jewish communities because they had crucified Jesus. The Jews found refuge only in the Arabic and Islamic countries. When European Christians liberated Spain from Islamic rule, they forced Spanish Jews to convert to Christianity or face death. Many converted out of fear for their lives, some of whom started rediscovering their Jewish roots just recently, previous American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is just one example. Others left Spain, and along with many European Jews, who were persecuted by Christian Europeans, found refuge only in the Arab and Islamic countries in North Africa and in the Middle East, where they were welcomed, lived peacefully, and flourished. Later on these Jews adopted Zionism and immigrated to the newly established state of Israel.

During the nineteenth century, and after the discovery of oil in the Middle East, there was a fear that the Ottoman Empire “the Sick Man” would regain its power. The decision was made by the “World Power Elite” to topple down the Ottoman Sultan, to divide the empire into smaller weaker states ruled by complicit dictators, and to create the warring state of Israel in the heart of the Arab World to pacify Arab nationalism and to divert their attention away from the policies of their corrupt dictators.

Zionism, then, was created to revive the “Greater Israel” dream. Zionism used anti-Semitism and the Holocaust to instill fear into the Jewish communities in an attempt to drive them to immigrate to Palestine in order to “reclaim” god’s Promised Land, and to establish a safe Jewish-only state (Israel). History shows that Zionists were actually the worst enemies of the Jews and had perpetrated genocidal crimes against them. During early 1940’s there were plans to save European Jewry from the war by evacuating them to either USA or to British colonies. In 1941 and 1942 Germany offered hundreds of thousands of European Jews transit to Spain on the condition to be transported to USA or to British colonies, but not to Palestine, in 1942 British Parliament had a plan to evacuate 500 thousand Jews from Europe to British colonies, and in 1943 Romania offered 70 thousand Jewish refugees of the Transdniestria to leave at the cost of $50 each. Zionist leaders had rejected all these rescue operations and abandoned European Jewry to face their holocaust. (jewsagainstzionism.com)

Zionist leaders, such as Yitzhak Greenbaum, Chairman of Rescue Committee of Jewish Agency, and Stephen Wise, President of American Jewish Congress and leader of American Zionists, had rejected every effort to save European Jewry from the war, and refused to spend one cent on such rescue operations unless the Jews are transferred to Palestine. The attitude of Zionist leaders was represented by Greenbaum’s infamous statement: “One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe”.
Instead of saving the Jews Zionists aimed to inflame anti-Semitic feelings to intensify Jewish persecution in the hope to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote in his diary (part I, pp. 16): “It is essential that the suffering of Jews become worse … this will assist in realization of our plans… I shall induce anti-Semites to liquidate Jewish wealth… The anti-Semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-Semites shall be our best friends.” Zionists had paid money to thugs and sometimes to Jewish religious zealots to attack Jewish communities, especially those in the Arab countries, to vandalize their cemeteries, throw molotov bombs against synagogues, and write hate graffiti on their walls, in order to pressure them to immigrate to Palestine. Israelis are the biggest anti-Semites since they persecute Palestinians, who are also Semitic nation.

Zionists propaganda portraying the Zionist state of Israel as the safest haven for Jews is the greatest hoax perpetrated against Jews, who were living peacefully in Arabic and Islamic countries before the establishment of Israel. In fact Israeli Jews have been facing the greatest physical danger while living in the Zionist Israeli state since they met the Arabic welcoming favors with the savage robbery of Palestine and the theft of important Islamic religious mosques. Since the establishment of Zionist Israel in 1948 its Jewish citizens have been living in a state of perpetual wars, and their every new generation had been turned into war criminals through conscription into the Israeli terrorist army.


Zionist leaders had offered to collaborate with strong Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war by offering the services of Zionist terrorist militias to strengthen German power in the Middle East, for the purpose of receiving jurisdiction over Palestine. David Yisrael, in his book “The Palestinian Problem in German Politics 1889-1945” (Israel: 1947); pp. 315-317, reports that the radical Zionist group “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”, better known as the terrorist “Stern” gang, which later on became the Israeli army, had offered to cooperate with the Nazis in order to maintain and strengthen German power in the Middle East for the hope of receiving jurisdiction over Palestine to establish the Israeli state.

Edwin Black, in his book “The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine”, also talks about Zionist collaboration with the Nazi. On August 7th, 1933, Black reports, Zionist leaders concluded a secret and controversial agreement with the German Third Reich to transfer 60 thousand Jews and $100 million to Jewish Palestine.

The Arab/Israeli conflict serves the interest of the industrial military complexes in the US, UK and to a certain degree in France. They have sold weapons to both sides. To preserve Israel in order to ensure profiting perpetual wars they provided Israel with WMD and supported Israeli government politically and financially. Successive American administrations have become the major supporters of Israeli policies until recently, thanks to the influential power of AIPAC (Israeli lobby), the Israeli interests had become American’s primary interests. Both Republican and Democratic parties support Israel’s actions and policies unconditionally. Criticizing Israel is considered a political suicide as previous President Jimmy Carter put it.

With the unconditional support of the American administration (the global bully and greatest Satan as viewed by the Islamic World) Israeli government had received an open hunting license to, one more time, turn Palestinian territories into killing fields using cruel terrorist methods that surpassed those of the Nazis’.

Worse than Nazism, that was built on the racist social ideology of German supremacy (the superman), Zionism is built on a racist divine ideology of god’s chosen people in god’s promised land. Whereas it is acceptable to debate social ideologies, debating or questioning divine ideologies is considered sacrilege.

Worse than Nazism, for Zionism to establish the pure Jewish-only Greater Israel it was necessary to get rid of all other ethnic groups. This led to genocidal, ethnic cleansing and complete evacuation of Palestinians from their home land. Massacres and complete demolition of total Palestinian towns to terrorize Palestinians into “voluntary” immigrations became the adopted policies of Zionist Israel. Massacres such as Deir Yassin, Kufr Qassem, Qibya, Qana, Sabra & Shatila, Jenin, Rafah, and Beit Hanoun are just few among the hundreds of Israeli massacres against Palestinian civilians. Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian professor, in his book “All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied & Depopulated by Israel in 1948” details 400 Palestinian villages that were totally destroyed by Israeli army. Sharon Shai, an Israeli history professor at Tel Aviv University, revealed that the records of the Association of Archeological Survey Department, housed in Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, show that this Archeological Department had approved the razing of about one hundred Palestinian villages within 1948 Israel after their inhabitants were forcefully evacuated. After 1967 war the Department turned its attention to razing Palestinian villages in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights. Now-a-days we have 40 Palestinian towns in the Naqab desert that are unrecognized by Israel and do not receive any civil services although their inhabitants pay taxes. These towns are considered illegal by Israeli government, who has plans to demolish them all. Last Friday March 9th. military bulldozers, under the protection of the Israeli troops, had demolished the whole town of At-Taweel one home after the other as a first step in demolishing the rest of the 40 towns.

Worse than the Nazis Israeli terrorist troops conduct daily raids, mostly after midnights, on Palestinian cities and towns using tanks and armored military carriers. They raid civilian homes, destroy furniture, loot jewelry and money, terrorize family members, kidnap young men, and finally demolish the home. Demolishing Palestinian civilian homes has become a favorite pass time for the Israeli troops. During the last five years and up to the first of this March the Israeli terrorist forces had demolished 645 public buildings and 72,437 civilian homes belonging to 29,314 extended Palestinian families as reported by Palestinian Health Ministry. During the last week of February 2007 alone the Israeli army had conducted 43 raids throughout the Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Major Palestinian cities such as Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, Qalqellya, and Hebron just to name few have been raided by Israeli tanks since the beginning of this March. City infrastructures were destroyed, government institutions were ransacked and burnt, media institutions were raided and their equipments destroyed and confiscated, schools and hospitals were raided and damaged, civilian homes were targeted by tanks, innocent civilians including women and children were gunned down by snipers, and many men – civilians, police and members of Palestinian Parliament- were kidnapped. Fifty five men including six children from Nablus, twenty five from Bethlehem, and about sixty from Hebron were kidnapped in one night.

In Gaza Strip Israeli snipers routinely target Palestinian children playing in the streets. Artillery shells rain unexpectedly on Palestinian neighborhoods. American made Israeli military fighter planes bomb the houses of resistance leaders, alleged missile manufacturing and storage shops, and civilian vehicles inflicting what the Israeli government calls “regrettable collateral damage”.

Israeli government routinely confiscates Palestinian land to build colonies on them and calls them Israeli neighborhoods. This week Al-Birah Palestinian residents were informed by Israeli military that hundreds of acres of their land east of the city will be confiscated to build new Israeli colony. Military bulldozers routinely raze farm lands in Gaza Strip and West Bank destroying crops and carrying fertile soil and palm and olive trees to Israel.

Israel is building an imprisonment wall (730 km long and 8 meters high with an average 50 meters buffer zone) that annexes 47% of the West Bank, totally encircling and imprisoning major Palestinian communities turning them into concentration camps and isolating 361 thousand Palestinians, devastating Palestinian economy, and evacuating 35 thousand Palestinians from their homes.

Israel is destroying Christian and Islamic religious sites and is trying to claim many of as Jewish. Many Islamic mosques and Christian churches had been destroyed and converted to whore houses, nightclubs, restaurants, and even to animal barns. Israel is destroying an important ancient Islamic cemetery (Ma’man Allah) in Jerusalem in order to build so-called museum of tolerance in its place (what an irony). Israeli archeologists have been digging under the Islamic Al-Aqsa mosque since 1967 hoping to uncover their alleged temple, but so far they succeeded only in uncovering more Islamic structures and are trying to hide them. Yofal Baruch, a prominent Israeli archeologist, revealed that Israeli government is destroying and burying all the Islamic archeological sites they had uncovered around Al-Aqsa mosque.

Israel had kidnapped more than 10 thousand Palestinian men, women and children and thrown them into dark dungeons and desert make-shift tent prisons. Newborn babies were born to Palestinian mothers in prison. Prisoners are routinely tortured using unimaginable cruel methods. Many of these methods were exported to American prisons in Iraq such as Abu-Ghraib. It has been revealed that Palestinian prisoners are being used as experimental subjects for new dangerous pharmaceutical drugs. Amy Liftat, the pharmaceutical head in the Israeli Health Ministry, had revealed in the Knesset that there is an annual 15% increase in the amounts of “legal permits” granted to conduct more drug experiments on Palestinian prisoners.

Besides the terror of the Israeli Army Palestinian communities are also faced with Israeli colonizers’ terror. These colonizers have been given free hand to inflict all types of terror they can think of against Palestinian farmers and villagers. This terror included armed night raids and burning of farm houses, poisoning Palestinian animals, burning and damaging Palestinian crops and uprooting trees (especially ancient olive trees), releasing waste water into Palestinian area as a form of germ warfare, terrorizing Palestinian children on their way to schools, and many times shooting and killing Palestinian civilians. All these terror tactics are perpetrated under the watchful eyes and protection of the Israeli troops, who would shoot, beat to death, and imprison any Palestinian, who dares to defend himself and his property, accusing them of terrorizing settlers.

The Israeli terror against the Palestinian people is numerous and requires volumes to enumerate.

These Israeli killing fields are sanctioned and legalized by the American unconditional support to Israel. The American administration and Congress had been hijacked by the American Zionist Israeli lobby (AIPAC), who had convinced the Americans that Israeli religious racist interests and American interests are the same when in fact they are definitely not. I heard one American co-worker concludes “there is something so similar between Israel and Al-Qaeda terrorists, which is their certainty that God is on their side”

How is it that the American administration, the self-claimed patron of freedom and democracy, cut down on the vital services to its own tax-paying people, such as proper education, health care especially to its own veterans, helping victims of natural disasters such as Katrina victims, take care of the homeless and poor, and take care of, at least, the American environment, in order to provide terrorist Israel with financial, military, and political support, and thus antagonizing at least half of the world population.

Have I known better, I, as a Palestinian, would have asked the self-proclaimed righteous president Bush to help free the ten thousand Palestinian prisoners (men, women and children), who had been kidnapped by the Israeli army in the middle of the night from their own homes, the same way he helped Israel attack Lebanon last summer in an attempt to free two captured Israeli troops, who were sent as sacrificing lambs into the Lebanese territories to be captured by Hezbollah so that Israelis could use them as an excuse to wage a war they had planned for few months in advanced as Israeli Prime Minister Olmert had revealed recently. The Bush administration had supplied Israel with laser guided bombs to demolish Lebanese infrastructures, and cluster bombs to litter Lebanese fields. Later Bush coerced the UN to send international troops into Southern Lebanon to allegedly protect Israel from Hezbollah. I am sure Bush’s administration would not offer the same help to free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, not at least sending UN troops to protect Palestinians from Israeli terror.

How is it that killing civilians by a terrorist group is a grave crime, while the annihilation of a whole nation by (Israeli) government is considered a self-defense? Israel is an occupying force, and thus is violating international laws and many times its own laws. Israel had opposed several UN resolutions, violated human rights, and thus has been condemned numerous times by the international community. Yet with the protection of the American administration the Israelis keep on killing Palestinians.

When will the hunting season in the Israeli killing fields (Palestine) end?


Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala and lives in the US. Email: mailto: eakleh@ca.rr.com

It's Israel that incites hate

March 11, 2007 12:36 am


BETHLEHEM, Palestine--I am surprised that you find so terrible some of the quotes you record ["A steady diet of hate for kids in Palestine," Feb. 11] from Palestinian textbooks, such as "Palestine will be liberated by its men, its women, its young ones and its elderly." Surely something of this sort was said by Americans fighting for their independence during the Revolutionary War. Their desire to sacrifice for freedom echoes some of our first generals: "[A]ppealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free" (Joseph Warren, American account of the Battle of Lexington, 1775).

I spent three months in Palestine and Israel. I have been a witness to injustice that rarely makes it to mainstream news in the U.S.

I have spent time with families whose houses have been demolished; families who are left with no means of income after their fields have been destroyed; men who have been tortured in prison and who are nevertheless seeking a nonviolent way to resist; children who have been shot while playing; children who have been beaten by soldiers; and children whose siblings are in jail simply for being members of a political party.

The lives of Palestinians are devalued at the expense of Israelis. Palestinian children have little or no access to play areas, because of Israeli building restrictions and continued confiscation of land. While settlements atop hills in Palestine use water for swimming pools, gardens, and open spaces, Palestinians must pay four times as much to Israel for water.

Sewage from these settlements often runs directly onto Palestinian farmland.

Palestinian children in refugee camps face raids, where soldiers come in the middle of the night, break into their houses, and sometimes make an arrest or simply break things and leave.

You state that Palestinians do not learn about the Holocaust. Well, Israelis are not taught in school about the history of their country beyond the Jewish perspective. It is not taught, for example, that in the 1948 war more than 400 Palestinian towns were destroyed, and thousands of Palestinians were expelled or killed.

I have found that Israeli soldiers know little about why they receive orders, and Israeli civilians are ignorant of what happens in the West Bank. Please consider the following typical examples:

The first week I was here, I met a Palestinian family whose 11-year-old son was shot from a watchtower while playing on his porch.

I told an Israeli girl in her 20s about it. Her reply: "That couldn't have happened. It would have been on the news."

Two weeks ago we received a phone call from a family whose sons, 17 and 18 years old, had been beaten and arrested by the Israeli Defense Force in the village of Budrus.

I called the spokesperson for the IDF. I did not get in direct contact with the general. Instead I talked to an office worker. His response: "This doesn't have to do with us. We just talk to the media. But soldiers do not hurt innocent people. I am really sorry."

Last week I asked an Israeli soldier if he knew where the Green Line (the internationally recognized border that gives Palestine 22 percent of its original territory) is--since bulldozers, 12 kilometers away from this border, removed 700-year-old olive trees, the livelihood of 200 people.

His answer: "I don't know where the border is. I am just following orders."

There are actually many schools in Palestine that teach about Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully together. The Hope Flowers School near Bethlehem works to bring Palestinian and Jewish Israelis together to teach about reconciliation.

This school faces a court order--from Israel--that its cafeteria be demolished to make room for a security road. In addition, the school's water well will be taken. This school is even denied the right to repair the road that leads to the school.

Palestinians do not need to learn hate from textbooks. They can learn it when they see what happens to their friends and families, their schools, and their land. They learn it by having dignity and rights taken away.

The Web site Palestinian Media Watch teaches Americans to hate. It turns the parents and teachers of Palestine into caricatures of terrorists whom we can easily blame.

Every parent and teacher I have met here is struggling to meet basic needs--and at the same time is teaching children that education is the key to freedom. But you cannot tie a cat down and ask it to make peace.

It would be much more useful if the Web site were devoted to America's role in unilaterally supporting Israel and how we can reach a solution that is just.

It would also be helpful if Americans came to visit Palestine, to see for themselves.
Caroline Borden, from Catlett, works in Bethlehem, Palestine.

Copyright 2007 The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.

Enough is Enough

March 8, 2007

By Gilad Atzmon

The short piece that follows has very little to do with Palestine, it is not about the starvation in Gaza, it tells nothing about Israeli road blocks, it is not about the right of return. It will have zero effect on Palestine or the enormous Palestinian suffering. It is about a tiny group of Jewish activists who made solidarity into an ongoing nightmare. This piece is written with some severe pangs of conscience. I wanted to believe that we would never have to get there.

This small piece is dedicated in particular to Mr. Tony Greenstein, a Palestinian Solidarity activist who is engaged solely in smearing and throwing mud on other activists, especially intellectuals with some continental appetite.

Two years ago, I had come across his name for the first time. It happened after I performed in a very moving event in remembrance of the Deir Yassin massacre. The event was organized by DYR and it was by far the biggest Palestinian event and gathering of Palestinians I have ever come across in the UK. I was shocked to find out a few days later that a group of Jewish activists who call themselves ‘anti-Zionists’, for some peculiar reason, were investing some enormous energy in destroying DYR.

Bewildered by their viciousness, I then started to monitor what is known as the Palestinian solidarity activity of the Jewish people in the UK. For the first time in my life I confronted the real meaning of Diaspora Jewish identity, for the first time I learned what segregation and Goy hating is all about. For the first time in my life I realized how devastating Jewish lobbying is. I summarized my impression in a satirical piece that was comprised of genuine quotes made by those very few JAZ (Jewish anti-Zionists). I called it ‘The Protocols of The Elders of London’. The piece was circulated vastly. I was convinced at the time that the piece would have a positive impact in increasing some self-awareness amongst those activists. Indeed, some left the group known as Just Peace UK, where the quotes themselves came from, some admitted to being Zionists and joined Engage, some just disappeared but a very few were left to retaliate. This was indeed a beginning of a world war.

It didn’t take long before Tony Greenstein, one of those quoted, found an opportunity to hit back. The next time I learned about him was when he organized a picket against me outside a London Marxist bookshop (Bookmarks). As a result of my circulating a piece written by Paul Eisen, whom he regards as a NASHD&M (‘Nazi’, ‘Anti-Semite’, ‘Holocaust Denier’ and a ‘maggot’), Greenstein tried to stop one of my readings, blaming the SWP for ‘giving a platform’ to guess what: an ‘Anti-Semite’, ‘Racist’, a ‘Nazi’ and a ‘holocaust denier’. Yes Greenstein and his friends are not economical with expressions. Needless to say, that the SWP ignored them completely.

As time went by, I saw Greenstein tossing accusations in almost every possible direction, but then something rather unusual happened. A week ago Greenstein published a piece on the Guardian’s CIF, once again he was campaigning against DYR, blaming its Directors for nothing else but being Holocaust Deniers and Anti-Semites. This time Greenstein & Co wanted the UK Palestinian Solidarity campaign (PSC) to shun DYR. He did it in spite of the fact that DYR memorials are probably the biggest and most successful Palestinian gatherings in Britain.

Within the first few hours after publication, the Guardian blog filled up with the usual meaningless Zio-centric comments, yet one was made by an unknown character with the nickname of Sachman who was referring to Greenstein’s past:
"Is this the same Tony Greenstein who was banned from National Union Of Students Conferences in the 1980's for hitting a Jewish student?" (CIF)
Some red lights started to flash. I asked myself whether it was possible that the same Greenstein who picketed against me, calling me an anti-Semite was himself involved in some violent acts against Jews. I may admit that I myself have never been involved in any violent incident, either against Jews or anyone else and this includes the 3 years I had wasted in the IDF. I asked myself, is it the same Greenstein who accuses my friend, activist Paul Eisen, the most peaceful person I have ever come across, of being a racist?

At that stage I was totally convinced that the accusations against Greenstein were nothing but trash from a Zionist plant. I raised the question at the Peacepalestine blog. It didn’t take too long before some devastating information about Greenstein’s past started to flood in.

Apparently, Greenstein has a lot to hide, his personal history is tainted with some unsavory unlawful activity. Yet, this is not the issue here. I do not care much about people’s past. Nevertheless, Greenstein is famous for passing ethical judgments on others. I tend to believe that people who are engaged in righteous preaching should themselves stand as an example of moral clarity. Moreover, though I do not hold Greenstein’s past against his present activity, I do believe that a politician who runs some deadly defamation campaigns and motions against an international Palestinian solidarity group and solidarity activists should be prepared to have his own past exposed.

David Cameron, the Tory leader, had to confront the resurfacing of his juvenile affair with cannabis. Blair and Clinton had to face the music (both on guitar and on saxophone) of their old crimes that were exposed to the public in their first electoral campaigns. In case you decide to live a political life, you have to bear in mind that your past becomes public property.

Greenstein couldn’t agree less. Once he realized that more than a few of us were starting to learn about his rather serious unlawful past, a new measure of threatening tactics were put into place.

Indeed, the British law allows convicted criminals to lie about their past after the period of spent conviction. The law is indeed morally correct. It allows the convicted person to open a new page. The British law allows Mr Greenstein to lie about his past, yet it doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest of the world should do the same.

However, whether people do or do not lie about their past is neither my concern nor my business. Nevertheless, when a politician tries to impose a lie on me I have to stand up against that. When a person with such a past insists upon dictating the ethical ground of the Palestinian solidarity agenda, I just go for a war.

But there are some wider ethical and ideological implications that should be explored. Interestingly enough, Greenstein presents himself as a Shoah historian. Not that he has written any book or produced any body of substantial work about the subject. However, he is obsessed with the issue of Holocaust denial and historical revisionism. Thus, it is rather amusing that Greenstein has such little respect for historicity when it comes to his own past.

One categorical question to do with Greenstein’s double standards is left open. If Greenstein is indeed convinced that he is legally entitled to lie about his past due to his ‘spent convictions’, what exactly gives him the right to confront the Israelis about their 1948 crimes? If that is the case, wouldn’t it be better to just forget it all? Is there some point where law takes priority over truth, where the loopholes that exist should be taken advantage of to promote a personal cause or even to cover up something unpleasant or even criminal? Using that reasoning, if Greenstein adopts the rehabilitation law so enthusiastically, would he have something to say by analogy and about just how much one can mention the Nazi crimes. Wouldn’t the Nazis deserve the same measures of spent convictions, if we are taking the ethical stance of Greenstein at face value? Or is there a mobile moral compass that he is aware of that the rest of us still haven’t grasped?

Actually, I am not interested in Greenstein’s answer to those questions. I believe in forgiveness, in grace and in love. I believe that to understand the Holocaust is to understand its meaning rather than its historicity. I believe that to understand the Nakba is to understand its meaning. If Greenstein would understand the meaning of his own past in terms of abuse of others, he may stop being a bully and a self-appointed inquisitor. I can easily live with Greenstein’s past as long as he presents me with an image of an empathic future.

I do feel guilty for writing this piece. I do feel guilty for being personal and referring to the conduct of an old man who may as well be a good man with a genuine positive will. But I am afraid that by avoiding it I would betray my beliefs. The smearing and the defamation must be stopped. I believe that Solidarity with Palestine must be based on an ethical thinking, on empathy and on love between people. I am tired of those hateful campaigns run by Greenstein and his friends, I am tired of people being labeled Nazis, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. Enough is enough.

I would never suggest banning Greenstein and his friends, though this is exactly what they suggest doing to others. All I ask for is a free discourse. A dialogue that allows different people to think differently. I have written this piece with regret. I was always hoping that we would never have to get there. The solidarity movement should move forward, it is all about Palestine rather than about the four or five UK Marxist Jews who care solely about anti-Semitism. Palestine solidarity is about Palestine. It is not about Jews being anti-Zionists. It is about people who protest against the inhuman crimes committed by the Jewish state.


An Israeli born Jew who served in the Israeli army, currently living in London. He is a top professional jazz musician playing saxophone and clarinet.