Zionism Kills

Norman Finkelstein - Hezbollah, the Honour of Lebanon

zionismkills — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:28:51 +0000

Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American political scientist and author, specializing in Jewish-related issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular talks about the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and openly supports and praises their resistance: “They (Hezbollah) show courage, they show discipline, I respect that”

On Israeli defeat and consequential withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Finkelstein says:”But the reality was — and everyone understood it — that the Israeli attitude was: We are going to knock out Hizbullah. They began planning for a new war right after they were forced to leave in 2000. They found their excuse, their pretext, in July 2006, but there is no question among rational people that Israel was never going to let the Hizbullah victory go by.”

Watch the video:

“There is no way that the United States and Israel are going to tolerate any resistance (to their hegemony) in the Arab world.”

On the damage caused to Lebanon as a result of the resistance: “It’s better to die on your feet than to walk crawling on your knees….how can I not respect those (Hezbollah) who say they would rather die on their feet? How can I not respect that?”

Finkelstein then goes on to slam the stances taken by some sell out Arabs who continue to admire George Bush like ‘Servants’ despite Bush being the man behind the carpet bombing of Lebanon and says that Bush should be classified as ‘persona non grata’:”Who (would) roll out the red carpet less than two years after your whole country was destroyed by them (the US)? “

“You (sell out-arabs) have NO self respect”

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How Hezbollah achieved victory over Israel

Part 1: The Intelligence War
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_E…

Part 2: The Ground War
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_E…

Part 3: The Political War
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_E…

McCain is Jewish

zionismkills — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:30:31 +0000

Palestinian Woman Attacked by Israeli Military Dog

zionismkills — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:17:15 +0000

CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO

Israel’s Ehud Olmert Gives Canada and PM Stephen Harper Love

zionismkills — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:23:49 +0000

Stephen Harper goes too far with his pro-Israel stance

In a recent speech to mark the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel, Canadian PM Stephen Harper suggested that hatred for the state of Israel is tantamount to hatred for the Jewish people:

“Unfortunately, Israel at 60 remains a country under threat - threatened by those groups and regimes who deny to this day its right to exist … And why? Make no mistake, look beyond the thinly veiled rationalizations: Because they hate Israel, just as they hate the Jewish people.”

Linking Israel and “the Jewish people” in this fashion, raises questions about Harper’s Zionist sympathies and evangelical affiliations. It is reminiscent of the language used by certain pro-Israel US pastors.

Since Harper’s focus was Israel and its 60th anniversary, it’s worth pointing out that Israel is not in fact “Jewish”, unless you consider non-Jewish Israelis to be widgets rather than citizens. The Jewish population of Israel is around the 76% mark. There are also 16.3% Muslims, 2.1% Christian, 1.7% Druze. Not all of the 76% represent religious or even Zionist Jews. According to a 2004 Israel Central Bureau of Statistics study, 44% of Israelis describe themselves as “secular”, and of these only 53% professed a belief in God. Subsequent polling has shown a fluctuation in these numbers.

A more recent TGI poll conducted among 10,000 Israelis reveals that 55% believe that it is important to maintain boundaries between the state and religion. Sixty five percent polled said they felt more Israeli than Jewish. A survey conducted by Ynet and the Gesher organization found that among secular Israelis, 57% would have no problem if their son married a non-Jewish girl. Surprisingly among religious Jews, 13% said they would have no problem with the marriage either so long as the prospective bride had Israeli citizenship.

A recent Harvard study - “Coexistence in Israel: a National Study” - provides surprising information about the relations between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. We are accustomed to media coverage that presents these communities as strife torn and polarized, but the truth is less extreme. The findings of the study provide optimism for those who believe in the prospect of a one-state solution. The study includes the following statistics:

• A great majority of both Jewish citizens (73%) and Arab citizens (94%) want Israel to be a society in which Arab and Jewish citizens have mutual respect and equal opportunities.
• 68% of Jewish citizens support teaching conversational Arabic in Jewish schools to help bring Arab and Jewish citizens together.
• 77% of Arab citizens would rather live in Israel than in any other country in the world.
• More than two-thirds of Jewish citizens (69%) believe contributing to coexistence is a personal responsibility; a majority (58%) of Jewish citizens also support cabinet level action.
• Arab citizens and Jewish citizens both underestimate their communities’ liking of the “other.”
• Urgent action on coexistence in Israel is desired: 66% of Jewish citizens and 84% of Arab citizens believe the Israeli government investments should begin now, and not wait until the end of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The identification of the state of Israel with Jewishness entails a leap that some Israelis themselves would question - not just progressive Israeli secularists and Arab Israelis, but also those orthodox Jews who have consistently drawn a line between their Jewish faith and the Zionist state.

Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, was a Talmud scholar of the first rank. In his book “Va Yoel Moshe”, he made clear the orthodox position on Zionism, based not upon his personal opinion or prejudices, but upon midrash ( biblical interpretation). In reference to Tractate Kesubos 111a of the Talmud, Teitelbaum states that God and the people of Israel exchanged three vows prior to the exile from ancient Israel:

1. That the Jewish people would not ascend to the Holy Land as a group using force.
2. That the Jewish people would not rebel against the governments of countries in which they lived.
3. That the Jewish people would not, by their sins, prolong the coming of the Jewish Messiah.

Rabbi Teitelbaum was not alone in this view. Many Hasidic rabbis share his convictions with respect to Zionism.

In Canada, Yakov M. Rabkin, a Professor of History at the University of Montreal, is the author of “Threat Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism.” A passage from the book illustrates the impact of Zionism upon pure, Torah-based Judaism:

“Worse than the toll of suffering, exploitation, death, and desecration of the Torah, has been the inner rot that Zionism has injected into the Jewish soul. It has dug deep into the essence of being a Jew … It has wreaked havoc among Jews both in Israel and America, by casting us in the role of Goliath-like oppressors. It has made cruelty and corruption the norm for its followers.”

Harper’s linking of hatred of Israel with hatred of Jews is a way of closing down political criticism of Israel by inferring that its critics are anti-Semitic. It makes you wonder what type of close minded idealogue has been elected to Canada’s top office. At times when you listen to Harper, you could be forgiven for thinking that he believes Israel has a divine mandate none should question. The truth is many Jews do in fact question the state of Israel, while continuing to defend its existence. One such group is the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians, that speaks out against Israeli policies they consider unjust. Are they also anti-Semitic?

Harper has taken such an extreme position on Israel that it is an embarrassment to many Canadians who value the traditional role Canada has played in international affairs. The one-sided views of the Prime Minister were echoed by comments made by Alan Baker, Israeli ambassador to Canada. Baker told The Globe and Mail that Muslims were having a growing influence on the foreign policies of European nations, and he ‘feared’ this might also turn out to be the case in Canada.

Baker seems to be inferring that Canadian Muslims are somehow crossing a line if they presume to advance their rights and interests as Canadian citizens. He refers to Canadian Muslims as having “their own values and principles” - the inference being that such values are in some way non-Canadian. Note to Mr Baker: Canada isn’t a lobby for the state of Israel … Canada is a fully fledged democracy and the views of Canadian Muslims are no less valid than the views of Canadian Jews.

It should be noted in the context of this discussion that according to the 2001 census, Muslims in Canada number 580,000 as compared with Jewish Canadians at 330,000.

Some of Baker’s remarks are presumptuous. He said: “I’ve got nothing against the fact that Muslims are members of the Canadian Parliament.” Talk about high handed. Canada isn’t doing its Muslim citizens a favor by including them in the political process - it is their right. Baker appears to be projecting the second-class status of Arab Israelis onto Canadian Muslims - a mistake, because unlike democracy in Israel - democracy in Canada isn’t a front for an entrenched supremacist ideology. When the governing party gets kicked out of office, it’s baggage goes with it.

At its best Canada is about equal opportunity and fair play for all - not about the cultural and political dominance of a small minority, however wealthy and influential. The disproportionate influence of the pro-Israel Jewish community in Canada, and the extent to which that influence has impacted the policies of the Tory Party should be a matter of grave concern to all Canadians who believe that the role of Canada on the international stage should be a broader and less partisan one than that currently being pursued by Stephen Harper.

Harper’s appeasement hits a new low, yet some still can’t grasp the fact that Canada is Zionist controlled. Is the opposition Zionist controlled as well?

“I guess my fear is what I see happening in some circles is (an) anti-Israeli sentiment, really just as a thinly disguised veil for good old-fashioned anti-Semitism, which I think is completely unacceptable,”Mr. Harper said in an interview with CJAD/CFRB radio.

Why is Harper working for the racist state of Israel? YayaCanada, an “alternative” Canadian internet news site, put it this way:

Harper’s blind support of Israeli policies is based partly on religious indoctrination, partly on directives from the US, and perhaps more importantly, his hope of “the Jewish vote” (a prejudicial term if ever there was one, suggesting that all Jews think with the same noodles).

Religious indoctrination and US appeasement(but what is the source of the pro-Israel sentiment of the US :-)) I can buy, but the “Jewish vote”? The folks at Yayacanada must be joking! The only Jewish votes that matter in a country where Jews are less than 2% of the population are those of the Zionist dominated media in Canada. The powerful Jews who own media are Zionists. Establishment Jews may have their disagreements but they are nearly always in agreement when it comes to irrational and treacherous, “unwavering” support of the world’s pariah, apartheid Israel.

Anyone that does not see that Zionists effectively control Canadian politics through their media domination is missing the big picture either through ignorance or malevolence. Politically ‘dissident’ sites like YayaCanada and ViveleCanada protect Zionists by covering the ‘other side’, but don’t reveal enough to actually expose the Zionists.

Whether it is political correctness(unforgiveable), ignorance(somewhat forgivable) or malfeasance(front groups), any Zionist protecting sites should be taken with a shaker of salt.

Even some pro-Palestinian blogs don’t really get it. There is no reasoning with Harper and the rest of the Bilderberg-vetted scum that dominate Canadian politics. Harper is not ignorant, he is fully aware of what he is doing and the powers he serves and it is time everyone woke up to it.

Here is an excerpt from an article discussing Harper’s latest subversion:

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/canadas-ignorant-prime-minister/

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently made outrageously ignorant comments on the plight of the Palestinian people.

He claimed that criticism of and opposition to the Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinian people amounted to “anti-Semitism.”

“Unfortunately, Israel at 60 remains a country under threat - threatened by those groups and regimes who deny to this day its right to exist,” Harper said in a Toronto celebration marking the inauspicious anniversary of Israel’s birth.

“And why? Look beyond the thinly veiled rationalizations; because they hate Israel, just as they hate the Jewish people.”

Obviously, Harper was trying to curry favor with Jews by appearing more Israeli and more Zionist than many Israelis themselves are.

read the rest of a well-written article that unfortunately lacks insight into the Zionist power structure:

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/canadas-ignorant-prime-minister/

Jewish War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Middle East

zionismkills — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:15:32 +0000

Horrible as the events described in the preceding sections above (communism, ww2) are, in one sense we are insulated from them - by time. The events are not happening now. They are history. Today, it is too late to hunt down the perpetrators, or almost too late. The victims are largely in their graves, their tormentors have largely joined them, the suffering is long ended, and even the first-hand memory of the suffering has almost been snuffed out. Although much work remains for historians to complete, the rest of us can go on with our lives.

However, this is not the case for the horrors described below. They are contemporary. Blood flows today. The screams of the tortured echo today. These horrors are within our power to stop, and within our power to punish. We cannot read about them and then simply go on with our lives.

Most relevant to the topic of Canadian prosecution of war criminals - the Israeli war criminals described below are still young and hale, nothing stops them from immigrating to Canada, and it is likely that some are living among us today. That aging Ukrainians are prosecuted for nothing worse than - under threat of death - reluctantly donning some German uniform and perfunctorily carrying out some conjectured duties, while young murderers and torturers with blood still fresh on their hands walk free and unpunished among us, is an incongruity that my present letter asks your Justice Department to explain.

The Author

The quotations below are all from Norman G. Finkelstein, mainly from his The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996; and one from his Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Verso, London and New York, 1995.

Norman Finkelstein teaches international relations and political theory at City University of New York and New York University. The glowing reviews appearing on the backs of his two books are too numerous to reproduce here. Perhaps, however, the dedication in his Image and Reality provides valuable insight into his background:

To my beloved parents,

Maryla Husyt Finkelstein,
survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto,
Maidanek concentration camp

and

Zacharias Finkelstein,
survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto,
Auschwitz concentration camp.

May I never forget or forgive
what was done to them.

Let us begin by noting a few statistics that Finkelstein provides concerning the birth of Israel:

Between 1947 and 1949, some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled as Israel declared its independence, and in June 1967 some 300,000 more Palestinians fled or were driven into exile as Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza. Hundreds of villages were systematically razed and erased from the map. In the course of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza after June 1967, over 1,000 Palestinians - including women and children - were deported without charges or trial. Fully 50 percent of the land and 80 percent of the precious water reserves were confiscated by the Israeli government. And as deported Palestinians languished in exile, some 100,000 Jews settled in the West Bank and Gaza. All these measures - and many more routinely taken by Israel in the occupied territories - were, as one Israeli periodical euphemistically put it, “very far from the norms of international law” (Hotam, 4 August 1989).

(Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, p. 52)

And also a few examples of the sorts of events that constituted Israel’s War of Independence:

Atrocities escalated, “no doubt precipitat[ing] the flight of communities on the path of the IDF advance” (Birth, p. 230). Consider the massacre at Ad Dawayima in late October. A soldier eyewitness described how the IDF, capturing the village “without a fight,” first “killed about 80-100 [male] Arabs, women and children. The children were killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead.” The remaining Arabs were then closed off in houses “without food and water,” as the village was systematically razed.One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain house … and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused. … The commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her. One woman, with a newborn baby in her arms, was employed to clear the courtyard where the soldiers ate. She worked a day or two. In the end they shot her and her baby.

The soldier eyewitness concluded that “cultured officers … had turned into base murderers and this not in the heat of battle … but out of a system of expulsion and destruction. The less Arabs remained — the better. …

Morris reports the following (very partial) inventory of IDF atrocities committed in the October fighting, as presented to the Political Committee of Mapam:

SAFSAF — “52 men tied with a rope and dropped into a well and shot. 10 were killed. Women pleaded for mercy. [There were] 3 cases of rape. … A girl aged 14 was raped. Another 4 were killed.”

JISH — “a woman and her baby were killed. Another 11 [were killed?].” …

(Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Verso, London and New York, 1995, p. 76)

Here is mention of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982:

Some two hundred Kuwaitis reportedly perished in the course of the Iraqi invasion. Approximately twenty thousand Palestinians and Lebanese perished in the course of the Israeli invasion [of Lebanon]. There was fully a hundredfold difference between the two invasions. And as the media waxed indignant over Iraq’s use of horrific chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds, they should have remembered as well Israel’s use, probably illegal, of cluster bombs and phosphorus shells during the Lebanon War. In his epic memoir, Pity the Nation, veteran British correspondent Robert Fisk described two Lebanese infant victims of the phosphorus shells:Dr. Shamaa’s story was a dreadful one and her voice broke as she told it. “I had to take the babies and put them in buckets of water to put out the flames,” she said. “When I took them out half an hour later, they were still burning. Even in the mortuary, they smouldered for hours.” Next morning, Amal Shamaa took the tiny corpses out of the mortuary for burial. To her horror, they again burst into flames.

(Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. 45-46)

The remaining quotations concern themselves with the intifada, to which I allocate more space because it is truly contemporary:

In fact, every expression of Palestinian “violence” I witnessed during my stay in the occupied territories was little more than symbolic, though the same could not be said for the force used to suppress it. Once, at Jalazoun refugee camp, children were burning a tire off the main road inside the camp when a car … pulled up next to it. The doors swung open, and four men (either settlers or the army in plainclothes) jumped out, shooting with abandon in every direction. The boy beside me was shot in the back, the bullet exiting from his navel. … Next day the Jerusalem Post reported that the army had fired in self-defense.

(Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, p. 2)

In the afternoon, news arrived of a massacre in Bethlehem. Infiltrating a crowd of protestors, an Israeli undercover squad disguised as tourists shot five Palestinians youths point-blank. One lay dead; the four wounded were pulled by their hair along the pavement to the army depot. As the terrified crowd dispersed, the civilian-clad assassins laughed and joked with the assassins in uniform.

(Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. 42-43)

A thousand-page Save the Children study, The Status of Palestinian Children during the Uprising, exhaustively documented the “indiscriminate beating, teargassing, and shooting of children.” More than 150 Palestinian children have been killed since the beginning of the intifada, including at least 37 below the age of six. The average age was ten. A majority, the study found, were not even participating in a stone-throwing demonstration when shot dead, and four-fifths of the gunshot victims were “obstructed or delayed by the army” as they sought emergency medical treatment. Funerals were “violently disrupted or interfered with” by the army. More than fifty thousand Palestinian children required medical attention for tear-gas inhalation, multiple fractures, and so on, during the first two years of the intifada; nearly half were ten years old or younger. The study also found that “the vast majority of soldiers responsible for the child casualties have been neither censured nor punished.” Indeed, only the few cases that received press coverage were even being investigated.
A B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) study, Violence against Minors in Police Detention, found that “illegal violence against minors, … many [of whom] are innocent of any crime, … occurs on a large scale.” Severe beatings, including “slapping, punching, kicking, hair pulling, beatings with clubs or with iron rods, pushing into walls and onto floors,” were said to be “very common.” The study also highlighted more novel methods for interrogating minors:Beating the detainee as he is suspended in a closed sack covering the head and tied around the knees; tying the detainee in a twisted position to an outdoor pipe with hands behind the back for hours and, sometimes, in the rain, at night, and during the hot daytime hours; confining the detainee, sometimes for a few days, in the “lock-up” — a dark, smelly and suffocating cell one and a half by one and a half meters [five by five feet]; placing the detainee, sometimes for many hours, in the “closet” — a narrow cell the height of a person in which one can stand but not move; and depositing the tied-up detainee for many hours in the “grave” — a kind of box, closed by a door from the top, with only enough room to crouch and no toilet.

Israeli press and human rights reports put flesh and blood on the data. The 1 April 1988 issue of Hotam reported the case of a ten-year-old beaten so black and blue during an army interrogation that he was left “looking like a steak.” The soldiers “weren’t bothered” even when they later learned that the boy was deaf, mute, and mentally retarded. The 13 July 1988 issue of Koteret Rashit reported the “disappearance of 25 children” and jail threats to their parents for “annoying” the army about the children’s whereabouts. The 19 August 1988 issue of Hadashot featured three photos of a blindfolded six-year-old in an army jeep. The caption reported that many children his age would be held in detention until “ransoms” of several hundred dollars were paid, and that, as they were carted away, the children often urinated in their pants “from fear.” Under the heading “Deliberate Murder,” the August 1989 bulletin for the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights reported that the Israeli army (apparently sharpshooters from “special units”) had targeted an “increasing” number of Palestinian children in leadership roles. “Carefully chosen,” the victim was usually shot in the head or heart and died almost instantaneously. Dr. Haim Gordon of the Israeli Association for Human Rights reported the case of an eight-year-old tortured by soldiers after refusing to reveal which of his friends had thrown stones. Stripped naked, hung by his legs and brutally beaten, the boy was then pushed to the edge of a rooftop before being released (cited in the January 1990 bulletin of the Israeli League). The 15 January 1990 issue of Hadashot reported the case of a thirteen-year-old who was thrown into detention after his fingers were deliberately broken and who was then left without any medical treatment or food because his father was unable to pay the ransom of 750 dollars. The 26 January 1990 issue of Davar reported the case of a sixteen-year-old girl who was beaten by a club-wielding policeman (”He even tried to push the club between my legs”) and then thrashed in prison for refusing to sign a confession. The 29 June 1990 issue of Hotam reported the case of a thirteen-year-old detainee who, refusing to supply incriminating evidence against his brother, was “smashed” in the face, had “bruise marks on his entire body,” was not allowed to drink or eat “for hours,” and was forced to “urinate and defecate in his pants.”
Reporting on the grisly fate of Palestinians as young as fourteen arrested on “suspicion of stone-throwing,” the 24 February 1992 issue of Hadashot quoted an inside source at the Hebron detention center:

What happened there … was plain horror: they would break their clubs on the prisoners’ bodies, hit them in the genitals, tie a prisoner up on the cold floor and play soccer with him — literally kick and roll him around. Then they’d give him electric shocks, using the generator of a field telephone, and then push him out to stand for hours in the cold and rain…. They would crush the prisoners, … turning them into lumps of meat.

Another source inside the center was quoted to the effect that the “tortures recall what is being inflicted in the cellars of Damascus’s prisons.”

(Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. 47-49)

Israel’s High Court proved to be a willing accomplice of the conquest regime in the West Bank and Gaza. The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibited the destruction of private property except “where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations” and also explicitly forbade collective punishment. Yet the High Court ruled that house demolitions in the occupied territories were permissible, even claiming that “there is no basis to the claim that house demolition is a collective punishment.” The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibited an occupying power from resettling its “own civilian population in territory it occupies.” Yet the High Court either ruled that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were legal or refused to hear challenges to their legality. International law stipulated that an occupier could not institute new taxes in the territory under its control. Yet the High Court ruled that the arbitrary value-added tax imposed on the occupied territories in 1976 was permissible. …
Israeli military courts had jurisdiction over all “security-related” (and most significant civil) cases involving Palestinians in the occupied territories. Suspects could be detained without trial for a period of eighteen days. The decision to renew detention was typically based on information supplied by the military prosecutor. Applications for release on bail were “almost never accepted.” Suspects had “absolutely no right of legal representation.” When representation was allowed, the lawyer was not permitted to visit his client until the interrogation had been completed. Trial proceedings barely rose to the level of farce. The “overwhelming majority” of convictions were decided on the basis of confessions “usually obtained under duress” and “almost invariably written in Hebrew,” a language “few Palestinians could speak or read.” Administrative detention allowed for imprisonment without charge, evidence, or trial for as much as a year.
Official Israeli rules of engagement allowed for the killing of a Palestinian simply for wearing a mask, hoisting a flag, erecting a barricade (which often consisted of no more than a few rocks and overturned garbage bins), or ignoring an order to halt. They also allowed for the virtually unrestricted use of lethal plastic bullets and the summary execution of “wanted” Palestinians. All these orders were in contravention of international law that sanctioned the use of lethal force only in life-threatening situations and then only if there was no recourse except to lethal force. As Middle East Watch concluded, official Israeli policies and practices “effectively condone [] the unjustified killing of Palestinians.”
The guidelines just cited on the use of lethal force were the official ones. The unofficial or de facto rules of engagement were yet more lax, as was evident from the record on investigations and convictions of Israelis accused of killings. More than seven hundred Palestinians had been, in the course of the intifada through December 1989, shot dead by Israeli security forces. Yet not one Israeli soldier was indicted on a murder charge, and only two were indicted on manslaughter charges. A tiny handful were indicted on lesser charges such as illegal use of weapons. The fewer than ten soldiers convicted in connection with killings of Palestinians received punishments ranging from an official reprimand to eighteen months’ imprisonment. … By way of contrast, Amnesty International reported that Palestinians received sentences of up to five years’ imprisonment for simply throwing a stone.
Reviewing the notorious case of a Gazan brutally beaten to death by Israeli soldiers (none of the accused was indicted on a major criminal charge or served more than five months in prison), the prominent Israeli advocate Avigdor Feldman concluded: “The illegality in the Territories is total. Everyone - regardless of echelon, regardless of disagreement on every other conceivable topic - is of a mind on one matter: the value of an Arab’s life is equal to zero.”

(Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. 51-52)

Recalling his stint as a guard in Gaza Beach, “one of the best” Israeli internment camps for Palestinians, Israeli journalist Ari Shavit expatiated on [his experiences] with rare candor and insight:Most [Palestinians] are awaiting trial; most were arrested because they were throwing stones or were said to be members of illegal organizations. Many are in their teens. Among them, here and there, are some boys who are small and appear to be very young…. The prison has twelve guard towers. Some Israeli soldiers are struck - and deeply shaken - by the similarity between these and certain other towers, about which they have learned at school …. Maybe the Shin Bet [secret police] is to blame for this - for the arrests it makes and what it does to those arrested. For almost every night, after it has managed, in its interrogations, to “break” a certain number of young men, the Shin Bet delivers to the [soldiers] a list with the names of friends of the young men…. [Then] the soldiers … go out almost every night to the city and … come back with children of fifteen or sixteen years of age. The children grit their teeth. Their eyes bulge from their sockets. In not a few cases they have already been beaten … And soldiers crowd together in the “reception room” to look at them when they undress. To look at them in their underwear, to look at them as they tremble with fear. And sometimes they kick them - one kick more, before they put on their new prison clothes … Or maybe the doctor is to blame. You wake him up in the middle of the night to treat one of those just brought in - a young man, barefoot, wounded, who looks as if he’s having an epileptic fit, who tells you that they beat him just now on the back and stomach and over the heart. There are ugly red marks all over his body. The doctor turns to the young man and shouts at him. In a loud, raging voice he says: May you die! And then he turns to me with a laugh: May they all die! Or maybe the screams are to blame. At the end of the watch, … you sometimes hear terrible screams … from the other side of the … fence of the interrogation section, … hair-raising human screams. Literally hair-raising …. In Gaza our General Security Services therefore amount to a Secret Police, our internment facilities are cleanly run Gulags. Our soldiers are jailers, our interrogators torturers. … Thus in the forty months of the intifada, more than ten thousand Israeli citizens in uniform have walked between the fences, have heard the screams, have seen the young being led in and out. … And the country has been quiet. Has flourished … Ten thousand (if not fifteen thousand, if not twenty thousand) Israelis have done their work faithfully - have opened the heavy iron doors of the isolation cell and then closed it. Have led the man from the interrogation chamber to the clinic, from the clinic back to the interrogation chamber. They have looked close up at people shitting in terror, pissing in fear. And not one among them has begun a hunger strike in front of the house of the prime minister. Not one among them that I know of has said, This will not happen. Not in a Jewish state.

(Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. 71-73)

Just as Germans for generations to come would have to bear the burden of Nazism, so Jews for many generations to come would have to bear the burden of Israel’s merciless assault against the Palestinian people. Just as Germany’s name was now inextricably linked, not just with Beethoven and Brecht, but with Hitler and Himmler, so the Jewish people’s name would now be inextricably linked, not just with Marx and Menuhin, but with Sharon and Shamir. Israel’s terroristic war against the Palestinians had also besmirched the memory of the six million Jewish martyrs.

(Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, p. 16)

Barack Obama at AIPAC

zionismkills — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:17:11 +0000

On June 4, 2008, Black racist presidential hopeful Barack Obama spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, DC.

John McCain

zionismkills — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:26:20 +0000

Orthodox Jews Harassing Christians

zionismkills — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:30:55 +0000

AIPAC on Trial: Them or US

zionismkills — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:18:05 +0000

Chapter 5 from the book, “THE POWER OF ISRAEL IN THE USA”
by James Petras

In August 2004, the FBI and the US Justice Department counter-intelligence bureau announced that they were investigating a top Pentagon analyst suspected of spying for Israel and handing over highly confidential documents on US policy toward Iran to AIPAC which in turn handed them over to the Israeli Embassy. The FBI had been covertly investigating senior Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin and AIPAC leaders, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman for several years prior to their indictment for spying. On August 29, 2005 the Israeli Embassy predictably hotly denied the spy allegation. On the same day Larry Franklin was publicly named as a spy suspect. Franklin worked closely with Michael Ledeen and Douglas Feith, then Undersecretary for Defense in the Pentagon, in fabricating the case for war with Iraq. Franklin was the senior analyst on Iran, which is at the top of AIPAC?s list of targets for war.

As the investigation proceeded toward formal charges of espionage, the pro-Israeli think tanks and ?Zioncon? ideologues joined in a two-prong response. On the one hand some questioned whether ?handing over documents? was a crime at all, claiming it involved ?routine exchanges of ideas? and lobbying. On the other hand, Israeli officials and media denied any Israeli connection with Franklin, minimizing his importance in policy-making circles, while others vouched for his integrity.

The FBI investigation of the Washington spy network deepened and included the interrogation of two senior members of Feith?s Office of Special Plans, William Luti and Harold Rhode. The OSP was responsible for feeding bogus intelligence leading to the US attack of Iraq. The leading FBI investigator, Dave Szady, stated that the FBI investigation involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance and photography that document the passing of classified information from Franklin to the men at AIPAC and on to the Israelis.

The Franklin-AIPAC-Israeli investigation was more than a spy case, it involved the future of US-Middle East relations and more specifically whether the ?Zioncons? would be able to push the US into a military confrontation with Iran. Franklin was a top Pentagon analyst on Iran, with access to all the executive branch deliberations on Iran. AIPAC lobbying and information gathering was aggressively directed toward pushing the Israeli agenda on a US-Iranian confrontation against strong opposition in the State Department, CIA, military intelligence and field commanders.

Franklin?s arrest on May 4, 2005 and the subsequent arrest of AIPAC foreign policy research director Steve Rosen and Iran specialist and deputy director for foreign policy, Keith Weissman on August 4, 2005 was a direct blow to the Israeli-AIPAC war agenda for the US. The FBI investigation proceeded with caution accumulating detailed intelligence over several years. Prudence was dictated by the tremendous political influence that AIPAC and its allies among the Conference of the Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations wield in Congress, the media and among Fundamentalist Christians and which could be brought to bear when the accused spies were brought to trial.

The first blow was struck on August 29, 2004, when CBS publicized the FBI investigation just when Franklin confessed to have passed highly confidential documents to a member of the Israeli government and began cooperating with federal agents. He was prepared to lead authorities to his contacts inside the Israeli government. Subsequently Franklin stopped cooperating. The Anti-Defamation League?s (a leading Jewish pro-Israeli lobby) Abe Foxman called for a special prosecutor to investigate ?leaks? of the FBI investigation, because they were ?tarnishing? Israel?s image (called ?magna chutzpah?). Then Attorney General Ashcroft intervened to try to apply the brakes to the investigation, which spread into the ?Zioncon? nest in the Pentagon: Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Rubin were ?interviewed? by the FBI. Zioncon, Michael Rubin, former Pentagon specialist on Iran and resident ?scholar? at the American Enterprise Institute, blasted Bush for ?inaction in the spy affair? and called the investigation an ?anti-Semitic witch hunt? (Forward Sept. 10, 2004). AIPAC launched a massive campaign against the spy probe and in support of its activities and leaders. As a result scores of leading Congress members from both parties vouched for AIPAC?s integrity and pledged their confidence and support of AIPAC.

Never in the history of the United States had so many leading Congress members from both parties pledged their support for an organization under suspicion of spying, based only on information supplied by the suspect and in total ignorance of the federal prosecutor?s case. Contrary to the bipartisan Congressional support for AIPAC, a poll of likely voters found that 61% believed that AIPAC should be asked to register as an agent of a foreign power and lose its tax exempt status. Only 12% disagreed. Among American Jews, 59% were not sure, while 15% strongly agreed and 15% strongly disagreed (Zogby International, Sept. 25, 2004). Clearly many Americans have serious doubts about the loyalty and nature of AIPAC activities, contrary to their elected representatives. The federal spy investigation proceeded despite Executive and Congressional opposition, knowing that it had the backing of the great majority of US citizens.

In December 2004, the FBI subpoenaed 4 senior staffers at AIPAC to appear before a grand jury and searched the Washington office of the pro-Israel lobby seeking additional files on Rosen and Weissman.

AIPAC continued to deny any wrongdoing, stating: ?Neither AIPAC nor any member of our staff has broken any law. We believe any court of law or grand jury will conclude that AIPAC employees have always acted legally, properly and appropriately? (AIPAC December 1, 2004). Nevertheless a few months into the investigation and with the arrest of the two top leaders, AIPAC terminated their employment and after a few months cut off paying their legal defense bills. Likewise Israel?s categorical denials of espionage, evaporated, as video and transcripts of their intelligence operative receiving classified documents surfaced.

A Grand Jury was convoked in early 2005. As the FBI?s spy investigation extended into AIPAC-Pentagon?s inner recesses, self-confessed spy Franklin?s superiors Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith announced their sudden resignation from the number 2 and 3 positions in the Pentagon, most likely reflecting a deal with the Justice Department to free themselves from further investigations into their ties with Israeli intelligence and Franklin. In February 2005, Bush announced that former convicted felon, defender of Central American death squads and long-term Zionist fanatic, Elliott Abrams, would be in charge of Middle East policy in the National Security Council. Abrams would serve as a channel for directing Israeli policies to the White House and as day-to-day source of the most essential policy decisions and discussions. Apparently Abrams was smart enough to keep his distance from the Franklin/Feith and AIPAC/Embassy operations and deal directly with Ariel Sharon and his Chief of Staff, Dov Weinglass. In April 2005, AIPAC dismissed Rosen and Weissman, saying their activities did not comport with the organizations standards. On May 4, Franklin was arrested on charges of illegally disclosing highly classified information to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group. On June 13, 2005 an expanded indictment explicitly named AIPAC and a ?foreign country? (Israel) and its Mossad agent, Naor Gilon, who had, in the meantime, fled to Israel.

Despite AIPAC being named in a major espionage indictment involving Steve Rosen, head of its foreign policy department and Keith Weissman, head of its Iran desk, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice gave the keynote address at AIPAC?s convention (May 22-24, 2005). Leaders from Congress and the Republican and Democratic parties also spoke, declaring their unconditional support for AIPAC, Israel and Ariel Sharon. The list included Senator Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Republican) and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Based on previous year?s attendance, more than half of the US Senate and one-third of US Congress members were in attendance.

Clearly AIPAC, with 60,000 wealthy members and $60 million annual budget, had more influence on the political behavior of the US executive, political parties and elected representatives than a federal indictment implicating its leaders for espionage on behalf of Israel. Could there be a basis for charging our political leaders as ?accomplices after the fact?? of espionage, if the AIPAC leaders are convicted?

On August 4, 2005 Paul McNulty of the Justice Department formally indicted AIPAC leaders Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of receiving and passing highly confidential documents via the Israeli embassy to the State of Israel. Their trial is set for April 25, 2006. Franklin?s trial was set to begin on January 2, 2006 but has been postponed. Franklin has been co-operating with the FBI and Justice Department in its investigations of AIPAC and the Pentagon?s ?Israel Firsters? in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and the further plans to attack Iran. The indictments are based on a prolonged investigation. AIPAC was targeted for investigation as early as 2001, while the indictment of Rosen and Weissman cites illegal activities beginning in April 1999.

The Spy Trial: A Political Bombshell

After Rosen and Weissman came under intensive federal investigation as co-conspirators in the Franklin spy case, AIPAC decided to cut its losses and cover its backside by throwing them overboard: AIPAC fired them on March 2005, arguing that their ?conduct was not part of their job, and beneath the standards required of AIPAC employees? (Forward, December 23, 2005). In effect AIPAC was making Rosen and Weissman the ?fall guys? in order to shake off a deeper Federal probe of AIPAC?s activities. Moreover AIPAC stopped payments to Rosen?s and Weissman?s lawyers sticking them with almost a half-million dollars in legal fees. AIPAC does not intend to pay the fees before the trial is over ? not for lack of funds (they raised over $60 million in 2005 and are tax-exempt) but for political reasons. AIPAC wants to see how the trial goes: if they are acquitted, it will be safe to pay their lawyers. But if they are found guilty AIPAC will refuse to pay (citing the organization?s by-law technicalities) in order to avoid being implicated with convicted spies. AIPAC leaders are putting their organizational interests and their capacity to promote Israeli interests in Congress and the media over loyalty to their former officials.

Rosen and Weissman Strike Back

Facing up to 10 years in federal prison, up against detailed, well-documented federal charges based on wiretaps, videos and the testimony of self-confessed spy and Pentagon contact Franklin, fired and denounced by their former colleagues and current leaders of AIPAC, Rosen and Weissman are striking back with unexpected vehemence.

The defense attorneys are expected to argue that receiving information from administration officials was something the two were paid and encouraged to do and something AIPAC routinely does (Forward, December 23,2005). In other words, Rosen and Weissman will say that pumping top US government officials for confidential memos and handing them over to Israeli officials was a common practice among AIPAC operatives. To bolster their case of ?just following AIPAC orders?, Rosen and Weissman?s defense lawyers will subpoena AIPAC officials to testify in court about their past access to confidential documents, their contacts with high-placed officials and their collaboration with Israeli Embassy officials. Such testimony could likely bring national and international exposure to AIPAC?s role as a two way transmission belt to and from Israel.

If Rosen and Weissman succeed in tying AIPAC to their activities and if they are convicted, that opens up a much larger Federal investigation of AIPAC?s role in aiding and abetting felonious behavior on behalf of the State of Israel.

In the almost two years since Rosen and Weissman came into the public limelight as spy suspects, AIPAC has successfully fended off adverse publicity by mobilizing leading politicians, party leaders and senior members of the Bush Administration to give public testimonials on its behalf. It successfully dumped Rosen and Weissman and pushed ahead with lining up the US Congress with Israel?s pro-war agenda against Iran. And then out of the blue, Rosen and Weissman threaten to blow their cover ?as just another influential lobby? working to promote US and Israeli mutual security interests.

Rosen and Weissman?s defense will certainly bring out the fact that AIPAC at no point informed their employees about what the law states regarding the obtaining and handing over of highly confidential information to a foreign power. Weissman and Rosen will argue that they did not know that receiving confidential information from administration officials and handing it over to Israel was illegal since everybody was doing it. They will further argue that their alleged spy activity was not a ?rogue operation? carried on by them independently of the organization, but was known and approved by their superiors ? citing AIPAC?s employee procedures for reporting to superiors.

Rosen and Weissman are taking on biblical stature. According to one former AIPAC employee with connections to the organization?s current leadership, Rosen and Weissman are perceived as acting ?like Samson trying to bring the house down on everyone? (Forward, December 23, 2005).

?Everyone? that is involved in exploiting US wealth, power and military forces to serve Israel?s expansionist interests? What started out as a small scale spy trial, no different from other recent cases, is growing into a major cause celebre, involving the most powerful lobby influencing the entire direction of US Middle East policy. If Rosen and Weissman are convicted and they effectively make the case that they were following orders and informing AIPAC of their felonious activities, it is possible that it will drive away many wealthy Jewish donors and activists, and perhaps put some shame into the politicians who kow-tow and feed at the AIPAC trough. With a weakened AIPAC and its neo-con/?Zion-con? allies in the government wary of continuing to ?liaison? with Israeli intelligence on Middle East policy, it is possible that a free and open debate based on US interests can take place. With a public debate relatively free of the constraints imposed by the Israel First lobbies and ideologues, perhaps the US public?s opposition to Middle East Wars and occupations can become the dominant discourse in Congress if not the Executive. Perhaps the $3 billion dollars plus annual foreign aid to Israel can be reallocated toward rebuilding all the industrially ravaged cities and towns of Michigan, Upstate New York and elsewhere. A move from Middle East militarism to a democratic foreign policy will not happen just because of a spy trial no matter how severe the sentence and no matter how deeply AIPAC is implicated, unless the American public is organized as a democratic majority capable of confronting party, congressional and executive leaders with the choice: You are either for America or for AIPAC. If the accused spies are convicted and AIPAC is implicated a clear choice will be posed to US politicians: Either standing up for a democratic foreign policy or further burying their heads in the slush money trough of agents of a foreign power and once more showing their backsides to the American people.