Jewish ideology and psychosis – a danger to world peace

Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon considers the deep religious and psychotic roots of the genocidal impulses of Israelis, as most recently demonstrated in the cold-blooded murder of humanitarian activists aboard the Gaza-bound international aid flotilla, and warns of the implications for humanity unless urgent decisive action is taken against the rogue Jewish state.

“…then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)

“…do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them…as the Lord your God has commanded you…” (Deuteronomy 20:16)

I am here to announce as loud as I can: There is no need for any “international”, “impartial” or “independent” inquiry into the latest Israeli massacre on the high seas. Although the Israeli opposition to such an inquiry suggests that the Israelis have much to hide, the truth of the matter is actually deeper. If you want to grasp what underlies the deadly Israeli barbarism, all you have to do is open the Old Testament.

Although it is certain that there is no ethnic or racial continuum between the biblical Israelites and the Khazarians who lead the Jewish state and its army, the similarities between the murderous zeal described in Deuteronomy and the current string of lethal Israeli actions cannot be denied. Israel’s is a murderous society not because of any biological or racial lineage with its imaginary “forefathers” but because it is driven by a fanatical tribal Jewish ideology and fueled by a merciless, poisonous psychotic biblical zeal.

Why You Won’t See Me On The BBC

By Yvonne Ridley
Counterpunch.org

A BBC news crew has been chased away by angry protestors at a central London rally in support of Palestine. The very sight of the BBC logo on a microphone at Saturday’s Stop the War Coalition protest turned some of the crowd nearby hostile; they vented their frustrations on the hapless crew who represent an organization which appears to be hell-bent on spewing out lies, distortions and manipulation of the truth about Gaza, its supporters and the brutal siege enforced by Israel.

Apart from a few moments of journalistic integrity and clarity – John Humphrys on Radio 4′s Today programme, for example – the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla has thrown the corporation’s gold standard for journalistic integrity into a tail spin. The reputation of the world’s best known broadcaster is lying in tatters, not because of the quality of the journalists it employs but because of the sinister political agenda pushed by its Director-General and a few of his cronies.

Is There A Religious War Being Waged Against Islam?

The Muslims are under attack both militarily and ideologically – that is self evident and a fact that only hard-line Zionist and Western ideological propagandists seek to dismiss.

The real question is not whether we are being attacked but why.

The main narrative that supportive left wing liberals put forward is to steal oil from the Muslim world. This sounds plausible in Iraq, but how does that explain Palestine, Afghanistan or the backing of Israel to attack Lebanon which Condi Rice spookily called ‘Birth Pangs’ of a new Middle East?

Why sanction Iran or seek regime change there when it sells oil at the market rate already? The oil lobby in Washington, ‘Big Oil’, lobbied and lost against the neo-con plan for Iraq, suggesting Big Oil had nothing to gain from a destroyed and destabilised Iraq. Something was missing and oil security alone could not explain it.

A possible clue was given in George Bush’s speech when he spoke of a ‘Crusade’. It was quickly brushed off by the corporate Media as a ‘mistake’. Others however believed it was something more sinister and far more intelligent than a slip of the tongue. It was, in fact, a ‘dog whistle’ to Christian right wing voters who were seeking exactly that: a Crusade against the Muslims to hasten the return of the Messiah and the final battle between good and evil.

If that was indeed the first clue, more were to follow. The largest private army in the world, Blackwater, was then sent to ‘stabilise’ the ‘freedom’ America had given to the Muslims. It later emerged that it was headed (again by chance some would argue) by a devout Christian who hired those who followed his faith.

His mission, he told his high ranking team, was to ‘wipe the Muslims off the faith of this earth’.

The neo-conservatives, of course, that paid for and sent Blackwater into the Muslim world were, you guessed it, by-and large, Jewish and Christian Zionists.

Yes, there were pieces of evidence littered everywhere that those who were pushing for war in Muslim countries in particular held deep-seated religious convictions, not just financial ones. Remember how Tony Blair famously remarked ‘How God would judge him’ when talking of the invasion of Iraq?

General Wesley Clark reported in his latest book that the White House had drawn up a list of exclusively Muslim nations to target as enemies over the next four years (Afghanistan, Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and the Sudan).

Strange stories surfaced about the military and its Christian revival. In Iraq for example, a government-paid chaplain had been baptizing American soldiers as Christians in exchange for giving them water to take showers.

Others were more chilling. Whilst serving under Bush, General William G. Boykin believed that these wars were being fought against Satan himself. In public, this military officer and aide to Bush insisted that the mission of the American military was to defeat Islam in the name of Christianity. The Bush White House refused to distance itself from Boykin’s claim and defended Boykin’s appropriation of the American military for religious purposes as “free speech”.

Preaching in his military uniform before a religious congregation in Oregon, General Boykin proclaimed, “We’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. Did I say Judeo-Christian? Yes. Judeo-Christian.”

He continued, “The enemy that has come against our nation is a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan. And if you do not believe that Satan is real, you are ignoring the same Bible that tells you about God.”

Just in case you did not know who Satan was, he explained, comparing himself to Muslims, General Boykin offered this taunt “My God is bigger than his.” His other comments in further interviews proved his barely concealed hatred towards Muslims and Islam.

To that same congregation, still in military uniform, General Boykin said of George W. Bush that, “He was appointed by God” to be leader of the United States.

And what was he appointed to do? Boykin expands, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we will never abandon Israel, we will never walk away from our commitment to Israel because our roots are there. Our religion came from Judaism and therefore these radicals will hate us forever.”

But he is not of course the only religious fanatic in a position within the military establishment of the US.

James Woolsey the Director of Central Intelligence in a little known speech in Israel talking about Iran and Syria was quoted saying:

“If we use force, we should use it decisively, not execute some surgical strike. It is a shame that Israel and the US have so far failed in participating in a move against Syria and Iran last summer’. He paused. ‘Finally’ he said looking into the eyes of the audience, ‘we must not forget who we are. We, as Jews and Christians are heirs of the tradition deriving from Judaism.’

The most recent and perhaps the most telling clue that those behind the wars being waged and being pushed were in fact waging a Christian and Jewish Crusade against the Muslim world was a small under-reported story that appeared on the ABC news website.

It revealed that the guns used by American forces had Bible codes on them, referring to the digits imprinted onto the gun sights that referred to passages in the Bible. The codes had been put there before Iraq they claimed. Perhaps so, but again at the very least it showed the link between the military and the Christian right, and to the Christian right Muslims are the enemy of Jesus.

Of course it is not just driven by right wing Christians but also a growing militancy within the Jewish community.

Whether or not this ideological and military war is driven solely by religious extremists within American & European political circles is a matter of debate. However no one can deny that they are playing a large and secretive part in the push for war. The question is how large a part it is.

The real religious extremism, then, does not primarily come from the Muslims who are taking up arms in a bid to stop their own occupation and slaughter but the trillion dollar war machine run by men in suits who talk of ‘freedom’ in public but who follow their religious books of war in secret.

For further research into this we recommend the superb books Israel Clash of Civilisation by Jonathan Cooke and The Last Crusade by Barbara Victor. Alternatively, come to our discussion groups around the UK and discuss this and other matters…we would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Israel’s Role In Destabilizing Pakistan

By Jeff Gates

When waging war “by way of deception,” the motto of the Israeli Mossad, well-timed crises play a critical agenda-setting role by displacing facts with what a target population can be deceived to believe. Thus the force-multiplier effect when staged crises are reinforced with pre-staged intelligence. In combination, the two often prove persuasive.

That duplicity was on display when U.S. lawmakers were induced to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9-11. That crisis alone, however, was insufficient. Military mobilization required a “consensus” belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons, Iraqi meetings in Prague, and so forth. Though all were false, those “facts” proved sufficient to induce an invasion of Iraq.

Such agent provocateur operations typically include collateral incidents as pre-staging for the intended main event. Ongoing incidents suggest a follow-on operation is underway. Recent history suggests we’ll see an orgy of evidence that plausibly indicts a pre-staged Evil Doer. Though Iran is an obvious candidate, Pakistan is also a possibility where outside forces have been destabilizing this nuclear Islamic nation with a series of violent incidents.

Will it be coincidence if the next war-like the last-is consistent with the expansive goals of Jewish nationalists?

The Indo-Israel Alliance

December 2007 saw the murder of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Mark Siegel, her Ashkenazim biographer and lobbyist, assured U.S. diplomats that her return was “the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact.”

President Pervez Musharraf had announced that resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict was essential to the resolution of conflicts in Iraq and neighboring Afghanistan. That comment made him a target for Tel Aviv.
During Bhutto’s two terms as prime minister, Pakistani support for the Taliban-then celebrated as the freedom-fighting Mujahadin-enabled her to wield influence in Afghanistan while also catalyzing conflicts in Kashmir. By fueling tension with India, she also fueled an Indo-Israel alliance as Tel Aviv provided New Delhi an emergency shipment of artillery shells during a conflict over the Kirpal region of Kashmir.

In January 2009, Israel delivered to India the first of three Phalcon Airborne Warning & Control Systems (AWACS) shifting the balance of conventional weapons in the region. That sale confirmed what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier announced: “Our ties with India don’t have any limitation….” That became apparent in April when Israel signed a $1.1 billion agreement to provide India an advanced tactical air defense system developed by Raytheon, a U.S. defense contractor.

In August 2008, Ashkenazim General David Kezerashvili returned to Georgia from Tel Aviv to lead an assault on separatists in South Ossetia with the support of Israeli arms and training. That crisis ignited Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, key members of the Quartet (along with the EU and the UN) pledged to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Little was said about the Israeli interest in a pipeline across Georgia meant to move Caspian oil through Turkey and on to Eurasia, using Israel as an intermediary while undermining Russia’s oil industry.

More Game Theory Warfare?

Bhutto’s murder ensured a crisis that replaced Musharaff with Asif Ali Zardari, her notoriously corrupt husband. By Washington’s alliance with Zardari, the U.S. could be portrayed as extending its corrupting influence in the region.

On August 7, 2008, the Zadari-led ruling coalition called for a no-confidence vote in Parliament against Musharraf just as he was departing for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. On August 8, heavy fighting erupted overnight in South Ossetia. As with many of the recent incidents in Pakistan, this violent event involved armed separatists.

But for pro-Israeli influence inside the U.S. government, would our State Department have installed in office the corrupt Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, leading to record-level poppy production? Is the heroin epidemic presently eroding Russian society traceable to Israel’s infamous game theory war-planners? [See "How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare" and "Israel and 9-11" .]

In late November 2008, a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India’s financial center, renewed fears of nuclear tension between India and Pakistan. When the attackers struck a hostel managed by Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect from New York, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced from Tel Aviv: “Our world is under attack.” By early December, Israeli journalists urged that we “fortify the security of Jewish institutions worldwide.”

Soon after “India’s 9-11″ was found to include operatives from Pakistan’s western tribal region, Zardari announced an agreement with the Taliban to allow Sharia law to govern a swath of the North West Frontier Province where Al Qaeda members reportedly reside.

Pakistani cooperation with “Islamic extremists” created the impression of enhanced insecurity and vulnerability for the U.S. and its allies. That perceived threat was marketed by mainstream media as proof of the perils of “militant Islam.”

With the Taliban and Al Qaeda portrayed as operating freely in a nuclear-armed Islamic state, Tel Aviv gained traction for its claim that a nuclear Tehran posed an “existential threat” to the Jewish state. Meanwhile Israel’s election of an ultra-nationalist/ultra-orthodox coalition further delayed resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

More delay is destined to evoke more extremism and gain more traction for those marketing the “global war on terrorism.” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni argued after the assault in Mumbai: “Israel, India and the rest of the free world are positioned in the forefront of the battle against terrorists and extremism.”

In announcing that list, Islamabad was indicted by its exclusion even though Pakistan is dominantly Sunni and, unlike Iran’s Shi’a , abhors theocratic rule. The fact patterns suggest that Pakistan, not India, was the target of the murderous terrorism in Mumbai.

Advised by legions of Ashkenazim, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent mission to Islamabad was a diplomatic disaster. Abrasive and arrogant, America’s top diplomat reinforced Pakistani concerns that it is surrounded by hostile forces and that the nation is being set up to fail by Jewish nationalist advisers to a nation it considered an ally.

In a climate of heightened tensions, Clinton undermined U.S. interests, boosted the Israeli case for a global war on “Islamo-fascism” and lent credence to the Clash of Civilizations.

Destabilization as a Prequel to Domination

As Afghanistan and Pakistan join other nations being destabilized by outside forces, key questions must be answered:

Was India’s 9-11 a form of geopolitical misdirection meant to serve both the tactical goals of Muslim extremists and the strategic goals of Jewish nationalists? Who benefits-within Pakistan-from humiliation at the hands of India and the U.S.?

With Bhutto’s murder and Musharraf’s departure, the crisis in Mumbai drew Pakistani forces to the Indian border and away from the western tribal region. Was that the geostrategic goal of these well-timed crises? What role, if any, did Israel play?

Is delay in ending the occupation of Palestine part of an agent provocateur strategy? Was the latest assault on Gaza part of this strategy?

Each of these crises incrementally advanced the expansionist agenda of Colonial Zionists. Do these collateral incidents trace their origin to a common source? Is that source again using serial events to pre-stage a main event?

The public has an intuitive grasp of the source of this oft-recurring behavior. An October 2003 poll of 7,500 respondents in member nations of the European Union found that Israel was considered the greatest threat to world peace.

Is terrorism limited to “Islamo-fascists”? Are mass murders also deployed-from the shadows-as a strategy of geopolitical manipulation by those who Ashkenazim philosopher Hannah Arendt described as “Jewish fascists”?

Author, educator, attorney, merchant banker and adviser to policy-makers worldwide and U.S. Veteran

Jeff was counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance (1980-87) working for Democrat Russell Long, son of Louisiana Governor and U.S. Senator Huey P. Long. Specialist in employee benefits law-pensions, 401(k) plans, stock options, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), et.al. Tax-qualified employee benefit plans accounted for $17 trillion in assets (April 2007) and more than half the funds in the hands of institutional investors. As of 2007, ESOPs were in place in 11,500 firms nationwide, covering 10% of the U.S. workforce and holding $800 billion in assets. Law practice w/ former Senators Russell Long, Democrat of Louisiana and Paul Laxalt, Republican of Nevada, chairman of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns.

Incrementalism to nowhere

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star , and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

A flurry of activity this week surrounding Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s trip to Washington suggests to many people that we can expect breakthroughs in Arab-Israeli peace-making. Mubarak and US President Barack Obama both said that things were moving in the right direction. The Israeli government has instituted an unofficial and unannounced “freeze” on new settlements construction, as demanded by the United States. Arab reports speak of an “initiative of leaders” to offer the Palestinian refugees compensation in exchange for dropping their demand on the “right of return.” Other reports expect the Obama administration to announce soon the terms of a permanent peace settlement, as a means of forcing all sides to respond and negotiate its terms.

It is good to have hope. It is much better to be realistic, and I fear that much of the talk about “jump starting” the peace process remains handicapped by relying on the same old techniques and approaches that have been tried many times and always failed. The determination of the Obama administration to push for an Arab-Israeli peace will go nowhere if the various initiatives and gestures by all concerned continue to dance around the central issues of the conflict, rather than to attack them head-on.

The current approach to peace-making suffers from the same vulnerabilities that caused many other attempts to fail – other than the Jordanian and Egyptian peace agreements that gave both sides equal and simultaneous rights. Today’s limp approach isolates elements of the conflict, and tries to address them one by one, hoping that “confidence-building measures” will take root and prod the parties to ultimate full reconciliation. So, the United States emphasizes its demand for a full Israeli settlements freeze. It asks the Arab countries to make unilateral gestures of accommodation with Israel, such as opening diplomatic interests sections or allowing commercial over flight rights. The Palestinians in turn are asked to focus on improving their security forces, so that Israelis feel more at ease that terror attacks will stop.

The fatal weakness of this approach is that addressing symptoms of the conflict will not resolve it, and instead one must acknowledge and go right to the core causes of the conflict. An Israeli interests section in the capital of Kuwait or Algeria, frankly, is diversionary nonsense, if the central issue of the historic dispossession, exile and refugeehood of the Palestinians in 1947-48 is not resolved. Similarly, a freeze on new Jewish settlements in isolated parts of the West Bank or the Golan Heights essentially means nothing if the Arab countries refuse to acknowledge and live with Israel as the historic heartland and secure homeland of the Jewish people.

Here is the hard but essential core of the conflict that must be grasped quickly and addressed courageously, if there is to be any realistic chance for peace-making to proceed convincingly, rather than romantically, as is the case now: The shattering and refugeehood of the Palestinian community in 1947-48 was a direct consequence of the Zionist movement’s massive inflow of Jews into Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel. Any realistic attempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict must reconcile those two facts, in a manner that respects three essential principles:

1) It must affirm the rule of law as defined by UN resolutions and international conventions on refugee rights.

2) It must address directly, rather than evasively dance around, the simultaneous core demands of the Jewish people’s need to live in a secure state, and the Palestinian people’s need to have their exile and refugeehood acknowledged as a consequence of Zionism’s actions, and then redressed through a series of options that allow future generations of Palestinians to live a normal life.

3) it must be negotiated directly and peacefully by the parties that explicitly and openly acknowledge the equal national rights of the other, in a manner that is politically realistic to all concerned.

Hosni Mubarak has sat in the White House for almost three decades stating that progress is being made towards a negotiated peace, and every time we sit through this spectacle it becomes less convincing, even just a little bit more childish – because the approach being used guarantees failure if it continues to evade the core issues for both sides that must be resolved.

If the good folks in the White House did not notice, Palestine is now split into a Hamas region and a Fateh region, Israel is polarizing into liberal secularists and gun-toting colonialist religious zealots, and a few days ago Hamas battled a small group of militant Salafists in Gaza who are inspired by Al-Qaeda. It is too costly to keep pussyfooting around the core issues of simultaneously acknowledging Israeli and Palestinian national rights in adjacent states, and resolving the refugeehood of the Palestinians and of any Arab Jews who have similar claims.

Pakistan gives US, NATO proof on India’s covert links with Baitullah Mehsud

The US continues to be in denial as evident from the recent statement of Richard Holbrooke where he said the evidence Pakistan has produced on India’s links to terrorism in Balochistan is not credible. The Pakistanis have photographs and video tapes of Indian agents in Afghanistan meeting with known terrorists. Army chief Gen. Kayani has warned the Americans to stop criticizing the ISI. On his recent visit, the protocol given to Mr. Holbrooke was no longer presidential, as was the case during his previous visits. And the ISI chief has also declined to meet any US officials separately. Pakistan is getting closer to being left with no option but to limit or outright block the occupation supply lines in order to force Washington to understand it can’t ignore Pakistani regional strategic interests.

Read Full Article on NewsVine: http://fatimarizvi.newsvine.com/_news/2009/08/03/3110217-pakistan-gives-us-nato-proof-on-indias-covert-links-with-baitullah-mehsud--

The GAZA FACTS… What the Western and Israeli media did not show you!

Seek the truth and the complete story…

The Gaza Holocaust

How can the western world be so sympathetic towards the Israelis and so callous and heartless in it’s approach to Palestinian sufferings ?? Are the Israelis sub-consciously seeking revenge for historical atrocities done to them by others ? The 20th century West found an arrogant, unjust and purely capitalist/colonialist solution to past problems of it’s own making. A look throughout history will tell us that it was the western countries and nations (the white man, the Christians) that repeatedly wreaked havoc and injustices upon the Jews. This was and has been a burden, a weight, a blot on Western conscience ever since. They felt the urge to compensate the Jews for these crimes and sins of commission and ommission. So they came up with a solution that only devious minds like theirs could come up with. And that was to make some one else pay the penance, the price for their own sins !! That would satisfy, satiate and compensate the Jews at NO COST to them !! So they chose the ‘little brown arab”(the weak one) to be the fall guy. They helped the Jews create Israel and thus thought they had compensated for and undone the injustices that they themselves had heaped upon them !! And to further placate the Jews they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the Arab sufferings as the Jews over the years vent their anger and their hatred on the ‘little brown arabs’, ruthlessly and without any sense of guilt. And ever since the little brown arab in Palestine has suffered and paid the price for the wrongs done by the white man unto the Jews. And the Jews with such horrible scars in their memories, history, minds and psyche have ‘done and continue to do unto the arabs what the white man had done unto them’. A very vicious circle of sorts. They have, are doing and will continue to exploit this western guilt factor to the hilt. And no western politician irrespective of his nationality can dare to ‘genuinely’ challenge the Jews. Who is paying and who will continue to pay this exhorbitant and senseless price for whose sins ?? What sort of Justice is this, Lord ??

Victims of Gaza Genocide by Israel

Gaza Strikes

The innocent children,
The lovely boys and girls,
The peace-loving men and women,
The students,
The housewives,
The professionals,
The businessmen,
The unemployed youth,
The employed ones,

Every man, woman and child lives in uncertainity and in fear in every moment.

Any time a bullet can pierce his/her body causing death or lifetime disability. Anytime a bomb blast can destroy their homes, lives, dreams. Actually do they have any dreams? I don’t know. I just hate the Zionists who are causing this monster-like demolition. I just hate the America who are supporting them. The severely injured boy is my brother. The girl blooded by bomb-blast is my sister. I can just see but I can do nothing. I just wish I could do SOMETHING!!!!

Do forward this mail to everyone on your list and let everyone be aware of the so called ‘Islamic Terrorists’ the Zionists are targetting!

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

The Independent/UK

” I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.”

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. “Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties,” yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night’s butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I’m afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against “international terror”. The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

I’ve reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel’s right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel’s own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing.

When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin’s government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie.

The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn’t even apologise.

Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village – again after they were ordered to leave by Israel – and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue.
I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we’ll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We’ll have the Hamas-to-blame lie – heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime – and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we’ll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn’t. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-do-they-hate-the-west-so-much-we-will-ask-1230046.html

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state’s legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

Avi Shlaim
The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza’s prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion’s share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel’s settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel’s propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel’s terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel’s cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted – a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, “crying and shooting”.

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak – terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel’s entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel’s objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel’s forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel’s spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel’s actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel’s insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel’s concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism – the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine