When I was young I perceived the Zionist Israelis to be the Palestinians, and my, only enemy. The Zionist terrorist gangs had forcefully occupied my country, razed about 400 Palestinian towns, perpetrated many massacres against their Palestinian residents, and evicted many hundreds of thousands others out of the country into refugee camps. Among them was my family, whose property; home and ranch planted with citrus and olive trees and vineyards, were seized by Israeli terrorists.

Researching deep in the history and nature of the Arab/Israeli conflict, watching the unfoldment of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence against the savage Israeli oppression and territorial expansion, and examining the Western political policies towards the conflict I came to a new different realization. Israelis, themselves, are as victims as the Palestinians although to a very lesser extents. Those Israelis are being misguided, mass-brainwashed, and militarily driven by deliberately distorted and misinterpreted theology, political Rabbis, and Western Zionist imperialist powers to execute the colonial Zionist project of establishing Greater Israel in the heart of the Middle East.

It has become obvious to all, by now, that Israel could not have been created nor could it continue to exist as a viable state without the assistance of the West especially the USA. Israel is a military subsidiary of the US; a forward-deployed American military base in the Middle East, who is totally dependent on American funds. Since its creation, 63 years ago, Israel received more American tax money, $3 Trillions as reported by Army War College in 2003, than any other country on earth. This money is used to cover the expenses of hoarding to Israel, housing, re-socializing, and absorbing every Zionist Jewish immigrant. It subsidizes homes for every Israeli citizen. It pays for free education of every Israeli child from elementary school until university graduation. It is used to create industries and jobs in Israel. It pays for complete medical coverage and for hefty monthly social security payment for every Israeli senior citizen. Even during the current economic crisis, when American tax-paying citizens are losing their jobs, losing their homes, the majority are without medical benefits, their educational system is facing severe budget cuts, with high rate of unemployment and many middle-class families are on the verge of poverty, their tax money is still generously transferred to subsidize Israelis' relatively comfort living. Without the financial, technological, military, and political support of the successive American Administrations Israel would not have been created and would immediately collapse.

Successive American Administrations, since President Woodrow Wilson up to President Barak Obama, are the real enemy of the Palestinians.

Arming and supporting Israel unconditionally, while fighting and undermining in every way possible the Palestinian legitimate struggle for freedom, self-determination and statehood had been a core principle in the American foreign policy. Despite the American Administration's claims to be an honest broker in the already 20 years old Palestinian/Israeli peace negotiations, and despite their claimed support for the two states solution we are witnessing only more Israeli expansions and more encroachments of fully armed aggressive fundamentalist extremists Israeli settlers on Palestinian towns. American Administrations have never been the honest broker they claimed to be, rather an Israeli full partner in occupation and oppression of Palestinians.

Enumerating all the actions of the American Administrations detrimental to Palestinians would require volumes. For the purpose of this article I will mention just few.

During WWI Great Britain was losing the war to Germany and was considering a German peace offer. An agreement (October 1916 London Agreement) was struck between Great Britain and World Zionist Organization (WZO) according to which Britain promised the Zionists to turn over Palestine to them as a reward if getting the US in the war as a British ally against Germany. Although the German Emancipation Edict of 1822 gave Jewish refugees equal civil rights as German citizens, the London Agreement had transformed German Jews from pro-German to pro-British. Encouraged by the London Agreement, and in partnership with WZO, American President Woodrow Wilson declared war against Germany in April 2^nd 1917 under the false claim that German submarines had sunk the S.S. Sussex ship. It was later discovered that the Sussex was never attacked (see Francis Neilson's book "Makers of War" pp 149-150). Rewarding the WZO Belfour Declaration was issued promising a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

In WWII the British was losing the war against Germany, again, and seems to lose grip over its Middle Eastern colonies especially Palestine. President Franklin Roosevelt came to the rescue. Needing a good excuse to break his pledge to the American people not to enter WWII President Roosevelt provoked Japan, a German ally, to attack Pearl Harbor (refer to diaries of Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of Defense under Roosevelt, in Yale University Library). Roosevelt informed the Japanese that they could not purchase any more American steel or oil, the Japanese were heavily dependent on to continue their war against China. (refer to "Backdoor to War", published by Henry Regnery of Chicago in 1952 written by Professor Charles Callan Tansill, professor of diplomatic history at Georgetown University). Roosevelt sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans so that Britain can keep Palestine as its colony and can fulfill its promise to WZO.

In a bargain with WZO President Harry Truman hastened, despite the opposition of his Secretary of State, George Marshall and the warnings of his Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, to recognize the Zionist terrorist state of Israel eleven minutes after its declaration in Tel Aviv at midnight of May 14^th 1948, a state established by 600 thousand alien professionally armed terrorist groups into Palestine after the massacre and expulsion of its indigenous rightful owners into refugee camps in exile. Truman also compelled the UN to admit Israel as a peace-loving state, and provided billions of US taxpayers money to make Israel very powerful militarily. (Eliahu Epstein, the US representative of the Jewish Agency in Washington in 1948, told the story in a three page article in the June 1958 issue of the Jewish Chronicle of London). In return the WZO helped Truman win his 1948 election despite 20 to 1 odds against him, to serve as a president for a second term.

Sponsoring Joint Resolution by Congress H J Res. 117 on January 5^th 1950, that was then refined by Congress to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, President Dwight Eisenhower sent 14,000 troops to occupy Lebanon, and shipped the US Sixth Fleet to station off the coast of Lebanon threatening the increasingly restless Arab nations not to make any move against the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.

President John F. Kennedy, like his predecessors, provided Israel with all kinds of support and even went further pledging to protect Israel even if it meant sending American troops to the Middle East. Yet when he stepped out of line by opposing Israel's development of nuclear weapons and insisted on close inspection of Israel's Dimona nuclear plant he was assassinated.

President Lyndon Johnson gave Israel an estimated $32 Billion in financial aid and sophisticated military weapons on the expense of the American taxpayers so that Israel could wage the Six Days War on June 1967 against Arab countries. Risking military confrontation and war against the Soviet fleet, according to Robert McNamara, Johnson's Secretary of Defense, Johnson sent the US Sixth Fleet to the Mediterranean to defend Israel during that war.

In 1969 President Richard Nixon struck a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that US would stop its inspection of Israel's nuclear plant in Dimona and would turn a blind eye to Israel's nuclear weapons program as long as Israel did not go public with its program and does not test weapons openly. ("Israel and the Bomb" by Avner Cohen). Israeli nuclear weapon program was exposed on October 5^th 1986 when the Sunday Times of London published an article in which Mordechai Vanunu, a former Dimona technician, provided a detailed look and pictures of Israel's Dimona plant.

During the October 1973 War Israel was losing the war to Egypt and Syria. Known as Operation Nickel Grass President Nixon immediately built aerial and sea bridges between the USA and Israel, through which an estimated 117,895 tons of military equipment, including fighter bombers, helicopters, armored vehicles, tanks, missiles and electronic equipments, worth $4 Billion were shipped to guarantee Israel's victory. Nixon also allotted $2.2 Billion a year to Israel. Arab members of OPEC countered this American aid to Israel with oil embargo against the USA causing the 1973 crisis.

When the Israeli trained and armed proxy South Lebanon Army and Maronite Phalange militias failed to kick the PLO out of Lebanon Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6^th 1982, but faced fierce resistance from PLO fighters. Under the guise of multinational peacekeeping force President Ronal Reagan sent American aircraft carriers USS New Jersey, USS John F. Kennedy, and USS Independence to Lebanon to provide intelligence and military assistance to Israel that led to PLO's withdrawal from Lebanon. This assistance made US troops a legitimate target for resistance groups, who bombed the American barracks in Beirut on October 23^rd 1983 killing 241 marines. The US withdrew from Lebanon in 1984.

President George H. Bush was busy with his "Desert Storm" war against Iraq. To obtain cooperation of Arab countries he pretended to restrict American funding to illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian occupied territories, although he sent the same funding through the back door of economical aid. Although he granted Israel the entire military hardware surplus from Desert Storm he was made to lose second election for bringing the subject of Israeli settlements in the open.

President Clinton's administration was able to isolate and control the PLO through signing the Oslo Accords on September 13^th 1993. Allowing Arafat to establish the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah had helped only to cut the wings of the PLO by placing it under close Israeli scrutiny and virtual control. The Palestinian Preventive Security Service was established, trained, and used to control the Palestinian population, thus relieving the Israeli army from this task. Making itself the primary financial donor while restricting other fund resources to the PA the Clinton administration had pressured Arafat to give one concession after the other to Israel throughout the next seven years of futile peace negotiations until Arafat rejected what was claimed to be "Israel's generous offer" at the 2000 Camp David Summit.

The administration of President George W. Bush had the most devastating effects on Palestinians. Bush forced Arafat to appoint the American/Israeli puppet Mahmoud Abbas as a prime minister. Not willing to give any more concession to Israel Arafat outlived his usage and thus was poisoned. After Arafat's death on November 11^th 2004 Abbas was helped into presidency through an orchestrated election in 2005. When Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election Abbas conspired with the Bush administration to topple Hamas government, but the attempt failed (Gaza Bombshell by Vanity Fair), and the Palestinians became divided into West Bank and Gaza Strip.

President Bush had supported Israel's war against Lebanon in July 2006. He created a direct airlift from US to Israel sending all kinds of weapons including the illegal cluster bombs. Another direct airlift was created sending weapons, including white phosphorus munitions, to support Israel's 2008/2009 war against Gaza Strip (operation Cast Lead). Bush had also sabotaged peace negotiations by sidetrack unworkable ideas such as George Mitchel's report, Road Map, and Geneva Initiative.

Obama's administration followed even tougher policies against the Palestinians and very aggressive defense of Israeli crimes. Through the threat of withdrawing American funds the administration kept their obedient puppet, Abbas, as president beyond his term. Hillary Clinton stated: "... there is no alternative to him (Abbas)". Abbas' bid at the UN to recognize a Palestinian state, when in reality the UN had done so in 1947, was just an American/Israeli/PA game to strengthen Abbas' leadership by portraying him as a national hero and to avoid any revolt against his corrupt rule similar to what happened in Tunisia and in Egypt. Abbas is "the best Palestinian leader for Israel" as stated by Israeli Shimon Peres. Obama threatened to veto recognition of Palestinian state declaring that the only way to statehood is to go back to the futile peace negotiation. Negotiation is Abbas "first, second and third choice".

Threatening Palestinians and Arab countries Obama took the opportunity, in his UN speech, to assert American strong commitment to Israel's security:

"America's commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable. Our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring. And so we believe that any lasting peace must acknowledge the very real security concerns that Israel faces every single day"

Obama had totally ignored the issue of Palestinians own security, and the fact that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative offered Israel recognition, security, and normal relationships with all Arab countries if Israel recognizes a Palestinian state within the 1967 border.

To express this commitment to Israel's security Obama's administration has pledged to sell Israel (actually to gift on the expense of starving and unemployed American taxpayers) nuclear material as well as technology and other military equipment despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

All these successive administrations had strongly supported Israel despite the fact that Israelis had militarily attacked the US, spied on the US, and stole secret technologies from US and sold them to its adversaries.

Israelis attacked American targets starting with the 1954 Lavon Affair (Israeli code name Operation Susannah [video]) in which Israeli terrorists planted bombs in a US diplomatic facility in Egypt leaving evidence behind to implicate Egyptians. In an act of war against the US, during the 1967 Six-Days-War Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats had deliberately and intentionally attacked the USS Liberty killing 34 and wounding 173 sailors. Read the reports (point to "US interest" tab and click "USS Liberty"), the findings of the Independent Commission, and watch the documentary [video]. The purpose of the attack was to accuse Egypt of sinking the USS Liberty so that the US would retaliate against Egypt. Many circumstantial evidences had surfaced implicating Israeli terrorists in the attack of 911, whose aim was to get the US wage war against Islamic countries.

It is a very well known fact that Israel has been spying on the US for a long time. Read the many reports here. Besides the well known story of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard there is the story of the alleged Israeli art students selling cheap art work to government personnel. These students were members of Israeli intelligence and electronic surveillance intercept units. Almost 90% of American communications traffic is managed and manipulated by Comverse Technology an arm of the Israeli government. In order to comply with the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) AT&T and Verizon had employed the services of Narus Inc., a subsidiary of Comverse. In 2006 AT&T whistleblower technician Mark Klein exposed the company's secret tapping room spying on American citizens at its San Francisco Facilities.

Israel had stolen nuclear material from the US. The case of Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) referred to large quantities of weapons-grade uranium, 587 pound, that were missing from the Apollo plant in Pennsylvania in the 1960s. This was reported by Carl Duckett, then CIA deputy director in a 1981 interview on an ABC television program "Near Armageddon: The Spread of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East. It was also mentioned in 1991 book "Dangerous Liaison" by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn. Read also the General Accounting Office (GAO) report, the newly unclassified Comptroller General report, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and further here, and here.

Many of the American-made advanced weapons and military technologies given to Israel have been reversed engineered and resold to American competitors and enemies such as South Africa, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, China, and to any highest bidders. Read Gordon Duff's article and article and video of Phillip Giraldi, who is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer.

Although many Christian Americans are stupid enough to believe what their administrations and their political clergy tell them about Israel rather than using their own reasoning to realize the facts, there are many other Americans, whom I met, read and heard about, some are Jews themselves, are aware of the realities and sympathize with the Palestinian just cause.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

Palestinian President, Mahmud Abbas, whose presidency had expired since early 2009, is treading a dangerous path when submitted a formal bid on Friday September 23rd to the UN to recognize a Palestinian Statelet - on the remaining fragmented and besieged by the separation wall 20% of historical Palestine- that would gain a full membership to the international organization.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas waves to the crowd during a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah upon his return from the UN General Assembly in the US on Sunday. Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

The first mention of a Palestinian state came within the partitioning 1947 UN Resolution 181 that unjustly divided historic Palestine into two recognized states; Palestine and Israel. In December 1988 the UN General Assembly, again, recognized a Palestinian state and the rights of Palestinians for self-determination based on Resolution 181.

The 1994 Oslo Agreement recognized a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Arafat and designated May 4^th of 1999 as a target date for the establishment of Palestinian State. This did not materialize due to the failure of the second Camp David negotiations between Arafat and Ehud Barak with Clinton's administration as an Israeli-biased mediator.

Other unrealized promises of statehood had been lived through later on such as the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, the American Road Map of 2003, President Bush's promise to establish a state before the end of 2005, which was postponed till 2008, the PA's 2009 declaration of resorting to the UN which was recanted for favoring continuation of peace negotiation, President Obama's support for the two state solution and establishment of a Palestinian State on the 1967 borders, and finally Abbas' bid to the UN.

Abbas' speech at the UN reminds me of the November 13^th, 1974 Arafat's famous "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand" speech at the UN urging them to recognize one democratic and secular Palestinian state where Jews, Christians, and Moslems could live peacefully together with equal rights. Unfortunately the Zionized American Administration controlled UN, who could not enforce any of its resolutions against Israel, was not able to put a leash on the Israeli mad dog that is left to terrorize the whole Middle East.

Abbas' bid for statehood does not seem to be a well-thought out strategy at this time in the history of Palestinian struggle for statehood and it opens a dangerous new can of worms. This strategy would hurt the majority of Palestinians and their just cause. If this Palestinian Statelet is approved, and I doubt that it would be, it means that Palestinians are giving up almost 80% of their historic Palestine to Israel while such a Statelet would be established within the separation wall; demilitarized, weak, and really non-sovereign due to its economic dependent on foreign financial aid as it is at the present, making it susceptible to foreign interference and manipulation.

It would also mean legitimizing the Zionist occupation of Palestinian land and legitimizing Israel as a Jewish State changing the struggle from resistance of illegal occupation into conflict over borders between two states.

The Israeli war criminals would be absolved of their crimes for they would be considered heroes defending their country from terrorists.

UN Resolution 194, which gives Palestinian refugees their legitimate right to return to their land and to their homes occupied by Israel in 1948, would be annulled. The refugees could not return to a "foreign country".

The legal status of Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora would change into mere foreign visitors in other countries thus the UNRWA would be absolved of its aid duties towards these refugees. As foreign visitors those Palestinian refugees might not obtain the right of residence in the host countries and their only place to resort to would be the Palestinian Statelet that could hardly absorb its current residents. Such refugees would be left helpless and without any legal rights.

The Israeli Palestinian residents, living in the 1948 occupied part of Palestine, would find themselves in a foreign country with the threat of losing citizenship and of being transferred to the Palestinian Statelet.

The Palestinian freedom fighters would be robbed from their legitimate struggle. The internationally recognized and warranted armed resistance to Israeli occupation would be, then, considered terrorism.

The status of Jerusalem city as the capital of Palestinian state is still ambiguous. Palestinian Jerusalemites are still subjected to home demolitions, evictions, seizures of businesses, settlers' terror, and heavy fines and taxations. They are being choked out of their neighborhoods by the encroaching illegal Israeli settlements. This week the Israeli interior ministry had just approved the construction of 1,100 housing units (apartment buildings) in illegal occupied Gilo; part of my Beit Jala home town land that had been added to Jerusalem city limits within the separation wall.

Although many countries seem to support Abbas' bid for statehood it seems to be doomed to failure. Regardless of the gains and of legitimacy it would gain Israel fiercely rejects it and the American Administration promised to veto it. The two don't want any legal entity standing in the way of accomplishing the Zionist project of Great Israel that would be the control center of the Middle East initially, and then the whole globe eventually. The EU had also expressed its reservation about statehood repeating the American claim that a Palestinian State could only be achieved through peaceful negotiation with Israel.

With these devastating results, and with the doomed failure, one wonders why Abbas and his Palestinian Council would take such a dangerous path!

To get a hint to what is behind this bid we need to listen to Abbas' speech to the PLO Executive Committee on July 27^th. Abbas stated that going to the UN is not going to be on the expense of negotiations for negotiations are "...our first, second and third choice..." He stated that this move does not aim at isolating or delegitimizing Israel for he is still meeting with many Israeli officials, and the Palestinian/Israeli security cooperation is still going on. He emphasized that he does not want to oppose or confront the American Administration, who finances the PA with $470 million a year. Abbas stressed that his move comes with complete cooperation with the American Administration in order to improve Palestinian chances in the negotiations. The real goal of the bid, he states, is to restart the negotiations that had been stopped for a long time.

Abbas and his cronies have no popularity among Palestinians outside his mercenary security guards financed by American money. His election as a president in 2005 was questionable. His presidency had expired early 2009 but he illegally and forcefully is clinging to position. The legitimacy of his appointed, not elected, Prime Minister, Fayyad, is strongly contested and it was never confirmed as required by the PA's Parliament. Members of Palestinian negotiating team were never elected and never refreshed, even after the Palestinian Papers scandal, despite their utter failure, throughout two decades of negotiations, in obtaining one single gain, but kept yielding to Israeli demands. The PA and its negotiating team had always taken fateful decisions without any popular referendum.

Palestinians had lost confidence in the ineffective Palestinian Authority, who is seen as a tool in the hands of Israel and the US. They see Abbas as "the best Palestinian leader for Israel" as stated by the Israeli President, Shimon Peres. The PA needed to do something drastic to regain the confidence of Palestinians. They sold this dangerous bid to the UN as a PA's courageous move and a historic victory that would internationalize the Palestinian cause even though a UN acceptance, if achieved, would not change a bit of the situations on the ground. They claimed that the UN Move would bring new legitimacy to Palestinian leadership under Abbas, and took the expense of setting large TV monitors in the squares of Ramallah City to broadcast Abbas' speech at the UN to portray him as a national hero.

Abbas' real, and personal, motive behind the UN move is not to "start a Palestinian Spring", akin to the Arab Spring, as he stated in his UN speech, but to avoid one that could topple his leadership.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

The Palestinians had not gained any positive results through these negotiations. On the contrary they have been witnessing their land being gradually snatched from under them few meters at a time, more of their rights being continuously violated, and more and more of them being routinely murdered by Israeli army and extremist colonizers (settlers).

Although not talked about openly the Palestinians had what could be described as unconscious knowledge of the dubious nature of the negotiations the Palestinian negotiating team is leading. WikiLeaks had just uncovered what have been well-known facts and had forced people to face and to talk about them.

What was really surprising is how far the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its negotiators have been willing to offer the Israelis, who have rejected all the Palestinian generous and free concessions, and the total pro-Israeli bias of the self-claimed American honest peace broker, who exerted tremendous pressure on the PA to surrender even more concessions.

The Palestine Papers have exposed PA and its negotiating team as traitors, who betrayed a national trust given to them by their own people. The Palestinian negotiating team had given Israel so many concessions while getting nothing in return. Besides accepting Israel's existence on occupied Palestinian land in 1948 they had also agreed to accept Israel's annexation of large tracts of 1967 occupied territories over which the Israelis had built more colonies (settlements) especially around Jerusalem in contravention to international laws that consider all settlements in occupied land as illegal. It also seems that they had agreed to some sort of shared sovereignty over Haram Al-Sharif; one of the most Islamic holy sites that is the property of the Islamic Waqf (trust) and belongs to all Muslims not just to the Palestinians.

It seems that the PA had also given up the legitimate rights of seven million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as guaranteed by all international laws and by UN resolution 194. They had considered it impractical while, at the same time, accepting the fraudulent Jewish claim of right of return from different countries all over the globe to Palestine. They, instead, have negotiated the return of a very small number of Palestinians only to the proposed yet-undefined future Palestinian state in the form of humanitarian reunion of family members.

The PA had also negotiated some sort of security cooperation with Israel that had made the Palestinian forces an Israeli proxy security forces protecting Israeli extremist colonizers and oppressing all forms of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation. This involved, among others, the imprisoning and torturing of Palestinian freedom fighters and political figures, providing security information to Israeli soldiers concerning the locations and movement of Palestinian activists, and allowing the Israeli soldiers to operate freely within the Palestinian towns to arrest and to assassinate activists and Hamas members.

Worst of all the WikiLeaks papers had exposed the roles the PA had played in inciting against the democratically elected Hamas government, its role in the failed coup in Gaza, its cooperation with Israel in the illegal economic siege against Gaza, it's pre-knowledge of the 2008-2009 Cast Lead Operation against Gaza and its intelligence sharing with the Israeli army, and its deployment of security troops to the borders of Gaza/Egypt in preparation of taking over Gaza as soon as the Israeli army finishes off Hamas.

Robert Fisk stated in his article "The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration". This is actually far worse than Balfour Declaration. We would expect Zionist British Balfour to betray Palestinians, but we would not have expected the PA, who claims to struggle for Palestinians' rights and to establish Palestinian state, to betray their own Palestinian brothers.

The response of the PA and its negotiating team to the Palestine Papers was so pathetic. I have watched their angry emotional nonsensical and at times hostile defense while being interviewed on Al-Jazeera TV, especially that of the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, Saeb Erekat. During his interview Mr. Erekat was extremely emotional, agitated, furious, very hostile, trying to talk down his interviewer with loud screaming voice, avoiding most of the questions posed to him, accusing his interviewer and Al-Jazeera of incitement against his person specifically and against Palestinians in general, threatening to sue Al-Jazeera, and talking big about patriotism and his own struggle to put Palestine back on the map. Never in my life have I felt pity for and disappointment with such a man assigned to be a chief negotiator with such a pathetic childish dialogue skills.

The 20 years history of this Palestinian negotiating team has failed to show any success. They failed to gain even one inch of occupied land back despite all the major concessions they offered Israel. With such failure it is so shameful that such a team was never changed even once while the Israeli negotiating team has been changed so many times.

It is understandable that negotiations between a weak occupied nation and its stronger occupying power yields only surrender agreements. It is also known, in the case of Palestinians, that the other rich Arab governments are no longer providing enough financial support to the PA to survive, and had left them under the conditional financial mercy of the Quartet and especially the US. The PA is forced to obey the dictate of the American administration for fear of losing its financial and logistical support. It appears that PA and its negotiating team had sold their souls and are willing to betray their people in order to stay in their political positions that generate handsome income into their own pockets. It is extremely shameful that they are willing to meet with their enemy to strike shady cooperative deals rather than meeting with their Palestinian brothers in the democratically elected Hamas government for reconciliation. Honorable men would have resigned their positions, when under pressure, rather than giving in to unjust political pressure causing harm to their people.

What was also surprising, besides the PA's generous concession, is the degree to which the Israelis were unwilling to accept these concessions that might have led to some sort of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Israelis seem to accept nothing less than complete capitulation by the Palestinians to everything they demand up front. This cast a doubt about Israel's seriousness in achieving any type of peace agreement. If peace is what the Israelis aspire for, as they keep claiming, they would have accepted the Arab Peace Initiative that guarantees them the peace and the security they claim to fervently seek.

Israel has adopted the Zionist dream of Jewish-only great Israel and nothing less would satisfy them. Israel's unwilling to accept all the generous Palestinian concessions reveal their false claim that they do not have any Palestinian/Arab partner in peace. The fact is that Israeli government, itself, is not willing to be a peace partner with the Arabs.

What is very striking in the Papers is the role the American administration had played in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Successive American administrations had continuously exhibited extreme bias towards Israelis regardless of the crimes they commit. Such bias can be seen in the US vetoing every UN resolution against Israel, supporting and arming Israel in its 2006 war against Lebanon and its 2008/9 war against Gaza, sidelining Goldstone's Report incriminating Israel in war crimes, and defending Israeli piracy against the Gaza Humanitarian Flotilla. In fact the American administrations had been Israel's faithful lawyer and financer

As for the Palestinian side the American administrations had always applied political pressure to force them into surrendering more concessions. The administration has gone as far as violating its sacred calling and aspiration for supporting freedom and democracy when it opposed the Palestinian democratic choice of a Hamas government, and went as far as arranging for a coup against that government and supporting the illegal blockade of Gaza.

As for the plight of the Palestinian refugees the Palestine Papers revealed that the previous Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, had the audacity to offer the mass transfer of these refugees, as if they were cattle, to some Latin American countries such as Chile and Argentine, assuming the authority to force the refugees onto the citizens of these countries regardless of any ethnic conflict that would arise.

The US had obstructed PA to resort to UN Security Council to extract recognition of a Palestinian state and pressured the PA back into the fruitless negotiations under the claim that such negotiation is the only means of solving the conflict. The US had offered only lip service against the Israeli violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention of building settlements on usurped Palestinian land in the occupied territories but had done nothing to stop it. The least the US could do to enforce the international law in this regard is to withhold, or at least threaten to withhold, all financial aid to Israel that is being used to build such settlements and to subsidize housing for Israeli extremists.

The American administration is not an honest peace broker as they keep claiming; rather it is a very active partner in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The world has been lately busy with what could be considered major wars and other low level conflicts. The major wars can be seen in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Palestine, while low level conflicts can be seen in places like Haiti, Somalia, India, and Sudan. Potential future wars are planned to break out in places like Korea, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf region (Iran). Yet all these wars are just distracting symptoms of a hidden war that is still being waged since the beginning of humanity.

Since creation (possibly millions of years ago) Man has been engaged in conflict and battles killing his brother for land and for its natural resources. Although billions of people were killed, empires collapsed, cities burnt and destroyed, civilizations lost, and land torched and contaminated, the so-called civilized modern Man of today is still not convinced that wars do not solve conflicts but exacerbate them. Wars are still being waged, Cain keeps killing his brother Abel, despite the wide spread anti-war movements and the many peace activists, for they, like many modern physicians, are not aware of the real cause of conflict; the hidden war, and keep attempting to cure the symptoms rather than the cause.

But what is this hidden war that the majority of people are not aware of? This is the war of the powerful minority (wealthy power elites) against the weaker majority of the population of the whole world including one's own countrymen.

The symbol of the unfinished pyramid with its all-seeing eye on top on the American one Dollar bill represents the state of the world. This pyramid represents the power hierarchy and is divided into three major structures; the controlled at the bottom, the administrators and enforcer of power at the middle, and the controllers at the unfinished top with the all-seeing eye. The first two structures are also subdivided into lesser substructures.

One may notice that this pyramid's top is not complete yet. This top represents a completely controlled world order first mentioned publically by President George Bush, the father, as the New World Order. This world order is still not yet complete.

A correlative pyramid, though inverted, is implied by the first. This inverted pyramid represents the global wealth distribution and shows that the largest accumulation of wealth is at the top of the pyramid while the majority of the people barely have 2-5% of wealth.

The bottom totally controlled structure comprises the majority of world population that includes the lower and middle classes, ranging from the absolute helpless impoverished people to the well-off business middle class. The impoverished are the hardest laborers yet barely earn enough morsels to keep them alive. The middle class also work hard but enjoys better quality of life and exert a little power over the lives of the impoverished.

At the second structure we find the administrators and the enforcers of power. Here we have the governments of the world, the military industrial complexes, and the religious institutions. These have total control over the population of the lower structure. They also enter into dynamic inter-relationships, cooperating and fighting, among each other. The present day wars we are witnessing are the result of conflict between different governments and different religions, and the competition between opposing military industrial complexes.

The controllers at the top are the wealthiest 3-5% of the families of the world population. The assets of some of these families are roughly estimated to be larger than the budgets of many countries combined. Their power over all the lower structures of the pyramid comes through their possession of and control over global money resources; i.e. central banks and financial institutions. Central banks such as the American Federal Reserve and the Bank of England print fiat paper money not backed by any real value such as precious metals. Through fractional-reserve banking system this money is loaned to governments and other governmental central banks in the form of bonds and charge interest for it. The government pays the interest from taxes collected from the people while other central banks charge higher interest to offset the interest they pay and to make some profit. The government and its central banks are, thus, in debt to the Federal Reserve. This debt is the bases for the country's national budget deficit.

Through their wealth this power elite had acquired the major industries of many countries especially the military and associated industries. They also control governments and dictate their policies through the buying of politicians with bribes, political rewards, and blackmail. They control political leaders, popes, and presidents by financing their ascendance to power position. Disloyal presidents, who attempt to promote self-interest or oppose the elite's plans, can easily lose their second term in office; e.g. George W. Bush and his unfinished war against Iraq, and Jimmy Carter and his solar energy plans. Others who directly opposed them or threatened their interests are assassinated e.g. failed assassination attempt on Andrew Jackson for destroying the privately owned Second Bank of US, Abraham Lincoln's assassination for his National Bank Act of 1863 and his Greenback money system, James Garfield's assassination for introducing silver into currency to refinance the federal debt, Warren Harding's suspicious death for reducing taxes and raising tariffs producing budget surplus, and failed assassination of Ronald Reagan for his appointment of the Gold Commission exposing the fact that US Treasury owns none of the gold at Fort Knox as believed by all Americans. Many other political leaders had been assassinated as documented in John Perkins' book "confessions of an Economic Hit Man". Even Popes were not spared assassination; suspicious death of Pope John Paul I in 28^th September 1978, only 33 days after his election as pope, for his decision to investigate the Vatican Bank (In God's Name: An investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, by David Yallop".

Tracing back the history of these controllers one discovers that they were the money changers of the ancient times. They had accumulated wealth through usury; lending money for high interest. They used to lend money to kings to pay for their wars and conquests. Through their money they acquired the military industry; a very profitable business during wars. But this military industry needs wars to flourish. So the money changers hired mercenaries to commit what we now call false-flag terror attacks against one country and then accuse another country of the crime. The money changers then loan money to both countries to buy weapons they manufacture themselves. When the war ends the money changers again lend money to both countries to re-build their infrastructures and their economies. Usury has become the tool used by the money changers to gain power over governments and to dictate their demands over them.

War is the biggest debt generator. Governments borrow money for weapons procurement to assure victory. The power elite provide both money and weapons to both sides of conflict. The loser will be loaned more money and sold more weapons to regain victory thus perpetuating the conflict while the financing money changers reap big profit. The Iraq-Iran eight years war is just one example.

We should remember the warning words of President Woodraw Wilson:

"In the US today we have in effect two governments; we have the duly constituted government, then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the constitution … we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled governments in the civilized world; no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by a vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men"

According to President Wilson the richest and most powerful country of the world; the US, has been under the grip of few powerful men since 1913. Can we imagine how much control they have now 97 years later?

The power elite control money printing. They would create economic boom lending money to everyone, and then create a shortage of money causing depression. This money manipulation through inflation and deflation traps businesses into debt with high interest they could not pay leading foreclosures. This way the power elite would buy businesses and properties for pennies on the dollar. The late housing crisis in the US is just one example.

The power elite use their influence over governments to draw border lines to separate nations. They use ideologies and religions to create enmity and bet people against each other. They had created and financed Fascism, Nazism and Zionism. They had started and inflamed both World Wars. They created Communism to oppose Capitalism; dividing the world into two halves with aggressive arms race that benefited only the military industries. They had committed false-flag terror attacks against the US to drive the Americans into wars against many other countries.

After the collapse of Communism the power elite committed the 911 terror attack (gooogle 911 truth seekers) to incite Islamophopia and war against global terrorism mainly in the Islamic World. Islam is the last obstacle against the creation of the New World Order. Bankers and financiers could not penetrate the Islamic World because Islam prohibits usury and considers it a great sin. Islamophobia and terrorism were created to destroy Islam and to enforce western banking systems under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy, as has been done in Iraq.

The US and EU countries have been driven into the draining war against global terror that created huge budget deficits worth trillions of dollars. The power elite now is taking advantage of this debt to gain yet more power and to siphon more of people's hard earning money into their own pockets. This is seen in the recent global money crises with its so-called austerity plan; laying off workers, increasing retirement age, bailing out doomed banks and corporations, tax cut for the rich, budget cuts of the educational systems, attempt to control social security and retirement funds, and freezing the salaries of government employees among many other measures.

During the early 19^th century the money changers financed the conquest of Napoleon Bonaparte of Europe, the Middle East, and Russia. At the same time they also financed every country Napoleon had invaded. When Napoleon was defeated first time at Leipzig in 1813 and was exiled to the island of Elba, the money changers financed him again to return to power. At the same time they financed the British troops, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. During his last days Napoleon wrote:

"The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency. Their sole object is gain."

In his only act of violence that contradicted his peaceful teachings of love and turning the other cheek, Jesus Christ had whipped the money changers out of the temple accusing them of turning the house of prayer into "a den of thieves" (Mathew 21: 12 & 13).

Shouldn't we follow Jesus' example and kick those evil money changers out of our society?

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank face waves after waves of Israeli terror campaigns throughout the year. These terror waves are committed by Israeli extremist settlers (colonizers) as well as the Israeli army. The most common attacks include violent trespassing on Palestinian properties during the night, stone throwing at civilians and their homes, physical assaults on farmers, children and women, destruction of all types of properties, burning civilian structures, crops and trees, shooting livestock, poisoning wells, and theft of crops and cutting fruit trees. The worst of these Israeli terror attacks are committed during harvest seasons, especially during olive season.

Olive trees are very important part of the Palestinian agricultural economy. They have been a major source of livelihood for Palestinians for thousands of years. Olive groves are spread all over the country and every Palestinian house has a couple of olive trees in its front or backyards. Many olive trees are thousands of years old.

As one of their key sources of income, the olive harvest season is a time of critical importance for Palestinians. Harvesting olives is a Palestinian communal activity that involves all classes of population. All family members; children as well as seniors, can be seen working in the fields. School students also volunteer to help farmers during the season. Olive mills and pressers open for business during this season to produce oil, to can pickled olives, and to export the products to other countries. The whole country becomes as busy as a bee hive. Over the last decades olive harvesting has become increasingly difficult due to Israeli settlers (colonizers) and army attacks.

Israeli governments as well as extremist settlers (colonizers) understand that Palestinians get more attached to their country during harvest season, especially during olive harvest. In order for the Zionist Israeli transfer/eviction plan of Palestinians to succeed, this Palestinian sacred attachment to the land must be broken. Thus the Palestinian economy and especially farm land is targeted by the Israeli government as well as the terrorist settlers (colonizers).

To destroy Palestinian farm land the Israeli government designates fields as closed military areas, surround it with barbed wires, and prevent entry to Palestinian farmers. The Israeli apartheid/separation wall had also isolated Palestinian farmers from their land. Although Palestinians resort to Israeli High Court requesting permissions to access their land during harvest seasons, yet no access has ever been granted. Neglected and unattended the fields and the trees become spoiled. After few years the Israeli government claims custodianship of the fields according to the Israeli law of "Absentees' Property". Israeli contractors, then, uproot all fruit trees and build colonies.

Israeli armed extremist terrorist settlers (colonizers) build their colonies on usurped Palestinian land and start terrorizing the adjacent Palestinian villages. Understanding the value and importance of the olive groves to the Palestinian farmers, those extremist Israeli terrorists target this major economic source in an attempt to drive Palestinians away. They invade olive groves with their tractors and bulldozers to harvest the olives for themselves, to uproot trees, to cut branches, to poison water wells, to set fire to crops, and to attack all Palestinians, who attempt to protect their fields. Many times, at the beginning of harvest season, they spray the fruit trees with chemicals to spoil the harvest and to kill the trees.

The terror attacks of settlers (colonizers) during harvest time has been gradually increasing every years until lately it had become a widespread phenomenon. The Israeli Haaretz noted that Israeli police reports have shown that settlers attacks against Palestinians during olive harvest season this year is the highest for the last ten years. I have counted in the media at least 35 terrorist attacks throughout the West Bank specifically related to olive harvest since the beginning of month of October. Many other attacks have not been reported due isolation and to media obstruction. Such number is a clear indication of a wide spread systematic plan of targeting Palestinian farmers during their olive harvest.

Other terrorist attacks such as setting fire to schools and mosques, shooting Palestinian civilians, intentional vehicular hit and run of Palestinian children, violent night raids against Palestinian homes, and eviction of Palestinian families and forceful occupation of their homes are still rampant although not counted in this article.

The majority of settlers' terrorist attacks (90%) took place in areas where Israeli army has security jurisdiction under the Oslo Accord. The increasing frequencies of the attacks indicate at least an intentional failure of the Israeli security forces to protect Palestinians. Under international law an occupying power (Israel in this case) is responsible for the safety of the people under occupation (the Palestinians). The attacks keep on happening in the same areas over and over again. If willing, the Israeli government could send security forces to these areas to prevent clashes. In its complicity the Israeli government encourages terrorist settlers (colonizers) to continue their attacks.

Those terrorist settlers (colonizers) are not restricted to one certain segment of Israelis, rather they come from the whole social spectrum of Israelis; religious, orthodox, secular and mixed colonizers. Their terrorism reflects the true genocidal nature of the Zionist ethnic cleansing philosophy and plan for establishing Greater Israel in an Arab-free Middle East.

Pictures and videos all over the internet show the presence of Israeli soldiers watching settlers attacking Palestinians and don't break up the clashes except to defend settlers, and to harass, beat, arrest Palestinians who dare to defend their groves, and to confiscate the whole harvested crops claiming it as evidence. In cases were arson is involved the Israeli soldiers usually obstruct access of Palestinian firefighters at nearby roadblocks.

Many Palestinian farmers had resorted to the Israeli police reporting the attacks and requesting protection. Since the job of the Israeli police is to protect settlers (colonizers) rather than Palestinians, they ignore such reports. The Israeli Yesh-Din organization (Volunteers for Human Rights) released a study showing that over 90% of police alleged investigations into settlers' attacks against Palestinians fail to produce any indictment and were closed on the grounds of "unknown perpetrators" or insufficient evidence.

The phenomenon of terrorist attacks by Israeli settlers (colonizers) against Palestinian farmers have been noticed by international human rights organizations such as International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who have arranged to send international volunteers to help and to protect Palestinian farmers while harvesting olives. The presence of such international volunteers, with their cameras, had in some areas, deterred and prevented violent settlers (colonizers) and Israeli soldiers from attacking Palestinian farmers. In other areas ISM volunteers, themselves, were specifically targeted by extremist settlers (colonizers) and had sustained injuries even during the presence of Israeli soldiers, who just stood there watching the attacks.

Since attacking ISM volunteers have been captured on cameras and broadcasted throughout European countries the Israeli government had adopted strict and harsh measures to deny international volunteers entry at the airport. The Israeli army had also issued orders to Palestinian villages warning them that housing international activists is illegal and would result in arrests. It was also reported through Palestinian radio that large fines of 6000 NIS have been sentenced against farmers who had invited international activists to accompany them during the olive harvest.

After the harvest Palestinian farmers either sell their olives as is, or press them and sell them as olive oil. Another Israeli method of destroying Palestinian olive harvest is by imposing high fees and taxations against the export of Palestinian olive products. Since Israeli army controls all border terminals the Israeli government hinders and delays the export of olive. In many occasions the products would be stored in warehouses until they get spoiled while waiting for export permits. Meanwhile Palestinians are charged high fees and taxes for storing and exporting their olives. Farmers end up selling their products locally for very cheap prices. Israeli companies would also buy the products from the farmers then turn around and sell them abroad as Israeli products making a lot of profits.

Israeli government always put the responsibility on Hamas government or Lebanese government for any border violent incident against Israeli settlers. Yet it does not take any responsibility for their terrorist settlers attacking Palestinian farmers, stealing their crops, and burning their trees. On the contrary Palestinian farmers are taken to Israeli courts, charged with attacking settlers, and forced to pay large amounts of fines. Such actions send a clear encouraging message to settlers to continue their terrorist crimes.

Settlers' (colonizers) attacks have become as a guaranteed phenomenon as the harvest season itself. Those terrorist settlers (colonizers) are funded by large segments of the American Jewish community and by American tax exempted Jewish organizations with the knowledge and protection of both the Justice Department and Department of Home Land Security. Such funding encourages more terrorism and counter-terrorism rather than peace the Obama administrations claims to pursue in the Middle East.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Palestinians had long lost confidence in their Palestinian Authority as their representative, who was supposed to defend their rights and work to achieve their statehood. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, was imposed on the Palestinians in the 2005 election when the Israeli forces had arrested and restricted the movements of other Palestinian candidates and his campaign was given 94% of TV coverage. Although his presidency had expired in January of 2009 he is still, illegally and unconstitutionally, occupying his position. Polls had shown that his popularity is very low.

Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, and his government were also imposed on Palestinians when Abbas appointed him to the position after the democratically elected Hamas government foiled an American coup d'état that eventually caused a division between the Palestinians.

The Palestinians were deceived by the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. They were misled that the Accords would be merely the first step in a plan that would eventually lead to Israeli withdrawal back to the 1967 Armistice Lines and to the establishment of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by 1995. Thus Yasser Arafat had dramatically altered the charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to reflect a new strategy of denouncing the legitimate armed resistance (labeled violence at the time), abandoning the liberation of all Palestine, accepting and recognizing the existence of the Israeli state on 78% of Palestine, and announcing peaceful negotiations as the only strategic choice for solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Arafat and his PLO were allowed to enter the West Bank, and to establish a Palestinian Authority (PA), whose job was to administer the Palestinian affairs during the interim period until statehood. Without an independent economy, and being under the mercy of the American-controlled Quartet funding the PA had no power and no autonomy and eventually, under western pressure to fulfill the conditions of the Oslo Accord and the Road Map, functioned as an Israeli tool and a front line to guarantee Israeli security by quelling any Palestinian resistance to expanding Israeli colonization (settlements) in the West Bank. It further served to legitimize political concessions given to Israel in the hope for achieving the illusive statehood.

Although the PA had fulfilled the conditions of the Oslo Accord and all the other agreements that followed, the successive Israeli governments did not withdraw an inch from the Occupied Territories; rather, they adopted more aggressive expansionist policies.

Finally, recognizing that negotiations are not getting him even the smallest gain that he could show to his people, Arafat stopped cooperating and refused to give any more concessions. Western pressure was applied forcing him to accept the assignment of Mahmoud Abbas as the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority in 2003. Abbas was set to continue the negotiations. When Arafat did not grant Abbas any real power causing him to resign he was assassinated by poisoning. Abbas, then, took his place and continued the charade of futile negotiations.

The PA was established basically to enter into peace negotiations with Israel. Unfortunately its negotiating team is very weak since the PA had burnt all its bargaining chips by denouncing armed struggle, pursuing Palestinian freedom fighters and imprisoning them, being divided into Gaza Strip and Western Bank, and not having serious support from the rest of the Arab countries. On the other hand Israel holds all the cards; the Israeli army has total military control of all Palestine, controls the movement of Palestinians through hundreds of check points, controls all borders and determines who could leave or come into territories including all the Palestinian officials, controls all the Palestinian resources especially water, imprisons 1.5 million Gazans into an open prison besides the 11 thousand prisoners in Israeli jails, and encourages and finances extremist armed settlers, who routinely terrorize Palestinian civilians and build their own colonies on stolen Palestinian land. On top of all that Israel has the financial, military and political support of the US.

Lately the international civil communities in Europe and in the US started to sympathize with the Palestinian cause and to join a campaign of boycotting and divesting out of Israeli companies and Israeli educational systems especially after witnessing the latest crimes against humanity of Israeli governments committed against Palestinians in general, their war crimes in Gaza Strip, their crimes of international political assassinations, and their open sea piracy and flagrant violations of international laws and many UN resolutions.

Re-engaging into the futile theatrical charade of peace negotiations with the Palestinians has become a necessity for the Israeli government to give the impression that Israel is seeking peace. Of course Israel will impose its impossible to accept conditions in order to accuse Palestinians of being an obstacle to peace.

Lacking any bargaining power and without any serious support from their brethren Arab leaders or from the US controlled international political community the Palestinian negotiating team could do nothing except appeal to the Israeli sense of fairness to achieve any political gain. But Israeli governments have no sense of fairness or justice and aspire only for more expansion and for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

The demands of the Palestinian negotiating team had shrunk dramatically. From the original struggle for liberating whole Palestine the PLO had downgraded its aspiration and strategy to acceptance of the Israeli occupation in the hope of establishing a Palestinian State on the meager 22% of original Palestine and then lately to a mere freeze of colonization (settlements) for just few months. It seems that the whole Palestinian cause has been summarized in settlements only. They have forgotten all other forms of Israeli occupation, oppression and terror such as the siege of Gaza, the arrest of civilians including women and children in mass, the theft of land, the terror of extremist religious settlers against Palestinian communities, the demolition of Palestinian homes especially in Jerusalem, the eviction of Palestinian Jerusalemites from their homes and the burning of Islamic mosques among the numerous other crimes.

The Israelis had stalled all peace negotiations. They never stopped their aggression against Palestinians; rather they intensified their oppression and their colonization specifically during peace talks. According to Ansar Al-Asra, a Palestinian human rights organization, Israel had focused its aggression towards Palestinian children targeting them for arrest, imprisonment, and torture in an attempt to break the spirit of resistance since childhood. Israelis never stopped expansion but increased it particularly during negotiations. They never dismantled any check point despite their claim of doing so. They continued imposing unacceptable pr-conditions to sabotage negotiations. Their so-called late freeze of settlement, which excluded settlements in East Jerusalem and the already ongoing settlements, came only to pull the legs of Palestinians into negotiations in an attempt to improve their internationally tarnished reputations after their piracy against the international humanitarian flotilla. Once negotiations started the settlements frenzy continued.

Statistics released by Land Research Centre show that during the 10 months of alleged freeze 120 illegal Israeli colonies were expanded , 1520 housing units were built, more Palestinian land was usurped, agricultural land was destroyed, 280 homes and other structures were demolished, and 13 Palestinian homes were seized by extremist settlers. On September 28^th the Israeli high court gave a judgment for settlers to evacuate tens more of Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a Jerusalem neighborhood, to be occupied by Israeli settlers. On October 10^th the Israeli Knesset succumbed to the demands of the extremist Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu Party and approved the racist "loyalty oath" bill demanding every new immigrant to swear loyalty to "the Jewish democratic Israel". Such bill comes as a first step of transferring more Palestinians out of Israel.

For almost the last 20 years of peace talks between Palestinian negotiating team and the successive Israeli governments the Palestinians kept yielding one concession after the other while Israel kept expanding one settlement after the other. Israelis had never missed any opportunity to reject every Arab peace offer including the best offer Arabs could give, the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that would guarantee Israeli security and normalize relationship with all its Arab nations providing Israel withdraws to pre-1967 borders. Peace contradicts with the Zionist expansionist dream in the Arab World.

There is a consensus that the path of peace negotiations has miserably failed and would never yield peace, yet members of the Palestinian negotiating team insist on negotiating because it secures their positions. Arab leaders support negotiations in the hope of containing the Arab/Israeli conflict in Palestine only. Israel wants negotiations to extract more political concessions. The US calls for negotiations in order to appear as an honest peace broker while at the same time guarantees Israeli military superiority in the region. The losers are Palestinians themselves; negotiations had harmed their cause; they have lost more land and more rights.

There is a dire need for an immediate new more assertive Palestinian political strategy. There is an urgent need for a new more effective Palestinian election, involving not only Palestinians under Israeli occupation, but also Palestinians in all Palestinian refugee camps and in exile, to choose a more representing political body, who would sincerely and assertively fight for the Palestinian rights on the international arena. The 17 years old Palestinian negotiating team with its futile negotiate-only mindset needs to be dismantled and be replaced with another team who is ready to negotiate only after Israel withdraws back to 1967 borders. The effectiveness of this new Palestinian body depends on the Arab League re-instating the Palestinian issue as the major Arab cause in totality and to support Palestinians in every form of resistance.

Further, and most important, the legitimate armed resistance to Israeli occupation must be re-introduced alongside the political struggle as an indispensable method for liberation. Aggressive armed resistance to the Israeli occupation is the only deterrent Palestinians have to stop Israeli expansion. The Egyptian October 1973 War liberating Suez Canal and Hezbollah's liberation of south Lebanon in 2000 serve as good examples for the saying "what was stolen by force could not be regained except by force".

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Aggressive rhetoric and a push for Israel to attack Iran have been, lately, intensified in the American media. While senators are trying to get President Obama to officially support an Israeli attack on Iran, reporters of the mainstream media are trying to convince the average American that Iran's (non-existent) nuclear weapons program, half the globe away, is a threat to America, and the only viable way to stop Iran is through an Israeli "preventive" attack. They claim that the consequences of such an attack, warned by some military strategists as devastating, are "overblown".

Many Zionist-bought Senators assert that the Congress strongly rejects nuclear Iran and supports the use of all means to keep Iran from acquiring a bomb including through military actions. Reiterating this assertion during their visit to Israel last July, Senators McCain, Lieberman and Graham hinted that Israel could spearhead such an attack that would definitely draw American forces in the conflict to finish the job.

Ignoring the dire consequences of such a war specifically on the US, Israel, and the Middle East, and the whole world in general, 47 House Republicans had introduced and signed onto a resolution (HR 1553) declaring "support for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran... including the use of military force." It is understood that nuclear "tactical bombs" are to be used for such a military force to be effective. This resolution is now on its way through the Congress and Senators are under pressure to endorse it.

The mainstream media is doing its part to sell this war to the American citizens. Major articles about the subject were published by leading pro-Zionist, pro-war neoconservatives such as previous CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht, who published his exceptionally very long article "Should Israel Bomb Iran? -Better Safe than Sorry". Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh from Washington Post had also published their long article "A Nuclear Iran: Would America Strike to Prevent It?" Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and commentator on Fox News Channel published his article "A Period of Consequences; Our Dangerous Iran policy".

The common theme with these writers is their addressing of the alleged Iranian nuclear "threat" to the American people although half the globe afar. They claim that economic sanctions and the American diplomacy are ineffective and insist that a military action by the US, or perhaps Israel, would be a better solution than mere talks. The danger of these articles is that they greatly downplay Iranians' ability to defend themselves and to counter-attack effectively.

The writers encourage nuking of Iran as the only solution to "curtail its ambitions" . Gerecht asserts "an Israeli bombardment remains the only conceivable means of derailing or seriously delaying Iran's nuclear program and -equally important -traumatizing Tehran... (an Israeli) preventive strike remains the most effective answer to (Iran) having nuclear weapons."

Drawing the American forces in the conflict the writers misleadingly assert that US military, although engaged in two ongoing wars, is still fully capable of "carrying out such a mission." They dangerously and extremely minimize the effect of such an attack as "limited" , as if the Iranians would stand by and let the US or Israel obliterates their country and their citizens.

Similar to pre-2003 Iraqi situation, the US and Israel are using the threat of "non-existent" Iranian nuclear weapons to rally international support for a regime change in Iran. They are accusing Iran with the same grave violations that they themselves (US & Israel ) possess. Iran is being punished by severe economic sanctions based on Israeli and American unfounded accusation that Iran, a member of the NPT, is building an atomic bomb despite the November 2007 assertion of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), summarizing the unanimous opinion of all 16 secret services, that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. The assertion stated: "We judge with high confidence that in fall of 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program... We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear program as of mid 2007."

IAEA's reports confirm that there is no evidence that Iran is currently pursuing an atomic weapon program. Iran is criticized and is sanctioned for what the US and Israel think Iran would do, rather than for what Iran is doing. Iran is exercising its legitimate right, as per the NPT, of acquiring peaceful atomic technology.

The US itself possesses thousands of nuclear bombs, and although a member of the NPT, is still working on what is called nuclear tactical bombs. Israel on the other hand is not a member of the NPT, yet it is very well known that Israel has between 200-300 nuclear bombs as exposed by Mordechai Venunu, an Israeli atomic technician, who used to work in the Israeli atomic facility in Dimona. Former President Jimmy Carter mentioned in May 2008 that Israel has 150 nuclear bombs.

Although having democratic elections Iran is demonized as a religious dictatorship. Similarly, Israel, although having democratic elections, is a religiously dominated society aiming at fulfilling their religious prophesy of Greater Jewish Israel. The American foreign policy is greatly tainted by influential religious groups such as the Jewish AIPAC and Zionist Evangelican Christians. This influence can be easily seen in Bush's description of his wars as "crusades", and in the use, by main media, of terms such as "Islamofascist", "Islamic terrorists", "Islamic extremist" and other religiously pejorative words to describe the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Iran.

While giving themselves the right to invade, occupy, destroy and devastate Iraq and Afghanistan under the accusations that such countries are threatening the US half the globe across, the American administration and Israel deny Iranians same right to defend its borders when its neighboring country is occupied by another country that keeps threatening to nuke their country, and accuse them of supporting terrorists in Iraq.

Iranian president Ahmadinejad is labeled as a new Hitler with a mad pathologically terror-stricken anti-Semitic Jew-hating Islamofascist regime intending on expanding its authority over the Middle East. Israel is playing the role of always the victim in a self-defense mode rather than the instigator of hostilities, and considers any criticism of its terror as anti-Semitic. Israeli leaders are worst than Hitler for what they had done to the Palestinians. Their government is a Zio-Nazi regime based on religious superiority complex, and intent on wiping off all Arabs and Moslems in between the Nile and Euphrates, as they had done in Palestine, in order to build their Greater Jewish Israel to spread its authority not only on the Middle East but also on the whole world. Israel is anti-Arab (anti-Semitic), anti-Moslems, and, as will eventually become apparent, anti-Christian.

The American administration is the worst of them all. Since its establishment until the present day the US has been in a state of perpetual wars and genocide against other nations. Its military bases are spread all over the globe to control and to manipulate other countries under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy.

Iranian Ahmadinejad is falsely accused of denying the Jewish Holocaust and of threatening to wipe off Israel, when in reality all what he had suggested was a serious and open historical study of the Holocaust similar to any other historical event, and had stated that the Zionist regime in Israel would bring an end to itself due to its terrorist actions against others. Iran had never threatened to strike any other country, including Israel, unless it was attacked first. Israel, on the other hand, denies the Palestinian Nakba and Palestinian pogroms perpetrated by the Israeli army and by Israeli terrorist settlers. Besides wiping Palestine off the map Israel, backed by the American administration, is threatening to nuke Iran and wipe off Iranian cities and citizens in mass. The US is also denying it's genocidal and war crimes against other nations, the least of them is the annihilation of millions of indigenous American Indians and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wiping off hundreds of thousands of people within few seconds. The Administration is still using the threat of nuclear strike against non-nuclear countries to force them to follow the American dictate.

The real goal of all these accusations is a regime change in Iran, similar to the Shah regime, that would allow the flocking of foreign corporations to exploit Iran's natural resources especially oil and gas. Since Israel has been complaining that one or two Iranian nuclear bombs pause an existential threat to its citizens, one would expect Israeli leaders and the American administration to be satisfied with the Iranian low enriched uranium swap tripartite deal, brokered by Iran, Turkey and Brazil.

Many political analysts fear that Israel might attack Iran before the end of this month (August). Israel has been preparing long for such an attack. Last July 2009 Israeli air forces had been training on bombing raids at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada, while the Israeli missile defense shield program was tested off the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Also in June 2009 two Israeli missile class warships and a German made Dolphin Israeli submarine with cruise missiles equipped with the most sophisticated nuclear warheads in the Israeli arsenal, had passed through the Suez Canal to be stationed in the Persian Gulf off the Iranian coast. Since the Israeli air forces need to fly through Iraqi air space the attack needs to happen before the US turns security control to the Iraqi forces end of August, and before Iran defuses the tension by swapping its nuclear fuel early September.

An Israeli strike would have a devastating effect on the whole world. Iran is a powerful country and has just added to its arsenal many domestically-built weapons such as Mersad anti-aircraft missile, Ghadir class mini-submarines, and the lethal Noor anti-ship missiles. There is a rumor that Iran had just acquired four S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems .

The Iranians are expected to counter attack with long range missiles against Israel. All the American aircraft-carriers in the Gulf are sitting ducks for the Iranian missiles. Iranians would also target all the American military bases in the Gulf. They would start supplying surface-to-air missiles to Taleban that would jeopardize American war in Afghanistan. Having a defense treaty with Iran, Syria and Turkey may be drawn into the conflict. Hezbollah and Hamas would hit Israel from North and South. The Iranians would definitely close the Strait of Hermuz blocking all the oil shipments. Blocking, for even few weeks, Iran's 7% of internationally traded oil plus another 40% of global oil exports from the Arab Gulf States would cripple the whole international economy.

An Israeli strike would ignite Armageddon in the Middle East, and it would spread to the rest of the world. The question that poses itself is: Is the American Congress really crazy to support such an Israeli strike?

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Israelis justify their genocidal economic siege against Gaza Strip, their December 2008 barbaric war crime onslaught against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and their international piracy against the international "Break the Siege Campaign" and the humanitarian aid Freedom Flotilla with the false claim that the democratically elected Hamas leadership, in the Gaza Strip, is a terrorist organization.

Examining Hamas' history in order to validate/debunk this terrorism claim one discovers that Hamas did not invade and occupy any other country, but Israel did. In 1948 Israel occupied almost half of Palestine, and later in 1967 occupied the rest of Palestine, parts of Egypt, parts of Syria, and parts of Lebanon with it. This illegal occupation still stands up to date.

Hamas did not evict complete populations of cities, did not perpetrate massacres of civilians, and did not level and raze complete cities. Israel did. Israelis had forcefully evicted the residents of Palestinian cities in 1948 and again in 1967. Israelis had committed many massacres against Palestinian civilians, such as the massacres of Deir Yassin, Ein al-Zeitun, Al-Tantura, Al-Dawayima, Jenin, and many others in Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, in his book "All That Remained" had documented 500 Palestinian towns the Israelis destroyed and leveled to the ground in order to erect Israeli colonies in their places.

Hamas did not create the worst refugee crises in the world. Israel did. In 1948 Israelis expelled almost 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and towns, drove them to the neighboring Arab countries, and denied them the right of return as per UNSC resolutions. In 1967 Israelis, again, drove thousands other Palestinians from their town out of the country. For the last 62 years these refugees are living under the charity of the UNRWA.

Hamas did not send its army to attack its neighboring countries. Israel did. Israeli army attacked Jordan until it was defeated in Al-Karameh Battle in March 1968. Israel attacked Egypt and occupied the Egyptian Sinai until 1973 when the Egyptian forces destroyed the Israeli Bar Lev Wall on the eastern bank of Suez Canal. This led to Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian Sinai Desert. Israeli army invaded and occupied Lebanon twice; once in 1978 and again in 1982. The second occupation lasted eight years until Hezbollah's resistance defeated Israelis in 2000 and forced them to retreat from Lebanese land.

Hamas did not steal Palestinian land, farms and homes from their rightful owners to build illegal colonies (settlements) in violation of all international laws and despite opposition of many UNSC resolutions, and to forcefully introduce aggressive extremist religious Jewish Israelis within Palestinian communities. Hamas did not forge land and home deeds to illegally seize Palestinian properties. Israel did. Land seizure, home demolition, and home theft are routine attacks on Palestinian civilians. Such practices have intensified lately with the latest plan of demolishing 22 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem in order to build a tourist park.

Contrary to what pro-Zionist media wants us to believe Hamas is not the extreme religious fanatics intolerant to other religions with a psychotic fervor to kill Jews. True, they are fundamental Muslims, whose religion teaches tolerance and acceptance of the "People of the Book"; Jews and Christians. They are not against Jews per se, but against the Zionist occupation of their land. Israeli Jews are the most extremist religious fanatics, who prescribe to the religiously racist "God's Chosen People" ideology that is intolerant to all other religions.

Hamas did not bomb, torch, or destroy any Jewish synagogues nor dug up and razed Jewish cemeteries. Israel did. Since 1948 Israelis had destroyed hundreds of Mosques, turned others into Jewish bars or clubs or senior homes. Jewish colonizers (settlers) had torched and vandalized many mosques. Religious extremist Jews are threatening to demolish Al-Aqsa Mosque, third holiest Islamic place, in order to build third Solomon Temple in its place. Israeli government had confiscated land belonging to Christian church. The Israeli army had bombed Christian churched including the Nativity church in Bethlehem, a Sumerian church in Nablus, and an Orthodox church in Gaza.

When a Jewish cemetery gets vandalized Israel and Zionists cry anti-Semitism. Yet Israelis give themselves the right to destroy hundreds of Palestinian cemeteries. In a most presumptuous act the Israeli government is digging up and razing almost a thousand years old Islamic cemetery in Jerusalem to build a museum of tolerance in its place.

Hamas was not involved in human organ trafficking by murdering Jewish children and stealing their body organs. Israelis did. Rabbis, who suppose to respect life, with the cooperation of Israeli military officials and Israeli military physicians were caught red-handed into this despicable crime.

Hamas did not manufacture drugs and smuggle them into the US. A gang of Rabbis, American Zionist Jews, and Israelis are involved into manufacturing ecstasy drugs in Israel and smuggling them into the US to profit on American addiction.

Hamas did not send arms with military trainers to every corner of the Middle East to arm and to train terrorist groups to terrorize local citizens and to attack local governments. Israel did. Israel had armed and trained Lebanese Phalangist militia, who started the Lebanese civil war and later on became Israel's proxy army during Israel's occupation of Lebanon. Israel had, also, armed and trained Kurdish militia in north Iraq to terrorize Iraqi civilians and to attack Turkish troop in east Turkey. Israel had armed and trained Jundullah terrorist group to terrorize Iranian citizens, and to attack and bomb Iranian government buildings.

Israel's arming and training had expanded beyond the Middle East to reach South African government who terrorized and suppressed the local citizens. In Algiers Israel armed and trained terrorist groups, who perpetrated many massacres against civilians. In Sudan Israel armed terrorist groups to create a division between the North and the South Sudanese. Israeli military trainers reached Latin America, where they trained drug lords' militias in Mexico and Columbia.

Hamas did not send assassinating teams, with forged foreign passports, to other countries to murder political officials, scientist, and university professors. Israel did. In 1973 Israeli army and Mossad assassins, sent to Beirut, Lebanon, assassinated three political figures; Kamal Nasser, Kamal Adwan and Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar. An estimated 100 other Lebanese security personnel and civilian neighbors were also murdered in this raid. In 1988 Israeli assassins were sent to Tunis and murdered Khalil al-Wazir, a PLO leader, in front of his wife and son. Several security guards were also murdered in this raid. In 1997 Mossad agents with forged Canadian passports entered Jordan and attempted to assassinate Khaled Mish'al, a Hamas official, with poisonous chemical weapon. The Israeli assassins were caught by Jordanians. In order to appease Jordan's King Hussein, the then Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered the botched assassination attempt, was obliged to send the anti-dote to cure Mish'al from the poison, and to release the crippled Sheikh Yassin, the founder of Hamas movement. In February 2008 Israeli Mossad agents were sent to Damascus, Syria, where they assassinated by a car bomb Imad Mughniyah, a senior member in Hezbollah.

Not learning from his 1997 criminal botched assassination attempt against Mish'al, Netanyahu, becoming Israeli Prime Minister a second time, had authored the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room in January 2010. A team of at least 29 Mossad assassins, carrying forged international passports, were sent to Dubai to assassinate al-Mabhouh; a Hamas official. The assassination was exposed internationally through Dubai's closed caption cameras.

Mossad assassins were also sent to Iran and Iraq to assassinate scientist, especially nuclear and physics scientists, university professors, and even medical doctors. According to Press TV Israeli Mossad agents were sent recently to Turkey to assassinate Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan but failed in the attempt. Erdogan has been a thorn in Israel's side lately.

The US, Israel's best friend and sponsor, was not saved from Israel's assassinations. The Mossad is accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy because he opposed Israel becoming a nuclear power, and was about to change American policy towards the Israeli/Arab conflict (see Michael Collins Piper's book "Final Judgment"). There are also many evidence implicating Israeli Mossad agents in the 911 bombing of the Trade Center.

Hamas did not spy on the US, stole its nuclear fuel and nuclear technology. Israel did. Israel's spying on the US is a well known fact among the American intelligence. The story of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard is very well known. Pollard was responsible for the murder of 100 CIA agents, whose names were included in vital intelligence he turned over to the Soviet Union.

Israel's theft of American nuclear technology and fuel was exposed in the article "America's Loose Nukes in Israel" by Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, where he explained how large quantities of America's highly enriched uranium and plutonium was smuggles to Israel via the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC). Besides building their own nuclear bombs, Israelis were trying to sell nuclear material and technology to apartheid South Africa.

Hamas did not commit any crime of high seas international piracy. Israel did. Israeli marine commandos had attacked, rammed, and hijacked "Break the Siege" boats, and lately had attacked Freedom Flotilla killing at least 9 international humanitarian peaceful activists, and kidnapping the rest to Israel, where they were imprisoned, roughed up, interrogated and deported. Twenty other activists are still missing, and feared being dumped in the ocean by Israeli terrorist commandos to cover their crime.

With such comparisons, and many others that could fill up volumes, one may ask why didn't Israel end up on the West's terrorist list but Hamas did? This "Terrorist List" was forced by Bush administration on the world. It is the American perspective and the American global hegemonic aspiration that determine who would be listed as a terrorist. Of course if the US would not put itself on the list for terrorizing Iraqis, Afghanis, and Pakistanis, why would it list Israel for terrorizing Palestinians and neighboring Arab Countries?

Hamas is a resistance movement with a branch of social services. It resists Israeli occupation and, at the same time, provides humanitarian and financial aid to families, who suffered from the Israeli occupation. It is not corrupt as what Fatah has lately become, and is not a collaborator with Israel as Fatah's officials. Thus it gained popularity and trust. When the American administration forced election on Palestinians in 2006 hoping to legitimize Fatah's collaborators again, Hamas won the election instead. This election was certified as fair and democratic by international monitors headed by Jimmy Carter, once an American president.

Hamas, rightfully, wanted to rectify the previous unjust agreements, expressed willingness to establish a long term truce with Israel, and accepted the two states solution providing that Israel would completely withdraw to 1967 borders. Israel rejected Hamas gestures the same way it had rejected all Arab peace initiatives in the past. Israelis refuse to be restricted within a defined border because that means the end of the Zionist expansionist scheme.

Israel, the Bush administration, and Abbas with his security chief Dahlan conspired to overthrow Hamas as was reported by Vanity Fair. Fortunately, Hamas was aware of the conspiracy and kicked Fatah's security forces out of Gaza. Since then the US added Hamas to the terrorist list, and Israel started its choking siege against Gaza.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

One more time, within less than one week, and despite all the international condemnations and mass protests all over the entire globe, Israelis had, with their snobby noses and raised middle fingers towards the world, broke the international laws in a flagrant provoking challenge to the international humanitarian collective consciousness by attacking the humanitarian aid ship "Rachel Corrie", stole the ship's humanitarian contents, and dragged the ship and its humanitarian activist to Israel in an act of kidnapping piracy.

The ship "Rachel Corrie" was named in honor of an American young humanitarian activist woman, who was deliberately crushed and murdered by an Israeli army operated Caterpillar bulldozer, while attempting, with other activists like her, to nonviolently protect a Palestinian home in Gaza Strip from demolition. Such illegal and inhumane home demolition is a routine activity of the Israeli Terrorist Army in Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The whole world has condemned Israel's piracy and the blockade against Gaza that puts 1.5 million Palestinians in the biggest concentration camp ever in the history of mankind. Even in Israel itself, an estimated 15,000 Israeli citizens held, on June 6^th, a demonstration in Tel Aviv to protest the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 and the attack on the Freedom Flotilla. The protest was organized by coalition that includes Meretz, Peace Now, Gush Shalom, Hadash, Physicians for Human Rights, and other organizations.

Navi Pillay, the UN Human Rights Chief described the blockade as "illegal and must be lifted", and accused Israel of violating international humanitarian law that prohibits starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, and prohibits the imposing of collective punishment on civilian population.

The head of UNRWA operation in Gaza, John King, had called upon the UN itself to begin defying the blockade and deliver humanitarian assistance since the blockade is a flagrant direct violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibits collective punishment.

Article 33 came as a response to WWII Nazi's execution of Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity, and for carrying out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance, where entire villages, towns, and districts were held responsible for any resistance activity taking place in the area. Israelis are following Nazi's example in their blockade of Gaza to suppress Palestinian's resistance of Israeli occupation of Palestine. The Article equates collective punishment with terrorism and war crimes. It states that:

• No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.
• Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
• Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
• Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime.

Israel had also violated Article 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988 stating that it is an international crime for any person to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process. This is the Article that legalizes sending international law-enforcing ships to fight Somali piracy in the Indian Ocean. Israeli piracy should be fought the same way.

Israel is the mad dog Zionism had released in the Middle East to terrorize its nations. For the last 62 years this dog had savagely bitten all its neighbors, and its mad barking is threatening the rest of the countries in the region. Enforcing its expanding cancerous existence into the heart of the Arab World Israel is using lethal force against every Middle Eastern country under the false justification of self defense. Israeli society thrives on violence. The Israeli commando (terrorist), who murdered six of the unarmed humanitarian activists, is being considered for a medal of valor. Elated by their piracy many Israelis rallied outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv condemning Turkish stand concerning the flotilla attack. They hurled stones and smoke grenades at the building, burnt Turkish flags, and slammed Turkish Prime Minister, Erdogan, as Fascist and Nazi. Other extremist Israelis attacked Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia TV news teams while broadcasting from Ashdod. These are the values that Israeli government is trying to instill in the hearts of their children since elementary schools.

War after war Israel has been escalating its savagery through the use of the latest more lethal American weapons although Israel had violated all the American arms export laws. Through Zionist control over American Congress the US had provided Israel with blind unconditional continuous financial, political, and military support that encouraged Israeli leaders to disregard international laws, violate UN resolutions, and commit crimes against humanity as well as war crimes against almost every country including even the US itself.

During Israel's 1967 aggression war against all its neighbors the Israeli air and navy forces had also deliberately attacked the American USS Liberty ship off the Egyptian coast killing 34 American servicemen and injuring 170 others in an attempt to frame Egypt and to get the US to bomb Cairo. Luckily the ship was able to communicate with other American navy ships and the American fighters sent to nuke Cairo were called back. Despite this attack the Zionized American administration swept the Israeli attack under the carpet. (watch BBC documentary "Dead In The Water" about this attack).

Arrogance had led the Israeli leaders to commit the crime of piracy against the international humanitarian activists in the Freedom Flotilla. Although condemned internationally in the emergency session of the UN Security Council the US had refrained from condemning this Israeli piracy, and requested a full investigation by independent and impartial investigators including Israeli authority. Clinton stated: "We support, in the strongest terms, the Security Council's call for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation. We support an Israeli investigation that meets those criteria"

Such an investigation is a diversion away from the Israeli crime since it is obvious that Israeli commandos had attacked the flotilla in the international waters. Besides it is ludicrous to ask the criminal to investigate his crime impartially. No criminal would incriminate himself, and Israelis had always exonerated their criminal soldiers in all previous investigations they conducted.

Fearing of being incriminated by an international investigation, similar to Goldstone's, phobic Israeli leaders, accusing the whole world to be hypocritical, had rejected any international investigation. Knowing that the US would be a biased-toward-Israel investigator, Israelis claimed that they will conduct their own internal investigation with the cooperation of the US.

Tzipi Livni, leader of largest Israeli party Kadima, stated: "We must carry out an internal investigation which will leave the rest of the world outside the gates ... the world is certainly hypocritical ... today the government has a mission: to leave the world outside the gates, and the IDF outside international investigation ... the aim is to set up -with the US- an internal investigation committee that will leave the international investigation outside."

Reflecting the Congress defense of Israeli piracy, Vice President, Joe Biden, in an interview with Charlie Rose, justified Israel's blockade against Gaza and its piracy against the flotilla with the claim that since Israel is at war with Hamas it has the right to know whether the flotilla is smuggling weapons into Gaza. It is a known fact that the contents of the flotilla had been inspected several times by independent humanitarian organizations and customs officials several times. Using Biden's same twisted logic does Hamas, if having the naval power, have the right to intercept and kidnap American ships delivering weapons to Israel since it is at war with Israel?

Obama's bias towards Israel was clear when he claimed that Israelis have legitimate concern about their security but had totally ignored Palestinians' legitimate concern about their own security. He claimed that while visiting the Israeli town of Sderot (built on Palestinian usurped land) he saw the holes caused by Hamas' rockets in Israeli homes. Yet he had never gone to Gaza to see the hundreds of homes completely destroyed by Israeli air raids, or the destruction of all Gaza's infrastructure caused by Israeli bombardment, or the hundreds of graves for Palestinian children murdered by Israeli snipers.

Obama is trying to help Israel transform their international defeat and piracy into some kind of victory by manipulating the mechanism of the blockade against Gaza. He claimed that the "current situation" (Israeli illegal blockade of Gaza) is unsustainable, and that his administration is working with the Palestinian Authority, with Israel and with other international partners to develop new procedures for delivering more goods and assistance to Gaza. His intentions are not ending the criminal blockade, but to concoct a "more acceptable method" of delivering more goods to Gaza to alleviate what he alludes to as a humanitarian crises rather than a military occupation. Israel has hinted to such an acceptable method that includes the delivery of all humanitarian aid to the Israeli port of Ashdod to be inspected by international observers before delivery to Gaza.

Palestinians and the international community don't want just to deliver more goods to Gaza, or just to break the blockade, but also to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Arab peace initiative of 2003 gives Israelis 80% of historic Palestine and guarantees their security and a complete normalization providing Israel withdraws back to 1967 border and recognize a Palestinian state. Yet Israelis reject this peace initiative since it contains Israel within defined borders, thus defeating the Zionist expansionist scheme in the region.

Israel has demonstrated, since its founding, its willingness to violate international laws, disregard humanitarian dignity, use depleted uranium and phosphorous bombs and other weapons in acts of colonizing wars, genocide, terrorism, assassinations, and piracy, to murder civilians and oppress all kinds of internationally accepted resistance of its colonization. Israeli leaders routinely threaten to nuke countries in the region such as Lebanon, Iran and Syria. Confirmed nuclear power, without any monitoring of IAEA or signing the NPT, Israel had sent three of its German-built submarines equipped with 15,00km range nuclear missiles to station off the coast of no-nuclear Iran.

How could the world trust this mad Israeli dog with nuclear weapons threatening nuclear war in the Middle East that would, certainly, touch every country in the world in one way or another?

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

As expected by many, the serial terrorist Israeli army attacked this morning, May 31st 2010, the "Freedom Flotilla" ships with gas bombs and live fire, murdering at least 19 humanitarian international activists, 16 of them Turks including one MP, and injuring 29 others. The Israeli navy, then, kidnapped the 700 humanitarian activists and their ships to Israel.

Since the declaration by the humanitarian activists that they intend to challenge the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza in order to deliver humanitarian aid to starved and sick Palestinian civilians, the Israeli officials and military had threatened to intercept the Freedom Flotilla, and send the activists back. When activists insisted on going through with their journey Israelis declared that such journey is considered a provocation to Israeli laws and a threat to its security. Later on, the Israelis announced that the organizers of the flotilla are pro-Hamas and pro-Al Qaeda terrorists attempting to smuggle weapons to Gaza, and that every passenger on the flotilla is a potential terrorist. I wonder if this includes the Israeli citizens who joined the flotilla volunteers.

The Israeli attack against the Freedom Flotilla was pre-meditated and pre-planned by the Israeli military headed by its defense minister, Ehud Barak, and approved by its prime minister, Netanyahu. Five large tents were erected at the Israeli port of Ashdod to hold humanitarian activists hostage. Three Israeli military ships loaded with 300 specially trained Israeli commandos accompanied by military helicopters and associated attack speed boats, headed to intercept unarmed humanitarian ships. This was the biggest Israeli naval battle since its illegal establishment in 1948.

Once again Israel had lived up to its infamous terrorist reputation. Israel's 62 years old history is full of terrorism, genocide, wars, violations of all human rights, breaking of all national laws, and war crimes that would fill large volumes. Israel's latest terror attack on the Freedom Flotilla is an international compounded crime. To start with, the Israeli navy attacked the ships in the international water. They attacked unarmed civilians. They attacked a humanitarian mission to aid people in need, similar to any humanitarian missions to a devastated area like Haiti for example, which gives the mission a special protection status by international law. The Israelis killed unarmed humanitarian activists. They kidnapped all the activists and took them hostages. They took the ships and put their hands on all the goods they carry similar to what they had done in the past with previous "Break the Siege" ships.

To cover their crime and war crimes against Gaza and the illegal siege the Israeli have just committed international crimes against representatives from 40 different countries including members of parliaments. Besides the crimes of murdering different internationals the Israelis have committed an act of piracy in the international waters.

The Israelis, as usual, portrayed themselves as the perpetual victims claiming that they had to kill the activists in an act of self-defense. They want us to believe that the humanitarian activists had come from 40 different countries with a conspiratorial plan to attack the Israeli well-armed navy, and that these activists had illegally boarded the Israeli battle ships using military helicopters and shooting live fire and gas grenades. The poor Israeli soldiers could do nothing but defend themselves. This reminds of me of Golda Meir's statement: "We could never forgive the Palestinians for making us shoot their children."

Israel's justification for boarding the Freedom Flotilla because they don't know what these vessels carry is a childish justification. There are hundreds of vessels in the Mediterranean, whose contents are not known to the Israelis. Does that mean that they have the right to board all of them?

The Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Israeli genocidal war crimes against Palestinians, especially the illegal and holocaustal siege of Gaza, are being increasingly recognized and opposed by many nations. The unremitting "Break the Siege" campaigns had exposed Israel's genocidal plan against Palestinians, and are gaining more international support.

Israel's criminal attack against the Freedom Flotilla is meant to terrorize other possible future humanitarian internationals out of organizing or participating in more humanitarian "Break the Siege" campaigns. Their special emphasis on the Turkish vessel came as a revenge for Turkey's courageous opposition of Israel's war crimes against Palestinians, and Turkey's successful mediation in the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Israel's siege of Gaza and its attack on Freedom Flotilla are clear indications that Gaza is still under the Israeli occupation. Israeli so-called withdrawal from Gaza, September 2005, is just a redeployment of Israeli forces rather than a withdrawal as Israelis like us to believe. Israel still controls every aspect of life in Gaza. Israel wants us to believe that its siege of Gaza is a response to capturing their soldier, Shalit, who was, in fact, participating in the siege at the time of his capture. Palestinians have the right to defend their lives from the terror of such soldiers. On the other hand, Israel does not want us to remember the 10 thousand Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, who were kidnapped and snatched from their families by the Israeli terrorist army after midnight.

The Freedom Flotilla is the 9th attempt of "Breaking the Siege" campaign to deliver humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza, a humanitarian duty the UN had poorly and almost not delivered. Five of these trips were successful, while the rest had suffered from Israeli piracy and kidnapping. The volunteers came from 40 different countries including European countries and from the US. They include some members of parliaments of these countries. These volunteers, unlike some of their bought pro-Zionist governments, represent the humanitarian cumulative compassion of many nations, and their courageous will to help their human needy brothers and sisters. They are not terrorists, as Israel claims, rather they represent civilized humanity.

The Israeli piracy and criminal attack against the ships have ignited a spontaneous global intifada, whose anger has echoed through the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the US. Thousands of protesters against Israeli terror walked through the capitals of major countries towards Israeli consulates. Governments of many countries, especially those with citizens among the flotilla volunteers, summoned the Israeli ambassadors to protest the attack.

Turkey-Israeli relationship is destined to suffer a great deal by this Israeli piracy. Turks have surrounded the Israeli consulates in Istanbul and Ankara, and the house of the Israeli ambassador and vowed not to leave until the Turkish vessels and Turkish volunteers are released. Turkey has summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest the attack and has called back its own ambassador from Israel. Turkey had also cancelled three joined military exercises with Israel. The Prime Minister, Erdogan, had called Israel's attack "state terror".

An urgent meeting of the Security Council was called by Arab governments, yet the US, as usual, came to Israel's rescue and had sabotaged the issuance of any resolution against Israel. The US called of "impartial investigation" of the matter. Such an investigation is a waste of time. It is as clear as the sun that Israeli forces had forcefully and illegally boarded the flotilla ships. Israelis are the aggressors not the victims. They were armed to the teeth attacking unarmed humanitarian activists.

American rescue of Israeli terror is not surprising, since the American administration is a full partner in imposing siege on Gaza. "The Gaza Bombshell" report by Vanity Fair explains how the American administration had conspired to topple the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza. The administration is also paying the Egyptian Mubarak's government to join into the siege against Gaza, and to build the steel wall and watch towers on the Egyptian border with Gaza.

Most of the American congress members are more loyal to Israel than to their own country. They spend the tax money of their citizens to subsidize Israeli illegal colonies and roads on usurped Palestinian land to provide almost-free homes to Israeli extremists while American tax payers are losing their homes. They vote to spend billions of dollars to provide free education to Israeli students, and full free medical coverage to every Israeli Jewish citizen, while American schools are facing budget cuts and crowded class rooms, and American citizens cannot afford to pay for any medical coverage of their own. They give Israel billions of dollars worth in financial aid and military technology. Such support to terrorist Israel is the major cause for increasing anti-American sentiments around the globe.

Israel's attack against the Freedom Flotilla is grave piracy, and an act of terrorism that is violating all international laws. It demonstrates to us that Israelis consider themselves above the law, and that their own laws are supreme laws that no one should even challenge.

Those countries claiming to be partners in fighting global terror should also join in fighting Israeli terror. Those countries, which are fighting Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, should also fight Israeli piracy in the Mediterranean.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A build up of heightened tension in the Middle East is escalating in the last few weeks. American and Israeli postures towards Lebanon, Syria, and Iran have become more threatening. Listening to speeches of political leaders one hears talks only about war not peace. Iranians and Israelis are continuously training hard for a possible showdown. Both sides are conducting extensive war games every month. This led Syrians to claim that Israel is preparing for a soon-to-come another war. The Jordanians also are warning that current stalemate of the peace process is an indication of a war breaking this summer. The Russian President and his army chief hinted, few months ago, that the US and Israel were planning for an attack on Iran.

Indeed Iran is, as it has been for last few years, the target of most of the threats and accusation of supporting terrorism. Escalating incitement against Iran the American Defense Department sent Last month (April) to Congress a report on Iran's military claiming Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the US by 2015.

Ignoring the fact that N. Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel are proven to have nuclear weapons while Iran does not, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose in her speech, to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference at the UN, to focus on Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions putting the whole world at risk as she put it. According to Clinton Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons, rather than Israel's more than 200 nuclear bombs, is destabilizing the Middle East. She called on world's nations to rally around US efforts to hold Iran, not other nuclear countries, to account.

Accusation that Usama Bin Laden is living comfortably in Iran had received a boost after the broadcast of a documentary called "Feathered Cocaine". This echoed the June 2003 claims of the Italian newspaper Corre de la Sierra that Bin Laden was in Iran according to some intelligence report, and according to Richard Miniter's book "Shadow War". This accusation was countered by Ahmadinejad in ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos stating that, since Bin Laden was a previous partner of Mr. Bush, he is living comfortably in Washington DC not in Tehran. It was also widely reported that one of Bin Laden's wives was living in Tehran with six of his children and eleven grandchildren.

A recent Associated Press exclusive, May 13^th, written by Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, reported that according to CIA monitoring program RIGOR Saad, the son of Usama Bin laden and many Al-Qaeda leaders and operative had taken refuge into Iran after 911. This exclusive disqualifies itself stating that "But generally, the U.S. has only limited information about them.", and "Details are murky".

The American military capitalized on such rumors when the commander of US forces in the Middle East, general Petraeus, told Congress that Tehran is working with Al-Qaeda facilitating links between its senior leaders and affiliate groups.

Syria, in turn, was not spared from American and Israeli warnings and threats. Syria was accused of violating 2006 UN Resolution 1701 prohibiting the transfer of weapons to Lebanese Hezbollah. Just before the US Congress approves sending Robert Stephen Ford as American ambassador to Syria as a sign of improving relationships, the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, accused Syria of smuggling Scud missiles to Hezbollah. Peres' accusation prompted the Congress to suspend sending Ford to Damascus.

Major General Alberto Asarta Cuevas of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon was quoted by Lebanese daily An-Nahar as saying: "We have no evidence of any Scud missiles in UNIFIL's area of operations." The US, also, could not confirm any Scud missiles shipped to Lebanon. Scud missiles are large and are difficult to hide.

Although not mentioning Scud missiles in specific Israeli officials such as the head of the Israeli military intelligence research department, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz, claimed that: "Weapons are transferred to Hezbollah on a regular basis and this transfer is organized by the Syrian and Iranian regimes." Syria was accused of transferring sophisticated weapons, such as M600 rockets, to Hezbollah. Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, accused Syria of importing weapons of mass destruction from North Korea to ship them to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak directly warned both Syria and Lebanon: "We make it clear once again that we see the government of Lebanon, and behind it the government of Syria, responsible for what happens now in Lebanon, And the government of Lebanon will be the one to be held accountable if it deteriorates."

The Americans parroted the Israeli claims. Hillary Clinton warned Syria of grave consequences of delivering weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas warning that such an act "could mean war or peace for the region ... Hezbollah's acquisition of new weapons, especially long-range missiles, would threaten Israel's security and destabilize the region."

Robert Gates, the American Defense Secretary, had also accused both Iran and Syria of arming Hezbollah with sophisticated weaponry. Finally, citing what the White House alleged Syria's "extraordinary threat" to US security and foreign policy, Barack Obama decided to renew economic sanctions against Syria for another year. Obama said that Syria's "continuing support of terrorist organizations and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the US".

Israel's fear was heightened by the visit of Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, to Syria, the first visit to Damascus by Russian ruler since 1917, to sign an arm trade agreement by which Russia would supply Syria with Mig-29 fighters, truck-mounted Pantzir short range surface to air missiles, and anti-aircraft artillery system. Building a Syrian nuclear power plant with Russian help was also discussed by the two leaders.

Turkey's improved relationships with Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, and its sympathy towards Palestinians worry the US and Israel the most. Since Davos incident in January 2009 between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Israel's president Shimon Peres, Turkey seems to adopt the Palestinian cause. Turkey had sent humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza within "Viva Palestina" and "Break the Siege" campaigns, and is also sending three humanitarian ships to Gaza within the "Freedom Flotilla" campaign.

Turkey and Syria had dramatically improved their political, economic, socio-cultural, and military relationships. The two countries conducted, last April 2009, a three-day military exercise along their borders and signed a technical military cooperation agreement to strengthen collaboration between their defense industries.

Turkey had improved relationship with Iran, where trade between the two countries is expected to increase to $30 billion. Turkey had opposed economical sanctions against Iran, had repeatedly played down the alleged threat of Iran's nuclear program, and defended Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy. This month, May 2010, Turkey and Brazil convinced Iran to accept nuclear fuel swap on Turkish soil.

Turkey seems determined to protect its good relationships with Syria and Iran to a point of deploying anti-aircraft batteries along the Syrian border in the Iskenderun district to repel any US or Israeli aerial attack against Iran or Syria, according to Turkish daily Hurriyet. In a phone call with Al-Manar TV, Mustafa Ozcan, a Turkish political analyst, confirmed this fact.

A Middle Eastern geopolitical alliance between Turkey, Iran, and Syria and Lebanon seems to take shape. This alliance seems to provide a counterbalance for Israel's military superiority in the region, and a deterrent to any further Israeli terrorist attack against Gaza, Lebanon, or Syria. Israelis are afraid that they may not be able to win a war as convincingly and with impunity as they used to do, especially after their failures in 2006 Lebanese war and 2008 Gaza onslaught.

Israel's whining about Iran's and Syria's weapons is meant to portray the Israelis as the poor victims, and to justify any Israeli aggression against its neighbors. It is meant also to draw in the US for its rescue, as usual. Israel wants a joint American/Israel attack against Iran/Syria/Hezbollah axis before their alliance become any stronger. American involvement is the wild card, as it always has been, that will maintain Israel's superiority in the region.

While supplying Israel with weapons allegedly for self defense the US denies this right to Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians. Coming to Israel's rescue, again, the US described Iran as the greatest threat to America, to its allies, to the Middle East, and to world peace by claiming that Iran is the region's greatest proliferator of weapons and supporter to terrorist groups.

Obama cited the possibility of nuclear Iran supplying nuclear material to some terrorist groups to be used against the US and its allies. The documented facts proved that the US is the only nuclear country that had secretly supplied nuclear material to terrorist Israel to build its nuclear bombs.

In his article "America's Loose Nukes in Israel", Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, explains how large quantities of America's highly enriched uranium and plutonium was smuggles to Israel via the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), part of Apollo Steel Company plant in Pennsylvania. A 1965 audit by Atomic Energy Commission discovered the shortage of 220 pounds of enriched uranium, and in September 1968 587 more pounds of enriched uranium went missing immediately after the visit of 4 Israelis, including Mossad agent Rafi Eitan. Also refer to the 1978 declassified report "Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion" regarding the investigation between 1957 and 1967 of the loss of highly enriched uranium in NUMEC.

Whistleblower former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds testified that Richard Perle, Doughlas Feith, and Marc Grossman, high ranking officials in G.W. Bush administration, were passing sensitive data and nuclear technology to Israel's military industrial complex.

Based on 30 declassified government documents from the National Security Archive in April 2006 Avner Cohen and William Burr published the article "Israel Crosses the Threshold" in the May-June 2006 issue of the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" indicating that the Nixon's administration decided to accept and to live with Israel's ambiguity of its nuclear weapons program, knowing very well that Israel had already built nuclear bombs.

At the Global Summit on Nuclear Security, last April, the US tried to rally nations against Iran's nuclear program, and supported the call for Middle East nuclear-free zone. Yet the US supported Israel's claim that it would consider signing the NPT and supporting such a nuclear-free zone only if there is a comprehensive Middle East peace.

The US, with 5,113 self-declared nuclear bombs and free of any IAEA monitoring process, is trying to use the NPT to monopolize nuclear technology and deny it to other countries. After signing the START Treaty on April 8^th President Obama called for $80 billion in nuclear funding to modernize the US nuclear weapons complex to meet the need to "rebuild and sustain America's aging nuclear stockpile". This means making the bombs smarter, smaller in size, and more powerful. This $80 billion came on top of more than the additional $100 billion for nuclear deliver systems like submarines. The US has no intention of reducing its nukes, but to improve them.

War clouds are looming over the Middle Easter. Israeli military officials keep threatening to attack Iran claiming they can use military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Israel is primed to attack Iran boosted Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon. Iran is taking these threats seriously and is preparing for war through war games; two of them this month. Iran's strongest warning to Israel came Wednesday May 19 from Iranian Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, stating that if Israel attacked Iran it would be destroyed within a week. Sunday May 23 Israel is conducting its most intensive and comprehensive war games called "Turning Point-4" lasting five days and including 68 cities and towns. Could this be preparation for another war this summer?

During its short 62 years history Israel had fought 8 wars against its Arab neighbors. It had developed nuclear weapons and did not sign the NPT. It had used chemical and nuclear (DU) weapons against civilians. It violated many UN resolutions. It committed war crimes and many massacres against civilians. It had refused all Arab peaceful gestures and keeps threatening to attack its neighbors. It occupation and destruction of religious sites, especially Islamic, might provoke religious war in the region. Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Canada had declared the issuance of a "Canada-Israel Diplomatic Relations" commemorative stamp to celebrate 60 years of relations between the two countries. This stamp will serve as a historical witness and reminder, for many future generations in the whole world, of the inhuman, unethical and immoral Canadian association with and support to the ultimate religiously racist, self-worshipping, rogue, international-law-breaking, murdering, genocidal, ecocidal, and terrorist bastard state of Israel.

Israel is established and based on the ultimate supremacist racist ideology. It is a religious ideology that has surpassed all other racist ideologies Man had ever known throughout history. Whereas German Nazism is a social ideology, and Italian Fascism is a political ideology, that can be opposed, debated and debunked, Israel's "God's chosen people in God's promised land" is a supremacist ideology cloaked within a religious cover. Its opposition is labeled atheism, its debate is called blasphemy, and its debunking is claimed a sin. This ideology is, after all, a divine contract between God and Abraham signed by circumcision in the foreskin of Abraham's penis. Jewish Israelis consider themselves God's gift to this world. All other nations, Goyims, non-Jews, are considered animal souls incarnated in human bodies, whose sole purpose of existence is to serve the Jews. One needs only read the Old Testament, the Talmud, Jewish religious books, and Rabbinical texts and pamphlets to learn and to confirm this supremacist ideology.

Israeli Jewish religious supremacy and self-worship beliefs are reflected in their Rabbis' teachings and statements. This religious arrogance is expressed clearly in Rabbi Ginsburgh's justification of the Israeli army murdering Palestinian civilians when he declared that: "Jewish blood and a goy's (gentile's) blood are not the same ... every single cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, and is thus part of God, thus killing isn't murder if the victim is a Gentile." Israeli chief Rabbi Yosef Obadia described Palestinians as cockroaches that should be crushed. Such ideology is the basic fundamental teachings Judaic Yeshivot (religious schools) incorporate in their so-called religious curricula.

Unlike all other countries Israel has no acceptance or tolerance to other religions. Although supremacist Judaism is tolerated and Jews are permitted free worship in every Christian and Moslem country, even in Iran, falsely accused of being fanatic Islamic, Arab Christians and Moslems are harshly rejected, persecuted, and equally ethnically cleansed in "Jewish only Israel". Jews were persecuted by all western Christian countries for the last two thousand years. They found refuge and acceptance only in the Middle Eastern mainly Islamic Arab countries. Yet instead of expressing any form of simple gratitude they have forcefully occupied Palestine. They are now evicting Christian and Moslem Palestinians out of their own country and especially out of their holiest city; Al-Quds (Jerusalem), and are denying them worship in their holy places during their religious holidays. Israel had destroyed hundreds of mosques and bombed and burnt many churches.

Many western Christians are deceived and are misguided by the so-called Zionist-Christianity and Judea-Christianity. These are antithetical terms, for Judaism considers Christianity its arch-enemy. Judaism considers Virgin Mary a whore, and calls Jesus Christ a pervert, Satan, and charlatan. Jews had crucified Jesus for his teachings of loving God, who loves all his creations equally without any favoritism to a specific nation.

Israel is a genocidal state. Israeli Jews like to proudly trace their history back to Moses and his commandments. An objective study of Moses's Five Books reveals that Moses was the most genocidal figure in the history of mankind. He, himself, had broken all his ten commandments. Moses had preached many other commandments that are racist to the core in the form of laws and regulations for the favor of only Jews. He and his racist God had destroyed Egypt seven times. He had ordered his followers to utterly annihilate other nations including babies and pregnant women (Numbers 31:17). Even the homes, the crops, the farm animals of other nations were ordered killed, burnt and destroyed; "you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them; the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusites, just as the Lord your God has commanded you" (Deuteronomy 20: 16-17) Moses ordered the Israelites.

He and his God were genocidal even against their own followers; Moses's God supposedly annihilated the Israelite tribes of Korah, Dathan and Abiram in a fiery earthquake for objecting to Moses's leadership (Numbers 16), and Moses ordered the sons of Levi to murder their Jewish brothers, companions and neighbors (Exodus 32: 27-28). Moses had even killed his brother Aaron (Numbers 20: 23-29), who was allegedly "gathered to his people" at mount Hor.

Moses's genocidal crimes are grotesquely documented in his five books in the Old Testament. The Israelites eventually got fed up with his genocidal frenzy that he "mysteriously", or divinely as they claim, disappeared and no family member of this divine prophet was ever mentioned in the Jewish history since then.

Unfortunately Moses's genocidal commandments had become so fundamental Judaic teachings that all present-day chief Rabbis of Israel are quoting them to incite and to justify Israeli genocide and holocaust of Palestinians. The Old Testaments tells us how Jewish Rabbis and so-called prophets commanded their people, in the name of their God, to annihilate non-Jews, to destroy their cities, to kill their animals, and to cut down their trees.

Today's Israeli Jewish Rabbis are no better than their ancestors. They, too, call for the extermination of Palestinians, the destruction of their towns, the killing of their farm animals and the cutting down of their fruit trees. Israel's former chief Rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu encouraged the Israeli army to mass murder Palestinian civilians; "even murdering a million". The Hasidic Rabbi Manis Friedman urged the Israeli army to murder Palestinian civilians regardless of their age. He declared: "The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: destroy their holy sites, kill men, women, children, and cattle."

Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the head of a Yishuv in illegal colony of Yitzhar in usurped Palestinian city of Nablus in the Occupied West Bank, had published a religious book distributed to Israeli soldiers before their onslaught against Gaza December 2008. The book called "The King Torah" is based on the halachic (Jewish religious) laws for the killing of non-Jews. Shapiro wrote that "Jews have the right to kill non-Jews in just about every circumstance ... If we kill a gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the (Jewish) seven commandments ... there is nothing wrong with the murder." Jewish Rabbis' disregard to non-Jewish nationals was exposed when Israeli Rabbis and Israeli army officers were caught traffic with human body parts in Palestine and in Haiti.

Before the illegal declaration of Israel, Jewish terrorist groups such as Lehi, Irgun and Haganah had perpetrated many massacres against civilian Palestinians. These terrorist groups merged together to form the terrorist Israeli army. For the last 62 years this terrorist army had committed numerous massacres against all its Arab neighbors; Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Their murdering and assassination arms have reached far other countries such as South Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Algiers, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and lately Dubai. This so-called most moral army finds its morality in spreading terror through the use of the American most sophisticated weapons against unarmed Arab civilians especially women and children. To understand why Israel had waged so many wars throughout its short history one should know that Israel is an army with a government rather than a government with an army. Its survival depends on perpetual conflict; the real reason for Israel's continuous rejection of all Arab peace initiatives.

Besides crimes against humanity Israel is committing daily crimes against mother earth and against the environment. Israelis keep claiming that they came to a desert and made it bloom. The reverse is true. Part of what is known as the Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent, Palestine is a very fertile land. Its fertility had been for thousands of years the target of all colonial powers. In their genocidal fever the Israelis had uprooted millions of fruit trees, especially olive trees that were cared for by Palestinians for two thousand years.

The 2007 report published by Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem documented that Israel had uprooted 1,000,000 fruit trees in the Occupied West Bank between 1967 and 1999, and an additional 1,405,658 trees from 2000-2006. The building of the Israeli apartheid wall has caused the uprooting of at least another million trees.

Israel's use of nuclear (DU), biological, and chemical weapons during its aggression against Lebanon and Gaza had contaminated earth and rivers. The razing of fertile land, the poisoning of water wells, the destruction of farm land, and the aerial chemical spraying of Palestinian crops and trees, which are part of a deliberate plan to destroy Palestinian economy, are grave crimes against Mother Nature and against the environment.

Israel is the most anti-Semitic country. Arabs are Semites, while the majority of Israeli Jews are Khazars and Germanic. Israeli Jews are not one ethnic nation. Walking through any Israeli city one encounters highly differentiated people, who came from different countries with different backgrounds that have nothing to do with Semitic people. Judaism is a religion that is adopted by people from different parts of the world and rather than an ethnic nationality. Not all Jews are Semitic the same way that not all Moslems are Arabs and not all Christians are part of one particular race.

Since the first Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland up to this very day, every Zionist leader and every Zionist Rabbi had openly called for the ethnic cleansing and forceful eviction of Palestinian Arabs from Palestine. The Zionist Koenig Memorandum encouraged Israeli army to use terror, assassination, intimidation, eviction and land confiscation among other terrorist tactics to terrorize Palestinians out of their country.

It would take large volumes to enumerate Israel's crimes against humanity and against mother earth. With their at least 200 nuclear bombs and their aggressive posture continuously threatening to bomb their neighbors back to stone age, it is the fanatic self-worshipping Israelis, not the Iranians, who pose the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and threat to global peace.

With such criminal history I ask descent Canadians whether they really want to associate themselves with such a terrorist state and become a terrorist-sponsoring country. I urge Canadians, specifically, and peace loving people in general, to express their disappointment in Canada's decision to issue such a shameful postal stamp by writing/emailing to the minister responsible for Canada Post Corporation; Mr. John Baird (baird.j@parl.gc.ca) and to Minister of State Rob Merrifield (Merrifield.R@parl.gc.ca).

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

During the last two weeks people were faced with a propaganda campaign trying to convince them that there developed a crisis in the American Israeli relationships due to Israel's announcement of approving the building of 1600 Jewish only housing units in occupied east Jerusalem Palestinian suburb of Shu'fat on the day of Joe Biden's visit to Israel March 9^th.

Major media sources and many politicians declared this announcement as an Israeli slap on Biden's face, especially after the Palestinian Authority, backed by Arab leaders, had just accepted American mediation in indirect talks (proximity talks as per Hillary's description).

The announcement, in reality, was an Israeli gift to Biden that also included a framed document announcing the planting of several trees in Jerusalem in memory of Biden's mother; a loyal supporter of Israel. This was an excellent gift, rather than a slap, for the ardent self-proclaimed Zionist Biden. During his visit Biden went to Tel Aviv University to tell his audience that he is a Zionist. He proclaimed: "Throughout my career, Israel has not only remained close to my heart but it has been the center of my work as a United States Senator and now as vice president of the United States." Israel, rather than the United States, seems to be closer to Biden's heart. Biden is a living proof that one does not have to be Jewish in order to be a Zionist, as he stated in a televised interview on Shalom TV.

Zionist's main tenets are the genocide of Palestinians, the confiscation of their land, the building of more Jewish only residents, especially in Jerusalem, and the erection of the third temple in place of Al-Aqsa mosque.

The announcement also confirms the Zionist plan for the region that had been adopted by every successive Israeli leader. Every time the Palestinians and Arab leaders make another step towards peace with Israel, its leaders take a more aggressive step such as driving their tanks into Palestinian cities, confiscating more land, or building more colonies. Netanyahu's government had destroyed the Salman Al-Farisi mosque in the Palestinian village of Burin, had added the Islamic Ibrahimi and Bilal Mosques to Israel's heritage list, and besides the 60 synagogues surrounding the Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque had announced the completion of the Hurva Synagogue (The Ruin Synagogue) few meters away from Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is seen by Moslems as another closer step towards the destruction of their Mosque.

The American/Israeli relationship has never been stronger than what it is today. The United States had supported Israel since her bastard birth in 1948 in the midst of the Arab World as an expansionist colonial state. It took the then American President, Harry Truman, only eleven minutes to recognize Israel as a state, and he did it even without consulting the Congress.

Israel constituted an important military base and a military mercenary army for the West, especially for France, UK and US. Joe Biden, in his interview on Shalom TV (previous link), had explained this fact very clearly. In 1956 Israel was a mercenary army for United Kingdom and for France against Egypt after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized Suez Canal taking it away from British control, and had supported the Algerian revolution against the French occupation. For this service Israel received French technological help to build its nuclear reactor in Dimona, and received heavy water to contain nuclear rods from United Kingdom.

For the United States Israel served as a military base for testing new American weapons against the Palestinians. Palestine is used by Israel as the testing ground, and Palestinians as the test subjects for the new American made weapons. Many NGOs has documented the use of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons against Palestinians and Arabs during Israel's wars against Lebanon and against Gaza Strip.

Israel was also used by the successive American administrations as an existential threat to Arab countries especially the oil rich Gulf States. This threat has facilitated the sale of large amounts of American weapons, although ineffectual and obsolete, to the Gulf States. Such sale helped American weapon manufacturers to thrive, and also helped to siphon the oil money into the American banks. The Israeli threat to the Gulf States helped justify the building of American military bases in the Gulf States under the pretense of protecting these states.

Israel was also considered the Western frontal defense line against Communist expansion in the Middle East. Yet after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel lost this usefulness. Israel, though, had regained its usefulness as an American partner in war against terror after the attacks of 911. Many investigations had pointed the finger towards special Mossad demolition squad as the possible planner and executor of this attack.

Bush's alleged "global war on terror" had flipped the American/Israeli military equation upside down. The United States had become Israel's free mercenary army fighting Israel's wars in proxy. The invasion of Iraq is one clear example. The two major Iraqi oil pipe lines, one from northern Kurdish Iraq to Turkey's coast through Syria and the other from southern Iraq to the Persian Gulf, were cut off. They both were directed to Israel's Haifa ports through Jordan.

The cold war against Iran and the graduating pressure to subdue the Iranian regime through economic sanctions and incitement of internal conflict and terror attacks serve only Israel. To keep Israel the strongest military power in the region this cold war is waged under the pretense of Iran's nuclear program aimed at developing a nuclear bomb, a pretense refuted several times by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and by Iran's willingness to exchange its rich uranium. Meanwhile the Western countries are ignoring the very well established fact of Israel's stockpiling at least 200 nuclear bombs, and that France and US had signed agreements with some Arab countries, such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and UAE to build nuclear reactors similar to that in Iran.

Thanks to AIPAC the American administration has become zionized. Israel's interests and welfare had gained higher priority than American interests and welfare. At the expense of the American tax payers the US had supported Israel with technology and most sophisticated weapons to attack Lebanon and Gaza Strip. Israel's terrorists and war criminals are protected and shielded by American political support and intimidation of other countries at the UN. The Congress had backed Israel's 2008 war crimes against Gaza and condemned Goldstone's Report by a vote of 334 to 36.

The Congress had approved the $3 billion annual military assistance to Israel. Using American tax money the administration is paying for free complete medical coverage for every Israeli citizen, and is subsidizing Israeli residential projects while those American tax payers lack necessary medical coverage and are losing their homes.

The Zionized American administration had ignored General Petraeus's warnings to the US Senate Armed Services Committee that the unconditional biased American support to Israel foments anti-American sentiments, and endangers the lives of American soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in the Moslem World in general. The administration seems to care about the lives of Zionist Israelis, for they are allegedly god's chosen people, more than they care about the lives of their own soldiers; some worthless goyims.

In a sign of support to Israel by the States Senate and under the initiative of Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) a letter was sent to Secretary Clinton urging her to do what she can to undermine the effects of what they call "the untimely announcement of housing construction in East Jerusalem". They also blame the Palestinian intransigence for failure to restart the peace negotiation, and asking that the administration should not publicly criticize Israel even when Israel does things to publicly embarrass the administration.

On the other hand at the Congress more than 250 members have signed onto a declaration sent to Hillary Clinton reaffirming their commitment to "the unbreakable bond that exists between the U.S. and the State of Israel ... we believe, as President Obama said, that Israel's security is paramount in our Middle East policy and that it is in U. S. national security interests to assure that Israel's security as an independent Jewish state is maintained."

In her speech at AIPAC's March 22^nd Conference Hillary Clinton gave an enthusiastic speech praising what she alleged Israel's commitment to peace and pledging America's perpetual support to Israel. "The future of both countries (US & Israel) are bound together ... our commitment to Israel's security and to Israel's future is rock solid" Hillary affirmed.

Obama's approach to Israel is reflected in his speech to AIPAC on June 3^rd 2008, while still a presidential candidate, when he stated: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided ... I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything and I mean everything."

So, what is the fuss about this so-called US/Israeli crisis? This is a double stick-and-carrot approach to the Arab leaders, who are having their summit this weekend (March 27 & 28). It is meant as a face saving for the US and giving the illusion that the administration might pressure Israel providing the Arab leaders do not come up with any strong resolutions and give the administration the time to deal with Israel. The stick comes in the Congress's commitment to Israel's security.

The ball is now in the Arab's court. What will the Arab leaders decide in their summit; the usual empty condemnations or real action this time?

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

Armenian Genocide Map

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The hypocrisy of the American legislators has never stopped to amaze me. On Thursday March 4^th The House Foreign Affairs Committee had approved, by 23 to 22 votes, a non-binding resolution to condemn WWI-era massacre of Armenians on the hands of the Ottoman troops that began in 1915 as an act of planned genocide.

Acknowledging, recognizing, and condemning genocides, ethnic cleansings, massacres, and even killing of one human is the duty of all countries of the world. Yet ignoring or recognizing genocide for political gains is a very shameful hypocrisy.

This was not the first time the Committee had voted on this issue, but the resolutions were blocked from moving to the House floor for full voting. The American administration feared adverse effects on the diplomatic relationship, especially the military cooperation, between the US and Turkey that might have devastating effects on the American interests in the region including its alleged war on terror, its occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and the Iranian alleged nuclear threat.

First in 2000 the House Committee had approved a resolution to recognize the Armenian massacre as genocide. President Clinton, at the time, succeeded in persuading the Republican speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, to withdraw the measure before the full House could vote on it.  In October 2007, the Committee, again, passed a similar resolution by 27 to 21 votes. The American administration, then, was still relying heavily on Turkish military bases for quick delivery of supplies to its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, noted that about 70% of all air cargo sent to Iraq passed through or came from Turkey, as did 30% of fuel, and virtually all the new armored vehicles designed to withstand mines and bombs. Avoiding the use of the world genocide, President Bush danced around the subject saying: "We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915, but this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

So what motivated members of Committee to pass the resolution for the third time although Representative Dan Burton reminded them that "We have troops in the field, and we run the risk of losing a base of operation in Turkey" ?

Turkey, as any observer can notice, had lately shifted its foreign policies. Although a Middle Eastern country Turkey longed to become a member of the EU, but unfortunately transferring your eastern roots to the west seemed to be a difficult matter. After so many years of applying for membership to EU, and adopting all the imposed harsh conditions to become a member besides serving NATO for 58 years, Turkey finally recognized that the EU will not accept Turkey especially after admitting many of the old Warsaw countries (e.g. Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia among others) so easily.  It seems that Turkey, finally, contented to remain Middle Eastern and decided to re-establish its position in the region.

The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, focused on internal economic and social improvements. The public debt as percentage of annual gross domestic product declined from 74% in 2002 to 39% in 2009. Turkey has become the seventeenth strongest economical power in the world. In April 2006 the government announced a social security reform package including free medical services for everyone under the age of 18 regardless of whether they pay premiums to any social security organization or not. This is an improvement the US, the richest country in the whole world, has not yet implemented for its citizens.

Erdogan improved Turkish political relations with its old adversaries and its neighbors. Through an aggressive plan of allowing use of Kurdish language and reverting original Kurdish names to their cities Erdogan ended the quarter-century-long conflict with the Kurds. He also improved relationships with Greece, Armenia, and Iraq. Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia and first to visit Iraq in 33 years. Last August 31^st Turkey and Armenia signed a protocol in Zurich to improve relations between the two countries. In Iraq Turkey signed 48 trade agreements.

Erdogan had significantly improved Turkish diplomatic relations with Syria. Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, travelled to Turkey for the first official visit by a Syrian President in 57 years. In late 2004 Erdogan signed a free trade agreement with Syria, and in 2009 visa restrictions between the two countries have been lifted. Erdogan had also functioned, although for a brief period, as a mediator in indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria.

Asserting its position in the Middle East Turkey decided to play a more active role in the political affairs of the region. Erdogan has established a trilateral pact with Iran and Syria. He also expressed political support for Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas in their resistance of Israeli occupation. He faced Israeli president, Shimon Perez, in Davos conference January 2009 and severely criticized Israel's December 2009 onslaught against Palestinian civilians in Gaza before walking out in protest over Perez's lies. This stand gained Erdogan huge popularity in the Arab and Moslem population.

Turkey had a change of heart, and decided to walk the path of freedom from Western influence. Turkey decided to become an independent and a major player in the Middle East in solidarity with its Arab neighbors. Turkey had committed the ultimate sin, in the eyes of the West and Israel, when it sided with Syria and Iran, and especially when it opposed and criticized Israel something many leaders, especially the Arabs, did not dare to do.

It was decided that Erdogan's government has to go before it becomes any stronger!!!

The Turkish "Zaman" newspaper reported on Jan. 3^rd 2009 that Israel plans to overthrow Erdogan's government because of his support for the Palestinian cause. It revealed that Israel provides support for opposition Turkish forces to topple the government. This was confirmed when the government arrested 49 military officers planning a coup. The newspaper confirmed that Israel helped in 1997 the Turkish neo-conservative to topple the then coalition government headed by Necmettin Erbakan. The Israeli war ministry leaked to the media in 2007 a report stressing the need to oust Erdogan's government through a similar plan.

Zionist conspiracies against Turkey started way back in June of 1896 when Sultan Abdel Hamid refused to sell Palestine to Zionist Herzl. Since then, and up to the present, Zionists schemed to embarrass and to weaken successive Turkish governments. This started with the Armenian genocide in 1915.

After WWI the Allied forces occupied large parts of the Ottoman Empire. Financing and arming Anatolia Armenian French Zionists incited the Armenians to revolt against the Empire to establish an independent Armenian state. The Armenians attacked The Turks, destroyed their cities and killed their women and children. Yet their revolt was brutally crushed by the "Young Turks Revolution", who also toppled Abdul Hamid's empire. It was revealed later that the "Young Turk Revolution" was actually a Jewish takeover (Jewish Young Turks) that was financed and armed by the Zionist Israelite Community of Salonika to topple the Ottoman Empire and to get rid of influential rich Armenians. This was revealed through letters to "The London Times" between June and August of 1911 under the title of "Jews and the situation in Albania". See also "The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians" by Christopher Jon Bjerknes.

Although the reports of Lieutenants Emory Noles and Arthur Sutherland, who were sent by the American administration to investigate the situation in Turkish Anatolia, reported massacres on both sides, only the Turkish massacres of Armenians were publicized.

Another chapter of the Zionist war against Turkey is being played. Israel tried to belittle Turkey when Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon publicly humiliated Turkey's ambassador in front of press cameras. The extremist Zionist Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman was sent to Greece, to Cypress and to Azerbaijan to inflame old hostilities against Turkey. A Turkish military coup attempt had failed and its planners, 49 military officers, were imprisoned.  Ignoring real historical events American Foreign Affair Committee, under the influence of AIPAC, passed its resolutions notably by very narrow margins, to condemn what was termed Armenian Genocide.

The question that begs itself here is what moral grounds this Committee has earned to pass such resolution? On what ethical basis do they condemn one genocide and not others? What about the genocide of 40 million American Indians to establish the US?  What about the nuclear genocide of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the killing fields of Vietnam and Korea, the aerial bombing of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and the present genocides of millions of Moslems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq?

Jews, and AIPAC in specific, should remember the genocide of 110 million Africans, victims of 113 years of slave industry, by Jewish slave traders, the genocide of 35 million Kulaks by Russian Jewish Cheka agents in 1932, the genocide of 100 million Christians including their priests between 1920-1940 by the Jewish Bolshevik Commisars under the leadership of Jewish Kaganovich, Stalin's brother-in-law, the Zionist expulsion and genocide of 16 million ethnic Germans from Silesia and the Volga at the end of WWII, and the still ongoing 62 years Zionist Israeli genocide of Palestinians.  More Zionist Jewish genocides can be found here.

The term Armenian Genocide refers to the total of 1.5 million Armenians killed in an alleged systematic campaign by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey acknowledges that hundreds of thousands of Armenians, as well as Turks and other nationalities, were killed during WWII, but denies that it was a planned genocide.

This is so much fuss about past historical events that could not be changed. Yet one hopes that we would learn from them to prevent any further future genocidal crimes. Today the whole world is faced with an ongoing four years old audacious, premeditated, deliberate, and systematic genocide of 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Zionists and Israeli leaders meet annually in what they call Herzliya Conference to strategize more effective genocidal methods against Palestinians. Would these Hippocratic leaders do anything about this genocide?

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A Palestinian boy scuffles with an Israeli soldier during a demonstration by Palestinians against the Israeli decision to include two West Bank shrines on a list of their national heritage sites in the West Bank village of Beit Omar, near Hebron, Saturday, March 6, 2010. AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi

This decision came as a first step in adopting his plan of reviving and renovating Jewish sites throughout Palestine; a plan he announced in his speech at the Tenth Annual Herzliya Conference last month. This plan is aimed at connecting the young Israeli generations to the land as a counter measure to the numerous Palestinian NGO's web sites and activities aiming at asserting the Palestinian roots and heritage to the land.

Netanyahu's government had also announced its decision to launch a 30-month project to allegedly renovate and develop the infrastructure of Christian and Moslem neighborhoods of the city of Old Jerusalem. The real aim of this project is the elimination of the Arab identity and characteristics of the town, and morphing it within a Jewish religious color.

The 43 years old Israeli archeological dig underneath and around the Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque did not uncover any shred of evidence of the alleged Jewish temple on that site. After falsifying the history, Zionists now need to distort the Arabic features of the town and turn it into Jewish. The destruction of Palestinian Al-Bustan neighborhood to build the so-called Biblical Gardens Project around the old city is just one of those distortions.

Netanyahu had also declared Israel's intention of keeping key parts of the West Bank even if there is a peace agreement with the Palestinians. He was referring to major Israeli colonies (settlements) in the West Bank especially those in Jericho and the Jordan River Valley along the eastern border of the West Bank. He alleged Israel's control of the border is essential to block the alleged flow of weapons from Jordan to Palestinians. When Israeli government demanded no preconditions for the resumption of peace negotiation, this decision seems to be a precondition.

These announcements had infuriated the Palestinians, who went out into the streets demonstrating into every major city to protect their holy mosques, homes, and land. The demonstration in Al-Khalil (Hebron) was especially furious because Netanyahu's decision to add the Ibrahimi Mosque to Israel's list of national heritage coincided with the sixteenth anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre perpetrated by the Zionist Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who murdered in cold blood 29 Moslems while kneeling in prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque.

After the six-days-war in 1967 the Israeli government took control of the Ibrahimi Mosque, and provided protected and free entry to extremist Zionist Jews to pray while limiting access to Moslems prayers, who have to go through electronic gates and body search before entering their mosque. It is reported that Israelis are destroying the Islamic characteristic of the Mosque especially its ancient carpet by dropping burning acid on it.

Netanyahu's decisions had encouraged extremist fundamentalist Jewish groups, who called for entry and prayer into Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during the Purim Jewish festival last Sunday. Violent clashes took place between the Israeli police, who tried to provide safe entry to hundreds of these extremists, and Moslem Palestinians, who gathered in the Mosque to protect it. This Friday, also, more clashes broke between the Israeli police and Moslem prayers at the Mosque.

Other extremist Zionist Jewish groups were so encouraged by these decisions so that they started building colonies on Palestinian land in Jericho. Others rushed in occupying more homes in the Jerusalem Palestinian suburb of Sheikh Jarah under the protection of Israeli police. More and more Palestinian families are being evicted from their homes to allow extremist Israelis to occupy those homes. This Saturday, March 6th, has witnessed a huge gathering of Palestinians and pro-peace Israelis demonstrating against these evictions in the area.

Netanyahu's decisions carry some dangerous implications. He knows that the US is applying pressure on Arab leaders and the Palestinian Authority to re-engage into peace negotiations without any preconditions such as freezing colonization (settlement). His decisions came as pre-emptive preconditions against any possible future political agreement in order for Israel to keep control over any area with alleged Israeli heritage sites. This translates into further fragmentation of contiguous land for any possible future Palestinian state.

The decision clearly demonstrates to Palestinians and to the world the Israeli intransigence, disregard to all international laws and UN resolutions, and aspiration for further expansion rather than for peace.

It can be easily seen that the 18 years peace negotiations yielded no peace, no end to Israeli occupation, and no Palestinian state in any shape or form. With their "land for peace" offer and Arab Peace Initiative the so-called Arab moderate leaders had achieved nothing but more Israeli colonization, demolishing more of Palestinians homes, and Judaizing more of Old Jerusalem including Christian and Moslem holy places. The process of peace negotiations with Israel has proven to be just a waste of time and providing opportunities for more Israeli colonization.

Yet, when Arab masses are demanding their leaders to protect their religious sites with actions rather than just mere condemnations, those Arab leaders, lacking any political will, had disappointed their people for the Nth time, and gave another lenient response to Netanyahu's decisions. In their summit last Wednesday March 3rd Arab leaders agreed to a US proposal for "indirect" Palestinian-Israeli talks for a four-month period.

One wonders what "indirect" talks would produce that the 18 years direct talks did not accomplish.

The illegal Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, whose presidency had expired January 2008, was under tremendous pressure from the US and donor countries to resume negotiations with Israel. He and his gang are faced with the threat that their usefulness may terminate, and they may lose their political and economical power. But unlike the American administration Abbas could not drop his previous demand for settlement freeze before returning to negotiations. So he resorted to the Arab League to provide him with a political cover. He, now, can baldly claim that renegotiation was an Arab League decision.

Sadly and ironically the Arab League Chief, Amr Mussa, declared: "Despite a lack of conviction over Israel's seriousness, Arab foreign ministers will give indirect talks a chance, for the final time, in order to facilitate US efforts, within four months." He also added: "There was a consensus that Israel is not interested in peace, the proof being what is taking place on occupied land ... Acts which are meant to provoke the Arab and American sides."

It was clear that the Arab League decision was aimed at providing an Arab cover for an already-taken Palestinian decision to hold indirect negotiations with Israel without any guarantees. Nabil Abu Rudeina, a Palestinian spokesman, gave a silly justification for calling on delegates to accept the principle of indirect talks when he said: "Israel does not want to return to the negotiating table, but it wishes to blame the Palestinian side saying that the Palestinians do not want to enter into negotiations. So we must put a stop to this pretext and reveal Israel's true position before the international community and the American administration."

After 18 years of fruitless negotiations with many Palestinians concessions and with the Arab Peace Initiative it has become so obvious to even the politically naïve person that Israel does not want peace. Abu Rudeina's justification is no longer valid and constitutes only dust in the eyes.

Palestinian leaders, in Ramallah, understand very well that they have no power at all. They are just employees, whose job is to partially administer the occupied territories and to oppress Palestinians to guarantee Israel's security. Any deviation from these duties would mean assassination, similar to what happened to Arafat, or at best the loss of their lucrative political positions. Many Arab leaders, on the other hand, are hoping for a Palestinian state in any form or shape to keep the Israelis busy and to stop any further expansion outside of Palestine.

With their immigration to occupied Palestine (Israel) from every part of the world Zionist Jews bring with them different, and often, opposing social, political and religious biases. Such biases create division and inner conflict. Netanyahu, like all his Zionist predecessors, understands the need for creating a common external enemy in order to unite his people. Israel needs a perpetual conflict with its neighbors in order to survive internal conflict. Israeli leaders, thus, provoke their Arab leaders in order to justify their aggression against them and to fulfill the Zionist dream of greater Israel.

Many Arab leaders are under the illusion that Israel would be contained into a border within Palestine. The Zionist end goal is to build greater Israel from Nile to Euphrates, and even larger if they could, in order to control the whole Middle East with its natural resources especially oil. Zionized western countries; Germany, France, United Kingdom, Canada, and US are in full support to the Zionist project and would not restrict Israeli expansion.

It behooves all Arab leaders to abandon their weak ineffective moderate approach, to unite as one entity, and to adopt resistance to put a stop to this expanding Israeli cancer, otherwise they would face the same fate native American Indians had suffered ... genocide.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.