By Julie Webb-Pullman

In response to the nameless Israeli Embassy Official's criticisms of a recent photo-essay published in SCOOP, I feel compelled to point out the ventriloquisms this wooden dummy is mindlessly purveying, and to suggest some appropriate New Year's Resolutions.

The photo essay complained of showed the face of Hamas that Israel wishes to deny but that is the reality on the ground - that of a broad-based, popular movement comprised of every sector of Palestinian society, seeking the application and implementation of international law to achieve the Palestinian right to self-determination. A similar photo essay was planned for another factional celebration, that of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) the week before, but the invitation to the event was not followed up with notification of time and place, so I missed it. It would have presented a problem for our wooden friend, had I not.

Not that a reality check would make much difference - restating Ismail Haniyeh's affirmation that "armed resistance is our strategic option..." as a determination to "...use any kind of violence and terrorist attacks to wipe Israel from the map" sees the dummy trying to be the ventriloquist, and flies in the face of the facts. Firstly, because the right to resist occupation is a right guaranteed to ALL occupied populations by Article 1(4) of Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions, and secondly, because the principle of self determination itself provides that where forcible action has been taken to suppress that right, force may be used in order achieve self determination.

Contrary to the spin our wooden friend put on it, Ismail Haniyeh's statement outlined an available strategy for Palestinian self-determination which is in accordance with international law. Like an out-of-control top, the wooden dummy twisted the statement in a superb display of hypocrisy, in its resolve to demonise Hamas as a terrorist organisation -which predictably surfaced a few paragraphs - and nose-lengths - later.

At the risk of knocking on wood, I suggest the dummy, or better still, the ventriloquist languishing in a very fragile glasshouse, looks at the history of both the founding of the State of Israel, and its terrorist record, before throwing stones.

As Alan Hart pointed out in 2010, "Zionism's assertion that Israel was given its birth certificate and thus legitimacy by the UN General Assembly partition resolution of 29 November 1947 is pure propaganda nonsense". ^[1]

He noted that while the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, it was only a non-binding proposal ie it could have no effect, and would not become binding, until and unless it was approved by the Security Council. However, the partition proposal never went to the Security Council, thus it was'vitiated' (became invalid) and went back to the General Assembly for more discussion. "It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence - actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community,"writes Hart.

He concludes that "...Israel, which came into being mainly as a consequence of Zionist terrorism and pre-planned ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist unless .....unless it was recognised and legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved."

Aha! We find the real reason wood-head has a big problem with Hamas's refusal to recognise Israel –because without it, Israel has no legitimacy, never has had, and as long as Hamas is around, never WILL have.

And if that rather glaring example of Israel's lack of legitimacy is not enough, there is more – Israel's admission to the United Nations in 1948 was on the explicit condition that it respect the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people as embodied in UN resolutions 181 (which gave international legitimacy to two states in Palestine) and 194 (the right of return and compensation for Palestinian refugees) - both of which Israel continues to violate. (hmmm, surely that also renders Israel's 'conditional' UN membership invalid? Illegitimate, perhaps?)

It is not only Hamas that has problems with Israel's lack of legitimacy, but a considerable body of worldwide opinion.

As for violence and terrorism, our nameless (and now apparently stateless) ventriloquist should consult the words of Holocaust survivor and then-Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, the late Israel Shahak, who said:

"There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state, which, almost from its inception, has used its intelligence service (the Mossad) to assassinate people on foreign soil with any violence or terror it considers necessary for its ends."

Ismail Zayed lists several such examples, following that quote. ^[2]

"Terrorism" he says,"has been the hallmark of Israeli leaders, including Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, and others. The massacres, including Deir Yassin, Doueima, Safsaf, Tantura, amongst scores of others, and war crimes that they have orchestrated, would take volumes to relate."

His documentation reveals that Israel holds the record for several 'firsts' in terrorism - the first act of air piracy in the history of civil aviation, (a civilian Syrian airliner forced down in Tel Aviv in 1954), the first act of shooting down a civilian flight (a Libyan airliner shot down by Israeli jet fighters over Sinai in February 1973, on the orders of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, killing 107 of its passengers and its entire French crew), and the first murder by letter bomb, carried by Yitzhak Shamir's Stern terrorist gang, killing British student Rex Farran in England in May 1948.

Even the United States, Israel's poodle, has not been spared - in 1954 in what became known as the Lavon Affair, Israeli secret agents bombed the U.S. diplomatic centres in Cairo and Alexandria in an attempt to put the blame on the Egyptians. In June 1967, Israeli forces attacked the U.S. spy ship USS Liberty, and strafed rescue boats, killing 35 and injuring 170 U.S. servicemen, in an attempt to conceal its own secret communications - and again tried to blame it on the Egyptians. (The U.S. Congress still continues to refuse to hold an inquiry into this crime.)

Nor has the Zionist terror machine hesitated to kill its own. In 1940, Menachem Begin's Irgun Zwei Leumi terrorist gang bombed the ship Patria in Haifa harbor, killing 240 Jewish refugees, (while blaming the British) and in 1950-1951, Israeli agents tossed hand grenades into the crowded Massauda Shem-Tov synagogue in Iraq, causing numerous deaths, in order to blame it on the Iraqis and encourage reluctant Iraqi Jews to emigrate to Israel.

Every resistance group in the Arab world rolled together would be hard-pushed to beat Israel's record..

Going on to quote a few figures from Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades'website, and ignoring the numerous other sources of data that explicitly condemn the disproportionate killing of Palestinians by Israel compared to the killing of Israelis by Palestinians, the ratio of which rose from 100:1 in 2009 to 180:1 in 2011 (one Israeli death to 180 Palestinian deaths ^[3]) is as suspiciously selective as describing Hamas as "...an internationally recognized terrorist organization." The countries that so designate it are Israel, Canada, the United States, and the 27 countries of the European Union, totalling 30 – hardly a majority of the 195+ countries of the world that constitute the international community.

The fact is, that while Hamas has publicly declared its commitment to peaceful resistance, and is widely acknowledged, even in the Israeli press, to have observed the ceasefire and stopped firing rockets at Israel, Israel continues to commit land, sea and air incursions into Gaza almost daily, carrying out extrajudicial killings of alleged (but acknowledged as non-Hamas) militants, as well as killing and injuring civilians, while continuing to beat the drums of war. ^[4]

As Gaza's Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh travels internationally meeting with heads of state in the region (they must have a different list to our wooden friend), Ma'an news agency reported on New Year's Day:

"...Hamas is now committed to prioritizing nonviolent resistance in all its activities. This position is translated on the ground in Gaza by the movement refraining from launching missiles towards Israel and in arresting or otherwise preventing any individual or group from doing so...Politically the Hamas movement is slowly removing all the issues that caused it international isolation." ^[5]

It seems the dummy can not only not identify or speak for itself, nor can it apparently read –including its own press – which might have kept its nose a few inches shorter. Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz on the same day:

"Instead of encouraging moderation, whether genuine or imaginary, whether strategic or tactical, Israel is rushing to nip it in the bud. .. If it's "no" to the Palestinian Authority and "no" to Hamas, "no" to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and "no" to Khaled Meshal, "no" to Europe and also "no" to the United States, who are we saying "yes" to? And above all, where are we headed? The writing is clearly on the wall..." ^[6] Wake up, woody.

As to the question "why does Scoop disseminate such material, isn't this photo essay anything else but a pro-Hamas propaganda exercise?" – SCOOP is an independent news service presenting information from a multiplicity of sources and perspectives, including that of this faceless and nameless minion of the Zionist state. One could equally ask, does SCOOP's publication of this whining attempt at spin-doctoring constitute a pro-Zionist propaganda exercise?

No, the very suggestion is about as insulting and unwelcome to us as the clutch of nameless faceless Zionist Mossad agents, who came to New Zealand to steal the identities of dead New Zealand children, and obtain passports in their names with which to carry out terrorist murders and assassinations in other countries.

New Zealand's Prime Minister might have his own personal reasons for choosing to forget such behaviour and welcome a Zionist embassy in New Zealand, but most other New Zealanders have long memories, and a strong commitment to social and political justice, human rights, and the right to self-determination. We have repeatedly shown our willingness to take a stand - against apartheid, against nuclear power and weaponry, and against breaches of national and international laws, conventions, and treaties.

Our own Treaty of Waitangi is a case in point – we determinedly overcame ingrained racism, colonialism, and illegitimacy in our quest as a nation to create a fair and just society based on international law and human rights.

Now it is Israel's turn. It is way past time to stop whingeing, and start reading – given the current lack of imagination, a good place to start their 2012 New Year resolutions would be with this list borrowed from the United Nations Security Council - all of the resolutions directly critical of Israel for violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions, the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions, international terrorism, and other violations of international law. ^[7]

Imagine!! TWO legitimate states instead of none – now THAT would be something worth writing about.

[1] http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/04/04/israel-and-the-de-legitimization-oxymoron/

[2] http://www.fromoccupiedpalestineorg/node/23

[3] http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/3228-israel-killed-180-palestinians-including-21-children-in-2011

[4]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/28/israel-gaza-offensive-sooner-later

[5] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=449254

[6] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israeli-war-drums-ignore-hamas-move-for-change-1.404822

[7] http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/01/27/rogue-state-israeli-violations-of-u-n-security-council-resolutions/0/

Source: Scoop

At 10:55 am, an Israeli naval warship attacked the international observers and Palestinian captain of the Civil Peace Service Gaza (CPSGAZA) boat Oliva, injuring its captain in an apparent attempt to capsize it.

Photo: Rosa Schiano, Civil Peace Service Gaza (CPSGAZA)

"The Israeli navy passed near us and the fishermen, and started to go around us, creating waves," said Rosa Schiano, one of the international observers. "The fishermen escaped, but we couldn't because of a problem with our engine. We couldn't move, and they went around us very quickly. The Israelis saw that we couldn't move, and that the captain was trying to fix the engine, but they didn't stop. We told them, 'Please stop! Please stop!' But they didn't."

When the warship was two meters away from the Oliva, one of the waves it had created nearly capsized the small boat, filling it with water and causing the Palestinian captain to fall out, injuring his left leg.

"Their intentions were to do something very bad," said international observer Daniela Riva. "Coming so close to us was very dangerous, and they obviously knew that."

After more than twenty minutes, the warship retreated, and the Oliva was rescued by a small Palestinian fishing boat, or hasaka, which threw it a line and towed it toward the shore.

Photos are available for free use with attribution to Rosa Schiano, Civil Peace Service Gaza (CPSGAZA): http://bit.ly/CPSGAZAphotos. Additional photos and video will be available upon request: email press@cpsgaza.org.

The incident followed similar attacks on the Oliva during previous missions. Video footage is available: http://bit.ly/CPSGAZAvideos.

Background

Restrictions on the fishing zone are of considerable significance to Palestinian livelihood. Initially 20 nautical miles, it is presently often enforced between 1.5 - 2 nautical miles (PCHR: 2010). The marine 'buffer zone' restricts Gazan fishermen from accessing 85% of Gaza's fishing waters agreed to by Oslo.

During the Oslo Accords, specifically under the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994, representatives of Palestine agreed to 20 nautical miles for fishing access. In 2002 the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan empowered Catherine Bertini to negotiate with Israel on key issues regarding the humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and a 12 nautical mile fishing limit was agreed upon. In June 2006, following the capture of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit near the crossing of Kerem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom), the navy imposed a complete sea blockade for several months. When the complete blockade was finally lifted, Palestinian fishermen found that a 6 nautical mile limit was being enforced. When Hamas gained political control of the Gaza Strip, the limit was reduced to 3 nautical miles. During the massive assault on the Strip in 2008-2009, a complete blockade was again declared. After Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli army began imposing a 1.5 - 2 nautical miles (PCHR: 2010).

The fishing community is often similarly targeted as the farmers in the 'buffer zone' and the fishing limit is enforced with comparable aggression, with boats shot at or rammed as near as 2nm to the Gazan coast by Israeli gunboats.

The fishermen have been devastated, directly affecting an estimated 65,000 people and reducing the catch by 90%. The coastal areas are now grossly over-fished and 2/3 of fishermen have left the industry since 2000 (PCHR: 2009). Recent statistics of the General Union of Fishing Workers indicate that the direct losses since the second Intifada in September 2000 were estimated at a million dollars and the indirect losses were estimated at 13.25 million dollars during the same period. The 2009 fishing catch amounted to a total of 1,525 metric tones, only 53 percent of the amount during 2008 (2,845 metric tones) and 41 percent of the amount in 1999 (3,650 metric tones), when the fishermen of Gaza could still fish up to ten nautical miles from the coast. Current figures indicate that during 2010 the decline in the fishing catch continues. This has caused an absurd arrangement to become standard practice. The fisherman sail out not to fish, but to buy fish off of Egyptian boats and then sell this fish in Gaza. According to the Fishermen's Union, a monthly average of 105 tons of fish has been entering Gaza through the tunnels since the beginning of 2010 (PCHR 2009).

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). "The Buffer Zone in the Gaza Strip." Oct. 2010.

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. "A report on: Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Fishers in the Gaza Strip." August 2009.

For More Information
Daniela Riva, 059 913 2853
Rosa Schiano, 059 250 8778

As Newt Gingrich's poll numbers surge and plummet with the predictability of the Dow Jones, some are making the connection between the two figures as genuine reflections of investor confidence. Several recent exposes reveal how Gingrich has skirted campaign finance rules to raise millions of dollars in unlimited donations from billionaire backers and big industry, with his ability to attract capital showing signs of abiding. But just who are those donors and what do they stand to gain from Gingrich?

Greg Gordon, an investigative reporter for McClatchy Newspapers who has been following the Gingrich campaign's finances, discussed one of Gingrich's latest beacons of support: Sheldon Adelson. "Sheldon Adelson is a rabidly pro-Israel donor and he operates two of the most elite casinos in Las Vegas: The Pallazzo and the Venetian. And he is also listed by Forbes as the 16th wealthiest person on the planet. Mr. Adelson is a huge backer of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he in fact publishes a free newspaper that circulates in Israel that basically is an extra voice to boost the Israeli Prime Minister. ... Perhaps it is no surprise, after all these donations from Adelson--totaling 7.65 million--that Gingrich has recently...talked about the Palestinian people as an 'invented people,' and he talked about moving the [US] embassy on his first day in office...from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would be an extremely provocative move to make in the Middle East," Gordon said. "According to Politico...[Adelson] is planning to put $20 million into these Super PACs that support Newt Gingrich."

Peter Stone, of the Center for Public Integrity, echoed Gordon's findings on Adelson and the Gingrich campaign. According to one of his reports, a close friend of Adelson's confirmed that he would "do whatever it costs to help Gingrich."

Video link: http://youtu.be/JV_yszQXP6U

[includes rush transcript]

JUAN GONZALEZ: The Iowa caucus is less than two weeks away. The Republican presidential race is still up for grabs. One recent poll in Iowa shows Texas Congressman Ron Paul in the lead, followed by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Five different candidates have led the Iowa polls in recent months.

We turn now to an in-depth look at the state of politics and money and how last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United has altered campaign fundraising. The ruling opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending on election campaigns.

Several exposés have recently been published looking at how Newt Gingrich has skirted campaign finance rules to raise millions of dollars in unlimited donations from billionaire backers and big corporations. McClatchy Newspapers recently reported Gingrich helped bankroll his resurrection as a candidate by exploiting a gap in federal campaign finance laws to create a political money machine that raised $54 million over five years, including over $7 million from the billionaire Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the Center for Public Integrity has exposed new details on how Newt Gingrich is receiving the backing of two so-called super PACs that raise unlimited donations. Donors can provide unlimited donations to these independent groups that were formed to help Gingrich, but legally must operate independently of the campaign. Earlier this week, one of the super PACs, known as Winning Our Future, released this ad:

WINNING OUR FUTURE AD: Proven conservative leadership: Newt Gingrich. In uncertain times, we need a leader whose commitment to conservative values has been tested. Newt stood with Ronald Reagan. Newt stood up to Bill Clinton. And Newt was there for conservative values. But most importantly, Newt has always believed in the greatness of America, that America’s best days are ahead. The choice: Newt Gingrich, the proven conservative leader. Winning Our Future is responsible for the content of this message.

AMY GOODMAN: Newt Gingrich, of course, is not the only presidential hopeful benefiting from super PACs that take in unlimited donations. A Mitt Romney-aligned group called Restore Our Future PAC recently produced this anti-Gingrich ad.

RESTORE OUR FUTURE AD: And on the issues, Newt’s been on all sides. He supports amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. Gingrich even teamed up with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming. And Newt was a longtime supporter of a national health insurance mandate, the centerpiece of Obamacare. Maybe that’s why George Will called Gingrich the least conservative candidate. The Gingrich record: 30 years in Washington flip-flopping on issues. Check the facts at newtfacts.com. Restore Our Future, Inc., is responsible for the content of this message.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about money and politics, we’re joined by two guests in Washington. Peter Stone is reporter at Center for Public Integrity. He has covered lobbying and campaign finance issues for the past two decades in Washington. He is author of Casino Jack, a book about the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. And Greg Gordon is with us, investigative reporter for McClatchy’s Washington bureau.

Peter Stone, let’s start with you. Give us the overarching story of what you call the "independent gold rush" since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

PETER STONE: Well, last year, we began to see an enormous tidal wave of money going into new outside groups, the most prominent of which was American Crossroads and an affiliate called Crossroads GPS, which together raised about $71 million, including many multimillion-dollar contributions from old friends of Karl Rove, who is a founder of Crossroads.

This year, the new thing is presidential super PACs, candidate-specific super PACs. And we’ve seen these established, so far, by just about every presidential candidate. Romney has so far built the most lucrative one. Romney’s allies, three former aides who were involved with the 2008 campaign, started the super PAC early this year. And in the first six months, they raised $12 million. They were the first really out of the gate with the biggest pile of money in their coffers. They had a few multi—a few million-dollar contributions from old friends and supporters of Romney, including New York hedge fund mogul John Paulson gave a million dollars. And we have others now.

As Gingrich has begun to gain momentum in recent weeks, his allies have set up two of these so far. The most potent seems to be Winning Our Future, which is being run by a woman named Becky Burkett, who spearheaded the fundraising for the group you alluded to before, the 527 that Gingrich used for five years before his campaign. And Becky Burkett was joined this week by Rick Tyler, his longtime communications aide, who was briefly the spokesman for the campaign. Tyler is going to be helping to do fundraising and coordinate activities with the other super PACs, which is legal, to make sure they get the most bang for their buck and are most effective.

President Obama’s allies have set up these, as well. So far, they’ve not done very much in the fund—they have only raised a small amount, a few million dollars, but they’ll probably pick up early next year.

So we’ve had this rise of these super PACs. They’re supposed to be independent of the campaigns, but because of weak FEC rules and enforcement, there’s a lot of wiggle room, especially on the fundraising side. The most prominent example so far of overlap, if you will, or links between the super PACs and the campaigns, is probably a fundraiser that was held in July in New York, which I reported on, that Romney attended while he was in New York doing two other events—one for his campaign and one for a party committee. He dropped in on a fundraiser that was solely for the super PAC, Restore Our Future, and he spoke briefly there and then left. He was—the law allows him to do this. And the only restriction is that he is not allowed to ask for unlimited donations at these events. He can ask for a donation of up to $5,000, but nothing more. So, there are examples like this.

A top Romney aide this summer moved from the campaign to spearhead the fundraising at the super PAC, a fellow named Steve Roche, which was a sign that there was going to be more emphasis on these super PACs. So, we have a situation with these parallel groups set up that are now running the bulk of the negative ads. Romney’s, in particular, has been blasting away, spent a few million dollars in Iowa just in the last week or 10 days, and they’ve had a big impact on Gingrich’s standing there. Gingrich is starting to respond with softer ads, but we may see negative coming on in a while. He said he wants to keep it—you know, keep it friendly, but the dynamic of these super PACs is to go negative and do the dirty work that the campaigns won’t, or can’t, keep—let the campaigns stay above the fray, be positive. That’s, more or less, a quick overview of it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, and Greg Gordon of the McClatchy Washington bureau, you’ve looked especially at how Newt Gingrich, before his campaign run, raised millions and millions of dollars with these types of organizations. And can you talk about that?

GREG GORDON: Yes. Former Speaker Gingrich set up a group in 2006 that is actually formed under a provision of the Internal Revenue Service Code, called a 527. And these groups are allowed to also raise unlimited donations. Before the Supreme Court ruling, they could spend them on political advocacy, but they could not try to defeat a particular candidate or advocate in favor of a particular candidate.

So what happened is that, basically—well, let me just take a step back. In the early 2000s, we saw the passage of this historic campaign finance overhaul, and the idea was to stop soft money, which were these unlimited donations to the national political parties. And the byword of this whole campaign was, we’re going to get the big money out of national politics. So here we are, less than a decade later, and we’re back to huge money, huge individual donations, and now coming from corporate treasuries, and potentially union treasuries, that basically can turn the tide as far as the finances of a particular election campaign.

OK, so what Gingrich did is yet another twist. He set up this group called American Solutions for Winning Our Future, and this group was raising money, and it was—it had a little—spent a few million dollars out of the $54 million, maybe $7 million, on a few campaigns, one of which was to try to overturn President Obama’s healthcare reform bill or act, and another was to fight climate change legislation and so forth. But the other thing that happened is that it bankrolled Gingrich as he flew around the country: $8 million in chartered flights, as he went around and rebuilt his profile after, you know, a long hiatus from his prominent role in politics, you know, in public service.

And so, you have kind of a bleeding here, because all of a sudden, last spring, former Speaker Gingrich announces he’s going to run for president. He never, unlike most of the other presidential candidates, formed an exploratory committee. He was all set up through this group. The question is, you know, did he use this group? These groups are supposed to be independent of candidates. Was he at any time really a candidate? How did this group benefit his campaign? And one way, I might note, is that there is a little charter airways company called Moby Dick Airways out at Dulles Airport outside Washington that flew him around, and his campaign also used that same company. And as of October 31st, its last report to the Federal Election Commission, it owed $451,000 to that airway—to that charter airway company. So, did that company float the campaign credit that it might not have gotten, were it not for its relationship with this 527 group that Gingrich, you know, used to reinvent himself?

JUAN GONZALEZ: And one of the big donors to his groups, Sheldon Adelson, could you talk about him?

GREG GORDON: Sheldon Adelson is a rabidly pro-Israel donor, and he operates two of the most elite casinos in Las Vegas: the Palazzo and the Venetian. And he is also listed by Forbes as the 16th wealthiest person on the planet. Mr. Adelson is a huge backer of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he in fact publishes a free newspaper that circulates in Israel that basically is an extra voice to boost the Israeli prime minister.

Gingrich and Adelson have been friends for quite a while, and Gingrich is a big booster of Netanyahu, as well. And perhaps it is no surprise, after all these donations from Adelson, totaling $7.65 million, that Gingrich has recently spoken against a—he talked about the Palestinian people as an invented people, and he talked about moving the embassy on his first day in office, the U.S. embassy to Israel, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would be an extremely provocative move to make in the Middle East.

Mr. Adelson, according to Politico just a few days ago, which quoted multiple sources, is planning to put $20 million into these super PACs that support Newt Gingrich. And so, you can see—now, Newt Gingrich has a huge deficit to make up between the latest number we’ve seen that his presidential campaign has raised, or that we’ve been told of by the campaign, is under $7 million, which is in fact less money than Mr. Adelson gave to the 527 group. And so, we see the possibility that wealthy donors, in a matter of a couple, three weeks, can totally change the playing field in terms of the money of a presidential campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Stone, you’ve also written about Sheldon Adelstein being investigated—Adelson.

PETER STONE: Right. Well, Adelson—let me just start—add a couple things to what Greg said. Adelson did vehemently deny the Politico story. But he left the door open. He called Politico. The guy is very reclusive, doesn’t talk to reporters. But he was pretty irked by the report, and he called them up, and he said, "I have made no commitment to do so." He quickly added, though, "Doesn’t mean I won’t do so in the future."

I did a follow-up story on it this week, where I talked to other sources, including old friends who he had signaled in recent weeks that he was probably going to help Gingrich. One of his old friends, Fred Zeidman, told me, on the record, that Adelson had said to him, "I’ll do whatever it costs" — quote — "I’ll do whatever it costs to help Gingrich." I think he is going to be a little bit cautious. He has a record of—

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

PETER STONE: OK. Back to the investigation, very quickly, there is a Foreign Corrupt Practices investigation underway. The Justice Department and the SEC launched this. They’re looking into possible violations of this law involving potential bribery in Macau—

AMY GOODMAN: In Macau.

PETER STONE: —where Adelson’s—

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Greg Gordon and Peter Stone.

Source: Democracy Now!

By Stephen Zunes*

An ad on my Facebook page from barackobama.com reads, "Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich say they would start foreign aid to Israel at zero. Reject their extreme plan now!"

This struck me as odd for two reasons:

First, it is disingenuous and misleading. The actual position taken by these Republican presidential candidates is that all foreign aid should initially start at zero as means of reducing the deficit, to be immediately followed by the resumption of aid on a case-by-case basis. As they themselves have acknowledged, they would immediately resume aid to Israel and perhaps even increase it. Ironically, U.S. "aid for Israel" goes almost exclusively to U.S. arms manufacturers, with which the Republican candidates have a close relationship.

Secondly, millions of Americans-particularly younger voters who are the primary users of Facebook-support zeroing out aid to Israel on human rights grounds. The Obama campaign, therefore, is effectively labeling those of us who oppose the use of our tax dollars to arm the right-wing Netanyahu government, which has repeatedly used U.S. weapons against civilians, as "extreme." Presumably, they feel the same way about those of us who support a cutoff of aid to other governments that violate international humanitarian law as well.

In 2009, Amnesty International, citing war crimes committed by both Israeli forces and the armed wing of Hamas earlier that year, called on nations to suspend arms shipments to both. The Obama administration categorically rejected the proposal. The administration has also rejected calls by human rights groups to condition military aid and arms transfers to other countries that use U.S. weapons against civilians, including Colombia, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Azerbaijan, and Morocco. Recently, the Obama administration requested a waiver on human rights restrictions in the forthcoming foreign appropriations bill in order to resume arming the Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan, which has massacred hundreds of pro-democracy protesters and has literally boiled its opponents alive.

One can speculate whether, if Obama were seeking re-election in 1984, his campaign would similarly label those who opposed aid to the murderous Salvadoran junta as "extreme." Or, if it were 1996, his campaign would have marginalized opponents of U.S. aid to the genocidal Suharto regime in Indonesia. The president's re-election team for 2012 sure appears to think of us that way.

Republican candidates certainly have taken a number of extreme positions regarding Israel and Palestine. Gingrich, Perry, and Romney, for example, have aligned themselves with the far right of the Israeli political spectrum, opposing Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and opposing a freeze on illegal Israeli settlements. Gingrich has even said the Palestinians are an "invented people" and implied his support for mass population transfers.

I've searched barackobama.com and elsewhere, and nowhere does the Obama campaign appear to label such positions or similarly outrageous statements as "extreme." However, if you oppose sending billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded aid to Israel-whether as a means of cutting the deficit, reducing cuts in social programs, or defending human rights-the Obama campaign considers it an "extreme plan" that should be rejected.

What is so bizarre about the Obama campaign's hostility toward those who oppose aid to Israel is that Israel doesn't need U.S. assistance to begin with. Israel, the region's only nuclear power, has by far the strongest military capability in the greater Middle East, and it possesses the only significant domestic arms industry in the region. Israel also has, by far, the region's highest standard of living, comparable to that of most European countries. Even putting human rights concerns aside, questioning why American taxpayers should be spending over $3 billion annually in aid to Israel at a time of massive cutbacks at home doesn't seem unreasonable.

Furthermore, public opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe U.S. military aid should be made conditional to human rights.

Most people for whom providing unconditional support for the Netanyahu government is their top priority are going to support the Republican nominee anyway. Meanwhile, there are millions of Democrats, independents, and even Republicans who question spending billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up that rightist Israeli government every year. Why risk alienating these voters by labeling their position "extreme"? Is it simply a headline thrown together by an overzealous young wonk in the campaign? Or is this part of a larger effort to stifle debate on the Obama administration's policies of aiding governments that violate human rights?

Either way, it sends the message that the Obama campaign does not welcome concerns about human rights. In addition, it serves as a reminder for Americans who do care about human rights that neither party will provide a presidential nominee we can vote for.

* Stephen Zunes, a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist and senior analyst, is a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He is the author, along with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press, 2010).

A former AIPAC official who attacked CAP writers on Israel may himself be the one to suffer consequences

By Glenn Greenwald*

(updated below)

"I sure hope that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby" - Tom Friedman, New York Times, today.

"[T]he U.S. government fed up with Israel's leadership [is] a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America's" - Tom Friedman, New York Times, September 18, 2011.

A significant and potentially consequential controversy erupted last week when Politico's Ben Smith - seemingly out of nowhere - wrote about what he described as deviations from "the bipartisan consensus on Israel" from several writers and bloggers at two of Washington's most well-connected Democratic political organizations: Center for American Progress and Media Matters. Naming Matt Duss, Eli Clifton, Eric Alterman and Ali Ghraib at CAP, along with former AIPAC employee MJ Rosenberg at Media Matters, Smith wrote that they regularly offer "a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins" and added: "warm words for Israel can be hard to find on [CAP's] blogs." The article included a quote from a former AIPAC official accusing the two groups of publishing "anti-Israel" and "borderline anti-Semitic stuff."

I have long been surprised - and impressed - by the high-quality, independent roster of commentators which an establishment entity like CAP employs to write about Middle East issues on its ThinkProgress blog. Even though most of it is under the guise of defending Obama on Israel from neocon attacks, those writers (and others at CAP, such as Zaid Jilani), are willing to question U.S. support for Israel and the actions of the Israeli government, as well as to use their critical faculties, to a far greater extent than is normally permitted in establishment D.C. discourse (that's why I was so disappointed in that recent unsigned, officious, war-mongering, White-House-talking-points propaganda put on the CAP blog under the name of the organization: it was atypical of their national security writing). But there is nothing fringe, anti-Israel, or remotely anti-Semitic about anything these commentators write. This Politico article simply features the standard, tired smears from those who ironically do more than anyone to trivialize "anti-Semitism" by cynically exploiting the accusation as a club to suppress dissent over Israel. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that it took this long for these exploiters of anti-Semitism accusations to launch this attack at CAP and Media Matters writers.

As it turns out - and this was rather predictable - Smith's article did not appear out of nowhere. It was engineered by one of Washington's most odious smear merchants, former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block. He has made a career out of working in the shadows, surreptitiously encouraging reporters to depict Israel critics as anti-Semites. For instance, during the controversy over the alleged anti-Semitism of Obama appointee Chas Freeman (accused of the crime of questioning U.S. support for Israel), Block publicly stated that AIPAC had no position on Freeman, but The Washington Post's Walter Pincus revealed that Block "provided critical material about Freeman [to journalists], albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him." That's what Block does: he scurries around in the dark feeding dossiers to reporters about people who are insufficiently supportive of Israel so that they will be publicly accused of anti-Semitism (at the time of the Freeman controversy, Politico's Smith similarly noted that "Jewish and pro-Israel organizations largely decided not to make the fight against Freeman a public crusade, though they were the first, and fiercest, Freeman opponents and made their views known privately").

Predictably, Block is now the leading force behind the McCarthyite campaign to have CAP writers labeled as fringe Israel-haters and even anti-Semites for the same crime Freeman committed. After publication of the Politico article, Smith acknowledged he was fed a file by Block listing the offending passages from the CAP writers. Block, in turn, was quoted in the Politico article as accusing CAP of publishing "borderline anti-Semitic stuff," specifically from the Jewish writer, Eric Alterman. And then late last week, my Salon colleague Justin Elliott broke the story of how Block, on a private email list filled with neocon writers and journalists, was "shopping a 3,000-word trove of opposition research against bloggers critical of Israel" and urging those journalists to "echo" and "amplify" the attack on those writers as anti-Semitic. Using classic guilt by association tactics - CAP's posts have been "applauded by revolting allies like the pro-HAMAS and anti-Zionist/One State Solution advocate Ali Abunumiah," he announced - Block issued his marching orders: "These are the words of anti-Semites, not Democratic political players."

Except a funny thing happened on the well-traveled road of Block's smear campaign. The predictable roster of neoconservative, hatemongering extremists on that email list - led by The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, who recruited the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the cause - dutifully spewed out articles echoing Block's attacks against these writers. But Block also created an even larger backlash against himself, from the Democratic Party players whom his accusations were intended to rile up and who are normally supportive - or at least perfectly tolerant - of these types of smear campaigns.

Block's business partner - the long-time Israel fanatic, Joe Lieberman fan and go-to lobbyist for despots around the world, Lanny Davis - publicly and forcefully repudiated Block's outburst. Even more surprising, The Washington Post's Greg Sargent reported that - as a result of the Salon story - "two top think tanks in Washington [the "centrist" Progressive Policy Institute (contact here) and the Truman National Security Project (contact here)] are mulling whether to sever ties with" Block as a result of his smear campaign. Specifically, "PPI head Will Marshall [the "New Democrat" Iraq War supporter] privately told Block that the think tank would sever ties with Block if he didn't retract the charges," while "at Truman, top officials privately debated via email whether to cut ties with Block after the Salon story broke."

Josh Block

That said, it could be very significant if Block ends up losing his affiliation with one or both of those think tanks. It's been a very long time in Washington - if it has ever happened - when someone suffered any consequences for launching a baseless McCarthyite campaign of "anti-Semitism" to punish critics of Israel. As Sargent astutely put it: "the question of whether the think tanks will remain affiliated with Block will be seen as a referendum on the larger issue of whether demeaning Israel critics as anti-Semitic will be considered acceptable discourse among foreign policy experts." Block has backed off some of his most incendiary accusations, but has apologized for nothing and continues to insist that the views he targeted should not be tolerated in any mainstream institution (including questioning whether Iran has a nuclear weapons program (what the last NIE did) or "policy or political rhetoric that is hostile to Israel": those views, insists Block, are strictly off-limits).

This episode reveals yet again just how pernicious is this manipulative use of "anti-Semitism" to intimidate people out of questioning U.S. policy toward Israel. Block targeted CAP because he knows full well that its two most important organizational resources - its White-House/Party access and its donor base - can be harmed even from the innuendo that it is committing heresy on Israel. Unsurprisingly, while the targeted writers have not been expressly admonished, CAP has engaged in blatant, public efforts to distance itself from their own writers' commentary and to assure everyone that they are not heretics when it comes to Israel.

Smith's original article reported that "CAP officials have told angry allies that the bloggers don't speak for the organization." One senior CAP official told Smith: "what one blogger or analyst may write isn't necessarily indicative of what our policy recommendations are for the administration or Congress when I'm doing meetings with our friends in government."

Two other senior CAP officials, in the wake of the Politico article, ran to the ThinkProgress blog to write an incredibly defensive apologia assuring everyone that they do not deviate on Israel, clicking their heels and affirming several oaths as though they're reading from some mandated D.C. script: "Iran's nuclear program is a strong point of concern for us, the U.S., and its allies"; CAP's goal is "ensuring Israel's long term security by securing its neighborhood"; "the multilateral sanctions framework engineered by the Obama administration is an important tool in pressuring Iran"; "It is a widely accepted fact that Iran has a nuclear program"; "while we take nothing off the table, we do not believe there is any evidence that a military strike would achieve those goals, a view shared by America's top military officials." Yet another CAP official, in response to the criticisms from the Wiesenthal Center, ran to affirm that we "take the threat of Iran's nuclear program seriously," that "the Iranian issue is a strong point of concern for us," and that "we support the Obama administration's position of 'no options off the table'" (while not supporting a military strike).

Given all this, is there any question - no matter what the outcome is - that this will have an effect on how CAP commentators write about Israel? Here you have their institutional employer under widespread attack for being anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic because of what they've written. You have a Washington Post columnist fueling those accusations repeatedly. You have your own organization's officials publicly, expressly and repeatedly distancing themselves from what you've said by making clear that it's not the organization's views, all while specifying what the acceptable boundaries are for your commentary on these matters (namely: nothing to the left of the Obama administration's official position). You now know that your writings on this topic are being monitored by the Josh Blocks of the world.

I have respect for the specific CAP and Media Matters writers targeted by this smear campaign. They have real integrity, and I doubt that any of them will consciously curb what they write. But I also have little doubt that this episode will be in their heads every time they go to write about Israel. They'll be wondering if they are crossing an organizational line, if they are going to prompt renewed smears against them and their bosses, if they should just refrain on the ground that the cost is not worth it. And that, of course, is precisely the goal of these smear campaigns: to make the cost of criticizing Israel and/or questioning blind U.S. support for Israel so high - personally and professionally - that most people are unwilling to do it.

And still - even now that the Israel debate has been opened up more than ever before (as those above quotes from Tom Friedman reflect - these smear tactics still work. Part of the problem is that most liberal writers, bloggers and pundits - especially the non-Jewish ones - are petrified of getting anywhere near the word "Israel," and that's been true for quite some time. One CAP writer noted to me the conspicuous silence among liberal bloggers and writers over this coordinated smear campaign against two of the most important progressive D.C. groups, and that's par for the course. By contrast, the entire Right jumps on every one of these smear campaigns and magnifies and amplifies it as loudly as possibly; note how the right-wing Breitbart site immediately lavished praise on Smith for "Exposing Media Matters, CAP as Anti-Israel Democrat Orgs." The smears of "anti-Israel" and especially "anti-Semitism" still pack a potent punch - especially (though by no means only) for non-Jewish political commentators - and most progressives will therefore avoid it at all costs. Indeed, the Politico article included this passage:

Podesta, who recently stepped down from his longtime position as CAP's president, "always wanted to stay out of Israel stuff from the beginning, because it's a no-win issue for them," a liberal Israel policy thinker and CAP ally said. "They're obviously a progressive place, but if you want to attract a mainstream Clinton, New Democrat milieu, you can't really do real progressive Israel stuff."

Those who are targeted with these smears for heresy on Israel know that - no matter how baseless the smears are - few will step forward to defend them. They'll be left alone, hung out to dry, in the face of a very aggressive neocon assault. When Walt and Mearsheimer were under vicious attack for The Israel Lobby, even many tenured academicians who had privately expressed support for their work ran away and refused to defend them. One CAP blogger, Zaid Jilani, has now apologized for and deleted tweets where he used the term "Israel-firster" even though (a) everyone knows there are American political activists - both evangelical Christians and Jewish - whose political worldview is dominated by allegiance to Israel and (b) even long-time stalwart Israel supporters like Tom Friedman now describe how U.S. officials are "hostage" to the "powerful pro-Israel lobby" that can force them to place Israel's interests over their own country's.

Every few months, one of these controversies erupts: some writer or official stands publicly accused of being insufficiently supportive of Israel; all kinds of innuendo about motives is smeared over the person; and demands are made that they be repudiated, fired or denied a position. No matter the outcome of the specific controversy, the effect is to re-bolster orthodoxies on Israel, fortify the restrictions on debate, and to send a warning to future would-be heretics about the cost of such behavior. It would be sweet justice indeed (as well as beneficial) if in this case the smear artist, rather than his targets, is the one who suffers consequences. But one should not doubt that the intended effect has been nonetheless achieved.

UPDATE: New Jersey Democratic Rep. Steve Rothman today called on Tom Friedman to apologize for the comments in his column today about the Israel Lobby. Declared Rothman: Friedman's remarks are "scurrilous, destructive and harmful to Israel" and constituting "aiding and abetting a dangerous narrative about the US-Israel relationship and its American supporters." That's just hilarious: if Tom Friedman of all people is now so anti-Israel and borderline anti-Semitic that he needs to publicly apologize, then you've reduced the accusation - and the movement that routinely spews it - to pure caricature.

I should also have noted here that while CAP has distanced itself from the comments of its bloggers, Media Matters, to its credit, has made clear it stands fully behind Rosenberg.

Finally, I'll be on Cenk Uygur's new Current TV show tonight at 7:00 pm EST talking about the detention bill.

* Glenn Greenwald (email: GGreenwald@salon.com) is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books on the Bush administration’s executive power and foreign policy abuses. His just-released book, With Liberty and Justice for Some
, is an indictment of America’s two-tiered system of justice, which vests political and financial elites with immunity even for egregious crimes while subjecting ordinary Americans to the world’s largest and most merciless penal state. Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in the nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the winner of the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning.

Interview with Eric Margolis, internationally syndicated columnist and author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj, discusses the conflict in Syria, where Western-backed instigators and a legitimate domestic opposition face off against the Assad regime – which still enjoys widespread popular support; the consequences of Syrian regime change for Palestinians, Iran and Hezbollah; what a truly democratic Middle East would look like; whether Egyptian sympathy for Palestinians will be tempered by continued US bribe money; and why the US needs to accept the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate political force – or deal with something far more radical later on. (source: antiwar.com)

Listen to this interview here. (19:52)

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles appear in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times and Dawn. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. He appears as an expert on foreign affairs on CNN, BBC, France 2, France 24, Fox News, CTV and CBC.

As a war correspondent Margolis has covered conflicts in Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique, Sinai, Afghanistan, Kashmir, India, Pakistan, El Salvador and Nicaragua. He was among the first journalists to ever interview Libya's Muammar Khadaffi and was among the first to be allowed access to KGB headquarters in Moscow. A veteran of many conflicts in the Middle East, Margolis recently was featured in a special appearance on Britain’s Sky News TV as “the man who got it right” in his predictions about the dangerous risks and entanglements the US would face in Iraq.

Margolis is the author of War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet and American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World.

By Julie Webb-Pullman

Drone spotted above Gaza on Friday afternoon

A "security situation" created by Israel's murderous breaking of a truce, with absolutely no cause.

A "security situation" created by Israel sending military forces backed by tanks and bulldozers into Gazan territory, Al Muntar on Tuesday 6th December – a provocation to which Gaza did not respond.

A "security situation" created by Israel on Wednesday 7th December, when Israeli military aircraft targeted a group of citizens near Anas Bin Malek Mosque in Al-shujaeyeh neighbourhood of east Gaza City, killing 22 year old Ismail Salameh and critically wounding two others, and another Israeli warplane fired a missile at another Gazan in al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, seriously wounding him - provocations to which Gaza did not respond.

A "security situation" created by Israel on Thursday 8th December blowing up a car in rush hour in the middle of the city, next to a crowded children's playground, killing two members of the same family and hospitalising two bystanders. Several busloads of high school students on a school trip were nearby, and fled screaming.

Thousands of Gazans walk past that spot every day, as do I, on my way to the NGO I am working with, and no doubt many were thinking, as was I, "There but for the grace of God..."

Finally, in response to these blatant provocations, on the anniversary of the first intifada, some Gazans responded late Thursday afternoon, with rockets fired at Israel, in self-defence – causing no material damage, and no deaths or injury.

The "security situation" was then escalated by Israel on Friday 9th December, with more air strikes killing two civilians in their home at dawn, one of them a 12 year old boy, and injuring 13 more family members, all of whom happened to live next door to an Israeli 'target' – provocations to which Gazans again responded, with rockets that neither damaged, killed nor injured any Israelis.

The current situation is a chilling echo of that immediately prior to Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, when Israel ended a four-month cease fire during which rocket attacks from Gaza had dropped to zero, by killing Palestinians, who then fired rockets into Israel.

Launching of rockets at Israel is a symbolic, rather than a murderous, retaliation. The disproportion in the Gazan response was not only in its relative lack of lethality, but also in its relative lack of civilian victims.

Before Benny Gantz and his henchmen trot out the usual justifications, they would do well to reflect on the January 2009 words of Victor Kattan, a jurist with the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London:

"On the very morning Israel launched its offensive in Gaza, the day it killed 225 Palestinians, Gabriela Shalev, its UN Ambassador, sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General announcing that 'after a long period of utmost restraint, the Government of Israel has decided to exercise, as of this morning, its right to self-defence.' "

This statement flew in the face of the facts, which were that there had been no rocket attacks for four months, yet Israel began killing Gazans regardless.

Article 2 of the UN General Assembly's 1974 Definition of Aggression stipulates that:

"The first use of armed force by a State in contravention of the Charter shall constitute prima facie evidence of an act of aggression."

This week again, as in 2008, Israel has committed the first use of armed force.

Kattan also pointed out that:

"In 1970, the UN General Assembly in resolution 2649 (XXV) affirmed 'the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples under colonial and alien domination recognized as being entitled to the right of self-determination to restore to them that right by any means at their disposal.'"

As Kattan went on to say:

"Most importantly, the law of armed conflict prohibits belligerent reprisals against civilians, civilian populations and certain civilian objects. This is confirmed in Articles 51, paragraph 6 and Article 54, paragraph 4 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It also goes beyond the proportionality requirement in the law of self-defence."

For the above reasons, Kattan, and more than two dozen international law experts, all rejected Israel's claim in the 2008 letter to the UN.

Kattan concluded in 2009:

"Israel's Gaza offensive cannot be legally justified by any right of self-defense and instead constitutes aggression and a forcible deprivation of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination."

The same holds true today. Israel is not protecting its security, it is deliberately provoking, in order to provide a flimsy justification for another Gaza offensive, a re-cast of 2008-9.

Events in Egypt have Israel worried. It wants Gaza back, but empty of Palestinians.

If the international community does not act now to reign in the rogue state of Israel, it will almost certainly continue with another massacre of innocents. How many thousand Gazans - and anyone else in the enclave, myself included - will die unnecessary deaths this time, at the robotic hands of USraeli drone-delivered missiles decimating civilian targets? (How can there be OTHER than civilian targets when 1.7 million people are herded into a 360 sq km open air prison?)

The international community has no excuses this time.

ENDS

Is Israel Preparing to Attack Iran?

By Neve Gordon*

Skimming the newspapers as I rushed to get my children ready for school, I suddenly understood that Israel might actually be preparing for a military attack against Iran. "[United States Secretary of Defence Leon] Panetta Demanded Commitment to Coordinate Action in Iran" read one headline, and "A Bomb at Arm's Length" read another.

Feeding this hype were a series of military events that had been planned months in advance yet mysteriously coincided with the publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. For four days straight all of the major television channels repeatedly showed images of Israel preparing for war.

It began with a report on Israel's testing of a long-range ballistic missile, which emphasised the missile's capacity to carry nuclear warheads. This was followed by interviews with pilots who were part of a comprehensive Israeli Air Force drill on long-range attacks carried out at an Italian NATO air base. Archival images of a missile being launched from an Israeli submarine were also shown. Ha'aretz readers were told that the submarine was important because it would enable Israel to carry out a second strike in case of a nuclear war.

These images of offensive arrangements were followed by images of Israel's defence preparations. On November 3rd, the three major news channels dedicated several minutes of air time to covering a drill simulating an attack on central Israel; these clips showed people being carried on stretchers and soldiers treating casualties who had been hit by chemical weapons. A day later, Ha'aretz reported that the military preparations against Iran had indeed been upgraded.

Iran with nuclear capabilities has been continuously presented as an existential threat to Israel. On October 31, in the opening speech of the Knesset's winter session Prime Minister Netanyahu noted that a "nuclearised Iran will constitute a serious threat to the Middle East and to the whole world and obviously also a direct and serious threat against us," adding that Israel's security conception cannot be based on defence alone but must also include "offensive capabilities which serve as the basis for deterrence."

Analysts repeatedly mentioned that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier and Reuven Barko from Yisrael Hayom even compared Iran to Nazi Germany. One cannot underestimate the impact of this analogy on the collective psyche of Jewish Israelis.

Barko went on to connect Hamlet's phrase "to be or not to be" to Israel's current situation, while posing the existing dilemma confronting the State as "to hit or not to hit". President Shimon Peres claimed that Iran is the only country in the world "that threatens the existence of another country", but neglected to mention that for generations, the Palestinians have been deprived of their right to self-determination.

On the day when the International Atomic Energy Agency report was finally published practically all Israeli media outlets described it as a "smoking gun". The report, according to the media, provides concrete evidence that Iran's nuclear programme is also aimed at producing weapons. Zvi Yechezkeli from Channel Ten described it as "the end of the era of Iranian ambiguousness", but failed, of course, to remark that Israel's own ambiguity regarding its nuclear capacities continues unhindered; Roni Daniel from Channel Two declared that "we are relieved" by the report, suggesting that Israel's claims have now been corroborated and that the report can serve to justify both the imposition of harsher sanctions against Iran and even an attack.

Notwithstanding the endless war mongering, most Israeli commentators claimed that the frenzy was no more than a "nuclear spin". The majority of political analysts tended to agree that the media campaign, which presented Israel as seriously preparing to attack Iran, was orchestrated just in order to pressure the international community to impose harsher sanctions against Iran. Channel Ten's Or Heller put it succinctly when he said: "It appears that neither Iran nor the Israeli public is the target of what is going on here, but first and foremost it is the international community, the Americans, the British."

The commentators also noted that there is wall-to-wall opposition to an Israeli assault, including the US, Europe, Russia and China. Alex Fishman summed up the international sentiment when he wrote:

"If someone in Israel thinks that there is a green or a yellow light coming from Washington for a military attack against Iran - this person has no inkling whatsoever of what is going on; the light remains the same, a glaring red."

The portrayal of Israel as a neighbourhood bully who feigns a rage attack while calling out to his friends to hold him back is not particularly reassuring, however.

After 10 days of media frenzy, Defence Minister Ehud Barak tried to calm the public by saying that "not even 500 people would be killed" in the event of an attack - but he failed to say that there would be no attack.

Yossi Verter from Ha'aretz explained that the media hype serves Barak's interests. "A successful attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities under his ministerial leadership can rehabilitate his personal status, and help him recover the public's trust." Verter cites a leading member of the political system, who claims that "Barak is convinced that only a person of his security stature can lead perhaps the most fateful battle in Israel's history since the War of Independence."

Regardless of whether Netanyahu and Barak are already set on launching an assault, the media hype and the portrayal of Iran as constituting an existential threat to Israel surely help to produce the necessary conditions for a military campaign.

What is remarkable about this saber rattling is its abstraction. Not a single analyst noted that entering war is easy but ending it is far more difficult, particularly if on the other side stands a regional power with vast resources and a well-trained military (unlike Hamas or Hezbollah). And, of course, no one really talked about the likelihood of a gory future or what kind of life we were planning for our children. This kind of abstraction makes war palatable, providing a great service to the war machine.

* Neve Gordon is an Israeli activist and the author of Israel's Occupation and author of (University of California Press, 2008). He can be contacted through his website www.israelsoccupation.info

U.S. law could force America out of international agencies, and into isolation

By Gwynne Dyer*

The Palestinians have finally come up with a strategy that may produce some results. But only by accident, so to speak.

They were fed up with 19 years of “direct negotiations” with Israel that never made any progress toward a final peace settlement, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas badly needed some small victory to prop up his failing popularity. So he decided to seek international recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state.

He knows very well that the Palestinians cannot get full membership in the United Nations, because the United States has promised to veto that. But membership in the various UN agencies like the World Bank and the World Health Organization is not subject to a veto, and each organization they join would move Palestine a tiny step closer to real statehood.

Their first target was the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). On Monday, they were granted full membership by a vote of 107 in favour, 14 against, and 52 abstaining.

The United States immediately cut off its huge contribution to UNESCO’s annual budget — 22 per cent of the total — as a punishment for voting the wrong way. The UNESCO vote, said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, was “regrettable, premature, and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Israel’s response was equally drastic. It announced that it was speeding up the construction of 2,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. It has also cut off the transfer of tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority on goods passing through Israel: about $100 million a month, which provides half of the PA’s domestic revenue. Without it, the PA’s civil servants will go unpaid.

Painful measures for the Palestinians, but Israel is always building more homes for Jews in the West Bank, and it cuts off the flow of revenue to the Palestinians whenever it feels like it: this is the second time this year. Nothing new there. And Washington had no choice: it is obliged by a 1990 U.S. law to cut funding to any organization that recognizes the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But this law, which the Palestinians were barely aware of when they adopted their current strategy, presents them with an extraordinary opportunity. There are 14 other UN specialized agencies, from the Food and Agriculture Organization to the World Meteorological Organization, most of them with similar membership requirements to UNESCO: a two-thirds majority vote of the existing members, and no veto.

If the Palestinians apply for membership in each of these organizations over the next year or so, they will probably get the same 88 per cent majority when it comes to a vote on membership. None of the countries that defied the United States and voted Palestine into UNESCO is going to humiliate itself by changing its vote at other UN agencies. And each time, Washington will be forced by law to cease its contributions to that agency.

The United States would not actually lose its membership by stopping its financial support — at least not for a good long while — but it would lose all practical influence on these agencies, which do a great deal of the work of running the world. It would be a diplomatic disaster for Washington, and it would test America’s reflexive compliance with Israel’s agenda, perhaps to the breaking point.

This interesting possibility is only now getting the full attention of decision-makers in the U.S., Israel and Palestine. It gives the Palestinians unprecedented leverage over the U.S., but it is a tool that must be used with caution, for Washington cannot back down. The U.S. operates under the rule of law, and the Obama administration must enforce this archaic law unless and until Congress rescinds it.

Using this new lever that has fallen into his hands, Abbas could actually drive the United States out of most international agencies if he wanted, but that is not in his interest. What he actually needs is some major pressure on Israel from Washington to stop building settlements and start negotiating seriously.

That cannot happen in an election year, so perhaps Abbas will wait until the end of next year and the outcome of the American presidential election. The U.S. law will stay on the books, but if Barack Obama wins re-election in 2012, maybe then he will risk putting pressure on Israel rather than see the U.S. driven into what amounts to diplomatic isolation. Or maybe he won’t.

* Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

What's Next for Palestine?

By Samah Sabawi*

The campaign for Palestine to be recognized as a full member of the United Nations has revealed the popularity of the Palestinian cause on the international stage, displayed the uncompromising nature of Israel’s political leadership, and highlighted the end of the road for the Palestinian Authority, which has made it clear that it has no other path to take. Now that the United States has used heavy pressure and strong diplomatic maneuvering to block the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) application for full UN membership in the UN Security Council, the question for Palestinians is where should they go from here and how to frame the next phase of their struggle.

Palestinians watching this political theatre unfold are not surprised by the inability of UN institutions to take a strong stand toward resolving their decades old conflict. During the Palestinians’ 63 years of dispossession, several dozen UN resolutions were directed at Israel over core issues such as refugees, Jerusalem, and borders, as well as its unlawful attacks on its neighbors, and its violations of the human rights of the Palestinians, including deportations, demolitions of homes, settlement expansion, and confiscation of Palestinian land.

All of these resolutions went unimplemented. Instead, the Palestinians - an occupied people - were for 20 years made to negotiate with the occupying power over rights to which they were already entitled under international law.

Predictably, these negotiations yielded little. Instead, the Palestinians saw the continued erosion of their rights and freedoms and the continued loss of their land. Israel colonized more than 50 percent of the West Bank with Jewish settlements, bypass roads networks, and buffer zones. When PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas insisted that Israel at a minimum halt its settlement expansion before the Palestinians continued to negotiate, his request was flatly rejected. Now Abbas has played his last card. The UN bid has exposed the weakness of the strategy of the Palestinian Authority, which has done the running in the name of the PLO.

The PA strategy rested entirely on the assumption that its good behavior - including collaboration with Israel over security, courting international economic institutions, and playing the game by the rulebook would be rewarded. It will not. U.S. Mideast negotiator Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, a former adviser to the Palestinian leadership, warned Palestinian leaders earlier this year, "History is not in the habit of rewarding good behavior; it is a struggle, not a beauty contest."

Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat - who publicly resigned his position after the Palestine Papers were leaked only to re-emerge after the furor died down and assist with the statehood bid – has offered this insight into the PA's strategy: "if we fail we can try again and again and again." In other words: We are out of options and this is the only route we have at our disposal.

Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki announced a few days ago that the Palestinians will not accept anything less than "a full member state" but the Associated Press later reported that the PA has begun a process of seeking an upgrade status at the UN. The PA is also sending mixed signals about applying for membership of other UN bodies such as the World Health Organization, the UN Development Program, the UN Population Fund, the Environment Program, the World Food Program and others.

While the PA continues to play diplomacy, the Palestinian people have been watching and learning. Unlike the PA/PLO, they recognize that without real leverage, laws and resolutions will never move beyond the paper they are written on. The apparent tsunami of support for the Palestinian statehood bid, and the endless rhetoric from world nations including the US, Canada, the European Union, and Australia, in support of a two state solution, will not bring a Palestinian state into the club of nations any time soon.

Freedom and rights are never offered on a silver platter in the halls of power. They are earned through mass popular movements and organized civil rights struggle. It is for this reason that more Palestinians are embracing civil society’s call for non-violent protests inside the occupied territories and for boycott, divestment and sanctions globally, a model based on the South African struggle to end apartheid. In this they have the support of a fast-growing global civil society movement that is willing to take action where governments are not and to put a moral and economic cost on Israel’s human rights violations.

With Jewish only settlements growing on Palestinian land faster than anyone can say “two states”, it makes no sense for Palestinians to pin their hopes on a state that may never be. That is why the Palestinian struggle has evolved into one that transcends borders and barriers. The language of the new Palestinian non-violent resistance movement is based on human rights and calls for equality, freedom, justice, and democratic representation.

Israeli hardliners who have ensured the death of the two-state solution and the demise of the Palestinian state need to brace themselves. The voices calling for full Palestinian equality and rights in the land of Palestine-Israel are sure to become louder.

* Samah Sabawi is the Public Advocate for Australians for Palestine. Co-author of Journey to Peace in Palestine, writer and producer of the plays Cries from the Land and Three Wishes.

Video link: http://youtu.be/t1wTRokvvTM

From Producer/Director Maurice Jacobsen:

I often wonder what draws Westerners to travel to Gaza. Is it anger at the incredible injustices being inflicted on the Gazan population and the need to witness these flagrant offenses first hand? Is it a desire to help document, for the record, this critical story? Is it a need for adventure, to go to a place nearly impossible to enter? Is it an innate desire to help people oppressed, much like the white freedom riders of the civil rights period?

For me it was most likely a combination of all the above, as I am sure it is for most who enter, or try to enter the territory. I spent thirteen months in Gaza in 2010 and 2011, and the time flew by in the blink of an eye. One has an ongoing visceral sense of being part of history, of being part of a story that can affect the entire planet.

The result of my time in Gaza was the production of a video documentary tour of Gaza titled Inshallah – the literally translation being "if Allah so wills it." In Gaza, the use of this phrase is more parochial. It is the lingering knowledge that no one knows their future. Quite literally, fate is out of their hands.

And so it is with Mohammed Obied, the subject of my forthcoming documentary, called Mohammed's Cry. We met Mohammed from the community of Izbet Abed Rabbo during production of Inshallah. During the 2009 Israeli invasion he lost his home, his farm, and all his livestock. His parents were targeted and killed by tank artillery shells.

Today he, his wife, his children and an extended family live in an opened shed put together from bits and pieces of his former home. He is preparing for a winter that is cold and wet in Gaza. It will be a difficult season.

A year ago Gazan filmmaker Lana Hijazi and I sat down and talked with Mohammed on-camera about his situation. He asked us a series of simple questions, questions that we could not answer. But they are questions that demand an answer. Not only for Mohammed, but for all who care about human rights and abuse of power by a dominate oppressor.

"Why did they do this to us? Why did they kill us? Why did they kill the animals?...The bodies of my mother and father were left on the road for five days. The Israelis killed the cows, all the animals died, Why?...What did we do to the Israelis to make them do this? We are not from Hamas or the resistance, and none of my brothers or their children are from Hamas or the resistance. We are farmers, peaceful farmers."

And now the time has come to raise the funds needed to return to Gaza to begin unraveling the answers to Mohammed's nida, his cry.

In Gaza, there have literally been billions of dollars pledged by the international community to rebuild, but there has been limited reconstruction of homes as building materials are not allowed entry into the territory by Israel. (Expensive, low quality cement and other materials get smuggled into Gaza from Egypt, but are not affordable to families like Mohammed’s.)

The United Nations and dozens of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are on the ground to give assistance. But this assistance also is mired in a bureaucratic and political brier patch that must be negotiated. And life for Mohammed and his neighbors goes on. There are mouths to feed, children to educate, and basic needs to be met.For Mohammed, he is on the “inside,” with absolutely no ability to move beyond the concrete and barbed wire that surround him.

Our film team’s search for answers to Mohammed’s questions will bring us to the United Nations Council on Human Rights in Geneva (where the archives of the Goldstone Commission are stored); to the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C.; to the United Nations in New York City; and then, armed with as many details as possible, to Israel. Here, with the help of human rights organizations, a journalist investigation will be undertaken. Interview requests will be put forward to policy makers, politicians and military personnel familiar with the events that took place at Mohammed’s home.

It will be a very difficult journey for all involved, logistically, emotionally, creatively, but a journey well worth taking. We hope you can help us in our efforts to find answers. We are beginning a funding campaign on the KickStarter website.

We thank you. But, most importantly, Mohammed thanks you.

The seven Irish human rights activists due home in Ireland this afternoon at 2:25 pm were at the last minute prevented from boarding their flight out of Ben Gurion airport by Israeli armed guards. They had been taken last night to a holding cell and were ready to board their 7:40 am flight to London this morning when at the last minute they were prevented from doing so by Israeli security forces and returned to Givon prison. All seven are now being detained indefinitely, with no further news available from Israeli authorities or the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs about when they will be released.

An Irish Ship to Gaza shore team coordinator spoke briefly on the phone with Fintan Lane before communication was abruptly cut off. Lane said: "This is a deliberate and calculated attempt by the Israelis to break our spirit. It won't succeed."

Lane also reported that the seven had been subject to "continuous harassment and repeated, humiliating body searches" and were shackled and "denied sleep".

Gay Lawlor, Zoe Lawlor's brother, spoke briefly with Zoe, who described what was happening as "sheer malice" on the part of the Israelis.

The families of the detainees are phoning member of the Irish Ship to Gaza shore team this morning in great distress.

Laurence Davis, Irish Ship to Gaza spokesperson, commented: "We are outraged by this latest attempt by the Israeli authorities to break the morale of the human rights activists, their families and their supporters, all of whom had been looking forward to the homecoming this afternoon in Dublin. This is yet another example of the cruelty and arrogance that the Palestinians face every day."

Irish Ship to Gaza spokesperson Claudia Saba added: "It is particularly distressing for the families to learn that their loved ones won't be coming home as they had expected, and distressing that they have no update as to what exactly is happening or when they will be finally freed."

By Dana Halawa *

I have read countless articles and watched numerous videos about Gilad Shalit being reunited with his family five years after his abduction. One typical report noted he was "just 19 years old in 2006 when he was cruelly and illegally abducted by Hamas." I have been hearing of him for the past five years. I know Gilad Shalit's name better than I know the names of my classmates.

Not one Palestinian child detainee in Israeli jails was released during the prisoner swap last month. More than 160 remain behind bars. (Yousef Deeb / APA images)

Ashraf Baluji, Imad Abu Rayyan, Imad al-Masri and Yusuf al-Khalis were only 18 and 19 years old when they were arrested back in 1991. They were part of the first 477 prisoners of war to be released in exchange for Gilad Shalit after spending over 20 years in Israeli jails. Crazily, 1991 was the year I was born. Every breath I have ever taken, every moment I have known of life, they were locked up and tortured.

In every article I've read referring to Shalit by his name and the 1,027 Palestinians being released in exchange as a number or as "militants," the journalist has forgotten to mention that Shalit was an armed and trained soldier that was "kidnapped" from a military occupation vehicle, that the majority of Palestinian prisoners never engaged in military or criminal acts against Israel, and were only accused of resistance to the Israeli military occupation. They have conveniently left out the numerous Palestinian children abducted from their homes and taken far away, usually denied even visits from their parents or lawyers.

In 2009, Time magazine published a story about Walid Abu Obeida, a Palestinian farm boy who was only 13 years old when he was stopped on his way home by two Israeli soldiers aiming their rifles at him. They punched, beat, and arrested him while his parents wondered where he was and why their son wasn't home yet ("Does Israel mistreat Palestinian child prisoners?," 30 June 2009).

Alas, Abu Obeida's treatment was far from an isolated incident. As of the latest figures recorded by Defence for Children International-Palestine Section, as of October 2011, 164 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 years old are behind bars, including 35 aged between 12 and 15 years old (Child detainees, accessed 7 November 2011).

Many are being held without trial or conviction, while others are — often falsely — convicted of throwing rocks at Israeli tanks occupying their land and demolishing their homes.

Key facts forgotten

Israel has arrested more than 650,000 Palestinians, a number equal to about 20 percent of the population, since the occupation of the West Bank began in 1967. We tend to forget that Israel is occupying Palestine when we speak of the two. Palestinians are killed and arrested every day under the pretext of "protecting Israeli security." Palestinians are kidnapped from their homes and stand trial in Israeli courts, where even Palestinian witnesses have no right to testify, while others are jailed, without trial or charge, under "administrative detention".

Looking through the list of released prisoners, I found the name of Akram Mansour, who was arrested at the age of 18. He has spent over three torturous decades languishing in Israeli jails for resisting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. At 51, he finally gets to taste a bit of freedom — although without his mother, father or sister who died while he was in Israeli custody — before the brain tumor he developed in Israeli jails takes life itself from him. In an online Arabic-language interview with Mansour, he says he currently suffers from paralyzed fingers, missing teeth and blackouts because of the torture he was subjected to, which varied from hammering his fingers to a nail in his forehead to having urine spilled over him and, after filing a complaint, being forced to strip naked in the cold as buckets of freezing water were spilled over him ("The suffering of the liberated prisoner Akram Mansour," 24 October 2011 [Arabic]).

Video: Interview with liberated prisoner Akram Mansour in Arabic:

Video link: http://youtu.be/WDiRn6RO83Q

Robbed of childhood

Twelve-year-old Palestinian boys are robbed of their innocence and childhood behind bars. Sixteen-year-old Palestinian children are tried as adults by Israel, even though the legal age under international and even Israeli law (for Israelis) is 18. Mothers and sisters are arrested and convicted of terrorism for standing up to the occupation. Children are forced to grow up without parents. Men are convicted and sentenced to as many as 36 life sentences for resisting their genocide. In total, 1,027 will be freed while 5,000 remain captive.

Gilad Shalit will be remembered as a hero that endured five years of kidnapping, during which he had regular medical checkups and was placed in as good a condition as Gaza could provide under the Israeli blockade. This is more than I can say for the Palestinian prisoners, who have often been deprived of basic services, including medical attention when needed.

Today, Shalit is a free man with no conditions on his freedom. However, the 477 Palestinians freed in the first part of this exchange were either allowed home, provided they report to Israel monthly and not travel between Palestinians cities; or exiled to Gaza where they may not see their families in the West Bank (who are not allowed into Gaza); or even exiled outside the entire country and banned from ever returning home. Through preventing released prisoners from returning home, Israel violates the most basic of human rights. Article 12 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights states: "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country."

A life is a life, and a human being is a human being. So, many now ask why Gilad Shalit's life is worth 1,027 Palestinian lives. To ask that is to not understand Israel. An Israeli life's value cannot be estimated, whereas a Palestinian life is of very little to no value. I think I speak for most Palestinians when I say, I'm glad Gilad Shalit is home, safe and with his family, that Palestinians more than anyone understand what it's like to lose a father, mother, brother, sister, daughter and son. More than anyone, Palestinians understand the joy he and his family must feel now that his back.

Personally, I believe a fair exchange would have been to release all Palestinian prisoners for all Israeli prisoners, namely just Gilad Shalit, rather than making one life worth 1,027 lives. However, knowing that Israel would never agree to that, I congratulate Hamas and the Palestinian people on their victory. And I pray for the remaining 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody, and many more currently being arrested to fill the cells being emptied of 1,027 prisoners.

* Dana Halawa is a twenty-year-old American-Palestinian medical student at the Jordan University of Science and Technology in Jordan.

The Israeli government continues to detain a number of passengers seized in international waters Friday while trying to challenge the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza. The passengers were on two boats — one from Canada and the other from Ireland — as part of the "Freedom Waves" flotilla. Some 20 activists are believed to remain in custody after refusing to sign statements asserting they had entered Israel illegally. Flotilla organizers have accused the Israeli military of physically assaulting some of the activists and tasering at least one of them. Democracy Now! correspondent Jihan Hafiz was among those detained despite her press credentials. Hafiz had been filing daily reports for Democracy Now! from the Canadian ship named "Tahrir." She spent three nights behind bars, where she was strip-searched and denied phone calls to relatives for 48 hours. She was finally deported Monday night and arrived in New York City just hours ago. Israel has not returned her equipment or footage. In a Democracy Now! exclusive, Hafiz joins us in our New York studio. "All of the [Israeli] commandos on all of these boats were heavily armed... It looked like they were taking on an army of a foreign country," says Hafiz, noting the masked soldiers pointed their guns at the heads of those on board.

Video link: http://youtu.be/We1sq_ee0w0

Rush transcript

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli government continues to detain most of the passengers seized in international waters Friday while trying to challenge the Israeli blockade on Gaza. The passengers were on two boats—one from Canada, the other from Ireland—as part of the Freedom Waves flotilla to Gaza. Around 20 activists are believed to remain in custody after refusing to sign statements asserting they had entered Israel illegally. Flotilla organizers have accused the Israeli military of abusing the activists, with allegations of physical assault and the use of tasers.

Democracy Now! correspondent Jihan Hafiz was among those detained in the Israeli raid. She had been filing daily reports for Democracy Now! from the Canadian ship called the Tahrir. She spent three nights behind bars. She was finally deported Monday night, landed in New York just hours ago. In this Democracy Now! exclusive, Jihan joins me now in our New York studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

JIHAN HAFIZ: Thank you very much, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It's very good to have you back. It was a battle to get you released this weekend from Israeli detention.

JIHAN HAFIZ: It's great to be back.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe first what happened on Friday? Yesterday we interviewed the Egyptian reporter about what she saw. She was also on the boat. But today, Jihan, tell us what happened.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Well, they contacted us at about 1:30—excuse me, 12:30, 1:00. And we knew that they had arrived, because all the communication had shut down on our boat. The satellite phones didn't work, as well. There was no internet. The BGAN, the satellite BGAN I've had to communicate with you and also to check email or to do any kind of updates, was no longer working. And so, we figured at that point that they were around. And then, of course, they made contact with us. And the Israeli navy asked us our—what the course of our—or where our course was headed. And David Heap, the member of the steering committee, said—

AMY GOODMAN: He is one of the Canadian activists.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Exactly, he's one of the Canadian activists still in detention in Israel, waiting to be deported. They haven't mentioned anything about his—about his case yet. But he, along with Ehab, who's also a member of the steering committee on the Canadian boat, said that "We're sailing toward the goodness of humanity." And it seemed that that irritated them a number of times, because they wanted a location as to where we were sailing off to, but they continued with "We're sailing to end the occupation. We're sailing for a better future." And then, from there on out, they attempted to discuss some kind of negotiation where Israeli commandos would come on board, search the boat for weapons, and then allow us to go on our journey to Gaza, which everyone on the boat, including the journalists, knew would not happen. We saw that as a pretext for them to come on, detain everyone, and forcefully take us to Ashdod, the Israeli port next to Gaza.

And, of course, this was also something the Irish delegation, which was 15 people on the—all Irish, by the way—on the Saoirse, which was—

AMY GOODMAN: Some parliamentarians, former.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Some parliamentarians, yes, including a European MEP. He was also on the boat. And—

AMY GOODMAN: That's a member of the European Parliament.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Exactly, and a former member of the Irish rugby team, the national team there. And they also refused to consent to the Israeli army boarding—Israeli navy boarding the ship and taking it to Ashdod. Everyone agreed that there would be passive resistance if they were to come on; we would not resist them in any way, but we would take what they said, if they were to detain us, which they did. And in the end, that happened. It did take an hour for them to come to some kind of negotiation. No negotiation was reached. And they were very irritated at that point. They were circling the boat multiple times.

AMY GOODMAN: And how many ships were there?

JIHAN HAFIZ: There were three warships, and there were about 20 smaller gunboats, so four Zodiac boats. And these are boats that can maneuver very quickly and can disrupt—our boats were not as big as the warships, but they could disrupt us in the water, and they pushed us forcefully side to side, because the waters that day were rough, as a storm was coming. And so, they were intimidating both boats, going back and forth, surrounding them. There were four Zodiacs, four water cannon boats, as well as four regular gunboats. All of the commandos on all of these boats were heavily armed. I mean, obviously, they did not look like they were taking two very much smaller boats filled with unarmed people, with activists and civilians. It looked like they were taking on an army of a foreign country.

In any case, they followed the Irish boat, which decided to make a run for it. They went straight ahead, attempted to break away from the Israeli commandos. And at that point, two gunboat—two water cannons started to pour lots of water into the Irish boat, which flooded it, blew their sockets, and cut off all the electricity. And so, at that point, the Irish delegates I spoke to said they told the Israeli army, "We're taking on water. We're sinking. We're going to go down at sea if you continue with the water."

Our boat, on the other hand, was—they started to board our boat as soon as the Irish boat went down and they boarded that one. And as soon as they came on board, they were extremely hostile. They approached us as if they—as if we were armed. They had guns in everyone's faces, on every—pointed at everyone's heads. And I found it interesting and somewhat schizophrenic that they would say, with their guns pointed in our faces, "Don't worry. Don't worry. Sit down. Sit down. Get up. Don't worry. Move to the side. Don't worry. It will be OK." And it's hard to—it's hard to believe a soldier—you don't have his face, because all their faces are masked, black masks. It's hard to believe someone that has their gun in your face that—not to worry, everything will be OK.

At this point, they attempt to separate us. They put the men on one side and the women on the other side. As they're boarding, they taser David Heap, who was in the captain's room trying to get to the back of the boat.

AMY GOODMAN: He was one of the Canadian activists.

JIHAN HAFIZ: He was one of the Canadian activists, and he was tasered on the arm.

AMY GOODMAN: You saw this?

JIHAN HAFIZ: I did, yes, in the captain's—captain's quarters. He was there with George, who was our captain. He's a Greek activist. And they moved—they tried to force them out to the side, to the back of the boat where we were. They weren't resisting. They were moving slowly, but not resisting. And I guess it wasn't fast enough for them.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you filming any of this?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Unfortunately, at this point, I did stop filming, because I wanted to hide my chips. I knew that if any—if I had any chance to take any of this video out, I would have to hide the video—I'd have to hide the chips that I had, from the experience of the Mavi Marmara. Casey Kauffman of Al Jazeera was filming up until the commandos stepped on the boat, and as soon as they stepped on the boat, they grabbed his camera and grabbed all the other cameras on board and put them to the side. And so, most of the filming stopped as soon as they boarded the boat.

And they were very forceful with Michael Coleman, who was a delegate—the only Australian delegate. He did resist. He was not—he was not cooperating with any of their demands. They dragged him to the other side of the boat. They had guns to his back, as well as to his head, as they frisked him. And they even had lasers pointed at his chest. And this irritated a lot of people on board, including the journalists, because it seemed as though they were threatening to shoot him. And so, we were a bit concerned about having lasers pointed at people, at which point they put it down. But they detained us and kept us all on the top—all on the top of the boat, until there were requests made to go down, because it was very cold heading back toward Ashdod.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you're taken. You're taken to Ashdod. There, did you—what else did you see? What happened to the activists there?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Well, we knew that, upon arriving, because when they did board our boat—and I—the first time I see the video of what happened is of course the Israeli video, because we don't have any of our images. So we were getting—

AMY GOODMAN: You don't have them because...?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Because they took them from us, and they would not let me come back to the United States with them.

And I found it interesting that when they boarded the boat, they had some Israeli commandos with cameras strapped to their helmets. And so, they were walking around filming us. We asked them for water, because there were some people who were dehydrated and who desperately needed water before we arrived at the port. And at that point, we didn't know if we could have water at the port, as well. So they allowed us to drink water. And whenever anyone attempted to drink, they had the cameras in people's faces, and the activists were saying this is going to be part of their propaganda machine to show that they were very cordial toward the activists and to the reporters they had detained.

And as soon as we got to the port in Ashdod, as soon as we got there, they already had an army of people ready to greet us. They had people—multiple soldiers with television cameras. It seemed as though they had a medical facility there. They had three huge vans with—it seemed like surveillance—surveillance machines, where they'd put our things through. We were escorted off the boat. And, of course, before we got off the boat, everyone warned, if they attempt to help you, just don't—carry your own things out, and help yourself off the boat, because they have cameras facing our way. And it was perceived that they would use this video as propaganda. So, of course, as everyone is getting off the boat, they have cameras in everyone's faces, cameras at their things. They even taped our passports, which I found to be shocking, because these are our international—these are our travel documents. And they moved us—they brought us to this warehouse, where they had—

AMY GOODMAN: Did they hurt any of the activists getting onto the bus?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes, they did. After going through strip searches with myself and some of the female activists—

AMY GOODMAN: You were strip-searched?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes, I was strip-searched, because they—I tried to hide these chips, I mentioned. And I hid them in my underwear, because I didn't think—I knew they were going to find them, but I attempted to see if it would work or not. And so, they did a thorough search [with] my clothes on initially, and then they used a metal detector, and they detected the metal in these chips. And at that point, they asked me to take—to remove all my clothing, and they did a very thorough strip search of my body to see if there was anything else on it. And this also happened to two of the Irish women who were also on the boat. They found chips in their bras. So anything they found that they suspected was—I'm not sure what it was, but they would immediately strip-search you and take you to board the bus.

And when they boarded me on the bus, I did witness extreme violence toward Michael Coleman, who I must say was the most defiant of that day that we were taken.

AMY GOODMAN: He was the Australian activist.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes, of course, he was the Australian activist. And while I was sitting down, I could hear him arguing with them: "You kidnapped us. You're pirates. You violated international law. You're lawless." And I think the more he would say these things that would irritate them, the more violent they would become.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened with the flags on the boats?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Oh, this was interesting with the flags. We actually—the activists didn't put up the Palestinian flag until the day—until Friday, when everyone presumed that the boat would be taken by the Israelis.

AMY GOODMAN: Before that, it was Canadian-flagged and Irish-flagged?

JIHAN HAFIZ: It was, yes, Canadian and Irish flags on both the boats. And then, of course, we put up Palestinian flags as we attempted to head into Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: The activists put up the flags—

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes, the activists put up those flags.

AMY GOODMAN: —on your—in both?

JIHAN HAFIZ: On the Canadian boat and on the Saoirse, which was—you know, we very celebrated because it was—we were about 45 nautical miles from Gaza, and it seemed almost—there was almost jubilation that this is possible it could go through. And of course, as the Israelis—Israeli navy boarded the boat, immediately after putting us in our corners and searching us, they tore down the Palestinian flags, and they put up the Israeli flags. It seemed to me as almost a sign of conquer, as conqueror, and heading into their port. When they attempted to do this with the Irish boat, however, the Irish refused to have that happen. They shielded their poles and said, "You will not remove any flags from our ship. You will take it into the port with the flags on it." And for whatever reason, the Irish—excuse me, the Israeli soldiers on their boat listened to them, and they rolled into Ashdod without any problems, without any—with the Palestinian and the Irish flag on their boat.

AMY GOODMAN: So, one boat flew in—came in with the Israeli flags.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And the Irish boat came in with the Palestinian flags.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So then you're brought into detention. We were making calls nonstop at this point for you as a journalist, accredited. Well, you have two press IDs.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes, I do. I have one from Democracy Now! I'm also credentialed by the U.S. TV Senate Radio Gallery. It's a U.S. government-issued ID. So I don't just have—

AMY GOODMAN: Because you covered the Senate and the House in Washington.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Because I—exactly. When I worked in Washington, I covered the—and that's usually the—if you work in Washington, that's the government-issued ID that gets you into the State Department, the White House, the Pentagon. So it's an authentic—it's a U.S.—it's a U.S. government-issued ID.

AMY GOODMAN: And you're a U.S. citizen.

JIHAN HAFIZ: And I am a U.S. citizen.

And they took us into this area to process us, which we later found out was court. It wasn't court. It was someone sitting across a desk telling you you have to sign a document that you illegally came into Ashdod and that you violated an international siege on Gaza. And everyone refused this, because we were kidnapped in international waters and forced into Ashdod. It was never our destination, to begin with. And I told him that I'm actually—I'm not an activist, I'm here as a journalist covering for Democracy Now!. I mentioned both my credentials. And he said to me that the Israeli government does not see me, does not see my reporting, or Democracy Now!'s, as reporting, as journalism. It's, to them, activism. And so, they did not designate me—

AMY GOODMAN: Journalism is activism.

JIHAN HAFIZ: That's what they said. They said that this form of journalism is actually activism, and so they designated me from there on out as an activist, not as a journalist. And even when I told them multiple times, "Please let me go through my bag. Let me get you my press credentials. Let me show—let me get you the one from the U.S. government. I'll show you that I'm here on assignment. I'm not here as a member of the delegation," they refused. And it almost seemed as though they had this—they already had it drilled into their system that I would continue on, from there on out, as an activist, because everyone I spoke to would continue to say, "So, why were you part of the American delegation?" I said, "No, I was here on assignment." And I was shocked that they allowed Casey Kauffman of Al Jazeera—they had him down as a journalist, as well as Hassan Ghani of Press TV. But when it came to me, I was lumped into the rest of the activism.

AMY GOODMAN: And what has happened to Hassan Ghani?

JIHAN HAFIZ: I haven't heard from Hassan since that night.

AMY GOODMAN: How was he referred to there?

JIHAN HAFIZ: He was referred to as the Iranian. Press TV is an Iranian station. And Hassan actually is not Iranian whatsoever. He's of Pakistani descent, but he's actually a British national. He was born in the U.K., and he has a British passport. But they continuously kept referring to him as the Iranian, as the Iranian. So I was worried at that point as to what would happen to him afterward, if they kept designating him as an Iranian.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Israeli army spokesperson Ari Shalikar, defending Israel's decision to intercept the flotilla boats in international waters.

ARI SHALIKAR: A short while ago, the Israeli navy boarded the two vessels which were on their way to break the maritime security blockade which was imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip. We are talking about a very clear case of provocation, and we maintain our right to defend our borders.

AMY GOODMAN: There is the Israeli army spokesperson saying, "We [maintain] our right to defend our borders." Jihan Hafiz, your response?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Well, that was the response all along, and we knew that before we—as soon as it was announced the media embargo, the information embargo, was lifted, the Israelis responded right away, and that response seemed to match what they said. We were well aware that they were—if they were to intercept the boats—and we knew that they were to intercept the boats—that this would be the response coming out, that we were violating their embargo and that—and what we were also hearing is that the 100-kilometer—they had jurisdiction over international waters. And they made that very clear to us, as well. I mean, if I could just quote what one of the guards said to us, she said, "You are not an Israeli. You are in Israel now, and we make the law." And it was very much—that's how it was the whole way through. Whenever we tried to—even the journalists who said, "Listen, we were in international waters. You kidnapped us. You brought us here. We were forced here. We won't sign things that say that we came here illegally, because we didn't," they would keep saying to us, "Well, this is international law, and you violated a so-called international embargo against Gaza." They didn't say "the Israeli embargo"; they said "the international embargo," to give it more authority over what they were doing.

AMY GOODMAN: You are a U.S. citizen. The United States government is responsible for what happens to you.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What was the U.S. response as you were in jail for the three days you were there?

JIHAN HAFIZ: I was very shocked by the U.S. response, by their involvement in—in our case. Kit Kittredge and I are both Americans. We were—

AMY GOODMAN: Kit Kittredge was the American activist.

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes, she was actually the only American activist on the trip. And we were shocked that it took—it took a while for them to come to our—to come to our aid. And while the Irish delegations and the Australian and Canadian delegations had their representatives and the Irish ambassador come three days of the three days we were detained, the Americans came twice. And they came at the very end of the day, with barely any kind of helpful information, other than what the Israelis were telling us to do, which was sign away that you entered illegally. And I found it somewhat astonishing that the U.S. representative from the U.S. embassy said to us—he admitted that they are powerless in Israel. They're powerless over our cases, that they're in a foreign country, and that they can't do anything, and that they're being given the runaround.

And I just—I was wondering why they came the second day so late. Kit and I said to them, "Where the hell have you guys been? We've been rotting away in this detention facility. No information. We keep watching the Irish and the Canadians go out speaking to their people, coming back with substantial information that pertains to their release. And meanwhile, we're rotting away, wondering what happened to our government and wondering how they will—why they can't get us out, given the close connection and the close relationship, financially, militarily, between Israel and the United States."

AMY GOODMAN: And what was the response?

JIHAN HAFIZ: And the response was, they're giving us the runaround and that they're powerless in a foreign country. I mean, they literally said, "We are powerless in a foreign country." And we couldn't believe that they were saying this to us, because this is the U.S.—this is the U.S. embassy. Everyone on the delegation, too, thought that the U.S. would come to our aid very quickly, they would find some way to get us out as U.S. citizens. But I have to say, we were not—the other delegations were much better off than Kit and I were, under the U.S.—

AMY GOODMAN: So the Irish ambassador visited.

JIHAN HAFIZ: The Irish ambassador came every day, and he refused to leave—

AMY GOODMAN: Did the U.S. ambassador come to visit you?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Of course not, no. And we asked him to come. And we asked him to make sure that the Israeli prison guards were giving us free association in the open courtyard. We did not see ourselves as criminals or as immigrants that needed to be deported. We were there as political prisoners at this point. And we wanted to make it very clear to those Israeli prison guards that we should have writing materials and other things that the other delegations were having. But they seemed almost, "Oh, no, this might seem a little bit too much to ask them. We're just trying to get you to be released." What seemed they wanted the most was for us to sign this paper.

AMY GOODMAN: That said you had illegally entered Israel.

JIHAN HAFIZ: That said we had entered illegally, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So, ultimately, what did you sign?

JIHAN HAFIZ: So, ultimately, I signed a deportation—a letter of my deportation out of Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: That did not say that you had illegally entered.

JIHAN HAFIZ: That does not say anywhere that I entered illegally. It just consents to, after 72 hours, I am being deported.

AMY GOODMAN: Where was your equipment, your—both your tapes, as well as your camera? What did they tell you about getting them back, as they were assuring us that you would be able to get them back at the airport?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes. Multiple times, I told them — and I saw — $20,000 worth of my equipment. When I came in the first night into this warehouse, where they did the strip search, I saw my equipment on a table, and I said, "I need a receipt for all of that that belongs to me." And they kept saying, "Oh, no, no. At the airport, when you leave, you'll get it. At the airport, when you leave, you'll get it." And, of course, when I met with the representatives from the U.S. embassy, the Israeli prison guards, as well as the commander in charge of the jail, said to us, "Oh, she will get her equipment at the airport as soon as she leaves."

When I left last night, not only did I leave without knowing any information, literally as a political prisoner, as a prisoner, as a criminal, they would not let me have any kind of communication with other people who were leaving the country. They snuck me in through this separate staircase that led to the front of the plane. And when I asked them multiple times, "Where is my equipment?" — "Oh, sorry. You have to get the U.S. embassy to bring—to get your equipment for you." And it was almost—extremely confusing, because I saw the commander who had taken my things on Friday, and I said, "Listen, you said" —

AMY GOODMAN: At the airport?

JIHAN HAFIZ: At the airport, yes. And he refused to speak to me. He refused to give me his name, at least details about who I can call the Israeli government about my equipment. And they were being extremely evasive the whole time through. I actually didn't know my flight number 'til I arrived in New York this morning. And I didn't even know I was coming to New York today until I was halfway—the voyage was halfway across the Mediterranean on the plane. So, I mean, they completely kept us in the black, treated us as criminals the whole time. And that was my experience there.

If I can just mention the most humiliating—my most humiliating experience while I was in their custody, and speaking to the other female guards, who are now really my sisters after what we experienced. As soon as we arrived—

AMY GOODMAN: The female guards?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Oh, not the female guards, the female prisoners. I'm sorry. The Irish, the women from the Irish delegation, as well as the Canadian and American. As soon as we arrived at this jail, there were about 40 prison guards outside. Four of them, four of the 40, had video cameras zoomed into our faces the whole time. They brought our bags in. They kept filming us. They did another search, another strip search, actually, filming it, filming our ID.

AMY GOODMAN: They filmed you naked?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes, they did. They filmed my back, not my bottom area, but my back area, naked. And then they brought us into this area where they were doing processing. And there were about 10 guards each on my bags, going through my things, sniffing my underwear, putting different metal detectors inside, and just going over and over the same motions, in a very robotic way, as if there was no—as if there was no kind of humanity in the room, that they couldn't tell me, "Oh, we're going to go through your bags now. Watch it." They were just doing it in a very mechanical way.

AMY GOODMAN: And when you were put on the plane, the Continental flight home?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes, when I was put on the Continental flight home, I was given no information. The guard that put me on, I'm not sure what he told the stewardess—who put me on this plane—but I did ask her multiple times for a newspaper. I've been in—I have not—I don't know what's going on in the world at all until today, and I asked her a couple of times, "Can I have a newspaper? Can I have a newspaper?" And then, very last minute, she said, "No, you don't get newspapers." And she just walked away and didn't say anything. And if I did make a scene there, it would be somewhat embarrassing or somewhat chaotic, because of all the other passengers. And so, I just took it that way. But the whole time through—

AMY GOODMAN: Were you able to make a call—

JIHAN HAFIZ: I was able—

AMY GOODMAN: —when you were in detention, for the days that you were?

JIHAN HAFIZ: Yes. I was—well, 48 hours later, I was able to make a phone call. In fact, one of the rights they claim to have read us says, "You have the right to notify a close friend, relative, an attorney or an official of your country upon being detained." I was able to make a phone call 48 hours later. So no one knew what was happening with me. No one had heard my voice or knew if I was OK or not until 48 hours later when I called my sister. And they recorded the conversation, and they only allowed three minutes.

AMY GOODMAN: And the call could go to where?

JIHAN HAFIZ: And the call could only go to your home country. So you could only call your home country, and you could only call a relative. And they said to me, "Do not say anything negative. Say good things that have happened to you. Say how we've been treating you. Do not say anything negative." They said this to the other women, as well. They said to the other women, "Do not say negative things on the phone. Do not say political things on the phone."

AMY GOODMAN: At this point, the majority of people who were detained are still in detention. In these last 30 seconds, can you talk about what you know of the people now?

JIHAN HAFIZ: They're supposed to be released today. The 72 hours of their detention was up last night. And so, what I think the Irish delegation is refusing is to buy their own tickets. They believe that the Israeli Ministry of Interior should purchase their tickets for kidnapping and—kidnapping them and bringing them to Ashdod. I do believe Kit Kittredge, the only other American delegate—the only American delegate on the ship, the Canadian ship, is being deported here to New York, should be here very shortly, and that the Canadians, along with Michael Coleman, the Australian, and the Irish, are now—have formed a committee inside their cell block, and they're demanding that the Israeli prison guards allow free association, free reading materials and phone calls, which is something we did not have. As five women in our holding cells, we weren't able to have that kind of momentum, as the men do, as 15 individuals—as more individuals than 15, actually.

AMY GOODMAN: Will you be able to get your equipment back?

JIHAN HAFIZ: I hope so. But the American official at the U.S. embassy said it's taken them a year and a half to get broken equipment back from the Mavi Marmara trip for other journalists. So I hope they live up to their word and they don't steal or break my equipment. But unfortunately, I prefer to have left Israel with my things. I am not sure how long it will take to get them back.

AMY GOODMAN: And it's your footage, as well, of the entire trip.

JIHAN HAFIZ: My footage of the entire trip, my hard drives, everything. I mean, everything was taken from me, $20,000 worth of equipment.

AMY GOODMAN: Jihan Hafiz, I want to thank you for being with us, Democracy Now! correspondent, has just returned to the United States after being detained and deported by the Israeli authorities for covering the Freedom Waves flotilla to Gaza. They were taken in international waters, brought into Israel, where they were held. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. To see her reports in international waters, you can go to our website at democracynow.org.

Source: Democracy Now!

The following is an open letter that was sent on Nov. 7, 2011 to John Baird, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister regarding the incident that resulted in the departure of Linda Sobeh Ali, the representative of the "Palestinian Authority" to Ottawa.

Mr. Baird:

We emailed you on Oct. 22, 2011 enquiring about the version of the Palestinian poem read in Arabic by a young Palestinian girl "Palestinian, my name is Palestinian", that was tweeted by Linda Sobeh Ali representative of the "Palestinian Authority" and allegedly stated "destroy the Jews". We informed you that if this was the case, we will "take a stand against anti-Jewish racism." So far we have not received any response from you nor from your Parliamentary Secretary. Does your lack of response to us mean that you are interested only in people who support Israel, rather than those who take a stand against anti-Jewish racism?

We do acknowledge the prompt response of the Globe and Mail Associate Editor, the only media that responded to our enquiries and supplied us with the link to the version that the Palestinian envoy was supposed to have tweeted.

Video link: http://youtu.be/iszbLbUf-OA

We would like to note that the original version of this poem with the correct translation has both a Turkish and English translation under the video (click "Show more"). This version was uploaded to YouTube on 11 Dec 2006 and was seen by 1,264,274 people so far. Both the Turkish and English subtitles correctly translate the Arabic word "Sahyoon" as Zionism and not Jews (Yahood). The one and only inaccurate version (with just 3,550 viewers) was posted and produced by Bokra Lena (Tomorrow Is Ours), and used the correct Turkish version with the Turkish subtitles but superimposed on it different English subtitles, substituting "To a war that will destroy oppression and kill the soul of Zionism" with the words "...& destroy the Jews". We unequivocally denounce this forgery as well as the anti-Jewish hatred it promotes; we believe that equating Zionism with Judaism serves only the anti-Semites, the Zionist lobby and their stooges and objectively hurts the Palestinian people and their struggle. In our statement "Jason Kenney Is Promoting Racism" we noted that "Zionism and anti-Semitism are two faces of the same coin", citing documentation to back up our argument.

It is ironic that you and the Canadian government target a representative of this "Palestinian Authority" which praised you (we don't understand why), worked closely with the Zionist organizations here, and served your government and Israeli policies rather than the interests of the Palestinian people. It seems you do not tolerate even their pretence of serving their own people.

We also would like to express our profound disappointment at the so-called "Palestinian Authority" that no longer speaks for nor represents the vast majority of the Palestinian people and their legitimate aspirations. The Palestinians have thousands of capable, eloquent, knowledgeable and committed people all over the world who are daily defending Palestinian human and national rights and who can effectively challenge the Zionists and their narrative. But the PA makes its decisions without consultation with the Palestinian communities in diaspora, thereby hurting the struggle of the Palestinian people and betraying the tens of thousands of martyrs who fell over the past century, fighting first British colonialism and then Zionist settler colonialism. This PA envoy has moved on, as has her predecessor; however, it is the Palestinian Canadian community and its supporters that are left to deal with the misconceptions created and exploited with this incident.

Canada was the first country to sign the so-called "The Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism". Both you and the Canadian Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney signed this document on September 19th of this year.

This protocol offers the following as one example of anti-Semitism: "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour." And although the document does make token mention that criticism of Israel is not always anti-Semitic, it then immediately goes on to state..."But singling Israel out for selective condemnation and opprobrium - let alone denying its right to exist or seeking its destruction - is discriminatory and hateful, and not saying so is dishonest."

The Globe and Mail reported, when noting that there was an incorrect English translation in the subtitles for the poem: "Shimon Fogel, chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), which first sent Ms. Sobeh Ali's video tweet to Mr. Baird's office, said both versions are unfit to be circulated by a Palestinian envoy. 'You're speaking to someone who doesn't see a difference,' Mr. Fogel said".

It is clear to us that Mr. Fogel's main concern and yours is not anti-Jewish hatred (anti-Semitism) but rather the defence of Israel. That is why you and your government do not differentiate between Zionism and Judaism; this is why Mr. Fogel insists that he is "someone who doesn't see a difference". This policy of equating Judaism with Zionism does in fact promote anti-Semitism and this is why we ask people of good will especially our Jewish brothers and sisters to challenge those who equate them.

Mr. Baird:

We know about your unconditional support for Israeli war crimes, ethnic cleansing and apartheid and we and hundreds of thinking Canadians have no doubt about your biased policies (see online petition). Frankly, we no longer expect you to treat the Palestinians as human beings. But we believe your policy is (hopefully not intentionally) promoting anti-Semitism in many ways, especially by putting on the shoulders of all Jews every crime Zionism, and its manifestation Israel, is committing against humanity.

For your information, Jews were the first to oppose and fight against Zionism. In 1897 on the occasion of the first Zionist Congress, the Executive Committee of the Association of Rabbis in Germany stated in its anti-Zionist manifesto: "Judaism obligates its adherents to serve with all devotion the Fatherland to which they belong, and to further its national interests with all their heart and strength." (Unease in Zion, Ehud Ben Ezer, Page 22)

Equating all Jews with Zionism is a very dangerous policy and we are concerned that your government is creating an atmosphere of racism against both Jewish Canadians and Palestinians. We are concerned because we care for the dignity and humanity of the Jews and because we and our homeland, Palestine, ended up as the sacrificial lamb for the European Holocaust.

So please Mr. Baird:- don't blame the Jews for the evils of Zionism.

Hanna Kawas, Chairperson, Canada Palestine Association