Palestine Israel History and Theirstory. (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

Legitimate and Illegitimate Discourses on Palestine and Israel.

The Unique Suffering of the Jewish People

Let there be no doubt. During World war Two the Jewish people of Europe have suffered severe dehumanization. In movies such as “Der Ewige Jude” (12) an entire people was in propaganda movies denounced as rats, as a pest, that needed to be removed to safeguard a healthy German population and a strong Germany. European Jews were systematically deprived of their humanity. It does not matter if the number of six million murdered Jews has been significantly reduced after later years research; the fact remains that countless human beings suffered the most appalling abuse. An abuse that hardly would have been possible if the German population had not been manipulated into perceiving them as a pest.

Jewish lobbies often argue, that the suffering of the Jewish people was unique, and that they therefore must be granted special rights and privileges. It is an argument, that is often used within the context of finding justification for Israel`s aggression in the illegal occupation of Palestine. With all due respect for those who suffered, but the argument is invalid. Besides the danger of the indescribable suffering of the European Jews being willingly or unwillingly abused to justify the infliction of suffering on others, Palestinians, there are many, like David E. Stannard (13) who rightfully argue, that declaring the so called holocaust as a unique event, and the positioning of the suffering of the Jewish people as unique suffering, belittles the many other genocides that have been taking place, and those which may come. Forced labor in the former Belgian colony Congo has, even though the exact numbers are somewhat disputed, contributed to the death of approximately 20 % of the colonies population (14). It is clearly problematic that the claims of the uniqueness of the Jewish suffering is not only false, but that it leads to the very relativism in the evaluation of human life that is one of the root causes of the holocaust itself, and of countless other massacres, acts of genocide, innocenticide, and ethnic cleansing. It is a root cause for the atrocities that those who survived the holocaust, and those who today claim to be the victims representatives, are claiming to deplore. With all possible empathy for the victims of the National Socialists persecution, the unique suffering is not a valid argument for the establishment of a Jewish state or the state of Israel on the territory of the Palestinian people.

Finally, the insistence of some Jewish lobbies that the suffering of the Jewish people is unique, while shamelessly abusing the legitimate suffering of millions of Jews for an extortion racket, which the Jewish American scholar Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein (15) documented in his book “The Holocaust Industry” (16) is contributing to strong, world wide, anti Jewish sentiments. It is reinforcing many of the stereotypes that have contributed to the Jewish people being targeted by National Socialists in the first place.

The Historical Argument.

If the historical argument, which is based on the fact that Jewish people were living in historical Israel in biblical times is to be validated as justification for the establishment of the modern state of Israel there arise a number of problems that are inconsolable with modern international law. The author of this article is German, born in the region of Germany from where Teutonic people once emigrated northwards to the Danish territory known today as Thy. Another remnant of that period is that Danes call Germans Tysker. Those German tribal people had a distinct culture and religion which is still maintained by some German people. Based on the historical argument, a strong lobby should be able to lobby a superpower like the USA into accepting the argument, and German people could initiate a mass migration into Northern Denmark. They could then, alter the demographics of the area and it would be perfectly legal to provide a Thy-Passport to anyone who could document West German ancestry. Finally, if the Thy region was divided between Germans and Danes, it would be legitimate to occupy it entirely, to evict Danes from their houses, to force them to live in enclaves with walls around them to protect the occupier. The historical argument is so problematic that it would provoke countless conflicts throughout the world. It is an often used, but never the less absolutely invalid and a most dangerous argument.

Legitimacy via the Balfour Declaration.

According to todays legal standards,the Balfour Declaration (17) would be considered illegal. Even according to the standards of the period when it was signed it is illegal. The argument that it lends legitimacy to the state of Israel is equivalent to arguing, that any colonial power or nation that is victorious in a war and an occupying power, has the right to significantly change the demography of an occupied territory. It is absolutely problematic, and created a precedence that since has given rise to other conflicts and illegal practices, such as the ongoing establishment of a so called independent Kosovo. Imagine for a moment, that Denmark, which still maintains a semi colony on Greenland, granted the Jewish people a homeland on Greenland. Would the Inuit on Greenland have the right to resist, and if necessary by making use of politically motivated violence. The argument is invalid, and the inherent consequences of this type of argument are most dangerous for the peace.

Legitimacy by Virtue of the United Nations.

On 14 May 1948 the provisional government of the self proclaimed state of Israel, led by Ben Gurion, informed the then US President Truman and the world that the state of Israel was established. Ben Gurion asked Truman to recognize Israel on behalf of the USA.(18) The US Administration recognized the government of Israel as de facto government within the course of minutes. After failed attempts, it was fully recognized as a member of the United Nations in 1949 (19).  It is important to remember, that the establishment and recognition of Israel happened within the context of a rapidly developing cold war, involving the USSR and the Warsaw Treaty nations on one hand and the USA, the UK, France, and allied as well as occupied nations on the other. It was by no means clear weather Israel would become an ally to the one or the other side of the divide. One must admit that the Israeli politicians played their hand wisely, gaining maximum support from the USA. A support that has since been so extended that some historians perceive Israel as a part of the American Republic.

The problem with the argument that the recognition of Israel by the United Nations provides legitimacy for the state of Israel is that the United Nations, by recognizing Israel, contradicted main tenets of it´s own charter. The right of Palestinians, Arab, Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike, was grossly neglected by allowing the establishment of a new state within the territory of another, without at least a referendum. The argument that the State of Israel has achieved legitimacy by being recognized by the United Nations Security Counsel and the United Nations General Assembly is thus at least highly problematic, and most likely legally invalid.

To be continued. Part 4.

Reference:

12. Der Ewige Jude; Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team.  http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/derewigejude.html

13. Stannard David E. (1996); The Dangers of Calling the Holocaust Unique, The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://www.codoh.com/reference/dangofcall.html

14. Congo Free State – Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Congo_Free_State

15. Norman Finkelstein Biography. http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/biography/

16. Finkelstein Norman (2001), The Holocaust Industry, Verso, London, New York

17. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 – Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917

18. Press Release about recognition of Israel. http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/larger-image.html?i=/education/lessons/us-israel/images/recognition-press-release-l.jpg&c=/education/lessons/us-israel/images/recognition-press-release.caption.html

19. Recognition of the State of Israel. Palestine Facts. http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_recognition_who.php

* Dr. Christof Lehmann, a life time peace activist, psychologist, and advisor in behavior, finance, economics and politics.

When new recruits join British Petroleum (BP) they are fed romantic tales about how the company came into being.

William Knox D'Arcy, a Devon man, studied law and, after emigrating to Australia, made a fortune from the Mount Morgan gold-mining operations in the 1880s. Returning to England he agreed to fund a search for oil and minerals in Persia and negotiations with the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar began in 1901. A sixty-year concession to explore for oil gave D'Arcy the oil rights to the entire country except for five provinces in northern Iran. The Iranian government would receive 16 percent of the oil company's annual profits.

Mozzafar ad-Din, seldom consulted on matters of state by his father, was naive in business matters and unprepared for kingship when the time came. He borrowed heavily from the Russians in order to finance his extravagant personal lifestyle and the costs of the state, and in order to pay off the debt, he signed away control of many Iranian industries and markets to foreigners. The deal D'Arcy cut was too sharp by far and would eventually lead to trouble.

He sent an exploration team headed by geologist George B Reynolds. In 1903 a company was formed and D'Arcy had to spend much of his fortune to cover the costs. Further financial support came from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil in return for a large share of the stock.

Drilling in southern Persia at Shardin continued until 1907 when the search was switched to Masjid-i-Souleiman. By 1908 D'Arcy was almost bankrupt. Reynolds received a last-chance instruction: "Drill to 1,600 feet and give up." On 26 May, at 1,180 feet, he struck oil.

It was indeed a triumph of guts and determination. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was soon up and running and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan. But the company was in trouble again by 1914. The golden age of motoring had not yet arrived and the industrial oil markets were sewn up by American and European interests. The sulphurous stench of the Persian oil, even after refining, ruled it out for domestic use, so D'Arcy had a marketing problem.

Luckily, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was an enthusiast for oil and wanted to convert the British fleet from coal, especially now that a reliable oil source was secured. He famously told Parliament: "Look out upon the wide expanse of the oil regions of the world!" Only the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company, he said, could protect British interests. His resolution passed and the British Government took a major shareholding in the company. Just in time too, for World War I started a few weeks later.

During the war the government seized the assets of a German company calling itself British Petroleum in order to market its products in Britain. Anglo-Persian acquired the assets from the Public Trustee complete with a ready-made distribution network with hundreds of depots, railway tank wagons, road vehicles, barges and so forth. This enabled Anglo-Persian to rapidly expand sales in petroleum-hungry Britain and Europe after the war.

In the inter-war years Anglo-Persian profited handsomely from paying the Iranians a measly 16 per cent , and an increasingly angry Iran tried to renegotiate the terms. Getting nowhere, the Iranians cancelled the D'Arcy agreement and the matter ended up at the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement for the Iranians but still didn't amount to a square deal.

Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddeq, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year cover for 1951.

Iran's small share of the profits became a big issue and so did the treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 withdrew their labour in 1946 and the strike was violently put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951 Anglo-Iranian declared £40 million profit after tax but gave Iran only £7 million. Meanwhile Arabian American Oil was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis. Calls for nationalisation were intensifying.

Iran nationalised its oil to achieve economic and political independence and combat poverty

In March 1951 the Iranian Majlis and Senate voted to nationalise Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran's oil industry since 1913 under terms disadvantageous to Iran. Respected social reformer Dr Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister the following month by a 79 to 12 majority. On 1 May Mossadeq carried out his government's wishes, cancelling Anglo-Iranian's oil concession due to expire in 1993 and expropriating its assets.

His explanation, given in a speech in June 1951 (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525), ran as follows...

Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries... have yielded no results this far. With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people. Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.

The Iranian state prefers to take over the production of petroleum itself. The company should do nothing else but return its property to the rightful owners. The nationalization law provides that 25 per cent of the net profits on oil be set aside to meet all the legitimate claims of the company for compensation...
It has been asserted abroad that Iran intends to expel the foreign oil experts from the country and then shut down oil installations. Not only is this allegation absurd; it is utter invention...

For this he was eventually removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death.

In the meantime Britain orchestrated a world-wide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran's stirling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. It even considered invading. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins. Attempts by the Shah to replace Mossadeq failed and he returned with more power, but his coalition was slowly crumbling under the hardships imposed by the British blockade.

At first America was reluctant to join Britain's destructive game but Churchill let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into Russia's arms at a time when Cold War jumpiness was high. It was enough to get America's new president, Eisenhower, on board and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down

Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.

The Shah fled to Rome. When it was judged safe to do so he returned on 22 August 1953. Mossadeq was arrested, tried, convicted of treason by the Shah's military court and sentenced to death.

Mossadeq remarked ...

My greatest sin is that I nationalised Iran's oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world's greatest empire... With God's blessing and the will of the people, I fought this savage and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism.

I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.

The sentence was later commuted to three years' solitary in a military prison, followed by house arrest until he died on 5 March 1967. Mossadeq's supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed.

Zahedi's new government soon reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion's share - 40 per cent going to Anglo-Iranian. The consortium agreed to share profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but, tricky as ever, refused to open its books for inspection or verification by Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.

A grateful US massively funded the Shah's government, including his army and secret police force, SAVAK.

The West's fun came to an abrupt halt with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the book closed on a chapter in British enterprise that started heroically, turned nasty and ended in tears.

The US is still hated today for reinstating the Shah and his vicious SAVAK, and for demolishing the Iranians' democratic system of government, which the Revolution unfortunately didn't restore. Britain, as the instigator and junior partner in the sordid affair, is similarly despised.

On top of that, Iran harbours great resentment at the way the West, especially the US, helped Iraq develop its chemical weapons arsenal and armed forces, and how the international community failed to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. The US, and eventually Britain, tilted strongly towards Saddam in that conflict and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King, writing in 2003 , summed it up...

The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.

Which brings us to today... Why are we hearing non-stop, loud-mouthed sabre-rattling against Iran when we should be extending the hand of friendship and reconciliation?

David Cameron (b. 1966) wasn't even a twinkle in his father's eye when Britain crushed Iran's democracy, and was probably carousing with his Bullingdon Club pals at Oxford while Iranians were dying in their thousands from Saddam's poison gases. What does he know?

William Hague (b. 1961) seems similarly oblivious to the dirty tricks previous British foreign secretaries pulled on Iran.

Obama (b. 1961)? He was a community organiser in Chicago while the Iranians were being mustard-gassed by chemicals his country supplied to Saddam. What does he know?

As for Mrs Clinton (b. 1947), she's old enough to know better.

So why are they demonising Iran instead of righting the wrongs? Why not live and let live?

Because the political establishment is still smarting.

They are the new-generation imperialists, the political spawn of those Dr Mossadeq and many others struggled against.

They haven't learned from the past, and they won't lift their eyes to a better future. It's so depressing.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 UN action on Israel-Palestine.

The common representation of Israel's birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the US governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect.

In reality, while the UN General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council.

Second, the General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.

Third, the US administration supported the recommendation out of domestic electoral considerations, and took this position over the strenuous objections of the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

The passage of the General Assembly recommendation sparked increased violence in the region. Over the following months the armed wing of the pro-Israel movement, which had long been preparing for war, perpetrated a series of massacres and expulsions throughout Palestine, implementing a plan to clear the way for a majority-Jewish state.

It was this armed aggression, and the ethnic cleansing of at least three-quarters of a million indigenous Palestinians, that created the Jewish state on land that had been 95 percent non-Jewish prior to Zionist immigration and that even after years of immigration remained 70 percent non-Jewish. And despite the shallow patina of legality its partisans extracted from the General Assembly, Israel was born over the opposition of American experts and of governments around the world, who opposed it on both pragmatic and moral grounds.

Let us look at the specifics.

Background of the UN partition recommendation

In 1947 the UN took up the question of Palestine, a territory that was then administered by the British.

Approximately 50 years before, a movement called political Zionism had begun in Europe. Its intention was to create a Jewish state in Palestine through pushing out the Christian and Muslim inhabitants who made up over 95 percent of its population and replacing them with Jewish immigrants.

As this colonial project grew through subsequent years, the indigenous Palestinians reacted with occasional bouts of violence; Zionists had anticipated this since people usually resist being expelled from their land. In various written documents cited by numerous Palestinian and Israeli historians, they discussed their strategy: they would buy up the land until all the previous inhabitants had emigrated, or, failing this, use violence to force them out.

When the buy-out effort was able to obtain only a few percent of the land, Zionists created a number of terrorist groups to fight against both the Palestinians and the British. Terrorist and future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin later bragged that Zionists had brought terrorism both to the Middle East and to the world at large.

Finally, in 1947 the British announced that they would be ending their control of Palestine, which had been created through the League of Nations following World War One, and turned the question of Palestine over to the United Nations.

At this time, the Zionist immigration and buyout project had increased the Jewish population of Palestine to 30 percent and land ownership from 1 percent to approximately 6 percent.

Since a founding principle of the UN was "self-determination of peoples," one would have expected to the UN to support fair, democratic elections in which inhabitants could create their own independent country.

Instead, Zionists pushed for a General Assembly resolution in which they would be given a disproportionate 55 percent of Palestine. (While they rarely announced this publicly, their stated plan was to later take the rest of Palestine.)

U.S. Officials Oppose Partition Plan

The U.S. State Department opposed this partition plan strenuously, considering Zionism contrary to both fundamental American principles and US interests.

Author Donald Neff reports that Loy Henderson, Director of the State Department's Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, wrote a memo to the Secretary of State warning:

"...support by the Government of the United States of a policy favoring the setting up of a Jewish State in Palestine would be contrary to the wishes of a large majority of the local inhabitants with respect to their form of government. Furthermore, it would have a strongly adverse effect upon American interests throughout the Near and Middle East..."

Henderson went on to emphasize:

"At the present time the United States has a moral prestige in the Near and Middle East unequaled by that of any other great power. We would lose that prestige and would be likely for many years to be considered as a betrayer of the high principles which we ourselves have enunciated during the period of the war."

When Zionists began pushing for a partition plan through the UN, Henderson recommended strongly against supporting their proposal. He warned that such a partition would have to be implemented by force and emphasized that it was "not based on any principle." He went on to write:

"...[partition] would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future..."

Henderson specifically pointed out:

"...[proposals for partition] are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [UN] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race..."

Henderson was far from alone in making his recommendations. He wrote that his views were not only those of the entire Near East Division but were shared by "nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the Department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems."

Henderson wasn't exaggerating. Official after official and agency after agency opposed Zionism.

In 1947 the CIA reported that Zionist leadership was pursuing objectives that would endanger both Jews and "the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East."

Truman Accedes to Pro-Israel Lobby

President Harry Truman, however, ignored this advice. Truman's political advisor, Clark Clifford, believed that the Jewish vote and contributions were essential to winning the upcoming presidential election, and that supporting the partition plan would garner that support. (Truman's opponent, Dewey, took similar stands for similar reasons.)

Truman's Secretary of State George Marshall, the renowned World War II General and author of the Marshall Plan, was furious to see electoral considerations taking precedence over policies based on national interest. He condemned what he called a "transparent dodge to win a few votes," which would cause "[t]he great dignity of the office of President [to be] seriously diminished."

Marshall wrote that the counsel offered by Clifford "was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem which confronted us was international. I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford's advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President..."

Henry F. Grady, who has been called "America's top diplomatic soldier for a critical period of the Cold War," headed a 1946 commission aimed at coming up with a solution for Palestine. Grady later wrote about the Zionist lobby and its damaging effect on US national interests.

Grady argued that without Zionist pressure, the U.S. would not have had "the ill-will with the Arab states, which are of such strategic importance in our 'cold war' with the soviets." He also described the decisive power of the lobby:

"I have had a good deal of experience with lobbies but this group started where those of my experience had ended..... I have headed a number of government missions but in no other have I ever experienced so much disloyalty"...... "in the United States, since there is no political force to counterbalance Zionism, its campaigns are apt to be decisive."

Former Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson also opposed Zionism. Acheson's biographer writes that Acheson "worried that the West would pay a high price for Israel." Another Author, John Mulhall, records Acheson's warning:

"...to transform [Palestine] into a Jewish State capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East."

Secretary of Defense James Forrestal also tried, unsuccessfully, to oppose the Zionists. He was outraged that Truman's Mideast policy was based on what he called "squalid political purposes," asserting that "United States policy should be based on United States national interests and not on domestic political considerations."

Forrestal represented the general Pentagon view when he said that "no group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point where it could endanger our national security."

A report by the National Security Council warned that the Palestine turmoil was acutely endangering the security of the United States. A CIA report stressed the strategic importance of the Middle East and its oil resources.

Similarly, George F. Kennan, the State Department's Director of Policy Planning, issued a top-secret document on January 19, 1947 that outlined the enormous damage done to the US by the partition plan ("Report by the Policy Planning Staff on Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine").

Kennan cautioned that "important U.S. oil concessions and air base rights" could be lost through US support for partition and warned that the USSR stood to gain by the partition plan.

Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's nephew and a legendary intelligence agent, was another who was deeply disturbed by events, noting:

"The process by which Zionist Jews have been able to promote American support for the partition of Palestine demonstrates the vital need of a foreign policy based on national rather than partisan interests... Only when the national interests of the United States, in their highest terms, take precedence over all other considerations, can a logical, farseeing foreign policy be evolved. No American political leader has the right to compromise American interests to gain partisan votes..."

He went on:

"The present course of world crisis will increasingly force upon Americans the realization that their national interests and those of the proposed Jewish state in Palestine are going to conflict. It is to be hoped that American Zionists and non-Zionists alike will come to grips with the realities of the problem."

The head of the State Department's Division of Near Eastern Affairs, Gordon P. Merriam, warned against the partition plan on moral grounds:

"U.S. support for partition of Palestine as a solution to that problem can be justified only on the basis of Arab and Jewish consent. Otherwise we should violate the principle of self-determination which has been written into the Atlantic Charter, the declaration of the United Nations, and the United Nations Charter-a principle that is deeply embedded in our foreign policy. Even a United Nations determination in favor of partition would be, in the absence of such consent, a stultification and violation of UN's own charter."

Merriam added that without consent, "bloodshed and chaos" would follow, a tragically accurate prediction.

An internal State Department memorandum accurately predicted how Israel would be born through armed aggression masked as defense:

"...the Jews will be the actual aggressors against the Arabs. However, the Jews will claim that they are merely defending the boundaries of a state which were traced by the UN...In the event of such Arab outside aid the Jews will come running to the Security Council with the claim that their state is the object of armed aggression and will use every means to obscure the fact that it is their own armed aggression against the Arabs inside which is the cause of Arab counter-attack."

And American Vice Consul William J. Porter foresaw another outcome of the partition plan: that no Arab State would actually ever come to be in Palestine.

Pro-Israel Pressure on General Assembly Members

When it was clear that the Partition recommendation did not have the required two-thirds of the UN General Assembly to pass, Zionists pushed through a delay in the vote. They then used this period to pressure numerous nations into voting for the recommendation. A number of people later described this campaign.

Robert Nathan, a Zionist who had worked for the US government and who was particularly active in the Jewish Agency, wrote afterward, "We used any tools at hand," such as telling certain delegations that the Zionists would use their influence to block economic aid to any countries that did not vote the right way.

Another Zionist proudly stated:

"Every clue was meticulously checked and pursued. Not the smallest or the remotest of nations, but was contacted and wooed. Nothing was left to chance."

Financier and longtime presidential advisor Bernard Baruch told France it would lose U.S. aid if it voted against partition. Top White House executive assistant David Niles organized pressure on Liberia; rubber magnate Harvey Firestone pressured Liberia.

Latin American delegates were told that the Pan-American highway construction project would be more likely if they voted yes. Delegates' wives received mink coats (the wife of the Cuban delegate returned hers); Costa Rica's President Jose Figueres reportedly received a blank checkbook. Haiti was promised economic aid if it would change its original vote opposing partition.

Longtime Zionist Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, along with ten senators and Truman domestic advisor Clark Clifford, threatened the Philippines (seven bills were pending on the Philippines in Congress).

Before the vote on the plan, the Philippine delegate had given a passionate speech against partition, defending the inviolable "primordial rights of a people to determine their political future and to preserve the territorial integrity of their native land..."

He went on to say that he could not believe that the General Assembly would sanction a move that would place the world "back on the road to the dangerous principles of racial exclusiveness and to the archaic documents of theocratic governments."

Twenty-four hours later, after intense Zionist pressure, the delegate voted in favor of partition.

The U.S. delegation to the U.N. was so outraged when Truman insisted that they support partition that the State Department director of U.N. Affairs was sent to New York to prevent the delegates from resigning en masse.

On Nov 29, 1947 the partition resolution, 181, passed. While this resolution is frequently cited, it was of limited (if any) legal impact. General Assembly resolutions, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not binding on member states. For this reason, the resolution requested that "[t]he Security Council take the necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation," which the Security Council never did. Legally, the General Assembly Resolution was a "recommendation" and did not create any states.

What it did do, however, was increase the fighting in Palestine. Within months (and before Israel dates the beginning of its founding war) the Zionists had forced out 413,794 people. Zionist military units had stealthily been preparing for war before the UN vote and had acquired massive weaponry, some of it through a widespread network of illicit gunrunning operations in the US under a number of front groups.

The UN eventually managed to create a temporary and very partial ceasefire. A Swedish UN mediator who had previously rescued thousands of Jews from the Nazis was dispatched to negotiate an end to the violence. Israeli assassins killed him and Israel continued what it was to call its "war of independence."

At the end of this war, through a larger military force than that of its adversaries and the ruthless implementation of plans to push out as many non-Jews as possible, Israel came into existence on 78 percent of Palestine.

At least 33 massacres of Palestinian civilians were perpetrated, half of them before a single Arab army had entered the conflict, hundreds of villages were depopulated and razed, and a team of cartographers was sent out to give every town, village, river, and hillock a new, Hebrew name. All vestiges of Palestinian habitation, history, and culture were to be erased from history, an effort that almost succeeded.

Israel, which claims to be the "only democracy in the Middle East," decided not to declare official borders or to write a constitution, a situation which continues to this day. In 1967 it took still more Palestinian and Syrian land, which is now illegally occupied territory, since the annexation of land through military conquest is outlawed by modern international law. It has continued this campaign of growth through armed acquisition and illegal confiscation of land ever since.

Individual Israelis, like Palestinians and all people, are legally and morally entitled to an array of human rights.

On the other hand, the state of Israel's vaunted "right to exist" is based on an alleged "right" derived from might, an outmoded concept that international legal conventions do not recognize, and in fact specifically prohibit.

* Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. Photos and videos referenced in the article can be viewed on the website (http://ifamericansknew.org) She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org

By Thabet Abu-Ras* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Historical Background of Palestine's Geography

Historic Palestine / source: Palestine Remembered

Since the appearance of the Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth century, there have been many endeavors to partition Palestine. The first partition plan took place under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, as part of placing Arab lands under the control of the two major colonial powers of Britain and France. One year later, Britain's Balfour Declaration proclaimed the intention to create a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, whose geographic borders were not defined at the time and when the Jewish population comprised less than 10% of Palestine. Two years following the declaration, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the World Zionist Organization announced its intention to implement it by creating a state with borders exceeding those of historic Palestine, to include Transjordan and southern Syria. This proposed Jewish state would extend from the Litani River in the north to the city of Arish in the south. The recommendations brought by the Peel Commission–formed in 1937 following the outbreak of the 1936 Arab revolt in Palestine–are considered to be the first to suggest that Palestine be partitioned into two equal entities, an Arab and a Jewish one, keeping Jerusalem under the governance of the British Mandate. The United Nations Partition Plan of Palestine of 1947 granted 56% of historic Palestine towards the establishment of a Jewish state and 43% for an Arab Palestinian state. Jerusalem was to be placed under international administration.

The Jewish state was eventually created on 78% of the land of Palestine, following the 1948 Nakba and the expulsion of over two-thirds of this portion's native residents. While the West Bank was annexed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Gaza Strip was placed under Egyptian control. In 1967, the arm of the Israeli occupation reached the remaining two parts of Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, placing the whole country under Israeli control. Reviewing this history provides important background for considering today's reality.

The Geopolitical and Natural Components of One State

• The Geographic Borders of Palestine. In 1948, Palestine's geographic unity–comprising 27,000 sq. km.–was severed into three geopolitical units: the state of Israel (20,770 sq. km.), the West Bank (5,860 sq. km.) and the Gaza Strip (365 sq. km.). The last 63 years witnessed many attempts to redraw or establish new borders based on different partition proposals, ceasefire lines, administrative borders, and others. However, all these attempts have failed. The land of Palestine, impervious to political proposals that have attempted to establish new boundaries, has maintained its well-established natural borders.
• The Oslo Accords. Neither the Oslo Accords of 1993 nor the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994 succeeded in affecting Palestine's historic and natural borders. Furthermore, the growing Jewish settlement activity in Palestine, though creating a new geographic and demographic reality, has also failed to affect Palestine's geographic unity. In addition, the difficulty inherent in the creation of two independent states within the 60 kilometer stretch between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River (as proposed by the 1947 UN Partition Plan) has been confirmed.
• Groundwater and Natural Resources. Groundwater and other natural resources are the most unifying components of Palestine's geography. For example, the idea of transferring a population from one place to another becomes impossible when considering groundwater. The control over groundwater and other natural resources has thus been among the most charged topics between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; for that reason, reaching an agreement on this topic has been tabled until the final status negotiations, along with the issues of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and borders. Furthermore, for Israel, the issue of water is a matter of security, demonstrated by the Israeli term, "water security."Accordingly, Israel considers the groundwater aquifer that lies under the mountains of the West Bank as a strategic reservoir not to be conceded to a future Palestinian state. The same can be said about the coastal groundwater aquifers that lie along the Mediterranean coast between the Gaza Strip and the city of Haifa. The current water crisis that exists today, and which will become more severe in the future, will force Israeli and Palestinian water experts to create a joint water system, as well as to develop a joint water policy that considers all residents between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
• Transportation and Communication Network. The transportation and communication networks that exist in historic Palestine comprise one continuous network. The major east-west highways traverse current borders to connect the east to the west of historic Palestine. The best example is Highway 5, the so-called "Trans-Samaria Highway" that connects Tel-Aviv with Palestinian cities and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Furthermore, Israel constantly uses Palestinian airspace for civil, as well as military, purposes. On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority must rely on Israeli ports, which are under full Israeli control, to transport products internationally. In communications, an Israeli company established networks in areas of Palestine that were occupied in 1967, and continues to operate them to this day.
• The Labor Market and Economic Cooperation. After the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Paris Protocol on Economic Relations, signed by the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government, aimed to fortify economic cooperation inside the borders of historic Palestine. Of course, Israel was the major winner of the protocol. Cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority was not limited to Palestinian usage of Israeli ports as Palestinian markets became an extension–and backyard–to Israeli companies and tradesmen. The Paris Protocol also decreed a unifying customs system and implemented the use of the same currency, the Israeli Shekel. Israeli electric companies further provide electricity to vast areas of the West Bank, including to major Palestinian cities and most of the Gaza Strip, even now after the Israeli withdrawal from the latter.
• Population Distribution and Demographic Components of One State. Today, the population inside historic Palestine stands at about 10.6 million, out of which 5.5 million are Jewish and 5.3 million are Palestinian. Of the latter, 2.5 million Palestinians are residents of the West Bank, 1.5 million are residents of the Gaza Strip, and 1.3 million live inside the State of Israel and hold Israeli citizenship. The remaining 300,000 are considered residents of Jerusalem, under Israeli authority, but without holding Israeli citizenship.Furthermore, Israeli settlement policies push towards greater interconnection, as the number of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank now stands at more than 300,000, distributed among 144 settlements and 130 unofficial Jewish outposts (Ma'ahazim). In addition, 15 additional Jewish settlements are neighborhoods of "Greater Jerusalem," which includes territory occupied in 1967 that Israel has annexed and claimed as belonging to an indivisible Jerusalem.

Conclusion

Palestine has resisted, and endured, all attempts of geographic partition and segmentation over the last 100 years. Today, Israel controls the totality of historic Palestine, while exerting pressure, locally and internationally, for its recognition as a Jewish state without drawing its final borders. Zionism has hereby reached an impasse in its attempt to build an ethnic Jewish state.

It is a well-established fact that Israel is the only state in the world that was established without defining its borders, which corresponds to the flexibility of Israeli citizenship; it does not align with geographic boundaries of a state as predominates in the rest of the world. Instead Israeli citizenship correlates to the boundaries of the Jewish religion around the world. Therefore, an Israeli settler in a West Bank settlement is considered an Israeli citizen, whereas a Palestinian living a kilometer away, who is an indigenous inhabitant of the land, is prevented from attaining citizenship. Thus we must ask the question: If the political and spatial interconnections, which exist between the Palestinian and Jewish societies inside the boundaries of historic Palestine, are inseparable and make partition non-amenable, how then can the future of these two societies start seeking alternatives to partition? Such a future requires that they work against the neo-apartheid regime and towards the establishment of one democratic, bi-national state.

* Dr. Thabet Abu-Ras is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Development at Ben-Gurion University.

By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Greater Israel Map

"That's the Holy Land!" exclaimed a Palestinian refugee "the Holy Land belongs to everyone! It doesn't belong exclusively to the Jews!"

The machinery was switched on for the usurpation of the Holy Land at the direction of the Zionist Conference in Switzerland 1897.

Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary (September 1, 1897):

Were I to sum up the Basle Congress in a word - which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly - it would be this: At Basle I founded the Jewish State.^[2] If I said this out loud today l would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.^[6]

Benjamin Freedman, an anti-Zionist Jew, said in 1961, "The Zionists and their co-religionists rule these United States as though they were the absolute monarchs of this country."

Freedman went on to explain that the Eastern European Jews who form 92% of the world's population of so-called Jews were originally Khazars, a Mongoloid race forced out of Asia into Eastern Europe. They were Pagans who selected the Talmudic faith.

To quote Freedman further, "There wasn't one of them who had an ancestor who ever put a toe in the Holy Land. Not only in Old Testament history, but back to the beginning of time. And yet they come to the Christians and ask to help repatriate God's Chosen People to their Promised Land."

"Could there be a bigger lie than that?" Freedman asks. "Because they control the newspapers, the magazines, the radio, the television, the book publishing business, and because they have the ministers in the pulpit and the politicians on the soapboxes talking the same language, it is not too surprising that you believe that lie."

The Pharisees and other scribes commenced compiling the Talmud in 375A.D. and later in Babylon in 500A.D. It is not based on spiritual faith but on laws, rules and tactics.

Israel Shahak, former professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was very critical of the Talmud, saying, "It must be admitted that the Talmud and Talmudic literature contain very offensive statements directed specifically against Christianity."

"For example, in addition to a series of scurrilous sexual allegations against Jesus, the Talmud states that his punishment in hell is to be immersed in boiling excrement...."

Shahak observes that Christians believe the Old Testament has the same central place and legal authority in Judaism that the Bible has for Christians.

"This is not the case, because the interpretation of the sacred texts is rigidly fixed by the Talmud rather than the Bible itself."

In the USA today, an estimated 60 million of the Christian Right support not only the creation of Talmudic Israel but the expansion of that State as well. Their belief is that when Israel is established it will bring about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

There is a misconnect here because Christ's message was of a Spiritual life whereas the Talmudists believe that when their messiah comes he will resurrect all the Jewish dead. It has been suggested that the Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem is the largest in the world because that is where the resurrection will commence.

Oswald Refeisen, a Polish Jew, voluntarily converted to Catholicism eventually becoming Father Daniel of the Carmelite Order. He immigrated to Israel in 1958. As he had a Jewish mother and considered himself a Jew, he applied for the status of an 'oleh (Aliyah) under the Law of Return.

When his request was denied, he took his case to the Supreme Court where a four to one majority decided that Father Daniel was not a Jew for the purpose of the Law of Return.

Stilberg, the presiding judge said, "A Jew who becomes a Christian cannot be called a Jew."

If the 60 million Christian Right expect a Second Coming of Jesus Christ into the Holy Land, they are in for a shock. His Jewish Mother would not be good enough to get Him residency.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

As Many As 90% Of Those Claiming To Be Holocaust Survivors May Be Frauds

By Gordon Duff * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

What Would The Real Camp Survivors Tell Us?

Last week, 17 men were arrested in New York for defrauding Germany out of $42 million in payments to phony holocaust survivors. Tens of thousands of American Jews had filed for pensions from Germany claiming to be concentration camp survivors. All swore they had been in the camps, told stories about gas chambers, human skin lampshades and such but not a single one had been in a camp at all. The state of Israel claims to have, alive today, nearly one million holocaust survivors.

As many as 90% of these may well be, not only frauds but many could easily be former concentration camp guards themselves, far more likely than surviving death camps. What better place to hide than Israel?

With numbers of camp survivors going up each year, we tend to forget we are talking about death camps. There were few survivors and most of them died immediately after the war. Those alive were found dying and couldn't be saved, and most of them weren't Jews but rather Russians, Gypsies, Communists, trade unionists and anti-Fascists.

Look at the numbers. There were only 5.3 million Jews listed as living in Europe, outside the USSR, in 1940. In a rough average, 12 death camps, filled to the brim with gas chambers and crematoriums ran 24 hours a day for 1000 days. Some are said, in testimony of literally thousands, to have killed from 17,000 to 20,000 per day. Lets use the figure, 10,000 per day times 12 camps times 1000 days.

Where do a million survivors come from? I can see a thousand, ten thousand but not 30,000 and certainly not the 15 million necessary to justify the current number of claimed survivors according to typical actuarial tables for healthy adults of the period, those who were not starved and tortured for years. Look at Vietnam veterans. Only 700,000 of 2.9 million survive 35 years after the war. Something is wrong here.

STOLEN VALOR

There are laws in the United States that punish people who wear military medals they didn't earn or claim other such honors. When veterans discover someone claiming falsely to have served in war, that individual is arrested but also publicly humiliated. They are hunted down like dogs.

There are concentration camp survivors living in America, people who suffered incomprehensibly at the hands of the Nazis. However, there are also, in America we now know, tens of thousands or more who claim falsely to be of the heroic numbers from that period and numbers inside Israel that are unimaginable. Why are these people not punished?

As a Vietnam veteran, I share a common problem with others. For 4 decades, I met veteran after veteran, many were children when the war ended, but each claims some honor tied to military service based on a movie or television show. I have met, over the years, hundreds of such individuals, many at meetings of veterans organizations. I don't find it horrible or destructive but it is disturbing and I won't even remotely begin comparing service in Vietnam with the experience of a death camp.

LAST WEEK

Last week, authorities announced that those who had wrongly filed for benefits had been fooled somehow. I can see fooling someone as to whether they had seen a televisions show or not but there is only one American I can think of who imagined he had been in a death camp who hadn't and that was President Ronald Reagan and he only claimed to have visited. Reagan's error was based on dementia, not profit or gain. Now it seems, not only do we have tens of thousands of people who have a single false memory, they seem to remember years of horror, incredible detail and all of it is utterly false. There is no comparison, not with Reagan, not with Vietnam veterans, not with anyone.

Reagan's error, despite the respect he is held in and his obvious illness, was been used to defame him countless times. His error was not only honest but done in the context of human feeling. How many of the others are lying, not only for financial gain but for something less wholesome?

Why then, in the name of all that is holy, did the authorities and news media immediately write this off as tens of thousands of cases of minor lapses in judgement rather than one of the most horrible moral crimes of all time?

There is no greater disrespect for a holocaust victim than this.

REVISIONISTS AND DENIERS

Two thousand people in Europe are in prison today for questioning some part, no matter how minor, of the holocaust. The official story of the holocaust is a compendium of testimony of several hundred thousand people as there was little physical evidence left at the end of the war. Some facilities were reconstructed based on testimony, for historical perspective but in general, it is believed that the Germans destroyed all evidence of death camps and mass graves when they learned they were losing the war.

Thousands of those who find this explanation unsatisfactory and had chosen to disagree, some noted historians, some scientists and some simple troublemakers and activists, have been imprisoned. At the trials, holocaust victims claimed that such questioning harmed them irreparably. However, not one holocaust victim has ever spoken up about the endless numbers of phony holocaust victims who besmirch them every day and have for nearly 65 years. Why is that?

One thing the revisionists claim is that almost every story from the holocaust, including notable books and even world famous holocaust survivors are, in actuality, the worst phonies of all. The analogy of the "phony veteran" is applicable here. After each war, endless numbers of those, who for reasons legitimate or not, felt their contribution to the war effort was less than honorable or noteworthy, claim accomplishments they are undeserving of. It is also known that combat veterans are seldom seen on bar stools at service organizations talking about heroic exploits.

In fact, as Americans are learning more and more each day, combat veterans have great difficulty surviving coming home and are often homeless, incarcerated and commit suicide in huge numbers. It would be easy to extrapolate the same for holocaust survivors. There is no greater potential cause of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the history of mankind than the concentration camps of World War 2. Not only would survivors kill themselves out of guilt, most would suffer greatly shortened lifespans. This has been amazingly well documented.

This being the case, only a few hundred holocaust survivors could be alive today, not the one million living in Israel.

HONESTY AND TRUTH

Anyone imprisoned wrongly, anyone whose family was killed or whose assets were seized illegally, should be compensated. Anyone wrongly claiming to be part of a group they are not, one this unique in the history of mankind, deserves punishment. Why is this not done? Why is there no normal social pressure to "out" these people and defend the honor of holocaust survivors?

Has anyone ever asked a real holocaust survivor what it is like to see phonies continually on television talking about the holocaust? Do they forgive? We will never know, as it seems nobody cares about real holocaust survivors. The holocaust is brought up when Israel bombs a school or asks for foreign aid but as for the people themselves, these misuses of the suffering of some cheapen human misery and the human condition.

NEVER AGAIN, WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN?

If one child was taken away, died in a gas chamber, typhus, shot, it doesn't matter, one life, this is a holocaust. If it was done because of race, the crime is doubly evil in nature. The lesson of "never again" was meant to be a lesson for all mankind to treat every single life with the same honor and respect, not to use the suffering of some as an excuse for financial crime, self delusion or outrageous acts of aggression.

Instead, the holocaust has become theatre, a stage for two sides to debate, to play, to "lawyer" the world to death. Some feel they should fight the holocaust because it has become a tool of evil. Some defend it because it is a tool of evil also but they believe the world is evil and only evil men are meant to survive.

Picture the death of a single child. Then go to the trial of a "holocaust denier." Who is evil? Who is good? Do any of them ever think of the single child or only how it died, who signed what or how many Palestinian children could be murdered just like that child, in that child's name perhaps?

THE REAL WAR

Why ask the question if 6 million Jews died? It is equally possible that 6 million Germans died in the Ukraine and Europe, not soldiers, not in air raids, but in a holocaust type extinction. This is not talked of but it happened. All of us, Jews, Germans, the west, all of us, were silent when Josef Stalin killed twice that number or more. It started before the war and continued after. The human suffering caused by Stalin was immeasurable but is never spoken of, barely touched on except by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and now his books are banned. They fail to conform to popular mythology.

There was nothing pure about the real war as there is nothing pure about wars today. The myths we may or may not make up to protect some are never really to protect anyone. The weak and vulnerable are never protected, only the powerful. This is how the powerful become such and remain that way. We are such liars.

Nobody ever cared about the holocaust survivors only what using their suffering would bring in honor and riches. Is this the truth? Is this the partial truth? Has anyone asked the hard questions, the real questions? Isn't it time that all the survivors got together? Some voice is needed, a voice that can say "never again' with authority.

But.."never again"...what?

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

Stability and peace in the Middle East are unattainable without first deconstructing the settler-colonial attitude upon which Israel is founded.

By Bassem Hassan * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Recent plans by the Israeli government and the Knesset to amend existing laws concerning citizenship rights in Israel have generated waves of criticism in liberal circles, including Israeli ones. The proposed amendments would institutionalise a loyalty oath to Israel as a "Jewish state" and would allow residential communities to bar families that "disrupt" their "social-cultural fabric" from residing there. As refreshing as these critical reactions have been (after all it is good to know that there are still some liberals out there who are willing to defend the ideals of democracy and equality rather than justifying violations of human rights -- especially those of Arabs and Muslims -- as a lesser evil, as several leading liberals became accustomed to in the last few years), the views expressed still suffer a major shortcoming.

Liberal critics of these plans stopped short of pointing out the real issue at hand, namely Zionism. In other words, they focussed on the effect rather than the cause. This is typical of liberal critics of the Israeli state who do not mind objecting to some of its policies -- for instance, house demolition and the construction of new settlements -- but that always shy away from critiquing the ideology that underpins them. For Western liberals, Zionism is the ideology and national liberation movement of the Jews who were persecuted in Europe for centuries, and as such should be immune to critique. While opposition to anti-Semitism is the only honourable position any decent person should adopt in the face of racism against Jews, it should not make one overlook the racist character of Zionism itself.

The racist and colonialist characteristics of Zionism were quite evident since its inception as an organised political movement in the late 19th century. In his attempt to sell the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine to the colonialist powers of the day, Theodor Herzl explained that such a state would constitute part of Europe's "wall of defence against Asia; [it] would serve as an outpost of civilisation against barbarism". But he was quick to add that the Zionists would take any country the European colonial powers would agree to give them. Notice that this was almost half a century before the heinous crimes of the Nazis against the European Jewry. Needless to say, the opinion of the indigenous people of whichever country the colonial powers would choose to allocate to the Zionists was of no significance to the latter. For whether it would have fallen on Palestine, Argentina or Uganda -- just to mention a few countries that were considered as a home for such a state -- it would have been considered a "land without a people for a people without a land."

Of course, the Zionists were aware of the presence of people in Palestine. However, to them, these people, unlike the Jews of Europe, were not developed and civilised enough to be treated as a nation worthy of a state. The fact that this attitude was the zeitgeist of 19th century Europe does not make it less racist or acceptable. Even when the European empires started to show signs of fatigue due to the resistance of colonised peoples and internal opposition, Zionist leaders remained staunch supporters of colonialism. As Jabotinsky put it, they had the "unshakable resolve to keep the whole Mediterranean in European hands... [F]or the West has represented a more superior culture than the East in the last thousand years... and we today are the most prominent and loyal bearers of this culture." Golda Meir's infamous denial of the existence of the Palestinians is in essence just another expression of this logic. The Oslo Process -- which entailed some level of recognition by Israel of the Palestinians -- did not lead to a major change in this respect as the continuous dehumanisation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers testifies.

These soon-to-be-implemented laws should be read in conjunction with the Israeli government's insistence that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state and the frequent warnings made by Israeli politicians and scholars of the demographic threat presented by the Arabs of 1948. Considering a sizeable portion of the citizenry an existential threat would seem quite absurd to anyone who believes in democracy, but not for Zionists (including liberal Zionists) who believe that being the state of the Jews not that of all its citizens is the raison d'être of Israel. Thus those Arabs who managed to stay in the land on which the Israeli state was established in 1948 -- following the ethnic cleansing of the majority of the indigenous population -- were placed under martial law for almost two decades. Terminating this state, shortly before the Israeli attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967, did not mean that the life of the Arab community returned to normality. Over the years the Knesset made series of laws that were designed to forestall its cultural and economic development. Land confiscation, demolition of villages and denials of building permits are just some of the mechanisms employed to accomplish this goal. Persecution of leaders and massacres (eg Kafir Qassem) are also among the methods used to eliminate the "threat" of the Arab community.

The strategy -- if there ever was anything that merits this description -- of the Palestinian national liberation movement since the 1960s played into the hands of the Zionists and contributed to keeping the Arabs of 1948 off the radar. Until the Arab defeat in June 1967, the Palestinians had pinned their hopes on the armies of the Arab states to liberate Palestine. Following the battle of Al-Karama the fedayeen became the locus of hope. In both cases liberation was pursued through military efforts originating from outside historic Palestine; and throughout this period the "Palestine Question" pertained only to the segment of the population that was expelled from Palestine in 1948. Rarely, if ever, was anything mentioned about those who remained. Starting as early as 1974 and culminating in the Oslo Process, the transformation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation from a liberation movement into a bureaucracy interested in ruling a state on any part of Palestine -- no matter how small -- the Israelis were willing to withdraw from, seemed to have sealed the fate of the Arabs of 1948 for good.

Yet they proved to be as resilient as the cacti growing on the ruins of the 400 or so Arab villages destroyed in 1948, indicating their sites and serving as a living testimony of the crimes committed against the Arabs of Palestine. Of no less importance is the fact that this community's presence in the heart of the Israeli state exposes the flawed logic upon which the Oslo Process is based -- logic aptly described by the late Baruch Kimmerling as "separatist". A few years ago, Martin van Creveld, the celebrated Israeli military historian, succinctly summarised this logic. The solution to the conflict as envisioned by him took the form of a wall that separated the Israelis from the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The wall was to be "so tall that even birds cannot fly over it... And then of course if anybody tries to climb over the wall, we kill him." This is the essence of the Oslo Process in a nutshell. Far from being about peace, coexistence and justice, the Oslo Process is about a less costly form of control that provides the Zionist project with a lifeline.

However, confining a segment of the Palestinian people to Bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza, aka the "Palestinian state", and dispersing another segment all over the world, will not solve the problem of the Israeli state. And its leaders know that, hence their pressure to secure Palestinian recognition of what they claim to be the Jewish character of the state and their latest systematic onslaught on the Arabs of 1948. Meanwhile, the same leaders never get tired of referring to their state as the only democracy in the region. Chutzpa!

Binyamin Netanyahu and company's pursuit of a final and complete victory over the indigenous people of Palestine will most likely backfire. It will certainly draw attention to the plight of the Arabs of 1948 and their struggles, and might rekindle debates over Zionism. This might explain why some hawkish figures warned of the loyalty oath law's potential negative consequences on their state's image. It remains to be seen whether the Palestinians and the Arabs in general will take advantage of this opportunity to expose the real face of Zionism, or whether they will persist in chasing a mirage.

As for Israel's liberal friends who support a two-state solution to "save Israel from itself", if sincere they would start advising their friends to de-Zionise their institutions and laws. For without such a move the Israeli polity will continue to be nothing but a Herrenvolk democracy and an apartheid system. This is no recipe for peace. On the contrary, it is a cause for conflict.

* The writer is a lecturer of political science at the British University in Cairo.

(Al-Ahram Weekly)

Stolen Palestinian books labeled "absentee property." (Courtesy of The Great Book Robbery: http://thegreatbookrobbery.org/)

By Arwa Aburawa * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A new documentary reveals a hidden chapter in the history of the Nakba -- the Palestinian expulsion and flight at the hands of Zionist militias as Israel was established in 1948 -- which saw the systematic looting of more than 60,000 Palestinian books by Israeli forces and the attempted destruction of Palestinian culture.

As the violence which came to mark the formation of Israel erupted, Palestinian families living in the urban centers and villages of the country fled their homes in search of safety and refuge. One Palestinian family after another escaped, and believing that they would soon return, many left behind their most precious belongings. As Palestinian homes sat silent in the haze of conflict, however, a systematic Israeli campaign was underway to enter the homes and rob them of a precious commodity -- their books.

Between May 1948 and February 1949, librarians from the Jewish National Library and Hebrew University Library entered the desolate Palestinian homes of west Jerusalem and seized 30,000 books, manuscripts and newspapers alone. These cultural assets, which had belonged to elite and educated Palestinian families, were then "loaned" to the National Library where they have remained until now. Furthermore, across cities such as Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberias and Nazareth, employees of the Custodian of Absentee Property gathered approximately 40,000-50,000 books belonging to Palestinians. Most of these were later resold to Arabs although approximately 26,000 books were deemed unsuitable as they contained "inciting material against the State [Israel]" and were sold as paper waste.

This untold story of the Nakba has remained hidden over the years until, by complete accident, Israeli graduate student Gish Amit stumbled across archives documenting the systematic looting of Palestinian books. "I came across this topic quite accidentally," Gish admits. "I spent the first few months of my doctoral studies at various archives, among them the archive of the Jewish national and university library, where one day, I discovered the first documents regarding the collecting of the Palestinian libraries left behind during the 1948 war. Anyhow, it took me a few more weeks -- and dozens of documents -- to realize that there was a story to tell. A story that hasn't yet been told and one that might enrich our knowledge about the Palestinian culture and its erasure."

Although many Palestinian families were aware that their books were taken during the aftermath of 1948, they had no idea that there was a systematic and conscious effort to appropriate their books.

Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian activist and author who lived in Jerusalem until 1948 when her family was forced to flee, recalls that her father was an avid reader and had an impressive personal library. "My family was part of the small, relatively educated elite in Palestine at the time which has lots books," she explains. "For the Zionists to steal those books ... I don't know, it's shocking. Well, they stole everything so I guess it doesn't surprise me at all."

The cultural destruction that occurred during the Nakba has remained a relatively marginalized aspect of the wider narrative of Palestinian suffering. It is seen as a small, irrelevant detail which affected a small minority of urban elites living in the cities, as apposed to the complete annihilation of Palestinian villages that affected a large portion of the Palestinian population.

"What you need to understand is that the Palestinian loss was so massive that such details were overwhelmed," says Karmi, who now lives and works as a university lecturer in the UK. She is also the author of several books including In Search of Fatima, a memoir of her family's experience during the Nakba. "People lost their homes, their lives, their land and I guess the loss of books in the homes of a small Palestinian elite would not have been high up on the scale. Now that all these years have passed since the Nakba, these details are starting to emerge and their importance is being acknowledged."

In fact film director Benny Brunner, Arjan El Fassed (co-founder of The Electronic Intifada) and others have made it their task to highlight the state-sponsored looting of 1948-49. The Great Book Robbery is a project and documentary in the making which hopes to expose the untold story of the book looting and help Palestinians reclaim their cultural heritage and even revive it (a brief video is available on the film website).

Brunner, a Dutch and Israeli citizen who has worked on various films related to Israel and the Palestinians, says "The story is really significant because it's more than the fact that 60,000 books were looted -- it's about the destruction of a culture. That's the real impact of this event; that's the real significance and I think that needs to be communicated. And if possible, efforts have to be put in resurrecting the lost cultural world that was destroyed in 1948."

Before the Nakba scattered the Palestinian elites, cities such as Jerusalem and particularly Jaffa were a hive of cultural and political activity. Well-educated elites published newspapers, magazines, books and poetry and intellectual clubs thrived and cafes served as venues for discussion of important issues. This all came to an abrupt end in 1948 and is now an almost completely forgotten chapter in Palestinian cultural history.

While the books seized by Israel were initially marked with the names of the Palestinian owners, in the 1960s this policy was changed and the books were later marked with just two letters: "AP" or "abandoned property." As time passed, these became "Israeli" books especially as a vast majority of them were embedded in the national collection and so it became impossible to trace the looted Palestinian books. "They became 'our' books and part of 'our' cultural heritage," says Brunner.

As Karmi explains, "What's really horrible about the book thefts is that it's like saying, 'I'm not only going to steal your home and your land but also an intellectual heritage' because they took these books, put in them in their Israeli libraries and then pretended that they were always there. Therefore we're in a fight because we're not just trying to reclaim something which has been sitting there gathering dust -- we're trying to reclaim something before it's destroyed. And that's why it's so urgent and why [Brunner's] project is extremely valuable."

Right now, Brunner is trying to trace more Palestinians who either witnessed the looting or lost their books in the Nakba. "We want people to tell us how they see the event, to analyze it and to contribute to us, not only financially -- although that would help -- but with their stories."

"If people care about their past and making a serious attempt to revive part of the cultural heritage they need to be a part of this project," says Brunner. He urges Palestinians to "look into your family history and see if there is anything you can contribute to this project" and to get in touch directly if they can.

Karmi emphasizes the urgency of reclaiming this part of Palestinian history and the significance of this moment: "We are no longer in a stage of trauma or shock which Palestinians have been in for a very long time. The actual shock of losing everything and having to build yourself up again has occupied people's energies for a very long time. Now, it's time to reclaim our history, our culture, our towns, our architecture, our geography before the Israelis demolish everything."

But even Karmi admits that some things have been lost forever. Manuscripts which were never published, books sold as paper waste, personal diaries or even the Arabic-English dictionary which Karmi's father was working on at the time of the Nakba is now lost forever. Even so, both Karmi and Brunner believe that Israel must return the 6,000 books that are clearly marked as Palestinian property to their rightful owners.

Karmi also adds that it's time for a Palestinian movement to emerge -- parallel to the movement reclaiming Jewish and other cultural artifacts lost under the Nazis -- dedicated to relocating pieces of cultural heritage lost during the Nakba. The Great Book Robbery aims to highlight the scale of the loss and hopefully act as a first step in this direction.

* Arwa Aburawa (http://arwafreelance.wordpress.com/) is a freelance journalist based in the UK who writes on the Middle East, the environment and various social issues.

(The Electronic Intifada)

By Antoine Raffoul * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1948 Lest We Forget has obtained a copy of the full Survey of Palestine (Including the map survey) for its records. The following outline extracts shed more light on the Zionist lies about Palestine being "a land without people...." We recommend that Survey to all our Supporters.

In December 1945 and January 1946, the British Mandate authorities carried out an extensive survey of Palestine , in support of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The results were published in the Survey of Palestine, which has been scanned and made available online by Palestine Remembered; all 1300 pages can be read here.

One of the subjects investigated in the Survey of Palestine is land use; specifically, which crops were Palestine's leading agricultural products at the end of the British Mandate, and whose farms were producing them.

So, according to the Survey of Palestine, who really made the barley fields of Beersheba bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 210,000 tons of grain.

About 193,400 tons of that grain were cultivated on Palestinian farms; about 16,600 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.

See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click image to enlarge

Who made the melon patches of Jaffa bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 143,000 tons of melons.

About 136,000 tons of those melons were cultivated on Palestinian farms; a little over 7,000 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.

See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click image to enlarge

Who made the tobacco fields of Safad bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 1,683 tons of tobacco, on 28,169 dunams of land. Virtually all the land under tobacco cultivation was Palestinian.

Who made the vineyards of Hebron bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestines farmers produced approximately 40-50,000 tons of grapes, and between 3-4 million litres of wine. About 86% of the land that produced these products was owned and cultivated by Palestinians.

See a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click to enlarge

Who made the olive groves of Tulkarm bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 79,000 tons of olives.

About 78,000 tons of those olives were cultivated on Palestinian farms; a little over 1,000 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.

See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click image to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Who made the banana groves of Tiberias bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 8,000 tons of bananas.

About 60% of the land that produced these bananas was owned and cultivated by Palestinians.

See the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click to enlarge

Who made the vegetable fields of the coastal plain bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestines farmers produced approximately 245,000 tons of vegetables.

About 189,000 tons of those vegetables were cultivated by Palestinian farmers; about 56,000 tons were cultivated by Jewish farmers.

See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click to enlarge

So, on the eve of the partition resolution, in which the United Nations proposed to allocate 55 percent of the land to Jewish Palestine (including those parts that produced most of Palestine's leading crops, with the sole exception of the olive crop), and 45% to Arab Palestine, Palestinian Arabs were producing:

• 92% of Palestine grain
• 86% of its grapes
• 99% of its olives
• 77 % of its vegetables
• 95% of its melons
• more than 99% of its tobacco
• and 60% of its bananas.

Palestine's agricultural produce at that time had an annual value of approximately 21.8 million pounds sterling; 17.1 million of which was produced by Arab cultivation, and 4.7 million by Jewish cultivation. (as seen in below table).

Click to enlarge

So, who made the desert bloom? The Palestinians made the desert bloom.

Photos: All the photographs of Palestinian farmers cultivating their crops in Palestine under the British Mandate are from Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History Of The Palestinians 1876 - 1948, by Walid Khalidi.

* Antoine Raffoul is a Palestinian architect living and practising in London. He was born in Nazareth and was expelled with his family from Haifa in April 1948. He is the Founder and Co-ordinator of 1948: Lest.We.Forget. a campaign group for truth about Palestine. He can be reached at info@1948.org.uk.

By Jonathan Cook * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

History may be written by the victors, as Winston Churchill is said to have observed, but the opening up of archives can threaten a nation every bit as much as the unearthing of mass graves.

That danger explains a decision quietly taken last month by Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend by an additional 20 years the country's 50-year rule for the release of sensitive documents.

The new 70-year disclosure rule is the government's response to Israeli journalists who have been seeking through Israel's courts to gain access to documents that should already be declassified, especially those concerning the 1948 war, which established Israel, and the 1956 Suez crisis.

The state's chief archivist says many of the documents "are not fit for public viewing" and raise doubts about Israel's "adherence to international law", while the government warns that greater transparency will "damage foreign relations".

Quite what such phrases mean was illustrated by the findings of a recent investigation by an Israeli newspaper. Ha'aretz revisited the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel seized not only the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, but also a significant corner of Syria known as the Golan Heights, which Israel still refuses to relinquish.

The consensus in Israel is that the country's right to hold on to the Golan is even stronger than its right to the West Bank. According to polls, an overwhelming majority of Israelis refuse to concede their little bit of annexed Syria, even if doing so would secure peace with Damascus.

This intransigence is not surprising. For decades, Israelis have been taught a grand narrative in which, having repelled an attack by Syrian forces, Israel then magnanimously allowed the civilian population of the Golan to live under its rule. That, say Israelis, is why the inhabitants of four Druze villages are still present there. The rest chose to leave on the instructions of Damascus.

One influential journalist writing at the time even insinuated anti-Semitism on the part of the civilians who departed: "Everyone fled, to the last man, before the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] arrived, out of fear of the 'savage conqueror'... Fools, why did they have to flee?"

However, a very different picture emerges from Ha'aretz's interviews with the participants. These insiders say that all but 6,000 of the Golan's 130,000 civilians were either terrorized or physically forced out, some of them long after the fighting finished. An army document reveals a plan to clear the area of the Syrian population, with only the exception of the Golan Druze, so as not to upset relations with the loyal Druze community inside Israel.

The army's post-war tasks included flushing out thousands of farmers hiding in caves and woods to send them over the new border. Homes were looted before the army set about destroying all traces of 200 villages so that there would be nowhere left for the former inhabitants to return to. The first Jewish settlers sent to till the fields recalled seeing the dispossessed owners watching from afar.

The Ha'aretz investigation offers an account of methodical and wholesale ethnic cleansing that sits uncomfortably not only with the traditional Israeli story of 1967 but with the Israeli public's idea that their army is the "most moral in the world". That may explain why several prominent, though unnamed, Israeli historians admitted to Ha'aretz that they had learnt of this "alternative narrative" but did nothing to investigate or publicise it.

What is so intriguing about the newspaper's version of the Golan's capture is the degree to which it echoes the revised accounts of the 1948 war that have been written by later generations of Israeli historians. Three decades ago - in a more complacent era - Israel made available less sensitive documents from that period.

The new material was explosive enough. It undermined Israel's traditional narrative of 1948, in which the Palestinians were said to have left voluntarily on the orders of the Arab leaders and in the expectation that the combined Arab armies would snuff out the fledging Jewish state in a bloodbath.

Instead, the documents suggested that heavily armed Jewish forces had expelled and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before the Jewish state had even been declared and a single Arab soldier had entered Palestine.

One document in particular, Plan Dalet, demonstrated the army's intention to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. Its existence explains the ethnic cleansing of more than 80 per cent of Palestinians in the war, followed by a military campaign to destroy hundreds of villages to ensure the refugees never returned.

Ethnic cleansing is the common theme of both these Israeli conquests. A deeper probe of the archives will almost certainly reveal in greater detail how and why these "cleansing" campaigns were carried out - which is precisely why Mr Netanyahu and others want the archives to remain locked.

But full disclosure of these myth-shattering documents may be the precondition for peace. Certainly, more of these revelations offer the best hope of shocking Israeli public opinion out of its self-righteous opposition to meaningful concessions, either to Syria or the Palestinians.

It is also a necessary first step in challenging Israel's continuing attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, as has occurred in the last few weeks against the Bedouin in both the Jordan Valley and the Negev, where villages are being razed and families forced to leave again.

Genuine peacemakers should be demanding that the doors to the archives be thrown open immediately. The motives of those who wish to keep them locked should be clear to all.

* Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair".

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Israel History

In order to maintain these myths one must control history. The story line must be taught in the schools and supported by the nation's multiple media sources. One must raise up a population that is so well inculcated with its mythic worldview that if something occurs which contradicts it, it can be readily dismissed as an exception to the rule. In the case of the United States, two hundred years of indoctrination and a long term status as a great power has allowed its myths to survive, in the minds of its own people, the horrors of Viet Nam, Iraq and now Afghanistan. Israel is a much younger nation with only three or so generations of indoctrination under its psychological belt, so to speak. And, while it may be a regional superpower, its reputation in the Middle East is built on fear. With the rest of the world that reputation is associated with equally unstable and temporary attitudes, like Holocaust guilt. In essence, apart from the convinced Zionists, Israel's sustaining national myths are still fragile.

A number of years ago Israel applied its law that required the government archives to be opened for public review and research following a thirty year waiting period for political affairs and fifty years for military affairs. This brought many of the government documents referring to seminal years of 1947 and 1948 into the open. The result was a serious, evidence based, revision of the founding legends of Israel. In other words, the state lost momentary control of its own history. The result undermined the nation's mythic self-image amongst observers outside of Israel and caused significant unease within the country. So powerful was the reaction of the elites against this revised interpretation of the past that the "new historians" who brought it forth are now either teaching abroad or have, as in the case of Benny Morris, recanted.

In the interim things have only gotten worse for the Zionist defenders of the idealized Israel. Multiple invasions of Lebanon and the essentially defenseless Palestinian cities and towns, the slaughter of the innocent, the reduction of Gaza to an open air prison, the on-going confiscation of land and property in the Occupied Territories, rampant settler violence, and the repeated election of racist governments have resulted in a worldwide civil society effort to isolate Israel and induce it to reform itself in the same manner as South Africa. Except in the United States, Israel's claim to act only in self-defense is not seen as credible and the accusation that all who disagree are anti-Semites not taken seriously. Yet outside disenchantment, as dangerous as it might be in the long run, is not nearly as threatening as the erosion of one's domestic population's adherence to their national myths. That adherence must be maintained at all cost otherwise the nation will metamorphose into something that no longer supports its present elites. The fate of the "new historians" has demonstrated just how determined the Israeli establishment is to prevent that sort of erosion.

That being the case, Israel's present Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has extended for an additional twenty years the period during which government archives can remain closed.

The Haaretz article announcing this decision says that the Prime Minister acted because of "pressure from the intelligence agencies," but Netanyahu probably did not need much convincing. The period of time for which documents will now remain classified include such events as the 1954 Lavon Affair, the 1956 Sinai invasion, and the 1967 war which saw the heinous attack on the USS Liberty and the seizure of the Golan Heights. The State Archivist, Yehoshua Freundlich told Haaretz that "some of the material was selected classified because 'it has implications over [Israel's] adherence to international law.'" This is probably an understatement. To add insult to injury, Haaretz reports that there is a good possibility that the government's decision to classify much of Israel's past as top secret will mean that "archives that had already been made public would again be hidden away."

If you study the new historians' revisionist history of Israel you are struck by the Machiavellian behavior of men like David Ben Gurion who made a profession of being "economical with the truth." So devious were many of Israel early establishment figures that their political competitors, such as the neo-fascist Ze'ev Jabotinsky and the terrorist Menachem Begin, appear almost refreshing in their frightful honesty. Today we have the worst of all worlds in Israel-leaders who are both terrorists and shockingly devious. Now by their own admission, today's Zionist leaders must hide away their nation's sins lest the entire world turn away from Israel, and perhaps even their own citizens begin to fear that their national myths cannot stand honest and objective examination.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

By Yousef Munayyer* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration By Poderiu

There are obvious questions that arise when an alleged perpetrator, in this case the government of Israel, is left in charge of investigating themselves. To mitigate such concerns, Israel has allowed two international observers to participate. One of them, David Trimble, raises questions on his own. He has a Nobel Peace Prize on his resume, but he is also known for having antipathy towards human rights groups whom he has accused of aiding terrorists, and was recently part of an initiative to launch a pro-Israel campaign in his native land. The other observer, Ken Watkin, is the former head of Canada's military judiciary.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that the international observers can keep any biases they may have out of their deliberations. Will they be able to come up with an accurate assessment of the events? It's not likely, since any information "almost certain to cause substantial harm to [Israel's] national security or to the State's foreign relations"¹ will not be made available to the international observers. Basically, the international observers, hand-picked by the state of Israel, are only permitted to observe what the state of Israel wants them to observe. A farce, if there ever was one.

Despite this, and a vast international outcry for an impartial, international investigation, the United States has come out in support of Israel's commission, calling it an "important step" and stating that Israel's "independent public commission can meet the standard of a prompt, impartial, credible, and transparent investigation."

Many around the globe do not share these sentiments and are deeply skeptical of Israel's investigation. But this skepticism does not lie in anti-Semitism or an anti-Israel sentiment, as many Israeli government spokespeople would have us believe. Rather, a long history of flawed or non-existent investigations into the killings of civilians at the hands of Israel's soldiers has led many to the conclusion that Israel is incapable of independently reaching justice. A brief review of some of these investigations in is order:

1953 – Qibya – As a punitive and vengeful response to cross-border raids, the Israeli government decided to send a message to the Palestinians. This village, just over the Green Line, became the target. The death toll of 70 Palestinians was made up mostly of women and children, and 45 homes were destroyed. Operational orders included commands for maximal killing and driving the inhabitants from their homes. International condemnation followed what was known to the Israeli military as Operation Rose. The United States expressed its regret for the loss of life and demanded that perpetrators "be brought to account and that effective measures should be taken to prevent such incidents in the future."² No credible public independent investigation was held. Those responsible included Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, Deputy Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, and Chief of Staff Mordechai Meklaf. The latter appointed Ariel Sharon who was the commander of the brigade responsible for the raid. He would go on to have a long and controversial career in Israeli political and military life. None of these officials were charged and all continued careers in public life.

1956 – Kufr Qasem – In this village of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, 47 were killed of which fifteen were women, and eleven were children under the age of fifteen. Thirteen others were wounded. The IDF swiftly changed curfew hours as villagers were returning to their homes. Major Shmuel Melinki gave the order to "shoot to kill" anyone outside of their homes. During trial, Melinki claimed the order "conformed to the spirit of the times." Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion ordered an investigation. To the surprise of many Palestinians the initial court martial found Melinki guilty of killing 43 civilians and sentenced him to 17 years in prison. Others found guilty included Lieutenant Joubral Dahan and Sergeant Shalom Ofer, both sentenced to fifteen years. Privates Hreish and Abraham, among others, were sentenced to seven years imprisonment for killing 17 citizens. The brigadier who directed Melinki to crack down on those breaking the curfew was found guilty of a mere technical error, and was sentenced to a reprimand and a fine of one piaster (ten cents!). Those initially sentenced by court martial for the killings had their sentences commuted by a series of civilian courts and politicians. No one found guilty for the murders ultimately served more than three years in prison. After their release, Melinki was promoted into the ranks of military intelligence and Dahan received a position in a city municipality.

1967 – The USS Liberty – During the war in 1967, Israeli military aircraft and navy bombarded a United States Navy reconnaissance ship killing 34 noncombatant sailors and injuring approximately 170 others. The United States reacted with outrage. At the time, Secretary of State Dean Rusk stated that the attack must be condemned and that the U. S. government expects the government of Israel to take the disciplinary measures required by international law. The Israeli position was that this was a mistake. The IDF Chief Military Prosecutor filed charges against select military personnel, but an examining judge ruled that nothing in the incident deviated "from the standard of reasonable conduct which would justify the committal of anyone for trial."³ No official proceedings ensued.

1976 – 'Land Day' Shootings – After announcing the confiscation of thousands of dunams of land that fell between two Palestinian villages in the Galilee, Israel braced for a reaction by declaring immediate curfews and that protests would be illegal. Palestinian citizens of Israel in the area organized strikes and demonstrations in protest of the land confiscation, part of which was privately owned Palestinian land. The crackdown that ensued involved thousands of Israeli police and tactical forces, and resulted in the killing of six unarmed Palestinian Arabs, the injury of approximately 100 more and the mass arrests of hundreds of others. No credible public investigation took place. No one was prosecuted in connection with the killings.

1978 – Operation Litani – Following a Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) bus hijacking that left 37 Israelis dead, Israel invaded southern Lebanon in March 1978. The result of the operation was a stunningly disproportionate response that left 1,100 Palestinian and Lebanese dead. Most of the causalities were civilians. The operation solicited ire from U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Carter noted in his book, The Blood of Abraham, that he instructed the State Department to push for condemnation of the killings in the UN Security Council, and that if the Israelis refused to cease the operation, he would be compelled to notify congress that U.S. weapons were being used illegally. No credible public independent investigation into the killings of civilians was held. 1982 – Sabra and Shatila – The number of deaths at these Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon is disputed to be between 400 to upwards of 3,000, mostly civilians. This massacre drew international condemnation and the UN General Assembly termed it an act of genocide by a vote of 123-0 with 22 abstentions (the United States abstained). An outcry in Israel led to the establishment of an investigation led by Yitzhak Kahan, then President of the Israeli Supreme Court. The Kahan Commission found that Israel was indirectly responsible for the massacre and that Ariel Sharon (whose career continued unabated after the Qibya massacre) bore personal responsibility. The Kahan Commission recommended Sharon be dismissed from his post as defense minister and never hold a ministerial position again. After much debate, Sharon stepped down as defense minister but maintained a minister-without-portfolio position in the government. It was during these years that President Ronald Reagan drew the conclusion that Sharon was a "bad guy who seemingly looks forward to a war." Sharon would go on to be elected prime minister.

1996 – Qana – During fighting in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hizballah, approximately 800 Lebanese civilians sought shelter in a United Nations compound in Qana. Israeli forces shelled the UN compound killing 106 and injuring 116 more. Israel claimed that the attack was a grave error. The investigation conducted by the Israeli Army determined mapping errors were behind the shelling. The United Nations disagreed, stating that evidence from the scene of the massacre shows that the Israeli claims are untrue and that "it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors."⁴ While the international outcry that followed the killings led to increased diplomatic efforts to end the fighting in southern Lebanon, no one was prosecuted in connection with the massacre.

2000 – October Events – After Ariel Sharon's controversial visit to the Temple Mount, an event thought to have sparked the second intifada, numerous protests throughout Israel and the Occupied Territories took place. The Israeli repression of these protests led to several incidents of killings of unarmed, Palestinian, civilian protesters. Within a few weeks, twelve Palestinian citizens of Israel and a Palestinian from Gaza were killed. An Israeli commission was established to investigate the killings headed by Israeli Supreme Court Judge Theodor Or. The Or Commission's 860 page report released in 2003 found that the demonstrators were merely exercising their rights as citizens to protest. The report criticized Israeli commands to authorize the use of snipers without a security threat and criticized Israeli police for failing to collect evidence surrounding the killings. As a result, no officers were prosecuted.

2002 – Jenin – During the second intifada and under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel declared Jenin a closed military zone on 1 April. Raids and fighting in the camp left many dead and wounded as well as significant damage to civilian infrastructure. The death toll is in dispute and media and observers were not permitted into the camp until nearly a week after the battle ended, leading to widespread accusations of a massacre cover-up. The United Nations puts the death toll at 52 of "whom up to half may have been civilians."⁵ Much international uproar followed, and the United States pressured Israel to account for their actions through an international investigation. Initially Israel complied with a UN investigation before retracting. No Israeli investigations took place, and Israel did not cooperate with the UN investigation. No prosecutions followed the events in Jenin.

2008-09 – Operation Cast Lead – A 23-day Israeli Operation in the Gaza Strip with the stated objective of halting Hamas rocket fire, resulted in the deaths of approximately 1400 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians. The scores of civilian dead, the use of controversial weapons such as white phosphorus in civilian areas and the destruction of UN facilities and civilian infrastructure, led to an international outcry. A now infamous UN investigation led by Justice Richard Goldstone found that Israeli actions may amount to war crimes. Israel refused to cooperate with the UN commission, and, to date, one Israeli soldier has been prosecuted for stealing and charging items on a Palestinian's credit card. Other recent reports indicate that one or two more soldiers may be charged in connection with shooting unarmed civilians. No other charges have been brought forth. The Israeli defense minister that oversaw the operation, Ehud Barak, remains in the same position today.

A number of other events could be added to this list, but the trend is clear. Where there have been allegations of war crimes or the killing of civilians, Israel has often failed to carry out or cooperate with independent investigations. In the instances where Israeli investigations have been carried out and soldiers or commanders have been found responsible, sentences were significantly commuted and/or the recommendations of the commission have been completely ignored by the heads of state empowered to enforce them. One must wonder how the course of history may have been altered had Ariel Sharon, who played a role in a number of these events, been discharged and imprisoned after Qibya in 1953, or even prevented from holding a ministerial level position as the Kahan Commission had recommended after the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Instead, Sharon went on to ascend to the premiership and presided over the most significant expansion of illegal Israeli settlements since the Menachem Begin era in the late 1970s. Indeed, it was only failed health, not the Israeli judicial system, that ended Sharon's long career in public life.

It's in this historical context that Israel begins an investigation into the raid on the flotilla that left nine dead. Pardon me for not holding my breath.

* Yousef Munayyer is the Executive Director of the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center.

¹See: "Government establishes independent public commission," Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 14 June 2010 (http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2010/Independent_Public_Commission_Maritime_Incident_31-May-2010.htm)

²See: "The Qibya (Israel-Jordan) Incident: United Nations Security Council Resolution, November 24, 1953" (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/mid009.asp)

³See: "Exhibit 21" (http://ussliberty.org/report/exhibit%252021.pdf)

⁴See: "Letter dated 7 May 1996 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council" (http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/62d5aa740c14293b85256324005179be?OpenDocument)

⁵See: "Report of the Secretary-General prepared pursuant to General Assembly resolution ES-10/10" (http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/index.html)

By Sina Alavi | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." -Thomas Jefferson

We are approaching another ominous anniversary in American History without anyone acknowledging it- not even a peep from the mainstream media. When Iranian students took hostages in Tehran and kept them for 444 days, for those of us who remember those terrible days know that the Media reported for hours about that ordeal on daily basis- and there was no Fox News and CNN. But, this ominous anniversary has nothing to do with Iran. To learn about this ongoing ordeal, we need to go back in time- more than 60 years.

It's been over 65 years since President Franklin Roosevelt, on his way back home from the Big Three Conference at Yalta, met with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia onboard US warship in Suez Canal. It was aboard Warship USS Quincy where FDR promised King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia that there will be no Israel. Little did he know, after his death- which came about in a few weeks after this meeting- this promise would be interpreted as a personal promise not as a heads of the state promise and in a short few years of his death Israel would be established. King Abdul Aziz even rejected creation of Israel in Libya and felt it would be unfair to North African Muslims. Of course, all this changed once FDR died in the arms of his long time lover Lucy Mercer.

For Truman it took 20 minutes to recognize the state of Israel when it declared independence in 1948. He did so in the face of opposition from the top U.S. diplomats and military officials that guided its foreign policy in 1947 and were opposed to the idea of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine and pressed then-President Harry Truman not to recognize the new state, arguing that such a move would harm the U.S. position in the Arab Middle East. But, this was a welcoming opportunity for a Christian Zionist to endorse the postwar partition of Palestine and recognize the new Jewish state there. And of course, let's not forget his whistle-stop train campaign that was greased by hundreds of thousands of dollars from Zionists.

Even though, Truman referred to New York City as "Kike town" and at one point he made the remark: "The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as displaced persons as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog." For Truman, it was a religious obligation as a christian Zionist- he saw himself as an instrument to fulfill the covenant. This uneducated President who was handpicked to become senator in 1934 by the corrupt Missouri Democrat Mobs, controlled by Tom Pendergast, had no idea that he was making the gravest mistake of his life and began a captivity of the US Government with no end in sight.

This was Truman's second big mistake after dropping the bombs on Japan. This loony religious zealot threatened countries around the world by dropping the big one. This product of corrupt Democratic Party recognoized an enclave of violent Jewish extremists soon after they ethnically cleansed 400-plus Palestinian villages. There is no question dropping the bombs on Japan was the most horrifying action in history of mankind, but recognizing the Zionist regime was basically turning over America to the Zionist regime. It is almost like walking in the captivity cell with your own feet and locking yourself up and handing over the keys to the captors. No one will ever forget the horror of the bombs, but it is an event that took place and recorded in history books. Recognizing Israel is not a one-time event, it is not like recognizing Liberia or Mali as a nation, this was beginning of horror to come. Not a day goes by that we do not get reminded of this ongoing torture- be it Madoff on Wall Street or Rahm Emanual, whose father was a terrorist in ethnic cleansing, on Pennsylvania Avenue.

This was a great achievement for Israel to be recognized by the U.S., zionists had used England in the first half of the 20th century as a stepping stone to get to this point. With England serving its purpose in helping to establish Israel- who were a great host close to three centuries and the fact Churchill handily destroyed British Empire; it was time to move on to the next host.

Truman left the office disgraced and with the least popularity numbers as a President, only George Bush Jr may come close to that. This unpopularity had nothing to do with Israel. The numbers would have been worse if Americans knew what Truman had done to their country. But, it was 1953 and Ike was the President. Everyone was giddy about Korean War being wrapped up- as soon as negotiators could decide on the shape of the negotiating table- oval or rectangle- America is about to roll into nifty fifties.

It was during the Ike years that Israelis were able to define their policies towards the U.S.. One of the defining moments came in 1956, when France, England, and Israel invaded Egypt- what's known as Tripartite Invasion- the intent of the invasion was to gain back control of Suez Canal. It did not take long for Eisenhower to issue an ultimatum to these countries to back off. Reluctantly, they retreated from Suez Canal, but it is well known Israelis implemented a scorch earth policy as they retreated to their enclave.

It was after this war that England decided to follow and support U.S. policies no matter what- hence, lapdog policy. France decided to oppose U.S. policies where they can. And, Israel decided they need to take control of U.S. Foreign policy. During the Suez crisis Eisenhower refused to meet American Jewish leader who were trying to influence U.S. foreign policy.

This crisis also was the turning point for America to take control of the old England and France colonies and make them satellite states to the U.S. Government. A step that turned U.S. from a republic to an empire building power.

During these years Israel was trying to plant the seeds of control inside and outside of the U.S.. This meant resorting to any means to establish themselves in American Society. From Miami Beach, New York Jewish Mob- whom to this date are operating and use Israel as base of their operation- to infiltrating into the Government, Financial Institution, and Schools.

David Ben-Gurion also ordered bombing of American and British offices in Egypt using sleeper cells, local Jews, to cause friction between Egypt and the Western powers. This operation is known as Lavon Affair. Israel honored these terrorist as heroes. To this day, Israel employs any means to keep their influence over U.S.. Jews had never forgotten that during the Second World War, the U.S. government would not take any action that might have impeded the slaughter of European Jews.

Hearing anti-Semitic speeches of public officials such as Representative John Rankin of Mississippi on the floor of Congress in the 50's, made Israelis more resolved to take over the Congress.

As with any nation resisting external forces and foreign values, Americans were trying to fend off these advances. Elite universities including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton maintained quotas limiting Jewish enrollments seeing a backlash of take over of Jews in the school system. It is similar to the resistance seen in the old England. In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, he introduces a character named Shylock who is a Jewish usurer who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the bond at a pound of Antonio's flesh. Looking at the Financial institution and their interest rate, Antonio probably got a good deal.

One of the major tools used to keep America hostage in the hands of Zionist started in the 50's. With the help of the France, Israel started working on the Nuclear Bomb. This also gave France a chance to take a shot at U.S. standing in the world. This work was done in secret and U.S. was not aware of this fact until years later.

Eisenhower, the war hero, did not think of Israeli threat much and he managed them like any other foreign country and he was more preoccupied with communist threat. This gave Israeli's and its supporters time to lay the ground for later stages.

Israel and its supporters had a hard time in Kennedy's era. One of the applausable theories on JFK's assassination is that Jacob Rubenstein, known as Jack Ruby, who killed JFK's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, wanted to silence Oswald and Ruby took the fall for the Israeli Jewish Mob. He basically eliminated the President who was not very friendly to Israel.

As a second act, Robert Kennedy was assassinated by a "Palestinian" named Sirhan Sirhan who claimed that he was angry at Robert Kennedy for his support of Israel. The ironic part of the story is that a few years earlier Robert Kennedy had ordered to list an organization named the American Zionist Council (AZC) as an Israel's foreign agent since the Department of Justice discovered the AZC had secretly received millions of Dollars in Israeli funds to build a domestic lobby and conduct public relations in the United States for arms, aid, and preferential diplomatic treatment. At the end, the AZC managed to file a partial activity declaration covering only three months as opposed to many years of lobbying for Israel. They also managed to keep the names of all the recipients receiving payments from Israel be kept secret. Soon after that AZC changed its name to AIPAC. This is how the AIPAC as we know came to existence with members in every walk of life from Wolf Blitzer to Rahm Emanuel. It is the same AIPAC that everyone in the Government must answer to. As recent as March, 2010, when Hillary Clinton was summoned to explain their comments on the new East Jerusalem Jewish settlements.

In short, Kennedys were eliminated by Israelis because of the trouble they caused them. Meanwhile, Israel and France had completed the development of Nuclear Bombs. Eisenhower and Kennedy tried to question and stop Israeli on Nuke development but they were ignored and outmaneuvered by Zionists. America was about to be put on the Shackle for unforeseeable future. Having Nuclear Bombs meant the last nail was driven in the coffin of America's independence and freedom. From that point on U.S. was taken hostage as a full fledge chained nation and not a single decision would be made before evaluating the benefits for Zionists.

In the era of LBJ, this imprisonment was tested. It was during the Six-Day war on June 8, 1967 when Israeli jet fighter attacked USS Liberty and killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two Marines, and a civilian). The interesting fact is that this ship was a Navy technical research ship. But, it did present a perfect case for Israeli's to demonstrate that U.S. cannot do anything about it- retaliation was out of the question. The message was sent to Washington. Washington was in bondage. This incident harbingered the domination of Israeli's over America. The capitulation was complete.

Starting with Nixon administration, more and more Zionists infiltrated the political systems in America and directed the policies of current administration. Almost every President after Nixon, including Nixon, made their disgust known about the Zionist except Clinton and Obama, but that's all they could do, just show their true feelings through words not actions. Nixon once said, "The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards."

It was in Nixon time that with the help of Kissinger Mossad agents stole 200 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear fuel processing plant in Pennsylvania enough material to make ten nuclear bombs. It was also during Nixon Administration that U.S. Government agreed to shield the Israelis from nuclear scrutiny, without asking for anything in return. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon described by Prime Minister Golda Meir as "the best friend Israel ever had," Nixon agreed in 1969 to endorse "constructive ambiguity" as a means for Tel Aviv to obscure its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile the Zionists used the threat of the Nukes to seize the land they sought for expansion.

Up to then Zionists were only successful to bring U.S. Government to their knees, the bigger and more important task was on hand- that was to bring American people under their control and place the yoke of control around their necks without them knowing- Americans are proud people they would never allow anybody to do that to them- they would rather die before they would take any of this- just take a look at New Hampshire motto- "Live Free or Die". But, Submission of the US Government to Israelis paved the way for the Zionist to have their way with American people. To bring the mass population into compliance, the effort had to be multi-prong and comprehensive, it had to cover all aspects of American life- social, political, education, entertainment, spiritual, Financial, industrial, and whatever that Americans cared for.

And that's when the wheels of infiltration started turning. The two most important segments that Zionist focused on in the decade of 70's were politics and religion. They already had a great success in social, education, and various industries including entertainment. The Zionist mob since 1930's had invested in Hollywood and other entertainment venues from TV networks to Movie studios, even to this day they are the biggest owner of gambling and Porn in America. And, in the 60's, they modified the norms of society to a more pregnable form for decades to come. The same with the education system, by the 1960s, Jews already constituted 20% of the faculty of elite universities and 40% of the professors of elite law schools; today, these percentages are much higher and this has nothing to do with smarts but it has to do with every un-American practice and values one can imagine.

Still the toughest nuts to crack were politics and religion. Gradually, in Nixon's Administration the Zionist started to take over. One the best positions to be in any administration were to be in the team of speechwriters. It is almost like putting words in the mouth of the President. The best example was when George Bush Junior uttered the words, Axis of evil, which was written by a Canadian Zionist David Frum. Poor Bush had no idea what he was saying- or even more recent when Obama, a Black President, used a racist reference to call Israel, "the jewish state of Israel, a reference that even Truman a Christian Zionist President refrained to use.

One of the most despicable speechwriter of all time started with Nixon's administration. William Safire was so opinionated that when Carter refused to bomb Iran, he considered his biggest defeat of his life. Safire did not stop there, he wanted to bomb El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, and any entity who had the remotest dislike towards Israel.

One of the major components of Zionist arsenal was created during Nixon era but in the Democratic Party. At this juncture Republicans were hawkish enough for Zionist and Zionist were influencing the Republican agenda with ease. The real challenge was to transform the Democratic Party into a hawkish Party. The game plan for Zionist was to have both parties in control so it would not matter which Party is running the Government. As a revealing example was the 2008 Senate election for Minnesota where both candidates Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent was running against carpet bagger Al Franken. This is in a state where only Fifty thousand Jews live in it. The Minnesotans were taken for a ride of their life watching a circus of election which brought them no respect.

After the defeat of McGovern, who was representing a milder and more humane face of Democratic Party in 1972, which was influenced by 60's so-called social justice movement- which is another ploy in Zionist game plan- the Zionist elements decided to redefine the Democratic Party to send the McGovern era into oblivion. The conduit to create a more hawkish Democratic Party was a pro-Israeli senator named Henry (Scoop) Jackson. Among the Zionist agents who surrounded the Scoop Jackson were Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Irving Kristol, Norman Podoretz, Frank Gaffney. This was the start of neo-conservatism that emerged in Clinton and Bush era with full force. This group of people later split up from Democratic Party claiming that Democrats are still not hawkish enough and infiltrated the Republican Party. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the lies leading to this invasion was all the work of Richard Perle, Prince of darkness, and rest of the neo-con gang of Republican Party. The ones that remained in the Democratic Party took control of the Party a few years later in Clinton era. The neo-cons showed that they have no party loyalty and they go where the power is.

Interesting note on these neo-cons is that most of them were Trotskyite Socialist.

The short-lived Ford Administration following the disgraceful exit of Nixon did not make any significant changes to the presence of Zionist in his Administration. Somewhat meaningful change came in Carter Administration where Carter excluded the neo-libs from his Administration but did employ ardent Zionists in his Administration. Carter gave enough reason for most neo-cons to move towards Republican Party.

Seventies was the decade that Christian Zionism was reaching new heights with the help of Israelis who lived in America and sounded and acted like Americans. Benjamin Netanyahu who practically grew up in the US was very active to make Christian Zionsim a mainstream political force in America. Leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and many others were instrumental with the help of Israel to have a strong say in political arena, The best example of this influence was re-election of Bush in 2004. America has become from a Christian country to a politically label of Judeo-Christian country. This was done by tremendous effort of Zionist inside and outside of the U.S.. With this accomplishment, it was quite manageable to bring the mass population into compliance. Engraining Judeo-Christian in religious psyche of Americans would have a lasting effect to manipulate American way of thinking.

It was in the Reagan era that Zionist found the opportune time to propagate through the American industries and at the same time continue with their machination in the foreign affairs. While they took credit for success of Reagan in the Cold War period, they were more active on the home front as America was busy paying attention to Iran-Contra affair, Mr.'s Reagan-Gorbachev Romance, and Russia in Afghanistan. Even though one of their neo-con cohort, Elliott Abrams, was caught in Iran-Contra affair, they did not slow down. As with Mr. Abrams, he was granted Presidential pardon by George H.W. Bush, and he continues with his evil acts to this day.

Along with penetration into the main stream American industries and high business growth in Israel which was financed by American Tax payers, the American Zionist were able to pass a law in 1985, Israel Free Trade Implementation Act, to open a wide trade door to Israeli companies to give them a preferential treatment even over their American counterpart. This was a huge success for Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and AIPAC which worked on this legislation for two years. Even though, FBI became involved in investigating the role of AIPAC in this legislation but as always nothing favorable came out of this for American people.

This gave small Israeli companies a tremendous exposure to Huge US market. With the help of the sellout Congress, these Israeli companies were allowed to even get into the government contracts. This of course was another step in destruction of manufacturing base in US and weakening the US in the consumer market and pushing them even more towards a more military industries and further away from what a true America stood for. But, Israelis knew too well that only an economy based on military expansion and low moral values can guarantee the security of Israel.

With the start of the Bush 41 presidency, everything looked favorable for Zionists. With collapse of Soviet Union, they had focused on shaping this President's term as a neo-con launch pad- they had even worked the phrase "New World Order" in the President's speech. It was high time for neo-con when the elder Bush went after Saddam to "free" Kuwait in 1991, but soon after that things got sour for the neo-cons when Bush Senior tried to put America's weight behind settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, many neo-con decided to give the Democratic Party a second chance. Interesting enough Bush Senior became a one term President. He would be the last President from pre baby boomer generation. It was time for neo-cons to focus on new breed of Presidents- the baby boomer generation.

In comes the slick willie, with neo-con honing in on a charming southerner, they signed on as advisers to Bill Clinton to help him out in his bid for the White House. Clinton was able to even bring on more neo-con and Zionist into his circle when he met Rahm Emanuel- the same king whisperer for Obama, who introduced Bill Clinton to all the influential Zionists in the East Coast and the West Coast. Bill Clinton's Presidency was the high time for the Zionist in American Political system. The entry gained by the Zionist would permanently open the doors to foreign forces with no regard to American interests. Bill Clinton's price for America was very cheap. He sold America to Israelis for only personal gains. From his sex scandals to all shady financial dealings the Zionists were right in the middle of it. When George Soros was architecting disintegration of Yugoslavia, Bill Clinton was very open to Balkan Massacre as long as he would benefit from it. His Administration was infested with corrupt Zionists. He became the only Administration in the US History who had the most Zionists in key positions- only to be topped by Obama's administration. He had basically turned over the responsibility of running America to Zionist and Israelis. It was in his Presidency that the Trio of Greenspan, Summers, and Rubin set the stage for the collapse of the Commodity and the Housing market in later years. Then again, Clinton simply did not care- it was more important for him to personally benefit from his presidency. His Secretary of Treasury Rubin alone made Clinton close to $500 million. Of Course, Mr. Rubin himself did very nice while he was destroying CitiBank and destroying American livelihood.

Zionist failure to place one of their own, Joe Lieberman, along with a clueless Gore in the White House meant they need to change strategy and gain grounds in incompetent George Bush's administration. Even though it was harder for the older socialist neo-cons who thrived under Democratic administration, they managed to infiltrate into Bush's administration through external thinkthanks and position themselves as advisors. Younger neo-cons were more open to change color and be part of the administration such as Wolfowitz and Perle and operate within Administration.

What neo-cons had in the cards for George Bush was anticipated years ago- around when Israel was created. In 1948, a Joint Chiefs paper titled "Force Requirements for Palestine" predicted that the "Zionist strategy will seek to involve the US in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives."

911 event was the catalyst to involve the US in an unending adventurism which would only benefit Israeli at the expense of American lives and liberty. The deconstruction phase of America by Zionist which had begun with Clinton administration was now in full swing. Election of Obama only solidified the position of Zionist in the Government- with Obama having the most members in his cabinet who hold Israeli Passport. These people consider the Constitution a piece of old paper which has no bearing on what America stands for. As Rahm Emanuel said once- Constitution is way overrated. What we are witnessing is the zenith of deconstruction of America. America may have a lot of problems, but it does not deserve this. For past sixty plus years America has been misled and hijacked and held hostage with this foreign entity wishing only the worst for America. The Deconstruction phase of this tragedy will be examined in detail to help us understand the current affair in America.

By William A. Cook* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Eliahu Epstein letter to President Harry S. Truman, May 14, 1948

As Israel attempts today to gloss over the reality of its birth 62 years ago with a sweeping public relations campaign extolling the miraculous "resurrection" of ancient Zion in contemporary times, a new nation seeking only peace with its neighbors, it might be enlightening and valuable to examine the truth.

On May 14, 1948 President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency for Palestine announcing the impending proclamation of the independent republic of Israel (Harry S. Truman Library, document filed August 22, 1949).[i] That date marks not only the beginning of the State of Israel but, sub missa voce, the assumption by the State of Israel of the calculated, systematic and determined ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of the land of Palestine that had been the business of "The Consultancy" and its agents before May 14, as identified by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his monumental The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.[ii]

The letter notes that the republic has been established within "frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947, and that a provisional government has been charged to assume the rights and duties of government for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel, for defending the state against external aggression, and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law." The letter was signed by Eliahu Epstein, Agent, Provisional Government of Israel.

The letter is notable not for what it announces, but for what it does not reveal. Truth requires revelation of all the facts, not concealment by omission of that which would prejudice an understanding. During the six months between the adoption of UN Resolution 181 and the date of this letter, and in subsequent months, the prospective state of Israel launched a massive military incursion into territory designated by that same Resolution for the Palestinian people, creating in its wake "three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees," the destruction of "hundreds of entire villages ... not only depopulated but obliterated ...and houses blown up or bulldozed" (Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, xv).[iii] Khalidi's massive study focuses on 418 villages, once the homes of Palestinians, 292 completely destroyed, 90 others "largely destroyed," the remainder re-inhabited by Jews called Israeli settlers.

In blunt terms, the Jewish Agency for Palestine lied to the American President that it had established a provisional government that "has been charged to assume the rights and duties ... for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel ... and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law."

The Agency's deception made no reference either to the President or the international community that it had created the "Catastrophe," or as the Palestinians termed it, the Nakba, the days of infamy that created what has become the largest Diaspora of refugees in the world and a time of remembrance for those killed in a series of massacres, estimated at 24 by Benny Morris, Israel's preeminent Historian of that period. Indeed, the Agency had acted against international law in invading Palestinian land as designated by the very Resolution that had given them the right to a state of Israel even as it lied without remorse to the international community that it would live in accordance with their laws.

This letter, coupled with an earlier one to the President, dated May 10, 1948, will serve as a microcosm of political deceit characteristic of the Zionist led forces that controlled the nascent state of Israel. This second letter from The Nation Associates, notified the President that

Tomorrow morning the Washington Post will carry, in the form of a full-age (sic) advertisement, the text of an open letter to you requesting the implementation of the November 29 resolution on Palestine...I have been requested to send you the enclosed text of this open letter by the signators ...It is our hope that in the week which remains before the end of the British Mandate, action will be taken by you to insure the recognition of the Jewish state as a means of maintaining the prestige of this country, the authority of the United Nations, and peace in the Middle East (Signed by Freda Kirchwey, President; document available at the Truman Library).[iv]

The Nation Associates supported the establishment of the State of Israel and used its publishing arm to further that goal. The "Open Letter" referred to above argued against the moves by "the British and our own State Department" to "sabotage" the partition resolution despite the President's determined effort to support Israel. Indeed, the Associates went so far as to publish "The British Record on Partition" published in The Nation, America's Leading Liberal Weekly, on May 8, 1948 detailing their selected reading of "British Military Intelligence Sources." This document was simultaneously submitted to the Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The Open letter published in the Washington Post amounted to a synopsis of this larger document including its primary argument that "there was no reason why the Jewish state could not be set up (if the Arabs resisted partition) and the Arab area turned over to the Trusteeship Council." Note that this argument is being made even as the Jewish Agency and its affiliates have driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and villages and massacred untold thousands in the area designated for the Palestinians recommended to be turned over to the Trusteeship Council.

The open letter cited an amendment to the resolution inserted by Truman's representative, Herschel Johnson, "the Security Council should determine as a threat to peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 29 of the Charter,any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution." Yet no mention is made here of the invasion by the Jewish forces of the towns and villages in the area designated for the Palestinians. Rather, the Associates allege that it is the British Mandate government that has supported the Arab League against Israel since 1945, "under the direction of Foreign Minister Bevin, {who} (has) resisted every American proposal for a decent settlement of the Palestinian question." "This was true," the letter continues, "in 1946 when he refused to accept the proposal of the Anglo-American Committee and your own, for the admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jews." What is left unsaid by the Associates is the British promise to the Arabs in the Balfour Declaration that they would maintain a strict ratio of Jews entering Palestine to the indigenous population, the second of the Balfour Declaration promises never referenced as the companion piece to the establishment of a home for the Jews in Palestine.[v]

So now we see the strategy of the Zionists as they manipulate the President: (a) advance publication of a major document detailing British subterfuge in eroding the possibility of establishing a Jewish state sent to the United Nations, thereby placing blame for the deterioration of conditions in Palestine on the British; (b) a subsequent letter to the President informing him that a public "open letter" will be published in the Washington Post detailing subversion of the Jewish people, placing him in the unenviable position of not aiding the "victims" of this subversion or carrying through with recognition of the Jewish state "as a means of maintaining the prestige of this country"; (c) and, finally, another letter, this from the Jewish Agency for Palestine, on the 14^th, seeking his recognition by "welcoming Israel into the community of nations" with no reference to the breaching of international law by the very Agency seeking his support.

Control and manipulation of the events coming out of Palestine has been and continues to be the modus operandi of the Zionist leaders of the state of Israel. The above letters to President Truman offer insight into this manipulation. Moreover, Truman was acting on behalf of the American people in recognizing the State of Israel on the 15^th of May 1948. What the American people knew was the suffering of the Jews under Hitler and the apparent logic of the United Nations partition plan to provide a state for the two peoples residing in Palestine. What they did not know was the Zionist entity that had different goals and the will to deceive the citizens of America to achieve them. But the American people were not alone in being deceived. More importantly is the deception kept from the British people about these "disappeared years," as Robert Fisk terms them. What's missing is the perspective of the Palestinians and the British Mandate government.

The United Kingdom had mandatory authority from the League of Nations to govern the area with the establishment of the Palestine Mandate in 1922, an action that imposed a western colonial and national mindset on an area familiar with tribal and imperial authority. Prior to the official implementation of the Mandate, the British Government had enunciated a "declaration" concerning the desirability of His Majesty's Government in the "establishment of a national home for the Jewish people," called the Balfour Declaration.

Discussions that resulted in the final text of the Balfour Declaration clarify the intention of its wording. The use of "national home" was used intentionally instead of "state." Additionally, the first draft of the declaration referred to the principle "that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people." In the final text, the word that was replaced with in to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only.[vi]

Between 1939 and 1947, the mandate Government found it more and more difficult to maintain its position as the responsible governing force servicing the Arab population and the growing Jewish population, determining by 1947 that these two populations could not coexist. As a result, the British Government placed the resolution of the problem in the hands of the United Nations. That in turn resulted in a partition plan of the land of Palestine, proposed in November of 1947 to the General Assembly, to be implemented in May of 1948, sixty two years ago this May.

British authority in Palestine continued under the United Nations until the implementation of the Partition Plan in May 1948. Consequently, the mandate government had to abide by the Charter of the UN and its Conventions. Ironically, as the Zionist forces, estimated by the Jewish Agency personnel in documents seized by the Mandate Police at 20 to 60 thousand (see top secret file of Sir Richard C. Catling, The Plight of the Palestinians), continued their massacres of Palestinians into 1948, the UN debated the adoption of a Convention defining "genocide" based on Nuremberg principles, a definition approved that same year.

In 1944 the term "genocide" appeared in Raphael Lemkin's Axis Rule in Occupied Europe created out of the conditions that allowed for the Nazi action against those suffering in their concentration camps. Therefore once the State of Israel was created by the Jewish leaders of the area by declaration May 14, 1948, and, subsequently, was recognized for membership in the UN in 1949, it was expected to abide by the UN Conventions. The United Nations does not appropriate to itself the authority to create states. The United Nations only authorizes itself to recognize states for membership, states that are formed or proclaimed by the people of said state.[vii]

What should be obvious now, after the carefully researched and scholarly work of Dr. Ilan Pappe in his Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and the equally well-researched work of Dr. Benny Morris in his Righteous Victims, both based on recently released evidence from the Israeli archives and those of the Israel Defense Forces Archives, complemented now with the materials preserved by Sir Richard C. Catling, to be made available in The Plight of the Palestinians from Palgrave Macmillan in June, is the truth about the creation of the state of Israel: acceptance of UN Resolution 181 by the Jewish Agency Provisional Government as the designated Jewish state was not done with intent to abide by the goal of the UN General Assembly, to provide a state for two peoples in the land of Palestine, but rather to use it as a means of subterfuge to gain eventual control of all the land and cleanse that land of its indigenous people to whatever extent possible. Put bluntly, what was true then is true today; the current government in Israel continues the practices of past Israeli governments, cleanse the land of its rightful inhabitants to make that land part of the Jewish state. This is what is termed, "slow motion genocide," not, one would hope, a civilized policy to be extolled either by the Israelis or the international community.

This essay is a modification of the opening chapter of William A. Cook latest book, "The Plight of the Palestinians: A Long History of Destruction", to be issued by Palgrave Macmillan in June.

* William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of The Rape Of Palestine: Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy and The Chronicles Of Nefaria. He can be reached at: wcook@laverne.edu.
www.drwilliamacook.com

NOTES:

[i] Eptstein, Eliahu. (1948). Agent, Provisional Government of Israel. Letter to President Harry S. Truman. May 14, 1948. Filed August 22, 1949. Truman Library. www.trumanlibrary.org/whistelstop/study_collections/Israel/large/documents/index. 12/15/2008.

[ii] Pappe, Ilan. (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld: Oxford.

[iii] Khalidi, Walid. (1992). All That Remains. Institute for Palestinian Studies: Washington, D.C. xv.

[iv] Kirchwey, Freda. (1948). President, The Nation Associates. Letter to President Harry S. Truman. May 10, 1948. Filed May 11, 1948. Truman Library.

[v] Prior, Michael. (1999) Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry. London: Rutledge.

[vi] Stein, Leonard. (1961). The Balfour Declaration. New York: Simon and Shuster, 470.

[vii] Harb, Jim. (2009). "The UN did not create Israel."

www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/04/what-theun-did-not-create-israel.html. 6-11-2009.

By Dr. Salman Abu Sitta* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

To maintain a façade of moral code, you do not kill a friend, you kill an enemy. You do not rob another man's house, you recover your long-forgotten property. These are the principles adopted in all wars and conflicts. That is why it was always the mission of the aggressor to depict the target of killing, i.e. the enemy, as an evil, bad person or people who deserve to be defeated, and if killed, that would be a natural end for their bad behavior. Similarly it was the mission of the occupier to claim that he is not robbing someone else but merely recovering back his property which he neglected to do for centuries.

Nobody perfected this art of deception, or double-speak, better than the Zionist agents. How else could you explain the success of a Hungarian man, like Herzl, sitting in a Vienna Café, and professing that a Jews' State will be established in 50 years in a faraway land he had never lived in? His success, almost solely in Europe at the time, was manifested by convincing colonial powers of the advantages of supporting his colonial project and convincing their people, the Europeans, that this conquest, killing, plunder and destitution of a people is a divine will, a miracle and a victory for western civilization.

Nobody had to create so many myths and falsehoods in their endeavors more than the Zionists. The reason is simple: they did not have credible facts to prove their case, so they had to invent dubious alternatives, relying on the readiness of the gullible people and the opportunistic politicians to believe them.

Take the slogan: "Palestine is a land without people". It was terra nullius, they say. Of course, Zionists knew that people lived there and built over 1000 towns and villages, most are 2000 years old, according to Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea (313 AD) who recorded them. Yet Zionists submitted a map to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, showing Palestine as 'a grazing land for nomads'. They presented this map to the colonial powers, particularly the British and the French. The irony of course is that the British had finished their voluminous survey of Palestine, 40 years earlier, in 10 volumes, listing 12,000 historical sites including towns and villages, and the French finished their survey through their scholar, Victor Guerin, in 1863, who produced 8 volumes of his journey to almost every Palestinian village. Yet they chose to believe the Zionists and hoodwinked their public to support this 'noble and moral' conquest, in churches, newspapers and public debates.

What then is the meaning of terra nullius? It does not mean (to them) an empty land. It means that those who live there do not matter, they are worthless. It is like clearing woods from dry bushes and insects.

These are the exact words of Herzl,

"If we move into a region where there are wild animals to which Jews are not accustomed – big snakes etc. – I shall use the natives, prior to giving them employment in the transit countries [read: expulsion], for the extermination of these animals."

Of course he did not say this in his published book, only in his then unpublished diary.

Balfour said as much:

"... in Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. Zionism [is] of profounder impact than the desires and prejudices [not the rights] of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land."

How was this colonial project in Palestine packaged in the diplomatic language? In Balfour Declaration, they called it a "home" for the Jews, national at that, not a state to the exclusion of the inhabitants of the country, in Palestine, not of Palestine. What about those inhabitants? Of course, there is a reference to them: "without prejudice to the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", all 92 percent of them. A civilized afterthought indeed.

If your home and family are threatened by an unwelcome flood of (Jewish European) immigrants and you rise to fight it, you are called a "bandit". Your house is destroyed, your supplies are burnt, your son and father are killed or imprisoned. That is what the British did in 1939.

Ten years later, when the Zionists depopulated 675 Palestinian towns and villages and committed over 70 massacres, during al Nakba ethnic cleansing, some people naturally tried to return home, at least to rescue an old father, to water the garden or to feed the animals left behind. No one believed the exile would last over a couple of weeks. These returnees were shot by Israelis on the spot. Complaints were made to the Mixed Armistice Committee that those killed were "infiltrators", by the very same people who "infiltrated" Palestine only a few years earlier.

Thus conventional wisdom would have it that those who waded into the shores of Palestine from a smuggler's ship in the darkness of night are not "infiltrators", they are the masters of the land, and the real house owners who were expelled from their homes and tried to return home are "the infiltrators".

Twenty thousand five hundred days later this ruse is still applied. At the time of writing, Israel issued Military Order No. 1650 (Second Amendment) in which seventy thousand Palestinians residing in the West Bank from other parts of Palestine are liable to be deported as "infiltrators". By the same analogy, an Italian from Napoli found living in Rome under the Nazi occupation in WWII would be liable to be deported to Albania as an "infiltrator". One must concede that the crime of ethnic cleansing, regularly described by the Israeli propaganda machine as "transfer of population", has now reached new heights of sophistication. It is now called "Prevention of Infiltration".

A story is often told about Ein Haud, a lovely small village south of Haifa, with beautiful stone houses. Its population was expelled but they managed to remain within Israel. They built shacks on the opposite hill, looking every day at their houses, now occupied by artists from Romania who turned it into an "artists colony". Their land and houses were confiscated under the Absentees Property Law of 1950. "Absentees" means the expelled refugees.

The logic is that the state of Israel takes over the property of those who are "absent", because they "abandoned" their property, probably to spend their lovely exile days at the Riviera, not a refugee camp. Hence it is the duty of a "democratic" state to take care of their property (to use, rent, utilize) for the benefit of Jews only. This logic does not allow for the fact that they are absent because they were expelled. If they returned, they will be shot as "infiltrators".

The irony has no end. If somehow the village inhabitants remained in the area conquered by Israel, they have to be counted and given IDs. Therefore they are "present". But their property must be confiscated because they are "absent". Hence they acquired the oxymoron appellation of "present-absentees".

Wonders never cease. One of those "present-absentees" from Ein Haud could not bear it. So one day he walked across to the opposite hill and knocked on the door of his house. A Romanian artist answered. The owner asked who he was:

- I am Ephraim

- Where are you from Ephraim?

- From here of course, Ein Haud. Why do you ask? Who are you any way?

- I am Abu Ahmed, from Romania.

The massive ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which took place in 1948/49, the year of al Nakba (Catastrophe), unprecedented in modern history, has to have an appropriate name in the Zionist lexicon which hides its ugliness. They called it "War of Independence", which is precisely what the Palestinians were engaged in since Balfour's Declaration of 1917, that is, since the betrayal of the Allies and the collusion with the Zionists to deprive them of their homeland. This Zionist term was adopted, by Jewish immigrants who infiltrated Palestine, to describe the ethnic cleansing of the original inhabitants of Palestine. It was widely accepted by the West. Mercifully, cracks now started to appear in this edifice of deception. Now it is against the law in Israel to mention al Nakba. The monopoly remains exclusively for the deception.

The Green Line is often used to describe the line dividing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in the West Bank and Gaza. What is this line? Why it is green? Its proper name is the "Armistice Line of 1949". It is the line at which Israeli invading forces stopped in 1949, whereby 78% of Palestine was conquered. That was a big jump from 5.5% Jewish-owned land during the Mandate and in excess of 24% over the suggested allocation of the Partition Plan. Israel signed 4 Armistice Agreements with Arab countries. Article 2 of these agreements states clearly that this line does not confer or deny rights to either party and has no legal meaning. No military forces are allowed to cross it, hence the armistice. It is simply a line separating Palestine that was occupied in 1948 from that occupied in 1967. Israel did cross it in 1967 in violation of international law. To obscure the legal meaning of the line and its crossing, it was dubbed by Israel as the Green Line, the colour of the pencil used by Israel on its maps. This simple device of renaming the line enables Israel to imply in its media machine that it has not violated any law and has not conquered any land. Thus, Netanyahu can announce boldly in CNN interviews that Jews should be able to live anywhere (in Palestine) without fear of contradiction. Now Israel removed this line altogether from its maps.

How could you steal a whole cake and eat it? You first steal half a cake. With no deterrent, you steal the other half. You eat the whole cake under the 'principle' that the two halves must be "unified" (in your stomach).

Israel occupied West Jerusalem in 1948 and East Jerusalem in 1967. Israel claimed that the city must remain "unified" under its control. The "unification" tag is meant to disguise the fact that both acts are not only illegal in view of international law, but, surprisingly, they are contrary to Israeli founding laws.

Israel's Declaration of 'Independence' states that its international legitimacy, feeble as it was, rests on the Partition Plan recommendation. But this Plan never puts Jerusalem under Israel. Israel occupied West Jerusalem, Lydda, Ramle, Galilee and parts of the south in violation of the Partition Plan. Israel's admission to the UN membership was conditional upon its compliance with the Partition Plan and the return of the refugees' resolution. It never complied. Needless to say that the occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a clear violation of "the inadmissibility of military conquest". Yet the "unification of Jerusalem" is touted by Israel and AIPAC as the justification to build anywhere (for Jews only) "in Israel's eternal capital, which is not a settlement".

Similarly, occupation of the West Bank is labeled as "liberation of Judea and Samaria". The Apartheid Wall, condemned by the International Court of Justice, is named the "security fence". The redeployment of occupation forces is described as "withdrawal".

Nothing can be more misleading than the withdrawal from Gaza Strip. Israel controls its land, above it, below it and around it. Gaza starvation has been described by Israeli officials as "putting the population on diet", a new device for slow death designed not to make world headlines.

The real name of this tragedy is "war crimes" and "genocide" according to articles 6 and 8 of the Rome Statute of 1998 creating the International Criminal Court. These two articles describe exactly the situation in Gaza.

The Gaza Palestinians are promised water, food and medicine and (partial?) removal of the blockade if they comply with the Quartet conditions: recognizing the Israeli occupiers and ceasing the resistance to them. Blair did not spare a media microphone without bleating into it that $ 4.5 billion are waiting to rebuild demolished Gaza if only Palestinians accept the Quartet conditions.

Blair is a patent liar. The media believed him or acted so. No official, no journalist, no learned 'expert' tells him he is lying. Only one man. Alvaro de Soto, the UN Mediator, in his End of Mission report, in May 2007, says in para 79, that the Quartet never imposed any conditions. These are US and European Union conditions based on their own policies, using UN and Russia as a shield for their demands.

A familiar name on TV screens is Sderot, the Israeli settlement, the victim of kitchen pipe projectiles which broke a window and killed one person in 8 years. Sderot mayor expresses his perennial fear of the unbelievably crowded Gaza Strip, the hotbed of terrorism, and is visited by dignitaries from European capitals and US Congress.

None of these dignitaries know, or wish to declare, that Sderot is a settlement built on the land of Najd village, whose expelled population lives mere two kilometers away in a refugee camp. They are throwing their home-made projectiles on their own land, at its occupiers, in a symbolic gesture to assert their right for their homes in the occupied land.

Those dignitaries lament the crowded conditions in Gaza, the misery, the poverty and the hopelessness. They shake their heads in sorrow. The brave ones visit Gaza in a whirlwind tour of two hours, with no contact with the real people, huddled by UN relief officials, to protect them from being devoured by the hungry people.

Did any one of those distinguished visitors ask why is Gaza Strip crowded and miserable? It is crowded because it is where the population of 247 Palestinian villages, the victims of ethnic cleansing in 1948, were crowded in an open air prison with an area of 1% of Palestine. They are crowded at a density of 6,000 persons per square kilometer whereas Sderot mayor and co. roam their land at a density of 6 persons per square kilometer.

Let them go back to their land and you will have no crowd, no poverty and no "terrorism". If you do not like that, give them what the Israelis have: F16 and Merkava tanks. "Terrorism" will stop and a nice lovely war will begin.

Israel gives itself the license to destroy any village and kill its people under the rubric "pre-emptive operation", sometimes called "retaliation". Under this principle, you are allowed to think that your neighbour has nasty looks and he may one day decide to kill you. So you decide to take action at once by catching him unaware and kill him. You do not need to see advancing tanks. You do not need any proof. Your mental mindset is enough, especially if you are a racist. That was the explanation given by Israel for the killings in Bureij camp, Qibya, Samou' and a dozen other places. This policy entered the language of international diplomacy as a respectable word. You see it now splashed on the newspapers' headlines, although it is in stark violation of the word and spirit of the UN Charter.

From the above examples, it is clear that the media manipulation and the loaded terminology are the undeclared army of the Zionists. This kind of army cannot be pinned down by Goldstone, Dugard or Falk. But it commits crimes just the same.

The Hasbara, fabricating Israel's lilly-white image, is a refined art. Its tools have been exposed recently in the Israel's Project's Secret Hasbara Handbook at the link:

No need to elaborate. But for those who are keen to know the facts, and they are luckily increasing in number, for those good people around the world who are guided by their moral compass and for the Palestinians of course, carriers of the burden of untold truths, for all those, the Israeli Hasbara is best described by a similar sounding Arabic word, Za'bara, which means: meaningless, convoluted loud words.

The world will be a better place, and justice will have a chance to prevail, when Hasbara is recognized as it really is: merely Za'bara. When truth shines, it expels the clouds of myths.

* Dr. Salman Abu Sitta (born 1938 in Bir-al-Saba' in Southern Palestine) is considered one of the greatest Palestinian researcher and writers on the issue of the Palestinian refugees and the Right of Return. His published works include:

* The Return Journey (2007) Palestine Land Society ISBN 0954903412
* Atlas of Palestine, 1948 Palestine Land Society (January 2004) ISBN 0954903404
* The Palestinian Nakba 1948: The register of depopulated localities in Palestine (Occasional Return Centre studies) (1998 reprinted 2000) Palestinian Return Centre ISBN 1901924106

Dr. Abu-Sitta wrote this article for the Palestine Think Tank