(An end of the year lament)

"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y'all, not a black militant (Ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck). Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised..."
(Jeremiah Wright, September 16, 2001)

Prophets fare poorly in their own country, yet countries would do well to hearken to their prophets. Scorn, ridicule, and innuendo attend their pronouncements as the righteous defend their actions as logical, existential and necessary. Jeremiah Wright suffered such scorn and mockery because he understood the consequences of revenge on the innocent and the defenceless, justified by whatever inane discourse. Wright spoke truth to power that Sunday after 9/11 and the righteous cried to heaven condemning him to perdition for defaming America, for even suggesting that revenge for the sake of revenge is the motivation of the arch fiend against the Almighty, the foulest, most ignorant, most amoral rational for action.

Prophets anticipate truth; they review a nation's past history and can predict its future. Witness America's past as the Reverend Wright did that Sunday morning, and what America is doing now repeats its ugliness. Wright said this about America's past:

He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost."

"We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

"We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

"We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

"We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

"We bombed Qaddafi's home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children's head against the rock. (See Psalm 137 to understand how the righteous take revenge against the innocent and defenceless.)

"We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they'd never get back home.

"We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

"Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.

That was the Sunday after 9/11, 2001 when Wright quoted Ambassador Peck. But even that list of America's atrocities is not complete as Mark Twain would attest in his recounting of the massacre of the Moro's at the turn of the last century 1900 and our disastrous foray into Vietnam when we lost 58,000 American soldiers and killed millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians.

This is the America that exists now: we preach righteousness, but lie with impunity; declare God's mission to bring freedom to the mid-east, then decimate the women and children, the old and infirm as necessary collateral damage; proclaim the existence of Weapons of Mass destruction, then massively destroy a nation's infrastructure, steal its natural resources, take control of its government replacing it with a favoured puppet; and then write the history to extol our righteousness while defaming the defenceless people decimated. Wright knew.

Perhaps our President might hearken back to a time when principles mattered, when truth mattered, when might did not make right, when the souls and hearts of people mattered, when justice and equality mattered not deceit and dominance over all. When did America become a dictatorial empire manipulated by an elite few using the Presidency like some houseboy to do their bidding? When did the founding documents get trashed, mocked and ridiculed as weak, worthless, and obsolete? When did the American people vote to become the dominant empire in the world? What interests of the people demand that this nation establish military bases in about 140 nations around the world then threaten the nations of the world with pre emptive slaughter should they dare to embark on economic or military equality with the United States? How do the actions implicit in these questions reflect a nation based on the rule of law, on justice for all its citizens, on equity of rights and recognition of rights, on the morals inherent in the Bill of Rights and the ideals enunciated in the Declaration of Independence?

Let's say it loud and clear, the America of our founding fathers no longer exists; America is owned in mind and pocket book by those who have purchased our representatives, propagate their news through the corporate controlled media, determine the receivers of our tax dollars salvaging those who wrought havoc with our economy, write the legislation that controls the American people orchestrated through the largest conglomerate of a police state ever assembled, Homeland Security, and in its final nail in the coffin of human rights has legislated the abolishment of habeas corpus and rule of law by installing the draconian National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA 2012). This act in the words of Jonathan Turley, expert in constitutional law (December 21, 2011 on C-Span, gives dictatorial power to the President:

President Obama has just stated a policy that he can have any American citizen killed without any charge, without any review, except his own. If he's satisfied that you are a terrorist, he says that he can kill you anywhere in the world including in the United States.

Two of his aides just ... reaffirmed they believe that American citizens can be killed on the order of the President anywhere including the United States.

You've now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion

I don't think the Framers ever anticipated that [the American people would be so apathetic]. They assumed that people would hold their liberties close, and that they wouldn't relax...

This is the President that rejected the Reverend Wright's prophecy, that capitulated to his new masters who demanded that he repudiate him, that now elevates himself to the role of Judge, Jury and executioner, the role that used to be played by the Sheriffs of the old segregated south when they turned a blind eye to those dragging a slave to the hanging tree. Indeed, we have turned back in time to that denunciated by a real leader of men, a man born into slavery, Frederick Douglass, when he described the America he lived in just before the Civil War:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

The American people are now in Douglass' shoes; they have been put on notice that any pathological employee of Homeland Security, of the armed forces of the United State, of our local police and National Guard, can suspect a citizen of associating or being engaged somehow with "terrorists," can be arrested, interrogated, imprisoned indefinitely, without charge, without review except his own. The America Douglass so graphically describes existed up through the 100 years of segregation until the Civil Rights movement of 1954 got under way. We've had a modicum of equality for the past 50 years brought on by national movements that made clear to the government that they were elected to serve the people, not arrest them.

But let it also be said that the America Douglass describes, the one grounded in "bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy," still exists outclassing its past a hundred fold. Our savagery knows no bounds: we decimate people wantonly throughout the world as Dresden, the fire-bombing of Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Vietnam, the sanctions against Iraq, the illegal invasion of Iraq, the unqualified military support we provide to the Zionist government in Israel against a defenceless people, the abominable use of drones against the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the continuing development of weapons of mass savagery and our willingness to develop further atomic weapons graphically illustrates.

The numbers slaughtered in this review is in the millions--not all dressed in combat fatigues. The numbers of the defenceless and the innocent outstrips those trained to kill. All of those slaughtered happened outside the United States and every son and daughter, mother and father, sister and brother, aunt and uncle, grandfather and grandmother felt the pain of loss that was to our forces a "body count." "Revenge is mine sayeth the Lord." "Violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred, terrorism begets terrorism," so rings the prophetic knell of the Reverend Wright to his congregation one of whom happened to be our current President Barack Obama. Would that he had listened, for if any man was ever elected to the office of President to change the world, this was the man and he has failed.

* 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.

Did you know that Israel allows Gaza residents to enter the West Bank to attend their relatives' weddings but not to get betrothed themselves? You don't believe it? Ehab is the proof.

Ehab, who did not want to be identified by his full name, is a man of 26. Ah, you will say, he is dangerous - young and single. A person like that, who knows what will go through his head if he is allowed to pass through Israel?

Palestinian students wear traditional clothing during a cultural event at the Bethlehem University, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Thursday, March 22, 2007. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Secondly, now that he wants to enter the West Bank to ask the parents of the woman he loves for her hand in marriage, as tradition requires, he will not even set foot in sovereign Israeli territory.

Ehab is not only studying; he is also working as a teaching assistant at his university, and planned his trip so his betrothal would take place during the semester break. And if you say it is his own fault, for choosing to marry someone who lives in the West Bank (which could endanger the demographic balance there, heaven help us ), we have no answer to that, no "thirdly" or "fourthly."

Like every Gazan, Ehab knows he needs an Israeli permit to enter the West Bank from Jordan. And so well in advance, even before he landed in Amman on December 10 of this year, he contacted Gisha so the legal advocacy group for freedom of movement could submit the application on his behalf. Here are the steps that followed suit:

1. On November 22, Gisha applied in writing to the army's Coordination and Liaison Office for Gaza and requested a permit for Ehab. For this is one of the bureaucratic rules of the closure and the separation between Gaza and the West Bank: Everyone who has a Gaza address in his identity card and needs any kind of Israeli permit must apply to the liaison office, even if he resides in Ramallah - or New York. Days passed and no answer came.

2. On December 6 Gisha wrote to the Justice Ministry's department of petitions to the High Court of Justice, a procedure called a "pre-petition" that sometimes gets the authorities to move more quickly. The pre-petition did indeed get something moving.

3. On the very same day the answer came back: Ehab must direct his request to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee in the Gaza Strip, and only after the committee forwards the request to the Israeli side will the Israel authorities consider it. (The civil affairs committee serves as the postman between Palestinians and the Israeli liaison office, which makes the decisions. ) Logical? Not very.

4. The Coordination and Liaison Office knows that the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee does not accept requests to enter the West Bank from Gazans who are not physically in Gaza. Why not? Because according to the Palestinian committee, the army's liaison office usually declines to even process them.

5. Nevertheless, on December 8, Ehab's mother filed a request with the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee in Gaza (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry in the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah ), asking for permission for him to enter the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge in order to become engaged to marry. The civil affairs committee acceded to the pleas of Gisha and sent the request to the military liaison office. Days went by and no answer came.

6. On December 14 Gisha petitioned the High Court of Justice with a request to allow Ehab to enter the West Bank for a defined period, to ask for the hand of the woman he wants to marry, who is slated to join him in the United States.

7. On the same day Gisha received a reply from the liaison office's center for public applications. It was dated December 13. The name of the person who wrote it was not noted, but that person's superior officers are Col. Khatib Mansour, the head of the Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza, and Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, coordinator of government activities in the territories.

The reply states: "Firstly, we will note that in accordance with the working procedures agreed upon with the Palestinian Authority, all applications concerning entry of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory must be addressed to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, which constitutes the body responsible for coordination, prioritization and transfer to the Israeli side of applications from Palestinian inhabitants of the Judea and Samaria District and the Gaza Strip. Moreover, it should be noted that at the present time, in light of the current political and security situation, entry of Gaza Strip residents into Israel is not allowed apart from exceptional humanitarian cases with emphasis on urgent medical cases.

"For details of all the criteria ... you are invited to enter the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories site on the Internet... Specifically, let it be made clear immediately that after looking into your client's matter is has been decided to refuse his request [emphasis added]."

8. A look at the criteria finds that the terminally ill are not the only privileged few allowed entry; so are those who seek "entry for purposes of attending the wedding or the funeral of a first-degree relative."

You will say, and rightly, that betrothal is not among the criteria, nor is a person's own wedding. Tomorrow the High Court of Justice will hold a hearing on the petition filed by Gisha on Ehab's behalf.

The ban preventing Palestinians officially registered in Gaza from using the Allenby Bridge crossing into the West Bank came well before Hamas' rise to power in 2006 and 2007. Back in 1991, Israeli authorities introduced a sweeping closure policy for the first time, requiring all Palestinians to obtain a permit if they wanted to travel between the West Bank and Gaza.

The more stingy the Israeli authorities were in granting travel permits, the more that Gazans, particularly university students but also others, sought out creative solutions. They traveled through Egypt, flew to Jordan and entered the West Bank from there.

After all, under the Oslo Accords, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank constitute a single territorial unit. Israel saw the "leak" at the Allenby Bridge and got scared. In 1997, as part of the gradual, quiet steps designed to cut Gaza off from the West Bank, Israel decided that Gazans taking the Allenby Bridge route would also require a permit, the kind of permit that is almost never granted.

The logical steps in the process of cutting off Gaza were to follow. A Gazan without Israeli permission to stay in the West Bank was eventually classified as "an illegal sojourner." And now, that illegal sojourner is classified as an infiltrator, to be deported any minute.

* Amira Hass is a prominent Israeli journalist and author, mostly known for her columns in the daily newspaper Ha'aretz. She is particularly recognized for her reporting on Palestinian affairs in the West Bank and Gaza, where she has also lived for a number of years.
The daughter of two Holocaust survivors, and was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. On Oct. 20, the International Women's Media Network reward Hass the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award. Hass was the recipient of the Press Freedom Hero award from the International Press Institute in 2000, the Bruno Kreisky Human Rights Award in 2002, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2003, the inaugural award from the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund in 2004 and Hrant Dink Memorial Award in 2009.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine recently found the state of Israel to be guilty of apartheid (EPA)

I firmly believe that the Russell Tribunal has credibility as a venue for truth-telling despite being established and funded by ordinary citizens concerned about the denial of Palestinian rights and Israeli defiance of international law. RToP makes no pretense of being "a court" with enforcement powers, but it does deny allegations of "cooking the books" because it knows in advance that there will be a finding of guilt. Indeed it is this knowledge in advance, based on abundant and non-contested evidence, that explains the motivations for mounting the extraordinary effort to raise the funds and handle the logistics required to organise a proceeding of this type. Such a tribunal makes no real effort made to discover the truth, although representatives of those accused were formally invited to present their defence, but rather its calling is to document the truth. Israel has made no secret of the policies, laws and practices that were presented in Cape Town, although it describes them differently, hides and obscures their application, and draws a different set of conclusions.

Russell's historic initiative

It was the celebrated British philosopher, Bertrand Russell who suggests in his autobiography that he felt that the world needed to know about the Vietnam War in a manner free from self-serving slant and Cold War propaganda, and so he invited leading moral authority figures in the world to take part in an unrestricted inquiry into the alleged criminality associated with the American role in Vietnam.

In Russell's opening statement at the International War Crimes Tribunal convened in 1966 to investigate the atrocities by the US in Vietnam, he declared that the initiative had no clear precedent but that such openness was helpful as it allowed the tribunal "to conduct a solemn and historic investigation, uncompelled by reasons of State or other such obligations". He ended his remarks by making clear the distinctive objective of the undertaking: "May this Tribunal prevent the crime of silence".

In effect, the narration of the criminality is undertaken not primarily to speak truth to power, which is generally deaf to voices from below, but to speak truth to people, awakening public opinion from its apathy to the responsibilities of being human (concern for the victimised other) and duties as citizens of free society to ensure that a government acting in its name upholds the law. Russell expressed this orientation as embodying very grand, some would say grandiose, expectations: "our task is to make mankind bear witness to these crimes and to unite humanity on the side of justice in Vietnam".

Actually, the outcome of the Russell Tribunal was virtually unreported at the time (except derisively), and later its work was known only to small coteries of anti-war activists and intellectuals, and even they were often confused at the time about whether such a one-sided unauthorised event was helpful to the general cause of peace and justice in the world. With the passage of time, the Russell experience has gained in influence and reputation, but it remains a large exaggeration to claim, as Marvyn Bennum does in an otherwise excellent article, "Understanding the rational, logic and procedures of the Russell Tribunal", [Cape Argus, October 31, 2011] that the Russell tribunals had "a profound impact on world opinion", although this historic initiative did set the standard in most respects for subsequent enactments of such an approach, including the RToP.

Unfortunately, although Russell's words are often invoked as the core justifying claim, the reality after some 45 years is that such undertakings, and there have been many since this first one, are rendered almost mute by a media that thinks and feels like a state, which is especially so when the allegations are directed at the lead constitutional democracy that sits firmly at the pinnacle of geopolitical power and influence. The wall of silence does not crumble easily if sustained by the combined corporate and military muscle at the disposal of Washington.

As Russell said in 1967 at the second session of the Vietnam Tribunal, "[w]e are not judges. We are witnesses". This witnessing is meant to be politically effective than mere pronouncements of injustice and criminality, and it has gradually in recent years become more so. As the state system has moved to criminalise certain forms of conduct, and even to establish an International Criminal Court, it seems more plausible to demand that the law should be applied to the strong as well as the weak, and less of a usurpation of governmental functions for persons acting on their own to do what institutions of the state are failing to do, that is, assess charges of guilt.

It may seem to be the case that the Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal gave the game away at the outset by putting the words "investigate the atrocities by the United States in Vietnam". Such provocative language makes us think about the nature of the game, and how it should be played. To deal with the impunity of the powerful in abusing the weak, the supposed uncertainty of outcome in a governmental trial (where some version of the myth of "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is in force) is not present in this kind of setting. The very premise of the Russell Tribunal, and the many subsequent replicas, is that there is such certainty present as to generate moral outrage sufficient to give rise to the inquiry.

Frank Barat, the main organiser of RToP put the issue slightly differently, by observing "[o]ur intention has never been to find out if Israel were guilty or not, nor to start a debate about it. This work has already been done by UN bodies, human rights organisations, aid organisations and countless violated UN Security Council resolutions". And further, "[i]t is our duty to stand with the oppressed in its quest for justice".

In this respect, those civil society tribunals that try to imitate to the extent a judicial model of inquiry and decision risk generating confusion. They make it more reasonable for critics to point out that if the tribunal purports to be trying to ascertain guilt rather than denounce it on the basis of a preexisting legal consensus, then a pretense of "judicial process" does make itself subject to criticism as a hypocritical fraud. To some extent, the recently concluded Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, while impressive in many respects, fell into this trap by emphasising the legal credentials of its "judges" who were almost all exclusively jurists who were only locally known and by putting forward a kind of token defence on behalf of Bush and Blair who were charged with crimes in connection with the Iraq War. The Russell Vietnam Tribunal, in contrast, had clearly signalled its rejection of this vocational law model by using such a loaded word as "atrocities" in naming itself, by not seeking to appoint individuals with a law background to serve on its panel of judges, and by not mounting any defence on behalf of those accused (although a ritualised invitation was issued to the American president, Lyndon B Johnson, to do so).

Obviously, this issue raises a question for the future. Is it better to mimic the state-centric model of judicial process in a criminal case to the extent possible or is it preferable to produce a morality pageant in which a true story is told with as much passion, reasoning, and proof as possible? Of course, international law can be invoked in the pageant model as explained by Barat when he writes that the RToP "by using international law as its basis, proposes a no-nonsense way forward. The law is on the side of the Palestinians, so let's make good use of it. The Tribunal intends to assist the people working on a just peace for all with the legal means they have crucially been lacking for too long". [Frank Barat, "What is the point of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine?"] The pro-Palestinian claim here seems to correspond with a fair reading of relevant international law on all crucial dividing issues: settlements, Jerusalem, refugees, occupation, land, water, and the utmost issue, self-determination. So stacked it reinforces the moral condemnation.

Goldstone's charm

Realising that the objective is to overcome "silence", the RToP was greatly helped by the publication of a slanderous attack on the prospective undertaking in the pages of the New York Times by the notable South African public figure Richard Goldstone. [Goldstone, "Israel and the Apartheid Slander", NY Times, October 31, 2011] Never before in the more than four decades of such proceedings had an influential media venue in the West stooped to take notice of such happenings prior to their occurrence. Not only did Goldstone call global attention to RToP, but he created a platform for response that was used by John Dugard, another South African of global stature with special expert credentials as to conditions in Palestine as well as to the experience of apartheid in South Africa. The Goldstone attack suggests that it sometimes better to have enemies than friends!

In the article almost ludicrously Goldstone wrote, "In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute. 'Inhumane acts... committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and discrimination'..." Really! The list of discriminatory laws, the dual administration of settlements and Palestinians, the checkpoint treatment of Palestinians, the settler only roads, the non-protection of Palestinians living under occupation, the midnight abusive arrests of children certainly suggest a pattern of inhuman acts even to an uninformed mind!

Without naming the participants, among whom were a death camp survivor, Stephane Hessel, a former member of Mandela's cabinet - Ronnie Kasrils, a world renowned author - Alice Walker, a distinguished English barrister - Michael Mansfield, QC, and a former American congresswoman - Cynthia McKinney, Goldstone calls them "critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known". The question, of course, is not whether these outstanding personalities have strong opinions on the matter at issue, but whether they have credibility based on their reputation for bearing witness truthfully and effectively. [For insightful interviews by Hanan Chehata with these leading RToP participants see the Middle East Monitor website].

RToP in South Africa

The RToP chose South Africa as the site for this session on apartheid quite obviously to claim continuity with the universally condemned racist regime that governed the country until 1994. This continuity was reinforced by having Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, renowned opponent of apartheid in South Africa and someone who early drew the analogy to Israeli treatment of Palestinians, deliver an opening address at the session in Cape Town.

This lineage was further reinforced by the presence of Ronnie Kastrils, a Jewish member of the RToP panel, as well as receiving testimony from the world respected South African jurist, John Dugard, who was prominent both for his opposition at home to apartheid and because in his role as UN HRC Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine he called the occupation as an instance of the international crime of apartheid.

But there was also some cost paid for emphasising this link to South Africa, which was the only real basis for Goldstone's rant directed at RToP. Goldstone called the comparison "an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations". In effect, it allows the misleading argument to be made that since there are significant dissimilarities between Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and the South African racist regime the allegation would seem to rest on the credibility of the comparison.

As should be understood by people of good will by now, the apartheid experience in South Africa gave rise to the formulation of an international crime of apartheid as specified in the 1973 International Convention and included in the 2002 Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, but it does not delimit future occurrences of the crime of apartheid. In this latter legal instrument, apartheid is set forth as one of eleven types of "crimes against humanity" in Article 7(1)(j) of the treaty.

The crime of apartheid

The most controversial, and at the same time far reaching feature, of the RToP finding was to conclude that Israeli responsibility for establishing an apartheid regime applied not only to Palestinians living under occupation, but also to the Palestinians minority living with discriminatory regulations in Israel and to the Palestinian diaspora consisting of 4-5 million refugees and exiles.

Seen in isolation, it seems like an unconvincing extension of the meaning of apartheid, even if separated from its South African connection, to consider Palestinian citizens of Israel, even if victims of severe and humbling discrimination, as living under an apartheid regime or even more so to view diaspora Palestinians in this manner. But there is moral and psycho-political weight to the unanimous view of the RToP jurors that the core right of self-determination applies to the Palestinian people as a whole, including not living under direct Israeli military control.

The RToP divides its rationale for finding guilty of committing the crime of apartheid into three main parts: (1) race as defining identity in Israel/Palestine relations (tribunal agrees that race in the international definition of the crime should be interpreted broadly to include ethnic and national character); (2) inhuman acts (specified in relation to Israeli treatment of Palestinians, as integral to the crime, particularly "colonisation and appropriation of Palestinian land" and coercive fragmentation of the Palestinian community in "different physical spaces"; (3) a systematic and institutionalised regime as pervading the subjugation of the Palestinian people (preferential treatment of Jews, dual legal arrangements, restrictions on residence and mobility, deportations and house demolitions are elements in what the tribunal calls "Israel's institutionalised regime of domination". [See Victor Kattan's excellent detailed analysis of the RToP finding of apartheid in his "The Russell Tribunal on Palestine and the Question of Apartheid", al-shabaka brief, November 23, 2011].

Assessing RToP

The importance of the RToP session is to strengthen the civil society case against the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people. As such, it adds a certain quality of gravitas to such international initiatives as the Freedom Flotilla and the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign. Thanks to Goldstone, and to the organisational skills of the tribunal, there has also been a certain media visibility for RToP that has been absent in most comparable undertakings, including the recent Kuala Lumpur proceedings against George W. Bush and Tony Blair. In this sense, the crime of silence that disturbed Bertrand Russell during the Vietnam War is still being committed, but it has been to a degree mitigated by the legacy he continues to inspire.

Indirectly, also, the very existence of RToP should encourage states to be more active in exerting their own authority to implement individual accountability under international criminal law via reliance on universal jurisdiction. At present, the impulse to reassert such national agency to supplement weak international enforcement mechanisms has been set back by a geopolitical backlash led by the US in the aftermath of the Spanish indictment and British detention of Augusto Pinochet a little more than a decade ago. This struggle between the vitalisation of international criminal law and geopolitical actors demanding impunity will help determine whether global governance is primarily a regime of power or a regime of just law.

Finally, we notice that the jurisprudence of conscience, that is, applications of law without punitive capacity in relation to alleged violators, is maturing in two parallel directions. The first illustrated by the Russell legacy, including at this recently concluded inquiry into Israeli apartheid, rests its methodology on law established by testimony of legal experts and findings of individuals whose credibility depends primarily on their moral authority and cultural stature, a jury of conscience. The second illustrated to a degree by the Kuala Lumpur proceedings, seeking to replicate the behaviour of courts under the informal auspices of civil society, and seeks to base its credibility on a pervasive legal framework, including the makeup of the panel making findings and recommendations and extending to providing a defence on behalf of the government and individuals charged with criminal behavior. Hopefully, the fourth and final session of RToP, to be held in 2012 in the US, will in addition to providing an overview of the allegations against Israel, will also offer guidance to those who see a continuing need for a jurisprudence of conscience as a critical arena of struggle in the ongoing quest for humane global governance.

* Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume, International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).

He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

Throughout its history, Israel's been a serial human rights abuser. Count the ways.

State-sponsored terror is official policy. So is collective punishment, apartheid, colonialism, premeditated war, torture, and filling prison cells illegally with Palestinians wanting to live free on their own land in their own country.

Instead they've suffered brutal indignities and persecution under 44 years of occupation. They've endured racism, land theft, dispossessions, road blocks, checkpoints, Separation Walls, mass arrests, prison hell, economic strangulation, terrorized neighborhood incursions, and isolation in cantonized communities and Gaza under siege.

Israel is a modern day Sparta, a regional killing machine. It can mobilize over 600,000 combatants in 72 hours, equipped with nuclear and other state-of-the-art weapons. With strong Western backing to do what it pleases, it takes full advantage.

Moreover, its youths are indoctrinated to be warriors. Underage boys and girls are prepared for future mandatory military service even though Israel has no enemies except ones it manufactures to justify conflict and violence.

Impressionable young minds are taught to believe force and belligerence are preferred ways to solve political problems. Education highlights it, including by uniformed soldiers in classrooms.

Moreover, teachers, especially principals, are retired career officers, and school walls are adorned with names and photos of fallen heros among their graduates. In addition, field trips for all ages visit military memorials on former battlegrounds.

Curricula and textbooks also reflect militarism. From kindergarten through high school, programs in all state-run ones mandate "preparation for the IDF."

They feature training, glorifying military heros and conquests. At the same time, children are proselytized to vilify Arabs and hate them.

They learn early and it sticks. They're disciplined for later conscription, combat, and a lifetime of military support. In fact, by raising children in a hostile, violent environment, they're conditioned to wage war against any designed state enemy, whether or not true.

Palestinians have paid dearly under occupation hell, especially besieged Gazans. They've endured years of slow-motion genocide from depravation, neglect, and regular air and ground attacks.

Israeli Arabs are treated more like fifth column threats than citizens. Even Jews are abused. Military and business priorities come ahead of people needs.

As a result, poverty, homelessness and hunger are growing problems. Israel, in fact, is one of the most unequal Western societies in terms of income, standard of living, and eroding social benefits.

Moreover, democratic freedoms are threatened. Israel's Knesset under Netanyahu is its worst ever. Weak-kneed opposition members go along to get along.

Recent actions include forcibly transferring around 30,000 West Bank Bedouin Israelis. Beginning in January, 2,300 will lose their homes and be expelled to a site near Abu Dis' refuse dump east of Jerusalem, the city's main one.

It poses health hazards to nearby residents. Israel's Environmental Protection Ministry calls it a "source of environmental pollution, risk of fire and even explosions" for lacking a way to pump out gases produced from unloading waste.

Jordan Valley residents next face dispossession. Over three to six years, one option is expelling them to areas near a-Nabi Musa, west of Jericho.

Stealing anyone's land and property is illegal. Israel falsely claims Bedouins have no land or property rights where they've lived for decades or generations.

Around 80% of Bedouins are 1948 refugees. During Israel's "War of Independence," they lost theirs and their Negev homes and other rights.

Two-thirds now are under 18. All lived for decades in "unrecognized villages." They've been denied basic services afforded other Israelis, including electrical grid and water system connections. Deeply impoverished, OCHA says most suffer from food insecurity.

Demolition orders already were issued. Israel has construction plans for thousands of Jews-only apartments and other development as part of its objective to entirely Judaize greater Jerusalem.

Colonizing occupied land brazenly violates international law. Forcibly expelling protected persons compounds a grievous crime. Depriving them of all rights with no redress exacerbates it. Nonetheless, it's longstanding Israeli policy.

Persecuting Mordechai Vanunu

As a Dimona nuclear technician, he smuggled out dozens of photos and scientific documents. On October 5, 1986, the London Times published them, headlined:

"Revealed - the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal/Atomic technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals secret weapons production," saying:

"THE SECRETS of a subterranean factory engaged in the manufacture of Israeli nuclear weapons have been uncovered by the Sunday Times Insight team."

"Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing nuclear atomic warheads for the last 20 years. Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons," with yields great enough to destroy entire cities.

The Times named Vanunu its source. He worked at Dimona for nearly 10 years in "Machon 2 - a top secret, underground bunker built to provide the vital components necessary for weapons production...."

Nuclear experts examined Vanunu's documents, called them genuine, and concluded that Israel's sophisticated technology enabled it "to build up a formidable nuclear arsenal."

According to Theodore Taylor, a world expert at the time:

"There should no longer be any doubt that Israel is, and for at least a decade has been, a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state....considerably more advanced than (earlier) indicated...."

Other top nuclear scientists agreed. Israel then and now is a world nuclear power, possessing sophisticated technology and weapons. Estimates of its arsenal range from 200 - 400 warheads able to destroy entire cities.

Vanunu's revelations cost him dearly. On October 12, 1986, The Times headlined his September 30 disappearance.

Mossad lured him to Rome, then beat, drugged, and kidnapped him. In 1986/87, he was secretly tried and sentenced to 18 years incarceration for espionage and treason.

All Israeli prisoners are treated harshly, especially Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Vanunu was kept confined in six square meter isolation. Somehow he survived what destroys most others enduring such treatment this long or less.

Released in 2004, his behavior and movements were restricted. As a result, harassing arrests followed after giving foreign journalists interviews and trying to leave Israel.

While incarcerated, he endured "cruel and barbaric treatment," he said. So does anyone Israel calls a security threat, whether or not true.

On July 2, 2007, he again was imprisoned for six months for speaking to foreign journalists. Israel's District Court later reduced it to three "in light of (his) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country's security in jeopardy."

In January 2008, he was sentenced to six months community service.

Daniel Ellsberg called him "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era." In July 2007, Amnesty International (AI) named him "a prisoner of conscience."

Vanunu says "I am neither a traitor nor a spy. I only wanted the world to know what was happening." They had every right to know and still do.

On December 28, 2009, he was again arrested following an alleged meeting with his girlfriend, a Norwegian national. House arrest followed.

On April 14, 2010, he said:

"The restrictions, not to leave the country for one more year (were) renewed. Now 7 years since my release AFTER 18 years in Israel PRISON," he's still effectively in one.

In May 2010, he began serving another three-month prison term, reportedly in isolation.

In July 2011, he petitioned Israel's High Court to revoke his citizenship. He said he could "no longer find his place in Israeli society," and despite free from prison, "the State of Israel continues to penalize him by imposing various restrictions on his person and travels."

Despite his wishes, he remains an Israeli citizen, trapped, unable to leave.

Annually for over 20 years, he's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In March 2009, he asked the Nobel Committee to remove his name from consideration, and in February 2010 again declined the honor. Most often war criminals like Henry Kissinger and Obama get it.

In 1979, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize, "for outstanding vision and work on behalf of our planet and its people." In 2001, Norway's University of Tromsoe honored him as a Doctor Honoris Causa (History).

On October 6, 2011, AFP headlined, "Israel bars nuclear whistle-blower from emigrating: media," saying:

Israel's Supreme Court barred Vanunu from leaving Israel "on the grounds he still poses a threat to state security."

Ordered to stay in Tel Aviv and not speak to journalists, Israel's High Court turned down his appeal to leave, saying:

He "proved several times he cannot be trusted and does not respect the letter of the law."

Prosecutors claimed he poses "a real danger to the security of Israel." The Court said he has contact with unspecified "foreign elements."

For decades, Israel's been nuclear armed and dangerous. In his 1991 book, "The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and America Foreign Policy," Seymour Hersh revealed its strategy to use nuclear weapons if it felt its existence threatened. In other words, preemptive nuclear war is an option.

In his 1997 book, "Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies," Israel Shahak (1933 - 2001) said "Israel (is) clearly prepar(ing) itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East (with no) hesitati(on) to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones."

Shahak added that Israel regards "the launching of missiles (onto its territory) as 'nonconventional' regardless of whether they are equipped with explosives or poison gas."

In turn, Israel's nuclear doctrine dictates a nuclear response to a "nonconventional" attack. Shahak called it the foundation of its grand strategy.

Israel's double standard calls for maintaining a formidable nuclear arsenal it wants other regional states denied.

Vanunu's knowledge dates through 1986. He's 25 years removed from Israel's most sophisticated technologies. He posed no threat then or now. Israel authorities know it. So don't prosecutors and its High Court.

A generation of punishment amounts to retaliatory viciousness. It's ongoing to deny him justice and relief.

Israel is one of three known nuclear outlaws. Besides India and Pakistan, it never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nor allows inspections. North Korea is a declared but unverified nuclear power.

Between them, America and Russia have about 97% of the world's arsenal. Washington and Israel are the only nations claiming the right to use them preemptively, including against non-nuclear states.

Both are well armed and dangerous. Vanunu never threatened Israel's security and doesn't now.

Nonetheless, he got lifetime punishment for living in the wrong country at the wrong time. Like America, justice was never Israel's long suit.

A Final Comment

Israel is democratic in name only, affording rights solely to higher income and wealthy Jews. Vanunu converted from Judaism to Christianity. He believes doing so hardened his punishment.

On release from prison, harsh ongoing restrictions include:

• contact with Israeli citizens only;
• no phone use;
• no possession of cell phones;
• no Internet access;
• no contact with foreign embassies and consulates;
• no contact with journalists;
• no entering areas within 500 meters of international borders;
• no visits to airports or ports or entry;
• no permission to leave Israel; and
• no right to other democratic freedoms.

Israel is a self-proclaimed democracy. Some democracy!

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

Israel treats Palestinian prisoners horrifically. In detention, interrogations include torture, intimidation and other abuses.

"Security prisoners" are punitively isolated for extended periods. Others for any reason or none at all face similar short or longer-term treatment.

Administrative detainees are held indefinitely without charges or trial. Children are treated like adults.

Horrific conditions include severe overcrowding; poor ventilation and sanitation; no change of clothes or adequate clothing; wooden planks with thin mattresses for beds; filthy blankets; inadequate food in terms of quality, quantity or conformance with dietary requirements; poor medical care; and hindered access to family members and counsel, among other abuses.

Last June, Netanyahu announced plans to toughen conditions further. Already they violate international law. Now they've gotten worse.

On September 27, Palestinian prisoners went on hunger strike against excessive punitive measures. On October 3, Haaretz headlined, "Palestinian prisoners go on hunger strike, protest worsening Israel prison conditions," saying:

Hundreds joined other strikers for better conditions. Around 500 "refus(ed) to eat, rapidly swelling the ranks of the protest which began last week."

Thousands of free Palestinians rallied in support. Many spent agonizing months or years in Israeli prison hell themselves.

The Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association said prisoners began striking "on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday of every week beginning" September 27.

They also said their disobedience campaign includes "refus(ing) to wear prison uniforms, participat(ing) in the daily roll call, or cooperat(ing) with any other IPS (Israeli Prison Service) demands."

Some prisoners went on open-ended strike against abusive isolation. Some endure it for years. Ahmed Sa'adat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has been isolated for three years. Sentenced to 30 years in prison in December 2008, his ordeal shows no sign of ending.

Palestinians in Ramon Prison began an open-ended strike to end abusive isolation, collective punishment, harsh restrictions on family visits, imposition of fines, frequent raids, humiliating searches, and shackling prisoners' hands and legs during transfer to and from lawyer visits.

Prisoners also want education privileges restored, better healthcare, and punitive harsh treatment ended.

A September 30 Adalah/Al Mezan Center for Human Rights/Physicians for Human Rights-Israel joint press release said prisoners are determined to strike "until loss of life" or their demands are met.

In recent years, bad conditions got worse, especially under Netanyahu. "Collective abuse of Palestinian prisoners has intensified, and has been anchored in new legislation and draconian regulations."

Cruel and unusual treatment includes:

• political leaders, human rights activists and others subjected to prolonged isolation;

• denial of legal counsel during interrogations that include torture and other ill-treatment;

• restricted judicial review of arrest and interrogation procedures;

• illegally imprisoning Palestinians in Israel;

• preventing Gazan families (as well as some in the West Bank) from visiting incarcerated family members;

• unreasonable fines;

• daily humiliating cell and strip-searches;

• submitting visiting family members to the same procedure;

• unreasonable hand and leg-shackling, including during medical care in hospitals;

• denying the right to buy food in prison canteens;

• denying education, proper healthcare and food;

• blocking television channels as well as denying books, newspapers and other reading material; and

• other forms of abuse and harassment.

Ma'an News said 20 or more Palestinians in Ashkelon Prison began striking. All others there will join them in days, as well as Ofer prisoners for three days a week "before joining the total hunger strike, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club."

Hamas prisoners in Ramon, Eshe, Nafha and Ashkelon are also participating in what's spreading throughout Israel's prison system.

"Director of the Abu Jihad center for prisoners affairs at al-Quds university Fahd Abu al-Hajj said Sunday that the 3,000 or so prisoners would not end the hunger strike until their demands are met, primarily an end to the policy of solitary confinement in Israeli jails."

Al-Hajj added that abusive practices escalated under Netanyahu "to exert more pressure on the Palestinian leadership to achieve political gains."

PA Minister of Prisoners Issa Qaraqe announced plans to hold sit-ins and marches for prisoner rights. Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Sheikh Muhammad Hussein urged Palestinian officials and communities to lend support.

Striking for Prison Rights in America

US prisons are notoriously oppressive. America's media ignore it. Last spring, California's Pelican Bay State Prison inmates went on hunger strike against cruel, inhuman, and abusive treatment, especially affecting isolated SHU-status prisoners. Others did it earlier in 2002.

On average they're there two years. Some, however, stay isolated up to 18 years or longer, even decades. No one enduring it comes out whole. The physical and emotion toll is horrendous.

On July 1, up to 100 inmates joined other strikers. Thousands in other California prisoners later joined them. After striking last summer for nearly a month, negotiations with the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) were held.

CDCR failed to follow through on promises, so prisoners resumed striking on September 26, saying they'll continue until vital changes are made.

Pelican Bay strikers have five core demands:

(1) End group punishment when one member of a race or group breaks a rule. Pelican Bay abusively uses this to isolate prisoners indefinitely.

(2) End debriefing inmates and falsely accusing them of being active or inactive prison gang members without evidence. Debriefing involves ratting on others, whether or not what they say is true.

(3) Comply with 2006 US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons solitary confinement recommendations to "make segregation a last resort" and "end conditions of isolation."

As of May 18, 2011, California held 3,259 prisoners isolated and hundreds more in Administrative Segregation, waiting for an available SHU cell. Some inmates stay isolated for decades.

(4) Provide adequate food in terms of amount and quality, as well as improved health and sanitary conditions.

(5) Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU prisoners, including self-help treatment, education, religious and others. Currently these opportunities are denied.

Pelican Bay is a California supermax prison. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) National Institute of Corrections calls the term "supermax" the most common one to describe "special housing unit(s), maxi-maxi, maximum control facilit(ies), secured housing unit(s), intensive management unit(s), and administrative maximum penitentiar(ies.)."

It describes them as:

"a highly restrictive, high-custody housing unit within a secure facility....that isolates inmates from the general prison population and from each other due to grievous crimes, repetitive assaultive or violent institutional behavior, the threat of escape or actual escape from high-custody facility(s), or inciting or threatening to incite disturbances in a correctional institution."

Other definitions describe "control-unit" prisons, or units within prisons providing the most secure levels of custody for the "worst of the worst" criminals and those threatening national security.

They're maximum security facilities or prison wings in which inmates are held in long-term solitary confinement under constant surveillance by closed-circuit TV.

Former inmates call them prison hell. Making oppressive conditions tougher got Pelican Bay prisoners to stage hunger strikes for relief so far not gotten.

Visit Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity for updates on their status, including a brief history of Pelican Bay.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

Thousands of Palestinians held rallies in Nablus, Gaza and Ramallah on Oct. 3, to show solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike since Sept. 27.

There are 6,000 to 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including women and children, many of them imprisoned without trial and others serving long terms.

The prisoners’ hunger strike was called to protest the solitary confinement of some prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti, who was placed in isolation after he called for mass demonstrations across the occupied territories and the world in support of the Palestinian bid for U.N. membership. Arrested and detained since 2002, Barghouti is a hugely popular elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, dubbed “Palestine’s Mandela” by Israeli writer Uri Avnery. Like Nelson Mandela, who became South Africa’s first democratically elected president after being imprisoned for 27 years, Barghouti is considered a possible successor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian prisoners are continuously subject to lengthy solitary confinements, sudden night raids and torture. The Israeli prison administration also deprives Palestinian political detainees of the simple right of bathing, access to clean clothes and family visits. Prisoners also suffer as a result of an improper diet and a lack of medical attention.

Call, write, fax or e-mail the U.S. State Department, Red Cross and the Israeli Embassy to ask them to end the suffering of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails. Show your solidarity for Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.

U.S. State Department
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Dept. of State
Washington, DC 20520
State Dept. Public information Line: 202-647-6575

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
P.O. Box 372
CH-1211
Geneva 19
Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 730 42 22
Fax: +41 22 733 03 95

International Federation of Red Cross New York Delegation to the UN
420 Lexington Avenue
Suite 2811
New York, NY 10170
USA
Tel: (212) 338 0161
Fax: (212) 338 9832

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
19 Avenue de la paix
CH 1202
Geneva, Switzerland
Fax: +41 22 733 20 57 

ICRC Media and Public Relations Officer for Middle East
Hicham HASSAN
Tel: +41 22 730 25 41
Mobile: +41 79 536 92 57
hihassan@icrc.org

American Red Cross National Headquarters
2025 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
202 303 4498
(1) 800 RED CROSS

Israeli Embassy
3514 International Dr. NW
Washington, DC 20008-3021
Tel: 202-364-5500
Fax: 202.364.5423

They are part of the national fabric that holds our country together. They contribute to America in many ways, and deserve the same respect as any of us. My Fellow American pledge to spread this message, and affirm the country's principles of liberty and justice for all.

Take the pledge: http://myfellowamerican.us/pledge

Video link: http://youtu.be/cjm0uk2JO58

Palestinian workers put the finishing touches on a chair covered with embroidered blue upholstery featuring a Palestinian flag and the word "Palestine". Palestinian activists would take the chair on an international tour to dramatize the Palestinian Authority's quest for U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

By Stephen Lendman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Ahead of the General Assembly's likely granting Palestine statehood recognition and full de jure UN membership in September or early October, Israel is preparing its army and arming settlers for disruptive protests.

Law Professor and former PLO legal counsel Francis Boyle explains that a simple two-thirds majority of states present and voting are needed. Abstentions and no-shows don't count. "Palestine has those votes for admission," he says! "The Israelis and the Americans know it."

Aside from Washington's illegal planned veto, if a Security Council resolution is introduced, Netanyahu apparently abandoned plan A, replacing it with a disruptive plan B.

On August 30, Haaretz writer Chaim Levinson headlined, "IDF training Israeli settlers ahead of 'mass disorder' expected in September," saying:

Settlement-by-settlement "red line(s)" were determined for "when soldiers will be ordered to shoot at the feet of Palestinian protesters if the line is crossed."

Arming settlers with tear gas, stun grenades, and perhaps other weapons is also planned, allegedly "as part of the defense operation."

Called Operation Summer Seeds, its "purpose is to ready the army (and settlers) for September and the possibility of confrontations with Palestinians following the expected" General Assembly granting them statehood and full de jure membership.

A document leaked to Haaretz stated a "working assumption" that "a public uprising" will follow Palestinian independence "which will mainly include mass disorder."

In fact, celebratory demonstrations are likely, not disturbances unless Israel and settlers incite them. Apparently, that's what's planned, again blaming victims of Israeli violence to maintain hardline occupation.

This time, however, it will be against a sovereign internationally recognized independent state, able to file a formal State to State complaint against Israeli officials.

In addition, as Boyle explains, it "can ratify the Genocide Convention and sue Israel for Genocide at the World Court, pursuant to" previous advice he gave Arafat and Abbas.

Moreover, it can "get a temporary restraining order" against Israel, requiring either Security Council enforcement approval, or if Washington vetoes it, to the General Assembly under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution overriding it.

In addition, it can use this procedure to halt settlement construction once and for all and perhaps regain lost land.

These prospects frighten Israel and its Washington paymaster/partner. So they're are pulling out all the stops to prevent Palestinian statehood or at least disrupt it if achieved to maintain hardline policies, claiming they're in self-defense.

The Israeli document contends disorder will include "marches toward main junctions, Israeli communities, and education centers; efforts at damaging (Israeli) symbols of government."

"Also, there may be more extreme cases like shooting from within the demonstrations or even terrorist incidents. In all these scenarios, there is readiness to deal with incidents near the fences and the borders of the State of Israel."

In fact, Israel is the only nation without fixed borders, because of its longstanding plan to seize Palestinian land, as well as more from neighboring states for a Greater Israel. It's indeterminate in size depending on how much it can steal.

Israel's army has been holding training sessions near its Shiloh military installation. It's also trained settlement squads at its Lachish base, used as a command training center for that purpose.

In addition, two virtual defense lines for each settlement were established. If Palestinians cross the first one, they'll face settlers using tear gas and other disruptive measures.

If line two is breached, soldiers will use live fire at their legs.

In other words, Israel plans disruptions. Rules of engagement were established to unleash them. A heightened state of readiness exists. Palestinians will be blamed like always. Injuries and perhaps deaths may result.

Instead of recognizing the UN's new member, Israel plans hostile acts short of war, perhaps planned later as more naked aggression.

As a result, Peace Now's Hagit Ofran expressed alarm, saying:

"We hope the army is making clear that nonviolent protests (and celebratory marches are) legitimate, and no settlers (or IDF personnel) should use any violence against unarmed demonstrators."

Rabbis for Human Rights' Arik Ascherman raised "serious questions and problems" with regard to settlers acting illegally, saying:

"We're very concerned that (Israeli forces) will not reduce conflict but increase it."

In fact, more at issue is instigating it as Israel commonly does, blaming its violence on Palestinian to shift responsibility.

Notably in early August, Israeli Foreign Minister/Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman outrageously claimed Palestinians are preparing for "bloodshed the likes of which we've never seen before," so when Israel sheds it they can be blamed.

Palestinian spokesman Ghassan Khatib accurately said Israel's "trying to fuel a fake picture of what will happen in September. These Israeli predictions of violence aren't true."

Palestinian Statehood and De Jure UN Membership Issues

A previous article explained Francis Boyle's work as PLO legal advisor to assure all Palestinians worldwide automatically become citizens of the State of Palestine if granted by the upcoming General Assembly vote.

On August 30, Ma'an News published his assessment and International and Comparative Law Professor John Quigley's concurring, saying:

The Palestinians' "initiative" to be introduced in the General Assembly "is no threat" to their rights, and "will only improve their standing. This is because as a matter of international law, states must ensure that human rights are not being violated."

As a sovereign state, Palestine will be "interacting" with others, "and this is a much stronger position. It can pursue remedies at the diplomatic level in its capacity as a state. It will do favors for other states. It can demand (them) in return. It can also pursue prosecutions of Israeli officials for war crimes," including illegal settlements, applying greater pressure available to sovereign states.

Moreover, "(r)ather than posing a threat to the refugees, (they'll), in fact, be in a much stronger position. Legally, while people might leave states, if the refugees are nationals then the state cannot refuse to allow them to return."

In 1988, the General Assembly accepted the PLO "as the sole representative of the Palestinian people." It's precisely what it's likely to do "in September if asked to accept Palestine as a state."

A Final Comment

The Virtual Jerusalem web site headlined, "Let Your Voice Be Heard," stating:

"Say No to Palestinian Statehood."

The pro-Israeli group accuses the PA of including "terrorist(s)....whose stated mission is 'the elimination of Israel," no matter that saying so is a bald-faced lie.

Nonetheless, it accused Hamas of hundreds of terrorists attacks, calling self-defense against Israeli violence "terrorism," what scoundrels always say.

It falsely said the PA lacks "vital aspects of modern statehood, such as freedom, respect for human rights, and a functioning democracy. Palestinian statehood," it adds, "will make peace negotiations with Israel impossible."

In fact, they've been stillborn for decades because Israel and Washington promote violence, not peace, a notion they find intolerable.

Virtual Jerusalem doesn't even lie well, adding that Palestinian statehood "will be gravely detrimental to Israel's security and the safety of the Israeli people."

"Stand with Israel and make your voice heard," it says. Tell Obama to support Israel against Palestine. Of course, he, like past presidents since Lyndon Johnson, have done it throughout their tenure.

It's time more responsible world leaders recognized rule of law responsibilities by voting to grant Palestinian statehood and full de jure UN membership.

Why? Because it's the right thing to do!

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

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

JIM Hoagland, writing in the Washington Post, says: "We have seen how information technology can provide a spark that sets afire the kindling of economic and social distress."

That was Hoagland's way of concluding an opening salvo that said: "Grinding civil war in Libya, a state-organised bloodbath in Syria and troubling stumbles in Egypt's march to democracy dim the lustre of Arab revolts that began the year in glory. This Arab summer is a political season of reaction and reversal."

What Hoagland refers to as "the virus of modern communication" most pundits have labelled "the Arab Spring".

The implication is that all protests have occurred for the same reason and in the same part of the world. That's simply not true.

Not all demonstrations have been agitating for democracy. According to Don Tapscott writing in The Guardian:

"A common thread to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and protests elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa is the soul-crushing high rate of youth unemployment. Twenty-four per cent of young people in the region cannot find jobs."

But the reasons for youth rebellions differ from place to place. Not all have been due to unemployment.

Commenting on student dissent in Chile, writer John Daly says:

"An element common to all these events is the population's rising anger over governments' perceived ineptitude and even outright corruption, inflicting financial misery on all but a privileged elite."

Few young people consider what effect their protests will have. Little heed gets paid by these youthful protesters to the cost of their revolutionary zeal. They blithely ignore the disaster their activities have caused to their national economies.

Millions in Tunisia and Egypt, for instance, have been dependent on the tourist trade, now lost and sacrificing the livelihoods of the entire industry's workers.

The demonstrators in the recent revolts only look at perceived injustices and pay scant attention to what will replace the systems they oppose.

Even Israel is hosting an Arab Spring. After experiencing demonstrations that saw "hundreds of thousands of Israelis" take to the streets, a Haaretz editorial comments: "We are in the midst of what is increasingly shaping up to be an Israeli revolution."

Monarchs, presidents and prime ministers are almost never universally opposed.

During the demonstrations in North Africa, those who supported the existing governments didn't take to the streets until large numbers of Libyans rose up to defend the Gadaffi regime in Tripoli.

And what of the prospects for more protests and demonstrations in Europe?

Protests in Europe have been largely due to youth unemployment and worse are expected because of budget cutbacks and debt crises.

Kids with no jobs ran amok in London.

Look for more demonstrations in Europe like those in Greece (with 38.5pc unemployment) and by the jobless in countries facing financial crises like Spain (45.7pc unemployment), Italy (27.8pc unemployment) and Ireland (26.9pc unemployment).

Who knows? Disastrous economics in America could usher in a riotous summer. There are already calls for a "Day of Rage" in the US.

* 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.

when the truth is so easy to discover

By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Here in the UK we have so many craven politicians paying homage to the likes of Rupert Murdoch and playing stooge to the pro-Israel lobby that there's little time to take much interest in US politics. So I apologise to American friends for briefly intruding on their grief; but somebody has sent me a copy of a letter from a US congresswoman to one of her constituents.

It says:

As the only democracy in the region, I believe that the United States has a special relationship with Israel... During my time in the House of Representatives, I will support our funding our ally and help to forward Israel's efforts to keep their citizens safe, which currently stands at 2.8 billion dollars in general foreign aid, and another 280 million dollars for a missile defence system...

Our foreign aid to Palestine is intended to create a virtuous cycle of stability and prosperity in the West Bank that inclines Palestinians towards peaceful coexistence with Israel and prepares them for self-governance. Continued failure to reach a two-state solution, combined with lack of consensus on any of the alternatives, may also mean that the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza could continue indefinitely. In addition, with the West Bank and Gaza currently controlled by Hamas, an entity listed as a terrorist organization by US State Department and many other world governments, this may ultimately impact future aid our nation will provide.

Most recently, I became a co-sponsor of House Resolution 268, which reaffirms our support for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states. This resolution also opposition to a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, as well as outlined consequences for Palestinian efforts to circumvent direct negotiations.[sic] This bill passed in the House on 7 July 2011 by a vote of 407 – 6...

Resolution 268 actually states that "Palestinian efforts to gain recognition of a state outside direct negotiations demonstrates absence of a good-faith commitment to peace negotiations". It threatens withholding US foreign aid to the Palestinian National Authority if it presses ahead with an application for statehood in the United Nations in September. It also calls for the Palestinian unity government to "publicly and formally forswear terrorism, accept Israel's right to exist, and reaffirm previous agreements made with the government of Israel".

Senator Ben Cardin, who initiated the resolution, announced: "The Senate has delivered a clear message to the international community that United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state at this time does not further the peace process."

Israel is the only democracy in the region? The West Bank and Gaza are controlled by Hamas? An application to the UN for Palestinian statehood is "circumventing" the peace process? Representative Colleen Hanabusa's letter shows that she is poorly briefed. There is nothing on her website to suggest that she has a special interest in foreign affairs, let alone the Middle East. So why does this nice lady lawmaker from Hawaii suddenly find herself co-sponsoring a resolution that's designed to scupper the hopes for freedom of another people halfway round the world, who have suffered betrayal and brutal military occupation for 63 years?

Disinformation is a recurring feature of US foreign policy discourse, and I'm reminded of the twisted comments of Alejandro Wolff, US Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, when he faced journalists' questions at the Security Council on that infamous day, 3 January 2009, when Israel's tanks rolled into Gaza to deal further death and destruction to a community that had already been air-blitzed for eight days and suffered siege and blockade for nearly 30 months before that.

Reporter: Mr Ambassador, you made no mention, sir, of any Israeli violation of those agreements that you've referred to, particularly in the opening of the crossings. And then there is a major development today, which is Israel's land attack and that's threatening to kill hundreds of civilians. Doesn't this deserve some request for Israel ... to stop its ground military attacks, sir?

Ambassador Wolff: Well, again, we're not going to equate the actions of Israel, a member state of the United Nations, with the actions of the terrorist group Hamas. There is no equivalence there. This council has spoken on many times about the concerns we had about Hamas's military attacks on Israel. The charter of this organization [the UN] respects the right of every member state to exercise its self-defence, and Israel's self-defence is not negotiable... The plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza is directly attributable to Hamas.

Reporter: But Hamas represents the people, because they voted, over 70 per cent of them, for Hamas in the last election.

Ambassador Wolff: Hamas usurped the legitimate authority of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

Even US ambassadors should know that Hamas was and still is the legitimate authority. Hamas was democratically elected in 2006 in a contest judged by international observers to be clean. The result didn't suit Israel or its protector, the USA, so, together with the UK and the EU, they set about trashing Palestine's embryonic democracy. Losers Fatah, a corrupt faction rejected by the people for that reason, was recruited and funded to do the dirty work, for which they were well suited. As John Pilger has pointed out, when Hamas foiled a CIA-inspired coup in 2007 the event was reported in the Western media as "Hamas's seizure of power".

Hamas simply took the action necessary to establish its democratic authority against Fatah's US-funded militia. This angered the US and Israel even more.

For Mrs Hanabusa's information, thanks to America's meddling Fatah controls the West Bank but has no democratic legitimacy while Hamas is holed up in Gaza. And Israel is far from being the full-blown Western-style democracy that many think.

"No equivalence" between Israel and "terrorist" Hamas?

The US uses a perfectly good form of words to brand, outlaw and crush any organization, individual or country it doesn't like. Under Executive Order 13224 ("Blocking Property and prohibiting Transactions with Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support Terrorism"), Section 3, the term "terrorism" means an activity that:

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and

(ii) appears to be intended

(a) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(b) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(c) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping or hostage-taking.

The order was signed on 23 September 2001 by George W. Bush. Its definition of terrorism fits the conduct of the United States and its bosom-buddy Israel like a glove, the irony of which seems totally lost on Congress.

Let us also look at Netanyahu's definition since he runs Israel's current government. His book Terrorism: How the West Can Win defines terror as the "deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends".

In an interview with Jennifer Byrne in February 2002, he said: "Terrorism is defined by one thing and one thing alone, the nature of the act. It is the deliberate systematic assault on civilians that defines terrorism."

It's like he's signing his own arrest warrant.

If terror is unjustifiable, then it is unjustifiable across the board. The Palestinians had no history of violence until their lands were threatened and then partitioned and overrun by a brutal intruder whose greed is never satisfied. Demands for Palestinians to cease their terror campaign (if you buy the idea that resistance equals terror) must be linked to demands for Israel to do the same.

As for the resistance movement Hamas, its charter is objectionable and the leadership are foolish not to have rewritten it in tune with modern diplomacy. Nevertheless the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, within days of being elected, offered long-term peace if Israel recognized Palestine as an independent state on 1967 borders. Previously, the Palestine Liberation Organization had unwisely "recognized" Israel without any reciprocal recognition of a Palestinian state. The Oslo Accords were supposed to end the occupation and give Palestine independence. "What we've got instead are more settlements, more occupation, more roadblocks, more poverty and more repression," he said.

Omar Abdul Razek, Hamas's finance minister, when interviewed by Aljazeera in May 2006, asked: "Which Israel would you want me to recognize? Is it Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates? Israel with the occupied Golan Heights? Israel with East Jerusalem? Israel with the settlements? I challenge you to tell me where Israel's borders lie."

Interviewer: "...the 1967 borders."

Omar Abdul Razek: "Does Israel recognize the 1967 borders? Can you tell me of one Israeli government that ever voiced willingness to withdraw to the 1967 borders?"

So, the question remains: why should Hamas or any other Palestinian party renounce violence against a foreign power that violently occupies their homeland, bulldozes their homes at gunpoint, uproots their beautiful olive groves, sets up hundreds of armed checkpoints to disrupt normal life, batters down villagers' front doors in the dead of night, builds an illegal "separation" wall to annex their territory, divide families, steal their water and isolate their communities, and blockades exports and imports to cause economic ruin – and now plans to steal Gaza's offshore gas?

Palestinians too have a right to defend themselves, and their self-defence, like Israel's, is non-negotiable.

As for recognizing Israel right to exist, no Palestinian is likely to do that while under Israel's jackboot. Nor should they be expected to. It would simply serve to legitimize the occupation, which is what Israel wants above all and what Israel wants Israel must get, even if the US has to make a complete fool of itself.

The terror that stalks the Holy Land

American and Israeli politicians love quoting the number of garden-shed rockets launched from Gaza towards Sderot. But can they say how many (US-supplied) bombs, shells and rockets have been delivered by F-16s, helicopter gunships, tanks, drones and navy vessels into the tightly-packed humanity of Gaza?

But at least we have an idea of the death-toll over the last 10 years. B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, keeps a close check.

In the period between the start of the second Intifada (September 2000) up to Operation Cast Lead (26 December 2008) 4,836 Palestinians were killed by Israelis in the occupied territories, including 951 children. Two hundred and thirty five of these were targeted killings (i.e. assassinations) while 2,186 were killed during targeted killings although they were not taking part in hostilities. Five hundred and eighty one Israelis, including 84 children, were killed by Palestinians in Israel.

During Operation Cast Lead (27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009) 1,396 Palestinians, including 345 children, were killed by Israelis. In Gaza itself they killed 344 children, 110 women and 117 elderly people. Only four Israelis were killed by Palestinians in this period, no children.

Since Operation Cast Lead and up to the end of May 2011 Israelis killed 197 Palestinians in the occupied territories, including 26 children. Five were targeted killings during which 65 non-participants were killed. In the same period three Israelis were killed by Palestinians in Israel, including one child.

I make that 6,429 to the Israelis and 589 to the Palestinians - a kill rate of 11 to 1. When it comes to snuffing out children Israel is even more proficient with a kill-rate of over 14 to 1.

And it's not just the dead. The Cast Lead assault on Gaza is reported to have injured and maimed some 5,450. Israel also destroyed or damaged 58,000 homes, 280 schools, 1,500 factories and water and sewage installations. And it used prohibited weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorus shells.

Assassination has been official Israeli policy since 1999. Their preferred method is the air-strike, which is often messy as demonstrated in 2002 when Israeli F-16 warplanes bombed the house of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of Hamas, in Gaza City killing not just him but at least 11 other Palestinians, including seven children, and wounding 120 others.

I'm told resistance "terrorists" like Hamas account for less than a thousand victims a year worldwide, while "good guy" state terrorists slaughter civilians by the hundreds of thousands – some say millions.

The long list of Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians – attacks that cannot be justified on grounds of defence or security and are so disproportionate as to constitute grave violations of human rights – puts Israel near the top of the state terrorist league. The demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes in the West Bank for "administrative" and planning reasons, the wholesale destruction of businesses and infrastructure, the impoverishment and displacement of Palestinians through land expropriation and closure, the abductions and imprisonments, the assassinations, and especially that 22-day blitzkrieg on the civilian population of Gaza who had nowhere to run – all this add up to mega-terrorism on the part of America's "special friend", according to their own definitions.

Negotiations? "We have spoken to Israel for more than 18 years and the result has been zero"

Finally, what is this nonsense about Palestinians lacking good faith and somehow "isolating Israel" by applying for UN recognition rather than wasting more time on fruitless negotiations? Israel obtained its statehood by accepting the borders of the UN's 1947 partition, which was agreed without even consulting the Palestinians whose land was being carved up. The Jews didn't stop to "negotiate". Well before the ink was dry Jewish terror groups had ethnically cleansed and driven off hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from their lands and villages so that the new state's already generous boundaries were immediately expanded (example, Najd now Sderot). The land-grab had started and Israel's borders have been "fluid" ever since.

Why are US lawmakers now trying to thwart the Palestinians' dream of their own independent state? No-one is demanding the 1947 borders. They are willing to accept the 1967 armistice lines recognized in numerous UN resolutions and generally accepted by the international community. Even Hamas has agreed. So what is the problem?

The problem is that the Israeli occupation should have collapsed long ago under the weight of its illegality, but Israel shows no willingness to return the stolen lands or relinquish enough control for a viable Palestinian state.

Netanyahu heads Israel's Likud party, which is the embodiment of greed, racist ambition, lawlessness and callous disregard for other people's rights. In any other country it would be banned and its leaders locked up. Yet he is welcomed like a hero in the US and given 29 standing ovations by Congress.

Likud intends to make the seizure of Jerusalem permanent and establish Israel's capital there. It will "act with vigour" to ensure Jewish sovereignty in East Jerusalem (which still officially belongs to the Palestinians as does the Old City). The illegal settlements are "the realization of Zionist values and a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel". They will be strengthened and expanded. As for the Palestinians, they can run their lives in a framework of self-rule "but not as an independent and sovereign state".

So we can see where he's coming from.

Kadima, the party of Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, is little better and has also pledged to preserve the larger settlement blocs and steal Jerusalem.

In the 1947 UN partition Jerusalem was designated an international city under independent administration to avoid all this aggravation.

Rather than force compliance with international law and UN resolutions the international community, led by the US, has let matters slide by insisting on a solution based on lopsided power negotiations in which the Palestinians are at a serious disadvantage. During this dragged-out and failed process Israel has been allowed to strengthen its occupation by establishing more and more "facts on the ground", and its violations of human rights and international law have escalated with impunity. And that is what this dirty game is all about: Israel needs more time to make its occupation permanent.

Funny how we never hear the US talking about law and justice. It's always "negotiations" or "talks", buying time for Israel.

What the situation is crying out for is justice, and it's all set down in UN resolutions, international law and humanitarian law. Once both sides are in compliance negotiations can commence – if there's anything left to negotiate.

Fr Manuel Musallam, for many years the Latin Catholic priest in Gaza, recently told members of the Irish government:

We have spoken to Israel for more than 18 years and the result has been zero. We have signed agreements here and there at various times and then when there is a change in the government of Israel we have to start again from the beginning. We ask for our life and to be given back our Jerusalem, to be given our state and for enough water to drink. We want to be given more opportunity to reach Jerusalem. I have not seen Jerusalem since 1990.

Indeed, when I met Fr Manuel four years ago he had been effectively trapped in Gaza for nine years, unable to visit his family a few miles away in the West Bank. Had he set foot outside Gaza the Israelis would not have allowed him back in to rejoin his flock. So, he stayed put until he retired. This is just a tiny part of the ugly reality that America supports and applauds.

If Mrs Hanabusa and the rest of Congress were in the Palestinians' shoes would they bog themselves down yet again in discredited negotiations with a gun to their heads?

Or would they apply to the UN for long overdue enforcement of its resolutions and international law?

There is only one thing worse than being lied to, Congress. And that's acting on a lie.

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

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

I'm writing this on the 4th of July, the American Independence Day. In America and on US military bases and embassies around the world, it's a day for celebration of a memorable day in 1776.

It's a day for outdoor barbecues – hotdogs, beer and beans – and fireworks, like independence days everywhere.

Revellers often use the holiday to toast the country's founding fathers who, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin were revolutionary signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Their names and those of John Adams, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton to a lesser degree, have been memorialized in the names of cities, streets and institutions everywhere in America.

Though much of the history of American independence is unknown by many, a few notable remnants from the declaration have become widely known, the most popular being:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The slogan that permeated the air during the revolution, like all chants of revolutionaries, has been equally famous: "No taxation without representation," they repeated.

The British parliament under King James II had insisted on collecting taxes from the British colonists in America who had no representatives in the British parliament.

If, as the Declaration says, "all men are created equal", why do Americans act as if that fundamental principle applies only to citizens of the USA?

Why should the UNALIENABLE rights - among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, proudly celebrated by Americans on the 4th of July, not be extended to humans everywhere?

As former US intelligence analyst Ray McGovern observes, "The Declaration of Independence was meant to be a statement expressing the 'self-evident' rights of all mankind. Those principles had a universality that was a beacon to the world."
McGovern points out that many Americans think of the "Declaration of Independence as applying to Americans, but not to many others - like the 1.6 million people locked in the narrow confines of Gaza."

No matter what biblical right has been claimed by Israel for six decades of the subjugation of Palestinians and the theft of their land, America violates its own most basic principles by failing to support Palestinian statehood.

America has no compunction against infringing on others' independence. The US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has robbed those countries of their independence.

The same thing can be said of the victims of all of Israeli and American occupations. After the celebrations of this Independence Day, Americans should take a sober look at the independence they are depriving others of in the Middle East.

The questionable justification for the occupation of Afghanistan ceased to exist once Osama bin Laden was assassinated by an American Seal unit.

The excuse for continuing occupation of Afghanistan has been "nation building". America has no legitimate business building any other nation but its own.

The rationale given for the destruction, invasion and occupation of Iraq was a complete fabrication designed only to destroy that country's independence.

There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the criminal supporters of Israel in the American government engineered the travesty in Iraq for one reason only: to prevent Iraq from EVER threatening Israel with weapons of mass destruction.

To achieve this, America will have to keep troops in Iraq, continuing its prevention of Iraq's independence. US troops have no legitimate business in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or anywhere else.

Finally, now that the 4 July celebrations are over, America desperately needs to declare its independence from Israel.

* 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.

by Radhika Marya

More Saudi Arabian women drove their cars in the streets of capital Riyadh Wednesday, continuing a campaign - largely rooted in social media - to push the kingdom into overturning a ban on female drivers. At the same time, one of the European Union's top diplomats sent a long-requested message of support for their campaign.

The drivers were Sara Al-Khalidi, who was accompanied by her mother, and Azza Al-Shamasi, who was accompanied and filmed by blogger Eman Al Nafjan. The group was also filmed by Saudi media group Rotana.

http://youtu.be/4uTTyUpout0

Al Nafjan also filmed another drive on June 17, the original day the Women2Drive movement called for Saudi women with international licenses, or licenses issued by foreign countries, to drive their own cars. According to an email from Change.org Human Rights Editor Benjamin Joffe-Walt, someone later broke the car's glass and left a note in English that said, "Don't drive again, Bitch."

"This could have been a Saudi man or a hired driver worried about losing [his] job," Joffe-Walt says.

A note is placed next to the shattered side-view mirror of a car belonging to Saudi Iman al-Nafjan's family which the family says was put as a warning after she drove in Riyadh on June 22, 2011. Fayez Nureldine / AFP - Getty Images

The Saudi driving ban on women is not based on any written law, but religious rulings enforced by police have prevented most women - Saudi and foreign - from driving. This has caused Saudi women to rely on live-in drivers or male relatives for transportation, leading to the Women2Drive movement, which began picking up momentum on social media sites around two months ago.

Women did go driving on the designated date of June 17, even though key organizer Manal al-Sherif was arrested and jailed for a few days in May after posting a video of herself driving on YouTube. Some women, like the ones who ventured out Wednesday, are also driving on later dates. According to most reports so far, women stopped by the police have only been briefly detained since they began driving June 17. At least one woman, Twitter user @Maha1410, received a ticket.

Al-Shamasi says she feels the campaign is moving slowly. But Al-Khalidi says she thinks it's starting to move in a big way, adding that she's even heard some positive feedback from the more conservative members of Saudi society.

"It seems that a lot of people are appreciating what's happening," Al-Khalidi says. "We are not against anyone. We are not trying to provoke anyone." She does know of some women who have heard negative feedback, while she herself hasn't received any.

Meanwhile, even Al-Shamasi thinks the campaign might pick up speed. "I think more people are going to drive soon, and we can see that through YouTube," she says.

International Support

Women2Drive continues receiving attention outside Saudi Arabia. The latest message of support comes from Catherine Ashton, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Ashton released a statement describing the women's movement as "courageous."

"The EU supports people who stand up for their right to equal treatment, wherever they are," the statement reads. "The Saudi women who are taking to the road are exercising their right to demand that equality. They are courageous and have the High Representative's support."

The message came after more than 7,000 people signed a Change.org petition asking Ashton for a public declaration of support, and just one day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced her support during a news conference.

Source: mashable.com

By Cindy Sheehan* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Recently, I was listening to KGO radio and in case you don't know, KGO is the ABC affiliate super-station here in San Francisco that can be heard by millions of people with it's mega-wattage transmitter.

Gene Burns happened to be the host at that time. The night that I was listening, Mr. Burns was wondering why the U.S. is bombing Libya, but not Syria, because Syria is, "torturing and killing children," and Mr. Burns didn't know how the people of the world could stand by and watch this happen.

I wish I could have gotten through on the call-in line because I would have asked Mr. Burns how he feels about the USA torturing and killing children in places like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. These are the active places the US is bombing, but what about the children that were held or are being held in places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Abu Ghraib in Iraq or Bagram AFB in Afghanistan? Why are the "people of the world" standing by and watching the US destroy civilization as it murders and tortures children?

It is my suspicion that even the most hardcore war supporter knows that women and children are the ones that suffer the most from war-but as War Madam, Madeline Albright notoriously said in an interview with Lesley Stahl of CBS: the slaughter of over 500,000 Iraqi children during the sanctions period during the Clinton regime was "worth it." Monsters don't always have to have long claws, bloody fangs, or inhabit our nightmares-they can look like somebody's Grammy-and that's what I call a waking terror.
As a mother of a victim of US Imperialism, my well of empathy is bottomless, but I am not like Gene Burns-I don't think we should just be upset when "rogue" regimes kill or torture children-because the US is the largest rogue regime in recorded history. The rogue Empire counts on people like Gene Burns to provide cover for its crimes, in part, by over-sensationalizing the crimes of others.

Because of the definition of "collateral damage" ("We don't do body counts," General Tommy Franks), it is hard to pin down the exact number of children that have been killed by the US's War OF Terror since 2001-in fact, it's almost impossible, but a safe guesstimate is hundreds of thousands. However, one was exactly one too many.
What I can do for you is tell you some statistics on how children are treated here in the US:

NUMBER OF HOMELESS CHILDREN: 1.5 million

NUMBER OF HUNGRY CHILDREN: 16.7 million

NUMBER OF CHILDREN LIVING IN POVERTY: 13 million

NUMBER OF CHILDREN WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE: 10.6 million

PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS WHO DON'T GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL: 30%

JUVENILES INCARCERATED IN THE US: 92, 854 (2006)

HOW MANY CHILDREN HAS THE US DETAINED IN GITMO? 22

NUMBER OF CHILDREN SYRIAN FORCES ARE ACCUSED OF KILLING: 30

Children should be the ultimate expression of love, joy, and hope in all societies and I am not trying to excuse Syrian forces for what has happened. Killing/torturing a child (adult) is an abomination, but what I am trying to do is put things in perspective.

Why would the dark forces that run the US care about murdering brown children with odd sounding names in far away places when it doesn't even care about the children here within our own borders?

Today (Sunday, June 12), on CBS's Meet the Press, war monster, Senator Lindsey Graham of SC said that the time was "very close" to attacking Syria, and it's time to let President Assad know that "all options are on the table."

If we do attack Syria, then the Nobel Laureate POTUS would be at war with at least six countries. I hope that Graham is just having a wet dream about Syria, but I fear he is correct because the US can't allow anybody else to kill people--our War Machine already has a near monopoly on murder.

* Cindy Sheehan is an American anti-war activist whose son, U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq War. Cindy Sheehan attracted national and international media attention in August 2005 for her extended anti-war protest at a makeshift camp outside President George W. Bush. She is a vocal critic of President Barack Obama's foreign policy, saying: "I don't think much has changed since the Bush administration."

By Greta Berlin* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

An Israeli army dog is seen here at the Oketz military base in central Israel. Palestinians desperate for work in Israel will go to extremes to sneak past the West Bank barrier, but now they face a new hurdle -- army attack dogs sent to attack them. AFP/Yoav Lemmer

Israel Using Attack Dogs Against Palestinian Workers

Whether this kind of brutality works or not, Israel has followed in the footsteps of the United States, using dogs to terrify Palestinian workers trying to get into Israel to find jobs. According to one Palestinian laborer, dogs are let loose to hunt down anyone trying to enter Israel looking for work, a new phenomenon which has been occurring for about two months.

Although the army's justification is that using dogs is a way of protecting the sprawling separation barrier from Palestinian vandals looking to create openings, the Israeli Human Rights organization, B'tselem, is appealing to the army senior command. Victims of the dog attacks are not security suspects, but rather day laborers seeking to enter Israel to find work and who do not have the proper permits to do so.

Are occupation soldiers using Palestinian workers as guinea pigs, trying out the dogs in preparation for use on the upcoming flotilla to Gaza? There is evidence this is exactly what they are doing. In the past few months, the Israeli military has boasted it will use trained attack dogs on our passengers.

According to one military source, "As soon as you put an attack dog in an area where soldiers are supposed to get to, it keeps the place sterile and prevents anyone from approaching. Dogs can be placed by crane or other means. They'll be the first, and after them, the soldiers."

These attack dogs, from the Oketz Unit, are trained to immobilize enemies by biting. "The dogs are weapons in every sense -- like snipers or tank shells -- but they are biological weapons," Yehida, an online military magazine, said in an article about the unit.

Is Israel really going to follow in the footsteps of the Nazis in Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps and use dogs against the Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others on board flotilla ships?

During the trial of an alleged concentration camp guard in Georgia in 2007 Director Eli M. Rosenbaum of the Office of the Special Investigations (OSI), "The brutal concentration camp system could not have functioned without the determined efforts of SS men, who, with a vicious attack dog, stood between the victims and the possibility of freedom."

Attack Dogs used against protesters in the US Civil Rights Movement

Those who remember the Civil Rights movement in the US, remember when Sheriff Bull Connor on May 3, 1963 changed police tactics to keep black protesters out of the downtown business area in Birmingham, Alabama. Connor allowed white spectators to push forward, shouting, "Let those people come forward, sergeant. I want 'em to see the dogs work."

When the hoses were turned on, bystanders began to throw rocks and bottles at the police. To disperse them, Connor ordered police to use German shepherd dogs to keep them in line.

Attack Dogs Used in Apartheid South Africa

Dogs were used in South Africa during and after Apartheid as a means to terrify the local population. As late as 2000, a graphic video showed six white policemen laughing and joking as they set their patrol dogs on a group of defenseless black men suspected of illegally entering the country. One man, squirming on the ground, grimaces in agony. He is kicked by a dog-handler who eggs on his snarling dog as it bites into the man's leg and arm while he pleads to be left alone. The sound of laughter is audible during the hour-long video and one of the police officers jokes that it is a "training video."

US Military Used Attack Dogs in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib

The US military used attack dogs in Abu Ghraib, a technique they had learned from Guantanamo. In a 2005 article in the WashingtonPost, military interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq learned about the use of military working dogs to intimidate detainees from a team of interrogators dispatched from the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Dogs Used against Civilians and Unarmed Detainees

In every case, these dogs were used against civilians and unarmed detainees, people who were protesting human and civil rights abuses, concentration camp detainees trying to flee, Iraqi civilians caught up in the wide net of suspicion after 9-11.

None of these victims was armed.

And neither are we.

Israel Threatens to use Attack Dogs on Unarmed Civilians of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla

We go to break Israel's illegal siege on Gaza, a blockade that international bodies have determined is collective punishment. We are standing up for the rights of people living in an open-air prison, just as the protestors in Birmingham and South Africa stood up for the rights of the oppressed.

If Israel is considering bringing attack dogs onto our ships while we sail to Gaza, Israeli officials should be brought up on war crimes charges for taking such action against civilians who are expressing support for an imprisoned people.

We need to ask: Does Israel have the right to attack us with vicious dogs while we sail? Does Israel understand that we are civilians, or do Israeli officials believe, as did their racist predecessors, that we are fair game?

The international community should insist that Israel let us through to Gaza without dogs, snipers and armed commandos attacking us.

* Greta Berlin is one of the founders of the Free Gaza Movement and was on board the Free Gaza when it sailed to Gaza in August 2008 bearing the first internationals in 41 years to reach the besieged strip of Mediterranean territory. She is a passenger on the US Boat, the "Audacity of Hope," that will sail in the international Gaza Freedom flotilla to break the naval blockade of Gaza at the end of June, 2011.

By Ann Wright * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Israel is hard at work to stop international citizen activists groups from 22 countries that form the Gaza Freedom Flotilla from sailing in less than three weeks to bring international attention to Israel's brutal siege on Gaza. As a part of Israeli government propaganda, the civil society to civil society project is purposefully and wrongly portrayed by the Israeli government as sending weapons and "material support" to Gaza's democratically elected government headed by Hamas -- a group Israel and the United States have designated as a terrorist organization.

Extensive investigations by the United Nations, Turkey and even the Israeli government concluded there were no weapons on any of the six ships of the 2010 flotilla and that the cargo was consigned to non-governmental organizations in Gaza. However, the Israeli government never lets truth get in the way of its propaganda machine!

Israel's massive diplomatic offensive on European countries, Turkey, Canada and the United States that strongly demands countries not allow ships and passengers to sail has been followed by a new type of warfare called "lawfare."

Instead of direct military "warfare," the Israeli government and its front organizations, American Israeli Public Affairs Council (AIPAC) and the Shurat HaDin Law Center, are using lawsuits filed against insurance and satellite telephone companies that may sell equipment to the flotilla organizers and against citizen activist groups that have raised funds to purchase ships as strategies to attempt to stop the flotilla.

AIPAC Joins Israeli Government Attack on the Gaza Flotilla

On June 2, New York City corporate attorney Neal Sher, the former executive director of AIPAC, the most powerful lobby in the United States, filed a lawsuit in Toronto, Canada against the organizers of the Canadian Boat to Gaza for "raising funds and providing material support to Hamas."

The lawsuit was on behalf of a Canadian-Israeli citizen and asks for an interim and permanent injunction to stop the Canadian Boat to Gaza initiative "from continuing to raise funds, purchasing equipment or supplies, and purchasing or renting a vessel for the purpose of delivering goods or funds to the Gaza Strip." The lawsuit also wants to block the Canadian grassroots group "from sending goods, funds or any other material support, directly or indirectly, to Hamas or any of its representatives, and/or from aiding and abetting Hamas by assisting in bringing imports and exports to and from the Gaza Strip."

In addition, the Canadian-Israeli citizen, 68-year old Cherna Rosenberg, wants $1 million in damages "for trauma and injuries suffered as a consequence of the defendants' conspiracy" from the time she lived in the Israeli town of Sderot, where she "endured the constant and relentless mortar attacks emanating from Gaza."

The lawsuit's aim is to continue the Israeli government's six-decade control over the economic future of Gaza by refusing to allow the export and import of goods by sea and the free movement of Palestinian people without the approval of either the Israeli or Egyptian government.

One would hope that a counter-suit by a citizen of Gaza would be brought asking for millions of dollars in damages for the daily attacks on Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces "for trauma and injuries suffered as a consequence of Israel's aggression on civilians" in all parts of Gaza where "they endured constant and relentless attacks by F-16s, Apache gunships, naval bombardment, drones, white phosphorus, dense inert metal explosive bombs and countless other weapons."

Lawsuits in the US Against Companies Offering Services to Participating Ships

A second lawsuit attempts to prevent the flotilla from sailing by bringing lawsuits in the United States against companies that provide services to ships in the flotilla.

Shurat HaDin Law Center, reportedly an independent non-profit organization but certainly supporting and working for the policies of the State of Israel, sent letters to worldwide maritime insurance firms and satellite communications companies, warning that companies that provide services that assist in the breach of the Israeli blockade on Gaza will be sued in the United States for aiding the Hamas terrorist organization.

Shurat HaDin's Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner demanded that mobile satellite services company Inmarsat, one of the companies providing communication and navigation services to ships that sail in the region, refuse to provide their equipment and services to ships participating in the flotilla. Darshan-Leitner said, "We informed them that if they do so, they will be in violation of the American Neutrality Act, which prohibits aiding a group in their struggle against the military of an ally country. Since Imarsat has offices in the US, the law binds them."

Shurat HaDin has also sent letters to 30 of the top maritime insurance companies in the world announcing the law center's intent to sue if the companies provide insurance to ships participating in the flotilla.

Relentless Campaign of False Information Used Against the Flotilla

In a relentless campaign of using false information about the flotilla, including that there were weapons on ships of the 2010 Gaza flotilla, Darshan-Leitner said...

"Maritime insurance companies insuring the boats utilized by the Gaza Flotilla surely have no idea that the passenger boats that they are indemnifying are being used by the organizers to run the coastal blockade, violently challenge the IDF and smuggle weapons into Gaza. No legitimate insurance company nor its shareholders would reasonably agree to insure an expedition like that. We have begun to send letters placing the maritime insurance companies on notice concerning the Gaza Flotilla, and warning them that if they provide insurance (a necessary component in the effort to smuggle contraband to the terrorists) that they themselves will be legally liable for any future terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas."

Lloyd's, the world's largest maritime insurance company, reportedly said that it would not insure ships participating in the flotilla. Lloyd's Senior Manager of International Regulatory Affairs, Andy Wragg, responded to Shurat HaDin's letter...

"As you correctly point out in your letter, Hamas is subject to UK and EU terrorist-financing sanctions. As such, any vessel identified as being owned or controlled by that organization would not be permitted to be insured by underwriters at Lloyd's, or any other EU insurer. The Lloyd's Market has robust systems in place to ensure international sanctions are followed, and therefore, any underwriter identifying an insured or prospective insured acting on behalf of, or for the benefit of Hamas, would not insure such a risk."

However, none of the ships of either the 2010 or 2011 flotilla have any connection with Hamas and no amount of false Israeli propaganda can change the truth. Although the truth is not what much of the commercial media is concerned with.

Force is not the Best Way to Stop the Flotilla

Darshan-Leitner commented...

"We...think that the war on the flotilla should not be left for the Special Forces to fight alone. There is no need for Israeli soldiers to repel down ropes in order to stop the next flotilla -- all that's needed is some courage and original thinking. There are various ways to prevent, postpone, limit and avert the danger -- and force isn't always the best way."

We Agree-Force is not the Way to Stop the Flotilla-Ending the Naval Blockade is!

On this, we agree with Darshan-Leitner. Force is not the way to stop worldwide condemnation of Israel's blockade of Gaza. The way to stop the flotilla is to end the naval blockade of Gaza!

Until the blockade ends, Flotillas filled with citizens from around the world will continue to challenge Israeli's brutal policies and the United States complicity in them.

* Ann Wright is a retired US Army Reserve Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. As a U.S. diplomat, she served in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia, serving a Deputy Ambassador in the last four Embassies. She travelled to Gaza three times in 2009 after the Israeli attack on Gaza that killed 1440 Palestinians and wounded over 5,000 and left 50,000 homeless. She was a passenger on the May, 2010 Gaza flotilla and is an organizer for the U.S. Boat to Gaza, “The Audacity of Hope,” that will sail in the second flotilla.