Sabbah Report » Terrorism

America’s Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

William A. Cook — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:34:14 +0000

(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.

Netanyahu Rejects Peace After Hamas and Fatah Reconciliation

Stephen Lendman — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:09:41 +0000

Sham Israeli peace negotiations were stillborn from inception. Writer Henry Siegman once called them "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history."

Netanyahu once said they're "a waste of time." Previous Israeli officials called occupation and status quo conditions "permanent."

Republican presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich calls Palestinians an "invented" people. Decades ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (a transplanted Ukrainian American) said:

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist....How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."

No wonder Edward Said once called the occupation an "atrocity" and the peace process "a disheartening bloody impasse.....to reduce the Palestinian actuality to nil, to efface Palestinians as a people with legitimate rights, to render them alien in their own land."

Israeli repression reached new extremes under Netanyahu. His government is Israel's worst ever. He exceeds the worst of Ariel Sharon and previous hard-line leaders.

On December 25, Haaretz writer Barak Ravid headlined, "Netanyahu: Israel will not negotiate with Palestinians should Hamas join government," saying:

Netanyahu vowed no talks if Fatah and Hamas unite for all Palestinians. In a speech at a conference for Israeli ambassadors, he said:

"If Hamas joins the Palestinian government, we will not hold negotiations with the Palestinian Authority....The peace process can only advance while maintaining security arrangements, which is becoming more difficult in light of the current situation in the region."

In April, Hamas and Fatah announced reconciliation and plans for transitional government ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections within a year to produce unity. Currently, they're set for May 2012.

Netanyahu reacted angrily saying, "choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas." Reconciliation shows "weakness," he added. "There cannot be peace" if both sides unite. "What happened....in Cairo is a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism."

Despite reservations on both sides, signing ceremony comments signaled hope. Abbas suggested turning a page, saying:

"Four black years have affected the interests of Palestinians. Now we meet to assert a unified will. Israel is using the Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse to evade (peace. It) must choose between peace and settlement."

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said:

"Hamas was ready to pay any price for internal Palestinian reconciliation. The only battle of the Palestinians is against Israel. Our aim is to establish a free and completely sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza strip, whose capital is Jerusalem, without any settlers and without giving up a single inch of land and without giving up on the right of return."

In mid-December, Abbas and Mashaal met again in Cairo after Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) membership plans.

They'll form a committee ahead of next May's presidential, parliamentary and Palestinian National Council (PLC) elections. Once held, they'll join the PLO as sole legitimate Palestinian representative.

Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded supportively, saying "Moscow welcomes the serious talks between the Palestinian factions that aim to end Palestinian division."

According to the Turkish Anatolian news agency, so did Ankara. It also praised Egypt's sponsoring role.

On December 24, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero announced full support, saying:

"This is an important element for the unity of the future State of Palestine, and in that sense, this reconciliation is in Israel's future interests."

He added that reconciliation depends on Israel ending Gaza's siege, as well as both sides denouncing violence and respecting past agreements.

During Bethlehem's Christmas midnight mass, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal called Palestinian self-determination the main thrust for achieving peace, adding:

"We ask for peace for the Palestinian people and for the Israeli people. We ask for peace, stability and security for the entire Middle East so that our children and their children may live their childhood in innocence, in a healthy environment where they may play together without fear or complex."

Israel and Washington, of course, remain significant obstacles very much unresolved.

Unity Discussions Scheduled to Continue

In late January, unity discussions will continue to select transitional government members until elections. In February, Palestine's parliament will resume operations.

At issue is Israel's response. Elections in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem depend on cooperation. In 2005, Israel manipulated the process for Abbas.

Leading opposition figure Marwan Barghouti was imprisoned on bogus murder charges. In addition, Mustafa Barghouti's candidacy was sabotaged for "demand(ing) total and complete reform, (ending all) form(s) of corruption, (and) mismanagement, and (working to) consolidate the rule of law."

As a result, Israel arrested him while campaigning, expelled him from East Jerusalem, excluded him from Nablus and Gaza, harassed and intimidated him repeatedly, and effectively rigged the process for Abbas.

In 2012, Israel may either prevent Palestinian elections with Hamas candidates or sabotage them to assure Israeli-friendly officials only gain power.

Another obstacle involves registering Palestinians worldwide to participate and letting them vote in PLO mission offices. Doing so depends on cooperation from countries where they live.

The PNC will have 350 delegates, 150 from the Territories and 200 diaspora ones. PNC Chairman Salim Zanoun has his hands full. He heads a committee charged with making this possible. Doing so's not easy. Nor is it for millions of occupied Palestinians or diaspora ones prevented from returning home.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Palestinians worldwide number 11.22 million as of year end 2011. About 4.23 million live in Palestine (including 1.6 million in Gaza), another 1.37 million in Israel, 4.99 million in Arab countries, and around 636,000 in other countries.

PCBS also said 44% of those in Palestine are refugees - 42% in the West Bank and 58% in Gaza. Numerous others live in Arab countries, notably Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's extremism is also troubling. Repeatedly he said Israel won't return to 1967 borders. Settlement expansions will continue, and doing so's no obstacle to peace. In fact, they violate international law and obstruct any possibility of resolution.

Targeting Hamas at Israel's Behest

Baseless accusations are Israel's stock in trade. In January 1995, at its behest, the State Department duplicitously declared Hamas a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Its emergence began after 1967. In the late 1970s, Israel offered financial aid to counterbalance PLO influence. During the first Intifada (1987 - 1993), it gained prominence. Israel remained supportive.

At issue was manipulating both sides to prevent peace. Like America, Israel needs enemies to justify conflict and violence. Hamas was chosen strategically to advance Palestinian divisions.

In Arabic, Hamas means courage and bravery. Since established, it's resisted oppression and occupation. It prefers negotiation and international consensus, not violence.

However, its charter says it'll fight for its rights if Israel prevents peaceful reconciliation. It rejects Zionist intentions to destroy Palestinian society, its values and "wipe out Islam."

It calls itself "a humane movement, which cares for human rights and is committed to the tolerance inherent in Islam as regards attitudes towards other religions. It is only hostile to those who are hostile towards it....(Under Islam) it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism to coexist in safety and security" as long as other religions "desist from struggling against Islam over sovereignty in this region."

It wants peace, equity and justice for all Palestinians. It prefers negotiating on the basis of "hudnah" or temporary truce. It's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said Hamas would end its liberating struggle "if the Zionists ended their occupation of Palestinian territories and stopped killing Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians."

It current leaders are willing to recognize Israel in return for self-determination in peace inside pre-1967 borders - 22% of historic Palestine. Moreover, numerous times it agreed to unilateral ceasefires in spite of repeated Israeli violations.

Nonetheless, it responses defensively after continued provocations. Washington and Israel call it "terrorism." Under international law, it's legitimate self-defense.

Besides being Palestine's legitimate government, Hamas provides vital social services, including medical clinics, education, free meals for children, help for orphans, financial and technical assistance for homeless families, aid to refugees, special youth and sports clubs, and more as their resources allow.

It also maintains an elite military wing for self-defense, policing and security, the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades.

It wants equitable peace and reconciliation. So do Arabs and Jews. Israel and its Washington paymaster/partner choose violence. That Gordian Knot remains to be cut.

* 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.

Palestine Israel History and Theirstory. (Part 2/4)

Dr. Christof Lehmann — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 13:03:17 +0000

Palestine Israel History and Theirstory. (Part 1 here)

The Necessity of a Teleological Approach to the Language of the Discourse.

The Palestinian Israeli conflict has lasted for decades, with unimaginable human suffering involved on both sides. This suffering was predominantly on the side of the Palestinians and Arab Israelis, but legitimate suffering has been and is present on both sides. It must, with all recognition of Israeli suffering, be understood that Israel is not only the one that illegally occupies Palestinian territory; it also has one of the worlds most well equipped military forces that are largely used to control the civilian population that is living under illegal occupation. The conflict has been dominated by decades of both low intensity and high intensity conflict. Both sides have used and are making use of what could be generally described as "terrorism".

The problems with commonly used approaches to the language of the discourse with regards to the Palestine Israel conflict as well as politically motivated violence in general becomes obvious when one analyzes the different philosophical and scientific approaches that are used for understanding terrorism. Before establishing a teleological approach, let us briefly analyze some of the other approaches that are commonly used.

The constructionist and social constructionist approach. With regards to so called terrorism, the constructionist approach is among other represented by Rom Harré. In his contribution to "Understanding Terrorism" (8), Harré not only emphasizes that the genesis of many psychological phenomena lie in the language and other symbolic systems. Harré is also correctly drawing attention to the fact that social constructionism does not sufficiently deal with problems such as positioning, scapegoating and labeling. Harré is giving the example of the British Member of Parliament Peter Mandelstam, who said:

"I think the distinction we have to make is not between good and bad terrorists. It is between those terrorists who have political objectives, and are prepared to negotiate these objectives at the end of the day and engage in some kind of political or peace process."(9).

Harré realizes the problems with social constructionism. The example of Peter Mandelstam's definition (ibid.) also clearly begs the question, if so called terrorists loose legitimacy because their opponent oppresses them to such a degree that they never get to the point where negotiations are possible. Are they less legitimate. Harré draws attention to the fact that the one mans terrorist can be the other ones freedom fighter. What Harré fails to deliver though, is a model that can help overcome the problems with social constructionism in politics and conflicts, and all that it includes.

There are numerous other approaches to the discourse of so called terrorism. The influence of the social self, the dishonest criminal, and many other which to analyze is beyond the scope of this article. The one most widely taught in Western University Institutes is describing a staircase, beginning with perceived injustice, where the individual who perceives apparent injustice, and who is feeling deprived of legitimate and sufficient political influence, is slowly radicalized, and then driven into the hands of "terrorist" networks who slowly recruit and indoctrinate the person into becoming a terrorist. This theory was developed by the Iranian American Fathali M. Moghaddam (10).

Actually Moghaddam's theory is a brilliant example for how problems can not be solved. It is also a brilliant example of how so called terrorism theory actively contributes to prolonging the Palestinian Israeli conflict rather than solving it. As long as the point of departure is "perceived injustice" (ibid.) without first analyzing if there is any injustice to be perceived, the theory will not help solving the underlying causes of a conflict and thus not help stop the politically motivated violence. It can at best be useful for reinforcing the victors, the powerful's narrative, that young people are indoctrinated by radicals, without ever analyzing why a group of people is making use of politically motivated violence including the strategy of terrorism. With respect to the Palestine Israel conflict, Moghaddam's terrorism theory (ibid.) is reinforcing the Hollywood narrative. The narrative of the violent Arab, the uncivilized barbarian, who seduces misguided, imbecile young Arab people into vicious and incompetent Arab monsters who have nothing better to do than randomly murdering innocent Israeli citizens for thereafter being murdered with impunity.

It is true that the genesis of many psychological phenomena is to be found in semantics, in language, in words. Semantics partially predetermine social syntax. And thus, before we ever arrive at a state where we can discuss legitimate suffering, perceived injustice versus injustice perceived, and how to solve one of the most complex conflicts of the Middle East and the world, we should begin by developing a teleological approach to the language of the discourse.

A teleology is any account that holds that final causes exist in nature. A thing, a process, or an action is teleological, when it is for the end of a final cause (11). In other words, teleology analyzes the "inherent intentionality in all objects, subjects and activities". This includes politicians, military and paramilitary forces, populations, nationalities, organizations, et cetera as well as flowers and bumblebees and the bumblebees and flowers inherent intentionality that partially determines the course of their interaction. What the author of this article suggests is that the language of the Palestinian Israeli discourse, and that of conflicts in general, must be based on an understanding and application of teleology. The reason why this approach is so crucial for conflict resolution is, that a teleological approach to the language of the discourse makes it impossible to position, scapegoat, excuse, use euphemisms, and so forth. Let us look at some examples.

Hiroshima. The second world war had already cost tens of millions of lives. The United States Air Force is a national military force. Terrorism can be described as the tactic of instilling the emotions of fear, terror, and perceived helplessness in a target population, with the aim to manipulate a political agenda. The city of Hiroshima was not of any direct military significance in the sense that it was not heavily defended, and in the sense that the vast majority of it's inhabitants were innocent civilians and non combatants. With a teleological approach to the language of the discourse of politically motivated violence, the bombing of Hiroshima was; " The criminal, premeditated mass murder of civilian non combatants by means of a national military force, with the intention to terrorize an entire people and their government into submission, and with the purpose to intimidate and terrorize them so as to accept an unconditional surrender". Euphemisms like "we nuked them to end war" are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The occupation of Palestine is the illegal occupation of a sovereign peoples country by means of military and paramilitary national, occupying forces. The countermeasures against so called terrorism in the occupied West Bank, such as road blocks, would be utterly unnecessary if Palestine was not illegally occupied, and are designed to intimidate and terrorize. They are illegally established population control units established to maintain an illegal occupation.

The bombing of Gaza in 2004 was the terror bombing of a civilian population with the intention to instill the emotion of terror and helplessness, with the intention to intimidate both the Palestinian people and their government into ceasing to continue their legitimate fight for liberation and self determination. It was terror bombing of non combatant civilians and premeditated mass murder.

The PFLP-GC is a Palestinian paramilitary organization that uses politically motivated violence with the intention to liberate their country from illegal occupation. The PFLP-GC has the declared intention to liberate their country from illegal occupation and it is thus a militant liberation movement. It also makes use of terror bombing of civilians, as well as it makes use of legitimate military action. The euphemism "targeted assassination" used by Israel and the United States of America, is a euphemism for premeditated murder. The brutal violence used by Israeli military forces against civilians in the occupied West Bank amounts to inflicting bodily harm with the purpose to intimidate and instill terror, so as to control the population of an illegally occupied territory. It is politically motivated, illegal violence and terrorism with the purpose to continue and control an illegal occupation. The Palestinian man or women, who strap a bomb on them selves and explode them selves among non combatants inside Israel are terror bombing civilians with the intention to liberate their country from occupation. Never the less, it is terror bombing of civilian non combatants and premeditated murder too.

To be continued. Part 3 and Part 4.

Reference:

8. Moghaddam F. and Marsella (2004); Understanding Terrorism, American Psychological Association, Washington, USA. pp. 91-102.

9. Mandelstam P. (2001, December 29). IRA aims make them freedom fighters, says Mandelstam. The London Times, p.2

10. Moghaddam Fathali M.; The Staircase to Terrorism. Georgetown University. http://fathalimoghaddam.com/upload/doc/1256627851.pdf

11. Teleology - Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Teleology

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

Terrorists Fight Terrorism

Paul J. Balles — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:55:09 +0000

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. --Eric Hoffer

Former American President Jimmy Carter commented on the kind of state terrorism reflected in American actions in Guantanamo Bay and other places as a disgrace to the U.S.A.:

"I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts."

"Terrorism" and "terrorists" are the key labels of warmongers working to instil fear into the public to justify military slaughtering. Just about anyone who refuses to comply with the dictates of pre-emptive military states can be targeted.

The amazing part of this charade is that the labels are used by the states to justify outright murders while indulging in the same behaviour under a different name.

A young Palestinian blows himself up as a reaction to his family's deaths by phosphorous bombs. He's a "terrorist".

The bombers are defenders of their security, but not terrorists.

Israel admits that it used phosphorus shells "against military targets in open ground" in south Lebanon. However, the Lebanese reported the Israelis used them against civilians.

If a family member of a dead civilian retaliates against Israelis, that's "terrorism".

Israel's choice of civilian-killing tools and where they're used is not terrorism but "self-defence".

In Gaza, 67 schools receive bombs from Israel in 22 days of war. That's not terrorism but self-defence. Does Israel argue that those 67 schools would produce future terrorists?

America, NATO and ISAF invade Afghanistan to capture and/or kill Al-Qaeda terrorists. It's done. We're still there terrorising Afghans.

The label "terrorism" instils fear and arouses action. It was used to become engaged in the Iraq war.

A group of Zioncons (Zionist Neocons) including William Kristol, Martin Peretz, Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Norman Podhoretz and Robert Kagan wrote a letter to President G.W. Bush using terrorism as the key to arousing fear.

"Mr. President, we urge you to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As you have said, every day that Saddam Hussein remains in power brings closer the day when terrorists will have not just airplanes with which to attack us, but chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, as well."

In that same letter, they wrote, "It is now common knowledge that Saddam, along with Iran...maintains links to the Al Qaeda network." That comment was a blatant lie, and they knew it.

To further instil fear, the Zioncons wrote, "If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors."

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz reveals the kind of thinking that attempts to extol state terrorism by calling it self- defence.

"I have been defending Israel's right to exist, and to defend itself against terrorism, for many years-on college campuses, in television appearances and in debate."

The same targeting of would-be terrorists, justifying more state terrorism, has been directed toward Iran.

American lawyer/writer Glenn Greenwald observes, "...it has been one of Obama's highest foreign policy priorities to isolate Iran and sanction it further: as a means of placating Israel and punishing Iran...."

When either the US or Israel indulge in further pre-emptive strikes or assassinations, it will be state terrorism used to defend against fictional terrorists.

Scholar and author Noam Chomsky observed wisely "Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."

* 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.

Suppressing the truth

Paul J. Balles — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:50:50 +0000

There are some scandals that refuse to die, either because they are never fully investigated or because those responsible for them never paid the price they should have. --Gideon Levy

Issues that should concern everyone, but especially in America, have been subverted, degraded, perverted, retracted, eradicated, expunged, obscured, obliterated, squashed or (simply) zapped!

Cover-ups have kept these issues under wraps for all but those whose concern for the truth provokes them to do serious research, primarily on the internet.

The mainline media rarely touch these topics; and when they are discussed in the alternative media, the discussions are limited to a few who have been following the issues closely.

Obscured issues that deserve more than a passing interest include:

The USS Liberty cover-up
Israel's nuclear programme
9/11 truth seekers discoveries
Big business corruption
Bush administration crimes
Plight of the Palestinians
Murder by un-manned drones

Un-manned drones provide the one issue receiving major media coverage, because Anwar Awlaki, assassinated in Yemen, was an American citizen. A New York Times News Alert reported:

"Earlier this year, the American military renewed its campaign of airstrikes in Yemen, using drone aircraft and fighter jets to attack Qaeda militants. One of the attacks was aimed at Mr. Awlaki, one of the most prominent members of the Qaeda affiliate group."

According to the Guardian, "Awlaki became the first American citizen to be placed on the CIA's list of individuals around the world who the agency aims to kill or capture. His killing was approved by Barack Obama in April 2010. The news provoked strong condemnation from civil rights groups."

Offering justification for Awlaki's murder, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano claimed that Awlaki had taken on an operational role in attack planning.

Confirming Awlaki's death, Obama cited a link to the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of an airliner heading for Detroit and a bid to post bombs to synagogues in Chicago on cargo planes last year.

It had become clear that the use of drones in assassinations could no longer be kept under wraps.

The same strike that assassinated Awlaki killed Samir Khan, an American editor of a glossy magazine used as a propaganda and recruitment tool by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Writing in Truthout, Ramzy Baroud reported on the censored death of a Gaza boy killed in a drone attack by Israelis. The father told Baroud:

"Both of Ibrahim's arms were cut off. He had a hole in his lung. Parts of his legs were missing. His kidney was in a bad condition…we need people to stand with us..."

Baroud reported that "Ibrahim Zaza was merely a 12-year-old boy. He and his cousin Mohammed, 14, were hit by an Israeli missile in Gaza, fired from an un-manned drone as they played in front of their house."

According to Baroud, "Palestinians were punished for an attack at Israelis that reportedly accrued near the Israeli border with Egypt. There is no evidence linking Gaza to the attack, and Egyptian authorities are now disputing the Israeli account altogether."

Both the U.S. and Israel have apparently adopted a war machine of unmanned drones to eliminate any enemy--real or perceived.

With drones, the commanders fly their attack weapons into enemy territory with no risk to a flyer's life. Nothing more than a remotely guided machine can be lost.

The deaths and destruction at the end of missions need not be seen by the attacker. The controller of the destructive drone need not lose sleep or suffer pangs of guilt remembering his unseen victims.

The perfect exterminator is on display.

FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical’

SR Editor — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 19:21:55 +0000

By Spencer Ackerman

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that "main stream" [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a "cult leader"; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a "funding mechanism for combat."

At the Bureau's training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more "devout" a Muslim, the more likely he is to be "violent." Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: "Any war against non-believers is justified" under Muslim law; a "moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah."

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

"There may not be a 'radical' threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology," one FBI presentation notes. "The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream."

The FBI isn't just treading on thin legal ice by portraying ordinary, observant Americans as terrorists-in-waiting, former counterterrorism agents say. It's also playing into al-Qaida's hands.

Focusing on the religious behavior of American citizens instead of proven indicators of criminal activity like stockpiling guns or using shady financing makes it more likely that the FBI will miss the real warning signs of terrorism. And depicting Islam as inseparable from political violence is exactly the narrative al-Qaida spins - as is the related idea that America and Islam are necessarily in conflict. That's why FBI whistleblowers provided Danger Room with these materials.

Over the past few years, American Muslim civil rights groups have raised alarm about increased FBI and police presence in Islamic community centers and mosques, fearing that their lawful behavior is being targeted under the broad brush of counterterrorism. The documents may help explain the heavy scrutiny.

They certainly aren't the first time the FBI has portrayed Muslims in a negative light during Bureau training sessions. As Danger Room reported in July, the FBI's Training Division has included anti-Islam books, and materials that claim Islam "transforms [a] country's culture into 7th-century Arabian ways." When Danger Room confronted the FBI with that material, an official statement issued to us claimed, "The presentation in question was a rudimentary version used for a limited time that has since been replaced."

But these documents aren't relics from an earlier era. One of these briefings, titled "Strategic Themes and Drivers in Islamic Law," took place on March 21.

The Islam briefings are elective, not mandatory. "A disclaimer accompanied the presentation stating that the views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. government," FBI spokesman Christopher Allen tells Danger Room.

"The training materials in question were delivered as Stage Two training to counterterrorism-designated agents," Allen adds. "This training was largely derived from a variety of open source publications and includes the opinion of the analyst that developed the lesson block."

Not all counterterrorism veterans consider the briefings so benign. "Teaching counterterrorism operatives about obscure aspects of Islam," says Robert McFadden, who recently retired as one of the Navy Criminal Investigative Service's al-Qaida-hunters, "without context, without objectivity, and without covering other non-religious drivers of dangerous behavior is no way to stop actual terrorists."

Still, at Quantico, the alleged connection between Islam and violence isn't just stipulated. It's literally graphed.

An FBI presentation titled "Militancy Considerations" measures the relationship between piety and violence among the texts of the three Abrahamic faiths. As time goes on, the followers of the Torah and the Bible move from "violent" to "non-violent." Not so for devotees of the Koran, whose "moderating process has not happened." The line representing violent behavior from devout Muslims flatlines and continues outward, from 610 A.D. to 2010. In other words, religious Muslims have been and always will be agents of aggression.

Training at Quantico isn't designed for intellectual bull sessions or abstract theory, according to FBI veterans. The FBI conducts its training so that both seasoned agents and new recruits can sharpen their investigative skills.

In this case, the FBI's Allen says, the counterterrorism agents who received these briefings have "spent two to three years on the job." The briefings are written accordingly. The stated purpose of one, about allegedly religious-sanctioned lying, is to "identify the elements of verbal deception in Islam and their impacts on Law Enforcement." Not "terrorism." Not even "Islamist extremism." Islam.

What's more, the Islamic "insurgency" is all-encompassing and insidious. In addition to outright combat, its "techniques" include "immigration" and "law suits." So if a Muslim wishes to become an American or sues the FBI for harassment, it's all just part of the jihad.

On Tuesday, the leaders of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), warned that law enforcement lacks "meaningful standards" to prevent anti-Islam material from seeping into counterterrorism training. Some FBI veterans suspect the increased pressure on American Muslims has a lot to do with the kind of training that Quantico offers.

"Seeing the materials FBI agents are being trained with certainly helps explain why we've seen so many inappropriate FBI surveillance operations broadly targeting the Muslim-American community, from infiltrating mosques with agents provocateur to racial- and ethnic-mapping programs," Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the American Civil Liberties Union, tells Danger Room after being shown the documents. "Biased police training can only result in biased policing." (Full disclosure: This reporter's wife works for the ACLU.)

The chief of the Training Division, Assistant FBI Director Thomas Browne, came into his current job in January. His official biography lists no terrorism expertise beyond serving as a coordinator for a bureau "Domestic Terrorism Program" in Tennessee sometime in the last decade.

It is unclear what vetting process the FBI used to approve these briefings; if any Muslim scholars contributed to them; and what criteria Quantico uses to determine Islamic expertise. "The development of effective training is a constantly evolving process," says FBI spokesman Allen. "Sometimes the training is adapted for long-term use. This particular training segment was delivered a single time and not used since."

Several of these briefings were the work of a single author: an FBI intelligence analyst named William Gawthrop. In 2006, before he joined the Bureau, he gave an interview to the website WorldNetDaily, and discussed some of the themes that made it into his briefings, years later. The Prophet "Muhammad's mindset is a source for terrorism," Gawthrop told the website, which would later distinguish itself as a leader of the "birther" movement, a conspiracy theory that denies President Obama's American citizenship.

At the time, Gawthrop's major suggestion for waging the war on terrorism was to attack what he called "soft spots" in Islamic faith that might "induce a deteriorating cascade effect upon the target." That is, to discredit Islam itself and cause Muslims to abandon their religion. "Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal," he said. Alas, he lamented, he faced the bureaucratic obstacle of official Washington's "political taboo of linking Islamic violence to the religion of Islam," according to the website.

* Spencer Ackerman: Brooklyn-raised, DC-based defense nerd. Reported from Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay a couple times.

Source: Wired

9/11 Mythology: The Big Lie of Our Time

Stephen Lendman — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:52:02 +0000

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

Winston Churchill rightly explained that "(a) lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Today, of course, it circulates everywhere instantly.

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's Reich Minister of Propaganda, once said:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

He added that "truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Corporate media manipulators love a big story they can hype, distort, and falsify to attract large audiences supportively for the worst imperial crimes.

In fact, the bigger the event, the worse the reporting, sacrificing truth for managed news and opinions everyone should understand and avoid.

Distinguished scholars like David Ray Griffin exposed the 9/11 lie in his exhaustive research and writings. In numerous books, articles, and lectures, he provided convincing evidence about an inside job, not an attack carried out by "crazed Arabs."

In an April 5, 2006 lecture titled, "9/11: The Myth and the Reality," he concluded saying:

"It would seem, for many reasons, that the official story of 9/11, which has served as a religious Myth in the intervening years (and still does), is a myth in the pejorative sense of a story that does not correspond to reality."

It was Griffin's polite way of calling it a Big Lie, the biggest of our time.

On September 11, 2008, his Global Research article headlined, "September 11, 2001: 21 Reasons to Question the Official Story about 9/11," including:

(1)

(2) Although the 9/11 myth claims "devout Muslims (were) ready to die as martyrs to earn a heavenly reward, Mohamed Atta (their alleged leader) and the other alleged hijackers regularly drank heavily, went to strip clubs, and paid for sex (NPHR 153-55)."

(3) Claimed cell phone calls from above 30,000 feet to relatives were falsified as technology at the time made completely them impossible. Later, the FBI changed its story, saying only two were made "from United 93 after it descended to 5,000 feet (NPHR 111-17)."

(4) Then "US Solicitor General Tel Olson's claim that his wife, Barbara Olson, phoned him twice from AA 77," saying hijackers controlled the plane, "was also contradicted by this FBI report," saying one call she attempted was "unconnected" and lasted "0 seconds (NPRH 60-62)."

(5) The FBI lied, saying Atta's left behind luggage included "decisive evidence that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks....(NPHR 155-62)."

(6) Evidence of alleged Al Qaeda videos, "passports discovered at the crash sites, and a headband discovered at the crash site of United 93 (showed) clear signs of having been fabricated (NPHR 170-73)."

(7) Evidence shows hijackers WERE NOT on the planes. Moreover, if they broke "into cockpits, the pilots would have 'squawked' the universal highjack code," a simple two second act. However, none aboard the four flights did it (NPHR 175-79).

(8) Standard operating procedures to intercept "planes showing signs of an in-flight emergency within about 10 minutes" weren't followed. Instead, a "stand-down order prevented (them) from being carried out (NPHR 1-10, 81-84)."

(9) Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said Dick Cheney, inside the White House bunker, "apparently confirmed a stand-down order at about 9:25AM," prior to an alleged plane striking the Pentagon. "Another man has reported hearing a member of LAX Security learn that a stand-down order (came) from the 'highest level' of the White House (NPHR 94-96)."

(10) The 9/11 Whitewash Commission ignored Mineta's report, deleted it from the official record, "and claimed that Cheney did not enter the (bunker) until almost 10:00...." They lied (NPHR 91-94).

In fact, Philip Zelikow, head of the 9/11 Commission, was a member of the Bush White House.

(11) The 9/11 Commission even contradicted what Cheney told Tim Russett on "Meet the Press" on September 16 (NPHR 93).

(12) Hani Hanjour, the so-called terrible pilot unable to fly a single-engine aircraft, "could not possibly have executed the amazing (AA 77) trajectory....to hit Wedge 1 of the Pentagon" that even experienced airline pilots would have had trouble negotiating, and never would have tried, fearing they'd crash and burn (NPHR 78-80).

(13) Wedge 1 was the most implausible spot to be struck. It was furthest from offices of Rumsfeld and Pentagon top brass, presumably the targeted high-value officials.

It was also "the only part of the Pentagon that had been reinforced." Its reconstruction wasn't finished, so few people were there. And it presented the most difficult flight path to execute (NPHR 76-78).

(14) Pentagon officials lied, saying they had no warning of an approaching aircraft. In fact, "a military E-4B - the Air Force's most advanced communications, command, and control airplane - was flying over the White House at the time." Astonishingly, the Pentagon "denied it belonged to them (NPHR 96-98)."

Moreover, the Pentagon is the most guarded structure in the world, complete with advanced radar and surface-to-air missiles, able to intercept and destroy any approaching threat.

(15) Without explanation, the Secret Service let George Bush remain at a Sarasota, FL school for 30 minutes after learning the second tower was struck, ignoring standard procedures to secure his safety as presumably high-value officials were targeted.

Only advance knowledge assured them of no danger at a time media reports circulated about America being under attack.

On 9/11's first anniversary, a new White House story emerged, falsely claiming Bush left the school immediately. "The lie was told in major newspapers and on MSNBC and ABC television (NHHR 129-31)."

(16) Their rigid steel columns made it impossible for the towers to crumble, let alone "at virtually free-fall speed - unless (they) had been sliced by means of explosives." In other words, claims about impacting planes and resulting fires being responsible are "scientifically impossible (NPHR 12-25)."

(17) Other features of the towers' destruction "can be explained only in terms of powerful explosives." They include "horizontal ejections of steel beams, the melting of steel, and the sulfidation and thinning of steel." Moreover, "fires could not have come within 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit of the temperature needed to melt steel (NPHR 30-36)."

(18) New York Fire Department "oral histories shortly after 9/11" provided testimonies of "having witnessed explosions in the Twin Towers. Others toppling WTC 7 as well as the towers were also reported by city officials, WTC employees, and journalists (NPHR 27-30, 45-48, 51)."

(19) On 9/11, Mayor Rudy Giuliani told" told ABC News anchor Peter Jennings that he was informed that the towers would collapse, despite no basis to think so. In fact, the so-called information came from his own Office of Emergency Management that either falsified it or had advance knowledge of the plot (NPH 40).

(20) "NIST, which produced the official reports on the Twin Towers and (recently) WTC 7, has been fully hijacked from the scientific to the political realm...." In fact, its "scientists" are "hired guns (NPHR 11, 238-51)."

(21) Growing numbers of "physicists, chemists, architects, engineers, pilots, former military officers, and former intelligence officers" reject the official 9/11 myth as a bald-faced lie (NPHR xi).

The Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST - formerly the National Bureau of Standards, NBS) is a measurement standards laboratory, expected to produce scientifically verifiable, not falsified, analysis.

In other writing, Griffin exposed its 9/11 coverup role, saying it suggested that "fire-induced collapses of large steel-frame buildings (like the twin towers) are normal events," when they knew it's impossible.

NIST was also tasked to provide "the definitive explanation" of WTC 7's collapse. Again, coverup was its unstated mandate.

It "committed two kinds of scientific fraud: Ignoring relevant evidence (showing explosives were used) and falsifying evidence."

For example, it suppressed evidence revealed in a peer-reviewed University of Copenhagen report, showing "WTC dust contained unreacted nanothermite. Unlike ordinary thermite, which is an incendiary, nanothermite is a high explosive."

Short of verifiable insider confessions, its presence is as close as it gets to smoking gun proof of controlled demolitions, destroying the twin towers and WTC 7, not fires or other causes.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

James Fetzer founded Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and scholars, dedicated to exposing official lies, removing the shroud of deceit, and revealing truths behind 9/11.

Access his site here.

A section on it headlines "Why Doubt 9/11," providing 20 examples to debunk the official lie. They include:

(1)

(2) Most jet fuel burned "in the first fifteen seconds or so. Below the 96th floor in the North Tower and the 80th in the South, those buildings were stone cold steel, unaffected by" fires above.

(3) Steel melts at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, "about 1,000 degrees higher than the maximum" burning jet fuel produces.

(4) "Underwriters Laboratory certified the" building steel to be able to handle temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit "for three or four hours without any significant effects."

The ignited 500 degree fires were more suitable for roasting marshmallows than melting steel.

(5) Had steel melted or weakened the buildings, "the affected floors would have displayed completely different behavior," far short of collapsing that was impossible.

(6) Even when the top 30 floors of the South Tower "pivoted and began to fall to the side when the floors beneath gave way, it wasn't enough "to exert downward pressure on the lower 80 floors."

Moreover, the top 16 floors of the North Tower, "as one unit of downward force," was offset by "199 units of upward force....counteract(ing) it."

(7) Last man out of the North Tower William Rodriguez "reported massive explosions in the sub-basements that (caused) extensive destruction...."

(8) He said "the explosion occurred prior to reverberations from upper floors, a claim...substantiated by a Craig Furlong and Gordon Ross" study, titled "Seismic Proof: 9/11 Was an Inside Job," showing the "explosions actually took place as much as 14 and 17 seconds before the presumptive airplane impacts."

(9) "Heavy-steel-construction buildings like" the towers are virtually immune from "pancake collapse," unless rigged explosives cause it.

(10) Both towers collapsing from fires or on their own any other way at free-fall speed is impossible.

(11) Mechanical Engineering Professor Judy Wood compared the phenomenon of the towers collapsing to "two gigantic trees turning to sawdust from the top down."

(12) WTC-7 was a "classic controlled demolition at 5.20PM...."

(13) The twin towers were "destroyed by different modes of demolition."

(14) "The hit point at the Pentagon was too small to accommodate a 100-ton airliner with a 125-foot wingspan and a tail that stands 44-feet high...."

Moreover, the debris found had "no wings, no fuselage, no seats, no bodies, no luggage, no tail," and no engines.

In other words, no plane struck the Pentagon. A likely cruise missile was used, a weapon unavailable to alleged terrorists anywhere, let alone the ability to launch one.

(15) Pentagon videotapes show no Boeing 757 striking the building.

(16) The "official trajectory - flying at high speed barely above ground level - (was) physically impossible..." It was aerodynamically inconceivable to negotiate even for experienced airline pilots. None, of course, would have tried.

(17) Flight recorder data given to Pilots for 9/11 truth by the NTSB "corresponds to a plane with a different approach and altitude...." If followed by a Boeing 757, it would have overflown the Pentagon, not hit it.

(18) If Flight 93 crashed as reported, efforts would have been made to find survivors post-haste. Instead, coverup to suppress the truth followed, suggesting an incident other than reported.

(19) The alleged hijackers had minimal competence to fly single-engine aircraft, let alone be able to handle commercial jets. Moreover, their "names are not on any original, authenticated passenger manifest."

In fact, several "turned up alive and well and living in the Middle East." Washington never even produced their tickets as evidence because they weren't aboard the planes and had nothing to do with the incidents.

(20) George Bush later acknowledged that Saddam Hussein "had nothing to do with 9/11. The Senate Intelligence Committee" said he had no connection to Al Qaeda. Moreover, the FBI admitted having no evidence linking bin Laden to 9/11.

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

AE911Truth is a "non-partisan association of architects, engineers and affiliates dedicated to exposing the falsehoods and to revealing truths about" the Big 9/11 lie, substituting myth for reality.

Its growing membership "is devoted to:

(1) Dispelling misinformation with scientific facts and forensic evidence

(2) Educating and motivating thousands of architects and engineers and the public at large

(3) Procuring a truly independent 9/11 investigation with subpoena power

(4) Achieving 9/11 Truth mainstream coverage

Access AE911Truth's here.

Growing numbers worldwide now dispute the official myth, including Muslims for 9/11 Truth, anyone can connect with through its site.

More than any others worldwide, Muslims unfairly paid the greatest price - vilified, persecuted and attacked for their faith, ethnicity, locations in resource rich countries, and domestically for political advantage.

The 9/11 lie bears main responsibility for launching a decade of war, persecution and other forms of abuse. Stopping it ahead is job one. Revealing the truth and holding those responsible is how.

In his new book titled, "9/11 - Ten Years Later," David Ray Griffin said the following:

"Getting the 9/11 lie exposed is essential. One obvious reason is simple justice," not only for 9/11 family members never told the truth or compensated in whatever way possible.

"There also needs to be justice in the sense of punishment for those who engineered this crime," including top government and military officials. They perhaps consider themselves patriots. They're, in fact, "guilty of murder and treason."

Revealing 9/11 truth is also vital "for the sake of preventing further crimes against democracy."

"Many lines of evidence show that 9/11 was an inside job." It's virtually indisputable. As a result, it needs to outed so everyone knows to give "never again" real meaning.

A Final Comment

9/11 was the transformative event of our time, for ill, not good. It sparked multiple wars producing more of them, as well as repressive domestic crackdowns.

It also launched a Global War on Terror (GWOT), another on truth, human and civil rights, social justice, rule of law principles, and democratic values wherever America and its NATO partners show up.

September 11, 2011, will mark the 10th anniversary of a day those old enough won't ever forget. Nor should they forgive political Washington for using it to wage war on humanity.

All wars are for wealth and power, never for liberation or other social justice reasons.

Debunking the official 9/11 lie is a vital first step to freeing America of a malignancy that's destroying it and free people everywhere in its grip.

Mark October 6 on your calendar. Stand with most Americans for "human needs, not corporate greed."

"Stop the Machine! Create a New World!" Head to the nation's capital where "hundreds of thousands are expected" to "occupy Freedom Plaza indefinitely until their demands have been met," including:

(1)

(2) Ending imperial wars, bringing US forces home, and cutting military spending.

(3) Protecting America's social safety net, especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as public and private pensions.

(4) Ending corporate and other forms of welfare for the rich at the expense of most others.

(5) Transitioning to a clean energy economy, as well as reversing environmental degradation.

(6) Protecting worker rights, including collective bargaining, decent wages and benefits, and initiatives to create jobs.

(7) Getting money out of politics, and

(8) Supporting social justice for everyone, not just too-big-to-fail banker crooks, other corporate favorites and America's aristocracy.

Transforming America starts with putting our bodies on the line for change, and not quitting no matter the odds.

There's no other way because the alternative is too grim to accept what only grassroots activism can achieve.

* 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.

Was War the Only Answer to 9/11?

SR Editor — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:46:57 +0000

By Noam Chomsky * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This is the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world.

The impact of the attacks is not in doubt. Just keeping to western and central Asia: Afghanistan is barely surviving, Iraq has been devastated and Pakistan is edging closer to a disaster that could be catastrophic.
On May 1, 2011, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan. The most immediate significant consequences have also occurred in Pakistan. There has been much discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden. Less has been said about the fury among Pakistanis that the U.S. invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor had already intensified in Pakistan, and these events have stoked it further.

One of the leading specialists on Pakistan, British military historian Anatol Lieven, wrote in The National Interest in February that the war in Afghanistan is “destabilizing and radicalizing Pakistan, risking a geopolitical catastrophe for the United States – and the world – which would dwarf anything that could possibly occur in Afghanistan.”

At every level of society, Lieven writes, Pakistanis overwhelmingly sympathize with the Afghan Taliban, not because they like them but because “the Taliban are seen as a legitimate force of resistance against an alien occupation of the country,” much as the Afghan mujahedeen were perceived when they resisted the Russian occupation in the 1980s.

These feelings are shared by Pakistan’s military leaders, who bitterly resent U.S. pressures to sacrifice themselves in Washington’s war against the Taliban. Further bitterness comes from the terror attacks (drone warfare) by the U.S. within Pakistan, the frequency of which was sharply accelerated by President Obama; and from U.S. demands that the Pakistani army carry Washington’s war into tribal areas of Pakistan that had been pretty much left on their own, even under British rule.

The military is the stable institution in Pakistan, holding the country together. U.S. actions might “provoke a mutiny of parts of the military,” Lieven writes, in which case “the Pakistani state would collapse very quickly indeed, with all the disasters that this would entail.”

The potential disasters are drastically heightened by Pakistan’s huge, rapidly growing nuclear weapons arsenal, and by the country’s substantial jihadi movement.

Both of these are legacies of the Reagan administration. Reagan officials pretended they did not know that Zia ul-Haq, the most vicious of Pakistan’s military dictators and a Washington favorite, was developing nuclear weapons and carrying out a program of radical Islamization of Pakistan with Saudi funding.

The catastrophe lurking in the background is that these two legacies might combine, with fissile materials leaking into the hands of jihadis. Thus we might see nuclear weapons, most likely “dirty bombs,” exploding in London and New York.

Lieven summarizes: “U.S. and British soldiers are in effect dying in Afghanistan in order to make the world more dangerous for American and British peoples.”

Surely Washington understands that U.S. operations in what has been christened “Afpak” – Afghanistan-Pakistan – might destabilize and radicalize Pakistan.

The most significant WikiLeaks documents to have been released so far are the cables from U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson in Islamabad, who supports U.S. actions in Afpak but warns that they “risk destabilizing the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis in Pakistan â(euro) .125.”

Patterson writes of the possibility that “someone working in (Pakistani government) facilities could gradually smuggle enough fissile material out to eventually make a weapon,” a danger enhanced by “the vulnerability of weapons in transit.”

A number of analysts have observed that bin Laden won some major successes in his war against the United States.

As Eric S. Margolis writes in The American Conservative in May, “(bin Laden) repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them.”

That Washington seemed bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s wishes was evident immediately after the 9/11 attacks.

In his 2004 book “Imperial Hubris,” Michael Scheuer, a senior CIA analyst who had tracked Osama bin Laden since 1996, explains: “Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. (He) is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world,” and largely achieved his goal.

He continues: “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” And arguably remains so, even after his death.

The succession of horrors across the past decade leads to the question: Was there an alternative to the West’s response to the 9/11 attacks?

The jihadi movement, much of it highly critical of bin Laden, could have been split and undermined after 9/11, if the “crime against humanity,” as the attacks were rightly called, had been approached as a crime, with an international operation to apprehend the suspects. That was recognized at the time, but no such idea was even considered in the rush to war. It is worth adding that bin Laden was condemned in much of the Arab world for his part in the attacks.

By the time of his death, bin Laden had long been a fading presence, and in the previous months was eclipsed by the Arab Spring. His significance in the Arab world is captured by the headline in a New York Times article by Middle East specialist Gilles Kepel: “Bin Laden Was Dead Already.”

That headline might have been dated far earlier, had the U.S. not mobilized the jihadi movement with retaliatory attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.
Within the jihadi movement, bin Laden was doubtless a venerated symbol but apparently didn’t play much more of a role for al-Qaida, this “network of networks,” as analysts call it, which undertake mostly independent operations.

Even the most obvious and elementary facts about the decade lead to bleak reflections when we consider 9/11 and its consequences, and what they portend for the future.

* Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and pressor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Techonology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific communities as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of analytic philosophy. Chomsky is the author of more than 150 books and has received worldwide attention for his views.

As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Decry “Whitewashed” U.N. Report on Gaza Flotilla, Blockade

Haitham Sabbah — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 11:33:34 +0000

Democracy Now! - Turkey has downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and frozen military cooperation ahead of a long-awaited United Nations report on Israel's deadly attack on a Gaza-bound aid ship in 2010. The report accuses Israel of "excessive and unreasonable" force in its attack—which killed nine people—on the Mavi Marmara ship, and says Israel should issue a statement of regret and compensate the families of the dead as well as wounded passengers. But it also chides passengers aboard the Marmara and the other flotilla ships for what it calls a "reckless" attempt to breach Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. In a major development with broader implications, the U.N. report concludes that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is legal under international law. We speak with Norman Finkelstein, author of several books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including "'This Time We Went Too Far': Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion." We are also joined by Huwaida Arraf, one of the organizers of the Free Gaza Movement. Both Arraf and Finkelstein blast the U.N. report, calling it a "whitewash" and "morally debased."

Guests:
Huwaida Arraf, chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. She was on one of six ships that were in the Gaza flotilla when the Mavi Marmara was attacked.

Norman Finkelstein, author of several books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including "This Time We Went Too Far": Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion.

Interview Part 1/2:

Video link Part 1/2: http://youtu.be/XlLm1Ym3Pbc

Interview Part 2/2:

Part 2/2: http://youtu.be/ZwRHJBAr0q8
Interview transcript:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Turkey has downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and frozen military cooperation ahead of a long-awaited United Nations report on Israel's deadly attack on a Gaza-bound aid ship in 2010. According to leaked excerpts, the report accuses Israel of, quote, "excessive and unreasonable force" in its attacks on the Mavi Marmara which killed nine people. The report says Israel should issue a statement of regret and compensate the families of the dead as well as wounded passengers. But the report also criticizes passengers aboard the Marmara and the other flotilla ships for what it calls a, quote, "reckless" attempt to breach Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. And in a major development with broader implications, the United Nations report also concludes that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is legal under international law.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.N. investigation was overseen by Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand. Turkey says it will expel the Israeli ambassador and downgrade diplomatic ties to their lowest level until Israel drops its refusal to apologize for the raid and provides compensation.

For more, we're going to go to Ramallah, where we're joined by Huwaida Arraf, one of the organizers of the Free Gaza flotilla movement. She's on one of—she was on one of the six ships that were in the Gaza flotilla when the Mavi Marmara was attacked. She's joining us by Democracy Now! audio stream. And here in New York, we're joined by Norman Finkelstein, author of a number of books on Israel-Palestine conflict, including "This Time We Went Too Far": Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion.

In Ramallah, Huwaida Arraf, your response to the leaked report—the New York Times posted it online—of the U.N.?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Hi, Amy, Juan, Norman.

Sadly, it's a completely expected whitewash of Israeli crimes. This panel's composition—not only its composition, but its mandate—was problematic in so many ways. And it wasn't designed to get at the truth of what happened or to achieve—to get at justice for the victims of Israel's attack, but rather to arrive at political compromise between Israel and Turkey. And that's what we have. It's an attempt to whitewash the crimes, set them aside, and in addition, it came up with some outrageous claims that completely contradict the findings of numerous human rights organizations and international law authorities, including various bodies of the U.N. itself, about the legality of the Israeli blockade. So, very problematic.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the report's criticism or faulting of one organization, in particular, a Turkish organization, that had some members—helped organize the flotilla. Could you talk about what it said and your response to that?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Sure. It did say—you did quote that we were "reckless," but it also said that Israeli soldiers faced organized violence when they tried to board the Mavi Marmara, which is completely untrue. We spent a long time preparing for this flotilla. And our—everything that we prepared, the passengers and our—the foundations of our movement and what we do is based on nonviolent direct action resistance.

This is not to deny that Israeli soldiers did face some attacks when they boarded, but you can't say that these attacks were anything more than self-defense, because of the obnoxious way in which Israeli soldiers—and very violent way in which they took over the ships, in the way that was intended to cause tremendous fear and commotion. They boarded the ships firing, even on our very small boat. The boat that I was on was traveling right next to the Mavi Marmara, and we only had about 17 people on that boat. They boarded, beating down people, using tasers, firing stun grenades and paintball pellet at people's faces. It was completely uncalled-for violence, so that some people, a handful out of 700 volunteers, reacted in what can be called a violent way. It was self-defense, so it was in no way organized. And this is—I'm saying this, being part of the central organizing committee of the flotilla.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.N.'s report notes that, quote, "On the basis of public statements by the flotilla organizers and their own internal documentation, the Panel is satisfied that as much as their expressed purpose of providing humanitarian aid, one of the primary objectives of the flotilla organizers was to generate publicity about the situation in Gaza by attempting to breach Israel's naval blockade. The purposes of the flotilla were clearly expressed in a document prepared by IHH and signed by all flotilla participants," unquote.

The report then cites the document's statement of purpose, which reads, quote, "Purposes of this journey are to create an awareness amongst world public and international organizations on the inhumane and unjust embargo on Palestine and to contribute to end this embargo which clearly violates human rights and delivering humanitarian relief to the Palestinians."

Norm Finkelstein, your response?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, I noticed that Juan was looking perplexed at that statement. I have to say, last night, when I was reading the report, I was completely dumbfounded, and I had to keep repeating—rereading these passages over and over again. What the report stated—and all of your listeners should hear closely, because it was so shocking, so morally debased—the report said that we doubt, or we question, the true motives of the organizers of the flotilla. They said, we have evidence that their real motive was not humanitarian. And the statement that you just quoted was the evidence that their real motive was not humanitarian, that they had this really sinister, nefarious motive. Their real motive was not humanitarian; the real motive was, they said, the report said, to cast publicity on Israel's illegal and immoral blockade of Gaza.

Now I have to say, that is—and I'm meaning this literally—it is a new low. I read all the Israeli reports, in particular the Turkel report, the one put out by the former Supreme Court justice. It's about 300 pages. They never stooped to that level. They claimed that this handful of what they call jihadists, that they were looking for a confrontation with Israelis or the Israeli soldiers, and they brought on weapons for a confrontation. This report does not claim that they were looking for a confrontation. It holds them morally culpable for trying to cast publicity on an illegal and inhumane blockade. With the Israelis, at least we're in the same moral universe, and it's a question of fact. What was the intent of these commandos—excuse me, what was the intent of the activists? Was it to get a confrontation, or was it to cast humanitarian—cast light on what's happening? But with this report, we've entered a new moral universe. They are actually saying that to cast light on an illegal and inhumane blockade is a morally sinister act.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask, there were four members on this committee: one from Turkey, one from Israel, then there were two supposedly independent ones, the former prime minister of New Zealand and Álvaro Uribe, the former president of Colombia, who himself presided over a period of the most—the highest level of extrajudicial killings and assassinations in his own country. It seems amazingly strange to have someone like Álvaro Uribe on this panel as an objective member of the committee.

AMY GOODMAN: The Colombian president.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, it was clear from the moment that Ban Ki-moon, the alleged secretary-general of the United Nations—it was clear from the moment he appointed Uribe on the panel that it was going to be a farce. Beyond all the crimes for which Mr. Uribe has been accused and also have been documented, he was also known as being very close to Israel and advocating closer military relations with Israel. So, from the get-go, from the moment the members were named, it was clear which way the report was going to go.

But, you know, you always wonder, what are they going to come up with? How could they possibly justify certain things? They said that the blockade of Gaza—now, we have to be clear. They said the naval blockade was legal. They separated it from the land blockade, for technical reasons, which it's no point in going into here. But they said the naval blockade was legal. And the grounds they gave were this: that Israel clearly faces security problems from Gaza, the rocket and mortar fire. OK. And they say, to document this security problem, since 2001, some 25 Israelis have been killed by these rocket and mortar attacks. Fair enough. And then they say that many people have suffered psychologically, psychological trauma from these attacks. Fair enough.

Then there's the other side of the equation. There is not one word, one syllable, on how many Gazans have perished as a result of Israeli attacks. It's not 25. It's not 250. It's at least at an order of magnitude of 2,500. We're not just talking about the 1,400 Palestinians who were killed in Operation Cast Lead. Israel always has operations in Gaza, has very fancy names—Operation Summer Rains, Operation Autumn Clouds, Operation Hot Winter, Operation Rainbow. All of it vanishes from this report. The only people who have suffered deaths in Gaza due to armed hostilities are Israelis.

Now, let's say it's true. Fair enough. They have a right to impose a naval blockade to prevent weapons from going to Gaza, for security reasons. Don't the people of Gaza have the right to impose a military blockade on Israel, to prevent weapons from going to Israel? You can't even raise that question. It's beyond their comprehension. In fact, the irony is, that's the law. The law is, as Amnesty International pointed out in its report "Fueling Conflict," under international law and domestic American law, it's illegal to transfer weapons to any country or—any state or non-state party which is a consistent violator of human rights. So, if that commission, the Palmer Commission, named after, you know, the former New Zealand president, if they had any integrity, they would have said, OK, Israel has the right to impose a blockade on Gaza, and the international community" — because this is what Amnesty said. Amnesty says the international community has an obligation—that's what they said—to impose an arms embargo on Israel, as well, because it's a consistent violator of human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: I want—I wanted to bring Huwaida Arraf back into the discussion, who's in Ramallah, chair of the Free Gaza Movement, was part of the aid flotilla last year that the Mavi Marmara was a part of. The U.N. investigation did accuse Israel of excessive and unreasonable force. Now Turkey has announced the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, the suspension of military cooperation, hours before the report was published. But also, in the last attempts of the Gaza flotilla, just in the last months, they themselves stopped a ship from going forward. Can you talk about all of this, Huwaida?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Sure. Really quickly, I'd like to just touch on a couple of important points that Norman made, the first one being about the legality of the blockade. And Norman did say that they considered it very separate from the rest of the closure, which has been declared completely illegal and a violation of Israel's obligations, so there's no way that this maritime blockade can be legal, no matter what way you look at it. It's a violation of Israel's obligations under international law as an occupying power.

Also, in regards to Uribe and the problems that Norman mentioned, the other thing is that he is known to have a complete disdain for human rights defenders. And you can look at complaints from human rights organizations within Colombia. Also, an organization called Human Rights First called this out, that him referring to human rights defenders as "terrorist sympathizers" endangers human rights defenders. So, from the start, he had a disdain for people like us who like to call attention to and take action, nonviolent action, against these human rights abuses.

And the last really important thing before I get to your question is this report and the attention that it's supposed to get, when we already had an independent U.N. fact-finding mission that released a report almost one year ago, comprehensive, interviewed over a hundred victims and participants, and that was put together by scholars in international law and known judges on international tribunals. This should be the authority on what actually happened, not this farce of a report.

But in terms of what you said about Turkey stopping—about being part of stopping the last flotilla, known as Freedom Flotilla 2, which was supposed to launch last summer, or this past summer, not exactly. It was Israel placed a lot of pressure on a lot of countries, the European countries, to stop their citizens from participating. Not many—you know, some leaders of these countries made statements that the flotilla is not helpful and that they warn their citizens not to take part. But the country that was—that really cooperated with Israel—and it was a shock and quite sad—was Greece. And it did—we did learn that it came under a lot of political and economic pressure also because of the economic situation that they're in. But they did impose restrictions and did not let our boats leave. So it really became complicit in Israel's blockade. And we are challenging that on different levels.

Turkey itself didn't really. It did communicate to us and to our Turkish partners that it might not be helpful at this time, but what happened—but the Turkish organization IHH remained fully a part of the flotilla. The Mavi Marmara was not able to go, because it was not physically, mechanically ready to go. In fact, up until the date that we were supposed to launch, they still had people working to meet all of the guidelines for being certified to go into international waters on the kind of mission that we wanted it to. So we knew—at a point, we realized it wasn't going to be ready, and we took that boat out of the equation. But the Turks remained fully a part of the organizing. And in fact, we were going to launch one boat from Turkey. One of the boats—it was the Irish ship—was located in Turkey, but it was sabotaged by, we believe, Israeli agents and was not able to launch. So, they didn't really place any barriers, certainly not like Greece did.

AMY GOODMAN: But the fact that this report did find that Israel's use of force was excessive and unreasonable, and the significance of Turkey expelling the Israeli ambassador?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Definitely. Well, it's kind of funny that Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador today after the release of this report, because the whole point of this report was to reach a political compromise and to repair the relation between Israel and Turkey. And we're glad that Turkey has taken the position that it has taken. And in fact, Turkey's foreign minister has said that it's time that Israel paid a price. And it's true, because Israel does not pay a price for any of its human rights violations. It continues to act with impunity. And even the fact that this report did say Israel acted using excessive force, it doesn't—it doesn't go enough to—money or paying compensation is not—is no kind of justice for the families or for the people that—for the victims of Israel's actions. And that's what we want to see. We want to see some kind of accountability. And that's different from the U.N. report that was issued last September by the independent fact-finding mission, which recommended that human rights abusers be held accountable. And that's what we're waiting to see. So, this report, the Uribe-Palmer report, pays some lip service to the victims, but its main—again, its main goal, to repair relations, and we're glad to see that Turkey is not falling for that.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I'd like to say—

JUAN GONZALEZ: Norman, if we can, we just have a little bit of time.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Sure.

JUAN GONZALEZ: If you could just briefly talk about the implications of this report coming out now and the continuing schism between Turkey and Israel, as we head into the United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, actually, many Israelis worried that this would be Pyrrhic victory for the Israeli government, because being so stubborn about refusing to make an apology—there are two of consecutive words that just don't translate into Hebrew. The two words, consecutive words, are "excuse me." They can't comprehend that. And the Israeli—many Israeli officials were saying, "Make the apology, because we need Turkey. Turkey is our—has historically been our strongest ally in the Muslim world. Things are now turbulent with our other main ally in the Arab world, Egypt. Make the apology, and move on." But there were members of the Netanyahu government—in particular, Mr. Lieberman, the foreign minister, and his party—who refused, because they said if they made the apology, Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, would run with it and would embarrass the Israelis, and Israelis would be humiliated. But they didn't think it was a wise move. And actually, I don't think it is, either. Losing the military relationship with Turkey, suspension of diplomatic relations, and now you know Turkey, when the state issue—statehood issue comes up in September, they are going to be in the forefront now, because Erdogan has been humiliated by this report. It was a complete spit in the face of the Turks, what this report said.

So I think, from a moral point of view, it was a disgrace. But from a political point of view, it will probably end up helping the Palestinians. You have to remember the whole point of the report. It described the killing of the nine members of the—on the—passengers on the Mavi Marmara. You know the phrase they used? It was a "major irritant" to diplomatic relations. Killing nine people is an "irritant." And they said, "We have to get over this irritant, so that Israel and Turkey can restore diplomatic relations." That's their moral level.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to leave it there. Norman Finkelstein, we thank you for being with us, author of, among other books, "This Time We Went Too Far": Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion, and Huwaida Arraf, chair of the Free Gaza Movement, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, was on one of the six ships that were in the Gaza flotilla when the Mavi Marmara was attacked. She was joining us from Ramallah, on the West Bank.

Turkey Does the Right Thing

Lawrence Davidson — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:52:28 +0000

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

In the wake of the dubious UN investigatory report which all but exonerated Israel for its May 31, 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara–an attack that killed 8 Turkish citizens and 1 Turkish-America–Turkey has downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel and suspended all military cooperation. Ankara had little choice in this matter. The Israeli attack was egregious. It took place in international waters against an unarmed civilian vessel and was carried out in defense of a barbaric and illegal policy of collective punishment against one million Palestinians bottled up in Gaza by an Israeli blockade.

For their part, the Israelis claim that they murdered the Mavi Marmara Turks in self-defense. I juxtapose the words self defense and murder quite purposefully, for the Turkish passengers were in the process of defending themselves from a violent assault when they were gunned down by Israeli soldiers who now describe their actions as self-defense. This scenario is a tragic parody of a hundred years of Zionist action in the Middle East. Having come to the region in the baggage train of an imperial occupying power (Great Britain) and successfully establishing themselves by evicting the native population (a process that is on-going), the Israelis define all acts of resistence to their aggression as attacks which require their defending themselves. The Mavi Marmara action fits neatly into this Zionist world of peculiar logic. In this sense, they turn the world upside down.

The Turkish government will have none of this and demanded the minimum of decency from the Israelis–an apology and compensation. In so doing they stand for civilized behavior. The Israelis refuse to apologize. After all, when you have turned the world upside down in the fashion described above, any admission that there lies a bit of faulty reasoning in your outlook threatens to collapse your universe like a deck of cards. So what can Ankara do? It can and has distanced itself from these crazy people and refuses any military affiliations. Why militarily assist the murders of your own citizens?

In making the announcement Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu observed that the Israelis apparently see "themselves above international laws and human conscience." Actually, that is not the half of it. Not only do the Israelis disregard international law, be on the high seas, in the maintenance of the obscene ghetto of Gaza, or through their colonial impositions in the West Bank, but they assiduously seduce others to support their criminal behavior anywhere and everywhere they have lobby influence. Everywhere they go they are the poor victims who need carte blanche to protect themselves. They are the victims who victimize others in the name of self-defense. Israel is taking us all back to a barbaric state of nature.

You can see this perverse influence in the way the UN investigatory report on the Mavi Marmara assault was manipulated and distorted. Though headed by Geoffrey Palmer, a New Zealand lawyer and politician with a reputation for integrity and honesty, he was hemmed in by having to share the investigation with ex-Columbian president Alvaro Uribe–a devoted follower of the Israeli line and ally of Washington. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who is currently under attack by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight for weakening the moral integrity of the organization, also bowed to a combination of American and Israeli pressure. As a result the panel restricted itself to "reviewing reports from Israel and Turkey, thus sidestepping any independent gathering of evidence or hearing of testimony from eyewitnesses." Ban Ki-Moon insisted that no report would be released unless Palmer and Uribe could reach consensus. That guaranteed equity for Israel’s perverse and lopsided logic. Thus the best the investigation could do is come up with a report that has an Alice in Wonderland quality to it: Israeli assault troops acted in self-defense against civilians even through they (the Israelis) used excessive force bordering on slaughter and mayhem. The investigatory process was suppose to be "transparent" to avoid this sort of corruption, but Ban Ki-Moon refused to let that happen.

Turkey, of course, has rejected the UN report. Now you might say all of this is in vain. Israel’s influence in the halls of power both in the U.S. and Europe is too great for Turkey’s position to be anything but symbolic. Well, you never know. The Turks do have some leverage. Israel dreams of the day when it can officially associate itself with NATO. Turkey is a member of NATO. Indeed, it has the second largest military force in that alliance and will soon host an extension of the organizations early warning system. Under present circumstances hell will freeze over before Israel becomes a full member of NATO. Unfortunately, within Zionist world of illogic, Turkey’s position will just reinforce Israel’s narcissistic sense of victimhood. Yasir Arafat once said that Israel acts like a homicidal "big baby." He was so right.

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

The Legend of 9/11 – 10 Years On [video]

Anthony Lawson — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:15:04 +0000

By Anthony Lawson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This video concentrates on the two major 9/11 issues: The Unidentified Planes and The Controlled Demolitions. Nothing else. It does not mention the NORAD stand--down; the don't-fly and don't-go-to-work warnings or the Dancing Israelis or any of the other anomalies and suspicious happenings. The alleged amateur suicide pilots are not mentioned, either, for obvious reasons, and I do not know what happened to the allegedly hijacked planes or their alleged passengers and crews.

It is my contention that the 9/11 Truth Movement has got to concentrate on the most blatant and provable lies in the official story, and stop trying to be an amateur Police Precinct or a citizen's District Attorney's Office. The Movement must bring pressure to bear in the authorities for a new enquiry, so that the police, the FBI, the NTSB and all of the other law enforcement and investigative agencies can do what should have been done 10 years ago: Find out who was responsible for the crime of the attacks on 9/11 and bring them to justice.

Video link: http://youtu.be/wF-Rp4W_ABE

While I was thinking about a video for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, an English artist named David Borrington got in touch, and asked if I would write and record some voice commentaries to be included in a set of prints that he was making for the same occasion. When I saw his strangely haunting artwork, I decided to incorporate David's images into my video. So, my sincere thanks go to David Borrington, whose website is www.davidborrington.com

I would also like to recommend that anyone who is interested in the research done on the Murray Street engine take a look at Christopher King's excellent web page.

Music: Adagietto - 4th Movement from Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.5

* Anthony Lawson (known professionally as Tony Lawson) is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad agency creative director and voice over. He used to be known for shooting humorous commercials, but doesn’t find much to laugh about, with the way the world is going, these days.

Rep. Erik Paulsen Meets Israeli War Criminal [Satire]

Mantiq al-Tayr — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:30:18 +0000

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. Minnesota House member Erik Paulsen (Likud) continues his hasbara work on behalf of the State of Israel doing so via the funding of the AIEF which is a US tax-deductible arm of AIPAC. In his fifth post from Israel he writes approvingly of the views of an Israeli war criminal with whom he had apparently a lengthy discussion. Paulsen ought to be publicly tarred and feathered and his passport ought to be revoked before he can return to the United States. Fortunately some of the readers here at Mantiq al-Tayr have been posting comments to his ridiculous blog posts and have been making Paulsen and his Israel-first supporters a little uncomfortable.

So far Paulsen has made six daily posts, all of them utterly devoid of any substance and all of which could easily have been written by AIPAC staffers. Maybe they were. Pure unadulterated Zionist Bullshit, but I'll get to that later. First I'm going to quote in full from his website from a page called "Issues and Legislation". The first "issue" he lists is "Defending Our Homeland" and it reads like it could have been written by a Nazi. Maybe it was. Here's the whole thing. Note to Shas Party members, the red highlighting is mine. Second note to Shas Party members: Could you guys get Paulsen to join your party and run for the Knesset? But I digress.

"Our national sovereignty rests in our ability to defend the nation from those who want to harm us. Despite the fact that we've made great strides in terms of national security since 9/11, securing the safety of our nation and citizens remains our greatest duty. We are still facing a very real enemy - an enemy that will stop at nothing to bring harm to the American people.

"We must never relent in defending against this enemy and I support a strong national defense to ensure that the American people are safe and secure. A strong defense includes strong law enforcement, secure borders, a strong military and vigorous intelligence services. It also includes drastically reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

"As our brave men and women continue to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world they deserve our full and unwavering support. The security we all enjoy is a direct result of their selfless sacrifice and I stand firmly behind these brave Americans, their families and their mission."

If that doesn't give you the creeps then you must be a Zionist.

Paulsen doesn't even mention who this enemy is that requires utterly bankrupting our country in order to defend ourselves against it. But the obvious enemy is them thar Moooooooooooselims.

It's interesting too that I can't seem to find any mention of his hasbara trip to Israel on his actual web site, his posts are put on the TC Jewfolk page instead. You'd think he'd want to proclaim his allegiances proudly on his own website too. But I digress.

So, let's look at one of his posts and seriously exam it and make endless fun of it in the process. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

Let's look at post number five because, well, because he meets an Israeli war-criminal who sometimes can't travel outside of Israel for fear of arrest. He seems to like this war criminal, Avi Dichter, very much. Let's see what Paulsen tells his "constituents," and I use that term loosely, about meeting Avi boy.

Oh wait, before I get to what Paulsen says, dig this picture of Avi.

Pretty cool, mish kida?

Anyway, let's see what good old Rep. Paulsen, in Israel on a trip paid-for by an arm of AIPAC that is recognized as a tax-deductable charity, has to say about Avi.

"Began the morning meeting with the opposition leader of parliament from the Kadima party, Avi Dichter. Avi is the former head of our FBI equivalent and gave an in depth briefing on a variety of security issues and the peace process."

Hold it, before I quote further I need to make a comment. Dichter is the "former head of our FBI equivalent"? Really? Let's be more specific. Avi Dichter is the former head of Shin Bet (aka Shabak), the Israeli "internal" security service that also is deeply involved in f***ing up Palestinians living under occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, it is because of his highly criminal activities while heading Shin Bet from 2000 to 2005 that Avi has a little trouble traveling – could not even go to Madrid last year for fear of being arrested. It's kind of like saying, "Began the morning meeting with O.J. Simpson, the former husband of Nicole Brown Simpson" and leaving it at that. But I digress. More on Avi later. Let's get back to the Zionist Bullshit from Paulsen.

"I found this particularly interesting not for the subject matter, but because as the leader of the opposition party I expected he would really spend his time with us discussing his party's policy differences with the ruling party. The fact that he used his time to share a united vision with the majority party really does demonstrate that Israelis are pretty unified on safety and security issues. Rockets were fired on his hometown early this morning."

Oh, poor baby, during a week in which Israeli killed at least 23 Palestinians from Gaza plus three Egyptian security officers, Paulsen bitches and moans about rockets being fired on Avi's home town – clearly doing so to show how the "enemy" is just plain evil.

What is Avi's hometown? Well, surprise, surprise it is Ashkelon which, when it was called al-Majdal, was largely ethnically cleansed by the Israelis in 1948 with the job being finished off in 1950. Many of its inhabitants were forcefully removed by Israel and the Haganah to Gaza. Think they might be pissed off by this?

Let's look at some of the lovely history of "Ashkelon" under the tender mercies of Zionism.

"In July 1950, Majdal - today Ashkelon – was still a mixed town. About 3,000 Palestinians lived there in a closed, fenced-off ghetto, next to the recently arrived Jewish residents. Before the 1948 war, Majdal had been a commercial and administrative center with a population of 12,000. It also had religious importance: nearby, amid the ruins of ancient Ashkelon, stood Mash'had Nabi Hussein, an 11th-century structure where, according to tradition, the head of Hussein Bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was interred; his death in Karbala, Iraq, marked the onset of the rift between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Muslim pilgrims, both Shi'ite and Sunni, would visit the site. But after July 1950, there was nothing left for them to visit: that's when the Israel Defense Forces blew up Mash'had Nabi Hussein."

Even the Zionist-infested Wikipedia shows just how wonderfully the Jews treated the town's original inhabitants.

"During the 1948 war, the Egyptian army occupied a large part of Gaza including Majdal. Over the next few months, the town was subjected to Israeli air-raids and shelling. All but about 1,000 of the town's residents were forced to leave by the time it was captured by Israeli forces as a sequel to Operation Yoav on November 4, 1948."

It gets better. Look at the wonderful treatment the Jews continued to give to the goddamn ungrateful terrorist Arabs.

"General Yigal Allon ordered the expulsion of the remaining Arabs but the local commanders did not do so and the Arab population soon recovered to more than 2,500 due mostly to refugees slipping back and also due to the transfer of Arabs from nearby villages. Most of them were elderly, women, or children. During the next year or so, the Arabs were held in a confined area surrounded by barbed wire, which became commonly known as the "ghetto". Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion were in favor of expulsion, while Mapam and the Israeli labor union Histadrut objected. The government offered the Arabs positive inducements to leave, including a favorable currency exchange, but also caused panic through night-time raids. The first group was deported to the Gaza Strip by truck on August 17, 1950 after an expulsion order had been served. The deportation was approved by Ben-Gurion and Dayan over the objections of Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, who envisioned the town as a productive example of equal opportunity. By October 1950, 20 Arab families remained, most of whom later moved to Lydda or Gaza.

After kicking the Arabs out the Jews then undertook a very-well organized campaign to fill the town with Jews. It was quite successful.

"Re-population of abandoned Arab dwellings by Jews became official policy by December 1948 but the process began slowly. The Israeli national plan of June 1949 designated Majdal as the site for a regional urban center of 20,000 people. From July 1949, new immigrants and demobilized soldiers moved to the new town, increasing the Jewish population to 2,500 within six months. The town was initially called Migdal Gaza, Migdal Gad and Migdal Ashkelon. In 1953, the nearby neighborhood of Afridar was incorporated and the name "Ashkelon" was adopted. By 1961, Ashkelon ranked 18th amongst Israeli urban centers with a population of 24,000.

And in that thoroughly ethnically cleansed place, war criminal Avi Dichter was born in 1952. And Paulsen has the nerve to mention those stupid rockets which seem to serve Israel's interests far more than those of the Palestinians for whom Paulsen cares nothing.

I guess Paulsen did do one good thing in this post. He unintentionally makes Salam Fayyad look like the sell-out that he is. But then, after a Zionist-Bullshit-filled reference to Hizbullah Paulsen moves on to how he ended the day.

"Arrived at the hotel and had a late dinner. The fun event for the day – a midnight swim in the Sea of Galilee!"

Fortunately for Paulsen, the area around the sea of Galilee was also ethnically cleansed by Israel back in 1948, so Paulsen could enjoy his swim.

"The Israeli military activities were confined to the Galilee and the sparsely populated Negev desert. It was clear to the villages in the Galilee, that if they left, return was far from imminent. Therefore, far fewer villages spontaneously depopulated than previously. Most of the Palestinian exodus was due to a clear, direct cause: expulsion and deliberate harassment, as Morris writes 'commanders were clearly bent on driving out the population in the area they were conquering'.

"During Operation Hiram in the upper Galilee, Israeli military commanders received the order: 'Do all you can to immediately and quickly purge the conquered territories of all hostile elements in accordance with the orders issued. The residents should be helped to leave the areas that have been conquered'. (31 October 1948, Moshe Carmel) The UN's acting Mediator, Ralph Bunche, reported that United Nations Observers had recorded extensive looting of villages in Galilee by Israeli forces, who carried away goats, sheep and mules. This looting, United Nations Observers report, appeared to have been systematic as army trucks were used for transportation. The situation, states the report, created a new influx of refugees into Lebanon. Israeli forces, he stated, have occupied the area in Galilee formerly occupied by Kaukji's forces, and have crossed the Lebanese frontier. Bunche goes on to say "that Israeli forces now hold positions inside the south-east corner of Lebanon, involving some fifteen Lebanese villages which are occupied by small Israeli detachments".

"According to Morris altogether 200,000–230,000 Palestinians left in this stage. According to Ilan Pappé, "In a matter of seven months, five hundred and thirty one villages were destroyed and eleven urban neighborhoods emptied [...] The mass expulsion was accompanied by massacres, rape and [the] imprisonment of men [...] in labor camps for periods [of] over a year".

Wherever Paulsen goes on his trip he is standing on stolen land belonging to the native population that has been under and endless onslaught by Israel's Jews for well over 60 years. Over six decades of pillage, murder, rape – you name it. Kind of like what's in the Bible, but I digress.

2. So just who is Avi Dichter and why is he so universally hated? The Center for Constitutional Rights is a good place to start. Turns out that Avi likes to kill lots of Arabs at a time no matter who they are. So in July of 2002, as head of Shin Bet, he decided to assassinate Salah Shehadah, the leader of Hamas' military wing at the time. In order to do this, he had a one-ton bomb dropped into a residential apartment building in Gaza city knowing that this would lead to killing and injuring countless others.

"Just before midnight on July 22, 2002, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dropped a one-ton bomb on Al-Daraj, a densely-populated residential neighborhood in Gaza City in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Among the 15 people who were killed were 8 children, and more than 150 were injured in the aerial bombing. The attack completely destroyed 9 apartment buildings and partially destroyed or seriously damaged 30 more."

Killing Palestinians is the national pass-time in Israel, as I have documented more than once on this site. The more you kill the more pissed off the Palestinians get so they retaliate and Israel then uses Palestinian retaliation as an excuse to kill even more Palestinians, continue to steal their land, and to get aid and support from tools like Paulsen who are all too happy to have US blood shed on behalf of Israel and the phony war on terror. The Center for Constitutional Rights notes:

"According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), approximately 724 individuals were killed in these extrajudicial killings carried out by Israel between September 2000 and March 2008; the victims included 228 civilian bystanders, of whom 77 were children."

A law suit was filed in 2005 against Dichter on behalf of his victims in the 2002 bombing. Sadly, it was done in the Southern District of New York where it was virtually doomed to failure. And in fact, in 2007 Judge William Pauley dismissed the case on a technicality saying that Dichter was immune from prosecution because he was acting "in the course of his official duties" as the Center reports. The dismissal was appealed but Pauley's ruling was upheld. Therefore, according to US law, the deliberate murder of innocent civilians including children undertaken by someone on a government payroll at the time is not a crime that can be prosecuted. War crimes are now legal.

Let me digress. In 2009 Judge Pauley allowed Israeli spy Ben-Ami Kadish to walk free. Fining him 50 thousand dollars but no jail time. Okay, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Fortunately, many people in the US and around the world realize what bullshit this is and Dichter has trouble when he travels. Even in the Zionist bastion of Brandeis University students protested his appearing there in April of this year.

"In addition to ordering the torture of Palestinians during his tenure as the head of Israel's General Security Services, Dichter has been charged with possible war crimes for his part in the 2002 killing of Hamas member Salah Shehade and 14 other Palestinian civilians, including 9 children, who were in his Gaza Strip apartment building when a one-ton Israeli bomb was dropped on it.

"As Dicther was speaking at Brandeis, a dozen Brandeis students listed charges against Dichter, including torture and the bombing of civilians, distributed warrants for his arrest, and demanded he turn himself in to authorities,

"They ended their disruption by chanting in Hebrew "Don't worry Avi Dicther, we'll meet you in the Hague."

In 2007 Dichter had to cancel plans to go to the UK because of the likelihood that he could be arrested if a complaint were filed against him and in 2010 he had to cancel plans to go to Madrid for the same reason.

And then there is also the organization known as WANTED made up of anonymous Israelis who have created a website called wanted.org.il that contains bills of indictment against a number of Israeli past and present officials. Dichter is prominent among them and the photo insert near the top of this post is from their website.

Hey you good folks at WANTED how does this one look?

Courtesy of Skulz Fontaine

3. Okay, it's video time. Here's a short clip of the students at Brandeis.

Video link: http://youtu.be/tyH8iQByNlY

The video below shows that not all of Paulsen's constituents are morons. They also don't like his relationship with the Koch brothers. I love the woman who says: "And again it's always interesting that we never seem to be able to talk to Representative Paulsen, he's always gone or doing something else and yet we are all his constituents." She's right, presently he's off kissing Israel's ass and posting Zionist propaganda on a pro-Israeli website while saying nothing about the trip on his own website.

Video link: http://youtu.be/QiT2cjj68EA

A faithful reader, quite literally from down under going by the name of "bin dead awhile" has been requesting another Haifa video. This is a nice one.

Video link: http://youtu.be/PyppUVrcOY8

As the bird sang:

"خبيني عندك خبيني دخلك يا نونو"

The angelic voice of اميمة الخليل

Video link: http://youtu.be/OaGLNWyb5Lk

Here's a slightly edited comment from the youtube url above explaining the song for those of you who do not know the language.

"The song is a dialogue between a bird and a girl called Nunu. The bird arrives at Nunu's window seeking refuge; he explains that he comes from the borders of the skies, from the neighbours'; that he has escaped from his cage and asks Nunu to hide him. The bird is scared and weak; he has lost his feathers, and has lost all hope. Nunu shows the bird the rising sun and the nearby forest where other birds fly freely, and reassures him that he too will eventually gain his freedom."

* Mantiq al-Tayr is a blogger who is attempting to wake up other American citizens to the true dangers and challenges which face their country and is devoted to justice for the Palestinian people. Truth is his objective, satire is his tool. He also enjoys reading the Qur'an from time to time. See his website.

Israel Makes Mahmoud Abu Samra A ‘Shaheed’

James M. Wall — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:16:24 +0000

By James M. Wall * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Mahmoud Abu Samra (left) and two of his friends (Source: The Palestine Chronicle)

Mahmoud Abu Samra was killed August 19 in an Israeli air raid near Gaza City. He was 13 years old. The Palestinian news service, Ma’an, tells the story of Mahmoud’s death:

Renewed air strikes across the Gaza Strip late Thursday killed a Palestinian teenager and injured more than a dozen others amid an escalation in violence that left some 20 people dead throughout the day.

Just after midnight Friday, Israeli warplanes launched a series of raids targeting Gaza City, the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and Khan Younis in the south.

Gaza medical official Adham Abu Salmiya said an air strike on a home near the former intelligence services headquarters in Gaza City killed 13-year-old Mahmoud Abu Samra and injured 18 others.”

Mahmoud (at left in the picture above) is number 150 in the list of 173 men, women and children who have been killed this year by Israeli forces.

Each person who dies in the struggle against the Occupation, is identified by Palestinians as a Shaheed, the Arabic word for “martyr”.

Some of the men killed are identified as members of the Gaza-based Al Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad. The women and childen are all civilians. They are, also, all Shaheeds.

The website, Occupied Palestine | فلسطين | iRemember… | الشهداء prints the names of the 173 Shaheeds who have been killed between January 1, 2011, and August 25. The site further indicates that this list includes only those deaths confirmed by media sources. The 173 are recorded in the order in which they died. The list grows as other deaths are recorded.

The site reports that Mahmoud died on April 19, after midnight, which would suggest he was killed in his sleep. The media stories that recorded the deaths may be accessed by clicking on each name listed on the site.

Israel, of course, does not launch air strikes on the spur of the moment. The Israeli air attack that killed Mahmoud after midnight, August 19, had the earmarks of another of those Israeli military strikes already on the drawing board, waiting for a trigger event to justify the action.

Israel’s December, 2008, Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza, was obviously a long planned military assault. At the time, Israel claimed the military assault was a “retaliation” against Gazan rocket fire.

On August 18, 2011, Israel was quick, once again, to blame Gaza “terrorists” (falsely) for the Eilat bus attack. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Israeli news agency, Ynet, “this terror attack originated from Gaza. We will exhaust all measures against the terrorists.”

The Guardian quoted Israeli officials flatly asserting that the PRC was responsible. The officials even had a scenario that explained how “militants” traveled 125 miles from Gaza into Israel to carry out the attacks.

The Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) was responsible for the attacks near the Red Sea resort of Eilat. A large squad of militants crossed through tunnels from Gaza into Egypt, and then travelled 125 miles (200km) south through the lawless Sinai peninsula before crossing into Egypt north of Eilat, according to officials.

This scenario quickly collapsed, except in US media and political circles, where Israel’s initial cover story was adopted as the Gospel according to Ehud Barak.

American Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein does not believe in that Gospel. He has been tracking the phony Israeli scenario from the outset. He wrote in his Tikun Olam blog:

Al Masry Al Youm, an independent liberal Egyptian newspaper, reports “Egyptian authorities have identified three of the people responsible for carrying out a terrorist attack in Israel, just north of Eilat, on Thursday [August 18], in which seven Israelis were killed, according to an Egyptian security source.

The same source added that one of the men identified is a leader of terrorist cells in Sinai, while another is a fugitive who owns an ammunition factory.”

What is intriguing about this story is that it would explain many things which appeared to be discrepancies when the theory was that Gazans were involved. First, the Israeli bus driver said the attackers wore Egyptian army uniforms. Now, it might be possible for Gazans to get such uniforms, but it would be much easier for Egyptians to do so.

Second, the Israelis themselves have disagreed about the authors of the crime, with [Prime Minister] Netanyahu claiming the Popular Resistance Committee was behind it and the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) spokesperson specifically rejecting her boss’ claim.

All of which leads one to believe that the Israelis don’t have a clue who was behind it.

Israel’s neighbors also rejected the Ehud Barak version. They know the deceptive nature of their enemy. In the August 24, The Palestine Chronicle, Tammy Obeidallah, writes:

Of course, the Israeli spin machine claims the bombardment of Gaza was in response to the [August 18] Eilat operation, although there is no evidence that Hamas or the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) perpetrated the attack.

He adds:

Israel’s 63-year campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people is neatly packaged as ‘retaliation’ against ‘mortars fired by Palestinian militants’ or the hackneyed ‘homemade rockets.’ Mysteriously, the media never reports on these mortars or rockets until Israeli forces “retaliate” for them; then it serves as an excuse for continued genocide.

If Israeli strikes are ‘retaliation’ we are left to wonder just what the Israeli military was ‘retaliating’ for during the first four months of 2011, when 49 Palestinians in Gaza were murdered during Israeli raids, including a missile strike that killed three children in the same family, all under age 16. A fourth family member also died in that strike and 13 others, mostly children, were wounded.

Obeidallah further ponders whether or not the US main stream media would ever be interested in publishing the names of those Palestinians listed on the “I remember” Palestine Chronicle page. He assumes they would not.

After all, Mahmoud Abu Samra is just another Arabic name which the majority of news anchors could not pronounce correctly. At 13 years of age, his bright eyes and infectious smile were memorialized momentarily on a few social network pages, then joined the sea of images of dead Palestinian children, all victims of a 63-year genocide endorsed by most of the world’s nations.

One week after the launching of Israel’s phony “retaliation” cover story, which led to the death of Mahmoud Abu Samra, Ha’aretz reported that on August 25 that Israel and Egypt had agreed to conduct a joint investigation “of the events surrounding last week’s terror attacks in southern Israel which left eight Israelis dead.”

Having reached a political arrangement with its powerful neighbor, the newly unpredictable Egyptians, Israel continued its attacks against Palestinian “militants” in the Gaza Strip, still claiming the strikes were “retaliatory”.

This time, Israel claimed it was attacking Gaza in response to the firing of more than 20 rockets at southern Israel since Wednesday. Five Palestinians have already been killed in this latest Israeli “retaliation”.

When a nation’s foreign policy is based on a platform of lies, deception becomes that nation’s constant obsession. Without the support and help of the nation it loves, the USA, that obsession becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

What would Israel do without the constant presence of journalists like the New York Times’ Ethan Bronner? Bronner can always be depended upon to serve as a conduit of Israeli spin to American readers.

Bronner, the Times Jerusalem correspondent, writes from the rarefied air of Israel’s government offices. He is always a reliable source of the latest Israeli spin. In his latest weekend update, published August 27, nine days after the Eliat bus bombing, Bronner examined the interaction between Middle East regional powers.

His conclusions are rather obvious: The current Egyptian government is not as Israeli-friendly as Egypt’s deposed dictator, Hosni Muburak, had been. That would explain why Benjamin Netanyahu and his Congressional pals in Washington, were so upset when President Obama finally faced the inevitable and called on Muburak to step down.

We also learn another obvious fact: Turkey is not happy with Israel for reasons related to Gaza and Mavi Marmara. Bronner cannot bring himself to admit (he is writing an analysis, not a news story) that Israel has no qualms about killing Palestinians.

Turkey does not like to see Israelis randomly killing Palestinians and then telling the lie that radical Palestinians made us do it. This is the tortured analysis Bronner offers to “explain” the big lie:

Last weekend, [Israeli] officials were contemplating a major military assault on Gaza. But that plan was shelved by the crisis that emerged with Egypt, by the realization that Hamas itself was uninvolved in the terrorist attack and by the worry about how such an assault would affect other countries’ views during the United Nations debate of a Palestinian resolution in September.

Those “other countries” include Turkey, of course.

The plan to create more Shaheeds (martyrs) in Gaza was “shelved” for political expediency? Bronner is finally given the freedom to write that Hamas was not involved (an admission slow to arrive in Israel’s ruling circles). He also was freed up to write that killing Palestinians would “affect other country’s views” when the UN vote is taken September 20?

Amira Hass, Ha’aretz‘ West Bank/Gaza correspondent, does not spend her time in Israeli government offices. She writes from Gaza where she finds persuasive circumstantial evidence that there were no Palestinians involved in the Eilat bombing.

It has been one week since the terror attacks near Eilat, and there is no sign of the traditional mourners’ tents for the relatives of militants killed by the Israel Defense Forces, or indeed any reports of Gazan families who are grieving as a result of IDF actions near the Egyptian border last Thursday. Nor were there reports of families demanding the return of their loved ones’ bodies for burial. A longtime social activist told Haaretz that even in the event that families were instructed to conceal their grief, news like that is difficult to hide in the Strip.

The absence of mourners’ tents reinforces the general sense in the Strip that the perpetrators of the attack were not from Gaza, contrary to Israeli defense establishment claims. Gazans also doubt that members of the Popular Resistance Committees and their military wing (the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades ) were behind the attack. Support for this view can be seen in a report on Monday by the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, according to which Egyptian security forces had identified three of the planners as Egyptians.

Bronner ignores the absence of mourners’ tents in his analysis. Instead he clings to the Israeli spin:

Israeli officials say they are certain from detailed intelligence that the Aug. 18 infiltration that killed eight Israelis was planned and carried out from Gaza by Palestinians associated with a small radical group.

Bronner also writes that “in its pursuit of the killers into Sinai and its assassinations of the group’s leaders in Gaza, Israel found itself with less room to maneuver than in the past.” In short, Israel is not prepared to stop the killing, just bring it down to pre-August 18 levels.

Not much in the way of progress, but it is a reminder that Israel cannot depend forever on America’s vetoes to clean up the mess it creates for itself.

* James M. Wall is currently a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois. From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine. Jim launched personal blog April 24, 2008.

Analysis: renewed hostilities between Gaza and Israel

Richard Lightbown — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:40:02 +0000

Warning: Graphic, Blood Content

By Richard Lightbown * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Two terror attacks in southern Israel on 18 August caught the Israeli army by surprise despite having received a large number of warnings. The official story is that members of the Popular Resistance Committee in the Gaza Strip entered Egypt through tunnels from the Strip and travelled nearly 200 kilometres to near the north of Eilat where they crossed the border. Significantly, no organization in Gaza has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The driver of the first of two buses attacked was reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as saying that two of the gunmen were dressed in Egyptian army uniforms. The second bus was blown up by a suicide bomber. Fourteen people were killed and 31 wounded. In addition, Israeli forces shot five gunmen while Egyptian border police killed two more. Many of the attackers, perhaps as many as 10, escaped. It appears that an Israeli military helicopter attempted to give chase and crossed into Egypt territory where it mistakenly attacked an Egyptian army unit, killing five and wounding several others.

A large variety of weaponry is reported to have been used in the attacks, including mortar fire, an anti-tank missile and an RPG device that was fired at a pursuing helicopter. Explosives were laid alongside the road. In a further shooting attack in the same area later that afternoon two Israeli soldiers were wounded and three gunmen died. The sophistication and success of this attack demonstrate an unusual level of competence.

Israel’s response has been to launch at least 50 air strikes into civilian areas in the Gaza Strip since 14 August. While the secretary-general of the Salah-al-Deen Brigades and a member of the Popular Resistance Committees have been reported killed, the total number of casualties on 20 August was 15 dead and 45 wounded. Two of the dead were two years old and another was aged 13. Ten children, eight women and two elderly people are among the injured; one 15-year-old is said to be seriously hurt. A Facebook account showing photographs depicting some of the truly horrific injuries from these attacks had gone down on the morning of 21 August, but many of the photographs were still available on the Europalestine website. [See photos at the end of the post. Warning: Graphic, Blood Content]

In a diplomatic response, the Israeli ambassador to the UN lobbied members of the Security Council in an attempt to get a Security Council Presidential Statement condemning the terror attack. The Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, said that the US, European members and India were strongly in favour of the statement. At an unofficial discussion of the US draft held on 19 August, Lebanon asked for the inclusion of an amendment citing the “the escalation in Israeli bombardment of Gaza”. The US and European members are reported to have opposed this but there was no record of any opposition from Indian or from other members, which include Russia, China and Brazil.

Rather than face criticism in a UN Security Council Presidential Statement, Israel arranged for the proposal to be withdrawn. Their UN ambassador, Ron Prosor, made acrimonious comments about the UN’s failure to condemn terror against Israelis, but avoided any comment on the children and other civilians killed by Israeli retaliatory air strikes. Meanwhile, the more compliant Middle East Quartet was prevailed upon to issue strong condemnation of the attacks in southern Israel, which it incorrectly described as “cowardly” (hardly an accurate word for a person who risks death or deliberately blows themselves up, whatever the morality of the action). Token concern was expressed for the situations in Gaza and Sinai. The Quartet’s special representative, Tony Blair, also condemned the attack in Israel but made no comment on the attacks in Gaza which have caused a higher toll of dead and injured.

The authenticity of claims of a Gaza link to the attacks in Israel has been questioned by Joseph Dana who pointed out that the Haaretz account was based entirely on anonymous sources and government hearsay accounts. (Nonetheless, most of the international media outlets published the same line.) The International Middle East Centre (IMEMC) has referred to a denial by the North Sinai governor who said that the claims of Palestinians infiltrating into Egypt through the border were impossible to believe. He added that Egypt has full control over the border with Gaza and the security presence was not affected by the regime change in Egypt. It should also be remembered that previous attacks on the Sinai gas pipeline from Egypt to Israel (there have been five such attacks this year) have usually been accredited to Bedouin. So Israeli army spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibovitz did not instil much confidence when she told the Real News that intelligence information from the bodies showed that the gunmen used Kalashnikov bullets and rifles and that these are very common in Gaza. The Kalashnikov after all is the most widely available weapon on the planet, and accounts for an estimated 20 per cent of all firearms available worldwide.

An Israeli government unpopular at home because it cannot or will not face up the cause of social protests must at least show that it can act with determination to protect Israel’s security. And who better to blame than the residents of the Gaza Strip, whom the international community has been shown over decades to be unwilling to help or defend? So it was that two-year-olds in Gaza died to atone for the death of Israeli citizens, who perhaps may have been victims of Al-Qaeda terror. So what? Israel can no longer attack Egypt with impunity, so the usual suspects will have to suffice.

However this still leaves the problem of the Egyptian soldiers who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and an Egyptian public that has more of a voice on Egyptian foreign policy than it did under the Mubarak dictatorship. While an adventurer in Cairo scaled the 15-storey building to remove the Israeli flag from the embassy roof, protesters outside demanded that their ambassador be recalled and also protested at the bombardment of Gaza. The interim government itself seems undecided as to whether it will or won’t recall its ambassador from Tel-Aviv after Jerusalem refused to issue an apology for the killings. Most governments would probably have honoured such a demand for an apology under the circumstances, but the Israeli government is not well practised in the art of diplomacy. It is also contemporaneously being pressured to give an apology to Turkey over the assault on the Mavi Marmara; an apology it is most unwilling to give for fear of facilitating the prosecution of members of its armed forces. Quite possibly, that piece of international arrogance and contempt has come round yet again to embarrass and impede Binyamin Netanyahu. Notwithstanding, the longer this row continues, the more the Egyptian stance is likely to harden.

As the anger in Gaza manifests itself in mortars and rockets fired at southern Israel, the target population is learning that the much-vaunted Iron Dome is not a guaranteed defence against projectiles fired from Gaza. The 200,000 people in Beersheva along with the populations of Sderot and Ashdod remain at risk and in fear from these attacks. But Israeli options are not so straightforward. Launching another blitzkrieg on Gaza could trigger an onslaught from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is reputed to have up to 30,000 missiles at its disposal for a war with its southern neighbour. Meanwhile, Israel’s Southern Command remains at a low strength following years of cold peace with Egypt.

As terrorists aim sparks at the tinder box that is the Middle East, the time has come for wise heads to prevail. Yet with a high proportion of fanatics in the Knesset, Netanyahu is more interested in political survival that statehood. And with the puppets of the Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), controlling the White House and Congress, and a weak Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, there appears to be little cause for hope. Unless Israelis on the streets can take the lead and join with those who advocate an end to violence, the options for regional peace currently appear to be very remote.

* Richard Lightbown, studied the impacts of the Rwandan civil war on four Ugandan forests for his Masters dissertation. He has been a volunteer in Gaza and the West Bank, and assisted with a forestry proposal for the Arab areas of the occupied Golan.

Warning: Graphic, Blood Content

Palestinian Right of Self-Defense

Stephen Lendman — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:20:56 +0000

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

The Rat Patrol - Edna Spennato

Repeatedly, Israel preemptively bombs, shells, and inflicts other forms of lawless violence on Gazans, bogusly claiming self-defense.

When they respond, Israel calls it terrorism, claiming justification for greater attacks in "self-defense," what international law prohibits.

In fact, UN Charter Article 2(4) says:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

Only two exceptions apply. Under Chapter VII, the Security Council may authorize force to restore peace. Individual states must abide by Chapter VII, Article 51 stating:

"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."

In addition, individual states may use defensive force against armed attacks until the Security Council acts. No other exceptions apply, including armed reprisals. Calling them unlawful, the General Assembly said all states must refrain from using them.

The right of self-defense is limited solely to deterring armed attacks, preventing future ones after initial assaults, or reversing the consequences of enemy aggression, such as ending an illegal occupation.

Even then, however, force must conform to the principles of necessity, distinction, and proportionality.

Necessity permits only attacking military targets.

Distinction pertains to distinguishing between civilian and military ones.

Proportionality prohibits disproportionate force likely to damage nonmilitary sites and/or harm civilian lives.

Moreover, a fourth consideration requires preventing unnecessary suffering, especially affecting noncombatant civilians.

If these objective aren't possible, attacks are prohibited.

Moreover, to a limited degree, anticipatory self-defense is permitted when compelling evidence shows likely imminent threats or further attacks after initial ones.

However, attackers bear burden of proof responsibility, most often failing the test as America always did post-WW II. Israel also, without exception, since its preemptive 1947-48 "war of independence."

In fact, it was naked aggression against another country, stealing 78% of it from its citizens, the UN's 1947 Partition Plan notwithstanding, granting 56% of historic Palestine to Jews, as well as designating Jerusalem an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council.

The UN Charter also explains under what conditions intervention, violence and coercion are justified. None exist in Palestine now or ever. Claiming an "inherent right" is also bogus under international law.

In addition, Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlements of international disputes, not preemptive attacks. Article 2(4), in fact, prohibits force or its threatened use, including violent interventions of any kind.

Further, Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit instigating any unilateral or other external threat or use of force not specifically allowed under Article 51 or otherwise authorized by the Security Council. Doing so is naked aggression.

America and Israel are serial offenders. In response, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Libyans, Somalis, Yemenis, and Palestinians may legally respond defensively to preemptive armed aggression.

When done, however, it's called terrorism. Aggressors make their own rules. Targeted states are doubly victimized, suffering armed attack effects, then vilified for defending themselves. It amounts to a shocking damned if you do or don't fate.

Lawless Israeli Aggression

Since August 18, Israel lawlessly bombed and shelled Gaza preemptively, falsely blaming Palestinians for multiple Israeli attacks. In fact, they bear classic false flag characteristics, notably because compelling reasons existed to launch them.

Ongoing for four days, mounting casualties include 19 Palestinians dead and 50 or more injured, mostly civilians in harms way or willfully targeted to inflict pain and suffering.

Besides violating UN Charter Article 51, Israel also defiled Fourth Geneva's Article 33 stating:

"No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited....Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited."

No matter. Israel willfully violates this and other international law provisions, committing preemptive armed aggression against Palestinian civilians, including using illegal weapons.

On August 19, The Palestine Monitor headlined, "Attacks on Gaza continue: 'I've never seen shrapnel wounds like this before," saying:

On Friday night alone, over a dozen air attacks struck multiple Gaza sites, including a civilian car, killing a family of three - a doctor, his five-year old son and others.

Media coordinator for Gaza's medical service, Adham Abu Salmiya, said Israel is using new kinds of weapons. Doctors reported unusual injuries, resulting in increased amputations.

Maha Elbanna, a Gaza City based Palestinian/American journalist noted images of wounded victims looking especially gruesome, saying:

"There is a picture of a teenage girl with shrapnel cuts in her face that are very deep, like I've never seen before. I have seen shrapnel wounds before and these are very strange."

In fact, weapons used may be high explosive Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) ones made out of a tungsten alloy. Used during Cast Lead, they have enormous explosive power, enough to cut people struck to pieces.

In 2006, they were first used in Lebanon and Gaza. They not only kill and mutilate, their toxins cause a long-term cancer threat.

Flechette munitions possibly also were used - 4cm-long darts used as anti-personnel weapons. They penetrate to the bone, causing multiple horrific injuries. Up to 8,000 can be packed into one artillery shell. After exploding, they travel at high speed in multiple directions up to around 300 meters.

DIME and flechette munitions are terror weapons, violating the letter and spirit of international law.

Albanna added that "(t)here is so much damage across Gaza - in the north, south and in Gaza City....So far, there is no evidence that anyone in Gaza is responsible for what happened."

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, Palestinian National Initiative Secretary-General said:

"This is a campaign that is turning into a massacre and civilian areas are targeted."

Among other nonmilitary targets, Israelis struck a concrete factory, gravely injuring two civilians. Barghouthi and Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) doctors called on the international community to demand an immediate cease fire.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas requested a special Security Council session to stop Israel's naked aggression.

In response, Gazans launched Qassam and Grad rockets as well as mortars, hardly an adequate defense against F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships, tanks and other high-tech weapons, ones Israel uses lawlessly against civilians.

On August 20, Haaretz said a Be'er Sheva home was struck Saturday night, causing one death and four injuries.

Another rocket slightly wounded two children. In total since Thursday evening, dozens of Qassam and Grad rockets, as well as numerous mortar rounds were fired at southern Israel, wounding about 16 Israelis. Areas in and around Be'er Sheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Eshkol and Sha'ar Hanegev were struck. Casualties and damage caused hardly compared to what Israel inflicted on Gaza, taking an enormous toll as always.

More was inflicted Sunday when Israel struck Beit Lahia, injuring seven Palestinians, besides causing extensive damage from four days of attacks, more perhaps to come.

On August 21, Haaretz said eight senior Israeli cabinet ministers met Saturday night to discuss escalated attacks on Gaza. Cast Lead II perhaps?

Also on August 21, opposition Kadima MKs demanded Israel "launch a (large-scale) military campaign" against Gaza.

MK Shaul Mofaz (former Defense Minister and IDF Chief of General Staff) said steps must be taken to "topple (Hamas') infrastructures and create a system of ties with Egypt in order to prevent terrorism coming from its border."

In other words, when in doubt, attack. Perhaps Cast Lead II indeed. Considering Israel's horrific crimes of war and humanity last time, imagine what now may be planned.

No matter. World leaders remain silent. As usual, an August 18 White House Press statement blamed Palestinian victims the way Obama wrongfully condemned Gaddafi to justify lawless US/NATO aggression.

On August 21, Haaretz writer Yossi Sarid headlined, "Israel is isolating itself from all its Mideast allies," saying:

Israel lashed out indiscriminately, blaming everyone but itself. "Hamas is to blame because it is reponsible for everything (in) Gaza." So is Islamic Jihad. "(I)t's the (PA's) fault because it agreed (to) unite with Hamas (for) a joint government. Al Qaeda is the guilty party because" it's everywhere, "and Egypt, too, bears responsibility" because they haven't acted against "terror."

Israel's capacity for making enemies may ultimately be its undoing, leaving it isolated and reviled. For its many victims, it can't happen a moment too soon.

A Final Comment

Some good news and bad. First the bad. On August 20, Israeli forces invaded Hebron, breaking into dozens of homes, searching and damaging them, as well as arresting about 120 residents, mostly Hamas political leaders and supporters.

Now the good. On August 21, Haaretz writer Hila Raz headlined, "Israeli activists: Social protests must continue despite escalation of" violence, saying:

"Despite the escalation of violence in the south, the tent protesters are determined to keep fighting for social justice, said organizers over the weekend."

Tel Aviv protest leader Stav Shafir said:

"We'll need to find new and creative ways to protest. For many years, Israeli society got used to giving in due to security issues....Because the protest is so strong, fierce, and affects all layers of society, we understand that if we don't continue, things will be worse."

Indeed so. As a result, staying the course is crucial to have any hope for success. National Student Union leader Itzik Shmueli said:

"The goal is to get the government to fix matters such as health care, education and housing....There's no reason for the protests to die out. We have a very powerful weapon on our side - the truth."

Hopefully that spirit won't wane despite Israel's objective to crush it. In fact, it was present Saturday night, YNet News saying Tel Aviv "protesters march(ed) under red banners....chanting time-honored slogans from the oeuvre of the pacifist hard Left." They included:

"Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies."

"We demand social justice in both Israel and the Territories."

"Let us live in dignity in both Gaza and Ashdod," and

"No to another war that will bury the protest."

Imagine that spirit inspiring all Israelis. It's already present in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, so why not throughout all Eretz Yisrael.