Truth and Justice have been a historical anathema to all Empires and the powerful oligarchies throughout history.

From all divine revelations to the necessity of humanity's coexistence in peace, Justice has been the highest and noblest of virtues to ensure that no man, no government, and no nation is above the law of equality of rights for all mankind whereby the weakest, poorest, and oppressed, can exact and restore their freedom, equality of worth, dignity, and receive justice for the ills and evil perpetrated against them. Life, liberty, human rights, freedoms, and free will are divinely endowed, thus humanity's purpose is to allow no man usurp such virtues and blessings.

"There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations."
--Edmund Burke

For the first time in human history nations came together in a united institution to prevent and resolve conflicts, to settle disputes, and to provide an international venue where injustice and the inhumanity of man against man can be heard and adjudicated

Thus emerged from the ashes of two world wars in Europe, the United Nations, an institution of hope, freedom, justice, equality, and human rights for all, people's right to self determination, freedom from aggression and occupation; an institution that fosters peace; but sadly it became an institution of the powerful, for the powerful, at the expense of the lives of billions of people around the world. Since its inception the U.N. has served the political, economic, military, and social whims of the oligarchy of five Security Council nations each with a vote or veto that can preserve lives and peace, or commit wanton genocides allegedly acting in self defense and in the national interests. Much of these Security Council decisions are dependent on domestic politics and the power of special interests. It seems western appetite for imperialistic power has not been satisfied by centuries of imperial occupation of most of the world.

National interests boils down to money, especially in alleged democracies where elections are bought and paid for by the top one percent of their populations. Politicians and political institutions are held hostage by the very people who paid for their elections.

The most glaring examples in modern history are the illegitimate creation of the State of Israel in Palestine due to the influence and power of Britain and the United States who imposed their will on the United Nations as well as the illegal, immoral, and genocidal invasion of Iraq by the U.S. (and allies) due to the powerful influence of mostly Jewish Neocons operating in the interest of Israel, along with the unquenchable avarice of oil companies. They manufactured false intelligence and mass propaganda that created an unstoppable hysteria in the White House, Congress, and nation.

"The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history."
--Ari Shavit, "White Man's Burden", Haaretz, April 3, 2003

After nine years of death and destruction the U.S. finally pulls out of Iraq (not completely) leaving behind a previously prosperous nation converted into a desert, but which they label as a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous Iraq. They killed to spread democracy. Today Iraq is enduring the most violent sectarian violence that threatens the unity of the nation, thanks to Israel and the United States.

"In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous...Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism."
--Professor Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order", p. 310

These two examples showcase the ineptness, failure, and incompetence of the very United Nations created to prevent just such illegal, unjust and immoral genocidal acts by one nation against another committing unimaginable war crime, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression.

Our world has indeed become an Israeli-centric planet where Israel's interest have become the focal point and obsession of all governments, no where more so than in the United States where Israel's interests form the basis of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. U.S. Presidents usually appoint Jewish Zionists to the National Security Council to direct MidEast policy. Is it any wonder that with U.S. backing Israel has rejected every U.N. Resolution, every International initiative or peace process, even opposing America's national interests, the very hand that feeds, arms, and protects it.

The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, speaking to the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) on September 6, 2011 publicly admitted what the entire world already knows; that U.S. foreign policy is an Israeli formulated policy that only serves Israel, not the United States.

He said:

"The first is this: the test of every policy the Administration develops in the Middle East is whether it is consistent with the goal of ensuring Israel's future as a secure, Jewish, democratic state. That is a commitment that runs as a common thread through our entire government, even while approaching the U.S.-Israel relationship and regional challenges from a variety of perspectives.....The test of our policy - that it advances Israel's status as a secure, Jewish, democratic state - also explains our commitment to vigorously battle against those who would attempt to isolate or delegitimize Israel in the international community."

Many American politicians, diplomats, military officials, academicians, journalists and national organizations have been saying this for decades, but they've been denied any media exposure to address the power of Israel and its lobby, mainly AIPAC, on the U.S. government.

"President Bill Clinton," said AIPAC was "better than anyone at lobbying in this town," or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who called it "the most effective general-interest group ... across the entire planet." Former Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) said upon his retirement that "you can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here," (Quote from Professor Stephen Walt, "The Mythical Power of the Arab Lobby", Dec.9, 2010) Thus for whom the bells toll; they toll for Israel and never for its millions of victimized dispossessed Palestinians. According to Golda Meir "There were no such thing as Palestinians."

The world has been indoctrinated to accept Israel's narrative of history of its creation and its professed innocence toward the suffering of the Palestinians. Israel has attacked Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemeni - and now next stop: Iran.

All the while the U.N. and international community can only profess "concern"; which is meaningless to the dead and injured.

"Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims."
-- Professor Arnold Toynbee, British Historian

Thus too whom do the victims of western and Zionist imperialism turn to for protection and justice? Who on this planet is courageous and principled enough to tell Israel, one of the smallest nations on earth, that its thievery of Palestine, its unabated ethnic cleansing, its utter destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages, its demolition of thousands of homes, farms and orchards, its oppression and daily violation of the human rights of its subjugated people, its theft of Palestinian water to fill the settler's swimming pools, and its non stop construction of new settlements on stolen Palestinian land despite the repeated "concern" of the U.N., U.S., E.U., the Quartet, and hundreds of U.N. Resolutions that Israel ignores and stomps on with impunity, even humiliating the President of the United States in the Oval office who dared suggest a "freeze" of new settlements.

No such expressed "concerns" have ever stopped one brick from being laid in what the world calls "illegal settlements", but which the U.S. deems only as "illegitimate" as evidenced by the very pandering and humiliating veto cast by the U.S. in the Security Council against a resolution that identifies these settlements as "illegal".

Although fourteen nations in the Security Council somewhat redeemed themselves recently by criticizing the U.S. for blocking condemnation of Israel's continued settlement activity in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Tragically, Israel will once again thumb its nose at the Security Council.

The United Nations has embarrassingly failed in its stated mission and has lost all credibility, with the exception of the U.N. Human Rights Council, that it has any authority or legitimacy to impact Israel's decades of an illegal occupation of over three million Palestinians, much less the status of seven million Palestinian refugees living in squalor camps in neighboring Arab nations. Israel has tried hard to end UNRWA's mission to provide much needed assistance to the Palestinian refugees, even forcing Congress to threaten defunding the organization. According to Israel Palestinian children must not be fed, provided with health care and an education, nor clean drinking water. If it can't kill them with bullets, it'll kill them by starvation and disease.

As long as the world is impotent and cowardly to face Israel there will never be any justice for the Palestinians, or any peace in the region or western hemisphere.

The world has come to accept that Israel is always above the law, that it will never be held accountable for its wars, genocides, and oppression of the Palestinians; that it will continue to rule and act with impunity with American weapons and vetoes against hapless Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

The world is holding its cowardly breath wondering when will Israel attack Iran, an action with serious consequences for the region, the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan, both militarily and economically.

But let's look at the other side of the coin where the United Nations Security Council flexes its muscle. The UNSC's power is only reflected against weaker nations, in particular in the Arab and Muslim world. Here harsh resolutions with serious political and economic consequences are routinely passed whereby these nations are held accountable and some leaders are sought for prosecution in the ICC.

The independent International Criminal Court, much like the U.N. Security Council, is hampered by its Statute, hypocrisy, double standards, and the political will of the same powerful nations who dominate the U.N. In practice it's a court against southern hemisphere nations and leaders, but never against the U.S., Britain etc, for their illegal invasion and devastation of Iraq; and never against Israel, the world's last colonial power.

According to the Associated Press, December 15, 2011, the International Criminal Court's Prosecutor, Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, said this regarding the issue of the potential arrest of the Sudanese President for alleged war crimes:

"The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (Luis Moreno Ocampo) said Thursday that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's "destiny" is clear: he will face justice for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur... International justice is here to stay."

How courageous against Sudan, but oh, how cowardly against Israel. Is there no courageous state party member of the ICC. that will refer Israel for possible prosecution for its war crimes? Won't anyone refer the two murderous tyrants of Syria and Yemen for their slaughter of innocent civilians yearning to break free from their dictatorships?

Sadly, in the entire structure of the ICC there is not one single Arab or Muslim judge or prosecutor, a glaring omission of representation of 1.7 billion Muslims in the world residing in 57 Muslim nations representing 30% of all nations.
It is conceivable and inhumane that the entire international community has been watching in horror and silence the daily carnage of Syrian and Yemenie civilians without taking any action to stop the ongoing slaughter. The world is more than satisfied to let the impotent and incompetent Arab League, a league of tyrants, to deal with the Syrian issue and allow the Gulf Cooperation Council to resolve Yemen's potential civil war.

The Arabs are doomed to fail given their internal strife and political loyalties to foreign nations, in particular, to the United States and thus indirectly to Israel.

It is hard to fathom why the west, Russia, and China are still attached to Arab dictators given the Arab Spring which will spread to other nations despite its initial growing pains, unless they all fear the rise of "Islamists" who potentially may challenge their hegemony and economic greed.

The Arab Spring is unstoppable and in its conclusion across the Middle East will surely be antagonistic to all the nations that oppressed them, especially the United States and Israel, occupied them, monopolized their resources, and fought and smeared their beloved faith, Islam, and their beloved and revered Prophet Muhammad. The tragedy in the Arab Muslim world is that in their disunity they are their own worst enemies.

Thus the Arabs can vote, they can have a democracy but only if it's a democracy approved by the United States and Israel, free of Islamist, or else, "Remember Saddam.".

The U.N. must reform its charter regarding the Security Council's membership and abolish the Veto structure and adopt resolutions by majority vote. It must be funded in large part by the southern hemisphere nations, especially the wealthy Arab oil nations, to remove the constant American threat to defund the organization. Perhaps even consider moving its headquarters outside of the U.S.

"The United Nations, whose membership comprises almost all the states in the world, is founded on the principle of the equal worth of every human being."
-- Kofi Annan

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

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

By Glenn Greenwald*

(updated below)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh Block

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WASHINGTON, Dec 13, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Following a three year Freedom of Information Act battle, US Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk has been forced to publicly release a secret report about America's first bilateral trade agreement. The 1984 report predicted which US industries would be most harmed by massive trade preferences for Israel.

In 2009 the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep), a Washington nonprofit that works to improve policy formulation, sought public release of the report. The USTR refused. IRmep appealed to an outside review panel arguing that declassified FBI files revealed both the Israeli government and American Israel Public Affairs Committee unlawfully obtained the report in 1984. A declassified FBI investigation uncovered AIPAC's receipt of the report from Israel's Economics Minister, who refused to divulge how he obtained it. IRmep successfully argued that Americans most harmed by the data theft should also have access to the report.

The International Trade Commission compiled "Probable Economic Effect of Providing Duty-Free Treatment for Imports from Israel" by soliciting confidential business information from all concerned industries. US tomato growers and canners wanted to protect domestic production and jobs while discounting Israel as a significant market for US products. Arkansas bromine producers were concerned that Israel's state-owned producer would displace private sector US jobs in an economically challenged region.

According to the secret trade report,

"Opposition to the duty-free tariff treatment for jewelry was voiced by the largest national jewelry trade association and several domestic producers...Support for the elimination of jewelry tariffs came from an importer and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee....The implementation of this proposal would eliminate uncertainty about the future of the GSP program, a program which is the key to Israel's competitiveness in the US market."

Passage of Israel trade preferences into law in 1985 created a chronic US deficit averaging $10 billion per year. In May of 2011, IRmep's Center for Policy and Law Enforcement filed a petition with the USTR Section 301 Committee demanding $6.64 billion in compensation for exporters that suffered confidential business information loss to AIPAC and Israel. Although USTR refused to pursue the petition, the report's public release now provides crucial evidence for civil damage claims to be filed in court against AIPAC. Stakeholders may now download released sections of the report and links to FBI files at: http://www.irmep.org/ILA/ustr/

SOURCE: Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep)

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

1. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. . . . America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." ~ George W. Bush, address to the nation, September 11, 2001

"They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." ~ George W. Bush, address to Congress, September 20, 2001

In context, all Americans assumed that Bush was talking about Moooooooooslims. Maybe he was really talking about somebody else but just couldn't say so? Let's see who hates our freedoms.

Where to begin? It seems the US has so many enemies these days. We could start with Pakistan, they hate our elections don't they? Oh, but they have elections too. Hell they even elected a woman as president. I know, they hate us because we have the right in the United States to keep and bear arms. Pakistanis don't have that right, right? Well, not quite. The gun situation in Pakistan would be the envy of everyone living in Bumfuck, Idaho. But I digress.

Oh, maybe they hate us because we bomb the shit out of them with drones? Damn, I bet killing lots of women and children probably does piss them off quite a bit, them being Moooooslims and all. Ungrateful bastards.

Maybe if we stopped killing them they might like us more. Naah.

Hmmmm, I went over a whole bunch of people who don't like us these days in a council with all the tuyuur here at Mantiq al-Tayr and we had to rule out places like Iran, North Korea, the Palestinians, damn near all Arabs everywhere, the Russians, the Chinese, the Central Americans, Newfoundland, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Yahweh knows who else. None of them, as far as we could determine, hates our freedoms, even our freedom to not have universal health care.

Hmmm, maybe Bush meant something else. Maybe he was being subtle, trying to get a secret message across to us. Maybe he was trying to say "Look, I'm a dumb-shit born to a rich family and I did too many drugs as a kid. But now I'm surrounded by absolute Zionist crazies and we're fucked. Help!"

Wouldn't that be cool?

Wow. So where should I look to find those who hate our freedoms?

A little birdie told me to start with the US Senate. It seems that there is some brouhahahahahaha going on about new legislation that might allow the military to arrest American citizens and put them in detention forever with no habeas corpus. The entire patriot-minded internet has written about it, so if this is a first for you then you have got to be a Shas Party member, but I digress. The US military could become the only nuclear police force on earth. Who on earth would come up with an idea as anti-American as that?

Israel.

Carl Levin

Well, for thing he is right at the top of Senate recipients of Jewish Lobby money. (Note to Shas Party Members and Republicans, the red highlights were done by Hassan Nasrallah, standing in for Haifa Wehbe who had a previous commitment editing Mark Dankof's work.)

"For the past three re-election cycles, Levin has been the top recipient in the Senate of pro-Israel contributions – receiving $573,773 in 1990, $371,157 in 1996 and $331,304 in 2002. In this election cycle of 2008, Levin is also leading all Senate candidates in donations from pro-Israeli groups with $84,910 in contributions, which is more than double the amount of all other Senate candidates."

The pro-Israel pacs just love this guy and he gets contributions from a whole bunch of them. Here are three examples:

One of those groups is the Center for Middle East Peace & Economic Cooperation, which was established in 1989 by Slim Fast Foods Chairman S. Daniel Abraham and Utah Congressman Wayne Owens. This pro-Israeli group makes campaign contributions and takes members of Congress to the Middle East on fact-finding missions. In the 2002 election cycle, they were the number one pro-Israeli campaign contributor giving nearly $1.5 million to candidates.

And:

Then there is the Washington PAC, which was founded by Morrie Amitay. Amitay was Executive Director of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) from 1974 to 1980 and speaks highly of Levin on his website. Washington PAC contributed $10,000 to Levin in 2002 and has already given $9,000 for his re-election campaign this year.

And:

NorPAC has contributed $5,000 to Senator Levin for his 2008 re-election campaign. NorPAC is a non-partisan political action committee whose primary purpose is to support candidates and sitting members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives "who demonstrate a genuine commitment to the strength, security, and survival of Israel." Their website also claims that their lobbying efforts, "Successfully helped pass the Syria Accountability Act, Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, Iran Freedom and Support Act, and gain Israel's entry into the UN's Western European and Others (WEOG) Group."

Levin of course does Israel's bidding on every conceivable issue with the exception of the Iraq war. He is a huge fan of the war on terror, arguing that the Iraq war was a distraction from it, and he is viciously anti-Palestinian.

He co-sponsored the senate resolution supporting Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2009.

Occupy Wall Street even calls him a "dual national." I'm not sure why though. Seems he is just loyal to one country. The same country that his co-sponsor John McCain is loyal to.

Not only does Levin hate your freedoms, he doesn't want the Egyptians to have theirs either. (And, btw, the Egyptians are fucked.) Last February Levin made it clear that all he cares about with respect to what some call the Egyptian "revolution" (which it was not) is that Egypt continue to kiss Israel's ass.

This guy is bought and paid for by Israel and he wants the military to be an internal police force against terrorism. All you all who like to do things like write columns for Hizbullah's al-Manar website and appear on Press TV had better fucking look out.

In Part II we will look at the drones. But I also really want to get to Alan Derwoshitz. Damn, but that one will have to wait till part 3 or 4.

Some much Zionist Bullshit, so little time. So little time not just for Mantiq al-Tayr, but for you.

2. The Republican Jewish Coalition also hates your freedoms. Remember, Israel is "the nation-state" of the Jewish people, so these Republicans, like their "Democratic" counterparts in the "National Jewish Democratic Council" have one priority – and guess what goys and girls – you ain't it.

Again, as anyone with the state of awareness of a Penn State football coach knows, Ron Paul, about the only non-fascist running for the Republican nomination, was excluded from their debate on Dec. 7 – a day that will "live in infamy" for sure.

The RJC, on it's website runs a piece by Jonathan Tobin who says:

"But just as no one would consider a demand the GOP group provide a platform for a Democrat, there is no reason for it to allow Paul to pretend he is anything but an extremist who is far outside of the mainstream, especially when it comes to issues concerning the U.S.-Israel alliance."

Paul also believes in individual liberties and freedom from a crushing militarized police state that is engaged is endless wars all over the globe. The RJC stands for exactly the opposite. They hate your freedoms.

Here's Newt Gringrich (by the way, there is some controversy about how you pronounce his last name – it is pronounced "GingdieforIsraelrich", but I digress)showing that he works for Israel at the RJC "debate".

"In a Gingrich administration, the opening day, there will be an executive order about two hours after the inaugural address. We will send the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as of that day."

So, an inauguration day, immediately after taking the Oath of Office as required by article six of the US Constitution, GringdieforIsraelrich will make serving our Israeli masters his first priority.

If you assholes vote for this guy you richly deserve to go straight to hell. And you will because he will create it here on earth for you, though I have to admit we're well on the way there already.

Here's what the RJC had to say on its very own website about the great "debate". Hasan-jan did the highlights again.

"What a tremendous day! The RJC's 2012 Republican Presidential Candidates Forum was an outstanding success. Six top presidential candidates took the time to come to Washington, D.C. just to speak to our audience. Each gave an impressive, thoughtful, and exciting speech and took questions from the audience."

"Impressive" and "thoughtful" mean subverting your country to Israeli interests.

Here's proof from the Haaretz blog of the event.

Matthew Brooks

"The Jewish community has a role to play in these elections and we'll win," Brooks says.

Uh, Matt, who is "we" in that sentence? Oh, and btw goys and girls, Matt isn't just the CEO of the RJC, he is also the head of the Jewish Policy Center, a pro Israeli think tank, one of about 6 million in the US. The Center "strongly supports the global war against Islamic extremism". This guy is all Israel all the time.

Here's Michelle Bachmann speaking at Matt's "debate".

Michele Bachmann

"I will move the Embassy to Jerusalem. Recognize annexation of the Golan Heights or any settlements Israel would chose to annex."

Here's Rick "Die for Israel" Perry saying the US must support Israel's wars.

"But Israel needs our vocal moral support, because there will be inevitable international condemnation if Israel decides to strike. What Israel does not need is President Obama demanding eternal gratitude for being its best friend."

The Zionist Jews are really after Romney, who also kissed Israel's ass at the "debate" but didn't kiss it enough. It's clear they have decided he's on his way out. They are the one's who decide who you'll get to vote for.

For example:

"Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) issued the following statement in response to Romney's speech: "Throughout my career in Congress, Democrats and Republicans have stood side-by-side in support of Israel's security and the U.S.-Israel relationship because they are bipartisan, national security priorities. It is highly irresponsible for a presidential candidate to spread reckless accusations about our foreign policy that could lead anyone to question the United States' commitment to Israel's security."

Not sure what got her so riled up, Romney totally sucked up to Israel and engaged in the mandatory war mongering against Iran. She's not the only Jew in Congress who was pissed off as you'll see if you read the whole blog – it's so revealing you might just want to pack up your bags and move somewhere else after you read it.

For example, Nit Mitt said:

"My policy couldn't be more different – I'll travel to Israel on my first trip, reaffirm Israel's existence as a Jewish state. And I want the world to know that the bonds between the U.S. and Israel are unshakable. I wouldn't meet with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. He should be excluded from the diplomatic community and indicted for incitement of genocide. And on my watch, Iran's Ayatollahs won't be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons. Our friends should never doubt we'll stand by them in their hour of need; our enemies should never question our resolve."

Huntsman also left the "debate" with a brown nose.

"It's time for the world to understand who our friends and allies are, that we stand with Israel." That's pretty much what Herman Cain used to say.

And the ridiculous Rick Santorum also wants you involved in more wars for Israel too.

"Look at the situation developing in Iran. It's time the Oval office has courage and convictions and so something that is right, to challenge the radical theocracy. It will change the world. There is no greater threat to the existence to Israel than Iran."

Go here on the RJC site for links to videos of the speeches on CSPAN as well as transcripts of many of the presentations. You must be over 18 – old enough to kill people for Israel – to view that material.

3. Okay, for video time, let's go to the other side of Zionist-permitted opinion on all things political, the so-called Democratic Party. And who would be a better representative of that party than the chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. The video is so revealing of how fucked we are. . .

Note that in her criticism of the RJC's "debate" she says that the RJC is "an organization that puts its partisanship and its party in front of its love of Israel." That's a criticism?

But as you watch the video it only gets worse. With Zionism, it always does.

Video link: http://youtu.be/ztz6OCoM_Ho

As I wrote above:

Some much Zionist Bullshit, so little time. So little time not just for Mantiq al-Tayr, but for you.

(to be continued, time permitting)

* 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.

Say this tongue twister quickly:

How much wood
could a wood chuck chuck
if a woodchuck
could chuck
wood?
As much wood
as a woodchuck could chuck
if a woodchuck
could chuck
wood!

That tongue twister doesn't do any damage, not even to the tongue.

"Another type of twister, a tornado," says Wikipedia "is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud."

If you follow news from America, you'll see frequent reports of swirling cones of air turned violent across the country, especially in the mid-west.

Sometimes twisters or tornados are called cyclones, but none of the people who have witnessed their houses picked up into the cones much care what they're called.

In the first stanza of THE SECOND COMING, Irish poet W. B. Yeats described another type of twister:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

The "widening gyre" offers another vision of the twister. Thus, not only is nature at times violent and destructive, but people falling into the conical pattern through anarchy.

Finally, those who twist the truth or distort facts--politicians, propagandists, snake-oil salesmen and major media outlets—are expert twisters.

Distorters have a cause to serve. Media has their owners and readers or viewers to satisfy. Rupert Murdoch outlets, like Fox News and News Corp pander to Murdoch's interests.

MSNBC yields to its liberal supporters, often critical of Fox and almost always opposed to Fox's political positions. If Fox News twists news and commentary to right wing politics, liberal media twist reporting to the left.

Politicians who gridlock parliamentary or congressional bodies serve special interests that support them financially. In short, they're bought by twisters who pay politicians to be twisters for a cause.

Outright propagandists like Abe Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League; David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee; and Norman Podhoretz, Editor-at-Large , Commentary magazine consistently use the print media to attack anyone critical of Israel.

The technique used involves twisted argument aimed at anyone who fails to tow the line of their organization, including writers who attack those who fail to accept any political medicine they prescribe.

This ploy works mainly because readers don't take the time to dig into both sides of arguments and can't distinguish fact from twisted fiction.

In a rant against the New York Times for an editorial slightly critical of Benjamin Netanyahu, David Harris complained that Netanyahu had been the newspaper's "favourite whipping boy for the editorial writers..."

Master twister Harris tried to defend Netanyahu while demeaning the Times editor for his criticism of the prime minister.

The editorial actually expressed concern for Israel, but Harris completely ignored that while refusing to accept any criticism for anything Israeli. To Harris's (and other's) twisted thinking, Israel can do nothing wrong.

Then there are the underhanded tactics used by AIPAC, whose current president is Lee Rosenberg. AIPAC functions as an organization dedicated to influencing media, students and elected officials in America.

Nureddin Sabir, Editor of Redress, Information and Analysis, upon his return from Libya, commented on the challenge now facing Libyans as they embark on a path of freedom from a single Gaddafi prescribed opinion:

Libyans "will have to get used to the art of persuasion. They will have to learn that theirs is not the only opinion worth listening to and that nobody, whether Islamist or liberal, holds a monopoly over the truth."

That's something people everywhere should learn. The only way out of the morass of opinionated special interests is to become exposed to opposing interests. Learn to see how twisters work to deceive.

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

by MEDEA BENJAMIN and ALLISON McCRACKEN

During August recess this year, 81 members of Congress went on a junket to Israel funded by the Israel lobby group AIPAC (well, funded by the American Israel Education Fund, but they are really one and the same) to “learn first-hand about one of our closest friends and allies.” While the representatives insist they got a balanced view, their itinerary belies that claim: 95 per cent of their time was spent hearing the Israeli government point of view, with only one token meeting with Palestinian reps.

CODEPINK has filed a complaint with the Congressional Ethics Committee stating that these trips—and the upcoming ones scheduled for December–violate the Congressional prohibition on traveling with a lobby group. We feel these voyages are part of AIPAC’s grand plan to control and monopolize Congress, which is not just unethical, but dangerous. Their bias reinforces a disastrous U.S. policy of unconditional support for Israel that obstructs peace and runs counter to our national interests.

At a recent Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, entitled “Promoting Peace? Reexamining US Aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)”, we got a glimpse of what happens when Congress views the Middle East through AIPAC-colored glasses. Here are a few of examples of their tunnel vision:

Asking the wrong questions: Congress is intent on looking into the $600 million a year U.S. taxpayers give to the Palestinian Authority, especially at a time, as a few members brought up, of economic hardship in the United States. But they would not dare hold a hearing about the more important issue: the $3 billion a year we are giving to the Israeli government–which is five times what we give the Palestinian Authority. The question they should be asking, but won’t, is: How can American taxpayers afford to give “military aid” to the wealthy government of Israel, especially when that government uses our funds to drop white phosphorous on civilians in Gaza, kill international humanitarians on boats trying to break the Gaza siege, bulldoze Palestinian homes and orchards, and imprison peaceful protesters?” CODEPINK was in the hearing with signs saying “No More $$ to Israel”, but we were not even allowed to quietly hold them.

Listening to the wrong people: While the hearing was about Palestine, not one of the four witnesses was Palestinian-American, Arab-American, or even sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view. Like the AIPAC-junkets to Israel, this Washington hearing was completely one-sided. Three of the four people testifying before the Committee were Jewish, and all four were white men from conservative think tanks that take the side of the Israeli government. One of the witnesses was none other than convicted criminal Elliott Abrams, who, after the Iran-Contra scandal, went on to covertly arm Fatah after Hamas won the 2006 elections in Gaza, leading to a bloody conflict and inadvertently, to a Hamas takeover of all of Gaza. What great credentials for giving Congress advice on the Middle East!

When we asked the committee staff why there was not one pro-Palestinian voice on the panel, we were told to be quiet or we’d be ejected from the hearing.

Polluting the atmosphere with racist comments: Not once was the plight of the Palestinians under occupation even mentioned. Instead, Democrats and Republicans across the board made sweeping statements that were embarrassingly racist. “Sending aid to the PA reinforces bad behavior,” said Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lethinen. “The Palestinians refuse to negotiate and they glorify violence,” she added. Cong. Carnahan wanted to know why there are no “honest actors” among the Palestinians. Elliot Abrams added, “The Palestinians have been cursed by a failure of leadership for 100 years.” There was no mention, of course, that some of the best Palestinian leaders can be found in Israeli jails.

At the end of the day, one message that could clearly be taken away from the hearing was that all Palestinians (except perhaps Salem Fayyad, who they didn’t think was so bad) are ungrateful, Jew-hating, terror-worshipping freeloaders who are too lazy to work for peace and who glorify violence. It obviously didn’t fit into the AIPAC junket agenda to introduce any of the committee members to peace activists in the West Bank who organize nonviolent protests against the occupation on a weekly basis.

Ignoring history/denying reality: It was painful to listen to the whole hearing, but one particular lament of Congress was arguably the most offensive. “Ah, Israel has given up so much land, and done so much for peace. When are the Palestinians going to make some concessions and do anything at all for peace?”, asked Cong. Rohrbacher, throwing up his hands in disgust. The Palestinians still want the right to return “so that they can destroy Israel,” he added. Cong. Poe complained that Israel has given so much land for peace that “pretty soon they’re gonna run outta land.” Witness Schanzer denounced “100 years of Palestinian nationalism, which has been more concerned with destroying Israel than constructing a viable Palestinian state.”

Putting aside the fact that the West Bank and Gaza territories represent a fraction of historical Palestine, Congress completely ignores the fact that thousands of acres of Palestinian land have been confiscated by the Israeli government to establish dozens of settlements and populate them with hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers. When the word settlement came up, it was not in the context of land theft but to chide the Obama administration for focusing too much on settlements in its first two years and creating a rift with the Israeli government.

Targeting the victims:  As if pointing the finger at the Palestinians for all the Middle East’s woes wasn’t enough, to its delight the committee found a new target to defund and shut down: UNRWA, the United Nations Refugee Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. UNRWA assists about 5 million Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East, including those who were displaced during the creation of the state of Israel and their descendants. UNRWA provides these refugees with basic services such as education and healthcare. The surrounding Arab countries where millions of Palestinian refugees live refuse to grant many of them citizenship, thus denying them the ability to work and receive social services. Without UNRWA, these people would basically be left with nothing.

Instead of acknowledging this sad reality, members of Congress nodded their heads in eager agreement as witness Jonathan Schanzer, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, insisted that UNRWA be shut down. “UNRWA treats the Palestinians more like clients than refugees,” he claimed, thus perpetuating the refugee problem. The only dissenting voice around shutting down UNRWA was David Makovsky, who cautioned that the Israeli government might hate UNRWA, but it would not like to see it shut down because then Israel would have to pay for those services it provides, including schooling Palestinian refugee kids.

Shutting off the lights: One witness,  Schanzer, had just returned from Ramallah with news about the “electricity scam.” The PA, he said, was supplying power to Palestinians in Gaza, but Hamas–which controls Gaza–was charging people and pocketing the money. Since the US funds the PA, we were enabling this scam. Committee Chair Ros-Lethinen was horrified and indicated that cutting off funds for electricity (i.e. turning out the lights on 1.6 million people) might be in order. No one mentioned that Israel bombed Gaza’s sole power plant during the 2008 invasion, and today it is still only partially functioning. No one mentioned that Israel continues to restrict the entry of spare parts to rebuild the plant and fuel to run it, leaving the people of Gaza with severe power shortages of up to 12 hours a day!



Tying aid with plenty of strings: While most representatives expressed a desire to cut all funds to the PA, the witnesses cautioned them–not for humanitarian reasons but for Israel’s interests. The PA security forces have been cooperating with the Israelis on everything from stopping attacks on Israelis to repressing demonstrations. David Makovsky from the Washington Institute speculated that cutting off funds to the PA security forces would only hurt Israel. Schanzer said that cutting off the PA could lead to an “intrafada” in which Hamas could emerge even stronger. He stated that money is the U.S. leverage to control the PA. “If we cut the funds, we lose our leverage and open the door for Iran and other anti-Israel actors.”

Eviscerating the UN: The United States claims that it will veto the Palestinian statehood bid because the peace talks should take place between the two parties directly and not through an outside entity—in this case, the UN. Many of the reps could not contain their distain for the UN. “The UN would vote for any resolution that is anti-Israel,” said Cong. Poe in disgust, even if it said that the world is flat. They suggested defunding any UN organization that endorses Palestinian statehood. Some went even further, suggesting we cut off aid to any country that endorses statehood! Hungry Haitians or Ethiopians will simply have to pay the price. There is no such thing as “going too far” when it comes to standing up for Israel!

Sheer stupidity: One thing the representatives just couldn’t understand is that if we are giving the Palestinians so much money, how come they don’t like us? “Anti-Americanism among the Palestinians is only second to anti-Israel invective,” said witness Schanzer, to the nods of the representatives. Rohrbacher seemed incredulous that we’ve given the Palestinians all this money, and it hasn’t even bought us goodwill. Duh! Of course the Palestinians don’t like us—we are supplying billions of dollars of weapons to their oppressors! 

The stranglehold AIPAC has over Congress is putting our nation on a collision course with history. The vast majority of the world’s nations support the Palestinian bid for statehood (120 of them already recognize the state of Palestine). The democratic movements sweeping the Arab world are clamoring for Palestinian rights. Unconditional U.S. support for Israel keeps the region in turmoil, pits us against world opinion and jeopardizes our national security. It’s time for Congress to take off the AIPAC blinders.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of the human rights group Global Exchange and the peace group CODEPINK.

Allison McCracken is the DC Coordinator of CODEPINK.

Democratic Congressional porkers at AIPAC's trough meeting Pres. Peres (source Richard Silverstein)

By Reverend Carolyn Boyd * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"What if we stopped the three billion dollars in aid we give to Israel annually and used the savings to create a national jobs-deficit reduction programme?... This is the time to reallocate financial resources to American families and communities and to fix our obsolete, dilapidated infrastructure." (Rev. Carolyn Boyd)

Americans are frustrated, angry and disappointed in the political leadership of our country. We are enduring one crisis after another: housing, war, jobs, budget, debt and deficit. We are also shouldering our own personal and professional crises. We are governed by political ideologies that are inflexible, uncompromising and that ignore the long-term well-being of our country.

Yet, with all of these pressing and unrelenting national challenges, a record 81 House members, about a fifth of the chamber, spent a week in Israel last month, courtesy of a foundation set up by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby.

As a participant in the Interfaith Peace-Builders' African Heritage Delegation to Israel/Palestine, who recently returned from a two-week fact-finding study tour, I can attest that Israelis have their own urgent and pressing issues to deal with: ongoing maintenance of the 63-year old occupation (yes, it dates to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of over 700,000 Palestinians), expensive and unjust military rule over the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territory seized in 1967, massive Israeli youth protests regarding the rising cost of housing, food and gas, and the ongoing oppression of Jews of colour and Palestinians who call Israel home.

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr, one of the Democrats who visited Israel, said that he was looking forward to learning about Israel's business and commercial sectors as well as the latest tools and technology the country is using to fight terror, but what did he really see? I doubt he saw and experienced what the 14 members of the African Heritage Delegation witnessed.

More than likely, his delegation saw and experienced the beauty and opulence of Tel Aviv. They enjoyed the finest of foods and perhaps sampled wines from the colonized Golan Heights. They probably witnessed well-orchestrated military exercises and political speeches. I suspect they did not hear, as we did, from Palestinians who are displaced from their homes, whose lands, farms, and olive trees have been confiscated or from the mothers who worry about their sons being bullied, abused and imprisoned by the Israeli police using the most technologically advanced counterinsurgency practices.

I'm sure they did not see, as my delegation did, the rationing of water to Palestinians, the daily blackouts of electricity or the lack of health care services to the elderly or those suffering from Post-Traumatic Occupation Stress Syndrome. No doubt, they did not meet Palestinians, as we did, in Hebron who live each day under the assault of angry, militant Jewish settlers.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who led one of two Republican delegations, stated:

I am pleased to be bringing so many of our new Members of Congress to Israel so that they can learn firsthand about Israel and the important role our key ally plays in the Middle East. The United States and Israel share similar core values of democracy, human rights and a strong national defense.

Yet, Israel is not living up to the definition of a democracy. Israel has dominated Palestinians for 63 years while illegally occupying the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem for the past 44 years. It routinely denies full participation of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Inside Israel, it is well documented that Jews of colour (Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews), African Palestinians and non-Jewish residents are treated as second and third-class citizens with diminished human and civil rights. Democracy means more than voting rights for Palestinian citizens. There must be equality under the law, yet that is significantly absent in Israel and dramatically lacking in how Israel administers the occupied Palestinian territory.

There is simply too much at stake in America for our congressional members to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders without the complete picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The situation is vastly different from the one Israel's prime minister depicted recently to Congress.

What if we stopped the three billion dollars in aid we give to Israel annually and used the savings to create a national jobs-deficit reduction programme? Our African Heritage Delegation believes, as many Americans do, that we need a jobs-growth and deficit-reduction programme here at home now. This is the time to reallocate financial resources to American families and communities and to fix our obsolete, dilapidated infrastructure.

The two-tier system of law Israel has established in the occupied West Bank, documented by Human Rights Watch, recalls the Jim Crow laws of the American South and the discriminatory practices of apartheid South Africa. Our members of Congress should loudly reject such discrimination. And they should spend more time with constituents in dire need of their leadership as well as modelling democratic values in their respective congressional districts.

* Rev. Carolyn Boyd lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and recently reteurned from an Interfaith Peace-Builders' African Heritage Delegation to Israel/Palestine.

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.

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

Part I - Stretching the Definition of Anti-Semitism
　
Can criticism of Israel, particularly a) criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people and b) criticism of the state ideology of Zionism that justifies that treatment, be labeled anti-Semitic? This is not a hypothetical query. An affirmative answer to this question is being advocated by influential Zionist lobbies in the United States. The question is of particular importance on the nation’s college and university campuses. In places like the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and also at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Zionist students are now threatening to sue these institutions for failing to prevent an "atmosphere of anti-Semitic bigotry" allegedly created by the presence of pro-Palestinian student groups and faculty.
　
One might ask if it isn’t a stretch to assert that protesting Israeli and Zionist behavior is the same as anti-Semitism? Common sense certainly tells us this is so. Unfortunately, we are not dealing with situations that are ruled by common sense. What we are facing here is the issue of ideologues bred to a specific perceptual paradigm and their insistence that others conform to it.
　
Here is an example: Take an American kid from a self-conscious Jewish home. This kid does not represent all American Jewish youth, but does typify say 20% of them. He or she is taught about the religion and also taught about recent history and the near annihilation of the Jews of Europe. He or she is sent to Hebrew school, and maybe a yeshiva school as well. Most of our hypothetical student’s friends will be Jewish and of similar background. Between home, friends and school the student might well find him or herself in something of a closed universe. Throughout this educational process Judaism and its fate in the modern world is connected with Israel and its survival. The Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, are transformed into latter day Nazis. In addition, Israel’s state ideology of Zionism becomes assimilated into the credos of the religion. Soon our hypothetical student cannot tell the difference between the two. Then, having come of age, our student goes off to college or university. Now he or she is no longer in a closed world. The result can be culture shock and an uncomfortable feeling that the student is on a campus where vocal and assertive debate about Israel and its behavior sounds like an attack on the Jewish religion. Our student complains to the ZOA, Hillel, AIPAC, or some similar organization and we are off down a road toward censorship and/or litigation. Lawsuits are lodged (particularly if the ZOA is involved), donors swear that they will no longer support the institution, legislators bang on desks at the state capital, and boards of directors want to know what is going on and what the institution’s president is going to do about it?
　
Part II - Sweet Reason
　
There have been a number of efforts to try to use sweet reason to work out some of these problems before they get too explosive. For instance, in 2006 there was concern over the efforts of various pro-Palestinian campus groups to promote an academic boycott of Israel. Is this being anti-Semitic? Should campuses allow this to be advocated? After all those who espouse academic boycott have a good deal of evidence of criminal activities on the part of the Israeli Universities. At that time the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) sought to clarify the issues by arranging a roundtable discussion on academic boycott by those who stood pro and con. This sounded like a good idea. But no, the Zionist side did not like the list of discussants on the pro side and tried to censor the list. The AAUP resisted that move, so the Zionist side pressured the donors subsidizing the proposed roundtable to pull their support. The whole thing collapsed. It seemed the Zionists were not going to discuss the topic except on their own terms.
　
Just recently there has been similar attempt at sweet reason. A heated debate is now taking place over whether Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which bars federal funds from institutions that discriminate) can be applied to schools that allow criticism of Israel which the Zionists claim is anti-Semitic. If so, those same Zionists, whose influence is strong in Congress, can use Title VI as a club to threaten colleges and universities with the loss of financial support unless they shut down the criticism. This, of course, equates to censorship and an attack on free speech.
　
Once more the AAUP, which opposes the use of Title VI in such situations, approached the American Zionists in an effort to find a compromise position. Professor Cary Nelson, head of the AAUP, managed to enter into negotiations with Kenneth Stern, the "anti-Semitism expert" of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The two of them worked out a common position which, after consultation with others in each organization, was signed and released to the public. What did this document say? For our needs, here are its most important points:
　
1. Title VI is not an appropriate instrument to use when trying to "protect" Jewish students from "anti-Israel events, statements and speakers." To use Title VI this way amounts to censorship.
　
2. Question: How do we know what is going on at a college or university campus is anti-Semitism? Answer: "Six years ago the European monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) created a working definition of anti-Semitism....while clearly stating that criticism of Israel in the main is not anti-Semitic, [it] gives some examples of when anti-Semitism may come into play, such as holding Jews collectively responsible for the acts of the Israeli state, comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, or denying to Jews the right of self-determination (such as by claiming that Zionism is racism). In recent years the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights have embraced this definition too. It is entirely proper for university administrators, scholars and students to reference the working definition in identifying definite or possible instances of anti-Semitism on campus."
3. Conclusion: Censorship should be avoided, Title VI should be avoided, but the "working definition" should be used to make judgments as to how best to "wrestle with ideas" while at the same time "combating bigotry."
　
This letter was signed by both Cary Nelson as President of the AAUP and Kenneth Stern as the Director of the anti-Semitism and extremism sub-division of the AJC. Released in early August 2011, it took only a few days before it was repudiated by the AJC. On 9 August David Harris, President of the American Jewish Committee, "apologized" for the joint declaration, said it was "ill advised" and blamed a breakdown in the AJC’s "system of checks and balances" for the slip up. Kenneth Stern is now on an unscheduled sabbatical and can not be reached for comment.
　
This is, of course, a replay of the 2006 situation and just goes to show that, it is the hard right ideologues who are in charge on the Zionist side. These people have a worldview that allows for no compromise. Censorship is exactly what they want and Title VI is as good a weapon to wield as any. What could Kenneth Stern possibly have been thinking? There is no room for sweet reason here.
　
Part III - The AAUP Makes a Mistake
　
This is not the end of the story. There is something wrong with the fact that the AAUP was so quick to endorse the EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism (a definition, by the way, that Kenneth Stern had a hand in writing). Consider these two statements from the above AAUP-AJC declaration each of which, according to the "working definition," can be seen as anti-Semitic: 1) "holding Jews collectively responsible for the acts of the Israeli state" and 2) "denying to Jews the right of self-determination (such as by claiming that Zionism is racism)." As we are about to see the first statement has hidden facets to it and the second defies historical reality.
　
Statement 1:

It is absolutely the case that the Jews should not be held collectively responsible for the actions of Israel. But it should be pointed out that it is just such collective responsibility that Zionists insist upon. Zionist ideology demands that Israel be recognized as representing world Jewry. Zionists expect that, in return, all Jews will identify with and actively support Israel–feel one with the "Jewish state." They classify those Jews who do not recognize their collective responsibility to Israel as somehow deficient or perhaps "self-hating" Jews. So let us get this straight, if holding Jews collectively responsible for the acts of Israel is anti-Semitic, what does that make the Zionists?
　
Statement 2:
　
a. That Jews have some sort of natural right to political self-determination is highly questionable. How about Protestants, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, ad infinitum? Just how far do we want to push this claim of political self-determination for religious faiths? Oh, but the Zionists insist that Jews are not just adherents to a particular faith–they are a "people." Well, for sure that is an opinion. It just doesn’t happen to be the opinion of millions of other Jews who see Judaism as a religion pure and simple. Of course, if the latter are vocal about this they run the risk of being labeled "self-hating."
　
b. And who, except of course the Zionists, says that Zionism is a desirable vehicle for the expression of this alleged right of self-determination? Let us face it. Israel and its Zionist ideology were born of the will of a small minority of Jews, almost exclusively from Central and Eastern Europe, most of whom were secularists, and almost all of whom carried within their heads the poisoned perceptions of European imperialist bigotry – an outlook which still characterizes the state they set up. That is why, in practice, Zionism has resulted in a prima facie racist environment in Israel. And now we are told that, according to the "working definition," pointing out the link between Zionism and racism is an act of anti-Semitism!
　
Given this close reading of parts of the "working definition," the AAUP really ought to rethink its apparent support of the document. It is a position that can only give impetus to the very censorship the AAUP dreads.
　
Part IV - Conclusion
　
One has come to expect twisted logic from the Zionists. Actually, one can expect this sort of thinking from any band of ideologues. Their blinkered vision, incapable of seeing around the corners of their prejudices, guarantees that most of what comes out of their mouths and their pens is sophistry.
　
However, what is one to do when folks you count on as rational and careful thinkers, like the leadership of the AAUP, get caught short this way? What is one to do when flawed reasoning and spurious assumptions start to be translated into criteria for government administrative decisions? What can you do when a fifth of the Congress decides to take a break and visit one of the most racist places on the planet and you risk being labeled an anti-Semite for decrying this fact? Well, you have a good laugh, have a good cry, and then go post your assessment of the situation on your website. Then you get a bit drunk. Finally, you repeat ten times "I will never to stay silent."

* 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.

Need A Vacation? AIPAC Pays For 81 US Lawmakers Vacation In Israel

While the US continues to struggle with its economic issues Congress is on vacation. Many are upset at the news reports that 81 members of Congress have chosen to spend a week relaxing in Israel. These vacations are being paid for by AIPAC. Adam Shapiro, an activist, tells us his thoughts on the matter.

Video link: http://youtu.be/2IVuiubScco

By Grant Smith * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

John Boehner and Eric Cantor

AIPAC's last IRS list of contributors claims the organization now has only two major donors [.pdf]. As a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization (a category intended for civic leagues, social welfare organizations, and local associations of employees) AIPAC files an IRS Form 990. AIPAC has long structured its fiscal year end in such a way that it languidly files 2-year-old data while other nonprofits are rushing to report their previous year. Therefore, the AIPAC Form 990 listed as "year 2010″ at Guidestar.org, the officially designated website to consult such data, is actually year 2009 data [.pdf]. It also lacks the most important data in Form 990 - donor contributions.

Unlike the far more numerous nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations, which have to continually "means test" that they have a wide public funding base in order for contributor donations to be tax-deductible, contributions to 501(c)(4) organizations such as AIPAC (which actively lobbies Congress, the executive, and numerous government agencies) are not tax-deductible. There are no contribution limits to 501 (c)(4) nonprofit groups. Individuals, foreign nationals, partnerships, associations, and other organizations may contribute whatever amount they like to a 501(c)(4).

Given AIPAC's oversize clout in U.S. Middle East policy, it's always informative to see just how many people are giving - and how much. When AIPAC's founder, Isaiah Kenen, was dispatched in the early 1950s from his job at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs with orders to lobby the U.S. Congress for guns and diplomatic support as an American (rather than the U.S. State Department as an Israeli foreign agent), it was supposed to be only a six-month gig. As that operation morphed into a semi-permanent Washington institution run outside the normal purview of the Foreign Agents Registration Act office, AIPAC was forced to tap a very small base of wealthy donors (some with criminal records) while simultaneously receiving covert support from the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency in Jerusalem.

After that "conduit" foreign- funding ruse was uncovered by a Justice Department investigation, Kenen emerged from the crisis and slowly built back up AIPAC's donor base, whipping up post-1967 Six-Day War donor fears and anxieties that Israel was in danger of being overrun (it wasn't) if people didn't send in their checks. Now, AIPAC is pushing largely the same "Israel in danger" emotional buttons, with Iran as the flashing red light.

AIPAC's schedule of donors doesn't appear on Guidestar. The IRS won't release it for any organization except by special request. Only then will the IRS send a "Schedule B" of contributors with all $5,000-plus contributors' names - but not their donations - censored. If the breadth of AIPAC's funding base is a "leading indicator" of AIPAC's popular support, it is America that should now be deeply worried that AIPAC is catering to drastically fewer - and possibly much more extreme - voices.

For fiscal year 2006, AIPAC's top contributor gave $650,000. The rest of AIPAC's "Schedule B" donors gave on average $16,772 each. The list of $5,000-plus donors numbered just over 1,700 individuals, so numerous that AIPAC had to attach a separate spreadsheet to its return [.pdf]. This large group of donors represented the majority (56 percent) of AIPAC's total claimed direct public support. If we assume AIPAC had approximately 50,000 paying members that year, the rest gave $464 each for a total of $50,920,792 in public support.

According to the special IRS release of AIPAC's 2009 Schedule B [.pdf] there were only two $5,000-plus donors. Donor number one gave $48,842,187. Donor number two chipped in $13,503,472. This means small donors contributed only $2,261,755 for total year 2009 public support of $64,607,414. The IRS confirms that there is no additional 2009 spreadsheet attachment of $5,000-plus donors as in 2006. AIPAC is now telling the IRS that it has only two meaningful donors.

There have been many reasons for smaller givers to bail out on AIPAC, leaving a pair of committed donors to carry all the weight. AIPAC, like any corporation, wants to chart a steadily increasing line of total revenues because any crisis-driven decline could weaken its brand and perceived power. But the years since 2006 have been rocky. Two former AIPAC officials narrowly escaped a long-awaited espionage prosecution, which was mysteriously tossed out by the Obama administration in 2009 after years of pre-trial escalation. Many AIPAC donors probably didn't have the stomach or risk-tolerance to donate to an organization that nurtured and then threw overboard top employees in order to save itself from an espionage indictment.

In 2009, former AIPAC official Steven J. Rosen noisily filed a $20 million defamation lawsuit against AIPAC and its board of directors. 2009 marked the year an ongoing campaign was launched to have AIPAC return to its roots by re-registering as an agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rather than continue to operate as a domestic American lobby and "social welfare" organization. In 2010, AIPAC's tax exempt status was also challenged. These concerns could have been sufficient to drive away scores of AIPAC's key base of $5,000-plus donors. AIPAC's signature Washington gathering in May 2011 had a Potemkin village feel to it. Many attendees interviewed by Max Blumenthal seemed woefully uninformed about the issues. Many hundreds of others, including student leaders, attended only after receiving heavy travel subsidies.

If the threat of Rosen walking away with $20 million was enough to keep small donors at bay in the recent past, it will likely remain that way for a few more years. On June 20, 2011, Rosen filed a brief [.pdf] and a 629-page addendum in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Rosen explains why within the AIPAC corporate culture it was defamatory for his former employers to characterize his attempts to gather and use classified intelligence on Iran as not comporting with "standards that AIPAC expects of its employees." Rosen has even filed a "smoking gun" [.pdf] July 21, 2004, email updating AIPAC director Howard Kohr on U.S. intelligence obtained about Iran and details of Rosen's early use of classified U.S. secrets to derail Jesse Jackson's political career. Rosen's lawsuit will not only elevate insider concerns that AIPAC donor funds may soon be paid out as damage awards, but also raise the larger and more public governance questions about why AIPAC has never been indicted for espionage or theft of government property as a corporation, given what has now been so thoroughly documented in court.

As Americans nervously ponder their representatives' travel plans and AIPAC's nonstop lobbying for American economic and clandestine warfare on Israel's enemies, they must ask other serious questions. Who are the two people now providing the lion's share of AIPAC's funding? As long-time Washington Report on Middle East Affairs editor Janet McMahon revealed during the May 2011 Move Over AIPAC conference, it's not clear what percentage of AIPAC's donations come from American contributors and sources. Given AIPAC's influential leadership role at the head of a network of stealth political action committees it helped establish in the 1980s, will AIPAC's concentrated pool of core donors channel ever more extreme candidate guidance [.pdf] to the people who really count come election day, i.e., single-issue pro-Israel campaign contributors? What do the big AIPAC donors dispatching 20 percent of Congress to Israel think about trip-wiring the U.S. into an unwarranted military conflict with Iran? Americans should ask themselves whether any two people should have so much influence on U.S. Middle East policy.

* Grant F. Smith is the author of the Spy Trade: How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy. He is a frequent contributor to Radio France Internationale and Voice of America's Foro Interamericano. Smith has also appeared on BBC News, CNN, and C-SPAN. He is currently director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.

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

Eighty-one members of the US House of Representatives-about 20 percent of the total membership-are enjoying a late summer week-long, all-expenses paid trip to Israel.

This hasbara (propaganda) trip happens every other summer (in non-election years), but this year's excursion to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea comes at a time when voters back home are not thinking about Israel. They are worried about their under-water mortgages and disappearing 401Ks.

Instead of returning immediately to their home districts to answer questions about the US economy, 81 House members are flying to Tel Aviv to demonstrate their loyalty and devotion to a foreign power. They are hoping, of course, as they bolster their standing with AIPAC, that financially-stressed voters will not be told that the 81 are enjoying an all expenses paid visit to Israel.

So far, the main stream media (MSM) has protected them. The only way to find out if your congress person is living in Israeli luxury for a week is to call his or her office and ask. The MSM has not bothered to identify the 81, except when a single member is mentioned in a fawning local feature story.

Allison Weir describes this bi-annual summer all-expenses hiatus trip as "extraordinary", because "no other lobby on behalf of a foreign country comes anywhere near controlling such wealth or taking so many of America's elected representatives on a propaganda trip to its favorite country".

Weir, writing for the Anti-War blog, notes that most US media outlets ignored the story.

I could not find a complete list of the 81. Since this is not a Codel (congressional delegation) trip, the House website does not offer any help. Phillip Weiss' Mondoweiss found a picture released to the media from the Israeli Embassy, with no names attached.

Weiss assumes the picture is that of the Democratic delegation, since Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer shares front row honors with Israeli President Simon Peres. The picture is large enough for constituents to look for familiar faces.

(Sunday Update: Richard Silverstein, a dogged researcher who has been writing the liberal Jewish blog, Tikun Olam, since 2003, has identified 33 names on the list of 81.)

(Monday Update: Silverstein's blog, for the moment, is off line. The original Silverstein posting of Tikun Olam with the 33 names is reprinted, in part, at the end of this posting as a Comment.)

The Washington Post provides the names of three Democratic travelers, Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. (Ill.), Betty Sutton (Ohio) and Mark Critz (Pa).

Otherwise, according to a survey by Weir, the Main Street Media has been respectfully silent and protective on the matter of the 81 who used their time away from Washington to visit sites holy to Jews and Christians, and to listen to lectures by Israeli leaders. Here is what Weir found in her survey:

The Associated Press, America's number one news service, has decided not to report on a lobbying group taking 81 representatives to a foreign country in order to influence their votes.

Even though the trips are being reported by news media in Britain, Iran, India, Israel, Lebanon, and elsewhere, AP has decided to give the story a pass. When contacted about this, an AP editor in Washington, D.C., said AP knew about the trips and was "looking into it."

Taking a similar tack, The New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, CNN, ABC, et al., failed to inform Americans about the trips.

When the Chicago Tribune learned that Jesse Jackson, Jr., was on the Israeli trip, it treated the visit as a human interest, feel good, story.

The Tribune used a short item from the Associated Press to inform its readers that Jackson was traveling abroad to evaluate how well Israel was handling US tax dollars which Jackson and his colleagues so generously send to Tel Aviv.

The Tribune story is a case study for a Journalism 101 class on how not to write a story involving a major congressional figure. Here is the soft story the Tribune ran on August 7:

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is headed to Israel for an eight-day visit. Jackson's office says he leaves Sunday and returns Aug. 15.

The Illinois Democrat is scheduled to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders as he discusses what he calls "the quest for a lasting peace in the region." He has meetings set with Israeli President Shimon Peres, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, prime ministers and others.

Jackson says he's looking forward to learning about Israel's business and commercial sectors as well as the latest tools and technology the country is using in its fight against terror.

The trip is being arranged and paid for by the American Israel Educational Foundation, a privately funded charity.

And that is all Tribune readers know about the journey of the 81. The AIEF is a "privately funded charity"? Nothing about the AIPAC parentage of the "charity", and nothing at all about Jackson's large number of traveling companions.

Josh Ruebner, national advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, reports that in spite of the media's protective cover, at least one Jackson constituent, is on the case.

Yali Amit, an Israeli-American constituent of Rep. Jackson, Jr. called his office to oppose his participation in the trip to Israel. He was told that Rep. Jackson, Jr. wants to learn what is happening there because of his position on the appropriations subcommittee that approves military aid to Israel.

Amit retorted that "you can't learn what goes on there on a paid trip of a propaganda arm of the Israeli government." And [Reuben adds] you certainly can't learn about the devastating impact that these U.S. weapons have on unarmed Palestinian civilians, nearly 3,000 of whom were killed by the Israeli military over the last decade.

This year's hasbara trip involved three separate delegations, two Republican and one Democratic; no bipartisanship here after those ugly DC scenes involving the debt ceiling. The 81 members will visit with Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was last greeted enthusiastically by 29 standing ovations when he spoke before a joint session of Congress earlier this year.

The Jerusalem Post was quick to assure American tax payers that no US tax dollars would be used on the trips. ("Move along folks, nothing to see here".)

All expenses for the 81 members and any spouses and staff members who choose to travel, are covered by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), better known as AIPAC's education arm. We know all about AIPAC, but what is this AIEF?

The AIEF was created in 1990 as a supporting organization of AIPAC, America's foremost pro-Israel lobby. Financial support for AIEF, a non-profit organization, comes from tax-exempt contributions, most notably from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.

AIEF, according to its mission statement, "provides grant monies to educate opinion leaders about the U.S.-Israel relationship, to expand public awareness about issues affecting the Middle East and to encourage participation in public affairs, especially by students on college campuses where anti-Israel propaganda is rampant."

So, strictly speaking, no direct US tax dollars are funding the 81 House members on their summer outing. But it is also true that the members are traveling on round-trip first class airline tickets ($8,000 per traveler) and enjoying an all-expenses tax-free paid trip with funds from a US tax-free non-profit organization.

But the question lingers: Do these transactions meet the requirements of the US tax code. The answer, from Legistorm, a website that tracks congressional travel, suggests that these clever partners, AIEF, which is in the education business, and AIPAC, which lobbies on behalf of the state of Israel, have found themselves a convenient "sleight of hand" tax loophole.

According to the latest publicly available tax return of AIEF, the organization has no paid employees - an astounding feat in itself for an organization that raked in more than $26 million in 2009 and a mind-blowing accomplishment for an organization running three huge congressional delegations in one month.

AIEF's partner, AIPAC, reports that in 2009, it very generously contributed more than $3.2 million of employee salaries to cover the staff costs of AIEF.

Legistorm also reports that two years ago, during the 2009 summer congressional recess, AIEF sent 50 lawmakers and staff members from both parties on a fully funded trip to Israel. Included in the 2009 delegation were House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who returned with this year's even larger delegation of 81 House members, and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who had business in Iowa and did not make it to Israel this August.

How tight is the Israel Lobby's grip on Congress? What keeps these elected representatives coming back, year after year, like so many obedient children making their mandatory holiday visit to visit aging parents?

Allison Weir discovered one poignant story about an earlier traveler:

Not all those going on these trips are enthusiastic. The wife of one congressman who made a similar trip some years ago said that she and her husband had never been exposed to such pressure in all their lives. She said that at one point on their trip, her husband - a normally extremely tough man - was curled up in a fetal position.

There have been several internet hints that a few of the 81 will try and escape their Israeli minders long enough to cross over into the Occupied Palestinian Territories where they hope to experience the Palestinian narrative.

That could be a risky move, not for security reasons, but for their return flight home. It is an abrupt shift from El Al Business Class to a middle seat in Coach. What happens to the campaign contributions these "escapees" had hoped to gain from making the trip in the first place? These funds will dry up, quickly.

For their troubles any "escapee" who is exposed by the hasbara police, will still have the enormous advantage of bringing home pictures and memories of talking to real Palestinians, not Uncle Toms. Inshallah, they will also bring back to the voters, a congress member with a heightened sense of self-worth.

* 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.

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

Having disposed of the Murdoch menace - for the moment anyway - it's time for the British public to turn the spotlight on the other villains our craven politicians pay homage to.

Public enemy Number One is the pro-Israel lobby. An organization called the Conservative Friends of Israel states it has "twin aims of supporting Israel and promoting Conservatism. With close to 2000 activists as members – alongside 80% of Conservative MPs – CFI is active at every level of the Party".

And the rot goes all the way to the top, with Conservative prime minister David Cameron endorsing it enthusiastically: "I am proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel; and I am proud of the key role CFI plays within our Party."

Back in 2006 The Jewish Chronicle ran a report on the backers bankrolling Cameron's bid for the party leadership. It was sent to the Committee on Standards in Public Life as an example of how the pro-Israel lobby infiltrates government and undermines the very principles the standards watchdog was established to uphold. But Zionist tentacles reach further than you think. The Committee ignored it.

At the time Cameron, a self-proclaimed Zionist, pledged: "If I become Prime Minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on her..."

The Liberal Democrats allow a similar lobby group to flourish within their ranks. Its stated aim is to "maximise support for the State of Israel within the Liberal Democrats and Parliament". Labour also has a virulent Israel supporters club that broadcasts Tel Aviv's propaganda and, when in power, appoints Israel lobby stooges to key ministerial and other positions.

Britain, as everyone knows, has carved an unfortunate niche for itself as America's poodle. But not enough people ask the key question: whose poodle is America? American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has the private parts of US Congress in such a vice-like grip that the Zionist regime’s interests come first in Washington. For example, the US House of Representatives felt obliged to endorse, by 390 votes to 5, Israel's assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008/9, a massacre that killed over 1,400 (mostly Palestinian civilians including a large number of women and children), wounded and maimed thousands more, left tens of thousands homeless and horrified the rest of the world.

It is amazing how many people with dual passports stalk the corridors of power in Washington. And we all saw the orchestrated adulation with which the Israeli primier was received the other week.

Israel's propaganda machine of course denies it. Nevertheless the US House of Representatives felt obliged to endorse, by 390 votes to 5, Israel's murderous assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008/9, an atrocity that killed over 1,400 (mostly Palestinian civilians including a large number of women and children), wounded and maimed thousands more, left tens of thousands homeless and horrified the rest of the world.

The knock-on effect in the UK is inecitable. We too are so embroiled in the Zionists' perpetual strife with the Islamic world that we've been sucked into the same cesspit. Britain is now one of the most hated nations on earth thanks to our cosy association with US-Israeli ambitions in the Middle East.

Meet the 'Israel-firsters'

Israel was founded on terror, land theft, ethnic cleansing and extreme brutality. Why would the British Establishment wish to snuggle up to it? Why did Liam Fox, now Defence Secretary, famously say: "We must remember that in the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression - Israel's enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together or we will all fall divided."

As if that wasn't absurd enough William Hague, now foreign secretary, came out with this in 2008: "The unbroken thread of Conservative Party support for Israel that has run for nearly a century from the Balfour Declaration to the present day will continue. Although it will no doubt often be tested in the years ahead, it will remain constant, unbroken, and undiminished by the passage of time."

Undimished by the passage of crime, too. Tzipi Livni was Israeli foreign minister at the time of Operation Cast Lead and largely responsible for the unimaginable terror and destruction unleashed on Gaza's civilians. Livni's office issued a statement saying she was proud of Operation Cast Lead and, lacking all remorse, she later declared: "I would today take the same decisions." Obviously she is on several wanted lists. When a warrant for her arrest was issued in London she went whining to our then foreign secretary David Miliband, who apologized. When the Conservative coalition came in and Hague took over the Foreign Office who can forget how Hague rushed to prove his loyalty by promising that our universal jurisdiction laws would be changed to protect Israel's suspected war criminals? It was "an appalling situation where a politician like Mrs Livni could be threatened with arrest on coming to the UK" he said.

David Cameron, for his part, told Conservative Friends of Israel: "The ties between this party and Israel are unbreakable. And in me, you have a Prime Minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible."

And he recently told a Jewish audience: "I want to be clear, we will always support Israel... when Iran flouts its international obligations Britain is and will remain at the forefront of the international community in ratcheting up the pressure with tough sanctions. We will not stand by and allow Iran to cast a nuclear shadow over Israel or the wider region."

Considering it is Israel which casts the nuclear shadow, menaces the region and flouts international laws and conventions, that remark was beyond ridiculous. Cameron, like Fox, seems determined to make Israel's enemies Britain's enemies when we have no quarrel with any of them.

Who gave him permission to spout such dangerous drivel in our name?

Hague too loves ratcheting up the violence. While still deeply embroiled in an unwinnable Afghan campaign he started bombing the hell out of Libya months ago - with no end in sight - and is now sending more British aircraft into "theatre" to intensify the carnage, seemingly oblivious to the fact that back home in Britain we are struggling to make ends meet with a monumental economic and financial deficit around our necks.

Who's he doing all this bloodshed for? Certainly not for us.

Lacking military experience these Israel-firsters, liked Blair and others before them, show an unhealthy lust for death and destruction. They are what I believe our American cousins call 'chicken-hawks' - talking tough but taking care never to risk their own worthless skins.

Lawlessness rules, OK?

Another ardent admirer of the Zionist regime is James Arbuthnot, the Parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel. He told Parliament: "Everyone in this House should have an interest in Israel, because it is a country that embodies the values that we should stand for. Israel [has] become a bastion of the rule of law..."

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

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

Are these the values Arbuthnot is suggesting we adopt?

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

As for Arbuthnot's claim that Israel is a bastion of the rule of law, a UN fact-finding mission, dealing with the assault on the Mavi Marmara last year, declared that "no case can be made for the legality of the interception".

But here's Arbuthnot again, arguing the case for Israel... "Given that the flotilla was designed to be provocative and to end in violence, we should not blame Israel for the violence against which it failed to guard itself; the blame lies with those who went on to the flotilla expressly seeking martyrdom."

The Mission considered that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza amounted to collective punishment and thus was illegal and contrary to Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The interception of the Mavi Marmara on the high seas was "clearly unlawful" and could not be justified even under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations (the right of self-defence).

The Centre for Constitutional Rights agrees that the blockade "cannot be reconciled with the principles of international law, including international humanitarian law". http://bit.ly/oV2Bt9 [.pdf]

If the blockade is illegal, why is it allowed to continue? Because subservient Israel-firsters in London, Washington and other capitals won't act. Lawlessness rules, OK?

Arbuthnot, by the way, is also chairman of Britain's Defence Select Committee. Worrying, isn't it?

Conflict of interests

The British government's policy of shielding and cosseting Israel's extremists makes all of us complicit in that regime's crimes. How does this perverse devotion to a foreign power square with the Seven Principles of Public Life, especially the one about Integrity, which the government is supposed to uphold? The Principle of Integrity lays down that holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.

Do MPs and ministers not understand this simple imperative? If the Israel lobby has no influence, as some have claimed, how do our leaders explain away the 80 percent of Conservative MPs who are Friends of Israel? How do they explain the appointment of a Foreign Secretary who has been a Friend of Israel since boyhood and a minister in charge of Middle East affairs who is a former officer of the Conservative Friends of Israel?

There are rules about conflict of interests. Why aren't they followed? Do we ever hear an MP or minister, when taking part in a Middle East debate, say "Mr Speaker, I wish the House to know that I am a staunch member of Friends of Israel and Jewish money paid for my election campaign"?

In his infatuation with Israel Mr Hague even stoops to provide cover for its mega-crimes. At the height of the murderous Gaza blitz, Hague announced to Parliament: "The immediate trigger for this crisis... was the barrage of hundreds of rocket attacks against Israel on the expiry of the ceasefire or truce."

The truce with Hamas didn't "expire". It was violated after five months by Israeli forces in order to provoke Hamas and provide an excuse for the long-planned assault. Israel had also failed to deliver its side of the ceasefire bargain, which was to lift the blockade.

Our Middle East minister, Alistair Burt, is another comedian. He recently announced that Britain would not recognise a Palestinian state unless it emerged from a peace deal with Israel. London, he said, could "not recognise a state that does not have a capital, and doesn't have borders".

Hadn't he heard? Palestine's borders are the pre-1967 armistice lines as defined in UN resolutions and recognised by the international community. Where does Burt suppose Israel's borders are? Is Israel where Israel is supposed to be, within internationally defined borders? No, it isn't. Israel keeps its borders fluid, all the time grabbing a bit more land here and confiscating a bit more there. Yet London recognises Israel.

Burt, Hague, Cameron, Fox, Arbuthnot... there are many more like them. How can we be sure where their allegiance lies? Whom do they really work for?

I'll leave the last word on Israel's evil machinations to Sir Gerald Kaufman, the straight-talking Jewish MP. He said in a Commons debate in January 2008: "Is it not a fact that only international action can bring to an end the humanitarian disaster caused by collective punishment imposed by the gang of amoral thugs who comprise the Israeli Government and violate not only international law but the historic Jewish conscience?"

Sir Gerald's family suffered horribly during the Holocaust and his sick grandmother was shot dead in her bed by a German soldier. "They're not simply war criminals, they're fools", he said of the Israelis when Operation Cast Lead was launched. "My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza."

Cameron's judgement, already wobbly, has finally been shot to pieces by his cosiness with Murdoch's 'mafia', and he should be clearing his desk. Add to that his dangerous obsession with racist Israel which drags us into unnecessary wars against countries that pose no threat, and sacrifices our lads in uniform in an unjust cause, and it's clear that he must go.

Our elected MPs belong to us, the British voters. Not to some gang of foreign thugs. We must mobilise to make sure they clearly understand this. And we must work to take back our parliament.

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

By Grant Smith * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Former AIPAC staffer Keith Weissman, indicted in 2005 under the Espionage Act alongside colleague Steven J. Rosen and Defense Department employee Col. Lawrence Franklin, is desperately worried. In a lengthy, rambling monologue delivered to independent reporter Robert Dreyfuss, Weissman breaks a long silence to declare he’s “concerned that if a confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran leads to war, it will be a disaster—one that Weissman fears will be blamed on the American Jews.” It is telling, but unsurprising, that Weissman—through misrepresentations and false dichotomy—exhibits little concern for the broader potential consequence of war. Fortunately, his tired arguments are in a final lap toward oblivion.

AIPAC, in the business of advancing Israeli government policies in the United States ever since its founder left the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1951, has long portrayed itself as the sole distillery of Jewish policy needs to politicians eager to tap the Israel lobby’s seemingly limitless barrels of campaign donations. But AIPAC’s brand has recently sprung a leak as growing numbers of youthful, creative, and noisy organizations challenge its tired claims of representation and even legitimacy. Weissman’s actual concern is that AIPAC and its creaky constellation of affiliates will be blamed if the United States is successfully goaded or tripwired into an unnecessary war with Iran. Accountability has always been anathema for an organization operating more like a foreign intelligence agency than a tax-exempt social-welfare organization.

AIPAC has long brushed its footprints away from trapping pits into which it has successfully lured American taxpayers. The Los Angeles Times has lauded its “donor secrecy,” while Fortune called AIPAC “calculatedly quiet.” One anonymous AIPAC official even confided to The National Journal that “there is no question that we exert a policy impact, but working behind the scenes and taking care not to leave fingerprints, that impact is not always traceable to us.” According to the interview:

[Support for regime change] was the personal opinion of many people in AIPAC, but it never uttered the words “regime change.” And I think my efforts were part of the reason why they never did. … How would it look anyway? This is what makes it so stupid! The American Jewish community choosing the next government of Iran? Helping to change the next government of Iran? How can that government have any legitimacy? It’s completely ridiculous. And I think the arguments that I raised against it convinced AIPAC, no matter what they personally thought, they realized that what I was saying was right.

Weissman’s overblown claims that he was a lone progressive hero fending off the Israel lobby’s push for regime change from AIPAC’s Iran desk must be evaluated against the actual record. Dreyfuss notes that Weissman was indicted under the Espionage Act over AIPAC’s covert attempts to influence Iran policy, but he writes, “Perhaps the full story of the Rosen-Weissman case, Franklin’s involvement, and what role was played by AIPAC and by Israel will never be known.” Fortunately for readers, enough is now publicly known to discount Weissman’s version, thanks to documents filed in Superior Court during a defamation suit last year.

According to court documents, Rosen and Weissman were both on a key phone call passing U.S. government classified information and spin to Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler in 2004. Rosen colorfully told Kessler that based on that information Iran was undeniably engaged in “total war” against the United States. Though AIPAC’s version of U.S. Iran assessments wasn’t true at the time, and isn’t true now, AIPAC’s motive for advancing it was clear—to trigger U.S. military operations against Iran by stirring up American outrage through the establishment press. Weissman said nothing to deter Kessler from propagating the false threat.

Then, as now, Rosen and Weissman’s operational concern was that they not suffer any consequences for shoveling tainted classified information—and that AIPAC not be implicated in the deed. Rosen told Kessler (with Weissman still on the line) that he was concerned about “not getting into trouble” [.pdf], meaning, as court documents reveal, “Rosen and Weissman could get in trouble because the information is classified.” Rosen later reflected that FBI wiretaps of the “total war” phone call to the Washington Post made them look “very sinister” and “portrayed him as a secret agent rather than a lobbyist.” It didn’t help that Rosen later fled to meet with Israeli embassy officials after the FBI told him to get a lawyer. The historical record is very clear that the Rosen and Weissman tag team was conscientiously setting tripwires for regime change.

Dreyfuss chronicles Weissman’s self-serving evaluation of the Israel lobby along a left-right spectrum, with FBI crackdowns on its neoconservative wing as driving the 2005 AIPAC espionage indictments. “So what does Weissman think was going on? He believes that U.S. law enforcement officials, including the FBI, and CIA officials were so angry over the role of neoconservatives in backing the war in Iraq that they launched an investigation that sought to link Wolfowitz, Feith, and other Jewish Pentagon officials to Israeli intelligence, AIPAC, and a panoply of neocons at the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, and other think tanks in Washington.”

Weissman’s self-portrayal is that of a progressive hero reining in AIPAC as its liaison to Palestinian and progressive groups while trundling around in a car with a “Free Palestine” bumper sticker. But AIPAC’s skillful use of Weissman—who readily admits that his greatest attachment to AIPAC was a string of generous paychecks—to access progressive and Palestinian groups is really no mystery. The lobby has always monitored even its weakest opposition closely, all the better to achieve an unopposed string of stunning successes for Israel, at great cost to America.

But the only frame more absurd than AIPAC’s claim to represent “the American Jewish community” is analyzing the Israel lobby from a “right-left” perspective. While AIPAC delights in creating an ongoing Democratic/Republican race for candidates to trot out their “pro-Israel” credentials, American taxpayers and voters are always the losers. Founder Isaiah L. Kenen gloated about roping The Nation Magazine Associates into his earliest Israel propaganda campaigns. There’s been even more noise of late as various progressive pundits and policy posers rush to carve out new positions in front of growing crowds of Americans outraged about the Israel lobby—now that it’s been fully flushed out in the open by Mearsheimer and Walt. But many progressive policy barkers continue to flog their skeptical acolytes with expired brands of snake oil—that everything of importance is really just a big left-right battle for influence over Israel and Mideast policy.

It’s not and never has been.

The overarching problem is the Israel lobby’s subversion of American governance through election fraud, the evasion of tax regulations and laws regulating foreign lobbies, and the systematized, ongoing infiltration of operatives into key government posts to advance the interests of a foreign state. Unfortunately for AIPAC, the Americans gathering to challenge it cross party lines. Whether they wear American flag pins on their suit lapels or Birkenstocks over wool socks is of ever declining significance. Weissman and his fellow travelers can try to outrun opponents by pulling an old horse’s head from right to left. Weissman clearly wants to tell his side of the story. But Weissman and Rosen will only reemerge as legitimate jockeys astride America’s policy circuits when they again register as AIPAC’s agents of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

* Grant F. Smith is the author of the Spy Trade: How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy. He is a frequent contributor to Radio France Internationale and Voice of America's Foro Interamericano. Smith has also appeared on BBC News, CNN, and C-SPAN. He is currently director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.

By Mohamed Khodr* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." 
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

No just cause has been so unclaimed by humanity than the cause of Palestine.

No just cause for the freedom of a subjugated people has been the blind spot of humanity for so long than the cause of Palestine.

No just cause has generated more words and less action than the cause of Palestine.

World history can be divided into eras of ideas; ideas that have elevated humanity to the summit of greatness and justice or plummet it to the depths of an abyss, an inferno of injustice and cruelty.

Our modern era is acutely and tragically defined by dumb politicians, smart bombs, and an apathetic world detached from the machinations of corrupt, greedy, selfish and cruel elites who view the world as their playground for power and the entitled theft of nations and their resources.

In pursuit of their wealth they have callously and without any semblance of conscience committed holocausts and genocides that in the 20th Century alone have killed over 170 Million people¹, ethnically cleansed mass populations across the globe, and committed untold war crimes and crimes against humanity. They believe that innocent populations living in their own lands are simply expendable to be exterminated and removed from their very earth to seize their homeland and its resources.

The powerful elite not only admit their craven bloodthirsty disregard for human life but are supremely proud of their deadly evil deeds.

"We belong to the superior race and civilization... The basic justification of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of our superiority - not just economic and military but also moral...That quality underlies our right to direct the rest of humanity"
-- Jules Harmand, French Colonialist, 1910

"We in the rich world live in comparative comfort only because of the inordinate power our governments wield and the inordinate wealth which flows from that power...Global democracy means ensuring that the world is run for our benefit"'
-- George Orwell, 1932

No greater sense of narcissistic and paranoid entitlement topped with a heaped sense of superiority and supremacy exists in today's world than in Israel and its shadow political and economic elites in western capitols.

Due to such inordinate Zionist power Khazarian Jews, mainly from Russia and Eastern Europe, were gifted a land they neither owned nor had any legitimate claim to as a homeland to solve the Anti-Jewish problem of Europe. Palestine was stolen by force, its people ethnically cleansed, massacred by Jewish terrorism, and now enduring the longest most brutal occupation of all aspects of their lives for decades.

This tragic oppression and dispossession was publicly supported by the governments of the United States and Europe. Is it possible that such free democratic societies were complicit and supportive of Israel's Apartheid Fascist existence and rule over an entire population, the Palestinians? It can't be, after all, they are the beacon of hope, liberty, freedom, self determination, equality and justice for all, and the spreaders of democratic human rights values around the world by peaceful means.

God allows these murderous oppressors time to either repent or hang themselves by their own weapons.

Thus divine time cures all injustices against all His creations. The end times for these "democratic" oppressive empires is fast approaching.

Prophet Muhammad taught:

"God has no mercy on one who has no mercy for others"

As a Muslim and a human being I am commanded by God to fight oppression anywhere against anyone who attacks and subjugates an innocent people, a people created free by God to live in peace and harmony with one another. (To comfort the doubters I have repeatedly called upon Muslim peoples to fight and exterminate Muslim terrorism)

"O mankind! We created you from a single soul, male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may come to know one another. Truly, the most honored of you in God's sight is the greatest of you in piety. God is All-Knowing, All Aware" (Qur'an: 49:13)

Hence my overwhelming passion to fight for the rights of the oppressed people of Palestine until their dream of freedom from Israel, a western colony that ironically is the master of the west, is realized.

Yet, I must admit my failure to have made an iota of difference in the life of Palestinian children who simply want to sleep, if for one night, in peace and quiet in their hope and prayers to live to see another day with their entire family still alive, none killed, or imprisoned.

My sole contribution to the freedom of Palestine is my keyboard and my weapon of mouse distribution of emails to others of like mind and heart.

I send out words in the hope they will touch someone, anyone; that they will move someone, anyone; that they will impact someone, anyone; that they may generate a mass gathering, a march, a rallying cry; anything that ends the inhumane suffering of the children of Gaza, Jenin, and East Jerusalem that they may see the light and warmth of freedom and awaken from their nightmare to live in a free independent Palestine.

Alas, my own dismal struggle for the Palestinian cause is limited to a Jihad by Email; a cyber struggle, words sent out with a click of a mouse and not with a thump of my feet banging across pavements that lead to our occupied centers of power.

There are many honorable men and women around the world of all faiths and races who like me toil against the Apartheid occupation of Palestine with their own Jihad by Email, their own struggle to enlighten the world that gross injustice exists under the very feet of the western invention of a "democratic Jewish only State" called Israel.

So few have the courage and motivation to physically stand up and protest around the western capitols raising their voices to free Palestine on behalf of the voiceless faceless Palestinians.

Despite their small numbers they are shining light on the Palestinian struggle to end their occupation and gain their freedom.

But why are their numbers small? Where is the rest of humanity that believes in justice, freedom, equality, and human rights? Are they afraid of Israel, its Mossad, AIPAC, and Anti Defamation League's attacks, threats to their lives, and media smears? Are they afraid of being harassed by the FBI, CIA, NSA, and every other soup alphabet? Are they afraid for their safety and loss of jobs?

If yes, than that's all the more reason to unite and oppose these forces by protesting around the country and in other western capitols that the powers of our government are meant to serve us not oppress us.

We have the most powerful weapon every invented by man: the VOTE. No amount of special interest money can overcome our votes, our voices, our demands.

They must hear this loudly: SERVE THE PEOPLE or YOU'RE FIRED.

Jihad by Email has given each of us some semblance of comfort that we're participating in a just struggle for Palestinian freedom but only massive peaceful protests and marches will bring about the revolution of change in our nation's subservient slavish surrender to Israel and its Zionists.

We must launch a rebellion of peaceful protests to reclaim our government and nation from the elite that enriches itself at the expense of the American people and sends our youth to die for corporate greed and Israel.

It is time to instill the fear of God in them, our government and Israel's lobbies, such as AIPAC.

It is time for them to be afraid, really afraid.

As Friedrich Nietzsche said:

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

History has always changed due to heavenly revelations, individual ideas and principles whether in the arena of politics, economics, science and technology, social, cultural norms and traditions. Such change has come by either violent revolutions or peaceful civil disobedience. We the people of conscience will reclaim our nation in a totally peaceful manner, via protesting and voting.

History is a journey of ideas; some meant for progress of humanity others meant to hinder and destroy humanity, hence the clash of man's free will for good or evil.

This time in history is our time. The time when humanity finally declares In unison-no more injustice, no more wars for oil and Israel, no more oppression of man's free will, no more enslavement or subjugation of peoples, especially women and children, around the world; no more corporate welfare, no more monopoly and accumulation of wealth by only 2% of the world's population, no more freedom to pollute our earth, no more hunger in an rich world, no more deaths due to lack of vaccines and drugs, and most importantly an END TO ISRAEL'S OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE AND WASHINGTON D.C.

Ideas alone can only succeed when voices are heard above the lies and propaganda of the elite, and when feet march to the beat of a drum crying for freedom.

Thus I call upon myself and all who dare to march to unite in Washington D.C. and New York City this September to demand freedom for Palestine and its recognition as a free and independent State; an end to the Zionist occupation of our corrupt bribed and frightened Congress that funds Israel's occupation, illegal settlements, and atrocities, while cutting funding for lunch programs in schools for America's poor children

Only a strong coordinated effort by people and organizations across this country can bring this protest into fruition. The question is who will lead this effort and who among us will respond physically and financially to secure the dream of a free Palestine, a free Washington D.C., and a free world?

Israel has succeeded in intimidating, frightening, and wearing down our minds and energies. But as Martin Luther King said, no one can ride your back unless your back is bent. Palestine fatigue has begun to set in precisely because of Israel's power and dominance of our government and media. We are fatigued because of their successful decade's long refusal to abide by international law frustrating a world paralyzed by fear of America's wrath against those who dare to oppose Israel. In private Americans detest Israel and its chokehold on this nation but publicly dare not speak. .

A superpower afraid to speak against a small nation it created, funds, supports, and protects. That's an American tragedy.

But with God's help Goliath will be crushed by a stone thrown by a Palestinian child.

Failure is a good probability for this effort but I'd rather try and fail then die a failed man with no legacy of any contribution to my fellow man.

"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just"
--Abraham Lincoln

It is easy and tempting to surrender and walk away, but if we do, did we really have the passion and commitment in the first place to any just cause?

Enough "Jihad by Email"- Time to March

After all the very existence and purpose of all life is to struggle for truth and justice.

Can we overcome our inertia? I strongly believe we can, but only time will be the judge of this moment, this era, and our brief inhabitance of this world.

1. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP1.HTM

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.