As Israeli Jewish terrorist attacks on mosques in occupied Palestine are assuming a phenomenal frequency.

Indeed, with the Israeli government and security establishment doing next to nothing to put an end to this wanton and unprovoked terror, a huge fire is being started in the region.

In religious wars, all sides are usually variably culpable and blamable. However, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Jewish fanatics bear nearly 100% of the blame.

Their attacks against mosques are not provoked by similar Palestinian attacks against Jewish religious places. In fact, Jewish terror groups readily admit that arson attacks against mosques are meant to embarrass the Israeli occupation army.

The attacks are perpetrated under the slogan "Price Tag" every time the Israeli army moves to dismantle a Jewish settlement outpost.

So why is it that the Palestinians and their places of worship are attacked, not the Israeli army?

Well, it takes a thoroughly sick mind to rationalize, even glamorize such attacks, but the Israeli settler camp never faces a shortage of virulence, mental depravity and mental sickness.

We are talking after all about the worst of the worst that racist, Talmudic Judaism could breed, people who view the rest of mankind as subhuman.

The practical implications of such a venomous ideology are enormous and absolutely nefarious. If non-Jews are subhuman, then their lives must be worthless, have no sanctity and expendable.

Think not I am making an exaggeration as it is difficult to exaggerate the evilness of these racist thugs who spend a lifetime demonizing and dehumanizing humanity as they celebrate their Chosen-people or Master-race status.

Unfortunately, the Israeli government and security establishment are giving these criminal-minded thugs a free rein to gang up on virtually unprotected Palestinian civilians, torch mosques and churches and vandalize olive groves throughout occupied Palestine.

It is very hard to buy the Israeli government's argument that these terrorists are a marginal group. But even if they were a marginal group, this wouldn't minimize the gravity of their terrorist actions.

The Nazi Hitler Youth was once viewed as a marginal group. However, the world saw what that "marginal" group was able to do during Kristalnacht in November, 1938.

Hence, the question begs itself whether the Israeli government should wait until the so-called hill-top "troublemakers" morph into a Jewish Hitler Youth.

Unfortunately, the Israeli government, the most fascist ever, can't be given the benefit of the doubt.

In the final analysis, the suspected connivance and obvious leniency with which the Netanyahu government treats these despicable criminals, along with the mind-boggling reluctance to prosecute them raise many hard questions about the nature of that government.

One Israeli writer, when asked recently why the government didn't exercise its legal authority to arrest and try Jewish terrorists who attack Muslim and Christian holy place, said a venomous snake wouldn't bit its own tail.

There is another worrying dimension to this obscenity, namely the virtually complete absence of real condemnations of these terrorist acts by Jewish leaders in Israel and abroad.

Jewish leaders in Europe and North America wouldn't wait a minute to condemn the slightest anti-Semitic attack on Jewish targets, even if this target happened to be a lone Jewish grave in an isolated village in Eastern Europe .

Even remarks or even slip-of-the-tongue jokes are castigated and people are made to pay a price.

However, when fellow Jews carry out outrageous acts of terror, arson and vandalism against mosques and churches, we see that these same Jewish leaders become speechless as if the acts of terror took place in a different galaxy.

The Jewish leadership must realize that the orphans of Kahana and thuggish terrorists of Gush Emunim are more than trouble makers. They are in fact criminal fire-starters whose pyromania could burn Jews as well as non-Jews.

Hence, Jewish leaders must have the necessary courage and rectitude to admit that Jewish terrorism is a two-lane street and that Muslims won't stand idle if their peaceable holy places continue to be torched and vandalized in the most blatant and unprovoked manner.

Of course, it would be naïve to expect verbal condemnations by Jewish leaders to stem the tide of Jewish settler terror against Muslim and Christian holy places.

However, this is the very least Jewish leaders should and can do to exonerate themselves from the ostensibly logical Charge that these leaders adopt a duplicitous attitude toward Jewish terror in Palestine by denouncing it when speaking to a non-Jewish audience while praising it privately.

Finally, the Palestinians themselves must not entrust the task of protecting mosques and Churches to Israel . The Palestinian Authority (PA) must deploy armed guards in the vicinity of mosques in order to protect them from Jewish terror. Crying out for help won't help very much. We have to do our own duty first and none would blame us for doing what anyone else would if they were in our shoes.

* Khalid Amayreh a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.

Part I

On 12 December 2011 hundreds of Israeli settler fanatics besieged a West Bank IDF army base. They destroyed equipment, set fires, and even stoned the base soldiers. This was the second such attack in a month. The cause? Anger over the army's dismantlement of a small number of isolated, unauthorized settler outposts. The Chief of the Central Command of the Israel "Defense" Forces, Major General Avi Misrahi, is quoted as saying "I have not seen such hatred of Jews towards soldiers during my 30 years of service." He must not have been looking.

This was not an exceptional event. The subsequent indignation over the attack expressed by Prime Minister Netanyahu ("red lines have been crossed") was, as Alex Fishman writing in Yedioth Ahronoth put it, staged hypocrisy. The Prime Minister is certainly aware that for some time there has been on-going skirmishing between the settlers and government security forces. Right wing settlers regularly throw rocks and fire bombs at police and army vehicles and "physical altercations" between settlers and Israeli police and soldiers are "almost routine." This is so despite the fact that the government, both Prime Minister and Knesset, "either tacitly or openly" support the settlers. Then why the hatred and why the attacks?

At this stage the battle is over strategy. The Israeli government wants to gobble up all of Palestine in an orderly step by step fashion. In part, this is to avoid too much international criticism at any particular stage of the process. On the other hand, the settlers don't give a damn about international opinion – no more than does al-Qaeda, to which they have an unsavory resemblance. Led "by fundamentalist religious leaders who do not recognize the state of Israel and its laws," they are driven by religious fanaticism and have no respect for governments or their agents. It is their ideological conviction that all of Palestine (including, by the way, Jordan) must be Jewish as soon as possible. The authorities sometime get in the way of this goal and that has led the settlers to, as Fishman puts it, "terrorize not only the Palestinian population but also the police and the army."

Prime Minister Netanyahu, belatedly noticing an erosion of government authority, has begun to set rules against settler violence when it is directed toward the IDF and police (but not toward the Palestinians). The New York Times reports that from now on such "radical Israelis" attacking soldiers or policemen will be treated just like "Palestinian militants." That is they will be "detained for long periods without charge and tried in military courts."

Alas, this new toughness won't work. For years Israeli governments have looked the other way as thousands of armed religious fanatics organized themselves and got stronger and more self-assured. Now, as Adam Keller of Gush Shalom tells us, "the Golem has turned on its creator." These are the people who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. What makes Netanyahu believe that Israel's present army, police and courts which, reminiscent of the Weimar Republic, regularly show sympathy and leniency toward these criminals, are going to change their attitude on his orders? When a military reporter asked a brigade commander if he was prepared to act toward settler hostility in the same manner as he would Palestinian hostility, he answered "you would not expect me to open fire on a Jew...I am certain you didn't mean that."

The reporter would have gotten a very different answer if she had asked the fanatic settlers about how far they were willing to go. Anshel Pfeffer writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes that "the only red line that has yet to be crossed is a scenario in which an Israeli citizen [belonging to] the extreme settler right would open fire on IDF soldiers. There are those in Israel's security forces who fear that day is not so distant."

Netanyahu's apparent change of heart comes too late. What we have here is incipient civil war. Any really serious effort to stop these fanatics will result in their turning their weapons on those who represent the government. What you sow is what you reap.

Part II

This climate of internecine hostility contaminates the Jewish diaspora as well. There is no rock throwing or armed men threatening violence, but the hatred is there. Jewish critics of Israeli behavior are categorized as "Israel-haters" or, alternatively, "self-hating Jews." This is often expressed with the same vehemence displayed by Israel's settler fanatics. And, indeed, those pointing fingers in the U.S. are often supporters of the extremists on the West Bank.

Last week Howard Gutman, the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, addressed "a group of European Jewish lawyers gathered...to discuss anti-Semitism" Gutman told them that there was now two different kinds of anti-Semitism: a "classic" type that is "directed against Jews for being Jews" and "a newer form" that is a product of "the Israeli-Arab conflict and can therefore be mitigated by reducing Israeli-Palestinian tensions." This is actually a conclusion that was reached by Israel's Defense Ministry as early as 1994. No matter, when Gutman's statement became public "the long knives" came out "for another Jewish liberal who committed the sin of stating the uncomfortably obvious truth about a causal relation between Israeli policy and Muslim anti-Semitism."

The Republican Jewish Coalition's Executive Director Matthew Brooks called Gutman's revelation "outrageous" and one that "makes excuses for anti-Semitic hatred and bigotry." Senator Joe Lieberman called Gutman's remarks "inexcusable" and Representative Gary Ackerman of New York suggested that Gutman himself might be anti-Semitic.

Again, the charge of anti-Semitism can be and frequently is leveled against fellow Jews who are critical of Israel. The logic goes something like this: Judaism and Israel are one and the same. Ergo if you are critical of Israeli behavior you are critical of Jewish behavior and that makes you an anti-Semite. Very neat. Of course, the whole train of thought rests on the false assumption that Israel and Judaism are two sides of the same coin.

Despite the viral reaction, Jewish criticism of Israel is growing quickly and this creates a frustrating dilemma for the Zionists. The pro-Israeli blogger Steven Plaut describes this situation in catastrophic terms. "Jewish anti-Semitism is all around us, part of the political air we breathe, a modern disease. In the twenty-first century the world is experiencing an explosion of it, a virtual plague."

Part III

None of this Zionist extremism can be dismissed as a passing phenomenon. It has been with us too long. In fact it has been with us since 1917 and the Balfour Declaration. That is when a certain segment of European Jewry began its obsessive drive to create and maintain a state for one group only. It was then, and continues to be an inherently racist project. Ideologies, like Zionism, that support such projects usually reject all opposition. And opposition from erstwhile members of the in-group is the very worst because it exposes the false nature of claims of ethnic, religious or racial solidarity.

When and if Israeli society comes to its senses and decides to rid itself of the Occupied Territories the settler fanatics will resist "fanatically," and the civil war that is now incipient will release its full potential violence. When and if that happens there will be repercussions for U.S. and European Jews and they too may well entail violence. It would seem that the people chosen to be a "light unto the nations" have only managed to create another badly flawed nation state–one with a preference for apartheid policies. Zionism said "let modern Israel be" and, pop, the light went out.

* 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.

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.

By Alan Hart * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Dear Abe Foxman,

In your lengthy article Decade of Deceit: Anti-Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 10 Years Later, you label a number of named writers and commentators including me who say that Israel's Mossad was or even might have been involved in the 9/11 terror attack as anti-Semitic, and you assert that they are demonizing "the Jews". You also say: "Anticipating criticism, a number of these anti-Semitic conspiracists now try to immunize themselves against charges of anti-Semitism by making disclaimers up front about not being anti-Semitic. Their own works and record, however, blatantly contradict their innocuous self-characterizations."

I have to assume that I am one of the "number" in the above quotation because when you introduce at the end of your piece a few sentences of what I have said on the subject of 9/11, you do so with these words: "After pre-emptively trying to dismiss charges of anti-Semitism, Hart asserts..."

I also have to assume that you have not read (surprise! surprise!) my epic book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, three volumes in its American edition (www.claritypress.com). Except those who are brainwashed by Zionist propaganda and deluded to the point of clinical madness, nobody could read this book and conclude that I was anti-Semitic. The first picture in it is of Golda Meir when she was prime minister, inscribed it in her own hand "To a good friend, Alan Hart." Do you believe, Mr. Foxman, that old lady was so stupid that she couldn't have seen through me if I was anti-Jew?

As I say in the book and on every public platform on which I speak, THE key to understanding is knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Here is how I am going to summarise this difference in a speech in Germany on this September 11.

JUDAISM is the religion of Jews, not "the" Jews because not all Jews are religious. Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism has at its core a set of moral values and ethical principles.

ZIONISM is a sectarian, colonial-like nationalism which created a state for some Jews in the Arab heartland mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing, and by doing so demonstrated contempt for, and made a mockery of, Judaism's moral values and ethical principles. In reality mainstream Judaism and Zionism are total opposites.

I'm also going to wonder aloud how many in my German audience are aware of two particular background facts. One is of that the return of Jews to the land of biblical Israel by the efforts of man – one possible but wholly inadequate definition of Zionism – was proscribed by Judaism. The other is that prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, the vast majority of Jews everywhere, and especially many eminent American Jews including the then owner of The New York Times, were totally opposed to Zionism's Palestine project. Why? They believed it to be morally wrong. They feared it would lead to unending conflict with the Arabs and the wider Muslim world. But most of all they feared that if Zionism was allowed by the big powers to have its way, it would one day provoke violent anti-Semitism on a grand scale.

I am then going to give the two main reasons why knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism is the key to understanding.

The first is that when you know the difference, you can understand why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist (anti Zionism's colonial enterprise) without being in any way, shape or form anti-Semitic in the sense of loathing and even hating all Jews everywhere just because they are Jews.

The second is that when you know the difference between Judaism and Zionism, you can understand why it is wrong to blame all Jews everywhere for the crimes of the hard core Zionists in Israel.

Defenders of Israel right or wrong assert that Judaism and Zionism are one and the same in order to make the charge, as you do Mr. Foxman, that criticism of Israel is by definition a manifestation of anti-Semitism. That, I will tell my German audience, is Zionist propaganda nonsense for a blackmail purpose, the purpose being to silence criticism and prevent informed and honest debate about Israel's policies and actions. And I will add this: "When you know the difference between Judaism and Zionism, you don't have to be frightened about being falsely accused of anti-Semitism for speaking and writing the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. You can say to your Zionist accuser, 'Go to hell!'".

Mr. Foxman, I'm not going to tell you to go to hell. I have a constructive suggestion to make. If you truly believe that I am anti-Semitic, why don't you say so explicitly in writing (on ADL's web site will be fine) and then I can sue you. And that will give us the Mother and Father of a test case to determine what anti-Semitism is and is not. (For some of my in-depth thinking on this matter you may care to visit Anti-Semitism: Zionist myth v truth and reality. There you'll find an article of mine with the headline Anti-Semitism – Zionist myth vs truth and reality.

While you are thinking about how to respond to my suggestion, you might like to consider two particular statements I make in my book and on most public platforms.

The first is this. I do not blame the Zionist lobby for acting in the way it does. It is only playing the game according to the rules. I blame a corrupt, pork-barrel system of American politics which puts what passes for democracy sale up to the highest bidders.

The second is this. The Jews, generally speaking are the intellectual elite of the Western civilization and the Palestinians are by far the intellectual elite of the Arab world. What these two peoples could do together in peace and partnership is the stuff that dreams are made of. They could change the region for the better and by doing so give new hope and inspiration to the whole world.

And I'll add this. I have two driving motivations.

One is to contribute to the understanding needed if there is ever to be an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. Without it the future is predictable – catastrophe for all, possibly in the shape of a Clash of Civilizations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic.

The other is to contribute to the understanding needed to stop Holocaust II, shorthand for another great turning against the Jews. My Gentile views on this aspect of the matter are in tune with the warning words of Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's longest serving Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel's Fateful Hour, published in 1986, he wrote this:

Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.

In the world today we are witnessing a rising tide of anti-Israelism provoked by Israel's arrogance of power, its contempt for international law and its appalling self-righteousness. (In Harkabi's view self-righteousness is the biggest threat to Israel's existence). If Israel stays on its present course, the danger is, as Harkabi warned, that anti-Israelism will be transformed into anti-Semitism, leading to another great turning against Jews everywhere and quite possibly starting in America. In my view the real danger of that happening will be greatly reduced if those (mainly Westerners) among whom most of the Jews of the world live are made aware of the difference between Judaism and Zionism.

Also to be said is that the Jews of the world (those in North America and Europe especially) could and should act to best protect their own interests by distancing themselves from the Zionist state and its crimes. In the Prologue to Volume One of my book which is titled Waiting for the Apocalypse, I quote Dr. David Goldberg, a prominent liberal London rabbi, as saying the following in 2001: "It may be time for Judaism and Zionism to go their separate ways."

Today I would say to him, it's not "may be" time, it is time.

Awaiting your response.

Sincerely,

Alan Hart

Extended Footnote for the record: Text of my overview of 9/11.

The starting point for any serious and honest discussion of 9/11 has to be this question: Did the impact of the planes and the heat of their burning fuel bring the Twin Towers down? If the answer is "Yes", there's no need for conspiracy theories. If the answer is "No", the speculative question has to be – Who did it and how and why?

My own answer is "No". In my analysis there's enough evidence – visual, technical and scientific, and from eye-witnesses including fire fighters – to invite the conclusion that the Twin Towers, like Building Seven, were pre-wired for controlled demolition.

For context, the first observation I'd like to offer is that the mainstream media's complicity in suppressing even questions and debate about what really happened on 9/11 is consistent. What I mean is that for the past 63 years – from the creation of the Zionist (not Jewish!) state of Israel mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing to the present – the mainstream media has been complicit in Zionism's suppression the truth about the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. Put another way, the mainstream media has been content to peddle Zionism's propaganda lies. The two biggest lies can be summed up in a very few words:

The first is that poor little Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the "driving into the sea" of its Jews. The truth, as I document in detail through the three volumes of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is that Israel's existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Zionism's assertion to the contrary was the cover that allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most – in the Western world and America especially – with presenting its aggression as self defense and itself as the victim when it was and is the oppressor.

The second is that Israel "never had Arab partners for peace" That is complete nonsense. Just two of many examples to make the point... From almost the moment he came to power in 1951, Eygpt's President Nasser wanted an accommodation with Israel. He had secret exchanges with Israel's foreign minister, Moshe Sharret, who was in my view the only completely rational Israeli leader of his time. For wanting to make peace with Nasser and the Arabs, Sharett was destroyed by Israel's founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion... Example number two: By the end of 1979, the pragmatic Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, had prepared the ground on his side for peace with Israel on the basis of a genuine and viable two-state solution – peace on terms which any rational government and people in Israel would have accepted with relief. But then, as is still the case today, Israel's leaders and most of its Jewish citizens were not rational.

Prior to 9/11, the best single example of the mainstream media's complicity in the suppression of the truth as it relates to conflict in the Middle East is Israel's attack on the American spy ship, the USS Liberty, on 8th June 1967, the 4^th day of the 6-Day war. (I was the first Western correspondent to the banks of the Suez Canal with the advancing Israelis, so I was in the Sinai desert at the time). That attack killed 37 Americans and seriously wounded more than 90 others. If things had gone according to the plan of the man who ordered that attack, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the Liberty would have been sunk with all hands on board, leaving nobody to tell the story of what really happened... If it had been an Arab/Muslim attack on an American vessel, it's reasonable to speculate that America would have resorted to a military strike, if not war, on the country or countries it held responsible. What did President Johnson do? Out of fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, he ordered a cover-up which remains in force to this day. And the mainstream media went along with it. As it still does.

The following are my summary thoughts on the possible/probable involvement of Israel's Mossad in 9/11. Two scenarios – A or B.

In Scenario A it's not impossible that 9/11 started out as an Arab/Muslim idea. But even if this was the case, Mossad would have had an inside track very quickly. From almost the moment of the Zionist state's birth, Mossad put great effort into placing agents inside every Arab regime, every Arab military and security establishment and every Arab/Muslim liberation movement and terrorist group. Many of Mossad's best and most effective agents were Moroccan and other North African Jews because they could pose most perfectly as Arabs. (In a moment I'll tell you the short story of Mossad's penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group).

In Scenario A the question is: Did Mossad tell anybody? My speculation is that it told some in the CIA and a few of Zionism's neo-con associates, Jews and non-Jews, including Vice President Cheney (I call him the real Doctor Strangelove) and the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In this scenario Mossad could have asked, "What do we do about this?" And the answer could have been something like, "We'll use it for the Pearl Harbour-like pretext we need."

In this scenario, 9/11, even if it started out as an Arab/Muslim idea, was a joint Israeli/Mossad and American/neo-con conspiracy.

For background a very short story about Mossad's penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group. Abu Nidal was a member of Arafat's Fatah but he broke with it when Arafat had come to terms with the reality of Israel's existence and was preparing the ground on his side for compromise with Israel. The Abu Nidal group, based mainly in Iraq, was responsible for the assassinations, mainly in Europe, of more than 20 of Arafat's emissaries who were telling Western governments behind closed doors that the Fatah-dominated PLO was serious about compromise with Israel. An investigation by Arafat and Abu Iyad, Fatah's counter intelligence chief, subsequently revealed that Abu Nidal was an alcoholic

- he consumed between one and two bottles of whisky a day, and for much of most days he was drunk, not sober. His number two was running the show and targeting those to be assassinated and directing the killing. Abu Nidal's number two was a Mossad agent.

It was, in fact, two Palestinian students in London who were activated by the Abu Nidal group to assassinate Israeli ambassador Argov. It was that assassination attempt in 1982 that gave Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon the pretext they needed to launch their invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut, for the purpose of exterminating the entire leadership of the PLO and destroying its infrastructure... Ambassador Argov survived and quite some time after the event, he indicated that he suspected Israel's involvement (he could only have meant targeting) in the attempt to kill him.

Scenario B has to be considered because it's a fact that some of the Arab/Muslim plotters, actual or alleged, were under surveillance by various Western intelligence agencies for years before 9/11. The agencies who were tracking them as possible/probable terrorists included the those of America, Germany and Israel.

In this scenario it's not impossible that the idea for 9/11 was put into the heads of possible/probable Arab/Muslim terrorists by Mossad agents.

In this scenario, Mossad was actually running the show with key American neo-cons fixing things in America to make sure the attack was successful. From all that happened on the day, I'm not convinced that President Bush was in the pre-9/11 fixing loop. I think Cheney was most probably in control of the American executive oversight of what was essentially a Mossad false flag operation.

Question: How did 9/11 serve the interests of the lunatic right in Israel and its neo-con associates in America?

In their view Saddam Hussein represented the only foreseeable potential Arab challenge to Greater Israel's continued military domination of the whole Arab world. He had to be removed. By falsely claiming that Iraq was implicated in the 9/11 attack, Zionism and its neo-con associates in America set the stage for President Bush to be conned into going to war.

As we know, Zionism's intention to get rid of Saddam Hussein was not a secret. In 1996, under the chairmanship of Richard Perle, widely known in informed circles as the "Prince of Darkness", American Zionism presented a policy document with the title A CLEAN BREAK: A NEW STRATEGY FOR SECURING THE REALM.

It urged incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to have no second thoughts about making a clean break with the Rabin policy of negotiating with the PLO and trading land for peace. Israel's claim to all the land it occupied was "legitimate and noble", the policy paper said. "Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights is a solid basis for the future." After the clean break Israel would be free to shape its "strategic environment". What would that involve? Among other things, "re-establishing the principle of pre-emption (pre-emptive strikes)... focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq... weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria, Hizbollah and Iran."

In fact the commitment of Zionism's in-America fixers and their neo-con associates to getting rid of Saddam Hussein goes back further than 1996. They were angry when President Bush the First refused to complete the job when he assembled a coalition to eject Iraq from Kuwait. After that Zionism's in-America fixers and their neo-con associates needed two things – a president who was dumb enough to buy their ideas – they got that with George "Dubya" Bush; and a "Pearl Harbour" like event to trigger the action. They got that with 9/11.

But there was much more to it. 9/11 was a win-win for Zionism in a number of ways.

Predictably it provoked a rising tide of Islamophobia throughout the Western world and across America especially. In the minds of uninformed and ignorant Americans (i.e. most Americans), that in turn gave added credibility to the Zionist state's claim to be America's only true and reliable ally in the whole of the Arab and wider Muslim world.

As I say in the Dear America introduction to the American edition of Volume 1 of my book, when Americans asked "Why do they hate us?", they were more or less all Arabs and Muslims everywhere. And I ask this question: What would Americans have learned if, instead of rushing to declare his war on global terrorism, President Bush had caused the Why-do-they-hate-us question to be addressed seriously?

The short answer I give in my Dear America Introduction – the long answer is in the three volumes of my book – begins with the statement that the overwhelming majority of all Arabs and Muslims everywhere do NOT hate America or Americans. What almost all Arabs and Muslims everywhere DO hate is American foreign policy – its double standards in general and, in particular, its unconditional support for an Israel which ignores UN resolutions, demonstrates its contempt for international law and human rights conventions and resorts to state terrorism... A truth is that for decades very many Arabs and other Muslims would, if they could, have migrated to America to enjoy a better life there. Today, however, the number of Arabs and other Muslims who would opt for American residence and citizenship if they could is greatly reduced because of the fact, sad but true, that the monster of Islamophobia is on the prowl across the Land of the Free and licking its lips.

Unlike most Americans, most Arabs and other Muslims know that America's unconditional support for Israel is not in America's own best interests. In fact it's not in anybody's best interests including those of the Jews of the world and Israel itself.

* Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East. Author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets on www.twitter.com/alanauthor

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.

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

Israeli Jews Are Voting With Their Feet

If the historical goal of the state of Israel is to provide the world's Jews a secure national home, a place of refugee in a world of real or potential anti-Semitism, it seems to have failed. It has failed not because this writer says so, but because an increasing number of its own Jewish citizens say so. There have been studies originating both in Israel and abroad that show "as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving ...if in the next few years the current political and social trends continue." This finding is in addition to the fact that yerida, or emigration out of Israel, has long been running at higher numbers than aliyah, or immigration into the country. "According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, as of 2005, 650,000 Israelis have left the country for over one year and not returned." The great majority of these were Jews. In addition, polls show that at least 60% and as high as 80% of remaining Israeli Jews "sympathize with those who leave the country."

Among those who stay, there is the conviction that the safe thing is to have a second passport issued by the United States or a European country. As the Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy puts it, "if our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport, there are those among us who are now dreaming of a foreign passport." At present the United States has issued over half a million passports to Israelis and a quarter million additional applications are pending. Germany runs second with 100,000 passports given to Israeli Jews and 7,000 new ones issued yearly. Why the scramble for foreign passports? Well, according to Levy, "the excuses are strange and diverse, but at the base of them all are unease and anxiety, both personal and national. The foreign passport has become an insurance policy against a rainy day. It turns out there are more and more Israelis who are thinking that day may eventually come."

There are two prevailing explanations for this phenomenon. The first is that it reflects the conviction that the safe haven that Zionism was suppose to create is not safe at all. This is the position taken by the University of Pennsylvania political scientist Ian Lustick. "The danger for the Jewish state is that, given the choice between convincing Middle Easterners that Israel can be a good neighbor and leaving the neighborhood, more and more Israelis are attracted to the latter....The logically extreme expression of escape is, of course, emigration." Lustick is supported by Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University who suggests that "the Zionist ideal is losing hold within Israel itself" because the Israeli government "endlessly delays the [peace] process." The second explanation is that suggested by the editors of the Jerusalem Post who cite interviews with "hundreds of Israeli expats in North America." Their conclusion is that when Israelis go abroad and stay, it is due to economic, and not political or security reasons.

Actually, the explanation offered by the Jerusalem Post is suspect. If the desire to emigrate is motivated mainly by economics, the demand for second passports would not be necessary. Israelis travel freely in the United States and the economic interconnections between the two countries make it relatively easy for Israeli Jews to get "green cards" to stay and work. This is probably true in some other parts of the West as well, as long as you are not tagged as a war criminal. However, when you combine the growth in emigration with the desire for foreign passports you get a different sort of message. Planning to possibly emigrate on a foreign passport implies that there are a number of Israelis who foresee the demise of the state. In other words, they foresee a day when the Israeli passport will be worthless. Given the fact that emigration is something of an ideological sin for Zionists, it is no surprise that some of the emigrants tell pollsters their motivation is economic. It sounds better. But in the end it hardly matters, leaving for whatever reason is the equivalent of voting with your feet.

Not Without Its Costs

This trend is no doubt encouraging to the Palestinians and their supporters, but it is not without its costs. If we assume no change and project this development into the future, say twenty years or so, what will Jewish Israel look like?
First - The ratio of Jews to Israeli Arabs within the Green Line will certainly shrink. That is, the Arab population, which already has a higher birth rate than the Jewish one, will grow all the more rapidly, making up an increasing percentage of the population. Factor in the Occupied Territories and there will be more Palestinians than Jews. One can, of course, say that this is as it should be. The notion that Palestine must have a Jewish majority has always been a perverse one. Nonetheless, as a consequence of the changing demographics, it is almost certain that Palestinian-Jewish Israeli relations, which have never been good, will get rapidly and proportionately worse. Why so? The second point answers this question.

Second - Of the Jews who remain in Israel, an increasing percentage will be ideological fanatics. Take a look at the religiously motivated, armed and aggressive settlers on the West Bank and then imagine them, along with those in black hats and pa'ot (unshaven sideburns), as making up 60 or 70% of the Jewish population. That is a "Masada" majority who will be willing to "defend" their way of life in all of Palestine not due to patriotic propaganda, but out of real racial conviction and religious zeal.

Third - The other remaining Jews, the ones not necessarily fanatical, will be mostly docile. These are the ones who can not get the foreign passports, who have no relatives abroad to vouch for them, and not enough resources to bankroll a new start even if they could find another place to go. They will follow what orders they are given by their increasingly fanatical government for the sake of their jobs, their pensions, to put bread on the table, because their peers are doing so, etc.

Fourth - Ideological fanatics confronting their worse nightmare, in this case the "demographic holocaust,"are not going to be devotees of democracy and human rights. Israel's government will become more and more dictatorial. We can already see this in today's Israel where the Knesset, presently controlled by ideological parties, is in the process of passing anti-democratic laws. This is may be just the beginning. In a population shorn of its middle class, there will be no real political opposition and the right-wing parties will become ever more aggressive against what they regard as anti-Zionist elements within the Jewish population. Organizations such as B'tselem, Gush Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights, the Committee Against Home Demolitions, and the like will be shut down. Supporters of these groups will become silent or go into exile, as will the small number of Israeli academics who now stand against government policy. If they do not, they will likely end up in jail.

Conclusion

This, of course, is just conjecture. However, it is reasonable conjecture. And so we really ought to think about this. In today's Israel you can still tell the difference between those Jewish Israelis who want a just and humane settlement with the Palestinians and those who do not. If things keep going as they are now there will come a time when it will be much harder to make that distinction. In other words, when the everyday man and women just looking for economic or physical safety, just looking for a better place to raise their kids, packs up and leaves, the "neutral zone" of everyday life vanishes with them. Society becomes a place where, as George Bush once put it, you're with us or against us. And, if to be with us means to be a racist, a supporter of the God chosen people and an active enemy of the inferior and doomed Amalekites, then that is how everyone still in residence will behave.

When and if that time comes, how are we on the outside, and especially those of us who are Jews, going to react to an Israel where those who seek a just peace are either silenced, imprisoned or exiled? What do you do with a society where everyone must support injustice or be themselves condemned as traitors or criminals? Under these circumstances how do you tell the difference between the innocent and the guilty?

This is not a potential scenario unique to Israel's situation. It has been played out before. The difference is that before the Jews were among the victims and not victimizers. This is what happens when any group gives itself over to a doctrine, be it racial, religious or political, which destroys all notions of common humanity. That is what the prevailing ideology of Israel has done. And, if history remains consistent, as Zionism "purifies" itself, gets rid of all those who would question it or compromise it, it must take its remaining adherents into the realm of unadorned horror. We should all be afraid of this. Very afraid.

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

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

"If I were an Israeli, I'd be worried. If I were an Arab, I'd be insulted. If I were a critic only of Israel, I'd be ashamed."

Thus concluded Richard Cohen in the Washington Post (28 February 2011)

What Cohen would be worried about is what he perceives as anti-Semitism in the Arab world, fuelled in World War II by the Muslim cleric Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

According to Cohen, Al-Husseini "the titular leader of Muslim Palestinians, broadcast Nazi propaganda to the Middle East, recruited European Muslims for the SS, exulted in the Holocaust and after the war went on to represent his people in the Arab League."

Cohen not only faults Arabs for their support of Al-Husseini, but for Cohen's conclusion that "the Arab world is saturated by Jew-hatred".

This is a propaganda line that serves no other purpose but to instil fear in Jews everywhere.

Voices like Cohen's - and there are many - have a much greater impact on Israelis and their worldwide supporters than any biased statements made by a single Muslim cleric.

But then Zionists in America feed their own paranoia by deceiving themselves and distorting reality in their image twisting house of mirrors.

Cohen says "If I were an Arab I'd be insulted."

To Cohen, an Arab should be insulted by Al-Husseini seeking support from the Axis of Germany and Italy prior to World War II.

In 1941, Al-Husseini sought a public declaration of support from the Axis nations for: 1) Arab independence from British and French rule; 2) the freedom for the independent Arab nations to unite in some form; 3) and for the elimination of the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Why should those goals give cause for anyone except an Israeli to suggest that Arabs should be insulted?

Instead of putting Al-Husseini's mission to save Palestine for the Palestinians into proper perspective, Cohen attempts to distort history.

Al-Husseini also sought military and financial assistance for an Arab uprising that he promised he could unleash, though only in conjunction with the Axis declaration.

Finally, Cohen crows "If I were a critic only of Israel I'd be ashamed."

If American supporters of Israel were more critical of Israel when Israel deserves it, there would be little call to complain of the crimes committed by Israelis.

Israel stands in constant denial of any wrong-doing, whether the wrong happens to be killing by the Stern Gang, apartheid treatment of Palestinians, murders in Gaza or illegal Jewish settlements.

If the rest of the world attempts to pass a resolution finding Israel guilty of wrong-doing, the US, under Zionist control, vetoes it. This has happened 36 times in the past four decades.

Jews who criticize anything that Israel does, no matter how horrendous, have been dubbed "self-hating Jews".

Major US Jewish organizations, from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, are committed to defending Israel whether right or wrong.

"Any time you engage in an activity critical of Israel you are trying to destroy the state of Israel," Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, said.

Israel isn't even able to accept criticism by Zionist Jews. Judge Goldstone is a case in point. He was severely faulted for identifying wrongdoing by Israel in Gaza even though his investigation was thorough and fair.

While Israel continues with apartheid practices, illegal settlements and attempts to get the US to bomb Iran, its blind supporters promote anti-Semitism.

It's time for reflection and self-criticism. Thinking like Richard Cohen's only increases fear by Jews and disdain by others.

* 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.

Nima Shirazi * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"The gradual abolition of the slave trade: or leaving of sugar by degrees in 1792" by Isaac Cruikshank

Last week, Indypendent journalist and frequent Mondoweiss contributor Alex Kane noted:

"As the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement continues full-steam ahead in its efforts to force Israel to comply with international law, pro-Israel hawks are increasingly attempting to link the movement to anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany-era policies."

The latest example of this disingenuous and intellectually dishonest smear campaign comes (unsurprisingly) from Jeffrey Goldberg, the former IDF prison guard, unabashed warmonger, and Zionist apologist and propagandist, who recently cheered the New Israel Fund for, in his words, leaving the "BDS swamp."

Despite Goldberg's claim to be "running a campaign on this blog against the cheap deployment of Nazi imagery in argument-making," he does just that, stating that "it's a fair analogy" to liken the boycott of Israeli goods to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933, explaining that "the BDS movement, like no other anti-Israel propaganda campaign, has sent chills down the collective Jewish spine precisely because economic boycotts have been, throughout history, used to hurt Jews."

Kane, in his cogent response, accurately points out many of Goldberg's errors. For example, Kane notes that the BDS campaign is not a "European-centered campaign," as Goldberg writes, but rather is "a Palestinian-led civil society movement that has spread to the Western world." He also points out that Goldberg is "guilty of conflating Israel with Judaism, and Jews with Israelis," continuing:

"The BDS movement is not an economic boycott directed against Jews; it is a boycott movement directed against the State of Israel, which labels itself the Jewish State, because of its flagrant violations of international law and its continued occupation of Palestinian land."

As per the Nazi analogy, Kane writes that while "Nazi Germany instituted a blanket boycott...directed at a persecuted minority just because of their religious faith...[t]he BDS movement is targeting a state, asking Israel to comply with their obligations under international law, because of their unjust and oppressive policies towards the Palestinian people."

But this is not the limit of Goldberg's spurious claims and specious equivalency. What could - and should - also be addressed is Goldberg's blanket contention that "economic boycotts have been, throughout history, used to hurt Jews."

This statement follows Goldberg's pattern of labeling any and all human rights efforts as "anti-Semitic" whenever they happen to address war crimes, contempt for international law, rampant and aggressive discrimination, land and water theft, ethnic cleansing, and collective punishment routinely committed by the Israeli government and military and widely supported (or ignored, or justified) by the Israeli public.

Goldberg not only traffics in knee-jerk emotional blackmail, as usual - yelling "Nazi!" in a crowded blogosphere - but also relies on a very selective historical memory regarding the history of boycotts and campaigns to educate the public about ongoing injustice and mobilize it against such atrocities.

Even leaving the most obvious, and historically recent, connection of the boycott of Apartheid South Africa to the BDS call aside, Goldberg's contention still falls flat.

In what the BBC describes as "one of the earliest examples of consumers using their purchasing power to reject the trade in goods which have not been ethically produced," British civil society widely boycotted sugar produced by slaves in the Caribbean in 1791. Spurred by the distribution of thousands of pro-boycott pamphlets by the London Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, eventually some 300,000 Britons boycotted sugar, resulting in sugar sales dropping by anywhere from a third to a half during that time. Many shops even advertised goods produced by 'freemen,' while sales of sugar from India, where slavery was not used, increased tenfold over two years.

BBC reports that "Hundreds of thousands of people also signed petitions calling for the abolition of the slave trade. Many supported the campaign against their own interests. For example, in Manchester (which sold some £200,000 worth of goods each year to slave ships) roughly 20% of the city's population signed petitions in support of abolition. The size and strength of feeling demonstrated by these popular protests made even pro-slavery politicians consider the consequences of ignoring public opinion. One pro-slavery lobbyist of the time noted that the 'Press teems with pamphlets upon the subject...The stream of popularity runs against us.'"

Also, during this time, even artists joined the fight to expose injustice. Poet Robert Southey spoke of tea as "the blood-sweetened beverage," and Sir William Fox urged the tea drinker "As he sweetens his tea, let him...say as he truly may, this lump cost the poor slave a groan, and this a bloody stroke with a cartwhip."

One wonders what could be written today about every dollop of Sabra hummus or each squirt of Ahava moisture-enhancing face "cleanser."

As Goldberg invokes the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses to disingenuously link BDS to anti-Semitism, he doesn't address the fact that the boycott lasted (at most) three days, was widely ignored by the German public and abandoned due to its damaging effect on the economy. He then deliberately ignores the historical record, which shows that the ineffective (though unquestionably appalling and racist) Nazi boycott was actually preceded by an anti-Nazi boycott of German business, organized by the American Jewish community.

On March 23, 1933, less than two months after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, less than one month after the infamous Reichstag Fire of February 27 (the false-flag operation which paved the way for massive Nazi gains in the parliamentary elections six days later) and the exact same day that the parliament voted overwhelmingly to gave Hitler dictatorial powers, New York City's Jewish War Veterans, after considering the consequences for the already persecuted German Jewry, became the first American organization to announce a trade boycott of the Third Reich and organize a massive protest parade, in which over 4,000 veterans marched on City Hall and were welcomed by Mayor John P. O'Brien.

Soon thereafter, a coalition of the American Jewish Congress, the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, and the Jewish Labor Committee sponsored simultaneous protest rallies in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and numerous other locations, encouraging the boycott of German goods. The New York rally, held at Madison Square Garden, was broadcast worldwide and featured speeches delivered by American Jewish, Christian, and labor leaders, along with Senator Robert F. Wagner and former New York governor Al Smith, calling "for an immediate cessation of the brutal treatment being inflicted on German Jewry." Four years later, another rally sponsored by the AJC and the Jewish Labor Committee was held at Madison Square Garden, at which union leader John L. Lewis, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and Rabbi Stephen Wise all spoke in support of boycott.

Nevertheless, the boycott movement - both in the US and worldwide - was largely unsuccessful, in part due to governments' unwillingness to cut economic ties with the heavily industrialized Germany, but also because the Jewish community itself was divided on the issue. Historian Lenni Brenner writes that "there were those in the Jewish community in America and Britain who specifically opposed the very notion of a boycott. The American Jewish Committee, the B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant) fraternal order and the Board of Deputies of British Jews refused to back the boycott. However, of all of the active Jewish opponents of the boycott idea, the most important was the World Zionist Organisation (WZO). It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers."

The WZO, intent on pursuing policies which would promote the establishment of a Zionist state in what was then Mandatory Palestine, "saw Hitler's victory in much the same way as its German affiliate, the ZVfD [Zionistische Vereinigung fuer Deutschland, or the Zionist Federation of Germany]: not primarily as a defeat for all Jewry, but as positive proof of the bankruptcy of assimilationism and liberalism," Brenner tells us. These sentiments were enthusiastically expressed by the renowned German biographer Emil Ludwig during a visit to the United States at the time. "Hitler will be forgotten in a few years, but he will have a beautiful monument in Palestine," he said. "Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were brought back to the fold by Hitler, and for that I am personally very grateful to him.” (Meyer Steinglass, "Emil Ludwig before the Judge," American Jewish Times, April 1936)

Clearly, Zionist opposition to morally-justifiable boycott - in service of its ethnocentric ideology - is nothing new. But as history has shown, boycotts can succeed despite libelous opposition and propaganda - it just takes time.

*****

A portion of this article was previously published in my September 10, 2010 piece, "The Thin Green Line," here on Wide Asleep in America.

* Nima Shirazi is a writer and musician from New York City. His political commentary is published on his website, Wide Asleep in America.com. His analysis of United States policy and Middle East issues, particularly with reference to current events in Iran, Israel, and Palestine, can also be found in numerous other online and print publications.

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

Zionists of all stripes incessantly complain about antisemitism. They tell us that it is on the rise and that is why Israel is so important. They warn that when antisemitism inevitably reaches lethal levels Israel will be the only safe haven left for world's Jews, including those oh so comfortable ones in the United States. The flip side of this alarmism is that the same Zionists are forever striving to turn the warning into a self-fulfilling prophecy. For instance, Israeli governments have behaved in such a brutal and illegal fashion toward the Palestinians that no self-respecting ethical human being can help but be indignant and angry. And, because of Zionist insistence that Israeli nationalism and Judaism are one in the same, half the world now thinks it's the Jews who are collectively responsible for the sins of the Israelis.

The Israelis are not alone in acting in a manner that can only ruin the reputation of the Jews. For a long time American politicians have quietly allowed themselves to be dictated to by Israeli allied organizations such as AIPAC. This corrupting process is usually hidden behind a facade of propaganda incorrectly describing Israel as a strategic asset, the only democracy in the Middle East, and a country sharing American values. As a consequence the public has hardly noticed as the interests of the United States are shaped to conform to those of Israel–with very negative results for the American position not only in the Middle East, but within the entire Muslim world. But now the corruption has reached a new level, one so open and brazen that the likelihood of the American public taking notice has, correspondingly, become more probable. And, when notice is taken, the possibility of a rise in American antisemitism also presents itself.

For this dangerous turn of events we can all thank a Republican political leader by the name of Eric Cantor. Cantor is a Congressional Representative from the Richmond Virginia who is presently competing for the position of GOP House Majority Leader. He styles himself as one of the party's "young guns." So what is it that Congressman Cantor has done that may well contribute to the a heightened level of American antisemitism? On Wednesday, November 10^th Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was in Washington DC for a meeting with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. But Cantor got to Netanyahu first and, according to the Congressman's boastful press release, he "stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the [Obama] Administration ....He [Cantor] made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other."

How do we translate this? Essentially what Cantor did was tell the leader of a foreign country that he will protect that country from the official policies of the President of the United States–the person charged by the Constitution to carry out the nation's foreign policy. Actually, the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have been supplying just this sort of protection for a very long time. But they have always done so surreptitiously. What is different with Cantor is that he has done this quite publically, letting us all know about it in a notice on his official stationary.

What Eric Cantor did on November 10^th was illegal. He broke the law. The Law he boasted about violating is known as the Logan Act. This act makes it a felony for an American citizen "without authority of the United States" to interact "with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof" with the intent to influence that government's behavior on any disputes with the United States. There are obviously disputes between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government. And here comes Eric Cantor to tell the Israeli Prime Minister that he and the Republican Party will use the power of the House of Representatives to protect Israel from U.S. government policy. If that is not a communication made in such a way as to influence the behavior of a foreign power, nothing is! In addition, Cantor cannot claim ignorance of the law, for there can be no doubt that he is aware of the Logan Act. We know this to be true because he tried to use it against Nancy Pelosi in 2007 after she met briefly with President Assad of Syria. Pelosi, of course, met with the Syrian government with the full knowledge and approval of the State Department. Cantor, on the other, had no official sanction whatsoever.

So what did Cantor think he was doing on November 10^th? The probable answer is that he was not thinking at all. Men like Cantor are so imbued with the notion of a "special relationship" that they have lost sight of the fact that Israel is a foreign country. After all, Israel has had a powerful special interest lobby operating in this country, distributing money to politicians on both sides of the aisle, for so long that it seems quite natural. Does Mr. Cantor realize that he can now be hoisted on his own petard–the Logan Act?

And herein lies the risk for American Jews. What seems so natural inside the Beltway, is losing its normalcy in the country at large. There is so much objectively unnatural about the U.S.- Israel relationship that if the general public actually starts paying attention things might turn nasty. There are the billions of dollars that go to a economically advanced country even when the US economy is hurting; there are all those UN vetoes that protect the same country in its incessant violation of international law; there is the fact that this money and protection is going to a land characterized by racist practices that would be illegal if carried out in the United States; there is the Israeli lobby's involvement in the launching of the second Iraq war, and on it goes. What if the American people get angry about all of this? Who are they going to blame? The politicians? Probably. The Israelis and their Zionist lobby? For sure. And, because the Zionists are so insistent that Israel and Judaism are one in the same, the public may generalize out their discontent to American Jews in general.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Israel and its Zionist supporters, as well as the U.S. politicians who have so long cooperated with them, have placed American Jewry in potential jeopardy. Realization of that potential probably requires on-going economic bad times and foreign disaster. But how far are we from that? If things get bad enough, all it would take is a spark to reinvigorate an ancient prejudice that has long laid dormant in the U.S. I can think of no one more qualified, in terms of sheer unthinking brazenness, to ignite that spark than Congressman Eric Cantor from Virginia. Maybe that is what it means to be a Republican "top gun."

* 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.

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

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

What Would The Real Camp Survivors Tell Us?

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

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

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

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

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

STOLEN VALOR

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

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

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

LAST WEEK

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

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

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

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

REVISIONISTS AND DENIERS

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

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

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

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

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

HONESTY AND TRUTH

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

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

NEVER AGAIN, WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN?

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

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

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

THE REAL WAR

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

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

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

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

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Al-Ahram Weekly)

Al Qaeda Ink Cartridge Bomb

By Maidhc Ó Cathail * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

While Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may have claimed responsibility for the parcel bomb plot, it's worth considering how this latest Yemen-linked terror scare has been a gift to their avowed enemies.

A mere two weeks before the discovery of mail bombs addressed to "two places of Jewish worship in Chicago", Rupert Murdoch sounded prescient as he received an award from the Anti-Defamation League for his support of Israel. "The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world," declared the media mogul in his acceptance speech. "But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government - and they have not weakened Israeli resolve." Equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the Fox News owner smeared the growing worldwide condemnation of Israel's rogue behaviour as an "ongoing war against the Jews".

Binyamin Netanyahu, a frequent London house guest of Murdoch and a likely recipient of his political contributions, was quick to make hay of the foiled plot. Briefing the cabinet on his impending address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, the Israeli prime minister told them that it would be "held against the background of reports about the attempt to attack the Jewish community in Chicago".

Linking the parcel bomb plot to some of the most iconic terrorist attacks of the post-9/11 era, Netanyahu said that "it does not matter if the target was a synagogue in Chicago or a railway station in Madrid, London, Mumbai or Bali". Deftly associating his increasingly isolated government with the victims of those attacks, the Israeli prime minister proclaimed: "We are facing a growing wave of terrorism by extremist Islam."

Netanyahu, never one prone to understatement, offered this analysis of the unsuccessful attempt to use desktop printers as terror weapons: "It is growing in the scope and brazen gall of its attacks, in the weapons with which it is arming itself, and in the sweeping objectives of the leaders of global terrorism."

He then assured his colleagues that "one of the main issues" he would be addressing in New Orleans with American Jewish leaders was "the steps that the civilized and free world must take in order to stop this wave that threatens us all."

Needless to say, those "steps" are unlikely to include an end to the 43-year occupation and colonization of the West Bank or a lifting of the four-year blockade of Gaza.

An American apologist for Israel's self-appointed guardian of "the civilized and free world" took a similar line. Joel Pollak, a Republican candidate in the mid-term elections, released a statement condemning the attempted terror attack, saying he would be spending the Jewish sabbath in West Rogers Park "in solidarity with the people of the ninth congressional district who were the direct targets of Al Qaeda terror". Sounding a lot like Netanyahu, Pollak attempted to rally his constituents by telling them, "We must not stop fighting to eradicate the twin evils of terror and hatred."

Again, we can take it as read that the "terror and hatred" Americans are being urged to combat only applies to Israel's enemies (PDF).

The Israeli news website DEBKA-Net-Weekly, which describes itself as "the leading geopolitical newsletter", has even attempted to implicate Israel's current enemy number one, Iran. The next issue, for subscribers only, promises to reveal "how the Al-Qaeda air package plot fit [sic] into the selective partnership between Tehran and Al-Qaeda and homes in on the areas where their schemes dovetail".

But how trustworthy is this "leading newsletter"?

"Debka is prepared mostly by former Mossad operatives. A reliable stream of information," Martin Peretz, the Islamophobic editor-in-chief of the staunchly pro-Israel New Republic assures us.

Ever since an Israeli firm let the Christmas Day crotch bomber "slip through" security at Schiphol Airport without a passport, a few influential voices with close ties to Israel have been instrumental in making Yemen "the new buzzword".

Appearing on Fox News two days later, the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress, Senator Joe Lieberman, announced: "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war."

Within a week, Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Saban Center in the Brookings Institution, had an op-ed in the Daily Beast titled "The menace of Yemen". Touting the botched Christmas Day plot as evidence of "the growing ambition of Al-Qaeda's Yemen franchise," Riedel called for "significant American support to defeat AQAP".

Riedel's employer, the Saban Center, is named after Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media mogul, who in 2002 pledged 13 million dollars to found the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Two years later, Saban admitted to the New York Times: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel."

"The US may be walking into a bit of a trap," warns Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert and doctoral candidate at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies.

That "trap" has been best described by a former CIA officer. "America's misguided war on terror", Philip Giraldi pointed out in a recent article, "is in fact a complete adoption of Israeli security paradigms without any regard for the actual threats that confront the US, making Israel's many enemies also the foes of Washington".

Israel must be very grateful indeed for this latest terror scare. If Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula did not exist, they might have to invent it.

* Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

Tell how it really is in Gaza, especially if you're an archbishop

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

Archbishop Barry Morgan of Wales

To their eternal shame, Western churchmen seem to care little about the plight of their brothers and sisters in the Holy Land or the fate of the holy places where Christianity was born.

There are, of course, honourable exceptions. One such is the Archbishop of Wales, the Most Reverend Dr Barry Morgan, whose church has provided the Gazans with a mobile dental unit.

He is not best pleased that the Israelis make it difficult to obtain fuel and medical supplies for it, and he didn't mince his words when recently reporting to the Church's governing body how things really are in Gaza.

The truth of the matter seemed to annoy a certain Mr Simon McIlwaine, who complained that the archbishop's words put the state of Israel in an unduly harsh light and he was compelled to "provide some badly needed context". Whereupon Mr McIlwaine launched into the familiar anti-Gaza, anti-Hamas rant we're used to hearing from the pro-Israel lobby.

"The archbishop raises a central issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict – anti-Semitism..."

The central issue is 62 years of criminal oppression. The charges include land theft, illegal occupation, ethnic cleansing, disregard for human rights, and war crimes such as those documented in the Goldstone report. The action required is set out in international law, numerous UN resolutions and every code of human decency.

"Hamas is an explicitly anti-Semitic organization that at the very least seeks to exercise a veto over the Jewish right to self-determination."

Israel is deeply anti-Arab and continues to dispossess and remove Arabs not only from Israel proper, but also from areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem that Israel has earmarked for permanent occupation.

Palestinians have been denied the right to self-determination for decades and Israel even refuses to recognize their perfectly satisfactory democratic process.

"Hamas's anti-Semitic ideology pre-existed the blockade..."

Israel's illegal occupation pre-dates the founding of Hamas.

"Hamas's attacks against Israel are not merely motivated by a desire to end the blockade, but to deprive the Jewish people of their ability to enjoy a national life of their own."

The irony of that remark is apparently lost on Mr McIlwaine.

"Clearly, anti-Semitism plays a significant role in fomenting violence against Israel in the Middle East."

Playing the anti-Semitism card yet again. Israel is the violator. Hamas chief Khaled Mesh'al has explained that armed resistance against Israel is the result of Israeli occupation, injustice and oppression, not religious differences.

"The archbishop describes the devastation in the Gaza Strip without acknowledging the role Hamas played in bringing the destruction about."

Israel broke the ceasefire with a raid killing at least six Palestinians in order to provoke the sort of retaliation that could then be used as an excuse to launch Operation Cast Lead, the three-week onslaught Israel had been preparing for months.

"History has shown that isolating tyrannical regimes such as Hamas results in civilian suffering."

Israel was making Palestinians' lives a misery long before Hamas appeared on the scene. What right has Israel or anyone else to isolate a democratically elected government and its people anyway?

Hamas is an Islamic party legitimately ruling a mainly Islamic country. It is the people's choice. How can it be any more "tyrannical" than the Jewish State with its exclusivity laws and lethal attitude towards non-Jews?

"...Responsibility for the disruption of daily life in the Gaza Strip lies with Hamas. By way of comparison, daily life in the West Bank, which has not been the source of rocket attacks, is improving."

As long as Israel occupies Gaza's airspace, coastal waters and air-waves, controls all access points (except now the Egyptian border, although it still interferes there), maintains a sea blockade and attacks and even murders volunteers bringing humanitarian supplies, it is ridiculous to suggest that anyone else is responsible for disrupting daily life.

In 2007, when Israel tightened the siege on Gaza, the prime minister's adviser, Dov Weisglass, said: "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger." According to documents just released under a Freedom of Information petition by Gisha, an Israeli law centre, Israel operated "a policy of deliberate reduction" of basic goods in the Gaza Strip. Gisha's director accuses Israel of "paralyzing normal life in Gaza", and adds: "I am sorry to say that major elements of this policy are still in place."

The documents confirm that the siege was not for security reasons but aimed at keeping Gazans at near-starvation level. Since around half the population are growing children this act of collective punishment has meant that hundreds of thousands are undernourished.

Mr McIlwaine is right that no rockets have been fired from the West Bank. Why, then, are the shredded remains of that territory still under cruel occupation and tight restriction?

"Hamas has murdered its political opponents, threatened its critics and stolen humanitarian aid shipped in from outside."

Another classic piece of irony for us to savour. Assassinations and extra-judicial executions are an Israeli speciality. So is thieving. They even steal British passports for their murder squads.

We never hear what happens to humanitarian aid seized in international waters by Israeli thugs who abduct passengers and crew and rob them of their possessions. Remember how Israel kept stealing Gaza's tax revenues? Did they ever give the money back?

Simon McIlwaine is co-director of Anglican Friends of Israel, an organization whose aims include:

• Securing defensible borders for the State of Israel. (What borders? Its ever-expanding illegal borders enclosing stolen lands or its internationally-recognized 1967 borders?)
• Calling Anglicans to repentance for the wrongs inflicted by Christians on the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.
• Protecting the Christian communities threatened by Islamic extremism in the Middle East (though not, it seems, against the crushing oppression of Israeli extremists).

The puzzle is why any Anglican would befriend a regime with so much blood on its hands and attack a bishop who speaks up for its wretched victims. St Augustine must be spinning in his grave.

At least Dr Morgan went to Gaza to see for himself. Did Mr McIlwaine?

What did the good archbishop say that so rattled Mr McIlwaine's cage?

Regarding Gaza, Dr Morgan observed: "Two-thirds of these people live in abject poverty, in refugee camps, after the confiscation of their homes and land by the Israeli government. The situation is worse now than when I visited in 2001..." He described how people lived in zinc shacks, without electricity or water and with open sewers running down the streets, and how Gaza City itself was like a bombsite.

Only 32 per cent of the industrial fuel needed in one week in August 2010 for Gaza's power plant was allowed into Gaza. The result was that the power plant shut down completely for two days after exhausting its reserves of fuel, triggering power cuts of 16 hours per day – affecting water supply, sewage treatment and removal, and the functioning of health services. Thirty per cent of households in Gaza have access to running water for only four to eight hours per week; 40 per cent receive water once every four days and the other 30 per cent obtain it once every two days. Half of the normal level of need of cooking gas entered Gaza in August; no diesel or petrol has been delivered for weeks - hence diesel and petrol being taken through the tunnels at the risk of attack by the Israelis. Imports are limited, raw materials severely restricted, no building materials are allowed into Gaza, exports from Gaza are banned entirely.

"The blockade in Gaza has destroyed public service infrastructure and hospitals have power cuts for twelve hours a day, emergency medical treatment for residents of Gaza is denied, and 40 million litres of sewage is being discharged every day into the sea because of lack of fuel to pump or treat human waste. Family members in Gaza have been separated from relatives living in the West Bank and elsewhere.

All of which is confirmed by other sources.

Dr Morgan continued: "The United Nations, the Security Council and the European Union want crossings to Gaza to be permanently open to allow access for humanitarian and commercial aid and all of this was agreed between Israel and the Palestinian authorities in 2005."

He also referred to the Kairos document issued by Palestinian Church leaders a year ago and the report "Justice and Peace for Palestine" discussed recently by the Methodist Church. "Both of those reports say that the key hindrance to security and a lasting peace for all in the region is the occupation of Palestinian territory by the State of Israel..."

For 43 long years. Who is foolish enough to believe there can be peace under the jackboot of occupation?

Settlements by Israeli settlers are illegal under international law, and over one third have been built on Palestinian privately owned land. The wall that has been built covering a distance of 702 kilometres ... not only separates Israelis from Palestinians but Palestinians from family members and friends. In rural areas, it effectively cuts them off from their olive trees and fruit and vegetable plantations. In July 2004, the International Court of Justice declared the separation barrier illegal, and called on Israel to cease construction to dismantle constructed areas and provide reparation to those materially damaged by the construction.

"Settlers" is too nice a word for my taste. It suggests peaceful pioneers wishing to integrate. Israeli "settlers" are anything but. They are squatters, half a million in over 100 illegal colonies – ugly blots on an otherwise lovely landscape. They include gangs of armed delinquents who terrorize local villagers, vandalize their crops, pollute their land and harass their children.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention clearly forbids an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

Next time, the archbishop might question why the Separation Wall, if meant for security, wasn't built within Israel's internationally-recognized borders. Its actual route bites deep into Palestinian territory and is designed to annex choice agricultural land and the Palestinians' precious water supplies. Palestinians are now severely rationed and have to pay Israel inflated prices for a dribble of their own water while Israelis splash around in their swimming pools and wash their cars.

The archbishop finished by saying:

Now we, as a Church, perhaps cannot do very much except that we ought to acquaint ourselves with what is going on, and fight against injustice, and demand that the rule of law be upheld wherever it is being flouted for whatever reason. We have a duty to speak out.

On an earlier occasion in 2009, after Israel's blitz on Gaza, Dr Morgan was saying:

Having visited Gaza twice over the past few years I have seen the appalling conditions in which the people there live ... with no proper homes, sanitation or means of escape. Their lives are now unbearable as they come under daily fire and are too scared to even leave their homes. We have heard that it has now become too dangerous for our clinic, which was being used as a frontline hospital dealing with casualties, to continue its work.

It is tragic that there is so much violence in an area known as the Holy Land... It is time for the fighting to stop – enough children have died and enough homes have been destroyed and it is immoral for the world to stand by and do nothing.

How very refreshing. Those other bishops who loaf around the House of Lords and never open their mouths when so much needs to be said and done, please note.

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

In his recent pep-talk to the Anti-Defamation League, media magnate Rupert Murdoch complains about "an ongoing war against the Jews".

He seems desperate to divert attention from the mounting resentment around the world towards Israel. But his threadbare argument collapses straightaway because no distinction is made between criminal Israelis and Jews generally. The one remains carefully hidden behind the other.

And the anti-Semitism label tends to get pinned on anyone and everyone in European society, “from its most élite politicians to its largely Muslim ghettoes”, who speaks against or as much as frowns at the racist regime.

The after-dinner audience he was addressing no doubt lapped it up, but unfortunately for Mr Murdoch people are better informed nowadays. I doubt if the wider audience buys it.

What they find unacceptable is Israel’s lawlessness and unrestrained killing. The much-hyped religious dimension is only relevant insofar as the perpetrators hide behind religion's skirts and misinterpret religious texts to whitewash their crimes.

What also undermines Mr Murdoch’s case is the fact that not all Jews support the state of Israel or approve the dispossession and removal of its indigenous (Arab) population. An increasing number, to their credit, actively campaign against it.

And not all of Israel's supporters are Jewish. They include battalions of Christian Zionists.

It is not surprising that the "Jewish state" has come under strong criticism. Any state, with or without tribal or religious underpinnings, would be roundly condemned if it misbehaved in the same way.

As for the speech, Mr Murdoch kicks off by telling the ADL:

"You have championed equal treatment for all races and creeds."

If only that were true. As their website and mission statement show, the ADL are preoccupied with supporting Israel. They are not interested in combating Israeli hate groups or defending the security of (let's say) the Palestinians.

He continues:

"My own perspective is simple: We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews... Now the war has entered a new phase. This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by de-legitimizing it... In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah."

Israel has already made itself a pariah by its hateful attitude, disregard for international law and defiance of UN resolutions. A question mark hangs over its own legitimacy while it attempts to isolate and de-legitimize the democratically elected government of neighbouring Palestine, whose remaining lands it covets and illegally occupies or blockades.

“Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel.”

Disagreeing with Israel is anti-Semitic? We laughed at the Germans for having no sense of humour. Must we now laugh at the Israelis?

Israel’s unwillingness to accept criticism is part of its undoing. Rejecting out of hand the Goldstone Report in relation to war crimes against the Gazans only magnifies the regime’s arrogance. Are deniers of Goldstone any better than deniers of the Holocaust?

"For me, this ongoing war is a fairly obvious fact of life. Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel."

Armies of terrorists? Every day? Really?

The principle of homeland defence, of course, applies equally to Arabs. The high-tech terror they face is real and bristles with state-of-the-art weaponry. It is a hundred times worse than any terror faced by Israeli citizens. Check the death and destruction statistics.

In case Mr Murdoch hadn’t noticed, Israel itself is widely regarded as a terror state frequently resorting, as it does, to assassinations and extra-judicial executions, abductions and torture, massacres and starvation sieges, air-strikes, armed incursions, the use of prohibited weapons on civilians and massive violations of human rights? It must be galling for the regime’s well-wishers to see how perfectly Israel fits the terrorist definition used by the US to blacklist and squelch countries that get in its way.

Talking of maps, I hear the Israelis have already deleted Palestine (and Palestinian place-names) from theirs. And it’s well known that they demolished and obliterated hundreds of Palestinian villages after putting the inhabitants to flight.

"Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran - a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel's destruction - pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke."

No fear of rebuke for Israel either. It is the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Given its 200 (or is it 400?) nuclear warheads and its freaky leadership, Israel poses a serious threat to its neighbours and far beyond. Moreover, it hasn't signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and hasn't ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty or the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Can Mr Murdoch, by any chance, show proof of Iran's nuclear weapons programme? And since Israel has spoken of nuking Iran, what is the point of claiming Iran wishes Israel’s destruction?

“Some believe that if America wants to gain credibility in the Muslim world and advance the cause of peace, Washington needs to put some distance between itself and Israel.”

Now you’re making sense, Mr Murdoch…

“My view is the opposite. Far from making peace more possible, we are making hostilities more certain.”

Now you’re not. Hostilities have been going on for years.

The latest panic in Western capitals over the “undetectable” printer cartridge bombs is a powerful warning that countries aligning themselves with the US-Israel axis are asking for trouble. Ordinary westerners are tired of being put in harm’s way by America’s coziness with Israel and by Britain’s sniffing around both of them like a bitch in heat.

Disengagement is what most people around here have long wanted.

“Far from making things better for the Palestinian people, sour relations between the United States and Israel guarantees that ordinary Palestinians will continue to suffer.”

Does this mean Israel would turn the screws on the helpless just for spite?

“The peace we all want will come when Israel feels secure.”

Peace will only come when EVERYONE feels secure. It is not a one-way street.

As Mr Murdoch surely knows, Hamas have said they will accept Israel within its internationally-recognised 1967 borders, which is the same position adopted by the United Nations. This, the most obvious avenue to peace, is studiously ignored by Israel.

“Right now we have war. There are many people waging this war. Some blow up cafes. Some fire rockets into civilian areas... Some are fighting the soft war, through international boycotts and resolutions condemning Israel.”

And some wage war on women and children and even target unarmed fishermen.

Some also commit acts of piracy and murder on the high seas against volunteers bringing humanitarian aid.

That’s war. And it’s dirty war, waged by Israel. But boycotting Israeli goods and tourism is not war. It's exercising one's freedom of choice. It’s registering one’s disgust. Israel’s tourism minister was this week doing the same thing, urging that "Turkey must be totally boycotted as a tourism destination”.

Face the truth, ask forgiveness

If Mr Murdoch, with all his persuasive powers, cannot put up a convincing defence of Israel, no-body can. He shows here that anyone attempting it is on a hiding to nothing.

The root of the problem is the fundamental evil of the Zionist Project and the fanatics in the US, Britain and elsewhere who backed it and still fan the flames.

I commend to Mr Murdoch the Jerusalem Declaration of 2006 by the Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, who daily have to operate amidst the disruption and devastation inflicted by Israel on Palestinian life. They reject Christian Zionist doctrines as “a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation”, and they reject the alliance of Christian Zionist leaders with the governments of Israel and the United States that impose pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine.

Christian Zionism supports these policies and “advances racial exclusivity and perpetual war”. The Declaration calls on everyone to “liberate themselves from ideologies of militarism and occupation”.

Perhaps Mr Murdoch is not yet ready for that kind of liberation. For the timebeing he talks up a “war against the Jews” when it is merely the flashpoint where propaganda lies finally collide with the sickening truth about Israel. It’s a slow motion train-crash that’s been waiting to happen.

So I haven’t given up on Mr Murdoch just yet. However you regard him he’s a remarkable man. Who knows - in the end he may decide there is no honour in Israel’s rogue schemes and it would be more sensible for the regime to stop the lies, face the truth, atone for its crimes, hand back what has been stolen, conform to international law, charter rules and normal codes of conduct, and respect neighbours’ rights.

That’s the way forward.

And it should not forget to ask forgiveness from God, from the US taxpayer and from those in the wider Jewish community who have winced with shame. Seeking a pardon from the Holy Land’s Arab communities - Muslim and Christian - for treating them so abominably for 60-odd years would be a hard road to take but is the only way to achieve reconciliation and ultimately find contentment.

* 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.

"I keep reading between the lies"
(Goodman Ace)

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

Murdoch and Peres

What he omitted from that statement is the ADL's treatment of the Palestinian people under Abraham Foxman, its national director, who "...uses high-mindedness and unfounded anti-Semitism hysteria as cover for backing Jewish supremacy and the right of Israelis over Arabs, including by occupation and belligerently enforced apartheid" (Steven Lendman, Socio-Economic History Blog). Murdoch omits a needed clause at the end of that statement: "except for the Palestinian people and their beliefs and their rights under international law." Indeed, Lendman's article refutes virtually every one of Murdoch's claims, laying bare the truth behind Murdoch's talk: see nothing, hear nothing, speak nothing against Israel or suffer the condemnation that comes with the label "Anti-Semite."

"We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews," intones Murdoch as he castigates all peoples as inherently discriminating against Jews everywhere. "Ongoing war against Jews" not "a rising tide of valid criticism against the Zionist controlled state of Israel with its current government's defiance of the United Nations' reports on crimes against humanity as published by the Goldstone Report, Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, the HRC report on the attack on the Mavi Marmara in May, and most recently the UNHRC by Dr. Richard Falk, the UN Representative for the Palestinian people." No, Murdoch euphemistically conjures up a "war" against Jews, a suffering, weak, victimized people at the mercy of the world's hate.

But there is no war; there is criticism, valid, righteous criticism that decries the wanton havoc inflicted on the Lebanese with Israel's invasion of that nation in the fall of 2006; valid, righteous criticism that watched in horror the devastation of the defenseless people of Gaza at Christmastime in 2008/9 as their homes, schools, mosques, food, water, and gas supplies lay devastated under the bombs and missiles dropped upon them from the skies; valid, righteous, humane criticism that lamented the deaths of children and mothers and the old and infirm who had no place to run or hide encircled as they were by the Israeli war machine; valid, righteous, and incredulous criticism of the brutal attack against the humanitarian aid workers on board the Marmara as it made its way to help these very people yet found themselves guilty of interfering somehow with Israeli security as they brought a modicum of relief to a blasted people. None of these people hated the Jews; indeed, Jews joined those criticizing the government's overbearing slaughter of the innocent including those who joined with me in the aborted 'Boat Brigade" that was to follow the Mavi Marmara to Gaza in June. How convenient to stamp "hate" on all, that by that condemnation they must be silenced.

Not content with such slander against innocent people indignant at the unconscionable brutality of the Israeli war machine, Murdoch chooses to slide silently by the horrific massacres inflicted on the people of Palestine during the Nakba, insisting that Israel suffered decades of "straightforward" military force by those attempting to "overrun Israel." He should read the reality of those days as described by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. This was the beginning of the genocide against the Palestinians as recorded in The Plight of the Palestinians recently published by Palgrave Macmillan that continues to this day.

"Then came phase two: terrorism. Terrorists targeted Israelis both home and abroad-from the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich to the second intifada," continues Murdoch, forgetting to mention Israel's terrorism against its neighbor Jordan that elicited this response by the UN: "The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 228 unanimously deploring "the loss of life and heavy damage to property resulting from the action of the Government of Israel on 13 November 1966?, censuring "Israel for this large-scale military action in violation of the United Nations Charter and of the General Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan" and emphasizing "to Israel that actions of military reprisal cannot be tolerated and that, if they are repeated, the Security Council will have to consider further and more effective steps as envisaged in the Charter to ensure against the repetition of such acts"(Six Day War, Wikipedia); nor did he mention the terrorism Israel perpetrated against the Palestinians in Beirut in 1982 where they watched the unfolding massacre of 3000 as their personally equipped allies, the Phalanges, mauled and raped and killed the abandoned Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, enjoying the slaughter so much they kept the skies alight throughout the night so their savage friends might not interrupt their savage servility. Instead of providing actions taken by Israel against its neighbors that gave rise to retaliatory actions, Murdoch decries how the world has risen to attack innocent Israel as though none suffer at the hands of Israel's ruthless war machine.

Listen to Murdoch's rant against the world: "the war has entered a new phase...a soft war to delegitimize Israel...the battleground is everywhere...to make Israel a pariah." All media, all multinational organizations, all NGOs have joined forces as armies of terrorists to inflict WW III on Israel that stands alone against the forces of evil. Why? To rid the middle east of Israel. How? By spreading anti-Semitism throughout the world. Who? Polite society in the form of "progressive intellectual communities." Indeed, Murdoch bemoans "...anti-Semitism today enjoys support at both the highest and lowest reaches of European society-from its most elite politicians to its largely Muslim ghettoes." Where is this obvious? In Norway where the government forbids a German shipbuilder from using its waters to test a submarine being built for Israel; In Britain and Spain who boycott an OECD tourism meeting in Jerusalem; In the Netherlands where there is a reported increase in anti-Semitic incidents; and in the European poll that listed Israel ahead of Iran and North Korea as the greatest threats to world peace.

Given the veto power of the United States in the UN, a veto that has prevented any action on any resolution that has condemned Israel's illegal and/or inhumane policies and military actions against Palestinians and its neighbors over a period of 63 years, the actions listed by Murdoch by European nations are but modest reflections of the frustration that exists throughout the world about the impunity this rogue state enjoys precisely because America "stands united in full support of Israel" regardless of its merciless behavior toward its neighbors in the mid-east. Yet Murdoch is afraid that the United States might be weakening in that support, one of the prime reasons for giving this talk before the ADL. "Some believe that if America wants to gain credibility in the Muslim world and advance the cause of peace, Washington needs to put some distance between itself and Israel. My view is the opposite." For some totally unexplainable reason, Murdoch seems to think that a continuation of 63 years of force-of land confiscation, of theft of Palestinian aquifers, of home demolitions, of imprisonment of thousands without due rights, of abolition of civil rights, of humiliation and disrespect that comes with hundreds of checkpoints, soldiers who mock and deride civilians, who are indifferent to the suffering of a mother about to give birth as she is prevented from getting to a hospital, of the psychological pain a child endures, a pain that lasts a lifetime, when the soldiers break down the door and force the father to the wall incapable of protecting his family from such ruthlessness, of life lived behind a wall, a wall that testifies to the fear that Murdoch expresses in his talk to the ADL, a pathological fear imbedded in his very soul, and a wall that imprisons the youth of Palestine who grow to manhood locked behind concrete and steel and watch towers and guns-such is the view that Murdoch brings to Americans if peace is to be achieved in Israel.

One cannot but think that something is amiss here. Murdoch sees only through his own eyes, and he sees fear, a fear that has infected his entire being, a toxic residue of hate against the world brought on by ingesting every day another dose of Abraham Foxman's diatribes against the world. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to look through the eyes of the world that Murdoch condemns. Norman Finklestein makes the point in his book, This Time We've Gone too Far: he cites the yearly resolutions of the UNGA that have condemned Israel for not returning to a legal position regarding its neighbor, Palestine.

Yearly, the US and Israel stand alone against the world as the people of the world view the catastrophe that is the occupied territories; recently, the world condemned Israel for its wanton destruction of Lebanon, and again only the US and Israel saw this action as justified yet Israel suffered no consequences for this illegal invasion of its neighbor; following the Christmas invasion of Gaza, the world rose against Israel's inhumane behavior and only Israel and the US stood in support of that merciless destruction condemning the Goldstone Report and preventing justice form being exercised; then came the flotilla of mercy to Gaza and Israel and the United States alone in all the world refused to comply with the UNHRC recommendations or permit international investigations from determining truth. And so it goes.

There must not and will not be criticism of Israel because that is by virtue of the name of the state, a Jewish state, damnation of the Jews. How convenient. Thus does Murdoch erect his own wall of fear around the people of the world should they dare to find fault with the government of Israel. He hides truth thereby behind slanders and lies, seeing all behavior through his own eyes instead of viewing truth as it is seen by his neighbors who suffer the wrath of Israel. Should he take that black veil off his eyes might he not see neighbors capable of love and joy, desiring to live in peace in a homeland large enough to accommodate them, and willing to share the resources of Palestine equitably that all might live a fruitful life.

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