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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unity Discussions Scheduled to Continue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Targeting Hamas at Israel's Behest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Jeff Gates * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Photo courtesy of Skulz Fontaine

So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists...."
-- Manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik

War-making storylines tend to lose their steam. Sustained warfare requires more than just a plausible Evil Doer. A credible narrative is also essential. To remind us who to hate, who better than a murderous Nordic Muslim-hater?

Far-fetched? How many Americans had heard of the Taliban before March 2001 when destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan was reported worldwide as a 'Cultural Holocaust'? Voila! An Evil Doer brand emerged and was soon repackaged as Islamo-fascism.

Six months later, an attack on U.S. soil left little doubt that outraged Americans would be provoked to war. Combine an emotionally wrenching mass murder with manipulated intelligence and an invasion was assured-of Iraq. That miscue required sophisticated pre-staging.

Residents of Washington, DC well recall the sniper attacks that left ten dead during the October 2002 lead-up to a Senate vote on a war resolution sponsored by Jewish Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman. Those well-timed murders ensured a heightened sense of insecurity and helped ratchet up the requisite hatred-to invade a nation that played no role in 911.

Remember the Times Square Terrorist? A car belonging to a Muslim was found with two WalMart propane tanks, an alarm clock, a box of fireworks and some fertilizer. When? In May 2010 during the lead-up to a UN vote on a nuclear-free Middle East-opposed by Israel.

To sustain hate requires a sustained stream of plausible reasons to hate. Plus careful maintenance of a 'generally accepted truth' that keeps attention focused on a credible threat.

Preparing the Minds

Islamo-phobia was a fresh threat when it first appeared in a 1993 article in Foreign Affairs. Yet it dates from 1990 when Princeton Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis, an avid Zionist, touted "The Roots of Muslim Rage." By 1996, Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington was ready to publish The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

With more than 100 nongovernmental organizations promoting The Clash, Americans experienced a seamless segue from an old narrative to a new. Without missing a beat in Pentagon spending, we ended a global Cold War and, by consensus, began a global War on Terrorism.

Huntington argued that cultural and religious identities would emerge as the primary source of conflict. To gain traction, The Clash consensus required a series of events that could be plausibly blamed on Muslim Evil Doers. That was 15 years ago-a long time to sustain a storyline.

With Osama bin Laden dead and war-weary Americans nearing the tenth anniversary of 911, The narrative was losing its punch. Plus the storytellers face a transparency problem: Intelligence agencies worldwide have identified pro-Israelis as the common source of the manipulated intelligence that induced the invasion of Iraq.

What's a Zionist to do? Answer: look to past successes.

Timing is Everything

Ten days prior to 911, Tel Aviv announced a $1 million grant to Israeli super-spy Jonathan Pollard. Why then? The timing suggests Tel Aviv was signaling its operatives and sayanim (Hebrew for volunteers).

The Norwegian shooter is akin to the narrative-advancing snipers who emerged in the lead-up to the Senate vote authorizing the U.S. military to invade Iraq. In the lead-up to next month's UN vote on statehood for Palestine, the carnage in Norway freshened up a stale storyline.

This latest mass murder was committed on the 65^th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv. That mass murder was an operation of the Irgun, Zionist-terrorist predecessors to the Likud Party of today's Benjamin Netanyahu.

The same night that Israel launched its Six-Day War in June 1967, Irgun operative Mathilde Krim was continuing her torrid affair with President Lyndon Johnson-in the White House. Why then? Because that land grab ensured the roots of the Muslim rage required to shape future events.

Why would a Norwegian Zionist target Norwegians? For the same reason that Irgun Zionist Menachem Begin murdered Jews in the King David Hotel: to advance a narrative.

In September 2000, Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led a provocative march to Jerusalem's Temple Mount. When, after a year of calm, suicide bombings recommenced, Sharon and Netanyahu warned that only when Americans "feel our pain" would we appreciate their plight. To feel Israel's pain, they said, would require that America lose 4,500 to 5,000 to terrorism, the initial estimate of those lives lost to a mass murder one year later.

The well-timed operation in Norway turned to mass murder as a means to remake the world order in plain sight. Those complicit specialize in maintaining a storyline that dates from when the medieval Crusades pit Christians against Muslims.

Absent the success of such deceit, we may forget whom to hate.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

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

The illegal town of Ariel

2. Hey goys and girls, are you interested in supporting terrorism, violating international law, stealing other people's property and being in general a smug narcissistic asshole and getting the US taxpayer to subsidize this behavior? Of course you are, who wouldn't be? So you will be most interested in a new occasional feature that the tuyuur here at Mantiq al-Tayr have come up with called "Support Your Own Illegal Israeli Settlement". Once every couple of weeks or so we will choose a nice Israeli settlement built on Palestinian land and we'll give you some links about it so you can learn about what a great place it is. We will also provide you a link so that you can make US tax-free donations in order to keep the illegal settlement going – something you really should go to jail for, but here in the US this sort of theft and support of insane Israelis is encouraged and the taxpayers as usual get to foot the bill. What a deal.

Our inaugural voyage into the realm of illegal Israeli settlements is the lovely (and did I mention illegal?) town of Ariel, which lies not far from Nablus and which the Jewish Virtual Liebrary has the chutzpahpahpah to call "the capital of Samaria."

Founded in 1978 by Likudnik Ron Nachman, this 8-mile long illegal settlement has about 20,000 residents – many of them Russian Jews imported during the 1990's. It also has a "university" of about 12,000 students a few hundred of whom are Arabs which makes everything better. Residents get highly subsidized by the Israeli government as it is clear that this settlement was and is designed as part of a major land grab in the northern West Bank. Again, the Liebrary tells us:

"The city's position expands Israel's narrow waist (which was 9 miles wide before 1967) and ensures that Israel has a land route to the Jordan Valley should Israel needs to fight a land war to the east. Because of its size, most Israelis favor the incorporation of the Ariel bloc within whatever may be the final borders of Israel. It is more controversial than the other "consensus" settlements because it is the furthest from the 1949 Armistice Line. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Barak's proposal at Camp David included Ariel among the settlement blocs to be annexed to Israel; the Clinton plan also envisioned incorporating Ariel within the new borders of Israel."

The residents of Ariel are there because of the "higher standard of living they enjoy and the economic incentives provided by the government. In particular, residents can obtain better mortgages and repayment terms because the government designated Ariel as a "national priority" development area."

You will be glad to know that Israeli ass-kisser and very likely to become the next Israeli Vice President for American Affairs, Mike Huckabee, went to Ariel early this month and made a complete ass of himself, something he is very good at doing.

Huckabeestein went to the Ariel Regional Center for the Performing Arts, which btw is the subject of a boycott initiated by Israeli artists who have a conscience – unlike Huckabee obviously – and said, and I'm not making this up:

"what some people from outside would call a settlement, most of us would look at this and tour it and call it a community – a thriving community – where people are being educated, encouraged, enjoying life and raising families ."

When the boycott of the ARCPA was mentioned to him by reports, Huckabilly actually made an indirect threat to those who support the boycott.

When asked about the artists' boycott of the Ariel Regional Center for the Performing Arts, Huckabee said: "People have boycotted me previously. I consider it a badge of honor. I am sure that this university and this community will thrive. I am not sure that the people who do the boycotting will."

And of course, the neo-con nutcase Jennifer Rubin who blogs for, surprise surprise, the Jerusalem Washington New York Times Post (JEWNYTP) recently visited Ariel and managed to learn nothing at all as she drove on the West Bank's "Jewish only" roads. She, like Huckabee, believes in a "one-state" solution to the problem – that is that only Israel exist. Not quite what Ali Abu Nima might have in mind. But I digress.

Huckabuthead, an ordained Baptist minister and living proof that American Christianity is pretty much just a bunch of Zionist Bullshit, got interviewed for Politico and said stuff that no doubt made Jennifer Rubin get really excited.

"The trips also have political lessons. Huckabee met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a committee of the Knesset on this trip, making headlines for his dismissal of the land-for-peace bargain that underlies the peace process and of the very idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

Such a state "can't be on top of the same real estate that the Israelis control," he told POLITICO. "There's no such thing as a realistic hope of this two-state solution."

He said demands that Israel rein in settlements have only encouraged Palestinian demands. Instead, he said, the U.S. should "encourage the Israelis to build as much as they can and as rapidly as they can."

I love this quote from the interview:

A parliamentarian who backs Israel's settlements, Danny Danon, told POLITICO that if Huckabee "had to get elected in the Knesset, I'm sure he would be the president of the United States."

Yet again, I digress. Let's get back to Ariel as we go down the "Jewish only" road.

So if you are the kind of person who admires a Huckabee or a Rubin, you can go to the "American Friends of Ariel" website and make your tax-exempt contributions to a one-state solution – one state that will end up having no Palestinians at all.

To go to their donation page, click here and see the message at the bottom of the page that says:

"Please note that all donations are tax deductible in the U.S.A."

3. Now, I have to comment on something. It's not the sort of thing readers of this site come here to read, but it is such an urgent matter that I feel I have to make a comment.

As hard as it is to believe, it does appear that the owners of the National Football League are going to lock out the players starting March 4^th and NFL fans around the country are facing the prospect that if no labor agreement is reached by late in the summer, some of all of the coming football season will be in jeopardy.

I want you all to know that we here at Mantiq al-Tayr are fully on the side of the NFL owners in this dispute. The owners are among the ruling elites in this country and they for the most part hate your guts and they would do anything they possibly could to fuck you over in a New York minute if they had the chance. And in fact they do so on a regular basis and NFL fans seem to enjoy it. I hope the owners totally crush the players union and do so in a way that even Shas Party members can see just how much the rich hate the guts of working people. I want them to stomp the players into the ground and when it's all over – and I hope there is no football season at all in 2011, the players have to go back to one-year contracts making the wages of your average Walmart assistant manager. Your NFL ticket prices still won't come down, you will still have to buy PSL's, you will continue to subsidize their huge fucking stadiums, and you'll still have to pay through the nose for Direct TV's "NFL Ticket" and the cable companies showing the games will just jack up their rates. And you – you stupid dumb tax-paying Israeli-supporting Fox-fed American morons won't do a damn thing about it. You deserve it. Fuck you.

I feel better now.

4. Man, do we need something to cheer us up.

How about this?

American Christianity - AP Photo

Hmm. Guess that one doesn't work, does it?

How about this? Huckabee vs. Derwoshitz

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw1aCRyPPjs

Nah, that just makes me even more upset.

How about this:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrOW4df3H68

Gosh, I am just striking out today. Give me another chance.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R611drTEHPA

Okay, one more chance. Please.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1it2EGo9h_o

Just one more, I promise.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBe-U4owMG8

See, I'm getting better. And here's one more. It's real short so Shas Party members can follow it.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZJhBtBfb3E

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

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

At any time, from 7,000 - 12,000 or more Palestinians are politically persecuted and imprisoned, including young children. The Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association explains that for over 43 years under military occupation, over 650,000 Palestinians have been illegally detained for wanting freedom on their own land in their own country, what Israel won't tolerate, nor have its leaders ever wanted peace. Saying so is a lie.

What Avi Shlaim once said about Ariel Sharon, applies to virtually all other Israeli leaders, past and present; namely, that "Bargaining, accommodation, and compromise (were) alien to his whole way of thinking."

Sharon earlier, and Netanyahu today, share like-minded views; namely, that "relations with the Palestinians (are) a zero-sum game" in which Israel intends to gain at their expense, including its own Arab citizens. Both leaders spurn concessions, Sharon once saying, "This is our land, and we'll settle it and build on it in order to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. We'll never give up this area." As a result, Palestinians have been ruthlessly persecuted, imprisoned, or slaughtered in gross violation of international laws.

Ameer Makoul is one of many victims, a previous article about him accessed here.

An Israeli citizen, human rights activist, and head of the internationally recognized Ittijah NGO for Palestinian empowerment, he also chairs the Public Committee for the Defence of Political Prisoners within the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee in Israel. Besides championing human rights, he also supports the global BDS movement, what many believe is perhaps the most effective nonviolent tactic against Israeli lawlessness, and another reason for his targeting.

An earlier article on Palestinian Political Prisoners can be accessed here.

Makhoul's Ordeal

In May, Makhoul was arrested on spurious charges of spying for Hezbollah, Israel's way to silence a respected Palestinian. At the time, attorney Hussein Abu Hasin said accusations were so vague and wide-ranging that emails, Internet chats or phone conversations with anyone about anything could be used as a pretext to prosecute for communicating with a "state enemy," whether or not true and regardless of the right to speak freely with anyone.

At the time, Mohammed Zeidan, head of the Human Rights Association of Nazareth said:

"We are used to our political leaders being persecuted, but now Shin Bet is turning its sights on the leaders of Palestinian civil society in Israel, and that's a dangerous development." Based on suspicions, circumstantial evidence, or none at all, Shin Bet's likely to target anyone "unwittingly....meet(ing) a relative of a relative of someone in Hezbollah, (Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad, or the Iranian government as) grounds to arrest you." Activist leaders are notably threatened, especially Israeli Arabs seen by hard liners as a fifth column existential threat essential to crush.

Zeidan believes that persecution of Israeli Arab society is the best way to expose Israeli racism and discrimination against anyone not Jewish. "Markhoul's arrest should be understood in that light."

On May 6, his ordeal began when about 20 Israeli police and security forces arrested him at 3:10AM, ransacked his apartment, confiscated his computers, cell phones, various documents, maps, and other possessions. At the same time, his Haifa office was also raided for other potentially "incriminating" evidence, a Shin Bet warrant saying only that "secret information" justified it for "security reasons," when, in fact, none whatsoever existed.

On May 9, Ynetnews.com writer Sharon Roffe-Ofir headlined, "Security scandal angers Arab sector," saying:

Despite a gag order, aroused Israeli Arabs freely discussed Israeli "police persecution of (the) Arab community....In Facebook, a protest group has already been set up, and (days earlier) an emergency conference was held by the Mossawa Center and the Adalah Center, both of which are among the most prominent organizations working for Arab rights," along with many others expressing concern. Wide distribution of information followed through newspapers, blogs, and word of mouth.

Mossawa's director, Jafar Farah, called "the steps taken by (Israel's) security establishment....an extreme right wing policy. In democratic countries," this type lawlessness is prohibited. The Popular Committee for the Defense of Freedoms said Israel's attack on freedom "is at its height." MK Masud Ganaim (of United Arab List-Ta'al) sent thousands of emails calling the affair:

"police terror and silencing. What is happening is clear proof of racism. Whoever claims Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East gets new evidence to the contrary every day, in the steps taken by the government and its institutions against citizens, parties and organizations of the Arab sector."

Makhoul was detained incommunicado at Petah Tikva for interrogation. Under gag order (now lifted), the Israeli media couldn't write or discuss anything about his case.

He endured 12 days of brutal interrogation, including torture and sleep deprivation. After three weeks, he was charged with espionage, helping an enemy (Hezbollah) in time of war, contact with a foreign agent, and other spurious charges, all of which he denied.

On June 14, prosecutors claimed "secret evidence" against him, withheld from his lawyers for "security reasons." In addition, all attorney conversations were wiretapped, and despite requesting medical help from the Association of Physicians for Human Rights, it was repeatedly denied.

He remains imprisoned, a Committee for the Defense of Ameer Makhoul established on September 8 to defend him. Comprised of dozens of Jewish and Arab figures, it took collective responsibility because:

• his arrest signifies what he represents, not just himself, and it was done to warn other activist Israeli Arabs; and
• charges against him are entirely unfounded and spurious, his targeting to silence a respected, powerful, effective political voice for all Arab Israeli citizens.

He's represented them globally as an internationally recognized human rights advocate, and as a member of world and regional coalitions and networks. Speaking publicly or in any other way to anyone is protected speech, yet accusations against him violate his legitimate right to communicate freely with Arab colleagues.

On September 16, he was charged in Haifa District Court, even though Israeli prosecutors said his home and office computers, cell phones, other possessions, and transcripts of about 30,000 wiretapped phone conversations revealed no evidence of espionage.

On September 14, his lawyers got the Nazareth District Court to uphold his right to direct and confidential counsel access, what he previously was denied in violation of Israeli and international law. Earlier in 2009, Shin Bet said they'd "tailor a file for this disappearance and prolonged separation from his family" unless he softened his outspoken activism, including his denunciation of Cast Lead war crimes.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International have been outspoken for him, AI signaling it may declare him a "prisoner of conscience" because his arrest "smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work."

Ahead, the Committee for the Defense of Ameer Makhoul needs help to raise funds, mobilize international legal and medical help as well as observers for his trial. Some tactical victories have been won, however, including disseminating information globally on his case and defeating Israel's gag order. Remaining tasks include building a solid defense team, challenging prosecutorial use of "secret evidence" unavailable to counsel, as well as bogusly incriminating anyone for using protected speech to communicate freely with anyone.

A Final Comment

Ahmad Sa'adat is another prominent Israeli political prisoner, an earlier article on him accessed here.

He's the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), sentenced in 2002 to 30 years imprisonment for supporting Palestinian liberation heroically.

On October 4, an International Campaign for the Release of Kidnapped Palestinian Legislators press release said he's spent over "500 days in solitary confinement under the most inhumane conditions....to break (his) will and steadfastness."

Brutal torture, abuse and humiliation are longstanding Israeli longstanding practices, including against children. In mid-October, Sa'adat will challenge his isolation in court, as well as his overall inhumane treatment, denying his basic rights, including:

• virtually no family and legal visits;
• isolation from other prisoners;
• only 30 minute daily prison yard access, in painful handcuffs and ankle shackles;
• little reading material and no personal books;
• brutal interrogations, including physical and psychological torture;
• no canteen purchases; and
• like other political prisoners, no proper food, medical care, proper ventilation and sanitation, adequate clothing, or virtually all other basic necessities for health and well-being, in violation of fundamental international laws, including Geneva's Common Article 3 requiring:

"humane treatment for all persons in enemy hands, specifically prohibit(ing) murder, mutilation, torture, cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment (and) unfair trial(s).

Israel, like America, flouts the rule of law. As a result, Palestinians have been victimized for over six decades, denied any measure of justice and freedom. Makhoul and Sa'adat are two of thousands enduring Israeli savagery, its longstanding practice against Muslim Arabs.

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

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

It has been an unsettling week watching Obama's unholy alliance with Israel take the world a step nearer the edge of the abyss.

First I read Mark Glen's scary piece, "Exodus of Jewish Advisors from Obama White House Likely Not an Omen of Good Things to Come", in which he suggests the unexpected departure of Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod and Larry Summers from the top echelons of the White House might indicate that some sinister and possibly cataclysmic event is imminent.

Then I saw reports in Haaretz and elsewhere about a leaked letter from Obama to Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, showering him with gifts if he, Netanyahu, would only save Obama's political bacon and see him through next month's primaries by extending Israel's freeze on settlement building for just a few months.

Obama's letter, we're told, grants a list of reckless American favours. He agrees not to ask for any more construction freezes and to veto any anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution in the year ahead. He also agrees that the future fate of the illegal settlements will be dealt with only as part of a final status agreement with the Palestinians.

In short, he gives a green light to Israel's various criminal schemes.

As if that wasn't enough Obama, in his desperation, also offers to increase the $3 billion security aid Israel receives annually from America's hard-pressed taxpayers and to supply advanced weapons and early warning systems, including satellites. In addition the US president guarantees to prevent the smuggling of weapons and missiles into a future Palestinian state, and he OK's a lengthy period of interim security measures in the Jordan Valley (read permanent occupation) and a regional anti-Iran defence pact (read war plan).

Most little boys are overjoyed to receive a bike or computer game. But spoilt brat Bibi Netanyahu must have the biggest and most dangerous toys on the planet so that he can continue to terrorise all the other boys on the block. And indeed all the weak-kneed adults around the globe.

Although the White House is prepared to deliver most of what's on his wish-list, and doesn't ask much in return, it seems little Bibi has rejected America's extravagant gesture. Israel-watchers say he fears being tipped out of his pram by the psychopaths and extremists who push it if he doesn't drive an even harder bargain with big softy Obama.

Settlements "have no legal validity" and are a serious obstacle to peace - official

It's obvious lawyer Obama needs a refresher course in United Nations rulings and codes of conduct before this pathetic relationship gets hopelessly out of hand.

Resolution 242 (1967) by the Security Council (and therefore fully binding) requires the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the conflict and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

242 also requires freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area, a just settlement of the refugee problem and the guaranteeing of territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area.

And Security Council Resolution 338 (1973) calls on the parties concerned to get on with implementing 242 immediately.

Security Council Resolution 446 (1979) determines that Israel's settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 "have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East... "

It calls once more on Israel, as the occupying Power, "to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories".

Got that, Mr Obama?

The reason why none of it has been implemented is that US presidents up to and including Obama didn't give a toss about international law or peace in the Holy Land, preferring to let themselves be emasculated and led by the nose by the Israel lobby.

We are all in trouble if the US president takes leave of his senses and jettisons integrity. The most powerful man in the world then becomes the most dangerous. I'm sure someone (though obviously not Emmanuel, Axelrod or Summers) has reminded Mr Obama that Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention makes it crystal clear that the occupying power is forbidden to transfer parts of its own civilian population - Israel's half-million squatters - into the territory it occupies. What's more, in 2001 the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention unanimously reaffirmed its applicability to the Palestinian Occupied Territories including East Jerusalem.

But he still rides roughshod and seems to think he can re-write international law and the Geneva Conventions to suit his Israeli friends.

Cuddling the quislings

The Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), which saw more than half the Palestinian population expelled and more than 530 of their villages depopulated and completely destroyed, took place 13 years before Obama was born. And it's still going on... on Obama's watch. Every day more Palestinians are forced to look on while Israeli bulldozers demolish their homes, rip up their orchards and olive groves, barricade them from their farmlands and annexe their water supplies.

Obama wasn't even born when Resolution 242 and the Geneva Conventions were solemnly signed. He fails in his obligation to uphold the precious principles they enshrine and snaps a contemptuous finger at the work of those men and women who thought they had brought universal fairness and justice to the community of nations.

"Don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it..." That's what Ariel Sharon told Shimon Peres at an Israeli cabinet meeting in 2001, according to Kol Yisrael radio. Israel's propaganda machine of course denies it.

Nevertheless the US House of Representatives felt obliged to endorse, by 390 votes to 5, Israel's murderous assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008/9, an atrocity that killed over 1,400 (mostly Palestinian civilians including a large number of women and children), wounded and maimed thousands more and left tens of thousands homeless. It was an act of utter barbarism coming immediately after Israel blatantly broke the ceasefire with Hamas. It horrified and disgusted the rest of the world but not, it seems, America's politicians.

And how is Obama's compromised democracy, or Netanyahu's fake democracy (it's actually an ethnocracy with a deeply offensive racist structure), superior to Palestine's fledgling democracy which produced a Hamas government in fair and proper elections?

Perversely Obama, 'king' of the free democratic world and self-proclaimed honest peace broker, refuses to recognise Palestinian democracy and rejects the people's choice - even to the point of denying Hamas a place in peace talks. Instead, Obama props up and arms ruthless Fatah, the sore losers, and their leader, Abbas, whose term as Palestinian president expired long ago but who clings to power like a nasty blot that's resistant to stain remover. Obama sets one faction against the other, cruelly undermining the Holy Land's democratic processes and sabotaging the Palestinians' right to self-determination - the sort of grubby act no respectable politician should ever contemplate.

The laugh is on Obama, however. Hamas are increasingly likened to the Maquis, or French Resistance, who struggled heroically against the Nazi occupation in World War 2, while Fatah are seen as the hated Vichy 'government' who actively collaborated with the Nazi occupier.

When liberation finally came the vengeful French rounded up and executed many of the Vichy quislings.

Abbas and his henchmen would do well to reflect on that, and so should their backers - including our own dear government here in London.

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

The disclosure of the details of a letter reportedly sent by President Barack Obama last week to Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will cause Palestinians to be even more sceptical about US and Israeli roles in the current peace talks.

According to the leak, Obama made a series of extraordinarily generous offers to Israel, many of them at the expense of the Palestinians, in return for a single minor concession from Netanyahu: a two-month extension of the partial freeze on settlement growth.

A previous 10-month freeze, which ended a week ago, has not so far been renewed by Netanyahu, threatening to bring the negotiations to an abrupt halt. The Palestinians are expected to decide whether to quit the talks over the coming days.

Netanyahu was reported last week to have declined the US offer.

The White House has denied that a letter was sent, but, according to the Israeli media, officials in Washington are privately incensed by Netanyahu's rejection.

The disclosures were made by an informed source: David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a close associate of Dennis Ross, Obama's chief adviser on the Middle East, who is said to have initiated the offer.

The letter's contents have also been partly confirmed by Jewish US senators who attended a briefing last week from Ross.

According to Makovsky, in return for the 60-day settlement moratorium, the US promised to veto any UN Security Council proposal on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the next year, and committed to not seek any further extensions of the freeze. The future of the settlements would be addressed only in a final agreement.

The White House would also allow Israel to keep a military presence in the West Bank's Jordan Valley, even after the creation of a Palestinian state; continue controlling the borders of the Palestinian territories to prevent smuggling; provide Israel with enhanced weapons systems, security guarantees and increase its billions of dollars in annual aid; and create a regional security pact against Iran.

There are several conclusions the Palestinian leadership is certain to draw from this attempt at deal-making over its head.

The first is that the US president, much like his predecessors, is in no position to act as an honest broker. His interests in the negotiations largely coincide with Israel's.

Obama needs a short renewal of the freeze, and the semblance of continuing Israeli and Palestinian participation in the "peace process", until the US Congressional elections in November.

Criticism by the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington may damage Obama's Democratic Party unless he treads a very thin line. He needs to create the impression of progress in the Middle East talks but not upset Israel's supporters by making too many demands on Netanyahu.

The second conclusion – already strongly suspected by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his advisers – is that Netanyahu, despite his professed desire to establish a Palestinian state, is being insincere.

The White House's private offer meets most of Netanyahu's demands for US security and diplomatic assistance even before the negotiations have produced tangible results. For Netanyahu to reject the offer so lightly, even though the US was expecting relatively little in return, suggests he is either in no mood or in no position to make real concessions to the Palestinians on statehood.

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported on 1 October that senior White House officials were no longer "buying the excuse of politicial difficulties" for Netanyahu in holding his right-wing governing coalition together. If he cannot keep his partners on board over a short freeze on illegal settlement building, what meaningful permanent concessions can he make in the talks?

The third conclusion for the Palestinians is that no possible combination of governing parties in Israel is capable of signing an agreement with Abbas that will not entail significant compromises on the territorial integrity of a Palestinian state.

One US concession – allowing Israel to maintain its hold on the Jordan Valley, nearly a fifth of the West Bank, for the forseeable future – reflects a demand common to all Israeli politicians, not just Netanyahu.

In fact, the terms of Obama's letter were drafted in cooperation with Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister and leader of the supposedly left-wing Labour Party. When he was prime minister a decade ago, he insisted on a similar military presence in the Jordan Valley during the failed Camp David talks.

Ariel Sharon, his successor and founder of the centrist Kadima Party, planned a new section of the separation wall to divide the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank, though the scheme was put on hold after American objections.

Today, most Palestinians cannot enter the Jordan Valley without a special permit that is rarely issued, and the area's tens of thousands of Palestinian inhabitants are subjected to constant military harassment. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has accused Israel of a "de facto annexation" of the area.

But without the Jordan Valley, the creation of a viable Palestinian state – even one limited to the West Bank, without Gaza – would be inconceivable. Statehood would instead resemble the Swiss-cheese model the Palestinians have long feared is all Israel is proposing.

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

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

In his book "Against Empire," Michael Parenti defines imperialism as "the process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of one nation expropriate for their own enrichment the land, labor, raw materials, and markets of another people."

In a September 21 article, titled "What Do Empires Do?" he says "Imperialism is what (they) do." They don't just pursue "power for power's sake. There are (significant) interests at stake, fortunes to be made many times over," including land, mineral wealth, cheap labor, and easily exploited markets. They're there, so take them, the strong dominating the weak. Besides seizing and controlling Syrian and Lebanese land, it's how Israel rules Palestine, no regional country a match for its military might with no shyness about using it.

The Latest Peace Process Round

On and off again for 35 years, it's a charade going nowhere, a cul-de-sac ending "road map." Strategically rebranded and reemerged periodically, it's neither a process or way to peace, and according to a September 3 Time magazine article, Israelis care more about other things. Titled, 'Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace," it's a controversial notion given how close they live to a war zone. In spite of it, however, their lives go on, perhaps not wishing to hunker down or take to the barricades.

Writer Karl Vick said:

"As three Presidents, a King and their own Prime Minister gather at the White House to begin a fresh round of talks on peace....the truth is Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They're otherwise engaged: they're making money; they're enjoying the rays of late summer." As for a "blood feud" with Arabs, they "say they have moved on."

They're indifferent, says Vick. They don't care about war or peace. "They live in the day," affluent Israelis, that is, enjoying the good life, "while all the rest is somehow blurred," especially in cities like Tel Aviv, known as "the bubble," its sidewalk cafes "a way of life." Israel is a country "whose quality of life is high and getting better," at least for some, not those Vick leaves out, ignoring the many poor and growing numbers experiencing hunger and homelessness. As for others, one says "We're not really that into the peace process. We are really, really into the water sports," making money, and enjoying life.

"It's a state of mind....I'm on vacation," says another. "Part of (it) is not to listen to the news every half-hour." Perhaps rarely or the wrong kind. As for the new talks: "If they're talking, they're not fighting." In Tel Aviv's "bubble," Israelis ignore them, well off ones, that is.

"Peace," Settlements, and the Construction "Moratorium"

So-called peace talks are a charade, for some a sick joke regurgitated like a bad meal. The construction moratorium also was bogus, Peace Now settlement tracking project head Dror Etkes (writing in Haaretz) explained it in his September 28 article headlined, "Settlement freeze? It was barely a slowdown," if that, saying:

"What took place in the past few months (since last December, in fact) is, in the best case scenario, not more than a negligible decrease in the number of housing units....built in settlements."

According to official Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics data, "the story can be called many things but 'freeze' is certainly not one of them." At year end 2009, 2,955 housing units were under construction. Three months later, "the number stood at 2,517," and building continued apace thereafter.

In fact, "settlers know better than anyone else that not only did construction in settlements continue over the last 10 months, and vigorously, but also that a relatively large part of the houses were built on settlements (lying) east of the separation fence," including Bracha, Itamar, Eli, Shilo, Maaleh Mikhmas, Maon, Carmel, Beit Haggai, Kiryat Arba, Mitzpeh, Yeriho, and others.

In other words, Israel not only flouts the law and its commitment, it does it throughout the Occupied Territories, including east of the Green Line, stealing as much Palestinian land as possible while pretending to want peace.

Etkes called the "freeze" little more than a "PR stunt," an "Israfluff," a rhetorical commitment only while illegal construction continued. In the six months preceding it, settlers (with government help) prepared "dozens of new building sites....especially in isolated and more extreme settlements east of the" Wall. Official statistics documented them.

In addition, "the government announced in advance that it planned to approve" hundreds of new housing units "with no connection to the 'freeze.' " As a result, settlers got permission "to build where(ever) and when(ever)" they wished, what really has gone on for the past 10 months and years before.

As for Abbas and the PA, they "turn(ed) a blind eye to the construction," pretending a "freeze" was in place, literally ignoring Israel's theft of Palestinian land.

With a touch of irony and humor, Etkas added a final thought, saying "Netanyahu will (not likely) win the Nobel Peace Prize," but he might get one for physics or chemistry, disproving what scientists have long believed - that "water is not the only substance that expands instead of contracting when it freezes."

Building never stopped, Haaretz writers Chaim Levinson and Barak Radiv headlining their September 27 article, "Bulldozers roll out across the West Bank as (rhetorical) settlement freeze ends," in fact, a moratorium. It was never called a freeze with good reason, and now it's full speed ahead.

Besides ongoing construction, new building began in dozens of settlements, including Ariel, Ravava, Yakir, Shavei Shomron, Adam, Oranit, Sha'arei Tikva, Kedumim, Karmei Tzur, Beit Hagai, Kochav HaShachar, Anatot, Kfar Adumin, Kiryat Netafim, Ramat Shlomo, and many others. In all of the them, the scene is similar - bulldozers clearing land, excavators and cement mixers in plain site, and workers building homes for residents in 121 settlements and 100 outposts. Around 500,000 Israelis, including 200,000 in East Jerusalem, own them, all on stolen Palestinian land, and their numbers grow daily.

Haaretz writers document it. Western ones barely notice, reporting little and most often nothing. For example, New York Times writers Ethan Bronner and Mark Landler headlined their September 26 article, "US Scrambling to Save Talks on Middle East" peace, mentioning the "freeze" as little more than a side issue, threatening to disrupt peace talks that both writers pretend are real.

For his part, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly threatened not to continue them if settlement construction resumed, despite turning a blind eye to it throughout his tenure, having expired over 21 months ago. Now, changing his rhetorical indignation, he signaled a willingness to keep talking even with no moratorium extension, saying:

"I cannot say I will leave the negotiations, but it's very difficult for me to resume talks if (Netanyahu) declares that he will continue his activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem. In fact, he's done it, stressing full speed ahead on construction. Speaking to Likud ministers, he said, "Regarding the freeze, there has been no change in our position," meaning no extension after September 26.

No matter, Abbas (earlier) told US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "We all know there is no alternative to peace through negotiations, so we have no alternative other than to continue these efforts."

Then, on September 25, before the UN General Assembly, he said "Israel must choose between peace and continuation of settlement," construction, followed by reversing his position the next day, saying talks will continue despite no "freeze" extension.

In response, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) suspended its participation in the PLO's Executive Committee, Deputy General Secretary Abdel-Rahim Mallouh and Political Bureau members Khalida Jarrar and Omar Shehadeh, warning of serious consequences and repercussions of appeasing Israel and America. A policy statement said:

After decades of failure, "The decision to return to direct negotiations....is an affront to the blood of our people (and) represents the persistence of the PLO leadership to continue the devastating Oslo path." Current talks "provide cover for the occupation practices and policies of settlement building, land confiscation, displacement, siege, detention, imprisonment and killing, (contributing) to the deepening of the disastrous internal Palestinian division."

A Haaretz September 28 editorial was also harsh headlined, "Netanyahu is failing to create a climate for peace," saying:

The rhetorical moratorium "was intended to convince Palestinians (that Israel) really intends to end its occupation of the territories," what, of course, it has no intention of doing. As a result, Palestinians continue living "under occupation and violence," unable "to achieve economic, and especially employment, independence."

Thousands given permits work in Israel, many others in settlements. "Every morning, they (head for) building sites and fields throughout Israel," but not easily, Haaretz writer Avi Issacharoff and photographer Daniel Bar-On documented "the disgraceful conditions at the Qalandiyah and Bethlehem checkpoints into Israel." Before getting there they endure delays and humiliations at other checkpoints along the way.

Unless Netanyahu eases passage and treats Palestinians with respect, "peace and reconciliation" are impossible - the continuing status because there's no chance he'll do it.

Why Illegal Settlements Matter

In a September 24 Foreign Policy article titled, "Down to the wire on settlements," B'Tselem's Executive Director Jessica Montell explained that in the past two decades, "the West Bank settlement population has tripled." Their municipal boundaries alone comprise over 9% of the land, areas Palestinians can't enter without permit permission. In addition, settlement "regional councils encompass vast swaths of land; fully 42 percent of the West Bank is under settlement control," a figure steadily increasing.

What this means for Palestinians and their future is "self-evident." Israel relentlessly circumvents their rights in a "politically manipulative way....One of many striking examples: the Dead Sea abuts Israel and the West Bank, as well as Jordan." While tourists visit the Israeli part, "Palestinians earn no income from this unique natural wonder. In fact, the entire area around the Dead Sea belongs to a settlement regional council." Palestinians can't even go there "for a picnic. Certainly they cannot develop tourist sites there."

Settlements also cause numerous other problems and hardships for Palestinians, including movement restrictions, continued land theft, sewage treatment, access to clean water, the Separation Wall's route, an oppressive military occupation, and much more. Combined, they're prevented from living freely on their own land in their own country.

Montell calls living under two distinct legal systems most disturbing, Palestinians under military rule, Israelis "enjoy(ing) all the benefits of....democracy. This discrimination is manifest in almost every sphere of life: access to justice, due process, protection from violence, planning and building codes, access to water, and much more." Core issues as well, including the right of return and viable self-determination or a one-state solution treating everyone equally under the law.

So-called peace talks exclude all of the above, why they assure one of two results - failure or unconditional surrender, granting Jews full rights, Palestinians none, the same fruits from on and off negotiations for the past 35 years - an exercise in futility and hypocrisy.

Israel always promised to half construction. It was explicitly part of the 2003 Road Map and 2007 Annapolis conference. Nonetheless, settlements grew faster than ever because Israel grants generous benefits, encouraging Israelis to move. Included are low-cost housing, liberal housing and mortgage subsidies, free preschools, a long school day, industry and agriculture grants and subsidies, various tax breaks, and government help to municipalities for their debts. For many Israelis, these incentives are too attractive to refuse.

However, the occupation and expanding settlements are "a daily thorn in the side of hundreds of thousands of" Palestinians prevented from building a home, expanding an existing one, farming their land, traveling freely (within and outside the Territory), accessing clean water, sewage treatment and proper sanitation, and living in dignity freely on their own land, safe from violence and an oppressive occupier.

Peace is only possible if negotiated equally for both sides, a prospect nowhere in sight, nor is Palestine's legitimate Hamas government even invited to try. The entire process again is a sham, little more than theater, one side entirely excluded, a story-line with a familiar bad ending.

A Final Comment

On September 24, heavily-armed FBI goon squads raided homes of anti-war/pro-Palestinian activists in Chicago and Minneapolis, abusively ransacking them and seizing various items, including computers, cell phones, books, photos, papers, correspondence, and more. Though no arrests were made, many targeted were subpoenaed to appear before grand juries in October, apparently to be questioned on their activities, including foreign travel to meet with like-minded people.

Most of those targeted are Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) members or supporters, publishers of the newsletter Fight Back. Arab-American Action Network (AAAN) Executive Director, Hatem Abudayyeh's home was also raided. Founded by Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, it "strives to strengthen the Arab community in the Chicago area by building its capacity to be an active agent for positive social change." Abudayyeh, like many others, openly condemns "the Israeli government and its military killing machine," leaving him vulnerable to state-sponsored persecution.

An FBI spokesman said the raids targeted people "providing, attempting and conspiring to provide material support" to "terrorist" organizations, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (both legitimate parts of their respective governments), and the FARC-EP in Colombia.

Noted Latin American expert James Petras calls FARC the "longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world (that was) founded in 1964 by two dozen peasant activists (to defend) autonomous rural communities from" Colombian military and paramilitary violence.

If indicted and convicted of providing "material support to terrorism," activists face 15 years in prison - for exercising their First Amendment and other constitutional rights, on a fast track toward extinction under a president promising "change."

These raids, others, and Obama administration policies overall signify deepening hostility toward individuals and organizations against imperial wars and militarism, as well as strong support for human rights, civil liberties, and democratic freedoms for many of the world's oppressed. They include Palestinians for over 62 years, over 43 under a brutal military occupation that fake peace talks won't end.

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

By Jeff Gates* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Is Barack Obama waking up to the agenda of those who produced his political career? Was his "Inner Eisenhower" on display last week in his televised speech to the U.N. General Assembly?

Did listeners detect a distraught commander-in-chief seeking to bypass Congress and appeal directly to the international community for help in containing Israel's expansionist goals?

In 1948, the Joint Chiefs cautioned Harry Truman about the "fanatical concepts" of a Jewish-Zionist elite that sought recognition as a legitimate state. U.S. military leaders warned Truman that this elite wanted "military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East."

Albert Einstein and other prominent Jews were even more critical. They cautioned Americans about the Zionist political party that produced Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, calling it a "terrorist party" with "the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party."

Eight years later, President Eisenhower experienced how they advance their agenda when, during the last days of his November 1956 presidential campaign, Israel, France and Britain sought to induce a war with Egypt over control of the Suez Canal.

Though Ike was distracted by presidential politics, London and Paris were quickly persuaded to abandon their efforts. Not Tel Aviv. Then as now, Jewish fanatics were not inclined to listen to a U.S. commander-in-chief regardless of the impact of their behavior on our national interests.

When this Republican leader sought Congressional support to counter the Zionists' agenda, he found none. That's when this former five-star general turned in desperation to a televised address to counter Israeli Congressional influence that has grown far stronger over the past 54 years.

In April 2010, a bipartisan 363 members of Congress committed themselves to an "unbreakable bond" with Israel-regardless of its behavior. No one dared even whisper the word treason.

That same Israel-first agenda was addressed to the commander-in-chief over the signatures of 76 Senators led by Democrat Barbara Boxer of California. GOP Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia and New York Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat, launched a bipartisan pro-Israel assault on the commander-in-chief that sounded less like the Congress than the Knesset.

Obama's Inner Ike

Could this be why Obama made an appeal to the international community to halt Israeli expansionism? Like Ike, did he wake-up to the fact of Israeli dominance in the Congress?

Has this young president-with no military experience-been forced to face the reality of an enemy within? If so, we may yet have an opportunity to restore representative government. If so, those who deceived the U.S. to invade Iraq for a Zionist agenda may yet be held accountable.

However, this past week also saw Congressman Barney Frank join others circulating a petition to free Israeli Master Spy Jonathan Pollard. A dual-citizen operative, Pollard did more damage to our national security than anyone in U.S. history. When he stole more than one million classified documents and Tel Aviv sold them to Moscow, our "special friend" gutted Cold War defenses on which American taxpayers spent more than $20 Trillion (in 2010 dollars) from 1948-1989.

Is Barney Frank committing treason? Or is he circulating that petition so that our national security apparatus has a list of those complicit in the treason that induced us to war in the Middle East on false pretenses? Was Obama's speech to the U.N. a cry for help by a president whose advisory corps is dominated by pro-Israelis and Israeli-Americans?

Few Americans realize that Obama is a political product of the Chicago Outfit, commencing with Penny Pritzker, his top fundraiser according to his April 2007 filing with the Federal Elections Commission. Pritzker's grandfather and great-grandfather were mob lawyers.

His second-ranked fundraiser was Chicago's affluent Crown clan (né Krinsky) whose dominant ownership stake in General Dynamics ensured additional riches both from waging the "war on terror" and from Homeland Security. The third-ranked financier active in producing the Obama phenomenon was financial manipulator George Soros, recently rebranded a "progressive."

Chicagoan Abner Mikva, White House counsel to Bill Clinton, captured the essence of the challenge Americans now face-regardless of party. A former Congressman, Mikva describes Obama as "our first Jewish president." He should know.

Americans have been deceived for so long, we may be unable to discern the truth even when confessed by those who know it best. Did this eloquent young community organizer realize just this past week that his political success was produced by descendants of organized crime and those loyal to a foreign nation?

Chosen by The Chosen

America finds itself torn between two competing narratives. The first remains loyal to our founding principles in defense of our core freedoms. The second group now grasps that those who induced us to war with phony intelligence misused those freedoms to advance their agenda. How does our commander in chief expose those who befriended us in order to betray us?

With the all-pervasive Congressional influence wielded by Zionist Jews and Zionist Christians, what is a commander-in-chief to do? Is that why Barack Obama turned to television to make an appeal for help from the international community? Or is that just my wishful thinking?

With representative government in the U.S. now dominated by those who share beliefs contrary to our core principles, what is the head of our executive branch to do?

Americans have long been oblivious to Zionist influence. Did Barack Obama just awaken from a self-induced slumber and recall to whom his oath of office obliges him? Perhaps.

Two days ago, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas echoed the same cautionary words as Albert Einstein and the Joint Chiefs when describing Israel's "mentality of expansion and domination."

Little has changed over six decades except the faces on this perilous fascism. Obama may yet become part of the solution. Or, unlike Ike, he may succumb to the pressures of mid-term elections and again support the induced fanaticism now playing out as The Clash of Civilizations.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

"O, that it were possible,
We might but hold some two days' conference
With the dead!"
(John Webster, IV.ii.18.)

"The voice of the dead was a living voice to me."
(Tennyson, "In the Valley of Cauteretz")

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

Twenty eight years ago, a scene of unspeakable horror rocked the rubble strewn alleys of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut as vengeance vied with naked lust in a massive display of human malice illuminated for the IDF overseers of this massacre with flares that provided "an unobstructed and panoramic view" for Israeli Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon and his Chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan, as they watched from the seven story Kuwaiti embassy providing logistical support for their Phalangist allies as they "massacred for 36 to 48 hours" the hapless Palestinians imprisoned in the camps. "We were breathing death, inhaling the very putrescence of the bloated corpses around us. Jenkins immediately realized that the Israeli defence minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror. "Sharon!' he shouted. 'That fucker Sharon! This is Deir Yassin all over again.'" (Fisk, Pity the Nation, 360). Outside of the Shatila camp, who remembers? What American knows of the massacre? What government agency has investigated our involvement in it? What lives lost haunt the Israeli or American mind for the evil we have done against the innocent who died such ignominious deaths twenty eight years ago?

Would that we could hold conference with the dead, to sense the absolute black fear that grabbed the mother's heart as her executioner grabbed her skirt to shred it before unleashing his uncontrollable lust into her trembling body, to feel the depth of anguish that spread throughout her being in these last moments of her life, to fear with her the absolute despair she felt as her murderer laughed and mocked her before thrusting his knife into her child yet unborn in her womb. Would that we could share with those slaughtered during these days of anguish the pain and suffering they endured, hapless innocents offered by Sharon and his forces to their paid mercenaries as compensation for their loyalty to the invading armies of the Israeli nation. Would that we could comprehend from their recounting how a man might find it in his being, in the root cellar of his soul, to inflict such wanton barbarity on a fellow being. Would that we could understand how the chosen of G-d Almighty could unleash such hate on another people that they would allow a savage massacre of brothers and sisters to continue for three days yet proclaim to the world their innocence. Would that there might be some civilized, rational means of grasping how such pathological destruction of fellow humans could be justified that America's support for a nation capable of such barbarity might also be justified.

Chris Hedges claims that "only the vanquished know war"; but this was not war, it was a massacre, yet these vanquished souls could tell us what vengeance is, what hate is, what sick minds are capable of inflicting on others if we only had time with them to learn. It is the destroyed that know and it is the destroyed we fear; to forget is our means to mental salvation, otherwise we are doomed to live in the hell of our memory that must see and know injustice exists and rules in this world inflicted by those who claim they are civilized but know in their souls they are but brutish beasts.

What can be said of Shatila twenty eight years later? It is, after all, but an incident in the horrors of sixty years stretching from the middle of the 20th century into the second decade of the 21st. It is an icon of American and Israeli horror, a burial of thousands destroyed savagely and forgotten while a symphony of hypocrisy extolling our virtues buries the reality. Those who died never existed, their sons and daughters never existed, their dreams and aspirations never existed, the fruit of their loins never blossomed to feel the heat of the sun, the coolness of the water, the fruit of the tree of life. We the indifferent cannot accept their existence nor recognize it lest we accept as well our guilt in their deaths. To return to Shatila is an act of retribution, an act that gives voice to the dead that suffered there, to accept responsibility for the horrors we allowed to happen there, to seek forgiveness of those who lost their lives there and cannot ever live those lives again nor see the sun rise or hear the baby's cry or know the laughter of their children or weep at the loss of a mother or father ... their voices have been silenced forever, yet they echo throughout the ages how vicious is the soul of humankind to remain silent and indifferent to their brothers and sisters in death.

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

This wall, adjacent to Abu Yassir's shelter is used by Shatila refugee camp tykes for playing ball and other games, unaware that some of their relatives and families' friends were among the hundreds butchered against 11 such "walls of death" 28 years ago, on September 16-18, 1982. Photo courtesy of the author

By Franklin Lamb* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The untreated psychic wounds are still open. Accountability, justice and basic civil rights for the survivors are still denied.

Scores of horror testimonies have been shared over the past nearly three decades by survivors of the September 1982 Sabra- Shatila massacre. More come to light only through circumstantial evidence because would be affiants perished during the slaughter. Other eyewitness are just beginning to emerge from deep trauma or self imposed silence.

Some testimonies will be shared this month by massacre survivors at Shatila camp. They will sit with the every growing numbers of international visitors who annually come to commemorate one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century.

There are no average massacre testimonies.

Zeina, a handsome bronzed-faced middle-aged woman, an acquaintance of Munir Mohammad's family, asked a foreigner the other day: "How can it be 28 years? I think it was just last fall that my husband Hussam and our two daughters, Maya, 8 years old, and Sirham, 9 years old, left our two room home to search for food because the Israeli army had sealed Shatila camp nearly two days before and few inside Shatila Camp had any. I still pray and wait for them to return."

In Shatila Palestinian refugee camp and outside Abu Yassir's shelter, the bullet marks still cover the lower half of the 11 "walls of death" where some of the dried blood is mixed and feathered in with the thin mortar. An elderly gentleman named Abu Samer still has some souvenirs of the event: three American automatic pistols fitted with silencers, a couple of knives and axes that were strapped to some of the killers belts as they quickly and silently shot, carved and chopped whoever they came upon starting at around 6 pm on Thursday September 16, 1982. Plus a couple of whisky bottles. These weapons were gifted to Israel by the US Congress and subsequently issued along with drugs and alcohol and other "policing equipment" to the killers in his "most moral army" by Ariel Sharon.

Earlier this year, one of the murderers from the Numour al-Ahrar (Tigers of the Liberals) militia, the armed wing of Lebanon's right-wing National Liberal Party founded by former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, nonchalantly confessed, "we sometimes used these implements in order to advance silently through the alleys of Shatila so as not to cause unnecessary panic during our work." The Tigers militia, one of five Christian killer units, was assisted inside Shatila by more than two dozen Israeli Mossad agents, and led in this blitz by none other than Dani Chamoun, son of the former President.

No plaque or sign notes what happened here.

The world learned of the slaughter at Sabra-Shatila on the morning of Sunday September 19, 1982. Photos, many now available on the Internet, taken by witnesses such as Ralph Shoneman, Mya Shone, Ryuichi Hirokawa, Ali Hasan Salman, Ramzi Hardar, Gunther Altenburg, and Gaza and Akka Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) Hospital staff, preserve the gruesome images deeply etched in the survivors memory. The Israeli Kahan Commission, five months later in its February 7, 1983 Report, substantially whitewashed Israeli responsibility referring more than once to the massacre as "a war."

Zeina ushered me down a narrow alley from her house arriving at the 3 by 8 meter wall outside her sister's home, spraying here and there with an aerosol can as we walked. She apologized for the spray but insisted that she and her neighbors could even now smell the slaughter that happened there three decades earlier.

For readers unfamiliar with the location of Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beirut, this particular "wall of death" is located across from the PRCS Akka Hospital, such as it is, after years without adequate financial or NGO support. Locating the 11 "walls of death" requires help from the few older Palestinians who still live in this quarter. They are among those still living at the scene and who still vividly recall the details of the massacre. Some provide personal history of some of the butchered, seemingly urging the dead to return by making them seem so alive, often describing a personality trait and the name of their family village in Palestine.

"A sweet boy who adored his older brothers Mutid and Bilal."

Zeina recalls that Munir Mohammad was 12 years old on September 16, 1982, a pupil at the Shatila camp school, named Jalil (Galilee). Virtually all of the 75 remaining UNRWA schools in Lebanon, like other Palestinian institutions, are named after villages, towns or cities in occupied Palestine. Often they are named after villages that no longer actually exist, being among the 531 villages the Zionists colonizers obliterated during and after the 1947-48 Nakba (Catastrophe).

Zeina recalls that it was late on a Thursday afternoon, September 16, that the Israeli shelling had grown intense. Designed to drive the camp residents into the shelters, almost all of which Israeli intelligence, arriving the previous day in three white vehicles and posing as "concerned NGO staff" had identified and noted the coordinates on their maps. Some residents, thinking aid workers had come to help the refugees, actually revealed their secret sanctuaries. Other refugees, based on their experience in the crowded shelters during the preceding 75 days of indiscriminate, "Peace for Galilee" Israeli bombing of Shatila, suggested to the "aid workers" that the shelters needed better ventilation and perhaps the visitors would help provide it.

According to Zeina the Israeli agents quickly sketched the shelter locations, marked them with a red circle and returned to their HQ which was located less than 70 meters on the raised terrain at the SE corner of Shatila camp still known as Turf Club Yards. Today, this sandy area still contains three death pits which according to the late American journalist Janet Stevens is where some of the hundreds of still missing bodies of the more than 3,000 slaughtered are likely buried. Janet had theorized that there was a second Sabra-Shatila Massacre that occurred on Sunday morning, September 19th, which piggybacked the first and was conducted on the west side of Shatila inside the second Israeli-Phalange HQ, known as the Cite Sportiff athletic complex. As the Israeli soldiers took custody from the Phalange militia of the surviving refugees, trucks entered Cite Sportiff loaded with hundreds of camp residents on the back to be taken to "holding centers". Family members forced to wait outside heard volleys of gunfire and screams from inside the complex. Hours later the same flat beds drove away to unknown locations, tarps covering the unseen mounded cargo.

Camp resident, Mrs. Sana Mahmoud Sersawi, one of the 23 complainants in the Belgium case filed against Ariel Sharon on June 16, 2001, (currently but not fatally sidetracked) explained:

"The Israelis who were posted in front of the Kuwaiti embassy and at the Rihab benzene station at the entrance to Shatila demanded through loudspeakers that we come to them. That's how we found ourselves in their hands. They took us to the Cite Sportiff, and the men were marched behind us. But they took the men's shirts off and started blindfolding them. The Israelis interrogated the young people and the Phalange delivered about 200 more people to the Israelis. And that's how neither my husband nor my sister's husband ever came back."

Journalist Robert Fisk and others who studied these events, concur that more slaughter was done during the 24 hour period after 8 a.m. Saturday, the hour the Israeli Kahan Commission, which declined to interview any Palestinians, ruled that the Israelis had stopped all the killing.

Eyewitness testimony also established that the "aid workers" described by Zeina passed the shelter descriptions and locations to Lebanese Forces operatives Elie Hobeika and Fadi Frem, and their ally, Major Saad Haddad of the Israeli-allied South Lebanese Army. Thursday evening, Hobeika, de facto commander since the assassination the week previously of Phalange leader and President-elect Bachir Gemayel, led one of the death squads inside the killing field of the Horst Tabet area near Abu Yassir's shelter.

It was in 8 of the 11 Israeli-located and marked shelters that the first of the massacre victims were quickly and methodically slaughtered. There being few perfect crimes, even in massacres, the killers failed to find 3 of the shelters. One of the overlooked shelters was just 25 meters from Abu Yassir's shelter. Apart from these three undiscovered hiding places there were practically no Shatila shelter survivors.

American journalist David Lamb wrote about this first night of butchery and the "walls of death":

"Entire families were slain. Groups consisting of 10-20 people were lined up against walls and sprayed with bullets. Mothers died while clutching their babies. All men appeared to be shot in the back. Five youths of fighting age were tied to a pickup truck and dragged through the streets before being shot."

At around about 8 p.m. on September 18 Munir Mohammad entered the crowded Abu Yassir shelter with his mother Aida and his sisters and brothers Iman, Fadya, Mufid and Mu'in. Keeping the relatively few camp shelters for the woman and children while the men took their chances outside was a common practice as the massacre unfolded. But a few men did enter to help calm their young children.

"If any of you are injured, we'll take you to the hospital."

Munir later recalled events that night: "The killers arrived at the door of the shelter and yelled for everyone to come out. Men who they found were lined up against the wall outside. They were immediately machine gunned." As Munir watched, the killers left to kill other groups and then suddenly returned and opened fire on everyone, and all fell to the ground. Munir lay quietly not knowing if his mother and sisters were dead. Then he heard the killers yelling: "If any of you are injured, we'll take you to the hospital. Don't worry. Get up and you'll see." A few did try to get up or moaned and they were instantly shot in the head.

Munir remembered: "Even though it was light out due to the Israeli flares over Shatila, the killers used bright flash lights to search the darkened corners. The killers were looking in the shadows". Suddenly Munir's mother's body seemed to shift in the mound of corpses next to him. Munir thought she might be going to get up since the killers promised to take anyone still alive to the hospital. Munir whispered to her: "Don't get up mother, they're lying". And Munir stayed motionless all night barely daring to breath, pretending to be dead.

Munir could not block out the killers words. Years later he would repeat to this interviewer as we passed the Shatila Burial ground known as Martyrs Square:

"After they shot us, we were all down on the ground, and they were going back and forth, and they were saying: 'If any of you are still alive, we'll have mercy and pity and take them to the hospital. Come on, you can tell us.' If anyone moaned, or believed them and said they needed an ambulance, they would be rescued with shots and finished off there and then...What really disturbed me wasn't just the death all around me. I...didn't know whether my mother and sisters and brother had died. I knew most of the people around me had died. And it's true I was afraid of dying myself. But what disturbed me so very much was that they were laughing, getting drunk and enjoying themselves all night long. They threw blankets on us and left us there till morning. All night long [Thursday the 16th) I could hear the voices of the girls crying and screaming, 'For god's sake, leave us alone.' I mean...I can't remember how many girls they raped. The girl' voice, with their fear and pain, I can't ever forget them."

The same kind of dégagé is displayed by the half dozen confessed militia murderers featured in German director Monika Borgmann's 2005 film Massaker, one of whom opined: "With hanging or shooting you just die, but this is double," explaining how he took an old Palestinian man and held him back against a wall, slicing him open in the shape of a cross. "You die twice since you also die from the fear," he said nonchalantly describing white flesh and bone as if in a charcuterie waiting to be served.

The killers also explained how they began a frantic rush to dispose of as many bodies as possible before the media entered Shatila. One testified how the Israeli army gave them large plastic trash bags to dispose of bodies. Another confessed that they forced people into army trucks to ferry them to Cite Sportiff where they were killed. And that they used chemicals to destroy many of the corpses. Several mentioned that Israeli army officers conferred with the militia's leaders in Beirut on the eve of the massacres.

The venomous hatred persists to this day.

To this day, the Hurras al-Arz (Guardians of the Cedars) boasts of its role in the carnage. Less than two weeks before the massacre the party issued a call for the confiscation of all Palestinian property in Lebanon, the outlawing of home ownership and the destruction of all refugee camps.

The party statement of September 1, 1982 declared: "Action must be taken to reduce the numbers of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, until the day comes when no single Palestinian remains on our soil."

In 1982 certain political parties referred to Palestinians as "a bacillus which must be exterminated" and graffiti on walls read: "The duty of every Lebanese is to kill a Palestinian"--the same hatred commonly expressed today in occupied Palestine among colonists, extremist Rabbis and politicians.

The 'Guardians' call for outlawing Palestinian refugee property ownership was indeed achieved in 2001 by a law drafted by current Minister of Labor, who pledged on September 1, 2010 that "Parliament will never allow Palestinian refugees the right to own property."

The mentality that allowed the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila 1982 is largely unchanged in 2010, as Lebanon still resists the call of the international community to grant the survivors of the Sabra-Shatila massacre basic civil rights. Some who have studied the Arabic websites and observed gatherings of the political parties represented at the 1982 massacre, claim the hate language is actually worse today and is being used to stir up Parliamentary opposition Palestinian civil rights.

During the month following the 1982 Massacre, British Dr. Paul Morris treated Munir at Gaza Hospital approximately one kilometer north of Abu Yassir's shelter, and kept the youngster under observation. Dr. Morris reported to researcher Bayan Nuwayhed al Hout (Sabra and Shatila: September 1982, Pluto Press, London, 2004) that Munir "Will smile once in a while, but he doesn't react spontaneously like others of this age, except just occasionally." Then the doctor banged on the table, and said: 'The lad has to be saved. He has to leave the camp, if only for a while, to recover himself."

When Munir was asked by al Hout if one day when he grew up and would be able to carry a weapon would he consider revenge. The pre-teen replied, replied: "No, No. I'd never think of revenge by killing children. The way they killed us. What did the children do wrong?"

Munir's 15 year old brother Mufid was among the first to enter Abu Yassir's shelter, but he left and later appeared at Akka Hoppital with a gunshot wound. After being bandaged he left the hospital to seek safety and his family. No one has seen him since and for a long time Munir could not even mention him.

According to camp residents, Munir's older brother, Nabil, then 19 years old, being of fighting age would have been shot on sight by the killers. Aware of this, Nabil's cousin and his cousin's wife fled with him as the Israeli shelling increased and camp residents reported indiscriminate killing. The trio dodged sniper bullets to seek refuge in a nursing home where his aunt worked. Like Munir, Nabil soon learned that his mother and siblings were all dead.

Postscript

Now in America, both Munir and Nabil are leading relatively 'normal lives' considering the horror and lost family they experienced while escaping death at Sabra-Shatila. Munir and Nabil have become a credit to Shatila camp, to Palestine and to their adopted country. Residing in the Washington DC area, Munir is married and busy with his career. Nabil is devoting his life to advocacy for peace and justice in the Middle East, working with an NGO. Both brothers return to Shatila camp regularly.

Also apparently living 'normal lives' are the six "Christian" militia killers featured in Borgmann's film Massaker. "They are all living ordinary lives. One of them is a taxi driver," Borgmann explains.

As is well known, the massacres at Sabra-Shatila were undeniable war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Each killing was a violation of international laws enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention, International Customary Law and jus cogens. Similar massive crimes have seen charges brought against Rwandan officials, Chile's ex-president, General Augusto Pinochet, Chad's former president, Hissein Habre, former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Liberia's Taylor and Sudan's Bachir.

No one has been punished or even investigated for the Sabra-Shatila massacre. On March 28, 1991 Lebanon's Parliament retroactively exempted the killers from criminal responsibility. However, this law has no standing in international law and the international community remains legally obligated to punish those responsible. The victims and their families of the Sabra-Shatila massacre as well as virtually all human rights organizations including but not limited to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Humanitarian Law Project, strenuously oppose blanket amnesty for the killers. They argue that the 1991 violates Lebanon's constitution, as well as international law and promotes impunity for heinous crimes.

It was precisely to achieve justice for the victims of crimes such as Sabra-Shatila that the International Criminal Court was established. The ICC must begin its work without further delay and all people of goodwill must encourage Lebanon to grant the survivors of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre basic civil rights.

* Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

By Jeff Gates* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Here's a news flash for Tel Aviv: it's not a sign of respect when the bulk of humanity views you as psychopathic.

The concerns of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are misplaced. The legitimacy of Israel is no longer threatened. It's already lost. Long gone. Kaput.

Nation states are shared states of mind. The mindset in Iceland differs from India. Israel is the most unlike of all. Founded by extremists and terrorists, it's been downhill ever since.

Psychopaths want to be loved. That's why they're so charming, albeit only superficially. They're also pathological liars, egocentric, callous and remorseless.

Those qualities have long been familiar to Israel's neighbors, particularly the Palestinians. After WWII, Harry Truman was charmed into treating this extremist enclave as an ally.

That decision may well go down in history as America's greatest mistake.

Though we've served for 62 years as Israel's patron, pocketbook and apologist, the respect and affection has flowed in only one direction.

Psychopaths should not be confused with megalomaniacs. The mental states are quite different. Megalomaniacs seek to be feared, not loved. Control is the common trait.

That not-so-subtle distinction matters, at least for those of us who are not dual citizens.

For instance, it's now known that Israel and its advocates fixed the intelligence that took us to war in Iraq. That fact is no longer in dispute.

That fact alone confirms the split personality evident in the shared state of mind we call Israel. Those who share that state charmed us into committing our blood and treasure for goals long sought by Israel. That's the psychopath component.

The megalomaniac component felt they had a right to make us fearful. As Chosen (by a god of their own choosing), devotees of this shared mindset truly believe it's their right to deceive. Those complicit see themselves as "of us but above us."

When we dispatched our military to pursue their goals, Americans were killed and maimed as we borrowed our way into a fiscal morass from which there's no clear route to recovery.

Score another victory for the U.S.-Israel special relationship.

Why Don't Americans Get It?

Nothing about this "state" is legit. Never was. Its founding traces to a multi-decade reign of terror built on a phony historical foundation. Even the most dull-witted now question how Israel came into being. And why the U.S. ever deemed it special.

Americans are learning to fear Israel-as they should. A few of us remain charmed-despite the facts. For the True Believer, facts are likely to remain irrelevant.

Those familiar with the facts know better. Thus the fast-growing concern that troublesome behavior patterns are emerging once again.

Those most knowledgeable are deeply concerned about recent events.

Sephardi chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef

Neither story gained traction in mainstream U.S. media. Instead, news coverage was reserved for August 31^st when four Israelis were shot dead in the West Bank.

The most lethal attack in four years-blamed on Hamas-occurred just hours before Netanyahu's scheduled meeting with Hamas leaders and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The timing revived memories of the many well-timed "incidents" during the reign of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. No one dares suggest that Tel Aviv may be the source of this latest incident. Yet consider just a few of the many precedents:

• On April 12, 2002, at the same moment Secretary of State Colin Powell was meeting with Ariel Sharon, a suicide bombing occurred in Israel, killing 8 and injuring 22.
• On May 10, 2002, at the same moment President Bush was meeting with Ariel Sharon, a suicide bombing occurred in Israel.
• On June 11, 2003, on the same day Ariel Sharon visited the White House, a suicide bombing killed 17 and wounded 100 on a bus in Jerusalem.
• On November 11, 2003, while the president of Italy was visiting the U.S., Italy suffered its greatest wartime casualties since WWII when 19 Italians were killed in Iraq.
• On November 20, 2003, while President Bush was visiting Prime Minister Tony Blair in London, the British envoy to Istanbul was among 27 killed by a blast.
• On November 30, 2003, while the president of Spain was visiting the U.S., seven Spanish intelligence officers were killed in Iraq.

The Source of Terror

What happens to Israel's fast-fading legitimacy if the fear of terrorism-all of it-traces back to those long known for their expertise at waging war "by way of deception." That's the founding credo of the Mossad, Israel's foreign operations directorate infamous for its worldwide expertise as an agent provocateur.

Would a state founded by terrorists resort to terror to sustain a narrative essential to its survival? Would Tel Aviv again deceive the U.S. to pursue its expansionist goals?

Zionist media mogul Haim Saban

His only omission: terror.

Was this dual citizen conceding how the U.S. was induced to war-for Israel?

Was he describing how Zionists shape U.S. policy-in plain sight?

Was he describing how psychopaths wage war on the U.S.-from within?

Was he divulging how megalomaniacs influence U.S. decision-making-with fear?

Americans have long been charmed by this "special" relationship. Now it's time to be fearful. When a mental state of this malevolent sort becomes transparent and its operatives apparent, that's when "psycho-megalomania" becomes its most dangerous.

Will we see another terrorist attack? You can bet on it. The only question is: When?

Special days are often chosen for special events. Will the next mass murder be on Rosh Hashanah (September 8^th)? How about the ninth anniversary of September 11? Or Yom Kippur on September 17?

Will the next incident be nuclear or conventional? Will it be staged in the U.S. or the E.U.?

And most important of all: will it be blamed on Hezbollah or Hamas? Or will the "Pakistan Taliban" be portrayed as the requisite Evil Doer responsible for the next mass murder?

Stay tuned.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

By Christopher Bollyn* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Badness always manifests in destruction and corruption, while goodness always manifests in preservation and benefit.
- Socrates in Plato's Republic (ca. 374 B.C.)

"Wanted" posters of Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak in Jerusalem, April 2010. Olmert and Barak are accused of bribery and corruption in Israel and indictable for serious war crimes in Gaza. Both men are architects of the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11. Olmert, for example, was on a secret visit in New York City on 9-11. When will we see posters in the United States calling for the arrest of Olmert and Barak?

IT IS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CERTAIN that 9-11 was a Mossad operation - period.
- Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former director of Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College

"And how can it be profitable for a person's immorality to go unnoticed and unpunished? The consequence of a criminal getting away with his crimes is that he becomes a worse person."
- Socrates in Plato's Republic, "Happiness and Unhappiness"

Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, has been in the United States for a week of meetings and speeches. He is, in my opinion, the key suspect of being the mastermind of the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11. I am providing this brief article to explain how I think he did it.

Within minutes of the airplane crashes on 9-11, Ehud Barak (the founder and master of the Israeli military's covert operation force, the Sayeret Matkal) was in the London studio of the BBC World ready to provide a plausible (and political) explanation to the world. Barak, the real mastermind of 9-11, was the first person to call for a "War on Terror" - and U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and the Middle East. This is how false-flag terrorism works. The perpetrator is the first one to assign blame by pointing his finger at his enemy in order to shape public opinion, which is the real purpose of such atrocities.

Ehud Barak (Brug) was born at Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon on 12 February 1942. He enlisted in the Israeli Army at age 17, became a career army officer, and helped to found and lead the elite Sayeret Matkal covert operations commando unit. After serving as head of Israeli Intelligence and Central Command during the 1980s, Barak was appointed IDF Chief of Staff, in 1991. Barak was Israel's minister of defense during Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009. Based on the report of the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, written by Justice Richard Goldstone, Barak is legally responsible for a host of war crimes committed during that assault. The United States (and all other nations who have ratified the Geneva Conventions) are obliged to arrest Ehud Barak based on the evidence and findings presented in the Goldstone report.

Socrates' point that unpunished criminals become worse is very much the story of modern Israel. The most serious criminals of the Zionist state have never been punished in any meaningful way by the international community - or the United States. This laissez faire attitude regarding Zionist criminals has only enabled and emboldened the most unscrupulous and aggressive criminals to rise to the top of the Israeli government, where they sit today. The criminal audacity of Israel's leaders is, however, simply not sustainable for the long term because their rampant criminality endangers the Zionist state, its citizens, and even its supporters.

Zionist Jews and Israelis living in America, for example, may find themselves in a very uncomfortable position when millions of Americans realize that Israel and its supporters are behind the mass murder of 9-11 and the cover-up of the truth, as Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former director of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, has repeatedly warned. It seems to be only a matter of time before this uncomfortable situation becomes a reality. It should be noted that the Israeli prime minister at the time of the attacks was Ariel Sharon, a Zionist extremist and terrorist who believes that American Jews (actually all Jews) should live in Israel. Sharon had a dream that one million American Jews would emigrate to Israel, while in reality more Israelis have chosen to live in America. Was 9-11 designed to force Jews to move to Israel?

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak (left) talks with Minister of Pensioner Affairs Rafi Eitan as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (center) waits to start the weekly cabinet meeting May 25, 2008 in Jerusalem. Eitan is wanted by the FBI for his role as the spymaster of Jonathan Pollard. Olmert was in New York City on 9-11 on a visit that has been kept secret. These three men know very well who was behind the terrorism of 9-11 - and it wasn't Osama Bin Laden and his band of twenty thieves.

Ehud Barak was prime minister of Israel from July 1999 until March 7, 2001, when he was replaced by Ariel Sharon. I attended an event at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois where both Barak, then prime minister, and Sharon were involved shortly before the election that brought Sharon to power. The fact that Barak and Sharon had travelled to Chicago together illustrated the utter fakeness of their rivalry.

Previous positions held by Barak include Head of Defense Planning and Budgeting, Head of the Israeli Intelligence Community, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Minister of the Interior in Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin's cabinet, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Shimon Peres cabinet, and Labor Party Chairman. If Israel is involved in 9-11, as Dr. Alan Sabrosky says (and which the evidence strongly indicates) Barak certainly knows all about it.

When Sharon assumed power in March 2001, Barak came to America. He supposedly came to the United States to work as a special advisor for Electronic Data Systems and as a partner with SCP Partners, a Mossad-run private equity company focused on "security-related" work - but this was merely his cover. His real assignment was to oversee the terror attacks of 9-11. As a partner with SCP Partners Barak was well placed to supervise the false-flag terror operation. The complex false-flag terror attacks of 9-11 required that the mastermind of the operation be in the country to manage the critical details.

One of the key aspects of 9-11 that Barak needed to arrange was the production and application of an advanced form of super-thermite, an extremely powerful explosive produced using nano-technology. In 2001, SCP Partners happened to have a suitable company in their portfolio, a private company called Metallurg Holdings, Inc., which has its office in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Today, SCP has another company called Advanced Metallurgical Group, N.V. (AMG) in its portfolio. AMG and Metallurg actually share the same phone number and address at 435 Devon Park Drive in Wayne. SCP Private Equity Partners L.P. and its management company named Safeguard International, which controls the metallurgical subsidiaries, are also both based at this address. AMG/Safeguard International have several subsidiaries, including one that specializes in the production of atomized aluminum (a crucial component of super-thermite) and others which manufacture specialized coatings of nano-composites.

SCP Partners, where Ehud Barak worked from 2001 until 2007, clearly had the capability in 2001 to produce nano-composite explosives like the super-thermite used to pulverize the World Trade Center on 9-11. There are very few companies or countries in the world that had the capability to manufacture super-thermite in 2001, but Ehud Barak and his SCP Partners did. Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida, on the other hand, did not and could not have had anything to do with the super-thermite found in the dust of the pulverized Twin Towers. The government version is a pack of lies designed to start a pre-planned war of aggression against Afghanistan. Ehud Barak was actually the first person to call for the U.S. to invade Afghanistan, something he did only hours after the attacks.

Chips of super-thermite found in the dust of the World Trade Center by Dr. Steven E. Jones

Rafi Eitan, the octogenarian Mossadnik who ran a spy operation against the United States using Jonathan Pollard, fled to Israel after Pollard was caught in 1985. Eitan was then offered the position as head of state-owned Israel Chemicals Corporation, which also has production and manufacturing facilities in the United States. In 1978, when Israeli intelligence began planning the false-flag terror operation of 9-11 (according to the documented comments of senior Mossadnik Isser Harel), Eitan was serving as Menachem Begin's "advisor on terrorism". This is the real reason that Rafi Eitan remained in the Israeli security cabinet until 2009 - he is one of the architects of 9-11.

Rafi Eitan was also involved in the 1968 theft and illegal smuggling of nearly 600 pounds of plutonium from a plant in Pennsylvania to Israel for the production of nuclear weapons. As the Pittsburgh Tribune reported in a series of articles about the stolen plutonium, Eitan is the key suspect:

Four other Israelis visited NUMEC on Sept. 10, 1968, and met with Shapiro [then-NUMEC President Zalman M. Shapiro, a staunch supporter of Israel] to "discuss thermoelectric devices (unclassified)," according to a Sept. 12, 1968, letter from Bruce D. Rice, NUMEC security manager, to Harry R. Walsh, director of AEC security and property management, seeking AEC approval for the visit.

The four visitors were: Avraham Hermoni, Ephraim Beigon, Abraham Bendor and Raphael (or, Rafael) Eitan.

In their 1991 book, "Dangerous Liaison," Andrew and Leslie Cockburn wrote, "At the time of his visit to Apollo in 1968, Eitan was acting as an agent for Mossad on special assignment to LAKAM ... a shadowy intelligence agency ... born in the 1950s with the express purpose of acquiring nuclear technology by any means."

Soon after the men's visit, 587 pounds of weapons-grade uranium reportedly went missing from NUMEC, according to Udall's papers.

In a recent article entitled "America's Loose Nukes in Israel," Grant Smith wrote: "To date, all of the uranium-diversion masterminds, financiers, and beneficiaries have escaped criminal prosecution, even as U.S. taxpayers fund a nuclear waste cleanup at the (now defunct) NUMEC Apollo facility."

Eitan's unscrupulous character can be seen in a comment he made to the wife and lawyer for Jonathan Pollard, the captured spy he had managed:

Eitan told us the only thing he regrets about the Pollard affair is that he did not 'finish the job' before leaving the States. We asked him what he meant by this. Eitan replied, "If I had been at the embassy when Pollard came to seek asylum, I would have put a bullet through his head. There would have been no Pollard affair."
- Esther Pollard, Maariv, March 30, 2006

Raphael Hantman a.k.a. Rafi Eitan

"In principle, when there is a war on terror you conduct it without principles. You simply fight it." – Rafi Eitan to Ha'aretz, February 19, 2010

At SCP Partners Barak worked closely with another Mossadnik named Eitan - Yaron I. Eitan. Although Yaron Eitan looks very much like Rafi Eitan, the relationship between the two Eitans is not known. Rafi Eitan was actually born Raphael Hantman in Mandate Palestine to Noah Hantman from Minsk, Byelorussia. Rafi reportedly has three children, named Yael, Sharon, and Yuval.

Yaron I. Eitan

Sources and Recommended Reading:

"America's Loose Nukes in Israel", by Grant Smith, April 14, 2010:
http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2010/04/13/americas-loose-nukes-in-israel/

Biography of Ehud Barak:
http://www.zionism-israel.com/bio/Ehud_Barak_biography.htm

"Government agencies investigated missing uranium, NUMEC", by Mary Ann Thomas and Ramesh Santanam, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 25, 2002:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreports/buriedlegacy/s_87948.html

Hillary Clinton laughing at her "friend" Ehud Barak's joke about her bat mitzvah as if his joke (delivered in barely understandable English) was hilarious. This is bizarre behavior (for a U.S. Secretary of State) and a classic example of how one overreacts to conceal an unpleasant situation. Clinton's reaction is meant to mask a sordid and sinister relationship between high-level criminals. Americans and Israelis certainly deserve better leaders.

At the American Jewish Committee gala dinner on April 29 Clinton again displays bizarre behavior vis-a-vis Ehud Barak. Is this proper behavior for a U.S. Secretary of State?

* Christopher Bollyn is an independent American investigative journalist

By Franklin Lamb* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

More than six decades after their expulsion from Palestine,  Lebanon's unwanted refugees justmight be granted some basic civil rights...

Part I: Hiba's Story

Granting even the most elementary and normally taken for granted civil rights to Palestinians in Lebanon won't be easy and it may not be pretty. Yet there is undeniable and growing Lebanese and international resolve for Lebanon's politicians to end a dark bleak chapter in Arab brotherly relations.

The disturbing paradox of Lebanon depriving its refugees of the most elementary civil rights, some of which are even granted Palestinians by their arch-nemesis, the Zionist occupiers of their own country, is increasingly being condemned in Lebanon. In addition, there is the gaping contradiction between the sweet words and the clarion trumpeting calls by groups wanting to liberate Jerusalem and all of Palestine and enforce the internationally mandated Right of Return (UNSCR 194), while at the same time appearing to avert their eyes from the very ones seeking to return and who exist in abject squalor, humiliation and indignity, thus appearing to tolerate their brothers and sisters' degradation. These contradictions are motivating an expanding panoply of Lebanese leaders, civil society organizations, side by side with local and international NGO's, to demand civil rights legislation from the current Cabinet and Parliament. What civil rights advocates seek is compliance with basic international law and indeed Lebanon's Constitution, both sources of law mandating civil rights for Palestine refugees including the right to work and to own a home.

In plenty of Lebanese neighborhoods, polite society often avoids the subject of 'haydoulik' ('they') when a foreigner mentions the teeming and squalid Palestinian camps, or brings up the subject of yet another local media or NGO's report detailing the alarming and accelerating deterioration of the world's oldest and largest refugee population. Close to half of Lebanon's Palestinian refugees are crammed into 12 camps and 27 unofficial 'gatherings'. Of the original 120,000 who were forced across the full length of the Palestine-Lebanon border during the 1948 Nakba, their offspring now number close to 450,000-some 425,640 of whom are registered with the United Nations Refugee Works Administration (UNRWA) as of April, 2010, and some also with the Lebanese Ministry of Interior. Since 1948, roughly 22 percent of the refugees in Lebanon have left loved ones and family members to seek jobs abroad so as to remit their foreign earnings back to the fetid camps. Lebanon leads the world in the amount of per capita in bound remittances, a significant contribution to its Gross Domestic Product.

The Untouchables

According to a Sunni Muslim family in the Sanayeh area of Beirut who has a long history of support for the Palestinians, including two sons who fought with the PLO against Israeli forces in 1982-83, a father who used to hide sensitive PLO documents inside his apartment walls as Israeli forces searched West Beirut house to house in the fall of 1982, and a mother who prepared home cooked meals during the summer of 1982 for 'Abu Ammar' (Yassir Arafat) and 'Abu Jihad' (Khalil al Wazir) and their office staffs, between 90-95% of Lebanese have never been inside a Palestinian camp. A teen-age member of the same Beirut family snarled to this observer, "Not since the ( 1982 ) Sabra-Shatila Massacre has a group of our Lebanese brothers visited a Palestinian camp!", referring to the right wing Phalange Lebanese groups who conducted the camp slaughter after being egged-on and equipped by the occupying Israeli military leadership including Israel's then Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon.

With the exception of Druze leader, MP Walid Jumblatt, and a couple of Hezbollah members of Parliament, and one from the Saad Hariri Future Movement, not one member of the 128 member Parliament or the 30 Member Cabinet has acknowledged visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in the past five years, according to a March 2010 survey taken by the Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon. For some of Lebanon's population the very idea of " going inside" a camp in enough to produce an exaggerated grimace.

As shocking as it is true, Lebanon by refusing to even allow Palestinians the right to work in dozens of professions or to own homes, stands in clear violation of no fewer than 43 international legal obligations contained in treaties, conventions, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Lebanon played a major role in drafting, international customary law, and indeed its own Constitution.

The arguments against granting civil rights to Palestine refugees are numerous, with some as imaginative as they are spurious. They vary widely depending on who from which of the 18 confessions is discussing the subject. Some arguments for the status quo currently being heard by advocates working to change Lebanon's right to work and home ownership laws include the following sampling:

• "If we grant civil rights to our Palestinian Refugees it could interfere with their Right of Return!"
• "How are Palestine Refugees in Lebanon deprived of the civil right to work since some do manage to find a job illegally."
• "The Palestinian refugee population poses a security risk for Lebanon and before any civil rights are discussed this must be resolved."
• "Palestinians are Sunni Muslim and giving them civil rights will interfere with the fragile sectarian balance among Christian, Druze and Shia Muslims."
• "Why shouldn't Lebanon take more time considering civil rights for the Palestinian Refugee families? At least their children are being looked after in UNWRA schools and are fine. Their elders must be more patient and haven't the Palestinians caused many of their own problems."
• "Lebanon needs more time to straighten out the "situation" with the Palestinians. Also, don't forget, Lebanon is quietly issuing Identification Cards to the 5000 plus Palestinian refugees who have never had either UNRWA or Interior Ministry registrations subjecting them to arrest at any time. So aren't we making solid progress?"
• "Since all other foreigners need work permits, how has the requirement that Palestine Refugees obtain a work permit unfairly affected Palestinians right to work in Lebanon?"
• "Lebanese women also are deprived of civil rights. They must get theirs before Palestine Refugees are given any."
• "Palestinian refugees don't contribute to Lebanon's economy so why should Lebanon allow them the right to work?"
• " Lebanon is a very small country and we cannot afford to allow refugees to own a home, given our limited available housing space."
• "If Lebanon grants civil rights to the Palestinian Refugees, they may become too comfortable and seek permanency in Lebanon via Naturalization (Tawtin)"

An analysis of these and other arguments against granting civil rights to Palestine refugees will be considered in Part II of this discussion but should any of these arguments prevail with Parliament, a least a quarter million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will remain deprived of achieving much more than subsistence during their wait and struggle to return to Palestine.

Miss Hiba Hajj

One of the hundreds of thousands wretched refuse facing continuing condemnation is a gifted 15 year old named Hiba Hajj, born and raised in the teeming 90,000 plus resident Ein el Helwe Palestinian Camp, in the 6000 year old town of Saida Lebanon.

Hiba, is a stunning, savvy, totally charming, hijabed Palestinian youngster who lives with her large family near the Sharia Bustan Yahoudi (Jewish Park Street) area of Ein el Helweh ('Eye of the Beauty' or 'Source of sweet water'). Hiba's neighborhood is named after the Jewish community that used to live in the quarter before Zionist colonials invaded Palestine. Most Jews who stayed in Lebanon after 1948 left during the 1982 Israeli invasion and the subsequent 18 year occupation-fewer than 30 are thought to remain in the country today.

To this foreign observer, when Hiba ('gift from God') relates her story of dreams defered, she becomes every Palestinian Refugee in Lebanon and her personal and anguished narrative embodies the urgency and historical imperative for Lebanon to immediately grant the most elementary civil rights for her and Hiba's close to 450,000 fellow Palestinian refugee.

Like many of her friends, Hiba, reputed to be one of the best female teenage football players and long distance runners in Lebanon (she runs an approximate 5 minute 20 second mile on her slower days) is considering dropping out of school to help support her family , whose income has plummeted since the recent fighting between camp factions because, as she explains to an American visitor, people are too afraid to enter the camp to have their cars fixed at her father's auto repair shop. The American Embassy has instructed the Lebanese army which has blocked off seven entrances to the camp and mans checkpoints at the four remaining entrances to Ein el Helwe, not to allow American passport holders inside the camp "for their personal safety".

Hiba often spends her free time at her sister Zeina's home, filled with four squirming babies, which is located in the explosive no-man's-land known as Taamir, between the boundary of Ein al-Hilweh and one of the Lebanese army checkpoints that overlooks the camp.

Hiba's peers consider her an expert on the camps factions, that range from the Saudi Wahhabi Takfiri groups who she says, "want to kill us Muslims and anyone else who don't follow their Wahabist version of our religion", to Osbat al-Nour (League of Light), Ansar Allah (Followers of God), Fatah al Islam remnants on the lam from the 15 week battle at Nahr al Bared in the summer of 2007, Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Greater Syria) Islamic Jihad, Asbat-al-Ansar (League of Followers) seven or eight Palestinian factions including Fatah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Ahmad Jebril's Syrian bankrolled Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Fatah al-Intifada, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the defunct Saiqa, along with some upstart secretive and well armed global jihadist cells sporting new heavy weapons from Iraq according to camp officials, courtesy of US military inventory "shrinkage."

"Hiba acts crazy sometimes," her older sister anguishes, " and our family worries about her. I have seen her walk into the center of a gathering of young fighters, many of whom she knows from rival gangs while they are yelling and threatening to shoot each other. Just last month she grabbed a boys AK-47 from him just as he took aim at a rival and she screamed at the boys to go home and read the Koran!" And they left without firing one shot"

Hiba needs to stay in school where she is an excellent student but like so many Palestinian teenagers she sees no point because she can do nothing with an advanced education. For all her energy and 'don't blame others just make your own life the way you want it' attitude Hiba grows introspective and seems sad as she explains to visitors what she would like to do with her life.

Like all Palestinian refugees born in Lebanon, Hiba is stateless and unprotected, brought up in the misery and hopelessness of a Lebanese Palestinian refugee camp. This sweet kid, like all Palestinian refugees, has no civil or political rights in Lebanon. She is barred from working in over 70 professions, cannot own or inherit property, is subject to I.D. checks every time she enters or exits the camp, and has no access to public healthcare or public education.

No Palestinian need apply

Her brother Ahmad explains: " To start off, if you are a 'camp kid' in Lebanon that is a big strike against you. For us we feel there is nothing here. Our country is there (he points in the direction of the Palestinian border 35 miles South). There is nothing to do here, maybe play games on the internet if you can find somewhere with a connection-if you go and play games at the internet place, you're happy that you did something for the day. Some of my friends accept a small salary and join a militia group."

Refugee-camp teenagers like Hiba once fuelled the anger and resistance to Israel occupying their land. "Not now" says Ahmad "Much of that anger has turned into depression, increasing drug use, gang violence, dropping out of school, domestic violence, feelings of hopelessness. "

"My sister wants to become an eye doctor", he explains, "She has no chance".

Today, Palestinians in Lebanon continue to suffer from draconian measures which the Lebanese state claims are needed to prevent them from becoming permanent guests.

As of February 10, 2010, the following dozens of jobs remain off limits to Palestinians in Lebanon per Ministry of Labor Regulation No. 10l1–either because they are restricted to Lebanese nationals, or are forbidden due to the Reciprocity requirements. Since Palestine is not recognized by Lebanon as a country it is impossible to fulfill the Reciprocity requirement, since the job seeker must be licensed in his recognized country and his country must allow a Lebanese to work at the same job. In addition, a Palestinian job seeker must have been a very expensive and difficult to obtain work permit by the Lebanese government.. The Minister of Labor can theoretically exempt a person from the laws for certain jobs if the job-seeker:

- has been residing in Lebanon since birth

- has a Lebanese mother

- has been married to a Lebanese woman for more than one year.

- or if he or she is from a recognized country that allows Lebanese nationals to do the same job, i.e. the barrier of Reciprocity again.

The jobs that Hiba and her fellow refugees are barred from include the following updated forbidden careers:

" Archeology Guide, Banking and administrative work of all kinds, particularly: Manager-Assistant manager-Staff manager-Treasurer-Accountant-Secretary Manager Clerk-Documentalist-Archivist, Computer worker-Commercial representative-Marketing representative-Forman-Warehouse keeper-Salesman-Jeweler-Tailor-Darning worker with the exception of darning carpets-Electrical installations-Mechanics and maintenance-Painters, Glass panes installer-Doorman-Watchman-Driver-Waiter-Hairdresser-Electronic work-Arabic food chef, All technical professions in the construction sector and its derivatives such as tiling, coating, plastering, installation of aluminum, iron, wood or decoration works and the like-Teaching at the elementary, intermediate and secondary levels with the exception of foreign language teacher when necessary, hairdressing, Ironing and dry-cleaning upholstery, publishing, printing, Engineering work in all specialties, Smithery and upholstery work. All kinds of work in pharmacies, drug warehouses and medical laboratories. In general all occupations and professions which can be filled by Lebanese nationals- money changer, real estate agent, attorney, physician, dentist, taxi driver or driver training instructor, registered nurse or assistant nurse, or other job in the Medical field, dentistry, health controller, any job in the engineering field, licensed health controller, medical laboratory worker, clinical health industry jobs, prosthetic devices fitter, certified accountants, dental laboratory science technician, jobs relating to nutrition and meals, topography, physiotherapy, veterinary medicine."

The only four jobs listed by the Lebanese Ministry of Labor that are open to Palestinian refugees are:

1. midwife

2. financial brokerage firm owner

3. roving photographer

4. land surveyor.

All Palestinian job seekers for the "available" four jobs are required to have been issued the nearly impossible to obtain work permit.

"This scheme by Lebanon is among the most egregious easily preventable massive human rights violations imaginable, given what the largest and oldest refugee population on earth has been through", according to Dr. Suoheil El-Natour, long time analyst of the Palestinian camp populations in Lebanon, and director of a Human Development Center (HDC) in Mar Elias camp.

Meanwhile, Hiba has promised her family and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon that she will stay in school through the current academic year to see what Parliament will do about allowing Palestine refugees some basic civil rights. She has joined the PCRC from her camp and recently emailed her colleagues in Shatila Camp to get to work on the Petition drive to Parliament with the following message:

"Failure is not an option for us, our only choice is success."

The online version of the hard copy Petition can be signed at:http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html.

Part II: Analysis of the arguments against Palestinian civil rights and handicapping the draft laws arriving at Parliament: Promises are being made, are fools rejoicing?

* Franklin Lamb is a researcher and volunteer with the PCRC in Lebanon. He can be reached at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org

From my two years old post:

There's another significant anniversary this week, but not one that’s attracted the sort of attention the 11 September commemorations have.

On the morning of Saturday, September 18th, 1982, reporters entering the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila near Beirut, Lebanon, were met with a ghastly sight. Piles of bodies littered the dusty streets of the camps, mass graves had been hastily constructed and buildings had been bulldozed over corpses. The slaughtered were old men, women, and children. A massacre had taken place here. The estimated death toll were in thousands.

What had happened here? What could have provoked this type of inhuman slaughter? Who did this?

These were the questions that punctuated the silence of the morning after the killing stopped. These questions are still asked today, more than two decades after the events had transpired.

To try to answer these question, lets read history again...

Read full post and watch videos/slideshow here!