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

On March 23, the Chicago Tribune presented one of its periodic reports on overseas travel by Chicago area members of the US Congress. The country most often visited? Israel.

The Tribune's interest was primarily on what motivated the trips. Were they junkets to resorts or would something really be learned by actually visiting other nations?

Trips to Israel are not junkets. They are described as "educational seminars".

The report revealed that US Senator Dick Durbin made 14 overseas trips in 2009-2010. He did not, however, visit Israel. No need, Durbin has been one of Israel's strongest allies in Congress since he first won the House seat previously held by Paul Findley.

Illinois' junior senator, former House member Mark Kirk, did go to Israel in 2009-2010, as did one other Republican, House member Peter Roskam, now occupying the seat formerly held by Henry Hyde. All other Chicago area members who traveled to Israel in 2009-2010, were Democrats, members who were either new or in need of some additional education on the Israeli narrative. These members were Debbie Halvorson, Daniel Lipinski, Jesse Jackson, Jr, Mike Quigley. Melissa Bean, and Bill Foster.

Jackson is the son of Jesse Sr. and Quigley now holds the seat once occupied by former Obama chief of staff, and Chicago's new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who needs no introduction to travel to Israel. Three of those six Democrats lost their seats in 2010: Halverson, Bean and Foster. Mark Kirk has left the House for the Senate where he occupies Barack Obama's old seat.

The organization that funded, planned, organized and directed the trips to Israel in 2009-2010 was the American Israel Education Foundation, a tax-exempt affiliate of AIPAC.

We will hear more from AIPAC May 20-21, when AIPAC conducts its annual Policy Conference in Washington. Since presidential primaries are less than a year away, this year's conference should attract every living Republican presidential candidate and a large majority of the members of Congress, including some members who have recently traveled to Israel.

One recent traveler was former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Governor Palin was escorted on her visit to the Old City of Jerusalem by Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz (left in photo here) and Israeli lawmaker Danny Danon (right) as she emerged from the Western Wall tunnels in Jerusalem's Old City, March 20. The closest Palin got to the West Bank was to the checkpoint between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Also expected to be on hand for the May AIPAC conference will be Israeli officials, beginning with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, pictured above addressing the 2010 Policy Conference.

In John J. Mearsheimer's latest book, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics, he examines the importance of national narratives.

Mearsheimer is the other half of the team (with Steve Walt) that wrote the book, The Israel Lobby, which made such an impact on the formerly impenetrable Iron Wall that protects the "Israel narrative as the only truth" in American culture.

Mearsheimer writes that elites create and dominate "a nation's discourse", a version of the state's founding and ongoing purpose that is a mixture of deliberate lies and patriotic enthusiasm. They do so for two reasons: False stories about the past "help create a powerful sense of nationhood, which is essential for building and maintaining a viable nation-state."

In particular, these fictions help give members of a national group the sense that they are part of a noble enterprise which they should not only be proud of, but for which they should be willing to endure significant hardships, including fighting and dying if necessary.

These dominating elites first develop the myths, and then control each succeeding generation through internal education that constantly reinforces the myth of the nation's founding. In the US, think the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Presidents' Day.

The internet-inspired uprisings in the Arab world is a concern to the Israeli authorities, as an increasing number of younger Jews in Israel have joined hands with Palestinians in protests and demonstrations against Israel's current right wing government with its tight control and denigration of Palestinians.

Ilan Pappe, the Jewish scholar who literally wrote the book on Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine, wrote in the March 22 issue of the political newsletter Counterpunch, that the current Israeli government has been rapidly expanding its "apartheid laws" against Palestinians inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories.

The most recent apartheid law passed by Israel's Knesset "allows Jewish settlements built on state land inside Israel not to admit Israeli Palestinian citizens as residents and legalizes the wish of these new settlers not to sell land to the Palestinians citizens of the state."

This is one of many such laws passed recently (the loyalty oath law that turns the Palestinians in Israel to second class citizens by law and one which does not allow them to live with their Palestinians spouses from the occupied territories are two of the more famous apartheid laws passed recently).

The new law, like the previous others, institutionalize the Apartheid State of Israel, or for short, ASOI.

ASOI is now one of worst apartheid regimes in the world. It controls almost all of Palestine (apart from Gaza which it imprisoned hermetically since 2005). . . .

Its policies against the discriminated native population, now composing nearly half of the overall population in ASOI, include atrocities such as barring people from using water sources, from cultivating their fields, building more houses, from getting to work, schools or universities and it bans them from commemorating their history and in particular the 1948 Nakba.

This treatment of a sizable minority of Israeli citizens and Palestinians in the OPT, is an affront to the national myth of Israel as a righteous democracy. The national myth is being exposed as a fraud by the actions of its leaders.

This, in turn, makes it even more imperative that the national Israeli myth be reinforced in other nations.

John Mearsheimer points out any new state must look for support and alliances with those nations who have within their borders "an influential diaspora" to which the new state (in this case, Israel) can export and reinforce its national founding myth. The best example of this phenomenon involves Israel and the American Jewish community.

There was no way that the Zionists could create a Jewish state in Palestine without doing large-scale ethnic cleansing of the Arab population that had been living there for centuries. This point was widely recognized by the Zionist leadership well before Israel was created.

The opportunity to expel the Palestinian came in early 1948 when fighting broke out between the Palestinians and the Zionists in wake of the UN decision to partition Palestine into two states. The Zionists cleansed roughly 700,000 Palestinians from the land that became Israel, and adamantly refused to let them return to their homes once the fighting stopped. . . .

Not surprisingly, Israel and its American friends went to great lengths after the events of 1948 to blame the expulsion of the Palestinians on the victims themselves. According to the myth that was invented, the Palestinians were not cleansed by the Zionists; instead, they were said to have fled their homes because the surrounding Arab counties told them to move out so that their armies could move in and drive the Jews into the sea.

The movie industry has been a reliable diaspora ally. Movies shape a culture, reinforcing the control that AIPAC, which is the American diaspora command center, has over US media, politicians and churches.

At the slightest sign that any narrative contrary to the Israel narrative might emerge in a film, AIPAC and its media allies go into their first line of attack: This Film is Not Yet Balanced. That usually frightens away film makers and distributors, until now.

Miramax, a company with an advertising budget ample enough to cover a two page ad in the New York Times, has entered the game. Miramax also has the media outreach to place directors and stars of films it is promoting into such outlets as the Charlie Rose television interview program. Miramax has won four best picture Academy Award Oscars, including its most recent winner, The King's Speech.

Miramax is distributing the new film Miral in North America. Is it possible that Miral, which has just opened in New York and Los Angeles, might emerge as the film with the power to threaten the decades old power of Exodus? Probably not, but the Israeli government and its US allies are taking no chances.

Freida Pinto, (shown at right) who was introduced to world audiences in Slumdog Millionaire, plays Miral in the film.

What makes Miral such a threat to Israel's narrative myth is that Miral begins with the Deir Yassin massacre and ends by commemorating the history of the Palestinian people and the Nakba.

Sandy Tolan, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC and the author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, considers the way in which the novel and movie, Exodus, has shaped the Israeli narrative in American culture. He wrote in Al Jazeera:

Most Americans, Jew and Gentile, grew up with the Leon Uris history of the struggle for the Holy Land. Exodus chronicles the heroic birth of Israel out of the ashes of the Holocaust. There the story ends; there is no other narrative.

This politically convenient and magnificently incomplete version of history remains the dominant American narrative of the tragedy known as Israel and Palestine.

Despite the cracks in that narrative in recent years, the über story of Exodus – Uris' 1958 mega-bestseller, and the subsequent Hollywood film starring Paul Newman – still holds a tremendous grip on the American imagination. It may be one of the most influential pieces of fiction ever written in the US. . . .

In Exodus there are only heroic or victimised Jews; only malicious, pathetic or cowardly Arabs, driven not by a love of their land but by fear and manipulation. As Uris tells the story, the Palestinians have no legitimate claim to their homeland: "If the Arabs of Palestine loved their land, they could not have been forced from it – much less run from it without real cause."

Here there is no Deir Yassin massacre; no "Plan Dalet" and its blueprint for sowing fear and fire in Arab villages; no Nakba and its dispossession of 750,000 indigenous Palestinians.

How eager is Israel to protect its national myth? Consider a bill now moving through Israel's Knesset that would make it illegal for an individual or an organization to endorse and support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

A word of caution on your next trip to Israel: If you want to make it safely through the Tel Aviv airport, leave your BDS buttons at home. There will be buttons available when you reach your destination.

If you have a DVD of Miral in your carry-on, and your interrogator objects, offer it as a gift to her. Consider it as missionary outreach.

The Palin picture above is from Reuters. It was taken by Ronen Zvulun. The picture of Netanyahu was taken in Washington by Jonathan Ernst, also of Reuters.

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

"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

By Steve Amsel* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Sunday evening at sundown, sirens will sound throughout Israel to commemorate the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day. On Monday, ceremonies will be held in various cities, the main one being at Yad Vashem, the memorial park in Jerusalem.

Friday was the anniversary of the massacre at Deir Yassin, the startof the 'other holocaust', known as the Nakba. There were no sirens tosignify this as the Nakba is the 'forgotten child of the holocaust'. In Israel today it is forbidden to even speak of this, to make sure itremains forgotten. You can read about The Children of Deir Yassin in this essay.

Let's take a brief look at what the Nakba was...

"We thought it would be a matter of weeks, only until thefighting died down. Of course, we were never allowed to go home." NinaSaah, Washington, DC

"My family's farm of oranges, grapefruits and lemons,centuries old, was gone." Darwish Addassi, Walnut Creek, California

"Those of us who left unwillingly in 1948 are plaguedwith painful nostalgia. My house in West Jerusalem is an Israeli nurseryschool now." Inea Bushnaq, New York, New York

"The people of New Orleans woke up one morning tocomplete devastation and had to flee. The Nakba was our HurricaneKatrina." Abe Fawal, Birmingham, Alabama

Sixty years ago, more than 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes andbelongings, their farms and businesses, their towns and cities. Jewishmilitias seeking to create a state with a Jewish majority in Palestine,and later, the Israeli army, drove them out. Israel rapidly moved Jewsinto the newly-emptied Palestinian homes. Nakba means "catastrophe" inArabic, and Palestinians refer to the destruction of their society andthe takeover of their homeland as an-Nakba, "The Catastrophe."

Ten Facts about the Nakba

1. The Nakba is a root cause of the Israeli/Palestinianproblem.

It is marked on May 15, the day after Israel declared itsindependence in 1948.

2. This traumatic event created the Palestinian refugeecrisis.

By the end of 1948, two-thirds of the Palestinian population wasexiled. It is estimated that more than 50% were driven out under directmilitary assault. Others fled as news spread of massacres committed byJewish militias in Palestinian villages like DeirYassin and Tantura (list of other massacres here and here).

3. Jewish leaders saw "transfer" as an important step in theestablishment of Israel.

Jewish leaders spoke openly of the need to use military clashes toexpel as many Palestinians as possible before other Arab countries couldcome to their defense. The Haganah militia's PlanDalet was the blueprint for this ethnic cleansing. Israel's firstPrime Minister, David Ben Gurion, said "We must use terror,assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of allsocial services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." (See whatother leading Israelis have said about transfer.)

4. Hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed.

Jewish forces depopulated more than 450 Palestinian towns andvillages, most of which were demolished.

5. Palestinian property and belongings were simply taken.

The newly-established Israeli government confiscated refugee land andproperties without respect to Palestinian rights or desires to returnto their homes.

Israeli historian Tom Segev reported that: "Entire cities andhundreds of villages left empty were repopulated with new [Jewish]immigrants... Free people – Arabs – had gone into exile and becomedestitute refugees; destitute refugees – Jews – took the exiles' placesin the first step in their lives as free people. One group[Palestinians] lost all they had while the other [Jews] found everythingthey needed – tables, chairs, closets, pots, pans, plates, sometimesclothes, family albums, books radios, pets....

6. Some Palestinians stayed in what became Israel.

While most Palestinians were driven out, some remained in what becameIsrael. Although citizens of the new state, they were subject toIsraeli military rule until 1966. Today, Palestinian citizens of Israelcomprise nearly 20 percent of Israel's population. They have the rightto vote and run for office, but more than 20 Israeli laws explicitlyprivilege Jews over non-Jews. Nearly one-quarter of Israel'sPalestinians are "internally displaced" persons, unable to return to thehomes and lands that were taken from them.

7. There are still millions of Palestinian refugees dispersedaround the world.

Today, there are 4.4 million Palestinian refugees registered as suchwith the United Nations, and at least another estimated 1 million whoare not so registered. Thus a majority of the Palestinian people, around10 million persons, are refugees.

8. Refugees have internationally-recognized rights.

All refugees enjoy internationally-recognized rights to return toareas from which they have fled or were forced out, to receivecompensation for damages, and to either regain their properties orreceive compensation and support for voluntary resettlement. This righthas been explicitly acknowledged in recent peace agreements in Cambodia,Rwanda, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Guatemala, Northern Ireland,Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Burundi, and Darfur. This right was affirmed forthe Palestinians by the UnitedNations Resolution 194 of 1948. Israel, however, does not allowPalestinian refugees to return, although a Jew from anywhere in theworld can settle in Israel.

9. Justly resolving refugee rights is essential to MiddleEast peace.

An overwhelming majority of Palestinians believes that refugee rightsmust be fulfilled for peace between Palestinians and Israelis toendure. And according to an August 2007 poll by the Jerusalem Media andCommunications Center, nearly 70 percent believe that refugees should beallowed to return to "their original land".

10. The Nakba has implications for Americans.

Israel's ongoing denial of Palestinian rights – and unconditionalU.S. financial and diplomatic support for Israel – fuels anti-Americansentiment abroad. A 2002Zogby poll, conducted in eight Arab countries showed that "thenegative perception of the United States is based on American policies,not a dislike of the West." The same poll showed that "the Palestinianissue was listed by many Arabs among the political issues that affectthem most personally." Resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue wouldundoubtedly improve America's international image, by proving that theU.S. government supports the consistent application of internationallaw. (Source)

A video showing the horrors of the Nakba...

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EAmtgfPz-k

Two years ago Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was quoted as saying that there can be no Palestinian state unless and until the victims learn to forget the word Nakba.

"The Palestinians will celebrate their statehood when they erase the word Nakba from their lexicon," said Livni, whose father, Eitan, who died in 1991, played an active part in effecting the genocidal campaign of murder and terror that culminated in the establishment of Israel.

Last year, Livni had the temerity to say that the creation of a Palestinian state on parts of the West Bank would have to address Israel's Arab citizens.

NEWS FLASH.....

The Nakba will NOT be forgotten and there WILL be a Palestinian State!

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuem7Hi76Aw

* Steve Amsel is a Jewish active peace and civil rights worker living in Israel. He can be reached at manopeace@gmail.com

Source: Desert Peace

A recent poll found that 76 percent of Jewish Israelis support "transferring" the Palestinian citizens of Israel - more than 1.4 million people - out of the country. Today, April 9, marks the 60th anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre - the most traumatic incident in the campaign to expel Palestinians from their homeland.

Deir Yassin Remembered (previously published a year ago)

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.

This is another example of Israel's brutality and history of barbarism:

FAQ on Deir Yassin (via: IMEU)

The massacre at Deir Yassin is one of some two dozen documented massacres of Palestinian civilians by Zionist forces seeking to transform Palestine into a Jewish state. If the import of catastrophes were gauged only in numbers of people slaughtered, Deir Yassin may not have taken on its central role in the Palestinian national consciousness. However, the terror at Deir Yassin triggered a mass flight of Palestinians who feared for their own lives. When Israel was established sixty years ago this May, more than 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and belongings, their farms and businesses, their towns and cities. Jewish militias, and later, the Israeli army, drove them out. Israel rapidly moved Jews into the newly-emptied Palestinian homes. This tragic event and its consequences lie at the core of the Palestinian/Israeli problem.

1. What happened in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and why does it matter today?

In the early morning of April 9, 1948, three Zionist militias - the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang -- attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, located west of Jerusalem. More than 100 men, women and children were massacred. Some were mutilated and raped before being murdered. Twenty-five men from the village were paraded through Jerusalem and then executed in a nearby quarry. Those able to escape fled to East Jerusalem.

Word of the terror attacks spread rapidly, causing many Palestinians to flee, fearing for their lives. Within a year of the massacre, Deir Yassin, which had been emptied of Palestinians, was re-populated with Jewish immigrants and its name was removed from the map.

For Palestinians, Deir Yassin became the symbol of the sudden loss of their homes and homeland and the near destruction of their society, a situation which endures until today. When Israel was established sixty years ago, more than 700,000 Palestinians were exiled and 78 percent of the land of historic Palestine was lost.

Today, Palestinian refugees number nearly four million, out of a total population of approximately ten million. They are still deprived of their internationally-recognized right to return to their homeland. In the West Bank, Israel continues to seize land for Israeli-only settlements and Israeli-only roads.

2. Who carried out the massacre?

The Haganah, which became the Israeli army, fired mortars at the village while the Irgun and Stern Gang attacked from close range. At the time of the massacre, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's 1st prime minister, directed Haganah policy; Menachem Begin, Israel's 6th prime minister, led the Irgun; and Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's 7th prime minister, was a leader of the Stern Gang.

3. What resulted from the Deir Yassin massacre?

As news of the massacre spread, the ensuing terror triggered the mass flight of Palestinians. A few days after the attacks, in fact, the Irgun asserted that the incident advanced "terror and dread among the Arabs in all the villages around, in Al Maliha, Qaluniya and Beit Iksa a panic flight began ..." The flight of Palestinian refugees fit into the plans of Zionist military and political leaders at the time. During the first week of April, a concerted campaign - known as Plan Dalet - to systematically expel Palestinians from areas sought for the soon-to-be-founded state of Israel went into effect. Zionist forces conducted eight major military operations against Palestinian cities and villages between April 1st and May 15th when Israel declared independence and Arab states intervened in response to the growing refugee crisis. Some 250,000 Palestinians had been expelled by then.

4. Was Deir Yassin an isolated incident?

No. While Deir Yassin may be the most infamous, Israeli historian Benny Morris documents 24 massacres of Palestinians conducted by Zionist, and then Israeli, forces in 1948. According to Morris, "In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved. The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70)... The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

The Irgun and Stern Gang also attacked British and United Nations institutions and officers who they believed stood in the way of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. The Irgun was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel, which was used as British military headquarters, in Jerusalem in 1946. Ninety-one people were killed. The Stern Gang assassinated Lord Moyne, the British minister of state for the Middle East, in 1944, attempted to assassinate Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner of Palestine, in 1944 and assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations representative in the Middle East, in 1948.

5. What was the total destruction and how it is still relevant today?

In total, at least 450 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated due to Zionist military attacks or fear of such attacks. Most of these were demolished. By the end of 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians - two-thirds of the Palestinian population - were exiled and their society was destroyed. Even today, a Jew from anywhere in the world is welcome to settle in Israel, while Palestinians with the keys and deeds to their seized homes do not enjoy the right to return.

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.

This is another example of Israel's brutality and history of barbarism:

For more info about Deir Yassin massacre, visit http://www.deiryassin.org/