It is quite heartening that leaders of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers are speaking of their disdain and contempt of the 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel.

It seems also prudent that the Islamist party, evidently the largest in Egypt, will not embark on a rash feat that could invite uncalculated reactions from the Zionist entity and its western allies, especially her guardian-ally, the United States.

The Muslim Brothers have said that they will respect Egypt's international obligations.

None the less, the Camp David treaty was not really a treaty of peace, but rather a treaty of submission and capitulation to Zionist regional hegemony, arrogance and military supremacy.

True, the Sinai Peninsula was "returned" to Egypt to the last inch. However, it is also true that vast swathes of the Sinai desert became off limit to the Egyptian forces. This is why smugglers, terrorists, saboteurs and foreign agents seem to act freely throughout that territory, blowing up gas pipelines, smuggling narcotics and other contrabands, and even attacking symbols of Egyptian sovereignty, including police centers and tourist resorts.

The defunct Egyptian regime of ex President Hosni Mubarak claimed mendaciously that the Sinai desert was completely liberated from the Israeli occupation. But how can Sinai are really completely liberated when the bulk of its territory is still off limit to the Egyptian army and air force?

In addition, it is quite scandalous how Israel came to understand the infamous treaty, e.g. that it gave the Zionist entity a carte blanch to gang up on the Palestinians, liquidate the Palestinian cause, though gradually and by desensitizing the world's moral conscience, and carrying out recurrent genocidal campaigns aimed at murdering, incinerating and maiming as many Palestinians as possible.

If evidence were needed, we are all invited to revisit the 2008-09 Israeli blitzkrieg on the Gaza Strip which did to Gaza what the allies bombing did to Dresden in the last phases of the Second World War.

Well, under these circumstances, one is prompted to ask whether Egypt, especially under an Islamist-ruled or Islamist influenced regime, is under any legal or moral obligation to abide by such a treaty.

Of course, the final say in this regard belongs to the Egyptian people. But the Egyptian people, who have suffered so much and for so long from Israeli criminality and aggression, and barbarianism doesn't seem to give that treaty the benefit of the doubt, that is if there is any doubt about the treaty's ignominious nature and disastrous legacy.

I realize that spasmodic and uncalculated statements may do more harm than good. However, there should be no question as to the pressing need to renegotiate that treaty if only because the government that signed that treaty back in 1979 was not a democratic government, which didn't enjoy the Egyptian people's acceptance.

This week, a Muslim Brotherhood's leader, Rashad Bayoumy, made it very clear that the Brotherhood will not recognize the "criminal state of Israel."

"Is it a pre-condition to recognize Israel in order to govern? This is not possible, no matter what the circumstances are. We don't recognize Israel at all. It is a criminal occupier."

Bayoumy, who is deputy to the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, stressed that no member of the Brotherhood will ever sit down with an Israeli.

"I will not allow myself to sit with a criminal. We will not deal with them in any way."

He added that the Brotherhood may hold a national referendum to measure public opinion before taking a final decision about the treaty.

"We will take all the correct legal procedures with the treaty, it is not biding for me, and the people will have the final opinion about it.

"We didn't agree to the peace treaty; we will take all respectable legal procedures towards it. I believe we have the right to present it to the people and the elected parliament so that they can come to a decision about it."

The above words spell resolve but impetuousness as they reflect the long-suppressed disdain and rejection among Egyptians of a so-called peace treaty that enabled Israel to gang on the Palestinians and arrogated the remainder of their homeland.

In the final analysis, Egypt can and should hold Israel to account over the clauses of the treaty which make it an integral part of a wider process which also includes resolving the Palestinian question in accordance with UN Security Council 242 and 338.

However, since Israel has violated these resolutions rather starkly and scandalously, if only by building hundreds of Jewish colonies on occupied land, and by transferring hundreds of thousands of its citizens to live on land that belongs to another people, Egypt should be able to downgrade its commitment to and compliance with the infamous treaty to the bare minimum.

Such a posture on Egypt's part wouldn't be viewed as declaration of war or even a unilateral promulgation of the treaty. It would only be viewed as a necessary measure reflecting Egypt 's sovereignty and national will.

There is no doubt that the treaty and relations with Israel will be a litmus test for the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) as well as the other Islamist party, the Nur, representing the Salafi brothers.

The Islamists under all circumstances must keep a distance from Israel even if bullied, coerced and pressured by the United States to behave otherwise. Any concession, real or imagined, in this regard will cost the Islamists dearly in terms of their standing in the eyes of the people.

The Islamists must not allow themselves to gain acceptance and favor from the criminal entity and her supporters, especially the Jewish-controlled US Congress, at the expense of the Egyptian people's acceptance of the Islamists.

In Egypt as elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world, there is a mutually exclusive relationship between having normal relations with Israel and being accepted and respected by the masses. A government, including an Islamist or quasi-Islamist government, can only have either good relations with Israel and her supporters on the one hand, or acceptance and respect from the people, on the other. It can't have both, period.

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

The dynamic of democratic, nationalist and class struggles throughout the Muslim world has set in motion a new constellation of alliances between the imperial West (US and European Union) and Islamist parties, leaders and regimes, dubbed "moderate" by US officials, propagandists and academics.

This essay analyzes the changing contemporary context of imperial domination, especially the demise of longstanding client regimes. It then examines the previous significant ties between western imperial powers and Islamist movements and regimes and the basis of 'historical collaboration'.

The third part of the paper will outline the political circumstances in which the imperial powers embrace "moderate" Islamists in government and utilize "armed fundamentalists" in opposition to secular regimes. We will critically analyze how "moderate" Islam is defined by the Western imperialist powers. Is this a tactical or strategic alliance? What are the political "trade-offs"? What do imperialism's neo-liberal clients and their new 'moderate' Muslim allies have in common and how do they differ?

In conclusion we will evaluate the viability of this alliance and its capacity to contain and deflect the popular democratic movements and repress the burgeoning class and national struggles, especially in regard to the 'obstacles' posed by the Israel-US-Zionist ties and the continued IMF policies which promise to worsen the crises in the Muslim countries.

The Transition from Neo-Liberal Client Rulers to Power-Sharing with Moderate Islamists

The key motivation in Washington's and the European imperial troika's (England, France and Germany) embrace of what their press and officialdom hail as "moderate" Islamist parties has been the collapse or weakening of their long-term client rulers. Faced with the ouster of Mubarak, in Egypt, Ali in Tunisia and Saleh in Yemen, mass protests in Morocco and Algeria, the US-EU turned to conservative Muslim leaders who were willing to work within the existing state institutional framework (including the army and state police), uphold the capitalist order and align with the empire against anti-imperial movements and states. In Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) (the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood), in Tunisia the Renaissance Party, in Morocco the Justice and Development Party have all indicated their willingness to serve as reliable partners in blocking the pro-democracy movements that challenge the socio-economic status quo and the long-standing military-imperial linkages.

The Islamist collaborators are called "moderate and respectable" because they agree to participate in elections within the boundaries of the established political and economic order; they have dropped any criticism of imperial and colonial treaties and trade agreements signed by the previous client regions - including ones which collaborate with Israel's colonization of Palestine.

Equally important "moderate" means supporting imperial wars against nationalist and secular Arab republics, such as Syria and Libya, and isolating and/or repressing class based trade unions and secular-left parties.

"Moderate" Islamists have become the Empire's 'contraceptive of choice' against any chance the massive Arab peoples' revolt might give birth to substantive egalitarian social changes and bring those brutal pro- western officials, responsible for so many crimes against humanity, to justice.

The West and their client officials in the military and police have agreed to a kind of "power-sharing' with the moderate/respectable (read 'reactionary') Islamist parties. The Islamists would be responsible for imposing orthodox economic policies and re-establishing 'order' (i.e. bolstering the existing one) in partnership with pro-multinational bank economists and pro US-EU generals and security officials. In exchange the Islamists could take certain ministries, appoint their members, finance electoral clientele among the poor and push their 'moderate' religious, social and cultural agenda. Basically, the elected Islamists would replace the old corrupt dictatorial regimes in running the state and signing off on more free trade agreements with the EU. Their role would keep the leftists, nationalists and populists out of power and from gaining mass support. Their job would substitute spiritual solace and "inner worth" via Islam in place of redistributing land, income and power from the elite, including the foreign multi-nationals to the peasants, workers, unemployed and exploited low-paid employees.

Why the Empire Arms Fundamentalist Anti-Secular Muslims

While the US and EU have backed respectable "moderate Islam" in heading off a popular upheaval of the young and unemployed, in other contexts they have enlisted violent, fundamentalist Islamic terrorists to overthrow secular independent anti-imperialists regimes - like Libya, Syria - just as they had done earlier in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. The US, Qatar and the European troika financed and armed Libyan fundamentalist militias and then engaged in a murderous eight months air and sea assault to ensure their client's 'victory' over the secular Gaddafi regime. Fresh from NATO's success, the US, the European 'Troika' and Turkey, with the backing of the League of Arab collaborator princes and emirs, have financed a violent Muslim Brotherhood insurrection in Syria, intent on destroying the nationalist economy and modern secular state.

The US and EU have openly unleashed their fundamentalists allies in order to destroy independent adversaries in the name of "democracy" and 'humanitarian intervention', a laughable claim in light of decade long colonial wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. All target regimes have one crime in common: Using their national resources to develop modern secular states - independent of imperial dictates.

NATO implements its campaigns through conservative 'moderate' or armed fundamentalist Islamist movements depending on the specific needs, circumstances and range of options in any given target nation. With the fall of pro-Empire 'secular dictatorships' in Egypt and Tunisia, pliable conservative Islamist leaders are the fall back "lesser evil". When the opportunity to overthrow an independent secular or nationalist regime arises, armed and violent fundamentalist mercenaries become the political vehicle of choice.

As with European empires in the past, the modern Western imperial countries have relied on retrograde religious parties and leaders to collaborate and serve their economic and military interests and to provide mercenaries for imperial armies to savage any anti-imperialist social revolutionaries. In that sense US and European rulers are neither 'pro nor anti' Islam, it all depends on their national and class position. Islamists who collaborate with Empire are "moderate" allies and if they attack an anti-imperialist regime, they become 'freedom fighters'. On the other hand, they become "terrorists" or "fundamentalists" when they oppose imperial occupation, pillage or colonial settlements.

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Collaboration

The historical record of western imperial expansion reveals many instances of collaboration and cooptation as well as conflict with Islamist regimes, movements and parties. In the early 1960's the CIA backed a brutal military coup against the secular Indonesian nationalist regime of Sukarno, and encouraged their puppet dictator General Suharto to unleash Muslim militia in a veritable "holy war" exterminating nearly one million leftist trade unionists, school teachers, students, farmers, communists or suspected sympathizers and their family members. The horrific 'Jakarta Option' became a model for CIA operations elsewhere. In Yugoslavia the US and Europe promoted and financed fundamentalists Muslims in Bosnia, importing mujahedeen who would later form part of Al Qaida, and then backed the Kosovo Liberation Army, a known terrorist organization, in order to completely break-up and ethnically 'cleanse' a modern secular multi-national state - going so far as to have Americans and NATO bomb Belgrade for the first time since the Nazis in the Second World War.

During President Carter's administration, the CIA joined with Saudi Arabia's ruling royalty, providing billions of dollars in arms and military supplies to Afghan Muslim fundamentalists in their brutal but successful Jihad overthrowing a modern, secular nationalist regime backed by the USSR. The murderous fate of school teachers and educated women in the aftermath was quickly covered up.

Needless to say, wherever US imperialism faces leftists or secular, modernizing anti-imperialist regimes, Washington turns to retrograde Islamic leaders willing and able to destroy the progressive regime in return for imperialist support. Such coalitions are built mainly around fundamentalist and moderate Islamist opposition to secular, class- based politics allied with the Empire's hostility to any anti-imperialist challenge to its domination..

The same 'coalition' of Islamists and the Empire has been glaringly obvious during the NATO assault on Libya and continues against Syria: The Muslims provide the shock troops on the ground; NATO provides the aerial bombing, funds, arms, sanctions, embargoes and propaganda.

These Islamist-Imperialist coalitions are usually temporary, based on a common secular or nationalist enemy and not on any common strategic interest. After the defeat of a secular anti-imperialist regime, militant Muslims may find themselves attacked by the colonial neo-liberal regime most favored by the imperial west. This happened in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the overseas Islamist fighters (Afghan Arabs) returned to their own neo-colonized, collaborating home countries, like Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt and elsewhere.

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Conflict

The relation between Islamist regimes and imperialism is complex, changing and full of examples of bloody conflict.

The US backed the "modernizing" free market dictatorship of the Shah in Iran, overthrowing the nationalist Mosaddegh regime. They provided arms and intelligence for the Savak, the Shah's monstrous secret police as it hunted down and murdered tens of thousands of nationalist-Islamists and leftist resistance fighters and critics in Iran and abroad. The rise to power of the fundamentalist-anti-imperialist Khomeini regime fueled US armed attacks and provoked retaliatory moves: Iran backed and financed anti-colonial Islamist groups in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (the Shia parties).

Subsequent to 9/11 the US invaded and overthrew the Islamist Taliban regime, re-colonized the country, establishing a puppet regime under US-European auspices. The Taliban and allied Islamist and nationalist resistance fighters organized and established a mass guerrilla army which has engaged in a decade long war with armed support from Pakistani Islamist forces responding to US military incursions.

In Palestine, Washington, under the overweening control of Israel's Zionist fifth column, has armed and financed Israel's war against the popularly elected Palestinian Islamist Hamas government in Gaza. Washington's total commitment to the Jewish state and its colonial expansion and usurpation of Palestinian (Muslim and Christian) lands and property in Jerusalem and elsewhere reflects the profound and pervasive influence of the Zionist power configuration throughout the US political system .They secure 90% votes in Congress, pledges of allegiance from the White House, and senior appointments in Treasury, State Department and the Pentagon.

What determines whether the US Empire will have a collaborative or conflict-ridden relation with Islam depends on the specific political context. The US allies with Islamists when faced with nationalist, leftist and secular democratic regimes and movements, especially where their optimal choice, a military-neo-liberal alternative is relatively weak. However, faced with a nationalist, anti-colonial Islamist regime (as is the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Washington will side with pro-western liberals, dissident Muslim clerics, pliable tribal chiefs, separatist ethnic minorities and pro-Western generals.

The key to US-Islamist relations from the White House perspective is based on the Islamists' attitude toward empire, class politics, NATO and the "free market" (private foreign investment).

Today's 'moderate' Islamist parties in Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco (and elsewhere), which have offered their support to NATO and its wars against Libya and Syria, uphold 'private property' (i.e. foreign and imperialist client control of key industries) and repress independent working class and anti-imperialist parties: They are the Empire's "new partners" in the pillage of the resource-rich Middle East and North Africa.

The US-brokered counter-revolutionary alliance among moderate Islamists, the previous military rulers and Washington is fraught with tensions. The military demands total impunity and a continuation of its economic privileges; this includes a veto on any legislation addressing the previous regime's brutal crimes against its own people. On the other hand, the Islamist parties uphold their electoral victories and demand majority rule. Washington insists the alliance adhere to its policy toward Israel and abandon their support for the Palestinian national struggle. As these tensions and conflicts deepen, the alliance could collapse ushering in a new phase of conflict and instability.

Emblematic of "moderate Islamiist" collaboration with US-EU imperialism is the role of Qatar, home to the 'respectable' Arabic media giant, Al-Jazeera, and the demagogic Qatari "spiritual guide" Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi. Sheik Youssef quotes the Koran and Islamic moral principles in defense of NATO's 8-month aerial bombing of Libya, which killed over 50,000 pro-regime Libyans (themselves Muslims). He calls for armed imperial intervention in Syria to overthrow the secular Assad regime, a position he shares comfortably with the state of Israel. He urges the "moderate Islamists" in Egypt and Tunisia to cease any criticism of the existing economic order, ( see "Spiritual guide steers Arabs to moderation", Financial Times, December 9, 2011 - p5). In a word, this respectable Muslim cleric is NATO's perfect Koran-quoting "moderate Islamist" partner - a dream come true.

The Strategic Utility of "Moderate" Islamist Parties

Islamist parties are approached by the Empire's policy elites only when they have a mass following and can therefore weaken any popular, nationalist insurgency. Mass-based Islamist parties serve the empire by providing "legitimacy", by winning elections and by giving a veneer of respectability to the pro-imperial military and police apparatus retained in place from the overthrown client state dictatorships.

The Islamist parties compete at the "grass roots" with the leftists. They build up a clientele of supporters among the poor in the countryside and urban slums through organized charity and basic social services administered at the mosques and humanitarian religious foundations. Because they reject class struggle and are intensely hostile to the left (with its secular, pro-feminist and working-class agenda), they have been 'half-tolerated' by the dictatorship, while the leftist activists are routinely murdered. Subsequently, with the overthrow of the dictatorship, the Islamists emerge intact with the strongest national organizational network as the country's 'natural leaders' from the religious-bazaar merchant political elite. Their leaders offer to serve the empire and its traditional native military collaborators in exchange for a 'slice of power', especially over morality, culture, religion and households (women), in other words, the "micro-society".

For their part, they offer to marginalize and undermine the left, anti-imperialist secular democrats in the streets. In the face of mass popular rebellion calling into question the imperial order, a 'moderate' Islamist-imperial partnership is a 'heavenly deal' praised in Washington, Paris or London (as well as Riyadh and Tel Aviv).

Conclusion: How Viable is the Imperial-Islamic Coalition?

Those who thought that the spontaneous pro-democracy movements spelled the end of the imperial order left out the role of organized "moderate" Islamist electoral parties as able collaborators of Empire. The brutally repressed mass mobilization of unemployed youth was no match for the well-funded grass roots community organization of the moderate Islamists. This is especially true when politics shifted from the street to the ballot box, a process that the Islamist parties facilitated. In the absence of a mass revolutionary party, seeking state power, the existing military-police state was able to work around the mass protesters and put together a power sharing agreement at least in the short-run.

In the November 2011 elections, the radical Egyptian Islamist party, Nour, gathered one-quarter of the vote in Cairo and Alexandria. Their showing was even higher among the urban poor districts, which promises even greater support among poor rural constituencies in the coming elections. Essentially a Salafist Islamist party, Nour, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, combined denunciations of class abuses and elite corruption with mass appeals to a return to a mythic harmonious life. They used effective grass roots organizing around basic services in order to gain a greater proportion of the working class vote than all the leftist parties combined. Nour's message of "class retribution against the ...abuses of Egypt's elite fueled Nour's new found popularity", (Financial Times December 10, 2011 p6).

Despite the successes of the Islamist-Imperial partnership, the world economic crises and especially the growing unemployment and misery in the Arab countries will make it difficult for the 'respectable moderate' Islamists to stabilize their societies. They are inextricably constrained by their alliances to function within the confines of the 'orthodox neo-liberal framework' imposed by the Empire. For that reason, the "moderate" Islamists will try to co-opt some secular liberals, social democrats and even a few leftists as 'minority partners', so that they won't be held solely responsible for dashing the expectations of the poor in their countries.

The fact of the matter is that the pro-imperial Islamist parties have absolutely no answer to the current crises: Charities delivered from the mosque during the dictatorship won them mass support; now more austerity programs imposed from their ministerial posts will certainly alienate and infuriate their mass base. What will follow depends on who is best organized: Liberals are limited to media campaigns and tied to economic orthodoxy; the leftists have to advance from protest movements in the downtown squares to organized political units operating in popular neighborhoods, workplaces, markets, villages and slums. Otherwise radical fundamentalist, like the Salafists, will exploit the people's outrage with moderate Islamist betrayals and promote their own version of a closed clerical society, opposing the West while repressing the Left.

The US and EU may have 'temporarily' avoided revolution by accommodating electoral reforms and adapting to alliances with "moderate" Islamists, but their ongoing military interventions and their own growing economic crisis will simply postpone a more decisive conflict in the near future.

* James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

In history, it is sometimes necessary to pause, reflect, assess and draw conclusions (and lines) which may be passed to future generations just in case we mortals miss the link. It is with this in mind that we may recall and connect two iconic events, though spaced by thousands of miles and 36 eventful years, which bring to mind an incredible image.

The first event took place in April 1975 as America was desperately counting the days to its final evacuation of Saigon (South Vietnam's capital city at the time) after its bloodiest war in SE Asia since WW2.

America was caught unaware by the speed with which the Viet Cong were advancing south towards Saigon. The ruling Vietnamese Junta, like all corrupt dictators, sped away to 'exit' in limousines and armoured personnel carriers leaving behind remnants of their corrupt regimes. In the desperate attempt to evacuate its military, secret service and CIA personnel from Saigon, the United State military had to send helicopters to lift its citizens out of buildings from the centre of Saigon because the city gates were jammed by massive queues of people running for the exit and the Viet Cong closing any major highway leading out of the city.

One iconic photo which, until today, captures the Fall of Saigon, showed American personnel being airlifted from the roof top of what was believed by many to be the American Embassy in Saigon, and which turned out to be the HQ building of the CIA in Saigon. This is confirmed by Hubert Van Es, the photographer who took that picture.

The headlines on the front pages of some US mainstream media outlets at the time was: "American escapes on helicopter skids".

photo copyright: H Van Es

Thirty six years later, a similar event took place in Cairo last Friday when, Egyptians, still smarting from their success in Tahrir Square but now very angry at the killing of 6 Egyptian border guards last month in Sharm-El-Sheikh by the Israeli enemy, stormed the Israeli embassy compound in Cairo after Friday prayers, and penetrated its perimeter wall in an attempt to enter the embassy building itself. It was reported that the Israeli ambassador, his family and most of the staff were whisked away by Israeli military aircraft, leaving behind a number of their own quarantined in the basement area of the building.

Only a desperate telephone call placed in the middle of the night by Benyamin Netanyahu, PM of Israel to Barack Obama, president of the United States, managed to save these guys as Israeli helicopters hovered above to pull them out and whisk them to safety. God knows if they were Mossad agents seconded to the embassy.

Unlike the Saigon event, no pictures of this particular escape are available (as this escape was typically planned at night). Only images of the Egyptian people storming the Israeli 'wall' of the compound were running on the front pages of Middle East news media.

Egyptian people storming the Israeli wall - Cairo

From Saigon to Cairo, there exists a geographical line which, if drawn accurately, will pass through Sharm-El-Sheikh.

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pretty cool, mish kida?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Courtesy of Skulz Fontaine

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

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

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

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

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

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

As the bird sang:

"خبيني عندك خبيني دخلك يا نونو"

The angelic voice of اميمة الخليل

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

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

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

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

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

Uri Avnery, intrepid columnist, ageless Israeli peace activist, and retired IDF soldier, has seen, up close, the actions of every government Israeli voters have put in office since the nation was created.

He is not fooled by the antics, decisions and deceptions of the current Israeli right-wing government. Avnery peers into the soul of the Netanyahu-Lieberman team and reports back to his readers the dark visions he finds there.

With a wisdom that was sadly missing from US media following 911, Avnery writes that the recent deadly exchange of fire in the southern Sinai gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the excuse he needed to change Israel's public conversation. Avnery calls his posting, "The Return of the Generals".

At the beginning of the week, Binyamin Netanyahu was desperately looking for a way out of an escalating internal crisis. The social protest movement was gathering momentum and posing a growing danger to his government. The struggle was going on, but the protest had already made a huge difference. The whole content of the public discourse had changed beyond recognition.

The city square of Tel Aviv has been covered with protesters living in tents. There was danger the Arab Spring spirit would soon engulf the region's so-called "Only Democracy".

Talk of "security" was pushed aside. As Avnery put it, TV talk show panels, which had previously been filled with "used generals", were now packed with social workers and professors of economics.

And then it happened. A small extremist Islamist group in the Gaza Strip sent a detachment into the Egyptian Sinai desert, from where it easily crossed the undefended Israeli border and created havoc. Several fighters (or terrorists, depends who is talking) succeeded in killing eight Israeli soldiers and civilians, before some of them were killed. Another four of their comrades were killed on the Egyptian side of the border. The aim seems to have been to capture another Israeli soldier, to strengthen the case for a prisoner exchange on their terms.

In a communications pattern familiar to American consumers of radio and TV news, discussions by economic experts about young people angry about jobs and housing were replaced by the "old gang of exes – ex-generals, ex-secret-service chiefs, ex-policemen, all male, of course, accompanied by their entourage of obsequious military correspondents and far-right politicians".

Netanyahu was once again playing the role that allowed him to be seen as "the he-man, the resolute fighter, the Defender of Israel". He became George W. Bush after 911, when the cowboy president from Texas grabbed a bull horn at Ground Zero and pledged to hunt down those dirty, murderous people who dared to attack the homeland.

After the Eilat clash Netanyahu sent his forces into action, not waiting for verification as to the source of the attackers. Richard Silverstein, writing on his Tikun Olan blog, finds that this attack handed Israel a "gift".

This is exactly the sort of gift that Israeli rightists like Bibi Netanyahu love. Faced with a mounting internal crisis in the form of the J14 movement, Palestinian rejectionists have handed him his "Get Out of Political Crisis Free" card.

Yesterday's attack in Eilat has fueled an Israeli reaction that can be described as uncontrollable fury, which has killed 14 including three children. Today [August 19], an Israeli drone performed heroically for the fatherland by incinerating a car (or in other reports a motorcycle) carrying a Palestinian doctor and his family to hospital seeking treatment for a sick child.

The doctor, his brother, and the doctor's little boy were killed in the attack. Ynet announced: Oops, we missed. The drone was aiming for a terrorist cell traveling nearby. WAFA says the doctor's brother was an Al Quds commander, which would mean that the IDF is willing to kill sick 2 year old children in order to get alleged terrorists as well.

In a flash, Netanyahu had changed the subject, just as Bush changed the subject in 2001 from the economy to "security against terrorists". The Israeli leader is not concerned with the truth. He will leave that task to future revisionist historians. The Israeli leader wants only to fire up the fear of the populace and remind them that security is to be found only in the military prowess of the world's fourth largest military force.

On his blog, War in Context, Paul Woodward posted a video clip of an interview with an IDF officer which suggests that the Israel retaliation attack on Gaza was carried out before Netanyahu could identify the culprits involved. In the posted video interview with an IDF official, Woodward found that the government's own military leaders did not know exactly who had attacked the Israeli bus.

So, the IDF says it "knows" the gunmen came from Gaza because they were using Kalashnikovs. That's about as logical as saying they know they came from Gaza because they appeared to be Arabs.

Why then is Israel now bombing Gaza? Simply because it bombs Gaza every chance it gets. It bombs Gaza knowing that Washington will never object. It bombs Gaza because whenever Jews are killed the easiest form of revenge is to kill Palestinians — even when those particular Palestinians most likely have nothing whatsoever to do with the deaths that triggered this particular cycle of violence.

Why, indeed, is Israel once again bombing Gaza? One rather obvious answer is that the Israeli public must be persuaded that Palestinians are not to be trusted to form their own government. The pattern is obvious. Israel is in danger of losing the September 20 vote for Palestinian statehood in the United Nations General Assembly. Latest predictions from Palestinian officials: They are only three to five votes short of obtaining a majority in their favor.

Since President Obama is on record promising to veto a subsequent Security Council vote for Palestinian membership in the UN, there is no chance that this will be the year UN grants statehood status to the Palestinian Authority delegation.

Meanwhile, Israel maintains its stubborn posture in the battle of "apologies" in the region, rejecting the demand from Turkey that Israel apologize for its deadly assault by naval commandos that killed nine Turkish citizens traveling on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza on May 30, 2010.

When Israel refused to apologize for the attack Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel and has subsequently announced that "it would launch a diplomatic and legal assault on Israel". Sources in the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Turkey would implement "Plan B", which will include an anti-Israel campaign in UN institutions, with an emphasis on the International Court of Justice.

Turkey also plans to encourage the families of the raid's victims to file suits against senior Israeli figures in European courts.

Also on the apology front, the Cairo News reports that Egypt has demanded an apology from Israel for the deaths of three police officers in the IDF attacks along the Egyptian-Gaza border this week.

Late Saturday afternoon, Israel took the unusual step-unusual for Israel, which rarely acknowledges mistakes–of "regretting" the deaths of the Egyptian police officers:

Breaking a customary silence on the Sabbath, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, released a statement saying, "We regret the deaths of members of the Egyptian security forces during the terror attack on the Israeli-Egyptian border."

Mr. Barak, who had seemed on Thursday to blame lax Egyptian security for allowing the attacks near the border, said that after an internal inquiry, an Israeli-Egyptian committee would investigate. And he went on to note the importance of the peace treaty with Egypt and his admiration for the judgment and responsibility of the Egyptian people.

These events all occurred after 81 members of the US House of Representatives returned to their home districts, basking in the warm hospitality of their Israeli hosts. One of those House members was Jesse Jackson, Jr., who, before he returned home, wrote a column for the Jerusalem Post, which included these paragraphs:

Marwan Barghouti, even though he has been jailed since 2002, is an influential Fatah leader who is serving five life sentences for acts committed in the second intifada. He has called "on our people in the homeland and in the diaspora to go out in a peaceful, million man march during the week of voting in the United Nations in September."

He told an Egyptian news service that a US veto would be a "historic, deadly mistake" and that there would be strong protests throughout the Arab and Muslim world and beyond. Does a convicted terrorist who has used violence in the past, and has not ruled out its use in the future, really have the moral authority and credibility to advocate a nonviolent march and be believable?

Good question, Congressman, which leads to a follow up question: You express such familiarity with the Israeli hasbara narrative, that your constituents might want to ask if you are also familiar with the Palestinian narrative which would provide you with a different take on the career of Marwan Barghouti.

Congressman Jackson, yes, he is the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., had previously expressed interest in receiving a direct appointment to the US Senate seat from the now-disgraced former Governor Rod Blagojevich, the seat which President Obama vacated to move to the White House. It was the "attempted sale" of that seat that pending appeals, is expected to send Blagojevich to a federal prison.

If Congressman Jackson still wants to run for that seat with the backing of the same AIPAC-related forces that funded his August visit to Israel, he would have to first win a Democratic primary and then compete with Republican incumbent Senator Mark Kirk. Why would AIPAC, a long time backer of Kirk, turn its favors to Jackson?

Kirk has his detractors in Illinois, as the lively video below, suggests. Sing along, and if you are of a mind to do so, drop Senator Kirk a note and ask him about the "moral authority" of the IDF drone that killed "a Palestinian doctor, his brother, and the doctor's little boy in Gaza".

Video link: http://youtu.be/7cNTd1JmZ0E

The video at the end of the posting was uploaded to YouTube by The Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine (CJPIP), based in Chicago.

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

By Uri Avnery* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" asked the prophet Amos (3:3). Well, seems they can.

This was proved again this week.

AT THE beginning of the week, Binyamin Netanyahu was desperately looking for a way out of an escalating internal crisis. The social protest movement was gathering momentum and posing a growing danger to his government.

The struggle was going on, but the protest had already made a huge difference. The whole content of the public discourse had changed beyond recognition.

Social ideas were taking over, pushing aside the hackneyed talk about "security". TV talk show panels, previously full of used generals, were now packed with social workers and professors of economics. One of the consequences was that women were also much more prominent.

And then it happened. A small extremist Islamist group in the Gaza Strip sent a detachment into the Egyptian Sinai desert, from where it easily crossed the undefended Israeli border and created havoc. Several fighters (or terrorists, depends who is talking) succeeded in killing eight Israeli soldiers and civilians, before some of them were killed. Another four of their comrades were killed on the Egyptian side of the border. The aim seems to have been to capture another Israeli soldier, to strengthen the case for a prisoner exchange on their terms.

In a jiffy, the economics professors vanished from the TV screens, and their place was taken by the old gang of exes – ex-generals, ex-secret-service chiefs, ex-policemen, all male, of course, accompanied by their entourage of obsequious military correspondents and far-right politicians.

With a sigh of relief, Netanyahu returned to his usual stance. Here he was, surrounded by generals, the he-man, the resolute fighter, the Defender of Israel.

IT WAS, for him and his government, an incredible stroke of luck.

It can be compared to what happened in 1982. Ariel Sharon, then Minister of Defense, had decided to attack the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, He flew to Washington to obtain the necessary American agreement. Alexander Haig told him that the US could not agree, unless there was a "credible provocation".

A few days later, the most extreme Palestinian group, led by Abu Nidal, Yasser Arafat's mortal enemy, made an attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador in London, paralyzing him irreversibly. That was certainly a "credible provocation". Lebanon War I was on its way.

This week's attack was also an answer to a prayer. Seems that God loves Netanyahu and the military establishment. The incident not only wiped the protest off the screen, it also put an end to any serious chance of taking billions off the huge military budget in order to strengthen the social services. On the contrary, the event proved that we need a sophisticated electronic fence along the 150 miles of our desert border with Sinai. More, not less, billions for the military.

BEFORE THIS miracle occurred, it looked as if the protest movement was unstoppable.

Whatever Netanyahu did was too little, too late, and just wrong.

In the first days, Netanyahu treated the whole thing as a childish prank, unworthy of the attention of responsible adults. When he realized that this movement was serious, he mumbled some vague proposals for lowering the price of apartments, but by then the protest had already moved far beyond the original demand for "affordable housing". The slogan was now "The People Want Social Justice"

After the huge 250,000-strong demonstration in Tel Aviv, the protest leaders were facing a dilemma: how to proceed? Yet another mass protest in Tel Aviv might mean falling attendance. The solution was sheer genius: not another big demonstration in Tel Aviv, but smaller demonstrations all over the country. This disarmed the reproach that the protesters are spoiled Tel Aviv brats, "sushi eaters and water-pipe smokers" as one minister put it. It also brought the protest to the masses of disadvantaged Oriental Jewish inhabitants of the "periphery", from Afula in the North to Beer Sheva in the South, most of them the traditional voters of Likud. It became a love-fest of fraternization.

So what does a run-of-the-mill politician do in such a situation? Well, of course, he appoints a committee. So Netanyahu told a respectable professor with a good reputation to set up a committee which would, in cooperation with nine ministers, no less, come up with a set of solutions. He even told him that he was ready to completely change his own convictions.

(He did already change one of his convictions when he announced in 2009 that he now advocates the Two-State Solution. But after that momentous about-face, absolutely nothing changed on the ground.)

The youngsters in the tents joked that "Bibi" could not change his opinions, because he has none. But that is a mistake – he does indeed have very definite opinions on both the national and the social levels: "the whole of Eretz Israel" on the one, and Reagan-Thatcher economic orthodoxy on the other.

The young tent leaders countered the appointment of the establishment committee with an unexpected move: they appointed a 60-strong advisory council of their own, composed of some of the most prominent university professors, including an Arab female professor and a moderate rabbi, and headed by a former deputy governor of the Bank of Israel.

The government committee has already made it clear that it will not deal with middle class problems but concentrate on those of the lowest socio-economic groups. Netanyahu has added that he will not automatically adopt their (future) recommendations, but weight them against the economic possibilities. In other words, he does not trust his own nominees to understand the economic facts of life.

AT THAT point, Netanyahu and his aides pinned their hopes on two dates: September and November 2011.

In November, the rainy season usually sets in. No drop of rain before that. But when it starts to rain cats and dogs, it was hoped in Netanyahu's office, the spoiled Tel Aviv kids will run for shelter. End of the Rothschild tent city.

Well, I remember spending some miserable weeks in the winter of the 1948 war in worse tents, in the midst of a sea of mud and water. I don't think that the rain will make the tent-dwellers give up their struggle, even if Netanyahu's religious partners send the most fervent Jewish prayers for rain to the high heavens.

But before that, in September, just a few weeks away, the Palestinians – it was hoped - would start a crisis that will divert attention. This week they already submitted to the UN General Assembly a request to recognize the State of Palestine. The Assembly will most probably accede. Avigdor Lieberman has already enthusiastically assured us that the Palestinians are planning a "bloodbath" at that time. Young Israelis will have to exchange their tents in Tel Aviv for the tents in the West Bank army camps.

It's a nice dream (for the Liebermans), but Palestinians had so far showed no inclination to violence.

All that changed this week.

FROM NOW on, Netanyahu and his colleagues can direct events as they wish.

They have already "liquidated" the chiefs of the group which carried out the attack, called "the Popular Resistance Committees". This happened while the fire-fight along the border was still going on. The army had been forewarned and was ready. The fact that the attackers succeeded nevertheless in crossing the border and shooting at vehicles was ascribed to an operational failure.

What now? The group in Gaza will fire rockets in retaliation. Netanyahu can – if he so wishes – kill more Palestinian leaders, military and civilian. This can easily set off a vicious circle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, leading to a full-scale Molten Lead-style war. Thousands of rockets on Israel, thousands of bombs on the Gaza Strip. One ex-military fool already argued that the entire Gaza Strip will have to be re-occupied.

In other words, Netanyahu has his hand on the tap of violence, and he can raise or lower the flames at will.

His desire to put an end to the social protest movement may well play a role in his decisions.

THIS BRINGS us back to the big question of the protest movement: can one bring about real change, as distinct from forcing some grudging concessions from the government, without becoming a political force?

Can this movement succeed as long as there is a government which has the power to start - or deepen - a "security crisis" at any time?

And the related question: can one talk about social justice without talking about peace?

A few days ago, while strolling among the tents on Rothschild Boulevard, I was asked by an internal radio station to give an interview and address the tent-dwellers. I said: "You don't want to talk about peace, because you want to avoid being branded as 'leftists". I respect that. But social justice and peace are two sides of the same coin, they cannot be separated. Not only because they are based on the same moral principles, but also because in practice they depend on each other."

When I said that, I could not have imagined how clearly this would be demonstrated only two days later.

REAL CHANGE means replacing this government with a new and very different political set up.

Here and there people in the tents are already talking about a new party. But elections are two years away, and for the time being there is no sign of a real crack in the right-wing coalition that might bring the elections closer. Will the protest be able to keep up its momentum for two whole years?

Israeli governments have yielded in the past to mass demonstrations and public uprisings. The formidable Golda Meir resigned in the face of mass demonstrations blaming her for the omissions that led to the fiasco at the start of the Yom Kippur War. The government coalitions of both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak in the 1990s broke under the pressure of an indignant public opinion.

Can this happen now? In view of the military flare-up this week, it does not look likely. But stranger things have happened between heaven and earth, especially in Israel, the land of limited impossibilities.

* Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, writer and peace activist. Author of 1948: A Soldier's Tale - The Bloody Road to Jerusalem.

By Adam Keller * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

By Carlos Latuff

It had been a difficult month for Prime Minister Netanyahu – truly, a very hard month. A Prime Minister under siege, caught in a bind. Tent encampments and more tent encampments sprouting up all over the country, demonstrations and protests and more demonstrations. The demands for affordable housing and for Social Justice and for a Welfare State occupy the center stage, and the Free Market economics which Netanyahu had worked so hard to foster since he was Finance Minister are suddenly cast into doubt. What did he not try? He used sticks and he used carrots, he tried to entice the protesters with committees and benefits and rabbits drawn from the hat and he tried to castigate them as Leftists and pampered sushi-eaters, and they went on to protest and demonstrate and extend ever further the tent encampments and get their rallies to the peak of three hundred thousands in Tel Aviv. Just yesterday morning, the protesters arrived at the home of Eyal Gabbai, Nethanyahu's Chef de Bureau, and he spoke forthrightly and made it clear to them that the Free Market system will not change, and there will be no taxation on the rich and there will be no Welfare State in Israel. And these cheeky youths did not accept these clear clarifications from their government, and just announced that they will increase ever more their protests and demonstrations.

How, how to change the focus and move the public agenda in a different direction? Perhaps finally September will come and the Palestinians will go to the UN and demand to have their state and thus help to distract public opinion in Israel? But the big show at the UN is only due on September 20, how to get through another month until then? Besides, would even that change the tendency of public opinion? What if the Palestinians hold mass demonstrations in late September, without any violence, and demand to have some Social Justice, to be free in their country and no longer live under occupation – would this be enough to change the agenda? It might even get a bit of sympathy among Israelis.

But not all is lost, and relief for the harassed Netanyahu came from the usual quarter, out of the deserts of Sinai came the dramatic initiative to change the Israeli public agenda. And it so happened that Israel's fine security services had long since prepared a plan to liquidate Gazan leaders which just needed to be put into operation, and now put into operation it was forthwith, and all at once Israel's Air Force took off for Rafah and made the hit, an instant and huge success, and immediately afterwards could the Prime Minister make a full-blooded patriotic Address to the Nation people over all channels and offer congratulations to the brave soldiers and the valiant pilots and the diligent security operatives and deliver a stern warning to the Palestinians and offer condolences to the bereaved and wish the injured a speedy recovery and how great it felt at last to make a long speech without a single word about social problems, just like in the good old days. And of course, as soon as Gaza was hit, Israelis all over the South knew that the time has come to seek shelter and expect the worst, and indeed the Qassam and Grad rockets were not slow in coming, naturally prompting the Air Force to counter-attack on more Gaza targets and bring on more missiles on Israel the escalation is mutually escalating - and who would now dare demand a cut the in the defense budget in order to promote social causes?

But what the social protest activists do now in their tent encampments? Would they quietly yield to the changed agenda and meekly disappear from the scene? If that's what Netanyahu is counting on, he should think again.

I would like to give the floor to Social Protest activists, with a selection of messages posted in the past twenty-four hours on the Official Housing Protest Facebook Page.

Voices from the grassroots field

Yigal Cohen: We will not let terrorism beat us!

Ittai Hertzberg: I just read this piece of news:
Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara calls upon demonstrators to dismantle their tents and call off their protest, in solidarity with the wounded in the attack, as "it's time to be united in the struggle against terrorism".
Ayoub Kara, don't you have another appointment scheduled with neo-Nazis in Austria?

Arnon Shaked: How sad, Bibi and his government got a terrorist attack just in the nick of time. There is only needed a small military operation to make him happy. That's what they think about human life, it's like a game to them.

Yossi Levy: This protest cannot stop, this protest will not stop. We must continue to protest, we must continue to protest. This protest will not stop! [modeled on a well-known Israeli song].

Friends, do not have to bow down low, we can prove that we can go on. Express our respect for the victims, with quiet rallies, go on going out to protest. Let the wounded heal and recover and rise up from their beds as patients in a better health system!
Let the soldiers on discharge find a better higher education system.
And a better Israel for all citizens.
Continue! Continue!

Tamar Aviyah: We undertake to continue the protest even if military action starts. Protests throughout the country.

Avi Hevroni: Finally, we will have to learn to go on demonstrating even after such events. There is no choice. It can not be stopped. This may sound insensitive but it's not. There is no other way you can keep this issue alive in a country where there is no certainty of tranquility and security.

Avishai E. Edenburg: Now is perhaps the most crucial moment for this movement. We all had this cynical thought, that we would fold everything down and go home like good children, when security issues come to the fore. No. We will not fold down, not until our needs are seriously addressed.

Shlomo Ohana: Friends, let's have a moment of silence for the Housing Protest. It was nice while it lasted, but now it's over.

Bikosh Bik: Well, Shlomo, speak for yourself. If you feel OK with the situation as it is, good for you... But you can't decide for others what is good for them and what they will do or not do.

Eshkar Eldan Cohen: Continue the protest, full steam ahead!
What happened today is a tragedy for the families of those killed and wounded. But it also a tragedy when men and women die from illness because of difficulty in purchasing drugs, or when people's health is damaged because they could not buy proper food, and when disabled people lack what they urgently need, and when people are discharged from hospital prematurely due to shortage of beds in rehabilitation, and when children go to school when their parents could not afford to buy textbooks, when people die because there were no beds free in Intensive Care – all these are tragedies. The military and government failure in their role to defend the border leads to tragedy. Also their failure to take care of daily needs. So the protest must go on, for those who manage to survive and want to go on living.

Meir Ben-Or: Mr. Prime Minister:
After the attack in the south, probably you will probably send out call-up orders also to the leftists who live in tents and eat sushi, just as you will send them the rightists and the settlers. You will sent us into action in Gaza which would probably be followed by overall war, and who knows where it would end. I just ask you, Mr. Netanyahu, for one small favor. Just remember us who will go away to fight for you and for Sarah and for all your distinguished colleagues, and to eat dust (instead of sushi). Of course, if we do not come back from this war, then all bets are off and you are exempt from all obligations...

Ashkar Alden Cohen: Do not go to this delirious war. You do not have to!

Neora Barak: Do not stop the protest in any situation. We are not indifferent. We are consistent and determined, we have patience and we will see who blinks!
Human pain and identification with the families of the victims does not mean giving up the momentum already created. We must not create a dangerous precedent of stopping the demand for social justice. Like it did not contradict the demand for release of Gilead Shalit. Suddenly the government sent a negotiator to Egypt to get him. That was only because the protests put some pepper up their ass.
We should not give up, there is a silent majority looking up with hope at this protest. Do not forget this!

Elad Shechter: The government wants protest forgotten. They asked the Jerusalem encampment to cancel the demonstrations (which shows how much the government thinks only of its own interests ). So it is important to manifest our presence and show that with all the sorrow and the pain, citizens are struggling also to live in a better country!

Not only does the protest not divide the people - it unites them for the first time in decades. The tents strengthen us against enemies from outside as well as inside. There is no contradiction between defending the country and improving it: before '48 we were able to struggle to formulate an ideology and therefore there is no reason we can't do it today. This is our War of Independence.
If the protest organizers cancel the scheduled actions, we would go on without them!

Sivan Wolchinsky: That's right! In Kiryat Shmona there will be a march ending with a rally. Certainly one thing does not come at the expense of the other. You have to remember that in the aftermath of such terrorist attacks the state often defaults on its responsibility to provide aid to the wounded, to give them benefits for disability (physical and mental...). Social Security payments could be very hard for them to get, for no justified reason! This is the real test – now more than ever, get to the streets!

Charles Arthur James: I would like to propose a "middle of the road" solution. Both mourning and a protest. On Saturday night we will not hold mass demonstrations. Events will take place in tents, circles of study, lighting candles in memory of those killed and writing letters of support to the wounded, holding hands and creating a human chain along Rothschild Boulevard, and more activities like this. In this we will show that we are united in pain, but do not let terrorism destroy our struggle for a better quality of life here.

Eyal Ap: The occupation and the settlements are part of what creates such situations, in which we cannot just go on with "a normal protest" that does not touch upon the conflict. That's why we must demand an end to conflict, demand true security which only peace can give.

Bikosh Bik: Eyal, this is not necessarily .. It is also possible to adopt a protest policy that says that the social and economic situation is no less important than the security situation ... without going into the unresolved debate about the conflict.

Matan Bar: We all feel pain and grieving over the deaths of innocents. Our outcry will be the continuation of the protest, despite all. For us, for the dead, and for the mourners. Another "Cast Lead" operation in Gaza? Again an enshrining of the khaki uniforms? Talking of security and silencing the voices on education, equality, welfare? We grieve for and and honor the victims, but we also continue the protest whose hope they also shared. Will will not cooperate with the war drive of Bibi - Barak - Lieberman! We will not run again to kill and die in Gaza under the outworn banner of 'state security'. We will walk in silence at the rally Saturday night, we will remember the dead, and will continue to press our demands upon the ministers and the prime minister!

The protest organizers announce:

We march in silence - the pain of all, the protest of all

On Saturday, August 20 at 9:00 pm, we all march together with the entire Israeli people, from Habima Square to the Charles Clore Garden. It would be a peaceful march with torches and candles, designed to remind the Prime Minister that even in these difficult times, he is still responsible for welfare and health just as he is responsible for security. When the march gets to its destination in the Charles Clore Garden on the Tel Aviv coast, we will all sit on the grass in wide circles or intimate discussion, talk, discuss, argue and sing – everything quietly, in silent respect for and solidarity with the victims of the criminal terrorist attacks.

This is the pain of all, this is the protest of all of us.

Quietly, but firmly. Because the people which demonstrates is the same people which is hit by the fire of our enemies. And their determined demand for a deep change in the order of economic priorities and for comprehensive social justice does not at all come at the expense of fighting terrorism - on the contrary. A people whose members are responsible for each other, struggle together for the future and strength of the State of Israel, are a strong people who can stand up to all their enemies.

Together with in the circles, honoring us with their presence, will be the best of Israel's artists, their voice devoid of the help of microphones, their guitars not connected to any amplifier. They will sing with us in pain and hope, for all of us have no other country - except the State of Israel.

Millie Duluoz: There is no such thing as a silent protest.

Ori Milstein: That's exactly what they want. Be quiet. We're good kids. God forbid that we should demand defense budget cuts. A silent protest is an oxymoron. Like was said here before, there is no need to apologize, no need to reduce our force.
I'm personally going to cry out when I get there. Otherwise it will simply be a surrender, a nail in the protest's coffin. If they manage to silence us now, what would happen if riots break out in September?

Hila V Goldstein: Dear firebrands! People were killed today. In the South there is a kind of war. A silent protest is the best now.

Bar Hefetz: It should not be silent and not be in Tel Aviv, it's time to express social solidarity, go the Gaza border communities and cry out that we're not afraid, not afraid of Hamas, and also not afraid of this evil government which is just trying to scare us and silence us. No, don't be silent!

David Bochris: We undertake to continue the protest even if military operations begin. Protest all over the country!

Ido Daniel: TV stopped talking about the incident and broadcast a miserable program on cooking ..... And the football games have a moment of silence and the players put on a black band to honor the dead, and then go on playing... Power is in the continuity, must show that we are continuing!

Gil Orlev: I understand all who are angry that it is to be a silent rally (why quiet? One terrorist attack. Life goes on, including all the junk programs on TV). I want to say on record that I much more sympathize with you than with the other side to the debate. Yet we must not ignore all the people who feel uncomfortable with a shouting rally when such things happen. Do not argue with feelings. There are situations where it is impossible to please everybody. I think the organizers deserve credit for trying to think of everybody and find a creative solution. There is room for two voices. We have a silent action, demanding peace and social justice.

Einat Doz'ovni: I have the experience of a quiet walk with only 200 people, which had a mesmerizing intensity. There is no need to shout in order to be heard.

Star Rajuan: I live in Gan Yavne, I was woken up twice this night by the sound of sirens. I they to keep optimistic also under air raid alarms, I hope you do too. We will continue to cry out - loudly or silently, each in their own way. To demand both justice and peace.
Peace will mean that fewer people would be killed. And justice will mean that fewer people will die because they do not have money for medications, treatments or food.

* Adam Keller is an Israeli peace activist who was among the founders of Gush Shalom, of which he is a spokesperson.

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

JIM Hoagland, writing in the Washington Post, says: "We have seen how information technology can provide a spark that sets afire the kindling of economic and social distress."

That was Hoagland's way of concluding an opening salvo that said: "Grinding civil war in Libya, a state-organised bloodbath in Syria and troubling stumbles in Egypt's march to democracy dim the lustre of Arab revolts that began the year in glory. This Arab summer is a political season of reaction and reversal."

What Hoagland refers to as "the virus of modern communication" most pundits have labelled "the Arab Spring".

The implication is that all protests have occurred for the same reason and in the same part of the world. That's simply not true.

Not all demonstrations have been agitating for democracy. According to Don Tapscott writing in The Guardian:

"A common thread to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and protests elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa is the soul-crushing high rate of youth unemployment. Twenty-four per cent of young people in the region cannot find jobs."

But the reasons for youth rebellions differ from place to place. Not all have been due to unemployment.

Commenting on student dissent in Chile, writer John Daly says:

"An element common to all these events is the population's rising anger over governments' perceived ineptitude and even outright corruption, inflicting financial misery on all but a privileged elite."

Few young people consider what effect their protests will have. Little heed gets paid by these youthful protesters to the cost of their revolutionary zeal. They blithely ignore the disaster their activities have caused to their national economies.

Millions in Tunisia and Egypt, for instance, have been dependent on the tourist trade, now lost and sacrificing the livelihoods of the entire industry's workers.

The demonstrators in the recent revolts only look at perceived injustices and pay scant attention to what will replace the systems they oppose.

Even Israel is hosting an Arab Spring. After experiencing demonstrations that saw "hundreds of thousands of Israelis" take to the streets, a Haaretz editorial comments: "We are in the midst of what is increasingly shaping up to be an Israeli revolution."

Monarchs, presidents and prime ministers are almost never universally opposed.

During the demonstrations in North Africa, those who supported the existing governments didn't take to the streets until large numbers of Libyans rose up to defend the Gadaffi regime in Tripoli.

And what of the prospects for more protests and demonstrations in Europe?

Protests in Europe have been largely due to youth unemployment and worse are expected because of budget cutbacks and debt crises.

Kids with no jobs ran amok in London.

Look for more demonstrations in Europe like those in Greece (with 38.5pc unemployment) and by the jobless in countries facing financial crises like Spain (45.7pc unemployment), Italy (27.8pc unemployment) and Ireland (26.9pc unemployment).

Who knows? Disastrous economics in America could usher in a riotous summer. There are already calls for a "Day of Rage" in the US.

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

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

Freedom Flotilla II participants demand their lawful right to deliver vital humanitarian aid to Gaza. However, an Israeli/Washington/Greek conspiracy block them. Nonetheless, they persist, trying to overcome imperial ruthlessness and succeed.

A June 27 Jerusalem Post (JP) editorial called their mission "Ships of fools," saying:

Organizers "seem to be foolishly throwing caution to the wind, and appear bent on pushing ahead with plans for a confrontation on the open seas with the Israeli Navy."

Of course, they want nothing of the sort. Israel's Navy plans confrontation with them if they sail, perhaps intending another high-seas massacre like in May 2010, and regularly through air and ground attacks against occupied Palestinian civilians.

Instead of blaming the villain, JP blames victims, including saying Israel now lets "most everything into Gaza," when, in fact, critical needs go unfulfilled. Virtually all exports are prohibited, and Israel's siege is ruthlessly lawless.

Operating as a pro-Israeli front group, the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor (NGOM) is equally biased, disseminating propaganda and hate. Moreover, it debases legitimate human rights groups, independent journalists, and other advocates for truth, equity and justice.

Its director, Gerald Steinberg, is a Bar Ilan University political science professor, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a steering committee member of the Forum on Antisemitism at the Office of the (Israeli) Prime Minister, and various other organizations promoting a one-sided pro-Israeli agenda.

On June 29, NGOM's Jason Edelstein headlined a Ynet.news article, "Gaza flotillas fill no great humanitarian void, clearly designed to provoke Israel," saying:

The "latest crop of flotilla participants - a fringe group of extremists working alongside terrorists - is more concerned with their own PR and promoting hate, violence, and chaos, rather than with working with Israelis and Palestinians to find peaceful solutions to the conflict."

What shocks is that Ynet News or any other publication would publish this rot instead of trashing it where it belongs, and barring further NGO Monitor submissions. They're long on hate and disinformation, while scorning truths, rule of law standards and justice.

In contrast, an April 7 Haaretz editorial headlined, "The blockade is the problem," saying:

The siege and plans to interdict flotilla aid "underscore the folly that serves as the foundation of" Netanyahu's policy. Moreover, Israel is "addicted to occupation and is unable to liberate itself...."

In addition, the blockade "only perpetuates the conflict and the hatred, and casts light on Israel as a cruel, occupying power....Halting the second flotilla does not compensate for the total failure of Israel's policy toward Gaza."

Haaretz writer Yitzhak Laor agrees, calling Gaza's siege "a moral blockade of Israel" in his July 5 article. Moreover, on June 3, Haaretz's Gideon Levy said today's Israel is "a society of force and violence," masquerading as a free and open democracy for all its people equitably. In fact, it never was and isn't now, nor is America, governed by powerful monied interests, operating with a license to steal.

So far, Greece prevents Flotilla II vessels from sailing, except the French boat, "Dignite al Karama," at sea en route to Gaza. Expecting to arrive in a day or two, its July 5 statement said:

"They are going to break the blockade in the name of the Freedom Flotilla, in the names of all those who have supported this mobilization, for justice and the law."

In Athens, however, police harassed and arrested US boat participants for protesting and fasting in front of Washington's embassy.

On July 4, six were arrested "for sitting on a park bench across from" the US ambassador's residence. "(P)ut into squad cars," Ray McGovern, Linda Durham, Debra Ellis, Ridgeley Fuller, Ken Mayers and Carol Murry were placed in "police station custody."

Earlier its captain, John Klusmire, was arrested. At noon Athens time, a July 5 hearing was held. Reports say he's free, though no doubt warned not to sail or receive much harsher treatment next time.

Greece, of course, is an Israeli/Washington enforcer, breaking the law for its masters after selling out its sovereignty to foreign bankers, despite mass public opposition. As a result, whatever legitimacy it once had is lost, a nation state reduced to a shameless imperial tool.

On July 4, the Canadian boat Tahrir defied Greece's prohibition and sailed from Agios. However, four miles short of international waters, it was intercepted, boarded and returned. Back in port, it's denied electricity and permission to start its generator.

As a result, its sanitary facilities are affected, punishment for supporting international humanitarian law, in contrast to Greece trashing it for Israel and Washington, using thuggery on their behalf.

On July 5, the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) headlined, "Greece is the Hero - and Maybe Harbinger of Better Days for Israel," saying:

Acting on Israel's behalf, both countries "have become very much closer recently....deciding (they) have the most in common and the most to gain from cooperation....The demise of the 2011 flotilla isn't the end of (Israel's troubles), but it is a welcome success engendered by (Greece's) willingness....to do the right thing."

Meanwhile, Gaza TV said 500 overseas Palestinians plan a "mass (July 8) fly-in" to Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport in solidarity with others trapped by occupation, especially Gazans under siege.

Fifteen organizations, including the International Solidarity Movement, organized the initiative, believing flotillas aren't enough. A July 3 press release said they hope to reach Gaza via Israel, adding:

"Most of us are frankly a bit scared because of one decision we've all made: to tell the truth that our plan is to visit Palestine."

In advance, they were warned they'll face "probing questioning" on arrival, won't be allowed entry, and likely will be harshly treated, then deported.

On July 5, in fact, Israel's Public Security Minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, said said "fly-in hooligan" activists will be confronted and deported, adding:

"In the coming days, hundreds of radical activists from Europe (and elsewhere) are expected to arrive in order to cause provocations, to demonstrate illegally and to damage our legitimacy in our country. I want to make it clear that....we will not allow public propaganda, incitement and illegal demonstrations to occur, not at the airport and not in any other place."

On July 5, Maan News said Israel made preparations to block them on arrival, including by diverting European flights to a separate terminal, then carefully screening all passengers. A statement from Netanyahu's office said:

"This planned event is a continuation of the attempts to undermine Israel's right to exist and to attempt to breach its borders and sovereignty by sea, land and by air."

Nonetheless, some flotilla participants also hope to reach Gaza via Ben-Gurion airport. It's not clear how many, when they plan to leave, or if Greek authorities will let them.

Israel, of course, is a rogue terror state. Its 44 year occupation and Gaza siege are illegal. So are decades of land theft, home demolitions, targeted killings, mass imprisonments, torture, and other brazen abuses against Palestinians for not being Jewish.

Whether or not flotillas reach Gaza, Israel lost the war. The whole world knows what America's media won't report, and what growing numbers of Jews condemn. Many, in fact, express disgust about a lawless nation in their name. Sooner or later perhaps every Jew will know, including fed up Israelis deciding to leave and renounce what no one should tolerate.

A Final Comment

On July 3, the Free Gaza movement and Flotilla II organizers learned that Greece offered to commandeer and deliver their aid. In a July 5 statement, they refused, saying:

It "shows collusion with Israel's blockade as well as a complete disregard for Palestinian human rights, reducing the issue of Gaza and Palestine (to) one of humanitarian aid," not why it's needed.

If Greece wants to address that, they explained, their "officials certainly know where to find us."

Also on July 5, the Palestine Telegraph headlined, "Public initiative invites flotilla 2 to sail from Egypt ports," saying:

On Tuesday, Egypt Today newspaper launched "a public initiative inviting the Freedom Flotilla 2 to sail toward (Gaza) via Egypt ports. Its statement announced:

Sailing "from Egypt ports will not only contribute in breaking the Israeli naval blockade....but also create a new hope for Egyptians and all Arabs."

The publication asked Egypt's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and all Arab states to back the initiative. Most, however, including Egypt's ruling junta, partner with Israel, Washington and other Western governments, not beleaguered, isolated Palestinians.

As a result, they're on their own with millions of global supporters to keep working for what Israel and complicit regimes won't allow, perpetuating their legacy of injustice.

* 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 Yousef Munayyer * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Earlier this year we watched with amazement as hundreds of thousands of Arabs charged into the streets of their cities demanding reform. The uprisings led to the departure of several leaders who had ruled for decades and also tested (and continue to test) several others.

But what led to this outpouring is much the same as the motivation behind the flotilla initiative which seeks to challenge the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

When fundamentally unjust situations are left unaddressed by states, the people must step in. That is precisely what happened in Tahrir square when hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Egyptians lost all faith in the government's ability to reform.

That is also precisely what drives the flotilla and the activists aboard it. They have watched as the collective punishment of 1.5 million civilians lingers with no objections coming from states that can change the situation. In fact, the siege of Gaza has been supported by Israel, the United States and Mubarak's Egypt (though post-Mubarak Egypt promises to be different).

The blockade of Gaza is just one part of a multilayered siege on the Gaza Strip. The layers include control of land entry and exit points for commercial and humanitarian goods, control over the amount of electricity and water available to the people of Gaza, control of the air and sea lanes, and so on.

The vast majority of water in Gaza is not fit for human consumption. The vast majority of people live on less than $2 a day and rely on daily handouts from aid organisations due to rampant unemployment.

The Israelis try to whitewash the devastating effects of the siege by ignoring the exhaustive documentation by aid organisations and human rights groups, and by claiming they facilitate the entry of hundreds of trucks a day into Gaza. This is tantamount to justifying the encaging of an innocent person by claiming to shove some bread and water through the bars once a day.

In reality, the number of trucks getting into Gaza are far below what the UN believes is necessary to meet the minimum standards of the population.

Exports, which are commercial goods leaving Gaza, have been stymied as well. In fact, in 2005, Israel agreed to allow 400 trucks of exports per day out of Gaza by 2006 yet less than 200 trucks of exports were permitted exit throughout all of 2008-2010! There is yet to be any rational argument from the Israelis as to why they prevent exports from leaving Gaza, and the only plausible explanation is that they want to emaciate the Palestinian economy in the strip.

It should also come as no surprise that Israelis are working around the clock in an attempt to vilify the people on these boats, just like the when the Mubarak regime attempted to do the same with the Egyptians that challenged his rule.

But the passengers on the flotilla realise that nonviolent disobedience is key to the success of their mission to raise awareness about the unjust blockade. The Israelis have even been caught distributing fake videos accusing the flotilla organizers of homophobia, alliances with terrorists and even suggesting the passengers might use chemical weapons.

For a state that claims to be a "democracy", their response to nonviolent disobedience is as irrational as any neighbouring autocrat's.

Vilification is, of course, the first step to justifying violence, and there has been no shortage of violence used against nonviolent activists during the Arab Spring. It seems Israel is laying the groundwork to apply similarly repressive techniques against the good-willed passengers of these boats.

So what will the reaction be?

As the flotilla approaches Gaza, another January 25th moment presents itself. You either stand with members of civil society who have challenged the unjust practices of states, or you stand with those states and their unjust practices.

About 40 brave Americans have cast their lot with civil society by setting sail on the American-flagged ship to Gaza, the "Audacity of Hope". Among them are men and women, elderly, and many Jewish-Americans as well. They will be joined by about ten ships and 300 other activists. They simply refuse to sit idly by like their governments as the crime of the siege of Gaza continues.

As the collective punishment of 1.5 millions civilians persists, it's time to ask yourself: which side are you on?

* Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

This article originally appeared in AlJazeera.net.

Ceyda Nurtsch interview with Noam Chomsky* about the Arabic spring in its global context.

Nurtsch: Mr. Chomsky, many people claim that the Arab world is incompatible with democracy. Would you say that the recent developments falsify this thesis?

False friends: Iran' democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh during a visit in the US in 1951, two years before the CIA's coup d'état that ousted him

In internal discussions in 1958, which have since been declassified, President Eisenhower spoke about a campaign of hatred against us in the Arab world. Not from the governments, but from the people. The National Security Council's top planning body produced a memorandum – you can pick it up on the web now – in which they explained it. They said that the perception in the Arab world is that the United States blocks democracy and development and supports harsh dictators and we do it to get control over their oil. The memorandum said, this perception is more or less accurate and that's basically what we ought to be doing.

Nurtsch: That means that western democracies prevented the emergence of democracies in the Arab world?

Chomsky: I won't run through the details, but yes, it continues that way to the present. There are constant democratic uprisings. They are crushed by the dictators we – mainly the US, Britain, and France – support. So sure, there is no democracy because you crush it all. You could have said the same about Latin America: a long series of dictators, brutal murderers. As long as the US controls the hemisphere, or Europe before it, there is no democracy, because it gets crushed.

Nurtsch: So you were not surprised at all by the Arab Spring?

On 6 April 2008 Egyptian workers, primarily in the state-run textile industry, striked in response to low wages and rising food costs. Strikes were illegal in Egypt, and the protests were eventually crushed

But in Egypt they remember, and that's only one in a long series of militant strike actions. Some of them succeeded. There are some good studies of this. There is one American scholar, Joel Beinen – he is at Stanford – he has done a lot of work on the Egyptian labour movement. And he has recent articles and earlier ones, in which he discusses labour struggles going on for a long time: those are efforts to create democracy.

Nurtsch: Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, claimed to cause a domino effect of freedom with his policy of the "New Middle East". Is there a relation between the uprisings in the Arab world to the policy of George W. Bush?

Chomsky: The main theme of modern post-war history is the domino effect: Cuba, Brazil, Vietnam… Henry Kissinger compared it to a virus that might spread contagion. When he and Nixon were planning the overthrow of the democratically elected Allende in Chile – we have all the internal materials now – Kissinger in particular said, the Chilean virus might affect countries as far as Europe. Actually, he and Brezhnev agreed on that, they were both afraid of democracy and Kissinger said, we have to wipe out this virus. And they did, they crushed it.

Today it's similar. Both Bush and Obama are terrified of the Arab spring. And there is a very sensible reason for that. They don't want democracies in the Arab world. If Arab public opinion had any influence on policy, the US and Britain had been tossed out of the Middle East. That's why they are terrified of democracies in the region.

Nurtsch: The well-known British Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk recently stated that Obama and his policy is irrelevant for the developments in the region…

Chomsky: I read the article, it's very good. Robert Fisk is a terrific journalist and he really knows the region well. I think what he means is that the activists in the April 6th movement don't care about the United States. They have totally given up on the US. They know the United States is their enemy. In fact in public opinion in Egypt about 90 per cent think that the US is the worst threat that they face. In that sense the USA is of course not irrelevant. It's just too powerful.

Nurtsch: Some criticize the Arab intellectuals for being too silent, too passive. What should the role of the Arab intellectual be today?

Chomsky: Intellectuals have a special responsibility. We call them intellectuals because they are privileged and not because they are smarter than anyone else. But if you are privileged and you have some status and you can be articulate and so on we call you an intellectual. And it's the same in the Arab world as anywhere else.

Ceyda Nurtsch
© Qantara.de 2011
Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de

* Noam Chomsky is one of the major intellectuals of our time. The eighty-two-year-old American linguist, philosopher and activist is a severe critic of US foreign and economic policy.

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

On March 7, Palestinian Prisoners Society head Qadura Fares presented a paper to the UN International Meeting on the Question of Palestine, addressing the plight of political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, saying:

Palestine "has been under criminal occupation for 44 years. During that time, (Israel) committed the worst crimes against humanity, violating every international instrument. The occupier has killed tens of thousands of our struggling people, most of them defenseless civilians. There have been over 800,000 instances of imprisonment. Tens of thousands of people have been injured," 30% left with permanent disabilities.

Moreover, thousands of homes, crops, and other property have been destroyed. "All this has been done in full view of the world." Even Israeli rabbis "legitimized the slaughter of Palestinian babies (claiming they'll) grow up to become enemies."

Citing many other lawless examples, Fares asked for UN help to end "the occupation and (let Palestinians) live in freedom in an independent sovereign State with Al-Quds Al-Sharif (Jerusalem) as its capital."

June 6 marks 44 years of occupation, a crime against humanity by any standard. Yet world leaders ignore it, denying Palestinians equity, justice, and freedom, putting a lie to those endorsing democracy. Israel long ago spurned it, especially for anyone not Jewish.

In 1948, in fact, its war without mercy depopulated villages and cities, massacred innocent victims, committed rapes and other atrocities, destroyed Palestinian homes and other property, and prevented them from returning after seizing 78% of historic Palestine.

During its Six-Day War, it took the rest, claiming self-defense against neighbors it attacked preemptively during its long-planned aggression it knew it could win and did easily.

The New York Times quoted Prime Minister Menachem Begin's (1977 - 83) August, 1982 speech saying:

"In June, 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches (did) not prove that (President Gamal Abdel) Nasser (1956 - 70) was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

In February 1968, two time Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1974 - 77 and 1992 - 95) told the French newspaper Le Monde:

"I do not believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it."

General Mordechai Hod, Commander of Israel's Air Force at the time said in 1978:

"Sixteen years of planning had gone into those initial eighty minutes. We lived with the plan. We slept on the plan. We ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it."

General Haim Barlev, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief told Ma'ariv in April, 1972:

"We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility."

Other Israeli leaders and generals voiced the same sentiment, saying Israel wasn't threatened, yet preemptively waged war, falsely claiming no other choice. In fact, it had a clear one. It could have chosen peace, but didn't and never did earlier or since, pursuing its imperial interests like America, its paymaster/partner from then to now, supporting its worst crimes.

In 1967, it was Israel's third major war, pursuing its vision for a Greater Jewish State, justified by the myth that Jews got there first, establishing their ancestral home on "a land without people for a people without land."

Israel's 1948 "War of Independence" was its first preemptive aggression. Palestinians call it al-Nakba. More aggression followed against Egypt in October 1956, with Britain and France, after Nasser's Suez Canal nationalization. Eight days later, US and Soviet pressure ended it, Israel withdrawing its last troops in March 1957 but not further belligerent intentions.

A decade later, more war and occupation followed. Ahead it it, Foreign Minister Abba Eban got Lyndon Johnson's backing to pursue it.

Begun on June 5, 1967, it was an impressive display of power, Israel easily destroying 90% of Egypt's 300 + aircraft on the ground and two-thirds of Syria's Air Force the first day.

After 24 hours, Israeli Air Force (IAF) Commander Mordechai Hod announced the combined Arab air forces were destroyed. The devastating toll proved it. In contrast, Israel lost only 19 fighter aircraft compared Egypt's 300, Syria's 60, Jordan's 35, Iraq's 15, and Lebanon's one or two.

Palestinians, however, lost the remaining 22% of historic Palestine leaving them stateless. It began on day two when Israel invaded Gaza and the West Bank.

On day three, IDF troops entered northern Sinai, devastated Egyptian brigades, captured Jerusalem, and got Jordan to surrender.

On day four, they invaded Haram Al-Sharif and central Sinai, and by day five advanced to the Suez Canal, taking all of Sinai and the Syria's Golan (including its valuable water resources).

The war practically ended before it began, but Israel showed no mercy, using unopposed air power to massacre thousands of defenseless Egyptian troops on the ground.

It was a turkey shoot Washington supported, providing Israel with the latest weapons and munitions, including tarmac-shredding explosives preventing undamaged planes from taking off, leaving them easy targets on the ground. Moreover, a US carrier group provided intelligence and communications help, standing ready to intervene if needed. Washington effectively partnered in Israel's war, even ignoring the USS Liberty attack.

Monitoring hostilities in Mediterranean waters about 13 nautical miles off Sinai, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked it, knowing it was a US vessel as its lead pilot later admitted. Despite 34 on board killed, another 170 wounded, and heavy damage inflicted, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara called it a case of "mistaken identity," knowing full well it was naked aggression.

Later, retired Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer called the incident "one of the classic all-American cover-ups," one of many times Washington alibied for the worst of Israeli crimes, even against US forces.

End the Occupation - Americans and Other Organizations Against It

Its web site (EndtheOccupation.org) explains its "call to action," supporting "freedom from occupation, and equal rights for all....including the right to exist in peace and security."

Its members from 325 diverse groups include civil and human rights activists; faith-based organizations including, Muslims, Jews and Christians; students; and others for peace and justice in Palestine, united to end US support for occupation.

Other organizations are also involved, including the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), calling itself:

"a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli apartheid in Palestine" through nonviolent, direct activism.

Other Opposition

On May 15, the Iranian Fars News Agency headlined, "Israeli Occupation of Palestine Continues Amid Int'l Inaction," saying:

Forty-four years of occupation, "bloodshed and devastation....falls squarely on (Israel's) shoulders (in) direct violation of international laws and any reasonable moral standard." According to Global Exchange:

We "oppose the policies of the Israeli government and the United States support for them, which, in our view, prevent any peaceful resolution and guarantee that (neither side) can live" safely in peace.

Despite international law and numerous UN resolutions calling for occupation to end and demanding Israel respect its legal obligations, Palestinians are still denied.

On May 16, the General Assembly published identical letters dated May 13 from the Permanent Observer Mission to Palestine's Charge d'affairs, addressed to the UN Secretary-General and Security Council President, saying:

Palestinians are still "uprooted, dispossessed and displaced" as refugees or under "belligerent military occupation of Israel....since (June 6,) 1967 in the Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, forced to endure the systematic violation of their fundamental rights and war crimes at the hands of the occupying power for nearly 44 years."

Israel clearly shows "contempt....for the rights and very existence of the Palestinian people, whom it continues to collectively punish, colonize, humiliate, intimidate and (subject) to all forms of oppression."

By not firmly confronting it, occupation, conflict and suffering continue, affecting the entire region and world peace. Again this year, Palestinians "call upon the international community to enforce its own Charter by assuming its (legal) responsibilit(y)" for Palestinian "self-determination and freedom in their independent State of Palestine on the basis of the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and ensuring a just and lasting solution to the plight of the Palestinian refugees."

"This letter (follows 390 earlier ones) regarding (resolving) the ongoing crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem....For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations committed against the Palestinian people, Israel....must be held accountable and the perpetrators must be brought to justice."

On June 5, organizers of the Nakba Day rally said Palestinian refugees will again march to Israel's borders against 44 years of occupation, despite IDF Nakba Day violence against them, killing over 20 nonviolent demonstrators, injuring dozens more.

Organizers again said this is "just the beginning (until) Palestinian refugees return to Haifa, Haffa, Al-Majdal, Bi'r As-Sab and all occupied Palestinian towns. The Nakba Day procession was not a one-time event, but rather a new phase in the Palestinians' historic struggle."

On June 1, International Middle East Media Center writer Kevin Murphy headlined, "Protests Announced for Naksa Day ("the setback" on June 5)," saying:

Other marches are planned, including to the Israeli - Lebanese border. Eil Hilweeh refugee camp official Muneer Maqda "said that 50,000 refugees will march on Israel's borders from two separate locations, Maron Ar-Ras and Naqoura...." They'll erect tents until their right of return is granted.

Other demonstrations will support them, including ones in Gaza, the West Bank, a march to Jerusalem, another opposite Israel's London embassy, and others worldwide in support of Palestinian liberation.

A Final Comment

On June 1, ahead of Naksa Day, Israelis commemorated Jerusalem Day provocatively, marching on the forty-fourth anniversary of its reunification. On June 2, Haaretz writers Yair Ettinger, Jonathan Lis and Nir Hasson headlined, "24 held during Jerusalem Day violence," saying:

Twenty-four Palestinians and Jews "were arrested yesterday during the traditional....flag procession which saw isolated instances of racist epithets, fist fights and stone-throwing. Tens of thousands" of mostly ultra-Orthodox zealots and right-wing settlers marched through Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly East Jerusalem Arab neighborhood, home to about 2,800 Palestinians, as well as diplomatic missions and well-known landmarks.

Settlers, however, want it back and have encroached for years, displacing dozens of Palestinian families, putting hundreds more at risk.

On the same day, Netanyahu addressed a special Knesset session, affirming continued illegal East Jerusalem settlement construction, pledging also that the city never again will be divided at a Jerusalem Day Ammunition Hill ceremony, site of a key 1967 battle.

Kadima leader Tzipi Livni expressed the same sentiment, saying: "There is no 'their' Jerusalem and 'our' Jerusalem," showing contempt for Palestinian rights and rule of law justice.

Throughout the day, tensions remained high, exacerbated by Netanyahu and extremist supporters defying Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Nonetheless, Naksa Day rallies will affirm their determination to accept nothing less than liberation on their own land in their own country, no matter the obstacles confronting them ahead. Their courage deserves everyone's support.

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

Israeli officials have expressed alarm at a succession of moves by the interim Egyptian government that they fear signal an impending crisis in relations with Cairo.

The widening rift was underscored on 4 May when leaders of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation pact in the Egyptian capital. Egypt's secret role in brokering the agreement last week caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, called the deal "a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism".

Several other developments have added to Israeli concerns about its relations with Egypt, including signs that Cairo hopes to renew ties with Iran and renegotiate a long-standing contract to supply Israel with natural gas.

More worrying still to Israeli officials are reported plans by Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza, closed for the past four years as part of a Western-backed blockade of the enclave designed to weaken Hamas, the ruling Islamist group there.

Egypt is working out details to permanently open the border, an Egyptian foreign ministry official told the Reuters news agency on 1 May. The blockade would effectively come to an end as a result.

The same day Egypt's foreign minister, Nabil Elaraby, called on the United States to recognize a Palestinian state – in reference to a move expected in September by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to seek recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

Israel and the US have insisted that the Palestinians can achieve statehood only through negotiations with Israel. Talks have been moribund since Israel refused last September to renew a partial freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

According to analysts, the interim Egyptian government, under popular pressure, is consciously distancing itself from some of the main policies towards Israel and the Palestinians pursued by Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president overthrown by a popular uprising in February.

Mubarak was largely supportive of Israel and Washington's blockade policy to contain Hamas's influence. Egypt receives more than 1.3 billion dollars annually in US aid, second only to Israel.

But the popular mood in Egypt appears to be turning against close diplomatic ties with Israel.

A poll published last week by the Pew Research Centre showed that 54 per cent of Egyptians backed the annulment of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, with only 36 per cent wanting it maintained.

Israel's Yedioth Aharonoth daily reported this week that Egyptian social media sites had called for a mass demonstration outside the Israeli embassy, demanding the expulsion of the ambassador, Yitzhak Levanon.

In comments to several media outlets last weekend, unnamed senior Israeli officials criticized Egypt's new foreign policy line. One told the Wall Street Journal that Cairo's latest moves could "affect Israel's national security on a strategic level".

Another unnamed official told the Jerusalem Post that "the upgrading of the relationship between Egypt and Hamas" might allow the Islamic movement to develop into a "formidable terrorist military machine".

Silvan Shalom, Israel's deputy prime minister, told Israel Radio on 1 May that Israel should brace for significant changes in Egyptian policies that would allow Iran to increase its influence in Gaza.

Egypt's chief of staff, Sami Hafez Anan, responded dismissively on his Facebook page to such statements, saying, "Israel has no right to interfere. This is an Egyptian-Palestinian matter."

In a sign of Israeli panic, Netanyahu is reported to be considering sending his special adviser, Isaac Molho, to Cairo for talks with the interim government.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu has repeatedly complained to visiting European ambassadors and US politicians about what he regards as a new, more hostile climate in Egypt.

Late last month Elaraby said Egypt was ready to "turn over a new leaf" in relations with Tehran, which were severed after the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty more than three decades ago.

Egyptian officials have also warned that the supply of natural gas to Israel may be halted. The pipeline has been attacked twice on the Egyptian side, including last week, in acts presumed to be sabotage.

Even if Egypt continues the flow of gas, it is almost certain to insist on a sharp rise in the cost, following reports that Mubarak and other officials are being investigated on corruption charges relating to contracts that underpriced gas to Israel.

Yoram Meital, an expert on Israeli-Egyptian relations at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, said Egypt's policy change towards Gaza threatened to "provoke a severe crisis in Egyptian-Israeli relations" by undermining Israel's policy of isolating Hamas.

With the toppling of Mubarak's authoritarian regime, Meital noted, the Egyptian government is under pressure to be more responsive to local opinion.

"We are at the beginning of this crisis but we are not there yet. However, there is room for a great deal more deterioration in relations over the coming months," he said.

Analysts said Cairo wanted to restore its traditional leadership role in the Arab world and believed it was hampered by its ties with Israel.

Menha Bahoum, a spokeswoman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, told the New York Times last week: "We are opening a new page. Egypt is resuming its role that was once abdicated."

That assessment is shared by Hamas and Fatah, both of which were looking to Egypt for help, said Menachem Klein, a politics lecturer at Bar Ilan University.

He noted that Abbas had lost his chief Arab sponsor in the form of Mubarak, and that the Hamas leadership's base in Syria was precarious given the current upheavals there.

With growing demands from the Palestinian public for reconciliation, neither faction could afford to ignore the tide of change sweeping the Arab world, he said.

Meital said: "We are entering a new chapter in the region's history and Israeli politicians and the public are not yet even close to understanding what is taking place".

* Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. 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 Dr. Ashraf Ezzat * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Demands: Embassy Closure and Withdrawal from The Camp David Accords in Wake of Renewed Attacks on Gaza

From Exclusive Video Coverage of The Embassy Seige

Editor's notes: The western press and even Al Jazeera have failed to report today's demonstrations in Tahir Square, Cairo accurately. Thousands of Egyptians marched from the square to the Israeli Embassy, demanding that the current military government end diplomatic relations with Israel in wake of the recent assault on Gaza by the IDF.

Israel claims that a school bus was attacked with a mortar round this week and it was necessary for the army to respond with tanks, helicopters, rockets and a step-up of the nightly bombing campaign that has gone on for months.

Skeptics doubt Israel's claim of an attack from Gaza, citing Israel's propensity for fabricating threats and the bizarre choice of weapons. From an American intelligence source who has worked with Israel for decades:

Israel has been using the "mortar attack" story more and more. Any small explosive charge can be made to look like a mortar attack. even a hand grenade. You only need to throw a few shards of metal around, the cheapest and dirtiest "false flag" possible and Israel has done this dozens of times.

Hamas has mortars but they also have thousands of RPGs. That's the weapon used to go after a vehicle. Saying someone shot a mortar at a bus is simply idiotic. If Gaza has the weapons Israel claims, Russian Kornet and RPG 29s which are capable of destroying Israel's Merkava tanks quite readily, as Hizbollah proved, the "school bus" story is even more fictional.

EXCLUSIVE TODAY VIDEO

VIDEO LINK: http://youtu.be/u6jC4gCGH4s

Background, The Egyptian Anti-Israeli Backlash

Egyptians marching to the Israeli embassy in cairo, protesting over Israeli strikes of Gaza.

On this very day, April 8th since 41 years the Israeli air force struck the village of Bahr el-Baqar – an Egyptian small village near Suez Canal. The raid resulted in the total destruction of an elementary school full of school children. Five bombs and 2 air-to-ground missiles struck the single-floor school. Of the 130 school children who attended the school, 46 were killed, and over 50 wounded, many of them maimed for life. The school itself was completely demolished.

That tragic day marked the first encounter of the Egyptian people with the brutality and the indiscriminate aggression of the Israelis that targeted the innocent and unarmed civilians. This air raid demolished not only the school building but also the remains of any hopes for Israel to be seen as a friendly neighbor state.

From then on Israel was the absolute enemy in the eyes of every average Egyptian.

This terrorist attack on the innocent Egyptian school children has been deeply engraved in the memory of all Egyptians. And to make sure that no one forgot what Israel had done on that day, Egyptians made April 8th a mourning day for the killed school children of Bahr el-Bakar and to be commemorated every year for the last 41 years.

Only this year it was rather different.

Egypt-Israel relations in the last 40 years

Egypt has just emerged from its worldwide celebrated revolution which managed to topple the long lasting in power dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

So many things happened in Egypt since the Israeli raid on April 8th, 1970.

• Egypt retaliated against years of Israeli military aggression and political arrogance in the glorious October war 1973 against Israel.

• President Sadat signed – on an individual initiative- a peace treaty with Israel 1979 (based on Camp David accords) that never managed to naturalize relations between Egyptians and Israelis.

• Mubarak ruled Egypt since 1980 and began a long era of not only observing the terms of the peace treaty but to acting as the closest friend of Israel and the White House in the Middle East.

• Mubarak, through his corrupt reign, helped Israel tighten its shameful siege on Gaza and even supplied Tel Aviv with the natural gas they needed for power and electricity production with prices well under the world rates. (enriching himself in the process) But his most appreciated contribution to the Zionist regime in Israel was the complete Egyptian withdrawal from actively participating in the key issues of the Arab- Israeli conflict.

Gaza under fire again

Lately, the unrest began to resurface again at the border line between Gaza and Israel. On Friday April 8th Five Palestinians have been killed and around 45 wounded in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip following an offer of a ceasefire from Hamas after a surge in cross-border violence that was dramatically reduced by Israel and sold to the world as the usual "selective" Palestinian attack, by their most primitive handmade rockets, on a school bus – an area of specialty long mastered by the Israelis since Bahr el-Bakar school massacre.

Thus began another expected scenario of disproportionate Israeli attacks on the civilians and children in Gaza with the civilized world muted and turning a blind eye as usual.

The world has grown numb and painfully insensitive to the crimes of Israel against the Arab Palestinians in Gaza and the west bank.

And with judge Richard Goldstone bowing out and going back on his indictment of the Israeli crimes committed during the war on Gaza 2009; the world seems like a barren place for the Palestinians devoid of any free voices left to stand up against the Israeli insolence.

And just when the Palestinians in Gaza thought they were facing this new Israeli attacks alone and with their backs against the wall, they found out they forgot, over the years, that they had brothers in Egypt who are willing not only to accompany them in their struggle against Israel but to protect their backs as well.

Embassy under siege

On the very same day of April 8th and as Egyptians were protesting in Tahrir square demanding that Mubarak and his inner circle of aids to be put on trial and as the news of the Israeli attacks on Gaza made its way to the square at the heart of Cairo, thousands immediately took to the district where the Israeli embassy in Cairo is located.

Egyptians held back – by the military forces- from advancing into the building where the embassy lies practically surrounded the embassy in what seemed like a gigantic human shield. The angry protesters held flags of both Egypt and Palestine and raised big posters of al Aqsa mosque- temple mount in Jerusalem.

On a live coverage by Aljazeera of the march to the Israeli embassy- that somehow failed to make it to the news headlines- some of the protesters expressed their anger at the recent unjust Israeli attacks on Gaza and they made it clear they expected nothing less than the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador out of Egypt and taking the Israeli flag off the embassy building.

Some of the protesters went far as to demand the immediate end to the siege imposed on Gaza from the Egyptian side and a freeze of the Egyptian supply of natural gas to Israel. But the most daring request came by many protesters who called for a public referendum to allow the Egyptian people to have their say about the peace treaty president Sadat had signed 30 years ago.

Amidst that overwhelming atmosphere of antagonism to Israel and its unacceptable and inhuman war of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians the Israeli embassy at the top floor of the building on the other side of the Nile opposite to Tahrir square found no other option than to dim out the lights and keep its staff hiding inside.

While the Egyptian crowd down in the streets were still swelling in great numbers around the embassy with the intensity of their enthusiasm rising high as they chanted for eternal solidarity with Palestinians the Israeli embassy's lights were almost turned off with the Israeli flag kept as unapparent and way out of sight as possible.

On this April 8th night, and on the very same day that witnessed the massacre of Bahr el-Bakar the Israeli embassy with all the Israeli diplomatic mission in Cairo seemed under siege.

It must have been a terrible night for the Israeli diplomats in Cairo but at least they have experienced, even it was for few hours how it feels to be vulnerable, threatened and under relentless siege.

This public display of the Egyptian anger and dissatisfaction of the Israeli aggressive policy against the Palestinians may pass unreported by the main stream media but never unnoticed by the analysts of the Arab- Israeli conflict especially in the post-Mubarak era in Egypt for what happened on that night of April 8th, 2011 might well depict the scene of the coming Egyptian-Israeli state of affairs.

On this day of commemoration, May the souls of innocent Egyptian and Palestinian children, massacred by the Israeli criminal forces, rest in peace.

* Dr. Ashraf Ezzat: Apart from the medical experience, he's always been engaged in writing activities. He writes articles about ancient Egyptian history, Ancient Near Eastern history, comparative religion and politics especially the Arab- Israeli conflict. Founder and board member of the bibliotheca Alexandrina friends society. Some of His articles have been published in Egyptian magazines and online publications.

By James Petras* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Introduction

Most accounts of the Arab revolts from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq and elsewhere have focused on the most immediate causes: political dictatorships, unemployment, repression and the wounding and killing of protestors. They have given most attention to the "middle class", young, educated activists, their communication via the internet, (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 2011) and, in the case of Israel and its Zionists conspiracy theorists, "the hidden hand" of Islamic extremists (Daily Alert Feb. 25, 2011).

What is lacking is any attempt to provide a framework for the revolt which takes account of the large scale, long and medium term socio-economic structures as well as the immediate 'detonators' of political action. The scope and depth of the popular uprisings, as well as the diverse political and social forces which have entered into the conflicts, preclude any explanations which look at one dimension of the struggles.

The best approach involves a 'funnel framework' in which, at the wide end (the long-term, large-scale structures), stands the nature of the economic, class and political system; the middle-term is defined by the dynamic cumulative effects of these structures on changes in political, social and economic relations; the short-term causes, which precipitate the socio-political-psychological responses, or social consciousness leading to political action.

The Nature of the Arab Economies

With the exception of Jordan, most of the Arab economies where the revolts are taking place are based on 'rents' from oil, gas, minerals and tourism, which provide most of the export earnings and state revenues(Financial Times, Feb. 22, 2011, p. 14). These economic sectors are, in effect, export enclavesWorld Bank Annual Report 2009). These export sectors do not have links to a diversified productive domestic economy: oil is exported and finished manufactured goods as well as financial and high tech services are all imported and controlled by foreign multi-nationals and ex-pats linked to the ruling class (Economic and Political Weekly, Feb. 12, 2011, p. 11). Tourism reinforces 'rental' income, as the sector, which provides 'foreign exchange' and tax revenues to the class – clan state. The latter relies on state-subsidized foreign capital and local politically connected 'real estate' developers for investment and imported foreign construction laborers. employing a tiny fraction of the labor force and define a highly specialized economy (

Rent-based income may generate great wealth, especially as energy prices soar, but the funds accrue to a class of "rentiers" who have no vocation or inclination for deepening and extending the process of economic development and innovation. The rentiers "specialize" in financial speculation, overseas investments via private equity firms, extravagant consumption of high-end luxury goods and billion-dollar and billion-euro secret private accounts in overseas banks.

The rentier economy provides few jobs in modern productive activity; the high end is controlled by extended family-clan members and foreign financial corporations via ex-pat experts; technical and low-end employment is taken up by contract foreign labor, at income levels and working conditions below what the skilled local labor force is willing to accept.

The enclave rentier economy results in a clan-based ruling class which 'confounds' public and private ownership: what's 'state' is actually absolutist monarchs and their extended families at the top and their client tribal leader, political entourage and technocrats in the middle.

These are "closed ruling classes". Entry is confined to select members of the clan or family dynasties and a small number of "entrepreneurial" individuals who might accumulate wealth servicing the ruling clan-class. The 'inner circle' lives off of rental income, secures payoffs from partnerships in real estate where they provide no skills, but only official permits, land grants, import licenses and tax holidays.

Beyond pillaging the public treasury, the ruling clan-class promotes 'free trade', i.e. importing cheap finished products, thus undermining any indigenous domestic start-ups in the 'productive' manufacturing, agricultural or technical sector.

As a result there is no entrepreneurial national capitalist or 'middle class'. What passes for a middle class are largely public sector employees (teachers, health professionals, functionaries, firemen, police officials, military officers) who depend on their salaries, which, in turn, depend on their subservience to absolutist power. They have no chance of advancing to the higher echelons or of opening economic opportunities for their educated offspring.

The concentration of economic, social and political power in a closed clan-class controlled system leads to an enormous concentration of wealth. Given the social distance between rulers and ruled, the wealth generated by high commodity prices produces a highly distorted image of per-capital "wealth"; adding billionaires and millionaires on top of a mass of low-income and underemployed youth provides a deceptively high average income (Washington Blog, 2/24/11).

Rentier Rule: By Arms and Handouts

To compensate for these great disparities in society and to protect the position of the parasitical rentier ruling class, the latter pursues alliances with, multi-billion dollar arms corporations, and military protection from the dominant (USA) imperial power. The rulers engage in "neo-colonization by invitation", offering land for military bases and airfields, ports for naval operations, collusion in financing proxy mercenaries against anti-imperial adversaries and submission to Zionist hegemony in the region (despite occasional inconsequential criticisms).

In the middle term, rule by force is complemented by paternalistic handouts to the rural poor and tribal clans; food subsidies for the urban poor; and dead-end make-work employment for the educated unemployed (Financial Times, 2/25/11, p. 1). Both costly arms purchases and paternalistic subsidies reflect the lack of any capacity for productive investments. Billions are spent on arms rather than diversifying the economy. Hundreds of millions are spent on one-shot paternalistic handouts, rather than long-term investments generating productive employment.

The 'glue' holding this system together is the combination of modern pillage of public wealth and natural energy resources and the use of traditional clan and neo-colonial recruits and mercenary contractors to control and repress the population. US modern armaments are at the service of anachronistic absolutist monarchies and dictatorships, based on the principles of 18^th century dynastic rule.

The introduction and extension of the most up-to-date communication systems and ultra-modern architecture shopping centers cater to an elite strata of luxury consumers and provides a stark contrast to the vast majority of unemployed educated youth, excluded from the top and pressured from below by low-paid overseas contract workers.

Neo-Liberal Destabilization

The rentier class-clans are pressured by the international financial institutions and local bankers to 'reform' their economies: 'open' the domestic market and public enterprises to foreign investors and reduce deficits resulting from the global crises by introducing neo-liberal reforms (Economic and Political Weekly, 2/12/11, p. 11).

As a result of "economic reforms" food subsidies for the poor have been lowered or eliminated and state employment has been reduced, closing off one of the few opportunities for educated youth. Taxes on consumers and salaried/wage workers are increased while the real estate developers, financial speculators and importers receive tax exonerations. De-regulation has exacerbated massive corruption, not only among the rentier ruling class-clan, but also by their immediate business entourage.

The paternalistic 'bonds' tying the lower and middle class to the ruling class have been eroded by foreign-induced neo-liberal "reforms", which combine 'modern' foreign exploitation with the existing "traditional" forms of domestic private pillage. The class-clan regimes no longer can rely on the clan, tribal, clerical and clientelistic loyalties to isolate urban trade unions, student, small business and low paid public sector movements.

The Street against the Palace

The 'immediate causes' of the Arab revolts are centered in the huge demographic-class contradictions of the clan-class ruled rentier economy. The ruling oligarchy rules over a mass of unemployed and underemployed young workers; the latter involves between 50% to 65% of the population under 25 years of age (Washington Blog, 2/24/11). The dynamic "modern" rentier economy does not incorporatethe street as venders, transport and contract workers and in personal services. The ultra- modern oil, gas, real estate, tourism and shopping-mall sectors are dependent on the political the newly educated young into modern employment; it relegates them into the low-paid unprotected "informal economy" of and military support of backward traditional clerical, tribal and clan leaders, who are subsidized but never 'incorporated' into the sphere of modern production. The modern urban industrial working class with small, independent trade unions is banned. Middle class civic associations are either under state control or confined to petitioning the absolutist state.

The 'underdevelopment' of social organizations, linked to social classes engaged in modern productive activity, means that the pivot of social and political action is the street. Unemployed and underemployed part-time youth engaged in the informal sector are found in the plazas, at kiosks, cafes, street corner society, and markets, moving around and about and outside the centers of absolutist administrative power. The urban mass does not occupy strategic positions in the economic system; but it is available for mass mobilizations capable of paralyzing the streets and plazas through which goods and services are transported out and profits are realized. Equally important, mass movements launched by the unemployed youth provide an opportunity for oppressed professionals, public sector employees, small business people and the self-employed to engage in protests without being subject to reprisals at their place of employment – dispelling the "fear factor" of losing one's job.

The political and social confrontation revolves around the opposite poles: clientelistic oligarchies and de clasé masses (the Arab Street). The former depends directly on the state (military/police apparatus) and the latter on amorphous local, informal, face-to-face improvised organizations. The exception is the minority of university students who move via the internet. Organized industrial trade unions come into the struggle late and largely focus on sectoral economic demands, with some exceptions – especially in public enterprises, controlled by cronies of the oligarchs, where workers demand changes in management.

As a result of the social particularities of the rentier states, the uprisings do not take the form of class struggles between wage labor and industrial capitalists. They emerge as mass political revolts against the oligarchical state. Street-based social movements demonstrate their capacity to delegitimize state authority, paralyze the economy, and can lead up to the ousting of the ruling autocrats. But it is the nature of mass street movements to fill the squares with relative ease, but also to be dispersed when the symbols of oppression are ousted. Street-based movements lack the organization and leadership to project, let alone impose a new political or social order. Their power is found in their ability to pressureseize power and protect the entire rentier state and economic structure while sustaining their ties with their imperial mentors. existing elites and institutions, not to replace the state and economy.

Hence the surprising ease with which the US, Israeli and EU backed Egyptian military were able to seize power and protect the entire rentier state and economic structure while sustaining their ties with their imperial mentors.

Converging Conditions and the "Demonstration Effect"

The spread of the Arab revolts across North Africa, the Middle East and Gulf States is, in the first instance, a product of similar historical and social conditions: rentier states ruled by family-clan oligarchs dependent on "rents" from capital intensive oil and energy exports, which confine the vast majority of youth to marginal informal 'street-based' economic activities.

The "power of example" or the "demonstration effect" can only be understood by recognizing the same socio-political conditions in each country. Street power – mass urban movements – presumes the streetlocus of the principal actors and the takeover of the plazas as the place to exert political power and project social demands. No doubt the partial successes in Egypt and Tunisia did detonate the movements elsewhere. But they did so only in countries with the same historical legacy, the same social polarities between rentier – clan rulers and marginal street labor and especially where the rulers were deeply integrated and subordinated to imperial economic and military networks. as the economic

Conclusion

Rentier rulers govern via their ties to the US and EU military and financial institutions. They modernize their affluent enclaves and marginalize recently educated youth, who are confined to low paid jobs, especially in the insecure informal sector, centered in the streets of the capital cities. Neo-liberal privatizations, reductions in public subsidies (for food, unemployment subsidies, cooking oil, gas, transport, health, and education) shattered the paternalistic ties through which the rulers contained the discontent of the young and poor, as well as clerical elites and tribal chiefs. The confluence of classes and masses, modern and traditional, was a direct result of a process of neo-liberalization from above and exclusion from below. The neo-liberal "reformers" promise that the 'market' would substitute well-paying jobs for the loss of state paternalistic subsidies was false. The neo-liberal polices reinforced the concentration of wealth while weakening state controls over the masses.

The world capitalist economic crises led Europe and the US to tighten their immigration controls, eliminating one of the escape valves of the regimes – the massive flight of unemployed educated youth seeking jobs abroad. Out-migration was no longer an option; the choices narrowed to struggle or suffer. Studies show that those who emigrate tend to be the most ambitious, better educated (within their class) and greatest risk takers. Now, confined to their home country, with few illusions of overseas opportunities, they are forced to struggle for individual mobility at home through collective social and political action.

Equally important among the political youth, is the fact that the US, as guarantor of the rentier regimes, is seen as a declining imperial power: challenged economically in the world market by China; facing defeat as an occupying colonial ruler in Iraq and Afghanistan; and humiliated as a subservient and mendacious servant of an increasingly discredited Israel via its Zionist agents in the Obama regime and Congress. All of these elements of US imperial decay and discredit, encourage the pro-democracy movements to move forward against the US clients and lessen their fears that the US military would intervene and face a third military front. The mass movements view their oligarchies as "third tier" regimes: rentier states under US hegemony, which, in turn, is under Israeli – Zionist tutelage. With 130 countries in the UN General Assembly and the entire Security Council, minus the US, condemning Israeli colonial expansion; with Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and the forthcoming new regimes in Yemen and Bahrain promising democratic foreign policies, the mass movements realize that all of Israel's modern arms and 680,000 soldiers are of no avail in the face of its total diplomatic isolation, its loss of regional rentier clients, and the utter discredit of its bombastic militarist rulers and their Zionist agents in the US diplomatic corps (Financial Times 2/24/11, p. 7).

The very socio-economic structures and political conditions which detonated the pro-democracy mass movements, the unemployed and underemployed youth organized from "the street", now present the greatest challenge: can the amorphous and diverse mass becomes an organized social and political force which can take state power, democratize the regime and, at the same time, create a new productive economy to provide stable well- paying employment, so far lacking in the rentier economy? The political outcome to date is indeterminate: democrats and socialists compete with clerical, monarchist, and neoliberal forces bankrolled by the U.S.

It is premature to celebrate a popular democratic revolution....

* James Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.