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

It begs the question why Israelis put up with lawless governance harming them as well as Palestinians. When will weeks of social injustice outrage arouse them to embrace universal equity?

Why haven't Martin Luther King's words hit home that, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." In Israel and Occupied Palestine, Arabs and Jews both are harmed. Injustice to anyone denies it to all.

Since the 1980s, destructive neoliberalism plagued Israel like the West. A race to the bottom followed, producing social injustice, inequality, and growing human need. Israelis finally reacted, demanding change, at the same time showing a hint of solidarity with Arab citizens, far more gravely impacted than themselves.

It's high time that spirit addressed 44 years of Occupied Palestinian torment. Permitting that to go on betrays core Judaic tenets. In their own time of need, will Jews embrace the universal struggle for justice everywhere, especially a few kilometers from their own backyard. Turning a blind eye to that injustice no longer can be tolerated.

What's now ongoing bears witness. Overnight, Israeli jets bombed Gaza, killing at least one resident and wounding seven or more others (including a child) in a series of lawless raids.

Gaza's medical emergency spokesperson, Adham Abu Salmiyya, said three residents were seriously injured after Israel bombed the Al Zeitoun neighborhood, Rafah tunnel areas, and an alleged Al Qassam Brigades training center in Gaza City's At-Tuffah community.

Further attacks struck eastern Khan Younis, causing extensive damage but no injuries. Israel targets Gaza regularly by air, land and sea, falsely claiming self-defense every time. It long ago rang hollow.

Imagine if instead Israeli neighborhoods were bombed regularly, killing innocent civilians? Western leaders would express outrage in response.

In contrast, when Palestinians are killed, it goes unnoticed, notably by major media sources more focused on supporting NATO aggression, slaughtering people in the name of "liberating" them.

The hypocrisy is stark and galling, yet commonplace backing wrong over right. The horrors need volumes to explain.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli forces also razed Palestinian farmland south of Hebron, bulldozing fruit trees belonging to several Palestinian families. At the same time, several Hebron neighborhoods were raided. In addition, residents of Yatta, Tarqomia, and other Palestinian communities face regular Israeli incursions, harassing and aiming to displace them.

Israel Welcomes Glenn Beck

On August 14, Israel National News writer Tzvi Ben Gadalyahu headlined, "Israel Rolls Out Red Carpet for Glenn Beck" ahead of his "Restoring Courage" tour in Jerusalem, saying:

He scrapped plans to hold it at the Temple Mount after being warned about Muslim outrage. Instead, he'll hold two Jerusalem events, "at the Davidson Center at the southern edge of the Western Wall and the other in Safra Square," near municipal offices and city hall.

A previous article explained Beck's demagoguery, right wing extremism, and racism.

No longer on Fox News, he continues his hatemongering diatribes against disadvantaged minorities, Muslims, Latino immigrants, and anyone to the left of his views, meaning he'll fit right in among Israeli extremists who arranged his visit.

Beck claims it's "time to Stand and Restore Courage. We ask those of you who value freedom honor and faith to travel to Israel and stand with Glenn Beck and leaders from around the world with one united voice."

Palestinians, anti-war activists, and opponents of Israel's illegal occupation aren't invited. Nor were they included on a July Beck visit when extremist Knesset members let him address the Aliyah and Absorption Committee, saying he came "to speak the truth" about efforts to delegitimize Israel.

He also claimed PA demands exacerbate anti-Semitism that's "going through the roof," when US and European studies show it in steep decline.

Now he's back, endorsed by Rev. John Hagee, a fellow demagogue, supporting racial hatred, white Christian supremacy, imperial wars, apocalyptic violence, gay bashing, male gender dominance, and fanatically wanting Israel exclusively for Jews.

They're a matched set, Hagee writing Beck, saying:

"I'm writing to express my strong support for the Restoring Courage events to be held in Israel....Those of us who love Israel (see) especially ominous thunder clap to come down in September, when the (UN) will most likely support a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood."

He falsely claimed the General Assembly has no power to do it, at the same time railing against "the symbolic impact" he called "extremely dangerous."

"I look forward to seeing you" in Israel, he said, "the land God gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in an eternal covenant that is binding to this day."

Hagee knows because God told him so, communicating directly he apparently believes. So do his parishioners sadly and other followers of his demagogic hatemongering misinterpretation of vital truths.

New Settlement Units Announced

In 2004, America's United Methodist Church stood firm against "confiscat(ing) Palestinian land for construction of settlements and the building of a separation wall."

It also expressed opposition to other Israeli abuses, including "intensified closures, curfews, dehumanizing check points, home demolitions, uprooted trees, bulldozed fields....confiscation of Palestinian land and water....targeted assassinations," and other Israeli occupation abuses.

In recent days, Israel announced thousands of new settlement units, defiant of international law, and a vital need for new construction in Tel Aviv, Haifa, West Jerusalem, and other Israeli cities, not Occupied Palestine, to relieve a severe housing shortage, causing prices to skyrocket.

Many human rights organizations express similar views, including opposition to settlement developments, stealing Palestinian land for exclusive Jewish use.

No matter. On August 15, 277 West Bank Ariel units were approved. Earlier, 500 others were announced in Gush Etzion, Ma'ale Adumin, Ariel, and Kiryat Sefer.

In early August, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said 930 more are planned for East Jerusalem's Har Homa C and 42 public buildings in Har Homa B, as well as extensive accompanying infrastructure.

On August 11, thousands more were announced - 1,600 in Ramat Shlomo, 2,000 in Givat Hamatos, and 700 in Pisgat Zeev. "This would bring (total East Jerusalem approvals) to over 5,200, and counting, in August alone."

In 121 illegal settlements and nearly 100 outposts, around 300,000 settlers populate the West Bank, another 200,000 in East Jerusalem, and the numbers keep growing.

As a result, over 42% of choice West Bank land and large parts of East Jerusalem have been stolen by successive Israeli governments, claiming they want peace.

Compounded by his duplicitous rhetoric overall, Obama (like his predecessors) stands firmly in support, reiterating America's "unbreakable" bond with Israel, including its most lawless acts.

According to PCHR and other human rights organizations, as long as international community leaders grant Israel impunity, Palestinian justice will lose out.

Will socially oppressed Israeli Jews finally take note and say No More!

* 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.

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• Gordon Duff: Israeli Ambassador Admits Rogue Operations, Spying And Worse
• Counting the cost of a Palestinian state
• One-State, Two-State and the American Task Force on Palestine – By Antoine Raffoul

By Thabet Abu-Ras* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Historical Background of Palestine's Geography

Historic Palestine / source: Palestine Remembered

Since the appearance of the Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth century, there have been many endeavors to partition Palestine. The first partition plan took place under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, as part of placing Arab lands under the control of the two major colonial powers of Britain and France. One year later, Britain's Balfour Declaration proclaimed the intention to create a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, whose geographic borders were not defined at the time and when the Jewish population comprised less than 10% of Palestine. Two years following the declaration, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the World Zionist Organization announced its intention to implement it by creating a state with borders exceeding those of historic Palestine, to include Transjordan and southern Syria. This proposed Jewish state would extend from the Litani River in the north to the city of Arish in the south. The recommendations brought by the Peel Commission–formed in 1937 following the outbreak of the 1936 Arab revolt in Palestine–are considered to be the first to suggest that Palestine be partitioned into two equal entities, an Arab and a Jewish one, keeping Jerusalem under the governance of the British Mandate. The United Nations Partition Plan of Palestine of 1947 granted 56% of historic Palestine towards the establishment of a Jewish state and 43% for an Arab Palestinian state. Jerusalem was to be placed under international administration.

The Jewish state was eventually created on 78% of the land of Palestine, following the 1948 Nakba and the expulsion of over two-thirds of this portion's native residents. While the West Bank was annexed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Gaza Strip was placed under Egyptian control. In 1967, the arm of the Israeli occupation reached the remaining two parts of Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, placing the whole country under Israeli control. Reviewing this history provides important background for considering today's reality.

The Geopolitical and Natural Components of One State

• The Geographic Borders of Palestine. In 1948, Palestine's geographic unity–comprising 27,000 sq. km.–was severed into three geopolitical units: the state of Israel (20,770 sq. km.), the West Bank (5,860 sq. km.) and the Gaza Strip (365 sq. km.). The last 63 years witnessed many attempts to redraw or establish new borders based on different partition proposals, ceasefire lines, administrative borders, and others. However, all these attempts have failed. The land of Palestine, impervious to political proposals that have attempted to establish new boundaries, has maintained its well-established natural borders.
• The Oslo Accords. Neither the Oslo Accords of 1993 nor the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994 succeeded in affecting Palestine's historic and natural borders. Furthermore, the growing Jewish settlement activity in Palestine, though creating a new geographic and demographic reality, has also failed to affect Palestine's geographic unity. In addition, the difficulty inherent in the creation of two independent states within the 60 kilometer stretch between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River (as proposed by the 1947 UN Partition Plan) has been confirmed.
• Groundwater and Natural Resources. Groundwater and other natural resources are the most unifying components of Palestine's geography. For example, the idea of transferring a population from one place to another becomes impossible when considering groundwater. The control over groundwater and other natural resources has thus been among the most charged topics between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; for that reason, reaching an agreement on this topic has been tabled until the final status negotiations, along with the issues of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and borders. Furthermore, for Israel, the issue of water is a matter of security, demonstrated by the Israeli term, "water security."Accordingly, Israel considers the groundwater aquifer that lies under the mountains of the West Bank as a strategic reservoir not to be conceded to a future Palestinian state. The same can be said about the coastal groundwater aquifers that lie along the Mediterranean coast between the Gaza Strip and the city of Haifa. The current water crisis that exists today, and which will become more severe in the future, will force Israeli and Palestinian water experts to create a joint water system, as well as to develop a joint water policy that considers all residents between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
• Transportation and Communication Network. The transportation and communication networks that exist in historic Palestine comprise one continuous network. The major east-west highways traverse current borders to connect the east to the west of historic Palestine. The best example is Highway 5, the so-called "Trans-Samaria Highway" that connects Tel-Aviv with Palestinian cities and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Furthermore, Israel constantly uses Palestinian airspace for civil, as well as military, purposes. On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority must rely on Israeli ports, which are under full Israeli control, to transport products internationally. In communications, an Israeli company established networks in areas of Palestine that were occupied in 1967, and continues to operate them to this day.
• The Labor Market and Economic Cooperation. After the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Paris Protocol on Economic Relations, signed by the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government, aimed to fortify economic cooperation inside the borders of historic Palestine. Of course, Israel was the major winner of the protocol. Cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority was not limited to Palestinian usage of Israeli ports as Palestinian markets became an extension–and backyard–to Israeli companies and tradesmen. The Paris Protocol also decreed a unifying customs system and implemented the use of the same currency, the Israeli Shekel. Israeli electric companies further provide electricity to vast areas of the West Bank, including to major Palestinian cities and most of the Gaza Strip, even now after the Israeli withdrawal from the latter.
• Population Distribution and Demographic Components of One State. Today, the population inside historic Palestine stands at about 10.6 million, out of which 5.5 million are Jewish and 5.3 million are Palestinian. Of the latter, 2.5 million Palestinians are residents of the West Bank, 1.5 million are residents of the Gaza Strip, and 1.3 million live inside the State of Israel and hold Israeli citizenship. The remaining 300,000 are considered residents of Jerusalem, under Israeli authority, but without holding Israeli citizenship.Furthermore, Israeli settlement policies push towards greater interconnection, as the number of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank now stands at more than 300,000, distributed among 144 settlements and 130 unofficial Jewish outposts (Ma'ahazim). In addition, 15 additional Jewish settlements are neighborhoods of "Greater Jerusalem," which includes territory occupied in 1967 that Israel has annexed and claimed as belonging to an indivisible Jerusalem.

Conclusion

Palestine has resisted, and endured, all attempts of geographic partition and segmentation over the last 100 years. Today, Israel controls the totality of historic Palestine, while exerting pressure, locally and internationally, for its recognition as a Jewish state without drawing its final borders. Zionism has hereby reached an impasse in its attempt to build an ethnic Jewish state.

It is a well-established fact that Israel is the only state in the world that was established without defining its borders, which corresponds to the flexibility of Israeli citizenship; it does not align with geographic boundaries of a state as predominates in the rest of the world. Instead Israeli citizenship correlates to the boundaries of the Jewish religion around the world. Therefore, an Israeli settler in a West Bank settlement is considered an Israeli citizen, whereas a Palestinian living a kilometer away, who is an indigenous inhabitant of the land, is prevented from attaining citizenship. Thus we must ask the question: If the political and spatial interconnections, which exist between the Palestinian and Jewish societies inside the boundaries of historic Palestine, are inseparable and make partition non-amenable, how then can the future of these two societies start seeking alternatives to partition? Such a future requires that they work against the neo-apartheid regime and towards the establishment of one democratic, bi-national state.

* Dr. Thabet Abu-Ras is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Development at Ben-Gurion University.

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• One-State, Two-State and the American Task Force on Palestine – By Antoine Raffoul
• Steps to create an Israel-Palestine
• Prof. John J. Mearsheimer – The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners

By Dr. Elias Akleh * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

The Palestinians had not gained any positive results through these negotiations. On the contrary they have been witnessing their land being gradually snatched from under them few meters at a time, more of their rights being continuously violated, and more and more of them being routinely murdered by Israeli army and extremist colonizers (settlers).

Although not talked about openly the Palestinians had what could be described as unconscious knowledge of the dubious nature of the negotiations the Palestinian negotiating team is leading. WikiLeaks had just uncovered what have been well-known facts and had forced people to face and to talk about them.

What was really surprising is how far the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its negotiators have been willing to offer the Israelis, who have rejected all the Palestinian generous and free concessions, and the total pro-Israeli bias of the self-claimed American honest peace broker, who exerted tremendous pressure on the PA to surrender even more concessions.

The Palestine Papers have exposed PA and its negotiating team as traitors, who betrayed a national trust given to them by their own people. The Palestinian negotiating team had given Israel so many concessions while getting nothing in return. Besides accepting Israel's existence on occupied Palestinian land in 1948 they had also agreed to accept Israel's annexation of large tracts of 1967 occupied territories over which the Israelis had built more colonies (settlements) especially around Jerusalem in contravention to international laws that consider all settlements in occupied land as illegal. It also seems that they had agreed to some sort of shared sovereignty over Haram Al-Sharif; one of the most Islamic holy sites that is the property of the Islamic Waqf (trust) and belongs to all Muslims not just to the Palestinians.

It seems that the PA had also given up the legitimate rights of seven million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as guaranteed by all international laws and by UN resolution 194. They had considered it impractical while, at the same time, accepting the fraudulent Jewish claim of right of return from different countries all over the globe to Palestine. They, instead, have negotiated the return of a very small number of Palestinians only to the proposed yet-undefined future Palestinian state in the form of humanitarian reunion of family members.

The PA had also negotiated some sort of security cooperation with Israel that had made the Palestinian forces an Israeli proxy security forces protecting Israeli extremist colonizers and oppressing all forms of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation. This involved, among others, the imprisoning and torturing of Palestinian freedom fighters and political figures, providing security information to Israeli soldiers concerning the locations and movement of Palestinian activists, and allowing the Israeli soldiers to operate freely within the Palestinian towns to arrest and to assassinate activists and Hamas members.

Worst of all the WikiLeaks papers had exposed the roles the PA had played in inciting against the democratically elected Hamas government, its role in the failed coup in Gaza, its cooperation with Israel in the illegal economic siege against Gaza, it's pre-knowledge of the 2008-2009 Cast Lead Operation against Gaza and its intelligence sharing with the Israeli army, and its deployment of security troops to the borders of Gaza/Egypt in preparation of taking over Gaza as soon as the Israeli army finishes off Hamas.

Robert Fisk stated in his article "The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration". This is actually far worse than Balfour Declaration. We would expect Zionist British Balfour to betray Palestinians, but we would not have expected the PA, who claims to struggle for Palestinians' rights and to establish Palestinian state, to betray their own Palestinian brothers.

The response of the PA and its negotiating team to the Palestine Papers was so pathetic. I have watched their angry emotional nonsensical and at times hostile defense while being interviewed on Al-Jazeera TV, especially that of the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, Saeb Erekat. During his interview Mr. Erekat was extremely emotional, agitated, furious, very hostile, trying to talk down his interviewer with loud screaming voice, avoiding most of the questions posed to him, accusing his interviewer and Al-Jazeera of incitement against his person specifically and against Palestinians in general, threatening to sue Al-Jazeera, and talking big about patriotism and his own struggle to put Palestine back on the map. Never in my life have I felt pity for and disappointment with such a man assigned to be a chief negotiator with such a pathetic childish dialogue skills.

The 20 years history of this Palestinian negotiating team has failed to show any success. They failed to gain even one inch of occupied land back despite all the major concessions they offered Israel. With such failure it is so shameful that such a team was never changed even once while the Israeli negotiating team has been changed so many times.

It is understandable that negotiations between a weak occupied nation and its stronger occupying power yields only surrender agreements. It is also known, in the case of Palestinians, that the other rich Arab governments are no longer providing enough financial support to the PA to survive, and had left them under the conditional financial mercy of the Quartet and especially the US. The PA is forced to obey the dictate of the American administration for fear of losing its financial and logistical support. It appears that PA and its negotiating team had sold their souls and are willing to betray their people in order to stay in their political positions that generate handsome income into their own pockets. It is extremely shameful that they are willing to meet with their enemy to strike shady cooperative deals rather than meeting with their Palestinian brothers in the democratically elected Hamas government for reconciliation. Honorable men would have resigned their positions, when under pressure, rather than giving in to unjust political pressure causing harm to their people.

What was also surprising, besides the PA's generous concession, is the degree to which the Israelis were unwilling to accept these concessions that might have led to some sort of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Israelis seem to accept nothing less than complete capitulation by the Palestinians to everything they demand up front. This cast a doubt about Israel's seriousness in achieving any type of peace agreement. If peace is what the Israelis aspire for, as they keep claiming, they would have accepted the Arab Peace Initiative that guarantees them the peace and the security they claim to fervently seek.

Israel has adopted the Zionist dream of Jewish-only great Israel and nothing less would satisfy them. Israel's unwilling to accept all the generous Palestinian concessions reveal their false claim that they do not have any Palestinian/Arab partner in peace. The fact is that Israeli government, itself, is not willing to be a peace partner with the Arabs.

What is very striking in the Papers is the role the American administration had played in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Successive American administrations had continuously exhibited extreme bias towards Israelis regardless of the crimes they commit. Such bias can be seen in the US vetoing every UN resolution against Israel, supporting and arming Israel in its 2006 war against Lebanon and its 2008/9 war against Gaza, sidelining Goldstone's Report incriminating Israel in war crimes, and defending Israeli piracy against the Gaza Humanitarian Flotilla. In fact the American administrations had been Israel's faithful lawyer and financer

As for the Palestinian side the American administrations had always applied political pressure to force them into surrendering more concessions. The administration has gone as far as violating its sacred calling and aspiration for supporting freedom and democracy when it opposed the Palestinian democratic choice of a Hamas government, and went as far as arranging for a coup against that government and supporting the illegal blockade of Gaza.

As for the plight of the Palestinian refugees the Palestine Papers revealed that the previous Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, had the audacity to offer the mass transfer of these refugees, as if they were cattle, to some Latin American countries such as Chile and Argentine, assuming the authority to force the refugees onto the citizens of these countries regardless of any ethnic conflict that would arise.

The US had obstructed PA to resort to UN Security Council to extract recognition of a Palestinian state and pressured the PA back into the fruitless negotiations under the claim that such negotiation is the only means of solving the conflict. The US had offered only lip service against the Israeli violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention of building settlements on usurped Palestinian land in the occupied territories but had done nothing to stop it. The least the US could do to enforce the international law in this regard is to withhold, or at least threaten to withhold, all financial aid to Israel that is being used to build such settlements and to subsidize housing for Israeli extremists.

The American administration is not an honest peace broker as they keep claiming; rather it is a very active partner in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

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By Dr. Salman Abu Sitta* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

To maintain a façade of moral code, you do not kill a friend, you kill an enemy. You do not rob another man's house, you recover your long-forgotten property. These are the principles adopted in all wars and conflicts. That is why it was always the mission of the aggressor to depict the target of killing, i.e. the enemy, as an evil, bad person or people who deserve to be defeated, and if killed, that would be a natural end for their bad behavior. Similarly it was the mission of the occupier to claim that he is not robbing someone else but merely recovering back his property which he neglected to do for centuries.

Nobody perfected this art of deception, or double-speak, better than the Zionist agents. How else could you explain the success of a Hungarian man, like Herzl, sitting in a Vienna Café, and professing that a Jews' State will be established in 50 years in a faraway land he had never lived in? His success, almost solely in Europe at the time, was manifested by convincing colonial powers of the advantages of supporting his colonial project and convincing their people, the Europeans, that this conquest, killing, plunder and destitution of a people is a divine will, a miracle and a victory for western civilization.

Nobody had to create so many myths and falsehoods in their endeavors more than the Zionists. The reason is simple: they did not have credible facts to prove their case, so they had to invent dubious alternatives, relying on the readiness of the gullible people and the opportunistic politicians to believe them.

Take the slogan: "Palestine is a land without people". It was terra nullius, they say. Of course, Zionists knew that people lived there and built over 1000 towns and villages, most are 2000 years old, according to Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea (313 AD) who recorded them. Yet Zionists submitted a map to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, showing Palestine as 'a grazing land for nomads'. They presented this map to the colonial powers, particularly the British and the French. The irony of course is that the British had finished their voluminous survey of Palestine, 40 years earlier, in 10 volumes, listing 12,000 historical sites including towns and villages, and the French finished their survey through their scholar, Victor Guerin, in 1863, who produced 8 volumes of his journey to almost every Palestinian village. Yet they chose to believe the Zionists and hoodwinked their public to support this 'noble and moral' conquest, in churches, newspapers and public debates.

What then is the meaning of terra nullius? It does not mean (to them) an empty land. It means that those who live there do not matter, they are worthless. It is like clearing woods from dry bushes and insects.

These are the exact words of Herzl,

"If we move into a region where there are wild animals to which Jews are not accustomed – big snakes etc. – I shall use the natives, prior to giving them employment in the transit countries [read: expulsion], for the extermination of these animals."

Of course he did not say this in his published book, only in his then unpublished diary.

Balfour said as much:

"... in Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. Zionism [is] of profounder impact than the desires and prejudices [not the rights] of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land."

How was this colonial project in Palestine packaged in the diplomatic language? In Balfour Declaration, they called it a "home" for the Jews, national at that, not a state to the exclusion of the inhabitants of the country, in Palestine, not of Palestine. What about those inhabitants? Of course, there is a reference to them: "without prejudice to the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", all 92 percent of them. A civilized afterthought indeed.

If your home and family are threatened by an unwelcome flood of (Jewish European) immigrants and you rise to fight it, you are called a "bandit". Your house is destroyed, your supplies are burnt, your son and father are killed or imprisoned. That is what the British did in 1939.

Ten years later, when the Zionists depopulated 675 Palestinian towns and villages and committed over 70 massacres, during al Nakba ethnic cleansing, some people naturally tried to return home, at least to rescue an old father, to water the garden or to feed the animals left behind. No one believed the exile would last over a couple of weeks. These returnees were shot by Israelis on the spot. Complaints were made to the Mixed Armistice Committee that those killed were "infiltrators", by the very same people who "infiltrated" Palestine only a few years earlier.

Thus conventional wisdom would have it that those who waded into the shores of Palestine from a smuggler's ship in the darkness of night are not "infiltrators", they are the masters of the land, and the real house owners who were expelled from their homes and tried to return home are "the infiltrators".

Twenty thousand five hundred days later this ruse is still applied. At the time of writing, Israel issued Military Order No. 1650 (Second Amendment) in which seventy thousand Palestinians residing in the West Bank from other parts of Palestine are liable to be deported as "infiltrators". By the same analogy, an Italian from Napoli found living in Rome under the Nazi occupation in WWII would be liable to be deported to Albania as an "infiltrator". One must concede that the crime of ethnic cleansing, regularly described by the Israeli propaganda machine as "transfer of population", has now reached new heights of sophistication. It is now called "Prevention of Infiltration".

A story is often told about Ein Haud, a lovely small village south of Haifa, with beautiful stone houses. Its population was expelled but they managed to remain within Israel. They built shacks on the opposite hill, looking every day at their houses, now occupied by artists from Romania who turned it into an "artists colony". Their land and houses were confiscated under the Absentees Property Law of 1950. "Absentees" means the expelled refugees.

The logic is that the state of Israel takes over the property of those who are "absent", because they "abandoned" their property, probably to spend their lovely exile days at the Riviera, not a refugee camp. Hence it is the duty of a "democratic" state to take care of their property (to use, rent, utilize) for the benefit of Jews only. This logic does not allow for the fact that they are absent because they were expelled. If they returned, they will be shot as "infiltrators".

The irony has no end. If somehow the village inhabitants remained in the area conquered by Israel, they have to be counted and given IDs. Therefore they are "present". But their property must be confiscated because they are "absent". Hence they acquired the oxymoron appellation of "present-absentees".

Wonders never cease. One of those "present-absentees" from Ein Haud could not bear it. So one day he walked across to the opposite hill and knocked on the door of his house. A Romanian artist answered. The owner asked who he was:

- I am Ephraim

- Where are you from Ephraim?

- From here of course, Ein Haud. Why do you ask? Who are you any way?

- I am Abu Ahmed, from Romania.

The massive ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which took place in 1948/49, the year of al Nakba (Catastrophe), unprecedented in modern history, has to have an appropriate name in the Zionist lexicon which hides its ugliness. They called it "War of Independence", which is precisely what the Palestinians were engaged in since Balfour's Declaration of 1917, that is, since the betrayal of the Allies and the collusion with the Zionists to deprive them of their homeland. This Zionist term was adopted, by Jewish immigrants who infiltrated Palestine, to describe the ethnic cleansing of the original inhabitants of Palestine. It was widely accepted by the West. Mercifully, cracks now started to appear in this edifice of deception. Now it is against the law in Israel to mention al Nakba. The monopoly remains exclusively for the deception.

The Green Line is often used to describe the line dividing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in the West Bank and Gaza. What is this line? Why it is green? Its proper name is the "Armistice Line of 1949". It is the line at which Israeli invading forces stopped in 1949, whereby 78% of Palestine was conquered. That was a big jump from 5.5% Jewish-owned land during the Mandate and in excess of 24% over the suggested allocation of the Partition Plan. Israel signed 4 Armistice Agreements with Arab countries. Article 2 of these agreements states clearly that this line does not confer or deny rights to either party and has no legal meaning. No military forces are allowed to cross it, hence the armistice. It is simply a line separating Palestine that was occupied in 1948 from that occupied in 1967. Israel did cross it in 1967 in violation of international law. To obscure the legal meaning of the line and its crossing, it was dubbed by Israel as the Green Line, the colour of the pencil used by Israel on its maps. This simple device of renaming the line enables Israel to imply in its media machine that it has not violated any law and has not conquered any land. Thus, Netanyahu can announce boldly in CNN interviews that Jews should be able to live anywhere (in Palestine) without fear of contradiction. Now Israel removed this line altogether from its maps.

How could you steal a whole cake and eat it? You first steal half a cake. With no deterrent, you steal the other half. You eat the whole cake under the 'principle' that the two halves must be "unified" (in your stomach).

Israel occupied West Jerusalem in 1948 and East Jerusalem in 1967. Israel claimed that the city must remain "unified" under its control. The "unification" tag is meant to disguise the fact that both acts are not only illegal in view of international law, but, surprisingly, they are contrary to Israeli founding laws.

Israel's Declaration of 'Independence' states that its international legitimacy, feeble as it was, rests on the Partition Plan recommendation. But this Plan never puts Jerusalem under Israel. Israel occupied West Jerusalem, Lydda, Ramle, Galilee and parts of the south in violation of the Partition Plan. Israel's admission to the UN membership was conditional upon its compliance with the Partition Plan and the return of the refugees' resolution. It never complied. Needless to say that the occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a clear violation of "the inadmissibility of military conquest". Yet the "unification of Jerusalem" is touted by Israel and AIPAC as the justification to build anywhere (for Jews only) "in Israel's eternal capital, which is not a settlement".

Similarly, occupation of the West Bank is labeled as "liberation of Judea and Samaria". The Apartheid Wall, condemned by the International Court of Justice, is named the "security fence". The redeployment of occupation forces is described as "withdrawal".

Nothing can be more misleading than the withdrawal from Gaza Strip. Israel controls its land, above it, below it and around it. Gaza starvation has been described by Israeli officials as "putting the population on diet", a new device for slow death designed not to make world headlines.

The real name of this tragedy is "war crimes" and "genocide" according to articles 6 and 8 of the Rome Statute of 1998 creating the International Criminal Court. These two articles describe exactly the situation in Gaza.

The Gaza Palestinians are promised water, food and medicine and (partial?) removal of the blockade if they comply with the Quartet conditions: recognizing the Israeli occupiers and ceasing the resistance to them. Blair did not spare a media microphone without bleating into it that $ 4.5 billion are waiting to rebuild demolished Gaza if only Palestinians accept the Quartet conditions.

Blair is a patent liar. The media believed him or acted so. No official, no journalist, no learned 'expert' tells him he is lying. Only one man. Alvaro de Soto, the UN Mediator, in his End of Mission report, in May 2007, says in para 79, that the Quartet never imposed any conditions. These are US and European Union conditions based on their own policies, using UN and Russia as a shield for their demands.

A familiar name on TV screens is Sderot, the Israeli settlement, the victim of kitchen pipe projectiles which broke a window and killed one person in 8 years. Sderot mayor expresses his perennial fear of the unbelievably crowded Gaza Strip, the hotbed of terrorism, and is visited by dignitaries from European capitals and US Congress.

None of these dignitaries know, or wish to declare, that Sderot is a settlement built on the land of Najd village, whose expelled population lives mere two kilometers away in a refugee camp. They are throwing their home-made projectiles on their own land, at its occupiers, in a symbolic gesture to assert their right for their homes in the occupied land.

Those dignitaries lament the crowded conditions in Gaza, the misery, the poverty and the hopelessness. They shake their heads in sorrow. The brave ones visit Gaza in a whirlwind tour of two hours, with no contact with the real people, huddled by UN relief officials, to protect them from being devoured by the hungry people.

Did any one of those distinguished visitors ask why is Gaza Strip crowded and miserable? It is crowded because it is where the population of 247 Palestinian villages, the victims of ethnic cleansing in 1948, were crowded in an open air prison with an area of 1% of Palestine. They are crowded at a density of 6,000 persons per square kilometer whereas Sderot mayor and co. roam their land at a density of 6 persons per square kilometer.

Let them go back to their land and you will have no crowd, no poverty and no "terrorism". If you do not like that, give them what the Israelis have: F16 and Merkava tanks. "Terrorism" will stop and a nice lovely war will begin.

Israel gives itself the license to destroy any village and kill its people under the rubric "pre-emptive operation", sometimes called "retaliation". Under this principle, you are allowed to think that your neighbour has nasty looks and he may one day decide to kill you. So you decide to take action at once by catching him unaware and kill him. You do not need to see advancing tanks. You do not need any proof. Your mental mindset is enough, especially if you are a racist. That was the explanation given by Israel for the killings in Bureij camp, Qibya, Samou' and a dozen other places. This policy entered the language of international diplomacy as a respectable word. You see it now splashed on the newspapers' headlines, although it is in stark violation of the word and spirit of the UN Charter.

From the above examples, it is clear that the media manipulation and the loaded terminology are the undeclared army of the Zionists. This kind of army cannot be pinned down by Goldstone, Dugard or Falk. But it commits crimes just the same.

The Hasbara, fabricating Israel's lilly-white image, is a refined art. Its tools have been exposed recently in the Israel's Project's Secret Hasbara Handbook at the link:

No need to elaborate. But for those who are keen to know the facts, and they are luckily increasing in number, for those good people around the world who are guided by their moral compass and for the Palestinians of course, carriers of the burden of untold truths, for all those, the Israeli Hasbara is best described by a similar sounding Arabic word, Za'bara, which means: meaningless, convoluted loud words.

The world will be a better place, and justice will have a chance to prevail, when Hasbara is recognized as it really is: merely Za'bara. When truth shines, it expels the clouds of myths.

* Dr. Salman Abu Sitta (born 1938 in Bir-al-Saba' in Southern Palestine) is considered one of the greatest Palestinian researcher and writers on the issue of the Palestinian refugees and the Right of Return. His published works include:

Dr. Abu-Sitta wrote this article for the Palestine Think Tank

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Ever ask what happen to the homes of those that become refugees in 1948?

This 3 minute clip from Al Jazeera English sums up the latest Israeli actions to make sure the "right of return" becomes just as unfeasible as they have made a true 2-state solution.

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The Zionist claims that Palestine is "a land without a people for a people without a land."

I got this picture from a Palestinian friend (h/t: A.S.K.). It is a photo of a Palestinian Arab Heritage Building in Haifa; built year 1872. Yes, you read it correct, Haifa is a Palestinian city before the existence of the apartheid state called Israel. That is more than a century and a quarter of years before the Zionist invasion of Arab Palestine... and they call it "a narrow slip of desert."

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The following is an abbreviated translation from some of the Arabic-language blogsphere. It was initially published at Global Voices!

Music...

Amal, in her latest cartoon:

“See my Wawa, kiss my Wawa.” The Wawa is the little tiny hurt “ouch”..

In this cartoon; a poor bleeding Palestinian child is begging from a wealthy Arabian man who seems not giving attention and busy listening to one of the most famous, yet currently the most seductive singer in the Arab world, Haifa Wahbi.

Quoting the late Ghassan Kanafani (a famous Palestinian novelist, revolutionary journalist and writer), Amal writes:

Speaking of the Wawa, Iyas and Laith has produced the Jordanian version of the Wawa song (MP3). On the other hand, Haitham wrote a funny quick tutorial of the Wawa and how to treat it supported by seductive photos of the famous singer, Haifa Wahbi.

Iraq...

During the past few days, an application form has been widely distributed in many cities throughout Iraq urging past Ba'ath party members to rejoin the Ba'ath party. A news report by Al-Basra Net said that the form was distributed among the Iraqi-Sunni's only.

Imad Khadduri disaffirm this news. He said:

Away from war and conflicts, Tara, loves life. She lists here some of the reasons:

Democracy...

In Kuwait; democracy is heading towards a new brink. This evening, the 'Orange Protest' will go out in streets protesting the new government proposal to change the number of election zones.

The protests already started few days ago. On Tuesday, Zaydoun had a foreigner guest from Dubai who is in business trip to Kuwait. When he saw the protest in front of the Kuwaiti parliament during the day, he insisted that he would like to join the protest that was going to take place a the same night.

Zaydoun then said:

A lot of photos from the last few days protests can be found here and here. Note the font colors of the blog like many other Kuwaiti blogs, turned orange.

That was on the peaceful side of protest in the Arab world. The rocky one still continues at Egypt.

The government issued a decree banning street protests.

Wa7da Masrya post short press release by "Journalists for Change", which says:

Ahmed is even more pessimistic. He publishes the Egyptian flag, but upside down and writes:

Zarqa Alyamama even call it occupation:

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Are women who have plastic surgery more likely to commit suicide?

Some studies have found that women who have their breasts enlarged are more likely to commit suicide, but no one knows why exactly. Researchers in Denmark looked at whether women who had cosmetic breast implants were more likely than other women to commit suicide or have previous psychiatric problems.

Good News for the Plastic Industry

This supports the hypothesis that breast implants don't drive women to commit suicide but that women who choose to have breast implants may be more likely than the average woman to have underlying psychiatric problems, the authors write.

Geez, does that means that Nancy, Haifa, Ruby, Elissa, etc are having psychological problems? God Forbid ;-)

[quote]

Lebanon is the fashion icon of the Middle East. Yet, when you look at most of the girls there, they are anything but pretty. Most of them have tattooed brows and lip liner, along with nose jobs, and Botox injections. Many of the girls, have been going to the Plastic Surgeon of the Stars in order to look like a certain star. (i.e. Nancy, Haifa, Ruby, Elissa, etc.) when in reality, all of these stars are also plastic. Nancy Ajram has apparently had 19 plastic surgeries and she is still only 19.

No one is appreciating the natural beauty anymore. When you have a girl walking around breasts that she bought, and liposuction along with fuller lips, she CAN outdo any natural girl any day. A girl that holds on to her natural-ness is kinda like a girl who saves her self, very rare. And I'm not targeting this to any particular region, country or ethnic background. When we have these stars who are "natural" size 00, size D breasts and a flaw-less face, many girls dont have confidence anymore. This tends to lead to eating disorders, a rise in teen sex, and teen pregnancies.

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