By Anthony Lawson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Video link: http://blip.tv/file/4936069

Alternative link: http://vimeo.com/24350691

Suppressing free and open discussion on any subject is as bad as telling lies, and knowingly suppressing the truth is the biggest lie of all, because it is based, not on a mistake or a genuine error, but on a deliberate intention to deceive.

Rudolf Höss -- Commander of Auschwitz

Yet Höss's conviction has stood, by inference, as a testament to the cruelty of Germans in general, since he was tried at Nuremberg, in 1947, and subsequently hanged on April 16th, 1947, in Poland.

With great respect for those who have tried—though harassed, punished, fined, imprisoned and otherwise abused—to tell it like it really was: Arthur R. Butz, Robert Faurisson, Paul Grubach, Gerd Honsik, David Irving, Kevin Käther, Nicholas Kollerstrom, Fred Leuchter, Horst Mahler, Ingrid Rimland, Germar Rudolf, Bradley Smith, Sylvia Stolz, Fredrick Töbin, Ernst Zündel and many others.

General References:
http://www.whale.to/b/rudolf_hoess.html
http://fathersmanifesto.net/hoess.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/bernard-baruch#ixzz1EIP9oT5c

http://www.white-history.com/hwr61.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Zionist_Organization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
http://remember.org/Facts.aft.tri.nur.html
http://www.rense.com/general68/hoss.htm
http://www.zundelsite.org/debate/006_jam.html
http://www.holocausthandbooks.com/
http://www.ihr.org/main/leaflets.shtml

Rudolf Höss

http://www.codoh.com/trials/triHöss.html

Charles F. Wennerstrum
http://www.iowacourtsonline.org/wfdata/frame1773-1463/pressrel68.asp

Robert Faurisson: Höss torture.
http://www.rense.com/general68/hoss.htm

Transfer Agreement Book
http://www.stockmaven.com/transfer_B5.htm

Japanese internment
http://archive.vancouver.wsu.edu/crbeha/ja/ja.htm

Palestine Mandate
http://www.mideastweb.org/mandate.htm

Agreement to bring America into WWI

http://separateduntoholiness.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/the-rothschild-1901-1919-the-secret-creators-of-world-war-1/

At Basle I founded the Jewish state
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/history/history1.html

Claim: Auschwitz II-Birkenau, more than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

Cremation specialists disagree
http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/auschwitz.shtml

Stephen F Pinter: No gas chambers in German camps
http://www.real-debt-elimination.com/real_freedom/Propaganda/nature_and_condition_of_german_concentration_camps.htm

"Not one case of death by poison gas was found."
http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070406.htm
http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/libcamps.shtml

Interesting video: Israeli Minister "We always use the anti-Semitism trick or bring up the Holocaust" 14 August, 2002 Shulamit Aloni
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW3a1bw5XlE

NOTE 1: Video originally created and uploaded by Anthony Lawson to YouTube, but YouTube removed it.
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gycNMf0xAc

NOTE 2: Vimeo also removed the video!
Video link: http://vimeo.com/21508099

* Anthony Lawson (known professionally as Tony Lawson) is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad agency creative director and voice over. He used to be known for shooting humorous commercials, but doesn’t find much to laugh about, with the way the world is going, these days.

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

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

What Would The Real Camp Survivors Tell Us?

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

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

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

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

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

STOLEN VALOR

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

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

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

LAST WEEK

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

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

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

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

REVISIONISTS AND DENIERS

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

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

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

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

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

HONESTY AND TRUTH

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

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

NEVER AGAIN, WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN?

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

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

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

THE REAL WAR

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

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

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

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

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

THE PHONY PRESS, SEX, SIN AND WAR

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

President Ahmadinejad of Iran has asked for a UN investigation of 9/11. For this, he has been branded a "wingnut" and "evildoer" by the American press. However, the 9/11 Commission itself asked for a criminal investigation, saying it uncovered a conspiracy and was prevented from getting the truth. They were quickly silenced. 9 years later, top scientists from around the world, supported by engineers, architects, military and intelligence officials agree on one thing. What thing is that? We will never know. Reporting that "one thing" would be the last thing any member of the press would ever do. A day later, they would become unpaid bloggers and have their name on the "no fly" list. Do things like this happen? How long did CNN's Rick Sanchez last after pointing out that Jon Stewart's fanatic pro-Israel bias is a form of "bigotry?"

Let's take a second to look at Ahmadinejad. Nearly daily stories hit newspapers around the world, "Iran is 15 minutes from being a nuclear power." Ahmadinejad threatens to "wipe Israel off the map." "Ahmadinejad supports a new holocaust."

The press, of course, continually reviles Ahmadinejad as a terrorist and mass murderer. What he isn't, however, is a liar. Every time it comes down to checking on who is telling the truth, Ahmadinejad or the press, it turns out Ahmadinejad is telling the truth. How can this be possible?

Well, a couple of things come into play. First of all, the press purposefully distorts what is said. The press lies, lies consistently. There is no nuclear program in Iran, not a weapons program. There is no credible information that varies from this fact, yet the press continually takes a line here and a statement there, out of context, and tries to build a case for war. Why is the press doing this? The answer is simply, Israelis control the American press and want the United States to destroy Iran, not because it is a military threat. It is technically impossible for Iran to attack Israel, every military expert in the world knows that and all have said it.

That will never be reported either.

Why is Ahmadinejad reviled with such venom? The answer is simple. He is being made an example. Anyone who speaks up, disagrees with reality as defined by the media, not any government, mind you, but the media that tells those in every government what they can and can't say or think, risks destruction. There is a clear methodology here. Let's look at some issues the press doesn't like very much, starting with our favorite, the villain of all time, Mr. Adolf Hitler.

Hitler got his start, speaking up much like Ahmadinejad. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles opened up Germany for abuse by financial criminals. However, it even started before that. Germany tried to quit the war in 1916 when it was winning. Britain and France refused, not on their own, but because the Rothschilds cut financial deals with them and promised to bring the United States into the war. 5 million more Europeans died along with nearly 200,000 Americans.

The Rothschilds got the Balfour Declaration, giving them a base to control Middle East oil, the Suez Canal and India, the things that the wars nearly a century later are being manipulated to bring about.

Communism took over Russia. Nearly every communist leader was Jewish and Zionist. Even today, every Russian "oligarch" is a Jew and Zionist. Hitler said that "communism' was the real Jewish religion. He believes he saved Germany from communism when he was elected chancellor. The country he took over had been economically destroyed through currency manipulation. A loaf of bread cost billions of Marks at one point. The currency was devalued by the Rothschilds supported by France and Britain, by force. Cash smuggled out of the country by the ton and reimbursed at full value, at gunpoint, stripping Germany clean, starvation, humiliation and, eventually, that nasty "right wing" government the world had so much trouble with, the Third Reich.

During the 1920s, when the French and British, really the Rothschilds, were destroying Germany, 80% of the property was foreclosed on and bought by, well, do we say it? Jews? Bought for pennies. This is the "billions" in property the Nazi's seized. Not a simple story when you get to hear all of it. An excuse, Auschwitz, Gaza, are there excuses for inhumanity?

This is all true. This is history. This will never be reported. Not only will this be kept secret but the fact that the Zionist groups that wanted Palestine settled by Jews supported Hitler and worked closely with him, not just in 1927 but as late as 1945. This is also historical fact, not conjecture.

So, lets go back to Ahmadinejad. Why would he have a "Holocaust Conference" in Tehran? Serious students of history that don't have to live off a university paycheck, telling the same myths and lies term after term all know what Ahmadinejad knows. They also know that there are some nasty secrets about the holocaust. The real reason, however, is to anger Israel. Why? Israel pretty much hates everyone, is arrogant, obnoxious and predatory.

Since Israel controls, not only the press but the world banking system, all major banks being "children" of the original Rothschilds banks, including and especially the Federal Reserve which controls the American economy, the idea that Israel may have "fictionalized" the holocaust in collusion with Josef Stalin of Russia, a mass murderer well beyond anything Hitler ever imagined, interested Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad never said there wasn't a holocaust. He simply asked for an honest and accurate historical assessment of the facts.

Israel went into a total panic. Israel was hiding a terrible secret about the holocaust. They still are. We don't know what it is, I won't even hazard a guess. We do know that millions were spent, tens of millions in bribe money to have laws passed suppressing any study of the holocaust. In 11 western nations, questioning the Israeli version, one that changes hourly it seems, is a crime.

So, what was Ahmadinejad's game? He was simply telling Israel that "he knew." Knew "what?" We don't know and may never find out but it is something horribly discrediting to Israel, so threatening that they would stage a nuclear attack to keep it secret. We all agree there were camps. We all agree the Nazis were bad. What could it be? It is something that Iran uses to blackmail Israel, that and the fact that China, a major military power, a massive nuclear power, quietly stands behind Iran. Nobody is supposed to know it. We all know it.

WHY SOME REALLY NEED TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT WWJD, WHAT JESUS WOULD REALLY DO...

Let's broaden things a bit. How do you tell if a Christian is a total phony or not? There is a standard question:

"Who was Mary Magdalene?"

If the answer you get uses the word "whore," you know you are dealing with someone whose religious education came from urban legends and comic books. If you are told she was an associate of Jesus cured of "demons" you have a student of the canon gospels. If you get a complex story of priest schools, a possible marriage of Jesus and Magdalene, Magdalene's own gospel, her sainthood and death in France, you may have a religious scholar on your hands.

Yet today, you can turn on your radio and hear dozens if not hundreds of radio stations, all blaring the same tune, "nuclear Armageddon...Obama the Muslim....Ground Zero Mosque.......family values....and how Magdalene was the "whore of Babylon."

The experts are all the same. Their name starts with Doctor." They have a degree in "Divinity Studies" from a college that can't be found on a satellite survey. What their 8 years of religious education and decades of bible study, some claim over 12 hours a day, they continue to harp on about Magdalene and her sins. Where did they get their ideas? From a Mel Gibson movie perhaps? Perhaps we could refer to the King James Version of the Bible as a reference:

Mt 27:56 Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children.
Mt 27:61 And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.
Mt 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
Mr 15:40 There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome;
Mr 15:47 And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid.
Mr 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.
Mr 16:9 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.
Lu 8:2 And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils,
Lu 24:10 It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.
Joh 19:25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.
Joh 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
Joh 20:18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.

This is every biblical reference to Mary Magdalene, quoting the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. What do we prove? Do we prove that the religious education of most Americans is based on Hollywood films? Dozens of films have depicted Mary Magdalene as a whore. Why would the film industry do this? Who runs the film industry? If I answer my own question, will I lose my job?

Christian Zionism: The Tragedy & The Turning, Part 1 from WHTT on Vimeo.

This week, dozens of stories of 9 year old brides in Yemen hit the papers. In fact, stories of the sexual abuses of Islam fill the papers in Western Europe and America. Sex sells papers and there is nothing that the same ethnic group that owns both Hollywood and America's newspapers loves more than sex and that's money. Are we being unfair, perhaps even bigoted? Yes, perhaps we might be with some exceptions. One of these is that the other group constantly attacked is Christians. Hardly a day goes by without the poor old German pope's photo next to a headline describing child rape.

Do we see those same headlines in the same papers as stories about Israeli organ theft rings? Oh, you mean you don't know that Israel has a huge industry tied to the theft and trade of human organs? Perhaps you might think this was an urban legend, you might think that, had you ever seen it reported.

Has anyone ever seen a news story about Jewish law and how it applies to pedophiles? Nothing? Curious. One of the few to speak up is Reverend Ted Pike. Here is some of what he has to say:

This year, top Israeli Rabbi Moti Elon was indicted by police for sex crimes against minors. "Far from being the rabbi of an obscure Hasidic sect, the charismatic Elon is a high-profile leader, educator and media personality, representing the more mainstream religious Zionists and former head of the renowned HaKotel (Western Wall) Yeshiva. He comes from a family of high achievers in law, politics and academia that has drawn comparisons with the Kennedy clan."

In 2006, Elon was restricted by an organization of rabbis in his contact with students, after confessing to sexual relationships with male students. Yet he continued to act as the president of a Talmudic academy in Jerusalem and did not fully honor the agreement. One Ha'aretz commentary says Elon "managed to turn himself into almost a kind of saint" –a fate certainly to be envied by American religious figures turned pedophiles.

Dr. Aviad Hacohen, dean of the Sha'arei Mishpat College, in 2007 reported that "95% of sexual offenses in Jerusalem were performed by the religious and haredi." "Several years ago, I began looking into the issue on a data-based level," said Hacohen. "It turned out that the law enforcement authorities, both the police and the prosecutor's office, were aware of the data but refused to expose it based on sectorial affiliation in order to avoid branding a certain group in the population..."

Since the following article was written in 2006, cases of Jewish leadership figures in Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism being involved in homosexuality or pedophilia scandals continue to mount not only in Israel, but in New York, where Ultra-Orthodox are strongest. The reason is simple: some of the very greatest rabbis who wrote the Talmud were pedophiles.

So, after a busy day reading the news, 9 year old brides in Yemen, women being stoned in Iran or the unending perfidies of the Catholic Church with its list of priest rape victims at 2 million and counting, reported much as though it were a sign counting "burgers sold" at a fast food restaurant, I find nothing in the "news" about such problems in the Jewish community, even though, as we read above, the scandals are real, pervasive and very noteworthy. I would think the arrest of Israel's top Rabbi for sex crimes would be reported.

It wasn't.

We are told daily, nearly hourly, the the Koran supports sex crimes and is unique among religious works for its "impurity." News networks in America actually encourage Koran burning, networks owned by Israeli's we admit, but American in some ways, at least some of the personnel are American citizens, still, at least. So, is there a problem in the Talmud that is being covered up, a problem that has driven the media to continually attack Islam while failing to look closer to home? Let's take a look:

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. (Sanh. 55b)

A girl who is three years of age and one day may be betrothed by cohabitation. . . .(Yeb. 57b)

A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her she becomes his. (Sanh. 69a, 69b, also discussed in Yeb. 60b)

It was taught: R. Simeon b. Yohai stated: A proselyte who is under the age of three years and one day is permitted to marry a priest, for it is said, But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves, and Phineas (who was priest, the footnote says) surely was with them. (Yeb. 60b)

[The Talmud says such three year and a day old girls are] . . . fit for cohabitation. . . But all women children, that have not known man by lying with him, it must be concluded that Scripture speaks of one who is fit for cohabitation. (Footnote to Yeb. 60b)

Where, in our news, do we read that a 9 year old girl would be considered an "old maid" in the Talmud? Have we proven bias and bigotry? When is the last time Jon Stewart talked about sex with three year olds? His audience would love hearing about it and I am sure he has some good "one liners" he could use. Can you see his smirk as he describes the physiological aspects alone? You are saying it would be in bad taste, something he would never do. Have you really seen his show?

Let's imagine Jon Stewart, "How about those rabbi's, can't you just picture it? A 3 year old? Like King Kong with a yamaka putting a move on Barbie."

How about Howard Stern? He has hour after hour attacking the sexual ills of Islam. Can you imagine how popular he will be when he starts pulling in callers screaming about the Talmud and sex with three year olds or the sex crimes of the rabbis, even higher by percentage than priests.

Imagine where Howard Stern would go with this. I'd rather not. "What did the rabbi say to the kindergartener?"

Is an Islamophobe a bigot? Is a Jew who rants about the sins of sex and Islam not only a bigot but a hypocrite as well? Am I going to be fired for saying this?

It isn't just that members of the press, our congress and 95% of our military are corrupt, moderate to severe, along with being functionally delusional. They believe everyone else is even dumber. When 300 billion goes missing in Iraq, they don't think we know who got it and that they all got a piece of the action? How could this much money disappear, news stories covering it, GAO accounting docs proving it but nobody notices that there are no hearings, no grand jury, no indictments.

The new rule in Washington, "if you steal it, you keep it."

Years ago, congress was attacked for passing the Patriot Acts, laws filled with unconstitutional provisions, some already overturned even by our Hitleresque Supreme Court. Here we sit, a new broom in the White House, freedoms restored, or are they? Government police from unspecified agencies whose powers and mandates are clearly outside the scope of any law, can arrest and detain anyone and do, not only disregarding color, race or ethnicity but guilt or innocence also. Anyone can be arrested, detained, shipped anywhere in the world, tortured, raped, murdered. It is done every day.

Ask the press. You say they don't care?

Remember when we learned that Stan McChrystal and Dick Cheney were running death squads under something called the JSOC? Now, years later, we find that our death squads are still out there, some official, some simply making it up as they go along. If you want to throw a hand grenade under a school bus, go ahead. If you want to open fire on civilians from your helicopter, simply mouth a few military sounding phrases, hit the button and sent a few hundred pounds of depleted uranium into a residential neighborhood.

Then again, you can fly into Pakistan and kill a few of their troops at a border checkpoint like was done last week, seemingly on a whim. Who needs Pakistan anyway? Isn't Peru still with us, part of the remains of the old Bush/Cheney coalition of the willing, the blackmailed, the bought and paid for?

Now no more gasoline for trucking the opium crop to the heroin processing facilities south of Kandahar or to the airfields in Balochistan for shipment to Western Europe or North America. As the press about this? Oh, you are saying they know, have written stories about this but were told they won't be "embedded" anymore unless they tone down the "self righteousness."

Remember the torture controversy? How about this one, did you know that 95% of the "terrorists" arrested during the Bush administration were found "innocent?" How about Pat Tillman, the former football player who joined the Army but became disenchanted with what he was seeing in Afghanistan. The press said nothing when he died a "war hero." Then he suddenly became a victim of an innocent and childish accident, not at all dissimilar to the accidents the Kennedy brothers suffered back in the 1960s.

The press is still buying the "accident' story even though the closely grouped head shots that killed Tillman were a "one in 10 billion" accident.

Before the Army is done, Tillman will have shot himself in the head 4 times and then, as usual, disposed of the weapon. You don't want to know how many accidents like this the Army has. You don't have to worry, you'll never find out about it anyway.

The press is still falling all over themselves for eventually figuring out that Tillman wasn't killed by the Taliban. All they had to do was read the coroners report, you know the one, it said "murder" on it.

What is the news? Anymore, we might as well get press releases sent directly to our I-Phones and cut out the jokers in the middle. Can you imagine, millions of Americans have Islam explained to them by a former Mossad public relations officer named Wolf Blitzer. (Jerusalem Press/CNN)

I wouldn't trust Blitzer doing a weather report, certainly not sports scores.

Remember a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, former furniture salesman now running Israel, the "American hating" extremist, demanded that we release spy Jonathan Pollard?

Remember that Congressman Barney Frank immediately ran to his side?

The press reports that Pollard was jailed for life because he "gave Israel information on PLO locations, information America failed to share."

Not one word of this is true. OK, one word, there is a person named Jonathan Pollard. Thus far, this is the only thing the press reported properly.

Pollard never gave anyone anything, he sold it. Nothing went TO Israel, Pollard and the State of Israel were spying FOR the Soviet Union AGAINST the United States.

The information was: (this has been confirmed)

• The identities of all CIA agents and the full NOC list, agents of "non official cover" (A movie was made about this, Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible)
• Full NATO defense plans in case of Soviet Attack
• Full information including strategic vulnerability assessments on what would be needed to defeat the United States in a nuclear war
• Design specifics on all American nuclear weapons and delivery systems
• America's military and diplomatic codes

This information was sold by Pollard to controllers in Israel who then sold it to the Soviet Union. We have learned that because of this information a couple of things happened:

• The Soviet Union came close to a nuclear "first strike" on the United States
• Over 100 CIA agents were executed after extensive torture
• Over 1500 "intelligence assets" were rounded up, tortured and interrogated, then killed behind the Iron Curtain
• America lost all ability to use intelligence to defend itself from the Soviet Union
• America's strategic capabilities were diminished by over 50%, with many ‘capabilities' totally unviable
• 15 years of weapons research was lost
• Several weapons systems were totally compromised including our stealth aircraft and nuclear submarines

However, when Barney Frank and his furniture salesman buddy, the one who continually brags about how stupid Americans are and how he can get them to do anything he wants, publicly demanded this monster, Pollard, be set free, the press was silent. The furniture salesman was right, about the press anyway, he can get them to do anything he wants.

Netanyahu wasn't serious about Pollard, he simply brings it up, from time to time, when he has a need to humiliate the United States, reminding them how naive and gullible they are as a people and how corrupt their military and government are.

There are no worries about the press. In fact, even though military and intelligence sources have leaked, for years, how serious the Pollard disaster really was for America, the press loves telling the same old Israeli yarn, the poor country of holocaust victims trying to protect themselves from uncaring America, their "bestest friend" and ally that they have to keep on a "short leash."

Can we think of something else the press has overlooked? Back in 2007, the American economy imploded. Prior to that, America ran up trillions of dollars of secret debt. We call it secret because no news ever reported it or its consequences. Debt is the clearest indicator of economic health. The levels of debt during the Bush years, a president who took office with a budget surplus, reached beyond epidemic proportions yet nothing was ever reported, not in such a way as to make the public aware the nation was going bankrupt.

In 2007, America hit full default, totally broke, dead, gone, bankrupt. Savings disappeared, retirement systems collapsed, markets plummeted and "blue chip" stocks became worthless. How did the news respond? They claimed that a small non-profit called ACORN, a group that worked registering voters, had caused the collapse. Proving this, we were told, a Republican party operative trained at an Israeli intelligence school, had "debunked" the entire crisis.

ACORN did it. According to America's right wing, fronting for the pan-Israeli banking cartel, a few dozen $30,000 dollar home loans managed to run up $3,000,000,000,000 in debt. Maybe it was extra fees or ‘handling charges?'

Then we learned that none of this happened and that trillions of dollars were stolen by a series of "banks" tied to the Rothschilds, run by Israeli Americans and long involved in massive criminal fraud in full collusion with the Bush administration, coordinating wars, defense fraud, bilking the economy and suspending constitutional rights, in a concerted effort, Bush, Cheney, Israel, the Rothschilds and their creature, the Federal Reserve System, permanently sinking America in a "Pearl Harbor" that made 9/11 tame in comparison.

So, where are these people, the "coalition of corruption," the "banksters" and the corrupt politicians? How many are in jail? Thousands? Bernie Madoff only?

What did the American press have to say? Anything? A story here, one there.

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

Illustration by Pete Pasho: www.dollopsofirony.com

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

Whistleblower Or "Kapo Queen," American Censorship In High Gear

"I am in favor of the Zionist state. I would gladly kill Arabs, even slaughter them. I can't allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead."....Eden Abergil

A "Kapo" was a Jew who served the Nazis, sometimes as administrators, but more often as thuggish camp police, even more brutal than the Nazi's themselves. Though over a million living in Israel claim to be "holocaust survivors," in reality only a few thousand survived the camps, many of them "Kapos." To help understand the absurdity of these "survivor" claims, we can examine another group from that era, American war veterans.

16 million Americans served in uniform during World War II. 292,000 were killed in the war. About one million survive today. The total Jewish population of countries controlled by Nazi Germany, prior to the holocaust according to the Jewish Virtual Library was 5, 811, 900. About one million survive today, we are told.

With so many Nobel Prize winners, mathematics is no longer Israel's strong suit. Neither is truth.

Whether discussing how many Palestinians were expelled, "liquidated" or imprisoned or how many tens of thousands of rockets Hamas has rained on Tel Aviv, with so few casualties, Israeli credibility is at an all time low. Eden Abergil has done as much as any Israeli citizen to bring that fact before the world, a young girl assigned to work as a Kapo in the Israeli "camp system." Is Abergil a victim, a humanitarian whistle-blower or a sociopathic Kapo torturer?

Oliver Lustig writes, in his Dictionary of the Camps:

"The Häftling (inmate) who was wearing on the left arm a black band on which it was written -KAPO- in Gothic letters of immaculate whiteness, was a chief...he could strike, beat, kill any Häftling who did not belong to the inner hierarchy of the camp...

Kapos were recruited from among sadists, from among the unscrupulous ones, who forgot they belonged to the human species, from among those who, faced with the alternative die or kill, preferred to kill. In order to prove their servility and to maintain their position as chiefs, they tried to surpass the SS-men in ferocity. The Kapos kit, beat, killed out of sadism or envy, out of the desire to assert themselves as chiefs or out fear of losing their function, out of hate of man or out of the mere pleasure to trample underfoot and torment the fellow men."

When CNN's Paula Hancocks reported the story, as is so often the case, both sides of the story were Israel. Hancock never asked why prisoners were blindfolded or about their fate. Hancock never asked what the job of camp "Kapo," how Eden Abergil and tens of thousands of other Israeli youths spend their national service, was like, the beatings, the humiliation and its obvious dehumanizing effect as was made clear by Abergil.

Was Eden Abergil a whistle-blower?

Was Abergil attempting to focus world attention on the 300,000 Palestinians who have "disappeared" over the past 60 years? Was she exposing the Israeli "gulag" system that may be holding up to 100,000 Palestinians prisoner? If this was her goal, CNN wasn't having any part of it. Not one question was asked about what her job was in the camps, how she felt about non-Jewish Israeli citizens. That came out later.

Eden Abergil, a 24 year old Israeli who recently finished her national service in the IDF, posted photographs on Facebook of herself with Palestinian torture victims. We have seen things like this before, of course, but last time it was Americans. We don't know how many photos we have or what acts they portray as CNN chose to show us only one, a depiction of Abergil mugging for the camera before a backdrop of blindfolded and "tie-wrapped" elderly Palestinian civilians.

When questioned by the Haaretz News Service in Israel, Abergail said:

I am in favor of the Zionist state. I would gladly kill Arabs, even slaughter them. I can't allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead.

Abergil told CNN that she has received numerous death threats, many from her neighbors in Israel and has requested police protection. The question is, did Eden Abergil go on worldwide media proclaiming to be a murderous sociopath out of bad judgement or is this a clever attempt at depicting the IDF as torturers and war criminals? Now we have hundreds of similar photos going up from dozens of former IDF "kapos."

Abergil's photos are the first to come out of the camp system in Israel, known for its torture, summary executions, starvation and daily brutality. Little is known or has been reported in the west about the 60 year program of ethnic cleansing or the nature of Israel's apartheid state and system of racial and religious laws that openly discriminate against Christians and Muslims.

Comments by fellow Israeli's made on Abergil's Facebook page referred to photographs of the "chunky" former IDF "Kapo Queen" taken with torture victims as "sexy."

Abergil has raised, not only the ire of fellow Israeli's but military officials in Israel as well. With Israel's role in pushing America into a war with Iran coming under increasing attack and their role in falsifying intelligence leading to the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain, the legitimacy of the "Jewish only" Zionist state in Israel has never been under wider pressure around the world.

With Israeli terrorist and serial killer, Elias Abuelazam being pulled off a flight from Atlanta to Tel Aviv and the recent failure by Israel to address the killing of between 9 and 16 unarmed civilians on the Mavi Marmara, the theft of millions in personal items and the illegal detention of up to two dozen peace activists seized in international waters, Israel's credibility, even while exercising "veto power" over unfavorable stories in the British and American press, is at an all time low.

In Britain, a website has been established, British Propaganda Corporation, not only spoofing the BBC, but highly critical of what is said to be virtual total Israeli control of all media outlets in Britain, including and especially the state run news service, the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Current population estimates put the number of displaced Palestinians at 6 million with those in temporary camps estimated by Israel at 400,000 and by other sources at between 700,000 and 980,000. Each year, new Israeli condominium projects displace thousands more, adding to the figures given. To this mix, we add nearly 1 million "guest workers" who, with their families, are also virtual refugees, "stateless persons" subject to expulsion at any time as with Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Managing this process, the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, a vast camp system, surveillance of not only Muslims in Palestine but the entire Jewish population as well, is a vast bureaucracy largely financed by the United States. Young Jews, many of them Americans, serve in the IDF, some of them as part of this system. Some of the daily tasks performed are not only inhumane and demeaning but, technically, criminal acts subject to punishment according to international convention.

Perhaps what we are told is right, all Muslims are extremists and must be cleansed from Israel in order to maintain the purity of the Jewish race, as touted in recent scientific studies quoted in the New York Times.

"The surveys provide rich data about genetic ancestry that is of great interest to historians. "I'm constantly impressed by the manner in which the geneticists keep moving ahead with new projects and illuminating what we know of history," said Lawrence H. Schiffman, a professor of Judaic studies at New York University.

One of the surveys was conducted by Gil Atzmon of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Harry Ostrer of New York University and appears in the current American Journal of Human Genetics. The other, led by Doron M. Behar of the Rambam Health Care Campusin Haifa and Richard Villems of the University of Tartu in Estonia, is published in Thursday's edition of Nature."

The studies along with extensive and continual mathematical documentary proof of 6 million Jewish deaths during the holocaust are used as justification for Israel's "junkyard dog" foreign policy, arms dealings with rogue states like Libya, South Africa and North Korea and their policies of ethnic cleansing. Much of the impetus for "revisionist" history, those advocating a reassessment of the holocaust after declassified documents have brought some traditionally accepted dogma into doubt, has been the desire to "disarm" Israels dependence on the holocaust to justify policies against the Palestinians that parallel many aspects of Germany's persecution of the Jews under Hitler.

Thus, we may have Eden Abergil, not as a Zionist "nutcase" but exposing, perhaps unsuccessfully, what no media organization will speak of. Those men on the bench, those prisoners, so many thousands arrested, detained, questioned, worse, and none ever released.

Where do they go?

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

By Rabbi Michael Lerner* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Rabbi Michael Lerner

ADL leader Abe Foxman presented the position of this organization that claims to oppose discrimination by reading a formal statement that seemed to be a perfect example of "shooting and crying" (first you attack brutally, then you cry about how sad it is to be put into this difficult position, often blaming the victims for having "forced" us to attack them). The key to that statement was this:

"Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain - unnecessarily - and that is not right."

This kind of argument is deeply mistaken. It was not "Muslims" or Islam that attacked the World Trade Center, but some Muslims who held extreme versions of Islam and twisted what is a holy and peace-oriented tradition to justify their acts and their hatred. We see the same thing happening in the name of Christianity (many of those who justified the war in Iraq were Christians who felt they were acting from a Christian ethical perspective) or in the name of Judaism (the immoral behavior of some of the settlers who use Judaism as their cover for stealing land and destroying the olive trees of their Palestinian neighbors). Just as we would rebel against others dismissing Judaism or Christianity, or prohibiting Jews and Muslims from constructing our holy places of worship or community centers where we wish because some of those who had suffered from the immorality of some Jews or some Christians had decided that it was painful to them to see the presence of these institutions near the site of previous suffering, so we reject this claim.

Arthur Waskow asks us to imagine how we would feel if some group of Muslims in the US, identifying with the suffering of Palestinians, and including within them some who had lived in Israel and had to leave to protect themselves from the oppression of Occupation that they labeled as "Jewish oppression," had opposed the construction of a synagogue in their predominantly Muslim neighborhood because it would cause some of the victims of Israeli policy to experience more pain. Would we accept that? Certainly not.

Underlying the ADL position is its references to the Holocaust and the need to respect the feelings of its survivors. Sadly, the memory of Jewish suffering is appropriated by right-wing forces to justify special privilege for Jews in general and Israel in particular, now is to be extended to victims of 9/11 (but not, for example, to the survivors of US military assaults on civilians in Vietnam,Cambodia, Laos, El Salvador, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq, or Afghanistan). The aggression of others is always evil, ours always justifiable, to the political right. That's bad enough. But shame on ADL in particular for now using our suffering in the Holocaust to justify discrimination toward others, whether in Israel or in the U.S.

Actually, to those of us who take seriously the Torah command to "love the stranger" (the Other), it seems clear that the rebuilding of Ground Zero should include the construction of an interfaith center in which all of the world's religions could be represented, particularly that of Islam as a way of affirming and supporting those many Muslims who do not adopt an extreme anti-American or anti-Jewish perspective.

The American Jewish Committee tried to adopt a more nuanced position, but wanted to withhold endorsement till they can establish that the source of money for this building did not come from extremist elements in the Muslim world. Yet how would we feel if construction of a Jewish center was similarly conditional? Would money from those who support the settlers or others who believe that Jews have a right to all of the Biblical Land of Israel and have a right to use violence to achieve that end be sufficient reason to prevent the construciton of a Jewish center? Would a Church that received money from sources in the Christian community that believed it appropriate to engage in violence to create the world they wanted (e.g. to support a US military intervention in Iran) be sufficient reason to deny them the right to build their Christian center? I don't think so.

No wonder, then, that we at Tikkun--seeking to build a world in which animosities among religions can be dramatically reduced so that all of us can recognize our common humanity (or what we Jews call "being created in the image of God") and recognize the immediate global environmental emergency to overcome national and religious antagonisms so that we can work together to save the planet and its peoples from destruction--strongly endorse and support the construction of the Muslim community center/mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero.

Shame on ADL and the American Jewish Committee for not understanding the moral imperatives of this moment! They not only betray Jewish values ("do not do unto others what you would not wish them to do to you") and American values (government should not interfere with the operations of religious communities), they unintentionally but nevertheless certainly increase the tensions between Jews and Muslims at a moment when all sane people in both communities recognize the need to build bridges of understanding, friendship and mutual caring as a prelude to supporting peace in Israel. Given that both ADL and the AJCommittee have consistently supported the most outrageous actions of the Israeli government toward Palestinians, is it possible that unconsciously they are taking these kinds of stands because they do not see the supreme importance of creating caring and sensitivity to the needs of the other? Yet it is this sensitivity which is the necessary prerequisite for a lasting peace with justice and security for both sides in the Middle East conflict. And that peace would be a major step toward undermining the support that terrorists have been able to amass, in part because such a peace is absent.

* Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine www.tikkun.org, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley, Ca. and author of eleven books, most recently the national best-seller The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country From the Religious Right. If you wish to support this kind of thinking, please join our Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org.

Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams

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

There's another twist in the recent adventures of the 104^th Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. This Christian Top Cat visited Gaza in February – a year late, let it be said - but afterwards made no public statement about the wretched human conditions still prevailing there.

He didn't even reveal his findings to the House of Lords where he has the support of a large gaggle of bishops.

This despite his claim to be "in a unique position to bring the needs and voices of those fighting poverty, disease and the effects of conflict, to the attention of national and international policy makers".

And despite his declaration that "Christians need to witness boldly and clearly".

And despite his urging greater awareness of the humanitarian crisis to ensure that the people of Gaza are not forgotten.

But there's more...

A reader writes that she sent 18 emails to Lambeth Palace (the Archbishop's headquarters) asking if the Archbishop's party could please bring back some deaf children's art, which should have been picked up by members of the last Gaza blockade-busting convoy. The Palace eventually declined saying the Israelis would not allow it.

She complained that by not using his position in the House of Lords and elsewhere the Archbishop was failing to improve the situation for Palestinians. She even quoted the words of Desmond Tutu: "Where there is oppression, those who do nothing side with the oppressor."

The lady tells me she was later informed that the Israelis permitted the Archbishop only an hour inside Gaza. This made me sit up and quizz the person she had spoken to at Lambeth Palace...

"Somebody tells me that the Israelis allowed the Archbishop and his party only an hour in Gaza so that he was restricted to a quick visit the Ahli Hospital and nowhere else. Is this true? If so, what was the Archbishop's reaction, please, and why wasn't this shocking interference with the Church's pastoral business in the Holy Land - of all places - reported on your website, in press releases and in the House of Lords where the Archbishop has a powerful voice?"

There was no response so I telephoned the person in question. He said the Archbishop had been refused access to Gaza but was eventually permitted a measly one-and-a-half hours in the shattered enclave. This was just enough time for a hurried visit to the hospital and no more.

My questions were forwarded to the Archbishop's public affairs spokesman, whose reply was headed "NOT FOR PUBLICATION". Normally I ignore such prohibitions from people in public affairs, but since this happens to involves the office of the leader of my own Church I'll play their game. Suffice to say the Israelis from the start refused access to Gaza and only at the last minute allowed the Archbishop a piddling little window of opportunity.

The spokesman also mentioned how the Archbishop was very personally involved in trying to improve the situation of the Palestinians and promote a two-state solution.

Two states? Given the facts on the ground, only Zionist sympathisers eager to preserve the racial purity of the Jewish entity are still taking that line.

The Archbishop's visit to the unholy Holy Land raises many questions. His website reports how he hobnobbed with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, paid his respects to Yad Vashem and the Holocaust, and talked with the President of Israel – the latter no doubt sniggering up his sleeve at his guest's frustration at being prevented by Israel's thugs from seeing what horrors they had inflicted on Gaza.

There's no mention of a get-together with senior Islamic figures, leaving a question-mark over his commitment to inter-faith engagement.

Why did he agree to fraternise with Jewish political and religious dignitaries when it was clear that his wish to carry out his Christian duty in Gaza would be obstructed?

Does Lambeth Palace not realise that meekly accepting such insults only serves to legitimise the Israelis' illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and gives a stamp of approval to the vicious siege of Gaza, the daily death-dealing air strikes against civilians, the persecution of Muslim and Christian communities and the regime's utter contempt for international law and human rights?

You don't turn the other cheek to bullies like the Israelis. If you do they'll slap it again and again, just as they've been doing for 62 years. They walk all over fawning sycophants masquerading as Western political leaders. Our spiritual leaders, however, are supposed to be made of sterner stuff and expected to perform to a higher standard, show moral backbone and face down evil. The Pope too chickened out over Gaza. Who's next?

Canterbury's bewhiskered prelate would, I feel, have done better to cancel his dalliance with Israel's warmongers and broadcast their despicable interference with his God-given work.

The Archbishop's deafening silence about the shaming of his Church – my Church too – and the endless terrorising of Christians and Muslims of the West Bank and especially Gaza, is still unexplained.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Suitcase Nuclear Weapon

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

"CHATTER" FLOWING IN FROM EVERYWHERE
"SUITCASE" NUKE SAID TO BE IN PLACE

Rumors of an upcoming terror attack to be blamed on Iran are moving around the world, "backchannel chatter." The primary suspect is Israel who is said to have a number of small "suitcase" type nuclear weapons, some primarily "dirty bombs," possibly supplied secretly by a previous US administration. These devices are in the "40 ton" range, highly radioactive, extremely small and can be engineered to leave the signature of a primitive device. They were originally engineered for use against Soviet armor and troop concentrations in Europe if a massed attack on NATO were to occur. Current conventional systems have made this type of weapon obsolete.

We have been told that federal authorities have interviewed, on video, a prominent individual with specific knowledge of the possession of this type of weapon.

This won't be in the news. All that "every day folks" will see is a story here or one there that don't make sense. Why would "ultra-Liberal" Senator Chuck Schumer, nightmare "anti-gun" nut, extreme lefty and staunch New York democrat turn on the president? In fact, why are extreme liberals and conservatives all attacking President Obama and, less visibly, our military leaders, all at the same time? Who is orchestrating this oddest turn of political events in recent history? Why would the Pentagon ban Reverend Billy Graham's son from a prayer breakfast as an "Islamophobe?"

Dad, the famous Reverend Billy Graham, primary spiritual advisor to every American president since Harry Truman held different views.

Rev. Billy Graham openly voiced a belief that Jews control the American media, calling it a "stranglehold" during a 1972 conversation with President Richard Nixon, according to a tape of the Oval Office meeting released Thursday by the National Archives.

"This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain," the nation's best-known preacher declared as he agreed with a stream of bigoted Nixon comments about Jews and their perceived influence in American life.

"You believe that?" Nixon says after the "stranglehold" comment.

"Yes, sir," Graham says.

"Oh, boy," replies Nixon. "So do I. I can't ever say that but I believe it."

"No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something," Graham replies.

Consider this report as a form of "innocualtion," meant to prevent an unseemly accident.

EVER WONDER WHY OVER 80% OF AMERICAN'S DON'T TRUST CONGRESS?

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BahjX9nI5k

FACE THE FACTS

Israel has never been in more trouble today, not from any imaginary Arab armies or a "holocaust" from Iran, a country with only minor defensive weaponry, a 4th rate military power, for those who really pay attention to these things. Israel has gotten in trouble because of "chickens coming home to roost." Americans and Europeans have been conditioned by the press, yes, Israel controls the press in the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, to ignore ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Palestine. Years of news and "infotainment" along with movies and TV series, always depicting Palestinians as crazed murders has done its job, covered mass murder in ways that Josef Goebbels could never do for Hitler.

Things started to go wrong for Israel when top military leaders became increasingly suspicious of 9/11. None will openly admit to it, but as years have gone on, and Iraq and Afghanistan could no longer be called real security issues for the US, an unspoken movement toward lending a suspicious eye to Israeli involvement in 9/11 has festered. Israel's hand in propagandizing our news has become too obvious for trained observers to miss, with the direction not "pro-Israel" but looking more like a country covering for crimes.

This is the potential list:

• Possible complicity in some part of 9/11 with or without help from groups in the US and one other Middle Eastern nation known to secretly finance Israeli operations but pretending to be a "blood enemy" of the Jews
• Israeli complicity in massive financial crimes in the US, including engineering of the sub-prime mortgage collapse as an operation meant to destabilize the United States. That current financial reforms meant to prevent a repeat of this, pushed by President Obama (and military leaders) is opposed by groups financed by the Israeli lobby is a "smoking gun."
• Terrorist attacks in Iraq, Russia, Iran and Pakistan carry clear signs of involvement of one or more intelligence agencies being involved, among them Israel.
• Israeli political machinations backed by a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign attempting to justify an unprovoked attack on Iran, disinformation including "holocaust" rhetoric and clearly falsified intelligence on Iran's non-existent nuclear program are an almost perfect repeat of the same operation that pushed the Bush administration to mistakenly attack Iraq.
• Nuclear threats made by "extremists" in Israel against Western Europe went unheeded and the desired outcry of support for an attack on Iran never materialized. Israel would never have allowed prominent sources in its defense establishment to voice "crazy threats" to "nuke Rome" unless some purpose were served.
• Highly orchestrated attacks on the Obama administration, now finally working in close association with top military leaders, is meant to destablilize the US. Moving threats against the US, the engineering of a new market collapse by Goldman Sachs, an ineffective attack by Israel on Iran, cutting off all oil to the west or attempts by Israeli controlled media giants to forment civil unrest in the US are all "on the table" and being pushed forward.

HOW AMERICA'S MILITARY HAS CHANGED

The deteriorating situation in Iraq and Afghanistan have tied down so many resources that our defense capabilities, the contingency response that our defense planners have spent years creating and over a trillion dollars financing is a shambles. We are trucking supplies hundreds of miles through enemy territory to resupply in Afghanistan, that and flying everything thousands of miles across Russia followed by more trucking, hundreds of miles across enemy territory again. In the process, we are paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to our own enemies, simply to keep ourselves in Twinkies and Ho Hos.

America is saddled with an incompetent and corrupt ally who has hopelessly embroiled us in his endless and ineffective plots, all with a massive subtext of drug dealing, selling weapons to the enemy and double dealing with foreign intelligence services.

How we got here is no secret and military leaders are unhappy. America got herself led into these disasters for the good of, not Israeli security but a series of intrigues, more like a chess match, playing country against country, while raking in cash selling weapons to everyone, including the US and India, but, less overtly, to Iran and the Taliban as well. These are some of the worst kept secrets in the world. Even President Obama knows, heaven forbid.

ONLY A NEW 9/11 CAN BAIL ISRAEL OUT

With massive control of news organization, half our top retired military leaders taking regularly paid "junkets" to Israel and 363 members of congress indicating an "unbreakable bond" with Israel, no matter what they are caught doing, and they have been caught so many times, starting with the 1956 Suez/Sinai invasion, the 1967 USS Liberty attack, which helped Israel sell the idea that they were attacked when quite the opposite is true, the belief is that that a new "false flag" attack can be covered easily.

Who could blame Israel, poor beleaguered country, the only "democracy" in the Middle East surrounded by vicious and dirty Arabs trying to sneak in and cut throats of small children in school?

We have already seen the stories about Iran's planned "holocaust' and how they are going to invade Israel, a technical impossibility" and set up gas chambers, start making soap and lamp shades out of Jews. If anything warns America that an attack is coming, hearing both "holocaust" and seeing Charles Schumer attacking a democratic president should be warning enough.

The rumors are that the weapons are in place in Europe and the US. "The usual suspects," Arabs, Persians, Pakistanis, some kind of Islamic terrorist group has either been recruited, invented or is being thawed out. News stories are in place and with 9/11, film crews are ready to be onsite. Witnesses will be briefed, all to say, "yes it was an Arab dirty bomb, we saw them, Middle Eastern looking, they must have bought it from North Korea."

That kind of story would hit the news within seconds from "stunned survivors" who will suddenly disappear, returning quickly to "you know where."

Glenn Beck will cry.

LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES HAVE ALWAYS GOTTEN MARCHING ORDERS FROM TEL AVIV

Americans have the rare privilege of seeing the GOP, NRA, Fox News and the Tea Baggers aligned with 250 or is it 300 or 400, we aren't sure, members of congress that have signed a letter promising to support Israel, in this case, against the interests of the United States. The names of those involved is difficult to find. A search of 100 stories on this subject has failed to give a list. Blog after blog is requesting the list of those who signed the letter but even Israeli papers don't print it.

Sites claiming to list the members signing now show "FORBIDDEN" or "NO LONGER AVAILABLE."

What we do know is that congresses most liberal members, those most outspoken for gun control and all of those listed by the Tea Bag movements and GOP as the most liberal and "unpatriotic" of our politicians are now lined up with the supporters of Goldman Sachs and all, the most conservative and most liberal, are signed up against the President and the Pentagon, aligned with Israel.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the entire "liberal" and "conservative" political hoopla of the last few years is turning out to be a subterfuge to keep Americans from uniting together to regain control of their own country, a control that, for awhile, ran our military, our intelligence services and even the oval office.

Now it runs only Congress, no party, just those addicted to AIPAC/Israeli funding more than allegiance to the United States of America.

What they may earn us through this "moral flexibility" and indifference to allegiance to their own country is another major terrorist attack. These same members of congress will receive the call, be told how to vote, what to say and exactly what they get in return, same as with Iraq.

Ah, the foibles of living in a democracy for sale to the highest bidder!

* Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor at www.veteranstoday.com

By Dr. Sami Alrabaa* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Holocaust Hypocrisy

Undoubtedly, the "Holocaust" which was inflicted on the Jews before the II World War was a crime against humanity; it was an egregious genocide, like several other genocides inflicted on the Native Americans, African Americans, and the Armenians, for instance. But as far the Jews are concerned the Holocaust is a "unique" crime, incomparable with any other crime. Day in and day out, the Jews across the globe insist that comparing the Holocaust with other crimes is politically incorrect and impermissible.

You can question the severity of any crime, but not the Holocaust, otherwise you are branded as anti-Semitic and one of those right-wing populists.

This is reminiscent of the racial discrimination in the US until the 1960s. Racial discrimination was "politically correct" at least in the America. Critics of racial discrimination were portrayed as "anti-American" and "communists".

Every chapter in the human history was dominated by a certain mindset, regardless how irrational and inhumane it was. What was politically correct proved later to be incorrect. Over more than three centuries, racial discrimination against African Americans was politically correct, at least in America.

After the II World War, the Jews have set out to single out their "Holocaust" as the WORST atrocity ever inflicted on a religious minority. They have insisted that any description short of that is improper and anti-Semitic. This implies a perverse discrimination against victims of other genocides. This mindset dominates the media and political life at least in the West and handled as politically correct per excellence. But, like other mindsets, sooner or later, this prevailing mindset will disappear and the Holocaust will be treated as not superior to other crimes against humanity. Many field studies, which have not been published for fear of provoking the Jewish lobby, prove without any shred of doubt that ordinary people view the Holocaust as a crime like any other crime.

In Germany and in the West at large, you are not allowed to compare any crime to the Holocaust. For the German establishment (media and politics across the board), controlled by an influential Jewish lobby, the Holocaust is a "UNIQUE" crime in the history of mankind. If someone slips and compares the Holocaust, even metaphorically, to any crime anywhere in the world, they are immediately urged to withdraw their comparison. The Holocaust is more "sacred" than the Bible and the Koran. Most recently, the Pope's secretary compared the media campaign about child abuse in Catholic institutions to the hate campaign against Jews under the Nazis before the II World War. The Jewish lobby rushed to muzzle him and ordered him to apologize, which he did.

Discrimination of any kind is politically incorrect. But it seems that Jews insist that discrimination against other victims of atrocities is "legitimate". It also seems that Jewish blood is more precious than other bloods.

By the way, denying the "Holocaust" is illegal and punishable in Germany and Austria. Think of the British David Irving who was jailed in Austria for simply saying that the 6 million Jews who were burned to death by the Nazis is exaggerated. Recently, a German court ruled that the British bishop, Richard Williamson had to pay a fine of € 10 million for claiming that the Holocaust never took place.

Likewise, if the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad happens to visit Austria or Germany, he would be persecuted and jailed, although he never denied the Holocaust. He simply criticized the number of Jews killed by the Nazis; Ahmedinajad believes that the 6 million is an exaggerated figure.

However, when you talk in private to Germans, they tell you, this is absurd. Nobody dare to compare the Holocaust to other crimes and genocides in the history of mankind. If you criticize that then you are branded as "anti-Semitic"!

By the way, the political establishment in Germany avoids conducting surveys about sensitive issues like the Holocaust and Islamism, for example, constructing minarets. More often than not, the public thinks differently than the political establishment and main stream media preach.

Jewish history is omnipresent in contemporary Germany. No day passes by without a Jewish story. All kinds of stories are told in newspapers, radios, and TVs, short, long, true, and fictitious stories are told.

How about crimes committed against the Native Americans and African Americans, just to name a few? For the Jewish lobby and mainstream media, you are comparing apples to oranges.

According to the British Encyclopedia, the Belgium King Leopold II (1835-1909) ordered the killing of 12 million Africans in Congo. This is real Holocaust. But this fact is as dead as Leopold himself. African Americans, Congolese, and Native Americans never received any kind of compensation, but the Jews received huge sums of money.

Along their history until now, the Jews have always marketed themselves as victims in the Diaspora; in Spain, Europe, and the Middle East.

The Iranian nuclear program which Israel blasts, day in and day out, is a welcome opportunity to play the victim. But how about the Israeli nuclear arsenal? Neither the West nor the IAEA dare check out this arsenal.

Further, Israel in not interested in peace. Peace with its Arab neighbors would mean an end to the "victim theory".

The Media Hypocrisy

I have been living in Germany for the past 30 years working as a sociology and communication professor. Hence, I know what I am talking about. I could fill up volumes about the hypocrisy and contradictions reproduced by the German media and German politics.

The German mainstream media and political establishment divide the world into democratic countries and dictatorships. Countries of the so called Third World which hold elections and have a parliament are branded as democratic, provided of course they are friendly to the West. It does not matter whether these countries introduce political and socio-economic reforms or not. Despotic Arab regimes with dismal human rights records are rarely criticized. They are branded as "moderate" and allegedly play a "geo-strategic role in the Middle East".

The truth of the matter, the West benefits from the Saudi billions of petrodollars. These huge sums of money are largely invested in the West. In addition, introducing real democracy in the Arab world would leave the West without stooge allies.

Democratic countries, like Iran, Bolivia, and Venezuela, for instance, which have introduced huge economic reforms and narrowed the gap between the rich and poor, are arbitrarily depicted by the Western media and political establishment as "dictatorships".

Also, the West accuses Third World countries of being corrupt. But how about the West? Isn't it also corrupt and greedy? Siemens and Mercedes, for example, have spent and still spend billions of dollars in corrupt channels in countries of the Third World. They bribe officials in these countries to gain bids. Siemens spent in the 1990s one and a half billions of dollars in corrupt transactions in Saudi Arabia alone. This was confirmed to me by a Siemens manager. Most recently, Mercedes agreed to settle corruption charges in a US court by paying a fine of 200 million dollars. Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minster ordered British courts and legislation NOT to investigate corruption charges in an arms deal of $ 20 billion instigated by the Saudi Bandar Bin Sultan. Blair argued at the time, "an investigation into the corruption charges" is not in British national interests and would harm the deal and damage thousands of jobs in the British arms industry.

Having said that, you can see that the West freezes democracy and human rights principles when their interests are in jeopardy. They use these principles when they conveniently suit them.

In the 1990s I used to teach at King Saud University and once in a while I was asked by the German Embassy to translate for German politicians visiting Saudi Arabia. In one of those visits by Juergen Moellemann, former chairman of the German Free Democratic Party (FDP), he received a gift check of 40 million dollars from Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh. What for is the money? Moellemann distributed part of the money among influential journalists in Germany so that they keep silent as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned.

When the money, which Moellemann deposited in a secret account in Switzerland, was discovered he committed suicide in 2003.

Germany is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of Berlin wall and the unification of east and west Germany. The German media brag: East Germany is now free. However, when you talk to people from East Germany, they tell you: "yes we are free now, we can travel wherever we want, but we do not have the money to do so. 40% of East Germans are jobless.

In contrast, it is big business in Germany which has benefited most from the unification. Whole state-owned industries and agricultural cooperatives were sold for peanuts.

Since the riots in Teheran after the latest presidential elections, the German correspondent of ARD TV, Peter Mezger has reported from Iran. He still reports from Teheran and concocts lies. He interviews "dissidents", but he never interviews supporters of the Iranian government.

If I were the Ambassador of Iran in Berlin, I would sue Mr. Mezger and his ilk for spreading lies. Certainly, the Ambassador would not win the case, where the German constitution, at least in theory, guarantees freedom of speech. But the case would instigate a debate on fair reporting.

In view of the fact that fewer people buy and subscribe daily papers and increasingly turn to the Internet for information, and in order to save costs and keep managing editors' salaries up, many of these German papers have withdrawn their correspondents from overseas. These journalists sit now in their cozy offices and concoct distorted reports about Iran, Venezuela, Bolivia, China, and Syria, for example. Insiders have confirmed this practice.

German TV stations, radio, and newspapers interview dissidents in Germany pretending that they were interviewed in their own home countries. People, who support their governments in the aforementioned countries and elsewhere, are sparsely interviewed. Their views seem not to be important for the German public.

I get sick when I see or read in German media that Mr./Ms. so and so is described as an expert in Iranian and Afghan affairs, for instance. When you check out their qualifications, you find out that they neither speak the language of these countries nor have studied their culture. Besides, they have never been to Iran or Afghanistan. They have read a couple of articles about these countries and hence have become "experts".

The German media condemn violence when Germany is not involved. As the American marines attacked an American ship, kidnapped by Somali pirates and freed the crew last year, the German media rushed to condemn the attack. When recently the Dutch marines attacked a German vessel and freed its crew from Somali pirates, the German media jubilated and approved of the attack.

Democracy and Human Rights Hypocrisy

How honest/dishonest is the West with regard to human rights?

The West claims that human rights are universal and must be respected everywhere in the world.

But does the West really support human rights activists equally across the world?

The answer is a big NO. The West supports human rights activists selectively as long as they suit them and serve their political and economic interests. The West blasts dismal human rights records in countries that are not friendly to the West and turns a blind eye to lack of these rights in "friendly" states.

While the West awards the Sacharov prize to Chinese dissidents, it ignores human rights activists in the Arab world.

Most recently, in his latest visit to Saudi Arabia, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle ignored addressing the dismal human rights record of the Al Saud. Later as he was visiting China, he loudly urged the Chinese government in a press conference to respect human rights.

As far as Westerwelle is concerned, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt play a "vital strategic economic and political role". China is an economic and political adversary.

Obviously, the Cold War is not completely dead. Western propaganda is still active towards those countries which do not submit to the will of Western establishments. Western media and political establishments operate according to the motto: If you are friendly to us, we let you do whatever you want. If you are not friendly to us, then you are our enemy, and we will do everything in our power to topple you.

In general, Western Europe has always looked down at East European countries and has never recognized Turkey as part of the European continent.

During the Cold War Turkey was a member of the NATO. After the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, Western Europe rushed to admit East European countries in the European Union (EU) and in the NATO. Turkey's wish to join the EU has so far been rejected, especially by Germany, Austria, and France. The EU argues Turkey is still backward and not European enough, although Turkey is not less developed than Bulgaria, Rumania, and Poland. All these countries, including Turkey have the same level of development in all walks of life. Why is this so?

Turkey has never been a "friend" of Russia (the core left of the Soviet Union) and would never ally itself with Russia. But East European countries could become allies of Russia if they were left outside the EU and NATO. Therefore, the EU was strategically more than happy to admit East European countries before they ally themselves with Russia, the old and new adversary of the West. Turkey was left out. It is politically insignificant in this equation.

The German media and the Western media at large come up with headlines like, "Tibet in Flames" and demand independence for this integral part of China. They allege that the natives of Tibet are oppressed and not allowed to practice their culture, language, and religion.

The truth of the matter is Tibet has been part of China for the past three centuries and its people are free to exercise their religion and culture. And Tibetans are not discriminated against as the Western media allege.

But how about Palestine and Kurdistan? For decades, the people of these countries have been fighting for independence. Until now, the West has ignored the basic rights of the Kurds for independence although they constitute an ethnic and cultural entity living in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. Yet, until recently, the Kurds in Turkey have been forbidden to use their own language and practice their own culture. In Syria, the Kurds are not recognized as an ethnic minority.

Viva Western rationale of democracy and human rights!

* Dr.ٍ Sami Alrabaa is a 60-year old retired sociology professor. Among other universities, he taught at Michigan State University, King Saud University, Kuwait University. He also published extensively in academia and print media. His latest book is "Veiled Atrocities" published by Prometheus Books, New York, 2010.

Canterbury Cathedral

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

My ears pricked up when I heard the Archbishop of Canterbury was planning a visit to Gaza last February, and Lambeth Palace (his headquarters in London) was "actively engaged in humanitarian relief and advocacy".

I asked for more information. Whom would he meet? Would he see the health minister? Would he sit down and talk with elected prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, man of God to man of God, Mr Haniyeh being an imam? I'd like to be a fly on the wall at such a meeting.

Would he "do Gaza proud by spending a generous amount of his time with senior members of the Islamic faith"?

And would he look up Fr Manuel Mussallam, the redoubtable old priest who was a mainstay of the Christian community thoughout Gaza's darkest hours and tells it straight?

His office didn't reply.

Looking at his website again now, I see he did none of those things. At least, he doesn't mention them if he did.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is Britain's 'Mister Christianity', the top cat in the Anglican Church. His website explains that his role as a figure of unity in the worldwide Anglican Communion, which is represented in over 130 countries, means that "he is in a unique position to bring the needs and voices of those fighting poverty, disease and the effects of conflict, to the attention of national and international policy makers and donor agencies".

He started his Ecumenical letter this Easter by saying: "Christians need to witness boldly and clearly ", and ended with: "The world will not be saved by fear, but by hope and joy... In whatever way we can, we must seek to communicate this joy, however dark or uncertain the sky seems."

Hope and joy? Tell that to the Palestinians, especially those in Gaza.

Since his return has he said anything about Gaza in the House of Lords, where he has a voice in Parliament? It seems he hasn't opened his mouth there for over a year, hasn't spoken in any debates and hasn't voted. He's a below-average performer.

So what was all that about bringing the needs of people suffering the aftermath of conflict to the attention of policy makers?

The Archbishop said in a press release that peace would not be achieved without sacrifice on all sides because the interests of one were intimately bound up with the interests of the other.

Sacrifice? How much more must Palestinians sacrifice, one wonders...?

He urged a greater awareness of the humanitarian crisis and isolation, to ensure that the people of Gaza were not forgotten.

That's where a few well-chosen words in the House of Lords might have helped...

He also pledged the continuing prayers and support of the Anglican Communion as a whole, and his personal support and prayers for all who felt so little hope for the future: "God's faithfulness is sure and will never fail".

Drinking at the Palestinians' well

The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Did he meet senior Islamic figures? No mention of it.

So much for inter-faith engagement then.

But he talked with the President of Israel about "the current state of relations between Israel and Palestine... and a range of environmental issues including water". What excuses did nice Mr Peres offer, I wonder, for stealing 80 per cent of the Palestinians' water at gunpoint so that Israeli settlers can enjoy a 24/7 supply, fill their swimming pools and wash their cars, then sell what's left back to the Palestinians in strictly rationed dribs and drabs, forcing some to go without?

We're not told.

Is that the Archbishop's idea of "witnessing boldly"?

If he's a filmgoer he'll remember the powerful scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) and his guide are drinking from a well. Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif) rides out of the shimmering heat of the desert and shoots the guide dead. Lawrence remonstrates.

"This is my well," says Ali.

"I have drunk from it," says Lawrence.

"You are welcome."

"He was my friend," insists Lawrence pointing at the dead man.

"That! He was nothing. The well is everything. The Hasimi may not drink at our wells. He knew that."

Expulsion of Christians from West Bank

And what, I wonder, does the Archbishop make of the new Israeli military order that came into effect on 13 April and is designed to deport Palestinians who are resident their homeland, the West Bank? We have already seen how students from Gaza, like Berlanty Azzam, attending university in the West Bank are arrested and dumped back in Gaza when only weeks away from graduating.

The wording of the order is so vague that Israeli human rights organisations say

Every Palestinian in the West Bank may find him or herself in danger of being criminally prosecuted and deported or being deported without appeal or review. "It defines anyone present in the West Bank, regardless of his status, as an "infiltrator" if they do not possess a permit given by the military commander or on his behalf - a permit whose exact nature is not defined in military legislation at all. In fact, the vast majority of individuals now living in the West Bank have never been required to possess any sort of permit."

In short, the order allows the Israeli military to empty the West Bank of all Palestinians, if it wishes, without the need for any inconvenient process like hearings. This of course hits Christians as well as their Muslim friends and neighbours.

Kairos Palestine describes the new order as:

• A flagrant display of military power;
• a destructive and cynical command that reduces thousands of people into "illegal aliens" in their own homes;
• a threat that, regardless of the extent of its implementation, will confine Palestinians in their villages and further sever them from vital economic, health, education, and social centers and is
• another improper step toward creating demographic changes in the West Bank and entrenching a regime which discriminates between people on the basis of religion and nationality.

As well as defying basic human rights, says Kairos, the military order "arrogantly violates various terms of international law, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibiting the forcible transfer/deportation of protected civilians in an occupied territory, and the principle of self-determination stipulated by general international law".

Kairos is a group of Palestine Christians who recently produced a document entitled "A Moment of Truth" - their word to the world about the occupation and an expression of their faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering. It is a call for solidarity to end over six decades of oppression.

Kairos Palestine calls on churches worldwide, church-related organisations, Christians and the wider international community to "condemn these shameful developments and work to restore the justice that is both our calling and our right".

I feel sure the Archbishop knows about this. It's Holy Land business and central to his faith. What has he to say? Will he show leadership?

And can we hope to see this shaggy-bearded prelate standing on the prow of the leading ship in the flotilla that will soon set sail to break the siege of Gaza?

That'll be the day... Our Mister Christianity needs to be someone like Desmond Tutu who'll take the bull by the horns.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

By Dr. Hanan Chehata

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – With Prof. Richard Falk the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied (OPT), since 1967. In 2001 Falk served on a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Inquiry Commission for the Palestinian territories with John Duggard. He is also an American Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University with a long and distinguished career in academics, politics and law. He recently gave this exclusive and revealing interview to the Middle East Monitor’s Dr Hanan Chehata.

HC: Following your appointment as UN Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2008 you traveled to Israel in order to begin your investigations. Can you tell us a little more about how you were received by Israel?

RF: I was denied entry and expelled at Ben Gurion Airport when I tried to enter Israel for the purpose of carrying out my duties as UN Special Rapporteur. These duties consist mainly of reporting on Israeli compliance with human rights obligations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and include duties of compliance with respect to international humanitarian law. Israeli authorities confined me for more than 15 hours in a detention cell with five other detainees before putting me on a plane. I was given no explanation beyond that my expulsion order came from the Israeli Foreign Ministry that had objected to my appointment from the outset. As my itinerary on the West Bank had been previously submitted to the Israeli embassy in Geneva, and as visas had been granted to the two UN employees assisting me on the mission, it seems clear that Israel wanted to have the incident at the airport rather than tell me in advance that I would be denied entry. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN officials did object to the Israeli refusal to allow me to do my job as Special Rapporteur. It should be pointed out that the UN Charter in Article 2(2) requires Members to cooperate with the UN in carrying out its functions, and that this duty is reinforced by an international treaty outlining this duty of cooperation.

HC: You were denied entry into the OPT. Have you been allowed at any point to enter the territory? If not, how have you been able to do your job?

RF: I have tried repeatedly through formal requests to Israeli authorities to gain entry to the OPT, and these requests have been ignored rather than denied. There may be a possibility of visiting Gaza on an official basis based on Egyptian cooperation. This has so far been difficult to arrange. As far as doing my job is concerned, it is certainly a major disadvantage to be denied entry, but my reporting job can be done without any handicap due to the abundance of open and diverse sources of information and documentation on the critical dimensions of the occupation. I would have to rely on such sources in any event even if access was possible.

HC: In light of the way that Israel has reacted to you and your reports and more recently to the Goldstone report it seems that Israel’s regard for the UN, if anything, has become more hostile. Why do you think Israel seems to hold the UN in such contempt and is there any way for the UN to compel Israel to cooperate with their investigations and abide by UN recommendations?

RF: Israel has a rather opportunistic approach to the UN. It is hostile when it is the object of criticism, and it rejects the authority of the UN in relation to its duties as the Occupying Power of the Palestinian Territories. It consistently complains about the bias of the UN, especially the Human Rights Council, and attacks those that serve the UN as civil servants or appointed officials. Most recently it has mounted a series of vicious attacks on Richard Goldstone who headed a fact-finding mission to assess allegations of Israeli and Hamas war crimes associated with the Gaza War (Operation Cast Lead) that took place between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009.

At the same time, Israel participates fully in the General Assembly, and uses its relationship with the United States to block adverse decisions in the Security Council. What was unusual about its response to the Goldstone Report was the extremely high profile repudiation of the findings and recommendations. Normally, as with the 14-1 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the unlawfulness of the separation wall built on occupied Palestine, Israel merely rejects the external criticism of its policies, and moves on with very little commentary, especially by its top political leaders. We must assume that the Goldstone Report touched a raw nerve in the Israeli political sensibility that explains its almost hysterical reaction, including vindictive attacks on the person of Justice Goldstone, himself a devoted Zionist and distinguished international jurist. It would seem that the conclusion that Israel had deliberately targeted civilians and the civilian infrastructure of Gaza in violation of the international criminal law was too authoritative a repudiation of Israeli policies toward the occupation to be ignored. The fact that the Goldstone Report also recommended that steps be taken to implement these conclusions by holding those responsible for the behavior to be criminally responsible was a further challenge to the legitimacy of Israel’s claims to be upholding its security by launching Operation Cast Lead.

HC: Why have the UN taken no measures against Israel for their breaches of international law?

RF: The quick answer is that the geopolitical impunity enjoyed by Israel is a consequence of unconditional U.S. support, and a reluctance in most European countries to be critical of Israel given the lingering sense of guilt about the Holocaust. A more thoughtful response is that there have been periodic attempts within the UN to hold Israel accountable for violations of international law. The General Assembly and Human Rights Council have frequently condemned Israeli policies in the OPT. The ICJ found that the separation wall was unlawful as constructed on Palestinian territory, and the General Assembly accepted these conclusions overwhelmingly. The Goldstone Report is itself a gesture in the direction of holding Israel accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity as perpetrated in Gaza. In this sense there have been a variety of efforts to condemn Israeli policies and practices from the perspective of international law, but an insufficient will to implement these efforts, and so the end result is a sense of the virtual irrelevance of international law as a behavioral constraint on Israel.

HC: Is the USA the biggest factor impeding the UN in coming to the aid of Palestinians?

RF: I think that in the absence of US support, the UN would be acting vigorously on behalf of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, including the imposition of an embargo on arms sales and support for economic sanctions. The European countries would in this altered setting in all likelihood stand aside, neither being strong supporters of UN actions on behalf of the Palestinians, nor defenders of Israel.

HC: Israel opposed your appointment from the very beginning making allegations that you were biased against their state. Is there any justification whatsoever to these claims?

RF: As I have responded, by now many times, I am not biased, but dedicated to being truthful and accurate, as well as interpreting the relevance of international law and human rights standards as objectively as possible. It is true that I have been critical of Israel in the past, but again on the basis of a widely shared consensus as to the facts and their most reasonable legal implications. The test of bias should be distorted treatment of facts or strained interpretations of law. To be critical of official Israeli policies is not to be anti-Israeli any more than to be critical of American foreign policy, which I have been over the years, means that I am anti-American. To be a citizen in a democracy, or to be a world citizen, means to follow the guidance of your conscience wherever that might lead.

HC: You have been depicted as a supporter of Hamas, how do you respond to such claims?

RF: Again, my effort has been to describe the actuality of Hamas’s positions on contested issues and to report upon its actual role in the OPT, especially Gaza. I have been impressed by the Hamas effort to negotiate a ceasefire with Israel from the time of its election in January 2006, and its consistent effort to reestablish a ceasefire, including one for a long duration. I have also taken note of the refusal of Israel to take advantage of such diplomatic opportunities, and its insistence on treating Hamas as a terrorist organization with whom no negotiations can occur. I have also criticized Israel for punishing the population of Gaza by imposing a blockade that restricts the flow of food, medicine, and fuel to subsistence levels, or worse. Such a blockade is a flagrant form of collective punishment prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. I believe that Hamas should be treated as a political actor, that the blockade should be terminated immediately, and that the UN should insist on the end to the blockade as a condition of Israel’s normal participation in the activities of the Organization.

HC: It seems that supporters of Israel try to equate the words anti-Semitic with anti-Zionist which are of course two different things. They have accused people such as Judge Goldstone, Prof. Ilan Pappe, Prof. Avi Shlaim and you of being “self-hating” Jews. How do you feel about this?

RF: It seems more extreme even than this. Justice Goldstone, for instance, is pro-Zionist, and yet stands viciously accused of being a self-hating Jew, apparently because he dared to be critical of Israel. This means that any defection from either the official policies of the state of Israel or from the Zionist project will be occasion for a Jew to be branded as ’self-hating.’ It is my view that the Jewish tradition considered biblically and over the course of time would require a Jew to honor conscience and truthfulness above tribal identities should these conflict.

HC: As a Jewish gentleman yourself how do you feel about the fact that Zionists and the Israeli government claim to speak in the name of all Jews?

RF: As my prior answer suggests, no government has the authority to speak in the name of others, and certainly Zionism, a movement I have never supported, and Israel, a state to which I owe no special allegiance, is not entitled to represent me because I happen to be Jewish. I have real problems with any coerced allegiance to a political or religious entity, and believe that the crime of treason sets up an unacceptable potential tension between the dictates of conscience and subservience to the will of the state.

HC: In 2007 you described the Israeli policies towards Palestine as a “holocaust-in-the-making“. Given the tightening of the siege on Gaza, which has now lasted over 1000 days, Operation Cast Lead etc.. would you now say that the situation has developed into a full blown holocaust?

RF: This is a delicate issue of language. Genocide is a word with a great emotional resonance, and special historic associations for the people of Israel. I wrote these words before I was appointed as Special Rapporteur, and although I would not retract them, I have refrained from using the word genocide since accepting the UN job. There is an ambiguity in the word genocide: it has legal, moral, and political connotations. It would be difficult to establish a genocidal intent on Israel’s part, given the way in which the ICJ approached the issue in the Bosnia Case. At the same time, I lament the continuation of the siege of Gaza, consider it a crime against humanity, and feel that the UN and many states are complicit to varying degrees.

HC: Your predecessor Prof. John Dugard compared the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to that of apartheid South Africa. Is this a view that you concur with after your own experiences there?

RF: Comparisons of this sort can be illuminating, although misleading at the same time. There are many indications of rigid separation, especially on the West Bank, as well as discriminatory regulations that make the situation for Palestinians resemble that of the black Africans suffering under apartheid, and deserving of comparable opprobrium. At the same time there are differences: the South African leadership defended apartheid as a preferable policy for race relations, whereas the Israelis do not offer an ideological justification for their separate treatment of the two peoples, claiming either the security rigors of occupation or the inevitable consequences of being ‘a Jewish state.’ Prolonged occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, along with the second class citizenship imposed on the Palestinian minority living behind the green line, are humanly abusive, but distinctive in their character, and it is important to understand these realities on their own terms.

HC: The world is watching as genocide unfolds in Palestine and yet nothing is being done to stop it. What can be done, and what should be done by the international community at this stage to ensure that the rights of the Palestinian people are protected?

RF: It is a scandalous refusal to take seriously the pledge after World War II of ‘never again.’ The liberal democracies in Europe and North America have allowed their hatred of Hamas to be a justification for inflicting and sustaining a humanitarian catastrophe on an entire civilian population denied even the option to become refugees. Even neighboring Arab governments have done far too little by way of opposition. And the UN has been largely mute. If ever there was a case where the imposition of sanctions was justified it would be in relation to Israel so long as it maintains the Gaza blockade. Civil society initiatives have challenged the Israeli policies most effectively, including such dramatic efforts as those associated with the Free Gaza Movement and Viva Palestina. These symbolic challenges expose the failures of the international community as constituted by the government of sovereign states to do uphold international law and international morality even in extreme situations of the sort that exists in Gaza, and add political weight to the BDS movement that is gathering strength in various parts of the world. The Palestinian solidarity movement has become the successor to the Anti-Apartheid Campaign as the most important popular struggle on behalf of global justice in the early 21st century. Of course, there are two time horizons that must be taken into account: the emergency horizon in Gaza that requires with utmost urgency the ending of the blockade; the justice horizon throughout occupied Palestine that requires a just peace at the earliest possible time.

HC: Israel has stated that it launched Operation Cast Lead as an act of “self-defence”. However you, and many others, have said that this is not an honest depiction of how events unfolded and that there are other “unacknowledged reasons“ as to why Israel launched its mass assault on the citizens of Gaza. Could you tell us what you think those “unacknowledged reasons” might be?

RF: Of course, unacknowledged reasons are kept secret because their admission would be awkward. As the question suggests, Israel had a diplomatic option by way of a ceasefire if security and self-defense were its concerns. The more plausible explanations for the timing and undertaking of Operation Cast Lead are the following: to redeem the reputation of the Israeli Defense Forces, which had been damaged by their operational failures in the Lebanon War of 2006; to send Iran a message that the IDF was ready to inflict major damage on an adversary without concern for the limitations of international law or world public opinion; to show Israeli domestic public opinion that the Kadima leadership was determined to use whatever force required to uphold Israeli state interests; to destroy Hamas, and reestablish Fatah control in Gaza, and unified Palestinian representation under the auspices of the Palestine Authority; striking Gaza aggressively while the supportive George W. Bush was still in the White House, and prior to the arrival of the untested Barrack Obama; obtaining the release of the single IDF soldier held captive, Gilad Shalit, which would have been hailed in Israel as a sentimental victory.

HC: Colonel Desmond Travers (a co-author of the Goldstone report) has recently called for certain weapons that Israel has used, or has been suspected of using, to be banned internationally, including white phosphorus, Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), flechettes and Tungsten. Would you support him in this call?

RF: Yes, definitely. All of these weapons inflict cruel injuries, and are already considered unlawful if used in proximity to civilians, which was done throughout Operation Cast Lead.

HC: You have pointed out that Hamas were democratically elected in a free and fair election, that it had proposed a 10 year truce with Israel and has, over the years, expressed readiness to work with other Palestinian groups and yet it is still regarded by Israel and its allies as a terrorist organisation. Isn’t it about time for Israel, the Quartet and others to sit down and talk with Hamas?

RF: It was a mistake from the outset not to take Hamas at their word as turning away from violence and toward political action. When initially elected Hamas established a one-year ceasefire unilaterally, which they kept despite a series of Israeli provocations, including the assassination of Hamas leaders by missile attack. It would seem that Israel, and the United States, were comfortable with the situation of divided Palestinian leadership, and with the accompanying argument that there was no Palestinian partner with whom Israel could negotiate. Hamas has basically displayed a willingness to establish a ceasefire, including one of long duration, along its border with Israel. International actors should even now, however belatedly, treat Hamas as the de facto governmental authority in the Gaza Strip and treat it diplomatically as a normal political entity. To attach the label ‘terrorist organization’ is to signal an unwillingness to substitute diplomacy for violence and a refusal to lift the cruel and criminal siege that is now causing such damage to the physical and mental health of the entire civilian population of Gaza.

HC: You have said that “the American public in particular gets 99% of its information filtered through an exceedingly pro-Israeli media lens.” What is your take on the coverage of the situation by the media in Europe?

RF: I am less familiar with the European coverage, but my strong impression is that although it is generally favorable to Israel, it is less unbalanced in its reportage, and more objective. Also, there is greater access to sources sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle, including Al Jazeera.

HC: The Palestinian Authority recently called for the deferral of your last report on the OPT, why have you not insisted on its immediate debate in the Human Rights Council?

RF: I do not possess the authority to challenge what takes place in the Human Rights Council. I have conveyed my disappointment to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and I hope that the report will be discussed at the June meeting of the HRC, and that these difficulties will not recur in the future. The report is a comprehensive attempt to depict the unlawful dimensions of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

HC: Is there any hope that Israel will be held accountable for its war crimes against the Palestinian people?

RF: I am not optimistic about accountability being achieved by way of the appropriate international procedures, especially referral to the International Criminal Court for further investigation and possible indictment. The geopolitical veto exercised by the United States on behalf of Israel, possibly reinforced by the EU, will block the implementation of the recommendations in the Goldstone Report probably without ever coming to a formal vote. Perhaps, if public pressure is heightened the geopolitical protection of Israel will become visible rather than, as at present, provided behind closed doors and in the deep recesses of the UN bureaucracy.

But there are two other ways in which some degree of accountability might be achieved: first, as recommended in the Goldstone Report, reliance on universal jurisdiction, which potentially empowers national criminal courts to investigate charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity with respect to Israeli military or political leaders who could be detained or extradited to face charges if entering a country that has introduced universal jurisdiction provisions into its law; second, as undertaken already by the Russell Foundation in Brussels, the formation of a citizens’ tribunal with a panel of jurors made up of respected moral authority figures, and passing upon the allegations against named Israeli officials. This kind of initiative would be symbolic in nature, but it would provide a documentary record, encourage support for BDS forms of nonviolent coercion, and represent an expression of condemnation of those accused and found guilty by world public opinion and by parts of the world media.

HC: You have the unenviable task of being an academic in an American university and a UN human rights Rapporteur in Palestine, how difficult has it been for you to function in both environments after your criticism of Israeli human rights policies?

RF: The tension is present, but so far has not been too serious. There is a shift in mood throughout the United States, making criticism of Israeli policies less controversial than had been the case in the past. The long arm of AIPAC and the Israeli Lobby remains dominant in Washington, D.C., but there is less impact than in the past on the country as a whole.

Source: Middle East Monitor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ten Facts about the Nakba

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

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

2. This traumatic event created the Palestinian refugeecrisis.

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

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

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

4. Hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed.

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

5. Palestinian property and belongings were simply taken.

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

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

6. Some Palestinians stayed in what became Israel.

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

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

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

8. Refugees have internationally-recognized rights.

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

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

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

10. The Nakba has implications for Americans.

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

A video showing the horrors of the Nakba...

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

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

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

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

NEWS FLASH.....

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

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

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

Source: Desert Peace

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

That U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had the courage to tell AIPAC's conference that Israel's continued construction of Jewish housing on occupied territory is undermining both the prospect for peace and America's credibility and own best interests was good news. The bad news is that this and other Obama administration expressions of concern are 42 years too late.

There's no mystery about when the U.S. should have taken the lead through the UN Security Council in putting Israel on notice that it would not be permitted to settle any of the Arab land it grabbed in the 1967 war. Security Council Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967 ought to have contained a diplomatic reading of the riot act to the Zionist state on the matter of settlements.

As I have noted in a number of previous articles and my book ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS, Resolution 242 was, actually, a disaster for all who were seriously interested in working for a just and lasting peace. By stating that Israeli armed forces were required to withdraw "from territories" occupied in the conflict – i.e. not the territories or better still all territories – Resolution 242 put the Israelis in the diplomatic driving seat, leaving them free to be the ones, and the only ones, who would determine (on a take it leave it basis backed by brute force) the extent of any Israeli withdrawals. This fatal flaw in 242 effectively gave Israel's leaders a veto over any peace process.

Despite that, Resolution 242 need not have been a complete disaster for peacemakers if a statement had been inserted into its text to this effect... That Israel should not seek to settle or colonise the occupied territories, and that if it did the Security Council would enforce international law and take whatever action was necessary to stop the illegal developments.

Question: Why did the text of Resolution 242 not contain such a statement of Security Council intent? The answer I give in the forthcoming Volume 3 of the American edition of my book (www.claritypress.com), is this.

Those responsible for framing Resolution 242 were very much aware that Israel's hawks were going to proceed with their colonial venture come what may – in determined defiance of international law and no matter what the organised international community said or wanted. And some if not all of those responsible for framing 242 were resigned to the fact that, because of the history of the Jews and the Nazi holocaust, Israel was not and never would or could be a normal state. As a consequence, there was no point in seeking to oblige it to behave like a normal state – i.e. in accordance with international law and its obligations as a member of the UN. Like it or not, and whatever it might mean for the fate of humankind, the world was going to have to live with the fact that there were two sets of rules – one for Israel and one for all other nations. Because of the way Israel was created – without legitimacy in international law – The System now had a double standard built into it, and because the political will to confront Zionism did not exist, there was nothing anybody could do to change that reality.

In my view a conclusion invited is that Zionism's in-Israel leaders are not the main villains in the story. They, the main villains, are successive American and other Western leaders who lacked the will and the courage not only to call and hold Zionism's monster child to account, but to do what was in the best longer term interests of their own countries.

I have the impression (of course I could be wrong!) that President Obama would like to break this mould. I even think there's a possibility that, in the privacy of his own mind, he might already have told himself that he will do so in a second term, if he has one. (Though Obama signalled his displeasure at having to meet with Netanyahu by insisting on no photographs, I thought it was a mistake for the President to meet with him. As with Biden's arrival in Israel, Netanyahu's arrival at the White House was preceded by the announcement of the go-ahead for more illegal Jewish construction in occupied Arab East Jerusalem. There could not have been a more pointed "Up Yours, Mr. President!" Israeli gesture). But what if President Obama tried and was not allowed by the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress to succeed? Would that necessarily mean that the Zionist state was and would remain a monster beyond control, with catastrophic consequences for the region and the whole world, including the Jews of the world?

Perhaps not.

There is today a new factor in the equation. It is the concern being raised in public by some of America's top military men.

The United States Central Command, Centcom, is the military headquarters responsible for US security interests in 20 countries across the greater Middle East.

On 16 March, Centcom's head, General David H. Petraeus, appeared before the Senate Armed-Services with a prepared testimony. It included this: "The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbours present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in the Middle East and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world."

Petraeus also briefed Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and apparently told him, among other things, that Washington's "impotence" in the face of Israel's ongoing colonisation of the occupied West Bank was the greatest cause of Arab anger.

As noted by Paul Rogers in an article for OpenDemocracy published on 18 March, America and Israel: a historic choice, "the very arm of the United States federal government which has the closest links with Israel – namely, the military – is now suggesting that Israel is the source of some of its own key problems in the middle east."

The significance of what Petraeus said was, as Rogers also noted, heightened by the fact that the criticism came not from retired generals, not remote from the strategic frontline; "but from the very US military command that has been fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for most of the decade... This elite forms a core element of the US military-industrial complex which in five decades of close cooperation with Israel has furnished its ally with sophisticated weapons-systems, undertaken many joint exercises, provided huge amounts of aid; and in turn depended on Israel for crucial assistance in its war in Iraq."

This military intervention in the "What to do about Israel?" debate now gathering momentum in America, made me wonder if the stage is being set for a showdown, at some point, between the Zionist lobby in its many manifestations and the occupant of the White House, whoever he is, with the military on his side.

So perhaps, even after 42 years, coming up for 43, it's not too late.

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

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

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

If you indulge in ad hominem attacks (attacking the person rather than the issue), you can expect the same in return. The issues related to the anti-Semitic label are many.

First, the expression "anti-Semitic" is a misnomer. It's defined as "hating Jews or Judeophobia." The label "anti-Semitism" is wrong because not all Jews are Semites, and many Arabs are.

In 2004, the US Congress passed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. The Act defines a person as being anti-Semitic for holding any of a number of beliefs. My comments follow each of the 14 items supposedly revealing anti-Semitism.

1) Any assertion, "that the Jewish community controls government, the media, international business and the financial world."

According to this, it doesn't matter whether the assertion is true or not. Truth is not an issue. Simply making such a statement violates the Act. In itself, that fact provides strong evidence of control of the US government.

2) The expression of "Strong anti-Israel sentiment."

Any criticism of Israel can thus be considered anti-Semitic. Israel can mangle Gaza and get away with it.

3) Expressing "Virulent criticism" of Israel's leaders, past or present.

Menachem Begin may have led the Irgun in the slaughter and dispossession of thousands of Palestinians, but it's anti-Semitic to say so.

4) Any criticism of the Jewish religion or its religious leaders with its emphasis on the Talmud and Kabbala.

It's perfectly acceptable, as free speech, to vilify Islam, but any criticism of Judaism violates the Act.

5) Any criticism of the United States Government and Congress for being under the undue influence by the Jewish-Zionist community, which would include Jewish organizations such as AIPAC.

Truth matters not to the ridiculous legislators who passed this ludicrous act.

6) Any criticism of the Jewish-Zionist community for promoting globalism or what some call the "New World Order."

When you can't criticise a propaganda machine for its promotions, both free speech and democracy are dead.

7) Placing any blame on Jewish leaders and their followers for inciting the Roman crucifixion of Christ.

In order to accommodate the anti-Semitism label, simply rewrite history.

8) Citing any facts that could in any way diminish the "six million" figure of Jewish holocaust victims.

I violate the act simply by citing the fact that five million non-Jews died at the hands of the Nazis. This goes beyond stifling free speech.

9) Claiming that Israel is a racist state.

That's not a claim. It's a fact. Israel is full of racist laws. It insists on preserving its racist character and its right to impose apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza.

10) Making any claim that there is a "Zionist Conspiracy."

A rational provision for such a claim would insist on evidence as proof of its validity. To disallow making such a claim is existentially (Israelis love that word) dictatorial.

11) Offering proof that Jews and their leaders created Communism and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

It just became illegal to offer proof. Minds are made up. Don't confuse them with the facts.

12) Making derogatory statements about Jewish persons.

Why limit it to Jewish persons?

13) Asserting that spiritually disobedient Jews do not have the Biblical right to re-occupy Palestine.

Why limit it to the spiritually disobedient?

14) Making any allegations of Mossad involvement in the 9/11 attack.

I just did in a column published a week ago.

The Act passed by the US Congress makes me anti-Semitic. It's an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. I'm a critic of Israel when they commit wrongs and a critic of America when it does wrong. Despite Congress, that's not anti-Semitic.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

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

Chutzpah, a Yiddish word meaning "shameless audacity," has been famously defined as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan." Considering Israel's increasingly outrageous behaviour, perhaps it's time for a new definition. The one that springs to mind is "that quality enshrined in a state, which having induced its 'allies' into a disastrous invasion of Iraq, then urges them to attack Iran."

At a recent dinner in honour of visiting Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took yet another rhetorical swipe at Tehran. "Humanity stands before one of its most difficult tests since World War II," Netanyahu intoned. "The radical Islamic regime threats [sic] the well-being of the state of Israel, the region, and all of humanity."

Sounding more like an Israeli envoy than the head of a sovereign nation, Berlusconi responded, "My job is to make sure that world leaders do not commit the same error of the past, the error of indifference that brought about the greatest tragedy in history."

In Defamation, a highly revealing 2009 documentary on anti-Semitism by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, Professor Norman Finkelstein noted this strategy of invoking past Jewish suffering to justify future wars. "The irony is that the Nazi holocaust has now become the main ideological weapon for launching wars of aggression," said Finkelstein, the author of The Holocaust Industry. "Every time you want to launch a war of aggression, drag in the Nazi holocaust."

Or, to be more precise, every time Israel wants other countries to launch a war of aggression on its behalf, it drags in the Nazi holocaust. In the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Netanyahu was one of many Zionists who did just that. In a September 20, 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "The Case for Toppling Saddam," Netanyahu laid on the guilt trip: "We now know that had the democracies taken pre-emptive action to bring down Hitler's regime in the 1930s, the worst horrors in history could have been avoided."

And as he and other Zionists are now doing with Iran, Netanyahu was in 2002 hyping a non-existent Iraqi nuclear threat. Saddam Hussein, he claimed, was "feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons." Moreover, "the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs," the then former Israeli Prime Minister speculated, could be produced "in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country-and Iraq is a very big country." To uncover Saddam's hypothetical "portable manufacturing sites of mass death," Netanyahu warned that "nothing less than dismantling his regime will do."

One might think that with over a million people dead and almost five million others displaced in Iraq-and not a weapon of mass destruction to be found-that Netanyahu might be showing some remorse. Instead, he's beating the drums loudest for an even more catastrophic war with Iran.

That should tell us a lot not only about the man but about the nature of the ideology that drives him. Zionism, like the fictional Jewish parenticide, shamelessly attempts to turn reality on its head.

Instead of acknowledging that it is the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, Israel and its supporters focus the world's attention on imaginary threats from its regional rivals.

Rather than apologizing for their crimes against humanity-most notably, the dispossession and virtual imprisonment of the Palestinian people- Zionists arrogantly portray themselves as the defenders of humanity against Islamic aggression.

And instead of admitting that they lied about Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories, Iraqi yellowcake uranium from Niger, and Iraqi meetings in Prague, Zionist propagandists are busy concocting similarly brazen lies about Iran.

If world leaders are indeed committing an "error of indifference," it is hardly their supposed resistance to Zionist scaremongering. Rather, it is their indifference to the suffering of Arab and Muslim peoples. Foremost among them are the Palestinians-the ultimate victims of the shameless audacity of Zionism.

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

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

Most Jews of the world (and probably many Gentiles) believe that Zionism is the return of Jews to the land promised to them by God. At the risk of offending some readers of all faiths for saying so, I must confess, and do so cheerfully, that I don't buy this concept because the Gentile me does not believe in the God of organized, institutional religions. So, I say to myself, no God, no promise to Jews (or anybody else). In my perception of the scheme of things, God is the potential for good inside each and every one of us. God so defined is a prisoner within each of us and our prime task is to liberate this prisoner. But let's put that to one side.

The Jews who "returned" in answer to Zionism's call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. They were converts to Judaism long after the end of the Hebrew conquest and short-lived domination of much of Canaan, the name as in the Bible by which Palestine was first known to the world. They therefore had no legitimate claim on the land.

The Jews who did have a legitimate claim, probably not more than about 10,000 at the time of Zionism's first dishonest mission statement in 1897, were the direct descendants of the Israelites who stayed in place on the land through time. They regarded themselves as Palestinians, and they were fiercely opposed to Zionism's colonial enterprise because they feared it would make them as well as the incoming alien Jews enemies of the Palestinian Arabs.

Also true is that prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, most Jews of the world were not at all interested in Zionism's colonial enterprise and many were opposed to it. The most informed and thoughtful of those who did express their opposition believed that Zionism was morally wrong. They also feared that Zionism's colonial enterprise would lead to unending conflict. But most of all they feared that Zionism, if it was allowed by the major powers to have its way, would one day provoke anti-Semitism. Which is precisely what is happening today. (Hence the title of my book, ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS).

In reality it is how the Zionists created their state - a Zionist not a Jewish state - that best defines what Zionism actually is.

Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing - a pre-planned process that saw three-quarters of the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine dispossessed of their homes, their land and their rights.

Zionism asserts that its state was given its birth certificate and thus legitimacy by the UN Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947. That is propaganda nonsense. The truth can be summarized as follows.

• In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.
• By the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged vote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a recommendation - meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.
• The General Assembly's recommendation never went to the Security Council for consideration because the U.S. knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force given the extent of Arab and other Muslim opposition to it; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
• So the partition plan was vitiated (became invalid) and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine - after Britain had made a mess of it and walked away, effectively surrendering to Zionist terrorism - was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the U.S. was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence - actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.

The truth of the time was that the Zionist state had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist UNLESS ... Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those Zionism had dispossessed of their land and their rights. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved.

What is a Zionist today?

Short answer: One, not necessarily a Jew, who (to quote Balfour) supports the Zionist state of Israel "right or wrong" and who cannot or will not admit that a terrible wrong was done to the Palestinians by Zionism - a wrong that must be acknowledged and then corrected on terms acceptable to the Palestinians if there is ever to be peace and the countdown to catastrophe for all is to be stopped. The Arab word for the catastrophe of the original dispossession of the Palestinians is Nakba. In my view, Zionism's Nakba denial is as obscene and as evil as denial of the Nazi holocaust.

One thing nobody can deny is the effectiveness of Zionism's propaganda machine. Zionism's spin doctors probably learned from the Nazis that the bigger the lies and the more frequently they are told, the more likely it is that they will be believed in the mainly Gentile, Judeo-Christian or Western world; and all the more so when the mainstream media is terrified of offending Zionism either too much or at all.

The biggest of all of Zionism's propaganda lies is the one which asserts that Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the "driving into the sea" of its Jews. As I document in detail in my book, Israel's existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Not in 1948. Not in 1967. And not even in 1973. Zionism's assertion to the contrary was the cover which allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most, in North America and Western Europe, with presenting its aggression (often state terrorism) as self-defense, and itself as the victim when actually it was, and is, the oppressor.

The companion propaganda lie is that Israel never had Arab partners for peace.

Zionism has two hallmarks.

One is self-righteousness of a most extraordinary kind. In 1986 this self-righteousness was described by Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former Director of Israeli Military Intelligence, as "the biggest real danger" to the Jewish state.

The other hallmark is a shocking and awesome arrogance of military and economic power and the influence the latter buys, most critically in the U.S. Congress where what passes for democracy is for sale to the highest bidders.

On the matter of truth as it relates to the making and sustaining of conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, I hope the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is right: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." If that's true, Zionism not only can be defeated but will be.

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