Sabbah Report » Massacre

Israel and the Celebration of the Anniversary of Genocide in Gaza

Dr. Christof Lehmann — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:22:31 +0000

When observing the aerial bombardment, heavy artillery and haubitzer shelling of Gaza, three years ago, I remembered Erich Maria Remarqe's, book All quiet on the Western Front, and the passage that has been deeply imprinted into my memory, where he described the shelling of a graveyard during the first world war, while a platoon of troops that got caught in artillery fire while passing the site was desperately seeking cover in the craters riddled with the bones of their rotting fellow human beings. The dead were killed for a second time, he wrote. ^[1]

The mere fact that Remarqe and this passage of his book come to mind when contemplating the situation in Gaza is sufficient for me to know that I need no further contemplation to know that something is going terribly awry in our sense of humanity when it comes to Palestinians, and who would wonder that the people of the world stand idly by when schools, women and children are bombed to unrecognizable pieces of flesh, and when children are taken hostage by IDF troops who are using them as human shields, as occurred during operation Cast Lead. One could read "Palestine Israel, History and Theirstory " ^[2] if one wants to know more about why much of the world does not care about Palestinian suffering.

Early this morning Israeli jets shelled areas in Northern and central Gaza. According to Israeli military forces because the areas had been used to fire a few home made Katusha rockets into what is now called Israel. After having had a look at what these dreaded Qassam Missiles are it becomes obvious that they are nothing more than some super sized firecrackers. The damage that can be caused by 10 of them can hardly be compared to the energy that is released by a single tank shell with a killing radius of the size of a football field.

There is a very useful term called proportionality which elicits much of the problem. When an entire people is systematically deprived of it's humanity by corporate media, entertainment industry and propaganda experts, who are euphemistically called spin doctors, then it becomes understandable that the merciless butchering of a thousand Palestinians by a thousand highly explosive high tech artillery shells plus bombs and rockets, is a proportionate response to two firecracker like Qassam missiles that injured a goat and frightened someone who chose to live on illegally occupied land.

It's absolutely proportional to keep hundreds of Palestinian child prisoners, thousands of adult male and female prisoners who have been illegally arrested in prison, because those terrorists have kidnapped one of the heroic Israeli soldiers who valiantly defend the genocide.

Israeli military sources are reporting that the bombing raid a couple of days ago, on the anniversary of Cast Lead as well as the bombing raid this morning, may be precursors of a new offensive.

It seems Israel is developing a delicate sense for the celebration of genocide. "Bibi, it's the three year anniversary of our murder of 1.200 Palestinian women and children, lets celebrate."

If Bibi Netanyahu and company need a pretext for another large scale massacre, why not wait until New Year. Imagine the awesome firepower of all those celebratory rockets sent into the skies and the countless firecrackers at new years eve. Bibi could even blame the Chinese for delivering those dangerous weapons to the terrorists, right? Or when was the last time you have seen fireworks not made in China?

"There "must" be one or two of them that fall into our liberated Holy Land, so we cam murder a few thousand more Palestinians". "Bibi, you could also have a couple of delicious preemptive strikes against Gaza, because I am sure that those damned tunnels are used to smuggle all kinds of food that they use to celebrate ." "No, General, we must have the tunnels open so they can get their new years firecrackers to Gaza, how else should we find an excuse for bombing them."

My best wishes to the people who are condemned to live within the worlds largest extermination camp, Gaza. My deep respect for those who live in the worlds largest extermination camp and still make full use of their right to resist against the genocide on their people, rather than behaving like a sheep waiting for the slaughter.

And my deepest respect for them not giving up to insist on their right to live on their own land, to self determination, statehood, peace, and their right to defend themselves from an attacking, occupying or besieging military force.

Happy New Year Gaza

Happy new year Palestine

Happy Anniversary of the Cast Lead Genocide, Israel.

Slideshow photos from Gaza Massacre - Cast Lead, 2008:
[[Show as slideshow]]

1) All quiet at the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, 1928, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front

2) Palestine Israel, History and Theirstory, Lehmann Ch. 2011, nsnbc http://nsnbc.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/palestine-israel-history-and-theirstory/

Analysis: renewed hostilities between Gaza and Israel

Richard Lightbown — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:40:02 +0000

Warning: Graphic, Blood Content

By Richard Lightbown * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Two terror attacks in southern Israel on 18 August caught the Israeli army by surprise despite having received a large number of warnings. The official story is that members of the Popular Resistance Committee in the Gaza Strip entered Egypt through tunnels from the Strip and travelled nearly 200 kilometres to near the north of Eilat where they crossed the border. Significantly, no organization in Gaza has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The driver of the first of two buses attacked was reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as saying that two of the gunmen were dressed in Egyptian army uniforms. The second bus was blown up by a suicide bomber. Fourteen people were killed and 31 wounded. In addition, Israeli forces shot five gunmen while Egyptian border police killed two more. Many of the attackers, perhaps as many as 10, escaped. It appears that an Israeli military helicopter attempted to give chase and crossed into Egypt territory where it mistakenly attacked an Egyptian army unit, killing five and wounding several others.

A large variety of weaponry is reported to have been used in the attacks, including mortar fire, an anti-tank missile and an RPG device that was fired at a pursuing helicopter. Explosives were laid alongside the road. In a further shooting attack in the same area later that afternoon two Israeli soldiers were wounded and three gunmen died. The sophistication and success of this attack demonstrate an unusual level of competence.

Israel’s response has been to launch at least 50 air strikes into civilian areas in the Gaza Strip since 14 August. While the secretary-general of the Salah-al-Deen Brigades and a member of the Popular Resistance Committees have been reported killed, the total number of casualties on 20 August was 15 dead and 45 wounded. Two of the dead were two years old and another was aged 13. Ten children, eight women and two elderly people are among the injured; one 15-year-old is said to be seriously hurt. A Facebook account showing photographs depicting some of the truly horrific injuries from these attacks had gone down on the morning of 21 August, but many of the photographs were still available on the Europalestine website. [See photos at the end of the post. Warning: Graphic, Blood Content]

In a diplomatic response, the Israeli ambassador to the UN lobbied members of the Security Council in an attempt to get a Security Council Presidential Statement condemning the terror attack. The Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, said that the US, European members and India were strongly in favour of the statement. At an unofficial discussion of the US draft held on 19 August, Lebanon asked for the inclusion of an amendment citing the “the escalation in Israeli bombardment of Gaza”. The US and European members are reported to have opposed this but there was no record of any opposition from Indian or from other members, which include Russia, China and Brazil.

Rather than face criticism in a UN Security Council Presidential Statement, Israel arranged for the proposal to be withdrawn. Their UN ambassador, Ron Prosor, made acrimonious comments about the UN’s failure to condemn terror against Israelis, but avoided any comment on the children and other civilians killed by Israeli retaliatory air strikes. Meanwhile, the more compliant Middle East Quartet was prevailed upon to issue strong condemnation of the attacks in southern Israel, which it incorrectly described as “cowardly” (hardly an accurate word for a person who risks death or deliberately blows themselves up, whatever the morality of the action). Token concern was expressed for the situations in Gaza and Sinai. The Quartet’s special representative, Tony Blair, also condemned the attack in Israel but made no comment on the attacks in Gaza which have caused a higher toll of dead and injured.

The authenticity of claims of a Gaza link to the attacks in Israel has been questioned by Joseph Dana who pointed out that the Haaretz account was based entirely on anonymous sources and government hearsay accounts. (Nonetheless, most of the international media outlets published the same line.) The International Middle East Centre (IMEMC) has referred to a denial by the North Sinai governor who said that the claims of Palestinians infiltrating into Egypt through the border were impossible to believe. He added that Egypt has full control over the border with Gaza and the security presence was not affected by the regime change in Egypt. It should also be remembered that previous attacks on the Sinai gas pipeline from Egypt to Israel (there have been five such attacks this year) have usually been accredited to Bedouin. So Israeli army spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibovitz did not instil much confidence when she told the Real News that intelligence information from the bodies showed that the gunmen used Kalashnikov bullets and rifles and that these are very common in Gaza. The Kalashnikov after all is the most widely available weapon on the planet, and accounts for an estimated 20 per cent of all firearms available worldwide.

An Israeli government unpopular at home because it cannot or will not face up the cause of social protests must at least show that it can act with determination to protect Israel’s security. And who better to blame than the residents of the Gaza Strip, whom the international community has been shown over decades to be unwilling to help or defend? So it was that two-year-olds in Gaza died to atone for the death of Israeli citizens, who perhaps may have been victims of Al-Qaeda terror. So what? Israel can no longer attack Egypt with impunity, so the usual suspects will have to suffice.

However this still leaves the problem of the Egyptian soldiers who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and an Egyptian public that has more of a voice on Egyptian foreign policy than it did under the Mubarak dictatorship. While an adventurer in Cairo scaled the 15-storey building to remove the Israeli flag from the embassy roof, protesters outside demanded that their ambassador be recalled and also protested at the bombardment of Gaza. The interim government itself seems undecided as to whether it will or won’t recall its ambassador from Tel-Aviv after Jerusalem refused to issue an apology for the killings. Most governments would probably have honoured such a demand for an apology under the circumstances, but the Israeli government is not well practised in the art of diplomacy. It is also contemporaneously being pressured to give an apology to Turkey over the assault on the Mavi Marmara; an apology it is most unwilling to give for fear of facilitating the prosecution of members of its armed forces. Quite possibly, that piece of international arrogance and contempt has come round yet again to embarrass and impede Binyamin Netanyahu. Notwithstanding, the longer this row continues, the more the Egyptian stance is likely to harden.

As the anger in Gaza manifests itself in mortars and rockets fired at southern Israel, the target population is learning that the much-vaunted Iron Dome is not a guaranteed defence against projectiles fired from Gaza. The 200,000 people in Beersheva along with the populations of Sderot and Ashdod remain at risk and in fear from these attacks. But Israeli options are not so straightforward. Launching another blitzkrieg on Gaza could trigger an onslaught from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is reputed to have up to 30,000 missiles at its disposal for a war with its southern neighbour. Meanwhile, Israel’s Southern Command remains at a low strength following years of cold peace with Egypt.

As terrorists aim sparks at the tinder box that is the Middle East, the time has come for wise heads to prevail. Yet with a high proportion of fanatics in the Knesset, Netanyahu is more interested in political survival that statehood. And with the puppets of the Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), controlling the White House and Congress, and a weak Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, there appears to be little cause for hope. Unless Israelis on the streets can take the lead and join with those who advocate an end to violence, the options for regional peace currently appear to be very remote.

* Richard Lightbown, studied the impacts of the Rwandan civil war on four Ugandan forests for his Masters dissertation. He has been a volunteer in Gaza and the West Bank, and assisted with a forestry proposal for the Arab areas of the occupied Golan.

Warning: Graphic, Blood Content

Return to Shatila

William A. Cook — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:53:34 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Munir’s Story: 28 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila

Franklin Lamb — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:48:17 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

There are no average massacre testimonies.

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

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

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

No plaque or sign notes what happened here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The venomous hatred persists to this day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Postscript

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kenneth O’Keefe – Countering Israeli Propaganda (Must Watch Video Interview)

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:13:48 +0000

Gaza Freedom Flotilla Eyewitness Report

HARDtalk with Kenneth O'Keefe talks about the attack on the MV Mavi Marmara that was trying to run the blockade on Gaza.

Part 1/3:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb7XOGJoCkg

Part 2/3:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1T6uTkvU0c

Part 3/3:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uA8ttjAMlc

Israel’s International Piracy

Dr. Elias Akleh — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:49:01 +0000

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

As expected by many, the serial terrorist Israeli army attacked this morning, May 31st 2010, the "Freedom Flotilla" ships with gas bombs and live fire, murdering at least 19 humanitarian international activists, 16 of them Turks including one MP, and injuring 29 others. The Israeli navy, then, kidnapped the 700 humanitarian activists and their ships to Israel.

Since the declaration by the humanitarian activists that they intend to challenge the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza in order to deliver humanitarian aid to starved and sick Palestinian civilians, the Israeli officials and military had threatened to intercept the Freedom Flotilla, and send the activists back. When activists insisted on going through with their journey Israelis declared that such journey is considered a provocation to Israeli laws and a threat to its security. Later on, the Israelis announced that the organizers of the flotilla are pro-Hamas and pro-Al Qaeda terrorists attempting to smuggle weapons to Gaza, and that every passenger on the flotilla is a potential terrorist. I wonder if this includes the Israeli citizens who joined the flotilla volunteers.

The Israeli attack against the Freedom Flotilla was pre-meditated and pre-planned by the Israeli military headed by its defense minister, Ehud Barak, and approved by its prime minister, Netanyahu. Five large tents were erected at the Israeli port of Ashdod to hold humanitarian activists hostage. Three Israeli military ships loaded with 300 specially trained Israeli commandos accompanied by military helicopters and associated attack speed boats, headed to intercept unarmed humanitarian ships. This was the biggest Israeli naval battle since its illegal establishment in 1948.

Once again Israel had lived up to its infamous terrorist reputation. Israel's 62 years old history is full of terrorism, genocide, wars, violations of all human rights, breaking of all national laws, and war crimes that would fill large volumes. Israel's latest terror attack on the Freedom Flotilla is an international compounded crime. To start with, the Israeli navy attacked the ships in the international water. They attacked unarmed civilians. They attacked a humanitarian mission to aid people in need, similar to any humanitarian missions to a devastated area like Haiti for example, which gives the mission a special protection status by international law. The Israelis killed unarmed humanitarian activists. They kidnapped all the activists and took them hostages. They took the ships and put their hands on all the goods they carry similar to what they had done in the past with previous "Break the Siege" ships.

To cover their crime and war crimes against Gaza and the illegal siege the Israeli have just committed international crimes against representatives from 40 different countries including members of parliaments. Besides the crimes of murdering different internationals the Israelis have committed an act of piracy in the international waters.

The Israelis, as usual, portrayed themselves as the perpetual victims claiming that they had to kill the activists in an act of self-defense. They want us to believe that the humanitarian activists had come from 40 different countries with a conspiratorial plan to attack the Israeli well-armed navy, and that these activists had illegally boarded the Israeli battle ships using military helicopters and shooting live fire and gas grenades. The poor Israeli soldiers could do nothing but defend themselves. This reminds of me of Golda Meir's statement: "We could never forgive the Palestinians for making us shoot their children."

Israel's justification for boarding the Freedom Flotilla because they don't know what these vessels carry is a childish justification. There are hundreds of vessels in the Mediterranean, whose contents are not known to the Israelis. Does that mean that they have the right to board all of them?

The Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Israeli genocidal war crimes against Palestinians, especially the illegal and holocaustal siege of Gaza, are being increasingly recognized and opposed by many nations. The unremitting "Break the Siege" campaigns had exposed Israel's genocidal plan against Palestinians, and are gaining more international support.

Israel's criminal attack against the Freedom Flotilla is meant to terrorize other possible future humanitarian internationals out of organizing or participating in more humanitarian "Break the Siege" campaigns. Their special emphasis on the Turkish vessel came as a revenge for Turkey's courageous opposition of Israel's war crimes against Palestinians, and Turkey's successful mediation in the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Israel's siege of Gaza and its attack on Freedom Flotilla are clear indications that Gaza is still under the Israeli occupation. Israeli so-called withdrawal from Gaza, September 2005, is just a redeployment of Israeli forces rather than a withdrawal as Israelis like us to believe. Israel still controls every aspect of life in Gaza. Israel wants us to believe that its siege of Gaza is a response to capturing their soldier, Shalit, who was, in fact, participating in the siege at the time of his capture. Palestinians have the right to defend their lives from the terror of such soldiers. On the other hand, Israel does not want us to remember the 10 thousand Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, who were kidnapped and snatched from their families by the Israeli terrorist army after midnight.

The Freedom Flotilla is the 9th attempt of "Breaking the Siege" campaign to deliver humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza, a humanitarian duty the UN had poorly and almost not delivered. Five of these trips were successful, while the rest had suffered from Israeli piracy and kidnapping. The volunteers came from 40 different countries including European countries and from the US. They include some members of parliaments of these countries. These volunteers, unlike some of their bought pro-Zionist governments, represent the humanitarian cumulative compassion of many nations, and their courageous will to help their human needy brothers and sisters. They are not terrorists, as Israel claims, rather they represent civilized humanity.

The Israeli piracy and criminal attack against the ships have ignited a spontaneous global intifada, whose anger has echoed through the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the US. Thousands of protesters against Israeli terror walked through the capitals of major countries towards Israeli consulates. Governments of many countries, especially those with citizens among the flotilla volunteers, summoned the Israeli ambassadors to protest the attack.

Turkey-Israeli relationship is destined to suffer a great deal by this Israeli piracy. Turks have surrounded the Israeli consulates in Istanbul and Ankara, and the house of the Israeli ambassador and vowed not to leave until the Turkish vessels and Turkish volunteers are released. Turkey has summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest the attack and has called back its own ambassador from Israel. Turkey had also cancelled three joined military exercises with Israel. The Prime Minister, Erdogan, had called Israel's attack "state terror".

An urgent meeting of the Security Council was called by Arab governments, yet the US, as usual, came to Israel's rescue and had sabotaged the issuance of any resolution against Israel. The US called of "impartial investigation" of the matter. Such an investigation is a waste of time. It is as clear as the sun that Israeli forces had forcefully and illegally boarded the flotilla ships. Israelis are the aggressors not the victims. They were armed to the teeth attacking unarmed humanitarian activists.

American rescue of Israeli terror is not surprising, since the American administration is a full partner in imposing siege on Gaza. "The Gaza Bombshell" report by Vanity Fair explains how the American administration had conspired to topple the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza. The administration is also paying the Egyptian Mubarak's government to join into the siege against Gaza, and to build the steel wall and watch towers on the Egyptian border with Gaza.

Most of the American congress members are more loyal to Israel than to their own country. They spend the tax money of their citizens to subsidize Israeli illegal colonies and roads on usurped Palestinian land to provide almost-free homes to Israeli extremists while American tax payers are losing their homes. They vote to spend billions of dollars to provide free education to Israeli students, and full free medical coverage to every Israeli Jewish citizen, while American schools are facing budget cuts and crowded class rooms, and American citizens cannot afford to pay for any medical coverage of their own. They give Israel billions of dollars worth in financial aid and military technology. Such support to terrorist Israel is the major cause for increasing anti-American sentiments around the globe.

Israel's attack against the Freedom Flotilla is grave piracy, and an act of terrorism that is violating all international laws. It demonstrates to us that Israelis consider themselves above the law, and that their own laws are supreme laws that no one should even challenge.

Those countries claiming to be partners in fighting global terror should also join in fighting Israeli terror. Those countries, which are fighting Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, should also fight Israeli piracy in the Mediterranean.

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

Alan Sabrosky: The Madness Of Arrogance: Israel’s Attack On The Gaza Aid Flotilla

Alan Sabrosky — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:24:14 +0000

A young boy protests outside Downing St, London on May 31, 2010.A large demonstration took place in London after more than 16 people were killed by Israeli commandos when they stormed a ship part of a flotilla of six carrying 1,000 tonnes of aid to the Gaza Strip, AFP/Getty Images

By Dr. Alan Sabrosky* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Israel's attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla on America's Memorial Day was all too predictable, although the form it took surprised even me. And it confirms the old proverb that "Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad," for the attack was the kind of madness only unbridled arrogance can assume.

It wasn't just that foreigners as well as Palestinians, flying flags other than that of Palestine, were attacked. Israel has a long history of doing such things, especially to the UN. But except for the USS Liberty incident in 1967, it has generally done that on inland sites -- Gaza, the West Bank, the Lebanon -- where it can largely block news and visual evidence, and control the spin it puts on events, counting on its friends in the US and other mainstream media to say little or nothing to contradict them.

The Attack Reprised

"...Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

Not this time. An attack on the open seas, in acknowledged international waters, against unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid with passengers and crews from many countries -- especially a direct attack against a Turkish ship -- is a different matter, and potentially an explosive one. The number of shipboard casualties indicates that once fighting started, the Israeli commandos simply sprayed automatic weapons fire into the people around them -- another of their long-standing habits.

And technology is their enemy here, just as it became in an earlier day the enemy of communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. Too many images and videos were taken, and some sent, and too many witnesses reported what was happening, before the Israelis were able to suppress communications from their victims.

Bad for their victims, but also potentially very bad for Israel, and the initial Israeli public-relations damage control efforts show that they are at least dimly aware of that fact. Trying to cast the attack in international waters as an exercise in self-defense would be ludicrous in the best or worst of circumstances -- has anyone ever seen wheelchairs used as offensive weaponry?

And for the Israeli spokeswoman to try to spin an assault by warships and armed commandos as defense against a "lynch" (I guess she was trying to push an American "hot button" for Obama -- someone should tell her it is "lynching" or "lynch mob") would have embarrassed even her public relations soulmate, Dr. Josef Goebbels. But desperate do what desperation dictates, I suppose, although this time they may well have gone way too far.

A Judging, Long Overdue

"...This is a time for those interested in justice for Palestine to seize the moment and act,.... now is the time and this is the incident to drive home the UN "Uniting for Peace" Resolution..."

And that is what the initial responses appear to affirm. All of the major US and many other media outlets are carrying this story, and even with the slant from many Jewish correspondents based in Jerusalem or Ashdod, the bloody particulars are slowly coming through to at least a general American audience for the first time:

1. The unarmed ships with unarmed passengers were trying to ferry humanitarian and reconstruction aid to ravaged and embattled Gaza.
2. Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza, probably if not certainly in violation of international law, supported largely by US vetoes in the UN Security Council.
3. Israeli warships and commandos intercepted and attacked the aid flotilla in international waters --which is an act of war, piracy or state terrorism, depending on one's view of the details.
4. Under attack, some of the passengers tried to defend themselves, scores were killed or wounded, and some Israeli commandos were also wounded -- doubtless a surprise to them, but then their usual run of victims may have made them a bit too cocky.
5. Many governments and publics around the world -- not only in Arab capitals -- are openly outraged, and the discussion forums on US news websites carrying the story suggest that much the same is happening at a public level in this country.
6. But for Israel, this is just another "we are the misunderstood victim" incident in a long, sordid and utterly unbelievable litany of such things -- except that this time, they may not get away with it.

Seizing the Moment

This is a time for those interested in justice for Palestine to seize the moment and act, building on the promise engendered but not fulfilled after the submission of the Goldstone Report to the HRC.

I would like to think that President Obama would take a stand, and perhaps he will, but if he does it will be with words and not with deeds. Neither the Congress nor Rahm Emanuel would let him do much more, whatever his predisposition -- and who knows, he may believe the "lynch" metaphor, or pretend to do so.

"...Trying to cast the attack in international waters as an exercise in self-defense would be ludicrous in the best or worst of circumstances — has anyone ever seen wheelchairs used as offensive weaponry?"

Americans shouldn't bother with letters or emails to US Senators or Representatives, or Obama; AIPAC will be there ahead of you with more letters and money than you can generate. Go instead directly to the local offices of US Senators and Representatives, stay until you speak personally to the senior person there, and make your case as forcefully as you can. Make sure as many people hear you as possible -- but be polite, and leave your signs at home.

For the world community, now is the time and this is the incident to drive home the UN "Uniting for Peace" Resolution, in both the Security Council and the General Assembly as needed. The nationalities of the victims will at least neutralize many European countries that might have opposed it before. Sanctions, embargoes, even the suspension or expulsion of Israel from the UN itself, do as much as quickly and as forcefully as possible. Press the BDS campaign everywhere hard.

And for the US armed forces, on this Memorial Day, it would be well to reflect on the meaning of duty and service to country and people. Oaths of allegiance, obedience and loyalty are important to professionals in the armed forces, in or out of uniform. They were to me when I was in the Marines, and later as a civilian at West Point and the Army War College. I'm sure serving professionals today are no different.

But the elected and appointed civilians overseeing the armed services have also taken their own oaths, and many have violated them by serving the interests of Israel rather than the US itself, and especially by spending American lives and treasure furthering Israeli interests rather than safeguarding American ones. This, to me, is clearly treason, and utterly negates any loyalty anyone else owes to them.

Remember that the cornerstone of our oaths is not to obedience, but to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Think about it on this Memorial Day.

* Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College. He can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net

“Criminal pirate” Israel makes a fool of the OECD only days after it clasped the viper to its bosom

Stuart Littlewood — Mon, 31 May 2010 12:40:09 +0000

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

This morning I'm hearing reports of 20 or more dead and dozens injured after Israeli forces attacked the Free Gaza flotilla in international waters and gunned down unarmed crew and passengers.

This is no surprise. Israel had been threatening for weeks to use violence, as is its style, to intercept the peaceful mission.

And I have just watched Israel's chief lie-monger, Mark Regev, on BBC TV. "We did everything we could to avoid violence," he said. "They [the aid workers] chose the path of confrontation... This is elementary, we have to defend ourselves." He claimed the Israeli boarding party was attacked! The week-kneed BBC failed to question this act of piracy in international waters and the blatant violation of maritime law.

Former British MP George Galloway, a mainspring behind the Free Gaza movement, called it "a murderous act of piracy" on innocent humanitarian aid workers and demanded a wholesale review of the international community's relationship with "the criminal pirate state of Israel".

When the OECD**, just 3 weeks ago, made their woeful decision to admit Israel to their club, the Zionist regime's plan to attack international ships attempting to bring relief to the 1.5 million innocent Gazans it had bombed and blockaded for 4 years, was already known. But the Organisation nevertheless went ahead, posting a video of their media briefing...
http://www.oecd.org/document/57/0,3343,en_2649_201185_45159737_1_1_1_1,00.htm

Grit your teeth, watch, and marvel at this master-class in the art of bumbledom. It does not, of course, explain what many would love to know: how Israel's vile conduct is deemed to comply with the OECD's fundamental values.

So I asked our ambassador. The office of Britain's delegation to the OECD had to be prodded and goaded several times before making a half-baked reply to the simple question: Why did the British government give approval - in the British people's name - for relaxing the rules to allow Israel to join?

Ambassador Dominic Martin was too lazy to issue a personal statement. Or maybe he was just too embarrassed by the thought of having to spout the sort of bilge I would receive 17 days later from one of his junior assistants.

When I finally got a reply it was from a lady who did not reveal her job title. But her previous job was with the Honours Unit in the Protocol Division so, clearly, here was somebody with deep background knowledge of Israel's theft of the Holy Land and general lawlessness. This is what she said...

28 May: The rules for joining the OECD were not relaxed to allow Israel to join, and there was consensus among OECD members to admit Israel. Israel had to undergo a rigorous process of technical reforms to ensure that it met the standards of the OECD acquis in a wide range of diverse areas, from changing legislation in line with the Anti Bribery Convention to the environment. Israel has made commitments to bring its standards into line with those of the OECD in two areas, post accession - statistics (where it has been asked to disaggregate statistics for the Occupied Territories from those of Green Line Israel) and Intellectual Property Rights.

The UK has always been supportive of Israel's application to the OECD and welcomes the successful conclusion of accession negotiations. Israel is a country with whom the OECD and its members have many natural synergies. We view the accession of Israel as a positive development for a number of reasons. It is significant that Israel believes that adherence to OECD values and standards is important and helpful in the country's economic and social development, including its efforts to address high levels of poverty and deprivation, particularly among certain categories of the Israeli population.

The UK, together with EU member states, is confident that Israel's accession to the OECD will open new areas of co-operation in our mutual interest. We do not believe that economic sanctions or boycotts are the way to engage or influence Israel.

You asked in your subsequent email about a statement or press release. Neither we, nor the FCO, issued a press release or statement when Israel joined the OECD.

- Tanya Collingridge, UK Delegation to the OECD

Who actually wrote that... Mrs Collingridge? Ambassador Martin? Or, more likely, some hack in the FCO's Hasbara Unit quoting from the Israeli crapaganda manual?

"The rules for joining the OECD were not relaxed..."

Its mission statement says that the OECD "brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy". And in December 2007 a roadmap towards Israeli membership set out the OECD's "fundamental values" to which members must adhere. These include "a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and respect of human rights".

Oh dear. Israel, as everyone has come to realize, is no western-style democracy and no respecter of the rights of others. It is an ethnocracy with deeply racist policies and criminal territorial ambitions. Since 1967 it has ruled over millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories without according them any democratic rights at all. It discriminates systematically against its Arab minority in numerous ways. For example, the OECD's own report Israeli Child Policy and Outcomes finds that "government spending per child is much lower in the Arab sector than in the Jewish sector... average spending per child in the Arab localities is estimated to be 36.8% lower than in Jewish localities".

Ongoing human rights violations are too numerous to list here - it's latest murderous outrage has just been demonstrated on the high seas. Others range from preventing Gaza's 3,500 licensed fisherman from earning a livelihood by shooting up their vessels whenever they put to sea, and preventing students from Gaza finishing their degree courses at West Bank universities such as Bethlehem and Birzeit, to what former prime minister Olmert himself described as "deliberate and insufferable" employment discrimination against their Arab minority.

Israel also operates discriminatory land laws that benefit Jews and prevent its non-Jewish Palestinian citizens (20% of the population) from exercising an equal right to own land. Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens are denied full legal status, thus excluding some 16,000 women from exercising their social rights such as accessing health care.

Basic services such as water and electricity are denied to Bedouin citizens of the Negev/Naqab. Their homes are frequently destroyed.

Has the OECD turned a blind eye to the terror and havoc wrought by Israel's military? The sanctions and blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, and Israel's ‘Cast Lead' blitzkrieg launched in December 2008 against the tiny enclave's citizens and infrastructure have caused a massive humanitarian crisis. Promised relief and reconstruction are cruelly obstructed.

Between 2000 and the start of Cast Lead (according to Israel's B'Tselem statistics), Israelis killed 4,790 Palestrinian civilians in their homeland. Of these, 952 were children. In the same period Palestinians killed 490 Israeli civilians within Israel, including just 84 children.

Yes, 952 Palestinian kiddies snuffed in their own streets. Israelis slaughtered at least 350 more during Cast Lead and have kept Gaza under daily air attack ever since. So the "most moral army in the world" must have eliminated nearly 1400 youngsters by now. The number left maimed and crippled doesn't bear thinking about.

Israel's claim to sovereignty over all of historic Palestine has no basis in law, yet land confiscation and illegal settlement building continues throughout the West Bank in blatant breach of UN resolutions and previous peace accords, as do home demolitions and displacements, especially in East Jerusalem.

Doesn't the OECD know about the severe restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by Israeli checkpoints and bypass roads, to the extent that Palestinians cannot easily reach their place of work or their farmlands, or even access the meagre healthcare facilities, and both Arab Christians and Muslims are prevented from visiting their holy places?

Isn't the OECD aware of the torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians held in Israeli jails and detention centres, the widespread denial of children's rights.and Israel's refusal to allow Palestinian refugees the right of return?

Israel's contemptuous disregard of international law, UN declarations and normal codes of conduct shows that it is not the slightest bit committed to the "attainment of the purposes of the United Nations". Thanks to its never-ending aggression, the persistent expansion of its borders and refusal to end its illegal occupation, Israel has miserably - many would say purposely - failed to establish "peaceful and harmonious relations" with its closest neighbours. It regularly violates Lebanese and Palestinian airspace and makes armed incursions into Gaza whenever the mood takes it.

It has made no contribution whatever to the economic expansion of non-member countries and no attempt to abolish obstacles to the exchange of goods and services or enable the liberalisation of capital movements. On the contrary, it has used unrestrained military might to wreck and ruin its neighbours' prospects and reduce them to permanent poverty.

The OECD surely knows these things.

"Israel has made commitments to bring its standards into line with those of the OECD in two areas, post accession - statistics... and Intellectual Property Rights."

Given the Israelis' long crime sheet, are these the only commitments the OECD was able to wring from them? Why did it not, at the very least, insist on an end to the economic and military blockade of Gaza?

"Israel believes that adherence to OECD values and standards is important..."

Israel believes quite the opposite, as its actions show.

"The UK, together with EU member states, is confident that Israel's accession to the OECD will open new areas of co-operation in our mutual interest."

Has anyone explained what interests and values we could possibly have in common with the Israeli regime?

"We do not believe that economic sanctions or boycotts are the way to engage or influence Israel."

Since when have we been squeamish about slapping crippling sanctions on other countries... Iraq since 1990 and Palestine especially when we didn't like the outcome of their democratic elections in 2006 or the' flavour' of their fledgling but perfectly legitimate government? We eagerly joined with the bully-boys to crush it and pile on the misery for innocent Gazans.

Now we're itching to "engage and influence" Iran with tougher sanctions. None of these countries have posed a threat to the UK.

For 62 years normal diplomacy has failed with Israel. People with a grain of sense have concluded that it's time to change tack. The British thumbs-up for Israeli membership of the OECD is an obscene reward for previous bad behaviour and the first act of lunacy on the watch of our new Foreign Secretary, William Hague. But we can expect many more. Hague is so passionately pro-Israel that he's determined to make the UK a safe haven for that regime's thugs. This will be achieved by ducking out of our legally binding obligation to exercise universal jurisdiction over persons accused of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

He is reported in Haaretz as saying, "We cannot have a position where Israeli politicians feel they cannot visit this country and indeed not just Israel, but this could apply to many other nations as well. So this has to be put right. And that is well understood and agreed in the coalition government."

How silly. Israeli politicians are welcome to visit the UK as long as their hands are clean. But Hague wants Mrs Livni, who is deeply implicated in the bloodbath in Gaza, and many more who are accused of crimes against humanity, to be able to come and do their shopping in London. I simply don't believe that the entire coalition government shares Silly Willy's protective attitude towards foreign war criminals. Besides, Hague's coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, are not as hopelessly hoodwinked by Zionism as he is.

And the public, one hopes, would regard sheltering Israelis wanted for war crimes as totally unacceptable.

It might be worth mentioning that Foreign Secretary Hague became a Friend of Israel at the tender age of 15, when still in short trousers. How can he possibly be fit for purpose? How clever is it to allow signed-up, card-carrying admirers of the rogue state anywhere the levers of international power?

The stark reality of Israeli terror

As I write, the fate of that altogether more gutsy coalition, the international Free Gaza flotilla, and its humanitarian cargoes and brave passengers, is still unknown. But after the callous murders at sea it can't be good.

Some 30 British nationals are believed to be aboard, along with £millions-worth of humanitarian supplies donated by British citizens, peacefully going about their lawful business. Where was the Royal Navy? The Government had been alerted to Israel's threats.

According to Aljazeera, Israel claimed the Free Gaza boats were embarked on "an act of provocation" against the Israeli military, rather than providing aid, and he flotilla would be breaking international law by landing in Gaza,

Last night I wrote to Nick Clegg, Britain's deputy Prime Minister, saying: "What action is Her Majesty's Government taking, please, to guarantee freedom of the seas and protect those going about their lawful business from Israeli piracy? Ministers were warned of Israel's threats so had ample time to prepare for this development. Let's have no whimpish driveling from the Foreign Office this time, please. What's needed is firm, decisive intervention. Just for a change let us see our Government do us proud on the international stage."

This was only one of many angry messages he and Prime Minister David "I'm-a-Zionist" Cameron must have received.

Every decent person this morning will feel great sorrow - but also tremendous admiration - for those who lost their lives or were wounded in a noble effort to relieve the endless suffering inflicted by the foulest professional politicians on earth. I fully expect their sacrifice to be marked by remembrance services across the world.

Meanwhile, hands up anyone who feels sorry for the OECD, which has been so comprehensively pissed on by the delinquent regime it welcomed with open arms only days ago.

* 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.

** OECD: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is where a select group of 31 countries compare policy experiences, identify good practice and coordinate domestic and international policies. Its roots go back to 1947 and the reconstruction of Europe under the Marshall Plan. It is funded by its member countries to the tune of 328 million euros.

RAW FOOTAGE: Israel navy massacres on one of Gaza Freedom Flotilla

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 31 May 2010 11:02:16 +0000

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB-Mk4bFz-U

Spread the video:

UPDATE – Video: Israeli troops storm Gaza flotilla killing more than 16

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 31 May 2010 06:25:46 +0000

Palestine/Israel History since 1878

Haitham Sabbah — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:47:33 +0000

Pass this short video to your friends to answer the basic questions about the history of Palestine/Israel conflict and 1948 Nakba:

Video link: http://blip.tv/file/3467330

This video will answer the following questions:

- How were the Jews treated by Arab before 1948?

- Where and how did Zionism start?

- Was Palestine empty when the Jews came?

- What was the population of Arabs in Palestine between 1878 and 1948?

- How many Jewish immigrants arrived to Palestine between 1878-1948 and how did the UN partition plan divided Palestine between Arab and Jews? Did Israel stick to this plan?

- Did the Jews find "land without people" as they claim?

- How did the Jews treat the Palestinians in the occupied lands?

- How did the Nakba start and at what cost?

- Where the Palestinians expelled before or after the neighboring Arabs countries engaged in a war with the Israeli occupiers?

- What happened to the evicted Palestinian villages? How many were erased?

- Can the Palestinian refugees return to "visit" their occupied villages and lands? And can the Jews visit the occupied lands?

All these questions and more are answered in the above 10 min. documentary. A good video to pass to your friends who like to learn more about the history of the conflict and 1948 Nakba.

Spread the video! Embed code:

Nakba, the Forgotten Child of the Holocaust

SR Editor — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:05:30 +0000

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

American Humanitarian Hypocrisy; Armenian Genocide

Dr. Elias Akleh — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:37:29 +0000

Armenian Genocide Map

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

The hypocrisy of the American legislators has never stopped to amaze me. On Thursday March 4^th The House Foreign Affairs Committee had approved, by 23 to 22 votes, a non-binding resolution to condemn WWI-era massacre of Armenians on the hands of the Ottoman troops that began in 1915 as an act of planned genocide.

Acknowledging, recognizing, and condemning genocides, ethnic cleansings, massacres, and even killing of one human is the duty of all countries of the world. Yet ignoring or recognizing genocide for political gains is a very shameful hypocrisy.

This was not the first time the Committee had voted on this issue, but the resolutions were blocked from moving to the House floor for full voting. The American administration feared adverse effects on the diplomatic relationship, especially the military cooperation, between the US and Turkey that might have devastating effects on the American interests in the region including its alleged war on terror, its occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and the Iranian alleged nuclear threat.

First in 2000 the House Committee had approved a resolution to recognize the Armenian massacre as genocide. President Clinton, at the time, succeeded in persuading the Republican speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, to withdraw the measure before the full House could vote on it. In October 2007, the Committee, again, passed a similar resolution by 27 to 21 votes. The American administration, then, was still relying heavily on Turkish military bases for quick delivery of supplies to its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, noted that about 70% of all air cargo sent to Iraq passed through or came from Turkey, as did 30% of fuel, and virtually all the new armored vehicles designed to withstand mines and bombs. Avoiding the use of the world genocide, President Bush danced around the subject saying: "We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915, but this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

So what motivated members of Committee to pass the resolution for the third time although Representative Dan Burton reminded them that "We have troops in the field, and we run the risk of losing a base of operation in Turkey" ?

Turkey, as any observer can notice, had lately shifted its foreign policies. Although a Middle Eastern country Turkey longed to become a member of the EU, but unfortunately transferring your eastern roots to the west seemed to be a difficult matter. After so many years of applying for membership to EU, and adopting all the imposed harsh conditions to become a member besides serving NATO for 58 years, Turkey finally recognized that the EU will not accept Turkey especially after admitting many of the old Warsaw countries (e.g. Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia among others) so easily. It seems that Turkey, finally, contented to remain Middle Eastern and decided to re-establish its position in the region.

The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, focused on internal economic and social improvements. The public debt as percentage of annual gross domestic product declined from 74% in 2002 to 39% in 2009. Turkey has become the seventeenth strongest economical power in the world. In April 2006 the government announced a social security reform package including free medical services for everyone under the age of 18 regardless of whether they pay premiums to any social security organization or not. This is an improvement the US, the richest country in the whole world, has not yet implemented for its citizens.

Erdogan improved Turkish political relations with its old adversaries and its neighbors. Through an aggressive plan of allowing use of Kurdish language and reverting original Kurdish names to their cities Erdogan ended the quarter-century-long conflict with the Kurds. He also improved relationships with Greece, Armenia, and Iraq. Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia and first to visit Iraq in 33 years. Last August 31^st Turkey and Armenia signed a protocol in Zurich to improve relations between the two countries. In Iraq Turkey signed 48 trade agreements.

Erdogan had significantly improved Turkish diplomatic relations with Syria. Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, travelled to Turkey for the first official visit by a Syrian President in 57 years. In late 2004 Erdogan signed a free trade agreement with Syria, and in 2009 visa restrictions between the two countries have been lifted. Erdogan had also functioned, although for a brief period, as a mediator in indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria.

Asserting its position in the Middle East Turkey decided to play a more active role in the political affairs of the region. Erdogan has established a trilateral pact with Iran and Syria. He also expressed political support for Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas in their resistance of Israeli occupation. He faced Israeli president, Shimon Perez, in Davos conference January 2009 and severely criticized Israel's December 2009 onslaught against Palestinian civilians in Gaza before walking out in protest over Perez's lies. This stand gained Erdogan huge popularity in the Arab and Moslem population.

Turkey had a change of heart, and decided to walk the path of freedom from Western influence. Turkey decided to become an independent and a major player in the Middle East in solidarity with its Arab neighbors. Turkey had committed the ultimate sin, in the eyes of the West and Israel, when it sided with Syria and Iran, and especially when it opposed and criticized Israel something many leaders, especially the Arabs, did not dare to do.

It was decided that Erdogan's government has to go before it becomes any stronger!!!

The Turkish "Zaman" newspaper reported on Jan. 3^rd 2009 that Israel plans to overthrow Erdogan's government because of his support for the Palestinian cause. It revealed that Israel provides support for opposition Turkish forces to topple the government. This was confirmed when the government arrested 49 military officers planning a coup. The newspaper confirmed that Israel helped in 1997 the Turkish neo-conservative to topple the then coalition government headed by Necmettin Erbakan. The Israeli war ministry leaked to the media in 2007 a report stressing the need to oust Erdogan's government through a similar plan.

Zionist conspiracies against Turkey started way back in June of 1896 when Sultan Abdel Hamid refused to sell Palestine to Zionist Herzl. Since then, and up to the present, Zionists schemed to embarrass and to weaken successive Turkish governments. This started with the Armenian genocide in 1915.

After WWI the Allied forces occupied large parts of the Ottoman Empire. Financing and arming Anatolia Armenian French Zionists incited the Armenians to revolt against the Empire to establish an independent Armenian state. The Armenians attacked The Turks, destroyed their cities and killed their women and children. Yet their revolt was brutally crushed by the "Young Turks Revolution", who also toppled Abdul Hamid's empire. It was revealed later that the "Young Turk Revolution" was actually a Jewish takeover (Jewish Young Turks) that was financed and armed by the Zionist Israelite Community of Salonika to topple the Ottoman Empire and to get rid of influential rich Armenians. This was revealed through letters to "The London Times" between June and August of 1911 under the title of "Jews and the situation in Albania". See also "The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians" by Christopher Jon Bjerknes.

Although the reports of Lieutenants Emory Noles and Arthur Sutherland, who were sent by the American administration to investigate the situation in Turkish Anatolia, reported massacres on both sides, only the Turkish massacres of Armenians were publicized.

Another chapter of the Zionist war against Turkey is being played. Israel tried to belittle Turkey when Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon publicly humiliated Turkey's ambassador in front of press cameras. The extremist Zionist Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman was sent to Greece, to Cypress and to Azerbaijan to inflame old hostilities against Turkey. A Turkish military coup attempt had failed and its planners, 49 military officers, were imprisoned. Ignoring real historical events American Foreign Affair Committee, under the influence of AIPAC, passed its resolutions notably by very narrow margins, to condemn what was termed Armenian Genocide.

The question that begs itself here is what moral grounds this Committee has earned to pass such resolution? On what ethical basis do they condemn one genocide and not others? What about the genocide of 40 million American Indians to establish the US? What about the nuclear genocide of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the killing fields of Vietnam and Korea, the aerial bombing of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and the present genocides of millions of Moslems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq?

Jews, and AIPAC in specific, should remember the genocide of 110 million Africans, victims of 113 years of slave industry, by Jewish slave traders, the genocide of 35 million Kulaks by Russian Jewish Cheka agents in 1932, the genocide of 100 million Christians including their priests between 1920-1940 by the Jewish Bolshevik Commisars under the leadership of Jewish Kaganovich, Stalin's brother-in-law, the Zionist expulsion and genocide of 16 million ethnic Germans from Silesia and the Volga at the end of WWII, and the still ongoing 62 years Zionist Israeli genocide of Palestinians. More Zionist Jewish genocides can be found here.

The term Armenian Genocide refers to the total of 1.5 million Armenians killed in an alleged systematic campaign by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey acknowledges that hundreds of thousands of Armenians, as well as Turks and other nationalities, were killed during WWII, but denies that it was a planned genocide.

This is so much fuss about past historical events that could not be changed. Yet one hopes that we would learn from them to prevent any further future genocidal crimes. Today the whole world is faced with an ongoing four years old audacious, premeditated, deliberate, and systematic genocide of 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Zionists and Israeli leaders meet annually in what they call Herzliya Conference to strategize more effective genocidal methods against Palestinians. Would these Hippocratic leaders do anything about this genocide?

A Call from Gaza

Haitham Sabbah — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:47:31 +0000

Haya and Lama Hamdan killed by an Israeli missile.

Haya Hamdan finally put to rest (probably not in the way her parents envisioned).

Little boy, Yahya Hayek, under rubbles. Our U.S. government recently supplied Israel with a fresh supply of heavy-duty missiles called bunker busters. It seems the Bush administration wanted to assist Israel in the humane and swift killing of Palestinian children without prolonging their pain.

Gaza - This week marks one year since Israel began its attack on the Gaza Strip: a year since phosphorus bombs, dime bombs and other weapons of death and destruction were unleashed on a defenseless civilian population. A year since the people of the world demanded that Israel end its attack on Gaza.

In this Israeli war of aggression on the occupied Gaza Strip, many of our civilians were massacred by Israel's indiscriminate bombing, condemned by UN experts and leading human rights organizations as war crimes and crimes against humanity. This assault left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, predominantly civilians, of whom 431 were children. Another 5380 Palestinians were injured. We, the 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were violently expelled from our homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reduced whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and partially destroyed scores of schools, including several run by the UN, where civilians were taking shelter. This came after 18 months of an ongoing, crippling, deadly hermetic Israeli siege of Gaza, a severe form of collective punishment described by John Dugard,the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights as "a prelude to genocide."

The war on Gaza was predicated and advocated for by Israeli generals and politicians. Matan Vilnai, ex-Deputy Defense Minister of Israel, told Army Radio during "Operation Hot Winter" (29 February 2008):

They will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.

In the days following this statement, 107 Palestinians, including 28 children, were killed. The international community failed to take action. This inaction, followed by European declarations of intentions to upgrade their trade agreements with Israel, served as a green light for the atrocities that were to be committed in January 2009.

But the attack on Gaza is not yet over: we, the Palestinians of Gaza are still living with our physical, mental and emotional wounds. Our bodies cannot heal because the medicine that we require is not allowed into the Gaza Strip .Our homes cannot be rebuilt and the mangled steel and concrete cannot be removed because the trucks and bulldozers that can remove them are not allowed into the Gaza Strip.

Never before has a population been denied the basic requirements for survival as a deliberate policy of colonization, occupation and apartheid, but this is what Israel is doing to us, the people of Gaza, today: 1.5 million people live without a secure supply of water, food, electricity, medicines, with almost half of them being children under the age of 15.

It is a slow genocide of the kind unparalleled in human history.

Earlier this month, Ronnie Kasrils, ex South African Intelligence Minister and member of the ANC, said in the UK, that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is far worse than what was done to black South Africans under apartheid. And, former American president Jimmy Carter said, on his visit to Gaza, that the Palestinian people trapped in Gaza are being treated "like animals."

The people of Gaza need your support to end the blockade. Over 1400 international activists from over 42 countries will be in Gaza on December 31. They will march with us to demand that Israel lift its' blockade of the Gaza Strip immediately and permanently. We ask you to show your solidarity with Gaza on the same day: wherever you may be, organize a protest, a march or a petition collection in your own country.

There are 1.5 million people in Gaza: we want to see 1.5 million people around the world support us as we take our demands to the Israeli state.

We need you to show Israel that we have a common humanity; that you watch what it does and you will not tolerate it because silence is complicity.

We need you to show Israel on December 31 2009 that there is no place for their kind of war mongering and barbarism in the world and that the people of the world reject it.

We need you to show us, the people of Gaza, that you remember the horror that we face each day, and that you are with us as we fight against the Israeli-apartheid killing machine.

Gaza

20.December.2009

Signed by:
Academic Sector
Boycott National Committee
PNGO (Civil Society Sector)
Labor Sector
Women's Sector
Students' Sector
Youth Sector

Yahya Hayek's grandmother was asked to identify the body of her grandson. He was among the fortunate ones whose body was still identifiable. She will send her thank you note to the Israeli leaders for their kind and humane gesture.

A boy shot by Israeli soldiers in a demonstration in the West Bank.

A father weeps the death of his five daughters, including a 14-month-old toddler.

At the funeral of one of those five girls, Deena Baalousha

What's Deena thinking now? Her beautfil angelic face tells a million story. Is she wondering why the world allowed Israel to starve her and her four sisters for three years and then watched as the F-16 sent the missiles to take their lives?

Deena can finally rest in peace in her own piece of land. This must be the peace that Israel keeps talking about.

A young Palestinian man carries a little boy who died before making it to the hospital. I am sure he has a name too. I am sure he has, or had, parents who loved him too. It might come as a surprise to many Israelis, but Palestinian parents name their children and love them too.

His crime is that he is not Israeli; so no one would care.

Three killed boys; three less targets for Israel.

A Christmas Remembrance

William A. Cook — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:26:26 +0000

Kaukab Al Dayah (Image - Lawrenceofcyberia)

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

"The white civilized man (is) the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth."
(Herman Melville, 1840s)

In 1841, Melville sailed aboard the Acushnet, a whaling vessel, on a three year trip to the South Seas. By July of 1842, Melville and a shipmate, Toby Greene, jumped ship revolting against the tyrannical powers that brutalized the crew by oppressing these men of many races. Having witnessed American warships firing their guns at naked islanders in the Marquesas, Tahiti, and Hawaii and watched "rapacious hordes of enlightened individuals" seizing the "depopulated land" from the natives, reducing them to starving "interlopers" in their own country, he realized that the superior white Christian civilization epitomized absolute savagery and that cannibals treated others with more humanity than these self-identified enlightened men. That understanding of the civilized white man struck me with its absoluteness, its certainty, its expressive force the moment I opened my file of little four year old Kaukab Al Dayah, whose tender face rests on top of the rubble of her home, an unsuspecting victim of white Zionist brutality that delivered her family a missile as a Christmas gift just over a year ago. (See Salaman, "The true Jew is the European Ashkenazi ... of whitish appearance," in Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People). (To see the picture of Kaukab Al Dayah, google her name. Two sites have photos: Getty Images and Laweranceofcyberia).

She, too, like the islanders in the South Seas 157 years ago, is a resident of a "depopulated land," or perhaps is an "interloper" that failed to flea when the merciful enlightened hordes shot their warning shots announcing the white man's civilized gesture to those about to be crushed, if they hoped to survive. How considerate. How truly enlightened. How like now in Gaza just a year ago, when Israel, our westernized culture in the Mid-East, the friendly democratic state of Europeanized enlightenment, attempted to crush the defenseless Gazans caught on their own island surrounded by the savage might of this most civilized state. How unfortunate since the intended target was the school next door; an unexplainable mistake since only precision missiles are used, $300,000 dollar weapons to ensure accuracy. "After all we are civilized; we don't permit such pictures to be made public. That's brutal, pornographic; at least blur the face as we do lest our people be shocked, or dismayed that the enemy seems so small, so sweet, so silent, so dead."

I look upon that serene face and see my own daughters asleep in their beds, no more than a yard apart when tucked in, sleeping now after the story's end, eyelids closed, lips parted, faces visible above the blankets as I turned out the lights. I remember because I was restoring a 1750 colonial house at the time and their room had not been touched yet. The heavy thick horse hair plaster was cracked on the ceiling, parts of it hung above the beds waiting the day I would tackle that room. But that night it crashed to the floor with a thunderous roar amid the screaming voices of the girls. How fear rushed to my throat; how relieved to find them untouched but sitting up in fright. How comforting for me to hold them and hug them till they fell asleep again. Remembering this moment, I find no words to express how a mother or a father or a grandmother or aunt or sister or brother would feel upon seeing the innocent face of little Kaukab shrouded in this pall of dirt and stone.

What horror strikes the soul to see that face encased in death, the weight of that shroud pressing around her tiny body, the cement wall rising beside her like the vault's side that receives the coffin, but there is no coffin. This is unnatural death. This is civilized death, the death of the innocent whose life was yet to be lived, whose eyes, shut now, will see no more the rising sun, whose hair, all matted now, will never flow in the warmth of the breeze, whose voice, silenced now, will never sing again. This is now the cold body of an unknown girl, unknown to the pilot of the F-16 that fired the missile, indeed, unconsidered by him lost as he is in his indifference to those he cannot see or hear or touch. How like Kaukab perhaps is that pilot's daughter. Was he happy, perhaps, upon his return home after his days work to lift his daughter's face to his lips before sitting down to dinner?

But he need not worry after all, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira has already absolved him of any guilt with the recent publication of his book, The King's Torah, a best seller in Israel, but un-reviewed in America, not by the enlightened New York Times or the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times. The good Rabbi writes "even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation" (Haaretz 12/15/09). Many other Rabbis joined with Shapira in his call to kill Gentiles while absolving the soldier or citizen of Israel from guilt before the crime is committed. During Israel's Gaza New Year celebration last year, euphemistically dubbed Cast Lead, Rabbi Mordechai Elyahu, one of the leading Rabbis in Israel, "urged the army not to refrain from killing enemy children in order to save lives of Israel's soldiers" (EU Times, 11/11/09). After all, Christian morals are not binding on Jews. Certainly the civilized world can understand these perspectives since the ultra-orthodox Rabbis have only exonerated God's chosen from the guilt that attends Gentiles should they be so rash as to kill a Jew. Funny how we condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization and justify the carnage that took the life of little Kaukab Al Dayah. No doubt the F-16 pilot feared for his life if he did not destroy her before she got old enough to commit some yet to be determined evil against the IDF forces.

I think as I look upon this young girl's face of the mother who bore her, cherished her, dreamed for her; I think about her father who never thought that his daughter would find her grave in the ruins of her room as she slept; I think about her sisters and brothers who played with her just the evening before never imagining that her life would end in such suffering and pain; I think of her as a reflection of all who died in this wasted war that accomplished nothing but horrific pain for the Palestinian and provided only a junky's moment of ecstasy for Olmert, Barak, and Livni, as they sunk needles into their arms, feeling nothing but self-gratification, a sickness of the mind and spirit, a high that knows nothing of others, nothing of love or gratitude or peace, the ecstasy of nirvana that unites all in the human embrace.

As the year ends that opened with Israel's invasion of a people locked behind walls with no place to go, an invasion by the world's fourth largest military according to Israeli estimates, an invasion against a people that have no military, an invasion of a small speck of land that is home to 1.5 million people, an invasion that capped two years of siege by this same military that destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza, preventing food and medicine and oil and gas and water from entering Gaza, an invasion that was as merciless as that of any ferocious animal killing its prey, but here the prey is not one but 1400 with upwards of 5000 wounded and maimed, an invasion that can only mark the perpetrators as ruthless killers without compassion or conscience, a robotic mass that has lost all sense of humane sensitivity, a people that should be and must be isolated from the law abiding nations of the world.

Perhaps, if there is a God of mercy, He has left this image as a token of His love for those who died in this carnage, and a token of His compassion for those who inflicted it that they might learn. It is after all a mirror that both must look into, a symbolic image of life and death. For the Palestinian, it mirrors what life should be for little Kaukab and all children: the joy that should have been; the love showered upon her, lost forever; the home filled with laughter and hope and dreams and warmth and security, blasted now; the neighbors and friends and family, tightly knit in love and kinship, shattered now as this home is shattered. An image of what must be, for friend and foe alike, if this life of hope has meaning and promise.

For the Israeli, it mirrors what this state has become and what the future of the Jews might be under the pathological sickness imposed on them by the Zionists. What minister of God could conceive the slaughter of children and justify it unless he was mired in myth as recorded in Biblical lore. There we read of the Scourge inflicted by G-d on the first born of all who lived in Egypt on behalf of the Jews. There we read of Herod's slaughter of the innocents that first Christmas lest his throne be threatened by the Christ child. Why do such tales exist? They exist to give license to those who would inflict their will on those they fear; they are stories of minds distorted by self-indulgence, arrogance and pride; they impose what they will to ensure their power not through rational deliberation but through deceit, coercion and fear.

That child mirrors for the Zionist the perceived enemy next door grown into adulthood, the fear of what might be; the twisted steel bars rising from the rubble reflect the prison built around those who have been excluded from privilege; the crushed cement strewn on the ground beneath the grey walls reminds the Israeli of the Wall of Fear they have built around the Palestinians, a fear resident deep in the psyche of the Zionist, as all embracing as the rubble that encases little Al Dayah, a fear that those different from them might walk their streets and shop in their stores reminding them that the world is full of people to fear, people that must be controlled and isolated; and in that image they see themselves, the consequence of the corrosive acid that is destroying their faith that once stood for compassion and love seen in the sorrowful face of this innocent girl, the realization that they have destroyed their neighbors, those closest in blood and place to their lives, and in the reaction from people around the world to this unwarranted slaughter, they understand they have built their own ghetto wall around an enclave that exudes violence, vengeance, retaliation, and death to those who do not capitulate to their wants; they have in fact created what their fear predicted, a complete isolation from the civilized world.

What more can be said? Melville saw the cannibals as more civilized than the white Christians that ripped apart the indigenous people of the islands, denying that they had rights, and with impunity destroyed their cultures. It's not only the Christians now, the evangelical end timer Christians; it's the white Ashkenazi of Europe that act now with impunity, the enlightened offspring of the Eurocentric mind that believes in their own superiority fostered by their own myths, supported by the Congress of the United States, as they ravage the defenseless people of Palestine.

Let us all ask of the Child of Bethlehem that He offer this world once again the Beatitudes:

For little Kaukab, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;

For her parents, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God;

For the perpetrators of this havoc, Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.