American Presidents: Romancing A Stone

An American past in an Israeli future for an ever present and brutal occupation

Happy Christmas Mr President or may I call you Barack this Yule Tide? As you know "Christmas is the day that holds all time together" (Alexander Smith) certainly as you rustle through your Christmas stocking and wrestle with your conscience perhaps to find as you dig deep in both and past 'hegemonic imperatives' an olive twig or a so-called 'peace process'? Perhaps not. But as you dig, can you hear the whispers? No. They are not the whispers from the Presidents of Christmas past, we will come to them; no? You are not listening attentively Mr President; that's because you've been genuflecting on the Christmas message of that other great statesman Prime Minister Netanyahu, "we are living in a time of great uncertainty and instability in the Middle East and Israel, throughout this instability, remains a beacon of religious freedom and pluralism." Wow. On what rock is Israel built and how Netanyahu bestrides it as America holds it, for "As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser" (Plato). And which is which?

No Mr President the whispers are coming from the stones of Palestine and Israel and they do "cry out" for past Presidents have remained quiet behind lofty rhetoric and where are they now? "It was [is] the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."(Dickens). You're a "keen student of history" Mr President what about the human condition and the children lost to a sordid history created by Israel and paid for by American tax dollars? Below are some of their names, the stone told me to tell you their names. God Bless you and God Bless America. Which way are you going?

Remember these Children Mr President:

• "Yael Ohana, 11, of Hamra settlement, killed by Palestinian gunfire while in her home. 6 February 2002."
• "Fadi Tayseer al-Azazi, 16, of Rafaha, Gaza, killed by IDF shelling to his chest. 6 February 2002."
• "Total Israeli Deaths since September 2002," 125 children."
• "Total Palestinian Deaths since September 2002," 1470 children. ^[1]

The Stoned

The American stone cast, that gave rise to the ripples that became the waves that is the American Israeli tsunami that engulfs Palestine today, was even in the beginning unusually dense, in the sense obtuse. Quarried and romanced in the USA this stone was to be formed, scuffed then ruthlessly scored by matchless Zionist discontent and ambition, tossed, retrieved, polished and tossed again by successive American Presidents into the same murky American Zionist Israeli foreign policy sea. The rising waves, Israeli aggression and ambition, supported by Zionist America and Presidential weakness, merciless waves beating against the blameless lives of countless Palestinian children past and present and their valiant resistance through the lengthening shadows and dark hours of a brutal occupation as the international community crept decade after supine decade to rectify this grave and ongoing crime against humanity with all the energy of a sloth on diazepam.

American Presidential rhetoric the becoming edict that led to endless Israeli atrocities "unlawful Israeli behaviour [supported by US Aid] that start[ed] out as "facts" have over time been transformed into "conditions", or in the words of the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, "subsequent developments" that are treated [unlawfully] as essentially irreversible." Moreover, "USAID and American taxpayers [are] financing, and thereby further entrenching, the Israeli de facto annexation of the West Bank." (Richard Falk, UNHRC, 16^th Session, Agenda Item 7, A/HRC/16/72, 10 January 2011), and the ruinous blockade and the deaths of Palestinian children.

For these two states America and Israel have been / are up to no good; are, in this criminality together, up to their necks "because everything that Israel does is done up to the limits that the United States supports and authorizes. So it's U.S. Israeli atrocities." (Noam Chomsky, Power And Terror). America and Israel justifying, "represent[ing] the institutionalization of a system of power in which justice is inoperative and its perversion hidden in clouds of rhetoric and obfuscation." and where, "The rule of law implicitly applies only to others." (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson)

Successive American and Israeli Administrations, each, an apostate to the other: "See!" he said to all the people "This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God." Joshua 24:27.

All the Presidents then

President John Adams, his mind high on effulgent heroic, saw conquest, envisioning Mordeca Manue Noah in 1819 "Marching with them [the Israelites] into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the Dominion of it". An "independent nation" thought John Quincy Adams, because, they deserved declared Abraham Lincoln a "leg up". All saw the stone that would be a rock and declared it an American good. And the die and the dying in the stone were cast. Time then, wrapped around the stone, ran through it, became beloved in an American Hegemonic Zionist dream warping space and time, imprisoning Palestinians in a boxed 'continuum'. An American red hot wax seal legitimising the continuum making it 'official' in 1948 as the Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the stealing bit by bit of 'Mandated Palestine' had begun and in ferocious fashion. The Israeli aggression rewarded with a hundred thousand US dollars in 1949 and Israel's aggression rewarded with billions of dollars in 2011.

The Children of Palestine in 1948 were standing in an American Israeli wind tunnel they are standing in it today. And as we come back from the future and indeed as we move from the past to the present, we see the pernicious results of successive Presidential and illegal leg ups the art of hubris and a continuum of failure. Here then an American Presidential Israeli nightmare and the subtitles of the Palestinian river of suffering that runs through it:

• "14^th November 2011, Israeli aircraft attacked a small naval post building in North Gaza district. As a result, one police officer was killed and ten persons were injured, including one woman and six police officers."
• "In 2009 in North Gaza, Gaza, Dair El Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, 1061 Palestinians lost their lives to Israeli aggression. In the Gaza strip in that same year, 323 children and 104 women were killed by the occupying forces." ^[2]

Remember this Child Mr President:

• "Basel Muhammad Nafe abu-Edwan, 14 killed by an unexploded IDF ordinance while he and his brother were herding sheep near their home." Died 27th January 2011. ^[3]

The stone was picked up and skimmed across the surface of the brimming Zionist sea by the deft wrist of Woodrow Wilson 3^rd of March 1919 in reaction to the Balfour Declaration, the text of which was presented to him for approval before publication, "The allied nations with fullest concurrence of our government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a Jewish commonwealth." Then President Warren G. Harding grabbed the stone from the Zionist air stating, "The Hebrew people restored to their historic national home," would enter a "new and yet greater phase of their contribution to the advance of humanity."

• "Number of houses demolished in Gaza strip, since the beginning of the intifada until the end 2009. North Gaza, houses 5399, residents, 54900. Gaza houses, 7060, residents,73149. Dair El Balah, houses 1004, residents, 8925. Khan Younis, houses, 1596, residents, 12247. Rafah, houses, 3774, residents, 32284. Total houses 18833, Total residents, 181505."
• "The number of damaged water wells. North Gaza, 120. Gaza, 154. Dair El Balah, 62. Khan Younis, 23. Rafah, 14. Total, 373."
• "2008 Women and children killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Children, 107, women, 23." ^[4]

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Shiran Ismail Abdullah abu-Shawareb 11, of Nuserat refugee camp, Gaza died of heart problems at Nasr paediatric Hospital in Gaza, which lacked necessary equipment, after Israel denied her entry for medical treatment. Doctors had requested transfer to an Israeli hospital on Dec. 27 [2010] On Jan. 10, believing permission for a transfer had been granted, Shiran's father took her to the Erez checkpoint where Israel again denied her entry." Died 15^th January 2008 ^[5]

The stone retrieved by Coolidge was polished with expressed "sympathy with the deep and intense longing which finds such fine expression in the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine." then caressed in short sighted rhetoric by President Hoover who as other Presidents before and after him couldn't see around histories sharp corner or dint want to saying 1932, "I am interested to learn that a group of distinguished men and women is to be formed to spread knowledge and appreciation of the rehabilitation which is going forward in Palestine under Jewish auspices."

• "Number of damaged industrial establishments by IOF's, in 2006 19, 2005 7, 2004 86, 2003 77."
• "Number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip; 2006 531, 2005 99, 2004 646, 2003 398."
• "Number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip (women, children) 2006 children 115, women 34, 2005 children 32, women 1, 2004 children 156, women 10, 2003 children 81, women 17." ^[6]

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Muhammad Jaber hassan Adila Said, 15, of osreen, near Nablus, killed by IDF gunfire to his chest." January 2004. ^[7]

Franklin Roosevelt viewed the stone empathetically, could feel its vital pulse, perhaps he had a pet name for the stone perhaps it was ineluctable? Or was it inexorable he had in mind as he sat to write to Senator Tydings on October 19, 1938 as The Nakba loomed. "I have on numerous occasions, as you know, expressed my sympathy in the establishment of a National Home for the Jews in Palestine and, despite the set backs caused by the disorders there during the last few years, I have been heartened by the progress which has been made and by remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish settlers in that country."

• "Number of Palestinians killed by Israel occupying forces in the Gaza Strip, 2003 North Gaza 89, Gaza 118, Dair El Balah 75, Khan Younis 42, Rafah 72."
• "Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip (women children) 2002 children 94, women 25, 2001 children 69, women 4, 2000 children 38 women 0." ^[8]

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Muhammad Jamal Muhammad al-Durrah, 12 of Burejj refugee camp, Gaza, killed by IDF gunfire to his chest as his father tried to protect him during a demonstration at Netzarim Junction." ^[9]

Then shining with Zionist zeal, it was to morph into a rock in 1948 enfolded in to Israel's emboldened clenched fist, and as the British looked the other way, smashed Palestine leaving Palestinians between it and a hard place, supported by intellectuals with nothing in their heads but the propaganda they were fed, and a Presidential endorsement. Eleven minutes after Israel's proclamation of independence President Harry Truman declared, "I had faith in Israel before it was established; I have faith in it now." He further said in 1952 "I believe it has a glorious future before it- not just another sovereign nation, but an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization."

• "The majority of these [Palestinian] children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers".(Catherine Cook)

Remember these children Mr President:

• "Ophir Rahum, 16, of Ashkelon, killed by Palestinian gunfire in al-Birah after being led to believe he was meeting an internet acquaintance, 17^th January 2001."
• "Omar Farouq Khaled 11,of al-Bireh, died of head wounds sustained Jan.7 2001 from IDF gunfire during a demonstration." ^[10]

And after 1948, a Presidential stream of consciousness compounding the problem for Palestine with unquestioning and ever increasing aid for Israel's gluttony, her voracious appetite to oppress and appropriate, and kill those who would thwart her:

Eisenhower: "our forces saved the remnant of the Jewish People of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn Israel. Kennedy: "Israel was not created to disappear- Israel will endure and flourish." Nixon: "The United States stands by its friends. Israel is one of its friends Peace can be based only on agreement between parties and agreement can only be achieved only through negotiations between them. The United States will not impose the terms of peace. [But] The United States is prepared to supply military equipment necessary to support the efforts of friendly governments, like Israel's to defend the safety of their people." Carter: "a few days ago in a conversation with about 30 members of the House of Representatives, I said that I would rather commit suicide than hurt Israel." President Regan: Israel exists; it has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders; and it has a right to demand of its neighbours that they recognize those facts." Bush Sr: "The friendship, the alliance between the United States and Israel is strong and solid, built upon a foundation of shared democratic values." Clinton: "The United States admires Israel for all that it has overcome and for all it has accomplished." And President George W. Bush: "Israel is a small country that has lived under threat throughout its existence. At the first meeting of my National Security Council, I told them a top foreign policy priority is the safety and security of Israel."

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Sara Abdul-Azim Abdul-Haq Hasan, 18 months, of Sarah, near Salfit, killed by Israeli settler gunfire to her head while riding with her father in a car. 1^st October 2000." ^[11]

And last but not the least short sighted lacking historical memory, also will as did the others President Barack Hussein Obama: "The American people and the Israeli peoples share a faith in the future and believe that democracies can shape their own destinies and that opportunities should be available to all. Throughout its own extraordinary history, Israel has given life to that promise."

Remember this child Mr President:

• "Haitham Ahmad Mustafa Maruf, 13 of Beit Lahiya, Gaza, died in Shifa Hospital, Gaza, of wounds sustained from an IDF drone attack while working on his family farm 29 August 2011." ^[12]

[1] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[2] http://www.mezan.org/en/messege.php?view=losesen

[3] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[4] http://www.mezan.org/en/details.php?id=12933&ddname=IOF&id2=9&id_dept=9&p=center

[5] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[6] http://www.mezan.org/en/details.php?id=12933&ddname=IOF&id2=9&id_dept=9&p=center

[7] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[8] http://www.mezan.org/en/details.php?id=12933&ddname=IOF&id2=9&id_dept=9&p=center

[9] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[10] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[11] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

[12] http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2011.html

* Clive Hambidge is Human Development Director at Facilitate Global. He can be contacted at: clive.hambidge@facilitateglobal.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why the Empire Arms Fundamentalist Anti-Secular Muslims

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

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

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

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

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Collaboration

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

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

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

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

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

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Conflict

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Strategic Utility of "Moderate" Islamist Parties

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

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

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

Conclusion: How Viable is the Imperial-Islamic Coalition?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rogue state lawlessness and contempt for humanity define both nations.

At home, America is plagued by police state laws, contempt for human and civil rights, out-of-control corruption, banker occupation, corporate control of Washington, record budget and national debt levels, as well as depression-sized unemployment, poverty, homelessness, hunger and despair.

Abroad, America wages permanent wars on humanity, killing millions for wealth, power, and unchallengeable global dominance at the expense of suffering billions.

The rancid stench of Washington's war on the world permeates everywhere, threatening human and environmental survival.

It's no better in Israel, a nation believing only Jews have rights, and increasingly less of them under neoliberalized harshness, favoring the few at the expense of most others.

Like America and other Western states, Israeli policies disproportionately favor the rich. Since at least the mid-1980s, they've caused extreme wealth disparities, unemployment, poverty, hunger, homelessness and gradual loss of social benefits, heading toward ending them entirely.

Israelis finally reacted, protesting for weeks about unaffordable housing, high food and energy prices, onerous taxes on working households, lack of free education and better healthcare benefits, weak labor rights, and a nation no longer fit to live in for Jews.

It never was for Arabs comprising one-fifth of the population. Yet they're treated more like fifth column threats than citizens with equal rights.

On September 3, Haaretz writer Ilan Lior headlined, "Hundreds of thousands of Israelis expected (Saturday night) at massive 'March of the Million' rallies," later saying in a follow-up article:

At 9:30PM, Tel Aviv's Kikar Hamedina plaza filled for the main event, preceded by a march from Habima Square via Marmorek, Ibn Gvirol and Jabotinsky streets.

Protest leaders and supporters addressed eager crowds. Featured entertainers heightened the popular spirit for change. Earlier, student union head Yuval Bdolah expected the rally's size to be unprecedented in Israeli history.

It didn't disappoint as around half a million Israelis massed in cities nationwide. Over 300,000 filled Kikar Hamedina. Protest leader Yonatan Levy said the atmosphere was like "a second Independence Day."

National Student Union Chairman Itzik Shmuli addressed the crowd, saying:

"Mr. Prime Minister, the new Israelis have a dream and it is simple: to weave the story of our lives into Israel. We expect you to let us live in this country. The new Israelis will not give up. They demand change. They demand change and will not stop until real solutions come."

Protest leader Daphni Leef added:

"My generation always felt as though we were alone in this world, but now we feel the solidarity. They try to dismiss us as stupid children, and as extreme leftists," but hundreds of thousands rallying for social justice prove otherwise.

Over 50,000 massed in Jerusalem's Paris Square, double the previous largest number. Actress Orna Banai addressed the crowd, saying:

"I am not amused that there are hungry children here, that we have a soldier rotting in captivity for five years, (and) that Israel is one of the poorest examples there (is for) human rights."

Others also spoke across the country for long denied social justice. Their common theme was keeping up enough pressure to succeed, and in Haifa to end discrimination against Arabs.

Shahin Nasser, Haifa's Arab Wadi Nisnas representative, addressed protesters, saying:

"Today we are changing the rules of the game. No more coexistence based on hummus and fava beans. What is happening here is true coexistence, when Arabs and Jews march together shoulder to shoulder calling for social justice and peace."

"We've had it. Bibi, go home. Steinitz (Israel's finance minister), go and don't come back. Atias (Israel's housing minister), goodbye and good riddance."

Rallying for social justice across Israel since mid-July so far shows no signs of ebbing. Succeeding, of course, depends on sustaining enough energy disruptively for change. Though never easy, it's the only way.

Approaching Zero Hour for Palestinian Statehood

Sovereign independence and full de jure UN membership is the only acceptable alternative for Palestine. However, dark Israeli and Washington forces aim to subvert it.

In February, Washington vetoed a Security Council resolution denouncing expanding Israeli settlements. In a White House statement, Obama "emphasized that a vote at the United Nations will never create an independent Palestinian state," even if the General Assembly grants it by a simple two-thirds majority.

Moreover, Congress near unanimously condemned Palestine's legitimate right to independence. In addition, it threatens to withhold support and perhaps impose sanctions if achieved.

In fact, political Washington contemptuously spurns universal rights, especially everywhere not under its control. As a result, whether democrat or despot, regime change threatens all independent leaders by one means or other, including naked aggression.

Ask Iraqis, Afghans, Haitians, and Libyans among others. They'll explain.

A previous article discussed The New York Times opposition to Palestinian statehood.

In fact, its longstanding policy staunchly supported Israel's occupation, belligerence, and right to reign terror on Palestinian civilians with impunity, in less than so many words.

On September 3, Steven Lee Myers and Mark Landler headlined, "US Appeals to Palestinians to Stall UN Vote on Statehood," saying:

"The Obama administration has initiated a last-ditch diplomatic campaign to avert a confrontation this month over" Palestinian statehood and full UN membership.

Once again it's playing the peace talks game even though past efforts for decades proved stillborn. Moreover, how can Palestinians negotiate without a willing partner, especially since its legitimate government is entirely shut out.

Both writers omitted these and other key facts, focusing instead on worrying whether "Obama would be put in the position of threatening (a) veto (or going along and) risk alienating Israel and its (US) political supporters...."

They also suggested support for Obama "trying to translate the broad principles (he) outlined in May into a concrete road map for talks that would succeed where past efforts have failed...."

In fact, as both writers know or should, equitable peace talks are impossible because Washington and Israel never tolerated them and don't now. Neither country negotiates. They demand. For Occupied Palestinians, it's stay that way, or else.

At the same time, past articles explained that Washington earlier provisionally recognized Palestine as an independent nation. According to UN Charter Article 80(1), it can't reverse its position by vetoing a Security Council (SC) resolution calling for Palestine's UN admission.

Doing so is illegal, subject to further SC action under the Charter's Chapter VI. Ultimately, the SC only recommends admissions. The General Assembly affirms them by a two-thirds majority. At this time, enough support exists to get it.

Moreover, if Washington does, in fact, play its veto card, the General Assembly can circumvent it under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution.

Abbas Holds the Wild Card

Ultimately, long-time Israeli collaborationist Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas may prove the wild card. Ahead of petitioning the General Assembly, he's expected to explain his strategy, according to presidential aide Nabil Abu Rudaineh, saying:

"The president will define all the political moves which will be taken before submitting the UN bid, so as to make clear where the Palestinian cause is headed."

He'll "address the Palestinian people, telling them exactly why the (PA) will go to the UN, and what caused the current political situation after negotiations stopped, and after the international community failed to work out solutions to the question of Palestine, and to move the negotiation process forward based on clear foundations."

Abu Rudaineh added:

Palestinian leaders will petition the UN "as long as negotiations have not started, and Israel has not committed to clear references to start" them.

"We will go to the UN Security Council in coordination with all Arab countries. Going to the UN will be the only way to gain our rights and to maintain our gains."

Clearly, Abbas left himself wiggle room to avoid confronting Washington and Israel by backing down at the 11th hour, despite enough world support and international law on his side to succeed.

If so, millions of Palestinians will be betrayed by their own president, proving again his collaborationist ties to to Israel and Western interests for whatever personal benefits he's afforded.

Planned Settler West Bank/East Jerusalem Belligerence

According to International Middle East Media Center writer Saed Bannoura, Palestinians also face another threat.

On September 2, he headlined, "Settlers Plan Attacks Against Palestinians In September," saying:

Armed by Israel's military with tear gas, stun grenades and other weapons, "extremist right wing factions (are) preparing (to) respond to any popular Palestinian move" to petition the UN for statehood and full membership.

Already, settlers are heavily armed with automatic weapons and "unlimited amounts of ammunition." Using them and other weapons, they prepared a plan called "children against children, women and women" to attack unnamed West Bank and East Jerusalem populations.

Extremist MK Michael Ben-Ari heads the scheme along with militant settlers, apparently spoiling for a fight and using Palestinian statehood efforts as a pretext.

"The eight-page plan includes instructions regarding operations in Palestinian cities and villages in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Its main slogan is 'let's transform September from a threat to a historic opportunity to change the rules of the game.' "

It adds:

"should the UN officially recognize a Palestinian independent state, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will take off to the streets, to celebrate, and they might approach the settlements."

"Unarmed Palestinian women and children will lead the processions heading to the settlements. This will push the Israeli soldiers to open fire at them, and this issue will lead to a full collapse in the security situation, and the Palestinians will resume their attacks against the settlements."

The plan calls for Israeli children to confront their Palestinian counterparts, Israeli women and men doing the same thing.

Palestinian settlers have a long history of attacking Palestinians with impunity, including acts of vandalism, desecrating mosques, and murder.

Their most extremist elements now see a chance to escalate violence to the next level, aided and abetted by Israel's military, operating under Operation Summer Seeds provisions.

A previous article explained.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

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• Israel Again and Again Slaps a Cowardly America
• Daily Rogue State Israeli Lawlessness

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

The biggest political mistake I've ever made was to vote for Barack Obama. I should have known that a really great campaign speaker and organizer would probably make an inept president.

All of Obama's emphatic talk about change sounded appealing; even though Washington has proven so often that it's incapable of changing. There are just too many self-interests needing trade-offs with other self-interests, none of which has public needs in mind.

The fact that Obama opposed the Iraq War carried a lot of weight with those who don't believe America should mind everybody else's business.

Many had enough of Bush-Cheney war-mongering for the neo-cons (aka American Zionists who desperately wanted America to take out Iraq before Saddam Hussein could wage the mother of all WMDs against Israel).

So the Zioncons made up stories, pretended that fiction was fact and lied about non-existent WMDs.

Some argue they even went so far as to arrange for the slaughter of 3000 plus people on 9/11 with Israel's help.

Let's say Mossad, Israel's intelligence deceivers, speaking perfect Arabic and pretending to be Arabs, infiltrated an Al Qaeda cell and hatched a plan to highjack four planes; and that would show everyone how clever Al Qaeda was.

Of course the hijackers knew nothing about any plan to fly into buildings like kamikaze pilots on a suicide mission.

Once they got into the air and managed to get control of the planes, there would be nothing else the hijackers had to do. Thank you very much; everything would now be on remote control, with planes being flown like drones and directed by the Pentagon.

All the Israeli-firsters needed to do now was trigger the already placed thermal devices in the Trade Centre buildings just before the time the flying drones were guided into the top of the twin towers.

Another plane was droned into a largely unoccupied wing of the Pentagon, and the last--not allowed to fly into the White House--was shot down over Pennsylvania.

The whole story is perfect enough to allow Bush to continue reading to school children in Florida and for Cheney to pretend fear of terror while hiding in a bunker under the White House.

Of course the dots had to be connected between hijackers and Al Qaeda who at first knew nothing about the operation, and later -Bin Laden hearing they were blamed for 9/11- ignorantly accepted credit.

Is there any better rationale for assassinating Bin Laden, once he was allowed to be found, than to keep him from eventually testifying that he had nothing to do with 9/11?

Once Bin Laden claimed credit for bombing America, the Taliban refused to turn him over to US authorities without evidence that Bin Laden was indeed guilty.

That provided enough reason for America to gather a coalition of 9/11 sympathizers to agree to invade Afghanistan. Does anyone seriously believe it took 10 years to find Bin Laden? Certainly Obama must know better!

Before locating and capturing the Al Qaeda mastermind, it was necessary to go to war with Iraq. In order to do that, Iraq had to be associated with the reign of terror connecting the triumvirate of evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

North Korea was simply thrown into Bush's Axis of Evil to send a message to China while pretending that the US wasn't focusing only on Middle Eastern threats to Israel.

Now here's Barack Obama, foster child of Bush-Cheney, trying to prove to the Zioncons (who have already jumped ship) that he's as much a warrior for Israel as his predecessors were.

Shame on me for ignoring the lessons of history: a great campaigner can make an inept leader!

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

Related posts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kids with no jobs ran amok in London.

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

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

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

Related posts:

• The Flotilla embodies the Arab Spring spirit
• Palestine is the key to Arab democracy
• We Are the Arab Youth, We Know Not the Impossible

By Lawrence Davidson * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Facing the world

It was the Scottish poet Robert Burns who, in a poem in 1786, wrote: "O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us, it would from many a blunder free us."

That gift is now ours in the form of modern polling technology but, alas, Burns underestimated our abilities to turn a blind eye to its revelations and continue our blundering ways. Here is a recent example.

The respected polling company Zogby International recently conducted one of its periodic "Arab Attitudes" polls measuring, among other things, the popularity of the United States in the Arab Middle East. This one was conducted between the middle of May and the middle of June 2011 and involved 4,000 face-to-face interviews in six countries: Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The results are not pretty. As reported by Al-Jazeera, "The United States' popularity in the Arab world has plummeted to levels lower than the last year of the George W. Bush administration." The best the US and the Obama administration could do was a 23 per cent approval rating in Lebanon. In Egypt the approval rating was but 5 per cent, which constituted a 30 per cent fall from the last survey two years ago.

For those paying attention to US foreign policy in the Middle East, the reason for this awful performance is not difficult to understand. James Zogby got it right when he attributed the results to "disappointment in the failure to meet the high expectations created by Obama's election in 2008". He continues: "Those expectations appeared to rise further after Obama's June 2009 speech in Cairo, where he pledged to seek a 'new beginning' between the US and the Muslim world and expressed particular sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians." The speech led most Arabs to expect rapid improvement in the two areas they consider the "greatest obstacles to peace and security in the Middle East": the continuing [Israeli] occupation of Palestinian lands and US interference in the Arab countries". Both came up again and again in the poll as continuing problems with the Palestinian issue by far number one. As Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion" points out, "US foreign policy is evaluated through the prism of the Arab-Israeli conflict". Obviously, Barack Obama has not come through on this issue.

Why did Obama fail? Whatever his initial intentions, Obama has learned that being president of the United States does not always involve looking after the national interest. Instead, it often involves seeing to the interests of (in his case) the Democratic Party machine and its politician constituents. If he does not do that he gets no cooperation in Congress and therefore, in terms of legislation, cannot carry forward an agenda. This arrangement demands the president's cooperation with the various lobbies to which politicians have tied themselves. Most of these are domestic and reference the economic stability of the states and districts that congress persons and senators represent.

But there are also powerful lobbies in the area of foreign policy and their influence allows them to skew policy formulation away from any objective national interest toward the fulfillment of their particular parochial interests. Just think about our policy toward Cuba for the past 50 some years. In terms of the Middle East, the Zionist lobby surely commands the political field. And that means that, ultimately, it commands Obama too.

Thus, in American politics, when it comes to knowing how others see you, there is a priority order. The lobbyists are often at the top of that list. So, domestic polls telling the president how the Zionists (Jewish and Christian) see his Middle East policy trumps polls telling him how the Arabs see it. As a result it is almost impossible for American leaders to face reality about the outside world in those cases where foreign policy is at the mercy of domestic lobbies.

Facing ourselves

On the gateway leading up to the ancient Greek sanctuary on the island of Delphi was inscribed the saying, "Know Thyself". The sanctuary was actually a temple to the god Apollo and in the temple lived the Delphic oracle. It was believed that the god would, through the medium of the oracle, answer questions about the future. But those answers were often qualified and quite enigmatic. To properly understand them one had to start by paying attention to the advice at the gate – by knowing thyself.

If America's political system can make it difficult to face foreign realities, it can also sometimes make it equally difficult to face domestic realities. And that is because the people in Washington often go to great lengths to deny what they do and how that shapes who they are. They refuse to know themselves.

Take for instance the question of Washington's sanctioned use of torture. On 11 July 2011 Human Rights Watch released an 107-page report, "Getting away with torture", documenting "overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration" and the subsequent failure of the Obama administration to "meet US obligations under the Convention Against Torture to investigate acts of torture and other ill treatment of detainees". The report notes that despite the "legal obligation to investigate these crimes", President Obama has treated them as "unfortunate policy choices". What investigations have been conducted by the administration have been purposefully designed not to address "the systematic nature of the abuses". For instance, in August 2009 the US Justice Department undertook an investigation which restricted itself to "unauthorized acts" of torture during the so-called war on terror. In other words, it looked into only those alleged acts that the Bush White House had not authorized. The implication here is that the only torture incidents the Obama people are interested in are the unofficial acts of isolated, lower echelon individuals.

President Obama's motives in doing this are pedestrian at best. He doesn't want to focus on the past but rather on the future. As Human Rights Watch notes, Obama's decision to "end abusive interrogation practices" during his own tenure in office "will remain easily reversible unless the legal prohibition against torture is clearly established". So much for the president's concern for the future. He also seems to want to protect those who were "just following orders". Just as significant, Obama may want to maintain maximum flexibility of action for future administrations. In other words, he may think it prudent to make sure future officials can commit the same crimes as those of the recent past.

These decisions, both of the Bush and Obama administrations, are the "know thyself" clues to the nature of American leadership that almost no one in the US government wants to face. Almost no one, but not quite.

Back in June 2005 US Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat – Illinois) got up on the Senate floor and spoke about an FBI report describing the "detainees at the naval base in Cuba as being chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures". He then said the following to his colleagues:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners under their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime ... that had no concern for human beings.

There was an immediate demand that Durbin apologize for insulting the country and its servicemen who were fighting so hard to "overcome evil regimes and spread democracy around the world". Much to his credit, Durbin refused to apologize, yet his steadfast honesty was and is the exception and not the rule.

Conclusion

Most Americans either do not care what their officials and agents do abroad, do not believe it when the horror stories leak out, or rationalize them away as the unavoidable consequences of the "war on terror". Therefore, in the end, they neither see themselves as others see them nor look honestly into their own faces. And so they are led to collectively act in self-destructive ways. This is the case despite the fact that age-old guideposts to relatively right action have been staked out for us by poets and oracles.

In the end, one can not help but share President Dwight Eisenhower's anxiety as he worried about just "how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

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• President Obama’s Ahistorical World
• Preparing for World War III, Targeting Iran (Part I: Global Warfare)
• When Will Americans Come to the Aid of Palestine?

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

The US Congress announced through two July votes that since the US and Israel are obviously the colonial bosses of the Middle East, the future of the Palestinian people must be determined through "negotiations" between unequal partners, an occupying military power and the captive population it occupies.

OK, so the resolution did not actually say that part about colonialism. But ponder for a moment what really happened in our national legislative halls this month.

By a unanimous Senate vote and a 407 to 6 majority in the US House, the Congress demanded that Palestinian leaders "cease all efforts at circumventing the negotiation process, including through a unilateral declaration of statehood or by seeking recognition of a Palestinian state from other nations or the United Nations."

The Congress also demanded that President Obama "announce that the United States will veto any resolution on Palestinian statehood that comes before the United Nations Security Council which is not a result of agreements reached between the Government of Israel and the Palestinians".

Furthermore, the Congress, in the words of its resolution, expects President Obama to "lead a diplomatic effort to oppose a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state and to oppose recognition of a Palestinian state by other nations, within the United Nations and in other international forums prior to achievement of a final agreement between the Government of Israel and the Palestinians."

Stephen Zunes understands the American zeitgeist which produced the arrogance behind that resolution. He wrote:

Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are still trapped in an early 20th century colonialist mindset which believes that colonized people should only be allowed independence under the terms and conditions granted them by their occupiers.

We are all occupied by Israel's army because we are, as Zunes notes, "trapped in an early 20th century colonial mindset". To be trapped in a colonial mindset is to be linked to a a matrix of mind control that deadens our hearts, our minds, and yes, our souls. Not convinced? You still believe that our political leaders, our church leaders, and our media controllers tell us the truth about Israel?

Take note of what riles up the oppressors. Why else would the state of Israel react with such vehemence at the slightest effort to throw supportive and symbolic lifelines to the Palestinian people? Recent example: The Israeli Knesset has just declared it to be a crime to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

That's right, that innocent-sounding Palestinian-inspired effort to call attention to the connection between corporate profits and Israel's occupation has made Israel chip away yet another hunk of high-minded idealism that once led Israelis to dub themselves as "the only democracy" in the Middle East.

Remember that, you delegates to church legislative bodies. You could end up in an Israeli prison cell if you continue to protest Israeli occupation. These people want us to be afraid, very afraid.

You congressional legislators who have come to love the perks and glamour of power, you thought you could be Mr. Smith in Washington doing what is good for your people? The moment a member of Congress endorses a check from supporters of colonialism, they lose their freedom to determine what is good.

It works this way, Madame and Mr. Congress member. Listen well. When AIPAC sends over its latest resolutions, don't bother to read it. Just sign and cast your vote the way you are told. When you have been ground down sufficiently, you will embrace Israel's control the way you once accepted the control of the schoolyard bully who stole that piece of your Mom's apple pie you brought for an afternoon snack.

You will get used to it, so much so that you will find yourself sending out lies and distortions to your voters and believing them, just as you expect the voters to believe them.

Colleen Hanabusa

After a while, it becomes easy to send out such a letter the way Hawaii's Democratic Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, did recently. The Congresswoman caught on fast. She is serving her first term in Washington:

Stuart Littlewood shared Hanabusa's letter.

Littlewood reminds us just what is in Resolution 268, of which the congresswoman is so proud to have supported in her first term in office:

Resolution 268 actually states that "Palestinian efforts to gain recognition of a state outside direct negotiations demonstrates absence of a good faith commitment to peace negotiations." It threatens withholding US foreign aid to the Palestinian National Authority if it presses ahead with an application for statehood in the United Nations in September. It also calls for the Palestinian unity government to "publicly and formally forswear terrorism, accept Israel's right to exist, and reaffirm previous agreements made with the Government of Israel."

Got that, you Palestinians? If you expect to keep your 40 acres and the mule, you must talk to no one but us. And, another thing, you must do so under our rules of engagement. Otherwise, as the Mafia guys in my town might say, "we know where you live". Read Hanabusa's letter carefully and take note of the deceptions and distortions members of Congress accept as the price for staying in office.

As the only democracy in the region, I believe that the United States has a special relationship with Israel... During my time in the House of Representatives, I will support our funding our ally and help to forward Israel's efforts to keep their citizens safe, which currently stands at $2.8 billion in general foreign aid, and another $280 million for a missile defense system...

Our foreign aid to Palestine is intended to create a virtuous cycle of stability and prosperity in the West Bank that inclines Palestinians towards peaceful coexistence with Israel and prepares them for self-governance. . . .

Most recently, I became a co-sponsor of House Resolution 268, which reaffirms our support for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states. This resolution is also in opposition to a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, as well as outlined consequences for Palestinian efforts to circumvent direct negotiations. This bill passed in the House on July 7, 2011 by a vote of 407 – 6...

(The resolution was sponsored by Representative Eric Cantor, the Debt Ceiling Republican point man. It was co-sponsored by virtually the entire house membership. Visit this site to see how your member voted.)

In the essay he wrote for Truthout this week, Zunes, a professor of politics and international studies and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, describes the history of the colonial mindset which is so slavishly followed by the US Congress. Zunes calls his essay, "Congress and Its Colonialist Agenda". He writes:

Up until the mid-20th century, Western attitudes regarding national freedom essentially went like this: the independence of white Western nations (Great Britain, France, the United States etc.) was a given. Independence for nonwhite, non-Western nations (such as those in Africa, the Middle East and Asia), however, could only be under conditions granted by the occupying powers.

The time at which these nations could be free, their specific boundaries and the conditions of their independence could only be reached through negotiations between the colonial occupiers and representatives (if approved by the colonial powers) of the conquered peoples.

The time for freedom, the " specific boundaries" and what will constitute independence, must be negotiated, which is to say, handed down to the "conquered peoples" by their conquerers. Any suggestion that a "third party", say, the United Nations, might be able to suggest a more equitable arrangement for the "conquered peoples", must be resisted vigorously.

There have been many Israelis who have felt the painful burden of having to impose their will on a captive people. These Israelis have spoken out, written about, and sought to reverse the uglier aspects of this occupation, but they have not prevailed against successive hardline conservative governments that buy the US Congress and shape the US media, all with one aim, to deny the reality of colonialism in the 21st century.

President Obama is no stranger to colonialism nor to racial hatred. We keep hoping his sensitivity to oppression will influence him to take his decision-making away from slavish adherence to Israel's dictates. Thus far, he has been a huge disappointment. When he was elected and basking in the adoration that engulfed him in Chicago's Grant Park, that long-ago night in 2008, we thought the matrix was about to crack.

But even before he was sworn into office, the signs were ominous. The President-elect sat by without complaint as President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert completed their dirty business in Gaza, carrying out an invasion which did not end until a few hours before Obama's inauguration.

Then came the appointments. Obama added no one to his inner circle who might have at least suggested to him that Palestinians are people who have been continuously brutalized. Instead, he brought in people like Dennis Ross to guide his Middle East policies.

The American media pontificators give Ross a free ride. Not so the liberal wing of Israel's media, as Stephen Walt (of Mearsheimer and Walt fame) points out in his blog for Foreign Policy:

In case you missed it, veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar has written a scathing denunciation of US Middle East policy - and long-time Middle East advisor Dennis Ross - in Ha'aretz. His bottom line is that Oslo is over, yet the United States is still trying to convince the Palestinian leadership to buy into a diplomatic process that has been a cover for continued settlement building and has manifestly failed to bring them a state. The key passage:

"It would be tough to find a bigger expert than Ross on the myths and illusions related to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. For years he has been nurturing the myth that if the United States would only meet his exact specifications, the Israeli right would offer the Arabs extensive concessions."

During the years he headed the American peace team, Israeli settlement construction ramped up. Now Ross, the former chairman of the Jewish People Policy Institute, is trying to convince the Palestinians to give up on bringing Palestinian independence for a vote in the United Nations in September and recognize the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people - in other words, as his country, though he was born in San Francisco, more than that of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was born in Safed. . . .

Ross is trying to peddle the illusion that the most right-wing government Israel has ever seen will abandon the strategy of eradicating the Oslo approach in favor of fulfilling the hated agreement. In an effort to save his latest boss from choosing between recognizing a Palestinian state at the risk of clashing with the Jewish community and voting against recognition at the risk of damaging U.S. standing in the Arab world, Ross is trying to drag the Palestinians back into the "peace process" trap.

There are reports out of Ramallah that the Palestinians may decide not to go forward in their appeal to the United Nations in September. If this is true, and we hope it is not true, then look for the US-Israeli matrix of colonial control to tighten even further.

The picture at top is from Aljazeera. The children are in Gaza. The time is December, 2008, taken during the Israeli invasion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…and EU's contempt for safety of its citizens who bring humanitarian relief to Gaza's women and children

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

In 2008 two humanitarian vessels got through to Gaza. In an article entitled "Keeping the sea-lane to Gaza open", I wrote:

The success of the Free Gaza boats in breaking the siege, and their safe arrival and departure, was due to the intervention and good offices of the British Foreign Office…

Before the peace activists set sail, the British government was asked about "action to ensure the freedom boats' safe and uninterrupted passage to Gaza considering these are international waters and Palestinian territorial waters". Any attempt to stop the boats would surely infringe the right to freedom of movement to and from Gaza, and seriously breach the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Israel is a party.

The minister in charge of Middle East affairs Kim Howells ... has now revealed that "FCO officials spoke to Israeli officials in advance of the trip and Israel allowed the boats peacefully into Gaza".

Bravo. Our chaps in London lift the phone to their chaps in Tel Aviv and – hey presto! – it's all fixed. That's diplomacy…

Yet here we are nearly three years later going through the same sorry process while ruthless foreign interests still relentlessly expand their influence by stealth, by subversion and by intimidation to persuade the rest of the world to let them do as they please in the Middle East and beyond.

In the UK and the EU we are losing control fast and will soon become abject Zionist stooges like America. It will soon be impossible to take back our country without organizing serious insurrection.

And on the high seas Israeli warships and helicopters assault and hijack vessels of other nations with impunity in order to maintain their illegal blockade of Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the German Left Party has issued a resolution prohibiting its parliamentary representatives from taking part in the upcoming Gaza Flotilla in an attempt to buy off criticism that the party is anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. They will not participate "in Middle East conflict initiatives that call for a one-state solution for Palestine and Israel and boycotts of Israeli products, as well this year's Gaza Flotilla".

An expert on left-wing anti-Semitism called Alex Feuerherdt told the newspaper that "it goes without saying" that participation in the Gaza Flotilla action is a "military attack on Israel".

Such are the lengths to which the Zionist conspiracy will go to control the thoughts and actions of ordinary, decent people.

And this is the background against which the Gaza Freedom Flotilla II sets sail. The conspirators don't want the boats to reach Gaza because their safe arrival would drive a coach and horses through the Zionists' control-freakery. So they shriek and squawk and threaten dire consequences like last year when they assaulted the Mavi Marmara with lethal force in international waters, not caring how many they killed.

This has prompted the following statement by the flotilla organizers to the UN Human Rights Council a few days ago:

We are determined to sail to Gaza. Our cause is just and our means are transparent. To underline the fact that we do not present an imminent threat to Israel nor do we aim to contribute to a war effort against Israel, thus eliminating any claim by Israel to self-defense, we invite the HRC or any other UN or international agency to come on board and inspect our vessels at their point of departure, on the high seas, or on their arrival in the Gaza port. We will – and must – continue to sail until the illegal siege of Gaza is ended and Palestinians have the same human and national rights those of us sailing enjoy. (Steering Committee of the International Coalition for Gaza Freedom Flotilla II)

One of the organizers in London tells me that when the British boat's final passenger list is confirmed, the Foreign Office in London will be contacted with the details and asked to "act to ensure the safe passage of their citizens".

Did the UK have a right to mount a general naval blockade of the Republic of Ireland in response to IRA terror?

Israel is clearly acting illegally by interfering with the flotilla's peaceful mission, so what are the chances that Britain and other countries will provide necessary protection?

A UN fact-finding mission, dealing with the assault on the Mavi Marmara, has already declared that "no case can be made for the legality of the interception and the mission therefore finds that the interception was illegal".

As for Israel's naval blockade, it is "considered by the mission to constitute collective punishment of the people living in the Gaza Strip and thus to be illegal and contrary to Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention". The action by Israel's military in intercepting the Mavi Marmara on the high seas was "clearly unlawful" and could not be justified even under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations [the right of self-defence].

And let's remember that Security Council Resolution 1860 (2009) emphasizes "the need to ensure sustained and regular flow of goods and people through the Gaza crossings" and calls for "the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment".

The Centre for Constitutional Rights has also concluded that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is illegal under international law. It said:

Due both to the legal nature of Israel's relationship to Gaza – that of occupier – and the impact of the blockade on the civilian population, amounting to "collective punishment", the blockade cannot be reconciled with the principles of international law, including international humanitarian law. It is recalled that the international community, speaking through both the United Nations and individual states, has repeatedly and emphatically called for an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The flotilla did not seek to travel to Israel, let alone "attack" Israel. Furthermore, the flotilla did not constitute an act which required an "urgent" response, such that Israel had to launch a middle-of-the-night armed boarding ... Israel could also have diplomatically engaged Turkey, arranged for a third party to verify there were no weapons on board and then peacefully guided the vessel to Gaza.

Craig Murray was deputy head of the teams which negotiated the UK's maritime boundaries with France, Germany, Denmark (Faeroe Islands) and Ireland. As Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, he was responsible for giving political and legal clearance to Royal Navy boarding operations in the Persian Gulf following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in enforcement of the UN authorized blockade against Iraqi weapons shipments. He is therefore an internationally recognized authority on these matters.

Referring to the participation of an American boat in Flotilla II, he says:

Right of free passage is guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, to which the United States is a full party. Any incident which takes place upon a US-flagged ship on the high seas is subject to United States legal jurisdiction. A ship is entitled to look to its flag state for protection from attack on the high seas...

Israel has declared a blockade on Gaza and justified previous fatal attacks on neutral civilian vessels on the high seas in terms of enforcing that embargo, under the legal cover given by the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.

There are however fundamental flaws in this line of argument. It falls completely on one fact alone. San Remo only applies to blockade in times of armed conflict. Israel is not currently engaged in an armed conflict, and presumably does not wish to be. San Remo does not confer any right to impose a permanent blockade outwith times of armed conflict, and in fact specifically excludes as illegal a general blockade on an entire population.

He acknowledges that Israel suffers from sporadic terrorist attacks from Gaza but this does not come close to reaching the bar of armed conflict that would trigger the right to impose a naval blockade. When the UK suffered continued terrorist attack from the Irish Republican Army, sustaining many more deaths than anything Israel has suffered in recent years from Gaza, it would have been ridiculous to argue that the UK had a right to mount a general naval blockade of the Republic of Ireland.

So Israel doesn't have a leg to stand on. Therefore "all good men and true" should rally to support these brave voyagers and ensure their governments back their play.

But here's a question put by Member of the European Parliament Kyriacos Triantaphyllides and the answer from the EU Commission.

Question: One year after the military action by Israel against a convoy carrying humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza, during which at least 10 civilians were killed, another humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza is now being organized, the principal cargo being supplies of stationery for school pupils. Is the EU and in particular the Commission aware of the new mission that is being organized and what is its position on this matter?

Given the participation of EU member state nationals and the presence of MEPs, will the EU take any measures to ensure that the personal safety of its nationals is not endangered?

Answer: After the organization of a flotilla heading to Gaza in May 2010, the Quartet, of which the EU is a member, stated that all those wishing to deliver goods to Gaza should do so through established channels, so that their cargo can be inspected and transferred via land crossings into Gaza. It also stated that there was no need for unnecessary confrontations and that all parties should act responsibly in meeting the needs of the people of Gaza.

In the same spirit, the Chair's Conclusions of the 13 April 2011 meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC) on donor coordination for Palestine reiterated a call on all international supporters to make use of the existing land crossings to channel their support to Gaza, and abstain from provocations.

The commission stands by this line. A flotilla is not the appropriate response to the humanitarian situation in Gaza. At the same time, Israel must abide by international law when dealing with a possible flotilla. The EU continues to request the lifting of the blockade on Gaza, including the naval blockade.

EU member states have the responsibility to protect their citizens abroad via their consular services. This responsibility covers assistance for their citizens who might participate in a possible flotilla. As in May-June 2010, the EU delegation in Tel Aviv stands ready to function as a hub for information and to coordinate the efforts of the consular services of EU member states.

So there your have it – the treacherous contradictions we have come to expect from this unelected body, including advice that member states have a responsibility to protect their citizens after they've been murdered.

The "established channel" for delivering goods to Gaza is of course the time-honoured route by sea, which is protected by maritime and international law and therefore entirely appropriate. There's nothing "provocative" about it. The organizers have offered their cargoes for inspection and verification by a trusted third party to allay Israel's fears about weapon supplies. They should not have to dirty their hands dealing with the belligerent regime that's cruelly turning the screws on civilians with an illegal blockade. Anyone suggesting they must do so seeks to legitimize the blockade, which we all know to be illegal and a crime against humanity.

Members of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee include the Palestinian Authority and the government of Israel, so no wonder it bends over backwards to accommodate Israel's criminal action.

* 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.

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By Jeff Halper* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

No one knows the precise plans of the Palestinian Authority (PA) vis-a-vis September: will PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declare a Palestinian state within recognized borders and ask that it be admitted as a full member of the UN - or not? Perhaps Abbas himself does not know. Now political leaders often make decisions alone or in consultation with a small group of advisors. As in so many matters political, however, the Palestinian leadership finds itself in a unique situation. Its main allies are not governments, and certainly not the American government, whose support for some inexplicable reason has constituted the Palestinians' default position for the past 40 years. Rather, the Palestinians' most loyal and powerful ally is civil society. And yet, this most solid base of support remains unappreciated, unutilized and ignored.

Three circles of popular support radiate out into the wider world, able to mobilize millions of people to the Palestinian cause. First, of course, is the Palestinian people itself. Displaced, scattered, oppressed, occupied, struggling for its national rights and very cultural identity, this "little grain of sand", as it has been called, continues generation after generation to jam not only the vaunted Israeli military machine but that of its main supporter, the United States, which for decades has used Israel as its forward position in the Middle East.

To oppressed people everywhere, the Palestinians have become an inspiration, almost their surrogate. Their ability to remain steadfast (sumud) is proof that injustice, even when supported by the most advanced weaponry of the most powerful superpowers, can be resisted. But Israel, helped by time and geography, has succeeded in fragmenting the Palestinians. The refugees in the camps are almost completely excluded from political processes, but it is the exclusion of the diaspora that is especially problematic. Highly educated for the most part, fluent in all the European languages, they could play a major role in promoting the Palestinian cause abroad. Indeed, a few individuals have carved out influential positions despite being excluded, even resisted, by the West Bank leadership. Instead, the Palestinian Authority has fielded, with a couple notable exceptions, a most inept and inarticulate corps of diplomats. Rather than using their greatest asset, their own people abroad as well as the legions of articulate spokespeople at home, including younger people, the Palestinian Authority has tied its own hands diplomatically just when Israel is mounting a major international offensive against it. Just recall one astounding fact: during the entire year that saw the Obama administration taking office and the invasion of Gaza, there was no official Palestinian representative in Washington!

The second circle of civil society support for the Palestinian cause is, of course, the Arab and wider Muslim worlds. While each uprising of the "Arab Spring" has its own reasons and dynamics, the Palestinian struggle provided the inspiration. The Arab peoples came to realize that the same forces oppressing the Palestinians - militarism designed to thwart democracy and ensure neo-colonial control over their lands and resources - are at the source of their own oppression as well.

Indeed, the Palestinians possess one source of tremendous clout: they are the bone in the throat of the global powers that prevent them from completing their imperialist plans. The Palestinian struggle is not simply a local one between Palestinians and Israelis; it has become global on the order of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. It cannot be by-passed. Even though there are larger and bloodier conflicts in the Middle East, until the Palestinians signal to the rest of the Muslim world that they have arrived at a political settlement with Israel and the time has come to normalize relations, the conflict is not over. A solution cannot be imposed, and the Palestinians are the gatekeepers. Nothing can happen without them, and until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed resolved, the US and Europe will be unable to pursue their interests unencumbered in an empowered Middle East.

The third circle of civil society just waiting to be mobilized are the millions of ordinary people the world over whose have devoted enormous energy and resources towards the realization of Palestinian national rights. The Palestinian struggle has indeed assumed the proportions of that against apartheid. It is one of the two or three leading issues in the world. Churches, trade unions, university students, political and human rights organizations, prominent intellectuals, performers and even key politicians have all mobilized in support of the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel). They are evident in the repeated attempts to break the siege of Gaza by sending international flotillas.

But they, like Palestinian civil society and that of the Arab and Muslim worlds, wait to be mobilized by the Palestinian leadership. According to newspaper accounts - unfortunately, the PA leadership has never conducted an open discussion of the crucial September initiative and has never shared its deliberations - the two main objections to seeking membership in the UN are fear of upsetting the American administration and failure to obtain the required number of votes. The first is ridiculous. Does anyone still believe the Palestinians will gain anything by pursuing American-led "negotiations"?

The second objection, that not receiving the required votes for admission to the UN constitutes a "failure", exposes a key flaw in the strategic thinking of the Palestinian leadership. If Abbas approaches the UN in a docile and half-hearted way, appearing more to be pushed by an Israeli refusal to negotiate than by his people's own just cause and urgent need for independence, the Palestinian struggle will certainly suffer. Many other countries that would otherwise support the Palestinian initiative will indeed waiver, giving in to US and Israeli pressure because it seems the Palestinian themselves are not serious about it. But if he goes into the UN as the head of a national unity government with the support of the world's peoples, Mandela-like, he could decisively change the course of events forever.

To pull off his September initiative, Abbas must reject the go-it-alone approach that the Palestinian leadership has followed fruitlessly for so long. He must recognize that civil society the world over - and in the Muslim world and Europe in particular - is the Palestinians' most important ally. The issue is not whether the initiative "succeeds"; it is clear that the US will cast a veto. The true struggle is to pull out all the stops to show the world just how strong the Palestinian movement is. If mobilized, the collective power of the grassroots who have for years laboured on the Palestinian issue will generate a momentum that will be hard to stop.

Time is of the essence. Mobilization must begin immediately. The elected representatives of the Palestinian people in the occupied territory, joined for the first time by Palestinians of the refugee camps, inside Israel and the diaspora, should issue a joint "Call for Support". Immediately following the Palestinian call, grassroots activists would issue a Civil Society Call to support the Palestinian initiative, which would be signed by tens of thousands of people from all over the world and delivered to the UN in September. If a campaign for public support begins now, if the political leadership works intensively and closely with its own civil society to garner widespread support, more than 100,000 people can be gathered at the UN in New York in September in a mass rally for Palestinian independence. (And believe me, Israel will mobilize its own supporters!)

Inside the UN, Abbas would present Palestine's compelling case for independence and UN membership, as he did in his New York Times piece of 16 May. He would also reframe the conflict. It is not specious security issues that lay at the roots of the conflict, but Israel 's refusal to respect Palestinian national rights and to end the occupation. As he also did in the New York Times article, Abbas must also make it clear that recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in no way compromises the right of refugees to return to their homes, a key point of future negotiations with Israel. He should also state up-front that the establishment of a Palestinian state does not end the Palestinian quest, through peaceful means, of an inclusive single-state solution.

If international mobilization is pursued vigorously and Abbas exudes a genuine determination to see a Palestinian state established and recognized, more than 130 countries, including many of the leading European ones, will vote to accept Palestine into the UN. Even if this does not overrule the US veto in the Security Council, it is far more than a merely symbolic achievement and certainly cannot be considered a failure. Such a massive expression of support would demonstrate the inevitability of Palestinian statehood. It would signal the beginning rather than the end of an international campaign for Palestinian rights, one now joined by governments as well as civil society.

We, the people who have pursued Palestinian rights over the decades, Palestinians and non-Palestinian alike, are an integral part of the struggle. We have earned the right, all of us, to have our voices heard in September. Indeed, I would argue that if September comes and goes without any breakthrough due to the acquiescence and weakness of the PA leadership, civil society support might well dissipate. The people can bring the struggle to a certain point; we cannot negotiate or pursue initiatives at the UN. If the leadership fails us then we truly have nowhere to go. All those Palestinians who have suffered, resisted and died over the past decades cannot be let down at this historic moment by a vacillating political leadership. We call on you to mobilize us. Together we shall succeed, and sooner rather than later.

* Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.

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

Live in fragments no longer. Only connect!
--E.M. Forster

We're living in fragments.

It's a smaller world with people further apart than ever.

We travel to different cultures; we fight other cultures. We want to control cultures we don't understand.

Different cultures think differently. If you believe that doesn't matter, try crossing a road in England or Australia if you come from America or the Middle East.

You'll be looking left when you should be looking right as you begin to cross. If you automatically look in the wrong direction, you'll be lucky not to get run over.

If you speak English, you may look at and refer to a red house. If you speak Arabic, you'll refer to the same house as al beit al ahamar (the house red).

The linguistic differences reveal different perceptions: the English speaker perceives the colour first and then the house. The Arabic speaker sees the house first and then its colour.

An excellent example of the challenges of different cultures can be found in E M Forster's famous novel A Passage to India.

We seek to impose our values and beliefs on others; and we fear the potential for others to impose their beliefs on us.

The youth look west and they want to wrest control from their elders. In these situations two cultures function within a larger culture.

It's a worldwide phenomenon. In Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock, the author looks at a world with "too much change in too short a period of time".

In Toffler's view change overwhelms people, leaving them disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation" - future shocked.

The majority of social problems were symptoms of future shock according to Toffler. From his discussion of the components we also suffer from "information overload."

Marshall McLuhan, author of The Global Village, devoted most of his career to the task of understanding the effects of technology related to popular culture, and how this in turn affected human beings and their relations with one another in communities.

Media and global village are both terms that McLuhan coined. He did this in the 1960s when television was still in its infancy, and the personal computer was almost twenty years into the future.

If McLuhan was right in saying that "the medium is the message", we are entering a period of immense culture shock.

Generations over 40 will find communicating with those under 25 almost impossible. Between 25 and 40 will depend on how much that age range have kept up with developments and have changed themselves.

Almost no one under 25 is reading the kinds of material that was the bulwark of their fathers. The young generation whose reading is influenced by the new age of twitter and Facebook haven't the time for the books their parents enjoyed.

They won't read long articles that the elder generations read. They will avoid reading anything they can find in shorter versions.

Just as the car extends our feet, its invention amputates muscles and clean air. The extension of social media amputates the ability to read and absorb much information.

With the radio and television we have simultaneous access to events on the entire planet. However, television culture diminishes, or amputates, many of the close ties of family life based on oral communication.

To avoid immense culture shock, think of social media and cell phone technology and ask several questions:

1. What does the media and technology extend?
2. What does it make obsolete?
3. What is retrieved from the past (what is gained?)
4. What happens if the technology is over-extended?

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

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

This picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laying down the law to the US Congress is not just a portent of things to come. It is, in fact, a portrait of who really runs US foreign policy.

While many Americans were watching Oprah or worrying about steroids ruining baseball, Israel assumed control of our government. The picture of Netanyahu lecturing Congress, was orchestrated by Republican House Speaker John Boehner with the help of all those other Zionist politicians we elected to office in campaigns financed by the Israel Lobby.

Two things stand out about the cheering Congressional mob that greeted the Prime Minister's series of lies and distortions:

One, the American media accepted this insult to the current American president with barely a whimper of protest. Their real leader had spoken and who are they to say otherwise.

Two, the Congress cheered statements about which they were either ignorant, or had been warned by leaders of both parties, not to disagree.

In case you were watching American Idol during the speech, you should know that this intruder to the podium of our Congress was actually cheered when he asserted that:

There is no occupation of Palestinian land because "in Judea and Samaria [better known except to biblical literalists, as the West Bank], Israelis are not foreign occupiers". They are, Netanyahu obviously wants us to believe, the native inhabitants.

Would that explain Israel's building of that Great Wall to separate Israel Proper from the land of Judea and Samaria? That wall looks biblical. Netanyahu cited Abraham in his speech to the Congress as a rationale for Israel's claim to occupied land. Could that Wall come tumbling down with a few well placed toots on a horn?

Is Sarah Palin writing Netanyahu's speeches? Talk about your distortion of history. Geeze. Has there ever been a surrender moment more filled with fantasy?

The sight of a right-wing Zionist leader standing at the podium normally reserved for American presidents, and harshly repudiating the current president, was sad in the extreme.

We could only hope that Barack Obama, this son of Kenya and Kansas, would respond to this insult to him and to his nation, with a repudiation of Bibi's speech.

Alas, it was not to be. Instead, we get this depressing report about a little-noticed new addition to the White House web site. The announcement came after the Prime Minister's speech, not from the New York Times, but from Philip Weiss, co-founder of Mondoweiss. The White House site may be accessed here.

The Obama White House has unfurled a new web-page, it's called "Advancing Israel's Security and Supporting Peace." It's obviously geared toward appeasing the lobby.

There is one reference to the status quo being "unsustainable," but all references to Palestinians are calls on them to advance peace and [halt] terrorism. Most of the site is about Israel's security. Iran has a whole section. The word "settlements" is not mentioned. 1967 is mentioned.

Talk about "walking back" from the firm focus President Obama put on the 1967 borders in his recent speeches, consider how the White House's "we love Israel" web page explains the border's reference:

"[T]he parties themselves will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967 to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years..."

Translation: Not to worry, you holders of the big dollars we need for reelection. We love what you have done with the occupied property since you stole it 44 years ago. We see no reason to make changes. Who's your decorator?

It is not as though we did not know this total capitulation to Israel was coming. Many people knew and tried to warn us.

An important early warning signal is found in the work of Jewish historian Simha Flapan, who knew exactly what Israel had in mind. He gave the details in his remarkably prophetic 1987 book, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities.

Flapan died, in Tel Aviv, on April 13, 1987, just as his book was going to press. The book is now, unfortunately, out of print (Amazon offers a rare new paperback copy for $89.99, and a few used copies for much less). It remains one of the most significant documents to emerge from that small band of Jewish writers who labored in the 1970s and 80s to sound the alarm about Israel's plans for the conquest of all of Palestine.

I own a treasured paperback copy of The Birth of Israel. Flapan is, for me, a mentor and a writer I often turn to when his prophecies become especially pertinent. Richard Falk wrote this on the book's cover: "A work of extraordinary integrity and of great significance for all those who favor a humane peace in the Middle East."

Early in his book, Flapan described the mindset of the Israeli people. Notice his reference to "atomic" capability.

Even though Israel has the most sophisticated army in the region and possesses an advanced atomic capability, it continues to regard itself in terms of the Holocaust, as the victim of an unconquerable, bloodthirsty enemy. Thus whatever Israelis do, whatever means we employ to guard our gains or to increase them, we justify as last-ditch self-defense. We can, therefore, do no wrong. The myths of Israel forged during the formation of the state have hardened into this impenetrable, and dangerous, ideological shield.

That shield, now firmly established in the US, has been so effective that when Netanyahu declared victory before the US Congress, the members stood and cheered. And the American media assumed, from behind their "ideological shield", that the speech was nothing more than "business as usual".

Of course, since Netanyahu is not a native-born American citizen, he cannot be elected president of the United States. (He graduated from a Pennsylvania high school, but that does not count.) There are, however, a few notable candidates from both American political parties ready to swear their dual allegiance to the US and Israel and run for the office of the Leader of the Free World.

There is Sarah Palin, who is easily manipulated by advisors. She loves Israel. And there is a more serious Democratic candidate, the newly-elected Mayor of Chicago, a fellow named Rahm Emanuel, whose parents are native-born Israelis. Emanuel, himself, has a American birth certificate, so he is good to go in 2016.

Matter of fact, Emanuel has issued his first major campaign speech for that campaign. It was published in the Washington Post, which is working hard to replace the New York Times as the leading Zionist newspaper in the US.

Here is the start of Emanuel's column, which praises both Obama and the native land of Emanuel's parents, the country for which the new mayor served a brief stint as a volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces, at the time of the Iraq war.

Days into my tenure as mayor of Chicago, with my focus on keeping our city's streets safe, our schools strong and our finances stabilized, I expected my attention to be in the Midwest, not in the Middle East. But as an American and the son of an Israeli immigrant, I have a deep, abiding commitment to the survival, security and success of the state of Israel.

I am among the many who know that the Israeli people yearn for peace. They have taken risks for peace in spite of dangers. They will again, when they have a viable partner in the process and a region that recognizes a Jewish state of Israel with secure and defensible borders.

Emanuel's Post column was ostensibly a pean of praise for President Obama, the man whom the new Mayor served as Chief of Staff. As he wrote in the column, as a new mayor, his focus should now be on keeping the "city's streets safe, our schools strong and our finances stabilized".

Worthy goals, all, but then, notice that in his debut column he is writing not for his current hometown paper, but for the hometown paper of the White House.

The column will serve as a reminder to those generous donors who share his love for Israel. Those names are, no doubt, nestled safely in Emanuel's Blackberry. It was in 1983 that I first saw an early version of those names. Rahm kept them in an ancient device we called the Rolodex.

At the time, I was Paul Simon's campaign manager in his first US Senate primary race. The 23-year-old Emanuel was our campaign's resident AIPAC representative, paid, not by AIPAC (which, as a non-profit organization, does not make direct financial political contributions) nor by the Simon campaign, since I had refused to authorize payment, but by some of those generous donors whose names were in that Rolodex.

And now, just think, the journey that started in the Simon 1983-84 campaign office, could finally end with Rahm Emanuel standing where Benjamin Netanyahu stood during the 2011 surrender ceremonies. Ain't history grand?

The picture of Prime Minister Netanyahu speaking to Congress is from Al Jazeera. The picture of Mayor Emanuel with President Obama is from the London Guardian, published during Emanuel's days in the White House.

Update note: At the suggestion of an alert reader, I have decided to stop referring to the Prime Minister of Israel by his nickname, "Bibi". The reader pointed out that my use of the Prime Minister's nickname implied that we were best buddies. We are not.

The changes are reflected in this update. One caveat: In future headlines, I may be forced to utilize the shorter nickname for space purposes. I thank the reader for calling this to my attention.

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

Related posts:

• Wholesale Treason, Why Israel Bought Congress
• Alan Hart – How Zionist lobby stooges in Congress brought shame to their institution
• A False Friend in the White House

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

There are hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of dedicated pro-Palestinian activists out there waiting, straining at the leash, hoping for a call from the Palestinian leadership to mobilize, get stuck in, set the mood and pave the way for the make-or-break bid for UN recognition and statehood in September.

They long to hear a coherent theme, a gutsy strategy and a strong, persuasive message that puts across the Palestinian case in terms that cannot be argued with. But the big day is only three months away and "the silly season", as the media call it, is nearly upon us. It'll need sharp thinking and superhuman effort to make enough noise to get the world's attention.

Mixed messages

And the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) – also known as the Palestinian Authority (PA) – is off to an unpromising start with the depressing news that "a statehood push at the United Nations will not advance the Palestinians' cause", according to President Mahmoud Abbas. The initiative, he is reported as saying, will be compromised by the fact that the Palestinians first have to seek support from the Security Council before going to the General Assembly.

The most that can be hoped for is "a non-binding affirmation of previous resolutions saying the Palestinians have the right to a state". The Palestinian leadership is only going ahead with its plan to approach the UN "in order to save face among the Palestinian people", said the report.

According to Ma'an News Agency, a member of the negotiating team denied the report, saying some of the world's most important international lawyers are backing the initiative and the Palestinians are hopeful they will succeed.

The Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) negotiators have made a career of bolloxing up negotiations for years. So who exactly are the "negotiating team"? It's time we knew their faces and background.

Unwanted baggage

And here's more silliness: The Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) – what's with all these names saying different things? Those of us in the world outside should only have to listen to one authority, otherwise we'll lose patience. Which one is it going to be?

Surely not the PLO. This organization has strong paramilitary overtones, being Yasser Arafat's old outfit. How clever is it to bring to the negotiating table or to the UN a name like that at a time like this? Yet it has a Negotiations Affairs Department, which in turn has a Public Relations Unit. A fat lot of good either of them are. Do they seriously intend heading up this statehood move?

Now is the time to dump all unwanted baggage. Like Abbas. He may be the Americans' and Israelis' pet dinosaur but it won't help in this situation and has never helped the Palestinian cause in any event. There is surely considerable talent among the "Palestinian Forum", which has been quietly pulling things together behind the scenes. It was left to Robert Fisk to bring us news of their work while Abbas's useless PLO and worthless public relations units kept us in the dark.

And I thought chief negotiator Saeb Erakat resigned following the scandal of the "Palestine Papers", which revealed the shameful behaviour of the Palestinian team in their pathetic peace talks with the Israelis. But no, he's still there issuing press releases. His seems to be the only voice and he continues to have a high profile role. Erakat is reported to be in Washington talking with US officials about reviving the peace process.

Adding to the confusion and showing the world that he can face two ways at once, Abbas was reported welcoming a scheme by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe to arrange a conference in Paris in July where the discredited "peace talks" could be resumed. Juppe says Abbas "responded favourably".

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad also welcomed the idea, we're told. Nothing is more likely to kick their application for UN recognition and statehood into the long grass than resumption of dragged-out, lopsided "negotiations" with an illegal occupier who's determined to make the occupation permanent

And why is Juppe doing this? If he is so concerned about Middle East peace why doesn't he concentrate on ensuring that in September the UN recognizes Palestine as an independent state on pre-1967 borders? A just and proper peace will flow from that.

The PA/PLO's "enlightened road map to peace"

On 7 June I received a press release from the Palestinian embassy in London which said:

The Palestinian leadership has ... concluded that endless negotiations with Israel have not led to a just solution to the conflict... The Palestinian leadership's decision to pursue a September United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines comes as a result of the deadlock in the peace process. This legitimate move has been welcomed by many countries that have recognized the Palestinian leadership's strenuous efforts to secure a negotiated settlement and that recognize the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and statehood.

The document quoted the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Professor Manuel Hassassian, as saying:

The foundations upon which Palestinians seek the establishment of a homeland are based upon peace, prosperity, freedom and security, against which Israel justifies its brutal occupation. Home demolitions, family evictions, revoking ID cards, the illegal occupation over Palestinian land, the remapping of Jerusalem, stalling peace talks and defying international law are tactics employed by Israel to stall the establishment of a viable Palestinian state...

Professor Hassassian calls on the international community to "seize the moment" and support recognition of a Palestinian state in September. "This is the enlightened road map to peace," he says.

Is it the call to action? Who knows? It isn't enough to email a press release. You have to follow up and make sure key publications broadcast it. And I cannot find it on the embassy's website, so there's no link.

For activists it contains no action plan, no briefing material, no "killer" statistics for activists to arm themselves with, no "lines to take" against stooges of the US-Israel axis, no contact details of articulate and media-savvy spokespeople on hand at a moment's notice. Nothing to support a campaign.

Maybe information packs are on the way.

And why spoil it with words that grovel, like "Palestinians seek to establish a homeland"? That's the language used by Zionist bribers and manipulators after World War I when trying to wheedle their way into Palestine. Palestinians already have a homeland, for God's sake! They just want it back.

Professor Hassassian is the PA/PLO's mouthpiece here in the UK. Presumably, he is told to stick to Ramallah's script. According to Ramallah, then, the foundations for establishing a homeland are "peace, prosperity, freedom and security". But the real purpose of the application, surely, are to end the brutal occupation, secure the return of stolen lands and natural resources, restore refugees to their homes if they wish, and become an independent self-determining state. There can be no peace, prosperity, freedom and security until these things are achieved.

The Palestinians' demands are based squarely on international law and numerous UN resolutions, which are waiting to be implemented. Not least, they are enshrined in human rights legislation and the principles of the UN Charter.

The question is, will senior member-states respect these solemn principles when the crunch comes in September? Or will they show the world how lawless, grasping and corrupted they have become?

One of the strongest cards in the Palestinian hand is the realization that there never has been and never could be any meaningful negotiation with Israel in present circumstances. No-one can reasonably be expected to "negotiate" with a gun to their head. Furthermore, the Israeli prime minister has refused to talk with a Palestinian government that includes certain democratically elected elements. Clearly, the only way forward is an application to the UN.

So what are we to make of the mixed messages at this eleventh hour? Does the Palestinian left hand know what the right hand is doing? Is the PA/PLO going wholeheartedly for UN recognition or is it determined to scupper its people's hopes by entertaining more "peace talks"?

If I were a Palestinian I'd be tearing my hair out.

* 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.

Related posts:

• Palestinians must urgently mobilize world civil society support for September’s UN recognition bid
• Time for New Palestinian Political Strategy
• The returning issue of Palestine’s refugees

By Mohamed Khodr* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all."
-Tacitus, First Century Historian and Senator in the Roman Empire

• No, America, you are not the land of the free, home of the brave.

• You are not the greatest nation on earth.

• You are not the superpower you proclaim.

• You are not the beacon of freedom, equality, and liberty to all.

• You are not the Promised Land.

• You are not the democracy of the First Amendment where there is Freedom of Speech, of the Press, of Religion, of freedom to petition and assemble.

• Your President is not the leader of the free world.

• You do not have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Thus, what will history record of whom and what you are?

What you are in essence and action is a nation of ignorant cowards, SLAVES, to be exact, to the very nation you created and continue to pay for with your tax dollars, weapons, and the lives of your sons and daughters-Israel.

What you are is a nation of fools according to Israel, "detached from reality"; "delusional", and full of "illusions"; in other words a nation of mental defects who are unaware of who's the real boss of this nation and your supposedly elected government.

It's Israel, Stupid.

But your arrogance and conceit of greatness, of a democracy, of a representative government, a nation where the people freely choose their President and Congressional Representatives, a nation of "American Exceptionalism", blinds you to the reality that you neither control, own, nor create your own destiny.

Who does? It's the little nation from afar-Israel.

No candidate or politician can ever hope to be elected without the obligatory visit to Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial in Israel) while being forced to wear the mind numbing Yarmulke, and the obligatory pandering and shameful visit and speech to the true altar of "your" government-AIPAC. They've been Washington's real power and policy makers for decades.

As Early as 1957:

"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews... terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen ... I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country"

–Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in February, 1957 quoted on p.99 of "Fallen Pillars" by Donald Neff

You think you have freedom of speech? Then why are you and your government so cowardly intimidated and silent to even mention Israel, Jews, or Judaism, in political or personal debates or conversations? Your knees tremble when these issues come up and you lose your vocal cords while your heart rate and blood pressure rise and your visit to the restroom becomes imperative.

You think you have freedom of the press? You know, the press that's owned, controlled, and run by Jews. Why is there not one single American Jew, Christian, Muslim or person of any faith on television criticizing Israel? Why? They will lose their jobs a la Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr, and many, many others, not to mention the many politicians who lost their jobs for daring to speak out against Israel. Try to submit an op-ed to the major papers critical of our government's Israeli formulated foreign policy in the Middle East.

Do you wonder why Islam and Sharia Law, two unknown subjects to Americans, have become the hysteria du jour and who's behind it? It's to distract your short attention span away from the control, theft of money, weapons, spying, and wars you pay and die for Israel's security.

Who do you think wants to push Muslims and Christians into a World War III?

Do you honestly think your government represents you? Once they arrive in Congress your representatives are immediately welcomed by an army of AIPAC minions to brainwash them and let them know not to ever cross Israel and always vote for anything AIPAC sends. Most of the Legislative Staff in Congress is Jewish. Do you ever wonder why our Congress cuts meals to our children while sending billions to Israel with overwhelming bipartisan support? Look up the Congressional votes on resolutions supportive of Israel. It's a shocking embarrassment.

For Congressional Votes and Support of Israel visit: http://thomas.loc.gov/

Do you think you have freedom of religion? Who do you think is behind the push that you, yes you Christians, can't celebrate Christmas, not even mentioning it by name instead having to use "holiday"? Who's against school prayers, no displays of Nativity Scene, no courses on world religions, and no school prayers?

It's not the Muslims.

Many Israeli TV Shows mock and use blasphemous remarks against Jesus and the Virgin Mary, yet not ONE Single Christian church, seminary, university, media outlet, organization, or person has ever gone on TV or wrote an Op-ed to a paper condemning our "closes ally" for this filth.

Imagine if this was on Iranian TV?

See the Videos and judge for yourself, then ask yourself, why are you so cowardly not to respond to this visual and literal neo crucifixion of Christ?

From the Israeli Children TV show "Toffee VeHa-Gorillah" a Girl in Bikini makes fun with a monkey of how Jesus Christ, a Nazi, was Crucified and how all Christians are an Evil People.

Video link: http://sabbah.in/l6Hj8h

Israeli TV Show Blaspheme Jesus and Virgin Mary:

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

Monkey Christ:

Video link: http://youtu.be/-zUvFaW3WY0

Jews and Hasidic Gentiles-United to Save America (JAHG-USA)
http://www.noahide.com/yeshu.htm

"Jesus a false Prophet...with an evil agenda".

However, slam views Jesus, peace be upon him, as the true Messiah, born through a miracle from the Virgin Mary, peace be upon her, and performed miracles during his life

How can Israeli Jews feel such supremacy and the freedom to blaspheme Jesus, the Virgin Mary, peace be upon them both, and all Non-Jews?

Here's a Rabbinical explanation?

"Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,"

According to Rabbi Yosef, the lives of non-Jews in Israel are safeguarded by divinity, to prevent losses to Jews.

"In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one's donkey would die, they'd lose their money....This is his servant... That's why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew."

"Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat....That is why gentiles were created."

– Jerusalem Post; "Yosef: Gentiles exist only to serve Jews"; October 25, 2010

Only Israel can slap America's Presidents, Congress, and the American people over and over and over while they all keep turning the other cheek over and over.

What hold do these Zionists have on our government, our minds, souls, freedoms, and courage to speak and act that we in this alleged superpower are so intimidated, so afraid, so cowardly to even raise a whisper in public about the historical costs to our lives, wealth, worldwide credibility, and our very humanity, by a people we saved in Europe, a people whom we against all divine and human laws gifted a foreign land to them, a nation that wouldn't exist without our recognition, support, and protection, a nation that commits genocide in our name and with our tax dollars?

Supporting Israel means supporting genocides against innocent civilians, ethnic cleansing, an expansionist military policy that's based on stealing more land and expelling more people, destroying villages by the hundreds, demolishing tens of thousands of homes, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people over decades without the rule of law, allowing torture as policy, shooting children in classrooms, stealing drinking and irrigating water for settler swimming pools, building illegal settlements on hilltops, allowing racist settlers free reign to kill, burn, beat, and terrorize families, destroying electrical and water plants, hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, ambulances, and littering lands with cluster bombs to kill and mutilate children.

It means never holding Israel accountable for violating hundreds of U.N. Resolutions due to our, yes you America, vetoes.

It means being subservient to a rogue, terrorist, racist, murderous state whom we have elevated and put on a pedestal for our idolatrous worship.

Here's the nation we support:

"It is the duty of the [Israeli] leadership to explain to the public a number of truths. One truth is that there is no Zionism, no settlement, and no Jewish state without evacuating Arabs, and without expropriating lands and their fencing off."
– Yesha'ayahu Ben-Porat, Yedi'ot Aharonot 07/14/1972

Such is our support of Israel against the hapless long suffering Palestinians who by the millions have lived for decades as refugees in squalor camps and impoverished lives because of Israel's founding, a founding America created. They are homeless and stateless and America is too cowardly and fearful of Israel and organized Jewry to even cast a symbolic vote to support a Palestinian state for the stateless.

Israel has made fools of us, our government, our religions, our beliefs, and everything Americans have come to value about themselves and their country.

America, your new Manifest Destiny, is to serve Israel and only Israel, so help you God.

And so continues the illegal occupations of America and Palestine.

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

No related posts.

Muslims, slightly more than 1% of Americans, are currently the target of nearly 15% of all hate crimes.

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

Whatever becomes of the truly pathetic "Pastor" Terry Jones and his plans to appear later this month at the largest Mosque in Michigan to condemn Islam and to generate some media attention while provoking all decent Americans and people of good will everywhere with his hate speech, will not be of much lasting import to Muslim and American relations.

Even as Jones prepares to act as grand inquisitor and plans to prosecute the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) for various imagined crimes, it reminds us that when it comes to intolerance, nothing is new under the sun in our land that beckons with its Statue of Liberty near Ellis Island in New York harbor:

"Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The wretched refuse from your teeming shore/ Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me/ I lift my lamp before the Golden Door."

Muslims and Arabs who began arriving in America in the middle of the 19th century have in many ways embodied the intended fulfillment of the American dream promised in the above words of Emma Lazarus. The reasons that Muslims are often described as being "As American as apple pie" includes exactly their qualities that every Westerner observes and often comments on if they are fortunate enough to live among Muslims abroad or have Muslims as neighbors in their communities in the USA.

These Muslim qualities, the product of Islamic culture and Koranic teachings, including the five pillars of Islam, result in strong law abiding families with respect for their elders, comprised of fun loving and hardworking individuals who sacrifice for their children, have respect for education, compassion for humanity and who perform acts of unsolicited charity for the less fortunate, and exhibit tolerance of the views of others.

Muslims make up slightly more than 1% of the 308 million Americans, but according to recent FBI statistics, since 9/11 and the seemingly eternal US government War on (of) Terror, Muslims in America are currently the target of nearly 15% of all hate crimes.

Robert Kennedy used to say during US Congressional hearings on hate crimes that approximately 20% of the American public is unfortunately quite capable and indeed ready for believing just about anything and acting violently toward their neighbors while being easily influenced toward racism, xenophobia, and hate of " the other."

It appears that not much has changed since the violence of the 1960's in America when some of our best leaders were assassinated. Sociologists claim that the American penchant for irrationally fearing different cultures has been true since the founding of America and our history is replete with examples that belie the passages in our schoolbooks that claim that our country is a unique example of a grand melting pot. Rather, the current trend in America appears, according to a range of observers from left leaning Noam Chomsky to fairly hard right Pat Buchanan, to be an increasing fracturing along ethno-nationalist cleavages.

When Americans are incessantly exposed to US wars in the Middle East and the ranting of fellow Americans who support and seek political advantage from those wars, including the Christian Zionists and pro-Israel lobby, American society becomes vulnerable to hate speech and crimes.

While the US political establishment and American society at large has mounted a significant chorus condemning the views of Terry Jones, Daniel Pipes, Bridgette Gabriel and hundreds like them who seek political and cash profit from sowing domestic discord, much more must be done by every citizen to support real American values of tolerance and good neighborliness.

On Friday, March 4, 2011, the Zionist Middle East Forum launched another Israel backed anti-Muslim campaign to try to wedge the "Pastor Terry Jones" hate campaign against Islam and Muslims.

The current US Zionist lobby, with a reported budget of five million dollars includes the following 'talking points' with which the lobby intends to saturate the US public:

• "The Koran burning by Florida pastor Terry Jones has created hysteria in the Muslim world. In Afghanistan alone, some twenty people, including U.N. workers, have been killed and beheaded to screams of "Allahu Akbar!" Western leaders around the globe-including Obama and members of Congress-have unequivocally condemned Jones' actions (without bothering to point out that freedom of expression is a prized American liberty)

• Western leaders rush to profess their abhorrence at what one American did to one inanimate book, what about what Muslims are doing to living and breathing Christians around the Islamic world-to virtually no media coverage or Western condemnation.

• We should also mention the jihadist attack on a Baghdad church, killing 52 Christians; the New Year's eve Coptic church explosion, killing 21; Muslim rampages that destroyed several churches in Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines; Iran's "round up" of some 70 home-worshipping Christians; and Kuwait's-a nation that owes its very existence to U.S. war sacrifices-rejection to build a church.

• Such is the surreal and increasingly irrational world we live in, where irate Muslims and groveling Westerners obsess over the destruction of one book while ignoring the destruction of many human lives; where a guaranteed and hard-earned American right-freedom of expression-receives a lot of condemnatory huffing and puffing from those charged with protecting it, while murderous and barbarous-in a word, evil-behavior is devoutly ignored.

With carefully organized and well-funded hate campaigns as illustrated above, America does, in a sense have a "Muslim problem" but it can be remedied by every American working in her or his community exposing profoundly un-American effort to sew religious and cultural discord.

* 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

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• Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America’s Military Strategy in the Muslim World
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