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

Photo courtesy of Skulz Fontaine

So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists...."
-- Manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik

War-making storylines tend to lose their steam. Sustained warfare requires more than just a plausible Evil Doer. A credible narrative is also essential. To remind us who to hate, who better than a murderous Nordic Muslim-hater?

Far-fetched? How many Americans had heard of the Taliban before March 2001 when destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan was reported worldwide as a 'Cultural Holocaust'? Voila! An Evil Doer brand emerged and was soon repackaged as Islamo-fascism.

Six months later, an attack on U.S. soil left little doubt that outraged Americans would be provoked to war. Combine an emotionally wrenching mass murder with manipulated intelligence and an invasion was assured-of Iraq. That miscue required sophisticated pre-staging.

Residents of Washington, DC well recall the sniper attacks that left ten dead during the October 2002 lead-up to a Senate vote on a war resolution sponsored by Jewish Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman. Those well-timed murders ensured a heightened sense of insecurity and helped ratchet up the requisite hatred-to invade a nation that played no role in 911.

Remember the Times Square Terrorist? A car belonging to a Muslim was found with two WalMart propane tanks, an alarm clock, a box of fireworks and some fertilizer. When? In May 2010 during the lead-up to a UN vote on a nuclear-free Middle East-opposed by Israel.

To sustain hate requires a sustained stream of plausible reasons to hate. Plus careful maintenance of a 'generally accepted truth' that keeps attention focused on a credible threat.

Preparing the Minds

Islamo-phobia was a fresh threat when it first appeared in a 1993 article in Foreign Affairs. Yet it dates from 1990 when Princeton Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis, an avid Zionist, touted "The Roots of Muslim Rage." By 1996, Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington was ready to publish The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

With more than 100 nongovernmental organizations promoting The Clash, Americans experienced a seamless segue from an old narrative to a new. Without missing a beat in Pentagon spending, we ended a global Cold War and, by consensus, began a global War on Terrorism.

Huntington argued that cultural and religious identities would emerge as the primary source of conflict. To gain traction, The Clash consensus required a series of events that could be plausibly blamed on Muslim Evil Doers. That was 15 years ago-a long time to sustain a storyline.

With Osama bin Laden dead and war-weary Americans nearing the tenth anniversary of 911, The narrative was losing its punch. Plus the storytellers face a transparency problem: Intelligence agencies worldwide have identified pro-Israelis as the common source of the manipulated intelligence that induced the invasion of Iraq.

What's a Zionist to do? Answer: look to past successes.

Timing is Everything

Ten days prior to 911, Tel Aviv announced a $1 million grant to Israeli super-spy Jonathan Pollard. Why then? The timing suggests Tel Aviv was signaling its operatives and sayanim (Hebrew for volunteers).

The Norwegian shooter is akin to the narrative-advancing snipers who emerged in the lead-up to the Senate vote authorizing the U.S. military to invade Iraq. In the lead-up to next month's UN vote on statehood for Palestine, the carnage in Norway freshened up a stale storyline.

This latest mass murder was committed on the 65^th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv. That mass murder was an operation of the Irgun, Zionist-terrorist predecessors to the Likud Party of today's Benjamin Netanyahu.

The same night that Israel launched its Six-Day War in June 1967, Irgun operative Mathilde Krim was continuing her torrid affair with President Lyndon Johnson-in the White House. Why then? Because that land grab ensured the roots of the Muslim rage required to shape future events.

Why would a Norwegian Zionist target Norwegians? For the same reason that Irgun Zionist Menachem Begin murdered Jews in the King David Hotel: to advance a narrative.

In September 2000, Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led a provocative march to Jerusalem's Temple Mount. When, after a year of calm, suicide bombings recommenced, Sharon and Netanyahu warned that only when Americans "feel our pain" would we appreciate their plight. To feel Israel's pain, they said, would require that America lose 4,500 to 5,000 to terrorism, the initial estimate of those lives lost to a mass murder one year later.

The well-timed operation in Norway turned to mass murder as a means to remake the world order in plain sight. Those complicit specialize in maintaining a storyline that dates from when the medieval Crusades pit Christians against Muslims.

Absent the success of such deceit, we may forget whom to hate.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

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

Anders Behring Breivik

In his summary of what the monster had stated behind closed doors in court, Judge Heger said he had argued that he wanted to create "the greatest loss possible to Norway's governing Labour Party", which he accused of failing the country on immigration and opening the door to the "Muslim colonization" of Norway and all of Europe.

There could not have been a more effective way of inflicting at a single stroke a great loss than gunning down many members of the Norwegian Labour Party's youth wing, the Workers Youth League (AUF), which was assembled on Utoya Island.

Two days before the massacre there, and as Gilad Atzmon has researched and noted, the AUF's leader, Eskil Pedersen, gave an interview to Dagbladet, Norway's second largest tabloid newspaper. In it he said:

"The AUF has long been a supporter of an international boycott of Israel but the decision of the last Congress demands that Norway impose a unilateral economic embargo on the country… I acknowledge this is a drastic measure but I think it gives a clear indication that, quite simply, we are tired of Israel's behaviour."

(My own view is that behind closed doors all Western governments, including the one in Washington D.C. in the person of President Obama, are tired of Israel's behaviour).

There are two things we know for sure.

One is that Breivik is fanatically anti Islam and pro Zionism.

The other is that Zionism's propaganda machine has been set to work at full speed, day and night, eight days and nights a week, to demonize, discredit and destroy all who are calling and campaigning for Israel to be boycotted.

From the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust to the present, Zionism's success in selling its propaganda lies as truth is the reason why the search for peace based on an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians has been, and remains, a mission impossible.

I describe the Israel-Palestine conflict as the cancer at the heart of international affairs which threatens to consume us all. It's bad enough that Zionist propaganda has prevented a cure for it, but if now that same propaganda is inspiring Europeans in Europe to slaughter their own, the future is very, very frightening.

I don't know the answer to my headline question but I think investigators in Norway, prosecutors and psychiatrists, must dig deep enough to find it.

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

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

This image shows Anders Behring Breivik from a manifesto attributed to him that was discovered Saturday, July 23, 2011. / AP PHOTO

Where's the label of "Christian terrorist"; where's the label of "radical extremist Jihadist" since the culprit calls for a Christian holy war against Muslims; he called the killing of civilians "necessary"; but leave it to Ms. Rubin, the blind solid and countable zionist delphi oracle to immediately jump on her usual pro israel bandwagon that muslim terrorists are responsible for the Norway attack. This woman's entire purpose at the Pro Israel Post (it didn't use to be that way under Katherine Graham) but now is under her daughter's tutelage.

I'm not surprised that the Post deems Rubin's column worthy of an apology, after all the issue deals with the despicable Muslim world, a world genetically and religiously predisposed to terrorism; never mind the Babylonial Talmud and the multiple Halakic ruling of Israel's rabbis that gentiles are meant to serve and die for Jews and their children can be killed at times of war.

Forgotten is that Zionist terrorists and Israel introduced terrorism to the world of car bombings, hijacking of and shooting down of civilian planes, introduction of letter bombs, assassination of UN representatives, manufacturing deceitful bombings blamed on Arabs to inflame the U.S. such as the Lavon Affairs and the USS LIberty, the impunity of constant wars and attacks upon civilians, Lebanon multiple times, Sabra and Chatils, the multiple attacks on Gaza, imprisonment and torture of Palestinian women and children, and the total defiance of the UN and humiliation of U.S. Presidents.

Europe and the U.S. xenophobia against Islam and Muslim immigrants is so hypocritical given that both invaded and colonized the Arab and Muslim world with Christian soldier "immigrants" that came by overwhelming force to "civilize" and "education", and "Christianize" the southern hemiphere. They were not wanted but they stayed anyway, now Muslim immigrants in Europe, needed to do fill the jobs unwanted by Europeans (Hispanics) are despised and deported. Europe is aging and with low fertility needs foreign workers as long as they are not Africans, Asians, or Muslims.

It is as Prof. Samuel Huntington said in his book "clash of civilizations"

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

"Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle"

The Post like the rest of the MSM have the same corrupt power on our government and society that Murdoch has in England. You are complicit in Israel's intransigence to avoid peace at all costs as it continues to steal Palestinian land and its water resources to thirst Palestinians while filling illegal settler swimming pools and fountains.

I doubt the Post will apologize for its knee-jerk attack against Muslims or ever change its ways to bring peace in the Holy Land despite its important to U.S. interests.

Rubin's attack on Muslims is the real "Anti-Semitism" since Arabs are the only true remaining Semites (languages not religion or ethnicity) while the Jews of today are not.

* 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.

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

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

Though this affair was domestic, it provided a jumping off point for Ha'aretz to go on and examine the larger international boycott of Israel which is indeed "gaining speed". It noted that Chile had recently pledged to boycott products from the Israeli settlements and Norway's state pension plan had divested itself of companies involved in construction in the occupied territories. The Ha'aretz article pointed out that these incidents (and there are others that can be named in such countries as Ireland and Venezuela) are signs that the boycott movement - so long the province civil society - is now finding resonance at the level of national governments. The Israeli paper declared that "the world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into an economic problem."

The article puts forth two explanations for this turn of events one of which is problematic, and the other incomplete. Let's take a look at them.

1. "Until now boycott organizers had been on the far left. [Now] they have a new ally: Islamic organizations... The red side has a name for championing human rights, while the green side [the Islamic side] has money." I have some personal knowledge of the boycott movement and I find some of these particulars to be, at best, exaggerations. The term "far left" must be based on some arbitrary Zionist definition of the political spectrum. Worldwide community support for the growing boycott movement has gone beyond political alignments. Today, it is a reflection of real united front seeking the promotion of Palestinian human rights (in this Haaretz is on the mark). As for the "green side", there is certainly an understandable affinity here. Muslims too are concerned about the human rights of Palestinians (including the Christians ones). However, the claim of any significant flow of cash is, as far as I know, another exaggeration. The Ha'aretz piece cites the example of the aid flotilla to Gaza, with its link to Turkey. But this is just one case in a worldwide movement. And, there was nothing illegitimate (despite Israeli propaganda) about the involvement of Turkish charities. It might come as a surprise to the Israelis, but you can run a boycott movement without heavy outside funding - as was the case of the boycott against South Africa.

2. Ha'aretz continues: "but then came the occupation, which turned us into the evil Goliath, the cruel oppressor, a darkness on the nations". The article suggests that this is such a contrast with the righteous stand that helped convince the West to support the original formation of Israel that many have turned away from Israel in disappointment. "And now we are paying the price of presenting ourselves as righteous and causing disappointment: boycott." No doubt there is much disappointment. The horrors of Israeli expansionism and occupation are such that they draw worldwide attention. And rightly so. But, they are symptoms of some deeper cause. What might it be? The state of Israel was founded on an ideological programme called Zionism. That programme called for the establishment of a state designed to serve the exclusive interests of one religiously identified group. While the Zionists felt this aim was justified by the centuries of persecution suffered by European Jews, it actually carried within it the seeds of its own corruption. The simple truth is that you cannot successfully design a state for one group only unless you found it on some desert island. If you put it down in a place that is occupied by others who are not of your group, what is the most likely next step? You turn into racists, ethnic cleansers or worse. The Zionist adherence to their ideology and its programme is the cause of their turning into "cruel oppressors". The means dictated by their end made it so.

The Ha'aretz article does not go beyond these points, but there is plenty more to say. Those who wonder whether they should support the boycott should certainly consider the horrors of the Israeli occupation and its ghettoizing of the people of Gaza. They might also consider the following:

1. The non-Jewish population of Israel proper, that is Israel within the 1967 borders (the "Green Line") are subject to segregation and economic and social discrimination that is both de jure and de facto. Their overall standards of living are lower than the Israeli Jews, their educational facilities inferior and their economic prospects poorer. This is to be expected. If you are running your state based on a racist principle, by definition discrimination must infuse the home front. This fact does not appear to fit with the often heard claim that the Israelis are "just like us" Americans. However, in a rather anachronistic way they are "like us" - that is like the United States prior to our civil rights legislation. In other words, Israel is like, say, Georgia or Alabama circa the 1920s.

2. The second factor worthy of consideration is the negative international impact of Zionist ideology, for the harm of Zionism is not confined to either Israel or its occupied territories. The fact is that Zionist influence spreads far beyond Israel's area of dominion and now influences many of the policy-making institutions of Western governments, and particularly those of the United States. This influence is corruptive if only because it distorts both official and popular notions of national interests in the Middle East. When you have a powerful and single-minded lobby that is able to manipulate your government in such a fashion that it pours its national treasure into a racist state, arms it and protects it to the point of becoming an accomplice to its crimes, and by doing so wilfully alienates 22 per cent of the world's population, you know that your notion of national interest has been seriously mangled. This harmful influence makes it imperative that Israel's oppressive behaviour be singled out as a high priority case from among the many other oppressive regimes that may be candidates for boycott.

So no one in Israel, the US or anywhere else should be surprised that the boycott against Israel, in its many manifestations, is "gaining speed." If you are not yet a supporter you should become one. To join the boycott is good for the world's future in general. It is certainly good for the Palestinians, and yes, it is good for the Jews too.

For more information on how to join the boycott Israel campaign, visit the websites of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement website and the Boycott Israeli Goods campaign.

* 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.

Remarks to staff of the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, separately, to members of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

Ambassador Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)*
1 September 2010, Oslo, Norway

Charles W. Freeman, Jr.: United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. In office 15 June 1989 – 13 August 1992

You have asked me to speak to current American policies in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the prospects for peace in the Holy Land. You have further suggested that I touch on the relationship of the Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, to this. It is both an honor and a challenge to address this subject in this capital / at this ministry.

The declaration of principles worked out in Oslo seventeen years ago was the last direct negotiation between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to reach consequential, positive results. The Oslo accords were a real step toward peace, not another deceptive pseudo-event in an endlessly unproductive, so-called "peace process." And if that one step forward in Oslo in 1993 was followed by several steps backwards, there is a great deal to be learned from how and why that happened.

There can be no doubt about the importance of today's topic. The ongoing conflict in the Holy Land increasingly disturbs the world's conscience as well as its tranquility. The Israel-Palestine issue began as a struggle in the context of European colonialism. In the post-colonial era, tension between Israelis and the Palestinians they dispossessed became, by degrees, the principal source of radicalization and instability in the Arab East and then the Arab world as a whole. It stimulated escalating terrorism against Israelis at home and their allies abroad. Since the end of the Cold War, the interaction between Israel and its captive Palestinian population has emerged as the fountainhead of global strife. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish this strife from a war of religions or a conflict of civilizations.

For better or ill, my own country, the United States has played and continues to play the key international part in this contest. American policies, more than those of any other external actor, have the capacity to stoke or stifle the hatreds in the Middle East and to spread or reverse their infection of the wider world. American policies and actions in the Middle East thus affect much more than that region.

Yet, as I will argue, the United States has been obsessed with process rather than substance. It has failed to involve parties who are essential to peace. It has acted on Israel's behalf to preempt rather than enlist international and regional support for peace. It has defined the issues in ways that preclude rather than promote progress. Its concept of a "peace process" has therefore become the handmaiden of Israeli expansionism rather than a driver for peace. There are alternatives to tomorrow's diplomatic peace pageant on the Potomac. And, as Norway has shown, there is a role for powers other than America in crafting peace in the Holy Land.

Over thirty years ago, at Camp David, Jimmy Carter pushed Israel through the door to peace that Egypt's Anwar Sadat had opened. Twenty years ago, the first Bush administration pressed Israel to the negotiating table with Palestinian leaders, setting the stage for their clandestine meetings in Oslo. The capacity of the United States to rally other governments behind a cause that it espouses may have atrophied, but American power remains far greater than that of any other nation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Middle East.

For more than four decades, Israel has been able to rely on aid from the United States to dominate its region militarily and to sustain its economic prosperity. It has counted on its leverage in American politics to block the application of international law and to protect itself from the political repercussions of its policies and actions. Unquestioning American support has enabled Israel to put the seizure of ever more land ahead of the achievement of a modus vivendi with the Palestinians or other Arabs. Neither violent resistance from the dispossessed nor objections from abroad have brought successive Israeli governments to question, let alone alter the priority they assign to land over peace.

Ironically, Palestinians too have developed a dependency relationship with America. This has locked them into a political framework over which Israel exercises decisive influence. They have been powerless to end occupation, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and other humiliations by Jewish soldiers and settlers. Nor have they been able to prevent their progressive confinement in checkpoint-encircled ghettos on the West Bank and the great open-air prison of Gaza.

Despite this appalling record of failure, the American monopoly on the management of the search for peace in Palestine remains unchallenged. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia - once a contender for countervailing influence in the region - has lapsed into impotence. The former colonial powers of the European Union, having earlier laid the basis for conflict in the region, have largely sat on their hands while ringing them, content to let America take the lead. China, India, and other Asian powers have prudently kept their political and military distance. In the region itself, Iran has postured and exploited the Palestinian cause without doing anything to advance it. Until recently, Turkey remained aloof.

On rare occasions, as in the case of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the Arabs have backed their verbal opposition to Israel with action. Egypt and Jordan have settled into an unpopular coexistence with Israel that is now sustained only by U.S. subventions. Saudi Arabia has twice taken the initiative to offer Israel diplomatic concessions if it were to conclude arrangements for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. But, overall, Arab governments have earned the contempt of the Palestinians and their own people for their lack of serious engagement. For the most part, Arab leaders have timorously demanded that America solve the Israel-Palestine problem for them, while obsequiously courting American protection against Israel, each other, Iran, and - in some cases - their own increasingly frustrated and angry subjects and citizens.

Islam charges rulers with the duty to defend the faithful and to uphold justice. It demands that they embody righteousness. The resentment of mostly Muslim Arabs at their governing elites' failure to meet these standards generates sympathy for terrorism directed not just at Israel but at both the United States and Arab governments associated with it.

The perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States saw it in part as reprisal for American complicity in Israeli cruelties to Palestinians and other Arabs. They justified it as a strike against Washington's protection of Arab governments willing to overlook American contributions to Muslim suffering. Washington's response to the attack included suspending its efforts to make peace in the Holy Land as well as invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. All three actions inadvertently strengthened the terrorist case for further attacks on America and its allies. The armed struggle between Americans and Muslim radicals has already spilled over to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries. Authoritative voices in Israel now call for adding Iran to the list of countries at war with America. They are echoed by Zionist and neo-conservative spokesmen in the United States.

The widening involvement of Americans in combat in Muslim lands has inflamed anti-American passions and catalyzed a metastasis of terrorism. It has caused a growing majority of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims to see the United States as a menace to their faith, their way of life, their homelands, and their personal security. American populists and European xenophobes have meanwhile undercut liberal and centrist Muslim arguments against the intolerance that empowers terrorism by equating terrorism and its extremist advocates with Islam and its followers. The current outburst of bigoted demagoguery over the construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque in New York is merely the most recent illustration of this. It suggests that the blatant racism and Islamophobia of contemporary Israeli politics is contagious. It rules out the global alliances against religious extremists that are essential to encompass their political defeat.

President Obama's inability to break this pattern must be an enormous personal disappointment to him. He came into office committed to crafting a new relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds. His first interview with the international media was with Arab satellite television. He reached out publicly and privately to Iran. He addressed the Turkish parliament with persuasive empathy. He traveled to a great center of Islamic learning in Cairo to deliver a remarkably eloquent message of conciliation to Muslims everywhere. He made it clear that he understood the centrality of injustices in the Holy Land to Muslim estrangement from the West. He promised a responsible withdrawal from Iraq and a judicious recrafting of strategy in Afghanistan. Few doubt Mr. Obama's sincerity. Yet none of his initiatives has led to policy change anyone can detect, let alone believe in.

It is not for me to analyze or explain the wide gaps between rhetoric and achievement in the Obama Administration's stewardship of so many aspects of my country's affairs. American voters will render their first formal verdict on this two months from tomorrow, on the 2^nd of November. The situation in the Holy Land, Iraq, Afghanistan, and adjacent areas is only part of what they will consider as they do so. But I do think it worthwhile briefly to examine some of the changes in the situation that ensure that many policies that once helped us to get by in the Middle East will no longer do this.

Let me begin with the "peace process," a hardy perennial of America's diplomatic repertoire that the Obama Administration will put back on public display tomorrow. In the Cold War, the appearance of an earnest and "even-handed" American search for peace in the Holy Land was the price of U.S. access and influence in the Middle East. It provided political cover for conservative Arab governments to set aside their anger at American backing of Israel so as to stand with America and the Western bloc against Soviet Communism. It kept American relations with Israel and the Arabs from becoming a zero-sum game. It mobilized domestic Jewish support for incumbent presidents. Of course, there hasn't been an American-led "peace process" in the Middle East for at least a decade. Still the conceit of a "peace process" became an essential political convenience for all concerned. No one could bear to admit that the "peace process" had expired. It therefore lived on in phantom form.

Even when there was no "peace process," the possibility of resurrecting one provided hope to the gullible, cover to the guileful, beguilement for the press, an excuse for doing nothing to those gaining from the status quo, and - last but far from least - lifetime employment for career "peace processors." The perpetual processing of peace without the requirement to produce it has been especially appreciated by Israeli leaders. It has enabled them to behave like magicians, riveting foreign attention on meaningless distractions as they systematically removed Palestinians from their homes, settled half a million or more Jews in newly vacated areas of the occupied territories, and annexed a widening swath of land to a Jerusalem they insist belongs only to Israel.

Palestinian leaders with legitimacy problems have also had reason to collaborate in the search for a "peace process." It's not just that there has been no obviously better way to end their people's suffering. Playing "peace process" charades justifies the international patronage and Israeli backing these leaders need to retain their status in the occupied territories. It ensures that they have media access and high-level visiting rights in Washington. Meanwhile, for American leaders, engagement in some sort of Middle East "peace process" has been essential to credibility in the Arab and Islamic worlds, as well as with the ever-generous American Jewish community. Polls show that most American Jews are impatient for peace. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they are eager to believe in the willingness of the government of Israel to trade land for it.

Previous "peace processes" have exploited all these impulses. In practice, however, these diplomatic distractions have served to obscure Israeli actions and evasions that were more often prejudicial to peace than helpful in achieving it. Behind all the blather, the rumble of bulldozers has never stopped. Given this history, it has taken a year and a half of relentless effort by U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell to persuade the parties even to meet directly to talk about talks as they first did here in Oslo, seventeen years ago. When the curtain goes up on the diplomatic show in Washington tomorrow, will the players put on a different skit? There are many reasons to doubt that they will.

One is that the Obama administration has engaged the same aging impresarios who staged all the previously failed "peace processes" to produce and direct this one with no agreed script. The last time these guys staged such an ill-prepared meeting, at Camp David in 2000, it cost both heads of delegation, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, their political authority. It led not to peace but to escalating violence. The parties are showing up this time to minimize President Obama's political embarrassment in advance of midterm elections in the United States, not to address his agenda - still less to address each other's agendas. These are indeed difficulties. But the problems with this latest - and possibly final - iteration of the perpetually ineffectual "peace process" are more fundamental.

The Likud Party charter flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River and stipulates that: "The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state." This Israeli government is committed to that charter as well as to the Jewish holy war for land in Palestine. It has no interest in trading land it covets for a peace that might thwart further territorial expansion. It considers itself unbound by the applicable UN resolutions, agreements from past peace talks, the "Roadmap," or the premise of the "two-state solution."

The Palestinians are desperate for the dignity and security that only the end of the Israeli occupation can provide. But the authority of Palestinian negotiators to negotiate rests on their recognition by Israel and the United States, not on their standing in the occupied territories, Gaza, or the Palestinian diaspora. Fatah is the ruling faction in part of Palestine. Its authority to govern was repudiated by voters in the last Palestinian elections. The Mahmoud Abbas administration retains power by grace of the Israeli occupation authorities and the United States, which prefer it to the government empowered by the Palestinian people at the polls. Mr. Abbas's constitutional term of office has long since expired. He presides over a parliament whose most influential members are locked up in Israeli jails. It is not clear for whom he, his faction, or his administration can now speak.

So the talks that begin tomorrow promise to be a case of the disinterested going through the motions of negotiating with the mandate-less. The parties to these talks seek to mollify an America that has severely lessened international credibility. The United States government had to borrow the modest reputations for objectivity of others - the EU, Russia, and the UN - to be able to convene this discussion. It will be held under the auspices of an American president who was publicly humiliated by Israel's prime minister on the issue that is at the center of the Israel-Palestine dispute - Israel's continuing seizure and colonization of Arab land.

Vague promises of a Palestinian state within a year now waft through the air. But the "peace process" has always sneered at deadlines, even much, much firmer ones. A more definitive promise of an independent Palestine within a year was made at Annapolis three years ago. Analogous promises of Palestinian self-determination have preceded or resulted from previous meetings over the decades, beginning with the Camp David accords of 1979. Many in this audience will recall the five-year deadline fixed at Oslo. The talks about talks that begin tomorrow can yield concrete results only if the international community is prepared this time to insist on the one-year deadline put forward for recognizing a Palestinian state. Even then there will be no peace unless long-neglected issues are addressed.

Peace is a pattern of stability acceptable to those with the capacity to disturb it by violence. It is almost impossible to impose. It cannot become a reality, still less be sustained, if those who must accept it are excluded from it. This reality directs our attention to who is not at this gathering in Washington and what must be done to remedy the problems these absences create.

Obviously, the party that won the democratically expressed mandate of the Palestinian people to represent them - Hamas - is not there. Yet there can be no peace without its buy-in. Egypt and Jordan have been invited as observers. Yet they have nothing to add to the separate peace agreements each long ago made with Israel. (Both these agreements were explicitly premised on grudging Israeli undertakings to accept Palestinian self-determination. The Jewish state quickly finessed both.) Activists from the Jewish diaspora disproportionately staff the American delegation. A failure to reconcile either American Jews or the Palestine diaspora to peace would doom any accord. But the Palestinian diaspora will be represented in Washington only in tenuous theory, not in fact.

Other Arabs, including the Arab League and the author of its peace initiative, Saudi Arabia, will not be at the talks tomorrow. The reasons for this are both simple and complex. At one level they reflect both a conviction that this latest installment of the "peace process" is just another in a long series of public entertainments for the American electorate and also a lack of confidence in the authenticity of the Palestinian delegation. At another level, they result from the way the United States has defined the problems to be solved and the indifference to Arab interests and views this definition evidences. Then too, they reflect disconnects in political culture and negotiating style between Israelis, Arabs, and Americans.

To begin with, neither Israel nor the conveners of this proposed new "peace process" have officially acknowledged or responded to the Arab peace initiative of 2002. This offered normalization of relations with the Jewish state, should Israel make peace with the Palestinians. Instead, the United States and the Quartet have seemed to pocket the Arab offer, ignore its precondition that Israelis come to terms with Palestinians, and gone on to levy new demands.

In this connection, making Arab recognition of Israel's "right to exist" the central purpose of the "peace process" offends Arabs on many levels. In framing the issue this way, Israel and the United States appear to be asking for something well beyond pragmatic accommodation of the reality of a Jewish state in the Middle East. To the Arabs, Americans now seem to be insisting on Arab endorsement of the idea of the state of Israel, the means by which that state was established, and the manner in which it has comported itself. Must Arabs really embrace Zionism before Israel can cease expansion and accept peace?

Arabs and Muslims familiar with European history can accept that European anti-Semitism justified the establishment of a homeland for traumatized European Jews. But asking them even implicitly to agree that the forcible eviction of Palestinian Arabs was a morally appropriate means to this end is both a nonstarter and seriously off-putting. So is asking them to affirm that resistance to such displacement was and is sinful. Similarly, the Arabs see the demand that they recognize a Jewish state with no fixed borders as a clever attempt to extract their endorsement of Israel's unilateral expansion at Palestinian expense.

The lack of appeal in this approach has been compounded by a longstanding American habit of treating Arab concerns about Israel as a form of anti-Semitism and tuning them out. Instead of hearing out and addressing Arab views, U.S. peace processors have repeatedly focused on soliciting Arab acts of kindness toward Israel. They argue that gestures of acceptance can help Israelis overcome their Holocaust-inspired political neuroses and take risks for peace.

Each time this notion of Arab diplomacy as psychotherapy for Israelis has been trotted out, it has been met with incredulity. To most in the region, it encapsulates the contrast between Washington's sympathy and solicitude for Israelis and its condescendingly exploitative view of Arabs. Some see it as a barely disguised appeal for a policy of appeasement of Israel. Still others suspect an attempt to construct a "peace process" in which Arabs begin to supply Israel with gifts of carrots so that Americans can continue to avoid applying sticks to it.

The effort to encourage Arab generosity as an offset to American political pusillanimity vis-à-vis Israel is ludicrously unpersuasive. It has failed so many times that it should be obvious that it will not work. Yet it was a central element of George Mitchell's mandate for "peace process" diplomacy. And it appears to have resurfaced as part of the proposed follow-up to tomorrow's meeting between the parties in Washington. It should be no puzzle why the Saudis and other Arabs could not be persuaded to join this gathering.

As a last thought before turning to what must be done, let me make a quick comment on a relevant cultural factor. Arabic has two quite different words that are both translated as "negotiation," making a distinction that doesn't exist in either English or Hebrew. One word, "musaawama," refers to the no-holds-barred bargaining process that takes place in bazaars between strangers who may never see each other again and who therefore feel no obligation not to scam each other. Another, "mufaawadhat," describes the dignified formal discussions about matters of honor and high principle that take place on a basis of mutual respect and equality between statesmen who seek a continuing relationship.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's travel to Jerusalem was a grand act of statesmanship to initiate a process of mufaawadhat - relationship-building between leaders and their polities. So was the Arab peace initiative of 2002. It called for a response in kind. The West muttered approvingly but did not act. After a while, Israel responded with intermittent, somewhat oblique suggestions of willingness to haggle over terms. But an offer to bicker over the terms on which a grand gesture has been granted is, not surprisingly, seen as insultingly unresponsive.

I cite this not to suggest that non-Arabs should adopt Arabic canons of thought, but to make a point about diplomatic effectiveness. To move a negotiating partner in a desired direction, one must understand how that partner understands things and help him to see a way forward that will bring him to an end he has been persuaded to want. One of the reasons we can't seem to move things as we desire in the Middle East is that we don't make much effort to understand how others reason and how they rank their interests. In the case of the Israel-Palestine conundrum, we Americans are long on empathy and expertise about Israel and very, very short on these for the various Arab parties. The essential militarism of U.S. policies in the Middle East adds to our difficulties. We have become skilled at killing Arabs. We have forgotten how to listen to them or persuade them.

I am not myself an "Arabist," but I am old enough to remember when there were more than a few such people in the American diplomatic service. These were officers who had devoted themselves to the cultivation of understanding and empathy with Arab leaders so as to be able to convince these leaders that it was in their own interest to do things we saw as in our interest. If we still have such people, we are hiding them well; we are certainly not applying their skills in our Middle East diplomacy.

This brings me to a few thoughts about the Western and Arab interests at stake in the Holy Land and their implications for what must be done.

In foreign affairs, interests are the measure of all things. My assumption is that Americans and Norwegians, indeed Europeans in general, share common interests that require peace in the Holy Land. To my mind, these interests include - but are, of course, not limited to - gaining security and acceptance for a democratic state of Israel; eliminating the gross injustices and daily humiliations that foster Arab terrorism against Israel and its foreign allies and supporters, as well as friendly Arab regimes; and reversing the global spread of religious strife and prejudice, including, very likely, a revival of anti-Semitism in the West if current trends are not arrested. None of these aspirations can be fulfilled without an end to the Israeli occupation and freedom for Palestinians.

Arab states, like Saudi Arabia, also have compelling reasons to want relief from occupation as well as self-determination for Palestinians. They may not be concerned to preserve Israel's democracy, as we are, but they share an urgent interest in ending the radicalization of their own populations, curbing the spread of Islamist terrorism, and eliminating the tensions with the West that the conflict in the Holy Land fuels. These are the concerns that have driven them to propose peace, as they very clearly did eight years ago. For related reasons, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has made inter-faith dialogue and the promotion of religious tolerance a main focus of his domestic and international policy.

As the custodian of two of Islam's three sacred places of pilgrimage - Mecca and Medina - Saudi Arabia has long transcended its own notorious religious narrow-mindedness to hold the holy places in its charge open to Muslims of all sects and persuasions. This experience, joined with Islamic piety, reinforces a Saudi insistence on the exemption of religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem from political interference or manipulation. The Ottoman Turks were careful to ensure freedom of access for worship to adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths when they administered the city. It is an interest that Jews, Christians, and Muslims share.

There is, in short, far greater congruity between Western and Arab interests affecting the Israel-Palestine dispute than is generally recognized. This can be the basis for creative diplomacy. The fact that this has not occurred reflects pathologies of political life in the United States that paralyze the American diplomatic imagination. Tomorrow's meeting may well demonstrate that, the election of Barack Obama notwithstanding, the United States is still unfit to manage the achievement of peace between Israel and the Arabs. If so, it is in the American interest as well as everyone else's that others become the path-breakers, enlisting the United States as best they can in support of what they achieve, but not expecting America to overcome its incapacity to lead.

Here, I think, there is a lesson to be drawn from the Norwegian experience in the 1990s. The Clinton Administration was happy to organize the public relations for the Oslo accords but did not take ownership of them. It did little to protect them from subversion and overthrow, and nothing to insist on their implementation. Only a peace process that is protected from Israel's ability to manipulate American politics can succeed.

This brings me to how Europeans and Arabs might work together to realize the objectives both share with most Americans: establishing internationally recognized borders for Israel, securing freedom for the Palestinians, and ending the stimulus to terrorism in the region and beyond it that strife in the Holy Land entails. I have only four suggestions to present today. I expect that more ideas will emerge from the discussion period. A serious effort to cooperate with the Arabs of the sort that Norway is uniquely capable of contriving could lead to the development of still more options for joint or parallel action on behalf of peace.

Now to my suggestions, presented in ascending order of difficulty, from the least to the most controversial.

First, get behind the Arab peace initiative. Saudi Arab culture frowns on self-promotion and the Kingdom is less gifted than most at public diplomacy. Political factors inhibit official Arab access to the Israeli press. The Israeli media have published some - mostly dismissive - commentary on the Arab peace initiative but left most Israelis ignorant of its contents and unfamiliar with its text. Why not buy space in the Israeli media to give Israelis a chance to read the Arab League declaration and consider the opportunities it presents? I suspect the Saudis, as well as other members of the Arab League, would consider it constructive for an outside party to do this. It might facilitate other sorts of cooperation with them in which European capabilities can also compensate for Arab reticence. The Turks and other non-Arab Muslims should be brought in as full participants in any such efforts. This wouldn't be bad for Europe's relations with both. By the way, given the U.S. media's notorious one-sidedness and American ignorance about the Arab peace plan, a well-targeted advertising campaign in the United States might not be a bad idea either.

Second, help create a Palestinian partner for peace. There can be no peace with Israel unless there are officials who are empowered by the Palestinian people to negotiate and ratify it. Israel has worked hard to divide the Palestinians so as to consolidate its conquest of their homeland. Saudi Arabia has several times sought to create a Palestinian peace partner for Israel by bringing Fatah, Hamas, and other factions together. On each occasion, Israel, with U.S. support, has acted to preclude this. Active organization of non-American Western support for diplomacy aimed at restoring a unity government to the Palestinian Authority could make a big difference. The Obama Administration would be under strong domestic political pressure to join Israel in blocking a joint European-Arab effort to accomplish this. Under some circumstances, however, it might welcome being put to this test.

Third, reaffirm and enforce international law. The UN Security Council is charged with enforcing the rule of law internationally. In the case of the Middle East, however, the Council's position at the apex of the international system has served to erode and subvert the ideal of a rule-bound international order. Almost forty American vetoes have prevented the application to the Israeli occupying authorities of the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg precedents, human rights conventions, and relevant Security Council directives. American diplomacy on behalf of the Jewish state has silenced the collective voice of the international community as Israel has illegally colonized and annexed broad swaths of occupied territory, administered collective punishment to a captive people, assassinated their political leaders, massacred civilians, barred UN investigators, defied mandatory Security Council resolutions, and otherwise engaged in scofflaw behavior, usually with only the flimsiest of legally irrelevant excuses.

If ethnic cleansing, settlement activity, and the like are not just "unhelpful" but illegal, the international community should find a way to say so, even if the UN Security Council cannot. Otherwise, the most valuable legacy of Atlantic civilization - its vision of the rule of law - will be lost. When one side to a dispute is routinely exempted from principles, all exempt themselves, and the law of the jungle prevails. The international community needs collectively to affirm that Israel, both as occupier and as regional military hegemon, is legally accountable internationally for its actions. If the UN General Assembly cannot "unite for peace" to do what an incapacitated Security Council cannot, member states should not shrink from working in conference outside the UN framework. All sides in the murder and mayhem in the Holy Land and beyond need to understand that they are not above the law. If this message is firmly delivered and enforced, there will be a better chance for peace.

Fourth, set a deadline linked to an ultimatum. Accept that the United States will frustrate any attempt by the UN Security Council to address the continuing impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. Organize a global conference outside the UN system to coordinate a decision to inform the parties to the dispute that if they cannot reach agreement in a year, one of two solutions will be imposed. Schedule a follow-up conference for a year later. The second conference would consider whether to recommend universal recognition of a Palestinian state in the area beyond Israel's 1967 borders or recognition of Israel's achievement of de jure as well as de facto sovereignty throughout Palestine (requiring Israel to grant all governed by it citizenship and equal rights at pain of international sanctions, boycott, and disinvestment). Either formula would force the parties to make a serious effort to strike a deal or to face the consequences of their recalcitrance. Either formula could be implemented directly by the states members of the international community. Admittedly, any serious deadline would provoke a political crisis in Israel and lead to diplomatic confrontation with the United States as well as Israel, despite the Obama Administration itself having proclaimed a one-year deadline in order to entice the Palestinians to tomorrow's talks. Yet both Israel and the United States would benefit immensely from peace with the Palestinians.

Time is running out. The two-state solution may already have been overtaken by Israeli land grabs and settlement activity. Another cycle of violence is likely in the offing. If so, it will not be local or regional, but global in its reach. Israel's actions are delegitimizing and isolating it even as they multiply the numbers of those in the region and beyond who are determined to destroy it. Palestinian suffering is a reproach to all humanity that posturing alone cannot begin to alleviate. It has become a cancer on the Islamic body politic. It is infecting every extremity of the globe with the rage against injustice that incites terrorism.

It is time to try new approaches. That is why the question of whether there is a basis for expanded diplomatic cooperation between Europeans and Arabs is such a timely one. And it is why I was pleased as well as honored to have been asked to set the stage for a discussion of this issue.

* Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman, Jr. (born 1943) is an American diplomat, author, and writer. He has served for the State and Defense Departments in many different capacities in the past thirty years, with the non-partisan Washington Report on Middle East Affairs calling his career "remarkably varied". He most notably worked as the main interpreter for Richard Nixon in his 1972 China visit and as the United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992, where he dealt with issues related to the Gulf War. He is a past president of the Middle East Policy Council, co-chair of the U.S. China Policy Foundation, and vice-chair of the Atlantic Council. In February 2009, unnamed sources leaked to the news media, initially to The Politico, that Freeman was Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair's choice to chair the National Intelligence Council in the Barack Obama administration. After several weeks of shrieking criticisms, he angrily withdrew his name from the nomination, and he then charged the Israeli lobby for what he saw as a smear campaign against him.

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

NTNU Norway - Proposes Academic Boycott of Israel

Several days ago (9 November 2009), David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, wrote an article for the Huffington Post complaining that later this month the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), will consider a proposed boycott of Israel.

His complaint is typical of the kind of twisted logic used by American Zionists to advance Israel's causes. He asks:

Why the call for the boycott? The appeal's first sentence says it all: "Since 1948, the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land and denied the Palestinians basic human rights." The boycott should continue until there "is an end to the occupation."

The caustic attitude and demeaning tone appears to deny the truth in the statement. Both Israelis and American Zionists have been dismissive of any Palestinian rights since the terrorist Irgun and Stern Gang's insurrection against British rule and terrorist slaughter of Palestinians.

Harris continues: "It (NTNU) goes on to accuse Israeli academics, among other alleged misdeeds, of developing "Zionist ideology and renouncing Palestinian history and identity."

"There you have it," he groans. "Israel is deemed illegal. It has no right to exist. Until it disappears from the face of the earth, it must be treated as a pariah nation, so radioactive as to be untouchable."

Harris admits that "at least the petitioners are being honest", complaining that "More often, we're treated to deliberately vague slogans such as 'end the occupation', without any specificity." Israel has no right to occupy Palestine. It is a pariah nation; and it is radioactive!

The sarcasm persists: "Do these calls refer to 1948, the year of Israel's establishment, or 1967, the year Israel fought a war of self-defence and, in winning, acquired territory it then expected to trade for a peace agreement? It can be hard, if not impossible, to tell."

The audacity of his reference to 1948 as "the year of Israel's establishment" purposely ignores 9 April 1948, when the Jewish Irgun terrorist group attacked Deir Yassin, Palestine, murdering 254 women and children captured in the village. Israel's terrorist founders caused thousands of Palestinians to flee for their lives as refugees.

Harris indulges himself in self-righteousness by referring to "1967 [as] the year Israel fought a war of self-defence and, in winning, acquired territory". He distorts history by pretending the 1967 war was not meticulously planned by Israel many years before.

"Of all the nations in the world, according to these Norwegian luminaries, only Israel has no legitimacy and must be ostracized," says Harris, attempting to legitimize Israel with several ludicrous historical twists:

Obviously, the ancient Hebrew presence, the continuous link between the Jewish people and the land, the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations mandate, and the votes of the UN Special Committee on Palestine and the UN General Assembly have no bearing, though they provide a legal and historical foundation for statehood far exceeding that of many countries.

One need only consider the deceptive claim about the "ancient Hebrew presence, the continuous link between the Jewish people and the land..." The reader of Harris's diatribe is supposed to ignore the ancient Palestinian presence and their continuous link to the same land.

However, in the most irrational bluff, Harris argues:

In reality, if the petitioners were truly concerned about sovereign legitimacy, they might begin by asking how many countries in the world today were established by violent conquest. And how many were created by politicians in distant capitals dispassionately drawing and redrawing boundaries in far-off lands?

In the twisted logic of Zionist deceit, other's wrongs justify Israel's. Others cheated! Why pick on us? Because you're guilty.

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

"Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that has committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims."
--Famed British Historian Professor Arnold Toynbee

"In the name of justice there cannot be subjection and in the name of peace there cannot be impunity."
--President Alvaro Uribe Velez of Colombia

"Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
-- Elie Wiesel

The Honorable Marit Arnstad, Chairman of the board

The Honorable Rector Torbjern Digernes

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Trondheim, Norway

Rarely in history do individuals, minority groups, or institutions have an opportunity to courageously adopt a principled unpopular stand that could be transformative in world affairs.

For sometime during the genocide of Gaza it was two extraordinary Norwegian physicians and humanitarians who risked their lives to save the lives of Gazans.

'This is what hell must look like'

Two Norwegian doctors witnessed first-hand the nightmare scenes inside Gaza
Guardian, January 16, 2009

Norway has always been known for its worldwide humanitarian efforts and generous foreign aid. It is no coincidence that Norway is always ranked first in the world by the United Nations.

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has just such a historic opportunity tomorrow when it considers voting for an academic boycott of Israel, a nation that for too long has lived by violence, ethnic cleansing, military expansionism, illegal occupations, subjugation of millions of innocent Palestinians, defied all divine and international laws that respect and value human life, and that since its establishment has committed countless terrorist acts and war crimes, lately documented by the Goldstone Report, all with impunity, never accountable for its actions in courts of justice, the U.N., or to all of humanity. The West, especially the U.S., has constantly protected Israel's interests at the expense of its own interests.

You may remember this headline in Aftenposten, 12/1/06:

"USA threats after boycott support"

"US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened Norway with "serious political consequences" after Finance Minister and Socialist Left Party leader Kristin Halvorsen admitted to supporting a boycott of Israeli goods."

A quote by the Nobel Prize Winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn encompasses both Israel's non stop violence against innocent Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, and Jordanian civilians and its brilliant intimidating propaganda that established the persecutor as the persecuted.

"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."

As a former academician I plead and urge you to take the only righteous stand possible against Israel and that is for your esteemed University to vote yes on an academic boycott of Israel. Your courage will open the door for Universities and other institutions around the world to follow your example.

In 1982 Sharon invaded Lebanon committing a widespread genocide that began in Southern Lebanon and ended in a three month devastating siege of Beirut, a city overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of refugees from Southern Lebanon who fled the Israeli army's advance. This genocide resulted in the murder of 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians other than the cold blooded massacre of 1,700 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. Under Sharon's protection, encouragement, and direction, the Christian Phalangists shed the blood of men, women, the elderly, and children. Sharon even provided powerful night lights for the murderers' to commit their slaughter. All the world could do is condemn the massacre without laying blame on Israel.

From the air, sea, and land Sharon unleashed his murderous campaign upon a crowded urban city bombing churches, mosques, hospitals, schools, orphanages, retirement homes, electrical and water plants, roads, bridges, the airport and sea port; not even ambulances and medics were spared.

He would bomb bakeries where men, women, and children stood in long lines for scarce bread.

Planes would bomb an area and await the gathering of ambulances, medics, and citizens to pull persons out of the wreckage only to bomb it again to inflict more casualties.

Ambassador Phil Habib, Reagan's personal envoy to stop the genocide in Beirut worked hard to reach a peace agreement between Sharon and Lebanon while promising the safety of the Palestinian civilians upon the departure of Yasser Arafat and the PLO from Lebanon. However, he discovered that Israel could never be trusted to keep its word.

In John Boykin's book, "Cursed is the Peacemaker" (2002, Applegate Press) he quotes Ambassador Habib as saying.

"I had signed this paper which guaranteed that these people in west Beirut would not be harmed. I got specific guarantees on this from Bashir (President of Lebanon) and from the Israelis--from Sharon'. He said he 'had been given assurances... that no action would be taken against the Palestinians remaining in the camps.... On the basis of those assurances we (Americans) had given our word. We had been deceived.... Sharon was a killer, obsessed by hatred of the Palestinians,' Habib said. 'I had given Arafat an undertaking that his people would not be harmed, but this was totally disregarded by Sharon whose word was worth nothing.'"

As is customary with Israel and U.N. Resolutions, Israel defied and rejected over a dozen UN Security Council Resolutions asking Israel to at least allow humanitarian aid into Beirut.

Israel's intransigence to make peaceful concessions to the Palestinians that they too may enjoy the freedom, liberty, and independence their occupiers enjoy makes us all complicit in this tragedy with our silence and inaction.

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is shocking that the world accepts Israel's genocides and threats against its neighbors as fait accompli without regard to the never ending suffering of Palestinians under its brutal military occupation. Palestinians and Lebanese die, suffer, and endure in silence in a world conditioned to accept Israel's "right to self defense", a euphemism for wanton murder. They die in silence absent from the western conscience due to the blanket support of most western media outlets, none more so than in America ,the nation exporting democracy and freedom through smart bombs and biased politicians who if dare to criticize Israel jeopardize their ambitions and become the recipients of the worst media smears. In the U.S. no debate or action is allowed against Israel neither by our own "never challenge Israel" government nor by our staunchly Pro Israel media.

The academicians and experts invited to your university to speak on this issue know first hand their personal victimization at the hands of Pro Israel forces. They have risked much for the truth and are honorable men and women.

Please do the right thing and vote for an academic boycott of Israel, a nation that is neither civilized nor democratic, by setting an educational precedent for your university, faculty, alumni, but most importantly for your students, that standing up for principle is the foundation for all just laws and human rights for all peoples and not just the powerful few.

Teach them to adopt "freedom from fear" as their guiding principle in life while facing all challenges, especially challenges that discriminate between the powerful and the weak, the haves and have nots, that no people should be victimized by the power of money and weapons.

""Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights"
--The late Honorable Dag Hammarskjold

"Giving Flight To Dreams"....Yes, we dare to dream, we dare to act.

Without waiting for anyone to tell them what to do and what not to do, Norway was the first EU country to re-establish political and economic relations with the new Palestinian government. OTOH, as usual, U.S. doing its best to maintain ‘conflict’ in the region and ‘not to recognize’ the elected Palestinian government, they are ‘disturbed’ by Palestinian ‘right to resist’ and disappointed by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s speech on Saturday expressing that right.

There you go, another basic human right that U.S. and Zionist want Palestinians to compromise. How come the Israeli ‘right to defend’ (right to occupy and kill innocents) is respected and supported by U.S. but Palestinians ‘right to resist’ and fight back the occupation is a crime? What a hypocrisies and double standard.

Why should we abandon our right to resist and remain living in the realm of the murderously absurd? Why should we live under oppression and submit to injustice is unacceptable? Resistance not only is a right and a duty, but is a remedy for the oppressed, even if not as a strategic, pragmatic option, we should resist as an expression of— and insistence on— our human dignity.

It is important, however, to distinguish between permissible (military) and impermissible (civilian) targets, and to set limits for the use of arms. Nor must the oppressor be exempt from these same principles (which by the way was never respected).

The Palestinians resistance is protected by all human and heavens’ laws. It is one of the basic human rights, international law and widely shared norms of behavior. However, at this stage, I believe that Palestinians should be more creative in providing effective peaceful alternatives for resistance that can invite the progressives of the world to join our struggle. Ultimately, the strength of the Palestinian plight lies in its moral, humanitarian characteristics; it is to our benefit to find moral, humanitarian means to protect that strength.