Prime minister David Cameron has told Britain: "We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so."

He was speaking on the occasion of the 400^th anniversary of the King James version of the Bible which, he said, had helped to give Britain a set of values and morals that make us what we are today.

And Cameron doesn't accept the argument about the church not getting involved in politics. "To me, Christianity, faith, religion, the Church and the Bible are all inherently involved in politics because so many political questions are moral questions."

True, but can our churchmen 'do politics'? They perpetually fail to get a result even on the Church's 'home turf', the Holy Land.

It's painful to be reminded that while Israel was planning its murderous 3-week assault on the people of Gaza (including the Christian community there), which it launched three Christmases ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury was visiting the former Nazi camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland with the Chief Rabbi to show joint solidarity against genocide.

"This is a pilgrimage not to a holy place but to a place of utter profanity," he announced. "How shall we be able to read the signs... that evil is gathering force once again?"

He needed to look no further than the prison camp that the Holy Land has been turned into by the never-ending Israeli occupation. Couldn't he sniff the stench of profanity besieging the Gaza Strip which, some claim, Israel uses as a warfare laboratory? Hasn't he noticed a strong whiff of evil in the judaisation of Jerusalem and the expulsion of its non-Jewish citizens?

And when the Archbishop visited the Holy Land in 2010 the Israelis prevented him seeing the horrors their thugs had inflicted on Gaza and obstructed him in his Christian mission there. But he still fraternised with their rabbinate and their President, and paid homage to Yad Vashem and the Holocaust, thus appearing to legitimise the blockade, the persecution of Muslim and Christian communities and Israel's contempt for international law and human rights.

The Pope fell for the same propaganda trick.

The Church clearly needs the mother of all shake-ups before it'll be capable of rolling up its sleeves and getting political.

Our not-so-Christian government

Britain as a country may still be Christian but what about its government? Mr Cameron describes himself as a "committed" Christian but only a "vaguely practising" one. What does that mean? Are Christian principles getting in his way?

Or is he sending a coded message of comfort to friends in Tel Aviv and Washington?

For Cameron also claims to be a Zionist.

He voted enthusiastically for the Iraq war, an irresponsible and un-Christian thing to do based on neo-con lies. And look what it has cost in lives and wholesale destruction. Now he and foreign secretary William Hague are upping sanctions designed to cripple the Iranian economy and bring misery to that country's civilian population. Shades of Iraq... sadistic action once again based on mere suspicion of wrongdoing, not actual proof. Is this proper behaviour for even the "vaguest" of Christians?

The political baggage Cameron has brought with him includes a foreign secretary who has been a member of Conservative Friends of Israel since his teenage years and a minister for Middle East affairs who's a former officer of that same fan club.

His defence secretary Liam Fox, now departed in disgrace, was dubbed "a champion of Israel within the government". He famously said: "In the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression - Israel's enemies are our enemies..."

How can it be right for Ministers of the Crown to make such ludicrous commitments to a belligerent foreign power that continually defies international and humanitarian law and, I hear, shoots children for amusement - according to a horrifying article by surgeon David Halpin, 'The methodical shooting of boys at work in Gaza by snipers of the Israeli Occupation Force'?

When Cameron became Conservative leader he proclaimed: "You need to know that if I become Prime Minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on Israel." And once in Downing Street he pledged: "In me, you have a Prime Minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible...I want to be clear, we will always support Israel..."

Supporting Israel means, of course, endorsing the regime's lawlessness and criminal ambitions. Is that an option for a real Christian? And when will Mr Cameron have time to concentrate on Britain's best interests in the Middle East, which is the job he was elected for?

Furthermore Britain, like all other countries that think themselves civilised, is under a solemn international obligation to make sure there's no hiding place for the world's vilest criminals. It's a responsibility no Christian should shirk. However, when Tzipi Livni, who was responsible for mounting Operation Cast Lead and for the 1,400 deaths that followed, complained that a warrant had been issued for her arrest in London, Cameron and Hague immediately mangled our Universal Jurisdiction laws to create a safe haven for her and other Israelis wanted for crimes against humanity.

Having ensured that Madam Livni could safely go shopping in Bond Street, the devoted Mr Hague said: "The UK is committed to upholding international justice and all of our international obligations. Our core principle remains that those guilty of war crimes must be brought to justice."

The Zionist cuckoo in Christianity's nest

Cameron waxes lyrical about the King James Bible but acts as if he was brought up on the less admirable Scofield version, which has been the standard religious text on the other side of the Atlantic.

Cyrus Scofield, a convicted criminal and described by one American newspaper as "a shyster", was commissioned to re-write the King James version by inserting Zionist-friendly notes. The idea was to change the Christian view of Zionism by creating and promoting a pro-Zionist sub-culture within Christianity. The Oxford University Press appointed Scofield as editor, and the Scofield Reference Bible has been a best-seller especially in the US for nearly 100 years.

It introduced a new worship icon, the modern State of Israel, which did not exist until 1948 but was already on the drawing board of the World Zionist movement.

American journalist Grace Halsell explained the re-hashed Biblical message:

"Simply stated it is this: Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us. Never mind what Israel does, say the Christian Zionists. God wants this to happen...

"Scofield said that Christ cannot return to earth until certain events occur: The Jews must return to Palestine, gain control of Jerusalem and rebuild a temple, and then we all must engage in the final, great battle called Armageddon. Estimates vary, but most students of Armageddon theology agree that as a result of these relatively recent interpretations of Biblical scripture, 10 to 40 million Americans believe Palestine is God's chosen land for the Jews."

Ultra-literal reading of certain Old Testament texts has persuaded Zionists to believe that Old Testament promises made to the ancient Jewish tribes are transferable to the largely unrelated people that comprise the modern state of Israel. They hope for, and are obviously working towards, the final battle they call Armageddon, in which Israel's enemies (and God's, of course) will be defeated. After that Jesus will return as the Jewish Messiah and King to reign in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and the Jewish people will enjoy privileged status in the world.

That is the Zionist dream of world domination in a nutshell.

We see how politicians become eager stooges, but if you are as puzzled as I am how a true Christian could possibly be taken in by Zionism, a short paper on the phenomenon is available from Sadaka [PDF].

An effective antidote is The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, a statement by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued in 2006. They are in the front line. They know the score. It is summed up in a single sentence:

"We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation."

Merry Christmas, Mr Cameron.

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

Here's a story to contemplate:

From a passenger ship, everyone can see a bearded man on a small island. He is shouting and desperately waving his hands.

"Who is it?" a passenger asks the captain.

"I've no idea. Every year when we pass, he goes nuts."

At times I feel like the bearded old man going nuts over the passing ship missing the point.

Previously, I mentioned seven subjects that have been covered up. The taboo topics included:

• The USS Liberty cover-up
• Israel's nuclear programme
• 9/11 truth seekers discoveries
• Big business corruption
• Bush administration crimes
• Plight of the Palestinians
• Murder by un-manned drones

The last of these seven items has emerged from under wraps following a spate of public criticism over the assassination of an American citizen by a remote controlled drone.

I received several comments and a letter from a reader who indicated a desire to know more about the other topics. She wrote:

"I would love to know more about 'the obscured issues that deserve more than a passing interest'...Could you please send me the websites so that I can educate myself and get to have an idea of what is really going on."

In the age of Google and other available research tools, the request came as something of a surprise. It shouldn't have. Those who regularly use the internet for research often forget that our readers don't know.

Those who find the internet a treasure trove of answers to almost any question concern ourselves with reliability not availability.

The best brief answer to the question about where to look is to type the whole question into Google. If the sites that Google brings up don't appear to answer your question, reword your query.

Another reader wrote, "Yes, these subjects should be investigated but it won't happen."

He's right. Unless those of us who believe they should be investigated keep harping on these issues, they will fade away.

Strangely enough, the assassination question associated with murders by unmanned drones, forced that issue out from undercover.

Fortunately, the legality, the morality and the danger of blowback associated with assassinations reached the public arena.

The plight of the Palestinians has received more than usual attention since the Palestinian Authority decided to petition the UN for more complete recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Forced into a corner by the prospect of becoming a one-state apartheid regime, Netanyahu has now agreed to negotiate all issues related to a two-state solution. He's buying time with words.

Big business corruption has been garnering the best kind of attention to its self-serving oligarchy by demonstrations now taking place in major cities internationally.

With steadfast attention to their goal and continued marching toward public action that the government has reneged upon, the jobless may have found truly rewarding employment in their protests.

It's doubtful that the remaining four will elicit enough public attention or support to force action or investigations.

The USS Liberty cover-up receives occasional attention from veterans or veterans groups who usually have more urgent needs and broader concerns demanding their time and energy.

Israel's nuclear weapons program will continue under wraps with the US and EU giving no more than occasional lip service to the IAEA, whose findings they ignore.

Too many of the US government's present staff were also part of the Bush administration for those guilty of war crimes to be prosecuted from the top down.

Despite the plethora of legitimate questions about the 9/11 attacks, the fantasies of some have led to dismissal of all truth seekers as conspiracy theorists.

If going nuts as the ship passes helps, three rescues show promise.

* 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.

…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.

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

After he returned from his ordeal on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Fiachra O'Luain, the second mate on the Challenger I, was asked if he would go again to break the siege of Gaza. He replied "yes ... and again, and again".

Many of the survivors of the flotilla will be on the next one, due to sail for Gaza towards the end of June. Called Stay Human, it will commemorate Vittorio Arrigoni who gave his life (as did 10 activists on the Mavi Marmara: nine dead and one in a coma) for justice and human rights for the Palestinian people.

In the face of Israeli propaganda, parroted by the BBC and other mainstream media, we should hold fast to the truth that these people are prepared to face. All of the survivors of the previous flotilla were maltreated and humiliated. Many of them were beaten, tasered by electric stun guns, attacked with stun grenades and tear gas, deprived of food and water and subjected, by terrorists in the employ of the state of Israel, to treatment described by a United Nations Fact-Finding Mission [.PDF] as tantamount to torture. Many suffered injury from deliberately over-tightened handcuffs. Several had their passports stolen (for use in who-knows-what future outrage by Mossad criminals), all cameras, mobile phones and computers were illegally seized and many lost large sums of money: plundered in individual acts of piracy by members of one of the world's most criminal and immoral armies. All of the victims experienced first-hand the ruthless contempt for human dignity that the Zionist state considers its right.

On the Mavi Marmara, passengers and crew saw friends and comrades killed, wounded or maltreated by thugs with no more respect for human life than Al Capone's gangsters. Some of these same criminals later appeared on the BBc programme "Panorama". Wary of the daylight they lurked in the night shadows of Haifa docks like wharf rats, referred to their victims as "terrorists", and falsely accused them of shooting at commandos who were indulging a blood bath totally outside of any remit granted by international law. (A terrorist, we should remember, is someone who uses violence against civilians for political ends. The commandos defined the term as someone who comes prepared to commit violence, dressed in military clothing with covered faces. Either definition accurately fitted the commandos themselves, who in any event would never be accorded the protection that internationallaw demands for civilians.)

The blood of men who believed in universal human rights dripped down the stairs of the Mavi Marmara that night as war crimes were committed on the orders of Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak under the guise of defending the state of Israel. Knowing all this, in a few days time an even larger flotilla with even more human rights workers on board will sail for Gaza. Binyamin Netanyahu has tried every trick in the diplomatic book to prevent it. We can be sure that Mossad has been hard at work too, trying to sabotage ships bound for the high seas.

Despite well-publicized claims to the contrary, and despite the recent opening of the Rafah Crossing to many civilians, the sadistic Israeli closure remains firmly locked on Gaza. There has been no confirmation that the 4,500 tons of building materials on the last flotilla ever reached Gaza. Desperately needed sewage pipes from the Malaysian ship the Spirit of Rachel Corrie are in an Egyptian warehouse instead of being delivered to Gaza. (Ironically, this would have helped to reduce pollution in the eastern Mediterranean where the tides presumably wash untreated Gazan sewage onto beaches in Israel and Egypt.) Permitted exports from Gaza amount to around two lorry loads a day in place of the 400 per day that Israel agreed to allow in a deal brokered by Condoleezza Rice in 2005. Meanwhile, the scarcely-reported ceasefire of missiles from Gaza, applied after the successful Palestinian unity talks, attracts no concessions from Israel's continuing occupation of the Gaza Strip.

The heroism and sacrifice of this next flotilla will not be in vain. Despite more brazen lies from Mark Regev and biased portrayals of events by the likes of Jane Corbin, Mr Netanyahu's stubborn, blinkered stupidity will further damage Israel's international image while further advancing the Palestinian cause. No Nobel Peace Laureate will be able to disguise the guilt if more Israeli hoods batter more human rights workers. No selectively edited whitewash report, with of without endorsement from professors of international law, will be able to conceal the truth this time from the people of the world. The flotilla is coming, and just as Mickey Mouse's sorcerer's apprentice merely increased the activities of his animated broom when he attacked it with an axe, Mr Netanyahu only risks further opprobrium in the eyes of the world, further censure for his pariah state and further flotillas if he insists in perpetuating the use of violent crime against lawful protest on the high seas.

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

Once the ships sail it will be possible to track them here. Any assault is likely to be before dawn on the night before the anticipated arrival in Gaza.

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.

By Dr. Dahlia Wasfi * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

We have an obligation to every last victim of this illegal aggression because all of this carnage has been done in our name. Since World War II, 90% of the casualties of war are unarmed civilians. 1/3 of them children. Our victims have done nothing to us. From Palestine to Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia to wherever our next target may be, their murders are not collateral damage, they are the nature of modern warfare. They don't hate us because of our freedoms. They hate us because every day we are funding and committing crimes against humanity. The so-called "war on terror" is a cover for our military aggression to gain control of the resources of western Asia.

Video link: http://youtu.be/KGTJq8LnIQg

This is sending the poor of this country to kill the poor of those Muslim countries. This is trading blood for oil. This is genocide, and to most of the world, we are the terrorists. In these times, remaining silent on our responsibility to the world and its future is criminal. And in light of our complicity in the supreme crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ongoing violations of the U.N. Charter in International Law, how dare any American criticize the actions of legitimate resistance to illegal occupation.

Our so-called enemies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, our other colonies around the world, and our inner cities here at home, are struggling against the oppressive hand of empire, demanding respect for their humanity. They are labeled insurgents or terrorists for resisting rape and pillage by the white establishment, but they are our brothers and sisters in the struggle for justice. The civilians at the other end of our weapons don't have a choice, but American soldiers have choices, and while there may have been some doubt 5 years ago, today we know the truth. Our soldiers don't sacrifice for duty-honor-country, they sacrifice for Kellogg Brown & Root.

They don't fight for America, they fight for their lives and their buddies beside them, because we put them in a war zone. They're not defending our freedoms, they're laying the foundation for 14 permanent military bases to defend the freedoms of Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum.

They're not establishing democracy, they're establishing the basis for an economic occupation to continue after the military occupation has ended. Iraqi society today, thanks to American "help" is defined by house raids, death squads, check-points, detentions, curfews, blood in the streets, and constant violence. We must dare to speak out in support of the Iraqi people, who resist and endure the horrific existence we brought upon them through our bloodthirsty imperial crusade. We must dare to speak out in support of those American war-resisters, the real military heroes, who uphold their oath to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, including those terrorist cells in Washington DC more commonly known as the Legislative, Executive & Judicial branches.

"If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress"

Frederick Douglass said

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both ... but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

Every one of us, every one of us must keep demanding, keep fighting, keep thundering, keep plowing, keep speaking, keep struggling until justice is served. NO justice, NO peace.

* Dahlia Wasfi was born in the United States in 1971 to an American Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. She earned her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Dr. Wasfi speaks out in support of immediate, unconditional withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and the need to end the occupation "from the Nile to the Euphrates." Her website is www.liberatethis.com .

The US military is developing software that would allow military personnel to use fake profiles in online chat rooms.

The idea is to use social media to spread "positive" messages about the United States and its allies such as Israel. While the Pentagon says it is a bid to counter violent extremist and enemy ideologies, we all know it's a propaganda war tool.

Israel recruited an army of cyber terrorists to do the similar job during their massacres in Gaza and Lebanon. In fact Israeli propaganda machine reached U.S. Department of State officials and evidences were presented at Sabbah Report few years ago.

Video link: http://youtu.be/qdU4c9ndgZA

Anti-Arab and Anti-Islam propaganda is all over the U.S media. It is not surprising to see the same spread all over the cyberspace.

By Jonathan Cook * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Israeli officials have expressed alarm at a succession of moves by the interim Egyptian government that they fear signal an impending crisis in relations with Cairo.

The widening rift was underscored on 4 May when leaders of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation pact in the Egyptian capital. Egypt's secret role in brokering the agreement last week caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, called the deal "a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism".

Several other developments have added to Israeli concerns about its relations with Egypt, including signs that Cairo hopes to renew ties with Iran and renegotiate a long-standing contract to supply Israel with natural gas.

More worrying still to Israeli officials are reported plans by Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza, closed for the past four years as part of a Western-backed blockade of the enclave designed to weaken Hamas, the ruling Islamist group there.

Egypt is working out details to permanently open the border, an Egyptian foreign ministry official told the Reuters news agency on 1 May. The blockade would effectively come to an end as a result.

The same day Egypt's foreign minister, Nabil Elaraby, called on the United States to recognize a Palestinian state – in reference to a move expected in September by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to seek recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

Israel and the US have insisted that the Palestinians can achieve statehood only through negotiations with Israel. Talks have been moribund since Israel refused last September to renew a partial freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

According to analysts, the interim Egyptian government, under popular pressure, is consciously distancing itself from some of the main policies towards Israel and the Palestinians pursued by Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president overthrown by a popular uprising in February.

Mubarak was largely supportive of Israel and Washington's blockade policy to contain Hamas's influence. Egypt receives more than 1.3 billion dollars annually in US aid, second only to Israel.

But the popular mood in Egypt appears to be turning against close diplomatic ties with Israel.

A poll published last week by the Pew Research Centre showed that 54 per cent of Egyptians backed the annulment of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, with only 36 per cent wanting it maintained.

Israel's Yedioth Aharonoth daily reported this week that Egyptian social media sites had called for a mass demonstration outside the Israeli embassy, demanding the expulsion of the ambassador, Yitzhak Levanon.

In comments to several media outlets last weekend, unnamed senior Israeli officials criticized Egypt's new foreign policy line. One told the Wall Street Journal that Cairo's latest moves could "affect Israel's national security on a strategic level".

Another unnamed official told the Jerusalem Post that "the upgrading of the relationship between Egypt and Hamas" might allow the Islamic movement to develop into a "formidable terrorist military machine".

Silvan Shalom, Israel's deputy prime minister, told Israel Radio on 1 May that Israel should brace for significant changes in Egyptian policies that would allow Iran to increase its influence in Gaza.

Egypt's chief of staff, Sami Hafez Anan, responded dismissively on his Facebook page to such statements, saying, "Israel has no right to interfere. This is an Egyptian-Palestinian matter."

In a sign of Israeli panic, Netanyahu is reported to be considering sending his special adviser, Isaac Molho, to Cairo for talks with the interim government.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu has repeatedly complained to visiting European ambassadors and US politicians about what he regards as a new, more hostile climate in Egypt.

Late last month Elaraby said Egypt was ready to "turn over a new leaf" in relations with Tehran, which were severed after the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty more than three decades ago.

Egyptian officials have also warned that the supply of natural gas to Israel may be halted. The pipeline has been attacked twice on the Egyptian side, including last week, in acts presumed to be sabotage.

Even if Egypt continues the flow of gas, it is almost certain to insist on a sharp rise in the cost, following reports that Mubarak and other officials are being investigated on corruption charges relating to contracts that underpriced gas to Israel.

Yoram Meital, an expert on Israeli-Egyptian relations at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, said Egypt's policy change towards Gaza threatened to "provoke a severe crisis in Egyptian-Israeli relations" by undermining Israel's policy of isolating Hamas.

With the toppling of Mubarak's authoritarian regime, Meital noted, the Egyptian government is under pressure to be more responsive to local opinion.

"We are at the beginning of this crisis but we are not there yet. However, there is room for a great deal more deterioration in relations over the coming months," he said.

Analysts said Cairo wanted to restore its traditional leadership role in the Arab world and believed it was hampered by its ties with Israel.

Menha Bahoum, a spokeswoman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, told the New York Times last week: "We are opening a new page. Egypt is resuming its role that was once abdicated."

That assessment is shared by Hamas and Fatah, both of which were looking to Egypt for help, said Menachem Klein, a politics lecturer at Bar Ilan University.

He noted that Abbas had lost his chief Arab sponsor in the form of Mubarak, and that the Hamas leadership's base in Syria was precarious given the current upheavals there.

With growing demands from the Palestinian public for reconciliation, neither faction could afford to ignore the tide of change sweeping the Arab world, he said.

Meital said: "We are entering a new chapter in the region's history and Israeli politicians and the public are not yet even close to understanding what is taking place".

* Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair".

By Reuters

WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHS OF DEATH AND INJURY BELOW

"Reuters" -- Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.

The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.

The official, who wished to remain anonymous, sold the pictures to Reuters.

None of the men looked like bin Laden. President Barack Obama decided not to release photos of his body because it could have incited violence and used as an al Qaeda propaganda tool, the White House said on Wednesday.

Based on the time-stamps on the pictures, the earliest one was dated May 2, 2:30 a.m., approximately an hour after the completion of the raid in which bin Laden was killed.

Other photos, taken hours later at between 5:21 a.m. and 6:43 a.m. show the outside of the trash-strewn compound and the wreckage of the helicopter the United States abandoned. The tail assembly is unusual, and could indicate some kind of previously unknown stealth capability.

Reuters is confident of the authenticity of the purchased images because details in the photos appear to show a wrecked helicopter from the assault, matching details from photos taken independently on Monday.

U.S. forces lost a helicopter in the raid due to a mechanical problem and later destroyed it.

The pictures are also taken in sequence and are all the same size in pixels, indicating they have not been tampered with. The time and date in the photos as recorded in the digital file's metadata match lighting conditions for the area as well as the time and date imprinted on the image itself.

The close-cropped pictures do not show any weapons on the dead men, but the photos are taken in medium close-up and often crop out the men's hands and arms.

One photo shows a computer cable and what looks like a child's plastic green and orange water pistol lying under the right shoulder of one of the dead men. A large pool of blood has formed under his head.

A second shows another man with a streak of blood running from his nose across his right cheek and a large band of blood across his chest.

A third man, in a T-shirt, is on his back in a large pool of blood which appears to be from a head wound.

U.S. acknowledgment on Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead had raised accusations Washington had violated international law. The exact circumstances of his death remained unclear and could yet fuel controversy, especially in the Muslim world.

Pakistan faced national embarrassment, a leading Islamabad newspaper said, in explaining how the world's most-wanted man was able to live for years in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, just north of the capital.

Pakistan blamed worldwide intelligence lapses for a failure to detect bin Laden, while Washington worked to establish whether its ally had sheltered the al Qaeda leader, which Islamabad vehemently denies.

(Writing by Chris Allbritton; Editing by Jon Boyle)

The unidentified body of a man is seen after a raid by U.S. Navy SEAL commandos on the compound where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, May 2, 2011. Bin Laden was killed in the U.S. special forces assault on the Pakistani compound, then quickly buried at sea, in a dramatic end to the long manhunt for the al Qaeda leader who had been the guiding star of global terrorism. Picture taken May 2, 2011. REUTERS

The unidentified body of a man is seen after a raid by U.S. Navy SEAL commandos on the compound where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, May 2, 2011. Bin Laden was killed in the U.S. special forces assault on the Pakistani compound, then quickly buried at sea, in a dramatic end to the long manhunt for the al Qaeda leader who had been the guiding star of global terrorism. Picture taken May 2, 2011. REUTERS

The unidentified body of a man is seen after a raid by U.S. Navy SEAL commandos on the compound where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, May 2, 2011. Bin Laden was killed in the U.S. special forces assault on the Pakistani compound, then quickly buried at sea, in a dramatic end to the long manhunt for the al Qaeda leader who had been the guiding star of global terrorism. Picture taken May 2, 2011. REUTERS

The unidentified body of a man is seen after a raid by U.S. Navy SEAL commandos on the compound where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad May 2, 2011. Bin Laden was killed in the U.S. special forces assault on the Pakistani compound, then quickly buried at sea, in a dramatic end to the long manhunt for the al Qaeda leader who had been the guiding star of global terrorism. Picture taken May 2, 2011. REUTERS

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

Far too often, what is not said, or cannot be said, publicly is more significant than the platitudes bandied about by assorted political leaders and pundits. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli matrix of death and disinformation.

President Obama in particular acts as if he were mesmerized by all this. He has all the power, but acts as if he were powerless. He can make things happen if he chooses to exert himself, yet has ended up positioning himself as a supplicant to Israel and pretending ignorance of Palestinian realities. He thinks and speaks, but does nothing of substance that Israel does not want him to do.

The Indictment

So let us look at those uncomfortable truths, politically unspeakable at least in the US but not necessarily elsewhere, and frequently discussed openly in many non-governmental forums, just so we all appreciate where we stand:

1. Gaza, Mr. Obama, Gaza. It holds three-fourths of the Palestinians under a government that electorally beat the faction that supports that Israeli puppet you call the Palestinian Authority. Deal with Gaza, deal with Hamas who governs there, or forget it: you are not dealing with Palestinians. You have got to know this. Why be in denial?

2. There is no two-state solution, and never has been one, so long as Israel held US support in its political palm. Look at the maps of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, look at the Israeli settlements and Israeli military protection for them in place, and the Wall – the Wall, Mr. President, longer & higher than the now-defunct Berlin Wall – and embattled Gaza. Just where and how do you think you will find a Palestinian state acceptable to Israel that has even a shred of the trappings of legitimacy and sovereignty that the now-defunct Bantustans had in apartheid-era South Africa?

3. The settlements are critical, and you, Mr. Obama, come across as a failure or a Zionist tool, or both together. Does projecting this image please you? And if you did not have the balls to force a halt to Israeli settlement expansion, much less the creation of new settlements, how do you expect to find the courage to dictate the removal of those settlements, without which there is no Palestinian entity of any kind in the West Bank, alone or not?

4. You can be pro-peace or pro-Israel, but not both together, and all of the rhetoric to the contrary, all of the money AIPAC and its confederates spend on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, all of the media attention Israel commands, cannot alter this essential reality. Why do you persist in playing to AIPAC, J Street, and the rest of the Hasbara crew, avowed or not?

5. Just why do you feel obliged to let your Administration's foreign policy staffing look like it was arranged by the Israeli Government? There are many experts in foreign policy, and in the Middle East, with US citizenship and no loyalty to a foreign government. Why are they not in your Administration? You have many Israeli partisans in your Administration, but where are your American partisans?

The Conundrum

And you, Mr. President, few of your predecessors have come into office with such high expectations and high hopes, and seen them squandered in such a short time. None of your predecessors since Carter signaled a willingness to view the Middle East through something other than an Israeli prism, and even Carter lacked John Kennedy's willingness to stand up to Israel. Your speech in Cairo signaled a stance on this issue in the tradition of Kennedy and Carter, and it went nowhere at all.

I understand the constraints, dealing with a Congress that does not now seem to contain a single person in either party in either House willing to stand up to the Jewish lobby. But are you so blind, so ignorant, so lacking in courage that you cannot and will not go directly to the American people? Do you like being cast as a laughing-stock and a weakling in public by Israel and its supporters? Do you like being an "Uncle Tom" to the Zionists?

Now, I do not care greatly for Obama as a person, nor anything at all for his domestic political agenda, but appearances notwithstanding, it would be wrong to dismiss him as simply a fool or a puppet. A fool or a puppet would never have made the Cairo speech two years ago in the first place. No politician anywhere enjoys taking the lead, and then looking behind, finding no one in support and clouds of criticism, and then having to back down from so public a stance. The egos of the breed cry out against such exercises in futility.

The same applies in part to some in his Administration, and to others, I suspect, in the Congress. Those who are Jewish, especially with dual Israeli citizenship, need no prompting to follow the Zionist agenda; that agenda is their agenda, heart and mind. The so-called Christian Zionists, mostly evangelical Protestants, are much the same, although for very different theological reasons, some of which ought to make Jewish Zionists more than a little nervous. And there are those in this and previous Administrations who have made their own Faustian bargain with AIPAC and its cohorts in the service of their own ambition.

But there are many in both houses of the Congress, and more within the armed services and the bureaucracy, who do not fit comfortably into any of these categories. Those in the Congress in particular have been bribed, blackmailed or bullied into submission, servility or silence, and few if any can be happy with their situation. Most simply make the best of an uncomfortable bargain, trading their own continuation or advancement in office for their support of Israeli ambitions, and their silence when confronted by Israeli crimes.

Yet this is a potential weakness in the edifice of Zionist influence and control in the US, and it should and must be our task to focus on that political battlefield, and not simply shuttle trucks and ships toward Gaza in the hope that some will get through the Israeli blockade. The remainder of the series that follows, Palestine and the United States: A Battle Lost, A War to Win, which has been completed and will be published in the coming weeks, is one attempt to define the parameters of a strategy to do precisely that. Executed properly, it and others like it may be a first step toward the saving of both the United States and Palestine.

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

By Uri Avnery * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

In a rare late-night session, the Knesset has finally adopted two obnoxious racist laws. Both are clearly directed against Israel's Arab citizens, a fifth of the population.

The first makes it possible to annul the citizenship of persons found guilty of offences against the security of the state. Israel prides itself on having a great variety of such laws. Annulling citizenship on such grounds is contrary to international law and conventions.

The second is more sophisticated. It allows communities of less than 400 families to appoint "admission committees" which can prevent unsuitable persons from living there. Very shrewdly, it specifically forbids the rejection of candidates because of race, religion, etc. – but that paragraph is tantamount to a wink. An Arab applicant will simply be rejected because of his many children or lack of military service.

A majority of members did not bother to show up for the vote. After all, it was late and they have families, too. Who knows, some may even have been ashamed to vote.

But far worse is a third law that is certain to pass its final stages within a few weeks: the law to outlaw the boycott of the settlements.

Since its early stages, the original crude text of this bill has been refined somewhat.

As it stands now, the law will punish any person or association publicly calling for a boycott of Israel – economic, academic or cultural. "Israel", according to this law, means any Israeli enterprise or person, in Israel or in any territory controlled by Israel. Simply put, it is all about the settlements. And not only about the boycott of the products of the settlements, which was initiated by Gush Shalom some 13 years ago, but also about the recent refusal of actors to perform in the settlement of Ariel and the call by academics not to support the so-called University Centre there. It also applies, of course, to any call for the boycott of an Israeli university or an Israeli commercial enterprise.

This is a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation: it is anti-democratic, discriminatory, annexationist and altogether unconstitutional.

Everybody has the right to buy or not to buy whatever he or she desires, from whomsoever he or she chooses. That is so obvious that it needs no confirmation. It is a part of the right to free expression guaranteed by any constitution worth its salt, and an essential element of a free market economy.

I may buy from the store on the corner, because I like the owner, and shun the supermarket opposite, which exploits its employees. Companies expend huge sums of money to convince me to buy their products rather than others.

What about ideologically motivated campaigns? Years ago, while on a visit to New York, I was persuaded not to buy grapes produced in California, because the owners oppressed the Mexican migrant workers. This boycott went on for a long time and was – if I remember right – successful. Nobody dared to suggest that such boycotts should be outlawed.

Here in Israel, rabbis of many communities regularly paste up posters calling upon their flock not to buy at certain shops, which they believe are not kosher, or not kosher enough. Such calls are commonplace.

Such publications are fully compatible with human rights. Citizens for whom pork is an abomination, have the right to be informed about which shops sell pork and which do not. As far as I know, no one in Israel has ever contested this right.

Sooner or later, some anti-religious groups will publish calls to boycott kosher shops, which pay the rabbis – some of them the most intolerant of their kind – heavy levies for their certificates. They support a vast religious establishment that openly advocates turning Israel into a Halakha state – the Jewish equivalent of a Muslim Shari'ah state". Many thousands of Kashrut supervisors and myriads of other religious functionaries are paid for by the largely secular public.

So what about an anti-rabbinical boycott? It can hardly be forbidden, since the religious and the anti-religious are guaranteed equal rights.

So it appears that not all ideologically motivated boycotts are wrong. Nor do the initiators of this particular bill – racists of the Lieberman school, Likud rightists and Kadima "centrists" – claim this. For them, boycotts are only wrong if they are directed against the nationalist, annexationist policies of this government.

This is explicitly stated in the law itself. Boycotts are unlawful if they are directed against the State of Israel – not, for example, by the State of Israel against some other state. No Israeli in his right mind would retroactively condemn the boycott imposed by world Jewry on Germany immediately after the Nazis came to power – a boycott that served as a pretext for Josef Goebbels when he unleashed on 1 April 1933, the first Nazi anti-Semitic boycott (Deutsche wehrt euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!)

Nor does any upright Zionist find fault with the boycott measures passed by Congress, under intense Jewish pressure, against the late Soviet Union, in order to break down the barriers to free Jewish emigration. These measures were hugely successful.

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, promotes the Store to Store campaign, part of drive to boycott of goods produced by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Photograph: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images

No less successful was the worldwide boycott against the Apartheid regime in South Africa – a boycott warmly welcomed by the South African liberation movement, though it also hurt the African workers employed by the boycotted white businesses (an argument now repeated by Israeli settlers, who exploit Palestinian labourers for starvation wages).

So political boycotts are not wrong, as long as they are directed against others. It's the old "Hottentot morality" of colonial lore – "if I steal your cow, that's right. If you steal my cow, that's wrong".

Rightists can call for action against left-wing organizations. Leftists cannot call for action against right-wing organizations. It's as simple as that.

But the law is not only anti-democratic and discriminatory, it is also blatantly annexationist.

By a simple semantic trick, in less than a sentence, the lawmakers do what successive Israeli government did not dare to do: they annex the Palestinian occupied territories to Israel.

Or maybe it's the other way round: are the settlers annexing Israel?

The word "settlements" does not appear in the text. God forbid. Much as the word "Arabs" does not appear in any of the other laws.

Instead, the text simply states that calls for the boycott of Israel, which are forbidden by the law, include the boycott of Israeli institutions and enterprises in all territories controlled by Israel. This includes, of course, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

This is the core of the matter. Everything else is camouflage...

Recently, the folly of the law was demonstrated by a French judge in Grenoble. This incident concerned the quasi-monopolistic Israeli agricultural products export company, Agrexco. The judge suspected the company of fraud, because products of the settlements were falsely declared as coming from Israel. This could well be fraud, too, because Israeli exports to Europe are entitled to preferential treatment which the products of the settlements are not.

Such incidents are occurring more and more often in various European countries. This law will cause them to multiply.

In the original version, boycotters would have committed a criminal offence and been fined. That would have caused us great joy, because our refusal to pay the fines and and subsequent imprisonment would have dramatized the matter.

This clause has now been omitted. But every single company in the settlements and, indeed, every single settler who feels hurt by the boycott can sue – for unlimited damages – any group calling for the boycott and any individual connected with the call. Since the settlers are tightly organized and enjoy unlimited funds from all kinds of casino owners and sleazy sex merchants, they can file thousands of suits and practically paralyze the boycott movement. That, of course, is the aim.

The fight is far from over. Upon the enactment of the law, we shall call upon the Supreme Court to annul it, as contrary to Israel's fundamental constitutional principles and basic human rights.

As Menachem Begin used to say: "There are still judges in Jerusalem!"

Or are there?

* Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, writer and peace activist. Author of 1948: A Soldier's Tale - The Bloody Road to Jerusalem.

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

"If I were an Israeli, I'd be worried. If I were an Arab, I'd be insulted. If I were a critic only of Israel, I'd be ashamed."

Thus concluded Richard Cohen in the Washington Post (28 February 2011)

What Cohen would be worried about is what he perceives as anti-Semitism in the Arab world, fuelled in World War II by the Muslim cleric Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

According to Cohen, Al-Husseini "the titular leader of Muslim Palestinians, broadcast Nazi propaganda to the Middle East, recruited European Muslims for the SS, exulted in the Holocaust and after the war went on to represent his people in the Arab League."

Cohen not only faults Arabs for their support of Al-Husseini, but for Cohen's conclusion that "the Arab world is saturated by Jew-hatred".

This is a propaganda line that serves no other purpose but to instil fear in Jews everywhere.

Voices like Cohen's - and there are many - have a much greater impact on Israelis and their worldwide supporters than any biased statements made by a single Muslim cleric.

But then Zionists in America feed their own paranoia by deceiving themselves and distorting reality in their image twisting house of mirrors.

Cohen says "If I were an Arab I'd be insulted."

To Cohen, an Arab should be insulted by Al-Husseini seeking support from the Axis of Germany and Italy prior to World War II.

In 1941, Al-Husseini sought a public declaration of support from the Axis nations for: 1) Arab independence from British and French rule; 2) the freedom for the independent Arab nations to unite in some form; 3) and for the elimination of the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Why should those goals give cause for anyone except an Israeli to suggest that Arabs should be insulted?

Instead of putting Al-Husseini's mission to save Palestine for the Palestinians into proper perspective, Cohen attempts to distort history.

Al-Husseini also sought military and financial assistance for an Arab uprising that he promised he could unleash, though only in conjunction with the Axis declaration.

Finally, Cohen crows "If I were a critic only of Israel I'd be ashamed."

If American supporters of Israel were more critical of Israel when Israel deserves it, there would be little call to complain of the crimes committed by Israelis.

Israel stands in constant denial of any wrong-doing, whether the wrong happens to be killing by the Stern Gang, apartheid treatment of Palestinians, murders in Gaza or illegal Jewish settlements.

If the rest of the world attempts to pass a resolution finding Israel guilty of wrong-doing, the US, under Zionist control, vetoes it. This has happened 36 times in the past four decades.

Jews who criticize anything that Israel does, no matter how horrendous, have been dubbed "self-hating Jews".

Major US Jewish organizations, from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, are committed to defending Israel whether right or wrong.

"Any time you engage in an activity critical of Israel you are trying to destroy the state of Israel," Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, said.

Israel isn't even able to accept criticism by Zionist Jews. Judge Goldstone is a case in point. He was severely faulted for identifying wrongdoing by Israel in Gaza even though his investigation was thorough and fair.

While Israel continues with apartheid practices, illegal settlements and attempts to get the US to bomb Iran, its blind supporters promote anti-Semitism.

It's time for reflection and self-criticism. Thinking like Richard Cohen's only increases fear by Jews and disdain by others.

* 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.

By Henry Siegman * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

For the longest time, Israeli governments have explained their resistance to Palestinian statehood by pointing to the Palestinians' and the Arab world's democracy deficit.

The dishonesty of that explanation has now been exposed to even the most credulous by the reaction of Israel's government to the democratic revolutions sweeping the region. We are now told by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government that the overthrow of Tunisia's and Egypt's rulers and the challenges to other regional autocrats, whose regimes provided Israel with a certain stability by repressing forcefully popular Arab anger over Israel's occupation policies, no longer allows Israel to accede to risky "concessions" that a peace accord entails.

So that while until now it was the region's democratic deficit that supposedly prevented Israel from ending its occupation, now it is the region's surfeit of democracy that stands in its way.

It is hard to believe there is today even a single head of state anywhere who still does not understand that Israel's settlement project in the West Bank-secretly encouraged, financed and protected by successive Israeli governments and the IDF-never had a purpose other than to secure permanent Israeli control of Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordanian border. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel, who not so long ago pledged Germany's unflagging support for Israel's quest for security, recently told Netanyahu that no one can any longer believe anything he says about Israel's interest in peace.

It is therefore hard to understand those who believe that the democracy revolutions in the region are a reason to urge Israelis and Palestinians to resume direct talks. Direct talks have not been resisted by Netanyahu, for they have served as an ideal cover for the continued expansion of the settlements-falsely holding out the promise that the controversy over the settlements will be resolved as soon as agreement is reached and a border has been set. So why waste time arguing about a settlement freeze now?

But the border is the one subject that Netanyahu refuses to discuss in these direct talks. If he were to disclose where he intends to draw that border, his intention to retain control over the entire West Bank and prevent the creation of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state would be exposed for all to see. Instead, Netanyahu speaks of a solution consistent with Israel's security, which in his conception of that term cannot accommodate a Palestinian entity that is not fully under Israel's control.

Unfortunately, Netanyahu has been aided and abetted in his deceptions by the U.S., for the Obama administration refused to endorse terms of reference that identify the 1967 border as the starting point of negotiations. The inescapable implication of that refusal is that, for all practical purposes, the Obama administration accepts the Likud's definition of the occupied territories as "disputed territories," to which Israel has as much a claim as the Palestinians do. Imagine what the U.S. would say to the Palestinians if they were to refer to any part of Israel as "disputed territory" to which they too have a claim.

It is not that President Obama is unaware of what Netanyahu is up to. But rather than calling a spade a spade, his administration thought it would work its way around Netanyahu's deceptions by pressing for a settlement freeze. Instead, it was Netanyahu who worked his way around the freeze.

The lesson to be learned from the serial failures of America's peace initiatives is that they cannot be based on a lie. We cannot pretend to believe Netanyahu's recently announced acquiescence to a two-state solution if we are not prepared to hold his feet to the fire when it comes to the issue of the 1967 border. Our recent veto of the UN resolution condemning the settlements was so shameful not only because it helped Israel continue its settlement project but because it abetted Netanyahu's lie that he can be for peace even if he rejects Palestinians' rights on their side of the 1967 border.

There is no better time for a resort to truth-telling than now, when citizens in countries neighboring Israel are risking their lives in the hundreds and thousands to put an end to the lies of dictatorial "security" regimes that have denied them their rights and their very humanity.

The truth the U.S. needs to tell Netanyahu and his government is not that they must return to meaningless peace talks, but that international law and previous agreements do not allow Israel to acquire territory beyond the 1967 border without Palestinian consent. They must be told that their insistence that Palestinians must wait a generation or two, if not longer, before they will be ready for statehood is indistinguishable from the insistence of Arab dictators that they must remain in power because their people cannot be trusted to rule themselves-and equally repugnant to America's values.

* Henry Siegman, President of the U.S./Middle East Project, is a non-resident visiting professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and a consultant to the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre.

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

Part I

There is no doubt that Julian Assange, the head of the Wikileaks organization, and Bradley Manning, the soldier who allegedly leaked U.S. classified documents, are being singled out and made examples of by the Obama administration. Their suffering constitutes a message which goes like this: if you inform the public of what the United States government is doing, no matter how illegal and disgusting it might be, our police and intelligence agencies will track you down and turn your life into hell. We will do that to you whether we can prove you committed a crime or not (as in the case of Assange) and we will do it to you even if it runs counter to our own legal codes (as in the case of Manning).

That is why Julian Assange is hold up in a British home under virtual house arrest devoting most of his energy to avoiding extradition to Sweden on what is almost certainly an exaggerated charge of sexual misconduct. The Swedes are cooperating with Washington and if Assange is extradited there he may well end up in the U.S. where, despite having not been charged with a crime, various politicians and talking heads have called for "punishment" of the most draconian sort. And it is not just Assange. Most of those involved with Wikileaks have been reduced to fear and trembling. As Glenn Greenwald puts it, "all of them, to a person, no matter what their nationality is, the thing they fear most is ending up in the hands of American authorities and in the American...justice system." Greenwald notes the irony of it all. For the truth tellers, the land of the free has become a land of justice denied.

And, speaking of draconian punishment and justice denied, Bradley Manning who, for the past nine months, has been in incarcerated in the brig at Marine base in Quantico Virginia, is subject to treatment that is certainly cruel and unusual and thus illegal. He is in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. In the 24^th hour he is taken into another room where he can walk about shackled. This is for exercise. If he stops walking at any time during this hour he is immediately returned to his cell. Periodically he is put under constant surveillance because the military says he is potentially suicidal. How did he get that way? He was not suicidal upon his arrest. If in fact he is suicidal now it probably because the U.S. military has subjected him to conditions that drove him in that direction. The Commandant at Quantico has apparently seen fit to turn his brig into a stateside version of one of those infamous black hole detention facilities used by the CIA. The ones in which the Bush gang conducted "torture by proxy." At Quantico we have decided to torture Bradley Manning ourselves.

Sadly, all of this is being done on Barack Obama's watch. Yes, the President has defended Gay rights both in military and civilian society, and he has pushed for the employment of people with disabilities. However, when it comes to the federal government's actions in violation of its own laws, he has refused to interfere or punish. This has produced the most startling juxtapositions. The U.S. government can lie to its people and start a war on that basis that kills millions of people (the ultimate crime according to the Nuremberg trials) and Obama will not investigate and will not prosecute. He will in fact do worse than nothing, as when he put pressure on Spain to cancel its own investigation of crimes against international law under the Bush administration. But, if someone like Bradley Manning defies the American code of secrecy and reveals the truth, President Obama will allow him to be driven half mad and charged with "aiding the enemy" which carries the death penalty. But wait a minute. If your war is based on lies and manipulation and a good deal of official stupidity, it logically follows that the "enemy" is a contrived one. Under those circumstances does the charge of aiding such an enemy make any sense? Well, it makes sense if government secrecy has kept everyone mostly ignorant of the lies and other machinations. All of this makes you wonder how the man in the Oval Office sleeps at night.

Part II

And what about the rest of us? President Obama is not doing these things alone. What is happening to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning requires the cooperation or acquiescence of at least two additional groups.

1) The first group is made up of those employed to carry out the draconian measures now being practiced. You do not have to be familiar with the sociologist Max Weber to figure out how such people can do what they do, largely with impunity. They are mostly bureaucrats and bureaucracies have evolved so as to hide responsibility. President Harry Truman once reacted to this fact by putting a sign in his office that said "the buck stops here." In other words, buried in organizations with layers of authority, are anonymous millions who can always claim that they are "just following orders." And, as a number of psychological studies have shown, most of us do in fact "just follow orders" especially if we are enmeshed in a peer group which is doing likewise. To this might be added the fact that there is always a sub-group of order takers who get their adrenalin highs from hurting others (every combat platoon has one or more of these). They are the ubiquitous torturers, abusive prison guards, and lower echelon thugs that find employment with all governments, including Washington. They were particularly active under the Bush regime. To be sure there are laws against acting in a criminal fashion, even as a member of a government department. However, if your illegal actions are officially sanctioned, you are almost certain to get away with it. One will recall that the Bush gang, from top to bottom, is protected from prosecution by President Obama. Problems only develop when someone "blows the whistle" in a very public way. It is interesting that in such cases, more often than not, it is the "whistle blower who gets punished, and not the criminals. Assange and Manning are good examples of this.

2) The second group is the citizenry at large. Particularly in a democracy like the United States, these grossly inhumane acts by government officials are harder to carry on if the public knows about them and strongly objects. So there are two qualifiers here: a) if the public knows and b) if the public objects.

a) Secrecy, along with a less than aggressive media, is the way the American government attempts to assure that its own citizens do not know of its illegal doings. Until the age of the Internet this was relatively easy to do. Most of the privately owned media outlets are either whole heartedly conservative in outlook, and thus share the government's attitude toward secrecy, or they are scared of the legal complications and bad publicity the government can cause them. There have been times in recent history when some news companies have acted in aggressive ways to assert the public's right to know (one thinks of the Washington Post at the time of the Watergate scandal) but the present day is not one of them. This is demonstrated by the fact that there has been no concerted effort on the part of the American media to defend Julian Assange, much less Bradley Manning. The combination of a government addicted to secrecy and news businesses that are essentially castrated means that what the public knows is what the government and its media allies tell it. So, unless someone breaches the walls of this system, either by doing something incredibly stupid, such as torturing prisoners at Abu Gharib while being photographed, or something incredibly brave, such as making public thousands of incriminating government documents, the citizenry will know little.

b) However, there is the second factor and that is objecting if you do happen to learn that something is amiss. One cannot assume that such objection comes automatically. Most people are so engrossed in their private lives that they do not pay attention to what the government is doing, particularly what it is doing abroad. They are more than willing to give Washington the benefit of the doubt unless the media aggressively asserts otherwise. So, when Obama says he will not allow for an official investigation of the Bush gang is there a public outcry? No. For that matter, if Washington quietly dropped all the charges against Bradford Manning and Fox News failed to go ballistic over the issue, would their be a public outcry? No. In the absence of an aggressive media to stir the pot and keep the citizenry focused, the default position of the majority is always a local one. In other words, if it does not impact my life, I am not going to pay attention unless you make me do so.

Part III

It may well be that the U.S. government has already achieved its goal when it comes to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. It has created an atmosphere of fear and trembling so as to reduce the probability that anyone else will soon come along and replicate their behavior. In this effort law and due process mean nothing to either the President, the men and women who carry out his orders, or the citizens who go about their daily affairs with only minimal awareness that these two individuals are being harassed and tortured in their country's name. It is a sad, but hardly unique, situation. It makes one nostalgic for those days in the 1960s when there was a another war based on lies, but also an aggressively skeptical media and a military draft that impacted lots of citizens' lives. It is no mistake that this combination, one that indeed got the American masses into the streets, is missing today.

* 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.

By Stephen M. Walt* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Yaser Ahmad

Last Friday the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolution condemning Israel's continued expansion of settlements in the occupied territory of the West Bank. The resolution didn't question Israel's legitimacy, didn't declare that "Zionism is racism," and didn't call for a boycott or sanctions. It just said that the settlements were illegal and that Israel should stop building them, and called for a peaceful, two-state solution with "secure and recognized borders. The measure was backed by over 120 countries, and 14 members of the security council voted in favor. True to form, only the United States voted no.

There was no strategic justification for this foolish step, because the resolution was in fact consistent with the official policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson. All of those presidents has understood that the settlements were illegal and an obstacle to peace, and each has tried (albeit with widely varying degrees of enthusiasm) to get Israel to stop building them.

Yet even now, with the peace process and the two-state solution flat-lining, the Obama administration couldn't bring itself to vote for a U.N. resolution that reflected the U.S. government's own position on settlements. The transparently lame explanation given by U.S. officials was that the security council isn't the right forum to address this issue. Instead, they claimed that the settlements issue ought to be dealt with in direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and that the security council should have nothing to say on the issue.

This position is absurd on at least two grounds. First, the expansion of settlements is clearly an appropriate issue for the security council to consider, given that it is authorized to address obvious threats to international peace and security. Second, confining this issue to "direct talks" doesn't make much sense when those talks are going nowhere. Surely the Obama administration recognizes that its prolonged and prodigious effort to get meaningful discussions going have been a complete bust? It is hard to believe that they didn't recognize that voting "yes" on the resolution might be a much-needed wake-up call for the Israeli government, and thus be a good way to get the peace process moving again? Thus far, all that Obama's Middle East team has managed to do in two years is to further undermine U.S. credibility as a potential mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, and to dash the early hopes that the United States was serious about "two states for two peoples." And while Obama, Mitchell, Clinton, Ross, and the rest of the team have floundered, the Netanyahu government has continued to evict Palestinian residents from their homes, its bulldozers and construction crews continuing to seize more and more of the land on which the Palestinians hoped to create a state.

Needless to say, the United States is all by its lonesome on this issue. Our fellow democracies -- France, Germany, Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Colombia -- all voted in favor of the resolution, but not the government of the Land of the Free. And it's not as if Netanyahu deserved to be rewarded at this point, given how consistently he has stiffed Obama and his Middle East team.

For more on this latest sad chapter in the annals of American Middle East diplomacy, see M.J Rosenberg here and here, the Magnes Zionist here and here, and Gideon Levy here.

As these commentators recognize, the real reason for Obama's misguided decision was the profound influence of the Israel lobby. Indeed, few observers have missed this simple and obvious fact. One can only conclude that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's repeated claims that they are "friends of Israel" and devoted to its security are nothing more than empty, politically expedient rhetoric. Whatever they may say, the policies they are pursuing -- including this latest veto -- are in fact harmful to Israel's long-term future. The man who declared in Cairo on June 4, 2009 that a two-state solution was "in the "Israel's interest, the Palestinians' interest, America's interest, and the world's interest" must have changed his mind, because his actions ever since have merely hastened the moment when creating two viable states will be impossible (if that is not already the case). Then remember what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2007, "if the two-state solution fails, Israel will face a South African style struggle for political rights." And "once that happens," he warned, "the state of Israel is finished."

If Obama were a true friend of Israel, in short, he'd be doing whatever he could to keep it from expanding its ruinous occupation and making the Zionist vision unsustainable. And given that Congress remains hopeless on this issue, he could have shown he was a true friend by instructing his U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, to vote for the resolution, as a diverse array of foreign policy experts had suggested. He would also have devoted some portion of his first two years in office to explaining to the American people why some "tough love" was needed on both sides (i.e., not just the Palestinians), and he would have recruited America's democratic allies in a genuine effort to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a fair and stable end. Had he done these things, most Americans would have supported him. Instead, his lame actions are just enabling the occupation, and for the most cynical domestic political reasons (like safeguarding his re-election prospects in 2012). Even worse, he did it at a moment when the Arab world is in ferment, and when the voice of the Arab street is beginning to be heard. But instead of aligning itself with international law, basic principles of justice, and its own stated position, the Obama administration caved. Again.

If the United States hopes to be on the right side of history, it is time to start thinking about what its policy should be when everybody finally acknowledges that "two states for two peoples" is no longer a practical possibility. This is going to happen sooner or later, and anyone who is still advocating for a two-state solution at that point is going to sound like an ignorant fool. Not because of the flaws in that option, but simply because it will be impossible to implement. What alternative solution will the president and secretary of state support then? Ethnic cleansing? A binational, liberal democracy in which all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine have equal civil and political rights? Or permanent apartheid, in the form of disconnected Palestinian Bantustans under de facto Israeli control? That awkward reality may not be apparent while Obama is president (which is probably what he is hoping), but it will be a damning legacy to leave to his successor, as well as a tragedy for two peoples who have already known more than their share.

Postscript: Some readers may think I am being too defeatist here, and they might cite in evidence Bernard Avishai's New York Times Magazine essay detailing the alleged "near-miss" peace talks between Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Avishai's account portrays the two leaders as close to a deal and suggests that it would not be that hard to resurrect a similar deal today. It's an interesting article, but there are at least four problems with his optimistic account. First, Olmert was the lamest of lame ducks by 2008, because he was due to be indicted on corruption charges and everyone knew it, so the talks themselves were something of a side-show. Second, even had this not been the case, it is by no means clear that Olmert could have sold the Israeli public on the proposed deal. Third, it is not even clear that the two sides were that close to an agreement, given Olmert's insistence that Israel could not withdraw from Ariel and Maale Adumim (two settlement blocs that thrust deep inside the West Bank). Fourth, and probably most important, political trends in Israel are headed the other way (among other things, Avigdor Lieberman wasn't foreign minister back then), which makes the Olmert/Abbas talks even less relevant. For excellent critical responses to Avishai's piece, see Noam Sheizaf, Matthew Taylor, and Ilene Cohen.

* Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.