Why Steve Rosen is Suing AIPAC

The Samson Gambit

On March 2 former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) foreign policy chief Steve Rosen filed a civil lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Rosen accuses his former employer, directors, and outside public relations firm of libel and slander. Rosen seeks damages of $5 million from AIPAC and punitive damages of $500,000 each from former board members and the public relations firm Rational PR, L.C. An analysis of Rosen’s civil complaint reveals how his “Samson’s gambit” of threatening to pull down the walls of justice over the heads of the Israel lobby may prevail in getting criminal espionage charges dropped within the next two months.

In August 2005, Steve Rosen, fellow AIPAC employee Keith Weissman, and the Pentagon’s Col. Lawrence Franklin were indicted under the Espionage Act for allegedly trafficking classified U.S. national defense information in the interest of provoking a stronger U.S. posture toward Israel’s arch nemesis, Iran. Franklin has since pled guilty and received a prison sentence and fine. Franklin has not reported to prison, since he is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors and ready to testify when the criminal trial of Rosen and Weissman-repeatedly delayed by sophisticated defense team legal maneuvers-finally commences on May 27.

In his civil lawsuit against AIPAC Rosen maintains both his immunity from the Espionage Act and right to obtain tightly held government information for effective lobbying and public relations on behalf of Israel:

To be effective, organizations engaged in advocacy in the field of foreign policy need to have earlier and more detailed information about policy developments inside the government and diplomatic issues with other countries than is normally available to or needed by the wider public. ‘Agencies of the government sometimes choose to provide such additional information about policy and diplomatic issues to these outside interest groups in order to win support for what they are doing among important domestic constituencies and to send messages to select target audiences.

One surprising inside glimpse of AIPAC information flow in Rosen’s complaint reveals how special relationships cultivated with U.S. government officials yielded periodic harvests of tightly held information. This bounty was then internally circulated and funneled to outside constituencies at the discretion of AIPAC’s mirror bureaucracy of self-appointed declassification agents:

To control the flow of such information, government agencies in the field of foreign policy have designated individuals with the authority to determine and differentiate which information disclosures would be harmful to the United States, and which disclosures would benefit the United States through the work of their agencies and would not be harmful to the United States. To maintain liaison with the authorized agency officials who at times are willing to provide such information, organizations like AIPAC have designated officials of their own who have the requisite expertise and relationships to deal with government foreign policy agencies. At AIPAC, Steve Rosen was one of the principal officials who, along with Executive Director Howard Kohr and a few other individuals, were expected to maintain relationships with such agencies, receive such information, and share it with AIPAC Board of Directors and its Senior Staff for possible further distribution. AIPAC, and those defendants who were AIPAC officials and/or members of its Board of Directors, knew that Mr. Rosen and others at AIPAC were receiving such information and expected that they would share it with them.

More damning to AIPAC, Rosen states unequivocally that other top AIPAC officials not only knew what he was doing, but also received classified information for which they both praised and financially rewarded Rosen and others handling and channeling classified information:

Mr. Rosen was highly successful in his job, and was regularly praised and generously rewarded by AIPAC’s Executive Director, its President, and its Board of Directors, including by those named as defendants herein who are and/or who were in those positions, for obtaining and sharing such information as described in paragraph no. 18 above. Indeed at the time it was shared with them, AIPAC’s Executive Director, its President, and its Board of Directors including those named as defendants herein who are and/or were in those positions, were well aware of the nature of the information obtained by Mr. Rosen as described in paragraph no. 18 above. Being so aware, they would often share that same information with others outside of AIPAC, particularly valuing Mr. Rosen for his ability to provide them with such information. In fact, AIPAC’s Executive Director, its President, and its Board of Directors, including by those named as defendants herein who are and/or who were in those positions as well as others of AIPAC’s staff, also obtained and shared with each other, and with others outside of AIPAC, such information as described in paragraph no. 18 above, and did so on a regular basis quite apart from the information obtained and shared with them by Mr. Rosen.

Curiously, Steve Rosen is not the only former AIPAC staffer suddenly surfacing to confront AIPAC. Another even intimates that AIPAC is a hotbed for activities of questionable legality. Former AIPAC chief lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield characterized AIPAC not as classified information bazaar, but rather as a covert foreign agent for Israeli governments bent on thwarting U.S. brokered peace deals. While simultaneously forecasting the imminent demise of the government’s criminal prosecution against Weissman and Rosen, Bloomfield points to insider forces slowly arraying highly damaging information against AIPAC:

In cutting loose the pair, AIPAC insisted it had no idea what they were doing. Not so, say insiders, former colleagues, sources close to the defense, and others familiar with the organization.

One of the topics AIPAC won’t want discussed, say these sources, is how closely it coordinated with Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1990s, when he led the Israeli Likud opposition and later when he was prime minister, to impede the Oslo peace process being pressed by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

That could not only validate AIPAC’s critics, who accuse it of being a branch of the Likud, but also lead to an investigation of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

What they don’t want out is that even though they publicly sounded like they were supporting the Oslo process, they were working all the time to undermine it,’ said a well-informed source.

Why the not-so-subtle public threats? Both Bloomfield and Rosen clearly feel that AIPAC violated the ethic of reciprocity when it cut loose Rosen and Weissman and halted funding for their legal defense. AIPAC fired the two to avoid indictment of the entire corporation in the aftermath of two harrowing
FBI raids. Corporate criminal indictments probably would have led to AIPAC’s immediate implosion. The melodramatic sense of betrayal that permeates the defamation complaint hinges on the flawed deal lead prosecutor Paul McNulty offered to AIPAC: “We could make real progress and get AIPAC out from under all of us.” AIPAC subsequently put Rosen and Weissman on leave and later fired them, after, in Rosen’s view, “they had approved and rewarded the very behavior which they now condemned.” AIPAC also began deploying its considerable influence in the news media to carefully place stories characterizing Rosen’s work and comportment as unacceptable and uncharacteristic, seemingly oblivious to the idea that the same tactic could also be turned against it. These particular slights may be the straws that broke the camel’s back. Rosen’s angst is palpable as he quotes AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr’s harsh treatment:

[M]r. Kohr subtly tried to make this case that Messrs. Rosen’s [another AIPAC employee] behavior was out of the ordinary for employees of the organization that considers itself one of the most powerful in Washington. At the same time, Mr. Kohr said he has taken steps to ensure that no lines in the future will be crossed by his lobbyists and analysts. ‘I will take steps necessary to ensure that every employee of AIPAC, now and in the future, conducts themselves in a manner of which you can be proud, using policies and procedures that provide transparency, accountability and maintain our effectiveness’ he said.

Rosen cites a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report to make a surprisingly frank assertion that Kohr himself not only received classified information from Rosen, but also knew it was from U.S. intelligence sources:

Further, on June 17, 2005, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported a different formulation to defame Steve Rosen: ‘No current employee knew that classified information was obtained from Larry Franklin or was involved in dissemination of such information,’ spokesperson Patrick Dorton said. In fact, Mr. Kohr had been told in writing that information obtained from Mr. Franklin originated from ‘intelligence’ sources, and Mr. Rosen knew no more about the sources or classification than Mr. Kohr.

The seemingly defeatist maneuvers of this circular firing squad partially mask Rosen’s real strategy. Millions of dollars would do him little good behind bars or preserve AIPAC’s reputation if he prevails. What Rosen needs most is for AIPAC to pull him ‘out from under all this’ as soon as possible. Otherwise AIPAC and the rest of the lobby will face the full wrath of Rosen’s accumulated arsenal: access to damning AIPAC internal information and a multitude of allies who follow the credo that “divided we fall.” Rosen, having recently proven his considerable powers even under indictment by derailing the nomination of Charles Freeman at the National Intelligence Council, now clearly expects AIPAC to muster the entirety of its own considerable resources to achieve concrete results before May 27. For bystanders, the key remaining question is whether Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama have the mettle to withstand the most intense maneuvers from all directions urging them to fold the Espionage Act trial before it begins.

Not since former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy ordered AIPAC’s parent organization to register as a foreign agent has the Israel lobby been as existentially threatened by rule of law in America. The elite mainstream press, from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal, has already pitched in to help by urging the DOJ to quickly march away from the prosecution. Pundits who before Barack Obama entered office saw the case as a threat to “freedom of the press” are now repositioning the trial as a vestigial legacy of the Bush administration’s pervasive secrecy.

But the passage of time has not played in AIPAC’s or the defendants’ favor. In the economic aftermath of a disastrous war empowered by carefully channeled disinformation, many Americans are questioning how rule of law might temper selective leaks from lobbyists obliviously liquidating U.S. tax dollars and soldiers in foreign follies. The Espionage Act should function like the financial industry’s Fair Disclosure regulation, which protects small investors from being victimized by larger investors trading on material inside information. If AIPAC obtains closely held information, shouldn’t all Americans instantly be privy? Also, that AIPAC is a de facto foreign agent covertly injecting Israeli government mandates into Congress and the executive branch isn’t quite the explosive secret AIPAC insiders presume it to be. In 2008, the DOJ grudgingly declassified all internal files detailing its earlier three-year fight to register AIPAC’s parent organization as a foreign agent. Any American who checks the Foreign Agents Registration Act against AIPAC’s routine activities knows it is the agent of a foreign power. Middle East historians have no need of Douglas Bloomfield’s verification that the Israel lobby thwarts presidential peace initiatives-the transcripts of Sen. J.W. Fulbright’s investigation of the Israel lobby in 1963 reveal precisely how such concerted actions thwarted the Johnson plan for Middle East peace. The issue is whether the Department of Justice will at long last stand up to AIPAC’s obvious violations of important laws that protect the interests of average Americans. Both John F. and Robert F. Kennedy struggled mightily and failed. If Obama and Holder similarly fail, it is not for lack of evidence now being delivered on silver platters from AIPAC operatives.

For, ironically, everything Steven Rosen alleges in his lawsuit and Bloomfield in his bluff is verifiably true. As an individual actor, Rosen truly is innocent of AIPAC’s protective ruse that he and Weissman alone were in any way unique at AIPAC. Yet another prior incident-also now public-substantiates this. AIPAC never adequately explained how its possession of a 300-page classified report in 1984 outlining the secret American negotiating position for the fatally flawed U.S.-Israel Free Trade Area could possibly be legal. The U.S. government, even in 2009, still won’t declassify that report for an overdue public audit.

Steve Rosen’s late legal gambit cannot obscure the obvious. The real issue isn’t whether AIPAC failed its lobbyists by jettisoning them in a panic; it is whether the Department of Justice failed Americans when it didn’t indict the entire American Israel Public Affairs Committee. If Obama and Holder resist urgent pressures from the Israel lobby, Steve Rosen’s lawsuit may actually accomplish what prosecuting attorney McNulty could not-making all top AIPAC operatives finally stand trial together.

Grant F. Smith is the author of America's Defense Line: The Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government. He currently serves as director of research at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington (IRmep), D.C. Read other articles by Grant, or visit Grant's website.

172 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Phil said on April 8th, 2009 at 9:31am #

    Too bad we can’t count on Obama, who’s been falling over himself to be an even more dedicated AIPAC toady than Bush was. But hey, such criminal organizations can’t last forever, one way or another…

  2. opeluboy said on April 8th, 2009 at 5:17pm #

    Implosion. Good.

  3. Chris said on April 10th, 2009 at 5:59am #

    Google-“Dov Zakheim,9/11”, “Dominic Suter,Urban Moving systems,9/11” and “Cheney wargames,9/11”. You dont know the half of it………

  4. Chris said on April 10th, 2009 at 6:02am #

    Also, I would urge those here to read about the Israeli spy ring that was uncovered around 9/11. Just put-“Israeli art student spy ring” into Google and ask yourself why this story wasnt aired more and why it was killed(and pulled from the website) after it aired on, of all places, Fox News Channel.

  5. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 11th, 2009 at 1:55am #

    I’m afraid we all know how this ends. How the US public can remain so mentally obtunded and morally indifferent as to allow the worst elements of one tiny, but immensely wealthy, hence powerful in the Yankee plutocratic system, minority, to run their country, suborn their legal and political processes, and lead the US and the world into religious war, is beyond belief. Of course we must never forget that many Judaics are fine, principled people, and many reject Zionism and Judeofascism, but the Messianic, chauvinist and religiously supremacist elements of Zionazism are as wicked and dangerous, and arrogant and audacious, a mob of miscreants as the world has seen for many a day.

  6. jon s said on April 11th, 2009 at 2:18am #

    Mulga-
    “One tiny…wealthy…powerful…minority…run their country” …we’ve seen it all before , like in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and other such garbage.

  7. Don Hawkins said on April 11th, 2009 at 5:23am #

    Remember reality is still here it hasn’t gone anywhere. Over the tears we made reality what we wanted it to be. The time has come for need not want. I have to admit to watch this play out is amazing to say the least. In just a few years not amazing but tuff is the word. We will know very soon if we are going to try the need part. We already heard about the shooting particles into space better known as the easy way out or no way out. “Your rocket is ready Mr. President awaiting our order sir”. So far this doesn’t look good stuck on stupid appears to be a hard habit to break for some.

  8. Bint Deeb said on April 11th, 2009 at 5:39am #

    Jon
    Open your eyes, for pete’s sake, look around you and read what Mulga said and cut the knee-jerk accusation of anti-Semitism. The “tiny. . . wealthy. . . powerful. . .minority” he’s talking about are clearly Zionists — and he says so specifically: “Of course we must never forget that many Judaics are fine, principled people, and many reject Zionism and Judeofascism, but the Messianic, chauvinist and religiously supremacist elements of Zionazism are as wicked and dangerous, and arrogant and audacious, a mob of miscreants as the world has seen for many a day.’ As someone said in a recent article, we shouldn’t be concerned that most of Obama’s closest advisors are Jews; we should be concerned that they are Zionists.

  9. Don Hawkins said on April 11th, 2009 at 5:39am #

    Two million people in front of the Capital. Do you need a permit? There is that darn question mark again. Pot’s and spoons one voice calm at peace as the best that can happen. A few speeches and as the Sun set’s 2 million with candles singing, “tomorrow, tomorrow it’s only a day away”. I wonder how Fox New’s would handle that one. Anybody out there hello anybody.

  10. joed said on April 11th, 2009 at 7:25am #

    Don Hawkins,
    amerikan people don’t care. as long as the FREE SPEACH ZONE aka DissidentVoice is available then people will not venture out. FSZ is safe and people feel their words can actually change the situation. it is a very sick society that you are asking to hold candles and sing. Ain’t gonna’ happen Don. the bad guys won and you folks lost. the fight is over. the fight is over. nothing left to do but whine and cry in the FREE SPEACH ZONE.

  11. Don Hawkins said on April 11th, 2009 at 7:57am #

    http://www.star-telegram.com/242/story/1311554.html

    Read this from one of our so called leaders from the great State of Texas where everything is bigger except there brains. Yes these people are not going out without a fight. The title of this insanity is
    BARTON: Study the (scary) figures on cap and trade. First of all the real scary part is cap and trade will not work does little to solve anything just business as usually more financial engineering to make money. Of course the number one scary part is a little thing called reality. In only a few years climate change will be kicking ass so to speak and then what? I guess these old way of thinking people will be ok still have all the marbles and be the last man standing. That’s not very nice. There is still time with a new way of thinking and I still think 2 million to start in front of the Capital singing tomorrow tomorrow it’s only a day away is a good start. These people who don’t want to try seem like a militant bunch and just not to bright. Tax the carbon return the money back to the people all the people will work as a start but seems light years away because of —— here are some words scary, militant, stupid, greedy, darkside, calm and at peace I think not. I see where Fox News is calling for a revolution in so many words, Oh so clever these people and then there is reality still here hasn’t gone anywhere. Yes a house divided falls and this time rather hard.

  12. jon s said on April 11th, 2009 at 9:51am #

    Bint Deeb-
    My reaction was based on Mulga’s use of classic anti-semitic stereotypes. For the sake of political-correctness Mulga substitutes “Zionists” for “Jews”. Another favourite ploy by anti-semites was always to say “some of my best friends are Jews…” And also note the term “Zionazism”. You don’t have to be a supporter of Zionism to understand that equating – or even comparing- Zionism with Nazism is obscene.

  13. bozh said on April 11th, 2009 at 10:51am #

    jon, respectfully,
    wld you please clarify your use of the word “anti-semite”? also what does an anti-semite do or say that makes one an anti-semite?
    is your use of the label “anti-semite” akin to the one used by dershowitz, sharon, or as that of probably 97% of world jewry?

    and why do you call people names? does any label explain/elucidate a situation?
    do you not use that label just in order to stifle free speech? or to frighten people so that they won’t speak out even the truth?

    so, it seems to that you are a zionst? as are may be 97% of all jews? As some are mini-, medi-, or maxi- zionists. tnx

  14. jon s said on April 11th, 2009 at 12:17pm #

    bozh-
    I use the term in the conventional sense: hatred of Jews, a form of racism.
    I’m a Zionist, in the sense that in my view Zionism was historically the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. What it means today is open to different interpretations: at the least I suppose it means that the Jews are a nation , and support for Israel’s right to survive, as a Jewish state.

  15. jon s said on April 11th, 2009 at 12:23pm #

    bozh-
    And see this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wJXf2nt4Y
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J08GqXMr3YE

  16. bozh said on April 11th, 2009 at 2:06pm #

    jon,
    does using the label “antisemitic” in a conventional sense mean that it is so used only or largely by ashk’c voelken? Moroccan, iraqi, yemeny people [probbly arabs] with the judaic cult [yes, it is to me] have never been discriminated as much as ashk’c voelken of europe and at least because of being shemitic; i.,e., ancestor of Shem, son of Noah.

    there never had been antishemitism among shemites but being against some of the the [mis]teaching of judaic cult goes to show that no cult tolerates another let alone gladhands it.

    initially, as euro-asian volk with the cult spread westward and northward, they have been accepted, else they wldn’t have been in russia, ukraine, poland at all

    but christians wldn’t accept judaic cult. Neither thus judaic cult accept islamic cult as evidence proves. so, judaic cult was first against midianites; then amelekites, canaanites; then agaist all goyim to this day.
    and who most complains about the intolerance? ashk’c voelken, an admixture of dozens of folks! tnx

  17. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 11th, 2009 at 8:23pm #

    Jon s, I like Gilad Atzmon’s take on the anti-Semite. That is that an anti-Semite used to be someone who hated Jews, now an anti-Semite is anyone hated by the Jews. As I clearly stated my argument is with the Zionist leadership, and those who follow their lead. As for Nazism and Zionism, I’m with Norman Finkelstein, that eminent US Jew, who stated that if the Zionists wished not to be compared to the Nazis, then they had better stop acting like them.
    I see Zionism as akin to Afrikaanerdom, the ideology of a white, European, settler society that attempts to justify its violent displacement of the indigenous, openly viewed by the settlers as racially and culturally inferior. I also see Zionism as pertaining to the Jews in the same manner as fascism did to the Italians or Nazism to the Germans. Judaism as a religion I hold in as much contempt as I do Islam, and Christianity, all being, as far as I can tell, concatenations of faery stories and lurid injunctions to mass murder, genocide and cruel punishments. All do encompass aspects of humanitarian morality that I see as far more benevolent, particularly in later developments of their doctrines, as of course do Buddhism, Confucianism and the rest. As far as Judaism goes, although I find the concept of a “chosen People’ repulsive and insulting, I know many Jews do not adhere to it, or only in so far as it entails great responsibilities rather than great privileges. As with all religion I respect the adherents’ right to follow their brainwashing as they see fit, so long as it does not harm others, which fundamentalist Judaism and Zionism clearly do.
    The ‘anti-Semite’ slur is so unimpressive an attempt to vilify and intimidate, it just provokes a yawn. Believe me, if real anti-Semites were about, treating Jews with the abominable cruelty that the Israelis inflict on the Palestinians, I would criticise them with equal intensity. Anti-Semitism, like reflex hatred of followers of Islam or Arabs, is imbecilic. No group is uniform in its character and its behaviour. Some Jews I do despise, but for their behaviour, not their adherence to their religion or tribal background. With Zionism, there is the separate question of adherence to an evil ideology. I’m sure I’ve met decent Zionists, but I think they would be in the minority, like decent Nazis or decent fascists, who we know did exist, but in the great minority. Equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is, in my opinion, a smear, a lie and a slur, as I know from my own experience.

  18. jon s said on April 12th, 2009 at 1:09am #

    Mulga-
    I’m glad to see that you condemn Anti-Semitism. Unfortunately it does still exist today – on the extreme Right , in the Arab and Moslem world (groups like Hamas ), and elsewhere, sometimes camouflaged as Anti-Zionism.
    The comparison of Zionism with Nazism is obscene because the Nazis murdered 6 million innocent Jews , in mass shootings, in gas chambers, by deliberate starvation, by countless other measures, without the existence of any kind of conflict between the victims and Germany, except in the Nazis’ imagination.
    On the other hand between Israel and the Palestinians there is a real conflict, tragic and bloody – over territory and legitimacy and occupation and terrorism and settlements and so on. Neither side is totally innocent or passive (as the Jews were in the Holocaust). And of course Israel is not carrying out a program of genocidal mass murder.
    The analogy with Afrikaanerdom is also flawed. Zionism sought to liberate the Jewish people and return them to their ancestral homeland . On the way they collided with Arab nationalism, creating the conflict. Jews are not strangers or outsiders in the land of Israel/Palestine and Israeli society is not “white, European, settler”.
    Bozh- All I can say is “huh?”. I happen to be a professional in the field of Jewish History and I find it difficult to understand what you’re talking about.

  19. Deadbeat said on April 12th, 2009 at 1:17am #

    Zionism = Racism. Apparently Jon S supports the racist appeal of Zionism. Arab nationalism is a reaction to Western colonialism. Zionism on the other hand is a racist ideology.

  20. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 12th, 2009 at 2:07am #

    Well, we’ll just have to disagree jon. I simply do not see how Jewish settler colonialism is any different from any other European colonialism. As you must surely acknowledge, Zionism, from Herzl on, knew Palestine was a populated land, with a settled people, of many descents, including Judaic, who had been there for millenia. Sure they had changed religions from time to time, other people had come into the region, and others departed, as is true of just about every square inch of the planet. For the Zionists to claim exclusive ownership for the Jews of an Eretz Yisrael of wide extent, and to plan the removal of the indigenous, is to my mind unconscionable, and is the Original Sin of Zionism. I favour a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society, myself, for whatever that is worth. The alternative is endless war, the brutalisation of both peoples, evident in Israel’s recent onslaught on Gaza, and a real risk of genocide or mass murder. As for the Nazi/Zionism analogy, there was more to Nazism than industrialised mass murder. There was racism, violent dispossession, torture and virulent demonisation of their victims, all of which Israel has been guilty of in its treatment of the Palestinians. As for your contention that the analogy with Afrikaanerdom is flawed, well I never claimed the two settler states and ideologies were totally alike. Of course the Jews do have an ancient association with the region, but by their own accounts they only arrived millenia after human habitation began, they were dominant for only relatively brief periods, were often overrun, and many left at the time of the Roman expulsion. Moreover many present-day Jews are ethnically different from the original inhabitants of Palestine, being descended from converts to Judaism from Central Asia, Kurdistan and North Africa amongst other regions.
    My contention is that Zionism is actually poisonous to Jewry, as was fascism for the Italians and Nazism for the Germans. You would know, of course, that many eminent Jews, and some streams of Judaic orthodox religiosity also share this opinion. Basically I am appalled by the mistreatment of the Palestinians, see it as a blot on Jewry and humanity and a malign influence that is propelling Israel to yet greater crimes, and the world to religious war.

  21. jon s said on April 12th, 2009 at 4:01am #

    Zionism has never been racist, except maybe on its extreme-Right wing.
    The mainstream Zionists never claimed “exclusive ownership” and never sought the “removal of the indigenous” . On the contrary mainstream Zionism supported various partition plans , such as the 1947 UN recommendation, which were rejected by the Arab side.
    Trying to determine who is descended from whom is futile and irrelevant and itself reeks of racism: we are not interested in “racial purity”. It’s not a factor in determinig present-day claims anywhere, not in Israel/Palestine and not in Adelaide, Australia.

  22. Hue Longer said on April 12th, 2009 at 5:31am #

    jon s,

    You poison the well then forget you did so.

    “Zionism sought to liberate the Jewish people and return them to their ancestral homeland”

    “Trying to determine who is descended from whom is futile and irrelevant and itself reeks of racism”:…unless it works for you? People lived there and had more drops of Abraham’s mythical blood than did their European invaders. And these invaders are innocent because other Europeans also invaded and “cleansed” Australia? This is circumstantial ad hominem and though it may be useful in applying reality to selectively moral Australians so quick to project onto Israel (South Africa is a better example because unlike that hypocrisy, not many Aussies have a collective conscious problem with Israel)…. It merely condones evil from the direction you bring it. “Hey, you like to rape and murder too! We are all innocent”!

  23. bozh said on April 12th, 2009 at 6:50am #

    jon,
    overwhelming number of euros have been for a long time looking dwn and still look dwn on people with ‘tainted’ skin such as arabs, peoples of the ‘stans, afrikans, latinos, innuit, red people.

    an assertition that ashk’c have not and don’t now look dwn on palestinians can be refuted by just reading what the ‘zionists’ have written or said.
    ashk’nazim are mostly euros; they look dwn even on sephardim an mizrahim; most of which may be, unlike ashk’m, shemitic
    invading a land to which ashk’c folks had no right to have is ultimate and most cruel racism.
    all zionists are robbing land and by murder. No, not a single ‘zionist’, including chomsky, finkelstein, condemns robbery and only a few condemn murder and later robbery.
    i think mulga and hue have said it well. tnx

  24. jon s said on April 12th, 2009 at 9:52am #

    Hue-
    “European invaders”? I find it extremely difficult to think of the First Aliya immigrants founding Petah Tiqva in a swamp near the Yarkon River in 1882, or the Second and Third Aliya immigrants , intent on establishing a Socialist Utopia, or the Holocaust survivors, trying to make their wayon rickety boats like the “Exodus” or the Yemenite Jews, making their way across the desert, or the Iraqi Jews , airlfted out of Iraq in 1951, I find it hard to think of them as “European invaders”. Many Israelis are not European at all , and those that were European were rejected by Europe , left the Continent to get away from discrimination, persecution and racism.
    Incidentally, one of the blood libels the Jews were accused of during the Middle Ages was the poisoning of wells. Interesting choice of metaphor.

  25. Hue Longer said on April 12th, 2009 at 10:47am #

    jon,

    I actually didn’t know the history of that fallacy but was actually naming the fallacy trap (circumstantial ad hominem: well poisoning) of calling anyone a racist who would discuss ancestry. It was more than circumstantial ad hominem of just calling everyone who had discussed ancestry a racist (including you), because it wasn’t just directed at what people had already said but more so an attempt at shutting down future debate with your qualifier

    tragic coincidence that it actually does have its roots in what you described (I looked it up) and odd that it would find its way to what seems an unrelated use in logic vocabulary, but there is no Latin word or layman’s usage to describe it. It IS what you did.

    Back to the conversation…
    “Holocaust survivors, trying to make their way on rickety boats like the “Exodus”” ? When you put that way, I would have a hard time thinking of them as invaders too–IF I were prone to emotional sales pitches. And what does Europe rejecting them have to with it?

  26. Max Shields said on April 12th, 2009 at 10:50am #

    Jon it may be hard for you to believe that these Jews who pushed the Palestinians out of their home and pushed them off the land that they had occupied for thousands of years, as invaders; but they were.

    Just because some Israelis are not from Europe is really not the issue. It is the West who “gave” provided the cover for the invasion and occupation. Israel would not be without Western powers who, too had invaded carved up and occupied Middle Eastern lands and so felt they could rid themselves of Zionism (and what some might have called the Jewish “problem”) by placing it far away in a spot where the inhabitants were defenseless against such an invasion. Of course, it has come back to bite with a furry.

    Regardless the story of where and how they came, these were Zionist invaders.

    Some day you may come to grips with this. We Americans have had a hard time with the fact that we invaded this land, committed genocide against the natives and stole more land from our neighbors. But over time, when the denial passes, we are beginning to come to grips with reality.

  27. mary said on April 12th, 2009 at 12:54pm #

    Many of the points in the preceding comments here crop up in Gilad Atzmon’s account of his appearance at the Sunday Times Literary Festival held at Christ Church Oxford on April 1st in a ‘debate’ with Aaronovitch and Cohen, journalists on the Times and Observer respectively and both defenders of the Zionist state. Interesting stuff and so too are the audio links and the 26 comments on the article.

    http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/04/07/gilad-atzmon-aaronovitchs-tantrum-and-the-demolition-of-jewish-power/

    Cohen supported the Iraq war as did Aaronovitch. Cohen also supported Cast Lead.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Cohen
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Aaronovitch

  28. Suthiano said on April 12th, 2009 at 1:35pm #

    1922: First British census of Palestine shows population of 757,182, with 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish and 9.6% Christian….

    Those numbers are after 40 years of Rothschild funded settlement through Hoeve Zion and other groups.

    The Rothschild inspired Balfour Report of 1917 laid the legal groundwork for the colonization of Palestine by European Jews.

    The holocaust – from Latin holocaustum = “burnt offering”, was considered by most powerful ‘jews’ to be a necessary sacrifice for the attainment of Palestine:

    Genesis 22:8 Dixit autem Abraham: Deus providebit sibi victimam holocausti, fili mi…

    = Abraham answered: JEHOVAH himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son [Isaac].

    In the story, Abraham has to prove he is willing to slay his own son as a “holocaustum” to the lord.

    When you examine the “blood for guns” and how Joel Brand struggled to get Moshe Dayan (later prime minister of Israel) and the World Jewish Congress to help him save 1,000,000 of his Jewish Hungarian brothers. Eichmann had put forward the offer of the 1,000,000 Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks. The allies and the WJC did nothing. As for Joel Brand, he cursed the leadership of World Jewry for allowing his countrymen to go to their graves.

  29. jon s said on April 12th, 2009 at 2:12pm #

    Hue – I think you understand what I mean, that the Jews in Israel were not and are not invaders, although of course the Palestinians perceived them as such. Hence the present conflict.
    Max- The Western powers didn’t actually “give” or “place” the Jews in Israel/Palestine. As a matter of fact the powers at the time were indifferent or opposed to the Zionist idea. Herzl failed to enlist the support of any European country for his Zionist program. The only country which gave any kind of support was the UK, which published the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But even the British, after a few years of lukewarm support, reversed course and in 1939 came out with the anti-Zionist White Paper, which was a death sentence to the Zionist project.
    The Jews in Israel are not invaders, robbers, or a Western implant. Their presence is every bit as legitimate as the Palestinians’.
    The challenge for today, however, is not win points debating history, but to try to find a path to understanding and peace.

  30. Max Shields said on April 12th, 2009 at 2:34pm #

    I think Truman et al might feel a tad slighted jon.

    There would be no “state” of Israel without the sanctioning of the West, primarily UK and US, and the UN agreement based on 2 of the major Western Security Council members.

    The issue has never been about Jews in the Palestinian lands, it has always been about the ethnic cleansing by Zionist Israelis of Palestinians from the territory that they had lived in for thousands of years.

    An integrated Palestine or Jerusalem would have been preferred; but this was a blatant invasion of European Zionist to the Middle East. Those numbers swelled with Soviet Jews.

    “Indifference” is hardly what I’d call the US governments unabashed, unlawful support for Israel, its aggression in the region, its feeding of arms and billions annually. If that’s “indifference”, I think we are reading from two different dictionaries.

  31. jon s said on April 12th, 2009 at 2:45pm #

    Suthiano-
    The Baron Rothschild provided support for only some of the early settlements, which were on the verge of failure until he intervened.
    The correct spelling is Hovevey Zion (“Lovers of Zion”).
    The Balfour Declaration, not “Report”. It wasn’t inspired by Rothschild, he was the recipient, and we’re talking about a different Rothschild, not the Baron who supported the settlements.
    The Jews are not familiar with the Latin translation of Genesis. In the Hebrew original there’s no connection to the Holocaust. Jews consider the Holocaust a catastrophe and a cause for grieving, not a “necessary sacrifice”.
    Moshe Dayan was never PM of Israel.
    The Joel Brand mission is highly controversial among serious historians. It’s unclear how serious Eichmann was and whether any Jews could have really been saved. See Yehuda Bauer’s research. And get your facts right.

  32. Max Shields said on April 12th, 2009 at 2:53pm #

    jon s all the zionist history and anscient biblical tales don’t begin to justify the genocide and apartheid created by Israeli Zionist.

    I think Zionist actually believe that they can pull out some Hebrew scroll and make all these war crimes disappear.

    As long as there are breathing, living souls on this planet, jon, you should be on notice there will be no peace for Israel. It is this realization that keeps Israel air-raids constant with the hope that they will have banished Palestinians from the face of the earth. But unlike the American history where the European settlers managed to eliminate most of the 10 million indigenous people in Nort America, Israel has a losing hand.

    Perhaps an equitable two state solution will suffice, but it will never be achieved under the conditions imposed on the Palestinian people today. We just know to much jon; there are no secrets.

  33. bozh said on April 12th, 2009 at 3:54pm #

    i am thru reading jon’s posts. his posts teem with wishful thinking which renders his thinking ineffectual.
    to posit lies as he does, he must be a self-damaging ‘jew’ or cultish about his tribe.
    he even asserts that only one country favored for ashk’m a state in palestine, the UK. The opposite is true: only one country was lukewarm about the invasion of palestine, and that was germany.

    nearly all christains and all popes were supporting the theft of land via murder.
    the only reason i have responded to his posts was to refute his assertions, lies, wishfulness to new readers and not to change the feelings of a criminal bodymind.
    but i don’t need to forever do that. In add’n, max, suthiano, hue have accurately/adequately also refuted his statements. thank you fellas. tnx

  34. Suthiano said on April 12th, 2009 at 7:07pm #

    Oh yea John, my bad, Moshe Sharett (At the time Moshe Shertok), not Moshe Dayan… My Moshe’s sometimes get confused.

    As for Yehuda Bauer, why would I trust that pseudo-historian? How convenient that he has sought to obscure the event and claim no one took the Eichmann as being serious….. really? What group was Joel Brand part of? The Aid and Rescue Committee…. who else was in that Committee? Rudolf Kastner…. What is he known for? He “negotiated with senior SS officer Adolf Eichmann to allow a number (1,700) of Jews to escape in exchange for money, gold, and diamonds” (Wikipedia, Kastner train).

    How does Yehuda explain that one?

    Joel Brand’s words:

    “Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry’s official leaders ever since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear.”

    That’s enough for me on that subject.. as Bozh said, Max and others have done more than enough to refute jon.

  35. Peter said on April 12th, 2009 at 11:15pm #

    Jon S,

    It looks like you’re outnumbered. It sucks dude.

    You swallowed the Israeli version of their history hook, line and sinker. But academics such as Norman Finkelstein (himself Jewish) have documented how Israelis deliberately drove the Arabs from their homes. How that was their plan. Read his book “Beyond Chutzpah – On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History”.

    You write in such a nice manner, leaving the reader with the impression that you are an honest broker writing only the truth of what happened and at the end the reader is informed that the Israeli’s are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. The Arabs end up dead (1,400 in the last massacre) and Israel looks like the most decent nation on earth with every one of its Jewish citizens deserving their own personal Nobel Peace Prize. But nobody is buying it anymore.

    Here is a picture comparison of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians vs. Germany’s treatment of Jews in WW II. With your creative writing skills, I think you might be able to explain why the four year old Palestinian boy who has an Israeli soldiers gun pointed at his head deserves to have his head blown off.

    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/deutschland-uber-alles/

  36. Peter said on April 13th, 2009 at 12:15am #

    Jon S,

    Also take note of the young Israeli girls writing messages to their Palestinian victims on the Israeli missiles that will be fired at the Palestinians.

    Look at the photo with the Palestinian woman down on her knees while the brave Israeli soldier points his gun at her.

    Is that a country that you think shares America’s ideals?

    But all this is off the topic of the article written. According to the author, AIPAC is a major spy ring operating in the USA. AIPAC is 100% Jewish (or close to it) and dedicated to shaping US government policy in favor of Israel. AIPAC’s clout brings Presidents, senators, congressmen and top Israeli government officials (including the Prime Minister of Israel) to its meetings to make glowing speeches about Israel and the USA’s undying support for Israel.

    If this is true (and I’m not saying it is), this could be the biggest spy ring ever caught in the USA and all its work was done to benefit Israel – the country that we have been told was our closest and most important friend who we share the most special relationship with. How are American journalists such as Thomas Friedman and so many others going to explain their unending support for Israel, a country with spies infested in every level of our government and society? I hope the author of this article is mistaken.

  37. Chris said on April 13th, 2009 at 7:58am #

    Peter, you are aware of the infamous Israeli “art student” spy ring that was uncovered correct? They took a keen interest in US military and government facilities. Antiwar.com did a fairly good series on it.

  38. jon s said on April 13th, 2009 at 10:18am #

    Max-
    Why is “state” (of Israel) in quotation marks? Looks to me like a denial of reality. Israel is here , is not going away. Deal with it.
    At the famous UN vote in 1947 it was the US and the USSR that voted for the partition plan. The UK actually abstained. In other words both the West and the Communist bloc supported the idea of partitioning the country into two states – a Jewish one and a Palestinian -Arab one.
    Of course it’s impossible to confidentally answer a “what if?” question in history. “What if the Great Powers had not supported the founding of Israel?” Don’t know.
    Of course I know that the US supports Israel. I was referring to the indifference of the Powers back in the early years of Zionism , the time of Herzl.
    As to the “invasion” charge: see my previous posts. I didn’t pull out any “Hebrew scrolls” and I don’t see any genocide taking place.
    Suthiano- Prof. Bauer is one of the foremost scholars and historians of the Holocaust in the world (and also a great humanist). You’re trying to contradict an eminent historian by quoting Wikipedia? And you’re on first-name terms (“Yehuda”) with him? How about some humility?Joel Brand was indeed embittered and frustrated by the failure of his mission. Prof. Bauer’s research puts it in perspective.
    Peter- It’s not a matter of being out-numbered as long as I”m telling the truth. I never said that Israel is totally innocent. Neither side is totally innocent or passive. I happen to disagree with much of Israel’s policies and actions. But on the Left we need to adopt a more balanced stand. (Exhibit A for imbalance and unfairness: the obscene Israel-Nazi analogy). International observers and activists should encourage both sides to move towards a reasonable peace agreement, not extremism. Both Israelis and Palestinians should understand that they can have either justice OR peace. The can’t have both. Let’s choose peace.

  39. Laser said on April 13th, 2009 at 12:16pm #

    These thoughful arguments ignore important facts, namely that Israel has been attacked from nearly every bit of territory from which it has withdrawn since the Oslo Accords. Israel turned cities and towns in the West Bank over to the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords in the 1990s only to see these areas used as recruiting grounds for suicide bombers during the Second Intifada. Israel withdrew, under fire from the Gaza Strip in 2005 only to see an increase in attacks after the withdrawal. And Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 only to be attacked by Hezbollah in 2006. Jewish acquiescence and self-reform did not lead to peace, but led to further violence. Moreover, the number of Israeli deaths inside Israel’s 1967 boundaries increased after the signing of the Oslo Accords in Sept. 1993.

  40. Suthiano said on April 13th, 2009 at 12:50pm #

    Once again Jon, “prof Bauer” is not a reputable historian just because he is a well known one.

    He is, in fact, a holocaust denier… he denies that any other peoples – Native peoples of North America for instance – ever experienced anything that is comparable.

    Professor Bauer has made such outrageous claims as “total physical annihilation… is what happened to the Jews.”… he continues with the Holocaust denial, saying “To date, this has happened once, to the Jews under Nazism”.

    In his 2000 page work “Encyclopedia of the Holocaust”, the respectable “Professor Bauer” is generous enough to devote 3 pages to “Gypsies”. He says, “The fate of the ‘Gypsies’ [Romani and Sinti peoples] was in line with Nazi thought as a whole; Gypsies were not Jews, and therefore there was no need to kill them all”.

    In Himmler’s December 8, 1938 “Decree for Basic Regulations to Resolve the Gypsy Question as Required by the Nature of Race” preperations were initiated for “the complete extermination of the Sinti and Romani”.

    So, as I said before, Yehuda is a pseudo-historian.

    And this time I didn’t even have to use wikipedia! Wow!

  41. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 13th, 2009 at 4:46pm #

    jon, you are not ‘telling the truth’, anymore than I am. You are presenting the facts as you see them, through the prism of your background and beliefs. Not being a Jew, nor a Palestinian, my opinions are different. Where I differ from you is in that I see Zionism as plainly colonial. After all a population of European Jews moved from Europe to Palestine with the explicit purpose not to live in peace and amity with the native population, but to supplant them and establish a religiously exclusive state. This has happened. As Ilan Pappe et al, the Israeli ‘New Historians’ and the Palestinian historians of the Nakbah have shown, Israel launched a carefully planned campaign of ethnic cleansing and terror, that drove out 700,000 Palestinians through massacre and terror, then it destroyed several hundred villages and refused to honour a pledge, and the dictates of international law, and allow them to return. That is the Original Sin of Israel, and unless it is acknowledged and resolved to the Palestinian’s and world opinion’s satisfaction, there will never be peace. I’m afraid I cannot accept the bona fides of any Israeli who denies this reality. From its acceptance some hope of peace and reconciliation can flow, but while Israel and its politics are dominated by individuals who do not accept the human equality of Jew and Palestinian, then peace will remain unattainable.

  42. Peter said on April 13th, 2009 at 5:05pm #

    I would not concentrate so much on German war crimes. As you said, The USA’s atrocities toward the American Indian are completely ignored (as well as its atrocities against African Americans).

    In WW II millions of German civilians were deliberately targeted for murder by the allies. Germany’s civilians were the targets of British and American bombs and the stated goal was to terrorize the German people into surrender. While allies estimate they killed about 500,000 people in bombing raids, this number could be grossly understated. Virtually all of Germany’s cities lay in ruins at the end of the war and that is where most of Germany’s people lived – a country of 80 million people.

    The Soviet Unions troops committed mass rape of German women upon entering Germany. Two million German women were raped by Soviet troops, many or most were gang raped and when the soldiers were thru they killed many of the women and their families.

    The allies downplay their own atrocities by not mentioning them at all, minimizing figures and denying certain atrocities, but at the same time maximizing the figures when discussing the brutalities Germany committed.

    There is nothing obscene with the NAZI analogy if it is accurate. Look at the pictures. Israeli soldiers are committing horrible atrocities against Arabs.

    Israel justifies its war crimes with the most insane arguments. In Gaza they murdered 1,400 Palestinians supposedly because of a few home made rocket attacks. No one was killed in these so called rocket attacks and these home made rockets are launched always after Israel has done something. Israel’s massacre of the Palestinians in Gaza is comparable to Germany’s attack on the Warsaw Ghetto in WW II. Would anyone reasonably state German soldiers had a right to retaliate because a few of their soldiers were killed by people in the Warsaw Ghetto?

    Israel blew a Palestinian family to bits a few months ago while they were at the beach. The family of 8 was murdered in cold blood. They have been starving the Palestinians so that Palestinians eat grass and Israel has prevented medicine from entering Gaza.

    Israel holds 10,000 Arabs in its jails. Some are just children. That is a violation of international law. Human Rights groups have documented Israel’s torture of these people.

    In 2006, 8 Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah while patrolling along the Lebanese border. That was Israel’s excuse to murder thousands of Lebanese. What insane nut can justify a war on these feeble excuses?

    In Hitler’s speech he delivered to Germany after he ordered German troops to attack Poland he cited atrocities committed by Poles against German’s living in Poland. If any Germans were killed by Poles it would have been a small number. Would any reasonable person say Germany’s attack on Poland that started WW II was justifiable for this reason? Just as Israel’s attack on Lebanon and Gaza are not for the reasons they state, Germany did not attack Poland because a handful of people may have been killed.

    I want to make a comment on Wikipedia. Don’t rely on it being accurate.

  43. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 13th, 2009 at 5:14pm #

    Laser, your little spiel includes at least two blatant untruths. Israel did not withdraw from Gaza in 2005. It merely moved to the walls of the concentration camp, and policed the ‘two-legged animals’ from there. This included a steadily increasing blockade and throttling of economic life, the bombardment and killing of civilians, the nightly terrorising supersonic overflights that have so traumatised Gazan children, and even harsher and more brutal tactics after Hamas won the Palestinian election. This culminated in the illegal blockade, group punishment of civilians, a crime against humanity under international law and an act of war, which makes the retaliatory Hamas skyrockets an act of legitimate defence against aggression. The cowardly onslaught and mass murder of civilians, such a testament to Israeli martial valour, followed.
    And Hezbollah, after driving out the appallingly brutal Israeli occupiers, who, with their death-squad stooges the South Lebanon Army, had terrorised the Shia of southern Lebanon for a generation, kept the peace with Israel along the Blue Line of control. Israel, which violated the Blue Line one hundred times as frequently as did Hezbollah, mostly with overflights, was smarting for years from this affront to their delusions of racial superiority, so, in July 2006, it launched what was described in Israeli papers as ‘the best prepared war in Israeli history’. The excuse was a border clash, universally reported in the early hours as the result of an Israeli incursion into Lebanon. The press sewer soon got its orders and the propaganda began flowing of Israeli troops ‘kidnapped’, when they were captured, or their bodies were as it turned out, in combat. This is a perennial Israeli hypocrisy. Their troops are always kidnapped, even on the battle-field or when engaged in aggression, but the tens of thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese and others, many illegally imprisoned, detained and tortured, are never ‘kidnapped’, even when dragged out of their beds in dead of night.
    Hezbollah, of course, refused to follow the script of Israel’s ‘best prepared war’ and kicked their arse, again, despite Israel destroying the country in the usual cowardly fashion from on high. Israel is still smarting, hence all the bellicose threats that followed its ‘victory’ over Hamas and the dead children of Gaza. Hezbollah would be next, this time all Lebanon would get the south Lebanese treatment of wanton, total destruction, as Lebanon had not expelled the cancer of Hezbollah from its society. Blah, blah, but truly Nazi-like in the virulent belligerence of the threats. Apparently wiser heads, realising Hezbollah remains no push-over, that armed and trained fighters might prove more dangerous opposition than women and children, have prevailed. But the threat of Israeli aggression against Lebanon, for at least the fourth or fifth time since 1948, not counting numerous bombing campaigns, remains.

  44. Suthiano said on April 13th, 2009 at 6:17pm #

    Yes German’s too were victims of horrible crimes.

    That is the message that the anti-war community should be expressing: in war everyone gets raped except for the people giving the orders. The moral is not to practice cult worship or group think.

    Yehuda Bauer is an exclusionary; a sewer of division.

  45. Laser said on April 13th, 2009 at 9:45pm #

    I am new to this forum and am dismayed to discover people who use anti-Zionism not as a cover, but as a vehicle for anti-Semitism. Of course, some of their best friends are Jews, like the notorious pseudo-scholar Norman Finkelstein, whose theories have been totally rejected by academia. But the sound of such a name is believed by some contributors to make it sound as though they “really love” Jews.

    Anti-Semitism rejects Jews as equal members of the human race; anti-Zionism rejects Israel as an equal member in the family of nations.

    Critics who habitually single out Israel for condemnation while ignoring far worse actions by other countries (especially other Middle Eastern countries) are anti-Semitic.

    Likening Israel to Nazi Germany, or to traditional anti-Jewish stereotypical behavior is another sure sign of Jew-baiting.

    Attacks on the merits of Israel’s existence rather than individual government policies are anti-Semitic.

    The use of “Nazi” to describe Jews is obnoxious and seems to be characteristic of the leftist anti-Jewish movement. If you want to be taken seriously, you must tone down your illogical hatred and name-calling.

  46. Laser said on April 13th, 2009 at 9:52pm #

    “Mulga Mumblebrain” cannot be taken seriously in his attempt to make words mean just what he (she?) wants them to. Withdrawal from Gaza means withdrawing 100 percent of Israelis from the Gaza strip. No more and no less.

    Calling Gaza, after Israeli withdrawal a “concentration camp” just shows that the writer hasn’t the vaguest idea of the horrors of the German concentration camps. And that he (she?) assumes that his readers do not either.

    You just cannot be taken seriously when you use such tactics!

  47. Peter said on April 14th, 2009 at 12:13am #

    Instead of name calling, why don’t you address the substance of what is written.

  48. mary said on April 14th, 2009 at 1:14am #

    Hasbara has obviously been calling in the supporters of Israel’s terror state as more of them pile on board this comments column.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbara

  49. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 14th, 2009 at 1:36am #

    Laser obviously doesn’t know the difference between concentration or internment camps, and extermination camps. Concentration camps which were first used, if I recollect correctly, in Cuba by the Spanish, and by the English during the Boer War, are designed to hold captive civilian populations. In ‘counter-insurgency’ wars this is to keep them from aiding the guerillas, ie to ‘dry up the sea’ of Mao’s dictum that the people are the sea and the guerilla’s the fish. As during the Boer War, the inmates are often treated appallingly and the death-toll rises, becoming de facto extermination camps, although not as industrially organised as Auschwitz. Israel runs the world’s biggest archipelago of concentration camps, where the Palestinians are imprisoned. The Gaza hell-hole, which Israel still totally controls, as the UN has decided, became a partial extermination camp a few months ago, as Israel slaughtered 14oo defenceless Gazans in a manner reminiscent of the Nazis at Oradur, Lidice or the US at My Lai, or Israel previously in Sabra and Shatilla.
    Your anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism slur doesn’t impress or intimidate anyone. As I have said Zionism is a European settler colonial ideology, a racist holdover from the 19th century. It is to Jewry as fascism was to Italians, or Nazism to Germans, a, hopefully transient, aberration, from which the Jews will recover.I know I am not an anti-Semite simply because the hatred of any group simply because of their membership of that group, ignoring the differences of character and temperament present in any group, is moronic and vicious. Unsurprisingly Zionist extremists practice just such a group hatred of Palestinians, if not all Arabs and Moslems. Its pot calling kettle black time, yet again. Moreover what I say is also said by numerous Israelis and other Jews. And I highly respect Jews living and dead from Oistrakh and Menuhin to Chomsky and Finkelstein. I judge them like everyone else, according to how I see their character.

  50. Heidi said on April 14th, 2009 at 2:25am #

    It´s nearly amusing to read in english (not my mother´s tongue) and the comments
    of Jon and Laser, which are so obviously false like automatic propaganda speach.
    Wy can they not accept reality, facts happened? why such a blind eye to the real situation? Why not be able to get away from such a nonsense? This thinking is not a constructive one for a peaceful issue in that blood imbued part of earth. The settlers in Gaza have been evacuated, because of the plan to create a human zoo ( “two-legged animals” as one isreali in the government told) and the use of new weapons, and create new atrocities impossible to be treated medically, as it has been reported. This is one fact.
    The other one is the continuing construction of settler homes in the occupied territories despite the international interdiction. There is no
    occupation politics without long planed goals. Twenty years ago the plan of “Eretz Israel” was just whispered. Now it is a reality. This is the colonial expansion of Israel, a hidden one. After the complete destruction of Iraq, there are already some jewish settlements. And why Iran? Israel is an atomic power. Everybody knows it. The aggression politcs of Israel makes me fear their nuclear strike possibility. Nuclear weapons in the hands of an aggressive, racist colonial power with apartheid behaviour is a threat to the world. I am afraid of Israel, which commits war crimes and crimes against humanity every day! Few people know that Israel still drops bombs over Gaza. Israel still does not let in medical assistence. The people of Gaza are still in a horrendous pain! This open show of inhumanity is a bad sign for all of us. We have to overcome these criminal actions by imposing severe sanctions against Israel. The only way to stop the israeli slaughter.

  51. Laser said on April 14th, 2009 at 4:07am #

    Mulligan is trying to change word meanings in an attempt to extricate himself (herself?) from the charge of comparing the plight of the Gazans with the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust.

    The Gazans are being supplied by Israel with food, medicine and cash. The Germans supplied the Jews with murder.

    In terming their camps “concentration camps,” the Nazis were using a mundane term to mask something far more horrific than the word had previously meant, similar to their usage of the term “ghetto.”

    The Nazi concentration camps were places of mistreatment, starvation, forced labor and killings. If you want to see what the Nazi concentration camps looked like, see http://shorl.com/begrylogruhobri .

    Once again, any legitimate gripe you may have becomes negated by the preposterous terms you use and charges you make.

  52. Laser said on April 14th, 2009 at 4:27am #

    Here is another example from another region of the world — very recent: gunmen have burned down Khan Yunis child and family care center in Gaza.

    The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reports that masked ‘Palestinian ‘gunmen’ burned down a child and family care center in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, 12 April 2009.

    Early that morning, unknown gunmen set alight the Child and Family Care Center in the al-Fukhari Village east of Khan Younis. The Center was established by the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy in cooperation with the al-Fukhari Association for Rural Development.

    This is the second time in two days that the Center has been attacked. This incident is part of the security chaos currently plaguing the Gaza strip, from which Israel withdrew in 2005.

    The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ (PCHR) investigations indicate that, at approximately 03:00am on 12 April 2009, a number of masked gunmen set fire to tents belonging to the Child and Family Care Center. During the attack, the gunmen detained the Center’s security guard in a nearby field. Mr. Al-Bahdari, director of the Center, stated that fire destroyed the six plastic tents which formed the Center, along with their contents and equipment.

    The Child and Family Care Center had been subject to a similar attack in the early morning of Saturday, 11 April 2009.

    The Child and Family Care Center is one of five established by the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy in cooperation with several benevolent associations across the Gaza Strip. These centers aim to help and support children who live in areas affected by the recent Israeli operation.

    PCHR strongly condemns the attack on the Child and Family Care Center, noting that this attack constitutes part of the continuing security chaos plaguing the Palestinian territory.

    Of course, since this attack cannot be blamed on the Jews (except to the extent that the ‘continuing security chaos’ and the ‘recent Israeli offensive’ can be blamed on the Jews), it’s not going to be of much interest to the ‘international community.’ But perhaps it ought to be.

    The key to this story is “The Center was established by the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy in cooperation with the al-Fukhari Association for Rural Development.”

    The Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy describes itself as a Palestinian non-profit organization [established] by “ the Palestinian Forum of Education for Development-PFED”, supported by the consortium of the French NGOs, member of the platform of the French NGOs for Palestine [ Members of the Consortium of French NGOs are: Refugee Children of the World (ERM), Active Methods Training Centers Association (CEMEA), Les FRANCAS, Leo- Lagrange League and Retired Educators Association (GREF) ].

    Canaan addresses the needs of professional training programs for the workers, and volunteers in the field of socio-cultural education, and promotes New Education based on the right to participation, freedom of choice, choice – responsibility and non-violence.

    Through its programs, Canaan meets the requests coming from other organizations for professional training and/or consultancy in designing, implementing and developing advanced educational activities and social programs.

    Why would ‘masked gunmen’ want to destroy this kind of center? Perhaps because it is competing with Hamas’ ‘charitable works,’ and Hamas views that as a danger.

  53. mary said on April 14th, 2009 at 5:13am #

    There is little or no mention of Operation Cast Lead in the preceding comments nor of the grabbing of Palestinian land that has taken place and which increases year on year for settlement building, the building of the wall and expansion especially in East Jerusalem.

    http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=3410&CategoryId=4
    Palestinian Land Day – Frequently Asked Questions
    Date posted: March 29, 2004
    By MIFTAH

    1. What does Land Day commemorate?
    Land Day, known as ‘Youm al-Ard’ in Arabic, commemorates the bloody killing of six Palestinians in the Galilee on March 30, 1976 by Israeli troops during peaceful protests over the confiscation of Palestinian lands.
    It has since become a painful reminder of Israeli injustice and oppression against the Palestinian people, and a day for demonstration linking all Palestinians in their struggle against occupation, self-determination and national liberation.

    continues/….

  54. Heidi said on April 14th, 2009 at 5:15am #

    Laser,
    Why would the Gazans be supplied by Israel with food and medical supply
    when Israel did everything to starve the Gazans to kill and to maim the People of Gaza? An israeli minister even said that they (the israelis) would ” make another holocauste in Gaza” Maybe you saw this in the TV; Israel has good performance in western TV.
    By the way, do you know the identity of your gunmen. Do you really think that Palestinians would attack their own people in that dramatic situation of low genozide? Israel did everything to divide the palestians into pro and anti Hamas, (remember the famous Mr Dalan paid by the US to fight against Hamas) The well known strategy of “divide and rule” is still very attractive to the invaders. But it did not work and the Palestinians are united against the oppressor. Do you know that occupation power pervert people for their miserable goal? As long as you can give the order to kill harmless civilians, especially children, and this is executed without revolting, you will have a society in disintegration. This is Israel.

  55. Laser said on April 14th, 2009 at 7:05am #

    Mary wonders why we have not mentioned Operation Cast Lead. Does she think that it is connected with Steve Rosen’s suit, which is actually the topic here?

    During Operation Cast Lead, IDF forces often had to deal with booby-trapped schools and mosques, and with rocket launchers positioned near schools and mosques. And with mosques used for storing and preparing ordnance.

    In one instance, on January 18, after Israel had announced it was holding its fire, a rocket launcher was identified between two school buildings. The launcher was not attacked by the Israel Air Force because of its proximity to the schools.

    Hamas stores weapons in civilian dwellings in densely populated areas, and sometimes rockets are launched near them. Both routinely and during Operation Cast Lead, when the Israel Air Force carried out pinpoint aerial attacks, aircraft cameras captured powerful secondary explosions, evidence of the presence of large quantities of weapons and explosives stored in private houses. By situating weapons and firing from residential civilian areas, Hamas knowingly endangered Gazans’ lives.

    So if Hamas had not used human shields, they would have avoided 90% of the civilian deaths. But they were not interested in preventing Arab deaths. In their calculation, a dead Israeli is good for them, and a dead Arab is also good for them.

  56. bozh said on April 14th, 2009 at 7:47am #

    laser,
    dwelling on faults/crimes of other people or nations and on own real or imagined virtues, while ignoring own even horrendous crimes, is an ancient strategem.
    it is not gonna work on DV. Such pieces regularly appear on msm and many people fall into the trap.

    i cannot verify your assertion that israel supplies pals with medicine or food. If it does, it does not have to do that, nor does a person like me approbate it; all israel has to do to, is to abandon their land, release abaducted people, stop stealing their land, etc.

    in addition to all this, israel by law must look after their captive people.
    also, sweet and sour treatment such as killing ten children or people and adopting one child/adult as a pet to show how kind a torturer is, will not work. tnx
    most likely, it wld cause even greater rage. tnx

  57. bozh said on April 14th, 2009 at 7:59am #

    mulga,
    you’re right about the fact that calling us antisemitic or antizionistic will not even detre us let alone stifle our duty to posit our facts and conclusions.

    in fact, one cannot be an antisemite, since ashk’c voelken are euro-asians, having no connection with the 10 lost tribes nor judeans/benjamins.
    actually, ashk’m look dwn on real shemites: arabs, pals, sephardim, mizrahim, yemeni, iraqi, et al shemites with the judaic cult. tnx

  58. mary said on April 14th, 2009 at 8:14am #

    And I am not forgetting the ramming by an Israeli gunship of mv Dignity in the early hours of December 30th when it was in International Waters. Israel tried to kill all those on board including my brother (one of the surgeons going to help in Gaza) along with Cynthia McKinney and 14 others. I will never forgive Israel for carrying out this act of attempted murder. The passengers were left for dead but managed to make harbour in Lebanon.

    I do not wish to hear any more piffle from Laser. We have had too much of it here from the likes of Mebosa Ritchie and Jaime over the years. Or perhaps they are all one and the same.

  59. bozh said on April 14th, 2009 at 8:17am #

    attacking israel, the fourth strongest military power and as de facto a 51st state of the states, is also attacking US.
    one wld have to be very naive to attack such a might which also wld be strongly supported by all evil empires and christian lands.

    as gaza massacre shows or proves, you wld most likely get butchered if you even annoy ‘zions’ let alone attack the uebermenschen. It is much likelier that wretchedly poor israel, a near total dependency, is seeking greater lebensraum [living room] and it can only obtain it by skirmishing, killings, abducting, sieges, land robbery, torturing to the point that some people reataliate with what they have.

    and ‘zionists’ love it. Most of them are making oodles of money in diaspora; in good safety, while urging the darkies of israel to ever greater paroxism. tnx

  60. Suthiano said on April 14th, 2009 at 12:19pm #

    Yes it really is pathetic rhetoric being used by laser.

    “Hamas knowingly endangered Gazans’ lives.”

    Likud, Labor, Kadima etc, have knowingly slaughtered thousands of civilians.

    “In their calculation, a dead Israeli is good for them, and a dead Arab is also good for them.”

    Clearly a sophist like you knows how valuable an Israeli death at the hands of a Hamas rocket is? Heck, even a ‘kidnapped’ Israeli soldier is enough pretext to launch a war for you sophists.

  61. Peter said on April 14th, 2009 at 1:36pm #

    Laser is a liar. Israel does not supply Gaza with food, medicine or supplies. Its just the opposite. They organized a worldwide boycott of Gaza that has been going on for over a year now. Israel and the USA pushed it and got Europe to fall in line. Its called the Hamas boycott. Its against the democratically elected government of Hamas and prevents virtually anything from getting into Gaza. Its been going on for well over a year now. You almost had to live on a desert island not to hear about it.

    The Israelis have gone beyond what is not allowed in and have prevented food and medicine from entering Gaza also. The Palestinians that eat grass do so because Israel prevents food from getting into Gaza. Thats why Gaza is compared to the Warsaw ghetto.

    Here is a US State Department Press briefing stating that Israel is preventing food from entering Gaza. The Israelis also prevent medicine from entering Gaza. All you have to do is type “Hamas food medicine” on the internet and your page will fill up with newspaper articles from all over the world on how the Palestinians don’t have food or medicine because of Israel. Their hospitals are out of supplies to do operations.

    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/new-abbot-and-costello-routine-on-gaza/

    The Israelis with the acquiescence of the cowardly USA and Europe have been killing off the Palestinians for over a year now. They accomplished this by calling anyone that didn’t go along with their plans an anti-semite.

    But now many Europeans and Americans think things have gone too far and many people think we should stop killing the people in Gaza – imagine that. I think they will first have to get AIPAC and Israel’s approval on that though.

    And just to make it clear. Any supplies or food that do get into Gaza don’t come from Israel, they come from Europe or elsewhere.

  62. jon s said on April 14th, 2009 at 1:47pm #

    Suthiano-
    Again, Prof. Bauer is an eminent historian and has expressed a legitimate opinion on the topic of the uniqueness of the Holocaust. You don’t have to agree, but there’s no need to disrespect him. (In general there’s way too much hatred on DV… most of it directed at Jews and Israel) . And as to Joel Brand: it’s interesting that after WW2 he joined the LHY (“Stern Gang”) and in later years became something of an icon of the Israeli Right-wing. So he’s your hero…
    Peter, Mulga-
    On Lebanon: On July 12 , 2006, Hizbullah attacked Israel. They attacked a patrol on the Israeli side of the fence, killed several soldiers and abducted two , who also died (yet the Hizbullah , with inhuman cruelty, still tried to extort ransom, as if they were alive…). At the same time they opened fire on Israel’s civilian population in the north.
    Hizbullah leader Nasrallah himself confessed that he miscalculated Israel’s response to the attack, but he didn’t deny that his side attacked.
    The attack caught the Israeli gov’t at the time off-guard and the ensuing conflict desroyed PM Olmert’s political agenda and ruined Defense Minister Peretz’ career. Israel was certainly not the aggressor.
    On Gaza: There is no Israeli “siege” or “blockade”. If you look at a map you’ll see that Gaza borders with Egypt to the south. Israel does not control that border (though many Israelis wish they did), the crossings open or close at the discretion of the Egyptian authorities. In other words at present Israel couldn’t blockade Gaza even if it wanted to.
    Hamas has staged a phony siege as a p.r. ploy. Israel has continuously supplied Gaza with food, medicine, fuel and electricity – while the Hamas were firing rockets at Israeli civilians! Sometimes supplies have been interrupted because Hamas or other gunmen open fire on the humanitarian convoys. They have also repeatedly tried to hit with their rockets the power plant in Ashkelon which provides them with electricity. Sounds crazy? Probably , but you have to realize that Hamas needs the people there to be as miserable as possible, and to be able to show the world how miserable they are, and blame Israel. Even during the recent fighting Israel sent through 1300 truckloads of humanitarian aid . I know of no precedent for a war in which one side sends humanitarian assistance to the other.
    As to the scope of Israel’s military response to the attacks from Lebanon and from Gaza (and the rocket attacks from there are no joke: around a dozen civilians have been killed over the years) – it’s not easy finding an appropriate or proportionate response to an attack . Should the US have responded to Pearl Harbour by attacking one Japanese naval base? And of course Israel should try, and try harder, to minimize civilian casualties among the Palestinians.

  63. Peter said on April 14th, 2009 at 3:21pm #

    Jon S,

    As to how many Israeli soldiers were captured or killed and which side of the border they were on depends on what you read. The article I cite below says Hezbollah killed three Israeli soldiers along the Lebanese border. Were you actually there to see which side of the border the Israeli soldiers were on? Your claim that Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel also depends on what you read and who you believe. Wikipedia claims Hezbollah fired rockets into Israeli border towns but no one was killed. The article below states by omission that wiklipedia is wrong and Hezbollah did not fire any missiles into Israel until the Israelis began the invasion.

    Either way, Israel started a war over a border incursion involving eight or less soldiers deaths. Israel destroyed a good part of Lebanon and killed more than one thousand Lebanese in their war.

    Israel is constantly violating borders bombing and killing Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis, countries all over the middle east. A week or two ago, they launched an attack on Sudan. There jets flew and fired on Sudan. Sudan is no where near their border. Would that justify retaliation against Israel perhaps killing thousands of Israelis.

    http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=11459

  64. Peter said on April 14th, 2009 at 3:30pm #

    Jon S,

    Pull your head out of the sand. There has been a worldwide blockade against Gaza (organized by Israel) for over a year now. Please read my entry above – a discussion with the State Dept. spokesman reveals the Israelis are preventing food from entering Gaza.

  65. bozh said on April 14th, 2009 at 4:08pm #

    US had gone on a shopping spree buying on behalf of Israel jordan and egypt. But, of course, the shopping is costly; probably about $7bn for both countries.

    there was no other way US-Europe/Israel cld have laid a complete siege of gaza.

    but all this is really a side show; the main events being at least three huge tsunamis that hit innocent people of palestine: violent expulsion and fleeing for life from murderous ‘zionists’; warfare against pals 1n 46-49 period; aggression by israel in ’67.
    i’m not eve counting lesser tsunamis, such as the three invasions of lebanon; bombings of osirak reactor in ’82 and a site in syria a yr ago or so.
    these self-hurting ‘jews’ actually help israelis chosen enemies by writing such obvious nonsense. bozhidar bob balkas

  66. Hue Longer said on April 14th, 2009 at 8:29pm #

    The food issue is a red herring.

    Proving that Israel gives food to Gaza is as valuable as proving that Nazis gave food to their victims

  67. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 14th, 2009 at 9:39pm #

    Well I must say jon, your ignorance or worse is indefatigable. The Israeli incursion into Lebanon, one of hundreds, which I note you do not deny, mostly aerial of course, was the excuse needed for ‘the best prepared war in Israeli history’, which I further note you do not dispute. The holding of the Israeli bodies as ransom for the return of captured Hezbollah is nothing compared to the well established Israeli practice of holding prisoners as hostages, often ‘disappearing’ them into secret prisons where not even the Red Cross may visit, and the detention of thousands of Palestinians, including children, most tortured, for the crime of resisting racist oppression, but I dare say your position simply reflects a good Israeli belief in the vastly greater value of an Israeli life to that of the ‘human animals’ who get in your way.As everyone knows but unashamed liars, Hezbollah only fired rockets on Israel after the carefully planned Israeli bombing commenced. This bombing, which like Gaza, targeted civilians fleeing in cars, hospitals, schools, mosques, warehouses, UN positions and the Hezbollah museum at the Israeli torture centre at Khiam, was typically callous and murderous, but accompanied by the usual lies that civilians were not targeted or Hezbollah ‘hid behind civilians’. This perennial Israeli lie, that was exposed at Qana, the site of a second Israeli massacre, becomes even more vicious when one contemplates the fact that Israel was condemned by the UN and even the Red Cross for the use of hostages and human shields in Gaza, a practice it has used widely in the Occupied Territories for years. The problem, jon, is that people have heard the Israeli lies too often, the sheer brutality is disgusting more and more people, the slur of ‘anti-Semite’ is no longer so efficacious and people are heartily sick of the dead from the Nazi Judeocide having their memory debased by being used as an excuse for the brutal mistreatment of another people.

  68. jon s said on April 15th, 2009 at 2:10am #

    Peter, Hue, Heidi, Mulga, Mary (sorry if I missed anyone)-
    The events of July 12 , 2006 were well-documented by the international press and –here’s the clincher – by a Hizbullah camera crew, for self-glorifying purposes : the Hizbullah fighters cut the fence, crossed into Israel, crossed the road, and lay in wait, to ambush the IDF patrol. The simultaneous rocket fire was apparently intended as a diversion. It’s amazing that on an ostensibly radical, left-wing forum there are people who prefer a clerical-fascist party like the Hizbullah (right down to the stiff-arm salutes) to Israel, which is, after all, a free country.
    An argument based on the relative number of casualties is absurd. On Dec. 31 a Grad rocket fired by Hamas from Gaza hit a classroom in a school in the Israeli town of Be’er Sheva. The classroom was empty because the municipality had decided to cancel classes that morning, “thanks ” to a rocket which had hit a kindergarten the night before. (The kindergarten was also empty, since it was night time). So if classes hadn’t been cancelled, and there would have been scores of dead Israeli children , would then Israel’s strikes into Gaza have been justified?
    I’ve got to ask you: in your opinion, under what circumstances would Israel be justified in exercising the right of self-defense? I get the distinct impression that your sincere answer would be: “never”.

  69. jon s said on April 15th, 2009 at 2:22am #

    On civilian casualties:
    I’ve recently come across a report on the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia, exactly 10 years ago. Here’s a sample of what happened.
    April 5, 1999
    Missile Attack on Aleksinac, Serbia
    NATO attack on a barracks on the town of Aleksinac . Resulted in missiles striking a residential area hitting apartments, an “emergency centre” and a medical dispensary
    10 dead and at least another 30 injured
    April 12, 1999
    Grdelica Gorge, Serbia
    NATO attack on a railway bridge hit a passenger train.
    14 killed and 16 injured
    April 14, 1999
    Road between ?akovica -De?ani
    NATO aircraft repeatedly bombed refugee movements over 19 km stretch in western Kosovo,
    73 deaths and 36 injured
    April 23, 1999
    Belgrade
    NATO attacked of the Serb Radio and Television headquarters in Belgrade.
    16 civilian technicians killed and 16 wounded
    April 27, 1999
    Missile Attack on Surdulica, Serbia
    NATO attack on residential area in the southern town of Surdulica.
    16 civilians killed
    May 1, 1999
    Attack on a civilian bus on Lužane Bridge North of Priština:
    A NATO missile aimed at the Lužane bridge hit a passenger bus. The vehicle was cut in two by the strike, near Lužane bridge, 20km (12 miles) north of Priština – one section plunged off the bridge into the river below, the other portion remained burning on the bridge for more than an hour An ambulance sent to the scene was reportedly hit in a second NATO strike.
    39 people were killed
    May 7, 1999
    Cluster bombing of Niš
    NATO confirmed that a cluster bomb aimed at an airfield in the Yugoslav city of Niš hit a hospital and a market. Unexploded cluster bombs left lying in gardens.
    14 civilians killed, about 60 injured
    May 7, 1999
    Missile Attack on Chinese Embassy in Belgrade
    The U.S. admitted that an out-of-date map used by its intelligence operations had led NATO to mistakenly launch missiles at the Chinese embassy
    3 dead, 20 injured
    May 14, 1999
    NATO bombing of Albanian refugees near Koriša, Kosovo
    NATO planes bombed of Albanian refugees near Korisa striking two convoys of ethnic Albanians trying to flee Kosovo,
    Over 100 killed
    May 19, 1999
    Belgrade Hospital Struck
    A NATO bombing attack on the Dragiša Mišovi? hospital in Belgrade hospital. Parts of the hospital were reduced to rubble. NATO admitted a missile aimed at a nearby army barracks went astray
    4 killed. several wounded
    May 30,1999
    Bombing of Varvarin, SE Serbia
    NATO bombers mounted a daylight raid on a bridge in Varvarin , south-central Serbia when local residents were attending the town’s market. The aged and narrow bridge was considered insignificant and no military installations were to be found within a radius of 20 km. Most of the casualties occurred in the second wave, when people had rushed to the bridge to help those wounded in the initial wave.
    11 civilians were reported killed and 40 injured about 17 very seriously
    May 30, 1999
    Missile Attack on Old Age Sanatorium in Surdulica, Serbia
    NATO planes hit an old age sanatorium in Surdulica in south-eastern Serbia, the second time civilian targets were hit in the town in just over a month.
    At least 11 people killed
    May 31, 1999
    Novi Pazar, southwest Serbia.
    A NATO missile attack on an apartment building in Novi Pazar, southwest Serbia.
    At least 11 people and 23 injured

  70. Hue Longer said on April 15th, 2009 at 5:45am #

    jon,

    Your first post has been responded to in detail and it’s gotten circular

    Regarding Serbia, you continue to make the same logical errors even after they’ve been spelled out for you. It doesn’t matter what acts against humanity another group does to someone else…It does not make Israel innocent. You’ve tried this nonsense with the US, Australia and now NATO.

    The ONLY context this makes sense in is when pointing out the hypocrisy of someone who condoned it while denouncing Israel–but even then, only when the one pointing it out isn’t defending either. You certainly do defend Israel’s acts so this last question isn’t necessary but I gotta ask…What makes you think anyone here defends NATO killing babies while condemning Israel for doing the same? You think this place is full of polarized Clinton fans? Read some other articles and know your audience!

  71. Peter said on April 15th, 2009 at 7:50am #

    Jon S,

    Starting a war and committing the mass murder of one thousand Lebanese citizens because of a border incident involving a handful Israeli soldiers (eight) and Hezbollah members is absurd.

    Starting a war in Gaza and killing 1,400 Palestinians supposedly in response to a Palestinian rocket launched that killed no one is absurd. Israel murders Hamas leaders and Gaza civilians constantly and you completely ignore these incidents, but when Israel starts a war you cite the last act of the Palestinians as the reason for your war.

    Isreali supporters in the press and elsewhere constantly talk about these Palestinian home made rockets that are “terrorizing” Israel. In the entire year leading up to the Israeli massacre of the Palestinans, these rockets killed no Israeli’s at all (or close to zero).

    You didn’t say anything about the Israeli attack on Sudan that I mentioned. Sudan is in Africa, hundreds or a thousand or more miles away from Israel. If a Gaza home made rocket that killed no one is your excuse for killing 1,400 Palestinians, does Sudan have the right to drop a nuclear bomb on Israel for Israel’s attack on their country (hundreds of miles away from the Israeli border)?

    Your “international press” has been reporting over and over again on Israeli plans to attack Iran for over a year now. The Israeli aggression appears imminent. Iran also is more than 500 miles from the Israeli border. Israel has been pushing the the US for help to launch a major attack on Iranian nuclear research facilities that Iran says exist for peaceful intentions only. Does Iran have the right to launch a pre-emptive strike perhaps with the help of a Pakistani nuclear bomb to prevent the Israelis from attacking them?

  72. Heidi said on April 15th, 2009 at 9:22am #

    and let’s not forget that Israel has never declared its borders!
    And why not? big question! The expanding is not finish yet!
    according to international law:
    A state without boders does not exist!
    The UN partition plan in 1948 designed the jewish borders and
    inconsequence the palestinian borders “the two state solution”
    still without consulting the palestinians!
    Israel had to admit this solution, but never respected it!
    Israel is an illegal state, according to international law and
    want to remain so! The nature of this state is clear: illegal expansion
    by brutal force. I would not like to live in such a “state” because this means that all of their citizen are forced to kill, and to kill and to kill, (Lieberman) to remain a jewish only state.

  73. Laser said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:56am #

    Heidi stated, “The settlers in Gaza have been evacuated, because of the plan to create a human zoo ( “two-legged animals” as one isreali in the government told) and the use of new weapons, and create new atrocities impossible to be treated medically, as it has been reported. This is one fact.”

    Heiri, your mind-reading in guessing the Isrealis’ intentions is just not right at all. It imputes to them evil motives that only the sickest mind could dream up.

    “A human zoo”? Pure and total nonsense. Israel took a tremndous toll in evacuating its citizens from Gaza, and only to satisfy people like you. But you will never be satiscfied a slon as Israel continues to exist.

    “Atrocites impossible to be treated medically”? You are once agin hallucinating.

    Howver, it may be important for you to know that (you mention a Jewish only state), that 20 percent of Isrealis are Arabs, and their living conditions are infinitely better than those of their brothers in the Arab states.

    But perhaps you also did not know that selling land to Jews in Judea and Samaraia (the Palestinain Authority’s “West Bank”) is punishable by death.

    It is also illegal for Jews to own property in Jordan and in Saudi Arabia. I invite the Arab experts here to complete the list of countries wthat prohibiyt Jews from owning land.

    So I am sorry to inform Heidi that her undertandings are not right, and therefore the conclusions she draws are invalid.

  74. Laser said on April 15th, 2009 at 11:12am #

    Sorry for the typos. What I meant to write is as follows:

    Heidi stated, “The settlers in Gaza have been evacuated, because of the plan to create a human zoo ( “two-legged animals” as one isreali in the government told) and the use of new weapons, and create new atrocities impossible to be treated medically, as it has been reported. This is one fact.”
    Heidi, your mind-reading in guessing the Israelis’’ intentions is just not right at all. It imputes to them evil motives that only the sickest mind could dream up.
    “A human zoo”? Pure and total nonsense. Israel took a tremendous toll in evacuating its citizens from Gaza, and only to satisfy people like you. But you will never be satisfied as long as Israel continues to exist.
    “Atrocities impossible to be treated medically”? You are once again hallucinating.
    However, it may be important for you to know that (you mention a Jewish only state), that 20 percent of Israelis’ are Arabs, and their living conditions are infinitely better than those of their brothers in the Arab states.

    But perhaps you also did not know that selling land to Jews in Judea and Samaria (the Palestinian Authority’s “West Bank”) is punishable by death.

    It is also illegal for Jews to own property in Jordan and in Saudi Arabia. I invite the Arab experts here to complete the list of countries that prohibit Jews from owning land. In contrast to Israel, in which Arabs own land all over the country.

    So I am sorry to inform Heidi that her understandings are not right, and therefore the conclusions she draws are invalid.

  75. Peter said on April 15th, 2009 at 11:17am #

    Israeli war crimes in pictures:

    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/deutschland-uber-alles/

  76. bozh said on April 15th, 2009 at 12:12pm #

    heidi, right,
    israel is borderless on all sides, even at its seacoast; this is the only land that is borderless on all sides.
    it can do that because US wants israel to do that.
    as an aside, PA can simply prevent sale of WB land; thus, it doesn’t have to come to putting people to death for selling land to ‘jews’.
    that is, if PA has authority over own land? tnx

  77. Laser said on April 16th, 2009 at 1:32am #

    The maker of the film, “The Third Jihad,” is a devout Muslim, who is devoutly against terror.

    In this remarkable and chilling film, he explains what the West faces, and how dangerous things really are – and why, as an American Muslim against terror, he stands alone.

    Everyone should see this film. It is in English with French subtitles.

    http://snipr.com/g08st

  78. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 16th, 2009 at 2:48am #

    I’m glad to see jon s declare that comparisons of relative casualty figures are absurd, because it exposes his real Zionist, racially supremacist, features. For the die-hard Zionist, following Rabbi Kook the Elder’s opinion that, ‘There is a greater difference between the soul of a Jew and the soul of a non-Jew than there is between the soul of a non-Jew and that of an animal’, the lives of the two sides are utterly incomparable. One side, the Jew, has infinite value, the other, the Gazan, none. So a death-toll disproportion of one hundred to one is actually cause for great rejoicing, as we saw when certain Judaic Israelis set up picnics to watch the carnage from vantage points. This attitude was further revealed during the carefully planned onslaught on Lebanon in 2006 (I note that you did not bother to refute the fact of careful planning, perhaps because it was splashed over the Israeli newspapers, in the early days of the murder-fest, when the ‘Chosen People’ still thought they would crush the Shia bugs like insects)when the Yesha Council of Rabbis and Torah Sages, a group allied with the settler movement, decreed that, in time of war, it is a mitzvah, or good deed, to kill enemy civilians. So the massacre of civilians, whether in Gaza or Lebanon, or Tunis, or Beirut, is a religious obligation for our ‘morally pure’ Israeli friends. The Yesha Council dismissed international humanitarian law, with contempt, as ‘Christian morality’, an insult in these exalted circles.

  79. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 16th, 2009 at 3:00am #

    Laser, when Heidi spoke of ‘atrocities impossible to treat medically’ she was either referring to the use of DIME munitions, a new terror weapon of unspeakable savagery, that literally shreds its victims, often the lower extremities, or white phosphorus, which Israel used point-blank against civilians then lied through its teeth, as ever, and smeared the numerous witnesses as, you guessed it, ‘anti-Semites’. This little trick has a sinister corollary. Obviously, by implying that any testimony, by eye-witnesses, no matter how credible, however fully corroborated, of Israeli crimes, is sheer invention motivated by ‘eternal’ anti-Semitism, yet another ‘blood libel’ by those wishing to launch a ‘New Holocaust’, the die-hard Zionist is implicitly asserting that Jews cannot commit crime. As the Yesha Council said, killing enemy civilians is good, but only when done by Jews. The Talmud is full of similar injunctions to a gross double-standard, no doubt necessary for survival by a tribe amongst many, not necessarily friendly, neighbours, over the millennia. Likewise the genocidal bloodlust of the Old Testament was surely not the Jews’ attitude alone. However, today, attitudes such as these are antithetical to civilised life, as is an aggressive, religiously exclusive, cruel and vicious, racist state. Israel must reform itself, or be impelled to do so, or it will remain a cancer, spreading hatred and suffering all about it.

  80. Hue Longer said on April 16th, 2009 at 5:20am #

    Hey Mulga,

    Don’t you know that Australia committed genocide? This means that Israelis are good guys too because we are bad guys like Israel! Wait, umm you know what I mean..can’t we all agree and look the other way? Want a stick of gum?

  81. Laser said on April 16th, 2009 at 11:02am #

    Hey, Mulligan, you are actually starting to believe that propaganda? Or are you trying to feed it to us and expect that we are complete fools?

    Here is what YOUR people said regarding the loss of Hamas lives:

    “Important announcement regarding information and pictures of the shaheeds of the resistance Dear Brothers!

    “In accordance with the policy of the factions of the jihad resistance in Gaza …we inform you that it is completely forbidden to issue information about the numbers, names or pictures or any [other] detail about the shaheeds and wounded of the resistance. The order is in force until the end of the Zionist aggression which is clear to us and our nation, with the consent of Allah, may he be exalted. Any [report] which violates these rules will be deleted and a warning will be sent to whoever is responsible for the posting. Let us all be soldiers of the resistance, and if we cannot assist it, at least let us not assist the enemy [fighting] against it.”

    You really should know what your brothers are declaring before you go and make a fool of yourself.

  82. Peter said on April 16th, 2009 at 2:46pm #

    Not only do they hate Arabs and Germans. They hate Africans too. The Israeli’s call africans “niggers”. Is there any one they don’t hate?

    Israelis to Africans: “Niggers don’t expel Jews”

    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3633163,00.html

  83. Mulga Mumblebrain said on April 16th, 2009 at 3:45pm #

    Good one laser. Where did you get that one? MEMRI, CAMERA, Mossad, The Jerusalem Post or did you make it up yourself? It is either mistranslated, deliberately, a hasbara speciality, taken out of full context, or true, but the Palestinians’ prerogative, as brutally occupied people, imprisoned by merciless racist brutes are entitled, in morality and under international law, to resist these depradations by any means necessary. You see laser, finally, in no small part due to the web, which explains Zionist efforts to censor it, the world is waking to Zionist lies. You do yourselves no favours by peddling already exposed lies and operating such a blatant double-standard, where you unashamedly proclaim that Gazan casualties are irrelevant if one Jew has their fingernail broken, and by your increasing bellicosity, and God knows it was always bellicose, and constant recourse to the vilification of ‘anti-Semite’ to any who dare to do anything but genuflect and sing your praises. Wherever people are informed, wherever opinions are not the result of open racism and xenophobia, which, in this country at least, the greatest propagators of, in regard to Islam, Arabs and the Palestinians in particular, are the local Israel Lobby and their local stooges, Israel is losing its propaganda edge. People simply no longer buy the evil gibberish that the Nazi Judeocide justifies baking Gazan children alive with white phosphorus.

  84. Laser said on April 16th, 2009 at 11:35pm #

    Peter lies. The Israelis do not even know the word “nigger.”

    Have you no shame, Peter?

    In fact, Israelis have, at great expense and under extremely difficult conditions, effected the immigration of Ethiopian Jews, who are as black as can be, and given them all the rights of all other citizens. From this standpoint, Israelis are color blind.

    Peter seems to be just plain blind.

  85. Laser said on April 16th, 2009 at 11:42pm #

    Mumblety-peg, you refuse to face facts. In this manner, there can be no intelligent dialog.

    Which, I seem to notice, is precisely what you wanted to achieve.

    Likening Israel to Nazi Germany, or to traditional anti-Jewish stereotypical behavior is another sure sign of Jew-baiting. All decent people reject absolutely any comparison between Israel and the Nazis. Only a sick mind could say such a thing. But if you are stuck on Nazis, you might be interested in a fact or two.

    Did you know that while some 60,000 civilians in UK cities were slaughtered by Nazi bombers in WW II, the Allied aerial counter-offensive to eliminate that evil threat cost 600,000 German lives ­ a ratio of 10 to 1?

    Is this also what muggledy would call disproportionate?

  86. Peter said on April 17th, 2009 at 10:07am #

    Laser,

    Did you bother to read the Israeli newspaper article I posted that reports on Israeli settlers calling Ethiopian’s “niggers.”. Are you also saying the Israeli newspaper is anti-semitic? So, who refuses to face facts.?

  87. bozh said on April 17th, 2009 at 11:17am #

    it is OK to compare nazism {an uniuqe theft of land} with socalled zionism; another particular theft of land.

    both isms had in mind murder and dispossession/repression/enserfment of weaker or less advanced peoples.

    comparing other {unique or not} aspects of the two isms is not necessary, at least to me, since the theft of land/murder/expulsion by both isms, adequately and accurately elucidate the two situations.tnx

  88. jon s said on April 17th, 2009 at 1:54pm #

    Peter- It looks like there are a lot of things about Israel that you simply don’t get. As I already mentioned the government and the IDF were surprised and caught off-guard by the Hizbullah attack on July 12, 2006. For Israel the death of 8 soldiers is a major calamity. The gov’t had to hit back, there’s a concept called “deterrence”: If I slap you in the face, you’re liable to kick me in the balls, therefore I’ll think twice before I’ll hit you. It turns out that this concept actually works more often than not.
    The Gaza conflict was not caused by one rocket attack – there have been 8 years of Qassam rocket attacks on Sderot and other places in Israel. These attacks have indeed terrorized the people of Sderot, people have been killed and injured. And don’t forget : the people of Sderot are innocent civilians. The Hamas have continued the rocket attacks despite the fact that Israel withdrew from Gaza and ended the occupation there. The people of Sderot deserve to live in peace, as do the people of Gaza. And contrary to what some of the haters on DV think – I value all human life equally.
    As to Sudan: it’s not as if the Israeli air force woke up one morning and had nothing better to do than to bomb Sudan. The target was a convoy carrying arms from Iran to the Hamas in Gaza. Turns out that not all their weapons are home-made, unless your home is a rocket factory in Iran…
    The prospect of Iran achieving a nuclear capability is really scary . Here is a regime which has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel, seeking the means to do so. The combination of intent and capability is what makes the threat so worrisome.
    Heidi- I have a problem with the concept of an “illegal state”. How can that be? What does it mean? That every single Israeli is a criminal? Every man, woman and child? You can oppose various Israeli actions and policies ( I do, too), but the state itself is legitimate, and here to stay. And I know many Israelis who have never killed anyone.

    My info on the NATO campaign in Serbia was meant to make two points:
    1. That in comparison I think that Israel took more precautions to avoid civilian casualties, though not enough.
    2.The double standard: did you oppose the NATO campaign as vehemently? Did you take to the streets and call for a boycott of all NATO countries? Deny their right to exist?

    I must say that some of the opinions expressed here on DV are much more extreme than those that I’ve heard from many of my Palestinian acquaintances.

  89. Peter said on April 17th, 2009 at 2:30pm #

    Jon S,
    Starting a war and committing the mass murder of one thousand Lebanese citizens because of a border incident involving a handful Israeli soldiers (eight) and Hezbollah members is absurd.

    Starting a war in Gaza and killing 1,400 Palestinians supposedly in response to a Palestinian rocket launched that killed no one is absurd. Israel murders Hamas leaders and Gaza civilians constantly and you completely ignore these incidents, but when Israel starts a war you cite the last act of the Palestinians as the reason for your war.

    Isreali supporters in the press and elsewhere constantly talk about these Palestinian home made rockets that are “terrorizing” Israel. In the entire year leading up to the Israeli massacre of the Palestinans, these rockets killed no Israeli’s at all (or close to zero).

    You didn’t say anything about the Israeli attack on Sudan that I mentioned. Sudan is in Africa, hundreds or a thousand or more miles away from Israel. If a Gaza home made rocket that killed no one is your excuse for killing 1,400 Palestinians, does Sudan have the right to drop a nuclear bomb on Israel for Israel’s attack on their country (hundreds of miles away from the Israeli border)?

    Your “international press” has been reporting over and over again on Israeli plans to attack Iran for over a year now. The Israeli aggression appears imminent. Iran also is more than 500 miles from the Israeli border. Israel has been pushing the the US for help to launch a major attack on Iranian nuclear research facilities that Iran says exist for peaceful intentions only. Does Iran have the right to launch a pre-emptive strike perhaps with the help of a Pakistani nuclear bomb to prevent the Israelis from attacking them?

    Israeli War Crimes (pictures):

    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/deutschland-uber-alles/

  90. Peter said on April 17th, 2009 at 7:20pm #

    Regarding Sudan, its a violation of international law to attack a foreign country. Sudan denies the arms were going to Hamas and Israel has no proof thats where they were going.

    However, there is proof that Israel was training soldiers in Georgia last year before Georgia attacked South Ossetia. Russia has made it clear for years it considers NATO in Georgia a threat to its security. Russia does have a right to defend itself. Perhaps they should drop a nuclear bomb on Israel for aiding an enemy on their border which is how Georgia is behaving under Saakasvili.

  91. jon s said on April 18th, 2009 at 12:33am #

    Peter – Your first April 17 post is simply a repeat of your earlier one. You didn’t address most of the points that I’ve made, including the question of under what circumstances would Israel be justified in exercising the right of self defense.
    On Sudan -of course they would deny the arms were going to Hamas. But you’ve got to ask yourself what possible reason would Israel have to send it’s planes on such a dangerous mission that far away unless there was positive proof.
    On Georgia – I have no information. In general Israel tries to maintain good relations with Georgia and also with Russia. It’s like you’re trying to tie Israel to every problem and conflict in the world.

  92. Peter said on April 18th, 2009 at 8:17am #

    Jon,
    Everything you post is a repeat of what you have already said, as someone else said much earlier about your posts. Your arguments are “circular”.

    I don’t have to ask myself anything about Sudan. Its quite simple. Israel attacked them and you have no proof of anything but you accept their version or the pro-Israeli press’s version of events and you reject the middle eastern and non-aligned nations press. If Iran dropped a (Pakistani provided) nuclear bomb on Israel tomorrow, they would have proof and reasons to defend what they have done according to your way of thinking.

    Your arguments that Israel is only defending itself have been thoroughly refuted.

    If you’re not aware of Israeli involvement in Georgia, you should have left it at that. Israel does get involved in all areas of the world, certainly, much too much for their size. And how you have argued, I can see why. They can do anything to anyone and you will defend it. I’m afraid the Israeli settlers that called Ethiopians “niggers” is the least of the worlds problems. The Israelis and you project those views towards all gentiles and that is Israel’s (and your) problem.

    I can tell you are going to have the last word no matter what. You are like a child. But, if you can’t tell by now, the tide of opinion is against Israeli aggression. The western countries government’s and press will follow eventually and it won’t be that long.

  93. Peter said on April 18th, 2009 at 8:36am #

    The western press is already changing. From Great Britain’s “Independent”:

    http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-how-can-you-trust-the-cowardly-bbc-1669281.html

  94. jon s said on April 18th, 2009 at 9:23am #

    Perhaps the radical press is also changing:
    http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7313/731336.html

  95. mary said on April 18th, 2009 at 9:39am #

    Peter – Reference the undermining of Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East Editor of the BBC, CAMERA was the complainant, funded by AIPAC of course and by others in the lobby with the same agenda.

    http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=6&x_article=1655

    PS Another Palestinian was shot dead today in the West Bank following the death of a young Palestinian protestor yesterday by a tear gas canister yesterday and Tristan Anderson lies in a hospital bed with injuries to his brain caused by one of these lethal weapons.

  96. Laser said on April 18th, 2009 at 9:24pm #

    Mary, when a “peaceful protest” becomes violent, the security forces are expected to use non-lethal weapons to break it up and protect themselves.

    If you don’t push a stick into a lion’s ear, he will not claw you.

    If these people had stayed home, there would have been no violent demonstration, and the participants would be in good health today.

  97. Laser said on April 18th, 2009 at 9:30pm #

    Three terrorist attacks were thwarted on Friday and Saturday in Israel.

    In Bet El, two Arab terrorists threw firebombs at Israeli homes. Not surprisingly, Israeli security forces shot the two terrorists.

    On Friday morning, civilian guards shot an Arab terrorist who was carrying a knife, in Bet Haggai, near Hebron.

    On Saturday two Israeli police were injured when an Arab driver intentionally rammed them north of Jerusalem.

    .

  98. Laser said on April 19th, 2009 at 4:31am #

    Recent news reports news inform us that a Hamas imam is calling for the extermination of the Jews. Or in short, “The Jews are evil, and their children will be exterminated.”

    And this was stated by an imam who participated in the “Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace.” A Hamas cleric who once participated in an international conference of “Imams and Rabbis for Peace” — whose delegates vowed to “condemn any negative representation” of each other’s religions — has wholeheartedly espoused Hamas’s racist ideology in a recent Friday sermon on Hamas TV. Hedeclared this on Hamas (Al-Aqsa) TV, on April 3, 2009.

    Ironically, this latest profession of Hamas’s genocidal racism was preached and broadcast at the start of the month in which the UN is meeting in the “Durban II” conference in Geneva to condemn Israel as being “racist.”

    According to the Hamas interpretation of Islam, the Jews are inherently evil, seek to rule the world, and are a threat to Muslims and all of humanity. They are therefore destined to be exterminated, in this evil person’s mind.

  99. Laser said on April 19th, 2009 at 4:34am #

    There is not a hint of “anti-Zionism” here. It is plain Jew-hatred, inspired by the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

  100. mary said on April 20th, 2009 at 2:23pm #

    Rep Jane Harman’s involvement in AIPAC’s murky dealings are detailed in this article.

    Snakes are honourable. Would Jane like a little water boarding – just 6 times a day?

    http://static.cqpolitics.com/harman-3098436-page1.html

    CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
    April 19, 2009 — 8:49 p.m.

    Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
    By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist

    Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

    Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

    In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

    Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

    continues/…………

  101. Laser said on April 20th, 2009 at 10:23pm #

    Arab spying on friendly countries has a rich past. Interesting is what they were doing in the 1940a.

    While Hadassah and the Hebrew University were assisting the British, Palestinian Arabs led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, were fighting a guerrilla war against the British and Jews. In late 1941, as a refugee in Berlin, the Mufti used radio broadcasts to urge Arabs to become fifth columns in the lands where they lived and to commit sabotage and to murder Allied troops and Jews.

    His spies provided the Nazis with information about British troop movements. His reports also described successful acts of sabotage in the Middle East by many of his agents. They cut water pipes and fuel and telephone lines, and destroyed bridges and blew up railroads. He organized an Axis-Arab Legion, the Arabisches Freiheitskorps, who wore German uniforms with “Free Arabia,” patches. They were part of the German army, and were responsible for protecting the Nazi communication system in Macedonia and for hunting down American and British paratroopers who landed in Yugoslavia.

    Once the partition of Palestine was approved by the United Nations on November 29, 1947, the violence against the Jews intensified. The equivalent of a Red Cross medical convoy comprising non-combatants — including doctors, nurses and university faculty and students — was ambushed by Arabs in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem.

    Although The British High Commissioner and the British Secretary of State personally gave their assurances that these convoys would be protected by British troops and police, seventy-eight Jews were murdered by the Arabs.

    The attack, which lasted seven hours, began at 9:30 a.m. and took place less than 600 feet from the British military post. The British watched from the sidelines. Jewish appeals for help were ignored until mid-afternoon. But by then the Jews had either been burned alive in buses or shot. There were 28 survivors, only eight had no injuries.

    Among the dead were the founders of the new faculty of medicine, a physicist, a philologist, a cancer researcher, the head of the university’s department of psychology, and an authority on Jewish law. A doctor who waited four years to marry the nurse he loved was killed when he went to say good bye to his patients before leaving on his honeymoon.

    One victim, a doctor, treated the Arab peasants in the village of Isawiyeh on Mount Scopus two weeks prior to the attack. Yet Arabs claimed that the ambush was a heroic act, and the British had no business intervening even at the last-minute: They did not want a single Jewish passenger to remain alive.

    Thousands of furious Jews attended the funeral and lined the streets of the procession. British indifference was responsible for this loss of life. Official Arab response was that they had heard that Jewish gangs were assembled near Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University.

    R.M. Graves, the British appointed Chairman of the Jerusalem Municipal Commission, said “…the Arabs do not realize that the killing of doctors, nurses and university teachers was a dastardly outrage.”

    Despite this sad and bloody piece of history, Hadassah has endured through hundreds of terrorist attacks and always has been there for the health of Jews and Arabs in the region.

    And the Arabs who are treated there get the best medical care in the Middle East, despite their terrorist leanings, affiliations and crimes.

  102. Laser said on April 20th, 2009 at 11:17pm #

    The phenomenon of American spying on Israel is more serious than Israeli spying on America, but the general public is not well informed.

    For obvious reasons, it’s impossible to provide current examples of this phenomenon. But there have been cases in the past that have been disclosed, only to be quickly hushed by both the Israeli and American governments (in a way that the Pollard issue, a festering wound to both countries, never was).

    One of the most telling such examples is the 1986 episode of Yosef Amit. Amit was a major in Israeli military intelligence. At one point, he worked in the secretive “Unit 504,” which is responsible for coordinating spies in Arab countries neighboring Israel, and he also had close contacts in the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. In the mid-’80s, Amit was recruited by Tom Waltz, a Jewish CIA officer based in the CIA station in Tel Aviv. And, until his arrest, he furnished the CIA with classified information about Israel’s troop movements and its plans in both the occupied territories and Lebanon.

    The incident got little press in either the United States or Israel, whose government barely even complained about it. Waltz stayed at his post in Tel Aviv, and, later, when officials inside the Israeli government considered offering to trade Amit for Pollard (or even to release Amit in exchange for leniency for Pollard), they quickly nixed the idea, because they feared stoking more anger in the United States. To some Israeli government officials, there is a lingering sense that Israel has been subjected to a “double standard,” as one of them put it.

    This is known as Americans intimidation.

  103. Peter said on April 21st, 2009 at 7:07pm #

    The Jewish racist talking about the Mufti and Nazis again. After the Arabs fought with Britain’s Lawrence of Arabia in WW I, the British stabbed the Arabs in the back and colonized them. There were Indians that also fought with Germany to seek their independence. After hundreds of years being under the colonialist rule, Arabs, Indians and others wanted freedom. Because you also subjugate people you consider inferior to yourself, you don’t understand what their motives.

    Ghandi said “the difference between Hitler and Churchill is only of degree”

  104. Peter said on April 21st, 2009 at 7:17pm #

    As an American whose country has given grant money to Israel at a rate of over three billion dollars a year for more than forty years in addition to other huge financial help, huge military help, allowed the secret of the nuclear bomb to be stolen from us, came to Israel’s aid in the 1973 war, the USA owes Israel nothing.

    Israel’s spying on us with their spies having contacts at the highest level of the US government has to be prosecuted. These spies sympathizers have to be watched too. This USA is not a colony of israel.

  105. Laser said on April 21st, 2009 at 10:53pm #

    The Mufti and his followers were great supporters of Hitler. As Peter has noted.

    And the Mufti’s descendants espouse similar policies. Only now, most (but not all) express their hate for the “Zionists,” which is of course their code word for the Jews.

  106. Laser said on April 21st, 2009 at 10:58pm #

    Gandhi did indeed state that “Hitlerism and Churchillism are in fact the same thing . . . The difference is only one of degree.”

    To put things in context, this is the same Gandhi who advised Jews to remain in Germany even if “the calculated violence of Hitler may result in a general massacre of the Jews.”

    What insight!!

    What a great humanitarian!!

  107. Peter said on April 21st, 2009 at 11:31pm #

    Ghandi is considered a great humanitarian.

    The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If I had been an Arab or Indian in those days, I would have sought the help of anyone that would help liberate my people and that would include Germany.

  108. Laser said on April 22nd, 2009 at 5:01am #

    Peter, I don’t understand where you are going.

    Gandhi told the Jews to remain in Europe even though that would lead to their extermination. Or in his own words, even if “the calculated violence of Hitler may result in a general massacre of the Jews.”

    Are you justifying his recommendation? That the Jews be exterminated?

    Or did I misunderstand your comment?

  109. Peter said on April 22nd, 2009 at 10:07am #

    I’m not familiar with the last quote you attribute to him. He was an advocate of non-violent methods and protests. He was not one of the nationalists I mentioned that advocated taking up arms against the British. His non-violent protests still resulted in many Indians getting their heads smashed by the British.

    The same question you ask about what jews should have done could be asked about the arabs. Should they have done nothing and allowed themselves to be Great Britain’s colony for hundreds of years?

  110. Peter said on April 22nd, 2009 at 10:18am #

    Ghandi may have thought organizing an international boycott against Germany less than two months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor (before he began his anti-semitic policies) would be considered a provocation:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DailyExpress_March1933_judeafrontpage.jpg

  111. Laser said on April 22nd, 2009 at 11:59am #

    Peter, whatever you mean by being a colony, there can be no comparison.

    Hitler killed 6 million Jews.

    If the others had been foolish enough to follow Gandhi’s advice, Hitler would have killed even more.

    And he gave that advice fully knowing what the consequences would be.

    And don’t you think it is time to start spelling Gandhi’s name correctly?

  112. Peter said on April 22nd, 2009 at 1:13pm #

    Thank you for correcting my spelling.

  113. Laser said on April 23rd, 2009 at 12:06am #

    See a video that explains the background to operation Cast Lead — specifically the terrorist tactics that Hamas employs.

    It shows how Hamas smuggles in weaponry in order to arm itself, and how it employs the civilian population and infrastructure in order to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel.

    Hamas’ use of human shields during operation Cast Lead caused many civilian casualties among the Gazans.

    http://bit.ly/5BMrl

  114. mary said on April 23rd, 2009 at 3:08am #

    Most amusing. A production from the IDF – top rated in Israhell. Notice the site was established the day the shoah started.

    idfnadesk
    Joined: 29 December 2008
    Last Sign In: 13 hours ago
    Videos Watched: 123
    Subscribers: 23,834
    Channel Views: 2,291,104
    The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit is the Israel Defense Forces’ professional body responsible for media and public relations in Israel and around the world. This is our new site that will help us do so.

    We thank you for visiting us and will continue to update this site with documentation of the IDF’s humane action and operational success in Operation Cast Lead.

    Please visit the IDF’s new blog – http://www.idfspokesperson.com – for news and other multimedia content.
    Hometown: Jerusalem
    Country: Israel
    Website: http://idfspokesperson.com/

    #1 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – Israel
    #8 – Most Viewed (Today) – Israel
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  115. Laser said on April 23rd, 2009 at 11:50am #

    Mary has shown us that there is a word she does not recognize: SHOAH.

  116. Laser said on April 23rd, 2009 at 12:00pm #

    As a Palestinian Authority Arab faces the death sentence for selling land to Jews, a civil rights group asks Prime Minister Netanyahu to demand that PA rescind death penalty for the “crime.”

    The Yesha (Judea and Samaria) Civil Rights Organization has written an urgent letter to Binyamin Netanyahu and ministers in his government in light of the opening of the trial this week. According to PA law, the defendant faces the death penalty if convicted.

    The letter, addressed to Netanyahu and the Ministers of Justice, Defense, and Public Security, states, “The Land of Israel is now the only place in the world where the law officially bans the sale of land to Jews because they are Jews. Even worse, the punishment for violators is actually death.”

    The organization says that Netanyahu’s government must set an ultimatum: “No negotiations with the Palestinian Authority until this anti-Semitic law is rescinded. This demand takes precedence even over the insistence that the PA recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”

    The trial of the Hevron resident in a special PA court began on Tuesday, with the defendant accused of having sold land in the Hevron area to Jews. The Yesha group asks Netanyahu and the ministers to step in to save the man, who is being charged with treason.

    Israel’s intervention in the past has caused the PA to release others who had been jailed on suspicion of selling land to Jews. These include Arab-Israelis living in eastern Jerusalem.

    Strook: “Such a Law is a Red Light for Diplomatic Relations” Orit Strook of the Jewish Community of Hevron, the director of the Yesha Civil Rights group, says, “Israel would never have diplomatic relations with any country that has on its books a law forbidding the sale of land to Jews.”

    Her organization’s letter states that the confiscation of Beit HaShalom (Peace House) from its rightful Jewish owners in Hevron several months ago is directly related to the fact that Arabs must fear for their lives when selling to Jews: “The Israeli authorities act as if the Arab sellers are free people, when in fact a gun is pointed at their heads and they must do everything they can to hide their actions – and this is why they claimed after the sale of Beit HaShalom [to Jews] that they never sold it.”

    “So long as the ‘Palestinian rule of law’ is not uprooted from its source,” the letter concludes, “all the talk about Israeli rule of law in Judea and Samaria has no foothold in reality.”

  117. mary said on April 23rd, 2009 at 12:04pm #

    Mary knows perfectly well what the meaning of ‘shoah’ is and what Vilnai intended it to mean to the Palestinians. In case Laser doesn’t know =

    The Guardian

    A catastrophic turn of phrase
    What did the Israeli minister mean when he talked of a ‘shoah’ befalling the Palestinians in Gaza?
    Comments (185)
    Brian Klug guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 February 2008 18.00 GMT

    There is a terrible irony about the turn of phrase used today by Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence minister. Referring to the rocket attack on Israel launched from Gaza, Vilnai warned that “they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves”.

    The Hebrew word “shoah” occurs in the bible and means catastrophe or disaster. But in the last century, the term acquired a more specific meaning and an intense emotional charge. “The Shoah” refers to the Nazi Holocaust, which resulted in the destruction of Jewish community life across Europe and the murder of two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population.

    A spokesperson for Vilnai has said he was using the word in its general sense and that “he did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide”. But the very fact that it was necessary to issue this “clarification” is revealing. The term “shoah” today, used in a political context, immediately conjures up the Nazi Holocaust. It frankly beggars belief that Vilnai could not have been aware that the word is so freighted.

    What was he thinking when he uttered his remark? First, who did he mean by “they” and what did he mean by “bigger”? The Ha’aretz report takes it for granted that by “they” he meant “the Palestinians”, while “bigger” can only mean “greater than we [the Israeli government] have inflicted upon them so far”. Even if he was referring only to Palestinians living in Gaza, this is tantamount to admitting that the Israeli government has been pursuing a policy of collective punishment – as its critics have long maintained……………..

  118. Peter said on April 23rd, 2009 at 5:00pm #

    Mary,

    He thinks his people are superior so their suffering is special. Shoah Shmoah. Besides the 6 million jews that died in the war about 50 million other Europeans died. Millions of Europeans were deliberately murdered. Jews should not receive special status.

  119. Peter said on April 23rd, 2009 at 5:13pm #

    Irish Nobel Peace Prize recipient says Israel is using “ethnic cleansing” to get rid of the Palestinians.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090421/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictjerusalem

  120. Peter said on April 23rd, 2009 at 5:24pm #

    Ahmadinejad supporters shout down the “Zio-NAZI” Elie Wiesel. We need some people like that in the US government.

    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/wiesel-demands-iran-pay-him-reparations-for-his-losses-to-madoff-iranians-shout-no/

  121. Laser said on April 23rd, 2009 at 11:53pm #

    Peter, his opinion is as valid as yours or mine.

    And he is as wrong as wrong can be.

    20 percent of Israelis are Arabs, who own their homes.

    Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and other Arab countries forbid Jews from owning land. In the PA, selling land to a Jew is a capital crime.

    So please rethink your absurd libel about Israel doing “ethnic cleansing.”

    And Mary and Peter have demonstrated that they have no idea of the magnitude of evil that Hitler visited upon the world by his holocaust. Incidentally, that was ethic l\cleansing, and to compare Israel to that is just to shown how insensitive the Israel bashers can be, and have become.

  122. Peter said on April 24th, 2009 at 7:04am #

    You have no idea the magnitude of evil that was perpetrated against most of Europe including 25 million Soviets and eight million Germans that perished in the war.

  123. Laser said on April 25th, 2009 at 11:02am #

    Yes, evil was also perpetrated on others. That does not detract from the magnitude of the evil with which Hitler acted against the Jews.

    And that is indeed what I had stated, and I’m sorry that Peter did not notice. Let me just repeat it once more:

    And Mary and Peter have demonstrated that they have no idea of the magnitude of evil that Hitler visited upon the world by his holocaust.

  124. Deadbeat said on April 25th, 2009 at 12:30pm #

    Here’s an excellent critique of Cornel West position on the Israel/Palestine by Steven Salaita. Salaita critique is important because it example the false “evenhandedness” such Left/Liberal intellectual like West, Michael Lerner and IMO Noam Chomsky.

    The Left/Liberal position has help to neutralize any real opposition to Zionism’s influence in the U.S. and it needs to be seriously confronted. It effectively advances the racist ideology of Zionism by essentially blaming and denying Palestinian resistance and justice in order to maintain the racist characteristics of Israel.

    Cornel West And The Ethics Of Faithful Equivocation

  125. Max Shields said on April 25th, 2009 at 12:43pm #

    DB you are now bringing into focus what you mean by “left”. For me West and Lerner are liberals of, for and by the system. They do not represent anything but a protection of Israel and, in West’s case, Barack Obama.

    But flayling about these liberals like there is something to be done about them anymore than about the MSM or the power elite, doesn’t get us anywhere. Ok, so we know who they are. We agree.

    It is Obama and the Democratic Party and the elitist who vetted Obama as our next President who have split the baby; and keep the thing going; not Lerner or West (and Chomsky, whatever you think of him is not part of the Lerner/West alliance (who are both clearly aligned in quid pro quo fashion).

    “Liberals” who were on the same page 6 months ago regarding war crimes and war and empire…are now adjoined to the Obama/Dem hip. It is not really West or Lerner who created or sustained it. Yes they offer some advocacy, but their flock is not that broad.

    No, the machine still holds the cards and it will only be through the machine’s own undoing, its demise that people of no particular ideological persuasion will say NO MORE.

    (DB as a Marxist you should be all for the end of ideology (left/right), rather than trying to hold some notion of left ideology banning together to overcome.)

  126. Deadbeat said on April 25th, 2009 at 5:59pm #

    (DB as a Marxist you should be all for the end of ideology (left/right), rather than trying to hold some notion of left ideology banning together to overcome.)

    Max, I guess it’s an issue of semantics. I do see your point regarding “ideology”. In the United States, “ideology” is extremely narrow whereby the Capitalist ideology is a given and the range of discussion is only between the “left” (Liberals) and “right” (Conservatives).

    I take ideology to mean a set of ideas that guides movements thus I don’t see ideology as a bad thing. I think what is needed is to educate people and to convince people of our common interests and how a just society is the best and only solution to society’s ills. I know that is vague and I think Marxism does help to refine that general idea. But that is beside the point that I’m trying to express here. The point is the motivating power of ideas IMO is needed to temper the motivating power of anger.

    Because of the narrowness of ideology in the U.S., people like West and Lerner are identified as the “Left”. Most dishearteningly, are people like Noam Chomsky who is solidly identified as leftist (even radical) who have not been faithful to the leftist tenets.

    We agree the machine needs to be undone and while there is a lot of anger among the populous where I think people want to effect change, there are also a lot of “ideas” that can and will mislead people into the kind of action that yields no changes whatsoever.

    Thus I see ideology as extremely important in order to persuade people in a particular direction. I just hope that direction is one that will move towards a just and fair society.

  127. Laser said on April 25th, 2009 at 10:06pm #

    We mourn our brothers in the U.S. Armed Forces who were killed fighting terror this past week:

    Richard A. Deawater, 21 of Topeka, Kansas
    Ray A. Spencer II, 20, of Ridgecrest, California

  128. Deadbeat said on April 26th, 2009 at 12:50am #

    You mean U.S. Soldiers fight for Zionist’s terror. Yeah it’s a real shame and something to be mourned.

  129. Laser said on April 26th, 2009 at 2:54am #

    Deadbeat,
    If you are an American, then you are a traitor. And you know what the law says about traitors during wartime.

    Also, your thesis is preposterous. I suppose you also hold that the Jews control the world — and then you rename them Zionists.

  130. Hue Longer said on April 26th, 2009 at 5:45am #

    Laser,

    Are you advocating that DB be shot?

  131. Shabnam said on April 26th, 2009 at 5:55am #

    We know who are TRAITORS when we see them. Deadbeat is NOT A TRAITOR but according to many people – for example Jeffrey Blankfort and others – the Zionist lobby who runs American foreign policy is a fifth column.
    http://archive.ucimc.org/newswire/display_any/8924

  132. bozh said on April 26th, 2009 at 6:56am #

    deadbeat is demanding amers finaly after 4 centuries inherit their inheritance: healthcare, free higher education, end to wars of aggression, right to live, more freedom, etc.

    the traitors are all those people who have been depriving 90% of amers of the basic human rights.
    and he is demanding these rights also for ‘jews’! tnx

  133. Laser said on April 26th, 2009 at 7:49am #

    Check the dictionary definition of traitor.

    I don’t know what an “Amer” is, but I do know how to use a dictionary.

    I also do not recognize the word Jews when written with a lower case J and enclosed in quotation marks. Perhaps this is asign of anti-Semitism?

    I thought that this forum was also serving as a vehicle to make people learn punctuation, capitalization and general literacy.

  134. bozh said on April 26th, 2009 at 8:41am #

    message is the message. It makes not a tad of difference if it is arrayed in broken chinese or english.
    if one gets the message/meaning even with wrong speling, cintaks, gramer, one does not complain.

    but i think that people who complain about bad syntax, punctuation, and spelling are attempting to silence dissent.
    it is known that at least some people unduly worry about or are ashamed of their poor english/grammar/punctuation.

    some people like to have lies, delivered to them by the ruling class, arrayed in ‘brilliant’ but worthless utterances.

    both clinton and obama kill children in many lands. That is OK to some people as long the killings are explained in ‘brilliant’ language, + in ‘correct’ spelling, etc.

    to me, give it to me in english! The english, that about 90% amers use daily; the only lingo they understand. tnx

  135. Laser said on April 26th, 2009 at 9:06am #

    Sorry, liyttle man. Bozh, I don’t know what an Amer is. I am also appalled at your mudering of the English language. And by your Alice-in-Wonderland facility to take a word and make it mean anything you want it to mean.

    And also, of course, by your cockeyed vie won current events.

    And your name-calling.

  136. Laser said on April 26th, 2009 at 9:09am #

    I apologize for my typos.

    What I intended to write was as follows:

    Sorry, little Bozh. I don’t know what an Amer is. I am also appalled at your murdering of the English language. And by your Alice-in-Wonderland facility to take a word and make it mean anything you want it to mean.

    And also, of course, by your cockeyed view on current events.

    And your name-calling.

    And the nonsense you spout about the connection between good syntax and stifling of dissent.

  137. bozh said on April 26th, 2009 at 11:32am #

    laser,
    it seems that u don’t know that the meanings are not in symbols/words but in people.
    the war criminals testify to this fact with such words as “war on terror”, “colatteral damage”, “preemption”, “defending our freedoms”, etc.
    when bush, obama, clinton use such terms, only they know what they mean. We, perforce must guess!
    still, some words cannot be further defined; i.e., they are undefinable.

    That’s the reason they are not used; new language/symbols are ergo coined.
    and in spite of the fact that english already extant, suffices to accurately/ adequately label and describe events properly.

    EG, one does not need to keep defining/explaining words like milk, water, flood, nosebleed, wife, crop, rasberry, et al.
    when i say “Milk’, an image of milk almost automatically rises in one’s brain.
    “colatteral damage” does not bring on an image. The reason is, one never sees it. MSM/clergy/pols make sure that none of us see kids torn apart by US missiles.
    the knowledge comes to us only thru five senses. We do not hear, taste, touch, see, or smell “fight on terror”.
    from this one can easily spot a deceiver. tnx

  138. Laser said on April 26th, 2009 at 11:51am #

    Bozh,

    Son, you really must stop philosophizing and leave that to people who undertstand the subject.

    You mention “US missiles,” but conveniently ignore the seven years of Hamas missiles targeting innocent Israeli citizens.

    That’s rasP berry, by the way. My previous remarks are still meaningful.

  139. Peter said on April 27th, 2009 at 6:04pm #

    You conveniently ignore that Israel continuously attacks and kills Palestinians, and starves them. Those home made missiles you keep talking about demonstrate the lying and dishonesty of the press reports you cite. The number of deaths from those missiles from Hamas are minimal to next to nothing. The massacres of Palestinians civilians are in the thousands.

    Of course the Palestinians are just one of the peoples the Israelis attack. They murder Lebanese and attack countries all over the world that have done nothing to them – 1982 attack on Iraq, recent attack on Sudan and now threats to Iran. Israelis are war criminals. Take a look at what your beloved war criminals do to their enemies in the pictures below. Its not enough they came from Europe to steal the Palestinians land – they have to kill them all off.

    Israeli War Crimes (pictures):

    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/deutschland-uber-alles/

  140. Laser said on April 27th, 2009 at 10:11pm #

    Peter, you have it backwards.

    The Islamist terrorists intentionally target Israeli civilians. The have been doing it for longer than you know. The send their suicide bombers to blow up restaurants in Israel. They provoke incidents with soldiers and civilians.

    Israel responds to these attacks and targets the terrorists.

    If you still don’t get it, I suspect you never will.

  141. Peter said on April 29th, 2009 at 12:56pm #

    No Laser, you have it backwards.

  142. Laser said on April 30th, 2009 at 11:47am #

    No, Peter.

    The Islamist terrorists intentionally target Israeli civilians. The have been doing it for longer than you know. The send their suicide bombers to blow up restaurants in Israel. They provoke incidents with soldiers and civilians.

    Israel responds to these attacks and targets the terrorists.

    The Palestinians repeatedly use Islamic sources to defend this religious hatred, even demanding the killing of Jews as a current obligation and the will of Allah. At least four times in recent months, Palestinian religious leaders have taught publicly that the following Hadith (Islamic tradition attributed to Muhammad) is an authoritative directive of Islam today, expressing Allah’s will that obedient Muslims kill Jews. According to Sheikh Muhammad Abd al Hadi La’afi, quoted in the official P.A. newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, and Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Madi, delivering the main Friday sermon on Palestinian TV the Hadith itself states:

    “The Day of Resurrection will not arrive until the Muslims make war against the Jews and kill them, and until a Jew hiding behind a rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'”

    So now you understand what motivates the radical Isamists.

  143. Suthiano said on April 30th, 2009 at 12:03pm #

    Laser,

    He is a master of unknown sources. He loves to “use quotation” marks to “make it seem like someone” said “something”.

    But Laser said, “Islam” is a religion of “terrorists”, and thus he committed a libel.

    Laser believes that if you’re Muslim you are a “terrorist” and you “hate all Jews” and want to “kill them all”.

    Thus Laser committed a libel, a huge generalization and has possibly committed hate crimes by attempting to fuel division. Would someone charge this guy with a hate crime please.

  144. bozh said on April 30th, 2009 at 12:20pm #

    laser,
    what you have said mybe true. It is much irrelevant as there are no jews to be found anywhere.
    what we do have is judaists. Historic record shows that the arabs of n. afrika and asia have not been killing their own people of judaic cult.
    judaists have commanded to kill every canaanite as well as any disbeliever. And that, too, is of no significance any longer.
    it is strange for you to assert that muslims deliberately kill ‘jewish’ civilians and omit numerous deliberate killings of palestinian civilians by stern, irgun and haganah.
    i guess King David, deir yassin, etc., did not happen. I guess telling small lies is not interesting enough for you. You repeat what Goering had said, The bigger the lie, the greater believability in it. tnx

  145. Suthiano said on April 30th, 2009 at 12:38pm #

    Yes laser tells big lies because if he were to look at the world, he would fall into a state of spiritual suffering…

    he would start to come to grips with the fact that he’s been a sewer of schism for so long, that he has been spewing vile lies originating in hate.

    Of course, the “Islamic terrorists” must want to kill “Jews” outside of Israel too… that’s why we’ve seen so many attacks in Canada, U.S., Australia, Russia, Germany, targeting the “Jews”.

    This has nothing to do with Israel… that’s what Laser wants you to believe…. this has nothing to do with a bit of land…. the crazy “Muslim terrorists” have been attempting to destroy the Jews since the beginning of history….

    Laser needs to define his terms (but he can’t because he’s a sophist). Israeli, Jewish, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Hebrew, Semetic… all have different meanings. Laser likes manipulate them for his desired ends of sewing schism.

    Laser is a huge racist. Everywhere he erects false divisions and covers over key distinctions. He does so out of a desire to see a certain people removed from their lands: thus Laser is a racist and a colonialist too.

  146. Suthiano said on April 30th, 2009 at 1:26pm #

    On April 26th, 2009 at 1:15pm, Israeli settlers beat two elderly Palestinian farmers with stones and sticks while they were working their lands close to Bet Ayn settlement, located in the southern West Bank. The attack occurred shortly after Israeli soldiers, having observed the two farmers, left the area. They did not reappear even after the attack.

    Israel has taken a step towards expanding the largest settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem

    The Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors settlement growth, said it had obtained plans drawn up by experts that the interior ministry had commissioned which call for expanding the sprawling Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem southward by 1200 hectares, placing what is now the separate smaller settlement of Kedar within Maale Adumim’s boundaries.

    The expansion is on a highly sensitive piece of real estate that both sides see as holding the key to whether the Palestinians will have a viable state with their own corridor between the north and south parts of the West Bank.

    Israeli settlers destroyed Palestinian farmers’ crops and took over land that belongs to farmers near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, while soldiers searched homes in the old city part on Tuesday.

    Famers from the village of At-Tuwani, near Hebron, said Israeli settlers attacked and destroyed an acre of their land which had contained winter crops. The settlers, it is thought, came from Ma’on, an illegal Israeli settlement nearby.

    Later in the day another group of Israeli settlers took over Palestinian-owned land and forced the farmers away. The settlers intend to use the area to mark the Israeli Independence Day this week, local sources reported.

    Israeli settlers supported by military units have been bulldozing Palestinian farm lands that belongs the villagers of Sartah near the northern West Bank city of Salfit.

    Local sources reported on Wednesday that the settlers have already destroyed 50 acres of land; the farmers say the bulldozers uprooted olive trees which is their main source of income.

    Sartah is located near the illegal Israeli settlement of Burkan , an industrial Israeli settlement originally built on lands stolen from the villagers of Sartah

    The Israeli Jerusalem municipality announced on Wednesday that it had finalized all the preparations needed to demolish 50 Palestinian-owned homes in Jerusalem.

    The homes are located at Al Bustan neighborhood just outside the old city of Jerusalem. On February of this year the Israeli Jerusalem municipality announced plans to demolish 88 Palestinian-owned homes located at Al Bustan neighborhood.

    Israeli occupation authorities imposed a strict siege on Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the already besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip, as Israel started marking its memorial day on Tuesday. It is also preparing to mark its “Independence Day” on May 15, which is the day Palestine fell under occupation 61 years ago.

    The siege includes deploying thousands of policemen and soldiers, installing more roadblocks, and closing border terminals.

    Thousands of policemen will also be deployed in Jerusalem, its streets, markets and alleys, especially in the center of the city and the area of the Western Wall.

    Soldiers and policemen have already installed dozens of roadblocks in the streets of Jerusalem, and have searched Arab and Palestinian vehicles.

  147. Laser said on May 2nd, 2009 at 9:32pm #

    Bozh shows that he has no knowledge of Jews or Judaism. As such, his comments are of no validity.

  148. Laser said on May 2nd, 2009 at 9:45pm #

    Suthiano makes unsubtantiated claims of alleged settlers beating alleged Palestinians.

    It would be a good idea for Suthiano and all other who wish the destruction of Israel to be aware of some simple facts.

    The Arabs are not willing to accept the presence of a Jewish state in their midst.

    To make that dream come true, they send suicide bombers to explode in the midst of Israeli citizens.

    Israel would like to protect its citizens from Muslim terrorists. One way to do so is to check the Arabs wishing to enter, and lo and behold, every day they find at least one Arab with a knife. From time to time, they also find Arabs carrying explosive belts, to be detonated on the streets of Israel. And worse.

    Therefore, that is the reason for checkpoints. We all wish that the Arabs would give up terror and try to live in peace with their Israeli neighbors.

    All but Suthiano, it would seem.

    Then there would be no need for checkpoints, nor for closing borders.

  149. Laser said on May 2nd, 2009 at 9:50pm #

    Regarding demolition of illegal houses.

    Israel has demolished one third of all illegal houses built by Jews, but only one-sixth of illegal houses built by Arabs.

    I am sure that all you people would like to see the law enforced uniformly.

  150. Laser said on May 2nd, 2009 at 10:05pm #

    Suthiano exudes such hate that I suspect his therapist has sent him here for catharsis.

    He writes, “Laser needs to define his terms (but he can’t because he’s a sophist). Israeli, Jewish, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Hebrew, Semetic… all have different meanings. Laser likes manipulate them for his desired ends of sewing schism.”

    I wonder if Suthiano has ever used a dictionary. If he does so, he will learn that I am anything but a sophist.

    He will also look in vain for a definition of “Semetic.”

    He will have to ask his seamstress if she knows about “sewing schism.”

    The words Suthiano does not understand can be found in Webster’s; I do not intend to do his work for him.

    Suthiano is a huge racist. His goal seems to be the removal of Jews from their lands. Thus, Suthiano is a racist and a colonialist too.

  151. Suthiano said on May 2nd, 2009 at 10:42pm #

    hahaha i love it.

    A sophist would never let himself be defined by a dictionary…. why? Becuase a sophist refuses to define terms.

    “sewing schism” is a direct reference to Dante, that fool with language.

    Laser believes that “all muslims are terrorists”.

    He suggests I believe “Jews should be removed from their land”. The statement is laughable. Perhaps Laser wants me to suggest all jews should be removed from all lands other than Israel, because Israel is the only Jewish state, thus other lands are not theirs?

    So ‘Jews’ have no land in U.S.A., Canada, France, UK or Australia?

    Laser, you don’t even use your fake quotation marks, how do you expect people to believe you when I have never, ever made a statement denegrating the Jewish faith or the general Jewish community…. as much can be proven by reviewng my posts.

    I have said the complete opposite, so unless you’re a sophist you can always refer back to reality to test such statements.

    Laser you sophist, you will face retribution for your libelous comments.

    hhaha, I’m a colonist…. ridiculous. What was the ‘Jewish’ population of Palestine in 1920? not even 10%. I’m a colonist?

    Laser, you’re sophistry is getting lax, perhaps I have managed to irritate your thick skin?

  152. Laser said on May 3rd, 2009 at 8:57am #

    “Sewing schism”? Do you know the difference between sewing and sowing? Or were you absent that day from 4th grade? Or perhaps you think **Dante wrote bad English**? You had a chance to correct that sentence, but you blew it. I cannot resist laughing; I hope you will understand. No offense intended.

    How could one expect you to know what a sophist is, you 5th grade dropout?

    Of course, it gets better, when you differentiate between “fake quotation marks” and real quotation marks. You must have been absent from the classes on punctuation also.

    Suthiano is a huge racist. His goal seems to be the removal of Jews from their homeland. Thus, Suthiano is a racist, a colonialist and a semi-literate, all at the same time.

  153. Laser said on May 3rd, 2009 at 9:02am #

    Suthiano asked about the population of Palestine, enclosing the word Jewish in single quotes because he does not know how to use punctuation.

    A travel guide to Palestine and Syria, published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker, illustrates the fact that, even when the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled the region, the Muslim population in Jerusalem was minimal. The book estimates the total population of the city at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews.

    If Suthiano knows how to calculate percentages, he will see that two thirds (or 67 percent) of the population of Jerusalem was Jewish.

  154. Suthiano said on May 3rd, 2009 at 12:35pm #

    I don’t care for your travel guides… My numbers come from official British census.

    In fact, in 1907 there had already been 30 plus years of colonialism by European Jews. Hoeve Zion etc, had been settling land with the funding of Lord Rothschild since 1880s.

    I suppose many European Jews were racists and colonialists, seeing as Jewish Bund did not agree with Zionism, and Lord Montague a Jewish Brit was extremely critical of Zionism and the Balfour Declaration.

    Remeber the Balfour Declaration? That arrangement between Lord Balfour and Lord Rothschild even as the British promised the Palestinians conrol of their homeland for assistantce in the 1st world war?

    Laser, your sophistry is lacking any bite.

    You can’t handle the battle. You’ve been unable to explain how I am either a racist (unless other Jewish people are racists towards Jewish people), and you’ve failed to explain how I am a colonialist.

    Are you Ashkenazi? You’re probalby the biggest anti-Semite on this website, spewing your hatred for Palestinian peoples, who are the Semitic brothers of the Sephardic Jewish population.

    Thus the only thing you’re doing is editing for grammar and or punctionation…. you think I will fall for your red herring fallacies? Do you think people on dissident voice are so stupid that they don’t recognize your odious views as distractionary?

    Laser, you’re not wanted on these boards with your libelous remarks.

    You’re not wanted with your sophistry and your massive ego. You must live a lonely life with such a massive ego and absolutely no substance to your beliefs.

    Your arguments are getting weaker and weaker with every post and everyone on this site knows who and what you are.

    I know who and what you are too… So anytime you want to come meet in the streets we can debate this one out face to face… lets see how many people accept your hateful, lie filled rhetoric and your sophistry. I will dismantle your fallacious reasoning.

    You can close my file now until you’re ready to meet for real, because I’ve already dismantled you and I know you’re face is burning red with shame.

  155. bozh said on May 3rd, 2009 at 3:07pm #

    suthiano, right
    while i am getting more stupid by month, laser is getting more stupid by day. tnx

  156. Laser said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:06am #

    Bozh, your clarity of thought and dedication to decency is truly impressive.

  157. Laser said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:17am #

    Suthiano says that he has “dismantled” me.

    Let us chalk up still another word that Suthiano does not understand.

    That together with the difference between sewing and sowing, his lack of understanding of punctuation, and his muddled thinking make up quite a package.

    To that, we can add that he has no idea of what the Balfour Declaration promises to whom.

    Not to mention Suthiano’s misunderstanding of the term “anti-Semitism.” While educating a boor is hardly my cup of tea, he should learn a few things — just a few.

    First, note that Arabs themselves frequently speak of “anti-Semitism” as synonymous with anti-Jewishness — before the 1947 partition, for example, Egyptian UN Representative Haykal Pasha warned the General Assembly that partition would bring “anti-Semitism” worse than Hitler’s — frequently they justify or obscure an anti-Jewish action by saying, “How can I be anti-Semitic? I’m a Semite myself.”

    “The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by Wilheim Marr, an anti-Jewish spokesman in Germany, as a euphemistic substitute for judenhass, Jew-hatred.” (Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin “Why the Jews? The Reasons for Antisemitism,” p. 199) In other words, Jew-hater Wilheim Marr substituted “anti-Semitism” for “Jew-hatred” to give Jew-hatred a fancy, scientifically sounding name, and thereby give it legitimacy. Largely he succeeded. Therefore, all one needs to do to avoid semantic confusion is to substitute Jew-hatred for anti-Semitism.

    Get it now, Suthiano and your groupies?

  158. bozh said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:32am #

    i do not think that there is the word “semite” in torah or bible. The word is a corruption of the word “shemite”. Shemites, whose ancestor was Shem, includes arabs, akkadians, assyrians, canaanites, hebrews; possibly also hittites.

    however, hebrews have in 728 bc vanished without trace; only benjaminim and judeans remained until 70 ad.
    benjaminim were marrying canaanitic women to such a degree that priests had to enact a new law about being a judean: to be a judean, one had to have a judean mother.
    but that time, benjaminim were assimilated and became canaanitic. and are probably still living in ex-canaan.
    it seems that no more than a few thousands judeans remained in judea after 70 ad. They became an admixuture of a shemitic people.

    so, it is likely that also judeans and benjaminim are no more. Because some euro-asians had judaism for faith, a mistake was made by calling them “jews”, “juden”, “yid” , “zhid” .
    these people by accepting the odious cult, cldn’t have made a worse mistake.
    that cult was hated all over europe and the cult hated entire world.
    and to this day they still cling to this abomination. tnx

  159. Laser said on May 7th, 2009 at 6:03am #

    Bozh, your history is very imaginative.

    Your slurs, however, make you an odius person and not one who makes a partner for discourse.

    Any moderated list would have banned such a boor a long time ago.

    tnx

  160. Peter said on May 7th, 2009 at 2:29pm #

    Israeli War Crimes (pictures):

    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/deutschland-uber-alles/

  161. Suthiano said on May 7th, 2009 at 4:09pm #

    bozh,

    I don’t find you to be an “odius person”…. not even an ODIOUS one.

    uh oh, a mistake!

    Zionism “began in the 1860s with the first attempts to send Jewish colonists to Palestine. One of the colonist associations, Hoveve Zion (Friends of Zion), obtained financial support in 1882 from Baron Edmund de Rothschild. Their first federal conference was held at Kattowitz (Katowice) in Silesia two years later; and a united World Zionist Organization (WZO) was created at the congress at Basle in Switzerland in 1897” (Davies, Europe: A History, Oxford University Press, 846).

    “No progress could be made… until the British conquest of Jerusalem in 1916, and the Balfour Declaration which followed” (Davies, 846).

    “Well integrated Jewish communities, such as that represented by the Anglo-Jewish Association in London, decried what they saw as the Zionists’ desire to exaggerate antisemitism for political ends. In 1911 the view was expressed by the Encylcopaedia Britannica, for instance, that ‘With the passing away of anti-Semitism, Jewish nationalism will disappear'” (Davies, 847).

    “Lord Rothschild’s letter is dated the 18th July and Mr. Balfour’s answer is to be dated August 1917. I fear that my protest comes too late, and it may well be that the Government were practically committed when Lord Rothschild wrote and before I became a member of the Government, for there has obviously been some correspondence or conversation before this letter. But I do feel that as the one Jewish Minister in the Government I may be allowed by my colleagues an opportunity of expressing views which may be peculiar to myself, but which I hold very strongly and which I must ask permission to express when opportunity affords” (Lord Montague, “A Dissenting Note on the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917”, http://www.counterpunch.org/montague11112006.html).

    It’s an interesting article, even if you’re a sophist.

    “In 1911 the view was expressed by the Encylcopaedia Britannica, for instance, that ‘With the passing away of anti-Semitism, Jewish nationalism will disappear'”

    The sophist L’s tricks are much older than he is. He shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think that none of us have learned/remembered.

  162. bozh said on May 7th, 2009 at 4:24pm #

    suthiano, i yam an oddious person just like everybody else. I seem to ire ‘jews’ quite a bit. And, i’ve been kicked out of haaretz and j’lem post. Not to mention out of nearly all msm. I do not design to enrage ‘jews’ but it seems a speak the truth most of the time. And most people, and not just ‘jews’, handle lies much better than facts.
    sorry to say, that includes me!
    tnx for your comment.

  163. Suthiano said on May 7th, 2009 at 4:46pm #

    yes, it seems I’m odious to some, though only when I begin speaking… as long as I listen to what they have to say and don’t disagree, then they tend to like me just fine.

    in fact, if you wanted to be liked by everyone you could just go around and listen to people, never disagree, and i think you’d do quite well.

    if you want to talk about real issues, well then, there is no better way to become odious in the eyes of those who would rather have such things remain in the shadows.

  164. Peter said on May 7th, 2009 at 9:02pm #

    Is Zionism racism or does it encourage racism?

    Israelis to Africans: “Niggers don’t expel Jews”

    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3633163,00.html

  165. Deadbeat said on May 7th, 2009 at 9:48pm #

    More ominous signs of Zionism’s influence within the U.S.

    A very good article by Paul Craig Roberts on Counterpunch…

    Counterpunch: Paul Craig Roberts

    Here’s Medea Benjamin and her latest Code Pink stunt. IMO its 5 years too late as she interfered with the Green Party’s ability to build into a national party in 2004. However perhaps her latest may have opened here eyes. One can only hope…

    Medea Benjamin

  166. mary said on May 8th, 2009 at 2:19am #

    And the Hasbara Gold Star goes to ….. Laser for contributing 24% of the comments in this column. What a waste of space.

  167. cuibono said on May 8th, 2009 at 11:20am #

    re Media Benjamin’s latest stunt: if you read her statement you will see that she continues to support the Zionist Entities “right to exist” as an Apartheid State. Her pink gyrations are aimed at maintaining Ideological Hegemony of “soft” Zionism over the “antiwar movement” and at containing the thrust of anti-AIPAC activity to AIPAC itself, at preventing public discussion of other branches of the Zionist Fifth Column in the US.
    While Ms B and AIPAC do what they do in Wash DC, the Zionist Power Apparatus is active in every local community in the US big enough to have a weekly newspaper, radio station, or community college campus.
    Some of the more visible branches of the Zionist Thought Police include the Jewish Community Relations Councils/JCRCs, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federation, Democratic Party clubs and County Committees, and the NAACP. No that’s not a typo.

  168. Peter said on May 8th, 2009 at 4:40pm #

    His arguments have been thoroughly refuted, Israel’s crimes are well documented (on film and pictures), human rights organizations condemn Israel’s atrocities and no one believes the lies Israel and its supporters (western governments and media) tell any more. So now he resorts to name calling. But, I assure you he is not done speaking. He wants the last word, even if as Mary says its a “waste of space”.

    I have a feeling he’s going to wait a month or two when everyone else has forgotten about this article and then he’ll make one more comment – another repetition of one of the distortions he’s already repeated 100 times or so.

    Israeli War Crimes (pictures):

    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/deutschland-uber-alles/

    Israelis to Africans: “Niggers don’t expel Jews”

    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3633163,00.html

  169. Laser said on May 12th, 2009 at 9:38pm #

    You forgot to charge that the Zionists assassinated Lincoln, and a fellow from Jerusalem killed Bobby Kennedy.

  170. Laser said on May 21st, 2009 at 7:25am #

    These “anti-Zionists” have been ammiss. They have not yet revealed that the Zionists assassinated Abraham Lincoln, and a Jerusalem resident killed Bobby Kennedy.

    I have a feeling you guys are going to wait a month or two when everyone else has forgotten about this article.

    I suppose that then you’ll make one more comment – another repetition of one of the distortions you’ve already repeated a dozen times.

  171. Laser said on May 21st, 2009 at 7:27am #

    Here comes another reason for you guys to start screaming entrapment or racial profiling.

    Yesterday the FBI announced the arrest of a cell of four people, surprisingly all Muslims, in a plot to blow up a synagogue in Riverdale, NY, and shoot down an aircraft with a Stinger missile.

    According to reports, the FBI had been investigating this homegrown terror cell for a year, and when they were arrested they were sneaking around the outside of the synagogue planting the phony explosives that the FBI had sold them.

    Can we find a way to blame this on the Zionists?

  172. Peter said on May 31st, 2009 at 10:40pm #

    Israeli War Crimes (pictures):
    http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/deutschland-uber-alles/

    Israelis to Africans: “Niggers don’t expel Jews”
    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3633163,00.html