Vanunu is scheduled to return to jail on May 23, 2010, because the ‘justices’ refused his offer to do community service in occupied east Jerusalem as they do not view that side of town to be a part of their community.

On May 12, 2010, Amnesty International urged the Israeli government not to re-imprison Mordechai Vanunu.

If Mordechai Vanunu is imprisoned again, Amnesty International will declare him to be a prisoner of conscience and call for his immediate and unconditional release,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Luther continued, “The ongoing restrictions placed on Mordechai Vanunu have meant that he has been unable to move to the USA to live with his adopted family, placing a huge strain on his mental and physical health. They are not parole restrictions since he served his full 18-year term. They arbitrarily limit his rights to freedom of movement, expression and association are therefore in breach of international law.”

On April 30, 2007, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, convicted Vanunu on 14 (out of 21) counts of violating a court order prohibiting him from speaking to foreign journalists in 2004. Vanunu was also convicted for traveling the four miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem when he hoped to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity, his first Christmas after being released from 18 years in jail (most of it in solitary) on April 21, 2004.

On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreign media in 2004.

On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Mordechai Vanunu’s six month jail sentence for speaking with foreign media in 2004, to three months, “In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy”.

On December 21, 2009, Uzi Eilam, a former head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission told PRESS TV that Vanunu, “served the regime because his revelations helped Tel Aviv intimidate others…I’ve always believed he should be let go. I don’t think he has significant knowledge to reveal (about Dimona) now.”

On May 10, 2010, Uzi Even, an Israeli scientist, Tel Aviv University chemistry professor, former worker at Israel’s Dimona reactor and a former member of Israeli parliament spoke on Israeli army radio: “The policy of nuclear ambiguity, by which we fool only ourselves and nobody else, is not good for us any more. It was good, effective and successful for close to 40 years, but over 40 years many things changed and now I am telling you clearly, this policy is no longer in our interest.”

The restrictions that have held Vanunu captive come from the Emergency Defense Regulations which were implemented by Britain against Palestinians and Jews after World War II.

Attorney Yaccov Shapiro, who later became Israel’s Minister Of Justice, described the Emergency Defense Regulations as “unparalleled in any civilized country: there were no such laws in Nazi Germany.”

Israel kidnapped Vanunu in 1986, but Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states: “No one shall he subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention”, including abduction of a person by agents of one state to another state.

Vanunu was charged with and convicted of treason and espionage.

Section 99 of the Israeli Penal Code, treason is defined as “an act calculated to assist (an enemy) in time of war…delivering information with the intention that it fall into the hands of the enemy.”

Section 113 defines aggravated espionage as “deliver(ing) any secret information without being authorized to do so and with intent to impair the security of the state” and a sub-clause provides for a penalty of seven years for the unauthorized collection, preparation, recording or holding of secret information; if this is done with intent to impair the security of the state and then, the penalty is increased to 15 years.

Vanunu served 18 years in jail and has been subjected to 24/7 surveillance ever since 21 April 2004.

Frank Barnaby, the Nuclear Physicist, who was hired by the London Sunday Times to interrogate Vanunu, testified at his closed door trial, “I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times…I found Vanunu very straightforward about his motives for violating Israel’s secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically.”

But, Vanunu was rendered defenseless during that closed door trial when the court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow Vanunu’s own statements regarding his intentions to even be considered in his defense.

During my interviews with Vanunu, he informed me that “All the secrets I had were published in 1989 in an important book, by Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East.”

On November 24th, 2006 Vanunu wrote:

“My lawyer succeeded to reveal a few very important facts: This General of the Army also was not allowed to see all the secrets that he is required to protect by these restrictions that they claim I know them. So, he gave orders of restrictions without knowing what he is protecting or that he is also following orders blindly, and Mossad Sheen Bet using its authority for just punishing me. He testified that it is not a crime for me to talk with foreigners in general anywhere.He testified that I can speak freely to any Israeli citizens about anything; it is not his concern what I am saying to them. These Israelis can give this information to any foreigners. It was difficult for the Judge to understand why this dichotomy exits between foreigners and Israelis. It means that it is not about secrecy but about something else.”

Israel’s statehood was contingent upon upholding the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS.

Article 19 affirms: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 13 guarantees: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

The purpose of the NPT Review, which happens every five years, is to reaffirm the signatories’ commitments to the treaty’s three purposes: disarmament, nonproliferation, and peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Countries without nuclear weapons that signed the NPT, such as Iran, were promised full support in developing other nuclear technologies in exchange for renouncing nuclear weapons. The five nuclear powers that signed the NPT agreed to get rid of their nuclear weapons.

On March 28, 2005, Former President Jimmy Carter, wrote for the Washington Post, “While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons.”

On May 5, 2005, Kennedy-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said, “I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous.”

On April 29, 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she did not see Iran’s purpose in attending the NPT conference, because their violations since signing the NPT are “absolutely indisputable.”

Speaking at the American Jewish Committee gala dinner in Washington, Clinton called the threat Iran posed to Israel as “real” and “growing.”

At last month’s two-day conference on nuclear disarmament hosted in Tehran and attended by representatives of 60 countries, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement declaring nuclear weaponry as haram meaning prohibited under Islam. Iran says it enriches uranium for civilian applications and that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has a right to the technology already in the hands of many others.

In D.C. Clinton opined, “Iran, with its anti-Semitic president and hostile nuclear ambitions, also continues to threaten Israel, but it also threatens the region and it sponsors terrorism against many…At every turn, Iran has met our outstretched hand with a clenched fist. But our engagement has helped build a growing global consensus on the need to pressure Iran’s leaders to change course. We are now working with our partners at the United Nations to craft tough new sanctions.”

Professor Virginia Tilley, explained that in his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word “map” or the term “wiped off.” According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole, and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was “this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time.”

“In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the ‘occupying regime’ in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, ‘This too shall pass.’”

In April 2010, several diplomats told Reuters that Egypt made it clear that it sees Israel as a higher priority than Iran and threatened to prevent the NPT conference from reaching any agreements if it does not get what it wants vis-à-vis Israel.

Egyptian initiatives at NPT meetings are nothing new, but this year they have issued a paper calling for an international treaty conference by 2011 to launch negotiations between all states of the Middle East, regarding an internationally and effectively verifiable treaty for the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.

At the 1995 NPT conference, member states unanimously supported a resolution backing the idea of “a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons as well as other weapons of mass destruction.”

The preamble to the NPT calls on nuclear weapons states “to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery.”

Article VI of the NPT obliges signatories “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

The three undeclared nuclear powers- India, Pakistan and Israel-have all refused to sign the NPT, and thus are ‘exempt’ from international inspections.

In 1986, the world learned that Israel had already developed between one hundred to two hundred atomic bombs and had begun to develop neutron bombs and thermonuclear weapons, after Mordechai Vanunu, a lowly tech in Israel’s 7-story underground clandestine WMD facility, provided two rolls of photographic proof and his testimony that was published by the London Sunday Times.

Israel has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has never opened its facilities for IAEA inspections and thus far, President Obama persists in another of President George W. Bush’s policies.

On April 24, 2004, Uri Avnery wrote after Vanunu was released from 18 years in a windowless tomb sized cell to house arrest denied the right to leave the state ever since, that “Everybody understands that [Vanunu] has no more secrets. What can a technician know after 18 years in jail, during which technology has advanced with giant steps?

But gradually it becomes clear what the security establishment is really afraid of. Vanunu is in a position to expose the close partnership with the United States in the development of Israel’s nuclear armaments.

This worries Washington so much, that the man responsible in the State Department for ‘arms control’, Under-Secretary John Bolton, has come to Israel in person for the occasion. Vanunu, it appears, can cause severe damage to the mighty super-power. The Americans, it seems, are very worried.

The world must be prevented by all available means from hearing, from the lips of a credible witness, that the Americans are full partners in Israel’s nuclear arms program, while pretending to be the world’s sheriff for the prevention of nuclear proliferation.

Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, Professor of international politics at the American University in Cairo and a former advisor to the UN’s Middle East envoy in Jerusalem, wrote:

In the multilateral security talks that followed the 1991 Madrid Conference, Israel adamantly refused to discuss its nuclear program unless conventional and unconventional threats of its neighbors were addressed first (including those posed by Iran and Saddam’s Iraq). Conversely, Arab states insisted on including Israel’s nuclear weapons in the discussion before any security arrangement could be agreed. As a result, the talks collapsed and were never revived in the years since.

Had the US intervened 15 years ago and led Arab states and Israel towards overcoming their tit-for-tat attitude, a Mideast security regime, with confidence-building measures, safeguards and verification mechanisms, would probably have emerged by now. Both the US and actors in the region need to start a dialogue on all security concerns in the Middle East that includes the nuclear issues. And they need to start this dialogue now, and urgently.

John Burroughs, the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, a nonprofit group concerned with disarmament issues, has warned that America’s behavior poses a profound threat to the NPT framework:

The U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons as a core element of its national security has always created serious tension within the non-proliferation regime, because it reinforced the double standard: Some countries can have nuclear weapons, others can’t.

But President Obama has also stated clearly and with conviction that America is committed to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.

In 2009, in Prague he said, “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act… Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Together we can do it… Words must mean something [and] violence and injustice must be confronted by standing together as free nations, as free people… [and] Human destiny will be what we make of it.”

All things are connected and the security concerns of America, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, the Gulf States, and the world are mutually dependent.

The commitment to pursue nuclear disarmament is enshrined in the NPT and human destiny hinges upon those words meaning something.

I’m not a traitor. I’m a man with a conscience who did what he did out of a deep belief after much thought and many doubts. But I knew that I had to do it, that I had no choice… somebody had to do it… I contributed my share by making public what the public ought to know and they shut my mouth behind the prison walls.

– Mordechai Vanunu

Mordechai Vanunu was released from Ashkelon prison to open air captivity in east Jerusalem on April 21, 2004 after 18 years-most all in solitary — on April 21, 2004.

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was clubbed, drugged, bound and kidnapped from Rome by the Mossad because he told the truth and provided the photographic proof of their clandestine 7-story underground WMD facility in the Negev.

In the case of Mordechai Vanunu, Americans need to know that the restrictions that have held him captive in Jerusalem come from the Emergency Defense Regulations which were implemented by Britain against Palestinians and Jews after World War II.

After WW II, Attorney Yaccov Shapiro, who later became Israel’s Minister Of Justice, described the Emergency Defense Regulations as “unparalleled in any civilized country: there were no such laws in Nazi Germany.”

During one of my seven trips to Jerusalem since 2005, I asked Vanunu, “If the British Mandate has expired why not the British Mandate’s Emergency Defense Regulations?”

Vaunu replied, “The reason given is security but it is because Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew. This administration tells me I am not allowed to speak to foreigners, the Media, and the world. But I do because that is how I prove my true humanity to the world. My freedom of speech trial began January 25, 2006 for speaking to the media, the same day as the Palestinian elections… When I decided to expose Israel’s nuclear weapons I acted out of conscience and to warn the world to prevent a nuclear holocaust.”

In 1963, Peres was Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense when he met with President Kennedy at the White House. Kennedy told Peres, “You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?”

Peres replied, “I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.”

In 2005, Vanunu told me, “President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’

Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Gurion open up Dimona for inspection. The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French when I was there, almost twenty years ago.

Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Gurion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.

When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.

On January 25, 2006, after nearly two years of speaking to hundreds of foreigners since his release from prison, Vanunu was convicted by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order that had prohibited him from talking to non-Israelis and because he attempted to “leave the state” by taking a cab from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity in 2004. The original indictment included 22 different violations; Vanunu was charged with 19 and acquitted of four. He was acquitted of speaking to foreign nationals on the internet and via video and voice chats.

Just prior to the taping of 30 Minutes with Vanunu on March 26, 2006, Vanunu told me, “Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no…CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can’t do it because they don’t want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing. Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it.”

On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreign media in 2004. On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Vanunu’s sentence to three months, “In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy.”

On June 14, 2009, Vanunu told me, “The Central Commander of the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long as I do not talk about nuclear weapons.”

Vanunu’s restrictions will be reviewed again by the Israeli High Court after Dec. 21, 2009. On July 6, 2009, the Supreme Court stated, “pending a review of his conduct, Vanunu will be able to ask for the restrictions to be lifted and be allowed to travel abroad… The state’s representative noted that six months may be too short a time period to determine a change in Vanunu’s behavior and that the state will reconsider the restrictions based not only on Vanunu’s behavior but a host of other considerations, including the time that had lapsed since he divulged state secrets to the British paper.”

It will soon be twenty-four years since Vanunu “divulged state secrets” and as Vanunu told me: “All the secrets I had were published in 1989 in an important book, by [Nuclear Physicist] Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East.”

Regarding Israeli behavior towards Vanunu, Americans need to know that in 1986, Israel kidnapped him from Rome but Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states: “No one shall he subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention”, including abduction of a person by agents of one state to another state.

Vanunu was charged with and convicted of treason and espionage. According to Section 99 of the Israeli Penal Code, treason is defined as “an act calculated to assist (an enemy) in time of war… delivering information with the intention that it fall into the hands of the enemy.”

Section 113 defines aggravated espionage as “deliver(ing) any secret information without being authorized to do so and with intent to impair the security of the state” and a sub-clause provides for a penalty of seven years for the unauthorized collection, preparation, recording or holding of secret information; if this is done with intent to impair the security of the state and then, the penalty is increased to 15 years.

Vanunu got 18 years and was also rendered defenseless when the court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow Vanunu’s own statements regarding his intentions to be considered in his defense.

A few days before Vanunu was lured from London to Rome, where he was clubbed, drugged and kidnapped by the Mossad, he spent three days being interviewed by Frank Barnaby.

Barnaby had been employed by the London Sunday Times to review the 57 photos Vanunu had obtained at various restricted locations in the Dimona and he also went to Jerusalem to provide expert testimony at Vanunu’s closed door trial.

Barnaby testified, “I found the fact that Vanunu was able to smuggle a camera and films into and out of Dimona and photograph highly sensitive areas in the establishment astonishing. I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times… I found Vanunu very straightforward about his motives for violating Israel’s secrecy laws; he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically.

“Israel’s political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel’s nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy. The knowledge that Vanunu had about Isreal’s nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the design of today’s Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed since then… Modern nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the mid-1980.”

A total of 1,200 pages of transcript of that closed door trial have been released and Vanunu told the court: “I wanted to confirm what everyone knew, I didn’t want Israel to go on denying that it had nuclear weapons, and Shimon Peres to go on lying to (then US president) Ronald Reagan, saying that we didn’t have a nuclear arsenal. I also wanted controls to be placed on these weapons.”

Defense witness and the Sunday Times journalist who broke Vanunu’s story, Peter Hounam, stated, “It is clear that, as far as Vanunu’s accusers are concerned, the trial is not only about whether this decision to reveal the secrets of Israel’s atom bomb amounted to treason and espionage, it is also about whether his decision to become a Christian was at the root of his alleged treachery”.

Hounam also testified that “We did not pay him money, but only covered his expenses… Money did not motivate him.”

Sunday Times journalist Wendy Robbins wrote, “Mordechai never asked for nor received a single penny for his information… he blurted out the whole tale without first setting out any financial preconditions. Mordechai got nothing out of the whole episode. He never ‘sold’ Israel’s secrets — he told them.”

In the 80′s, Vanunu was transported to and from his closed door trial in a crash helmet, handcuffs and leg-irons, inside a van with blacked out windows that blasted noise to assure Vanunu would not communicate with journalists or supporters. During the court hearings, two Israeli security agents flanked him at all times in order to be able to cover his mouth if he began to reveal anything they deemed secret. The public, the press and all observers — even Amnesty International — were excluded from the hearings and the court’s judgment was censored before publication.

On January 25, 2006, the first day of a freedom of speech trial in Israel only two reporters from minor media showed up for Vanunu’s historic court case. Not one was in the court room on February 22, 2006, when it was revealed that Israel had gotten Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu’s Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained by alluding that he was being charged for espionage.

Vanunu wrote, “Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details… three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated… it is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad… Sfard [Vanunu's attorney] proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage. The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense.”

Americans need to know that Vanunu’s secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for “attempting to leave the country” when he attempted to celebrate his first Christmas out of prison at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the confiscation of his private property by thirty Israeli Forces that stormed into his room at St. George’s Cathedral in 2004, according to Vanunu had all “been done… under the false and misleading statements to the courts of ‘suspicion of espionage’, and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes… and the fact is that I have not committed any crimes.”

After Vanunu next faces the Israeli Supreme Court, the world will know more about Israeli democracy and justice. Until then, learn more and see and hear Vanunu in 2005, 2006, 2008 video interviews freely streaming at the Vanunu Archives.

There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s battle lines being drawn. Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong. I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.

– “For What it’s Worth,” Buffalo Springfield, 1967

The birth of “The Summer of Love” occurred on June 1, 1967, with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

On June 5, 1967, the Six-Day War began and led to Israel’s occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, Gaza and the West Bank.

On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, a spy ship was attacked by Israel while navigating in international waters. Although they were flying the American flag, 34 men were killed and 172 were wounded out of a crew of 294. After eighteen hours of enduring a failure to support the troops by the Johnson Administration, they were finally rescued.

On Nov. 8, 2009, Haaretz reported on a “classified, unreleased” portion of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s ‘Plan’ that offers elements of Netanyahu’s call for “economic peace” and adds justice and common sense.

Concerns are growing in Israel’s government over the possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence within the 1967 borders, a move which could potentially be recognized by the United Nations Security Council.

The reports indicated that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reached a secret understanding with the Obama administration over U.S. recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

This would expose that any Israeli presence across the Green Line, including east Jerusalem, is what it is under the rule of law: an illegal incursion.

The plan specifies that at the end of a designated period for bolstering national institutions the PA, in conjunction with the Arab League, would file a “claim of sovereignty” to the UN Security Council and General Assembly over the borders of June 4, 1967 during the Six-Day War, in which Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza.

During the summer of ’67, the Republican representative from Iowa, H.R. Gross stood up in The House and said:

Is this Government now, directly or indirectly, subsidizing Israel in the payment of full compensation for the lives that were destroyed, the suffering of the wounded, and the damage from this wanton attack? It can well be asked whether these Americans were the victims of bombs, machine gun bullets and torpedoes manufactured in the United States and dished out as military assistance under foreign aid.¹

By November 1967, lawmakers were willing to spend six million USA tax dollars to build schools in Israel but during the debate, Representative Gross introduced an amendment that “not one dollar of U.S. credit or aid of any kind [should] go to Israel until there is a firm settlement with regard to the attack and full reparations have been made [and Israel] provides full and complete reparations for the killing and wounding of more than 100 United States citizens in the wanton, unprovoked attack…I wonder how you would feel if you were the father of one of the boys who was killed in that connection-or perhaps you do not have any feelings with respect to these young men who were killed, wounded and maimed, or their families.”²

Gross’s amendment failed, justice remains delayed and American tax payers continue to support the Jewish State which has reaped a more violent and insecure planet for innocent civilians.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.³

Congressman Paul Findley said:

It is time to speak openly and honestly about Israel. But, in American politics, that is still forbidden. Pity that we cannot seem to shed our fear of Israel. We are afraid to speak out on Capitol Hill, for fear of losing the next election. They are more like trained poodles jumping through hoops than leaders!

Why this fear? How did we get here? Forty years ago to this day, June 8, 1967 the change occurred, the floodgates opened and money poured into Israel as never before. When President Johnson heard about the U.S.S. Liberty being attacked by Israel he ordered the rescue fighter planes to return to the deck. The rescue mission was aborted and the survivors have said they heard LBJ’s voice tell Admiral Giess, ‘Get those planes back on deck. I don’t care if the ship sinks, I will not embarrass Israel.’

LBJ also threatened to court martial anyone who reported what had happened. Johnson accepted Israel’s false claim of “mistaken identity” and he knew it was a lie. That is when the change began and Israel learned they could get away with murdering U.S.A. soldiers.

In June 2005, the whistle blower of Israel’s WMD program, Mordechai Vanunu told me:

When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them. Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.

In the 1970s, Israel built many fortresses and spent lots of money on equipment, but nothing on the people I saw, who were oppressed and under occupation. I got really mad and upset every time I thought about how much money they wasted, but I kept my mouth shut and kept it all to myself. After a year, I finished my training and was assigned to train more soldiers. For me it was all futility and waste; I saw these children become soldiers and thought, What a complete waste. When the Yom Kippur War broke out, I was home on leave. I returned the next day to my station near Ramallah. Soldiers with less than a month of training got called to go with me to the Jordan Valley. There weren’t enough trained troops, and we were lucky we didn’t see any fighting and got to return to base after three days. After a few months, we all went to Syria and the Golan Heights. When Kissinger coordinated the cease-fire, the Israeli army destroyed the area before leaving there…

Fast forward to 2009: Vanunu awaits another High Court date seeking the right to leave the Jewish State while Prime Minister Fayyad, is winning international support seeking a Security Council resolution to replace Resolutions 242 and 338.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 22, 1967, in the aftermath of the Six Day War. The preamble refers to the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every State in the area can live in security.”

242 requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and required the withdrawal of Israel armed forces from the territories occupied in the then ‘recent’ conflict.

On October 22, 1973, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 338 called for a ceasefire in the Yom Kippur War in accordance with a joint proposal by the United States and the Soviet Union for a bilateral cease fire to take effect within 12 hours.

It also called upon the parties concerned to immediately implement Security Council Resolution 242 and insisted that negotiations between the parties concerned would be aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East.

Fayyad’s 2009 Plan is garnering positive responses from the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Sweden. Haaretz reported that, “Fayyad added that he presented the proposal to the U.S. administration and did not receive any signal of opposition in response.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a mediator between Israel and Syria during Ehud Olmert’s term as prime minister, has resume the role as an intermediary between the two countries. He said his government can be an “honest broker” in such talks but Netanyahu responded with reluctance over Turkish mediation due to the ongoing tension between Ankara and Jerusalem, which Patrick Seale reported on Oct 16, 2009:

Turkey’s sudden cancellation this week of a major air force exercise with Israel was a salutary wake-up call. Evidently, Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan found it necessary to cancel the drill because of the widespread hostility to Israel among Turkey’s population. He has had to take Turkish public opinion into account. Foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu spelled out the reasons in diplomatic terms: ‘We hope that the situation in Gaza will improve…and that will create a new atmosphere in Turkish-Israeli relations…’

To offend the Turks is no small matter. Israel cannot afford to ignore the warning or sweep it under the carpet. Turkey has for many years been Israel’s main regional strategic partner — indeed its only one since the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979. Losing Turkey could turn out to be the worst setback Israel has suffered for a very long time.

Turkey’s army is the largest in the region; so is its industrial base. Its GDP, at over $1,000bn (in 2008) dwarfs that of the oil producers, whether Arab or Iranian, and is four times larger than Israel’s own. In recent years, Turkey has greatly improved its relations with Iran and with neighboring Arab states — Syria in particular — and is emerging as the wise ‘big brother’ of the greater Middle East. It has offered to mediate local conflicts and is attempting to spread stability and security all around it.

With the Fayyad Plan gaining steam and a ‘big brother’ like Turkey, peace in the Holy Land no longer seems to be just a pipe dream.

1. James Scott, The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship (Simon & Schuster, June 2009): 271-272.
2. Scott: 272-273.
3. “U.S. Military Aid and the Israel/Palestine Conflict,” If Americans Knew.

The Ileana Ros-Lehtinen/AIPAC driven House Resolution 867 boiled down to a call for censorship of the Goldstone Report without “any endorsement or further consideration” from the Obama Administration, rife with inaccuracies and undermines support for the universality of human rights.

It is no surprise that Congress is trying to cover their culpable asses for during the 23 days of Israeli assault on Gaza, “Washington provided F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions, including white phosphorus and DIME. The weapons required for the Israeli assault were decided upon in June 2008, and the transfer of 1,000 bunker-buster GPS-guided Small Diameter Guided Bomb Units 39 (GBU-39) were approved by Congress in September. The GBU 39 bombs were delivered to Israel in November (prior to any claims of Hamas cease fire violation!) for use in the initial air raids on Gaza.

One of the few who have been to Gaza, Congressman Baird D-WA, wrote,

H.Res. 867 is very serious business. If, as Goldstone asserts and the evidence I have seen supports, there were in fact gross violations of international law and human rights on all sides, we cannot in good conscience support H.Res. 867.

This is about much more than just another imposed political litmus test that we are all too often asked to perform. This is about whether we as individuals and this Congress as an institution find it acceptable to drop white phosphorous on civilian targets, to rocket civilian communities, to destroy hospitals and schools, to use civilians as human shields, and to deliberately destroy nonmilitary factories, industries and basic water, electrical and sanitation infrastructure. This is about whether it is acceptable to restrict the movement, opportunities and hopes of more than a million people every single day.

At the end of the day, this is also about our own domestic security. If we are seen internationally as condoning violations of human rights and international law, if our money and our weaponry play a leading role in those violations, and if we reflexively obstruct the findings of someone with the credentials, history and integrity of Justice Goldstone, it can only diminish our international standing and our own security.

In a 71-page report released March 25, 2009, by Human Rights Watch, Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes.

“Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza,” provides eye witness accounts of the devastating effects that white phosphorus munitions had on civilians and civilian property in Gaza.

“Human Rights Watch researchers found spent shells, canister liners, and dozens of burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards, and at a United Nations school in Gaza immediately after hostilities ended in January.

“Militaries officially use white phosphorus to obscure their operations on the ground by creating thick smoke. It has also been used as an incendiary weapon, though such use constitutes a war crime.

“In Gaza, the Israeli military didn’t just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops,” said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report.

“It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren’t in the area and safer smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died.”

During the 23 days of attack on Gaza, the UN Security Council, Amnesty International, International Red Cross, and global voices of protest rose up and demanded a ceasefire, but both houses of Congress overwhelmingly endorsed resolutions to support a continuation of Israel’s so called “self defense” and its collective punishment upon Gaza.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walked on coals poured out of righteous rage in Morocco after her moronic praise for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “reasonable compromise” in which he “proposed a moratorium on new housing units in the West Bank, but would allow building or finishing about 3,000 more units and would exclude East Jerusalem from any building limits.”

All the settlements are illegal under international law and the precedent of US failure to act was well established by 1973, when Ariel Sharon bragged to Winston Churchill III, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years time, neither the United Nations, nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”

Back in 2005, top U.S. law enforcement officials attended a briefing organized by the Council for the National Interest regarding how charities “such as B’nai B’rith and Hadassah were in direct control of the World Zionist Organization and directly linked to a massive money-laundering operation…and the settlements are an indirect generator of terrorism against the United States.”¹

It is the American government’s hypocrisy in collusion with Israel’s negation of international law, UN resolutions, and denial of equal human rights for Palestinians which are at the root of the instability in the Middle East.

Beginning in the 1990′s and even more so after 9/11, US politicians blind allegiance to Israel has been furthered by the claim that both states are threatened by Arab terrorist groups and rogue states bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Many Americans see Israel as an ally and Iran and Syria as our mutual enemies. The “war on terror” has become a tactic to infuse fear while it ignores that much of the anger in the Arab world is in response to Israel’s 40+ years of military occupation of Palestine and The Wall where ever it is built on legally owned Palestinian property which is “financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile. The Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.”²

On February 1, 2007, Senator Clinton spoke at an AIPAC Conference, “Both Israelis and Americans know so well, a democracy is far more than just holding elections. Democracy has to spring from an active and open citizenry dedicated to tolerance, to respect for differences, to the rule of law, to policies that lift us up not tear us down as fellow human beings, and to the value of human life…

“We also know that the dangers posed to Israel have been compounded by the rise to power of Hamas…Hamas…leaders have refused to disarm, to reject violence, or even to recognize the right of Israel to exist.”

The Palestinian Authority first agreed in 1988 to recognize Israel and reaffirmed this in 1993 during the Oslo Accords. Hamas has repeatedly issued olive branches of recognition to Israel, but Israel ignores all offers to make peace through justice.

On November 15, 2005, Senator Hillary Clinton stood on the Jerusalem side of The Wall and was quoted in Ha’aretz, expressing support for The Wall because it “is against terrorists” and “not against the Palestinian people.”

After I read Senator Clinton’s inaccurate and insensitive remarks in Ha’aretz, I immediately contacted her through her website. My email bounced back to me, for I am no longer a New York constituent, but I was born and lived my first three years in The Village and came of age in Levittown, Long Island.

I snail mailed Hillary a respectful letter informing her that even a little one such as me, knew all about the many gaps and lack of ‘security’ along The Wall that every taxi driver and ANY would be ‘terrorist’ also knew about in order to travel from the West Bank to Jerusalem without having to stop for SECURITY.

I also reminded her that we were in the midst of the UN Decade of Creating a Culture of NONVIOLENCE for all the children of the world. The only response I received from Senator Clinton was to be put on the DNC’s mailing list soliciting funds.

As a Senator, Clinton repeatedly said, “I’ve been a strong supporter of Israel’s right to build a security barrier to keep terrorists out. I have spoken out against the International Court of Justice for questioning Israel’s right to build that fence of security.”

International Law states occupation is to be temporary and maintain the status quo and that the occupiers are not to transfer their population into occupied territory. And what RIGHT has anyone to put a fence up on somebody else’s property?

As a Senator, Hillary said: “I went to see the fence with my own eyes. During a trip to Gilo, a Jerusalem neighborhood, I was greeted by Col. Danny Tirza, who was overseeing the construction of the security fence.

“Col. Tirza’s explanation in his graphic depiction of what was part of the daily life of people living in that one neighborhood, gave me an even greater appreciation for the imperative of the fence and the need to do everything possible to protect Israel against these continuing attacks.”

The truth is that in 2000, before the construction of The Wall began, there were less ‘attacks’ than in 2008 and the Orwellian spun ‘neighborhoods’ are all ILLEGAL colonies for everyone exist on legally owned Palestinian land, NOT on Israeli owned land!

I have seen “the fence” too and it divides Palestinians from Palestinians with 25 to 30 foot high concrete slabs or wire equipped with razor barbs, trenches, sniper towers, military roads, electronic surveillance, remote controlled infantry and buffer zones that stretch over 100 miles wide and deny Palestinians access to their legally owned land, their families, jobs, and resources.

The Wall has eviscerated the sister cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem and will soon completely separate Bethlehem from her sister villages of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala. Bethlehem’s significance to and historic ties with Palestinian East Jerusalem and its economic demise caused by The Wall heralded the beginning of what the BBC reported on November 5, 2009:

Palestinians might have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator said, “It may be time for President Abbas to tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option.”

Mr. Erekat also dismissed Netanyahu’s, ‘generous offer’ saying it only opened the door to more settlements in the next two years and that “Israel has the choice, settlements or peace.”

Erekat also said Palestinians made a mistake in the last round of talks by agreeing to negotiate without insisting that Israel settlement building be stopped, and added this time things would be different, meaning the alternative for Palestinians is to “refocus their attention on the one-state solution where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live as equals” as they would in true democracies.

After Clinton met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, he called for a resumption of talks, “We have to concentrate on the end game and we must not waste time adhering to this issue or that as a start for the negotiations.”

Senator Clinton once said, “It is not enough for us to say the right things; we’ve got to be smart and tough enough to do the right things that will protect American and Israeli interests now and forever.”

Tough and smart would comprehend that America’s best interests and Israel’s security demand justice for Palestine: end the occupation and ensure equal human rights for all. And integrity would have no fear of international law.

1. Grant F. Smith, Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal, (2007, Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Washington D.C.) p. 158.
2. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, p. 43, Jan/Feb. 2007.

On January 16, 2007, 10 year old Abir Aramin was walking home from school with her sister and two friends, but instead of having milk and cookies that afternoon; she was shot in the head with a rubber bullet by the Israeli Border Police and after three days on life support Abir’s struggle ended but not the struggle for justice her parents have been seeking ever since.

In 2007, I reported that Avichay Sharon, of Combatants for Peace stated, “Over the past 2 years, the Israeli Border Police and IDF forces have been creating provocations near the school district of Anata [which] has become a part of the daily routine for the children. Ever since construction started on the separation barrier surrounding Anata, the jeeps have been roaming the streets especially near the schools and shooting grenades and tear gas along with rubber bullets.

“Many children have been injured in the past by these brutal actions of the soldiers and on January 16th it became deadly. As in many other cases the police replied that the soldiers were shooting in response to stones thrown at them by children. Even though all the evidence and witnesses stated that no stones were thrown that day” the prosecution dismissed the Aramin family’s case, claiming lack of evidence.

Bassam Aramin, Abir’s father and co-founder of Combatants for Peace said, “I’m not going to lose my common sense, my direction, only because I’ve lost my heart, my child. I will do all I can to protect her friends, both Palestinian and Israeli. They are all our children.”

When Bassam Aramin was 17 he was sentenced to 7 years in an Israeli prison for belonging to the then-outlawed Fatah movement. Although he had been beaten by soldiers in prison, he decided that he would not become a prisoner of hatred.

The “Combatants for Peace” are Palestinians and Israelis, who had all been involved in perpetuating the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army (IDF) and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom. All decided to put down their guns and work together in the good fight for peace through nonviolent actions and by raising voices of conscience as they seek to create political pressure on both Governments to end the violence and end the military occupation of Palestine.

Elhanan wryly reported that Abir’s parents “live under a cruel occupation and they have experienced all it has to offer: exile, imprisonment and the killing of their small daughter Abir by a rubber bullet that was allegedly fired from the rifle of a Border Guard soldier who was sitting in an armoured jeep and thrust the barrel of his rifle through the opening that was allegedly designed for that purpose and allegedly aimed and fired at the head of the girl who was standing beside her sister at a kiosk, allegedly buying candy during the break between the first class and the second.

The projectile was removed from under the girl’s body and transferred to the authorities. The eyewitnesses, as well as the Border Guard soldiers, testified that there was no alleged danger to their lives and that the shooting was done – if it was done – in contravention of instructions. Two pathologists testified that it was probable that the fracture in Abir’s little skull could allegedly have been caused by a rubber bullet. The attending physician at the Hadassah hospital said that it was not a live bullet. The video of the reconstruction of the incident was not given to the defence counsel or to the court, because the soldiers who allegedly carried out the shooting, that is, who thrust the barrel of the rifle through the opening that had been made especially for that purpose, aimed and fired at the head of the girl Abir, were featured in the recording.

Counsel for the State, stammering, unprepared and unkempt, stood like a platoon commander in charge of new recruits with her back to the public and refuted the allegations: So they found a projectile. So what? Who knows how long it had been lying there? So people gave testimony, so what? They (those Arabs) can say anything, does that make it testimony? So nobody was throwing stones at that spot, so what? On a nearby street stones were thrown. If you were in my place, she laughingly says to Michael Sfard, Aramin’s attorney you would have made morsels of them by now.

Judge Beinish reminds Sfard – twice – that there have been such incidents in the past and that soldiers have rarely been put on trial or even indicted, so it would be best to just forget it… But Salwa and Bassam Aramin have no choice but to seek justice in an Israeli court. They demand that the truth come to light in a court of the occupiers – of the killers.

I nearly shouted for the drowsy judges – Beinish, Arbel, Frocaccia – to find a spark of humanity, of motherly feelings, within themselves and to look into the eyes of Salwa, who never stopped crying, and at Bassam’s ashen face, and to say: the High Court of Justice sympathizes with you over the death of little Abir. They didn’t.

Elhanan also noted that Jean-François Lyotard wrote that the perfect crime is not only the killing but also the suppression of the testimony and the silencing of the voices of the victims. And the greatest injustice is to compel the victims to seek justice in the court of their tormentors.

In March of 2006, I visited Anata refugee camp and have been tormented by my memories ever since.

Israel erected their thirty foot high concrete apartheid Wall at the boys high school where 780 Palestinian adolescents, share a slab of cement about the square footage of a basket ball court; their only ‘playground’.

A resident refugee informed me that on a daily basis, “The Israeli Occupation Forces show up when the children gather in the morning or after classes. They throw percussion bombs or gas bombs into the school nearly every day! The world is sleeping; the world is hibernating and is allowing this misery to continue.”

A moment later, a teenage boy approached me as I was taking photos and asked me my name and where I was from. I cringed admitting I was American, for “financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.”¹

On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice/ICJ, ruled 14-1 that The Wall was illegal and it must come down and also that compensation should be paid to all who had been affected.

The ICJ Judges also decided 13-2 that signatories to the Geneva Convention were obliged to enforce “compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law” and the U.N. General Assembly also passed a resolution 150-6 supporting the ICJ’s call to dismantle the wall.”²

Less than five minutes by car from Anata, one can enter into the Orwellian Disney Land of lush green grounds called the Pizgat Ze’ev settlement.

All the settlements/colonies in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

I was sick at heart as I traveled through the colony and counted three playgrounds and a swimming pool.

I wondered how many USA tax dollars helped to build them, and outraged over the injustices of Walls and military occupation that American money provides against the indigenous people of that land.

Within fifteen minutes after leaving Anata, as I stood next to a playground in Pizgat Ze’ev, a barrage of gunshots issued from the refugee camp and my guide informed me that the Israeli soldiers were showering the refugees with gun fire and terror- another normal daily occurrence for them.

I lost it and sobbed uncontrollably, and imagined the Magdalena when she could not find her Lord.

And then I thought how Jesus cried buckets of tears over Jerusalem when he “saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you had only known what would bring you peace but it is hidden from your eyes.’” — Luke 19:42

Lady Justice, the Roman Goddess of Justice, an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems, is depicted wearing a blindfold to indicate that justice should be meted out objectively, not based in favor of- or against- ethnicity, power, or weakness, but on blind impartiality.

Perhaps it is a case of cold hearts in 21st century Jerusalem that has rendered the Justices of the Israeli High Court with eyes blind to their injustices.

1. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Jan/Feb. 2007.
2. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2009.

There comes a time comes when silence is betrayal… History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims… We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular?

But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right.

– Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Since 1967, the Israeli authorities have demolished more than 24,000 Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories.

Some are considered “collateral damage” in military operations; such as the 4,000 homes that were demolished in Israel’s December-January assault on Gaza.

Some are as collective punishment; such as the obliteration of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002.

Many are for lack of a building permit, which Israel denies to Palestinians; and due to the unjust justice system of Israel, the courts have ordered thousands of Palestinian families to demolish their own homes while threatening them with fines and imprisonment.

Currently there are tens of thousands of demolition orders on Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank .

The unjust justice system of Israel ignores that the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an Occupying Power from extending its law and administration into an occupied territory.

The very process of granting or denying permits to Palestinians is blatantly illegal under international humanitarian law.

Missing from Israel’s security framing is the very fact of occupation, which Israel both denies exists…and that “security” requires Israel control over the entire country… rendering impossible a just peace based on human rights, international law, reconciliation.¹

International Law states occupation is to be temporary, but Israeli courts rule on the basis that there is no occupation and therefore the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting civilians under occupation is irrelevant to their sense of justice.

Jeff Halper, the American-Israeli founder of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions informed this reporter: “Before 1947, the Palestinians owned 94% of the country. Then the UN gave away 56% to the Jews and today they have 78% of the land. Hamas cannot accept the legitimacy of Israel stealing their land, just as no colonial people would ever give up the claim to their homeland.”

The first house ICAHD rebuilt was in 1998 — the Beit Arabyia house — the name for the home of the Arabiya family with seven children which has been rebuilt at least four times by the efforts of ICAHD and the JCHR/Jurist Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian NGO focused on legal advocacy for Palestinians in the Jerusalem area.

Jeff said, “Israel has no constitution but has a Declaration of Independence which promised that Israel would abide by conditions and UN resolutions. They have not fulfilled the agreement which was the basis of their independence.”

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was signed on May 14, 1948 the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired:

On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.

Jeff elaborated:

We really are only but actors in a play. When we wake up to that, and become an active participant in the human drama and pursue justice, things must change because injustice is unsustainable… One out of three Israeli children lives below the poverty line. It’s probably about 80% for Palestinians. Jews are like everyone else, those who have been abused grow up to be abusers. Things here have been turned on their head: its victim mentality and denial about the occupation. Once Israelis accept the fact that they are occupiers they will have to admit their State Terrorism.

Since 1967 the Israeli government has destroyed over 22,000 Palestinian homes. 95% of the cases have nothing to do with security. All these homes are on Palestinian private property. The Israeli government will not grant permits for them to build on their own land, and in reality are quietly transferring the Palestinians administratively from the land. They make conditions so intolerable that the Palestinians give up and leave and this is exactly what they are after. Not only do the Palestinians receive no warning when their homes are to be destroyed they are fined $1,500.00!

The reasons for the demolitions are: for The Wall, to establish illegal settlements, build roads and because the Israeli government wants to keep Palestinians confined to the islands [areas A and B] in the West Bank and so Palestinian land remain under the control of the Israeli government.

When you incorporate occupied territories, highways, settlements and use resources it is all illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention which states the status quo must be retained so that negotiations can happen. Unilateral actions are illegal. The occupying power is responsible for those under its control.

Tony Blair said 70% of all the conflicts in the world can be traced back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. This conflict impacts the global community and especially everyone in the USA. This whole issue is based on Human Rights and it is a global issue requiring global intervention.

There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are ½ million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into Bantustan; truncated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Israel is not a democracy, it is an ethnocracy: full rights to Jews, but not Palestinians.

In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible. The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa!

The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines Bantustans. Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives.

Israel has set up a matrix of control; a thick web of settlements guaranteed to make the occupation permanent by establishing facts on the ground.

Israel denies there is an occupation, so everything is reduced to terrorism. It is our job to insist upon the human rights issue, for occupied people have International Law on their side.

Israeli policy is to maintain a 72% Jewish and 28% Arab population. Palestinians cannot get building permits to build upon their legally owned land. The Arab land has been re-zoned as green space, and the green space will be re-zoned for the settlements.

Every single Palestinian home in Jerusalem has a demolition order. The entire West Bank has been zoned as agricultural land by Israel, and that will also be re-zoned again for more settlements.

Under international law all the settlements are considered illegal colonies-but they are spun as “neighborhoods” by politicians and a limp and lazy media.

During an ICAHD bus tour, on my way to the Beit Arabiya Peace House, I witnessed acres of tree stumps that had once been miles of olive trees; but they were chopped off by the Israeli army.

Jeff commented, “It has been said that the Israelis do not love this land, they just want to possess it. I don’t just have a political problem with this Judiaization of the Old City; it is ecologically and environmentally offensive.”

It also is spiritually impoverished for the raping and pillaging of what is claimed holy ground refutes and denies the biblical meaning of dominion. The ancients understood dominion meant to nurture, love and protect but the destruction of indigenous peoples homes, the stealing and destroying of their legally owned property, has got to be an abomination unto God as well as a crime against humanity.

The Beit Arabiya Peace House, is at the crossroads of Areas A, B and C and the home has become a symbol of nonviolent persistent resistance and a meeting place for Israelis, Palestinian and International peace activists at the intersection of Areas A, B, and C.

The smallest of the three is Area A, which is under Palestinian authority. Areas B and C are under Israeli control.

When I saw Jeff last in June 2009, he told me there was another demolition order of the Beit Arabyia home, but during my visit I was captivated by a mural painted on the outer wall created by the North American Workers Against the USA occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The mural depicted Rachel Corrie, the American who was run over by a USA made Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza when she stood up to defend the home of a pharmacist with five children four days before the USA began bombing Baghdad. Also depicted was a pregnant Palestinian woman of ten who had also been run over by a Caterpillar in Gaza.

The angelic images of the two women floated above a depiction of a USA made Caterpillar bulldozer that had tipped to one side and was flanked by tanks and images of weapons of destruction along with images of people and a railroad track; a reminder that prior to 1948, Jews and Palestinians had worked together in peaceful solidarity to build a railroad.

The Arabyia home/Peace Center is at the cornerstone of the village of the Anata and the Shufat refugee camps, in the very area where the prophet Jeremiah in the 6th century B.C. critiqued the violent conflicts in the Mid East, which were already old news: “I hear violence and destruction in the city, sickness and wounds are all I see.” [Jeremiah 6:7]

Mohammad Alatar, film producer of The Iron Wall addressed my group after we broke bread and ate a typical Palestinian feast prepared by the Arabiya family:

“I am a Muslim Palestinian American and when my son asked me who my hero was I took three days to think about it. I told him my hero is Jesus, because he took a stand and he died for it.

“What really needs to be done is for the churches to be like Jesus; to challenge the Israeli occupation and address the apartheid practices as moral issues.

“Even if every church divested and boycotted Israel it would not harm Israel. After the USA and Russia, Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world. It is a moral issue that the churches must address.”

The Obama Administration has demanded Israel freeze all construction of its illegal settlements; but the building continues. Money talks louder than words and people of conscience are exerting pressure to get Israel to change its behavior. The quickest and most effective way to do this is by ending U.S. military aid, which is being misused by Israel in violation of U.S. law to kill and injure Palestinian civilians and sustain Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

1. Jeff Halper, Obstacles to Peace, A Re-Framing of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, page 1.

The original indictment included 22 different violations, Vanunu was charged with 19 and acquitted of four. On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six months in jail just for speaking to non-Israeli media — and not on the content — of what are hundreds of conversations that began the day Vanunu emerged from a tomb sized cell for providing the photographic proof in 1986 of Israel’s underground WMD facility. However, he was acquitted of speaking to foreign nationals on the Internet and via video and voice chats.

Two days before President Bush’s first trip to Israel, and a day before Vanunu’s appeal was to begin, Israel sentenced him to community service. But Israel does not recognize occupied east Jerusalem as part of the community although it is the only neighborhood where Vanunu has lived since April 21, 2004. On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced his sentence to three months in jail, “In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy.”

On June 14, 2009 Mordechai Vanunu told this reporter, “They renewed the restrictions to not speak to foreigners until November. I meet foreigners every day. I am talking with people every day. But I am not writing or announcing the appeal until after it happens. It was scheduled for January, then May 6th and June 18th. Now I am waiting for a new court date. The Central Commander of the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long as I do not talk about nuclear weapons.”

Vanunu returned to court on July 6, 2009 and “his attorney Avigdor Feldman…and the state agreed that after six months, pending a review of his conduct, Vanunu will be able to ask for the restrictions to be lifted and be allowed to travel abroad.

Feldman said, “Vanunu is not going to change. He will still be the man who left the reactor and transferred sensitive material over to The Sunday Times. But it is inconceivable that a man be held in Israel for his entire life because of this. The world has anyway lost interest in the subject…You can say a lot of things about Vanunu, but you cannot say he is dishonest. Until now he wouldn’t commit to refrain from speaking of [Israel's nuclear program], but now he is. He wants to live, to raise a home, a family and children.”

However, the “Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish, did not agree with Feldman’s ‘lack of interest’ theory, saying that “the case is still generating great interest, like any other security-related case. The media’s attention he gets is proof of that.”

Vanunu told reporters, “All I’m interested in is freedom. Give me a passport and I can tour the world. I want to walk around the streets of New York.”

That evening I phoned Vanunu and as always he said he was, “OK…You have freedom of speech and freedom of movement. Do what you want. But I am not publishing anything…Everything is already on the Internet.”

I met Vanunu for the first time on June 21, 2005 and have seen him on all seven of my trips to Jerusalem, but not until June 14, 2009 did he fill me in on why he has not written and published his own story. Vanunu said that he and a writer had been openly meeting in the garden of the American Colony and working on his book soon after his release from Ashkelon, but a Palestinian spy turned them both in and the authorities threatened Vanunu with more jail time if he published anything without going through Israeli censors.

However, Vanunu did write that on February 22, 2006, in a Jerusalem court it was revealed that Israel had asked Microsoft to hand over all the details of his Hotmail account before a court order had even been obtained and they eluded that Vanunu was being investigated for espionage.

Vanunu wrote, “Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details, three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated. It is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad.”

His attorney Michael Sfard repeatedly requested Police Representative Mr. Peterburg to specifically state what type of espionage activity Vanunu was accused of.

According to Vanunu, “The policeman did not have any answers and said that he brought all the evidence to the court. When Sfard asked him again about any material related to the espionage charge, Peterburg had no answers.

“Sfard proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage.

“The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders, called Hisaion, which are documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers. This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense.”

Vanunu reported that his secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for “attempting to leave the country” while traveling the four miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the confiscation of his private property by thirty IDF that stormed into his room at St. George’s Cathedral had all “been done…under the false and misleading statements to the courts of ‘suspicion of espionage’, and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes. And the fact is that I have not committed any crimes.”

On St. Patrick Day 2005, Vanunu spoke to the media immediately after he had been arrested for speaking with the media in 2004.

Vanunu said: “I have no more secrets to tell and have not set foot in Dimona for more than 18 years. I have been out of prison, although not free, for one year now. Despite the illegal restrictions on my speech, I have again and again spoken out against the use of nuclear weapons anywhere and by any nation. I have given away no sensitive secrets because I have none. I have not acted against the interests of Israel nor do I wish to. I have been investigated by the police again and again, and re-arrested. They have found nothing. I have done nothing but speak for peace and world safety from a nuclear disaster…I do not want to harm Israel, but rather to warn of an enormous danger. I want to work for world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons. I want the human race to survive.”

On December 9, 2008, I was introduced to Sam Habeeb, a twenty-something photo journalist and humanitarian worker in Gaza.

Yesterday, Sam received three death threats against him and his family because of his reports from Gaza.

I spoke with Sam today. His life is in danger from death threats and also the bombs that are very close to his home.

Sam wrote:

I have got more calls from anonymous persons stop blogging or I would be killed. Yet, I would keep on this track. Some of you do wonder how I send news in such conditions. I really suffer a lot to send you this update due to lack of power. I go around 4 kilo meters a day in this cruel war where I charge my laptop battery to be able to send this work! This is very risky since shells rain down and drones hover over me! I will keep this up…[There is] No water, No beans, No fruits, No chicken, No rice, No bread, No Markets, No shops, No Medicines, No medical Machines, No enough Doctors, No enough ambulances, No fuel, No gas, no beans, no candlelight, No power…

Have a look at my photos of Gaza Children!

Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza reported on January 9, 2009:

Take some kittens, some tender little moggies in a box”, said Jamal, a surgeon at the Al Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital, while a nurse actually placed a couple of blood-stained cardboard boxes in front of us. “Seal up the box, then jump on it with all your weight and might, until you feel their little bones crunching, and you hear the last muffled little mew.” I stared at the boxes in astonishment, and the doctor continued: “Try to imagine what would happen after such images were circulated. The righteous outrage of public opinion, the complaints of the animal rights organisations…” The doctors went on in this vein, and I was unable to take my eyes off those boxes, sitting at our feet. “Israel trapped hundreds of civilians inside a school as if in a box, including many children, and then crushed them with all the might of its bombs.

What were the world’s reactions? Almost nothing. We would have been better off as animals rather than Palestinians, we would have been more protected.”

At this point the doctor leans towards one of the boxes, and takes its lid off in front of me. Inside it are the amputated limbs, legs and arms, some from the knee down, others with the entire femur attached, amputated from the injured at the Al Fakhura United Nations school in Jabalia, which resulted in more than fifty casualties. Pretending to be taking an urgent call, I took my leave of Jamal, actually rushing to the bathroom to bend over and throw up.

A little earlier I’d been involved in a conversation with Dr. Abdel, an ophthalmologist, regarding the rumours that the Israeli Army had been showering us with non-conventional weapons, forbidden by the Geneva Convention, such as cluster bombs and white phosphorous. The very same that the Tsahal Army used in the last Lebanese war, as well as the US air force in Falluja, still violating international norms. In front of Al Auda hospital we witnessed and filmed white phosphorous bombs being used about five hundred metres from where we were, too far to be absolutely certain there were any civilians underneath the Israeli Apaches, but so terribly close to us all the same.The Geneva Treaty of 1980 forbids white phosphorous being used directly as a war weapon in civilian areas, allowing it only as a smoke screen or for lighting.

There’s no doubt that using this weapon in Gaza, a strip of land concentrating the highest population rate in the world, is a crime all on its own. Doctor Abdel told me that at Al Shifa hospital they don’t have the medical and military competence to say for sure whether the wounds they examined on certain corpses were indeed provoked by white phosphorous bullets.But on his word, in twenty years on the job he had never seen casualties like those now being carried into the ward.

He told me about the traumas to the skull, with the fractures to the vomer bone, the jaw, the cheekbones, tear duct, nasal and palatine bones showed signs of the collision of an immense force against the victim’s face.

What he finds inexplicable is the total lack of eyeballs, which ought to leave a trace somewhere within the skull even in case of such a violent impact. Instead, we see Palestinian corpses coming into the hospitals without eyes at all, as if someone had removed them surgically before handing them over to the coroner.Israel has let us know that we’ve been granted a daily 3-hour truce, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM.

These statements from the Israeli military summit are considered by the people of Gaza as having the same reliability as the Hamas leaders’ declarations that they’ve just provoked a massacre of enemy soldiers. Just to be clear on this point, the soldiers of Tel Aviv’s worse enemy are the very same who fight under the Star of David. Yesterday a war ship off the coast of Gaza’s port picked out a large group of alleged guerrilla fighters from the Palestinian Resistance, moving as a united front around Jabalia. They shot their cannons at them. But as it turned out, they were their own fellow soldiers, with the shooting resulting in three being killed and about twenty injured. No one here believes in the truces that Israel declares, and as it happens, today at 2:00 PM Rafah was under attack by the Israeli helicopters.

There was also yet another massacre of children in Jabalia: three little sisters aged 2, 4 and 6 from the Abed Rabbu family were slaughtered. Just half an hour earlier in Jabalia, once again the Red Crescent hospital’s ambulances were under attack. Eva and Alberto, my ISM colleagues were on board that ambulance and managed to film everything, passing those videos and photos on to all the major media.Hassan was kneecapped, fresh from mourning the death of his friend Araf, a paramedic who was killed two days ago as he came in aid of the injured in Gaza City. They had stopped to pick up the body of a man languishing in agony in the middle of the road, when they were under fire by about ten shots from an Israeli sniper. One bullet hit Hassan in the knee and the ambulance was filled with holes.

We’re now at a death toll of 688, in addition to 3,070 injured, 158 dead children and countless missing. Only yesterday, we counted 83 dead, 80 of which were civilians. Thankfully, the death toll on the Israeli side is still only at 4.Travelling towards Al Quds hospital, where I’ll be working all night on the ambulances, as I raced along on board one of the very few fearless taxis left, zig-zagging to avoid the bombs, on the corner of one street I saw a group of dirty street urchins with tattered clothes, looking exactly like the “sciuscià” kids of the Italian afterwar period. They threw stones towards the sky with slingshots, at far away and unapproachable enemy who was toying with their lives.

This is a crazy metaphor, which could serve as a snapshot of the absurdity of this time and place.

Stay human Vittorio Arrigoni.

Darlene spoke to me on the phone from the home of the parents of an International Solidarity Movement/ISM activist who met her at JFK Airport.

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led NONVIOLENT movement that resists the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in creative and always nonviolent ways. ISM was founded by a few committed thoughtful people in August, 2001. ISM supports and strengthens the NONVIOLENT Palestinian popular resistance front by providing international presence and a voice that will not be silenced.

Darlene began and ended our conversation talking about why she “will return to Gaza. It is because of the people of Gaza. It is their spirit, courage, resilience, kindness, warmth, hospitality, love and resistance to the occupation that pulls me back.”

Twice, Darlene has been to Gaza and arrested and deported by Israeli Forces.

Her first visit was in 2002. While in the Balata Refugee camp she was arrested along with seven other nonviolent internationals who were there bearing witness to the collective punishment of Palestinians. All eight were arrested and deported, but that did not stop Darlene from returning for more.

Darlene arrived in Gaza for her second time, aboard the SS Liberty on August 23, 2008. She was arrested this time along with Andrew Muncie from Scotland and Victor Arrigoni from Italy who had arrived at the same time and had remained in Gaza until they were kidnapped by Israeli Forces on November 18, 2008.

Darlene said, “I told the American Embassy I wanted to be deported to London or Cypress where I have many friends as I had no money did not know anyone in New York and had no means of contacting anyone. Their response was to issue me passport valid for one month which become invalid once I entered the USA. The two Embassy employees kindly gave me fifty five dollars out of their own pockets, but the American Embassy, whose job it is to take care of American citizens and my Congressional Representative, whose job it is to represent me, failed me…

“It began around ten in the morning on the 18th. I was with 15 fishermen and Andrew and Vittorio; all on three typical wooden Palestinian fishing boats. The usual response from the Israeli Naval Forces who illegally invade Gaza water zones, is to shoot machine guns, canons, grenades. They do a lot of damage to the boats with targeted high pressure water canons. Those water canons have cracked peoples ribs and one of the nonviolent activists was nearly washed over board from the force. The Palestinian fishing boats have sustained a lot of damage from the high pressured water fired from the water canon. The Israeli navy has also used some kind of “dirty water”. We still don’t know what the Israeli Forces are mixing in that water, but it smells like putrid sewage and they wear protective clothing – masks, gloves and what ever else, to keep themselves protected from the liquid they shoot at the fishing boats, the catch in the nets and at the Palestinian fishermen and internationals who are in Gaza territorial waters.

“On that Tuesday morning, the Israeli Forces had three gunboats that were joined by five Zodiacs. Zodiacs are inflatable, high-speed maneuverable water craft. The Zodiacs came right up to each wooden fishing boat one at a time. I saw them board the boat Andrew was on – he raised his arms above his head and they put a life vest on him and put him on the Zodiac. Then more Israeli Forces boarded that boat and began putting the Palestinian fishermen on another Zodiac. Usually the Israeli Forces do not board the fishing boats. They order the fishermen to strip and then swim over to the Israeli boat. This time was different…

“After they finished with the boat Andrew was on, a Zodiac came and Israeli Forces boarded the boat I was on. One of the Israelis said in English “you are in Israel.”

“We were in Gaza waters and I did not want to go to Israel, but the Israeli Forces kidnapped me at gunpoint and forced me to Israel against my will. We were told in English to raise our hands.

“I said, ‘I want to stay with my friends. I want to stay on the boat.’ The three notebooks I had with me were confiscated. At gunpoint I was forced off the Palestinian boat, onto the Israeli Zodiac and then onto the Israeli gunboat.

“I saw the Palestinian fishermen, blindfolded and handcuffed, taken from the boat Andrew was on. I said I wanted to stay with my friends on the deck. I was then forced below to the second level and I finally saw Andrew again. He was handcuffed and sitting at a table in a galley-kitchen area. We started to talk and were ordered to shut up. The Israeli Forces separated us and later they brought Vittorio in.

“Vittorio looked awful! I was very concerned about him, but didn’t learn until much later that he had been tasered while holding onto a metal structure on the roof of the fishing boat. He ended up in the cold water and I am assuming he was suffering from hypothermia; he was barefoot, and shivering!

“When we arrived in Ashdod and as I was being taken off the Israeli gunboat I saw the Palestinian fishermen, blindfolded and handcuffed sitting on the deck. I yelled, in Arabic, that they were my dear friends and I will see them again.

“I was questioned by many Israelis and my response was that I was not talking to anyone or answering any questions without my attorney present.

“All of my belongings — cell phones, cameras, keys to my apartment, everything was confiscated and while in Israeli custody, I was taken to Ben Gurion Airport for an audience with the Minister of the Interior.

“I told him-and every other inquisitor that I wasn’t answering any questions without my attorney. His response was, ‘We are done!’

“I do not know what charges were filed against me. I was held in the women’s compound in the men’s prison at Ramle that held people with visa violations. So I’m assuming I was there for being in Israel without a visa – pretty ridiculous given I was forced to go to Israel at gunpoint against my will. Israel deported me against my will back to America. I wanted to go to London or Cypress, but my requests were ignored. My belongings were not returned to me – my cell phone, my three notebooks, my keys to the apartment!

“When I saw the Zodiacs, I tried to text on my cell phone but there was no network. By some miracle, I received a phone call and told the person what was happening. A little later the captain, Adham, handed me his phone as Fida, the ISM-Gaza Strip Palestinian coordinator called to talk with me, she could not get through on my phone. If I had not received that first phone call I don’t know how our friends in Gaza would have known what happened to us.

“Usually Israel will hold Gaza fishing men and their boats for weeks or months at a time. This time the men were released the following day and their boat a week later. The Israeli Forces damaged a motor on one and stole all the GPS units.

“On this trip 15 men who usually remain at sea for two days at a time, were denied their catch and that resulted in denying hundreds of children some protein! Hundreds of people were impacted just from this one illegal action by Israeli Forces. The families and everyone connected with the three Palestinian fishing boats were without their source of food and income for ten days — longer for the damaged boat.

“The thing that pulls me back to Gaza is the people. The Palestinians have touched my heart and I will continue to work in solidarity with them and I will return to Gaza.”

Never doubt that a few, thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

– Margaret Mead

Within the next few days, history will be freely streaming from aboard the Free Gaza and SS Liberty as a few committed global citizens focus the world’s attention onto the 1.4 million open-air prisoners of Gaza who have been collectively punished by Israel’s ongoing occupation.

On board are Internationals, Israelis, Palestinians, a Catholic Nun, Child of The Holocaust, Journalists, Human Rights Activists, Fathers and Mothers, Civil Engineers and Coordinators of Children’s Programs in Gaza, Professors, Film Makers, Writers, Non-Violence Trainers and Activists, former Marine and Legislative Representative, Musicians and More who have been led by the desire to stand up for the voiceless who have endured under siege conditions before and after the ‘disengagement’ in 2005, for Israel has always maintained complete control of air, land and sea borders.

“We have been invited by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society of Gaza to go to Gaza. The people of Gaza expect us and will come out in their boats to meet us. We will fish together,” announced Greta Berlin, Co-Founder of the Free Gaza Movement, at the closing of the 27th annual ADC/Arab-American Anti-Discrimination conference in Washington, D.C. June 10, 2007, which preceded a March on D.C. by over 5,000 dissenting American’s Against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.

The MSM was MIA at both events, but the March was well attended by USA Security Forces.

In 2007, the plan had been to sail ten boats through international waters to bring food, water, medicine directly to the people of Gaza. It has been said that you don’t make war with the army you wish you had, but the army you have; the army out to change the world consists of two boats- the Free Gaza and SS Liberty and streaming video.

Co-visionary and Co-Founder of Free Gaza, Dr. Paul Larudee, a former Fulbright-Hayes lecturer and piano tuner, had scheduled twenty piano-tuning appointments throughout the West Bank during the summer of 2006, but instead, spent two weeks in a Ben Gurion jail cell before being deported for his non-violent activism against the route of The Wall and U.S.A. tax dollars that support the Israeli Military Occupation of Palestine.

Larudee explained in 2007, “We are going through international waters; we are not going through Israel. Israel claims Gaza is unoccupied and so, we are going to unoccupied territory… We will embark in Cyprus and disembark in Gaza. This can play out in many ways; we may get blown out of the water, we may get towed away, but we will remain nonviolent and exercise the sovereignty of international waters, for we are not going through Israel. We will not allow the Coast Guard to enter onto our boats; we will demonstrate nonviolently our solidarity with the residents of Gaza who invited us. We are taking food, water, medicine, but the issue is solidarity with the people of Gaza. If our rights are denied, we will remain nonviolent.”

Also on board is American-Israeli Professor Jeff Halper, Founder of Israeli Committee against House Demolitions and famous for his explanation of Israeli democracy, “Israel is not a democracy, but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control… Missing from Israel’s security framing is the very fact of occupation, which Israel both denies exists… and that ‘security’ requires Israel control over the entire country… rendering impossible a just peace based on human rights, international law, reconciliation.”

Sara Roy, is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University and political economist who has worked in Gaza since 1985. She had just returned from there and spoke prior to Greta and Paul at the 2007 ADC Conference:

There is nothing new in Gaza, just more acute and the internal breakdown due to restrictions and 527 physical barriers and cantonizations make it impossible for Palestinian businessmen to move their goods and they have been forced to hire Israelis as middle men who are able to transport Palestinian goods over the 535 miles of roads that Palestinians have been denied access to. The few Palestinians who are able to access these roads have become a privileged class…This new class is also dependent on international donors who are not building new structures to challenge the occupation and this has resulted in the humanitarization of Palestine; donors and Israelis are not treating them as human beings with political rights.

This has caused fragmentation, isolation, cantonization which will soon become worse. The physical impediments, roadblocks and required permits have caused most of the people to give up, for their efforts to move their goods increases their costs so much and since there is no guarantee that their efforts will result in them being able to transport their wares, many have given up.

There is a great sense that the people are robbed of their space and time and this has resulted in a de-development of the human being… The issue is no longer occupation but sovereign control…All vestiges of Palestinian presence is being destroyed by Israel.

The Free Gaza and SS Liberty are scheduled to set sail for Gaza from Cyprus by the middle of August 2008. When the international crew alerted the people of Gaza of some recent delays, the resilient and patient reply was, “Don’t worry. We know you are coming. And we are waiting.”

The Free Gaza Movement is endorsed by an impressive array of international groups and personalities including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire and former Prime Minister of Lebanon Dr. Salim Al-Hoss.

On two small boats, 40 global citizens from 16 countries, (the oldest will celebrate her 84th birthday on board and the youngest is a 22-year-old student from Denmark) on their way to Gaza, will be freely streaming reality video with hope to nonviolently defeat the Israeli Navy and begin the End of the Occupation.

The SS Liberty learned to have documentation ready, from its namesake the USS Liberty, which was attacked while in international waters not far from Gaza by the Israeli Navy and Air Force on June 8, 1967. On 13 October, 2007, USS Liberty survivor Phillip Tourney told me:

Israel got away with cold blooded murder! Forty years ago the CIA and the NSA all threatened the survivors not to talk! They scared me so much; I didn’t for twenty years… Israel wanted the world to believe that Egypt [committed the crime]… Thirty-four were killed and 172 were wounded out of a crew of 294… The Israeli planes marked out the Star of David so we wouldn’t know who was attacking us… Our keel was broken, we should have sunk but God kept us alive.

On June 8, 2007, Congressman Paul Findley at the 27th annual American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Washington, D.C. spoke straighforwardly:

It is time to speak openly and honestly about Israel. But, in American politics, that is still forbidden… Pity that we cannot seem to shed our fear of Israel. We are afraid to speak out on Capitol Hill, for fear of losing the next election. They are more like trained poodles jumping through hoops than leaders! Why this fear? How did we get here?

Forty years ago to this day, June 8, 1967 the change occurred, the floodgates opened and money poured into Israel as never before. When President Johnson heard about the USS Liberty being attacked by Israel he ordered the rescue fighter planes to return to the deck. The rescue mission was aborted and the survivors have said they heard LBJ’s voice tell Admiral Giess, ‘Get those planes back on deck. I don’t care if the ship sinks, I will not embarrass Israel.’

LBJ also threatened to court martial anyone who reported what had happened. Johnson accepted Israel’s false claim of “mistaken identity” and he knew it was a lie. That is when the change began and Israel learned they could get away with murdering U.S.A. soldiers.

Even President George W. Bush sometimes gets it right, as he did at the Second Inaugural Address:

In the long run, there is no justice without freedom. There can be no human rights without liberty. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we stand with you.

Get on Board.

I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it. It’s all down to you, mate …All we are saying is give peace a chance…A ll you need is love… Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.

– John Lennon

In a country that possesses 11,000 nuclear weapons with many in excess of 20,000,000 tons of TNT [the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 12,000 tons] yet claims to be based on the Judeo-Christian ethics, which includes the commandment that thou shall not kill, is staggering in it’s hypocrisy.

In March 2008, President Bush announced his plan to build a new multi-billion dollar plan to rebuild the nation’s nuclear weapons capabilities through the Department of Energy’s Complex Transformation proposal.¹

The centerpiece is a new nuclear weapons plant for the production of plutonium pits, the primary detonators in modern nuclear weapons and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is the site slated for the new bomb plant.

America signed the NPT and thus is legally and morally obliged to reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal.

Mankind is the only species that has the choice of annihilating itself. “Since the end of the Cold War, the world has spent more than $10 trillion on armaments. The Untied States alone spends approximately $100 million every day to keep its nuclear arsenal at the ready.”²

American money proclaims “In God We Trust” but the facts on the ground are that we have become an empire of blasphemers, for what we trust in are weapons of destruction.

Cesar Chavez said the key to peace is: “Public Action! Public action! Public action!”

In the ’60′s Eldridge Cleaver reminded us that if we are not a part of the solution, we are a part of the problem.

Filmmaker and peace activist, Bud Ryan recently went to Japan to shoot a film about the Hiroshima Peace Museum. He met Emiko Okada, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb who sent this invitation:

Dear President Bush,

As a hibakusha, a survivor of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb, I would like to invite you to come and visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum while you are in Japan for the G8 Summit (in July).

All of my friends, many of whom are fellow bomb survivors, are waiting to be your guides around the Peace Memorial Museum and Peace Memorial Park. We are the people who can give you the best perspective of the horrors of nuclear weapons as we have lived through it and many of us have suffered numerous physical ailments over the last 62+ years and lost loved ones in the blast.

I myself suffer from aplastic anemia and I lost my 12 year old sister whose last words were “I go now” as she left our house that fateful August morning in 1945.

Our world is now full of worries like global warming, environmental issues, regional conflicts, poverty and a questionable world economy, so none of us need the specter of nuclear weapons to add to those concerns. As a bomb survivor my only wish is that these horrible weapons never be used again. To insure that these awful weapons are never used again ALL of the Nuclear Weapons States must live up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which requires that all nuclear stockpiles be dismantled.

I would ask that you, with the tremendous authority that the Office of the President of the United States possesses, take the first step in fulfilling your Treaty obligations by coming to Hiroshima to see for yourself firsthand what these weapons have wrought and to talk with some of the people who have lived through the blast.

I would also ask that you use your international influence to invite the other leaders of the Nuclear Weapon States – Great Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – to join you in Hiroshima so they too can see and hear for themselves the destructive nature of these nuclear weapons that do not discriminate between soldier and civilian. In point of fact, nuclear bombs kill mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, the old and the young.

Thank you for reading my invitation and listening to my plea about helping to remove the 30,000+ nuclear weapons around the world today. I look forward to meeting you and the other leaders in July in Hiroshima.

Sincerely,

Ms. Emiko Okada
11-6 Nakayama Kagamigaoka
Higashi-ku, Hiroshima 732-0022
Japan

“You must give birth to your dreams; they are the future waiting to happen.”
– Rilke

One dream can change everything and change only occurs from the bottom up. It is up to each one of us individually to do something to bring the dream of a nonviolent world into reality. The way to wake up in a new world begins with a spiritual evolution that sees all others as equal human and sacred beings.

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
– Martin Luther King Jr

Love is a choice and so is nonviolence. Hearts that are stuck in the past turn to stone and fear numbs the imagination.

The way to peace is not brain surgery and only justice will reap it. The day that the gold standard of law is implemented as outlined in International Law and the Declaration of Human Rights and when Governments meet their obligations under these Laws and Agreements, peace will be reality.

Treaties, legislation, resolutions and promises are irrelevant, until we as individuals evolve and are transformed into one human family, and that will lead to an enlightened and humane way of living together and nonviolently solving conflicts so that we will share, nurture and love the one world we all inhabit.

Send a letters or email:

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

1. Learn more about Complex Transformation.
2. Jonathon Granoff, Tikkun Magazine, 9/11/03.

On April 4, 2008, Haaretz reported their interview with Zubeidi:

…We’ve shut down the Al-Aqsa brigades and I haven’t yet received a full pardon from Israel…They lied to us, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The PA promised us that after we spent three months in PA facilities and if we didn’t get involved in actions, we would receive a pardon. The three months ended and nothing happened. We still need to sleep at the headquarters of the security organizations. They promised us jobs and they haven’t materialized either…They lied to everyone, they made a distinction between those who were really in the Al-Aqsa Brigades, whom they screwed, and groups that called themselves by that name, but in fact were working on behalf of the PA… Look, it’s perfectly clear to me that we won’t be able to defeat Israel. My aim was for us, by means of the ‘resistance’ [code for terror attacks], to get a message out to the world. Back in Abu Amar's day [the nom de guerre of Yasser Arafat], we had a plan, there was a strategy, and we would carry his orders…Everything that was done in the intifada was done according to Arafat's instructions, but he didn't need to tell us the things explicitly. We understood his message…Today I can say explicitly: We failed entirely in the intifada. We haven't seen any benefit or positive result from it. We achieved nothing. It's a crushing failure. We failed at the political level - we didn't succeed in translating the military actions into political achievements. The current leadership does not want armed actions, and since the death of Abu Amar, there's no one who is capable of using our actions to bring about such achievements. When Abu Amar died, the armed intifada died with him… our politicians are whores. Our leadership is garbage. Look at Ruhi Fatouh, who was president of the PA for 60 days, as Yasser Arafat's replacement. He smuggled mobile phones… We, the activists, paid the heavy price. We've had family members killed, friends. They demolished our homes and we have no way of earning a living… Lots of other people, as a result of the frustration, and because Fatah doesn't have a military wing any more, have joined the Islamic Jihad. Those activists are still willing to pay the price… And look at what the PA does to those who are keeping at it. If a PA person is killed in a battle with the Israelis, the stipend paid to his family will amount to NIS 250 a month, even though he had been earning about NIS 2,000. Why? So that he won't even think about carrying out terror attacks. This is the only plan that the PA has these days: Israeli security, the security of the occupation before the security of [Palestinian] citizens. When an occupation jeep comes into a refugee camp, the PA doesn't do anything, and if someone shoots at the jeep, they'll go and arrest him immediately. Today the president of the Palestinian people is General Dayton [Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator]. They're all working for him, he is the boss. A PA no longer exists.

During my fifth trip through the West Bank, on July 23, 2007, I traveled to the Jenin refugee camp accompanied by a Melkite Priest, who informed me, "There are 2,500 Christians now left in Zababdeh and just over 1,000 Muslims and we have always gotten along. Whenever I have a problem here, I go to Jenin and get help there."

We traveled past the five years young American Arab University where medical and law students from Israel and Palestine study together. The priest informs me, "We are suffering now. The Israelis denied to renew the visas for the American teachers because they do not like them opening America's eyes. The teachers tell all about the suffering, hunger and anger of the occupied."

Jenin refugee camp is home for nearly 20,000 Palestinians who share one square kilometer of land. Within seconds of stopping the car on one of the winding narrow alleys, an elderly woman in the typical Muslim dress approaches us with a broad smile and immediately invites us all to her home for coffee and lunch. We gratefully decline as we are on the way to meet with 40 year old Krozow, number two leader of El Katib: the underground resistance movement within the Fatah party.

In English, Krozow translates to "good fighter" and Fatah stands for Palestinian Liberation Movement. I am shown the new Fatah logo that replaced the former depicting two hands holding two guns. The new image is of two hands, with one hand holding one gun and the other hand holding an olive branch in memory of Arafat's pledge at the UN:

"Do not let me drop this olive branch. Do not let me drop this olive branch. Do not let me drop this olive branch!"

Krozow was 16 the first time he was sent to prison for throwing rocks in 1985. He was released in '88 and resumed his resistance to the occupation and was sent back to jail from 1990-1994, when he was released under the Oslo accords.

Krozow greets us warmly and his beautiful smiling children keep entering the room to look at me, for red blonde hair is a rarity in occupied territory. Krozow patiently and lovingly hugs them all and picks them up in a bear hug and with a broad smile, deposits them back outside the living room door. He returns with water, and then after another child enters the room, he repeats the ritual but this time returns with coffee, the third time with orange soda.

He informs me, "Last week Israel and Abbas agreed that 232 persons here would hand over our weapons. We did and Israel agreed that they would not attack the camp. Yesterday the soldiers came and shot out the street lights. The children watched from the windows and saw it all. They also saw when the Israelis shot and burned up an ambulance and the man inside died. What can children think when they must see these things?

"The camp is a warm place because children dream of freedom. My son is 4 years old and he knows all about weapons. All his words are about the Israelis attacking us and Apache helicopters that drop bombs. Children all over the world get to go play outside, but here all they see are soldiers who come every day to terrorize.

"We are not violent people, but we do resist the occupation, as is our right. What if Russia came to occupy American, wouldn't you fight? I support Abbas, but he believes in negotiations, I believe in resisting the occupation. Abbas is the political Fatah, they drive Mercedes and roll up their windows and shutout the suffering of the people. I am dedicated to the people and to protecting them from the IDF. We are people under occupation and we would all love to have our children grow up free and live like children anywhere else in the world, who can play outside, go swimming and not have to see soldiers all the time. The Israeli's tell the world we are violent, but we are only against their occupation. What if Russia came and occupied America, wouldn't Americans resist?

"Hamas sends people out to Israel and targets civilians. The underground Fatah movement does not do that, we defend our home ground against Israeli forces. I take care of my family, home and community. I do not target innocent people.

"Last week Abbas told us to surrender our weapons and the PA would take care of the people. I surrendered all I had except for this one hand gun, for my personal safety against the Israelis. Every night I leave my home and sleep in the Mukatar [Palestinian government building in Jenin City].

"We have every right to live like the Israelis. My dream is for a viable Palestinian state, but they have cut up the West Bank and the only way to solve the problem is to give Palestinians the right to live like human beings everywhere else in the world, the right to our land, to move with freedom, the right to a good life like the Israelis.

"I have no hope for the immediate future, but I have hope for my children that American taxes will stop going to buy Apache helicopters that bomb them. My dream is that there will be a political agreement between Israel and Palestine and so all children can live in peace. Our relationship with Christians is we are brothers. We are looking to have peace with all the sons of Abraham."

I stand to thank him for his time and his mobile phone rings. It is Zakariya Zubeidi, the number one commander of the underground El Katib Fatah resistance movement and he has agreed to finally meet, in the proverbial "five minutes."

In Palestine five minutes can easily take hours, but I sit back down and Krozow brings the fruit out. After a forty minute wait another phone call and the message received is to leave the camp and drive to where Zakariya Zubeidi is staying that day.

The priest tells me, "Zakariya is number one on the wanted list by the Israelis. He is the top man in Jenin and spends his day solving many of the social problems. His mother and brother were both murdered by the Israelis and his three brothers are in prison. Abbas has asked for his support, for Abbas is very worried about Hamas. Hamas has a very different way of thinking and we don't hate them, but we hate the way they deal with the issues. No one is born a killer and violence only makes more violence. The stupidest thing Palestinians did was pick up weapons. The second stupidest thing they did was target innocent people."

We arrive in the home of one of Zechariah's assistant's who informs me, "My roof is higher than the roof of Oslo. Your government is controlled by the Zionist agenda. What Americans see on TV and read in the paper is controlled by the Zionist agenda and it is not the truth of what we live and what we are like and what we want. We are living an existence under occupation for 40 years now. All occupied people have been liberated, except the Palestinians. America liberated herself from Britain and we have every right to a free life. We are a resistance movement and Israel calls it terrorism, but we call it resisting occupation.

"The resistance has no strategy to fight Israel and destroy it, or end their existence. Our resistance message to the whole world is that we are people existing under occupation and we can only exist by resisting.

"The more powerful one is the one who must make peace and that is Israel, it is up to them. The weak cannot bring peace and we are not talking peace between nations but between governments. The Holy Land always had all three religions; this land is holy to all the sons of Abraham. Religions idea is suitable for one state, but the political situation doesn't make it possible. There is no disagreement between the Christians and Muslims here, but we do disagree with the Christians in the U.S.A. who do not come here and see the truth!

"It is wrong news that Jenin is a terrible place to come and visit. What happened in Gaza with Alan Johnston [kidnapped journalist] is not the true Palestinian culture. We are hospitable and it is not our culture to kill.

"My message to the American government is that Arab people do not trust you. You asked for democratic elections and you don't support the suffering people, you support only Israel. Palestine is a very holy place for Jews, Christians and Muslims and there is no future for the West Bank if it remains under occupation. What we want is freedom from occupation; we want our land, water and refugee rights."

After coffee and fruit juice, but no sign of Zachariah who was still busy dealing with many of the social problems of the people of Jenin, I thanked the ten men who had gathered with me and my three escorts in the living room for their time and information. My driver with VIP license plates and I headed back to Jerusalem at a good speed until we approached the Wad Elbedar Valley checkpoint. The line of cars extended around the mountain and none were moving. But, my VIP driver passed them all and maneuvered in front of the first car in line. We were almost immediately waved into the checkpoint area and after the usual questions of where I am from and why had I come through occupied territory, the soldier handed me back my American passport and as usual (for I help pay his salary), "Welcome to Israel. Have a nice day."

“Were Israelis and Palestinians to have an equal chance to get a building permit … it wouldn’t be a human rights issue. It’s a human rights issue because it’s intentional and purposeful housing discrimination,” said Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights

The Hamden home was first demolished by Israel in 2005 but volunteers rebuilt it last July. “Former Jerusalem city council member and Meir Margalit, one of Hamdan’s supporters, said his group won’t be deterred and plans to rebuild again.”

The AP failed to report that Meir’s group is ICAHD/ Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a non-violent civil do something group opposed to the occupation of Palestine and which resists by standing up to the bulldozers that demolish and then rebuilding what Israel had destroyed.

The AP also failed to report the on site arrest of Prof. Jeff Halper, American Israeli, Founder and Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Jeff was arrested once again for trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. On April 3rd, it was a close friend of Jeff’s and last summer’s crew of ICAHD volunteers who had rebuilt the Hamdan home.

In a telephone interview with Adnkronos International (AKI), Halper, said that the Israeli occupation Jerusalem municipality had carried out the demolition.

‘As Israelis, we are privileged,’ he told AKI. ‘They (police) are not going to shoot us if we resist the demolition, but if a Palestinian had done it, they would have certainly shot him.’

While in Jerusalem on July 16, 2007, this American civilian journalist witnessed twenty five ICAHD volunteers; internationals, Israelis and Palestinians who become a community upon the rocky barren land of the Hamdan clan as they broke ground and laid the foundation. The ICAHD crew was intent upon handing the keys of the once again rebuilt home over to Hassan Yussef Hamdan and his family within two weeks. That mission was accomplished on schedule.

The land has legally been owned by the Hamdan clan — with the deeds filled out in Hassan Yussef’s great-grandfather’s name — during the Ottoman Empire.

The oldest son, Mohammed’s grandmother, Um Mohammad addressed the media on ICAHD’s summer kick off commitment to rebuild 300 of the — so far 18,000 Palestinian homes the Israeli government has destroyed — and which have resulted in creating 18,000 homeless families who legally own their land but are denied the right to build upon it.

The diminutive woman’s Arabic was translated into English by Nadia another ICAHD volunteer, while the foundation of the house was being laid, “We own twenty-five pieces of land, twenty-five meters is one piece. After building our home here, we received papers demanding we demolish our own home. We got a lawyer in Tel Aviv, and after paying $10,000.00 she did nothing. The soldiers came under our window and we hired another lawyer and had to pay 70,000 shekels within two hours to hold off the soldiers. The soldiers came back two more times, after more negotiations the soldiers came back a third time and destroyed our home.”

ICAHD spokesmen, Meir Margalit admitted, “We are here because we are embarrassed and ashamed of our government. A decent person cannot handle what this government puts innocent people through. We are doing this for both sides; for the innocent families and to keep the moral values of Judaism alive.”

According to international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids home demolitions in occupied territories and demands that the occupiers maintain the status quo and not pilfer the resources of the indigenous population.

But last Wednesday, in the ‘Holy’ Land, a crane-mounted jackhammer tore down the Hamdan’s home that had broken ground on July 16, 2007.

On that day of a beginning again, American Israeli, Aviva Joseph spoke, “We are here building on the 9th day of Av, the day the Jewish Temple was destroyed… I was born in Chile into an Orthodox Zionist home. Both my parents are Holocaust survivors. When I was ten I use to go to Bethlehem, but after the first intifada, things began closing down; physical walls and psychological walls. I lived in Gilo, some call it a settlement, some a neighborhood and I lived in a small box with my own myth. Now I live in California and things you see from there you can’t see here and other things you must come here to see what cannot be seen anywhere else. I love Israel but until I began listening to the voices of the marginalized did I see I was living my own myth. The work is not just in the head, but in the heart; opening both sides to a new paradigm with compassion. It must be like hydrogen and oxygen the sides coming together; who could have thought that would make water?”

Ashraf Abu Moch, Israeli Palestinian and ICAHD Volunteer is famous for saying, “We all need a psychiatrist, but we cannot afford one, so we do activism.”

It was in December 2005, that I first met Jeff in his ICAHD office on Ben Yehuda Street, in West Jerusalem next door to the Burger King.

Jeff is from Hibbing, Minnesota and knew Bob Dylan when he was still Zimmerman. Jeff smiled when he told me, “It was during the Vietnam years that I told my grandmother that I was moving to Israel and she replied, ‘That is no place for a nice Jewish boy!’

Jeff continued, “Israel has no constitution but has a Declaration of Independence which promised that Israel would abide by conditions and UN resolutions. They have not fulfilled the agreement which was the basis of their independence.”

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was signed May 14, 1948 the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired. The USA recognized Israel that very night and the USSR three days later. The Declaration affirms that the state of Israel:

“Will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion…and will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education and culture: it will safeguard the Holy places of all religions, and it will be faithful to the principals of the Charter of the United Nations.”

Jeff also spoke during December 2005′s Holy Land Trust’s Celebrating Nonviolent Resistance Conference, in Bethlehem. Members of Hamas attended but Israel denied entry to Ghandian activists from India and many internationals for having histories of speaking up for human rights for Palestinians.

Jeff informed the conference crowd, “We really are only but actors in a play. When we wake up to that, and become an active participant in the human drama and pursue justice, things must change because injustice is unsustainable… One out of three Israeli children lives below the poverty line. It’s probably about 80% for Palestinians. Jews are like everyone else, those who have been abused grow up to be abusers. Things here have been turned on their head: its victim mentality and denial about the occupation. Once Israelis accept the fact that they are occupiers they will have to admit their State Terrorism.”

During other interviews and conferences Jeff said, “It was at the time when the Oslo peace plan collapsed and the occupation reasserted itself. Many Israeli peace activists began asking Palestinians what the best way to engage with each other was and the answer was blowing in the wind: ‘STOP the home demolitions!’

Since 1967 the Israeli government has destroyed over 18,000 Palestinian homes. 95% of the cases have nothing to do with security. All these homes are on Palestinian private property. The Israeli government will not grant permits for them to build on their own land, and in reality are quietly transferring the Palestinians administratively from the land. They make conditions so intolerable that the Palestinians give up and leave and this is exactly what they are after. Not only do the Palestinians receive no warning when their homes are to be destroyed they are fined $1,500.00!

I’ll get a call at 5 AM from a Palestinian telling me the bulldozers have arrived and we activists go out and engage in civil disobedience by standing up to the bulldozers. We also raise funds to rebuild these homes right where they had been before.

The reasons for the demolitions are: for The Wall, to establish illegal settlements, build roads and because the Israeli government wants to keep Palestinians confined to the islands [areas A and B] in the West Bank and so Palestinian land remain under the control of the Israeli government.

When you incorporate occupied territories, highways, settlements and use resources it is all illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention which states the status quo must be retained so that negotiations can happen. Unilateral actions are illegal. The occupying power is responsible for those under its control.

Tony Blair said 70% of all the conflicts in the world can be traced back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. What gives us hope is that as this conflict worsens maybe Europe will figure out that American policies are against their interests and intervene… This conflict impacts the global community and especially everyone in the USA.

If we do fix this conflict it would be a tremendous step forward in global reconciliation… This whole issue is based on Human Rights and it is a global issue requiring global intervention.

It has been said that the Israelis do not love this land, they just want to possess it. There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are ½ million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into Bantustan; truncated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators.

Israel is not a democracy, it is an ethnocracy: full rights to Jews, but not Palestinians.

In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible. The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa! The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines Bantustans. Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives.

Israel has set up a matrix of control; a thick web of settlements guaranteed to make the occupation permanent by establishing facts on the ground. Israel denies there is an occupation, so everything is reduced to terrorism. It is our job to insist upon the human rights issue, for occupied people have International Law on their side.”

I asked Jeff if the settlements were in actuality colonies; meaning foreigners had invaded and set up residence in another’s territory. He agreed and added that, “When Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan, the East side was 6 sq. km. Since 1967, Israel has added 64 km. The West side was 38 sq. km until ’67 and is now 108 sq. km. Israel plans to develop 17 settlements. Israeli policy is to maintain a 72% Jewish and 28% Arab population. Palestinians cannot get building permits to build upon their legally owned land. The Arab land has been re-zoned as green space, and the green space will be re-zoned for the settlements. Every single Palestinian home in Jerusalem has a demolition order. The entire West Bank has been zoned as agricultural land by Israel, and that will also be re-zoned again for more settlements.”

Orwellian doublespeak has also been employed in the USA government and media to turn the illegal colonies: for all the settlements are considered illegal according to International Law, into “neighborhoods”.

Linking the settlements in a ring around the Old City of Jerusalem, the Eastern Ring Road has bridges for Israelis but Palestinians are denied access and must drive through sewage and tunnels. During an ICAHD bus tour, I rode past acres of olive trees that had been chopped off by the Israeli army, on our way to another repeatedly built house; The Beit Arabiya Peace House.

On the way, Jeff said, “I don’t just have a political problem with this Judiaziation of the Old City, it is ecologically and environmentally offensive.”

I add it also is spiritually impoverished. The raping and pillaging of what is claimed holy ground refutes and denies the biblical meaning of dominion. The ancients understood dominion meant to nurture, love and protect and the destruction of Palestinian homes, the stealing and destroying of their legal property, is an abomination unto God and crime against humanity.

The Beit Arabiya Peace House, is at the crossroads of Areas A, B and C and has been demolished and rebuilt at least four times by now. The owner received his fifth demolition order in 2006.

Beit Arabiya is the name of the home of the Arabiya family with seven children. Their home has been rebuilt by the efforts of ICAHD and the JCHR/Jurist Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian NGO focused on legal advocacy for Palestinians in the Jerusalem area.

The home has become a meeting place for Israelis, Palestinian and International peace activists and is the cornerstone and intersecting point of Areas A, B, and C. The smallest of the three is Area A, which is under Palestinian authority. Areas B and C are under Israeli control. Since 1967 over 18,000 Palestinian families in the occupied territories have been left homeless due to home demolitions.

According to Jeff Halper, the reasons for these home demolitions are purely political: to confine the 3 ½ million residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza into small, crowded, impoverished and disconnected enclaves.

Upon the wall of the Beit Arabyia home was a mural donated by the North American Workers Against the USA occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The mural depicts Rachel Corrie, the American who was run over by a Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza when she stood up to defend the home of a pharmacist with five children. Also depicted is a the pregnant Palestinian woman of ten who too was run over by a Caterpillar in Gaza. The angelic images of the two women float above a depiction of a USA made Caterpillar bulldozer tipped to one side and flanked by tanks and weapons of destruction. On both sides of the weapons of destruction are many people. A railroad track reminds the viewer that prior to 1948, Jews and Palestinians once worked together in peaceful solidarity to build a railroad.

The Arabyia home/Peace Center is the cornerstone of the village of Anata and the Shufat refugee camp, in the very area where the prophet Jeremiah in the 6th century B.C. critiqued the violent conflicts in the Mid East, which were already old news: “I hear violence and destruction in the city, sickness and wounds are all I see.” [Jeremiah 6:7]

Mohammad Alatar, film producer of The Ironwall addressed our group after we broke bread and ate a typical Palestinian feast prepared by the Arabiya family: “I am a Muslim Palestinian American and when my son asked me who my hero was I took three days to think about it. I told him my hero is Jesus, because he took a stand and he died for it. What really needs to be done is for the churches to be like Jesus; to challenge the Israeli occupation and address the apartheid practices as moral issues. Even if every church divested and boycotted Israel it would not harm Israel. After the USA and Russia, Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world. It is a moral issue that the churches must address.”

In 2005, Jeff told me that every time he is arrested and sentenced to community service for his ICAHD actions, he tells “the judge I am serving the community but they just don’t get it!… The Israeli government simply does not want to take responsibility and the USA government ignores the situation.

As of “27 February to the afternoon of 3 March, 106 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip. Contrary to the Chief of Staff’s contention that ninety percent were armed, at least fifty-four of the dead (twenty-five of them minors) did not take part in the hostilities. In addition, at least forty-six minors were wounded… including the killing of four children and wounding of two others while they played soccer in the street, east of the Jabalya refugee camp on 28 February. B’Tselem’s investigation indicates that Qassam rockets may have been fired earlier about 100 meters from where the children were. However, no armed Palestinians were killed or injured in the incident.”

McCain — the son of Vice Admiral McCain, the man who directed the rush job, whitewash known as the Court of Inquiry regarding the June 8, 1967 attack by Israeli jets and torpedo boats on the lightly armed spy ship, the USS Liberty, as she sailed in international waters — also issued a “further signal of solidarity with Israel, [by supporting] the Jewish state’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital, which the international community rejects.”

But, hope and wisdom has spoken, for the most promising of a Palestinian Martin Luther King, Jr. has a risen in Ramallah.

Ziad Abu Ein, a senior Fatah operative and Deputy Minister for Prisoners’ Affairs in the Palestinian Authority, is offering the world a vision to begin the world again with a nonviolent plan to defeat the culture of terrorism, racism and denial of the other.

On the very same day McCain was beating the drum of discord, disharmony and disunity, the Jerusalem Post reported on the Palestinian visionary, Ziad Abu Ein, who has chosen the way of accord, harmony, unity and civilian obedience by activating the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 regarding the rights of refugees to return home.

From May 14-16, the Palestinian Diaspora will be commemorating Israel’s 60th birthday in the Holy Land by arriving with suitcases, tents and their house keys, carrying UN flags along with their UNRWA-issued ID cards.

As human beings have rights and states and nations have obligations, this global citizen, American civilian journalist and justice and peace seeker, phoned Ziad on March 19, 2008 to learn more about his dream. One dream can change everything and only in solidarity do “we have it in our power to begin the world again,” as Tom Paine once wrote.

Ziad informed me, “I was born in 1959 in a tent in a refugee camp in Ramallah. Before 1948, my family had lots of land. My family has suffered so much and so have my four children.

“The Palestinians did not make Resolution 194, the UN did!

“We are calling all the refugees to come home and be UN peaceful soldiers!

“We are calling all Israelis and all the people of the world to wake up and participate in seeking justice and peace with us because this is the only way we will stop the terrorists!

“This initiative is seeking full human rights for all the Palestinians in exile. This initiative is seeking peace with the Jewish people which requires justice for Palestinians. This initiative is accepting and implementing UN Resolution 194!

“We cannot succeed in the peace process until we solve the refugee problem!

“We must expel the hate from hearts and minds! The only discrimination is in not accepting the other.”

On December 11, 1948 The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 in regards to the crisis in Palestine that erupted and continues to flame because of the actions of ‘civilized’ white men who carved up the Holy Land in a misguided attempt to semi-repent for the atrocities of the Third Reich by forcing the indigenous peoples of Palestine to pay for the sins of the Nazis.

The birth of the state of Israel resulted in Al-Nakba/The Disaster for Palestinians who were forced out of their legally owned homes and off their legally owned property because of the lust of Zionists supremacists who violently pursued grabbing more than the UN had partitioned unto them.

“On March 10, 1948, in Tel Aviv, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns.”

Dr. Ilan Pappe, spoke those words on Nov. 8, 2006, on the seventh day of Sabeel’s [Arabic for THE WAY] 6th International Conference; The Forgotten Faithful/AKA the Palestinian Christians, and this civilian journalist was in the audience.

Dr. Pappe spoke to over 330 International ecumenical Christians in the Ramallah Cultural Palace on that day about the “Dynamics of Forgetting” and because of the “fierce urgency of now” [Rev. MLK, Jr.] the world is beginning to remember that once there was a Red House where a most diabolical plan was hatched.

Dr. Pappe informed the crowd, “The Red House in Tel Aviv is gone now. It was a typical building in Tel Aviv that had all the characteristics of Mediterranean homes but with the local Palestinian architecture of the ’20′s. Today a USA Sheraton Hotel stands in its place. The Red House was the home of the Haganah; a Jewish underground organization but before 1948 it was the home of a socialist movement, from which it received its name.”

“Haganah” is Hebrew for “The Defense” and was a Jewish paramilitary organization formed in what was then the British Mandate for Palestine from 1920 to 1948. It began as a small group of “Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee. At no time did the group have more than 100 members until after the Arab riots of 1920 and 1921. The Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British, whom the League of Nations had given the Mandate of Palestine in 1920, had no desire to confront the Arabs about attacks on the Palestinian Jews, and thus created the Haganah to protect their farmers and settlements. The initial role of the Haganah was to guard the Jewish Kibbutzim and farms, and to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinian Arabs.

In the period between 1920 and 1929, the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination. Haganah “units” were very localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim. Following the Arab 1929 Hebron massacre that led to the ethnic cleansing by the British authorities of all Jews from the city of Hebron, the Haganah’s role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment. It went from being an untrained militia to a capable army.”

The British did not officially recognize the Haganah,but the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Auxiliary Forces and Special Night Squads. By 1931, the most right-wing elements of Haganah branched off and formed Irgun Tsva’i-Leumi (the National Military Organization), better known as “Irgun” (or by its Hebrew acronym, pronounced “HaEtsel”). The members were discontented with the policy of restraint when faced with British and Arab pressure and “terrorists” in their own right. Irgun later split in 1940, and their off-shoot became known as the “Lehi” (Hebrew acronym of Lochamei Herut Israel, standing for Freedom Fighters of Israel, and also known by the British as the “Stern Gang” after its leader, Abraham Stern. Because the British severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, in 1939 the Haganah created the Palmach — the Haganah’s strike force, which also organized illegal Jewish immigration of over 100,000 Jews to Palestine.

In 1944, in response to the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State for the Middle East, by members of the Jewish Lehi underground, the Haganah worked with the British to round up, interrogate, and, in some cases, deport Irgun members. This action was called the Saison (or hunting season), and seriously demoralized the Irgun and reduced its activities.

But, the Saison could not stop the Irgun, Haganah and the Stern Group from working together. The three groups had different functions, which served to move the British out of Palestine and to make Palestine a Jewish state rather than create a Jewish home in Palestine.

Menachem Begin, an Irgun commander, stated in a 1944 meeting: “In fact, there is a division of roles; one organization advocates individual terrorism (the Lehi), the other conducts sporadic military operations (the Irgun) and there is a third organization which prepares itself to throw its final weight in the decisive war.”

On November 8, 2006, Dr. Pappe also illuminated the crowd of committed justice and peace seeking Christians that, “The New York Times followed Israeli troops and reported the truth of the expulsion and separation of men and women, and of the many massacres. The world was well informed in 1948, but a year later not a trace was reported in the USA press or books. It was as if nothing ever happened.

“From March to October 1948 the USA State Department stated what was happening was a crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing. When ever one ethnic group expels another group they should be treated as War Criminals and the victims should be allowed to return. This is never mentioned in the USA about Palestine.

“Israel is so successful in their ethnic cleansing because the world doesn’t care! The ethnic cleansing continues via the apartheid policies of the Israeli government and because of the denial of the truth by the USA media.

“To claim Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is bullshit! The Six Day War of 1967 escalated the ethnic cleansing and today in Jerusalem every Palestinian who fails to pay taxes, or has a minor infraction will loose their citizenship.

“In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began. When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. Nothing wrong with either of those goals! But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology.

“Israeli Jewish life will never be simple, good, or worth living while this ideology of domination, exclusiveness and superiority is allowed to continue. The mind set today is that unless Israel is an exclusive Jewish State, Palestinians will continue to be obstacles. However, there has always been a small vocal minority challenging this.

“The only thing that can save Palestinians is for the world to say “ENOUGH is ENOUGH!” The way to challenge and change the ethnic cleansing is to pursue true democracy and the use of sanctions and divestment, for money talks.”

Since 1948, USA taxpayers have provided over 100 Billion dollars to Israel, which is not a democracy, but an ETHNOCRACY!

Jeff Halper, Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and a Noble Peace Prize Nominee for 2006 argued, “Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.”¹

In 1973, Ariel Sharon told Winston Churchill III, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, in between the Palestinians, then another strip of Jewish settlement, right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years time, neither the United Nations, nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”

But all things are possible and miracles do occur; and one man’s dream can change everything.

* Learn More and Do Something

1. Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s Life in Occupied Territory, Eileen Fleming, page 15.

After loosing fifteen pounds, the diabetic Dr. was moved to Butner Medical Center. I phoned the center [919- 575-3900] on March 14, 2008, seeking a condition update, but only got as far as leaving a voice mail.

I then phoned Melva Underbakke, who was driving to Phoenix to show the documentary USA vs Al-Arian.

Melva informed me, “I have known Sami for fifteen years, we both taught at the University of South Florida. When he was indicted he lost his tenure. We lived a mile from each other and were both on the educational committee of HOPE, a volunteer organization in the community that works to strengthen the community. Sami and I were both on the committee that helped the public schools develop an alternative to out of school suspension by keeping the suspended kids in the school system.

“After 9/11, Sami was instrumental in outreaching to the entire community by inviting the churches and all others to the mosque to express our shared grief and sorrow.

“Sami has won many awards for teaching. He worked to get people out to vote and he lobbied in Washington.

“It’s a big loss to our community–a big loss to our country to loose such a person as Sami.

“Even during his pretrial incarceration the conditions were very harsh. He was always behind a glass; no physical contact was allowed, even for his family. I think maybe once a year they were allowed to be in the same room with him. The last time I saw him was just after his second hunger strike. He was still joking and in good spirits. He was strong and it was a happy visit.

“Sami was always a big believer in the American system. He felt justice would be done. But, I think because this case goes all the way to Washington, and they have been loosing these terror cases, they want to save face and don’t want to give up persecuting Sami.”

Dr. Al-Arian has stated:

“To be patriotic is to be able to question government policy in times of crisis. To be patriotic is to stand up for the bill of rights and the Constitution in times of uncertainty and insecurity. To be patriotic is to speak up against the powerful in defense of the weak and the voiceless. To be patriotic is to challenge the abuses of the PATRIOT Act.”

“A great nation is ultimately defined and judged by its system of justice. When the system is manipulated by the powerful and tolerates abuses against the minorities or the weak members of society, the government not only loses its moral authority and betrays future generations, but will also be condemned by history.”

The diabetic Dr.’s first hunger strike, lasted 140 days, he survived on nutritional liquids and lost 45 pounds. In 2007, he went on a two month hunger strike, drank only water and lost 55 pounds. His third hunger strike began March 3, 2008 and he is refusing fluids.

The documentary USA vs Al-Arian that Melva is taking around the country, details “the absurdity of the show trial held in Florida and the hollowness of the government’s case against Al-Arian. When the film was awarded Best Nordic Documentary at the Nordic Panorama in Finland the jury wrote: ‘The film shows precisely how a common man becomes a victim of the situation in the contemporary world, where the Big Brother is watching you even when you’re ordering pizza.’”

The film is also “a close portrait of an Arab-American family facing terrorism charges leveled by the U.S. Government. The film shows a personal story of a family living in a society where fear of terrorism has resulted in increasing stigmatization and discrimination against Muslims. For years, Nahla Al-Arian and her children have been fighting to prove the innocence of husband and father Sami, a Palestinian refugee, university professor and civil rights activist, who has lived in the USA for more than thirty years. In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was accused of giving material support to a terrorist organization and held in solitary confinement for over three years. His six-month trial ended without a single guilty verdict. The failure to convict Dr. Al-Arian was seen as a stinging rebuke for the federal government. While the Bush administration considered this a landmark case in its campaign against international terrorism, Sami Al-Arian claims he has been targeted in an attempt to silence his political views. Because the jury hung on some of the counts, however, Dr. Al-Arian remained in jail as the prosecution threatened to retry him. In May 2006, he agreed to a plea bargain with the US Government in order to put an end to the ordeal and to be reunited with his family. A federal judge sentenced him to 57 months in prison and subsequent deportation… The case of Sami Al-Arian is one of the first major tests of the USA Patriot Act, a controversial law passed hastily after September 11, 2001.”

So far the American taxpayer has provided approximately $50 million dollars to persecute Dr. Al-Arian. “The government has called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to hundreds of hours of often absurd phone transcriptions and recordings made over a 10-year period, which the jury dismissed as “gossip.” Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian—including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad”—the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors disagreed on the remaining charges, with 10 of the 12 jurors favoring his full acquittal… Following the acquittal, a disaster for the government, especially because then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had announced the indictment, prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor, under duress, accepted a plea bargain agreement that would spare him a second trial, saying in his agreement that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a tepid charge given the high profile of the case.”

*****

USA vs Al-Arian
Contact Melva Underbakke to schedule a screening in your city.
Call (813) 215-3403
E-mail: ten.knilhtraenull@uavlem

Apparently the idiots running the asylum in the House of Representatives perceive the 982 Palestinian children who have been killed by Israeli forces, since 2000 are card carrying members of Hamas, but reality is:

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

In Orwell’s nightmare, 1984, the Party slogan “War is Peace” and “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past” are life in the 21st century USA for the 404 congressional reps who have convinced themselves that history never happened.

Not a word in HR 951 mentions the fact on the ground that human rights have been denied the 1.5 million human beings in the open air prison of Gaza nor Israel’s persistent blatant disregard of international law and the 65 UN resolutions that have targeted Israel.

Aside from the core issues—refugees, Jerusalem, borders—the major themes reflected in the U.N. resolutions against Israel over the years are its unlawful attacks on its neighbors; its violations of the human rights of the Palestinians, including deportations, demolitions of homes and other collective punishments; its confiscation of Palestinian land; its establishment of illegal settlements; and its refusal to abide by the U.N. Charter and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

Big Brother would be in his glory in the America of today, for the Industrial Military Media ‘Security’/Surveillance Complex persists to spin the fallacy that Israeli forces withdrew from [Gaza] in 2005, but reality is that the drama in Gaza was made for television.

The colonists/squatters/settlers the world witnessed being removed were financially compensated and resettled in other illegal settlements in the West Bank. Israel never gave up complete control of all air, land and sea borders to Gaza and the Jewish apartheid state birthed the world’s largest open air prison inhabited by 1.5 million human beings which gives credence to Big Brothers mantra that “Ignorance is Strength.”

All right thinking people of good will condemn and deplore the targeting of any civilians and grieve over the loss of any life taken by any independent militant, terrorist organization or army of any state or nation.

HR 951 cites “the near-daily rocket fire [that] has been targeted primarily and intentionally at civilian communities in Israel, such as Sderot and Ashkelon, making life in such areas agonizing… [and] that these unprovoked rocket and mortar attacks have murdered over a dozen Israelis, inflicted hundreds of casualties, produced thousands of cases of shock and posttraumatic stress, especially among children, and caused severe disruption of daily life.”

None of those who voted yes for HR 951, apparently have ever read the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem’s reports among which affirm that since the year 2000, 1,259 of the 2,679 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip were not participating in hostilities when they were killed, and 567 were minors, nor have a clue of the trauma inflicted upon the children of Gaza who are denied electricity for hours every day and often days on end.

“Israeli deaths are ‘terrorism,’ while Palestinian deaths are merely an unfortunate consequence of the fight against ‘terrorism.’ But the two are intricately linked, and what happened in Jerusalem [at the Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav on March 6 are] a direct consequence of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades.”

That west Jerusalem school is the ideological cradle of the most militant of all the Jewish settler movements–Gush Emunim–and “unlike other sects in Israel which sought exemption of their students from military service, Gush Emunim encouraged its followers to join the army and become the armed wing of religious nationalist Zionism. Gush Emunim settlers… founded the most extreme and racist settlements in the Occupied West Bank, including the notorious colonies in and near Hebron whose inhabitants have made life miserable for Palestinians in the city and forced many of them out of their homes. It is the militant settlers of Gush Emunim who still honor Baruch Goldstein who murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron in February 1994. It is in Hebron that the Gush Emunim settlers spray ‘Arabs to the gas chambers‘ on Palestinian houses.”

In June 2005, I made my first and last trip to Hebron, the most painful place I have ever been.

My guide was Jerry Levin, who in the 1980′s had been CNN’s Mid East Bureau Chief in Lebanon and a secular Jew. Jerry was kidnapped and held hostage by the Hezbollah for nearly a year. Shortly after he experienced a mystical Christmas Eve, and escaped unharmed, he was never the same. He became a Christian and he and his wife, Dr. Sis, have devoted themselves ever since to seeking justice and peace in the Holy Land.

In 2005, Jerry was a full time volunteer with CPT/Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron when he told me, “Every time I get ready to return to Palestine, everyone asks me, ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ I reply, ‘Of what, the Palestinians? No way! But when it comes to the Israelis soldiers, you bet I am!’”

In 2005, Hebron contained 450 Israeli settlers/squatters/colonists and three thousand Israeli forces. The eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds patrolled the streets with their weapons at the ready and turned us away at one of the many checkpoints. Jerry quipped, “Most of the soldiers don’t like the CPTs. Whenever they won’t let us through, we just go another way, and always, eventually, get where we want to go.”

I was nauseated the entire day for the oppression was visceral. The narrow, winding stone streets that for centuries had been trod by Palestinians were eerily empty in many areas except for the open air market street and another where apartment buildings were on one side Israeli, and the other Palestinian. The only connection to the other side of the street was a thick deeply sagging netting strung over head. Huge rocks, shovels, electronic equipment, furniture, and all manner of debris had been flung upon it, and I wondered if I would be underneath when it gave way.

Jerry told me, “It gets cleaned out about every year or so. Come back in a few months, and this netting will be much closer to your head. The settlers just throw whatever they want onto the netting; they do whatever they want and get away with it. The CPT’s run interference by nonviolent resistance; we get the children and woman to where they need to be going and back again. Sometimes, the settlers curse and stone us all; it keeps it interesting.”

We then walked to a desolate area and Jerry pointed out all the empty and formerly Palestinian homes that the settlers had painted graffiti and Stars of David on. It was not a nightmare, but reality when I saw spray painted on a now empty, but formerly Palestinian home, “GAS THE ARABS.”

I told Jerry Hebron was hell on earth and he replied, “You haven’t seen anything, until you see Gaza.”

On July 2, 2007, an Israeli court sentenced Vanunu, to six more months in jail for violating a ban imposed on him in 2004, forbidding him to speak to foreigners. Two days before President Bush landed in Tel Aviv and a day before Vanunu’s appeal was to begin, Israel sentenced him to community service instead.

On Feb. 5, 2008, Vanunu met with prison officials to arrange community service and learned that to his “surprise they say there is no community service in East Jerusalem. I told them the agreement for community service was on this condition that it will be only in the East Jerusalem. They say no one told them about this… I will do community service in the East Jerusalem or the appeal begins and may be the prison sentence.”

After an historic year and half long freedom of speech trial, Vanunu was convicted of 14 parole violations including contact with foreign journalists in 2004 and for attempting to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity, five miles away in occupied Bethlehem.

Vanunu has lived on the east side of Jerusalem, the Palestinian side of town since his release from 18 years in Ashkelon Prison on April 21, 2004.

West Jerusalem, is 99% Jewish and has never been Vanunu’s community.

“I went three times to West Jerusalem by taxi because I had to go to the Supreme Court. All three times some right wing extremist Jews shouted and threatened me. My community is the Lutheran Church in the Old City, the Palestinians on the streets and internationals. I have met with hundreds, thousands- probably even five thousand people since 2004.”

Everyone who talks with Vanunu on the street, on the phone or by email understands that they are being monitored by cogs in the industrial security-surveillance complex.

On February 13, 2008, Washington Post Staff Writer Paul Kane wrote: “The Senate yesterday approved a sweeping measure that would expand the government’s clandestine surveillance powers, delivering a key victory to the White House by approving the telecom immunity provision… the Senate approved the reauthorization of a law that would give the government greater powers to eavesdrop in terrorism and intelligence cases without obtaining warrants from a secret court… The most important change approved by the Senate yesterday would make permanent a law approved last August that expanded the government’s authority to intercept — without a court order — the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States communicating with others overseas.”

That news was ignored by ABC, CBS and NBC. The MSM has also failed to report that on January 28, 2006, Vanunu’s historic freedom of speech trial began and that on February 22, 2006 it was revealed that Israel had asked Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu’s Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained.

Vanunu: “Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details… three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated…it is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad… Sfard [Vanunu's attorney] proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage. The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense.”

Vanunu’s secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for “attempting to leave the country” when he attempted to celebrate mass at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the confiscation of his private property by thirty IDF that stormed into his room at St. George’s Cathedral in 2004, according to Vanunu have all “been done… under the false and misleading statements to the courts of ‘suspicion of espionage’, and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes… and the fact is that I have not committed any crimes.”

“But the real problem that Vanunu represents… at a critically important moment in the history of the Middle East that Israel is a nuclear power and that its warheads stand ready to be fired from the Negev desert. [Vanunu] will also remind the world that the Americans, despite battering their way into Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, continue to give their political, moral and economic support to a country that has secretly amassed a treasure trove of weapons of mass destruction.

“How can President Bush remain silent on Israel’s nuclear power when he has not only illegally invaded an Arab state for allegedly harbouring nuclear weapons and condemned Iran for the same ambitions, but also praised –along with Tony Blair’s government–Colonel Gaddafi of Libya for abandoning his nuclear pretensions? If the Arab states are being “defanged” –always supposing they had any real fangs in the first place–why should Israel not be “de-nuclearised”? Why can’t the United States apply the same standards to Israel as it does to the Arabs? Or why, for that matter, can’t Israel apply the same standards to itself that it demands of its Arab enemies?”

The legend of Vanunu continues to grow

An intrepid twenty-one year old German was arrested on Christmas Eve 2007 just for having dinner with Vanunu.

Five days prior, Dana from the USA met Vanunu in the Old City and walked to the American Colony with him for lunch. Dana informed this civilian journalist via telephone, “At the table next to us was the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem and a lot of photos were being taken of him. I wasn’t concerned about myself, but I was afraid to meet Vanunu for his sake; that he would get arrested. I told him this and he just shrugged. I do believe he was arrested on Christmas Eve just because he is a Christian.”

Also unafraid of speaking with Vanunu are the “Ten to twenty foreigners [who speak with Vanunu] every day in the streets, in the restaurants, in churches; some times long meetings.” ¹

This civilian journalist phoned Vanunu on February 12th to ask him what he thought about the two homicide bombers who blew up six miles from the underground Dimona nuclear plant on Feb. 5th. Reuters originally reported that a source said the “Army of Palestine” wing of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades from Gaza carried out the attack in Dimona along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Within hours it was then reported that it was two Hamas from Hebron. Israeli authorities denied the nuclear plant was the target and not one journalist questioned it.

Vanunu said, “We don’t know if they were Hamas or Fatah, but they got as far as they could get to the Dimona. The Dimona is very heavily guarded, and only another state could blow it up, not terrorists.”

Vanunu hasn’t set foot in the Dimona in twenty-two years, [International Inspectors never have] yet Israel continues to insist they cannot let him speak with foreigners or leave Israel, because Israeli authorities claim he still has a secret he has not yet told.

Vanunu has repeatedly responded, “All the secrets I had were published in 1989 in an important book, by Frank Barnaby: The Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East.”

Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Israel ratified and is obliged to uphold, stipulates: “everyone [has] the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence” and that “everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own”.

Israel is bound by international law not to impose arbitrary restrictions on Mordechai Vanunu, including on his right to travel within the country or abroad, his right to peaceful association with others and his right to express his opinions.²

“For 18 years in prison I felt like a man at a train station, waiting for my train. I lived in a six by nine foot space without a window for 18 years. Every day I would get up, get dressed, put on my shoes, look at the same four walls and wait for that train that never came… Now I live in a nine by nine space with four walls, I have a window to the Mount of Olives and the street. But, I live like a tourist without even a TV in a cheap hotel and all I want to do is leave Jerusalem. I am no longer waiting for a train. Now I am at the airport terminal waiting for my plane.”

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.³

1. Excerpted from an email from Vanunu.
2. Amnesty International Press Release of April 19, 2004 and July 2, 2007.
3. Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Six weeks after boarding the USS Liberty and fifteen minutes into the attack, while operating on a sailor to control his bleeding, Dr. Kiepfer received eleven shrapnel wounds into his abdomen, and shortly thereafter, a gun shot to his leg, burns, and a broken knee cap. He remained on his feet, caring for the crew for the next twenty-eight hours and their spirits ever since.

This reporter visited with 70-year-old Dr. Richard F. Kiepfer, a Catholic born and bred in Brooklyn, at his Texas home where the deer ignore the corn put out by his neighbors, for Dr. Kiepfer provides prime feed in his front yard. Obese raccoons dine on a daily feast of dog food and multiple cats eat better than mine, in his back yard. Friends, who check on the doctor daily, set the food out since Dr. Kiepfer can no longer do what he once did.

A Master Bridge player while still in his teens, Dr. Kiepfer today continues to play the cards he has been dealt in life with aplomb and grace. In 1973, he nearly died in a plane crash. Instead he parachuted atop some Georgia pecan trees, ending his surgical career and the use of his right hand and arm.

“As I laid there and looked at my arm and failed every test to move it, I knew then I would never operate again and began to think about what I could do in life to continue to be useful, and decided on nuclear medicine. The pilot landed a mile away from me, and was impaled on a forest of pine trees,” said Dr. Kiefer

After twenty years in nuclear medicine he retired after suffering a heart attack and since then has suffered the loss of two wives, but not his sense of humor, which borders on the ribald. My weekend visit with Dr. Kiepfer, in his home adorned with icons of St. Francis, occurred only a week after his discharge from a rehabilitation center. He had spent the last six months recuperating from a below-the-knee amputation.

In an email from retired Commander David Ed Lewis² who had been the officer in charge of 195 men out of the total crew of 294 on the USS Liberty he wrote, “I know Doc has suffered more and complained less than anyone I know. Job didn’t have much on Doc… He has always dedicated his life to others and has never asked anything in return from them.”

The book of Job is a critique about the justice of God in light of the suffering of innocent people and finding meaning and value in that pain and playing the cards one has been dealt with in life without blaming God.

Being a retired nurse, I had many questions for Dr. Kiepfer, utmost was what was left out of the Court of Inquiry: such as how could the deck log which documents the hours during the attack be so neatly written and list all the dead and wounded in alphabetical order within the hours of noon to four PM but make no mention of the many Israeli over flights that occurred during that morning before the attack.

Dr. Kiepfer explained, “The deck log was not written during the attack. Captain McGonagle signed off on the Log and that makes it legal, but not authentic. McGonagle was concerned that he would be blamed for the USS Liberty being in troubled waters. I told him, ‘Over my dead fucking body!’”

After the hellacious and unprovoked attack by Israel, they did indeed blame the victims. “Israel did identify the ship six hours before the attack… Israel did know that the ship was American and admitted to our government that they knew the ship was American; Israel claims only that the attacking forces failed to get the word… Modern diplomacy simply does not permit one to embarrass a ‘friendly’ nation, even when that nation is caught red-handed with its torpedo in one’s ship… McGonagle [was] tormented by the idea that he was somehow responsible for the agony his ship and crew suffered… One top level theory holds that someone in the Israeli armed forces ordered the Liberty sunk because he suspected that it had taken down messages showing that Israel started the fighting [during the Six Day War]… typical of Israel’s casual attitude toward the episode, an attitude which suggested from the beginning that it was really our fault for being there [in international waters] in the first place…messages from Israel directly charged that a share of the blame was McGonagle’s… the Shreveport Times suggested… that our government was involved in a cover-up… and that the attack itself may have been conducted to prevent the ship [and the United States] from detecting the pending invasion of Syria,”³ which was scheduled for June 8th but implemented on June 9, 1967.

Dr. Kiepfer continued to relay the events of that day:

“McGonagle may have misremembered or may have not reported the over a dozen Israeli over flights that morning because he may have thought he should have abandoned our mission-which was to listen in on all communications. My opinion as a civilian is that the Court of Inquiry — which was to determine if the Navy was at fault — would have inquired why he didn’t get the Liberty out of the area since we could see the smoke from Al Arish, in Gaza.

“I was the only Medical Corp officer to be appointed Officer of the Deck; that means I was in charge of everything on the ship when the Captain was off duty. I stood mid watch from midnight to 4 AM the night before the attack of June 8, 1967 and all was quiet. I always slept until 7:29 because breakfast ended at 7:30. Beginning at sunrise to 8 AM, the bridge reported a couple of propeller driven aircraft overhead and by noon several more. At lunch people were talking about all the Israeli over flights, but nobody was worried; they were our friends. Afterwards, as usual I went to the ward room for coffee while the Corpsmen began the start of sick call and off duty officers pursued the national sport of sunbathing on the quarter deck.

“Lieutenant George Golden and I were together when the attack began and we thought a steam line had ruptured when we heard the first explosion. We both headed off to our general quarters stations as the announcement sounded that we were under attack. I assumed it was perpetrated by the Arabs or Russians. Understand that nobody could identify Mirage fighter bombers that travel at MACH One. Imagine as I say these words to you that the jets are a mile away, now they are overhead and now they are a mile away from us. That is how fast they travel.

“Fifteen minutes into the attack, while I was operating on a sailor and trying to control his bleeding, I was hit with eleven pieces of shrapnel into my abdomen. A rocket struck above the ceiling of sick bay and the light over my head and the operating table protected me; both acted as a life saver for me, otherwise I would have gotten hit in my shoulders, side and back. I was knocked against a wall and waves of red and white pain throbbed through me.

“I knew I had to finish with the guy on the table; if I walked away, I wouldn’t have returned. All I could think about was keeping limbs attached to sailors. From the moment the attack began, I felt a greater presence within me that was physically holding me up. I thought it was the spirit of all the navy docs who had gone before me. I felt physically held up by my invisible assistants and with all that adrenalin coursing through me and some carefully titrated morphine that I self injected, I was able to do what I did.

“It was not until I finished that operation did I even examine myself. The fragments that penetrated me were so hot they cauterized my wounds. The pain was intense, but after applying surgical dressings to my wounds and putting on a life vest to control the bleeding I gave myself a shot of morphine and remained on my feet and working for the next twenty-eight hours.

“Just before the torpedo struck, I was summoned to the bridge and went through the mess decks from sick bay, where a number of wounded sailors were. Captain McGonagle was the only man still functioning there, the lookouts were dead, the helmsman — the guy at the steering wheel was dead and I saw the blown apart remains of our Navigator, Mr. Toth, two decks below me. All I could do was administer morphine to the still living and get them onto stretchers to evacuate them. I had two Corpsmen working with me and knew I needed more surrogates, for the wounded were shoulder to shoulder the full circumference of the passageway.

“While I was on the deck, I got hit by a fifty-caliber machine-gun bullet to my leg that came from the torpedo boats. I was bleeding into my shoes and not until the next day when I was able to lie down did the bleeding slow down. You know the story of the Incredible Hulk and mother’s who lift cars off of their kids? When you are angry and hurt you can do amazing things.

“If you got one hundred people into my skin that day, probably all of them would have thrown up from the hell that erupted on the Liberty. Men were groaning and crying for their mothers, but it was just background noise for me. I was slip sliding as I crossed the bloody deck to get to the Captain who had been hit. McGonagle was leaning back in the Captain’s chair, bleeding from many orifices, some natural and some new ones. I applied battle dressings, started an IV, gave him some morphine and sent an enlisted man to find as many officers as possible to come up to the Bridge and assist him and to watch him for shock. The Captain said, ‘If I sit up, I pass out, but as long as I stay in this position, I am OK.’

“People I had eaten lunch with were dismembered all around me, burned, dead. To this day, every time I have a phone conversation with Phil Tourney, who held the light while I was operating on Blanchard;⁴ he tells me he can still see the look in my eyes.

“Everyone in the Navy hierarchy knew we were scapegoats and the Navy would have done anything to exact retribution, but the Navy never got the chance.

“In LBJ’s mind we were just an average day’s losses in Vietnam. I doubt Israel would have attacked without the knowledge or complicity of our State Departments willingness to sacrifice a few hundred sailors to have a ‘stabilized’ Middle East and all that oil. Our State Department’s morality and ethics are just slightly below those of a Madame in a house of ill repute or a large scale drug dealer.

“June 8, 1967 on the Liberty, was like July 4th in hell without the ice cream… and yes, I agree that it was God that kept us afloat.

See previous parts: Remembering the USS Liberty, The Torpedo that Hit the USS Liberty: Made in the USA?, and Seconding Captain McGonagle’s Two Word Epithet.

1. Admiral John S. McCain, Silver Star Medal Commendation.
2. Read more about Lt. Commander Dave Ed Lewis.
3. Assault on the Liberty, James M. Ennis, Jr. pages 213, 214, 131, 136, 141, and 142. Reintree Press, 1979.
4. Read more about Blanchard.

In the long run, there is no JUSTICE without FREEDOM. There can be no human rights without LIBERTY. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for LIBERTY, we stand with you.
– President George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address

On June 8, 1967, Gary Brummett was a twenty year old Third Class Petty Officer assigned to the Boiler Room aboard the USS Liberty, a Navy intelligence/spy ship that was brutally attacked while sailing in international waters. Israeli air and naval forces aided and abetted by the LBJ Administration cold bloodedly ended the lives of 34 Americans, wounded 174 and irrevocably and traumatically altered the lives of all the men aboard the USS Liberty.

“After more than two hours of unremitting assault, the Israelis finally halted their attack. One of the torpedo boats approached the Liberty. This same torpedo boat crew had been circling the ship, machine-gunning anyone who stuck his head above decks, as well as the lifeboats the crew had put over the side. A torpedo boat officer asked in English over a bullhorn: ‘Do you need any help?’ The wounded commander of the Liberty, Captain William McGonagle, instructed the quartermaster to respond emphatically: “Fuck you.”

Brummett had been on the bottom most level all during the attack, “For thirty-five years I kept this devil bottled up. I felt like I had it under control, but it all became so real again, after I retired from the Post Office and joined the Board of the Liberty Vet’s Association. I was the Vice President for two years and President and three years.

“The attack was the easy part; the aftermath in not being able to get our government to address this cover up has been the bastard. I’ve had forty years thinking about this crap and all the presidents and Congressmen and Senators since LBJ are guilty for not addressing this issue that has been set before them. The few congressional representatives who have tried to address this have been silenced by the Israel Lobby; AIPAC and the JDL.

“The apologists for Israel like A.J. Cristol in his book of half truths and errors claimed there have been investigations. In checking the Congressional Record you will see the only investigation was the original Naval Court of Inquiry. The Liberty Veterans Association has offered $10,000 reward to anyone who can prove there was ever a Congressional investigation and so far, no takers!

“The Naval Court of Inquiry was done by two officers under the command of Senator John McCain, Sr. and it was concluded in six days! After Admiral Kidd delivered it to Washington, parts of it were altered, stuff was excised out, and it was falsified with intent!

“When the attack occurred, I was in the engineering spaces, and we called it the Dungeon. I was there, twelve to fifteen feet below the water line when the torpedo hit and I remember it as vividly now as when it happened. My back was to the boiler heater, I was looking at the starboard [right] bulkhead [wall] when the torpedo hit. I was beyond fear of death, but that feeling didn’t last too long. The torpedo hit about fifteen feet forward of the space I was in. It felt like it lifted the Liberty out of the water and we rolled to port [left] side and I thought we would capsize.

“The hole measured twenty-two by thirty-nine feet and it was like the destruction of a three story building. The entire space flooded in a matter of moments and it was a nightmare scenario.

“The day before, I and another third class boiler tech, J.P. Newell, had worked for over twenty-two hours and been awake for over thirty because of the boilers. If the water gets too low in a boiler it will over heat and rupture. Everything on that ship ran on steam power; the electricity, the fire hoses, cooking, laundry, commodes and the turbines that turned the shaft and moved the ship!

“We had been working on the Coffin Pump, an auxiliary feed pump that supplies water to the boilers. It’s a good thing we did get it fixed, because during the attack we needed that Coffin Pump because both main feed pumps seized on us about half way through the seventy-five minute attack.

“I had gotten burnt from the super heated water in the early morning on the day of the attack and after going to sick bay J.P. and I had coffee on the mess deck. J.P. then went back to finish the work on the Coffin Pump and I took a shower and went to sleep until 10 AM and then I went back to the Dungeon.

“On the PA System I could hear the Officer of the Deck call five or six times for the duty photographer team to go up to the bridge between ten and one that day. Ten to twenty minutes after a routine general quarters drill the attack started, about 2 PM. I smelled gun powder and things got hot and heavy and more furious from that point on.

“We were trained incessantly like Pavlov’s dogs, so, you don’t think you just react. I kept busy and when that torpedo hit the engineering spaces were all ready dark because the turbo generators had been knocked off line. The missiles had destroyed our back up emergency generators and the only light available were hand battle lanterns.

“Israel said they stopped attacking us after the torpedo hit, but that’s a big lie! I think they stopped shooting at us because they ran out of ammunition. When we got to Malta, I was one of five two men teams that counted the direct hits and while the official record states 821 direct hits plus the torpedo there were thousands of rounds of ammo that hit us and no way could they all be counted!

“It wasn’t until June 9th just after midnight that I went to the mess deck and saw bodies all over the place; on the floor, the tables and blood was everywhere. Men were crying for their mother’s! It was an emotional mix master, unreal, surreal. I was a twenty year old kid and not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I even knew something was very wrong with what had happened to us.

“The dead had been in storage lockers for a few days before we even had time to move them into the freezers. Out of a crew of 294, 34 were killed, over 170 injured so that didn’t leave many of us to do everything.

“When we got to Malta two Navy Officers informed my group of about a dozen crewmen that National Security was involved and we were all ordered not to talk, ordered to keep our mouths shut, no talking to reporters, no details to family.

“The closest safe harbor was Crete, a day an a half away, but we were sent to Malta, a six day trip with bulkheads so contorted we could have sunk in waters that went down 17,000 feet! We still don’t have submersibles that go that deep! I think they sent us to Malta so that D.C. could have four more days to get their story straight and they hoped we would all sink!

“I was baptized a Christian when I was thirty-eight years old and while I believe it was God that kept the Liberty afloat I also think that my life was spared for another purpose and reason and LIBERTY means FREEDOM!”

See previous parts: Remembering the USS Liberty and The Torpedo that Hit the USS Liberty: Made in the USA?