In its conclusions and recommendations, the synod repudiated the fact that Israel never stops misusing the Bible to justify oppressive and repressive policies against virtually helpless Palestinians. It also explained that for purely moral reasons, Christians around the world cannot speak of “the promised land” as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people; in Christian beliefs, it is in Christ that all men and women of all countries and races become the chosen people.

On the face of it, the latest good news from Rome represents a step towards the reassertion of moral Christianity at the expense of Zionist (or “Zionised”) Christianity. The formulation of a western Christian, especially Roman Catholic, stance on the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the Zionists is welcome. However, it probably has more to do with reasserting Christianity’s moral identity than with making any serious effort to challenge the Israeli regime, which under Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing leadership is drifting through unbridled jingoism towards fascism.

None the less, the Vatican should be commended for demonstrating that political Zionism, which has enslaved nations and governments, will not find Christianity such easy prey. Not only that, but it is showing that the Roman Catholic Church, at least, is not about to morph into a political pawn in the service of the Israeli state’s territorial ambitions. It is reassuring that the Vatican appears not to be ready to align itself with Israel’s unrelenting dehumanisation of and brutality against Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, whose only crime is that they are not part of a “holy tribe”.

Even so, it is true to say that Zionism has made much progress in turning erstwhile good-hearted Christians into fanatical Zionists, ready to support human rights violations by right-wing Jewish settlers and their supporters in Israeli society. So-called Christian Zionists seem to have lost any real link to genuine Christianity and the message of Jesus in their rush to support Zionist Israel and its policies which any human being with any degree of honesty would find morally repugnant and criminally unacceptable. Indeed, some supposedly Christian leaders give enthusiastic support to decidedly un-Christian acts by Israel, such as extrajudicial killings, ethnic cleansing and systematic persecution, in order to create space in the Holy Land for Jewish immigrants; the Nazis had a similar policy, called lebensraum, intended to provide living space for “ethnic Germans”.

In the face of a powerful Israel lobby, such Christian leaders of Western states make do with half-hearted appeals for “balance” and “restraint” when they know as much as anyone that the situation in the Israel-Palestine conflict is far from a conflict between equals. There worthless statements have failed to save even one Palestinian farmer’s olive grove from being destroyed by Israeli settlers. Or one Palestinian family’s home from being bulldozed and the family expelled.

It is true that some courageous Christians have stood up for human rights and the rule of international law and faced the opprobrium of their fellows in the process. But their voices are usually lost in the increasing Israeli hasbara (propaganda) which turns black into white and the Big Lie of Zionism into accepted truth.

It is imperative that we encourage Christians to show their commitment to true Christian values and morality by denouncing Israel’s illegal policies in the West Bank and the growing phenomenon of using biblical and Talmudic injunctions to dehumanize Gentiles. The remarks by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef that the raison d’être of Gentiles is to serve Jews, was ignored by the US media; it took a reader of the New York Times to point this out. Thus the Zionists’ “servants” across North America were spared from having to respond in a way which might have been unfavourable to Israel. Rabbi Yosef is the spiritual head of the Shas Party, one of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners.

More than two thousand years ago, the frenzied multitude rejected Jesus because they thought he was going to rob them of their “chosen people” status and equate them with the rest of mankind. Today, 2000 years later, under the same chosen people rubric, Palestinian villagers, Christians and Muslims alike, are still being chased, assaulted, and hunted down “because they don’t belong”.

When Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai, he received the Ten Commandments, described as a light upon humanity. The Neturei Karta Movement of Orthodox Jews are anti-Zionist: “One of the basics of Judaism is that we are a people in exile due to Divine decree. Accordingly, we are opposed to the ideology of Zionism, a recent innovation, which seeks to force the end of exile. Our banishment from the Holy Land will end miraculously at a time when all mankind will unite in the brotherly service of the Creator. In addition to condemning the central heresy of Zionism, we also reject its policy of aggression against all peoples. Today this cruelty manifests itself primarily in the brutal treatment of the Palestinian people. We proclaim that this inhuman policy is in violation of the Torah.”

Unfortunately, Zionism has not only inflicted death and destruction on Palestinians it has also killed the sense of morality and joint humanity among Israelis so that they condone the killings, land confiscation and lies carried out in their name by their government. Orthodox Jewry is clear: “[Zionism's] essential goal was and is to change the nature of the Jewish people from that of a religious entity to a political movement. From Zionism’s inception the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people stood in staunch opposition to it.” If only religious Christians around the world would take the time to reflect on this message, their desire to support Israel may be diminished. Perhaps the Vatican already has.

Palestinians incinerated to death by Israeli White Phosphorous bombs

To be sure, no one claims that Hamas is completely blameless. Targeting innocent civilians is unacceptable. However, equating the resistance of a long-persecuted people languishing under an evil military occupation, even if wrongs are done, with an immensely superior state terror unjustifiably perpetrated by an occupying power is morally unconscionable, to say the very least. Indeed, doing so would be analogous to equating European resistance to the attacking Nazi armies during the Second World War, with the Nazi aggression itself.

Well, with all due respect to AI and its efforts to safeguard and defend human rights, there is no legal or moral equation between a rape victim’s right to defend herself against her attacker and the criminal act initiated by the rapist. I am using this analogy because the enduring Israeli oppression meted out to the Palestinian people is an enduring act of rape. Yes, firing home-made and other comparatively primitive projectiles on Israeli civilians is a regrettable act. However, the firing of these projectiles, which killed a few Israelis in ten years of hostilities (virtually one Israeli per year), can’t be compared with the nearly complete annihilation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and wholesale murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children. The excessive, disproportionate and often pornographic use of deadly violence against an essentially imprisoned and unprotected civilian population is more than just a mere miscalculation or faulty reasoning. It is rather a deliberate war crime the perpetrators of which are vile war criminals who ought to be prosecuted and punished for their crimes.

More to the point, it is imperative that one gives context if one is truly interested in producing an honest and objective analysis of the recent outrage in Gaza. Hence, one must be honest enough to remember that Israel had been forcing the 1.5 million Gazans to choose between dying quietly by succumbing to a genocidal hermetic siege that pushed most of the region’s inhabitants to the brink of a silent holocaust, or fighting back, using whatever primitive and extremely limited means at their disposal. I strongly believe it is absurd and ludicrous, if not outright malicious, to compare Hamas with Israel as far as the use of violence is concerned.

Hamas is a small movement of persecuted Palestinians who have been on the receiving end of Israeli persecution and repression. Hamas poses no real or strategic threat to Israel, a military superpower which also, to a large extent, controls American politics and policies. In its recent genocidal onslaught on Gaza, Israel used the deadliest weapons of death, including F-16 warplanes, apache helicopters, Merkava tanks, heavy artillery, depleted uranium, chemical agents that eat through the human flesh and eventually cause death, white phosphorus, dart shells and a variety of other lethal weapons. On the other hand, Hamas used notoriously primitive weapons, mainly to deter Israel from carrying out a genocide on a wider scale.

During that blitz, Israel knowingly and deliberately targeted civilian neighborhoods, apartment buildings, private homes, mosques, college dorms, university buildings, UN-run schools, grocery stores and businesses. It was a no-holds-barred rampage of murder and terror against an imprisoned and thoroughly starved civilian population. As a result, as many as 7,000 Palestinians were murdered, or maimed and injured, many with life-long deformities. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of other Gazans suffered long-lasting psychological trauma.

On the Israeli side, we are talking about a dozen Israeli fatalities, some of whom killed or injured by “friendly fire.” So, we are dealing with an extremely lopsided situation where the death ratio is nearly 1:100. Needless to say, one doesn’t have to be a great military expert to realize that this is not really a war; it is rather a huge massacre.

This is why, AI is called upon to call the spade a spade and refrain from hiding behind technical jargons that not only fail to communicate the facts about what really happened in Gaza but also give a false impression of symmetry in guilt between Israel and Hamas. More to the point, it is important to remember that Israel didn’t impose the draconian blockade of Gaza as retaliation for the largely innocuous firing of projectiles onto Israel. The criminal blockade was imposed, first and foremost, as a cruel punishment of Palestinians for electing a political party that Israel didn’t like. Hence, the imposition of the siege, which is continuing unabated, is per se a war crime or a crime against humanity.

The world betrayed them, the Arab world stood silent, with some Arab regimes even colluding with Israel to perfect the siege in the hope that Gazans would turn against Hamas and bring it down. And the hypocritical West had the audacity to blame the victims while babbling, as usual, about Israel’s right to defend itself. This happened while an entire people was being imprisoned, starved, tormented and quietly exterminated, mainly for political reasons pertaining to Israeli territorial aggrandizement.

In short, it was the Nazi-like Israeli savaging of the Palestinians that made Palestinian resistance inevitable. The Palestinians, long tormented by this cruel occupation, have every legal and moral right to resist, using whatever means available to them. Indeed, instead of blaming the victims for resisting their oppressors, the world, including AI, ought to tell Israel that it can’t just incarcerate 1.5 million civilians within the confines of an open-air prison, surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, tanks, landmines, and other state-of-the-art machines of death, and then expect the victims to display love and understanding toward their tormentors and oppressors.

Israel did transform the Gaza Strip into a real concentration camp, by denying the prisoner population access to fuel, electricity, food, medicine, medical care, and basic consumer products. Meanwhile, the Israeli death machine never stopped murdering innocent Palestinians, nearly on a daily basis. It is essential that AI and other human rights groups take these facts into account when dealing with the situation in Gaza. Failing to do so, by cowering before Israeli pressure, would further corrode AI image as the world’s premier human rights organization.

Daniel Pipes, the notorious American Jewish Islamophobe who has made a career inciting against “political Islam,” told the decidedly-right wing audience that it would be unwise to portray Islam itself as the enemy.  Pipes said targeting Islam as a religion would backfire and push Muslims to get united to defend their faith.  “Those who regard Islam rather than Jihad as the enemy fail to realize that a change has occurred over the past few years. Although moderate Muslims are still a small force, they are stronger than they were two years ago.”  Pipes and other speakers call for the continuation of the American-led war against “radical Islam,” overlooking the fact that Islamist groups have grown stronger in many parts of the Muslim world. (e.g., Taliban today control nearly three quarters of Afghanistan despite the heavy presence of NATO forces in that country)

Pipes said he was identifying with Judeo-Nazi groups in Israel in their rejection of the peace process and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.  He said he advocated “crushing of Palestinian hopes” for freeform, liberation and independence which he called “hopes for destroying Israel.”  He also said he opposed the creation of a Palestinian state and the ongoing peace talks, suggesting that Israel should either expel all non-Jews from Palestine-Israel or adopt full-fledged apartheid to preclude human and civil equality for Palestinians.  Pipes, a Jewish-Zionist supremacist, has been an ardent supporter of President Bush’s anti-Islamic militancy.  He has also been inciting European states to fight multi-culturalism, promote nationalism and xenophobia and see to it that Muslim immigrants are either thoroughly assimilated or expelled back to their original native lands.

Another speaker at the conference, Duke University’s Prof. John Lewis, suggested that the fight against “radical Islam” needed to focus on non-Arab Muslim nations such as Indonesia and Turkey.  The conference was co-sponsored by the far-right Israeli lawmaker Aryeh Eldad, a Jewish supremacist and fervent supporter of Jewish settlement expansion and theft of Arab land.

A few years ago, when Israeli troops vacated Jewish settlers from the Amonna settler outpost in the West Bank, Eldad was quoted as saying that it was lamentable that the Israeli army “treated true human beings (Jews) as if they were Arabs.”  Eldad utterly rejects peace between Israel and the Palestinians and advocates “total extirpation of non-Jews from the land of Israel.”

Conference of hate

Ismael Shindi, a professor of Islamic Studies at Hebron University, dismissed the Jerusalem conference as a “conference of hate.”  “These people are not serious scholars. They are motivated by a pathological and blind hatred of Islam and Muslims, not by a real desire to know the truth. Their respective records and backgrounds underscore their academic, intellectual and moral bankruptcy.”  Shindi said any objective and honest scholar would make a clear distinction between what religion says and what some followers do.  ”Religions don’t carry out acts of terror and violence, individuals do.”  Shindi said it was very easy to demolish the view that Islam is the enemy of the West or that Islam is inherently violent.  ”Then how would they explain that atrocities, genocides, and holocausts carried out by western Christians in the past 2000 years, or the atrocities committed by Jews in biblical and modern times.”  He pointed out that all victims of Muslim wars and violence since the beginning of Islam didn’t add up to the victims of a single Christian or European war.

Shindi opined that the anti-Islamic conference in Jerusalem should be viewed in the context of the “growing alliance between Judeo-Nazi forces in Israel and European fascist circles.”  “Normally, these two groups are enemies given the legacy of Nazism and fascism in Europe. But now they seem to have found a common enemy in Islam.”  Shindi said this alliance shows that many Zionist Jews were not against Nazism as a matter of principle.  ”If the holocaust had targeted non-Jews, many, probably most Zionist Jews, would have lauded Hitler.”

In Israel, the Gaza Strip is becoming the central election issue in a country deeply menaced by political and religious extremism.

Israeli political leaders from right and left are already promising the Jewish public that they will destroy Gaza and murder untold thousands of poor Gazans if only they are elected in the 10 February polls.

Tzipi Livni, leader of the Kadima party, was quoted as saying on Sunday, 21 December, that if she becomes Israel’s next Prime Minister, she will destroy Hamas’s government in Gaza, using military, economic and diplomatic means.

Similar remarks have been voiced by other Israeli leaders, which really underscores the cannibalistic instincts and jingoistic trends permeating through the bulk of the Israeli Jewish society.

After all, experience shows that the more racist, more criminal and more vitriolic a given Israeli politician is perceived, the greater the likelihood he will be elected.

In contrast, an Israeli politician who advocates a humane approach toward the Palestinians, like, for example, calling for lifting the Nazi-like siege imposed on the 1.5 million innocent Gaza inhabitants, will be committing a political suicide. Such a politician would instantly be called “Self-hating Jew,” “Hamas lover,” or even “a Nazi.”

This background is essential for understanding the present situation in Gaza as the huge Israeli propaganda machine would have us believe that Israel is the victim of aggression and that the Palestinians are the aggressors.

Israel claims ad nauseam that its Nazi-like blockade of Gaza, which is a brazen violation of international law, is in response to the firing by Gaza guerrillas of generally ineffective home-made projectiles known as Qassams.

This is simply a big lie. The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip began immediately after Hamas won the legislative election in January 2006, and the main driving goal was to punish, as much as internationally acceptable, the people of Gaza and Palestinians in general for electing a government that Israel didn’t like.

Indeed, some Israeli leaders admitted then that Israel wanted to put the Palestinian on a diet, a euphemistic expression connoting the subsequent and continuing Israeli policy of starving and killing and savaging the people of Gaza very much like the Nazis did to Jews at Ghetto Warsaw in 1942-43.

Determined to survive, in spite of a malicious cruel world that preaches human rights while crushing  human lives, Gazans appealed to everyone and anyone willing to listen all over the globe, but to no avail.

It was only after it became clear that Israel was hell bent on destroying Gaza and its inhabitants through a slow process of extermination that Gazans began firing these largely psychological weapons which inflict little damage and rarely cause human casualties among Israelis.

In June, Hamas agreed to stop all “belligerent acts and hostilities” against Israel in return for Israeli reciprocity and the lifting of the hermetic siege on the Strip which obliterated Gaza economy and caused the death of hundreds of innocent people.

However, instead of dealing in good will with the Egyptian-mediated understanding, Israel never lifted the siege nor allowed the reopening of the border crossings.

Using the words of a Gaza journalist, Israel resorted to the policy of “strangling Gaza to near death,” by preventing the delivery to Gaza of most consumer goods and products from vital medical material to food products.

More to the point, Israel did violate the ceasefire understanding several times, killing as many as 49 Palestinians from June-19 when the truce began to December-19 when it ended.

During that period, not a single Israeli civilian was killed by Palestinian factions in the Gaza strip.

Hence, one is always prompted to ask what the Palestinian Authorities in Gaza are supposed to do when Israel is effectively telling them that they have only two choices awaiting them, to die a slow agonizing death as a result of this criminal siege, or be killed and decimated by the Israeli occupation army.

A few months ago, this writer challenged a rabbi from the West Bank to ask his government to end the siege in Gaza and allow normal economic activities between Gaza and the outside world.

I assured him that if Israel were to carry out such a step, there would be a total stoppage of all attacks and hostile activities against Israeli settlements bordering the coastal territory.

Predictably, the Israeli government dismissed the proposal, telling the rabbi rather tersely that they respected his efforts.

Unfortunately, Israel is allowed  to keep up starving  and killing Gazans thanks to a hypocritical world whose leaders keep telling Israel that “it has the right to defend itself,” while utterly ignoring the fact that the Palestinians, too, have at least an equal right to life and human dignity.

How many western leaders have had the moral courage to visit the Gaza Strip and see the slow-motion holocaust on the ground?

How many western leaders have dared utter the politically innocuous but balanced view that Israel should lift the siege on Gaza and Palestinians ought to stop their nearly innocuous attacks on Israel?

Why is Tony Blair telling Israel that it has the right to bomb Gaza? Is he completely oblivious of the existence of 1.5 million human beings who have been forced into a situation that doesn’t really differ much form that faced by much of the European Jewry several decades ago?

How about Sarkozy, who claims to represent western enlightenment? How about the leaders of EU states?  Do they all enjoy watching the people of Gaza getting savaged and killed by the crime against humanity, otherwise known as Israel?

Have all they succumbed to moral blindness and callousness in the face of an evil state that claims to be a light upon the nations while thinking, behaving and acting very much like the Third Reich?

Well, shame on you all. History won’t be kind to you.

During Yasser Arafat’s reign, which ended with his death in 2004, the PLO retained a modicum of symbolism, not so much because it had a life of its known, but rather because Arafat embodied the PLO and PA combined.  After all, Arafat was the PLO and the PLO was Arafat since he took all the decisions, held all the reigns and controlled all the money.  Now, with the American-backed and Israeli-courted PA regime in Ramallah, Abbas and his numerous minions, henchmen and hangers-on are constantly invoking the PLO mantra to justify their manifestly treacherous behavior, not only with regard to Palestine’s ultimate enemy, Israel, but also with regard to the Palestinian masses, especially in the West Bank where the PA security agencies have effectively become another sinister layer of Israeli occupation and repression.  Now, not a day passes without Abbas unleashing the “rusty sword” of the PLO in the face of Hamas.  The cheap theatrics are not really aimed at strengthening or even safeguarding the organization founded by Ahmed Shukeiri in 1964, but rather to force Hamas to accept the treasonous and capitulationist stances which the PLO has adopted in recent years.  These include, inter alia, recognizing the legitimacy of the Israeli regime in return for recognizing the PLO as a sole representative of the Palestinian people.  Well, what do the Palestinian people benefit, in real terms, from an Israeli recognition of the PLO as a sole representative of the Palestinian people?  Indeed, with the passage of 15 years since the PLO extended its stupid and unconditional recognition of Israel, every Palestinian man, woman and child have the right to ask the PLO-PA leadership what gains have we achieved in return for recognizing Israel?

Has Israel recognized a Palestinian state in return?

Has Israel stopped or even mitigated its settlement expansion in our land?

Has Israel stopped its murderous policy against our people?

Has Israel relaxed its Nazi-like repression of Palestinians, whether in the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians are being starved to death, or in the West Bank where Palestinian population centers are besieged by as many as 700 roadblocks, manned by trigger-happy Judeo-Nazi Gestapo-like terrorists?

These are more than just legitimate questions for which the senile and shockingly dishonest PLO leadership has no satisfactory answers.  Besides, we all know that the PLO of today is not the PLO of yesterday.  This is not the same PLO that was dedicated to the liberation of Palestine and realization of Palestinian rights, including the paramount right of return for millions of suffering refugees who were uprooted from their homes and villages, and dispersed to the four winds when the hateful Zionist entity was established in Palestine more than sixty years ago.  Today, the PLO is a house of shame and ill-repute. It is an organization that has allowed itself to be used as a tool of repression against the very people it claims to be serving.  It is an organization that gives treason and national apostasy a legitimate face and an acceptable façade. It is an organization whose behavior and conduct constitute the exact anti-thesis of the authentic PLO of the past which, more or less, represented the national Palestinian consensus.  Indeed, free-minded Palestinians, who won’t be intimidated by the big sticks or bribed by the big carrots into joining the chorus of lies of the neo-Oslo gang, have the right to ask whether it is morally right to give loyalty to an organization whose leaders are saying aloud that Israel is not the enemy and is not the occupier and that both Israelis and Palestinians have one enemy, it is Islam and Hamas? 

In recent weeks and months, the PLO has been working in close concert with the Israeli occupation army to torment Palestinians, raid their homes in the dead of night, and close down charitable institutions and orphanages.  This is not to mention the rampant acts of torture the PLO has been performing on Palestinians who refuse to inform on resistance fighters or hand-over their resistance weapons.  In short, the PLO whose raison d’être was the libration of Palestine from the nefarious Israeli occupation has nearly disappeared, and is being replaced by a PLO that is very much a tool of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people. 

Recently, Chairman Abbas gave a speech before the PLO Central Council in Ramallah which he argued that whoever wants to join the PLO must accept it as it is.  Well, let the PLO then go to hell because the Palestinian masses are not willing to accept a thoroughly corrupt organization whose soldiers (bearing official PLO insignia) raid Palestinian homes in Hebron and Nablus during the quiet hours before dawn, all in order to obtain a certificate of good conduct from Israel.  Yes, the Palestinian people are not and will not lend their support to an organization that is at Israel’s beck and call, an organization that receives vehicles and arms and money from the CIA and American puppet regimes in the region, for the purpose of fighting and tormenting other Palestinians on Israel’s behalf.  Such an organization is a house of shame; it is a disgrace upon the Palestinian people and their enduring just cause. It is a cancer upon the conscience of Palestinian struggle for justice, freedom and independence. The martyrs, tens of thousands of them, are moving in their graves, seeing this PLO becoming an enemy of Palestine.

This organization no longer represents the Palestinian people since it has become very much like a small company run be a number of money-grabbing careerists who don’t hesitate to sell out our national rights in return for American dollars and European Euros.  Hence, it is imperative that free, patriotic Palestinians, from all factions, including Fatah, as well as independents, embark immediately on the paramount task of reforming the PLO.  And in case this task proves to be too complicated, then a new body would have to be created, a body that would move the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian will from the Israeli-American sphere of influence.  Otherwise, we will end up having a PLO that is no better than the infamous village league of Menachem Milson of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Well, isn’t the PLO already there?

The executive authority, which really has no authority or sovereignty of its own, has become too authoritarian and tyrannical and, of course, too corrupt.

The legislative authority is paralyzed due to the mass incarceration by the Nazi-like Israeli occupation regime of dozens of lawmakers for their refusal to recognize the “legitimacy” of Zionism and the Israeli apartheid state.

And the media, the fourth estate, has likewise been thoroughly corrupted due to the virtual absence of press freedom and freedom of speech as a result of the consolidation of an American-sustained reign of terror now being consolidated in the West Bank.

Now, the Palestinian Justice System seems to be collapsing as well, mainly due to its growing subservience to the executive power, particularly to the police-state apparatus.

Our justice system is alive and kicking as far as its infrastructure, officials and trappings are concerned. However, when it comes to carrying out its central function, namely the administration of justice, it is conspicuously absent and utterly lifeless.

The rampancy of injustice and consistent violation of our people’s human rights and civil liberties at the hands of the security agencies are a clarion testimony to the corruption and impotence of the system.

In fact, the persistence of this anomaly gives the impression that our Ministry of Justice is merely an annex department answerable to the office of the PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

True, we are not an independent state, or even a quasi-state, and we can’t behave as if we were a sovereign state because we aren’t. Israel after all controls all aspects of our life and the PA itself is a little more than a submissive police force carrying out instructions issued by the occupying power. This is the truth irrespective of the stupid trappings and ostentatious self-deception displayed by PA people whose flamboyant behavior often gives the impression that a Palestinian state is in the making and that freedom for Palestine is finally around the corner.

None the less, it is amply clear that those entrusted with the administration of justice are miserably failing the public trust.

Indeed, when a serious malfunction of the justice system occurs anywhere in this world, the people entrusted with the administration of justice hasten to correct the imbalance with the resolve of a military commander.

And if and when the executive power shows disregard for the rule of law and constitution, the guardians of justice don’t just give in without a fight.  They put up a severe resistance to the forces of despotism and authoritarianism.

And if all efforts to uphold the rule of law fail, the guardians of justice and the constitution, the men and women of law, resign, preferably en mass, in order to embarrass the undemocratic forces and generate public pressure on them to reconsider their misbehavior.

In our country, we see that the security apparatus illegally arrests numerous innocent people, especially suspected political opponents, who are persecuted, tortured and even killed. This happens while our justice system behaves as if these grave violations of the law were happening in a distant land or on a different planet.

In our country, public servants are flagrantly fired from their jobs because of their religious, ideological or political convictions while our Ministry of Justice remains silent.

Moreover, rulings are issued by our courts, but in many cases the executive power, especially the security agencies, refuse to or at least procrastinate in carrying out court decisions.

However, instead of putting up a strong resistance to the contempt of court, our justice officials resort to pandering to and imploring these insolent agencies to heed the orders.

And when wronged citizens broach the courts for justice, they are often told that “we did what we could, and the rest is in the hands of God.”  Well, the rest is not in the hands of the God, it is rather in the hands of the police state apparatus.

In short, justice itself is raped a hundred times per day in our country,  without the slightest protest or opposition from those who are supposed to oversee the administration of justice.

Well, I would like to address our Ministry of Justice, our judges and men and women of the law in Palestine.

You are the ultimate address for the seekers of justice, and you must not betray them.

We don’t ask you to eradicate all the inequities in this world. But we do expect you to speak up against these blatant violations of our people’s rights and dignity.

I ask you: by what standard of morality is a teacher fired from his job because of his views and convictions?

By what moral justification are Palestinian homes raided in the dead of night and citizens are maltreated and savaged just because they happen to hold non-conformist views regarding the conflict with Israel?

The Ministry of Justice is supposed to be the most vigilant government department, given its paramount function and responsibility in upholding the rule of law.  However, if that ministry allows itself to be at the beck and call of the executive power, let alone the security agencies, as is currently the case, it means it has lost its raison d’être.

Hence, I would like to say a few words to the Minister of Justice, Ali Khashan, and the government’s legal advisor, Isa Abu Sharar: Declare your legal opinion concerning the serious breaches of justice in our country, and  try to rectify these violations.

If you can’t for one reason or the other, you should immediately resign.

You shouldn’t, you mustn’t allow yourselves to be witnesses and abettors to the rape of justice in Palestine.

Shehada described the issue as “having to do with security” and “having nothing to do with the rule of law.”

The following are excerpts of the interview:

Question: Hundreds of Palestinian school teachers were fired recently for political reasons. Why has the Teachers Union remained silent?

Answer: This is not true, I myself have issued several statements in this regard. And I want to tell you that we at the Union are in principle against the firing of teachers and public servants from their jobs for political reasons. But as far as I know those teachers you are talking about were not dismissed because of their party affiliation or political views. They were never formally and officially instate as full-time teachers in the first place. In other words, the procedures and formalities necessary for instating them in their jobs were incomplete. So we can’t really speak of dismissals.

Q: But why let these teachers carry out their tasks as teachers for nearly 30 months? Shouldn’t the security agencies have informed them that they were unwanted upon their initial appointment?

A: Well, we at the Teachers’ Union are not responsible for this. But in general I can tell you that these people were dismissed for objective reasons.

Q: Some teachers accuse you (the Teachers’ Union) of conniving and colluding with the security agencies against teachers who are not affiliated with Fatah.

A: It seems to me that you rely on Hamas’ sources. Besides, why don’t you write on what is happening in Gaza and the dismissal of more than four thousand teachers there. I myself have been threatened by Hamas.

Q: Does this mean that the dismissal of teachers here in the West Bank was effectively a reprisal for the anti-Fatah measures in the Gaza Strip?

A: No, it is not like that. Here security was the only determining factor beyond the dismissals.

Q: Yes, but in the final analysis, the teachers were fired because of their political convictions which you call “security hazards.”

A: No, no, the dismissals were motivated by genuine security considerations, because even teachers have no right to jeopardize the interests of the country and the masses.

Q: In what way have these dismissed teachers jeopardized the security of the country and the masses?

A: Well, this matter needs to be investigated.

Q: Investigated by whom?

A: By the security agencies.

Q: But the security agencies say affiliation with Hamas constitutes a national security threat?

A: I don’t know about this.

Q: Now, how are you at the union going to deal with this matter?

A: We have asked the dismissed teachers to submit a complaint and we will study each case based on its own merit.

Q: Do you advise the fired teachers to go to the courts?

A: As I told you, this is not a legal matter; this is only a security matter.

Q: Are security matters not subject to the rule of law?

A: As I said this is not a legal issue, it is a security matter that is not related to the rule of law.

Q: Why is the government refusing to pay full salaries for thousands of teachers who were appointed in the past three years?

A: We have been conducting negotiations with the government on this matter, and we hope we will reach a solution very soon.

Q: But you have been conducting negotiations with the government for ages, but to no avail. Are you betraying the teachers’ trust?

A: We are not to blame for this; Hamas is to blame, because many of these teachers were appointed without financial allocations.

Q: But why must a teacher wait that long until receiving his or her “financial allocation” when a newly inducted security cadre receives his salary almost immediately?

A: Because the job of a teacher is very sensitive and we have to be sure about his or her qualifications.

Q: Qualification and political affiliation?

A: Qualification and security considerations.

Q: Do you intend to go on strike to protest the government’s foot-dragging in paying the “new teachers” their long overdue salaries?

A: We can’t go on strike because of this problem. We went on strike last week for two days, but we can’t start an open-ended strike every time we have a little problem.

Q: It is amply clear that the general level of school learning is very low, aren’t you worried about this issue?

A: Indeed, I am. But there is little we can do to rectify the situation. We are talking after all about a complicated problem stemming from serious disruptions besetting the educational process during the two uprisings which lasted for 10 years.

Q: When will the next teachers’ elections take place?

A: We had an election last year. (Hamas says that election was concocted by Fatah and utterly illegal.)

Q: Is it true that the dismissals of pro-Hamas teachers are left to be resolved before the national reconciliation talks in Cairo?

A: No, I don’t think so.

This week, the Chief of the “National Security Forces” in the West Bank, Diab al Ali, also known as Abu al Fath, reportedly described resistance to the Israeli occupation army as “a criminal act that produces criminals and murderers.” The tone of Abu al Fath’s remarks caricatured a man who has put all his trust in the PA-Israeli “partnership” and who has turned his back to decades of bitter but heroic struggle by the Palestinian masses for freedom from the Nazi-like Israeli occupation. Earlier, the main Palestinian security chiefs in the West Bank held a truly shameful meeting with their Israeli “counterparts” at the settlement of Beit El near Ramallah. During that ignominious meeting, which took place in September, the PA chiefs, who are supposed to serve the national interests of their people, assured their Israeli “colleagues” that “we have one common enemy, that is Hamas,” and that “there is no conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.” According to the Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, who attended the infamous meeting as an observer, the Palestinian officers went as far as asking the commanders of the Israeli army, the very army that occupies their country and savages their people, to supply them with weapons and training so that the PA could re-conquer Gaza by force.

Unfortunately, the PA leadership completely ignored these brazenly treacherous behaviors, which in itself underscores the extent to which the PA leadership has drifted away from the Palestinian national discourse. The perfidious collusion between the PA security apparatus and the Israeli occupation army against Palestinian national interests is only one aspect of an overall trend on the part of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian regime to eradicate Abu Ammar’s [DV: Yasser Arafat] heritage. True, the legacy bequeathed by the late Palestinian leader wasn’t particularly rosy. Abu Ammar did leave a myriad of security agencies plagued with corruption, ignorance, indiscipline and staffed with people with questionable credentials. However, Yasser Arafat would have never allowed Fatah to stoop to this level by readily becoming an additional arm of the Israeli occupation to torment and further debilitate the Palestinian people. Hence, the current PA behavior vis-à-vis Israel is nothing short of a national apostasy of unprecedented proportions. This is why it is really difficult to be optimistic about the ongoing Egyptian efforts to end the split between Fatah and Hamas unless Fatah and the PA are willing to reverse their misdeeds.

True optimism can only be justified by good-will on both sides. Wishful thinking and prayers alone don’t breed optimism, let alone tangible results on the actual Palestinian arena. To the chagrin of all Palestinians, the PA behavior in the West Bank doesn’t really foster mutual trust between Fatah and Hamas. Indeed, how can Fatah, or more correctly those at the helm in Fatah, be trusted for achieving national reconciliation when masked armed men affiliated with Fatah continue on a daily basis to round up and maltreat suspected Hamas activists, mostly on flimsy and concocted charges? True reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas should have been preceded by confidence-building measures such as stopping torture, freeing incarcerated journalists and political prisoners and reinstating civil servants unceremoniously fired from their jobs because of their political orientation. Hamas has already released the bulk of Fatah’s prisoners in Gaza, but Fatah has yet to stop the daily arrest of Hamas’s activists.

A few days ago, an elderly Palestinian whose son had been arrested by the Israeli occupation army told this writer that he breathed a sigh of relief because the 19-year-old college student was in the custody of the “authorities” rather than the “authority.” When I asked the man why he thought the Israelis were more merciful than the PA, he said he was sure that this was the case. Of course, the Israelis are not merciful at all, for they are the root cause of all evils in Palestine. Israel is itself a crime against humanity of unmatched proportions.

There is no doubt that the success of the Egyptian-mediated reconciliation efforts is a paramount national interest. However, there is more than reasonable suspicion that the security agencies, some of which have forged a strategic bondage with foreign elements, will do everything they can to thwart and sabotage the reconciliation efforts; this is not soothsaying nor delving into the realm of the unknown. After all, the restoration of national unity can’t be realized as long as the current quisling-occupier formula governing the relationship between the PA and Israel remains intact.

Fatah simply can’t embrace Israel with its right hand and Hamas with its left. The termination of the Israeli connection is therefore a sine qua non for the success of national unity talks in Cairo. More to the point, the PA would have to sever or at least freeze its CIA connection, namely the near carte balance granted to the American intelligence apparatus to mold the Palestinian security apparatus in accordance with the Bush administration’s Islamophobic outlook whereby Islam is viewed as the enemy and Israel as a friend and ally in the war on “terror.” One of the key contentious issues that will be discussed in Cairo is the restructuring of the Palestinian security apparatus according to professional standards. In other words, the present security apparatus in the West Bank would have to be dissolved and replaced by a new one chosen, not by a CIA general who is answerable to a Jewish-Zionist neocon in Washington D.C., but rather by a truly patriotic Palestinian government that is answerable and responsible, first and foremost, to the Palestinian people and their elected representatives.

Needless to say, in order to expedite these crucial goals, it might be necessary to dismiss all CIA-trained security personnel who were inculcated with the poisoned slogan that the enemy is Hamas, not Israel. Indeed, the last thing Palestine and the Palestinian people need are “professional soldiers” who would shoot and kill their countrymen in the streets of Palestine on Israel’s behalf as happened in Hebron last year. Hence, it is imperative that each and every cadre that would join the Palestinian security apparatus be un-contaminated with the CIA school of thought which teaches security men in Third World countries to shoot first and think afterwards. Such cadres would have to be reeducated and re-indoctrinated in the all-important principle that shedding Palestinian blood by Palestinian hands is an unforgivable crime amounting to grand treason. This principle would have to be applied meticulously in both Gaza and the West Bank and both Hamas’s and Fatah’s men would have to internalize it, or else they would be fired unapologetically.

Furthermore, the CIA method of selecting these cadres, e.g. only accepting people who scored very poorly in their schools and whose IQ is very low, would have to be scrapped and reversed. Hence, only people with a college degree and a reasonable intelligence level should be allowed to join the security apparatus because ultimately ignorant people wouldn’t make good soldiers. I don’t believe that being meticulous about these matters is unwarranted. The behaviors of some members of the Palestinian security agencies toward their own people have been more than appalling.

I have seen masked soldiers humiliate and torture and beat innocent Palestinians on no other ground than the suspicion that the victim is affiliated with an Islamic student bloc or may be a supporter of Hamas. Such vindictiveness would have to disappear from our life once and for all. Otherwise, true Palestinian unity will remain a far-fetched dream.

 ”The extremists, hundreds of them wanted to make sure that we, Muslims, observe the Yom Kippur and not conduct our life as usual. Next time, they will demand that we convert to Judaism, or leave,” said Jamal Adham, who was attacked and slightly injured by the extremists.  According to Ahmed Odeh, a member of the Akka municipal council, the riots and the subsequent acts sabotage were triggered by provocative efforts by Jewish fanatics to impose a total curfew on the town’s non-Jewish inhabitants.  Odeh said he had received assurances from the police that the city would remain open and that non-Jews would be allowed to move freely during the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) holiday.  Odeh added that he was later surprised to find out that all town’s entrances and exits were tightly closed, apparently by a private security firm answerable to the town’s municipal council.  “Even access to the Old town, where most of the Arabs live, was blocked.”

The Israeli Arab leader pointed out that when Arabs in the Old quarter of Akka  received word that Jewish extremists were laying siege to the Sha’aban family, dozens or hundreds of Arab youngsters headed for the home, trying to protect the family from a possible lynching.  In the meanwhile, as many as a thousand Jews arrived at the Sha’aban family home, along with dozens of crack policemen.  Some of the people in the huge crowed reportedly shouted “Mavet le Arabim” or “death to the Arabs” and “Arabs out.”  The Arab youths from the town’s old quarter couldn’t make it to the besieged home as reinforced police forces prevented them by force from reaching the site.  Many Arab protesters were injured from beating by police or as result of tear gas inhalation.

Reacting to police brutality, some Arab youths reportedly attacked Jewish property, including cars and businesses.  However, no acts of arson were reported.  “Unfortunately, some unruly guys indulged in vandalism. I totally reject this behavior which is incompatible with our values and doesn’t serve the cause coexistence in the town.”  Odeh said the “racist anti-Arab discourse” within the Israeli Jewish society encouraged the extremists to try to impose their will on society.  “It is time these extremists understand that this land is inhabited by Jews and non-Jews, and that non-Jews have to conduct their life in accordance with the law.”

The Ha’aretz newspaper quoted the head of the Acre police station, Chief Superintendent Avi Edri, as saying that the “altercation” was initially an isolated incident that escalated due to the involvement of Jewish and Arab gangs.  ”This is a very serious incident that the city of Acre has not seen the likes of in recent years and we will deal with all the rioters and those who take the law into their own hands with an iron fist,” Edri said.

Abbas Zkoor, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset urged the Police to protect Israeli Arab citizens from Jewish fanatics especially during Jewish holidays.  Zkoor was quoted as charging that for years, young Jews have gathered at city entrances on Yom Kippur and stoned passing Arab cars, endangering the lives of the passengers.  “Despite numerous complaints filed in police stations, officers were not sent to disperse the racist gatherings,” Zkoor said.  He also asked Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar to condemn such behavior, which “surely contravenes the basic principles of the Jewish religion.”

Interestingly, reports and comments on the “Beit El meeting” were censored by the PA-run and PA-influenced media, including the three main daily newspapers, Al-Quds, al-Ayyam, and al-Hayatul Jadida as well as by the European-funded Maan News Agency, which has been effectively taken over by the Fatah organization.  Indeed, had it not been for the coverage of the event by some foreign-based satellite TV stations such as al-Jazeera as well as some internet sites, most Palestinians here wouldn’t have heard about that meeting.  The Beit El scandal is most likely just one of many meetings of “security coordination” between the PA and Israel. Indeed, one could argue with little exaggeration that the Palestinian security agencies have been more or less working in concert with the Israeli occupation army in the West Bank.

Some Palestinian villagers have reported that they saw Israeli soldiers and Palestinian soldiers jointly carrying out raids and arrests in the northern West Bank.  Moreover, it is widely believed that the closure by Israel of numerous Palestinian schools, orphanages, charities and businesses in the West Bank was carried out in close coordination with the Israeli army.  The PA functionaries and operatives routinely deny suggestions that the PA is collaborating with Israel against its own people.  However, there is irrefutable evidence suggesting that the PA is not telling the truth. The daily arrests of Palestinian activists by both Israeli and PA security agencies are very telling, to say the least.

It may be a bit reassuring that some Fatah leaders in the West Bank, such as Qaddura Fares, have spoken out against the scandalous encounter at Beit El, describing the security chiefs involved as “traitors who have nothing to do Fatah.”  However, it remains really disturbing that these men committed a disgraceful act with total impunity.  In a recent interview with the London-based al Hewar TV, Fares urged the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah to fire these security chiefs.

However, one is still deeply disquieted by the fact that the Fatah organization, nearly in its entirety, been reticent and done next to nothing to punish, expose or even rebuke these men who have committed what amounts to be national apostasy.  To be sure, Fatah is not a monolithic movement, neither ideologically nor even politically. Nonetheless, there are a lot of honest and patriotic people within the movement.  We also understand that the good people within Fatah, who probably constitute the majority, are being marginalized, isolated and impoverished financially by the Oslo gang which has the money and the political backing by Israel and the United States.  However, Fatah can’t be forgiven for allowing, even passively, these money-grabbing opportunists and hangers-on to besmirch a movement that has produced people like Abu Ammar and Abu Jihad and thousands of martyrs who lived and died for Palestine.

Treason is treason whether committed by Fatah or the Southern Lebanon Army or by the infamous village leagues.  And there is no real difference between a Shin Beth agent who leads Israeli death squads to the whereabouts of a Palestinian freedom fighter and a PA security officer who carries out Israeli instructions under the disgraceful rubric of security coordination.  Needless to say, a Palestinian security chief who tells the commanders of the Israeli occupation army that “we have common interests, common goals, and common enemies” is a traitor par excellence who should be immediately arrested and prosecuted for grand treasons.  Just imagine an Israeli officer telling a Palestinian security chief, for example, that “we have one enemy, it is the Jewish settlers.” Would such a proverbial officer stay on his job for 24 hours?

It is therefore imperative that Fatah press and pressure its top leadership, which is the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, to launch a speedy investigation into what happened at the Beit El meeting and sack those security chiefs who have brought shame and infamy to decades of Palestinian struggle for liberty. Failing to act for whatever reason would only mean that Fatah is effectively being Zionized by allowing itself to be infiltrated and even taken over by Israeli agents who claim to be serving Palestinian national interests while in reality serving the interests of our enemy, Israel.  Unfortunately, we can’t give the top Fatah leadership the benefit of the doubt since it is likely that the Beit El meeting took place with its full knowledge, approval and even blessing.  This is probably what emboldened those security chiefs and made them attend the meeting and say what they reportedly said with brazen disregard to Palestinian national dignity. The attendance of the Israeli journalist, whom they knew would disseminate the details of their convivial meeting with the Israeli occupation officers, also tells us much about the mental level of these people.

Finally, one is really at loss trying to understand how Fatah is really sincere about national reconciliation with Hamas at a time when Fatah’s men tell Israeli security chiefs that “Hamas is the enemy” and “give us weapons and training to re-conquer Gaza.”  In short, Fatah has to choose either reconciliation with Hamas or cordial relations with Israel, the occupier of our country and tormentor of our people.  It can’t choose both.

“They (the PA security commanders) arrived at the IDF headquarters Sunday night, passing through the ‘Court roadblock,’ only a 3-minute-drive from Ramallah. They drove through the road leading to the old Beit El settlement, going through the gate of the former Jordanian camp which houses the Command of the Judea and Samaria Brigade.

All of them were dressed in civilian attire with the exception of the Inspector-General of the Palestinian Police. They were eight commanders, all of them veteran Fatah leaders. This is the last chance for the generation that came from Tunis to retain their grip on power before Hamas could take over and devour everything.

The commander of the Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank, Major-General Noam Tiv’on wanted to invite them to a meal to break the day’s fasting. However, the agenda of the encounter was disrupted for reasons having to do with the failure of the Israeli army to suppress settler riots (near Nablus) and the death of a Palestinian boy by Israeli army bullets the next day, which eventually forced the guests to break their fast at their homes.

Well they did. The discussion would have wasted a lot of time had it been carried out at the food pantry prepared by the Israeli army. Tiv’on and the head of the Israeli civil administration in the West Bank, Major-General Yoav Mordechai wanted to present to the Palestinian commanders the plan- Jenin-2 for the deployment of PA forces in City.

The Israeli commanders asked their Palestinian counterparts for their permission to allow a journalist to attend the meeting. The Palestinians concurred. In fact, I was the only journalist allowed to attend the meeting. However, because of my presence and essentially because of the sense of urgency on the Palestinian part, the meeting assumed different directions with excessive extents.

Shocking words

Contrary to conventional belief, journalists hate to be surprised. They think they know every thing and that which they don’t know is not considered especially important. I was surprised by the things that the Palestinian security commanders uttered. I was also surprised by the tone of their voices.

The gist of their argument is that a violent confrontation between Fatah and Hamas will take place in January of 2009. On the 9th of January Abu Mazen’s presidential term will expire. He is determined to stay in office until January 2010. We can’t rule out the possibility that Abu Mazen will declare the Gaza Strip a “rebellious province”

The Palestinian security commanders asked their Israeli counterparts to join them in preparing a field plan and train their forces and supply them with weapons.

I have never heard such an excessive willingness on the part of the Palestinian Authority to work with Israel, except for a small period in the Spring of 1996.

Following the meeting, I told one of the Israeli commanders who was in the hall “this is just talk. Aren’t you worried that the followers of Fatah would disappear at the decisive moment as they did in Gaza?” “No,” he said. “Prior to the Gaza events, they didn’t know what would happen to them. But now they do.”

Abu al Fath is the commander of the General Security Apparatus of the Fayyad government. It represents the main military force of the Palestinian Authority. Abu al Fath is the most senior and highest ranking officer among the heads of the Palestinian security agencies.

“There is no conflict between us,” he told the Israeli army commanders. “We have a common enemy.” Abu al Fath commenced the meeting with a complaint about the settler rampage (near Nablus). The way he related to the riots was interesting. He went on saying that “this makes things more difficult for us, especially in dealing with ordinary Palestinians. You must have law and order just as you expect us to have law and order. I will do all I can to prevent the occurrence of operations (against you.). You realize that we are much better than before. Thanks to our operations, the Israeli army needs to carry out lesser operations.

Hamas: our common enemy

Abu al Fath went on: “there is a huge strife going on in preparation for January, 2009. Abu Mazen is adopting the peace-line and you should bolster his position. Release juvenile prisoners, this is very important. Remove the roadblocks and dismantle the settlements. I want to ask you to allow us to deploy a regiment from Jericho to Hebron. I know there is a problem with the settlers in Hebron and the frictions spots there. I have no intention to enter these spots. The regiment will operate in the villages of Southern Hebron.

Major-General Kivon replied: “I am quite happy with what you have said. The local commanders of both sides should meet and reach an agreement on this. However, Colonel Mordechai warned the Palestinian officer, saying that “the deployment of the regiment in Hebron should take place Friday night lest they collide with the settlers.” Abu al Fath said: “No problem. We are moving against Hamas even during the month of Ramadan.”

At this point, the head of the Fayadh government’s military intelligence, Majed Faraj began talking: “We are in the midst of a very difficult battle. There is an Arabic proverb: ‘the sea is before us and the enemy is after us.’ We don’t even have a sea. We have decided to fight the battle until the end. We have decided to put all our problems on the table. Every thing is clear. No game-playing. Hamas is the enemy, and we have decided to wage an all-out war against Hamas. And I tell you there will be no dialogue with Hamas, for he who wants to kill you, kill him first. You have reached a truce with them, but we won’t do so. To be honest, we behaved differently in the past.

Faraj went on boasting: “Now we are taking care of every Hamas institution in accordance with your instructions. Lately you gave us the names of 64 institutions, and we have already dealt with fifty. Some of these institutions have been closed down, others we have changed their administrations. We have also seized their money (Israel referred to the PA 150 bank accounts suspected of belonging to terrorist organizations while the PA closed 300 other accounts).

“I have two observations: In the past we thought a thousand times before entering a mosque, but today we enter any mosque whenever deemed necessary. Don’t understand from this that you are allowed to enter the mosque. On the contrary, we can enter the mosques precisely because you don’t. We also can enter the campuses of universities, including the Islamic University in Hebron. We are making utmost efforts and even if success is not 100%, motivation is 100%”

Following Faraj’s remarks, Hazem Atallah, the Inspector-General of the Palestinian Police Forces spoke: “Until the end of the year, we will enter into a confrontation with Hamas. Khalid Meshal said Abu Mazen’s government wouldn’t be legal after the 9th of January, hence we should bet ready for the confrontation. ”

Hussein al Sheik, head of the civilian affairs department in the Fayadh government said “this is very important. Hamas doesn’t have a military power in the West Bank, but it has the power to get people onto the streets.” Attallah addressed the Israeli commanders: I am talking about a comprehensive plan, if we enter the next year without being fully prepared, nothing will be left except arguing over who was responsible for the defeat, we, or you, or the Americans.

Mordechai assured him, saying: we will form a joint team, we will help you with the training and military gear. The Palestinians complained that a Canadian shipment of truncheons for the police was still being withheld at the Ashdod Port. Tiv’on assured them that “we will hand it over to you.”

Last week, he told Al-Arabiya TV that he couldn’t demand that all Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes and towns from which they were uprooted when Israel was created in Palestine more than sixty years ago.

This week, the PA President uttered even more daring remarks in an interview with the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, published Sunday, 14 September.

He suggested that Israel was justified in refusing to allow the repatriation of the refugees.

“We understand that if we demand of you that all the five million refugees be allowed to return to Israel, the State of Israel would be destroyed. But we must talk about compromise and see what numbers you can accept,” Abbas was quoted as saying.

He added: “We have to talk with Israel about the number of refugees who will return to Israel. I am criticized for not demanding the return of all the five million refugees, but I say that we will demand the return of a reasonable number of refugees to Israel. ”

Needless to say, the loose tone of Abbas’s words seems to reflect a certain propensity on his part to effectively sacrifice and trivialize the right of return, which more or less represents the heart and soul of the Palestinian problem.

Well, I have a few words of advice for Abbas and his aides: Don’t mess with the right of return. Don’t play with fire.!

It is true that you were elected President of the PA in 2005. However, this doesn’t give you the right to compromise on the core of Palestinian cause, the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and villages from which they were ethnically cleansed and subsequently dispersed to the four corners of the globe by organized Jewish terror.

Indeed, you yourself, Mr. Chairman, during your election campaign four years ago, stressed repeatedly that the only solution acceptable to the Palestinians with regard to the refugee plight would have to be based on UN resolution 194.

I am not asking you to emulate Saladin or Omar ibnul al Khattab This is obviously beyond your ability.

But the Palestinian masses do expect you to honour your undertaking and keep your word. This is certainly not beyond your ability.

Let me remind you Mr. Chairman of paragraph #11 of resolution — 194 in case you have forgotten it.

“It (the resolution) resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”

Some of your friends and advisors may have advised you to “show flexibility” in this regard, and you may have harboured a certain tendency to view the right of return as somewhat anachronistic given the existing hard political realities.

However, it is equally valid to argue that any resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli strife excluding a genuine implementation of the right of return would be disingenuous, fragile and short-lasting.

I am not indulging in sooth-saying or far-fetched prognostication. Ask the refugees themselves from Nahr al-Bared in Lebanon to al-Wihdat in Jordan to Jabalya in the Gaza Strip and al-Amaari near Ramallah, not far from your office. Ask them if they are willing to cede their right to return to their original homes and villages even in return for a Palestinian state or quasi-state, and they will communicate to you their true feelings. Don’t listen to the hangers-on around you whose main preoccupation is to make money and appear on TV screens every evening.

As a Palestinian, I was particularly disquieted by your remarks that “the return of five million Palestinians would lead to the destruction of Israel.”

Well, Mr. Abbas. Has Israel’s survival as an exclusive Jewish state become a pressing Palestinian preoccupation?

As a Palestinian leader, your main preoccupation should be first and foremost to protect and effect the right of return for these tormented Palestinians who have been suffering the agony of homelessness for more than sixty years.

Yes, sixty years of homelessness, pain and dispersion should be enough for these miserable people who had inherited misery and suffering generation after generation after generation.

Hence, ending this most obscene and sinister scandal would not be an act of charity to the Palestinians. It would rather be a belated application of relevant UN resolutions which call for the repatriation and indemnification for these refugees.

The uprooting of these innocent victims of satanic Zionism, now numbering five million human beings, was a collective act of rape and ethnic cleansing with very few parallels in history. It will remain an enduring act of rape as long as the wrongs done to the victims are not rectified and corrected.

Indeed, the bulk of the Zionist establishment doesn’t even recognize the occurrence of these crimes, and whenever a conscientious Israeli academic speaks up against these wrongs, he or she is usually vilified and threatened by a society dominated by racism and hatred.

This is why the Right of Return, at least as far as Palestinians are concerned, shouldn’t be a subject of dispute and controversy just as the rightful owner’s right to recover his stolen property from a thief is not a subject of dispute and property.

As to Zionist arguments about the need for maintaining Israel as a Jewish state, it is obvious that such arguments constitute a brazen moral insult to every human being that values justice and honesty.

First, it is well known that the term “Jewish character of Israel” is nothing short of a euphemism for the continuation of Israel’s racist policies against non-Jews. Apartheid and racism can’t be legitimate even if practitioners are Jewish. Jewish racism is no less virulent than German racism.

Second, it should be axiomatic to all that the conscience of the world is under no more legal or moral obligation to maintain Zionism in Palestine than it was to maintain apartheid in South Africa.

More to the point, one is always prompted to ask the following question with regard to this issue: Does Israel’s alleged right to religious and ethnic purity override the Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and country?

Finally, it is clear that denying the Palestinian refugees their inalienable right to return to Palestine/Israel is beyond the pale of simple rectitude.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948, states in its Article #13 that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”

To reiterate, the right of return is the heart and soul of the Palestinian problem. It is actually more paramount than the issue of Palestinian statehood and even Jerusalem, despite the latter’s immense national and religious importance.

Hence, it should be amply clear that any agreement or understanding between Israel and the PA ignoring or overlooking this central issue of the right of return will be treated as null and void by the Palestinian people.

This is not only a message to the PLO leadership. It is also a message to the insolent Israeli state which might be tempted to think that the current weakness of the Palestinian position vis-à-vis Israel would prompt the Palestinians to retreat from their national constants.

Credited for the introduction of nuclear weapons to the Middle East via the “French connection,” Peres charged that Hamas was impeding peace between Israel and the American-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), suggesting that Hamas’s “extremism” was the main reason behind PA reluctance to sign a formal peace treaty with Israel. Peres overlooked the fact that Israel had more than 20 years without Hamas (1967-1987) and another 19 years during which Hamas was more or less weak or neutralized (1987-2006), but instead of making peace with the Palestinian leadership, namely the PLO, the Zionist state was busy building Jewish-only settlements and Jewish-only roads on a land that belongs to another people.

Peres’s remarks are indeed beyond chutzpah. After all, the man himself is a despicable murderer with a lot of innocent blood on his dirty hands. He is also a pathological liar and unredeemed hypocrite.  The fact that respect is accorded to him in many capitals doesn’t really make him a lesser criminal.  Indeed, for Peres to invoke the ideals of human rights and democracy against Israel’s tormented victims, the Palestinians, is very much like having the likes of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin lecturing their own victims on the sanctity of human life. After all, there is no difference of moral substance between the nefarious Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, as is the case in the Gaza Strip, and the Nazi behavior during the Second World War. Actually, the main difference lies not in the quality of the evil committed but rather in its sheer size.

Let us not be duped and deceived by this lying old man who knows well deep in his heart that were it not for the inherently unjust international system, he and other Israeli leaders would be shipped, like drugged wild animals, to the International Court of Justice in the Hague to stand trial for their diabolic acts of murder and terror.  Peres and nearly all other Zionist leaders since Ben Gurion have always been despicable murderers and liars. They still are.

Peres himself is a mass murderer par excellence. In 1996, during his brief stint as Prime Minister following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, he ordered the Israeli army to bomb the UNIFIL headquarters at the village of Qana in Southern Lebanon. And while the resulting pornographic massacre shocked the conscience of the world, Peres and his colleagues were busy deflecting blame and concocting excuses. Interestingly, Peres has never apologized for the horrendous crime, nor has Israel ever thought of compensating the families of the victims. The phrase “mea kulpa” apparently doesn’t exist in the Zionist lexicon.

As to Peres’ morbid call for barring Hamas from participating in future Palestinian elections, the Israeli president must know that without Hamas there can be no elections in the occupied territories. Indeed, what type of elections would Palestinians have in the West Bank and Gaza Strip if only Israel’s and America’s agents are allowed to participate? Or perhaps the hero of Qana thinks that Palestinian democracy should not go beyond  enabling the “masses” to select a Palestinian Judenrat that would torment the Palestinian people on Israel’s behalf as the Ramallah-based regime is already doing.

Besides, it is crystal clear that Peres is being scandalously inconsistent as to whether “anti-democratic” groups ought to be allowed to take part in elections. He should be reminded, in case he has forgotten, that several Israeli political factions and parties contending elections happen to be full-fledged terrorist groups that openly call for the expulsion, enslavement or extermination of non-Jews in Palestine-Israel. So why aren’t these groups barred from participating in the Israeli elections?

How about the manifestly fascist MIFDAL (the National Religious Party) which openly calls for deporting all Palestinians to Jordan and other Arab states? How about the National Union, the quasi-Nazi party whose leaders advocate disenfranchising non-Jews and carpet-bombing Palestinian population centers? How about Mikhail Kleiner’s party which considers Jordan “the eastern part of Israel”? How about Israeli Knesset members, like Aryeh Eldad, who openly claim that non-Jews are not really fully human beings? How about these numerous rabbis from Merkaz Harav (the Talmudic College in Jerusalem) who teach their students that in time of war, non-Jewish children and civilians may be slaughtered en mass? And how about arch-terrorists like Baruch Marzel and his cohorts? Why does Israel, which claims to be the only true democracy in the Middle East, allow these thugs to participate in elections?

Besides, doesn’t Peres realize that his own party, Kadima, is comprised of real terrorists and war criminals, people who in any other country that respects itself would be thrown behind bars? I challenge Peres to tell us the name of an Israeli prime minister, or foreign minister or defense minister who is not a war criminal?  Let us, for example, consider the last three Israeli Premiers, Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak.

The first ordered the Israeli air force to drop three million cluster bomblets on Southern Lebanon. For those who don’t know, three million bombs are sufficient to kill and maim three million children. In Gaza, Olmert ordered his army to murder innocent Palestinian civilians in the thousands and starve hundreds of thousands of innocent people on the ground that they had elected a political party that Israel didn’t like.

And Sharon? Well, we are all aware of the dark legacy of that vile certified war criminal.

And Barak, the notorious child killer who with his own hands assassinated Palestinian writers and intellectuals in Beirut and who ordered his troops to open fire on unarmed Palestinian protesters. This is the man who had to appeal to the most primitive sadistic instincts of the Israeli public in order to be popular and get elected.

In truth, Israel itself is a crime against humanity and its leaders are vile war criminals. As such, they are utterly unfit to speak about human rights and democratic values.

Indeed, despite numerous visits to West Jerusalem and Ramallah, which cost  American taxpayers millions of dollars,  it can be said without exaggeration that Rice’s achievements amounted to a fat zero.

Rice had wanted to achieve her boss’s vision of seeing two states in historical Palestine, Israel and a vaguely-defined  Palestinian entity,  living side by side in peace.

However, after nearly eight years of hectic diplomacy, unfulfilled promises and unrealized hopes,  that goal is now as illusive as ever.

In fact, one wouldn’t evade the truth by saying that the prospect  of  creating a truly viable Palestinian state in the West Bank is now  more unrealistic  than it was when Bush came to the White House nearly eight years ago.

The intensive proliferation of Jewish colonies in the occupied territories of 1967  has simply rendered the creation of a Palestinian state worthy of the name unachievable. We shouldn’t  pay attention to those who say otherwise. They simply  don’t know what they are talking about, assuming they are  sincerely ignorant.

While speaking during a joint  press conference with her Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, Rice hardly touched on the continued expansion of Jewish colonies. She only managed to utter  invoke the old  platitudinous formula that we have been hearing ad nauseam, namely that “unilateral acts” (notice she wouldn’t even say the word “settlements”) don’t help the peace process.

Well, Rice and her boss have been saying the same tired  words for ages while Israel keeps stealing Arab land and building Jewish settlements unabated?

So how are we supposed to interpret this farce or game of make believe? Is there a tacit understanding between the U.S. and Israel whereby the former keeps repeating certain disingenuous statements, which only ostensibly  criticize  Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank,   while the latter keeps building  the settlements  irrespective  of what American officials say in this regard?

A few years ago, George Bush lambasted the construction of that wall of shame, mutilating Palestinian  land and meandering through Palestinian population centers, reducing them to de facto detention camps.

However, Israeli leaders effectively  ignored Bush’s remarks, knowing too well that he was in no position to act on these remarks.

So why would Israel take seriously an administration that says openly that it wouldn’t punish Israel no matter what it did  and that it would never force Israel to do anything against its will?

Apart from the phenomenal settlement expansion being frantically pursued by the fascist Zionist regime,  Rice  must have drawn satisfaction from the continuing criminal siege imposed on 1.5 million helpless Palestinians in Gaza.

The manifestly callous lady wouldn’t even utter a word about the enduring plight of these tormented men, women and children who are made to suffer and die because they had the audacity to elect a political party Israel and the Bush administration didn’t like.

There is no doubt that the American-Western approach to the Gaza ordeal is a stigma of shame at the forehead of the western world.

After all, we are talking about a nefarious collusion between Israel, a Judeo-Nazi state that thinks and behaves and acts like a Nazi state, and western governments in effecting a slow-motion genocide against innocent people for purely political reasons.

Israel used to tell the world that the evil blockade of Gaza was a defensive measure aimed at forcing the Palestinians to stop firing home-made projectiles on nearby Israeli settlements.

However, when a ceasefire was eventually reached more than two months ago, Israel kept the blockade virtually intact and both Israel and Egypt, apparently with American approval, kept the Rafah border crossing, Gaza’s sole conduit to the outside world, closed.
 
In truth, Gaza,  thanks to this criminal lingering siege,  is more than just  “the greatest open-air prison in the world” as is bruited abroad.   Gaza is actually a  real concentration camp, a concentration camp where people are starved, tormented and made to suffer and die for diabolical  political calculations having to do with efforts to expedite global  American hegemony and Jewish supremacy.

At the Palestinian camp, there is a clearly  stupid Palestinian leadership whose main preoccupation is  staying politically alive even if this happens to be at the expense of the Palestinian people and their enduring just cause.

This is why the self-proclaimed  “legitimate” leadership is willing to indulge in endless futile negotiations with our tormentors while Israel keeps stealing our land, demolishing our homes and building settlements for would-be Jewish immigrants from around the world.

This is the same leadership that keeps persecuting and repressing its own citizens by arresting them, torturing them and even killing them on Israel’s behalf. It is a leadership that is building a huge security apparatus, with American funding and training, not to liberate our land from the criminal claws of Zionism but rather to further savage  our struggling people and weaken their ability to regain their freedom.

And now, we are about to enter a new phase of this farcical  “peace” process where Palestine continues to be crucified and slaughtered while the whole world plays the role of spectator.

With Ehud Olmert about to leave the Israeli political scene soon, and with Bush having only a few months left in the White House, the Palestinian plight, with all its calamitous aspects, will have to wait  at least until the next American administration puts its act together, which will take several months. 

Hence, it is imperative that patriotic Palestinians  find, as soon as possible, a way out of this absurdity.

 Maybe we should be seriously thinking of abandoning the entire strategy of Palestinian statehood based on the so-called two-state solution. This hapless strategy is losing credibility and relevance and becoming a crippling liability  undermining our struggle and aspirations for freedom and justice.

The important thing is that we must no longer allow ourselves to be held-hostage to this farcical theatre known as “the peace process” which only spells death and destruction to our people and  just cause.

In recent weeks and months, the American-backed and Israeli-favored regime in Ramallah has been systematically violating the human rights and civil liberties of the Palestinian people in ways unseen since the start of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. This is done in utter violation of the rule of law and is mainly aimed at consolidating Fatah’s domination in the region. In short, it seems that the PA, not Hamas, is enforcing a ruthless regime whereby all forms of dissent are suppressed by brute force.

To be sure, not only press freedom is suffering under the fear-inspiring regime being imposed on the Palestinian masses in the West Bank, thanks to American, Israeli and European bullying. The PA has been arresting people and closing down or taking over academic, health and charitable institutions ever since Hamas’s counter-coup in Gaza more than 14 months ago. However, press freedom always serves as an accurate barometer reflecting the status of human rights and civil liberties in any given country.

Today press freedom in the West Bank is coming under attack by the PA. In recent weeks, Palestinian security agencies stepped up efforts to muzzle press freedom and intimidate non-conformist journalists who criticize the PA or voice views deemed antithetical to PA policies and political goals. Many journalists, especially cameramen, have been beaten and injured at the hands of security men and no real measures are taken to prevent the recurrence of this worrying phenomenon. PA leaders readily make statements denouncing assaults on journalists. However, these assaults continue unabated, even assuming added ferocity, which suggests that the PA leadership is either losing control over the security agencies or that it is not really sincere about protecting journalists from the truncheons of PA policemen.

Two weeks ago, the PA Preventive Security Force (PSF) arrested Awadh Rajoub from his office in the town of Dura in the Hebron region. Rajoub works for the Arabic service of al-Jazeera.net and writes irregular reports for a number of Arabic publications based in the occupied territories and abroad. According to his relatives, Rajoub has been accused of spreading “incitement against the Palestinian Authority” and of “endangering national unity,” a tacit reference to criticisms of the Ramallah-based regime, especially its clampdown on civil society.

Rajoub, 30, has been harshly interrogated in connection with his work and threatened to be tried by a military court. The PA is not a state, it is not even a semi state or state-in-the-making since it has no authority or sovereignty of its own. Indeed, should this kind of treatment by the PA of its own citizens be a harbinger for the future, I am sure the Palestinians, or most of them, would want to remain under Israel’s nefarious occupation until the prospect for real freedom and true liberation is in sight.

Mustafa Sabri, a journalist from the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya, has also been languishing in PA custody for several weeks in connection with his writings, deemed “not inline with” with “national interest”. Sabri, too, is accused of writing “tendentious material” that could undermine Palestinian regime’s public image. However, it is widely believed that his political orientation is the real reason behind his arrest and continued incarceration. Last week, Sabri was transferred to the custody of the “military intelligence” where concocted charges were leveled against him, including “assaulting a police officer.” His lawyer told this writer that “there is no legal basis for keeping my client behind bars; his arrest is in violation of all Palestinian laws.”

Undoubtedly, the arrest of journalists constitutes a flagrant breach of press freedom and a clear violation of Palestinian press laws. The Palestinian press law states that “no security agency has the right to question, interrogate or detain a Palestinian journalist on matters pertaining to his or her work.” Hence, it is clear that the PA is violating its own laws with regard to press freedom.

The PA might think that arresting and harassing journalists would force them to exercise “self-censorship.” This might be partially true, especially with young journalists struggling to build a professional career from scratch. However, in the long run, this stupid policy is self-defeating since hiding the truth from citizens and the world at large is an impossible task in the age of the internet. Hence, it is only fragile and insecure regimes that adopt a hostile attitude to press freedom. More to the point, the PA security agencies have lately begun to interfere with the editorial policies of some local news agencies for the purpose of making sure they don’t deviate from “the official line.” Unfortunately, some of these news agencies have effectively succumbed to this intimidation.

A few days ago, this writer sought in vain to post an Arabic article on the webpage of a European-funded news agency. The article highlighted the plight of thousands of Palestinian school teachers who haven’t received regular salaries for close to two years because of doubts about their loyalty to the PA regime. Some of these teachers, who teach “nationalist education” in morning classes, are forced to work in Jewish settlements in the West Bank in the afternoon in order to make ends meet. Unfortunately, the editor-in-chief of that news agency, bruited abroad as a free and independent news outlet, refused to post the article without any explanation.

Meanwhile, PA security agencies are trying even to suppress people’s thoughts and ideas. This week, Palestinian security officials summoned for questioning a former journalist from the southern part of the West Bank in connection with an internet article written by a distant relative. The man told the interrogating “officer” that he had nothing to do with the article and that he had stopped writing a long time ago. However, the condescending officer told the man that he realized that he didn’t write the article himself, and that he only suspected that the ideas contained in the article were inline with his way of thinking!!!

There are those who would cite press freedom violations by the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip to justify or at least extenuate the gravity of what is happening in the West Bank. However, it is amply clear that whatever is happening in Gaza can’t be compared in terms of proportionality and gravity to what is happening in the West Bank. As an independent-minded and free-thinking journalist who has withstood and continues to withstand Israeli repression and harassment, I unhesitatingly denounce in the strongest terms all violations of press freedom, regardless of the political identity and ideological affiliation of the victim and the perpetrator. Earlier this week, I contacted my friend Saleh al Naami, a journalist of impeccable credentials, and asked him if Fatah-affiliated journalists were being detained by the Gaza Authorities. Al-Naami said the following:

I don’t know of any journalist being arrested in Gaza. A journalist working for a German Television network was detained recently for a few days in connection with the violence that struck the Gaza beach in June, but he has been released.

In any case, both the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Hamas government in Gaza are strongly urged to immediately put an end to all forms of press freedom violations. This is the right thing to do, and Palestine is too tired and too exhausted to be dragged into another internal strife which could only debilitate and exhaust us further.

Today, much of the western “financial aid” provided to the Ramallah-based regime is being utilized to consolidate a police-state structure, actually a police state without a state since the Israeli occupation army continues to tightly control all parts of the occupied territories, including the vicinity of Mahmoud Abbas’s own headquarters. According to reliable sources, more than one third of the PA budget, which is based on “donations” from western and oil-rich Arab donors, goes to the security agencies which operate with virtually no legal or moral restrictions.  In comparison, less than one percent of the budget goes to agriculture in both Gaza and the West Bank. This is the sector upon which more than 50% of Palestinians depend for their livelihood.

We all know that the raison d’être behind the very existence of the PA security apparatus is to repress Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.  Otherwise, Israel wouldn’t have allowed the US and other countries to bankroll, train, and arm these “Palestinian forces.”  Today, the way these so-called forces function seriously undermines the rule of law, civil liberties and human rights in the occupied territories.  They are arresting, maltreating and torturing innocent people. They are imprisoning journalists who are carrying out their duties as journalists. They are closing down and vandalizing social, cultural, academic and other institutions in utter violation of the rule of law.  In short, there is a reign of terror being fostered all over the West Bank under the pretext of “fighting Hamas.”

The PA claims its heavy-handed tactics are necessary to prevent Hamas from carrying out a coup in the West Bank.  This claim, however, is ridiculous and mendacious. The reason is that in order for Hamas to be able to carry out a “coup” in the West Bank, it would have to be militarily stronger than both Israel and the PA combined, which is a far-fetched prospect, to say the least.  In truth, the real reason behind the reign of repression and flagrant human rights violations in the West Bank is an overwhelming desire for revenge for the ousting by Hamas of Fatah militias from Gaza more than a year ago.

A few weeks ago, the PA arrested three journalists in the West Bank on manifestly frivolous charges such as “endangering national security” and “creating divisions within the people.”  These journalists, including Awadh Rajoub, a correspondent for the Arabic service of the al-Jazeera.net, are still languishing in PA lockups and jails.  Rajoub’s relatives said he was likely to be prosecuted by a military tribunal!! Yes, a military trial of an innocent Palestinian journalist by an authority that has no authority or sovereignty, and whose very survival and existence depend nearly completely on the good-will of Israel, the Palestinian people’s ultimate tormentor and oppressor.

Moreover, dozens of community leaders, religious officials, elected mayors, as well as college students are being jailed and probably tortured by security interrogators.  A few weeks ago, a visitor to the local government hospital in Hebron intimated to this writer that he saw a badly-beaten young man tied with iron chains to his hospital bed, with three armed security guards posted at the entrance to his room.  Last week, PA crack policemen beat savagely two teachers who were tutoring high-school students at the Anwar Academic Center in Dura, 10 miles south West of Hebron. The two teachers were identified as Naim Talahmeh and Salem al Hureibat.

Earlier this month, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said he ordered the security agencies to release all political prisoners rounded up following recent Gaza events.  However, two weeks have passed and 95 per cent of the political detainees are still languishing in PA lockups and jails.  Indeed, PA security forces continue to arrest innocent people and close down businesses and charities on a daily basis without any regard for the rule of law.  In recent days, the PA security forces even began arresting lawyers defending illegally-held detainees. Human rights sources in the West Bank have reported that Advocates Muhammed Farrah from Hebron and Fadel Bushnaq from the northern West Bank are languishing in PA jails.

The reign of repression being carried out by the PA against its own people can’t be justified by whatever unacceptable conduct by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including the unlawful arrest of political figures affiliated with Fatah.  Persecuting people perceived as Hamas supporters as a reprisal for the arrest by Hamas of Fatah activists, or vice versa, is an unethical act fitting gagsters and street thugs.  To be sure, Hamas has released the vast bulk of Fatah’s political leaders, including Zakaria al Agha, the group’s most prominent leader in the strip. So why is the Fatah-dominated PA continuing to violate the human rights and civil liberties of the Palestinian people?

The West is wrong in thinking that beating and tormenting Palestinians by the PA will produce security for Israel.   The PA had carried out a lot of repression of its own people during the so-called Oslo era (1994-2000).  That ugly episode of repression, we all remember, eventually produced two things: The al Aqsa Intifada and Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006.  It is therefore very likely that the Western-sponsored repression by the PA of the very people it claims to serve and whose interests it claims to be protecting and safeguarding will boomerang on both the West and its increasingly ruthless child.

The West is thus advised to create a clear linkage between its financial aid to the PA and its human rights records. That would be compatible with its declared ideals and policies, and would also serve the interest of peace in Palestine.  In the final analysis, the last thing the Palestinians need is another tormentor augmenting Israel’s genocidal terror against our people.

In truth, there is a weak linkage between the criminal blockade of Gaza and the Shalit affair. After all, Israel has been murdering, tormenting, starving and blockading Palestinians for ages. There are tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank who are barred from traveling or seeking work. This has nothing to do with the Shalit affair, but has everything to do with Israel’s strategic goal of annihilating the Palestinians as a people and seizing what has remained of their homeland. Indeed, claiming that the capture by Palestinian fighters of an Israeli occupation soldier, who may well have a lot of innocent blood on his hands, is the reason for Israel’s Nazi-like policies in the West Bank and Gaza is a flagrant expression of ignorance or malicious mendacity.

Are we to believe that the cold-blooded murder of Ahmad Mousa in Nilin a few days ago was motivated by the imprisonment of Gilad Shalit? Are we to believe that the systematic demolition of Arab homes in East Jerusalem is attributed to the Shalit affair? Is the Gestapo-like reign of terror by Jewish settlers against innocent Palestinian shepherds and peasants in various parts of the West Bank connected with the same issue? More to the point, it is also absolutely untrue that Israel would have been more willing to release Palestinian prisoners had it not been for the Shalit affair. In fact, only fools and ignoramuses would give Israel the benefit of the doubt in this regard. Israel was holding many thousands of Palestinians, many without charge or trial, long before the “abduction” of Shalit.

The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did everything he could, often obsequiously, to gain the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli dungeons, but to no avail. He revoked the Palestinian National Charter, he imprisoned and tortured opponents of the Oslo Accords to please and appease Israel, he built a casino in Jericho to accommodate Israeli gamblers, he even traveled to Tel Aviv to kiss the head of Lea Rabin, the woman whose husband ordered the Israeli army to break the bones of Palestinian children during the first Intifada, the man who didn’t hesitate to reveal his wish to see Gaza, with its 1.5 million people, drown in the Mediterranean. The same thing occurred with regard to Jordanian prisoners who are still languishing in Israeli jails despite the signing of the peace treaty and the exemplary relations between Israel and the Hashemite kingdom.

And how about Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen’s supplications for the release of Fatah and other prisoners, some of whom, like Said al Ataba and Abu Ali Yatta, have been in Israeli jails for more than three decades? Have all his begging and pleading succeeded in getting Israel to release those prisoners? Yes, Israel does occasionally release some prisoners to help prop up Abu Mazen’s public standing. However, we all know that most of the prisoners released in the context of these “gestures of good will” are people whose jail terms have already expired or about to expire. Besides, it is well known that in return for each Palestinian released, the Israeli Shin Beth (the chief domestic security agency) rounds at least five Palestinians. This consistently arrogant Israeli behavior toward Palestinian prisoners, which is contrasted by a scandalously liberal approach toward Israeli terrorists and criminals, has convinced millions of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims that the only way of getting their sons, daughters and beloved ones released from the Israeli hell is Hezbullah’s and Hamas’s way. Israel has only itself to blame.

In his article, Shalit also claims that the often open-ended imprisonment of Palestinian activists in Israeli jails is an inevitable outcome of previous Israeli-Palestinian wars! What wars is he talking about? The Palestinian people have been on the receiving end of Israeli barbarianism, savagery and ethnic cleansing for ages. The Palestinians never waged war on Israel? The Palestinians are victims of Israeli Nazism. How can a people who are dying on a daily basis at the hands of Zionism’s indifferent hands wage war on a country that possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons and is in tight control of American politics and policies? How can the victims of barbaric aggression and ethnic cleansing be initiators of war?

Finally, Shalit claims that the closure by Israel of the Rafah border crossing is related to his son’s affair. This is not true. We all know that Israel kept the Rafah crossing and other border crossings closed, nearly completely, long before the capture of his son. Interestingly, Shalit argued that it was his son’s captivity that was holding thousands of Palestinian civilians hostage, people who he said were “uninvolved” and suffering from abject poverty and acute shortage of basic consumer goods. Well, thank you Mr. Shalit for recognizing the innocence of your state’s victims. Thank you for admitting, though indirectly and probably inadvertently, that Israel is a terrorist state that murders, starves and torments innocent civilians for political reasons. But if they are innocent people, and they indeed are, then why don’t you tell your leaders that blockading, harming and starving innocent people is wrong and incompatible with moral and religious ethics? Do Jewish ethics condone tormenting innocent people who committed no wrong?

One may really sympathize with Noam Shalit especially at the personal level. However, Mr. Shalit should also try, even for a brief moment, to put himself in the shoes of the fathers, mothers and relatives of 10,000 Palestinian prisoners who, unlike him, don’t enjoy the benefit of a potent world-wide media machine that has effectively made his son the most famous prisoner in the entire world.

Isn’t that fair enough?

The teachings also serve as a direct inspiration to numerous Israeli soldiers operating in the West Bank who, thanks to the racist indoctrination they receive from their rabbis, have come to view the estimated 3.7 million Palestinians living under Israel’s military rule, not as real human beings, but rather as animals walking on two feet. The often barbaric treatment meted out to the Palestinians in the occupied territories testifies to the rampantly racist indoctrination soldiers and settlers receive at the hands of religious Zionist rabbis. Last year, a Jewish immigrant from France, who murdered an Arab taxi driver after luring him to his home north of Tel Aviv, told police interrogators that he didn’t kill a human being; he only killed an animal.

“Merkaz Harav”

Merkaz Harav (the Rabbi’s Center) is the ideological and theological central nervous system of religious Zionism in Israel. Established in honor of Rabbi Abraham Kook, Israel’s first Chief Rabbi, the center, which is actually a religious college, teaches students that God Almighty created the entire universe for the sake of “the Jew,” and that all non-Jews ought to be slaves laboring for the “chosen people.” As to the Palestinians, Merkaz Harav teaches that “non-Jews living under Jewish law in Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) must either be enslaved as water carriers and wood hewers, or banished, or exterminated.”

Some rabbinic authorities associated with Merkaz Harav have been preaching the view that Palestinians are descendants of the Amalek, or Amalekites, whom the Bible says must be totally exterminated. Such hateful views are actually espoused by hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. This is the religious doctrine of religious Zionism. This is the theology taught in hundreds of Yeshivot (religious schools) throughout Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Settlers as well as the increasingly Settler-dominated Israeli army may very well act on these doctrines in a more wanton manner if the world goes into a slumber. They are only awaiting the opportune time to do it.

According to Rabbi Kook, “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews-all of them in all different levels-is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the soul of cattle.” The late Israeli philosopher, Yisrael Shahak, pointed out that the teachings of Kook were based on the Lurianic Cabala, one of whose basic tenets is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body “so much so that the world was created solely for the sake of Jews.”

In 2003, Rabbi Saadya Grama, an alumnus of Beth Medrash Govoha, the renowned Yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J., wrote a book titled Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut, which can be translated as “the Majesty of Israel and the Question of the Diaspora,” in which he argued that non-Jews were “completely evil” and that Jews constituted a separate, genetically superior species. The book was condemned by many reform and conservative rabbis in the US as manifestly racist and incompatible with normative Jewish religious thinking. However, major Jewish organizations in Israel and North America, such as Agudat Yisrael, refused to condemn the book.

In Israel, numerous Orthodox Zionist rabbis, many of them graduates of and lecturers at Merkaz Harav, continue to teach the theologically dubious concept that the ten commandments don’t apply to non-Jews and that, therefore, the Biblical commandments against committing murder, theft, and lying don’t cover non-Jews. For example, Rabbi Dov Lior, Chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council, teaches that “there is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time” “The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them. This is the real moral behind Israel’s Torah and we must not feel guilty due to foreign morals,” he was quoted as saying by the Hebrew newspaper Ma’ariv in 2004.

“A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”

Lior is not a marginal figure in the Zionist religious establishment. I asked Rabbi Menachem Froman, who himself has taught at Merkaz Harav, about Lior’s religious credentials and he told me that the man “is considered among the most learned sages of the Torah.” Earlier this year, Rabbi David Batsri told followers that “it is impossible to mix the pure with the impure. They (the Arabs) are a blight, a devil, a disaster. The Arabs are donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn’t create them to walk on all four. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean. They don’t have any place in our school.”

In May, 2007, Mordechai Elyahu, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, issued an edict that would permit the Israeli army to murder hundreds of thousands of Palestinians . “If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they don’t stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000. Even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

I don’t believe that this repulsive extremism represents true Judaism, the Judaism that is based on the Ten Commandments. Jewish traditions relate the story of a heathen who came to Shammai with the request to be accepted as a convert on condition that he was taught the whole Torah while he stood on one foot. Shammai drove him away with the yard-stick he was holding. Then the man went to Hillel with the same request. Hillel told the man “what is hateful to yourself don’t do to your fellow human being. That is the whole of the Torah and the rest is commentary.”

Unfortunately, the rabbis of religious Zionism, including the so-called Chabadim who have effectively replaced the Torah with a notoriously racist manual called “Hatanya,” pay no attention to such traditions. And when they are reminded of them, they arrogantly claim that words such as “man” or “human being” refer solely and exclusively to the “Jew.”

Besides, it is obvious that these fanatics only select the most racist and most hateful texts from a huge body of scriptures, Biblical and Talmudic, while utterly ignoring and shunning authentic texts, including biblical texts, that urge Jews to treat kindly and justly non-Jews who live in their midst.

In addition, one wonders if these so-called religious leaders and “holy men” understand what it means to rule that in wartime no holds are barred and there is no such a thing as enemy civilians.

Well, Adolph Hitler could have made the same argument to justify his genocidal onslaught against Jews and non-Jews in Europe?

Finally, I hope that moderate Jewish religious authorities will move to challenge these extremist rabbis who I am convinced misrepresent Judaism by presenting it as a religion of fire and blood and hate. God-fearing rabbis should make it abundantly clear to Jews in Israel-Palestine that harming innocent people is wrong.

This is a paramount issue because if the ideology and theology of Merkaz Harav are allowed to prevail, then Judaism itself will suffer immensely.

In Nablus and neighboring towns and villages, US-trained security personnel raided private homes, municipal buildings and public institutions, elected mayors, public figures, college professors, student leaders and prominent religious figures. One of the people arrested was Professor Abdul al Sattar Qassem, a well-known author and political activist. A former presidential candidate, Qassem is not affiliated with Hamas or any other political organization, but his daring writings seem to have proven too unbearable for a self-proclaimed “national” authority that claims to represent Palestinian aspirations for freedom and liberation.

In Dura, near Hebron in the southern West Bank, PA security forces arrested Awadh Rajoub, the West Bank correspondent of the Arabic service of al-Jazeera.net after raiding and thoroughly searching his press office and confiscating his PC. Rajoub is still being detained at the Preventive Security headquarters in Hebron where he has been interrogated in connection with a report he had written on the mistreatment of prisoners in PA jails and lockups. Four other journalists have also been arrested by the PA police recently, including Muhammed Halayka and Alaa al Titi of Hebron, Ausayd Amareneh of Bethlehem and Mustafa Sabri of Qalqilya. PA spokespeople claim that the arrests are carried out in accordance with the rule of law.

However, it is amply clear that such claims carry very little weight if only because the “rule of law” doesn’t really exist in a police state (without a state), whose very existence and survival depend almost completely on the extent to which this entity meets the needs, obey the instructions and serves the interests of the Israeli occupation. These are conspicuous facts that every Palestinian man, woman and child is aware of. Hence, it would be foolhardy to try to hide the obvious from one of the most politicized people on earth.

Interestingly, the stepped-up clampdown on freedom of expression by the PA coincides with the ghoulish escalation of Israeli criminality and ethnic cleansing throughout the West Bank. During the past few days, trigger-happy Israeli soldiers murdered in cold blood two Palestinian minors, including a 10-year-old boy who was taking part in a peaceful protest against Israeli schemes to grab more Palestinian land under the pretext of building the so-called “separation wall.” (The Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi this week admitted that the route of the wall was decided by political, rather than security considerations as Israeli officials have been claiming)

Similarly, Israel has been demolishing Arab homes, including a multi-story building in East Jerusalem as Nazi-like Jewish settlers are given a free rein to take over Arab property and terrorize and savage Palestinian children in the southern Hebron hills for the purpose of driving their families away form their homes. So, as if Zionist ethnic cleansing were not enough, the PA is finding it necessary to complement Israeli criminality by arresting, humiliating and tormenting patriotic Palestinians for criticizing the Ramallah regime for compromising Palestinian national interests and for throwing itself squarely into the lap of the Bush administration which itself is at Israel’s beck and call.

It is really difficult to make any sense of what is happening except that the PA is effectively becoming another layer of the Israeli occupation. Otherwise, one is prompted to ask what national purpose does this wave of repression of Palestinians by Palestinians serve? Does it strengthen Palestinian steadfastness in the face of the Israeli occupation? Does it enhance the Palestinian ability to liberate the usurped homeland from the criminal Zionist hands?

There is no doubt that in light of its shameful behavior against the Palestinian people, the PA has effectively become a serious liability undermining the enduring Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice. Indeed, a situation where Palestinians have to keep guessing if their children will be abducted by “the (Palestinian) authority” or “the (Israeli occupation) authorities” is unbearable, to say the least. It is a stigma of shame that a time has come when Palestinian homes have to be raided in the quiet hours before dawn by Palestinian policemen in order to arrest young Palestinians activists. Today, the PA has proven itself a moral, political, economic and security disaster for the Palestinians and their enduring just cause.

The Palestinian people had been dreaming of a “free authority” that would heal their wounds, sooth their afflictions and strengthen their steadfastness in the face of the Nazis of our time. They never dreamt of a ‘Judenrat’ of quislings and collaborators that would arrest, torment, torture and even murder Palestinians in order to receive a certificate of good conduct from the occupiers of our country and their guardian-allies in Washington. Hence, it is paramount, for the sake of our future and the future of our children that this outrageous PA apparatus, where pseudo-nationalists, money-grabbing careerists, hangers-on, opportunists and probably foreign agents as well hold sway, be dismantled as soon as possible. In fact, one can go as far as saying that the dissolution of the PA is now a sine qua non for a successful Palestinian struggle for freedom from diabolical Zionism.

In Sderot, in southern Israel, Obama was quoted as saying the following: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything in my power to stop that, and would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” Of course, he mentioned absolutely nothing about the Israeli campaign of murder and terror against Gaza, particularly the year-long harsh blockade of the coastal enclave’s estimated 1.5 million inhabitants, which has killed and maimed thousands of innocent men, women and children whose only “crime” is that they had dared elect a government the Bush administration and Israel didn’t like.

Predictably, Obama lashed out at Iran, saying that “a situation in which Iran was capable of making nuclear weapons would be “game-changing” and would have repercussions across the world. Again, he utterly and totally ignored Israel’s estimated 300 nuclear warheads, as if even alluding to this well-known fact was an earth-shaking taboo. Obama is not ignorant of the facts in the Middle East. He is well-aware of the evil nature of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the equally criminal treatment meted out to the Palestinian people. He also knows well that true and just peace with the Palestinians is the last item on Israel’s agenda as evidenced from the unmitigated Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, especially in occupied Arab East Jerusalem. Nonetheless, Obama is also meticulously conscious of the whoring theatre of American politics where political correctness always exceeds and overrides moral rightness. He knows that the nearly complete Jewish domination of the “media discourse” in America leaves him with only two choices: Either he be conscientious, in which case he would most probably lose; or play the political prostitution game quite skillfully, and have a fair chance of winning. Obama has obviously opted to adopt the later choice.

It is of course true that the sole reason behind Obama’s visit to Israel, a country that got the US involved in two wars in the Middle East and is now hell-bent trying to get the Bush Administration to wage a third war, this time on Iran, has more to do with his efforts to impress American Jewish voters, especially American Zionist leaders, than with showing solidarity with “Sderot” or underscoring his commitment to peace in the Middle East. But this is only partially true. There are far more Hispanic voters in the US than Jewish voters, but Obama has made no pilgrimage to Mexico as he has to Israel. Similarly, there are probably at least as many American Muslim voters as there are Jewish voters, who unlike the Jews are expected to overwhelmingly vote for Obama, given their conspicuously nightmarish experience with the Bush administration, especially its witch-hunting campaign against American Muslims.

Yet we have seen Obama display a virtually phobic reaction toward everything and anything Islamic, from refusing to be photographed with two hejab-wearing supporters recently to him completely disavowing his childhood Islamic heritage as if the religion of Islam, which gave the world so much in terms of civilization and culture, were something to be ashamed of. This probably explains why Obama has carefully avoided visiting the Haram al Sharif esplanade in East Jerusalem, one of the world’s most splendid sites, lest he be caught inadvertently showing signs of respect to the holy place or shaking hands with a Muslim scholar. Then his political opponents back home would rather enthusiastically seize “the golden opportunity” of having finally found the ultimate “proof” that Obama is in fact a “crypto-follower of Osama bin Laden.” After all, Obama’s last name and Osama’s first have 80% similarity!!!

Well, anything could work in a country that can be so easily mesmerized by spin doctors and misled to the abyss by organized mendacity. Yes, it is the spin doctors, the professional liars, that Obama is worried about, I would say much more than he is about Jewish voters. This is why he probably doesn’t want to give them any chances, even at the expense of whatever moral credentials he might have. I know that the hardcore Jewish leadership in America doesn’t really like or trust Obama, mainly because in the tone of his voice they detect a propensity to refuse total submission to Jewish power. This is the reason that their support of the black candidate is shrouded with more than a thin façade of hypocrisy and disingenuousness.

But why would the “omnipotent lobby” not unmask its doubts and lack of certitude about Obama and switch support to Senator McCain, who is with Israel, heart and soul? Well, because they are worried that in case Obama won the race, they lobby would probably fall out of favor with the next master of the White House. And that would be very bad for Israel. Hence, their uttered slogan is “we must not allow this Negro to outsmart or outmaneuver us.”

Surely, American Zionism and its powerful lobby, which effectively controls American politics and policies, is fond of Obama’s tongue. But they are not so sure about Obama’s mind and heart. So, far Obama has done a remarkable job hiding whatever discrepancy there might be between his tongue and his conscience. This is what irks Israel’s firsters most.

Well, let us hope that Obama will be the next President of the United States. At least if he can’t stand up to Israel , whose former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rumored to have said “We, the Jews, control America and the Americans know it,” he, at the very least, would be the lesser of the two evils, since a McCain’s presidency would mean another four years of George W. Bush’s policies.