Men use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

— Voltaire, Dialogue XIV, Le Chapon et la Poularde

Voltaire’s wit often illuminates truth. Consider this revealing “thought” as expressed recently in Alert, the voice of AIPAC, to its membership:

Some Americans believe if the Israelis strike Iran, the U.S. will pay the political costs anyway, so it would be better for the Americans to do the job and do it properly. Their clock is a bit different from the one the Israelis hear. Because of their vastly superior firepower, the Americans could strike Iran later, more devastatingly and more sustainably.

How just is it for AIPAC’s mouthpiece to declare that America should “devastate” Iran because it has “vastly more firepower” than Israel and could “do a better job” and “do it properly,” as though this were a clean-up “job” of a waste dump and not an illegal invasion of a member country of the United Nations that has done nothing under international law to threaten the U.S. much less attack it, while the Israeli government and its IDF look on happily content that it is American boys and girls suffering the consequences of the unwarranted attacks and not Jewish boys and girls? Has it come to this, that unnamed Israeli spokespeople, voicing AIPAC’s policies, determine what nation the U.S. should invade without consultation with the representatives of the American people?

Not that this sentiment has not been expressed before. Netanyahu told Piers Morgan the same thing in an interview last year, as I have quoted in previous articles, noting Israel’s Zionist government’s desire to use America’s military as their own claiming that what is good for Israel is good for America. That protestation completes the wit contained in Voltaire’s quote: because Israel is America’s only friend in the mid-east, and the only Democracy, and the only nation in that part of the world aligned with the west, it alone deserves America’s “unquestionable” and “unbreakable” support.

Speech that conceals fails to mention that being Israel’s “only friend” has made the U.S. a pariah among nations in the world and made its touted “Democratic freedoms” a laughing stock as the other nations in the UN watch America “support” the Zionists’ agenda to attack Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza, abort international law as it, like Israel, commits extrajudicial executions in foreign states, equips Israel when it invades its neighbors to the north and attacks peace activists aboard vessels from peaceful nations including Turkey, and, ironically sits silently by as Israel dismantles what little of a democracy existed in that nation by creating new laws that deny full citizenship to anyone not a Jew. Thus have we become a nation supportive of a militaristic Theocracy while we continue to mouth the principle of separation of church and state, a principle founded on tolerance, concealing the truth that there are more than 20 great religions with well over a billion people who accept no religion (Adherents.com) all of whom deserve recognition and, as necessary, support from America.

Clearly Israel’s needs are not America’s needs if we mean by that more war in the mid-east. Have we pulled our troops from Iraq just to move them into Iran? Does any sensible person believe that the Iranians have a “need” or desire to attack the people of the United States? Our forces completely surround Iran. We are the nation with atomic weaponry, not Iran. What possible good would Iran achieve by having a nuclear weapon? Hasn’t Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement while Israel, who damns Iran for its nuclear “ambitions,” has an arsenal of nuclear bombs and has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. Which of these nations is to be feared? Iran has never attacked a neighbor; Israel attacks and occupies its neighbors at will.

Have the Iranians reason to fear control of the U.S. military by Israeli operatives using this nation as its power because Israel wants to devastate Iran the way Iraq has been devastated? Yes. Israel’s ultimate goal is control of the mid-east by surgically cutting it into small indefensible sections that can be dominated by Israeli money and American forces. It would appear, however, that Israel fears America does not desire to follow Israel’s advice to “take out” Iran the way they convinced the Bush administration to “take out” Saddam Hussein. Hence the constant barrage that characterizes Iran as a warlike state set on wiping Israel off the map and becoming the dominant power in the mid-east.

It’s time, I believe, for the U.S. and the UN to consider how to avoid yet more devastation in the mid-east, not by expanding military operations there but by seeking peace through negotiations and cooperative support for the people of the mid-east. Both Israel and the United States must confront the reality on the ground today that they no longer have control over the people of the mid-east, and recognize the colonial drives that Zionism had designed for Israel are no longer tenable.

While Israeli control of America in the form of Las Vegas billionaires buying the presidency continues in the United States, and Republican candidates crawl to the altar of Mammon to remove Obama, who has already sold his soul to the forces of Evil, the people of the world look on in disbelief, having witnessed for over sixty years the dominance of Zionist deceit, treachery, and manipulation of America as it savaged the mid-east in the name of friendship, democracy and shared values. But now, they have moved to take control of their own lives as they watch Israel corrode from within as it metamorphoses into a tribalistic, superstitious people further isolating themselves from the community of nations.

Can they not see that the people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and, arguably, in Yemen and Saudi Arabia have had enough of dictators imposed by the U.S. and Israel to control their governments?  Can they not see that Turkey broke with the Zionist forces that demanded compliance with their rule regardless of international law and due respect for neighboring nations? Are they blind to the Jordanian efforts to take seriously their role as a Palestinian neighbor? Do they not see that the people of Egypt have made possible the opening of Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza, that the people of the world have given notice that they will not cease to break that siege with boats entering Gaza through international waters; that the Iraqi people have made clear they will not cave in to America’s continued control of their country by proxy power; that the peoples of Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia have openly condemned Israel’s injustices to the Palestinian people regardless of their governments paid presidents and prime ministers that claim otherwise?

Have they stood by blind to the French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee issuing its recent report condemning Israel’s apartheid practices against Palestinians in the West Bank, blind to Secretary Ban’s clear call to Israel that it must withdraw from the occupied territories, blind to the European Union as it issued its recent report critical of the Israeli government’s on-going occupation and settlement of Palestinian land? Blind as Russia, China, Iran and numerous other mid-east nations put into practice what they have agreed upon by resorting to  currencies other than the dollar to be the international means of finance; unable to see that once the people of the world have had an opportunity to view the critically acclaimed, dramatically powerful, passionately presented film, The Promise, by director Peter Kosminsky of the United Kingdom, where the inhumane policies of the Zionist criminals erupts in all its unguarded ferocity, the veil of respectability will be removed from Israelis’ atrocities for all?  And blind, totally blind, to the United Nations as it acts upon a resolution to recognize the rights of the Palestinian people to a state of their own? Must they not see, both Israel and its people, as well as all Americans, that they must accept the reality that no single nation can force its will on all other nations with impunity? That time is over.

Clearly Israel’s militaristic approach to neighborliness does not work. Israel fears “delegitimization”.  It fears boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and it fears total isolation from the world’s communities. Should the U.S. become financially incapacitated through the devaluing of its currency, should it not be able to create adequate jobs for its citizens, should its investment in Israel – estimated at $8.2 million per day for a population that is approximately 7 million – impair its stability, should the people of America awaken to the control AIPAC has over their President and representatives and the total disregard of America’s security as a result, then Israel could lose both the American veto that has protected it from world condemnation of its policies and America’s military support for its aggressiveness against its neighbors. That would leave Israel isolated, wrapped in fear, and psychologically unstable. Israel’s alternative can only be constant instability, never ending terror and war, hatred by their neighbors, innate, simmering self-hate, and mental anguish resulting from exclusionism that leaves open wounds of distrust and self-questioning, a state terribly close to insanity.

Is it not time for Israel to seek peace with its neighbors? Since no sensible person in the mid-east believes that the U.S. can act credibly as a broker for peace, Israel must seek other partners from the UN who can serve that purpose. It must be willing to accept as a premise for peace, justice as defined by the UN’s International Courts and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It must understand that the occupied territories must be returned to their native inhabitants, that the Partition Plan of November 1947 must be a basis for negotiations if only to provide a foundation for equitable land for both peoples. Modification of land distribution could follow as well as a means of providing for the rights of those displaced in the Nakba. The world peace body could serve to protect both peoples as generations come and go until a free movement of all is possible. Then perhaps we could say, men use thoughts to find justice and speech to communicate it.

Hell is where many false commitments must be unlearned.

— Ricardo J. Quinones, Dante Alighieri

Richard Goldstone’s journey from Justice to Sinner represents the spiritual act of dying in the Zionist world. By recanting his own report he has attempted to break the bonds that cast him into the sufferings in Caina, Antenora, and Judecca where, in Dante’s Inferno, those treacherous to their own, are removed from the light and warmth of their kin, their country, and their masters and suffer eternal damnation in the remorseless dead center of the ice in the most bottomless circle of Hell. Fortunately, Goldstone like Dante can learn that he has, in his journey, aligned himself with many false gods and many false attachments ignoring on the way the elementary truths that bind humankind ineluctably in one race in a bond of human grace.

The Zionist world needs no Hell since it heeds no conscience. It exists on one foundation, a solid block of ice that freezes the soul of all who bear allegiance to its creed of absolute obedience, an ancient form of tribal slavery bound by fear that shackles the soul, by isolation that instills despair, by humiliation that corrodes self, and by victimhood that bonds the tribe in self-perpetuating agony. It is in this sense Medieval, a remnant of the inquisitorial mind that harbored no dissent, gave no credence to personal freedom, and obligated all to one monolithic understanding of commitment to the powers that control.

Goldstone, nearing the end of his life’s journey, vested in the mantle of Jewishness with all the warmth of family and community, surrounded by companions from adolescence to manhood, imbued with curiosity and fervor for the history of his people, and sustained over the years by his commitment to justice for his people found himself confronted by a state that would not cooperate in the pursuit of that justice when he and his commission found it to be wanting.

Thus did the Goldstone Report, executed on behalf of all nations united in pursuit of truth, become the lodestone that attracted the attention of the world and brought condemnation to the state of Israel. In retaliation for such an act, he suffered the consequences of those who act treacherously to their masters, the Zionist powers that used time-tested punishments of those who find fault with the tribe: damnation, isolation, coercion, rejection, humiliation, and expulsion from his own. Thus did the false gods expose themselves, forcing Richard Goldstone to retract his own words in a blind attempt to seek solace in the tribe that condemned him. But these false gods are “dead people” in Dante’s Inferno, they have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites for land and power through the use of violence, perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice.

Had Goldstone paid heed to his history, he would have realized that his retraction would illicit exactly this behavior. Forgiveness does not exist in the tribal culture; it is a sign of weakness. If history had recorded the truth of the Jewish war against Britain during the Mandate period, the means by which they operated in coordinated violence and terrorism against the very nation that made possible the existence of a Jewish homeland, would be known.

The existence of the Jewish Agency, formed initially in coordination with the British authorities, metamorphosed into a clandestine Jewish government that used that acceptance by the British to aid Jewish immigrants coming to Palestine, as a means of violating the civil rights of the very Jews they were purportedly aiding. The reality of this period, from 1939 to 1948 demonstrates conclusively that the Zionist rulers of the Jewish Agency, most especially the Consultancy as labeled by Dr. Ilan Pappe, declared a war against the Mandate Police and British forces operating in Palestine while they controlled the entering Jews with mandated taxes through a calculated process of extortion, coercion, and fear.

In Top Secret documents collected by the British Mandate Police, specifically Head Deputy of the Criminal Investigation Division Richard C. Catling, filed in the archives of the Rhodes House library in Oxford, in Appendices used as evidence for a 48 page report on six areas of violations against the Mandate Authority, are details of an Emergency Fund under the control of the Consultancy that stipulates procedures for forced collection of illegal taxes from Jews providing specific actions to be taken against those who do not pay.

Under item 4.a, page 3,

Measures of pressure against the stubborn are executed under the direct supervision of the Central Office in conjunction with the Department of collection or by the management of the local committee. No incidental pressure or assault or causing excitement to the person refusing before he is warned and declared as stubborn.

A.b. In the second instance, it will be referred to the party or the organization, institute, economical society, manager of the synagogue, or friends of the person concerned so that they can influence him to pay.

A.c. In cases where all these measures prove ineffective a decision is passed against the person to inflict on him the following measures. (1) To publish his name and the fact of his refusal and post it in the corridor of the house where he lives. (2) These facts are also circulated amongst his comrades in the party to which he belongs. (3) A demand is made to the party, organization or synagogue etc. to discharge him from membership. (4) Circulation of his name is made in a special notice to be posted in the zone where he lives. (5) Circulation of his name in the press. (6) A request is made to his party and clients to influence him. (7) A demand to the Rabbinate to inflict on him a boycott in case he belongs to the Orthodox Society. (8) To post a permanent picket of protest to accompany him on roads, to stand at the door of his house, office, shop etc., until he fulfills his obligations

And indeed, the names are posted: “The following are the wealthy people of Tel Aviv who have not responded to the appeal of the Emergency Fund…Morris Gredinger, David Ilgovsky, Hillel Turkeldove, etc. etc….”(about 25 additional names followed by an amendment with more.)

The Tel Aviv Municipal Council makes the following declaration: “The Municipal Council denounces their behavior and has decided to adopt all means of public pressure at its disposal in order to force those who would evade payment to carry out their civic and national duties.” Other documents in Catling’s file, all seized from the Jewish Agency and its affiliated organizations, testify to individuals who challenged the Emergency tax and also described some “disappearances” of individuals that could have resulted from a refusal to pay.

It would appear that no Jew arrived in Palestine without having to commit himself/herself to the Zionist enterprise. Personal freedom appears to be non-existent. Those who arrived and had not yet reached the age of 18 would upon reaching that age be required to enter the Jewish military forces known then as gangs but which were in reality well trained troops. If they entered the Hagana forces they had to take the Hagana Oath which committed them for life to the wishes of the High Command even unto death. Commitment, obedience, total acquiescence to the Zionist Consultancy and its beliefs ruled in Mandate Palestine.

Today we may not expect that kind of coercion over individuals to be a practice in a purported Democracy. Yet with the passage of recent McCarthy-like oaths that force commitment by citizens to the democratic and Jewish State, where total allegiance is required not only of Jews but of Israeli Arabs, Israel has virtually branded itself a racist, apartheid state. Even more alarming is the Lieberman designed act that declares remembrance of the Nakba to be illegal and punishable by fine or imprisonment. This is nothing short of a totalitarian imposed attempt to rob Israeli Palestinians of their memory of the catastrophe that left them aliens in their own land.

Gilad Atzmon, perhaps the most incisive intellect investigating the Zionist mind today, offered these observations recently about the treatment Goldstone has endured from Zionist intolerance to anti-Zionism:

…for some time now, we have witnessed Goldstone being subjected to relentless measures of exclusion and abuse from his Zionist brethren. As a matter of fact, intolerance towards critical voices is inherent within Jewish culture, identity, and politics, for Zionism is clearly a demand for ideological collectivism.

But interestingly enough, Jewish anti Zionism is also no different in its modus operandi : all too often we come across a Jewish ‘progressive’ poisonous smear campaign against one ‘Jewish self-hater’ or another.

As tragic as it may sound, Jewish identity politics is an exercise in some different variations of collective hatred; hatred towards the Goyim, but also towards Jewish dissidence.

The Goldstone saga is then, an opportunity to peep into contemporary Jewish political intolerance, and Goldstone emerges as a tragic figure: he sacrificed his professional name for the sake of just a little Jewish empathy. (On Jewish Intolerance)

What more can be said? Richard Goldstone stands as a tragic figure, a man that stood against forces he could not defeat, aware of the righteousness of his acts as an observant Judge, resilient in his desire to act in total truthfulness, a figure due great respect given his heritage, a man of unquestioned faith in the potential of law to serve the greater good, yet a victim of his own nature that was nurtured by his Jewishness which always taught equity to all, compassion for all, justice for all only to find that Zionism had destroyed that heritage and those principles and had the power to turn his own against him.

He now wanders the stage a defeated man in the streets of Jerusalem where all turn from him regardless of his vain attempt to reconcile with his past. But his past is not the Zionists’ past; they have corrupted true Judaism. His future lies with those who seek truth, in the very garden that he so fruitfully watered with his report; it is the lesson of his journey through Hell, false gods have tried to kill his soul and, truth be told, he must abandon them. Those who know him well will come to him. He is like the protagonist of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, John Proctor, but Richard Goldstone is his name, it is his identity in this life and forevermore; it alone will testify to the truth of his actions, not the veiled curse of those who would destroy his being and erase Richard Goldstone from memory.

For fifteen days and counting, the people of the world have been watching in wonder and witnessing in fascination the Egyptian people flow through the streets of Cairo. As they streamed in and out of Tahrir Square we sensed the ebb and flow of the Egyptian people pulsing before us – vibrant, brilliant, eloquent – a symbolic force echoing the dreams and desires of humanity around the world. From our vantage points, witnessing this rare and powerful movement of human will on television screens in every land, we interpret the events to give meaning and purpose to their bravery, their commitment, their endurance, in the face of absolute force that has imprisoned them for thirty years in their own land.

And in our guts we feel the rising tide of impotence that has lifted our numb bodies in the ebb and flow of a silent sea of acquiescence and obeisance to the absolute forces that control our lives. Helplessness and shame swell in our hearts as we realize the frustrations, the torment and suffering these people have lived while the world watched and waited and did nothing, decade upon decade. There are lessons to be learned from the streets of Cairo.

But let us reflect for a few minutes on this rare scene of human will embodied in millions of Egyptians swarming through the streets of Cairo with banners held high, scribbled signs raised aloft flapping in the wind, children grasping their mother’s hand, arms lifted in jubilation, faces wet with tears of happiness, laughter ringing in the air, arms around each other in joyful celebration, horns blaring, flags of black, white and red spread parallel to the ground caught in the breeze as they furl in undulating waves among the crowds, an audible hum hovering over the huge gathering that breathes as one in motion to and fro, a living vibrant organism of humanity.

Beneath that ever moving, pulsating, audible scene, the image that captures hundreds of thousands of individuals, the observable reality in all its unique “accidents” of faces, colours, garments, noise, movements, objects, resides another reality, deeper than the observable, the universal truths that lie hidden beneath the accidental appearances: a human’s destiny and individual actions as well as understanding of self or anything at all are, by virtue of human nature, beyond an individual’s control and beyond comprehension. This is both the marvel and the evil of human existence. Yet here in this scene, in February of 2011, the Egyptians exemplify the dreams and desires and hopes of all free people who unite in oneness with them to throw off the limitations that those who thrive on indifference, on anger, on hate, on racism, on arrogance impose on them by force of will through occupation, subjugation and oppression. There are lessons to be learned from the streets of Cairo.

None of us viewing that scene can know what resides in the hearts and minds of those who braved the forces that have controlled their destiny for over thirty years, nor can we know what will follow. We know from experience that some desire to take control and impose their will on others. In our world that can be a dictator or an apparent democracy; in both cases it is those who control money that ultimately control all, corporations or individuals with the means to assert their will. A hundred years ago Mark Twain decried Teddy Roosevelt’s empirical designs by praising the brutal slaughter of the Moros in the Philippines by our military because it represented the ascendency of human immorality against fellow humans.

Today American empiricism accomplishes the same end across the globe by buying “peace” agreements with Mubarak that stifle the rights of his people, bury alive more than five million who live in the squalor of garbage and cockroaches in the Cities of the Dead in Cairo, force half the population to live on less than $2 a day, while they imprison Palestinians behind walls and lay military siege to Gaza.

Mubarak became president (after Pres. Anwar Sadat’s assassination) in October 1981, two years after Egypt signed its peace with Israel. Under Mubarak, Egypt always adhered closely to the treaty’s terms. But the services it performed for Israel and the United States went much further than that. Indeed, Mubarak’s Egypt became both a shield and a spear for Israeli interests in the region, and globally. It shielded Israel politically from demands that Israel abide by international law in East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied territories. And it worked closely with Israel to combat Hamas and Israel’s many other challengers.¹

There are lessons to be learned. But this sentence is too broad; it does not touch the soul, the hidden truth lies beneath it. Like their Egyptian brothers and sisters, the Palestinians suffer behind walls, gates and checkpoints. Can we “truly comprehend what it is that makes an old man from a West Bank village face the brutality of Jewish settlers, year after year, as he returns to harvest his few remaining olive trees? Or a Palestinian woman from Gaza who keeps coming back to hold a vigil before the Red Cross office with a framed photo of her once-young son, now ailing in some Israeli jail?”²

This is suffering caused by our closest friend in the mid-east, the only democracy in the mid-east, the country the world should turn to if it is to distinguish between civilized humanity and that exposed by the people in the streets of Cairo. How fast the good friend Mubarak becomes a despot when the fear of change looms on the horizon. This our tax dollars pay for; this we call democracy.

Americans more than most must respond to this scene since their government has been responsible for “three decades of failed economic policies, massive poverty, continued repression of religious rights and near zero tolerance for political dissent.”³ Strange this quote comes from the Jewish Times, when it is Israel’s very existence that has embedded America in Egyptian politics. Our support for Israel glows in the darkness of mid-east inhumanity caused by dictatorial powers, military occupation, and apartheid.

One would think that the scenes in Cairo would lead both Israel and the United States to recognize that their approach these past 63 years by force of arms has wrought only destruction, humiliation and death to the vast majority of the people of Egypt and Palestine, indeed to the whole of the mid-east. One would think, that the lessons to be learned, graphically demonstrate that a mutual respect for all people, not just the inner circle of the powerful in Egypt or the Jews only in Palestine, require an equitable distribution of wealth to all, comprehensive employment for all, health for all, education for all, freedom of movement for all, and equitable housing for all if a civilized society is to exist for all.

If the streets of Cairo teach us anything, they teach us that those who horde for themselves isolate themselves from human sympathy; those that torture their fellow humans declare to the world that they are inhuman and deserve only ostracism; those with excessive pride fall from grace crushing their ego in the process; those that manipulate for personal gain causing undue suffering to their fellows are but tools of carnage lacking both heart and soul; and those that remain silent in the face of such inhumanity against others belong in the lowest circle of hell, frozen forever for all to see.

February 11, in all its symbolic splendour of togetherness, love and freedom, bears witness to our dreams and our hopes that humans can find happiness in accepting the brotherhood of all humankind. But that dream confronts a reality, an absolute of our experience, that a man will act to destroy another man, or lie to deceive him, or slander to discredit him, or turn from him in fear or turn love to hate on the presumption that he knows the truth concerning another man. Such behaviour is the righteous indignation of men, confirmed in illusion believed to be truth, and it corrodes the humanity that should guide all men. If the streets of Cairo have taught us anything, they have demonstrated that vigilance against those who would control out of arrogance, oppress with indifference, deceive with impunity, and humiliate without feeling, have abandoned all natural sympathies and become , in fact, non-human and must be exposed for all to see. Such vigilance unfortunately can never end.

1. Reassessing U.S. aid in light of Egypt, The Congress Blog, Helena Cobban, 02/02/11.
2. Ramzy Baroud, “Insisting on their humanity.”
3. “Can peace with Israel survive Egypt’s revolution?” Jewish Times, Neil Rubin.

I doubt that you have read these works or listened to any of the voices that write for Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Antiwar, Media with a Conscience, the Pacific Free Press, the Palestine Chronicle, Intifada Palestine or all the other Internet publications that speak on behalf of the Palestinian people. If you truly want to solicit ideas that differ from those published in the main stream corporate controlled media, then this is where you should look.

I realize you have been seeking suggestions from Dennis Ross and Condoleezza Rice, indeed all the politicos that have hung around D.C. for the past four decades, the ones who have failed to bring peace to the mid-east because they have “unbridled loyalty to Israel.”

Quite frankly Mr. Berger and Mr. Hadley, all of Clinton’s and Bush’s former employees should recluse themselves. And let’s be totally honest, any ideas that do not begin with justice, international justice, not Israeli justice or the justice promoted by the United States, will end once again in failure.

In March of 2006, shortly after the ascendancy of Hamas to power in Palestine, I was asked to give a paper at the 4th International Conference against the Occupations in Cairo. My proposal at that time suggested that both Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas leadership propose peace plans to the world that would engage the UN as principle broker for peace. Within two months Abbas had called for a Conference on Peace to be held in Oslo and Hamas representatives noted that the Saudi Prince’s Peace Plan proposed in 2002 could be a viable proposal. Neither Israel nor the U.S. responded to these initiatives. They were sent to the waste basket of lost opportunities. Now this administration seeks new ideas even as a more intransigently supportive Israeli Congress moves to Washington. There is one answer: remove the U.S. from the position as “peace broker,” it cannot be bound by “unbreakable acceptance of Israel” and be credible much less effective. History demonstrates this.

In July of this year, I wrote an article that presented this alternative and suggested that the issue of peace in the mid-east be given back to the UN. The Israeli government and our own will rant and rave at this traitorous act by the U.S., but the world community will rejoice; I speak here of the citizen of the world communities not the governments. The article was titled “Terrorists United against Peace: Illusion versus Reality.” I believe the proposal offered in this article bears repeating. This is a section from that article.

Because the US has veto power in the Security Council it can and it does negate any actions taken by the member states against Israel or the US. This is a structural problem inherent in the powers vested in five nations that have permanent status on the Security Council. Procedurally, there is little the majority of nations can do to prevent the US protection of the Israeli state. Since the UNGA has acted in over 160 resolutions to condemn Israeli actions, attempting to bring it in line with the UN charter and declarations, and since the UNSC has acted approximately 30 times to force some compliance, it’s obvious that the world communities have found the state of Israel to be wanting in its adherence to UN policies and agreements. Therefore one might conclude that the UN has attempted to hold Israel to the same standards as other member states, but has been thwarted by the US veto power to enforce its policies and compliance.

For virtually all of the past six decades, Israel and the US have acted as one against the wishes of the UN membership as those actions relate to Palestine and more recently to Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Today, Israel wants Iran’s ‘nuclear ambitions’ curbed, ambitions it has determined exist despite IAEA investigations to the contrary or the reality that Iran has signed the non-proliferation treaty and Israel has not. But what Israel wants, the US will provide according to Lieberman (Senator Joseph Lieberman, “U.S. Prepared to Strike Iran,” July 7, 2010) including pre-emptive strikes against a legitimate member of the UN that has done nothing aggressive against either the US or Israel. Israel on the other hand, during these same 60 years, has attacked Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and continues to occupy portions of Lebanon, Syria and virtually all of Palestine. Curiously enough, during all this time, the United States has shamefacedly portrayed itself as the broker for peace in the mid-east. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US Congress and the Israeli Knesset are Siamese twins bound together by an umbilical cord of dependency through interlocking arteries of corporate and military budget lines that keep the complex alive while force feeding our representatives with blood money.

All of which brings us to this simple conclusion: Israel and the United States, the two terrorist states against peace in the mid-east, must be aborted from the decision process that determines peace in the mid-east. Consider the reality and not the illusion. Look through the eyes of the real victims not through the fractured lenses of the controlled media that fails to cover any perception but that offered by our Congress or the Israeli dominated international news. The mantra beats on — Israel has a right to defend itself and, therefore, must provide protective borders around the state of Israel. Hence it has a right to invade Lebanon to its north to ensure that no rocket, missile or person (terrorist) can enter Israel; it must blockade the sea on the west to ensure that nothing enters Israel (weapons or terrorist) from international waters; it must confiscate an eastern border from north to south to ensure that no weapons or terrorists enter Israel from Jordan despite having agreements with Jordan as a peaceful neighbour; and it must have a protective border with Egypt in the south despite having a like peaceful relationship with that nation.

Logic would suggest that Israel’s need for protection and, therefore, its need for these aggressive measures that results in stealing land from others, breaking international laws, and creating hostility throughout the region would apply to each of its neighbours. After all, it is Israel that has weapons of mass destruction, though it does not reveal that reality transparently, has invaded its neighbours frequently over the years, and continues to occupy and oppress the peoples of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. Consider what would happen should Iran or Syria or Jordan or Egypt move to strengthen their respective borders by applying the same tactics as Israel. Lebanon would invade northern Israel, Egypt would not cooperate with Israel in the south, Jordan would take Israel to the international court to object to its illegal acquisition of the richest agricultural land in Palestine given by Jordan to the Palestinians, and Syria would move to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions demanding that it return the Golan Heights.

Consider further the umbilical cord that ties the US to Israel and the 60 years of non-peace that has existed as each successive President and new Congress acts to bring a viable peace to the mid-east. It has not happened. Why not? Read Dr. Jeff Halper’s enlightening chapter, “The Problem with Israel,” in The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction, recently published by Macmillan. There the whole sordid history of intentional delays and deceits is laid bare for the world to see. The US does what Israel wants, as Lieberman so eloquently testifies. Unending war is good for the economy, at least for the elite that control it. The suffering of those destroyed by their wars is of no concern to them.

One need only consider the expansion of the American military throughout the nations in the mid-east and its placement of airbases and military installations that give it dominance throughout the region. Iran is literally surrounded by weapons of mass destruction, US weapons of mass destruction, that coupled as they are with the desires of Israel to expand its borders to “greater Israel,” far beyond the boundaries provided by UN resolution 181 in November 1947, boundaries provided by an ancient g-d that served as real estate agent to Abraham, and the threat to Iran and all other mid-east nations glows like white phosphorous and is just as dangerous and life threatening. It is the US and Israel that are the terrorists acting out of concert with their neighbours and wreaking havoc on the world.

So what’s to be done? Precedent suggests a possibility; justice demands it! In November of 1947 the UNGA passed Resolution 181 partitioning Mandate Palestine into two parts, one for an Israeli state and one for the Palestinians. Despite the procedural reality of the UN this resolution was acted upon without having been acted upon in the policy sector of the UN, the Security Council. This would suggest that the UNGA has the implied power to act without concurrent UNSC action and have its resolution approved by member states subsequently. Since Israel was the benefactor of this process, it could hardly object today if the UNGA were to pass a resolution that would establish a recommending body of members, exclusive of the US and Israel, to bring forth a resolution that would effectively force a just solution to the illegally dismantled partition plan passed in 1947. Once such a group is formed, the UN could place a peace keeping body in Palestine along the green line to maintain order and provide security for both the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Should such a body give priority to the resolutions passed by its members since 1948, it would recognize that Israel would have to collapse its territorial acquisitions by approximately 31% from its current illegal possession of 86% of the original Mandate land offered to them by resolution 181. This would then provide a viable contiguous Palestinian state. Alternatively, Israel could and the Palestinians could decide to live together in one state with equal citizenship for all. Should the majority of UNGA member states approve the resolution offered by their committee, a solution to the crisis might be in the offing. On the other hand, should the Israeli government reject this offer, it would find itself isolated from the world community and subject to whatever sanctions might be imposed by the UN.

Understandably, not all the resolutions since 1948 have been favourable to the Palestinians. They, too, would be subject to the decisions made by the new committee deciding the fate of the Israeli/Palestinian crisis. In simple terms, the UN would have effectively removed the peace process from the two states that are, as they state themselves, one and “unbreakable” in their desires and intents and consequently uniquely unqualified to be the arbiters of the fate of the Palestinians or of other states in the mid-east. To accomplish this end, the people of the world must view the reality of the mid-east through the eyes of those suffering the destructive power inflicted on them by the United States and Israel.

Every principle on which the United States rests from the Declaration of Independence to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution cries out against the actions of the United States and Israel as they inflict a merciless set of attacks, invasions and wars on the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, and now, Turkey and Iran. That statement recognizes the power of the Israeli lobbies on behalf of its client state, Israel, as it is more than complicit in the enforced dominance of the US in the world. No one can witness the enormous control asserted by Israel over the US Congress where almost 400 representatives and 100 senators vote in unison to support Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, its invasion of Gaza and its murder of Turkish citizens without recognizing their control. The people of America are no longer in control of their government; it has become a client state of a foreign power.

It is time for America to demand that its government respect equality of life, not destroy it wantonly through mercenaries and drones, reject wars of deception perpetrated by purported friends of the nation by seeking reconciliation with those we’ve destroyed, and, finally, withdraw support from the rogue nation of Israel that has severed America from the community of nations making it vulnerable to those who would use America for their own ends, and become once again a nation of the people and for the people not a nation of elites who use the people by inducing fear and phobia to control.

Virtually all members of the UN understand this reality as the above news items testify. As it becomes more and more clear that Israel and its compliant US Congress care nothing for the rights of other nations as their promotion of aggressive action against Iran proclaims, a virtual mirror process that brought about the war against Iraq, the world communities must face the reality that the US cannot control Israel nor its own policies. Therefore, the UN must assert its responsibility for all its member states and resolve a conflict that has plagued the world for the past 60 years. It’s time illusion gives way to reality.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.

—Edward R. Murrow

The State of Israel has just passed a “loyalty oath” required of all prospective citizens living in Israel illegally to swear allegiance to a “Jewish democratic state.” Concurrently, “an academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.¹

It would appear that Israel is in need of a lesson on the virtues of democracy as they are anathema to tyrannical rule. Harry S. Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 with this observation: “In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have.” To impose a “loyalty oath” and to criminalize professors who support actions against the government of Israel is to force compliance in thought and act, behavior more of a tyrannical state than a democratic one.

Consider that the Israeli Shin Bet recently interrogated the conscientious objector, Yonatan Shapira, a former Israeli Air Force pilot, who penned the “pilot’s letter” of 2003, continuing a harassment of a man for his dissenting opinions of the State of Israel. Salem-News on July 11 carried an article about another conscientious objector, Shir Regev, who has been given a third prison term for contending “I believe it is my personal duty to refuse and defect from an army whose main purpose is to serve as an occupation police for maintaining ‘Israeli order’ and imposing it on defenseless Palestinians who are denied citizenship.”

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Murrow writes; nor must we confuse pseudo-democracy with democracy. Israel is not a democratic state; let’s be clear about that. Its citizenship exists solely for those who are members of a religion with one exception, those Palestinians who remained in Israeli controlled land areas after the cessation of hostilities in 1948 and the Declaration of the State of Israel by the Jewish Agency. These Arab Israelis as they are called, to obfuscate the reality of their Palestinian heritage, do not have equality before the law nor do they have access to all the benefits of their fellow citizens who are members of the Judaic faith; they have a passport and a country and even that can be denied if they ride in a Turkish Aid boat to visit their brothers and sisters in Gaza. For all those indigenous to the area of Palestine, accepted as a group by the United Nations and its members, the Palestinians, who live in land occupied by Israel and claimed by Israel, there is no citizenship, thus no equality in concept or in fact. Israel has no constitution; it operates under civic and religious law, especially in matters pertaining to marriage, retaining thereby control of the citizenry, and in land ownership which is essentially available only to Jews. This alone negates the concept of democracy as applicable to the Israeli State. If Israel is anything distinct as a country, it is in its theocratic nature not its democratic nature.

As Israel moves ever closer to a siege mentality by blowing wind on the coals of victimhood, the explosive vapors of Hamas’ determination to drive Israelis into the sea aided and abetted by surrounding Arab neighbors intent on destroying the Jewish State, it desperately grasps for means to control its citizens and force compliance with its policies, hence the “loyalty oath” characterized as early as 1663 by Samuel Butler in Hudibras as “Oaths are but words, and words but wind.” This is the act of a despot desperate to protect self at the expense of his subjects; it is the act of a failed State that resorts to the impossible, to impose the logic of its acts regardless of sense on all its subjects; it is the despair reflected in Macbeth, “Who can be wise, amazed, temperate, and furious, loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.” No mind perceives the same as another, no heart responds the same, no soul accepts being the same; that fact is the power behind democracy, the uniqueness of each requiring of each respect for all others. Democracy is a concept united in its applicability to provide equity for all its citizens. Loyalty to injustice negates democracy; fidelity to one faith without tolerance for all faiths destroys equality for those excluded; truth determined by the despot or the tyrannical government cannot be truth for all; honor demanded of a citizen against his or her innate principles of belief dishonors that citizen; trustworthiness and faithfulness imposed by an oath undermines the conscience of the citizen forcing compliance regardless of the behavior required. A citizen who swears to an oath of absolute allegiance to any authority has destroyed self by that act and thereby has become but chattel, a beast serving the will of another. So much for the Israeli “loyalty oath.”

America has been there, indeed I have been there. Years ago I took a menial position in the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and witnessed first hand the betrayal of democracy by a demagogue and his followers who set fear before the American citizenry by losing faith in the American people. Year after year this pall of fear lay on the American landscape as citizen turned against fellow citizen, neighbors rose in anger and resentment against artists, entertainers, professors, educators, union members, and even the military as McCarthy lashed his venom at all who opposed his witch hunt or refused to comply with his belief that Communists had infiltrated American society. He did not understand that dissent is not disloyalty; he knew nothing of tolerance of another’s belief; he failed to comprehend that equity necessitates respect and democracy means equity. Margaret Chase Smith spoke before the Senate of the United States in 1950 in a speech titled “Declaration of Conscience,” and noted “some of the basic principles of Americanism: the right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought.” These are the rights Israel would deny to Yonatan Shapira and Shir Regev and the university professors as well as to prospective citizens.

What has brought Israel to this sick state of affairs? Based on the research I have done through the seized documents taken by Richard Catling (Sir Richard C. Catling) when he was Deputy Head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Mandate Police in the 1940s, in files he saved and marked as Top Secret, it is evident in the words of the leaders of the Jewish Agency, the Zionist leaders of the Consultancy as Ilan Pappe notes, that they intended to impose an atmosphere of fear on the new immigrants to unite them in their (the High Command of the Consultancy) intent to cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people necessitating protecting themselves against the Arabs who were out to destroy the Jewish state. That intent exists to this day. Add to this reality the need to grow the Jewish population to offset Palestinian growth, thus bringing to Israel the fanatical sects of Jews who live by a far right orthodoxy of “chosenness” and animosity against gentiles, especially those from Russia.

This group and others of similar persuasion have grown in strength even to the point where no government can exist without their presence. This has been true since Ariel Sharon held office. Their beliefs control government policy much as AIPAC controls our Congress. They believe that their g-d gave them the land of greater Israel and they have done and will do everything in their power to regain what g-d gave to them centuries ago regardless of historical realities or international law.

Jews of other persuasion, secular and reformed, True Torah Jews, Jews for Peace in Palestine and all others who understand the horrendous crimes being imposed on the Palestinians in their own land by those who have suffered under the brutal Nazi regime, recognize that there festers in the State of Israel a cancer that is spreading beyond its borders, those it has legitimately through the UN partition plan of 1947 and those it has acquired illegally and forcefully, that is destroying the Judaic faith and the principles it has stood for these many centuries. The country is being torn by a minority fanatical group that it cannot control, one that is pushing through legislation that corrodes any semblance of democracy as it pushes to a greater state of theocracy both of imposed behavior and imposed belief.

Creating such a state does nothing to advance democracy in the Middle East, it crushes it. The citizens of such a state become but puppets of those who have garnered power, used by them as wooden soldiers in their youth, as molders of their young tutoring them in the intolerant beliefs of ancient tribal men, and subservient elders that spout the party line in their Knesset. But there is a consequence to such behavior and such imposed control. There is a responsibility they assume when they shackle their people to acts that destroy, maim and kill innocent people as they march their way to their greater Israel; there is the reality that international law uses as precedent, the trial that brought King Charles I to his death, and has been used now for the trials of Pinochet and Milosevic, the “universal right to punish a tyrant who denies democracy and civil and religious liberty to his people.” Charles was brought to trial by John Cooke who penned the words of indictment and his words continue today. That is a reality that Sharon, Olmert, Livni, Barak, and now Netanyahu and Lieberman face as they attempt to justify what is not justifiable and impose what is not legal not only on the people of Israel but on peoples of all nations that seek redress of the outrages the Israeli government has taken against its neighbors, most especially the Palestinians.

One need only mark the power of the peoples’ flotillas into Gaza. This is not the action of the governments of America or England or any single nation, this is a peoples’ action against tyranny; it is the equivalent of America’s Civil Rights Movement that had the people take to the streets, united in purpose and demands, against their government, state and federal, to right the wrong of segregation. It took time and many died in the quest for justice. But over time as more and more people understood that their government was the criminal, they grew in number and force until the government capitulated to their demands and granted justice to the African American and all who had been denied their civil rights.

The flotillas have grown in number over the months. They have made it known to the government of Israel and America, its puppet, that they will not stop until justice is achieved. This fall a flotilla of 50 to 60 boats from many countries will leave for Gaza. Now the Israeli government, its militarized government not its democratic one, will have to stop multitudes of boats with individuals from many countries and many nationalities all saying the same thing. “Freedom now, freedom now, the people of the world demand freedom now.” The people of the world demand that laws be obeyed, just laws, not laws made by the occupier for the oppressed. Accusation is not proof, guilt by association is not evidence, military might is not what is right for the people. Actions taken out of fear are actions removed from reason—fear erodes reason. “Let us not walk in fear, one of another,” as Murrow says, let us honor each other, recognize dignity in each other, respect each other, and thus treat all with equity, fulfilling the very concept of democracy by our actions.

1. Guardian, 11 July 10.

On May 14, 1948 President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency for Palestine announcing the impending proclamation of the independent republic of Israel.¹ That date marks not only the beginning of the State of Israel but, sub missa voce, the assumption by the State of Israel of the calculated, systematic and determined ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of the land of Palestine that had been the business of “The Consultancy” and its agents before May 14, as identified by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his monumental The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.²

The letter notes that the republic has been established within “frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947, and that a provisional government has been charged to assume the rights and duties of government for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel, for defending the state against external aggression, and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law.” The letter was signed by Eliahu Epstein, Agent, Provisional Government of Israel.

The letter is notable not for what it announces, but for what it does not reveal. Truth requires revelation of all the facts, not concealment by omission of that which would prejudice an understanding. During the six months between the adoption of UN Resolution 181 and the date of this letter, and in subsequent months, the prospective state of Israel launched a massive military incursion into territory designated by that same Resolution for the Palestinian people, creating in its wake “three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees,” the destruction of “hundreds of entire villages … not only depopulated but obliterated …and houses blown up or bulldozed.”³ Khalidi’s massive study focuses on 418 villages, once the homes of Palestinians, 292 completely destroyed, 90 others “largely destroyed,” the remainder re-inhabited by Jews called Israeli settlers.

In blunt terms, the Jewish Agency for Palestine lied to the American President that it had established a provisional government that “has been charged to assume the rights and duties … for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel … and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law.”

The Agency’s deception made no reference either to the President or the international community that it had created the “Catastrophe,” or as the Palestinians termed it, the Nakba, the days of infamy that created what has become the largest Diaspora of refugees in the world and a time of remembrance for those killed in a series of massacres, estimated at 24 by Benny Morris, Israel’s preeminent Historian of that period. Indeed, the Agency had acted against international law in invading Palestinian land as designated by the very Resolution that had given them the right to a state of Israel even as it lied without remorse to the international community that it would live in accordance with their laws.

This letter, coupled with an earlier one to the President, dated May 10, 1948, will serve as a microcosm of political deceit characteristic of the Zionist led forces that controlled the nascent state of Israel. This second letter from The Nation Associates, notified the President that

Tomorrow morning the Washington Post will carry, in the form of a full-age (sic) advertisement, the text of an open letter to you requesting the implementation of the November 29 resolution on Palestine…I have been requested to send you the enclosed text of this open letter by the signators …It is our hope that in the week which remains before the end of the British Mandate, action will be taken by you to insure the recognition of the Jewish state as a means of maintaining the prestige of this country, the authority of the United Nations, and peace in the Middle East.⁴

The Nation Associates supported the establishment of the State of Israel and used its publishing arm to further that goal. The “Open Letter” referred to above argued against the moves by “the British and our own State Department” to “sabotage” the partition resolution despite the President’s determined effort to support Israel. Indeed, the Associates went so far as to publish “The British Record on Partition” published in The Nation, America’s Leading Liberal Weekly, on May 8, 1948 detailing their selected reading of “British Military Intelligence Sources.” This document was simultaneously submitted to the Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The Open letter published in the Washington Post amounted to a synopsis of this larger document including its primary argument that “there was no reason why the Jewish state could not be set up (if the Arabs resisted partition) and the Arab area turned over to the Trusteeship Council.” Note that this argument is being made even as the Jewish Agency and its affiliates have driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and villages and massacred untold thousands in the area designated for the Palestinians recommended to be turned over to the Trusteeship Council.

The open letter cited an amendment to the resolution inserted by Truman’s representative, Herschel Johnson, “the Security Council should determine as a threat to peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 29 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution.” Yet no mention is made here of the invasion by the Jewish forces of the towns and villages in the area designated for the Palestinians. Rather, the Associates allege that it is the British Mandate government that has supported the Arab League against Israel since 1945, “under the direction of Foreign Minister Bevin, {who} (has) resisted every American proposal for a decent settlement of the Palestinian question.” “This was true,” the letter continues, “in 1946 when he refused to accept the proposal of the Anglo-American Committee and your own, for the admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jews.” What is left unsaid by the Associates is the British promise to the Arabs in the Balfour Declaration that they would maintain a strict ratio of Jews entering Palestine to the indigenous population, the second of the Balfour Declaration promises never referenced as the companion piece to the establishment of a home for the Jews in Palestine.⁵

So now we see the strategy of the Zionists as they manipulate the President: (a) advance publication of a major document detailing British subterfuge in eroding the possibility of establishing a Jewish state sent to the United Nations, thereby placing blame for the deterioration of conditions in Palestine on the British; (b) a subsequent letter to the President informing him that a public “open letter” will be published in the Washington Post detailing subversion of the Jewish people, placing him in the unenviable position of not aiding the “victims” of this subversion or carrying through with recognition of the Jewish state “as a means of maintaining the prestige of this country”; (c) and, finally, another letter, this from the Jewish Agency for Palestine, on the 14th, seeking his recognition by “welcoming Israel into the community of nations” with no reference to the breaching of international law by the very Agency seeking his support.

Control and manipulation of the events coming out of Palestine has been and continues to be the modus operandi of the Zionist leaders of the state of Israel. The above letters to President Truman offer insight into this manipulation. Moreover, Truman was acting on behalf of the American people in recognizing the State of Israel on the 15th of May 1948. What the American people knew was the suffering of the Jews under Hitler and the apparent logic of the United Nations partition plan to provide a state for the two peoples residing in Palestine. What they did not know was the Zionist entity that had different goals and the will to deceive the citizens of America to achieve them. But the American people were not alone in being deceived. More importantly is the deception kept from the British people about these “disappeared years,” as Robert Fisk terms them. What’s missing is the perspective of the Palestinians and the British Mandate government.

The United Kingdom had mandatory authority from the League of Nations to govern the area with the establishment of the Palestine Mandate in 1922, an action that imposed a western colonial and national mindset on an area familiar with tribal and imperial authority. Prior to the official implementation of the Mandate, the British Government had enunciated a “declaration” concerning the desirability of His Majesty’s Government in the “establishment of a national home for the Jewish people,” called the Balfour Declaration.

Discussions that resulted in the final text of the Balfour Declaration clarify the intention of its wording. The use of “national home” was used intentionally instead of “state.” Additionally, the first draft of the declaration referred to the principle “that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people. ”

In the final text, the word that was replaced with in to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only.⁶

Between 1939 and 1947, the mandate Government found it more and more difficult to maintain its position as the responsible governing force servicing the Arab population and the growing Jewish population, determining by 1947 that these two populations could not coexist. As a result, the British Government placed the resolution of the problem in the hands of the United Nations. That in turn resulted in a partition plan of the land of Palestine, proposed in November of 1947 to the General Assembly, to be implemented in May of 1948, sixty two years ago this May.

British authority in Palestine continued under the United Nations until the implementation of the Partition Plan in May 1948. Consequently, the mandate government had to abide by the Charter of the UN and its Conventions. Ironically, as the Zionist forces, estimated by the Jewish Agency personnel in documents seized by the Mandate Police at 20 to 60 thousand (see top secret file of Sir Richard C. Catling, The Plight of the Palestinians) , continued their massacres of Palestinians into 1948, the UN debated the adoption of a Convention defining “genocide” based on Nuremberg principles, a definition approved that same year.

In 1944 the term “genocide” appeared in Raphael Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe created out of the conditions that allowed for the Nazi action against those suffering in their concentration camps. Therefore once the State of Israel was created by the Jewish leaders of the area by declaration May 14, 1948, and, subsequently, was recognized for membership in the UN in 1949, it was expected to abide by the UN Conventions. The United Nations does not appropriate to itself the authority to create states. The United Nations only authorizes itself to recognize states for membership, states that are formed or proclaimed by the people of said state.⁷

What should be obvious now, after the carefully researched and scholarly work of Dr. Ilan Pappe in his Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and the equally well-researched work of Dr. Benny Morris in his Righteous Victims, both based on recently released evidence from the Israeli archives and those of the Israel Defense Forces Archives, complemented now with the materials preserved by Sir Richard C. Catling, to be made available in The Plight of the Palestinians from Palgrave Macmillan in June, is the truth about the creation of the state of Israel: acceptance of UN Resolution 181 by the Jewish Agency Provisional Government as the designated Jewish state was not done with intent to abide by the goal of the UN General Assembly, to provide a state for two peoples in the land of Palestine, but rather to use it as a means of subterfuge to gain eventual control of all the land and cleanse that land of its indigenous people to whatever extent possible. Put bluntly, what was true then is true today; the current government in Israel continues the practices of past Israeli governments, cleanse the land of its rightful inhabitants to make that land part of the Jewish state. This is what is termed, “slow motion genocide,” not, one would hope, a civilized policy to be extolled either by the Israelis or the international community.

1. Eptstein, Eliahu. (1948). Agent, Provisional Government of Israel. Letter to President Harry S. Truman. May 14, 1948. Filed August 22, 1949. Truman Library. 12/15/2008.
2. Pappe, Ilan. (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld: Oxford.
3. Khalidi, Walid. All That Remains. Institute for Palestinian Studies: Washington, D.C. xv.
4. Kirchwey, Freda. (1948). President, The Nation Associates. Letter to President Harry S. Truman. May 10, 1948. Filed May 11, 1948. Truman Library.
5. Prior, Michael. (1999) Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry. London: Rutledge.
6. Stein, Leonard. (1961). The Balfour Declaration. New York: Simon and Shuster, 470.
7. Harb, Jim. (2009). The UN did not create Israel, 6-11-2009.

It occurred to me as I read this piece, signed by a bevy of Nobel Prize winners, that something was missing, some subtext that was not enunciated, some “second prayer” as Mark Twain noted in his satire “The War Prayer,” penned in 1904-5, a second prayer unuttered that accompanies the first. Twain’s satire castigated the government of his day for the needless wars they inflicted on defenseless people as it began America’s quest for empire. He chastised the “sheeples” of his day who drank in the sacred words of their ministers of war who joined the government in its “holy” quest to bring enlightenment to the pagan hordes that lived in distant lands across the seas. That second prayer Twain delivered through an emissary of “the Throne-a message from Almighty God.”

Apparently Elie Wiesel has taken it upon himself to direct the governments of the world in his quest for domination of the mid-east, especially the “cruel and oppressive, irresponsible and senseless, the shameless” regime that dictates the affairs of the Iranian State. Hence the letter:

We the undersigned urgently appeal to you and the other leaders of the world, to use your prestige and power to put an end to this outrage. The situation in Iran is not improving; in fact, it is worsening every day. The cruel and oppressive regime of “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad, whose irresponsible and senseless nuclear ambitions threaten the entire world, continues to wage a shameless war against its own people. Human rights violations have now attained new levels of horror. Thousands of the regime’s political adversaries are being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, raped, and killed, many by hanging…opposition leaders assassinated…human rights activists … behind bars…indiscriminate firing on unarmed, peaceful demonstrators…and riot tanks in the capital…

What then is the “second prayer,” the subtext that is not enunciated in Wiesel’s plea to the leaders of the world? Could it be part of the Israeli Reut Institute’s directions to the Israeli government that it launch as big an offensive in PR as it does militarily against the Palestinians to quell the world-wide outrage against the brutality of the Israeli regime a year ago, and continuing in Gaza? Could it be that the “Foundation for Humanity” has been commandeered to partake in the Israeli government’s Public Relations blitz that is currently saturating the European and American theaters? Could this be an attempt to capitalize on the internal unrest in Iran to direct the people of the world away from the oppression and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza? Could this be an enhancement of the efforts of Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, as he travels to various university campuses, most recently at the University of California Irvine, to promote the virtues of the Israeli state that is “existentially” threatened by Iran? Could it be another approach to silence voices of dissent against another illegal invasion of a mid-east nation, comparable to the barrage being levied at Chancellor Michael Drake of UCI by the Zionist Organization of America for allowing free speech to be expressed at the university? Could this letter be anything other than subterfuge, a coating of deception to hide the reality of the real threat that exists in the mid-east, a way to bury under public relations copy the Goldstone Report to the UN that calls upon the world body to bring the alleged war crimes of Israel before the International Court of Justice?

What subtext is not presented to the world through Wiesel’s letter? What happens if we substitute the nation of Israel for the nation of Iran in the text? “The situation in Israel is not improving; in fact, it is worsening every day. The cruel and oppressive regimes of Sharon, Olmert, and now Netanyahu, who maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons, not just an “ambition” to possess one, threaten the entire world. Human rights violations have now attained new levels of horror with the invasion of Gaza’s defenseless people resulting in the unnecessary slaughter of 1400 civilians and the on-going siege of that imprisoned people for years on end.” What if that letter presented the full picture of Israeli “horror” before the world and asked the simple question, “Why is this tolerated?”

Let’s draw up the bill of particulars that is hidden from the world, the subtext, the unsaid prayer no one in this American government wants revealed and certainly no one in Israel wants displayed publically.

What is the true nature of this state of Israel that commands the allegiance of the American people and is now seeking to enlist the governments of the world against its perceived “existential” enemy, Iran?

• It is a state without mercy, a state without morals, a state premised on racism, a state built on deception and lies;
• a state defiant of international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions that apply to occupying powers;
• a state, unlike North Korea or Iran, the other identified Axis of Evil states, that has invaded neighboring states and occupies them;
• a state, unlike all nations in the Mid-East, that possesses weapons of mass destruction, including hundreds of nuclear weapons, and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty;
• a state that uses cluster bombs, white phosphorus, and other internationally banned weapons of warfare, not only against the innocent people of Lebanon, but also against the defenseless people of Palestine;
• a state that proclaims itself above the law as it executes individuals without arrest, without charges brought, without counsel, without habeas corpus, and without trial by jury;
• a state that imprisons over 10,000 Palestinians without charge and without due process;
• a state that tortures those it imprisons;
• a state that constructs a wall, in defiance of the International Court of Justice and the United Nations, that encircles the Palestinians with full intention of decimating their economy and hence their livelihood as well as their chance to create a state of their own, while inflicting a psychological humiliation that is inhumane and in defiance of every principle of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
• a state that has systematically confiscated, appropriated, annexed, and assimilated virtually all land belonging to the Palestinians in a sixty-year period of time, leaving them approximately 14 percent of their original land, making it the greatest visible land theft known to human kind in our day;
• a state whose laws protect a group that belongs to a religion and denies equality of citizenship to all others including the indigenous people of the land;
• a state that has defied more than 160 UNGA and 39 UNSC resolutions, demanding it act as a civilized state abiding by international law and protocol;
• a state that will not tolerate interference by the UN in its calculated genocide of the Palestinian people;
• a state that, through its Zionist supporters in America, particularly AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), influences U.S. policy in the Mid-East that has resulted in the unlawful invasion of Iraq and irrational economic and political procedures against Syria and Iran;
• a state that has convinced our Congress that it provide billions of dollars to ensure that the state of Israel continues this genocide of the Palestinian people;
• a state that proclaims itself a democracy but is not and, with malicious intent, confiscates the money belonging to a democratically elected government in Palestine and arrests their representatives without charge or trial;
• a state that proclaims peace but creates conditions that prevent peace;
• a state that, like the United States under Bush, has reached the nadir of the civilized state, a return to lawless barbarism inflicted on the weak by the strong, the imposition of the will of the few on the many;
• and, finally, in all brazen hypocrisy, a state that cries to the world that it is the victim of unspeakable cruelty and in constant peril of obliteration by forces within and without. And we wonder why the United States is castigated throughout the world when it supports this rogue state, this state without mercy.

Great is truth, sayeth the Prophet, and it shall prevail, if not for those now living perhaps for the dead who have suffered the consequence of this deceit; it is to them, “to the dead,” says Voltaire, “we owe only truth.” Thus ends the “second prayer.”

Ben Gurion “…realized that the holy book could be made into a secular national text, serve as a central repository of ancient collective imagery, help forge the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into a unified people, and tie the younger generation to the land.”

– Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, 108)

Of what possible significance has Sand’s comment today as America watches in utter disbelief and dismay the demise of the President of Change and Hope into an obsequious and obedient Golem of Israel, subservient to Netanyahu and Lieberman? The great Golem of Prague in the 16th century, a mythological creature created of mud by incantations of the ancient Rabbi Loew to protect the walled ghetto of the Jews, lived without a soul but at the service of the Rabbi. So now, we watch in disbelief Obama bow before the scorn of Bibi and Avigdor as they mock the great agent of change, the bringer of peace to the world, and the savior of America from the ravages of Bush.

The answer lies in a study of mythistory and deception. Mythistory is the creation of historical fact out of ancient stories placing the accuracies of these stories before the evidence of scientific investigation or epistemological study. In 1936, Yitzhak Baer published Galut (exile) stating conclusively, “The Jewish revival of the present day is in its essence not determined by the national movements of Europe; it harks back to the ancient national consciousness of the Jews, which existed before the history of Europe and is the original sacred model for all the national ideas of Europe.” For Baer, the Biblical myth that told of the giving of the land of Palestine to the chosen people gave them proprietary claim to it; indeed, Jewish history “was to be studied in isolation from the history of the gentiles, because the principles, tools, concepts and time frame of these studies were completely different” (Sand 102).

Ben Gurion ignored scientific evidence when it faulted the story of the Bible that recounted “the promise of the Land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham and Sarah.” A necessity, since Ben Gurion was not of that seed, as Shlomo Sand’s evidence demonstrates. Ben Gurion would not allow any external source to challenge the biblical author’s “divine” source. Not even the logic of Thomas Paine, who noted that Abraham’s visit with God in the bush, should it have happened in fact, could determine the existence of that promise since it was a revelation to Moses alone and only hearsay to those who followed him. But Ben Gurion’s efforts prevailed throughout Israel as the Bible became the national textbook and “the creation of a common ‘ethnic’ origin for the religious communities scattered throughout the world, and (a means to) self-persuasion in the claiming of proprietary rights over the country” (Sand 111).

Unfortunately for Ben Gurion’s protestation to the contrary, archeological and scientific evidence demonstrates that the genocide at Canaan never occurred, the Exodus never happened and the kingdoms of David and Solomon were and are but myths. One need only read The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman and The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives by Thompson, and the latest work by Dr. Sand among many to understand the reality. Unfortunately for the Palestinians and for the people of the mid-east, Ben Gurion’s lies and deceptions have insulated Israel from censure for stealing the land of Palestine from its rightful indigenous population. As Sand puts it, “The book (Bible) was transferred from the shelf of theological tracts to the history section, and adherents of Jewish nationalism began to read it as if it were reliable testimony to processes and events” (127).

On May 14th of 1948, President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency in Mandate Palestine seeking his support, indeed his recognition, of the newly declared State of Israel. In that letter the Jewish Agency declared in no uncertain terms that their government of the new state would bring peace to the area since it would abide by and uphold the United Nations Partition Plan that provided for two states in Palestine, one for the Palestinians and one for the Jews. What the letter did not say was that Jewish forces had been invading and destroying Palestinian villages and towns for the preceding months, most notably, and only a month before the letter, the village of Deir Yassin where a brutal massacre had been inflicted on its inhabitants. The consequence of this deception was the eradication and razing of 418 towns and villages by the combined Jewish forces, the ethnic cleansing of approximately 750,000 natives to refugee camps and to neighboring lands, and the annexation of their lands and homes to the new Israeli state. Yet another form of mythistory created by deception.

All of which brings us to Ben Gurion’s “forging” of the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into a unified people by means of a Mafia-like control over the masses of Jews brought to Palestine before 1947. The absoluteness of this control as established in documents seized by the Mandate Police and kept by Sir Richard Catling in the Rhodes House Archives at Oxford, included forced taxation to support the military arm of the Agency, the violence used to control “laggards,” the availability of jobs once in Palestine, the network of Zionists in Europe and England to maintain control of desirable immigrants versus undesirable, as well as the control of politicians to enable the Zionist terror against the Mandate forces to continue unhindered, the means of communication within the Jewish community and of all external communication about the Jewish community especially in England and America, and the education of all youth followed by forced enlistment in the Jewish armed forces. Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine corroborates the documents secured by Catling.

Today that ethnic cleansing continues because the Mafia-like controls imposed on the Jews immigrating to Palestine in those early years still exists through the almost total control of the people of Israel by the Israeli military and by the Zionist government’s control of the United States Congress through the coercion of the Jewish lobbies as noted by Mearsheimer and Walt as evidenced in the Congress’ acquiescence to the dictates of AIPAC. One need only look at the most recent capitulation to Israel’s demands by our Congress as it lobbied against the Goldstone Report.

Why should we care that Ben Gurion’s deception became the fodder of the Jews brought to Palestine during the Mandate period? The answer is clear enough. The Zionists controlled all Jews entering Palestine as noted above including the molding of their minds to a religion that was a lie and rights to land that did not exist. That same mythistory was conveyed to the west in numerous books based on interpretations of the Bible as historically accurate renderings of a race of people that do not exist as a race but who believe in truths dependent on hearsay, the mythological flight of a people from Egypt and their wandering in the desert for forty years, an exodus that never happened, the conquering of the Canaanites that did not occur, and the existence of ancient kingdoms for which there is no evidence. Indoctrinated with those beliefs, the Jews under Ben Gurion’s oligarchy believed that they were coming home to a land they had an historical right to regardless of the reality that it was inhabited by others for centuries. That belief allowed for no acceptance of others as neighbors on a land for believers alone, a strange definition of a democracy.

The horror of this deception cuts two ways: the innocent Jews fleeing Nazi Europe were commandeered for the Zionist cause which used their faith for both political and economic ends and the sympathetic allies of the west, conscious of the devastation wrought on the Jewish people by the Nazi regime and feeling guilt for allowing it to happen became innocent accomplices of those willing to manipulate truth to gain power, land, armaments, and wealth. As a result of this baptism in deceit, the Jewish state now grapples with hordes of fanatical “settlers” that firmly believe they have a right not only to the land of Palestine but to the killing of Palestinians because they live on the land given only to the Jews by G-d Himself. Even more horribly, the United States and the United Kingdom have been seized by the Zionist forces through the manipulations of the lobbies that control our representatives thus providing the means to sustain the brutality of the Israeli States’ subjugation of the indigenous people of Palestine against the will of the citizens of these alleged democratic countries.

And this brings us to the Wall that has been built around Barak Obama. Obama is a captive of the Zionist forces that control America’s representatives, its corporations and its mass communications. No one disputes the intent of the American people when they elected Obama as President. He was the man to bring change – to end the wars, to bring health care to all Americans, to fight for the environment, to expand educational opportunities for all – all promises that require the support of the Congress. Yet despite his overwhelming victory at the polls, he is a virtual lame duck President. Why?

Early in his Presidency, Obama made overtures to the Arab world and to Russia and the European Union asserting that America was no longer the pre-eminent world power that thirsted for world domination. His Cairo speech appeared to open a dialogue that suggested the possibility for peace through a return to the Saudi Prince’s Plan based on the 1967 UN resolution, a plan that provided full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab nations. Almost immediately, Israel reacted, questioning his faithfulness to the Jewish State. From that time to this, Obama’s mid-east policies have towed the line even though he has had to bow before the likes of Netanyahu and Lieberman. Why?

The answer is simple enough. With the Congress controlled by AIPAC and its affiliates, Obama can do nothing requiring Congress’ action if he opposes or even seems to oppose what the Zionists dictate. Perhaps the most blatant decision by the Obama administration that confirms this perspective is the decision to object to the Goldstone Report that condemns Israel for crimes against humanity, crimes identified and confirmed by B’Tselem in Jerusalem, the Jewish states’ Human Rights organization, the International Red Cross, and Amnesty International.

Now we know what Obama must have known these past few months, that the United Nations Human Rights Council has proposed a Resolution on “The Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” This resolution endorses unqualifiedly the “recommendations contained in the report, and calls upon all concerned parties including UN bodies, to ensure their immediate implementation in accordance with their respective mandates.” But the Obama administration and our Congress has opposed what the world understands to be a valid and true account of the brutal actions of the Zionist government of Israel.

There is a wall around this President, a wall he did not know existed when he made his famous speech in Berlin when still a candidate; a wall he did not know he could not tear down even if he became President; a wall that has been built by powers that control America not by the people of America; a wall that uses fear as its mortar, bigotry and racism as its buttress, coercion as its cement, and money as its allurement to maintain control. It is a wall created out of myth twisted into history, taught repetitively as truth till it becomes truth, deceptively designed to drag this once free nation into the depths of darkness and despair that allow the few to control the multitude and in the process to enslave the minds that would be repulsed by what they support if they knew the truth behind the myths.

After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they (Zionists) are used to being untouchable.
— Gilad Atzmon, “Britain Must de-Zionize Itself Immediately,” Nov. 17, 2009, MWC News).

This week the British people listened to the Daily Mail‘s Peter Oborne present, on Channel 4, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of their government.¹ Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine ensuring that the Anglo-American mid-east policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government. Gilad Atzmon responded to this report in his article “Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately,” noting that this control has been in place for so many years the lobby feels “untouchable.”

How many years are “many” one might ask? In 1941, the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, Senior Palestine Mandate officer for the British Mandate forces in Palestine, sent the following “Top Secret” “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” to the Secretary of State, dated October 16th, a report prepared by The Palestine Police, Criminal Investigation Department:

The memorandum illustrates – indeed, brings into full limelight – the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention.

Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine. This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e., Palestinians as well as Jews, and knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help.

The Zionists and their “gangs,” a euphemism for well equipped and well trained military forces, launched a full scale terrorist rebellion against the British by robbing banks, indiscriminate killing of British police, and the assassination of British minister-resident Lord Moyne in 1944. By the end of World War II things got even worse: “The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations – liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit camp; the bombing of the country’s railroad network; sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British police mobile force; sabotage of British vessels … and the destruction of all road and railroad bridges on the borders.” All of this terrorism was conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda (Meir Pa’il, “From Hashomer to the Israel Defense Forces: Armed Jewish Defense in Palestine,” World War II).

But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine.

A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota, the forced contributions to funds and the power of the Histadruth. … The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions…

Perhaps one of the most frightening observations MacMichael makes comes at the very end of his dispatch: “As matters now stand it seems to me inevitable that the Zionist Juggernaut which has been created with such intensity of zeal for a Jewish national state will be the cause of very serious trouble in the Near East.” Prophetic words indeed.

The memorandum provided by the Palestine Police Department includes approximately 500 pages of seized documents from the Jewish Agency and related organizations. These documents reveal the intention of the Zionists that controlled operations in Palestine as they worked to force into existence a Jewish State. “We regard it as our duty to caution you against any attempt to decide on an anti-Zionist solution … We regard it as a duty to utter another warning. Do not postpone the political solution for ten years … The Jews are a nation. The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The Jewish State will be established. It is better that it should be established with your help and for your benefit, than against you” (The Jewish Resistance Movement, March 25th, 1946).

The Mandate Criminal Investigation Department was headed by Richard Catling. Catling’s memorandum begins with an understanding of the “intricate Jewish political, social and economic structure in Palestine.” A series of appendices chart these structures marking in passing that “… the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 understood ‘The Agency (Jewish) is obviously not a governing body; it can only advise and cooperate in a certain wide field.’ But allied as it is with the Vaad Leumi, and commanding the allegiance of the great majority of the Jews in Palestine, it unquestionably exercises, both in Jerusalem and in London, a considerable influence on the conduct of government.” Catling’s frustration with the actual control of the Jews over British policy in Palestine glares through this document: “This powerful and efficient organization amounts in fact, to a government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government…”

The Zionist controlled Jewish Agency actively undermined the legal authority in Palestine even as it operated to undermine support for that government in Britain, placing UK forces in harms way as they attempted to fulfill their authorized responsibilities in Palestine. It also demonstrates the determination of the Agency’s leadership in undermining the very nation that gave it a means of establishing a “homeland” in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. The wording of that declaration is rarely presented in its full form: “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The declaration did not intend to establish a Jewish State. Indeed, the wording, “national home,” was used intentionally instead of “state.” Additionally, the first draft referred to the principle ‘that Palestine should be’ reconstituted ‘as the national home of the Jewish people.’ In the final text, the word ‘that’ was replaced with ‘in’ to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only.

Now perhaps we can answer the question, “How many years has the British government been under the control of the Zionist influence?” Three score and ten, the biblical age. Perhaps it’s time that Britain is reborn, free from the shackles that bind it to this corrupt power that flouts international law, wantonly commits crimes against humanity, and in brazen arrogance tells the Nations United to shove its demands to comply with the civilized communities of the world.

Note: Sir Richard C. Catling’s files have been released to this writer by the chief Archivist of the Rhodes House Library of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University. Some of the material presented above comes from the “Introduction” of a yet to be published book due out this coming spring.

1. The documentary can be viewed here.

Galloway’s talk, “Resisting War from Gaza to Kandahar,” sponsored by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, would have provided Canadians with a first hand account of conditions in Gaza following Israel’s invasion and destruction of that walled in strip of Palestinian land during the three week war from December 27 to January 18, 2009. Galloway is one of a handful of foreigners to see the devastation that others could glimpse only from You Tube videos made available through Al Jazeera news service. All western journalists were banned from Gaza by Israel’s IDF. Galloway led a convoy of trucks from England to Gaza carrying relief provisions for the people. The convoy entered Gaza just over a week ago.

Contrary to the CJC contention that the banning should be seen as a security measure under section 34 (1) of the immigration act, a close reading of the act would suggest that Galloway cannot be perceived as a person (c) “engaging in terrorism” or in (e) “acts of violence that would or might endanger the lives or safety of persons in Canada,” but rather an individual, by virtue of his recent experience in Gaza, who would be upholding the intent of Canada’s Criminal Code, Sections 318-320. Canada’s Criminal Code, passed in 1970, builds upon the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1966, the conventions of which support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as defined by the Charter of the United Nations.

According to the Nizkor Project “The premise underlying Canada’s anti-hate laws is that in a democratic society, identifiable groups must be protected against racism, including its verbal manifestations, in order not to limit their basic freedoms and thereby their full participation in Canadian society.” Nizkor asserts that the catalyst for this legislation might well have been the experience of Nazism, “that unchecked racism and hate propaganda could lead even a highly educated, cultured and democratic society to justify the most heinous crimes against humanity.”

How does this code apply to Galloway’s “Resisting War from Gaza to Kandahar”? The answer would appear to be in the importance of his eye witness account of the conditions in Gaza resulting from the invasion and his investigation of those conditions from Gazans, NGOs, and newspaper reports made available since the attacks. Multiple human rights organizations including B’tselem out of Jerusalem, the PCHR in Palestine and Human Rights International have brought varying allegations of Israeli war crimes before the International Court and the United Nations, crimes of disproportionate force in a civilian enclave where escape was impossible, crimes against civilians intentionally executed especially of women and children, crimes against international law for the use of banned weapons like white phosphorous, and crimes against the Geneva Conventions through the use of children as human shields. Additionally, the United Nations envoy for human rights activities in Palestine, Richard Falk, has brought forth a report that details Israeli war crimes suggesting that the fact that the people of Gaza could not escape made the invasion even more of a crime since it meant that civilians had no recourse from the weaponry of this massive military incursion into the densely populated cities of Gaza.

Now to the actual sections of the Criminal Code as they are applicable here. Section 318: Advocating Genocide and Section 319: Defining Genocide. “The criminal act of ‘advocating genocide’ is defined as supporting or arguing for the killing of members of an ‘identifiable group’ – persons distinguished by their colour, race, religion or ethnic origin. The intention would be the destruction of members of the targeted group. Any person who promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence, and liable to imprisonment…” Section 319 defines genocide as “any acts committed with intent to destroy an identifiable group – such as killing members of the group, or deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction.”

Given the knowledge that Galloway brings regarding “criminal acts committed with intent to destroy an identifiable group – such as killing members of the group, or deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the groups physical destruction,” because that identifiable group is distinguished by their colour, race, religion and ethnic origin, it would appear that Galloway has a responsibility to bring such awareness, no doubt recognized by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, before the Canadian people to protect members of that group who reside in Canada.

In short, the CJC and the League of Human Rights of B’nai B’rith, along with other Jewish organizations that have supported the Israeli invasion of Gaza, including the Harper government, would appear to be guilty of promoting “unchecked racism and hate propaganda” that could “justify the most heinous crimes against humanity.” Clearly these organizations and the government of Canada realize the avowed intent of Avigdor Lieberman, a self- promoted Zionist and a member of Olmert’s government that executed the “war” in Gaza and now a member of Netanyahu’s new government, to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land, including if necessary the use of the atomic bomb on them. It would appear that the Harper government and the Jewish Canadian organizations support Israeli governments that, in Lieberman’s words, want to “execute Israeli Arabs that are members of the Knesset,” or “Destroy the foundation of all the [Palestinian] authority’s military infrastructure … not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything.” Civilian targets included. Bomb all Palestinian commercial centers including banks and gas stations.

Ironically, it is not the Canadian Jews that are in danger by Galloway’s appearance because he is a “terrorist” and a security risk against the Jews as potential victims, but the fact that he brings information that identifies the Zionist party of the Israeli government, particularly in the form of Lieberman’s racist party, Israel Beytenu, as terrorists intent on destroying Palestinians. Hence the real danger in Canada exists for the Palestinian people living there not the Jews. Indeed, one might argue that it is the responsibility of the Canadian Government to support Galloway’s efforts to enlighten the Canadian people to the dangers inherent in the actions of the CJC and the League of Human Rights of B’nai B’rith of Canada that forced the Canadian immigration authorities to ban Galloway.

According to the Canadian Council on Human Rights, Section 319 (3), an individual cannot be convicted of breaking the Criminal Code if the statements or information provided can be established as true, are relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which is for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds it is able to be believed as true and is expressed in good faith and intended to point out … matters tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada.” Quite obviously, the information George Galloway brings about the intent of the Israeli government as noted above is true and is of importance to the safety of Canadian citizens of Palestinian descent, since groups supportive of the genocidal acts committed by that government as alleged, recorded and advanced by respected Human Rights organizations before the proper world authorities, wants to prevent the citizens of Canada from hearing such information; they are the guilty parties not George Galloway.

It should be clear from the evidence presented here that a disturbing picture of an Israeli government emerges, one intent on the destruction of the Palestinian people as stated by members of that government and by the polls taken in Israel of Jewish support for the invasion, 94%, that a concerted effort to commit genocide against an identifiable group, the Palestinians, because of “race, ethnicity, and religion,” by “promoting the killing of members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction, ” is occurring, all actions condemned by Canada’s Council on Human Rights through its Criminal Code as defined in sections 318-319.

Alykhan Velshi, Jason Kenney’s spokesman, “said that the act (immigration act 34) was designed to protect Canadians from people who fund, support or engage in terrorism.” This article makes clear that those who “fund, support or engage in terrorism” are those who convinced Kenny to ban Galloway. He could provide Canadians with accurate, recent, detailed information related to the intended destruction of the people of Gaza and their livelihood. He can provide pictures and testaments from NGOs and the people of Gaza about the actions of the IDF as they launched missiles from the sea, from the air and from tanks on the surrounded civilians of Gaza, how they used illegal chemical weapons on children and women, how they intentionally destroyed United Nations schools housing children and mothers knowing some or all would be victims of that action, how they leveled with white phosphorous the humanitarian store house of the United Nations so that the people could not have food and water, how they maintained the locked gates so that no one could leave and no needed medical and food supplies could enter, and how even the soldiers of the IDF have now reported on the intentional killing of children and women.

This information is vital to the Canadian people if only to provide the truth that their government wants to suppress, if only to mark indelibly who the real terrorists are in Canada that want them, like their neighbors to the south, to be ignorant of that truth.

In his response, Peres launched into a passionate defense of the Israeli state’s invasion pointing to three primary points that justified the attack:

a. Israel does not break cease fire agreements ever, and its response was in retaliation for Hamas’ breaking of the agreement; b. the attacks came primarily in response to the withering assault on Israeli civilians by Hamas’ rockets which made life intolerable and necessitated a reaction; and c. Israel has suffered tremendous loss of life caused by Palestinians who do not want peace. Peres’ loud and passionate defense of Israel lacked only truth. If one searched for a title for his offensive defense, one need only go to an article by Barak Ravid of Haaretz, December 31, 2008: “Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about.”

Is it true that Israel does not break cease fire agreements, in particular the agreement made between Israel and Hamas that began in June of 2008 and lasted until December 19, 2008 and the unilateral ceasefire it authorized on the 18th? Here are the facts:

1. On November 4, 2008, the IDF moved into Gaza and killed 6 Palestinians. At 8:30pm on the 4th, the IDF took control of a Palestinian residence owned by Mofeed Suleiman al Ramali in Wadial Salqa village. The house was destroyed by missile fire from aircraft.¹
2. Following the Israeli unilateral ceasefire of January 18, after three weeks of unrestrained carnage, ” … Israel had already violated the cease-fire at least 7 times, the Israeli military killing 2 Palestinian civilians and injuring at least 5, at least one of them a child:
   • Israeli forces killed a Palestinian farmer in Khuza’a east of Khan Yunis on Jan 18
   • Israeli forces killed a Palestinian farmer east of Jabalia on Jan 19
   • Israeli naval gunboats shelled the Gaza coast line, causing damage to civilian structures on Jan 21
   • Israeli troops shot and injured a child east of Gaza City on Jan 22
   • Israeli gunboat fire injured 4-7 Palestinian fishermen on Jan 22
   • Israeli shelling set a Palestinian house on fire on Jan 22
   • Israeli tanks fired on the border town of Al Faraheen, causing damage to homes and farms on Jan 24²

Peres lied. While he bellowed over and over again that Israel is innocent of charges that it breaks ceasefires and attacks first and without cause, the facts tell a different story.

Second, is it true that Israel attacked Gaza because of the barrage of rockets fired at Sderot and Ashkelon? Answer: In an article published in Haaretz on December 31, 2008 by Barak Ravid, the invasion the world witnessed on December 27 had been planned more than six months in advance while Israel pretended to be in negotiations with Hamas for a ceasefire. “Long term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and misleading of the public – all these stood behind the Israeli Defense Forces’ Cast Lead operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.” The secrecy of these plans
“seemed to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.” In other words, despite Peres’ rants to the contrary, Israel not only intended to invade Gaza in the near future, it planned an operation that would result in greater casualties. Peres lies when he says Israel does not hate anyone or desire to kill the people of Gaza.

But let us turn to Peres’ insistence that the rockets forced the government to attack because they caused such severe death and destruction to Israeli citizens. Since 2,000 and the beginning of the second intifada, Peres and others claim that approximately 6,000 rockets rained down on Israel. He did not mention that the vast majority of these rockets are home made devices that have little more capability than fire works’ rockets and even less accuracy. If we determine that those 6,000 were “raining down” on Israel at 2.8 a day, it would be a light rain indeed. But do the math and that is
what would fly into Israel each day. Now during those 8 years 23 people were killed by the rockets even though Sderot has both sirens and fall out shelters, conveniences not available to the millions living in Gaza. Following Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire, the Gazan resistance fighters sent more rockets into Israel. The point is clear, I think, that Peres’ passionate defense of Israel for its disproportionate attacks based on the devastation of the Gaza rockets is absurd, especially if we understand the power of Israel’s fourth largest military in the world. Peres lies.

Finally, a cursory review of the death toll over these same 8 years would show that Israel has killed approximately 6,200 Palestinians while they have suffered slightly more than a thousand. The vast majority of these are civilians, 1,550 Palestinian children (the final number yet to be calculated) and 123 Israeli. These figures are available from B’tselem and if Americans knew. Yet Peres decries those that claim Israel kills and is not the victim. Israel does not kill he insists, believing, perhaps, that someone might believe him. He lies.

Following Peres’ stormy rebuttal to the presentations made by the Turkish Prime Minister and the head of the Arab League, Recep Tayyip Erdogan attempted to respond to these obvious lies, a necessary response since such deception has been the modus operandi of Israel’s Public Relations blitz since the invasion began. He was, however, prevented from doing so by the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, the debate’s moderator, because the people in the audience had to get to dinner. Better roasted chicken than roasted Peres.

1. See PCHR Report, November 5, 2008.
2. moc.spuorgelgoognull@wenkaciremafi, January 27, 2009

“Become more human, and humans will love you.”
—Text of the Gospel of Phillip, 143

Predictably, the United States Senate and House of Representatives voted to support Israel’s carnage in Gaza thereby handing the new President yet one more war to contend with, one unhappily more dangerous to America than those in Iraq or Afghanistan. That may seem to be, on its face, a strange thing to say unless one understands that we are in Iraq fighting for Israel and, with this vote, our Congress has indebted itself to the Israeli forces that govern the United States (as Ariel Sharon said long ago), forces that will use endangerment of Israel as leverage to attack Iran and Syria, countries already in their military sites since 1992.

Source: Al-Nahar 13 January 2009.
About the cartoon, an Israeli poet said: "I don't know anybody here (Israel) who would make a poster out of that image. but what about europe?"

Ironically our “only democratic ally” in the mid-east, as constantly reiterated by our main stream media and talking heads, has locked the media out of Gaza in order to isolate truth to its Public Relations campaign begun the day it invaded Gaza three weeks ago. Consequently, Americans receive their news from those that decided to break international law and their own responsibilities as an occupying force under the Geneva conventions. No truth, no morality, only raw force serves this Zionist nation beholden only to itself and those it owns, including our Congress. Yet the news gets out. The people of Gaza transmit the truth by phone cameras and a handful of Al Jazeera journalists that report from the killing fields. These pictures inundate the Internet and even a European press on occasion.

Contrast the reality of the coverage with that provided to Americans. In Sderot, the little town used by Israel to portray its misery, devastation, and ultimate demise at the hands of the “terrorists,” the citizens have taken to the hillside overlooking Gaza — binoculars, sunglasses and beach chairs in tow — to watch the rain of Israeli terror by air, sea and land on an imprisoned people. (Shashank Bengali, “Israelis, sipping Pepsi, watch bombardment of Gaza town,” 1/5/2009, McClatchy). Are they in danger? Perhaps, although they do have bomb shelters and warning sirens, something that the people of Gaza do not have. And as I have noted elsewhere (in Counterpunch, 1/5/2009), they have been bombarded on average with 2 rockets per day for 8 years. Twenty three have died over these 8 years, an unsupportable number killed by meaningless use of force. Nonetheless, this has become the rationale for Israel’s current killing that now approaches 1000 half of whom are children. Disproportionate? Not to our Representatives.

Now consider what we are not shown, an image that the western media finds “pornographic,” “irresponsible journalism,” “too graphic,” “too emotional” for public consumption; yet the rest of the world sees these images, hundreds and hundreds of them. This alone should give our representatives pause to reflect on how their subservience to the barbaric behavior of Zionist Israel plays out in the world that is not controlled by American corporations or complicit congressmen. You can go here. There you will see the head of a little girl looking forlornly though vacant eyes, mouth still open, completely buried from the neck down in rubble from her crushed home; indeed, too graphic, too emotional to contemplate, just another unnamed casualty of war where death happens … unfortunately, and “we’re sorry.” This appeared in multimedia, a Norwegian site, where you can also hear Sven Egil Omdel, the Director, explain why he decided to publish the photo even though it is against policy: “It is (the publication) a conscious provocation and we have two reasons for it: Israel keep (sic) all western journalists away from the war in Gaza. … The most important reason for us to show this face, is that the Arab world sees pictures like these from Gaza every day. Not a single still, but hours and hours of TV images of hospital floors full of small, dead bodies. Four year olds, two year olds, seven year olds, newly borns – These pictures represent the war in Gaza for millions of muslims – and we wonder why the hatred against Israel and the west grows? (translation)” This now is Obama’s war whether he wants it or not including the 3000 tons of ordnance being shipped now to Israel by the United States to supplement what they are currently using in Gaza.

Americans must understand the timing of this “war” that is not a war but a slaughter of caged people that have no where to hide, no where to go and even then, when following IDF orders, find themselves in a building targeted for destruction, their destruction. Deceit governs; racism motivates; hatred compels and greed for others’ land is the bed rock of action.

Why now? For two years, during the election campaign for the US Presidency, Israel imposed a siege on Gaza, a calculated act of slow, insidious decimation of the people planned in 2004 (www.infoimagination.org) to ultimately compel the Palestinian people to submit to Israeli dominance, without a state, without an army, without freedom of ingress and egress, unclassified and wholly dependent on Israel. Included in that strategy was the need to complete “Securing the Realm,” the document drawn up by our faithful Neo-Con “servants” that drove the policies of Bush’s administration and called for regime change in Syria and Iran in addition to Iraq. During the political campaign, while press coverage crowded out virtually all other news, the Zionist forces destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza, began the locking down of gates and the slow but methodical destruction of Gaza’s economy. Simultaneously they sought, but failed to get in time, Bush’s approval of attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites. Now, as the days of the Bush reign of terror ends, they are desperate to force Obama into a continuation of absolute and unquestioned support of Israeli policies in the mid-east. With the Congress in hand, with the vote made public in America and its continued commitment made known to the world, they believe that hey have locked Obama in a prison not unlike that surrounding Gaza.

What now? Reflection on the past few years, since 2005 to present, especially in the United States, makes possible this observation: the people of the United States and the people of Israel no longer see eye to eye on matters of mutual concern and, indeed, have already expressed that reality in fact. What do I mean? Beginning with the Downing Street memo and the disclosures of Richard Clark and Ambassador Wilson, the ability of the main stream press to hide the truth from the American people could no longer hold. As 2005 evolved, more and more disclosures unraveled the lies protected by the “fair and balanced reporting” of the corporate owned and controlled media. Fair and balanced was neither fair to truth nor balanced. To put two items on a scale, one for, one against, does not present truth or a balanced report. It simply shows two different perspectives, one for and one against. But as facts and documents became available to the American people, items available over the prior years on various Internet publications, the American people reacted by throwing out Bush supporters in the 2006 and 2008 elections and Bush support eroded into the mid-twenties.

They wanted “change” promised from the start by Senator Obama and mimicked eventually by most of the other contenders to the throne. Change meant getting out of Iraq immediately and return to a government that had a concern for America, including less absolute and blind support for Israel. The vast majority of the American people do not accept the disproportionate and cruel invasion of Gaza by Israel. As more and more pictures and videos become available on the Internet, especially the recurring images of savagery on You Tube, the American people are traumatized by the horror, especially the uncountable number of deaths of children. Our representative government does not represent the American electorate; it represents only scared politicians who depend on AIPAC money, men and women who fear for their political seats regardless of what their constituents believe and want.

By contrast Israeli citizens are faced with an election that has all three contenders fighting to convince the electorate that he/she is the one that will inflict more force to subjugate the Palestinians to Israeli will. The focus of this campaign resonates around the war monger Benjamin Netanyahu; both Livni and Barak must demonstrate that they are better leaders to take Israel against the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Iranians. Israel’s future is one of continued war which means in turn continued American billions to sustain their ambitions against their perceived enemies. They do not talk of “talk” with neighbors, only unending war against those that oppose the Jews. One does not speak of Israel as a state or government when “victimhood” is needed to induce unyielding support for the Israeli governments need to acquire more land and control the regimes of its neighbors, one must turn to the bias against Jews that is world wide and endemic. Sympathy cannot be rung from criticism of a government’s policies.

Horribly, the invasion of Gaza can be viewed quite accurately as a campaign war where Livni and Barak have made evident to the electorate that they will use force to ensure Israel’s right to dominate the area regardless of international pressure and opinion, international law or international justice. They know they can do this because they have control of the American Congress and administration including the veto power of the United States in the Security Council. World opinion means nothing. The Israeli electorate, with modest exception, does not want change.

Ultimately, it’s AIPAC’s will against the American citizens’ expressed desires as they voted for this man of change. Who will win? Will the blatant exposure of Israeli violence and mercilessness, in pictures and videos, turn the tide? Can Israeli hacking of Internet sites like that done to The Palestine Chronicle and the attempted erasure of sites that contain the pictures and videos described above stop the flow of sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and quell the building animosity that has arisen world-wide against the cruelty employed by Israel in its savage destruction of Gaza?

Will Obama turn to diplomacy, as he preached when a candidate and, thus doing, fulfill the truth enunciated by Phillip, “Become more human, and humans will love you”? Will he turn to negotiations with those engaged in these brutalities, to stem the violence? Will he recognize the impossible absence of the democratically elected Hamas government from deliberations with Israel over Gaza? How absurd. Will he reconsider the bribery that Bush employed to keep Egypt and Jordan in collusion with Israel despite the agony the people of Egypt and Jordan experience as they watch their people die in Gaza? Will he seek justice by returning to the resolutions of the UN that demand Israel return to the borders of 1948 or 1967, to leave the occupied lands of Palestine including East Jerusalem, to recognize the right of return of the refugees, to realize that Palestinians have a right to their state just as Israel has a right to its, something recognized by Hamas though never recognized as true by our main stream press. (Guardian, 1/12/2006 and Ynet, 1/30/2006). Will Obama seek peace that America might be free of its entanglement with a rogue state that blindly leads America into the darkness of unending conflict and death? Will he demand of Israel that its support from America depends of its recognition that it can only survive if it lives in harmony with its neighbors not out of fear but out of brotherhood? Will he suggest that the Israelis consider a diametrically opposite road to peace, one that understands “People will love you if you become more human”?

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be.

– Oedipus Rex, Scene I

As the Israeli military launched an “all out war” with Hamas in the Gaza strip, as casualties mounted to 400 dead and another 1450 wounded, as tanks and troops massed in the area just outside the wall that imprisons the people of Gaza, as preparations for a ground assault into the “closed military zone” around the Gaza strip moved forward, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday the 27th “… instructed the Foreign Ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel’s international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip.” (Haaretz, 12/28/08). “An aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign” needed to be launched simultaneously with the estimated “60 raids” that now pummel Gaza each day, raids that, in human terms, have taken the lives of five children, all girls, of the Ba’losha family killed in Bait Lahia City north of Gaza and three children from the Al Absi family in Rafah refugee camp as Israeli rockets collapsed their roof. (freepalestine.ps, Sameh, Habeeb).

I provide names and locations of these families to give reality to the statistics that numb the mind; multiply the suffering of these families as 400 lie dead from this “turkey shoot” against fenced in civilians launched by this compassionate Olmert administration that closes out its criminal tenure in office awaiting the election of yet another militaristic administration.

Unfortunately some ministry officials had to interrupt their vacations to return immediately to their posts abroad. Their purpose, like Livni’s, to “explain the rationale for the expanded IDF operations in the Gaza Strip.” (Haaretz, 12/28/08). The ministry also seeks speakers of foreign languages, especially Arabic, Italian, Spanish, and German to ensure that its message is received by all. An international media broadcast outlet opened on Sunday in Sderot, the hapless Israeli town that has been the recipient of most of Hamas’ rockets over the past 8 years. Tours are planned for “foreign media and diplomatic figures.” Livni noted that “Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community, as it confronts terror, and advances the interest of all those who wish the forces of peace and co-existence to determine the agenda of this region.” (Haaretz)

 Not mentioned by Livni, though reported in the same newspaper on the same day, was an article by Barak Ravid, “Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about.” Ravid discloses that Olmert had “instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.” Interesting how propaganda precedes perception and negates reality. In 1958, Aldus Huxley commented in Brave New World Revisited that “truth is great” but “silence about truth is greater still.” Hitler used just this “silence about truth” to imprison the minds of his civilians by silencing his actions in the media and creating instead a “new” truth from fabricated lies that cloaked reality in acceptable clothing by redefining actuality.

While Livni’s hordes roam the world’s TV talk shows and pen articles about “scores” or “showers” or “barrages” of “rockets” pouring on Sderot or other towns near Gaza, Olmert meets with his cabinet for “five hours of discussion about the operation” reserving “one line devoted to the situation in Gaza, compared to one whole page that concerned the outlawing of 35 Islamic organizations.” In short what the public is told by Livni’s PR campaign is not the reason Israel has attacked Gaza. The reason for this invasion is to wipe out Palestinian resistance, something the British had to face in the 1930s and 1940s as Jewish “gangs,” in reality organized and trained military forces (Irgun, Stern, and Hagana), confronted their rule as determined by the UN under the Mandate. But the deception did not end there. Israel continued “to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza strip” and that Olmert “would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday — one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued.” Hamas, which had vacated its headquarters because of these announcements, returned just in time to be killed, a deception comparable in its consequence to that 1946 “false flag” operation that destroyed the King David Hotel killing 91.

The world has been and is again being told how the people of Israel are victims of Hamas’ rockets that “pour” or “shower” their villages. Let’s consider the reality rather than the propaganda. Israel sets up Sderot as the suffering example of this terrorist action and provides tours for journalists and diplomats including Barak Obama. One step into Gaza and you will see real devastation, not remains of rockets that landed in fields or hit a building causing no deaths. Both Gaza and the West Bank speak vividly the results of military incursions, home demolitions, bulldozed farm land and fruit trees, and the most insidious icon of human brutality, the Wall of Fear erected by Ariel Sharon.

So let’s consider the reality not the propaganda. In eight years, an estimated 6000 rockets have been shot at Israel. That’s a slightly exaggerated number but one that will allow for increased attempts by Hamas or others to send additional rockets into Israeli towns. That means that on average 750 have been hurled at Israel each year, or 62.5 per month or 2 per day. In all that time, 23 Israeli or non-Israelis living in Israel have been killed. That represents about 2.8 a year. This past week, as Israel “showers” Gaza with $300,000 precision missiles, that unfortunately do not distinguish in their accuracy civilians from resistance fighters, more rockets have been launched per day by Hamas and other factions at Israel and at least four more have died. Now we can see how numbing statistics are. Those 23 should never have been killed nor the four who died this week. But for Israel to use the rockets as the basis for this past weekend’s horrific slaughter of Palestinians is inexcusable by any measure. Four hundred and fourteen dead (Guardian, UK, 1/2/2009) as Israeli missiles hammer civilian neighborhoods with, as they claim, precision, is nothing short of outright murder and the slaughter continues beyond the 325 sites struck in those first days by land, sea, and air — a true “rain” of death, devastation, and psychological trauma.

Consider the conditions on the ground, the reality not the propaganda, as Israel attacks the residents of Gaza: for the past two years Israel has put Gaza under constant siege closing all gates thus preventing egress and ingress; it has destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza including sewage, electricity and water; it has barred international shipments of humanitarian goods and fuel; and it has maintained, even during the agreed upon cease fire, constant daily incursions into Gaza killing randomly and destroying at will. (PCHRGAZA Weekly Reports). Little or none of this is reported in American papers or on TV news broadcasts, only reference to terrorists and rockets constantly threatening the existence of Israel.

Consider as well the irony of this situation not the propaganda offered by Israel apologists. The people of Gaza are collectively refugees of Jewish forces driven from their homes, like Ashkelon, that is now hit randomly by Gazan rockets. They fire at their own land, at homes they used to live in before well equipped and trained, “unofficial” military of the Jewish Agency during the Mandate years ethnically pushed them into Gaza. The Israelis, of course, do not mention that they stole Ashkelon from the very people who now send rockets into it.

Consider the reality, not the propaganda: the Palestinian people can go nowhere; they cannot escape through the Israeli controlled gates; they can not flee by car, rail, air, boat or on foot; they are caged in a steel enclosed land area blocked on the west by Israeli gunboats. This is comparable in its way to the “highway of death” that slaughtered thousands of Iraqis as they fled from Kuwait in the 1991 war, surrounded and at the mercy of those hurling missiles from the air and the hills that overlooked their death throes.

Consider Livni’s public relations campaign, the reality not the propaganda, as it thunders forth the desperate condition the Israelis face as Hamas builds its strength in imitation of Hizbullah. Estimates reported in Ynet News (4/10/08) by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center place Hamas’ “military-security force” at 20,000, up from an estimated 13,000 in 2007 as reported in Haaretz (7/21/07). These numbers threaten the Israeli military despite the fact that Israel can field an estimated two million troops; despite its state of the art military that is considered the fourth largest in the world; and despite its possession of 200 to 400 nuclear weapons. All of this force against weapons smuggled into Gaza through tunnels; there’s no other way to bring them in since they are under constant guard by the IDF.

Consider as well the Israeli effort to claim victim hood based on Hamas’ terrorism against its civilians; consider the reality not the propaganda. The following statistics come from B’Tselem as recorded by if Americans knew: 4,897 Palestinians killed since 9/29/00 to 11/30/08; 1062 Israelis killed during that same time period. Of these numbers, 1050 were Palestinian children and 123 Israeli; 2,227-3149 were Palestinian civilians and 727 were Israeli civilians. Since June28, 2008, in Gaza, the start of the cease fire, a total of 247 were killed up to October 6, 2008, 155 of these were civilians and 57 were children. Add to these horrific numbers the tally the Israeli’s accumulated on December 27th, approximately a week ago, of 251 Palestinians killed, most civilians including 20 children and 9 women with another 584 wounded 130 of them children (PCHR). The death toll for Palestinians has exceeded that of the American casualties in Iraq, and continues to climb above 5200 as each day passes with no end in sight.   

And so we must ask, why? What drives this merciless military machine that is the government and armed forces of Israel? Can it be true as Livni attests that “Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community, as it confronts terror, and advances the interest of all those who wish the forces of peace and co-existence to determine the agenda of this region.” What is terror if not the forced imprisonment of 1.5 million people locked behind gates and walls of steel while a state of the art military including land, air and sea forces pummel the people day and night in a merciless barrage of devastation and mayhem? What civilized state in this community of nations could believe that Israel “advances the interest of all” by such devastation of a helpless neighbor? What civilized state could support, what Livni, without blushing, calls the “forces of peace and co-existence” that determine the agenda in the mid-east? Consider the reality not the propaganda.

Why? In July of 2004, Khalid Amayreh, writing in InfoImagination, in a study of Israeli military strategy, noted the following: “Israel’s hawkish Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon last week lashed out at the Knesset’s influential committee on defense and foreign affairs, accusing some members of disclosing ‘classified army secrets.’” The reason for the tongue lashing? That the Israeli occupation army “provoked the Palestinians into escalating the violence during the first few months of the second intifada in order to give the army a pretext to hit hard on the Palestinian society and bully it into unconditional surrender.” How was this done? 1,300,000 bullets were fired by “occupation soldiers on Palestinian population centres and other targets.” “This massive firepower, which had no operational justification … showed that the Israeli army was interested more in decimating and harming Palestinians and less in ending the violence.” Compare this newest incursion with its massive firepower against a people that have no where to go, but must live through the agony of a rain of death, a people that have had to endure a merciless siege for two years that has left them physically weakened, emotionally drained, psychologically distraught, and personally humiliated by unemployment, and helpless to alter the situation imposed on them. Before he was “extra-judicially executed,” Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, former Hamas Gaza leader, made this observation, “Israel is offering us two choices, either to die a meek lamb’s death at the slaughter house or as martyr-bombers.” Consider the reality not the propaganda.

Let me return now to the quote from Oedipus Rex that headlined this piece: “How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be.” The nations of the world are faced with a pulverizing public relations blitz by the Israeli government to justify its disproportionate destruction of the Palestinian people and their property. Silencing truth, the reality that exists behind a cloak of lies, destroys justice just as it destroys the people of Gaza. I look back at Hamas’ victory at the election booth, at their offer for peace following that election, both the Hamas offer to consider the Saudi Prince’s 2002 peace plan and Mahmoud Abbas’ offer for an International Peace Conference in Oslo, and realize that Israel and the United States ignored their offers, intentionally ignored their offers just as President Bush, earlier this fall, ignored, by refusing to reply, to a Hamas offer for an on-going ceasefire so that peace could be achieved. A different agenda is at work here, an agenda that seeks the total elimination of the Palestinian people as a people, subject to the authority and control of the Israeli government. As Mohammed Barakeh, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset remarked about Israel‘s strategy in 2004, “Israel sought to and almost succeeded in convincing the world that its violent onslaught against the Palestinian society was in reaction to Palestinian terror. This simplified and erroneous claim ignores the simple fact that Israel’s violent and racist occupation of the Palestinian homeland is the root cause of all violence.” Once again, the government of Israel has determined that it can, by stealth of propaganda, control how the world views its occupation and military conquest of the Palestinian people. Let’s hope reality overcomes deception.