21/07/08

By Khalid Amayreh

As British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was having an
audience with Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud
Abbas in Bethlehem, the Israeli occupation army was raping
anew the Palestinian town of Nablus, rounding up and
humiliating innocent people, violating homes and
vandalizing businesses.

On Sunday and early Monday, the so-called Israeli Defense
Forces raided the northern city, for the fourth time in
less than three weeks, as thousands of CIA-trained
Palestinian security personnel were watching from their
comfortable headquarters nearby.

The invading forces arrested dozens of innocent people,
including a lawmaker named Muna Mansur, the wife of an
Islamic political leader who was murdered by a Jewish death
squad while sitting in his office in downtown Nablus
several years ago.

The detainees, who are likely to be dumped in an Israeli
concentration camp for lengthy periods of time, have
committed no felony or even misdemeanor. Their only “guilt”
seems to be their conscientious opposition to the Nazi-like
Israeli occupation of their country.

Two weeks ago, the same Jewish forces, acting like the
German Gestapo, ransacked the main commercial center of
Nablus, raiding commercial malls, beauty salons, a major
medical center and numerous other institutions, crushing
furniture, smashing equipments and vandalizing public and
private property.

These acts of rape passed quietly as the governments of
Europe and North America, thoroughly absorbed in their
pornographic hypocrisy toward the Palestinian plight, kept
silent. After all, the victims are Palestinian, they are
Arabs, they are Muslims.

These are the same governments that have been demanding
rather shamelessly the prompt and unconditional release of
an Israeli combat soldier who was taken prisoner by
Palestinian fighters near the Gaza Strip more than two
years ago, while utterly ignoring the fate of more than
10,000 Palestinian detainees languishing in Israeli
dungeons and detention camps.

This pattern of moral whoredom on the part of European and
North American leaders is echoed ad nauseam every time a
European or American or Canadian official sets foot on the
soil of occupied Palestine, a holy land made unholy by the
overwhelming obscenity of Israel’s oppression of a people
whose only guilt is its enduring determination to survive
and be free.

There, these officials and statesmen utter a few empty
words about the “glory of Israeli democracy” before
returning home, hoping to have succeeded in impressing the
international Zionist cartel which effectively controls the
policies, politics and governments of most western
countries.

Gordon is no exception. He is just another carbon copy of
the typical hypocritical, double-faced, and morally
bankrupt western leader who tries to blur his dishonest
discourse with diplomatic niceties and nice-sounding
statements.

In fact, not only did Gordon keep his mouth shut regarding
Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, apparently fearing
upsetting his arrogant Zionist hosts, but he also
reiterated the same mantra western leaders like to utter
whenever they visit Europe’s ugly brat in the Middle East.

Brown, whose country gave birth to ugly Zionist entity,
vowed that Britain would “back Israel’s right to exist,” a
euphemism for backing Israel’s settlement expansion and
territorial aggrandizement at the expense of the
Palestinian people.

Indeed, this is how Israel understands such statements from
western leaders because if a given western country doesn’t
fully support Israel’s genocidal campaign against the
Palestinians, then the government of that country must be
advocating the destruction of Israel and the extermination
of the Jewish people!!

In short, from the Israeli perspective, Europe and America
have two choices vis-à-vis Israel, either they support the
liquidation of Palestine and its native people, the
Palestinians, or get themselves ready for vociferous Jewish
accusations of being Nazis, anti-Semites and “Hamas
lovers”!!!

I don’t know why western leaders, such as Gordon, keep
talking about Israel’s right to exist while rarely alluding
to the Palestinian people’s right to exist. Do they think
that Palestinians are unimportant? Do they consider the
rights of the “Chosenites” to be superior to and override
the rights and lives of the non-Chosenites?

Besides, one might really wonder how a country that
possesses more than 300 nuclear warheads and is also in
tight control of the American government and Congress has
its “right to exist” threatened by a people who spend half
of their time stranded at Israeli roadblocks and
checkpoints and the other half struggling to make ends
meet?

What is the problem with these European and American
leaders who keep parroting these illogical formulas about
Israel and its miraculous achievements? Are they drunk? Are
they ignorant? Are they irremediably dishonest?

In addition to his shooting from the hip about Israel,
Brown had the audacity to claim that Palestinian economic
prosperity was the key to foster and consolidate peace. He
went as far as saying that he planned to implement an
“economic roadmap” in occupied Palestine in an effort to
develop and stabilize the region.

But, undoubtedly, these are manifestly stupid remarks since
no economic prosperity can be achieved in a jungle of
roadblocks and checkpoints and hundreds of other physical
barriers that reduce the West Bank to an archipelago of
miserable Bantustans and townships, cut off from each other
and virtually isolated from the rest of the world.

Shouldn’t Brown have consulted with his predecessor, Tony
Blair, and asked him about the feasibility of effecting
economic prosperity in the West Bank under a Nazi-like
military occupation regime that is hell-bent on making the
Palestinians’ daily life an unbearable hell so that they
would eventually leave their homeland.

Blair, who had harbored wild hopes about reviving the
Palestinian economy, mainly in order to induce Palestinians
to be flexible on such paramount issues as the “right of
return” and “Jerusalem” has lately come to recognize the
impossibility of any serious economic revival in the West
Bank due to the ubiquitous presence of the Israeli
occupation.

Nonetheless, the often criminal western collusion with
Israel against the Palestinians and against justice
wouldn’t have had a conspicuously sinister impact had it
not been for the presence of a perfidious “Palestinian”
authority that is very much at America’s, and therefore
Israel’s beck and call.

Well, what is the point of having a “Palestinian Authority”
in whose presence and under whose rubric the Israeli
occupation army rapes our population centers every day and
every hour and every minute?

What is the point of having flamboyant PA leaders having
photo ops and “friendly and constructive and positive”
meetings with western leaders when all these encounters
can’t even save a Palestinian home from the claws of one
Israeli bulldozer?

Surely, no one is demanding that the PA militarily
confronts brutal Israeli barbarianism.

However, playing the role of a Palestinian Judenrat
vis-à-vis Israel represents the ultimate act of national
treason. That is the message that Palestinians everywhere
ought to communicate to the American-backed junta in
Ramallah.

(end)

Recent Israeli army aggressions against Palestinian
charities, beauty salons and shops show unequivocally that
Israel is morally lost, writes Khaled Amayreh in Nablus

If you still think there are red lines that Israel has not
crossed with regard to its treatment of Palestinians, don’t
be too sure. In recent days and weeks, the Israeli army has
been vandalising, ransacking and confiscating Palestinian
civilian institutions in the West Bank’s largest towns and
cities, including Ramallah, the seat of the so-called
Palestinian government.

Frustrated eyewitnesses and tearful victims spoke of
“unprecedented brutality” and “Gestapo-like behaviour” as
Israeli occupation forces moved throughout the central and
northern West Bank to destroy what was left of the
Palestinian charity sector upon which thousands of
impoverished Palestinian families depend for their
livelihood.

Israel had been targeting orphanages and boarding schools
as well as soup kitchens and sewing workshops serving
orphans in the Hebron region. The campaign of terror, with
many hair- raising scenes of cruelty and moral callousness,
has seriously raised the level of hostility and hatred for
Israel.

Palestinian livelihood, like Palestinian lives, appears
irrelevant to Israel. It is, after all, the tormentor,
murderer, and perpetual oppressor of the Palestinian
people.

The latest savagery occurred last week when dozens of
Israeli army vehicles, including armoured personnel
carriers, stormed the main business district in Nablus, 90
kilometres north of Jerusalem. Nablus is one of the cities
the Palestinian Authority (PA) had declared “sovereign”,
especially after the deployment of hundreds of US-trained
and well armed “security forces”.

When Israeli soldiers violated the city last week,
Palestinian security forces were nowhere to be seen. The
invading Israeli troops stormed schools, commercial malls,
sports clubs, cultural centres, a key medical centre, a TV
station, beauty salons as well as numerous NGO offices,
ransacking and destroying equipment. In one instance,
educational aides — including human skeletons, microscopes
and school furniture — were smashed and thrown into the
street.

Moreover, soldiers stole computers and many electrical and
electronic appliances from the targeted buildings, all
declared “property of the Israeli” army. At the Afaq TV
station in downtown Nablus, the Israeli army confiscated
all its equipment and furniture, “then they left on the
front door a military order of its closure for one year,”
said station owner and director Issa Abul-Ezz in a
statement sent to Al-Ahram Weekly.

The most draconian barbarity, however, targeted a
commercial mall consisting of dozens of shops. The Israeli
army closed the premises, warning that any Palestinian
entering the multi-storey building would be arrested and
imprisoned for five years.

In Ramallah, Israeli soldiers stormed the municipal council
building of Al-Bireh, Ramallah’s twin-town, located a few
hundred metres from the headquarters of PA President
Mahmoud Abbas and the office of his Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad. The Israeli soldiers, with sledgehammers and
welding equipment, forced open offices, confiscating
computers and destroyed furniture.

Again, PA forces remained confined to their barracks “in
honour of agreements and understandings” with Israel. PA
officials, including Prime Minister Fayyad, have argued
forcefully that all social, cultural, educational, athletic
and commercial institutions targeted by Israel functioned
according to the law and were involved in nothing of
concern to Israel whatsoever.

“These are legitimate Palestinian institutions, and
targeting them is aimed at weakening and humiliating the
Palestinian Authority,” said Fayyad while inspecting the
targeted buildings. He added that he would complain to the
United States as well as to Tony Blair, the Quartet’s envoy
to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Neither has
uttered a word criticising the latest Israeli savagery.

The Israeli occupation authorities claimed the targeted
institutions were owned or run by religious individuals who
might be sympathetic to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic
resistance movement. However, the Israeli army, and its
intelligence arm, Shin Bet, failed to produce any evidence
whatsoever linking the institutions to acts of violence.

Ironically, it is provocative actions like these that
seriously weaken the image of the PA while strengthening
Hamas. Fayyad said the Israeli onslaught on Palestinian
charities and other institutions would radicalise
Palestinian society and deepen hatred for Israel. It is
evident, however, that Israel is indifferent to the
long-term effects of its vindictive actions against
Palestinians. Drawing satisfaction at seeing Palestinians
suffer seems to be the main Israeli motive.

The harsh onslaught on the city of Nablus, and the
embarrassment this onslaught has caused to Israel’s peace
partner, the PA, has drawn few reactions from an
international community that appears to have lost hope of
restraining Israel’s wild savagery against virtually
helpless Palestinian victims.

The most outspoken response came from Louisa Morgantini,
vice- president of the European Union, who called the
Israeli raids “a clear violation of international law”.

“The ongoing raids, closures, and confiscations by the
Israeli army against institutions, associations and evens
schools in Nablus are illegal actions, representing not
only a clear violation of international law and more
suffering and injustice against the Palestinian population,
but also a direct attack on the Palestinian Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad’s government.

“Incursions, arrests, closures, sound bombs exploding
during nightly invasions, and now also the order to close
the Nablus mall, including 50 shops and offices,
threatening anyone who enters the mall to be imprisoned for
five years: these orders by the Israeli military are
illegal and invalid.”

On 10 July, Fayyad toured Nablus and urged shopkeepers and
residents to reopen their stores and to resist
non-violently. The Israeli army responded to Fayyad’s
“defiant posture” by re-entering Nablus and sealing
additional premises and by renewing warnings that violators
of Israeli military orders would be imprisoned and have
their homes blown up.

Fayyad, infuriated and clearly embarrassed by the audacity
of the Israeli raids, called on Hamas to work towards the
formation of a national unity government, because “this is
the only way to present a united Palestinian front in the
face of the Israeli aggression.”

Israeli society, which has been drifting stridently towards
Talmudic fundamentalism and jingoistic fascism, generally
ignored its army’s shameful behaviour in the West Bank.
There were two exceptions. First, the small but noted
Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, published a statement in
the Israeli newspaper Haaretz entitled “Orphans and
widows”.

The statement read as follows: “As part of the actions
against Hamas, the Olmert government is destroying
orphanages, schools and charities in the West Bank. There
are no other institutions to take their place. Orphans,
widows and poor people will be thrown into the street. Will
this isolate Hamas? On the contrary.”

The other exception was an article written by the
non-conformist columnist Gideon Levy, also published in
Haaretz. Levy spoke of the horrific oppression the Israeli
army is meting out to the Palestinians. “Thus the
occupation proves once again that there is no place in
Palestinian lives that it cannot reach, and that it has no
boundaries.”

“An army that closes a school, library, bakery and boarding
school; soldiers who raid a licensed commercial television
station, confiscating its equipment and threatening its
closure, as happened recently at the Afaq TV station in
Nablus… These operations broadcast a message loud and
clear: the occupation has lost all moral inhibitions and
any shred of wisdom.”

“How wretched is an army,” Levy continued, “that empties
storerooms of food and clothing for the needy; how
ridiculous that the army signs orders to close hairdressing
salons; how pathetic is a military raid on bakeries and how
cruel is an occupation that shuts down clinics on any
pretexts.”

It is important to keep in mind that these views in no way
reflect the collective conscience of Israel’s overtly
racist society. Therein, the dominant response to the
occupation’s atrocities is silence.

Still illegal Four years on, Palestinians still demand that
the World Court’s ruling on Israel’s apartheid wall be
implemented, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank

On 9 July 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in
The Hague ruled as illegal the so- called “separation wall”
– the gigantic barrier Israel had been building in the
West Bank.

The wall has not yet been completed, mainly due to
procedural and financial problems. But when completed, it
would devour nearly 46 per cent of the West Bank, 10 per
cent of which would be isolated on the “Israeli” side of
the barrier. This almost certainly means annexation.

This is added to East Jerusalem and surrounding Arab
villages, which constitutes four per cent of the occupied
West Bank. Israel has already cordoned East Jerusalem, with
its estimated quarter of a million Palestinians, with an
eight- metre high barrier, cutting them off from the rest
of the West Bank.

The landmark ruling by the ICJ stated that the gigantic
barrier, built mostly on confiscated Arab land occupied by
Israel in 1967, was in violation of international law and
should be torn down. The ruling also reaffirmed that all
Jewish colonies built in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and
the Gaza Strip since 1967 were likewise illegal under
international law and ought to be dismantled.

Palestinians suffering losses as a result of the wall, the
ICJ ruled, would have to be compensated by Israel. Israel,
emboldened by its guardian-ally, the United States,
rejected the ruling defiantly, arguing that its viewpoint
was not taken into consideration by ICJ judges.

In fact, far from paying the slightest attention to the ICJ
ruling, Israel actually accelerated its seizing of
Palestinian land, with the Israeli High Court of Justice
acting as a rubber stamp in the hands of the Israeli
occupation army to give the huge land-grab a façade of
legality it cannot have.

Palestinians in general viewed the ruling as an important
victory for their cause. However, few Palestinians had any
illusions as to the realistic prospects of getting the
US-dominated “international community” to ensure
implementation of the ICJ ruling on the ground. After all,
numerous other resolutions by the UN and its Security
Council declaring Israeli actions illegal and null and void
remained mere “ink on paper”.

In recent days, Palestinians all over the West Bank have
been marking the fourth anniversary of the ICJ ruling with
renewed determination to end the 41-year-old Israeli
occupation of their homeland. Indeed, the construction of
the ugly barrier, which many also call “the wall of shame”
is but a symptom of the Israeli occupation, just as is the
proliferation of Jewish-only colonies and Jewish-only roads
throughout the occupied territories.

Last week, eight protests were held in the West Bank, from
Jenin in the north to Bethlehem in the south. The
protesters, who also included foreign peace activists,
carried aloft Palestinian flags as well as signs calling
for the demolition of the wall.

In Deir Al-Ghusun near Tulkarem (in the northern West
Bank), protesters marched to the wall that isolated their
orchards and farms. One protester called the seizure of his
land by the Israeli army “an act of rape”. He accused
Israel of “deceiving and lying to the world”.

“First they said the wall was a security structure, not a
political border. However, we have seen that all Israeli
policies and actions indicate that Israel deals with the
wall as constituting political boundaries,” said the
middle-aged man.

Soon, however, the protest was suppressed by Israeli
occupation troops invading the village via military gates
built into the wall. The purpose of these gates is to allow
the Israeli army easy access to adjacent Palestinian
villages, thus facilitating control over the local
populace.

On 11 July, Palestinian villagers and foreign peace
activists marched to the wall at the villages of Jayyous,
Niilin, Billin and Al-Khadr where they clashed with Israeli
troops defending the wall. Villagers spoke bitterly of
Israeli military bulldozers decimating and pulverising
their centuries-old olive groves and ancestral farms, upon
which much of their livelihood depends.

For their part, Israeli occupation soldiers were in no mood
to allow the victims of Israeli apartheid policy and ethnic
cleansing to even peacefully communicate their grievances
to the outside world. Even before protesters arrived at the
site of the decimated groves, occupation soldiers showered
them with rubber-coated bullets, sound bombs and tear gas.
One villager was seriously injured, and as many as 50 olive
trees were set on fire by exploding bombs and tear gas
shells.

Undoubtedly, the wall has inflicted incalculable losses of
national proportions on Palestinians in the West Bank,
covering all aspects of their existence and survival.
According to Abdul-Hadi Hantash, a cartographer and expert
on Jewish settlements, the wall has a length of 786
kilometres and is built along the main water reservoir
basins in the West Bank, which produce 460 million cubic
metres of mostly fresh water per year. Of this amount,
around five per cent goes to the Palestinians while Israel
grabs the rest.

Hantash said the wall had already isolated more than 70
Palestinian villages and hamlets with a total population of
223,000 people. It also resulted in the uprooting or
destruction of 108,000 full-grown trees, including 84,000
olive trees.

Hantash said the Palestinian Authority (PA) should not take
the wall as a separate issue. “This sinister wall is an
integral part of the Jewish settlement policy. It is a
symptom of the occupation, and as we all know symptoms
can’t be eradicated without treating the root cause first.”

Hantash was speaking on 11 July during a symposium held in
Dura, near Hebron, marking the passage of four years since
the adoption by the ICJ of the landmark ruling against the
wall.

Talab Al-Sanie, a Palestinian member of the Israeli
parliament, who also took part in the symposium, pointed
out that the construction of the wall was motivated by an
overwhelming Israeli desire to unilaterally impose
political boundaries between Israel and a prospective
Palestinian state.

Al-Sanie, however, argued that the ICJ ruling proved that
the wall was “an illegitimate phenomenon stemming from
another equally illegitimate phenomenon, namely the Israeli
occupation of Arab land”. He pointed out that Israel was
simply trying to resolve its demographic problems and fears
at the expense of the Palestinian people.

“Jews ought to realise that this hateful military
occupation will not give them security. They should also
understand that their enemy is not the Palestinian people,
but the occupation, the termination of which would put an
end to the conflict in the region.”

To his chagrin, most Israelis, especially their government
and the military establishment, denounce Al-Sanie’s views,
explaining the continued expansion of Jewish settlements
all over the West Bank and on both sides of the
“separation” wall.

Caption: Palestinian demonstrators gather at the apartheid
wall during a protest marking the fourth anniversary since
the International Court of Justice called for partial
demolition of the wall in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood
of Beit Hanin

C a p t i o n 2: Palestinian demonstrators gather at the
apartheid wall during a protest marking the fourth
anniversary since the International Court of Justice called
for partial demolition of the wall in the East Jerusalem
neighbourhood of Beit Hanin

11/07/2008
By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

Until a few years ago, most of the Israeli army activities
in the occupied territories were aimed primarily at forcing
Palestinians to come to terms with their status as
perpetual slaves tightly controlled by Jewish masters.

The occupation army would demolish homes, seal college
campuses and arrest suspected activists for prolonged
periods of time.

The message was clear: Don’t you ever dream of freedom, for
whatever you do wouldn’t help you, the world won’t help you
because we control America and America controls the world;
we are the master race.

Now the Israeli army is targeting the Palestinian society
as a whole. It is directly targeting educational, social,
economic and even medical institutions.

Interestingly, this is taking place under the scandalous
rubric of “peace talks” between the Zionist state and the
American-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) which is
supposed to protect Palestinians and their national
interests from Israel’s nefarious conduct.

In doing so, Israel is effectively crossing all erstwhile
red lines, violating all conceivable considerations
mandated by human decency. It is a no-holds-barred policy
intended to impoverish and debilitate the Palestinian
community by forcing Palestinians to devote most of their
time and energy to hankering after their immediate daily
needs.

This week, the Israeli army vandalized and ransacked civil
institutions, including a school, a medical center and a
commercial department store in the heart of Nablus, the
second largest city in the West Bank. The vandalized and
ransacked institutions happen to be in an area under the
control of the PA, pursuant to the hapless Oslo Accords.

Reporters and ordinary citizens were shocked by the scenes
of basic educational materials trashed and crushed by an
army that Israelis claim ad nauseam that it is the most
moral army in the world.

Well, it is a “moral army” that orders its soldiers to
storm orphanages, boarding schools and soup kitchens and
crush food about to be served to poor children, many of
them have lost their parents to Israeli bullets.

Morality afterall is a relative matter. The Nazis, too, had
thought their armies were the most moral of all armies.
Apparently, Zionist Jews are walking in the same path and
making the same arguments.

A few months ago, the Israeli army carried out a
“holocaust”, using the words of a Christian peace activist,
against Islamic charitable institutions in the Hebron
region. The “army of the Jews” targeted schools,
businesses, orphanages and soup kitchens. troops, acting
like gangsters and common criminals, went as far as raiding
and vandalizing sewing machines and clothes stores. Even
children sport shoes and underwear were confiscated and
later dumped at sewage streams outside the city. Yes, this
happens in a state that claims to be a light upon the
nations and the only democracy in the Middle East.

Israel, a country whose very existence is based on murder,
mendacity and theft, claims that its “actions” are
necessary to combat terror, a reference to Palestinian
resistance to Israel’s sinister occupation, including
non-violent resistance.

However, it is more than obvious that the targeted
institutions have absolutely no connections with any
political organization, including Hamas, the mantra whose
invocation Israel thinks justifies every conceivable crime
against the helpless Palestinians, their dignity and
property.

Moreover, one is inescapably compelled to ask how
destroying classrooms and trashing educational aids as well
as crushing soup kitchens and storming gynecology wards in
hospitals contribute to fighting “terror.”?

Does the Israeli army, government and Jews in general think
that they endear Palestinian children to peaceful
coexistence by destroying their classrooms, by crushing
their educational aids, and by tying up Palestinian
teachers to power poles and beating them savagely?

In fact, Israel is punishing the Palestinians for their
very survival, for their very existence and for refusing to
die and disappear, just as the Nazis fought Jews for their
very existence, survival and refusal to disappear.

Israel would want the Palestinians to die and vanish from
the face of earth without showing resistance and as quietly
as possible.

This mental sickness on the part of Israelis explains the
utter evilness and insidiousness of their despicable
treatment of ordinary Palestinians. The collective mindset
of Israel simply expects her Palestinian victims to behave
and act like Nazism’s victims, to surrender to their
ineluctable fate without making a big noise.

Unfortunately, the world at large seems to be colluding
with Israel in crucifying the Palestinian people.

Even the Palestinian Authority (PA) of Ramallah, which
claims to be defending and safeguarding Palestinian
national interests, is acquiescing to genocidal Israeli
terrorism, so much that Israel itself has come to view the
PA as a sort of Palestinian Judenrat.

One would have thought that Mahmoud Abbas, the chief of the
PA, would take a meaningful stand against Israeli crimes in
Nablus and Hebron.

However, his deafening silence in the face of these
abominable crimes is confirming and the man’s utter
inadequacy for leading the Palestinians.

But, then, what can we realistically expect from an
authority that has no authority, an entity whose very
existence and survival depends on handouts from foreign
powers which themselves happen to be at Israel’s beck and
call?

As to the west, the matter is even more scandalous. Western
governments, which keep an army of informers, NGO
representatives, diplomats, and monitors in the West Bank,
know perfectly well the extent of Israeli barbarianism and
terror against the helpless Palestinians.

A few weeks ago, a European diplomat intimated to this
writer that “we brief our governments on every aspect of
Israeli repression of Palestinians.”

However, when asked why the governments don’t act on the
information provided, the diplomat, expressing a whiff of
embarrassment, said “Well, that is a different matter. Our
governments have other considerations. They can’t always do
what should be done. They can’t upset certain pressure
groups both inside and outside.”

We are talking about mostly morally-bankrupt governments
whose leaders, when they come on a visit to occupied
Palestine, don’t stop babbling about “human rights,
democracy and civil liberties.”

Well, we have heard these stories too much and for too
long, so much that most of our people have already lost
faith in western democracy, a big lie that only spells
hypocrisy and conspiracy.

What else explains the disgraceful western silence toward
the Nazi-like Israeli onslaught on the Palestinian people’s
very existence.

20/07/2008
By Khalid Amayreh

This week, Israel sank in an avalanche of national
lethargy, hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Seeking to cope with Hezbullah’s success in getting Israel
to release all Lebanese prisoners, dead and living, in
exchange for the remains of two Israeli soldiers, Israeli
leaders, media and shapers of public opinion have been
indulging in sanctimonious self-glorification while
denouncing the other side as “hateful, uncivilized and
representing an inferior culture.”

This is a characteristic Israeli behavior. It perfectly
characterizes a society that has been living in a state of
denial ever since Zionist gangs, aided by western powers,
succeeded in uprooting the bulk of native Palestinians from
Palestine, their ancestral homeland, and implanting therein
Israel, a state based on racism, terror, ethnic cleansing
and falsification of history.

The orgy of lying, especially the shocking amenability of
most Zionist Jews to take the obscene lies at face value
caricatures a people that dreads knowing the truth, let
alone coping with it. And when the truth eventually manages
to penetrate the “iron wall” of Zionist lies, the
custodians of the big lie, which is Zionism, resort to a
whole set of defense mechanisms to protect the collective
mental sanity of a state whose very existence constitutes a
crime against humanity.

Thus, according to this depraved and psychotic mindset,
Israel doesn’t murder children and innocent civilians, It
is only the victims that bring death upon themselves. And
Israelis don’t steal the land and property of Palestinians,
since the entire world was created for the sake of the
“chosen people.”

And even when Jews do commit “certain mistakes” and
“abominable sins,” they are not really to blame for that
since it is the victims that always force Jews to make
these mistakes.

Hence, the proverbial Palestinian victim of Israeli
savagery is always responsible for the demolition of his
own home, the murder of his own children and the
destruction of his own farm, grove and orchard by Israeli
bulldozer!!

Eventually, the entire Palestinian Nakba is a
self-inflicted calamity which the Palestinians brought upon
themselves because they refused to succumb to the will of
the “chosen people.” More to the point, if the Palestinians
don’t come to terms with the Nakba and the occupation, a
greater Nakba, or holocaust, would be inflicted upon them.

Interestingly, the wave of self-righteous overindulgence in
Israel has been led by the establishment people, figures
that know too well that Israel doesn’t really represent the
culture of peace, but rather the culture of war and
aggression; they know that Israel is inculcated with a
criminal and murderous mentality that differs very little
from the Nazi mentality.

Yes, they do know all of this, but like all murderers,
thieves and liars, they dread facing the truth. The truth
would simply make them lose their raison d’etre. This is
why they always try to turn the black into white, the white
into black and the big lie into a “truth” glorified by
millions of “beneficiaries” at home and ignorant “fans”
abroad.

It may be particularly difficult to convince the
“beneficiaries” of their sinfulness, namely the fact that
they are living in homes that belong to other people and
living on land that belongs to another people.

However, for the sake of the ignorant or naïve fans in
Europe and north America as well as the rest of the world,
it is imperative that they be delivered from the grip of
Zionist lies.

Yes, westerners must be allowed to know the naked truth
about this sick and sickening state that deceptively claims
to be the sole true inheritor of Judaism while its
ideology, behavior and actions are antithetical to all
religious and moral values that stress universal justice
and human equality.

Let us remember some of the “glorious expressions” of the
Zionist culture of love and self-abnegation in recent
years.

Chris Hedges is a prominent journalist and author
specialized in American and Middle Eastern politics. He
worked for a number of publications including the Christian
Science Monitor, the Dallas Morning News and the New York
Times where he spent 15 years.

In his recent book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,
Hedges tells a chilling story from his trip to the Gaza
Strip in the heydays of the intifada, or the second
Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation.

Hedges watched, ten- and eleven-year-old Palestinian
children being lured to their neighborhood’s perimeter
fence by taunts from a loudspeaker on the Israeli side.
“Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come! The
Israeli voice barked insults at the boys’ mothers. The boys
responded by hurling their rocks at the jeep with the
loudspeaker. The Israelis shot at them with M-16s fitted
with silencers. Hedges found the victims in the hospital,
children with their stomachs ripped out, and with gaping
holes in their limbs.

Writing for “Harper’s Magazine” (see The Nation, March 11,
2002), Hedges wrote: “ Children have been shot in other
conflicts I have covered. Death squads gunned them down in
El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined
up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children
in their sights in Sarajevo, but I have never before
watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and
murder them for sport.”

Here is another “expression of love:” In November, 2001, an
undercover unit of the Israeli army buried a landmine in
the sand that flows around Abdullah Siyam Primary School in
Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

A few hours later, as Palestinian children headed to
school, the mine exploded. Five school kids were instantly
reduced to broken flesh. The youngest was six. All the
victims came from the same extended family: Akram Naim
Astal, 6, and his brother Mohammed, 13; Omar Idris Astal,
12, and his brother Anis, 10; and their cousin Muhamemd
Sultan Astal, 12. Their young bodies were mutilated beyond
recognition. The limbs of one child were found 50 meters
away. Some of the kids could only be identified by their
school bags, brightly colored and spattered with blood,
still dangling from their butchered bodies.

Hasbara doctors in Israel might seek to extenuate the
gravity or even whitewash these crimes by claiming that
these were “individual acts” that didn’t reflect the
overall policy of the Israeli government and army.

However, this is a big lie. In 2001, the noted Israeli
award-wining journalist Amira Hass interviewed an Israeli
sniper in which the soldier described the commands he
received from his superiors:

“Twelve and up, you are allowed to shoot. That is what they
tell us,” the soldier said. “So,” responded the reporter,
“according to the IDF, the appropriate minimum age group at
which to shoot is 12.” The soldier replied: “this is
according to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don’t
know if this is what the IDF says to the media.”

A further “expression of love and humanity of Israeli
culture” manifested itself, also in Gaza, in 2004, when an
Israeli occupation army soldier, dubbed Captain-R, shot a
Palestinian girl, Iman al Hums, who was on her way to
school. However, the soldier was not sure whether the
13-year-girl died or not. Hence, he walked to the bleeding
child, and instead of trying to save her life, he shot here
25 times, emptying his entire magazine of bullets into her
tender body. He did what he did in order “ to verify the
kill,” a standard Israeli army practice in such
circumstances

Now, the reader might be prompted to think that the
bloodthirsty murderer was arrested and made to stand trial
for his hair-raising crime. Well, the opposite happened.
The soldier not only was innocent of any wrongdoing but was
also awarded tens of thousands of dollars for being “hurt
and libeled by unfavorable media coverage.”

In truth, it is not only Israeli army soldiers and officers
who willfully indulge in such Nazi behavior. Zionist rabbis
routinely issue religious edicts that would allow Israeli
troops to murder non-Jewish children knowingly and
deliberately without having to worry about any
ramifications, moral or otherwise.

In May 2007, shortly before Israeli occupation soldiers
murdered two Gaza children who apparently were searching
for scrap metal to sell for a few cents in order help feed
their impoverished families, the former Israeli Chief
rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, petitioned the Israeli government
to carry out a series of carpet bombing of Gaza population
centers.

Elyahu argued that a ground invasion of the world’s most
crowded spot would endanger Israeli soldiers. He said “If
they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a
thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must
kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000,
even a million, whatever it takes to make them stop.”

Earlier, Elyahu, a prominent Talmudic sage, called on the
Israeli occupation army not to refrain from killing
Palestinian children if that means saving the lives of
Israeli soldiers.

The above-mentioned are only sporadic examples of the
barbarian spirit inculcated in Israelis, especially
soldiers dispatched to the occupied Palestinian territories
to guard the occupation and enforce apartheid.

It is this barbarian mindset that makes Israeli soldiers
abduct Palestinian school children and take them to nearby
Jewish settlements where they are used as “training
objects” by Jewish youngsters. It is this barbarian
mentality that makes Jewish soldiers force helpless
Palestinian laborers do certain depraved acts such as
drinking soldiers’ urine and singing, individually or in
unison, “wahad Hommas, wahad fool, Allah Iyhay-yee Mishmar
Gvul” (one ‘dish’ hummus, one broad beans, may Allah greet
the Border Police)!!!

There are of course thousands, even tens of thousands, of
examples which one could easily and readily cite to
underscore Israeli barbarianism.

To be sure, this disgraceful reality is known to many
Israelis. In 2001, Shulamit Aloni, a former minister of
education, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that “we
have become a barbarian people.”

So, what makes a leftist, liberal woman see in Israel what
the vast bulk of Israelis, including the country’s
intelligentsia, wouldn’t see, or more correctly, wouldn’t
want to see.

Well, it is Israel’s collective psychosis, the denial
syndrome?

17/07/2008
By Khalid Amayreh

The latest prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hezbullah
is a healthy indicator that at least some Arabs are
beginning to understand the depraved Zionist mentality, and
act accordingly. Such mentality is based on arrogance,
insolence, and religious and ethnic superiority.

Israel, a country whose collective mindset views non-Jews
as virtual animals or at least lesser human beings, had to
face a new enemy, an enemy that will not be scared by
overwhelming brutality, but one that will meet Israel’s
state terror with toughness, resilience, valor and
defiance.

This is a new reality that Israelis, especially Israeli
leaders, have yet to come to terms with, especially
psychologically.

This explains the deep frustration that is apparent in the
tone of Israeli leaders reacting to the latest swap deal,
especially the fact that Israel has been forced to release
the Lebanese guerilla Samir Kuntar.

Israel, utterly ignoring her own countless murderous sins,
has come to view Kuntar as the prototype of the ultimate
terrorist as if the tens of thousands of Jewish murderers
and terrorists who have enormous amount of innocent blood
on their hands were the Lord’s angels of love and mercy.

Indeed, if Israel were a normal state, and its people a
normal people, it would have adopted an honest and just
approach toward its neighbors, an approach that would not
discriminate between “blood and blood” and “life and life.”

Undoubtedly, such an approach would have saved thousands of
lives, Jewish and Arab, and spared the region and its
peoples decades of pain and suffering.

But then Zionism would be losing its face, mind and heart,
and would morph into something entirely different.

Unfortunately, it is probably futile to preach morality to
Zionism, a manifestly demonic movement which experience
shows is not capable of behaving morally and humanely.

Well, let us examine some of the statements and remarks
Zionist leaders have been making with regard to the latest
swap deal with Hezbullah.

Shimon Peres, the hero of the Qana massacre of 1996, who is
now Israel’s President, has been quoted as saying that “We
don’t want murderers to go free, but we have a moral
obligation to bring home soldiers whom we sent to defend
their country.”

Peres also reportedly said that “my heart is torn over the
decision to pardon Kuntar,” adding that his decision to
that effect “in no way constituted forgiveness.”

Certainly, no one , Arab or otherwise, is particularly
infatuated with what Kuntar did in 1979, although the
Israeli army then was at least partially responsible for
the killing by the Lebanese guerilla of three Israelis,
including a paramilitary policeman, a man and his daughter.

The three lives, like numerous other victims, Arab and
Jewish, would have been spared had the insolent Israeli
military establishment behaved wisely.

After all, Kuntar, and his friends who were killed in that
rescue operation, didn’t come to Israel to kill and shed
blood but to force Israel to release Arab prisoners.

Non the less, one is prompted to ask difficult questions,
questions that most Israelis don’t like to hear let alone
answer, but when confronted with, they either seek to evade
or prevaricate and quibble in their answers.

Who has killed more innocent people, Shimon Peres or Samir
Kuntar? Who has more blood, including children blood, on
his hands, Shimon Peres or Samir Kuntar? Who has inflicted
more terror, suffering and death upon innocent people,
Shimon Peres or Samir Kuntar?

If honesty is to be the ultimate arbiter among men, then
one can’t escape the inescapable conclusion that it is mass
murderers like Peres, Ariel Sharon and other Israeli
leaders, dead or living, who really need forgiveness for
their horrible crimes against humanity.

In fact, Israelis should be reminded on this occasion that
a Presidential post, a business suit with neck tie, and the
ability to speak eloquent sound-bites in several languages
and have audience with statesmen and VIPs from around the
world, don’t really transform a criminal into a true human
being.

A criminal is a criminal especially if he refuses to come
to terms with his crimes and if he refuses to apologize to
his victims. Needless to say, Peres has done neither.

But then criminals are not concerned about their sins.

One elderly Israeli woman interviewed by the Ha’aretz
newspaper lashed out at Hezbullah for having refused until
the very last moment to tell if the two Israeli prisoners
were dead or alive.

“It’s the saddest day for Israel. They kept us waiting
until the last second to learn the fate of our sons,” the
woman was quoted as saying.

I certainly sympathize with the woman at the personal
level. However, I would want to ask the Jewish lady why she
thought that Jewish lives were worth more than non-Jewish
lives?

I also would like to ask her what she would tell the
mothers, families and relatives of thousands of Arab
prisoners who have been languishing in Israel’s dark,
underground dungeons since 1967?

We are talking about POWs and MIAs and other ordinary
people whose families have no way of knowing if their
beloved ones are dead or a live? Aren’t these “forgotten
prisoners” human beings, too? Are they children of a lesser
God?

Unfortunately, most Israelis, thoroughly self-absorbed and
self-centered, don’t like to be asked such questions lest
their superiority complexes and collective psychosis be
exposed.

Finally, the latest prisoner swap shows that Israel only
understands the language of cold realpolitik which is by
definition immoral and coercive.

For Palestinians, who have more than 10,000 of their
beloved ones languishing in Israeli concentration camps,
the message is very clear: If you want to get Israel to
release your beloved ones, take Israeli hostages and swap
them for the Palestinian captives.

11/06/08

Hamas leaders arrive in Cairo to resume efforts, mediated
by Egypt, aimed at addressing numerous issues currently
deadlocked on top of which is the elusive Palestinian
reconciliation, Dina Ezzat and Khaled Amayreh report

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo Tuesday for talks with
Egyptian officials to resume truce negotiations frozen by
the movement last week as well as discuss a prisoner swap
deal involving Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit held captive
since 2006.

Hamas hopes to exchange Shalit for a number of Palestinian
prisoners held in Israel. There are over 10,000
Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

The Hamas delegation, which includes leaders from both the
Gaza Strip and the Diaspora, will also ask the Egyptian
leadership to step up efforts to bring about Palestinian
national reconciliation between Fatah — which Egypt leans
towards in support — and Hamas.

Rafah is also high on the agenda with some Hamas leaders
privately criticising Egyptian reluctance to reopen the
border crossing, saying that keeping it closed is causing
unwarranted distress for desperate Gazans. Hamas leaders
also take issue with Egypt’s refusal to release Hamas
members held by authorities in Egypt — some for years.
Egyptian officials acknowledge that tension has marred
contacts with Hamas.

Egyptian officials argue that Egypt can’t unilaterally
reopen the Rafah crossing given that such a step would go
beyond an outstanding international agreement regulating
Palestinian movement in both directions across the
Egypt-Gaza border. Refuting this argument, Hamas believes
the agreement was unfair — since it allowed Israel to have
the final say in an exclusively Egyptian-Palestinian matter
–and that it has expired anyway.

According to sources close to Ismail Haniyeh, prime
minister of the Hamas-dominated Gaza government, the Hamas
delegation will also brief Egyptian officials on as many as
50 Israeli violations of the fragile Hamas-Israel truce
struck but a month ago.

Egyptian officials speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly say that
Cairo has become impatient with the “inability of Hamas to
show necessary determination to complete” the prisoners
swap deal. The officials add that Egypt is “offended” by
the insistence of Hamas to include the European Union in
the deal, almost as a co-sponsor.

This said, Cairo appears determined to press ahead with
attempts to consolidate the truce and eventually expand it
to include the West Bank. “Hamas wants this [expansion]
within weeks, but it looks like it is going to take a few
more months,” commented one official.

In parallel, Egypt is also maintaining what its officials
qualify as a “reasonable pace” in handling the prisoners
swap deal. “Last month we were more optimistic, but we are
not pessimistic now,” an informed official said.

Ever since the conclusion of the truce deal four weeks ago,
Israel kept border crossings with Gaza partially closed,
allegedly in response to rockets fired on Israel from
inside the Gaza Strip.

However, there are indications that elements affiliated
with Fatah, and that are directly answerable to Palestinian
Authority (PA) intelligence officials in the West Bank, are
responsible for the firings.

PA leaders have publicly given their general support for
the truce in Gaza. However, some elements within the Fatah
leadership consider the truce as benefiting Hamas and
disadvantaging Fatah in their internal power struggle.

This week, the Israeli occupation army raided, vandalised
and ransacked schools, charities, an important medical
centre and a large department store in Nablus, alleging
that these targets were affiliated with “religious”
individuals close to Hamas. Israel said the rampage was
aimed at strengthening PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Although
Fatah condemned the Israeli aggressions, Abbas has remained
reticent to speak out.

Hamas, while asserting its commitment to the ceasefire with
Israel, has condemned the “criminal and Nazi-like
ransacking of Palestinian interests in Nablus and other
parts of the West Bank.”

The perceived collusion between the PA and Israel against
Hamas, which Fatah leaders vehemently deny, comes as
efforts to reconcile the two camps have suffered a series
of setbacks. In the West Bank, Fatah-affiliated security
agencies have arrested scores of Hamas sympathisers,
including the elected mayor of Al-Sammou, a small town near
Hebron.

The general atmosphere of mutual mistrust this week
culminated with Abbas’s refusal to meet with Khaled
Meshaal, the Damascus-based politburo chief of Hamas.
Abbas, who held talks with Syrian President Bashar
Al-Assad, has reportedly been offended by a strongly worded
letter sent to him by Meshaal via Arab League
Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

Hamas interpreted Abbas’s refusal to meet with its chief as
further proof that Abbas “is answerable first” to the US,
which opposes rapprochement between the two Palestinian
political factions. Fatah leaders deny that Abbas is at the
Bush administration’s beck and call. “It is unfair that
whenever the brothers in Hamas don’t like a certain
statement or conduct on our part, they start calling us
traitors and agents of America,” said Rafiq Al-Natsheh, a
former Fatah cabinet minister.

More than a month ago, Abbas called for national
reconciliation dialogue — inclusive of Hamas — that Cairo
was going to host. In fact, last week Egyptian officials
said the dialogue would be held “soon”. Now Cairo officials
are saying, “it is around the corner.”

“The factors necessary to launch the dialogue are there.
Both Fatah and Hamas are interested in ending the national
split that they are both finding difficult to handle,”
commented an Egyptian diplomatic source. He added that
Israel and the US are now less reluctant about this
dialogue than they were a few weeks ago, especially in view
of the negative impact of the split on progress in
Palestinian- Israeli negotiations.

“Today, the US is especially aware of the need for
President Abbas to secure some victory that he can
capitalise on,” said one source; all the more so if he is
to run for the Palestinian presidency again in elections in
the near future.

Palestinian columnist Hani Al-Masri believes that both
Hamas and Fatah — but especially Fatah — are reluctant to
make the necessary efforts to reach reconciliation at this
time. Al-Masri told Al-Ahram Weekly that Abbas wants to
exhaust all possibilities for reaching a broad agreement
with Israel before the end of President Bush’s term in
office.

Al-Masri said Hamas, too, would like to wait until its
estimated 45 lawmakers, now held in Israeli jails as
political hostages, are released. “If they are freed, Hamas
then would have the parliamentary majority to sack the
Ramallah-based Fayyad government, and Abbas would have
little manoeuvrability,” Al-Masri said. (see pp. 3&7)

[Caption: THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM: Armed with the national
flag, a Palestinian young man stands in silent
confrontation with an Israeli soldier in the occupied West
Bank following protests against the construction of the
apartheid wall deemed illegal by the World Court. A
reminder, perhaps, for rivals Fatah and Hamas that the
Israeli occupation remains the gravest threat to the
survival of the Palestinian people]

[C a p t i o n 2: THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM: Armed with the
national flag, a Palestinian young man stands in silent
confrontation with an Israeli soldier in the occupied West
Bank following protests against the construction of the
apartheid wall deemed illegal by the World Court. A
reminder, perhaps, for rivals Fatah and Hamas that the
Israeli occupation remains the gravest threat to the
survival of the Palestinian people]

From Khalid Amayreh in Nablus

08/07/08
Palestinian Islamic leaders have called on Arab and Muslim
states as well as “all human beings who believe in justice”
to strongly condemn an ongoing Israeli campaign against
Islamic civilian institutions throughout the occupied West
Bank.

The Israeli army on Tuesday, 8 July, rampaged through the
northern town of Nablus, raiding schools, businesses,
charities, sport clubs and a major medical center.

Eyewitnesses said as many as 130 Israeli military vehicles
and armored personnel carriers stormed Nablus’s downtown
shortly after forces loyal to Palestinian Authority leader
Mahmoud Abbas were ordered by the town’s nominal governor
Jamal Muhesen to return to their barracks and stay there
until a further notice.

Thousands of American-trained Palestinian “national
security forces” are stationed in Nablus, but their tasks
are confined to fighting anti-Israeli activists,
particularly members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad
organizations.

The targets of the latest Israeli rampage include a girl
school, which was thoroughly vandalized, an important
medical center which offers free or semi-free health
services to the poor and the unemployed, a commercial mall,
a recreational center, and an insurance company and the
offices of a number of NGOs.

One of these NGOs is the Nafha Society which monitors
Israeli treatment of Palestinian political and resistance
prisoners in Israeli jails and detention camps.

Local sources said crack soldiers and Shin Beth agents
confiscated dozens of computers and other office equipment
as well as undisclosed sums of cash. The soldiers also
seized a large amount of furniture. The Shin Beth is
Israel’s chief domestic intelligence agency which
effectively controls all aspects of Palestinians in the
West Bank. The operation which began shortly after midnight
lasted for nearly four hours, witnesses said.

Before leaving the city, Shin Beth officers gave
proprietors written statements informing them the ownership
of their businesses and property had already been
transferred to the Israeli army.

The statement also warned that any Palestinian venturing to
enter the closed premises would be imprisoned for a minimum
of five years.

The Israeli army claimed the targeted businesses and the
medical facilities were part of Hamas’s civilian
infrastructure and might have been involved in transferring
money to the movement.

However, proprietors and PA officials vehemently deny the
charges, saying they were ordinary businesses and
institutions functioning within the confines of the law.

A co-owner of a commercial department-store the Israel army
said it confiscated and ordered closed down told reporters
that “they are punishing us for being religious.”

“In any country in this world, people are innocent until
proven guilty. Here, in the so-called only democracy in the
Middle East, they arrest us, they destroy our homes, they
confiscate our property and destroy our businesses, even
without talking to us.

“So what is the difference between Israel and Nazi
Germany,” said the man who asked that his name remain
anonymous lest he be arrested.

The man who was visibly angry said “we are a religious
people, we pray and we give charity and fast during the
month of Ramadan, but we have nothing to do with Hamas or
any other organization. Destroying our businesses and
ravaging our lives on the mere suspicion that we might be
affiliated with Hamas is a dirty criminal act.”

War on Islam

One officials at the Tadamun Medical Center, which was
closed down and confiscated, accused the Israeli state of
waging an all-out war on Islam similar to the war the Third
Reich declared on Jews during the Second World War.

“I call upon all Muslims and Arabs in the world to respond
to this naked aggression on Islam and Muslims. Israel is
simply seeking to destroy Islam. They want to destroy our
mosques, they want to destroy our life, they want to
obliterate the Islamic religion from Palestine,” said Munir
S. Hanbali.

“The terrorist state claims that Hamas is the target. Don’t
you believe these lies. Their target is the very religion
of Islam, because Islam is the last-remaining obstacle
impeding the liquidation of the Palestinian cause by
Israel.”

Hanbali called on the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar,
Mauritania and Turkey as well as other states that value
justice and humanity to immediately sever ties with “this
criminal entity which murders children and starves them to
death and then claims to do this on behalf of western
civilization.”

“I tell these Arab and Muslims countries ‘ shame on you.’
You are watching these vile criminals destroy the
Palestinian community slowly and step by step while you are
looking on as if what is happening in Nablus and Hebron
were happening on a distant planet.

“Wake up! Kick their ambassadors out of your country. Show
them that you care about Palestine.”

Provoking Hamas

Hani al Masri, a prominent journalist and columnist from
Nablus, opined that the Israeli rampage in the city was
aimed at provoking Hamas to “break the truce in Gaza.”

“Israel wants to show that the relative calm in Gaza
doesn’t mean that Israel’s hands will be tied up in the
West Bank. Israel simply doesn’t want the Palestinians to
have a moment of peace.”

Al-Masri said while the Israeli crackdown on Islamic
institutions would undermine the “public service sector,”
in the city, it would also increase public sympathy and
support for Hamas.

“And it would also hurt the image of the PA because the
very same institutions targeted by Israel last night have
also been targeted by the Palestinian Authority.

“This would make people think that the PA and Israel are
colluding and collaborating against Hamas in broad
daylight.”

Hamas itself accused the western-baked regime in Ramallah
of conniving with Israel to destroy the Palestinian society
in order to enable Israel to impose capitulation on
Palestinians and liquidate the Palestinian cause.

“Hamas strongly condemns the unprecedented Zionist crimes
against the Palestinian society and its economic interests
and civilian constitutions,” said a statement distributed
by Hamas Tuesday.

The statement accused the PA of collaborating and closely
coordinating with the occupation forces.

“Even their food will be confiscated”

On Monday, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz quoted an Israeli
army spokesman as saying that the occupation army will
target Islamic charitable and educational institutions in
the West Bank.

The spokesman said the purpose of the occupation army
campaign against Islamic institutions was to strengthen the
American-backed PA and weaken the Palestinian Islamic
opposition.

“We are talking about strengthening the moderate elements,
that is the Palestinian Authority, but actually the PA has
little control over the area. The Palestinian public
prefers Hamas, because they are less corrupt and more
efficient.”

The spokesman bragged about targeting boarding schools,
health care centers, charities “and even soup kitchens and
orphanages..”

“Dozens of associations were shut down and food
confiscated.”

Earlier this year, the Israeli occupation army carried out
a particularly draconian campaign against orphanages and
boarding schools in Hebron, closing several institutions
and leaving thousands of orphans and poor children
un-catered for.

The confiscated objects included several buildings, school
buses, office furniture, educational aids, classroom seats,
sewing machines, clothes and shoes.

Many of the items seized by the Israeli army from the
Hebron institutions, including children clothes, kitchen
appliances, refrigerators, food and dairy products and
computers, were later found at a waste dump outside the
settlement of Kiryat Arba’a.

The campaign was widely condemned by human rights
organizations. However, Israel’s guardian-ally, the United
States, supported the Israeli measures.

However, as usual in such circumstances, Israeli flew in
the face of the world, saying that “no country can tell
Israel what to do. We do what we want.”

The visibly vindictive campaign against Palestinian
institutions such as schools, hospitals, orphanages and
businesses is generating a lot of hatred for Israel and
Jews among a people who already have been through more than
41 years of a Nazi-like military occupation.

Nael Salameh is a Palestinian businessman from Nablus. He
says that Israel is behaving like a mad bull.

“An army that targets soup kitchens and orphanages and
ordinary businesses doesn’t differ much from gangsters and
common criminals. A state that behaves like gangsters and
criminals will not live for long.”

Salameh said Israel was pushing the Palestinian people to
the edge.

“Besides, who says that the suicide bomber is the product
of the Palestinian society and culture? It is not.

“The suicide bomber is first and foremost an inevitable
by-product of Israel’s Nazi-like terror and cruelty against
the Palestinian society. This is what the world ought to
understand.”

06/07/2008
From Khalid Amayreh in el-Sammou, Hebron

Midhat Abu Karsh

Even in his wildest dreams, Midhat Radwan Abu Karsh never
imagined that one day he would be tied up to a power pole
and savagely beaten by bigoted Jewish settlers who believe
that non-Jews are animals in a human shape.

Yet, this is exactly what happened to him earlier this week
when four Jewish terrorists ganged up on the 31-year-old
Palestinian teacher as he was hiking in his land, awaiting
Israeli peace activists whom he wanted to brief on the
daily acts of vandalism, harassment and land theft at the
hands of fanatical Jewish settlers, protected by the army
and backed by powerful political parties.

Abu Karsh accuses the settlers of being hell-bent on
driving Palestinians away in order to take over their land.

“As I was standing in my land, suddenly four settlers
descended from the settlement of Asnael, and started
cursing and beating me with clubs. As you know, I am
physically handicapped and couldn’t escape because of my
leg,” Abu Karsh told reporters on Sunday at his home in the
small town of El-Sammou, 35 kilometers south west of
Hebron.

“Then they dragged me along the thorny terrain, causing me
indescribable pain, until we reached the power pole just
out of the settlement. There they tied me up rather tightly
to the pole and began beating me with the clubs all over my
body, including my head. What kind of people would do this
to a handicapped person who can’t defend himself?

“When they tightened the robe around my neck, I thought I
was going to die.

The attempted lynching and beating continued unabated even
after an Israeli army jeep, carrying three soldiers,
arrived at the scene.

“Initially, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the
soldiers coming. I though they would rescue me instantly
and arrest or at least stop the settlers. However, to my
disappointment, the settlers kept up beating me, causing a
lot of bleeding in my head and face while the soldiers kept
looking on.”

Abu Karsh said the soldiers begged the settlers “to stop
it,” but to no avail.

“Would you believe it, soldiers begging the settlers to
stop beating a handicapped Palestinian? Just imagine how
Jews and non-Jews would react if criminals, say in France,
attacked a Jew who is physically or mentally handicapped,
say in Paris or Leon?”

At one point, the settlers warned the soldiers to keep
away, or else they would attack the soldiers. Israeli
soldiers serving in the occupied West Bank have strict
orders barring them from responding to settler violence in
any active manner.

When the soldiers, who had backed off a few meters, started
calling their superiors to notify them of what was going
on, the settlers carried out a last round of beating,
kicking Abu Karsh in his underbelly and genitals.

He said he nearly fainted.

Forty minutes later, an Israeli police jeep showed up, with
one policeman reportedly telling the settlers to bring a
bucket of water from the settlement and pour it right on
the victim’s head, ostensibly in order to wash away the
blood before the arrival of journalists and photographers.

“Even at this point, I was still tied to the power pole and
the police wouldn’t untie me. And, of course, they didn’t
arrest any of the settlers,” Abu Karsh said.

Eventually, an Israeli ambulance transferred Abu Karsh to a
Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance which took him to the
main hospital in Hebron.

Abu Karsh accused the settlers of deliberately starting a
fire in the area and blaming it on him.

The incident, the second of its kind in less than a month,
was witnessed by Israeli peace activists from the Ta’ayosh
(co-existence) group.

One of the activists was quoted by the Israeli newspaper
Ha’aretz as saying that he saw the settlers kick the victim
while he was bound up.

“When we arrived at the scene there were already lots of
the army’s troops. I saw a settler approach him and kick
him, as he was tied to the pole. His whole body was bound
up, I saw they bandaged a head wound and he was half
conscious.”

Last month, masked, stick-wielding Jewish settler
terrorists attacked with clubs elderly Palestinian peasants
near the West Bank town of Yatta.

The brutal attack was filmed on video by a Palestinian
woman, which embarrassed the Israeli government which
refuses to take any meaningful action against settlers who
attack Palestinian villagers.

The wide dissemination of the video also prompted Jewish
settler leaders in the Hebron region to warn settler
terrorists to make sure that their “anti-Palestinian
activities” are not being filmed or photographed.

B’Tselem provided about 100 cameras to Palestinians who
bear the brunt of settler terror and violence. The project,
dubbed “Shooting Back” is aimed at documenting settler
brutality and attacks.

Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights
organizations operating in the occupied Palestinian
territories have already documented numerous cases of
settler attacks, harassment and vandalism against
Palestinians.

However, the Israeli army and Shin Beth (Israel’s domestic
intelligence agency), have consistently refused to rein in
the settlers, thus effectively encouraging them to keep up
their terror against the unprotected Palestinians.

Most of the terrorist settlers attend Talmudic schools, or
Yeshivot, run by extremist rabbis who inculcate their
students with virulent hatred of every thing non-Jewish.

Some rabbis, especially in the Hebron region, openly preach
the view that modern-day Palestinians are the descendants
of the Biblical Amalek or Amaledites, who the Bible says
must be wiped off from the face of earth.

Some rabbis, such as Rabbis for Human Rights, strongly
reject the brutal racism and terror of their right-wing
colleagues, arguing that such practices are immoral and
constitute a serious distortion of Judaism.

However, such views are rejected and treated with utter
contempt by the vast bulk of the Orthodox establishment in
Israel.

By Khalid Amayreh
3 July 2008

Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, holds a number of
key portfolios of immense significance and symbolism.

He is the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), President of the Palestinian ‘national’ Authority
(PA) and Chief of the Fatah organization.

As such, he ought to strive to represent his tormented
people in the best possible manner. He should also make
every possible effort to eloquently and effectively
communicate to the world at large the Palestinian people’s
pains and grievances as well as their hopes for freedom and
liberation from the manifestly criminal Israeli occupation.

More to the point, Abbas should carefully shun any behavior
that would harm his people’s dignity, image and national
interests.

Indeed, these are the most elementary tasks a leader, let
alone a leader of a people languishing under a sinister
foreign military occupation, is expected to perform.

However, Abbas’s diplomatic behavior doesn’t suggest that
he is the best and most effective representative of the
Palestinian people and cause. In fact, the opposite seems
to be true.

This week, while attending the 23rd congress of the
Socialist International at the Lagonissi Grand Resort in
Greece, Abbas was audacious enough to introduce Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani to Israeli war minister Ehud
Barak.

Talabani and Barak shook hands rather cordially as a
visibly satisfied Abbas was looking on. The Palestinian
leader behaved as if the arranged handshake between the
certified Israeli war criminal and the Iraqi President was
merely part of the diplomatic niceties expected in such
circumstances.

Well, since when have Palestinian leaders assumed the role
of encouraging and expediting normalization between Arab
states and Israel which continues to rape Palestine and
savage its people?

Have we lost our sense of dignity as individuals and as a
people?

The shameless encounter in Greece, though symbolic, did
carry a horrible message. It showed that Israel and Arab
regimes can normalize relations, even publicly, while the
Zionist regime continues to torment the Palestinian people
and steal the remainder of their homeland.

What is particularly scandalous though is that all of this
obscenity occurs with Palestinian blessing and
encouragement. This is more than outrageous.

I don’t know what was going on in Abbas’s mind when he
decided to do what he did. Perhaps he thought, out of sheer
naiveté, that the vacuous gesture would prompt Israel to
display more flexibility in the moribund ‘peace talks’ with
the PA.

Or perhaps he thought that he as ‘President of Palestine’
ought to show courtesy, civility and even cordiality to
Israeli leaders regardless of their murderous, cruel and
humiliating treatment of his people.

But in both cases, Abbas can’t be given the benefit of the
doubt, for many reasons.

Abbas, as a long-time PLO leader, should be fully aware of
the brutal ugliness of the Israeli mentality and the fact
that no amount of ‘normalization’ and courtesy by the Arabs
and Muslims would make the racist entity come to terms with
Palestinian rights or even mitigate its terror and ethnic
cleansing against the Palestinian people.

Israel has succeeded in establishing diplomatic and
economic relations with a large number of Arab states,
including Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Tunisia,
Morocco and Mauritania.

However, far from showing good will toward these states,
Israel stepped up its genocidal drive throughout the
occupied territories, continued stealing Arab land and
building Jewish colonies at the expense of the native
Palestinians.

In addition, Abbas’s behavior in Greece reflected a great
deal of national irresponsibility. As President of the PA,
Abbas should have understood that socializing with Israeli
leaders and embracing them warmly before TV cameras would
create the wrong impression and send the wrong message to
people around the world, especially friends and supporters
of the Palestinian cause.

One doesn’t have to be a great expert in PR to realize that
the scenes of Abbas and other PA leaders exchanging kisses
with Israeli leaders give the erroneous impression that all
is well between Israel and the Palestinians and that only
minor psychological problems stand in the way of peace
between the two sides.

In the final analysis, Israel and the US, our tormentors,
would hector the Arabs to normalize relations with Israel
by arguing that “you can’t be more Palestinian than the
Palestinians themselves.”

Some Palestinians may argue that Abbas has to behave
somewhat sycophantically toward the Israelis in order to
safeguard his people’s interests.

However, it is amply obvious that this reasoning is faulty
since the damage done to the Palestinian cause, and
especially to the Palestinian national dignity, exceeds by
far whatever short term ‘benefits’ Abbas and his regime
might stand to reap from appeasing the Zionist leadership.

Besides, should Abbas not realize that arranging
‘Arab-Israeli encounters’ serves only to divert attention
from wanton Israeli crimes, such as the unmitigated
obliteration of the Arab identity of East Jerusalem and
ongoing efforts to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque.

Interestingly, while Abbas has shown no remorse or regret
or even embarrassment for arranging the Talabani –Barak
handshake, the office of the Iraqi president has issued a
‘clarification’ tacitly blaming Abbas for presenting Ehud
Barak to shake hands with Talabani ‘who responded to
President Abbas’ request.’

The statement said Talabani shook hands with Barak “not as
President of Iraq, but rather in his capacity as President
of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Vice
President of the Socialist International (IS).”

Despite its flimsiness, the statement showed that Arab
leaders are still apprehensive about appearing in public
with Israeli officials.

This trend ought to be encouraged and enforced as there
should be no normalization between Zionist criminals and
their Palestinian victims at least until the victims
recover their rights, including the right to return to
their homeland from which they were uprooted by force at
the hands of diabolical Zionism.

It is really sad that until recently Palestinians left no
stone unturned in order to stop any form of normalization
between Israel and the Arab and Muslim world.

Now, however, it is lamentable that some Palestinian
leaders have become the bridge through which Israel is
normalizing relations with the Arab world.

Have we become our own worst enemies?

(end)