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| Reshaping History
By Noam Chomsky
The fundamental principle is that "we are good" -- "we" being the
state we serve -- and what "we" do is dedicated to the highest
principles, though there may be errors in practice. In a typical
illustration, according to the retrospective version at the
left-liberal extreme, the properly reshaped Vietnam War began with
"blundering efforts to do good" but by 1969 had become a "disaster"
(Anthony Lewis) -- by 1969, after the business world had turned against
the war as too costly and 70 per cent of the public regarded it as
"fundamentally wrong and immoral", not "a mistake"; by 1969, seven
years after Kennedy's attack on South Vietnam began, two years after
the most respected Vietnam specialist and military historian Bernard
Fall warned that "Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity... is
threatened with extinction...[as]... the countryside literally dies
under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an
area of this size"; by 1969, the time of some of the most vicious state
terrorist operations of one of the major crimes of the late 20th
century, of which Swift Boats in the deep South, already devastated by
saturation bombing, chemical warfare and mass murder operations, were
the least of the atrocities underway. But the reshaped history
prevails. Serious expert panels ponder the reasons for "America's
Vietnam Obsession" during the 2004 elections, when the Vietnam War was
never even mentioned -- the actual one, that is, not the image
reconstructed for history.
The fundamental principle has corollaries. The first is that
clients are basically good, though less so than "we". To the extent
that they conform to US demands, they are "healthy pragmatists".
Another is that enemies are very bad; how bad depends on how
intensively "we" are attacking them or planning to do so. Their status
can shift very quickly, in conformity with these guidelines. Thus the
current administration and their immediate mentors were quite
appreciative of Saddam Hussein and helpful to him while he was just
gassing Kurds, torturing dissidents and smashing a Shia rebellion that
might have overthrown him in 1991, because of his contribution to
"stability" -- a code word for "our" domination -- and his usefulness
for US exporters, as frankly declared. But the same crimes became the
proof of his ultimate evil when the appropriate time came for "us,"
proudly bearing the banner of Good, to invade Iraq and install what
will be called a "democracy" if it obeys orders and contributes to
"stability".
The principles are simple, and easy to remember for those seeking a
career in respectable circles. The remarkable consistency of their
application has been extensively documented. That is expected in
totalitarian states and military dictatorships, but is a far more
instructive phenomenon in free societies, where one cannot seriously
plead fear in extenuation.
The death of Arafat provides another in the immense list of case
studies. I'll keep to The New York Times (NYT), the most important
newspaper in the world, and The Boston Globe, perhaps more than others
the local newspaper of the liberal educated elite.
The front-page NYT think-piece (12 November) begins by depicting
Arafat as "both the symbol of the Palestinian's hope for a viable,
independent state and the prime obstacle to its realization". It goes
on to explain that he never was able to reach the heights of President
Anwar Sadat of Egypt; Sadat " [won] back the Sinai through a peace
treaty with Israel" because he was able to "reach out to Israelis and
address their fears and hopes" (quoting Shlomo Avineri, Israeli
philosopher and former government official, in the follow-up, 13
November).
One can think of more serious obstacles to the realisation of a
Palestinian state, but they are excluded by the guiding principles, as
is the truth about Sadat -- which Avineri at least surely knows. Let's
remind ourselves of a few.
Since the issue of Palestinian national rights in a Palestinian
state reached the agenda of diplomacy in the mid-1970s, "the prime
obstacle to its realization", unambiguously, has been the US
government, with the NYT staking a claim to be second on the list. That
has been clear ever since January 1976, when Syria introduced a
resolution to the UN Security Council calling for a two-state
settlement. The resolution incorporated the crucial wording of UN 242
-- the basic document, all agree. It accorded to Israel the rights of
any state in the international system, alongside of a Palestinian state
in the territories Israel had conquered in 1967. The resolution was
vetoed by the US. It was supported by the leading Arab states. Arafat's
PLO condemned "the tyranny of the veto". There were some abstentions on
technicalities.
By then, a two-state settlement in these terms had become a very
broad international consensus, blocked only by the US (and rejected by
Israel). So matters continued, not only in the Security Council but
also in the General Assembly, which passed similar resolutions
regularly by votes like 150-2 (with the US sometimes picking up another
client state). The US also blocked similar initiatives from Europe and
the Arab states.
Meanwhile the NYT refused -- the word is accurate -- to publish the
fact that through the 1980s, Arafat was calling for negotiations which
Israel rejected. The Israeli mainstream press would run headlines about
Arafat's call for direct negotiations with Israel, rejected by Shimon
Peres on the basis of his doctrine that Arafat's PLO "cannot be a
partner to negotiations". And shortly after, NYT Pulitzer-prize winning
Jerusalem correspondent Thomas Friedman, who could certainly read the
Hebrew press, would write articles lamenting the distress of Israeli
peace forces because of "the absence of any negotiating partner", while
Peres deplores the lack of a "peace movement among the Arab people
[such as] we have among the Jewish people", and explains again that
there can be no PLO participation in negotiations "as long as it is
remaining a shooting organisation and refuses to negotiate". All of
this shortly after yet another Arafat offer to negotiate that the NYT
refused to report, and almost three years after the Israeli
government's rejection of Arafat's offer for negotiations leading to
mutual recognition. Peres, meanwhile, is described as a "healthy
pragmatist", by virtue of the guidelines.
Matters did change somewhat in the 1990s, when the Clinton
administration declared all UN resolutions "obsolete and
anachronistic{", and crafted its own form of rejectionism. The US
remains alone in blocking a diplomatic settlement. A recent important
example was the presentation of the Geneva Accords in December 2002,
supported by the usual very broad international consensus, with the
usual exception: "The United States conspicuously was not among the
governments sending a message of support," the NYT reported in a
dismissive article (2 December 2002).
This is only a small fragment of a diplomatic record that is so
consistent, and so dramatically clear, that it is impossible to miss --
unless one keeps rigidly to the history shaped by those who own it.
Let's turn to the second example: Sadat's reaching out to Israelis
and thereby gaining the Sinai in 1979, a lesson to the bad Arafat.
Turning to unacceptable history, in February 1971 Sadat offered a full
peace treaty to Israel, in accord with then- official US policy --
specifically, Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai -- with scarcely even a
gesture to Palestinian rights. Jordan followed with similar offers.
Israel recognised that it could have full peace, but Golda Meir's
Labour government chose to reject the offers in favour of expansion,
then into the northeast Sinai, where Israel was driving thousands of
Bedouins into the desert and destroying their villages, mosques,
cemeteries, homes, in order to establish the all-Jewish city of Yamit.
The crucial question, as always, was how the US would react.
Kissinger prevailed in an internal debate, and the US adopted his
policy of "stalemate": no negotiations, only force. The US continued to
reject -- more accurately, ignore -- Sadat's efforts to pursue a
diplomatic course, backing Israel's rejectionism and expansion. That
stance led to the 1973 War, which was a very close call for Israel and
possibly the world; the US called a nuclear alert. By then even
Kissinger understood that Egypt could not be dismissed as a basket
case, and he began his "shuttle diplomacy", leading to the Camp David
meetings at which the US and Israel accepted Sadat's 1971 offer -- but
now with far harsher terms, from the US-Israeli point of view. By then
the international consensus had come to recognise Palestinian national
rights, and, accordingly, Sadat called for a Palestinian state,
anathema to the US-Israel.
In the official history reshaped by its owners, and repeated by
media think-pieces, these events are a "diplomatic triumph" for the US
and a proof that if Arabs were only able to join us in preferring peace
and diplomacy that could achieve their aims. In actual history, the
triumph was a catastrophe, and the events demonstrated that the US was
willing only to accede to violence. The US rejection of diplomacy led
to a terrible and very dangerous war and many years of suffering, with
bitter effects to this day.
In his memoirs, General Shlomo Gazit, military commander of the
occupied territories from 1967-1974, observes that by refusing to
consider proposals advanced by the military and intelligence for some
form of self-rule in the territories or even limited political
activity, and by insisting on "substantial border changes", the Labour
government supported by Washington bears significant responsibility for
the later rise of the fanatic Gush Emunim settler movement and the
Palestinian resistance that developed many years later in the first
Intifada, after years of brutality and state terror, and steady
takeover of valuable Palestinian lands and resources.
The lengthy obituary of Arafat by Times Middle East specialist
Judith Miller (11 November) proceeds in the same vein as the front-page
think-piece. According to her version, "Until 1988, [Arafat] repeatedly
rejected recognition of Israel, insisting on armed struggle and terror
campaigns. He opted for diplomacy only after his embrace of President
Saddam Hussein of Iraq during the Persian Gulf war in 1991."
Miller does give an accurate rendition of official history. In
actual history Arafat repeatedly offered negotiations leading to mutual
recognition, while Israel -- in particular the dovish "pragmatists" --
flatly refused, backed by Washington. In 1989, the Israeli coalition
government (Shamir-Peres) affirmed the political consensus in its peace
plan. The first principle was that there can be no "additional
Palestinian state" between Jordan and Israel -- Jordan already being a
"Palestinian state". The second was that the fate of the territories
will be settled "in accordance with the basic guidelines of the
[Israeli] government". The Israeli plan was accepted without
qualification by the US, and became "the Baker Plan" (December 1989).
Exactly contrary to Miller's account and the official story, it was
only after the Gulf War that Washington was willing to consider
negotiations, recognising that it was now in a position to impose its
own solution unilaterally.
The US convened the Madrid conference (with Russian participation
as a fig leaf). That did indeed lead to negotiations, with an authentic
Palestinian delegation, led by Haidar Abdul- Shafi, an honest
nationalist who is probably the most respected leader in the occupied
territories. But the negotiations deadlocked because Abdul-Shafi
rejected Israel's insistence, backed by Washington, on continuing to
take over valuable parts of the territories with settlement and
infrastructure programs -- all illegal, as recognised even by the US
Justice, the one dissenter, in the recent World Court decision
condemning the Israeli wall dividing the West Bank. The "Tunis
Palestinians", led by Arafat, undercut the Palestinian negotiators and
made a separate deal, the "Oslo Accords", celebrated with much fanfare
on the White House lawn in September 2003.
It was evident at once that it was a sell-out. The sole document --
the Declaration of Principles -- declared that the final outcome was to
be based solely on UN 242 in 1967, excluding the core issue of
diplomacy since the mid-1970s: Palestinian national rights and a two-
state settlement. UN 242 defines the final outcome because it says
nothing about Palestinian rights; excluded are the UN resolutions that
recognise the rights of Palestinians alongside those of Israel, in
accord with the international consensus that has been blocked by the US
since it took shape in the mid-1970s. The wording of the agreements
made it clear that they were a mandate for continued Israeli settlement
programs, as the Israeli leadership (Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres)
took no pains to conceal. For that reason, Abdul-Shafi refused even to
attend the ceremonies. Arafat's role was to be Israel's policeman in
the territories, as Rabin made very clear. As long as he fulfilled this
task, he was a "pragmatist", approved by the US and Israel with no
concern for corruption, violence, and repression. It was only after he
could no longer keep the population under control while Israel took
over more of their lands and resources that he became an arch-villain,
blocking the path to peace: the usual transition.
So matters proceeded through the 1990s. The goals of the Israeli
doves were explained in 1998 in an academic study by Shlomo ben-Ami,
soon to become Barak's chief negotiator at Camp David: the "Oslo peace
process" was to lead to a "permanent neocolonial dependency" in the
occupied territories, with some form of local autonomy. Meanwhile
Israeli settlement and integration of the territories proceeded
steadily with full US support. It reached its highest peak in the final
year of Clinton's term (and Barak's), thus undermining the hopes of a
diplomatic settlement.
Returning to Miller, she keeps to the official version that in
"November 1988, after considerable American prodding, the PLO accepted
the United Nations resolution that called for recognition of Israel and
a renunciation of terrorism". The actual history is that by November
1988, Washington was becoming an object of international ridicule for
its refusal to "see" that Arafat was calling for a diplomatic
settlement. In this context, the Reagan administration reluctantly
agreed to admit the glaringly obvious truth, and had to turn to other
means to undercut diplomacy. The US entered into low- level
negotiations with the PLO, but as Prime Minister Rabin assured Peace
Now leaders in 1989, these were meaningless, intended only to give
Israel more time for "harsh military and economic pressure" so that "In
the end, they will be broken," and will accept Israel's terms.
Miller carries the story on in the same vein, leading to the
standard denouement: at Camp David, Arafat "walked away" from the
magnanimous Clinton-Barak offer of peace, and even afterwards refused
to join Barak in accepting Clinton's December 2000 "parameters", thus
proving conclusively that he insists on violence, a depressing truth
with which the peace-loving states, the US and Israel, must somehow
come to terms.
Turning to actual history, the Camp David proposals divided the
West Bank into virtually separated cantons, and could not possibly be
accepted by any Palestinian leader. That is evident from a look at the
maps that were easily available, but not in the NYT, or apparently
anywhere in the US mainstream, perhaps for that reason. After the
collapse of these negotiations, Clinton recognised that Arafat's
reservations made sense, as demonstrated by the famous "parameters",
which, though vague, went much further towards a possible settlement --
thus undermining the official story, but that's only logic, therefore
as unacceptable as history. Clinton gave his own version of the
reaction to his "parameters" in a talk to the Israeli Policy Forum on 7
January 2001: "Both Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat have now
accepted these parameters as the basis for further efforts. Both have
expressed some reservations."
One can learn this from such obscure sources as the prestigious
Harvard-MIT journal International Security (Fall 2003), along with the
conclusion that "the Palestinian narrative of the 2000-01 peace talks
is significantly more accurate than the Israeli narrative" -- the
US-NYT "narrative".
After that, high-level Israeli-Palestinian negotiators proceeded to
take the Clinton parameters as "the basis for further efforts," and
addressed their "reservations" at meetings in Taba through January.
These produced a tentative agreement, meeting some of the Palestinian
concerns -- and thus again undermining the official story. Problems
remained, but the Taba agreements went much further towards a possible
settlement than anything that had preceded. The negotiations were
called off by Barak, so their possible outcome is unknown. A detailed
report by EU envoy Miguel Moratinos was accepted as accurate by both
sides, and prominently reported in Israel. But I doubt that it has ever
been mentioned here in the mainstream.
Miller's NYT version of these events is based on a highly-praised
book by Clinton's Middle East envoy and negotiator Dennis Ross. As any
journalist must be aware, any such source is highly suspect, if only
because of its origins. And even a casual reading would suffice to
demonstrate that Ross's account is wholly unreliable. Its 800 pages
consist mostly of adulation of Clinton (and his own efforts), based on
almost nothing verifiable; rather, on "quotations" of what he claims to
have said and heard from participants, identified by first names if
they are "good guys". There is scarcely a word on what everyone knows
to have been the core issue all along, back to 1971 in fact: the
programmes of settlements and infrastructure development in the
territories, relying on the economic, military, and diplomatic support
of the US, Clinton quite clearly included. Ross handles his Taba
problem simply: by terminating the book immediately before they began
(which also allows him to omit Clinton's evaluation, just quoted, a few
days later). Thus he is able to avoid the fact that his primarily
conclusions were instantly refuted.
Abdul-Shafi is mentioned in Ross's book once, in passing.
Naturally, his friend Shlomo ben-Ami's perception of the Oslo process
is ignored, as are all significant elements of the interim agreements
and Camp David. There is no mention of the flat refusal of his heroes,
Rabin and Peres -- rather, "Yitzhak" and "Shimon" -- even to consider a
Palestinian state. In fact, the first mention of the possibility in
Israel appears to be during the government of the "bad guy", the far-
right Binyamin Netanyahu. His minister of information, asked about a
Palestinian state, responded that Palestinians could call the cantons
being left to them "a state" if they liked -- or "fried chicken".
This is only for starters. Ross's view is so lacking in independent
support and so radically selective that one has to take with a heavy
grain of salt anything that he claims, from the specific details he
meticulously records verbatim (maybe with a hidden tape recorder) to
the very general conclusions presented as authoritative but without
credible evidence. It is of some interest that this is reviewed as if
it could be considered an authoritative account. In general, the book
is next to worthless, except as giving the perceptions of one of the
actors. It is hard to imagine that a journalist cannot be aware of
that.
Not worthless, however, is crucial evidence that escapes notice.
For example, the assessment of Israeli intelligence during these years:
among them Amos Malka, head of Israeli military intelligence; General
Ami Ayalon, who headed the General Security Services (Shin Bet); Matti
Steinberg, special advisor on Palestinian affairs to the head of the
Shin Bet; and Colonel Ephraim Lavie, the research division official
responsible for the Palestinian arena. As Malka presents the consensus,
"The assumption was that Arafat prefers a diplomatic process, that he
will do all he can to see it through, and that only when he comes to a
dead end in the process will he turn to a path of violence. But this
violence is aimed at getting him out of a dead end, to set
international pressure in motion and to get the extra mile." Malka also
charges that these high-level assessments were falsified as they were
transmitted to the political leadership and beyond. US reporters could
easily discover them from readily accessible sources, in English.
There is little point continuing with Miller's version, or Ross.
Let's turn to The Boston Globe, at the liberal extreme. Its editors (12
November) adhere to the same fundamental principle as the NYT (probably
near universal; it would be interesting to search for exceptions). The
editors do recognise that the failure to achieve a Palestinian state
"cannot be blamed solely on Arafat. Israel's leaders... played their
part..." The decisive role of the US is unmentionable, unthinkable.
The Globe also ran a front-page think-piece on 11 November. In its
first paragraph we learn that Arafat was "one of the iconic group of
charismatic, authoritarian leaders -- from Mao Zedong in China to Fidel
Castro in Cuba to Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- who arose from
anti-colonial movements that swept the globe following World War II."
The statement is interesting from several points of view. The
linkage reveals, once again, the obligatory visceral hatred of Castro.
There have been shifting pretexts as circumstances changed, but no
information to question the conclusions of US intelligence in the early
days of Washington's terrorist attacks and economic warfare against
Cuba: the basic problem is his "successful defiance" of US policies
going back to the Monroe Doctrine. But there is an element of truth in
the portrayal of Arafat in the Globe think-piece, as there would have
been in a front-page report during the imperial ceremonies for the
semi-divine Reagan, describing him as one of the iconic group of mass
murderers -- from Hitler to Idi Amin to Peres -- who slaughtered with
abandon and with strong support from media and intellectuals. Those who
do not comprehend the analogy have some history to learn.
Continuing, the Globe report, recounting Arafat's crimes, tells us
that he gained control of the south of Lebanon and "used it to launch a
stream of attacks on Israel, which responded by invading Lebanon [in
June 1982]. Israel's stated goal was to drive the Palestinians back
from the border region, but, under the command of then-general and
defense minister Sharon, its forces drove all the way to Beirut, where
Sharon allowed his Christian militia allies to commit a notorious
massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camp and
drove Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian leadership into exile in Tunis."
Turning to unacceptable history, during the year prior to the
Israeli invasion the PLO adhered to a US-brokered peace arrangement,
while Israel conducted many murderous attacks in south Lebanon in an
effort to elicit some Palestinian reaction that could be used as a
pretext for the planned invasion. When none materialised, they invented
a pretext and invaded, killing perhaps 20,000 Palestinians and
Lebanese, thanks to US vetoes of Security Council resolutions calling
for ceasefire and withdrawal. The Sabra-Chatilla massacre was a
footnote at the end. The goal that was stated very clearly by the
highest political and military echelons, and by Israeli scholarship and
analysis, was to put an end to the increasingly irritating Arafat
initiatives towards diplomatic settlement and to secure Israel's
control over the occupied territories.
Similar reversals of well-documented facts appear throughout the
commentary on Arafat's death, and have been so conventional for many
years in US media and journals that one can hardly blame the reporters
for repeating them -- though minimal inquiry suffices to reveal the
truth.
Minor elements of the commentaries are also instructive. Thus the
Times think-piece tells us that Arafat's likely successors -- the
"moderates" preferred by Washington -- have some problems: they lack
"street credibility". That is the conventional phrase for public
opinion in the Arab world, as when we are informed about the "Arab
street". If a Western political figure has little public support, we do
not say he lacks "street credibility", and there are no reports on the
British or American "street". The phrase is reserved for the lower
orders, unreflectively. They are not people, but creatures who inhabit
"streets". We may also add that the most popular political leader on
the "Palestinian street", Marwan Barghouti, was safely locked away by
Israel, permanently. And that George Bush demonstrated his passion for
democracy by joining his friend Sharon -- the "man of peace" -- in
driving the one democratically elected leader in the Arab world to
virtual prison, while backing Mahmoud Abbas, who, the US conceded,
lacked "street credibility". All of this might tell us something about
what the liberal press calls Bush's "messianic vision" to bring
democracy to the Middle East, but only if facts and logic were to
matter.
The NYT published one major op-ed on the Arafat death, by Israeli
historian Benny Morris. The essay deserves close analysis, but I'll put
that aside here, and keep to just his first comment, which captures the
tone: Arafat is a deceiver, Morris says, who speaks about peace and
ending the occupation but really wants to "redeem Palestine". This
demonstrates Arafat's irremediable savage nature.
Here Morris is revealing his contempt not only for Arabs (which is
profound) but also for the readers of the NYT. He apparently assumes
that they will not notice that he is borrowing the terrible phrase from
Zionist ideology. Its core principle for over a century has been to
"redeem The Land", a principle that lies behind what Morris recognises
to be a central concept of the Zionist movement: "transfer" of the
indigenous population, that is, expulsion, to "redeem The Land" for its
true owners. There seems to be no need to spell out the conclusions.
Morris is identified as an Israeli academic, author of the recent
book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. That is
correct. He has also done the most extensive work on the Israeli
archives, demonstrating in considerable detail the savagery of the
1948- 9 Israeli operations that led to "transfer" of the large majority
of the population from what became Israel, including the part of the
UN- designated Palestine state that Israel took over, dividing it about
50- 50 with its Jordanian partner. Morris is critical of the atrocities
and "ethnic cleansing" (in more precise translation, "ethnic
purification"): namely, it did not go far enough. Ben-Gurion's great
error, Morris feels, perhaps a "fatal mistake", was not to have
"cleaned the whole country -- the whole Land of Israel, as far as the
Jordan River".
To Israel's credit, his stand on this matter has been bitterly
condemned. In Israel. In the US he is the appropriate choice for the
major commentary on his reviled enemy
.
-Al-Ahram Weekly, 18 - 24 November 2004, Issue No. 717.
| | |
| Israel’s State Terrorism
by Dr. Lev Grinberg
http://www.counterpunch.org/grinberg1.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0401-04.htm
Published on Monday, April 1, 2002 by Tikkun Magazine
What is the difference between State terrorism and individual terrorist acts? If we understand this difference we’ll understand also the evilness of the US policies in the Middle East and the forthcoming disasters. When Yassir Arafat was put under siege in his offices and kept hostage by the Israeli occupation forces, he was constantly pressed into condemning terror and combatting terrorism. Israel’s State terrorism is defined by US officials as “self-defense”, while individual suicide bombers are called terrorists.
The only “small” difference is that Israeli aggression is the direct responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Ben Eliezer, Shimon Peres and Shaul Mofaz, while the individual terrorist acts are done by individuals in despair, usually against Arafat’s will. One hour after Arafat declared his support of a cease fire and wished the Jews a Happy Passover feast, a suicide bomber exploded himself in an hotel in Netanya, killing 22 innocent Jews celebrating Passover. Arafat was blamed as responsible for this act, and the present IDF offensive has been justified through this accusation.
At the same time, Sharon’s responsibility for Israeli war crimes is being completely ignored. Who should be arrested for the targeted killing of almost 100 Palestinians? Who will be sent to jail for the killing of more than 120 Palestinian paramedics? Who will be sentenced for the killing of more than 1,200 Palestinians and for the collective punishment of more than 3,000,000 civilians during the last 18 months? And who will face the International Tribunal for the illegal settlement of occupied Palestinian Lands, and the disobedience of UN decisions for more than 35 years?
Suicide bombs killing innocent citizens must be unequivocally condemned; they are immoral acts, and their perpetrators should be sent to jail. But they cannot be compared to State terrorism carried out by the Israeli Government. The former are individual acts of despair of a people that sees no future, vastly ignored by an unfair and distorted international public opinion. The latter are cold and “rational” decisions of a State and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped, financed and backed by the only superpower in the world.
Yet in the public debate, State terrorism and individual suicide bombs are not even considered as comparable cases of terrorism. The State terror and war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli Government are legitimized as “self-defense”, while Arafat, even under siege, is demanded to arrest “terrorists.”
I want to ask: Who will arrest Sharon, the person directly responsible for the orders to kill Palestinians? When is he going to be defined a terrorist too? How long will the world ignore the Palestinian cry that all they want is freedom and independence? When will it stop neglecting the fact that the goal of the Israeli Government is not security, but the continued occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people?
As Israelis in the opposition, we are fighting against our government, but the international support that Sharon receives is constantly jeopardizing our struggle. The whole international public opinion must be reverted, and the UN must deploy intervention forces in order to stop the bloodshed and the imminent deterioration. Israelis and Palestinians desperately need the awakening of the international community’s public opinion and a reversal in the global attitude. These are needed both in order to save our lives (literally), and preserve our hope in a better future.
Dr. Lev Grinberg is a political sociologist and Director of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research at Ben Gurion University. | | |
|
To Hitler, these children were the enemy.
To the Israelis, these children are.
"Silence is betrayal". This phrase is the theme to many books including "Night" by Elie Wiesel. This phrase is the epitome of the Palestinian struggle and the Jewish struggle during the holocaust.
I hear too many claims that the Holocaust was fabricated, or exaggerated. The fact is: it happened. And, its happening now: a genocide in Palestine. "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them" the famous words of George Orwell. The problem is that Israelis don't disapprove the atrocities commited by Israel, in fact, they commend it. A eerie and striking similarity to that of the Nazis. | | |
|  “Every time we do something, you [Shimon Peres] tell me America will do this and will do that... I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”
— Ariel Sharon
Israeli Prime Minister
Knesset, Tel Aviv, October 3, 2001
By Jeffrey Steinberg
Executive Intelligence Review (EIR)
http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/site_packages/2002/sharon/020430sharon_crime_hist.html
Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, is currently facing possible war crime prosecutions for two massacres that occurred 20-years apart: the September 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, and the April 2002 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) mass killings in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
Sharon is, without doubt, guilty of these crimes against humanity, and others. He is also unrepentant. For him, these mass killings are merely necessary steps on the path toward his objective of a “Final Solution” to the “Palestinian problem,” through the mass expulsion and/or extermination of the more than 3 million Palestinians and Arabs now living in Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. Under various labels, Sharon and a rogues gallery of collaborators inside Israel, Britain, and the United States, are now moving toward the final phase of their “mass transfer” plans for the Palestinians and Arabs.
[Added note: “transfer” is the traditional Zionist euphemism for “ethnic cleansing”, accomplished through Israeli state terrorism, mass-murder and torture of Palestinian people.]
EIR has “written the book” on Sharon’s blood-soaked career for over 30 years. (see 1994 Profile) As a service to the current worldwide debate on his government’s fascist actions, we provide this summary dossier on the Israeli mass murderer. This summary is linked to a compendium of earlier exposés of Sharon and his partners in crime.
The Sharon File
Sharon was born in Kfar Malal in 1928. At the age of 14, he joined the Haganah, and at 20, headed an infantry company in the Alexandroni Brigade during the 1948 War of Independence, during which the Israeli forces drove an estimated 300,000 Palestinians from their land, using some of the same genocidal methods against unarmed civilian populations that were used in the recent IDF invasion of the Palestinian Authority’s Area A territory.
In 1953, Sharon founded “Unit 101,” a secret death squad within the IDF that committed several mass murders of civilians. In October 1953, Sharon’s “Unit 101” massacred 66 innocent civilians during a cross-border raid into the Jordanian West Bank village of Qibya. Under intense machine-gun fire, local residents were driven into their homes, which were then blown up around them, killing the occupants by burying them alive in piles of rubble. The April 2002 IDF massacre at the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin was, in fact, modeled on Sharon’s “Unit 101” operations at Qibya.
On Oct. 18, 1953, the U.S. State Department issued a bulletin denouncing the Qibya massacre, demanding that those responsible be “brought to account.” Instead, Sharon was rewarded for his war crimes by having his “Unit 101” absorbed into the Israeli paratroop corps. By 1956, Sharon had been appointed paratroop brigade commander.
Between Feb. 28, 1955 and Oct. 10, 1956, a Sharon-led paratrooper brigade conducted similar cross-border invasions into Gaza, Egypt, and the West Bank in Jordan. At the West Bank village of Qalqilya, Sharon’s death squad killed 83 people.
During the 1956 joint British, Israeli, and French invasion of the Suez Canal, Sharon and his lifelong collaborator in mass murder, Rafael Eytan (click for more), carried out another horrific war crime: In three separate incidents, Sharon- and Eytan-led units murdered Egyptian prisoners of war, as well as civilian Sudanese workers who had been captured. All told, 273 unarmed prisoners were executed and dumped into mass graves. When the story broke, nearly 40 years later, in the Aug. 16, 1995 London Daily Telegraph, it nearly ruptured Israeli-Egyptian relations. This was less than three months before Sharon would bloody his hands once again, by orchestrating the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin, in Sharon’s eyes, had committed the mistake of signing a peace treaty with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.
During the 1960s, Sharon’s military career advanced. In 1964, he was appointed to head the IDF’s Northern Command; in 1966, he took charge of the Army Training Department; in 1969, he was named commander of the IDF’s Southern Command.
In 1972, at the urging of American organized crime figure and leading right-wing Zionist Meshulam Riklis, Sharon resigned from the IDF (he was recalled, briefly, to active duty during the 1973 Yom Kippur War) to run for the Knesset (parliament). Henceforth, Sharon would be wedded to leading international organized crime figures associated with the Meyer Lansky National Crime Syndicate in the United States, and allied Jewish mafia figures from Israel and Russia.
Even at the end of his career, Sharon was still running death squads. On Sept. 25, 1997, Israeli Television Channel One interviewed Benny Golan, a veteran of the Rimon Unit, which Sharon had created and deployed in the early 1970s in the Gaza Strip to carry out targeted assassinations of Palestinian “militants.” Golan described the assassination program, and reported that members of the unit frequently “disguised themselves as Arabs” for “special operations” (click for more). Other sources reported, at the time, that the “special operations” included terrorist attacks on Israeli Jewish targets to justify “retaliatory strikes” against pre-selected Palestinian and Arab targets.
Far from ending his career of mass butchery, Sharon’s resignation from the IDF coincided with the launching of an even more ambitious criminal enterprise that would see thousands of Palestinians killed and wounded as part of the “Eretz Israel,” or “Greater Israel” drive to permanently annex all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights — and resettle these areas with Russian and other Jewish immigrants, after the Palestinians have been eliminated.
“Landscam” (click for more)
Sharon entered the Knesset in December 1973, at the very moment that the Israeli government lifted the ban on private sales of West Bank land to Israelis. The Knesset decision was brought about by a heavy lobbying effort by Sharon colleague and former Police Minister Yehezkel Sahar. The very first “private” purchase was for the construction of a residential community for retired IDF officers. The partners in the deal included Sahar, Gen. Reshavam Ze’evi, Sharon publicist Eli Landau, and Avraham Mintz, a founder of the fanatical settlers movement Gush Emunim.
In June 1974, Sharon personally led a group of settlers to establish an illegal outpost near the West Bank town of Nablus. It was the first of many such ventures that Sharon would sponsor, under the rubric of the drive to “Judaize the territories.”
Sharon’s political career continued to advance. In 1975, Prime Minister Rabin appointed Sharon as his personal security adviser. Then, the Likud was swept into power in the 1977 elections, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin named Sharon as Minister of Agriculture. In that capacity, Sharon launched a massive expansion of Jewish “agricultural settlements” throughout the West Bank and Gaza. During 1977-81, more than 25,000 new settlers — mostly members of the Gush Emunim — moved into the occupied territories. The Gush Emunim settlers formed into death squads explicitly modelled on Sharon’s old “Unit 101.” They would play a pivotal role in a filthy Anglo-American Zionist criminal enterprise known as “Landscam” (click for more).
In 1979, the Israeli Supreme Court ratified the private land purchases in the occupied territories, and immediately, Sharon’s mafia cronies set up several real estate ventures, under such names as Jumbo, Samarea and Judea, and Meteor. In 1980, Sharon and Yuval Ne’eman formed an organization, “Prevention of Emergence of Another Arab Country in Eretz Israel” (PEACE), to press the issue of permanent Israeli annexation of the occupied territories. The group included a number of notables from Israel and the United States, who would remain part of the extended Sharon mafia family for years to come: Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, Jewish Defense League (JDL) founder Joseph Churba, Young Israel director Harold Jacobs, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith general counsel Arnold Forster, right-wing Knesset member and Rabbi Meir Kahane patron Geula Cohen, and Roni Milo.
Sharon toured the United States in 1980, lining up financing for a massive real estate grab. But first, Sharon launched a campaign of terror against the Palestinians in the West Bank, to literally scare them into leaving their land. In the Spring of 1982, Sharon hosted a planning meeting at his Negev desert ranch, which had been purchased for him by Riklis. Riklis, Henry Kissinger, Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, Rafi Eytan, General Ze’evi, Arieh Genger, Herbert Brin, and Eli Landau attended the session, according to an eyewitness account. Within days of the meeting, Gush Emunim and JDL terrorists began attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. “Landscam” was under way.
“Landscam” coincided with Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon, which began on June 4, 1982, and was aimed at wiping out the Palestine Liberation Organization (click for more), which had established its base in several camps near Beirut. Between June 4 and Aug. 31, 1982, the IDF, under Sharon’s direction (Begin had named him Minister of Defense the previous year), killed a total of 19,025 Palestinians and wounded 30,032 in a military campaign that Sharon called “Operation Peace in Galilee.” Under immense pressure from the Reagan Administration (click for more), Sharon abandoned plans to assassinate Arafat, and, on Aug. 21, 1982, he allowed the PLO to evacuate 15,600 fighters from Lebanon, under an American-brokered cease-fire.
On Sept. 15, Sharon broke the cease-fire agreement, and the next day, launched a “purification” campaign against the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila, and Burj El Barajneh. [Lebanese Christian] Falangist death squads — protected by the IDF, which encircled the camps — massacred unarmed women, children, and elderly.
On Sept. 19, 1982, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 521, harshly condemning the massacres at the camps. In a distant mirror of the current genocide in Jenin, Ramallah, and Bethlehem, Sharon ignored the international condemnations. Today, Sharon faces war crimes prosecution in court in Belgium (click for more) for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, as the result of a lawsuit filed on June 18, 2001 by 23 survivors of the attacks.
On Oct. 15, 1982, a month after the 1982 massacres, Sharon held meetings — in the Chouf Mountains of Lebanon and at his Negev ranch — with Falange leader Camille Chamoun, Uri Dan, Rupert Murdoch, Charles Douglas-Home, and others, to move the “Landscam” West Bank real estate grab forward. On Nov. 15, 1982, a final meeting took place on several real estate purchases, mostly through Arab middle-men, to push the massive expansion of Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank — at a handsome profit. Attending the meeting at Sharon’s ranch were: Kissinger, Lord Harlech (Sir David Ormsby-Gore), Johannes von Thurn und Taxis, Tory Parliamentarian Julian Amery, Sir Edmund Peck, and MI-6 Mideast mandarin Nicholas Elliot.
The Kahane Commission, an Israeli body convened to investigate the Sabra and Shatila mass murders, found Sharon to be complicit in the crimes, and he was fired by Prime Minister Begin as Defense Minister shortly after the report’s release. But Sharon landed on his feet. In 1984, after the fall of the Begin government and the establishment of a Likud-Labor national unity government, Sharon was appointed Minister of Trade and Industry, a position he held until 1990, when he was named Minister of Construction and Housing, a post that enabled him to continue as the leading sponsor of the massive expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. During Sharon’s tenure in various government ministries, the number of Jewish settlers soared to more than 110,000.
In January 1986, Edgar Bronfman, the Jewish mafia don and president of the World Jewish Congress, admitted, in a New York Post interview, that he was negotiating on behalf of the Israeli government with Moscow, to secure Soviet permission for 400,000 Jews to emigrate to Israel — in return for massive shipments of grain to the Soviet Union. The deal was cynically dubbed “Jews for wheat,” in recognition that this scheme was leading to the annexation of the occupied lands by Israel. A year earlier, in another sop to the American- and British-based Jewish criminal interests bankrolling Sharon’s “Judiazation” scheme, the Knesset had passed laws dropping all restrictions on cash flows into Israeli banks — so long as the money was invested in Israel.
Hamas: Another Sharon Asset
During his postings in the Likud governments during 1977-92, Sharon had not only been the “rabbi” of the Gush Emunim and Kach Movement/JDL Jewish underground terrorist organizations. He also played a pivotal role in the creation of Hamas (click for more), the Palestinian Islamist group, which was formally founded in 1988. Under the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, an estimated 800 “licenses” were handed out to Palestinians, to create schools, infirmaries, food kitchens, and other social service programs. Sharon made sure that all these licenses were given to Islamists, many of whom would be Hamas founders, as a way of creating a “countergang” ruling structure to eventually supplant the power of the PLO inside the occupied territories. Sharon’s sponsorship of Hamas has become a public scandal in recent months, particularly since the publication of stories in EIR in the past year, exposing these links, and detailing Sharon’s plans to use Hamas as part of his “Jordan is Palestine” drive for mass transfer.
Killing the “Peace of the Brave”
When Rabin was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1992, the former Sharon ally in the war on the Palestinians had the courage to admit that his underlying assumptions were wrong, and would lead to the destruction of Israel. He entered into secret peace talks with Arafat, which culminated in the August 1993 signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, in the presence of U.S. President William Clinton at the White House.
Instantly, Sharon declared war on the Oslo Accords and on Prime Minister Rabin (click for more). The entire “Landscam” gang joined Sharon in assailing the peace initiative. On Sept. 11, 1993, Kissinger told CBS News interviewers that Oslo was “unworkable.” Several weeks later, Kissinger told the Institute for Jewish Affairs in London that Jordan would soon fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists and Oslo would be crushed — a not-so-veiled reference to Sharon’s Hamas assets, which would soon launch a terror wave against Oslo in tandem with Sharon’s Jewish underground.
On Oct. 11, 1993, Bertram and Herbert Zweibon, co-founders of “Americans for a Safe Israel”, a Sharonist front, held a conference in Crystal City, Virginia to launch a campaign to destroy Oslo — and its sponsors. Five days later, Sharon delivered a speech calling for the settlers to launch a resistance to the sellout.
Sharon rushed to the United States and embarked on a nationwide tour on Nov. 14, 1993, in which he declared that the 150,000 Jewish settlers were the “only barrier to a Palestinian state.” Sharon was accompanied, throughout the tour, by Yechial Leiter, a leader of the JDL in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. While in the United States, Sharon raised millions of dollars for the Kiryat Arba “resistance” from such right-wing Zionist patrons as Florida and California bingo parlor magnate Irving Moscowitz and former Reagan Administration Ambassador to Austria and perfume heir, Ronald Lauder.
Sharon’s fundraising paid off. On Feb. 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an IDF reservist and leader of Kiryat Arba, massacred 50 Palestinian worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarch holy site. Goldstein had been Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Knesset campaign manager at Kiryat Arba.
In March 1994, some 200 rabbis, led by Avraham Shapira, staged a rally at Kiryat Arba and issued a religious edict, ordering resistance against any attempt by the Rabin government to dismantle any settlements. On March 31, 1994, Sharon and Yitzhak Shamir, the former Likud Prime Minister and Stern Gang terrorist, led a rally of 10,000 people attacking Oslo. ADL National Chairman Abe Foxman told the Jerusalem Post on April 2, 1994 that Rabin was “undermining organized Jewish clout” in America, through his peace antics.
Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 by a West Bank settler, Yigal Amir, who came from Sharon’s terror hub, Kiryat Arba (click for more).
On Jan. 26, 1997, Sharon returned, triumphal, to Kiryat Arba, to deliver new marching orders to the heirs of “Unit 101.” If Arafat declared a unilateral Palestinian state in the territory of the West Bank and Gaza under Palestinian Authority control, the settlers should join in the drive to annex all of Judea and Samaria. At the time, Sharon was Minister of National Infrastructure, a super-ministerial post that had been created for him by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon’s sometimes ally and sometimes rival for power in the Likud. During 1996-99, Sharon’s tenure as Minister of National Infrastructure, the settlers population in the occupied territories soared to more than 200,000.
Netanyahu’s fall from power in 1999, and his replacement by a Labor government headed by former IDF chief Ehud Barak, signalled that the Oslo peace process that Sharon was dedicated to destroying, was back on the table.
After the failure of the July 2000 Camp David II negotiations to reach a final settlement, more intense private negotiations between the Barak government and the Palestinian Authority began under a number of venues. Talks took place in New York City, and later, at the resort of Taba, Egypt, producing a final accord, in draft, that would have formed a just and viable basis for two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine. The thorny issues of the right of return of Palestinian refugees, the status of the holy sites in Jerusalem, and of creating two capitals within the extended city limits of Jerusalem, were, according to several Arab and Israeli diplomatic sources, worked out in principle by January 2001. These final points, memorialized in the talking points brought to the final sessions by President Clinton, could be revived today as a basis for reaching a just solution, in the view of many Mideast diplomats familiar with the document.
But Sharon and his backers would have nothing of this.
In September 2000, Sharon visited New York City, where he met with Lauder and other supporters and financiers. He returned to Israel, reportedly with a large amount of cash to be disbursed to settlers’ terrorist cells. Sharon personally staged the decisive provocation, by visiting the Islamic holy sites on al-Haram al-Sharif (click for more), what the Israelis call the Temple Mount, on Sept. 26, 2000 (click for more). Sharon was accompanied by more than 1,000 Israeli troops and paramilitary police. It was a flagrant provocation, an assertion of Israeli permanent control over the sacred sites of Islam, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
With that visit, Sharon provoked the “Al Aqsa Intifada,” and within days, the entire Holy Land was again awash in the blood of Palestinian protesters. By January 2001, the Barak government would fall, and, on Feb. 6, 2001, Sharon, who had taken over the Likud party in September 1999, was elected Prime Minister of Israel (click for more), ready to launch his final drive for “Greater Israel.” (see “The Insane Fascism of Ariel Sharon,” by Lyndon LaRouche | | |
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JEWS FOR JUSTICE |
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| People who criticize Israel are accused of "anti-semitism." That's the Israel lobby's last line of defense, and it's designed to shut you up. Don't be fooled - read these statements by Jews who criticize Israel... |
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 Gerald Kaufman Member of Parliament, UK
"There is no point in seeking to change Israeli policy by appealing to its government's better nature, since such a nature does not exist. Economic sanctions and an arms ban against Israel are the only way of breaking the impasse." [Source] |
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Shulamit Aloni Anti-war activist, Israel
"Israel's very foundations have been undermined by our adulation of force, and all this is called a democracy. There cannot be democracy when we rule over three million people who have no voice. We simply have to get out of there." [Source] |
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Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold Harvard University, USA
"Unless Israel gives up its settlements and makes peace with its neighbor, I fear that its very future is threatened. American Jews must tell the US government and leaders in the Jewish community that a two-state solution is the only way to ensure Israel's longterm survival." [Source] |
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Judy Rebick Publisher, Canada
"Israel is supposed to be my homeland. The suicide bombings, as terrible as they are, are not the reason for Israeli aggression in the Palestinian territories. The real reason is to protect ever-expanding Israeli settlements." [Source] |
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Baruch Kimmerling Hebrew University, Israel
"Sharon's final aim is the politicide of the Palestinian people, a systematic attempt to cause their annihilation as an independent political and social entity. Politicide is a crime against humanity that is very close in its severity to genocide." [Source] |
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Naomi Klein Author, No Logo, Canada
"For Sharon, Jewish fear is a guarantee that his power will go unchecked, granting him the impunity to do the unthinkable: send troops into the Palestinian education ministry to steal and destroy records; bury children alive in their homes; block ambulances from getting to the dying." [Source] |
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Jeff Halper Peace activist, Israel
"Israel is a very sophisticated, high-tech rogue state. Where Israel has a great PR advantage is that it presents itself as a victim. We need to expose Israel as the regional superpower that it really is. Israel is not a little David, but actually the Goliath." [Source] |
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Wendy Pearlman Middle East researcher, USA
"Every Palestinian family has had a member killed or injured by the Israeli army. The sooner Israel withdraws from the occupied territories, the sooner Palestinian children will be able to imagine a future that offers something other than an early death." [Source] |
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, USA
"The goal of the peace process is to ensure that Palestine remains a permanent neo-colonialist dependency. It can be called 'a state,' just as apartheid South Africa was happy to call the Bantustans 'states'." [Source] |
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Yisroel Dovid Weiss Jews United Against Zionism, USA
"The root of the problem is the refusal to recognize the existence of the Holy Land's indigenous population. There is no war between Jewry and the Arab/Islamic world. That is a myth, caused and perpetuated by the Israeli state." [Source] |
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Jennifer Loewenstein Lecturer, University of Wisconsin, USA
"If your blood doesn't run cold when George W. Bush calls Ariel Sharon a 'man of peace' then you're getting nothing but lies packaged as news by a massive propaganda machine. Americans, you are paying for the dehumanization and destruction of an entire people." [Source] |
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Gideon Levy Commentator, Israel
"From September 2000 through March, 2004, Israeli soldiers killed 486 Palestinian children and teenagers. This appalling figure should have long ago troubled the sleep of every decent Israeli. There can be no justification for the killing of children on such a large scale." [Source] |
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Tanya Reinhart Professor, Hebrew University, Israel
"Palestinian farmers whose land is being robbed sit on the ground in front of bulldozers. What could be more nonviolent than that? But the Israeli army shoots at sitting demonstrators, blocking all options of non-violent resistance." [Source] |
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Daniel Barenboim Musician, Israel
"Can the Jewish people - whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution - allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people?" [Source] |
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Ronnie Kasrils Government Minister, South Africa
"The cruel and unjustified occupation of Palestine is colonialism of the worst kind. There is no way that a Zionist Israel can 'radiate as a light unto nations' on the basis of conquest and dispossession." [Source] |
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Jonathan Sacks Chief Rabbi, UK
"You cannot ignore a command that is repeated 36 times in the Mosaic books: 'You were exiled in order to know what it feels like to be an exile.' Therefore I regard the current situation as nothing less than tragic, because it is forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long-run with our deepest ideals." [Source] |
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Irena Klepfisz Women in Black, USA
"Jews know what it's like to be without homes. Suicide bombings started a very short time ago, the occupation started 34 years ago. I don't see anyone protesting for 34 years and then stepping down because of suicide bombings. It's an excuse to not stand up for what's right." [Source] |
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Eyal Sivan Film-maker, France/Israel
"Zionism has failed to achieve its fundamental objectives of abolishing the ghettoes and making Jews safe. Israel is the world's biggest ghetto and in no other country are Jews less safe. We should be thinking, really, of a single, non-confessional and democratic Israeli-Palestinian state." [Source] |
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George Soros Billionaire, USA
"There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. I'm critical of those policies. If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish." [Source] |
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Emmanuel Wallerstein Philosopher, USA
"What we have is a situation in which not only the most intransigent forces on the Israeli and Palestinian sides have the upper hand, but the most intransigent pro-Israeli forces in the United States have the upper hand." [Source] |
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Steven Feuerstein Not in My Name, Chicago, USA
"We condemn all violence against civilians equally, including Israeli army attacks on Palestinians. They are killing civilians in the name of Jews worldwide and I personally don't want it to be done in my name." [Source] |
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 We applaud all Jews who take a stand against Israel's oppression of Palestinians. |
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concert4palestine.org/jews
| Looking at this site makes me even more inclined to fight for the Palestinian cause. I've read the stories. I've seen the pictures. It's time for you to learn by reading. I've appealed, you should too. http://www.concert4palestine.org/appeal/ | | |
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