Tag Archives: Israel/Palestine

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Brzezinski suggests getting tough with Israel on Iran

The national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave an interview to The Daily Beast in which he suggested President Obama should make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them.

“We are not exactly impotent little babies,” Brzezinski said. “They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? … We have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a ‘Liberty’ in reverse.”

The USS Liberty was a U.S. Navy technical research ship that the Israeli Air Force mistakenly attacked during the Six Day War in 1967.

Brzezinski endorsed then-Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign in August 2007, which at the time was portrayed in the media as a boost to Obama’s foreign policy cred. The Washington Post reported: “Barack Obama, combating the perception that he is too young and inexperienced to handle a dangerous world, got a boost yesterday from a paragon of foreign policy eminence, Zbigniew Brzezinski.”

Brzezinski was never an official campaign adviser, but Republicans jumped on the endorsement to push the meme that Obama wouldn’t be a friend to Israel. (Read more from campaigniran.org)

Egyptian Government Denies Rachel Corrie’s Parents Entry to Gaza to Attend Memorial Soccer Cup

The parents of slain American activist Rachel Corrie were denied entry into the Gaza Strip Tuesday, following day-long efforts to secure their entry and cheer on teams at the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament.

The Corries and a delegation accompanying them continue to wait at the Rafah border at Egypt, but have thus far been denied entry. Egyptian crossing authorities have given various reasons for the delegation’s delay, despite the group having previously coordinated with Egyptian authorities, who said they informed crossings officials that the delegation had been cleared for passage.

. . . .

Rachel Corrie was run over by an armored Israeli caterpillar bulldozer as she tried to protect the home of Rafah resident Samir Nasrallah from demolition on 16 March 2003. Corrie went to Gaza as part of the International Solidarity Movement, and was standing alongside six other international activists when the incident occurred. (Read more from aljazeerah.info)

Rabbis Considering Ban on Selling Houses to Arabs

“Hareidi and national-religious rabbis will meet Monday in Jerusalem to discuss ways of dealing with the Arab influx into Jewish neighborhoods in northern Jerusalem, as well as the purchasing of agricultural land in the Galilee by wealthy foreign Arabs.

The rabbis are expected to call for an end to the phenomenon of sale of land and houses by Jews to Arabs. The organizer, Aryeh King, who heads the Israel Lands Fund, told Arutz Sheva’s Hebrew service that he is hoping to see the rabbis issue a pronouncement that sale of land and houses to Arabs is forbidden. . . .

According to King, the economic downturn is causing many Jews in the Galilee as well as in the ‘socially weaker’ parts of Jerusalem to sell their homes to Arabs.” (Read more from israelnationalnews.com)

Report: West Bank Settlement Construction Not Slowing Down

“Last week several Israeli officials claimed that settlement construction had been effectively frozen by the government as a gesture to the US. Most of the officials expressed annoyance at the freeze and promised it wouldn’t last long, though it still led President Obama to praise them.

But despite public outrage from the Israeli right, which has condemned the pause as a betrayal of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s camapign promises, settlement watchdog Peace Now issued a report today noting that the construction is continuing and there is absolutely no sign of any freeze being underway.” (Read more from antiwar.com)

Obama in Ramadan message: U.S. unyielding in support for Palestinian state

“The United States is ‘unyielding’ in its support for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, U.S. President Barack Obama said in a special video message to the Muslim world on Friday to mark the beginning of Ramadan.

Obama used the occasion to reiterate his desire to mend relations between the United States and Muslim countries, an effort he began with a major speech in Cairo in June to the Muslim world.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

There’s a lot of behind the scenes anger at Obama for taking such a strong stance, at least with rhetoric – not with his political appointees. Can it be???? Is this change that I do believe in?

See also: Democratic rep. criticizes Obama demand for Israeli settlement freeze

Obama Joker artist revealed

This picture started appearing all over the internet a few weeks ago. It’s content and then-unknown author was quickly denounced as racist by major new media. (See here, here, and here.)

From prisonplanet.com: “It turns out the image was created not by a Republican white supremacist but by a Muslim-American of Palestinian descent who didn’t vote for Obama or McCain.

Firas Alkhateeb, a 20-year-old senior history major at the University of Illinois, created the image as a reaction to the Christ-like status being afforded to Obama by the establishment, and also in protest at Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.

‘Emanuel is a fervent anti-Islam voice in Washington,’ he wrote on his Flickr page. ‘A Zionist, he takes a hard line stance against the Palestinian cause, and shows a clear anti-Muslim racism.'”

During the Bush administration, much of the anti-war movement was portrayed as the fringe and irrelevant left. Now, much of the anti-socialized-healthcare movement is portrayed as the fringe and irrelevant right. In both cases, it’s individual liberty vs. government power. In both cases, the conflict is portrayed as left vs. right.

Haaretz Editorial: Settlers undermining legitimacy of Israel’s existence

“The representatives of the settler organizations have recently declared their intention to establish 11 new settlements in the territories, including some, according to media reports, on privately-owned Palestinian land. The operation is being depicted as having been inspired by the 11 tower and stockade communities in the northern Negev that were established just before Yom Kippur in 1946. This is not the first time the settlers have compared their efforts to the settlement activities that provided the foundation for the establishment of the state. There is no basis for such a comparison, which is nothing more than an act of forgery and fraud.

The basic difference between the two undertakings is that the settlement project that preceded Israel’s establishment was intended to create the territorial basis for the future Jewish state. It wasn’t intended to deprive the Arabs of everything that was left or, for that matter, their right to a state of their own alongside the Jewish state.

The 11 settlements in the northern Negev, meanwhile, were meant to ensure the inclusion of the Negev in the Jewish state upon the expected partition of the Land of Israel into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

The current settlement campaign, on the other hand, like the unnecessary construction in East Jerusalem, is not designed to ensure the existence of the state of the Jews, but rather to deprive the Arabs of their state in the West Bank and their capital in Arab Jerusalem. That is precisely the difference between the just Zionism of self-defense and aggressive Zionism, which is totally dismissive of the Arabs and their human rights.

According to the settlers, the Jews have the right ‘to settle everywhere,’ and the Jews of course also have needs created by ‘natural growth.’ In their opinion, do the Arabs also have the right to settle everywhere, or is any construction by Arabs illegal for one reason or another? And don’t the Arabs have ‘natural growth’?

In the eyes of the settlers, the term ‘illegal’ only applies to Arabs, not to the settlers’ construction, because the source of their inspiration is divine and beyond the democratic context. According to this approach, the law only exists as a tool of the state, as the settlers’ subcontractor, to deprive the Arabs of what little is theirs.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

Israel targets U.K. funding of IDF veterans’ group that exposed ‘IDF crimes’ in Gaza

“Israel continues to ratchet up diplomatic pressure against European Union funding of a group that exposed what it described as war crimes perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.

The deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Rafi Barak, expressed ‘concern’ last week over Britain’s financial contributions to ‘Breaking the Silence,’ an organization founded by IDF veterans which collects testimonies from soldiers serving in the Palestinian territories.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

Olmert: U.S. must stop focusing on settlements

“Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called the United States’ focus on freezing construction in the West Bank an impediment to the Middle East peace process, in an article published in The Washington Post on Friday. . . .

He describes Israel’s partnership with the United States as ‘one of its greatest strategic assets’ and writes that both he and Sharon were successful in boosting this relationship ‘on all levels, based on deep and candid understandings, both written and oral.’ . . .

‘Yet today, instead of a political process, the issue of settlement construction commands the agenda between the United States and Israel,’ writes Olmert. . . .

He calls the current U.S. demands for a complete settlement freeze ‘impossible to completely enforce’ and a waste of time for valuable progress to be made in the peace process.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

There is no peace process. There is only the rhetoric which prolonges a long, slow, deliberate, bureaucratic destruction of Palestinian society.

I pay attention to this issue because my tax dollars subsidize Israel, and because, as even the 9/11 commission report acknowledged, our one-sided support for Israel is a major reason why the Muslim world hates us.

Israel rejects US call to halt Jerusalem project

“Israel on Sunday rejected a U.S. demand to suspend a planned housing project in east Jerusalem, threatening to further complicate an unusually tense standoff with its strongest ally over settlement construction.

Israeli officials said the country’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, was summoned to the State Department over the weekend and told that a project made up of 20 apartments developed by an American millionaire should not go ahead.

Settlements built on captured lands claimed by the Palestinians have emerged as a major sticking point in relations between Israel and the Obama administration because of their potential to disrupt Mideast peacemaking. . . .

On Sunday, Netanyahu told his Cabinet there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in ‘unified Jerusalem.'” (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

There is no peace movement. There is only endless rhetoric meant to create the illusion of one while Israel steal as much Palestinian land as they can.

Israel cuts 1948 ‘catastrophe’ from Arabic texts

“The Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians call the ‘catastrophe’ of Israel’s creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren, the education minister said Wednesday.

The reference to ‘al-naqba,’ the Arabic word catastrophe, as Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel’s 1948 creation, was inserted by a dovish Israeli education minister in 2007.

The phrase remains contentious six decades later, a symptom of the continuing divisions in Israel. Many Israeli Arabs identify politically with their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, some Israeli Jews accuse Israeli Arabs of disloyalty to the country.

Israel’s current government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line Likud Party, includes members who favor cracking down on Israeli Arabs by ordering loyalty oaths or even moving them out of Israel.” (Read more from news.yahoo.com)