Beyond The Fringe

As we predicted, Israhell’s recent aggression against the blockaded and deprived people of Gaza and threats of escalated collective punishment have been logically followed as in the past by more radicalisation, with a murderous attack by an unidentified gunman within a religious school in Jerusalem.

Merkaz HaRav yeshiva is described by one comment in Haaretz as ‘a heart of religious Zionism’, in other words, a bastion of the land thieving settler movement.

“This attack … came in reaction to the crimes of the Israeli occupation and the massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman.

The gunman is reported as being a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem, and his actual identity is still unclear.

8 students were slaughtered, making the results of Israhell’s aggression against the neighbours it ethnically cleansed 60 years ago consistent with the existing death ratio. A comparative 10 Palestinians are slaughtered due to the illegal occupation, blockades and oppression by the Zionist enterprise for every 1 Israeli.

And so the cycle of violence, orchestrated and cheerled by those who benefit and glory in it the most - religious zealots, rightwing fanatics, power-mad politicians and of course the shills of the weapons industry - continues.

Meanwhile, Israhell is condemned for its 40 years of occupation and oppression by aid groups -

GAZA is experiencing “a humanitarian implosion” and life for its embattled citizens is at its worst since the beginning of Israeli occupation in 1967, a coalition of British human rights groups and charities said yesterday.
Poverty and unemployment are rising, hospitals are suffering power cuts for 12 hours a day and the water and sewage systems are close to collapse, according to a report by groups including Amnesty International, Care International UK, Oxfam and Save the Children UK.

It called on the UK government and the European Union to urgently redress this by pressuring Israel to lift its blockade on the impoverished coastal enclave and talk to Hamas.

…

The UK groups’ report on Gaza said the severity of the humanitarian situation had “increased exponentially since Israel imposed extreme restrictions on the movement of people and goods in response to the Hamas takeover (last June] and to indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israel”.

It added: “The Gaza economy is no longer on the brink of collapse; it has collapsed.”

During the past six months, the majority of private businesses in Gaza have shut down and 95 per cent of its industrial operations have been suspended due to an Israeli ban on imported raw materials and the blockage of exports. The report said poverty and unemployment had deepened dramatically and that 1.1 million people out of a population of 1.5 million were dependent on food aid.

Israeli restrictions had also hit patients in need of medical treatment unavailable in Gaza. Israel granted only 64 per cent of applications for care outside Gaza in December, compared with 89.3 per cent in January 2007.

An Israhelli spokesman for Olmert oinked in support of ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians, whilst taking the opportunity to delegitimise the democratically elected Hamas government yet again.

“In Gaza, a hostile regime took power that is shooting rockets into Israel on a daily basis. You don’t have to have normal economic relations with a country that is shooting at you.”

It doesn’t appear to occur to these arrogant monsters that Israhell, possessing the 5th most powerful military in the world, continuously commits war crimes which have been declared war crimes internationally for very good reason, as they inevitably cause terrible repercussions to be visited upon their perpetrators, irregardless of whether Israhell wishes to lay the blame, as it always does, on its victims rather than taking responsibility for its own criminal, deliberately chosen policies.

There is no happiness for him who oppresses and persecutes; no, there can be no repose for him. For the sighs of the unfortunate cry for vengeance to heaven. - Johann Pestalozzi

The Zionist media strongarmers rush to insist on retractions by the media whom they claim misinterpreted Israhelli Deputy Defence Minister Vilnai’s use of the term ’shoah’ in his repulsive collective bullying threat against the beleaguered Palestinian people. Guardian editor Alan Rushbridger apologises profusely for using the word holocaust as a translation - still, the Palestinian people and the world have heard Vilnai’s allusion, intended or not, loud and clear.

Will apologies now gush from multiple newspaper editors to Iranian leader Ahmadinejad for their definite misinterpretation of his speech where they and the Zionist propaganda machine claimed he said Israhell would be ‘wiped off the map’ when he actually said the Zionist regime would be metaphorically ‘wiped from the page of history’? Yeah, right, sure they will.

Wikipedia, flawed though it may be at times, has this to say:

Shoah is the Hebrew term meaning “disaster” or “conflagration”. With addition of “Ha” (meaning ‘The’ In Hebrew) - Ha Shoah is commonly used to refer to the Holocaust.

A quick google for ’shoah’ finds the common result in English at least is the Holocaust, whereas HaShoah appears to be associated with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Paligate plot thickens with this Vanity Fair report where the United Stupids are revealed to have secretly conspired to give arms to Fatah strongman villain Dahlan in order to provoke a civil war to remove the democratically elected Hamas government. The elections, perpetrated at too short notice for Fatah to win, were encouraged by the Stupids. Folowing the Hamas electoral win, the Stupids wailed and gnashed teeth in consternation:

“Everyone blamed everyone else,” says an official with the Department of Defense. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’ ”

….

Some analysts argued that Hamas had a substantial moderate wing that could be strengthened if America coaxed it into the peace process. Notable Israelis—such as Ephraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency—shared this view. But if America paused to consider giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt, the moment was “milliseconds long,” says a senior State Department official. “The administration spoke with one voice: ‘We have to squeeze these guys.’ With Hamas’s election victory, the freedom agenda was dead.”

One would think after numerous utter failures and countless lives lost through cossetting of a lengthy list of previous dictators/strongmen, including Saddam, the Stupids would have learnt by now. In the current debacle according to the report, the Stupid’s UN ex-representative John Bolton blames Miss Prim, Condisleezer, clumsily seeking to make her mark on history and demonstrating she has not learnt from it.

Once again, Israhell uses its grotesquely disproportionate US funded weaponry to wantonly slaughter Palestinians. About 100 people were obliterated this time, including 19 children.

Israhelli commandant, Barak, foreshadowed an increase in military extermination operations in Gaza in order to bring down the democratically elected Hamas government. Ugly threats mean ugly responses including increased radicalisation, not less, against your apartheid state, Ehud.

From Gush Shalom:

This is not a conflict between two equal forces. The most powerful army in the Middle East, backed by the world’s single remaining super-power, is daily using tanks, fighter planes, helicopters and gunships against the lightly-armed militias and overcrowded population of a small area whose people have lived under occupation and in poverty long before the present siege.

Israhell’s expressed intentions:

“We are justified in bombing Palestinian civilians including women and children because Palestinian fighters are using them as human shields.”

Israhell’s real intentions:

“Hey you mob, get your fighters to stop fighting us or we will kill you all, women and children included. And we will take more of your land, with any luck, all of it.”

Then, last week Israhelli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatened the Palestinians with genocide, veering toward the real intentions above:

The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.

Shoah means Holocaust in Hebrew. It can also mean disaster - either way, Vilnai’s threat is repugnant and arrogant.

Thus does the racist oppressor state use innocent human lives as bargaining chips with the leaders of the Palestinian concentration camp inmates it has tormented for the past 60 years. Jonathan Swift would smile in recognition of their rhetoric.

Israhell seems incapable of realising that the more collective injustices it perpetrates against its hapless victims, the more rockets will come. Humans do not submit to oppressors committing heinous acts. They fight until the oppressor is vanquished or a peaceful solution found. With no hope, there is only despair, and nothing to lose by fighting back to the death if necessary. Yet Israhell habitually does not recognise Palestinians as human at all, which perhaps explains why its leaders appear unable to grasp these simple truths.

Eissam Younis, director of the Al Mizan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, said :

the Israeli army was “intentionally and systematically targeting civilians” and criticised world powers for their muted response.

“Israel puts itself above the law because the international community is always silent,” he said.

…

Tariq Dardouna, a Palestinian resident trapped in his house in east Jabaliya, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces were targeting civilians.

“The Israeli army opens fire at everything in our area, including children and houses. There are injured children bleeding inside their houses,” Dardouna said.

Following Israhell’s pogrom on Gaza, the West Bank offices of democratically elected Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya, were destroyed by Israhelli plane strikes. Another 5 people were killed. Israhell complained when Abbas cut off negotiations and condemned the attacks.

“It’s very regrettable that what is happening is more than a holocaust,” Abbas told reporters in Ramallah.

“Children who are barely five-months old are being bombed by the Israeli army.”

“We tell the world to see with its own eyes and judge for itself what is happening and who is carrying out international terrorism.”

Perhaps it will be his offices struck next. Then Israhell can joyfully proclaim as it has been wont to do in the past that it has noone with which to negotiate, conveniently placing the blame back on its miserable victims.

Barak no doubt is preparing the way to make support for the Zionist uber state and its abominable pogroms a central issue in the United Stupids election where Obama appears to have the lead at present. Barack may be forced to barrack for Barak and Israhell’s acts of attrition, or face an uphill battle in the US election.

For peace to come to the Palestinian region, it is essential that the US is led by someone in step with the rest of the international community and who does not favour privileged Israhell with its mansions and swimming pools over the needs of those whom it oppresses and from whom it has stolen and continues to steal, with the pallid, erroneous excuse that Israhell is the only democracy of the region.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. - Jonathan Swift

Bush’s upcoming visit to Israhell is unlikely to stimulate any relief for the collectively punished, long-suffering Palestinians, despite vague waffle by Olmert on illegal settlement evacuations. Israhell has a political half nelson on the United Stupids, who are blinded by pro-Israhelli propaganda, who do not realise or do not care that they are co-conspirators in war crimes and heinous human rights abuses. For the uneducated, the Israhellis are always the good guys and the Palestinians the bad. Nor do any of the Democrat presidential candidates offer any hope for change. The Israel First Zionist lobby is too strong - to speak of justice for Palestine would be electoral suicide. Why the presidential hopefuls speak of Israhell as a democracy is mystifying - perhaps it is a reflection of the lack of real democracy in a country primarily driven and controlled by big money lobbies and corporations.

Jonathan Cook analyses the Barak Oslo offers and makes some chilling conclusions about Olmert’s present political plans toward those hapless people the apartheid State of Israel currently occupies and from whom it blithely and cynically continues to steal land:

In truth, Israel’s need for recognition as a Jewish state is proof that it is not a democratic state, but rather an ethnic state that needs to defend racist privilege through the gerrymandering of borders and population. But in practice Olmert may yet use the recognition test to back Abbas, a weak and unrepresentative Palestinian leader, into the very corner that Arafat avoided.

Before Annapolis, Livni declared: “It must be clear to everyone that the State of Israel is a national homeland for the Jewish people,” adding that Israel’s Palestinian citizens would have to abandon their claim for equality the moment the Palestinian leadership agreed to statehood on Israel’s terms.

Olmert framed the Annapolis negotiations in much the same way. It was about creating two nations, he said: “the State of Israel — the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian state — the nation of the Palestinian people.”

The great fear, Olmert has repeatedly pointed out, is that the Palestinians may wake up one day and realize that, after the disappointments of Oslo and Camp David, Israel will never concede to them viable statehood. The better course, they may decide, is a South African-style struggle for one-person, one-vote in a single democratic state.

Olmert warned of this threat on another recent occasion: “The choice … is between a Jewish state on part of the Land of Israel, and a binational state on all of the Land of Israel.”

Faced with this danger, Olmert, like Sharon and Barak before him, has come to appreciate that Israel urgently needs to persuade Abbas to sign up to the two-state option. Not, of course, for two democratic, or even viable, states, but for a racist Jewish state alongside a Palestinian ghetto-state.

With Bush also wanting a two state solution by the end of his disastrous term of office, the future of Palestinians looks as usual, bleak.

And watch and listen … sometime soon we’ll recommence in earnest our real world political and stockmarket bents, which at present are busy in the fantasy blog world for fun and profit.

Our national politics, let alone our international political predilections are nearly too sickening at present for words anyway. While the rodent postures and preens over indigenous causes which he has patently ignored for 10 years, he is touting devious plans to allow forced entry to aboriginal communities - cornucopia for mining interests? He is preparing for the campaign of his miserable ratty existence, the outcome of which despite the woeful Liberal polling is by no means assured.

Little Johnny’s immoral counterparts and allies, the terrorist state of Israhell and its bevy of international cowering zealot minions with their individual imperial ambitions, piously condemn the popular democratically elected so-called ‘terrorist’ government of the overly occupied terrorities in favour of their now allies of convenience, the terrorist Fatah brigades. Terminally blinkered Western proponents of democracy thus are seen to regard democratic governments as legitimate if they undemocratically support policies which their electors patently do not.

There is a reason the people threw out Abbas’ Fatah party in last year’s election. Palestinians see the leading Fatah politicians as unimaginative, self-serving and corrupt, satisfied with the emoluments of power. Worse yet, Palestinians came to realize that the so-called peace process championed by Abbas (and by Yasser Arafat before him) had led to the permanent institutionalization — rather than the termination — of Israel’s 4-decade-old military occupation of their land. Why should they feel otherwise? There are today twice as many settlers in the occupied territories as there were when Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat first shook hands in the White House Rose Garden. Israel has divided the West Bank into besieged cantons, worked diligently to increase the number of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem (while stripping Palestinian Jerusalemites of their residency rights in the city) and turned Gaza into a virtual prison.

Divide and conquer the good old colonialist way - again, for the umpteenth disastrous time since the Zionist invasion, when the Zionists first introduced terrorism to Palestine. Is As’ad from the Angry Arab News Service too optimistic when he declares:

The Palestinians need a new political organization: neither Fath nor Hamas. NOW.

As’ad also points out that

A new poll among Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank reveals the obvious: that most Palestinians are neither for Fath nor for Hamas: more than 40% of Palestinians indicated that they are “independent”.

Yet even if there was an alternative political force, it would be nanoseconds before the Israhelli government stereotyped them as terrorists in order to engineer the obligatory, traditional nobbling of peace initiatives, so their land thieving on the West Bank and breaches of international law could continue behind the usual smokescreen of convenient, manufactured ‘beleaguered’ victimhood.

As Jeffery Sachs observes:

For the past 10 years, the greatest practical barrier to peace has been Israel’s failure to carry out any true withdrawal to its 1967 borders, owing to the political weight of hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank and the religious and secular communities that support them. This remains the crucial truth; the rest follows as tragedy. Even when the US or Israel have tabled peace offers, such as at Camp David in 2000, they have included convoluted ways to sustain the West Bank settlements and large settler populations, while denying an economically viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

Sachs fails to note that inevitably it is the enabling activities or lack thereof of the Israhelli government which have bolstered the continued thievery and oppression. At all times, it has been within the power of that democratically elected government to restrain its extremists and to act within the ambit and intention of UN Res 242 in order to obtain peace.

(more…)

What will be the repercussions from today’s revelations from the internationally respected Red Cross that

Israel is using its rights as an occupying power under international law “in order to further its own interests or those of its own population to the detriment of the population of the occupied territory”.
With the the separation barrier, the establishment of an outer ring of Jewish settlements beyond the expanded municipal boundaries, and the creation of a dense road network linking Israeli neighbourhoods and settlements in and outside Jerusalem, the report says, Israel is “reshaping the development of the Jerusalem metropolitan area” with “far-reaching humanitarian consequences”.

Given the stranglehold the Zionists have on western governments, media and public opinion, and although there are signs that the support Israhell has enjoyed for its reprehensible activities are waning, probably very little.

As usual, Israhelli officials obsfucate, deny culpability, refuse to admit the validity of international law in regard to return of territories seized via warfare, and thumb their noses at warranted criticism.

Israeli officials rejected the premise that Jerusalem was an occupied territory. “It is not. Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1967 and offered full citizenship at the time to all of Jerusalem’s residents. These are facts that cannot be ignored,” a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Mark Regev said.

Israel was “committed to a diverse and pluralistic Jerusalem, to improving the conditions of all the city’s inhabitants and to protecting their interests as part of our sovereign responsibility”. He added: “If any population in Jerusalem is thriving and growing, it is the Arab population.”

Demographic facts on the ground in Jerusalem are likely to inpinge on Zionist control soon. There are also positive signs that even United Stupids dignatories are disapproving of Israhell’s past crimes in the area.

Ambassadors from European Union states are to boycott celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Israel’s conquest of Arab East Jerusalem this week - in the opening shot of what promises to be a challenging summer for Israeli diplomacy.

The United States ambassador, Richard Jones, is also expected to join the Europeans in snubbing the celebrations .

What Israelis commemorate as the “reunification” of their historic Jewish capital is seen by most of the international community, not to mention the Palestinians, as a unilateral attempt to pre-empt a key issue in any peaceful solution. One-third of the city’s 725,000 residents are Palestinians, who have opted to reject offers of Israeli citizenship. Along with most other countries, the Europeans keep their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian parliament, yesterday welcomed the European boycott as a blow for international law and peace. “The Israelis,” she said, “cannot get away with creating facts on the ground and then forcing everybody to fall in line”.

[Thanks to Antony Lowenstein for the above two links.]

There can be no doubt that Israhell is willing to continue to run the gauntlet in order to cling to lands it has misappropriated, that further oppression in order to accomplish this is still the primary modus operandus of the Zionist apartheid state. Such intransigence, of course, will not bring about conditions to promote a peaceful outcome for the region. Peace would mean compromises. On past performances, Israhell is unlikely to give an inch - to do so might initiate a collapse of its whole unsavoury, colonialist edifice.

Leaves from the past swirl about my shattered country

and bloodied by hate

Like a beautiful, fragile teaset, the elegant device she’d made lay upon the table. Amirah scooped it up peremptorily, for it was deceptively sturdy, fastening the webbed belt about her body beneath her loose cotton blouse.

Plenty of time. Into her pocket she placed her folded poem, hoping to finish it on the bus during the interminable hot, angry checkpoint waits. The guards knew her well, they would smile lewdly at her and joke about her flashing dark eyes.

“Amirah, princess of the territories, give us a kiss.” they would laugh, swaggering with their Utzis.

At first she ignored them, yet later, as her plan evolved, she would smile shyly in return, building trust. After months, they would not search her, even when all others were pried and poked when the enemy rampaged in revenge.

For three years following her degree’s completion, she had settled for a menial maid’s job in Tel Aviv, studying for her PhD in physics at night and weekends. Her ticket to freedom – perhaps even to America. Then her mistress’s husband began to seek her out. One afternoon while the mistress was out with her rich, gossiping socialite friends, he had forced her to the bed and taken her. She had to trash the sheets and endure a scolding when she told her mistress she had burnt them whilst ironing.

And then, her uncle was captured, implicated in a tunnel building project to smuggle in food and medicine to the sanctioned, beleaguered city. The enemy had arrived at her parents’ home and bulldozed it whilst she scrubbed the enemy’s pots in the pretty modern villa by the glistening sea. Gone were her thesis notes and her computer, buried in the pitiful rubble of their lives. Her wise grandmother was nearly killed by the cruel, inexorable blades, hounded and taunted by the soldiers as she fled, hobbling down the street. The oppressors had everything – except peace. Amirah wondered if they had ever really wanted it.

At university, Amirah had spoken against violence.

“We are bound by violence, we are chained by it to them and we must break the cycle,” she argued. “Resistance is legitimate under international law, yet violence will not work. They use it against us. Don’t you see?”

She had not despaired, although her brother still walked with crutches from the blows he received from the enemy when five years old. A stone thrown at a tank had missed and hit a soldier. With an education, she would be able to pay for him to walk again.

Nearly everyone had lost a relative, or knew of a house that had been crushed, sometimes with people still inside. The collective punishment was a brutal, never-ending scourge. What else was there to do but fight, to wear the enemy down with a despairing reaction to the oppression, to never let them know security whilst they denied it to others. Responsibility was never taken by the powerful and the weak were blamed for objecting to their punishment, justifying more delays for peace settlements, more land thievery for more enemy settlements and their hideous ghetto wall.

Amirah did not know whether the wall was to keep the horror in, or to keep it out. After her parents’ house was demolished and her future with it, she too saw horror everywhere.

Amirah left her flat and caught the bus. The guards winked at her at the checkpoint.

“How are your studies, Amirah?” “When are you going to America, Amirah?”

Amirah smiled at them, her tears held captive by resolve. Today at the final checkpoint, it was a short wait, a miracle.

The ancient bus lurched its winding way to the leafy, well-to-do suburb by the sea. She walked to the plaza and sat on a bench. Amirah pretended to examine something in her satchel as she set the timer.

Within, she could feel the enemy’s baby move, twingeing her regrets. From her pocket, she took the half-finished poem and scrutinised it carefully before screwing it into a ball and tossing it behind the bench. Tears threatened to erupt, and Amirah clenched her fists. Not long to wait now.

“You dropped something”, a kindly voice spoke in the enemy’s tongue.

“It’s nothing,” she replied, “just a poem.”

“May I read it?” The interloper was a young pregnant woman in her late twenties or early thirties, with a guitar strung across one shoulder. She flattened the sheet and began to read.

“It isn’t finished”.

“I know,” she said. “I can’t think of an ending. It makes me too sad.”

“It is very good – perhaps we can finish it together?”

“But you are the enemy,” Amirah whispered. Two minutes and there would be no more broken promises, no more fear and hurt.

“I’m Danish, here to study archaeology.” The woman smiled.

Amirah looked at her, saw unexpected warm eyes and her heart leapt.

Then she thought of her unfinished poem and in a blazing torrent, unannounced, the final words came.

Even in the silence of the desert

by joy.

At a two day summit in Riyadh aimed at pushing the Arab peace plan for Israhell and Palestine, in a significant about face, the Sauds have rounded on the incompetent Coalition of the Gobbling warmongers.

Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is a close US ally, slammed Wednesday the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh.

“In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war,” Abdullah said.

He also said that Arab nations, which are planning to revive a five-year-old Middle East peace plan at the summit, would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

What will be the reaction of the United Stupids to such impudence? The original neocon plan called for the transformation of the middle east using Saudia as a pivot to democratise the region, with Egypt the eventual prize. Saudia is thus throwing a big spanner in the works by projecting its power and biting the hand that feeds it.

Saudi leaders are keen to promote the beleaguered Sunni cause in Iraq, which is presently endangered by overwhelming Shite power, including within the Shite dominated and United Stupids’ backed puppet Iraqi government. The summit is expected to adopt a resolution calling for more power sharing with the former Sunni elite.

The Iraqi government has immediately dug in its heels, telling the Sauds they

did not need a “diktat” from the Arabs on how to amend its constitution and boost national reconciliation.

The Arab League wants to resume negotiations with Israhell, offering normalisation for acceptance of terms including withdrawal of all land occupied in 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state and return of Palestinian refugees.

Despite mutterings from Israeli officials about the Arab plan being a “starting point”, it is likely that rightwing Israhelli zealots who, with the support of Doodoo bush and the Israhelli first lobby, will insist on retaining lands they have stolen through warfare. Acceptance of the right of return of refugees driven from their land in the Nakba catastrophe in 1948 is seen by the Israhelli rightwing, religious nuts and fanatical settler movement as tantamount to destruction of their pariah apartheid state, despite the clear legal basis for such return under international law.

At the summit, Hamas is calling for an end to the western boycott of Palestine and is seeking financial support from the Arab states to the tune of $2.7b.

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal projected firmness, warning Israhell

not to expect any further diplomatic overtures, telling a British newspaper: “What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done.”

“If Israel refuses [the plan], that means it doesn’t want peace and it places everything back in the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers, but in the hands of the lords of war.”

And that, my friends, will suit the Netanyahooites and religious zealots down to the ground, to the detriment of Israhell’s future security and prosperity.

Here’s an excellent article on the biblical heresies promulgated by fundoziotards and their support of Israhelli oppressive policies against the Palestinians in order to promote their nutty beliefs. Talk about fanatical fruitcakes and promoters of violence - yet their heresy is rampant and virtually unchallenged throughout the United Stupids with a significant grip on the public’s foetid imagination in Australia as well.

“Rossing chronicles some of the people and the industries that have hijacked these scriptural sources for political power, geopolitical violence, financial gain, and the promotion of fear.“They use the book of Revelation for their own ends,” she said. “I want to claim it back to the mainstream in hopes to bring hope and healing to the Middle East.”

Mainline Christians left the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation to the fundamentalists for interpretation. As a result, Revelation theology became the dominant, Christian interpretation - a prophetic, apocalyptic interpretation - that fuels a lucrative prophecy industry. The industry manipulates American Christians into believing and supporting U.S. right-wing, political agendas that block the road map to peace and justice for Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.

The Prophecy Industry

How do these political agendas reach the masses?

Through T.V., radio, movies, and fiction novels, the prophecy industry has influenced 30 – 40 million Americans into believing and promoting Christian Fundamentalist Zionist policies in the Middle East.”

According to commentator, Patrick Seales and others, it’s only a matter of time before the neoziocon nepotists attempt to whack Iran.

It is now clear that U.S. President George W. Bush has decided to confront Iran — politically, economically and militarily — rather than engage it in negotiations, as he was advised to do by James Baker and Lee Hamilton in their Iraq Study Group report.

Bush appears to have been influenced by pro-Israeli advisers such as Eliott Abrams, the man in charge of the Middle East at the National Security Council, and by arm-chair strategists at neo-conservative think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, who have long clamoured for regime change in Tehran.

Although Washington’s neo-cons have suffered some severe setbacks, notably because of the abysmal failure of their belligerent Iraqi strategy, they clearly continue to exercise considerable influence in the White House and in the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney.

On a recent visit to the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to mobilize the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, plus Egypt and Jordan, to join the United States in confronting Iran.

Leading Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are, of course, concerned by the rise of Iran and of militant Shi‘ism, but they are even more alarmed at the possibility of a United States/Israeli war against Iran, which would inevitably inflict heavy blows on their own societies.

The declared aim of the United States is to contain Iran and reduce its influence throughout the Middle East. But the danger of such a policy is that it runs the risk of escalating from verbal assaults and sanctions to armed clashes, and even to a war.

Some experts believe that if the United States were to attack Iran, Iran might respond by firing missiles against U.S. bases in Iraq and the Gulf, Hizbullah might attack Israel, and Israel might invade Syria, igniting a full-scale regional war with devastating consequences for all concerned.

Washington has long identified Iran as an adversary, part of Bush’s famous — or infamous — “axis of evil.” But, in the last few weeks, a decision appears to have been made to get tough with the regime in Tehran which, in the words of Vice President Cheney, is said to pose a “multidimensional threat” to the United States and its allies.

Meanwhile, the Dems fire a broadside at the chimp, claiming he does not have the authority to whack Iran.

Contemporaneously, Israhelli possible PM-to-be Tipsy Livni urges for stiffer sanctions against Iran.

Sanctions naturally increase poverty, extremism and fundamentalism - but these are tactical and familiar outcomes for Zionists.

The zookeepers have let Georgie the ape run rampant again. Instead of learning from his mistakes, the chimp is now compounding them, adding more troops to the raging civil war in Iraq.

And now he is raising the antes and threatening Iran and Syria, wrongly accusing them of fuelling the insurgency and terrorists. When one considers that Bush is supporting the Shiite dominated Iraqi parliament, does he think Iran (Shiites) would really be supplying Sunnis?

One can have no other conclusion except that the chimp is completely insane and this is his last ditch attempt to save his name in history. It won’t work - Iraqis want the United Stupids out.

The zookeepers - the despicable Christian/Zionist/Wahhabi neocons and corporate moguls who manipulate the chimp all have their own variously crazy, selfish greedy interests at heart and not the welfare of American or Middle East citizens.

Perpetual war suits the wealthy - and the Sauds, who have recently invested in much gold, will be most happy to see both their new acquisitions and the price of oil rise with the uncertainty that comes with imperial madness.

The United Stupids kidnapping Iranian diplomats at an Iraqi consulate is a clear provocation and act of war. No reaction much from the Iranians - they know the game being played. Juan Cole’s commentary is interesting.

As we predicted, following the madman’s rant, the POG and oil rose and the USD dropped, and resources rose markedly on Friday to match.

Fortunately we are already stoked to the brim with lovely, cheaply acquired preciouses which should thrive nicely in the coming week. This week we accumulated more THXO. THX is way overdue for an upgrade. Phil Crabbe exercised a stack of options at 47.5 leading us to think that he expects a large premium on that price within the near future. Additionally, THX is not going ahead with its U spinoff which means oppies will now be back in favour. We haven’t converted any of ours, though many may have.

We have also bought into a stunning little company, AWS, which has been refinanced by Westpac to expand with its water device stores across Australia. This could have very significant potential given the timing for water awareness, the company’s recently opened new stores and handsome increases in sales already experienced. A 2006 profit of $1m plus is forecast, which should lead the sp over 10c, making our investment a multibagger in a very short period.

We also acuumulated more of our dead cert, EVZ, which is due some news about more contracts with big companies, and more INL which sp should improve soon with news about zinc concentrate shipments and initial profitability estimates.

An exciting week to come! RRS still hasn’t announced its JV, but news on that should be very soon, with President Muse alluding to foreign mining investment the other day. We expect our holdings in NWR, NWRO, GAU, CTO, CQT, NAV, NAVO, SAU, TRF, TRFO and even BAR to soar.

We’ll take a profit from some of them and buy back later in a couple of months.

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on Middle East issues.

From http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-makdisi221206.htm:

Former President Jimmy Carter has come under sustained attack for having dared to use the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s policies in the West Bank. However, not one of Carter’s critics has offered a convincing argument to justify the vehemence of the outcry, much less to refute his central claim that Israel bestows rights on Jewish residents settling illegally on Palestinian land, while denying the same rights to the indigenous Palestinians. Little wonder, for they are attempting to defy reality itself.

Israel maintains two separate road networks in the West Bank: one for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers, and one for Palestinian natives. Is that not apartheid?

Palestinians are not allowed to drive their own cars in much of the West Bank; their public transportation is frequently interrupted or blocked altogether by a grid of Israeli army checkpoints — but Jewish settlers come and go freely in their own cars, without even pausing at the roadblocks that hold up the natives. Is that not apartheid?

A system of closures and curfews has strangled the Palestinian economy in the West Bank — but none of its provisions apply to the Jewish settlements there. Is that not apartheid?

Whole sectors of the West Bank, classified as “closed military areas” by the Israeli army, are off limits to Palestinians, including Palestinians who own land there — but foreigners to whom Israel’s Law of Return applies (that is, anyone Jewish, from anywhere in the world) can access them without hindrance. Is that not apartheid?

Persons of Palestinian origin are routinely barred from entering or residing in the West Bank — but Israeli and non-Israeli Jews can come and go, and even live on, occupied Palestinian territory. Is that not apartheid?

Israel maintains two sets of rules and regulations in the West Bank: one for Jews, one for non-Jews. The only thing wrong with using the word “apartheid” to describe such a repugnant system is that the South African version of institutionalized discrimination was never as elaborate as its Israeli counterpart — nor did it have such a vocal chorus of defenders among otherwise liberal Americans.

The glaring error in Carter’s book, however, is his insistence that the term “apartheid” does not apply to Israel itself, where, he says, Jewish and non-Jewish citizens are given the same treatment under the law. That is simply not true.

Israeli law affords differences in privileges for Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of the state — in matters of access to land, family unification and acquisition of citizenship. Israel’s amended nationality law, for example, prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel who are married to Palestinians from the occupied territories from living together in Israel. A similar law, passed at the peak of apartheid in South Africa, was overturned by that country’s supreme court as a violation of the right to a family. Israel’s high court upheld its law just this year.

Israel loudly proclaims itself to be the state of the Jewish people, rather than the state of its actual citizens (one-fifth of whom are Palestinian Arabs). In fact, in registering citizens, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior assigns them a whole range of nationalities other than “Israeli.” In the official registry, the nationality line for a Jewish citizen of Israel reads “Jew.” For a Palestinian citizen, the same line reads “Arab.” When this glaring inequity was protested all the way to Israel’s high court, the justices upheld it: “There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people.” Obviously this leaves non-Jewish citizens of Israel in, at best, a somewhat ambiguous situation. Little wonder, then, that a solid majority of Israeli Jews regard their Arab fellow-citizens as what they call “a demographic threat,” which many — including the deputy prime minister — would like to see eliminated altogether. What is all this, if not racism?

Excellent article by Bishop Desmond Tutu:

In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.

What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.

On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?

I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: “Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews.”

My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won’t let ambulances reach the injured.

The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty, will not provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only intensify the hatred.

Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or - I hope - to strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders.

We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land?

My brother Naim Ateek has said what we used to say: “I am not pro- this people or that. I am pro-justice, pro-freedom. I am anti- injustice, anti-oppression.”

But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?

People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.

Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.

When will Americans wake up to the subversion and manipulation of their country by the Zionist ratbags?

The power of think tanks to shape public discussion and ultimately public policy was demonstrated before the Iraq war when public perceptions concerning Iraq were informed by a well-funded network of think tanks connected in many intimate ways to a pro-Israel political lobby that actively supported Bush’s Iraq policy.

The same actors are already marshaling against the report and the report’s subdued yet explicit linking of wider Middle East problems with Iraq:

“There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.”

The report directly connects Israel to Iraq in a way that unsettles Israel’s supporters, stating,

“The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict…”

Because of this, we already see, among others, Israel and its foreign policy advocates in America piling on criticism. Some are starting to deconstruct the report as a defeatist document produced by a spineless liberal establishment.

The critics have something in common, a high regard for Israel and the notion that Israeli foreign policy objectives are always the same as US foreign policy objectives.

In the case of Iraq, this equation is patently false. The United States is suffering from Bush’s adventure in Iraq and Israel is benefiting from the chaos resulting from it.

This report deserves to be read and discussed rather than blithely dismissed. The critics may howl, yet none dare call it treason.”

Something we found in the Guardian’s comments section:

THIRD INTIFADA/UPRISING :

NONVIOLENT:
But With Words Sharper Than a
Two Edged Sword

subtitle:

Memoirs of a Nice Irish American “Girl” in

Occupied Territory

On December 1st WAWA BLOG:

http://www.wearewideawake.org

I offer you an excerpt from Chapter 1:

So, What’s a Nice Irish American Girl Like Me Doing in Occupied Territory?

In January 2005, during my second journey to Israel and Palestine, seven Americans and a Brit, rode in a van through the Kidron Valley on the un-maintained bumpy winding narrow roads that Palestinians must go, in order to reach Jericho and the Dead Sea. Our guide was from Beit Jala, a Christian community on the west side of Bethlehem who told us, “Do you know what is more dangerous to the Israeli government than a journalist? A tour guide, for we always tell the truth and cannot be censored!”

I know it sounds crazy, but on that bus trip through the Kidron Valley, I saw an upside down rainbow that was inverted above the mountain tops. I wondered if it were a sign from God confirming the fact that in this Orwellian world of Israel and Palestine: wrong has become right. After the rainbow vaporized from view, my traveling guide told me, “In Israel the only law is the law of the jungle. I have to apply for a permit on a monthly basis to enter Israel but any soldier can deny me access without giving me any reason. There are 190,000 Palestinian with Israeli ID s but they are all second class citizens. They can vote in municipal elections but not for Parliament. They cannot get a Passport; they must apply for Visa s…In July 2005 the first anniversary of the International Court of Justice s historic ruling affirmed The Wall and All of the settlements are grave violations of human rights and against International Law as well as obstacles to peace. Yet Israel continues to erect The Wall and expand its settlements in the occupied West Bank.”

On my second day of my second journey to Israel and Palestine, I rode upon the treacherous and the only way to the newly recognized village of Ain Hod, home to the locally famous Albeit Restaurant. The food is so good there that even the settlers will leave their smooth well maintained by-pass roads and travel up the mountain side upon a narrow winding rocky unpaved way that edges a cliff with a 300 foot drop.

The owner of the well renowned restaurant where many settlers dine on the weekend is Mohammed Abu Haija. Soft-spoken and patient, he explained the upside down illogic of the Unrecognized Villages. In 1948 when most of the indigenous population fled their homes and property, some citizens held their ground, dug in and nonviolently endured being treated like sub-human beings.

The Unrecognized Villages are not on any map and yet these people all have Israeli citizenship, pay taxes yet receive no services. The Israeli government had deemed these scattered villages as military zones and agricultural areas so homes were demolished, and people have lived for decades without water, electricity, schools or medical care. The Israeli settlers 400 meters away have swimming pools and every comfort known to man.

On the fortieth anniversary of The Declaration of Human Rights in 1998 Mohammed and others formed the Association of 40″ and they have worked in solidarity and nonviolently through the court system to be recognized, to receive water, electricity, roads and human rights.

In 2006, in Israel, there are still 100 Unrecognized villages with over 100,000 tax paying Israeli-Arab citizens who live in third world conditions.

While I was in Ain Hod, over one hundred residents from the Bethlehem district gathered in Beit Jala to protest against The Wall being built on their land. The building of The Wall in the city of Beit Jala had begun the week prior for “security purposes”, yet its route lies deep within Palestinian territories. A Coordinator of the Celebrating Nonviolent Resistance Conference and the former Director of Holy Land Trust, Sami Awad was detained and beaten by Israeli soldiers, he stated, “The Israeli occupation is sending a clear message to the Palestinian people, they don t want us to engage in nonviolent resistance because it truly exposes them and the injustice they are doing to the world.

The Wall is composed of 25 to 30 foot high concrete slabs with razor wire, trenches, sniper towers, electric fences, military roads, electronic surveillance, remote controlled infantry and buffer zones that stretch over 100 miles wide that deny Palestinians access to their land, families, jobs, and resources.

The Wall will completely separate Bethlehem and her sister villages of Beit Sahour, Beit Jala from the northern parts of the West Bank. Because of Bethlehem s significance to and historic ties with Palestinian East Jerusalem, Bethlehem s economic demise may well mark the beginning of the end of a viable Two-State solution. If The Wall is completed in this area, 4000 dunums of the areas most fertile land will be isolated in order to accommodate for the expansion and the building of the colonies/settlements of Gilo and Har Gilo. This means Beit Jala will have no potential for expansion.

This growing ghettoization of Bethlehem is not only destroying ancient communities, but the influx of nearly 900 new settlers, and plans for 30,000 new settlers to colonize the occupied West Bank, violates the Road Map, which prohibits settlement expansion. The Wall and all of Israel s settlement colonies are illegal under International Law.

Come, let us go and see this thing that has happened in Bethlehem

In 2000, during the Second Intifada, which is Arabic for Uprising photographer Debbie Hill captured George of Beit Jala, standing in the rubble of what had been his bedroom the night before. His photo ran in the Florida Catholic newspaper, and when I looked into his eyes, I heard in my heart: “Do Something.” It persists.

I had no clue what I could do, but I put a copy of that photo in a frame and set it upon my home altar: which is a bar high table in the upper room of my home, surrounded by candles and eclectic icons. I pass by his photo dozens of times a day, and all I do is sigh and groan, for I do not know what I ought to pray, but the Spirit intercedes with groans and sighs, deeper and more meaningful than any words. -Romans 8:26

In the year 2000, in Beit Jala, west of downtown Bethlehem some hopeless militants infiltrated the previously peaceful Christian village to shoot into the illegal colony of Gilo a few miles away. The Israeli Defense Force retaliated and the bedroom of George was decimated. The shrapnel that pierced the wall of his sanctuary read “Made in USA” and was delivered from American made Apache helicopters that buzzed over his head.

I first met George of Beit Jala in June 2005, shepherded by an Internet connection, George Rishmawi, a Palestinian Christian. My first trip to Israel Palestine was via my connection to the interfaith, non-profit Olive Trees Foundation for Peace, dedicated to raising awareness and funds to help replace the olive trees The Wall has brought down. I have been drawn to return three times since in less than a year since, to bear witness and report about the Christian Exodus.

During my initial visit with George of Beit Jala, I learned that he, his sister and mother all suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome, but most governments just consider that collateral damage. George s father told me he has no bitterness about what happened even though the snipers had not even been near their home. The most difficult thing for him was the lack of employment opportunities in Bethlehem and being dependent on relatives and friends to feed his children.

In June 2005, George and his sister Ghada were both painfully shy and neither was doing well in their school studies. But, when I visited them six months later, they both greeted me with the typical Mid East greeting to a friend; a hug and kiss on both cheeks. George was doing better in school, but Ghada was still frequently depressed and struggling. When I revisited them in March and November 2006 I was awed by the resiliency of childhood; both were laughing, playing with cousins and friends and making A s at the private Christian school they both attend, tuition paid by anonymous Americans.

The only way to security for Israelis and justice for Palestinians, is to end the occupation and ensure that all people have equal human rights. No enduring peace, no security, and no reconciliation is even possible without the foundation of justice. Justice requires mercy and is always nonviolent.

MUCH MORE ON WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/