I am not a self-hating Jew!

Young Jewish girl rebuts Israeli propaganda while being denigrated as a self-hating Jew by ardent followers of the propaganda.

British Protests Against the Israeli Atrocities in Palestine

Rabbi Dovid Weiss on the Zionist Oppression of the Palestinians

Jane Hirschmann of “Jews Say No!” Says “No!” to Israel’s Gaza Policy

In November 2008, the ceasefire ended—Israeli soldiers broke it in a cross-border raid killing six members of Hamas. In response, rockets were launched into Israel, so Israel, fortified with American weaponry, attacked the people of Gaza. Approximately 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed compared to 13 Israelis. Gaza was pulverized. Judge Richard Goldstone and his team reported there was no doubt that the people of Gaza were disproportionally affected.

Right after the invasion in Gaza I became one of the organizers of “Jews Say No!” in New York City. We wanted to make clear that the Israeli government did not speak in our name as they claimed. I began reading about the occupation, settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the building of the separation wall, Jewish-only streets for Israeli settlers, special identity papers for Palestinian citizens of Israel—one step away from wearing a yellow star—and the other indignities endured by the people of Palestine on a daily basis. And I saw the total collusion by the US government—its unconditional support no matter what the Israeli government did, including giving them 30 billion dollars over a 10-year period for weaponry—F16s, Apache helicopters, white phosphorus, Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in Bedouin encampments—used ruthlessly against the Palestinians. This was intolerable for me.

I understand the fears and frustrations of Israelis being fired upon by rockets and the resultant deaths and injuries. But what about the thousands of Palestinians being killed and whose homes, schools, hospitals, farms, mills, factories and infrastructure are being destroyed? What about a people living under a brutal occupation who are being denied the right to live with dignity in their own homeland? The siege and blockade of Gaza continue. The Israeli government controls the land, sea and air of this small area (25 miles long and roughly six miles wide) where 1.6 million people live.

Lightly edited extract from Counterpunch. Jane Hirschmann is a member of “Jews Say No!” in New York City and one of the national organizers of the US Boat to Gaza. Hirschmann has been active in anti-war efforts for the past four decades. She is a psychotherapist and the co-author of three books. More information about the The Audacity of Hope is available at www.ustogaza.org.

A Tale of Two Countries

Libya—a Rogue State

We found out last night that the British parliament is not a coalition of the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, it includes the Labour Party. When it comes to warfare, the UK has only one party—the Gang of Three. The House of Commons voted by 557 to 13 to support the UN resolution 1973 on Libya. The thirteen MPs with the principle to vote against were:

John Baron (C: Basildon & Billericay), Graham Allen (L: Nottingham North), Ronnie Campbell (L: NBlyth Valley), Jeremy Corbyn (L: NIslington North), Barry Gardiner (L: NBrent North), Roger Godsiff (L: NBirmingham Hall Green), John McDonnell (L: NHayes and Harlington), Linda Riordan (L: NHalifax), Dennis Skinner (L: NBolsover), Mike Wood (L: NBatley and Spen), Katy Clark (L: NNorth Ayrshire and Arran), Yasmin Qureshi (L: NBolton South-East), Caroline Lucas (Green: Brighton Pavilion), Mark Durkan (SDLP: Foyle), Margaret Ritchie (SDLP: Down South).

The rest either abstained, showing they are good for nothing, or voted for yet another middle eastern war. These people have no excuse. They have seen what Blair and Bush did in Iraq and what is happening in Afghanistan, but they are so lacking in principle and dripping in opportunistic self satisfaction that they ignored what they know… for self advancement. They are not fit to be MPs. They are not fit to be in Parliament. Parliament requires an opposition or it is as much a dictatorship as Libya. What is the point of choosing a representative when all of them vote according to the script that suits the MP and not what the citizens they represent want.

These people have killed democracy as we know it. As we know it it is pointless, and it needs now to be re-thought. The present system is a careerist gravy train for crooks, who, on this vote, outnumber principled MPs 43 to 1. We cannot expect Parliament to reform itself, so we, the people, will have to reform it as we have had to do in the seventeenth century, and twice in the nineteenth century by revolution and the threat of revolution. Britons died on these occasions, and doubtless the same will again be true. To achieve fairness and justice ordinary people always die.

Will the French, Americans and Arabs be organizing a humanitarian “No Fly Zone” over the UK when our government turns the troops against its people? No chance! If anything, they will do the same as in Libya. The “No Fly Zone” over Libya is obviously… obviously… not a humanitarian venture.

Just how do you save people from being killed by bombing them? It is exactly the same in Afghanistan where even Karzai, the US stooge, now wants the US and its lapdogs out, after a series of mass murders of civilians, often by US drones. It shows the poltroonery of the US and its allies. They are doing their best to engage the enemy by robots in case they might get killed themselves, so they sent pilotless aircraft to target schools and weddings, anywhere where there seems to be a gathering of people on the assumption that it is a troop of rebels.

And to what purpose? How does an ordinary Briton or American benefit from this wanton brutality? We do not. A few people employed servicing the military will briefly enjoy secure employment, but the rest of us will have to pay for this adventure, as we paid for the previous ones, by job losses and tax hikes. The beneficiaries are the rich, not us. And, when we choose to rebel against our rich dictators, the rich will use the technology they are perfecting abroad against us.

Israel—a Rogue State

Perhaps something will come out of it. It is wishful thinking, but goes like this.

Since all these MPs think it proper to support the bombing of nations that they claim a humanitarian reason for doing, they ought now to be willing to support the bombing of Israel, a rogue state which has different laws for Jews and Arabs among its own citizenry, and frequently raids Gaza, a small patch of land packed with millions of Arabs who are not Israeli citizens. Israel’s “democratic” authorities have even revoked the residency permit of the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem. Despite efforts by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the British Foreign Secretary and the British ambassador, the Israelis have not relented.

After maintaining a deafening silence about Israel’s atrocities against civilians, Britain suddenly wants a “day of reckoning” for war criminals—as long as they are Libyan.

Stuart Littlewood

The UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, promised retribution for Gaddafi’s crimes, and to refer Libya to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court:

That sends a clear message to all involved, in the regime and any other groups that if they commit crimes and atrocities there will be a day of reckoning for them.

Crimes will not go unpunished and will not be forgotten. There will be a day of reckoning and the reach of international justice is long.

British diplomats expressed the ConDem coalition’s policy as taking whatever steps were necessary…

…to ensure that those responsible for the awful human rights violations that are currently occurring in Libya are held to account… [because] we are appalled by the levels of violence… [so] The United Kingdom will do everything we can to make sure those responsible in the Libyan regime are held accountable for their actions…

Why then did we not hear this highly principled, humanitarian Foreign Secretary call for a reckoning with the Israeli regime? It murdered 1400 of Gaza’s civilians, including hundreds of children, two years ago, at Christmas! Besides the murder, the attacks left thousands maimed and myriads homeless, having to live in rubble. One UN resolution was sufficient for the bombing of Libya, but very many UN resolutions have been passed regarding Israeli oppression of Palestinians with absolutely no response at all from these humanitarian leaders of ours.

HMS York instantly appeared unloading medical supplies for the Benghazi Medical Centre, donated by the Swedish government, but nothing was available to assist when Gaza was under attack from Israeli bombers, or when Israeli soldiers acted as pirates on the high seas hijacking a Turkish ship carrying similar humanitarian aid to Gazans who are oppressed, humiliated, and impoverished every day by Israeli attacks.

Instead of seeking justice for Israeli crimes the Foreign Office is trying to change international law to let the Israeli criminals who authorized and justified them, like Tzipi Livni, Avigdor Lieberman, Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu, to move freely in the west.

Prominent Zionist Jews, who are knee jerk supporters of Israel, whatever atrocities they commit, are among the supporters of western political parties, and western leaders pander to these Zionists because they will finance them. David Cameron told a Jewish dinner, according to the Jerusalem Post:

With me you have a prime minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible… I will always be a strong defender of the Jewish people. I will always be an advocate for the State of Israel.

Cameron promises to support the Zionist state of Israel “always”—whatever crimes it commits! And then he cynically equates “the Jewish people” with Israel, so is it any wonder that some people do the same and attack Jews wherever they are for the crimes of Zionist Israel? Anti-Semitic attacks are on the increase, the Chief Rabbi of the UK tells us, as if it should be surprising when so many of them are Zionists—Jewish fascists! But all Jews are not Zionists, and all Jews do not support the racialist attitude of Israel, including some Israeli Jews.

Western uncritical support of Zionism is why Israel gets away with what Gaddafi cannot, why anti-Semitism is increasing, and why also the megarich oil sheiks of the Arabian peninsula can oppress their own people without a word of criticism from western leaders like Hague, Cameron, Obama and Clinton, all of whom get more two faced and slimy by the second. If you are an Arab rebel make sure you choose who you are rebelling against. If it is Gaddafi—OK, you are a democrat. If the king of Saudi Arabia—bad news, you are a terrorist.

War is a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.

Paul Valery

Invading foreign countries is for the benefit of a narrow class of megarich people, who like to steal other people’s assets and benefit from war bucks whatever else happens.

The Palestinian Case in Brief

The Palestinians, who have lived in Palestine for 2000 years, are no closer to having their own state than they ever were. Israel’s desire to push forward with the peace process is not clear. It refuses to countenance either withdrawal from the occupied territories or the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under US pressure, did join his predecessors in endorsing Palestinian statehood, albeit grudgingly and with caveats. The idea is not popular with the right wing members of his coalition, and efforts to coax Israel into halting all settlement construction in the West Bank have not succeeded.

The illegal apartheid wall snakes through the West Bank. Illegal Israeli settlement colonies, still being expanded, on the West Bank are for Jews only, as are the specially constructed roads. Gaza is still being illegally blockaded. Palestinians in their homeland are confronted by a plethora of checkpoints and barriers that divide families and keep people from their homes, farms and workplaces. What red blooded Yankee would stand for it? Moreover, the international community’s failure to hold Israel to account for war crimes gives it virtual carte blanche to launch attacks with the best modern weaponry, supplied by Uncle Sam, on the virtually defenseless Arabs.

To cover up their criminal complicity, Israeli's and their western sponsor, the US, blame the victims, claiming that Hamas’s resistance to recognizing the current gains of their oppressors stands in the way of a just settlement. Avigdor Lieberman demands the execution as traitors of Arab members of the Knesset who have met Hamas, and the expulsion of Arab citizens who do not sign a loyalty oath to Israel “as a Jewish state”. Such ideas are plainly racist—a form of apartheid. Anti-Arab racism is woven into the fabric of Israeli society. Lieberman is an example.

Palestinians who were born on land inhabited by their forebears for centuries, were driven out by the Jewish terrorist groups that became the core of the Israeli Defense Force after Israel’s foundation, and have no right of return. But Lieberman was born in Chisinau in Moldova, a place totally foreign to Palestine and its Arab people. Yet his status as a Jew qualified him to emigrate to Israel with full civic rights and the ability to travel and to settle anywhere in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

At the root of this mess is the protective umbrella with which America unconditionally shields its Middle East ally. As long as the US has the power of veto within the UN Security Council, Israel can do what it pleases. At the same time, Britain cannot hold Israelis to account without risking its special relationship with Washington.

Britain, which has always prided itself on its legal system and respect for human rights, actually colludes with Israel to ensure its officials escape prosecution. The British Foreign Office engaged in diplomatic shenanigans so that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak could receive immunity from prosecution while on a private visit to London with his wife. British justice does not extend to Israeli war criminals being held to account for their atrocities.

Those who believed that President Obama would make a difference are disappointed. He now seems a man of fine words and little action, certainly in foreign affairs. Like his predecessors, he is perpetuating US double standards. He calls for a nuclear free Middle East and wags his finger at Iran for enriching uranium, then blesses Israel’s policy of “nuclear ambiguity”.

Britain, kow-towing to the US and Israel and in common with the rest of the European Union, refuses to talk to Hamas, even though it was properly elected in the Palestinian election, but it is ready and willing to engage with war criminals and racists. So much for the sanctity of democracy.

Meanwhile, the United Nations ignores Israel’s flouting of Security Council Resolutions, and chooses to bin its own investigations into Israel’s crimes. The carefully compiled report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict was shelved. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, lobbied diplomatic support to back Israel’s objection to the report accusing Israel of war crimes. The report wanted its conclusions referred to the International Criminal Court prosecutor in The Hague, if the warring parties failed to conduct credible investigations within six months. The court at the Hague is not popular with the US either. Too many US leaders would be up for trial as war criminals, they fear.

Where does this sorry state of affairs leave the Palestinian people? Absolutely nowhere. They are constantly failed by international bodies and the international legal system. Is it any wonder that they have resorted to desperate methods? Who would not take them in the unjust situation Palestinians are in? Promises made that their own state is on the horizon are always broken.

When, in frustration, they turn to violence, they are branded as terrorists. The Islamist movement Hamas is regarded by Israel and the West as a terrorist organization after carrying out dozens of suicide attacks, but the invasion by Israel of Gaza on 27 December 2008, left 1,400 Palestinians, nearly all civilians, and 13 Israelis, nearly all soldiers, dead.

Surely something is seriously wrong with our world when a people who have been wronged for over a half century are treated as the criminals. Wherever the Palestinians turn, they find every door shut. Whatever they do to obtain a fraction of their rights, they face insurmountable obstacles. Time and again, they pursue international justice only to discover that it does not exist… for them! Recognized legal channels lead them nowhere.

Compiled from various sources.

Which now is the Rogue State in the Middle East?

The Zionist Israelis it seems have now murdered an elected representative of a sovereign state on foreign soil. Is this terrorism? The neoconservative New Labour rulers of Britain have expressed no concern for the implications for democracy and terrorism elsewhere, particularly here. It is concerned only that British passports were forged to effect the assassination. You can imagine what the reaction in the West would have been if the assassins had been Iranians, and the victim an Israeli.

“Democratic” Israel has full or shared control of 97% of the Palestinian people’s land in the West Bank, where it is demolishing Palestinian homes to build Israeli settlements. It is also building a “security” wall through the West Bank—to secure Arab land and water supplies for the Israelis! Palestinians suffer. They are subjected to arbitrary arrests and torture, and live under conditions many describe as open-air prisons or apartheid.

The Palestinians have been divided by the US and Israel, with Fatah and Israel siding together against Hamas. Fatah controls the West Bank while Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, under Fatah, has been bought off. Israel’s chosen governing partner, directly controls the other 3% of the West Bank.

Hamas is the party democratically and legitimately elected by the Palestinians. Fatah is unelected, known for corruption, torture and intimidation, and bankrolled by the US. Keith Dayton is the US security coordinator overseeing the training of Palestinian forces. He says the stated aim of the mission is to “preserve and protect the interests of the state of Israel”. Hamas is villified and has been boycotted since winning the 2006 election while Fatah—or the Palestinian Authority—receives money and training from the US to fight the party Palestinians have elected.

The ruling caste of the US in Washington, and our own in London, boast their democratic credentials until representatives are elected they do not like, then suddenly they prefer unelected but easily bribed crooks. They have always preferred local bullies to do their military dirty work for them, when they can get them to.

The money and training are being used by the Palestinian Authority to wage war against Hamas, and the Palestinian population of the Gaza strip, literally a completely isolated strip of land confined by the sea and Israel, with a short stretch adjacent to Egypt. The Israeli war on Gaza at the beginning of 2009 killed more than 1,400 Palestinians. The independent Goldstone report heavily criticized Israeli war crimes and attacks on UN buildings in Gaza. The Israeli justification of the war was to stop Hamas rocket attacks. These represent a token resistance to Israeli brutality. The rockets are home made, unguided and almost useless, having killed almost no one. And Hamas had kept a ceasefire until Israel provoked a reaction as an excuse to fight the one sided war.

Israel has the upper hand in every measure. Fatah stays in power by policing Israel’s enemies. There is no peace process. Israel has no interest in peace. It is a small boy under the protection of the big boy in the schoolyard. It enjoys kicking the other small boys, knowing they dare not retaliate. The big boy sadistically enjoys the small boys’ pain and humiliation.

People rightly ask why we are under attack by terrorists, but they never listen to the answer. We are assisting an occupying power in the middle East. We must be implicated in their torture and other abuses. Why does our government keep on siding with international criminals subject to a long list of UN resolutions for their terrorism against their neighbors? We persist in supporting the rogue nation causing all the trouble in the middle east. It is not Iran, but Israel!

Additional reporting from Adam Uppal, The Standard, Canada

Do not Submit British Law to Zionism

Dr M D Magee—You can add me to this list (below)! The neo-Nazi, pro-Zionist, New Labour party has added so many oppressive laws to the British Statute Book, that we have lost count, and will only remember them when they start being used against us, as all such laws eventually are. Here the aim is to let the Zionist ministers of the elitist, racist, neo-Nazi state of Israel, like Tzipi Livni, enter the UK without molestation from court orders drawing attention to her involvement in state terror and war crimes in Gaza, which might have led to her justified incarceration in a British jail.

This Labour Party leadership is devoid of any principle except self aggrandizement. Each of them expects to be repaid, just as Blair was, for involving us, against our will, in unjust and illegal warfare.

They bowed to the wishes of Zionist mogul, Rupert Murdoch, to get his support to win a series of elections in the nineties and the so-called noughties, but Murdoch has abandoned New Labour, so they want to suck up to the Israeli state directly.

We must all abandon New Labour, if we haven't already done so, and decide to support individual candidates of principle. The party system itself is bent and bankrupt.

The Labour MPs listed below evidently have some principles left, but the New Labour party as a whole is such a disgrace, it wants tipping down the drain. We must do so, and instead support individual candidates who will change the first past the post electoral system that has led us into mess after mess since the 1970s, and will also erase all the fascist Acts of Parliament Blair and Brown have legislated.

Letter to the Guardian

“We are shocked at suggestions by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister Ivan Lewis and foreign secretary David Miliband that Britain may consider changing its laws to avoid any future attempts to prosecute suspected war criminals, Israeli or otherwise. The UK must not renege on its international treaty obligations, particularly those under the fourth Geneva convention to seek out and prosecute persons suspected of war crimes wherever and whoever they are, whatever their status, rank or influence, against whom good prima facie evidence has been laid. We reject any attempt to undermine the judiciary's independence and integrity. A judge who finds sufficient evidence of a war crime must have power to order the arrest of a suspect, subject to the usual rights to bail and appeal.

The power to arrest individuals reasonably suspected of war crimes anywhere in the world should they set foot on UK soil is an efficient and necessary resource in the struggle against war crimes, and must not be interfered with (Report, 6 January). Nor should the government succumb to pressure from any foreign power to alter this crucial aspect of the judicial process. We urge the government to state clearly that it will not alter the law on universal jurisdiction and will continue to allow victims of war crimes to seek justice in British courts.”

John Austin MP, Katy Clark MP, Frank Cook MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Ann Cryer MP, Paul Flynn MP, Neil Gerrard MP, John Hemming MP, Paul Holmes MP, Kelvin HopkinsMP, Brian Iddon MP, Lynne Jones MP, Tom Levitt MP, Martin Linton MP, Bob Marshall-Andrews MP, Gordon Prentice MP, Linda Riordan MP, Terry Rooney MP, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Baroness Lindsay Northover, Bob Russell MP, Clare Short MP, Phyllis Starkey MP, Sir David Steel, Sandra White MSP, Derek Wyatt MP, Tayab Ali, Partner, Irvine Thanvi Natas Solicitors, Sir Geoffrey Bindman, Richard Burgon, solicitor, Daniel Carey, Public Interest Lawyers, Ian Cross, solicitor, Jim Duffy, Public Interest Lawyers, Shauna Gillan, barrister, 1 Pump Court, Andrew Gray, solicitor, Tessa Gregory, Public Interest Lawyers, Beth Handly, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors, Michael Hagan, solicitor, Michelle Harris, barrister, 1 Pump Court, Susan Harris, solicitor, Jane Hickman, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors, Sam Jacobs, Public Interest Lawyers, Salma Karmi-Ayyoub, barrister, Paul Kaufman, solicitor, Aonghus Kelly, Public Interest Lawyers, Daniel Machover, Chair of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Michael Mansfield QC, Anna Mazzola, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors, Sarah McSherry, Partner, Christian Khan solicitors, Clare Mellor, solicitor, Karen Mitchell, solicitor, Simon Natas, Partner, Irvine Thanvi Natas solicitors, Sophie Naftalin, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, Human Rights Legal Aid Fund, Henrietta Phillips, solicitor, William Seymour, solicitor, Navya Shekhar, solicitor, Phil Shiner, Public Interest Lawyers, David Thompson, solicitor, Paul Troop, barrister, Mohammed Abdul-Bari, Secretary-General, Muslim Council of Britain, Anas Altikriti, British Muslim Initiative, Lindsey German, Stop the War Campaign, John Hilary, Director, War on Want, Kate Hudson, Chair, CND, Betty Hunter, General Secretary, PalestineSolidarity Campaign, Dan Judelson, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Hugh Lanning, PCS Deputy General Secretary, John McHugo, Chair, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, Gerry Morrissey, General Secretary, BECTU, Tony Woodley, Joint General Secretary, UNITE, Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK, Jackie Alsaid LLM, Rachel Bowles, Prof Haim Bresheeth, Dale Egee, Sarah El-Guindi, Deborah Fink, David Halpin, Sharif Hamadeh, Samira Hassassian, Professor Ted Honderich, Victor Kattan, Asad Khan, Miriam Margolyes, Professor Nur Masalha, Professor Steven Rose, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, Andrew Sanger, Dr Aisha Sarwar, Tareq Shrouru…

US Morality? Ignoring Israeli Atrocities

The UN Resolution on the Goldstone Report

US ambassador Douglas Griffiths, opposing the human rights resolution at the UN, said the Goldstone report written by South African Judge, Richard Goldstone, was unfair towards Israel. But Goldstone investigated both sides of the conflict, Israel and Hamas. The 575 page document concluded that, during its incursion into the Gaza Strip, on 27 December 2008, to root out Palestinian rocket squads, Israel:

• used disproportionate force
• deliberately targeted civilians
• used Palestinians as human shields
• destroyed civilian infrastructure.

It also pointed out that Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, deliberately targeted civilians and tried to spread terror through years of rocket attacks on southern Israel. In fact, the report required both Israel and Hamas to look publicly and fairly into their respective human rights failings in the conflict, and, if they failed to conduct credible investigations within six months, recommended a reference of the offending party to the International Criminal Court prosecutor in The Hague.

So, the report itself is balanced, but the UN resolution emphasized the Israeli part because far more innocents were killed by Israeli professional soldiers than by Hamas fighters. The three week conflict in Gaza left 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. It was the continuation over decades of such one sided “defense” of the territory that until 1948 had been the Palestinians’ for twelve centuries that has caused the hatred of Moslems worldwide. Consequently, the resolution agreed in Geneva called for the UN General Assembly to consider the Goldstone report, and then for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to report, on Israel’s adherence to the resolution, to the Human Rights Council.

For Washington, justice is a “distraction from the peace process”, according to the US ambassador. Naturally, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, claimed the resolution “provides encouragement for terrorist organizations worldwide and undermines global peace”. Israel is not the terrorist organization he meant. Meanwhile Ambassador Griffiths continued with the usual pro-Israeli stance of all US administrations:

We had worked for a resolution that recognized the right of a state to take legitimate action to protect its citizens in the face of threats to their security while also condemning violations of international law regardless of the actor.

Read this carefully. “A state has the right to take legitimate action to protect its citizens.” It is true, and is enshrined in the Human Rights Act, but the US ambassador means Israel has the right, not the Palestinians who are actually fighting for the life and land of its people, yet always suffer completely disproportionally in the one sided war going on between Israel and Palestine. Numerous UN resolutions have been directed against Israel, but they lead nowhere because of US intransigence and veto.

In 40 years, Israel has featured in 65 Security Council UN resolutions, passed by two thirds majorities or better in the 15 nation Security Council—often 14 to one, the US! These resolutions have censured and deplored Israel’s actions and policies in respect of massacres of Palestinians, land grabbing since the 1948 partition, destroying Palestinian buildings including homes, making them refugees in their own land, restricting their access to water and electricity, illegal imprisonments, deliberate harassment and settling Israelis in illegal settlements. These are all violations of human rights, yet The US and Israel justify them by the fact that Palestinians protest against them! If someone did it to you, what would you do? Tip your cap in gratitude? Something is seriously wrong with the world when people wronged for half a century are treated as if they are criminals for trying to assert some sort of justice themselves.

For international justice for them is a joke, through US protection of Israel. It is impossible for them to find justice wherever they turn. Insurmountable obstacles are constantly placed in their way, legal channels are blocked, and their human rights are mangled in the interest of US oil imperialism. They have lost their own land, and are promised a share of it, as a Palestinian state but the never get even to share what was theirs sixty years ago. In the end, they only have one course open to them— to fight for their rights—then they are called terrorists.

Is it any wonder that Arab and African countries can only see US double standards in this, and try to use the UN for its proper purpose. The Israelis do all the damage, and the Palestinians get all the blame. Those who believed President Obama would act differently have already been disappointed. Change? He talks the talk but no longer walks the walk, in this key issue of foreign affairs. Typically and especially typical of his predecessor, he insists on a nuclear free Middle East, except for Israel, whose 60 nuclear bombs, though held contrary to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty never meet any US disapproval while Iran gets threatened with nuclear attack just for enriching uranium for legitimate reasons.

How can the leaders, and indeed the general population, of this immensely powerful superpower, the US, claim to be a moral nation, or even understand what morality is, when they have such an immoral attitude to some of the most ill treated people in the world. The Palestinians are treated as less than dogs. So much for the respect the meretriciously Christian Americans have for God and His creation, and Christ’s famous saying that to mistreat anyone is to mistreat himself in the same way!

At the root of the US hypocrisy is the unqualified protection America gives its Middle Eastern colony, Israel. The US can veto anything brought before the UN Security Council blocking any call to bring Israel to justice before the International Criminal Court. Israel therefore knows it stands above international law. It can therefore act just as it likes to its Arab neighbours, launching attacks wherever it fancies. The illegal segregationist wall stretches through the West Bank to protect the illegal Israeli settlements being expanded there—Arab land—and Gaza is still being illegally blockaded.

As the US ambassador said, countries have the right to self defense, and that is what the Palestinians have been doing, but the US has its own agenda behind its immoral attitude to foreign policy. It is the agenda of the magnates and militarists who make megabucks out of other people’s distress, and so have a permanent policy of causing it, not just in Palestine. It is time for American liberals and the genuinely Christian American, if any exist, to speak out against the criminality of their own leaders serving those who sacrifice human beings to the insatiable Moloch of greed and war bucks, America’s caste of robber barons.

Gaza: Israeli Criminals let off the Hook Again

In a special session, 25 members of the 47 nation UN body voted in favor of the resolution that chastised Israel for failing to cooperate with the UN mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone. Another 6 voted against—the US and Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine—while 16 others abstained or did not vote. Britain, France and three other members declined to vote. Russia and China, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, were among those voting yes.

Britain, which used to pride itself on its respect for law and for human rights did not vote, according to David Milliband, the UK's Jewish Foreign Secretary, because it had not finished discussing the issue, effectively colluding with Israel to keep its generals and officials from prosecution. The British Foreign Office prevaricated last month, over a private visit to London of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his wife until they had immunity from prosecution.

Moreover, the United Nations itself ignores Israel's flouting of Security Council Resolutions and has shelved the report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, its own careful investigations into Israel's crimes.

Israel says focusing on its actions in Gaza could derail the start of talks toward a peace deal and the establishment of a Palestinian state, objectives Israel has consistently opposed in every way practical. “Any action against Israel in this area is incompatible with negotiations and concessions”, said Eytan Gilboa of Bar Ilan University.

Goldstone, a noted judge, who is a Jew and has been under strong pressure from Zionist Jews and Israelis, concluded that both Israel and Hamas, the militant ruling party of Gaza, elected by the Palestinian people, committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the conflict.

So the responsibility was evenly divided between Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinian people, having been consistently failed by international bodies and the international legal system, it can scarcely surprise anyone that they have tried to take matters into their own hands. Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto did the same—they fought back even though against the odds. why is it right for Jews to fight fascist oppression but it is not right for Arabs to do it against Israelis, Jewish colonists in the US colony of Palestine.

Israel is portrayed as the minnow even though it has nuclear weapons and every modern WMD it wants from their protectors the USA. The Palestinians have almost nothing, though Israel launched its vicious attack in response to some rockets fired from Gaza in late December 2008. These rockets were not professionally made military hardware, but are ingenious home made contraptions, little more than self propelled mortar bombs, and quite untargetable. They have caused some casualties and damage to property, but no fair judge can compare it with the full scale professionally equipped onslaught of the Israeli army last January.

And who can doubt the injustice looking at the figures of casualties from the three week long invasion of Gaza by the Israeli troops and their tanks. Almost 1,400 Palestinians—400 children—were killed during conflict, and just 13 Israelis, half by friendly fire! What is moral or defensible about professional soldiers killing defenseless women and children in their homes?

How can the US justify such immoral behavior? How can Obama especially justify it? It is not moral in the least to beat up and murder helpless people, and it is the Palestinians who are helpless not the Israelis. Obama in less than a year has been corralled by the military clique in Washington, yet has won a Peace prize. So too did Kissinger, but he at least gave his back. Why doesn't Obama change? Change was his slogan. Why not try it in foreign affairs as well as in health care? And even there he is struggling. We have to conclude that the Christian-Zionist military axis ruling the US is too strong for anyone. The US people themselves need to respond.

Gaza and Warsaw—A Tale of Two Ghettoes

Zionist Jews commonly use the accusation of “antiSemitism” to try to stifle any criticism of Israel. Howard Jacobson, the professional Jew retained by the UK Independent, is often commended by his fellow Zionists for attacking those knaves who would scurrilously attack poor Israel for killing innocent Arab kids in Gaza, a pastime they are fond of. Jacobson pleads that Jews cannot label any critics of Israel as anti-Semitic, though they never cease doing so.

For Jacobson and his cohorts, I am anti-Semitic. I am confusing racial prejudice with a moral stance to condemn Israel for its bombing of Palestinian civilians. Like most good people, I was horrified by the extent of the slaughter of the Arabs trapped in Gaza. My moral stance is not a prejudice against Jews, but is a prejudice against evil. It is formed from the widespread evidence that the conflict was not fair, and that Israeli soldiers were just butchering the helpless. Or is the death of 400 children not a massacre, but merely inevitable damage caused by the “fighting”? I object to being called anti-Semitic from a man who is little more than a verbal pimp, for reading widely about the Israeli army, which has no compunction about shooting unarmed volunteers or young children going home from school, using the weapons the US has paid for as if it were a joke, and concluding that they are wrong.

Such propaganda pimps complain about anti-Semitism whenever the Nazis who now run Israel are ever actually correctly identified. In this instant who could fail to compare the herding of defenceless Arabs into Gaza to be murdered with shells and phosphorus bombs with the Warsaw Ghetto when Nazis perpetrated a similar crime on Jews. So, Caryl Churchill’s powerful play, Seven Jewish Children, shows Jews as supporting everything Israel has done to the Palestinians in parallel with Jewish treatment by Nazis. Though the Palestinians did not initiate the Holocaust, they are paying the price. Gaza was the latest extension of the war of invasion and conquest waged since WWII against the indigenous Palestinians, who remain oppressed and humiliated, their homes demolished, their livelihoods destroyed, their crops uprooted.

Inevitably, the leagues of professional Zionist letter writers ply their media targets with grapeshot. They, and others like them, relentlessly tell the world that Israel is in the right, whatever it does, regardless of the self-evident selfishness of its occupation and settlement of Palestinian land and the barbarity of its suppression of Palestinian resistance. If increasing numbers today are thinking most Jews are Zionists, then the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Chief Rabbi, and people like Howard Jacobson can take some of the responsibility. Yet, for the first time ever, major sections of the Jewish community, even in the United States, dissociated themselves from what Israel was doing in Gaza, and in Israel at least a substantial minority of Jews freely opposed the invasion, or expressed grave doubts about the atrocity. The UK Zionist rally supporting Israel attracted less than a fifth of the numbers of previous rallies.

That criticism of Israel’s murderous attack on the Semitic population of Gaza as anti-Semitic is bizarre, but is meant, of course, to be a “big lie”, the method used by Göring. And does anyone seriously think Israel is poor, these days? That is another lie—the David and Goliath lie. Israel is wealthy. It is not militarily weak, but is the strongest power in the region, with a nuclear bomb, and a well equipped army and air force. The Palestinians have none of this, and have no prospects of getting any sort of military equality while the US plays superpower politics in the region. As the greater power, Israel can make choices the Palestinians cannot. They can choose to be merciful and enable everyone to live peacefully and with dignity.

It is a dastardly slur to suggest that there is something racist about the expression “the Chosen People of God”, an honour that has given Israelis the right to do just as they like in someone else’s land. And, if Israelis seem not to care about dead children, as long as they are not Jewish, when they are mercilessly killing Arab children and innocent passers by, how can anyone avoid coming to that conclusion. The suggestion is “outrageous” to the Zionist scribblers. What is outrageous is that the Israelis continue to get away with it. There are Israelis now who openly want to force a loyalty test on Palestinians without which they would be “transferred”! Whatever next will the Israeli fascists and their comforters think of?

A Sane Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Jewish actress, Miriam Margolyes’s family from Belarus were wiped out by the Nazis at the Treblinka extermination camp. “I honor their memory, but I can’t think about the bad things done in Israel. It’s a slur on the memory of the Holocaust.”

Margolyes thinks Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians is a form of betrayal. “One of Judaism’s ideals is to do as you would be done by. We are betraying it. I’m Jewish. I feel I have a responsibility to say:

“Look at what’s happening. Look at these people with their lives in ruins. We’ve done this. How do you expect people to stop bombing you when you are bombing them? But Israelis feel that they are the victim. They haven’t been to Gaza. When you see little boys being shot at, you know it’s wrong. We’re so used to being the victim, we’re not realizing that now we are the oppressor.” It is a matter of right and wrong. “I have a fierce sense of justice. I’m 67. If I don’t tell the truth now, when am I going to start?”

The injustice must eventually end in reconciliation, as in South Africa. But “the fact is that Israel was founded by taking land from people. They pretend it wasn’t and gloss over it, but it was. We have a responsibility to those people to repair their lives. That land has to be shared out. I don’t have all the answers, but one has to be to stop the killing, and take the wall down.”