No wonder they didn't want reporters there. Here's more astonishing journalism about atrocities in the Gaza strip, this time by Don Nissenbaum of McClatchy chain:
Souad Abed Rabbo said that she tied a white robe around
a mop handle and two of her granddaughters waved white headscarves as
they walked outside.
When they opened the door, they saw an Israeli tank parked in their garden about 10 yards away.
"We
were waiting for them to give us an order," Khaled said last week as he
stood in the ruins of his home. "Then one came out of the tank and
started to shoot."
Souad Abed Rabbo said she was shot as she
pushed her son back inside and her granddaughters fell on the stairs.
When the shooting was over, she said, 2-year-old Amal and 7-year-old
Souad were dead.
The allegation is one of at least five such
white flag incidents that human rights investigators are looking into
across the Gaza Strip. It's part of a growing pattern of alleged abuses
that have raised concerns that some Israeli soldiers may have committed
war crimes during their 22-day military campaign in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch says "this was not a rogue unit." And Nissenbaum reports that Israel plans to protect these soldiers from investigation. (Phil Weiss, and emphases are mine; thanks to Sebastian)
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=an_open_letter_to_george_mitchell
An Open Letter to George Mitchell
Greetings and advice for President Obama's Middle East envoy
Gershom Gorenberg | January 28, 2009 | web only
(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
Dear Mr. Mitchell,
Welcome. Arriving here today as President Obama's Middle East envoy, you're likely to be greeted with tired indifference or polite hostility by leaders on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
So I'd like to let you know that I'm glad you're here. The president's choice of you as his diplomatic alter ego was a pleasant surprise: The agreement you brought in Northern Ireland, in a conflict that looked as bitter and irrational as our own, means that you come carrying evidence that it's possible to negotiate peace. Though you were part of the Clinton team, you aren't associated with the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000. The choice of a former Senate majority leader also shows that Mr. Obama wants someone with prestige and seniority — and someone who can go to Capitol Hill to explain the need for aggressive, even impatient, peace-making. When AIPAC tries to line up votes for knee-jerk resolutions to undercut your work, this will matter.
Northern Ireland, in a conflict that looked as bitter and irrational as our own
That's a misrepresentation. The 'Northern Ireland' conflict (as this bogus equation defines it by default) is nowhere near as complex as the near East.
I'm sure Mitchell will be very pleased and relieved that you don't hold him responsible for the failure of Camp David. Maybe he should bring you in as an adviser.
AIPAC had nothing to do with Arafat's rejection of a state at Taba and will have nothing to do Mitchell's failure to convince 5 million Palestinians that they are not "returning' to Israel
Julian,
The myth about "Arafat's rejection of a state at Taba," has been revealed "is the Big Lie told by Ehud Barak".
Uri Avnery
23.2.02
Politicus Interruptus
Last week, in Europe, I happened to pass a frozen lake. I was told that a few days before it was possible to skate on it. But the temperature had risen and the ice cover had started to melt. It still covers the whole lake, but in many places it can be broken with a stick. I was warned not to try to stand on it, because it might break, I would fall into the lake and disappear. But in a few days or weeks, I was promised, the ice would disappear and the beautiful lake would come to life again.
The situation in our country resembles this situation. The ice still covers the whole state, but it has started to melt.
The ice is the Big Lie told by Ehud Barak and his companions. This lie is starting to break. Soon nothing will be left of it.
When the bunch of bankrupt politicians returned from Camp David, they fabricated the legend, which has since become a holy truth, as if given by God at Mount Sinai. Like the Ten Commandments of Moses, there are Eight Facts of Barak: I have turned every stone on the way to peace; I have submitted offers unprecedented in their generosity; I went further than any Prime Minister before me; I have given the Palestinians everything they wanted; Arafat has rejected all the offers; Arafat does not want peace; The Palestinians want to throw us into the sea; We have no partner for peace.
If Binyamin Netanyahu had said this, it would not have had any impact. Everybody knows that Netanyahu is a crook. If Sharon had said it, he would not have been believed, because everybody knows that Sharon is a Man of Blood, unable to distinguish between truth and untruth. But when it came from the leaders of the Labor Party, those eminent spokesmen for peace, it caused the collapse of the established peace movement.
Since then, many testimonies about Camp David have been published, including some by pro-Israeli American eye-witnesses. All of them show that Barak's proposals fell far short of the essential minimum for peace: end of the occupation, establishment of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel, giving up all the occupied territories (all in all 22% of Palestine under the British Mandate), returning to the Green Line (with the possibility of mutually agreed swaps of territories), turning East Jerusalem into the capital of Palestine, return of the settlers and soldiers to Israel, ending the tragedy of the refugees without damage to Israel.
When the Big Lie exploded, an alternative lie was put out: Some months after the Camp David talks were renewed in Taba, Barak's men made offers unprecedented in their generosity, gave the Palestinians everything, but Arafat Refused To Sign, which shows that he does not want peace, etc.
Now Moratinus, the the European Union emissary for peace in the Middle East, has come along and buried this lie, too. The Spanish diplomat, who was in Taba but did not take part in the talks, has published a long and detailed report about what really happened there.
The clear conclusion is that at Taba the sides indeed came dramatically closer to each other. Gaps remained between their positions in almost all areas, but they were quantitative, rather than qualitative gaps. Clearly, if the talks had gone on for another few days or weeks, a historic agreement would have been achieved.
So what happened? Is it true that "Arafat Refused To Sign"?
Not at all. Arafat did not refuse to sign. He wanted to continue the negotiations until there was an agreement to sign.
It was not Arafat who broke off the talks at this critical moment, when the light at the end of the tunnel was clearly visible to the negotiators, but Barak. He ordered his men to beak off and return home.
Why?
The Taba talks began after the outbreak of the second intifada. After Sharon's invasion of the Temple Mount with Barak's permission, and after seven Arab protesters were shot by Ben-Ami's police, bloody incidents occurred daily. The Taba talks were held "under fire" � a process that is quite normal in history. After all, negotiations are held in order to put an end to the fire.
On that day, two Israelis were murdered in a Palestinian town. The Palestinians said that this was revenge for the murder of a local leader. But it was enough for Barak to break off the talks.
What was the real reason? The answer must be found in the mind of Barak. After all, it happened to Barak time and again: whenever he got close to an agreement, he withdrew at the last moment.
It started at the very beginning of his term of office. As will be recalled, he wanted to come to an agreement with the Syrians first, in order to isolate the Palestinians. Complete agreement was almost reached, when suddenly everything broke down. Assad wanted Syrian territory to extend to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, while Barak wanted the border to be a hundred meters away from the shore. Because of the hundred meters, Barak rejected the historic agreement that was at hand. (Comics say these days that Barak should have fixed the border at the shore line as it was then, as the sea has retreated many hundreds of meters since then.)
The same happened at Camp David. Agreement was possible. All the participants believed at the time that it was already close. Then something happened to Barak. As the Israeli participants testify (and as Arafat told me a few days ago), Barak simply freaked out. He cut himself off, did not shave and refused to meet even with his closest assistants.
Something similar happened at Taba. When the agreement was at hand, Barak ordered the talks to be broken off. The actual pretext does not matter.
When something like that occurs again and again, it raises questions. It may be called "politicus interruptus'. A moment before the consummation, Barak draws back. I am not a psychiatrist and am not qualified to deal with mental problems. But I believe that every time, when Barak saw the actual price of peace in front of him, he shrunk back at the last moment. There was a dissonance between the price of peace (withdrawal from the occupied territories, evacuation of settlements, conceding East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, return of a symbolic number of refugees) and the ideas he was brought up on. He could not shoulder the responsibility and broke down. At the same time, he expanded the settlements at a frantic pace.
Adding sin to crime (as the Hebrew expression goes), he covered his personal collapse with the Big Lie, which caused a national collapse.
Now the lie is starting to break up. The open discussion of war crimes, the declaration of hundreds of soldiers that they refuse to serve in the Palestinian territories, the call of the reserve generals for an end to the occupation, the new voices in the media, the call of courageous artists, the big demonstration of 27 militant peace organizations (including Gush Shalom), the following big Peace Now demonstration � all these show that the ice is starting to melt.
This is only the beginning. Now is the time for all those who were waiting to join the effort. As Churchill said after the victory in Egypt: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
See also Avneri's "On the Wrong Side [of History] link to antiwar.com
:
The most brutal is Ehud Barak. Once I called him a "peace criminal," because he brought about the failure of the 2000 Camp David conference and shattered the Israeli peace camp. Now I must call him a "war criminal," as the person who planned the Gaza War knowing that it would murder masses of civilians.
In his own eyes, and in the eyes of a large section of the public, this is a military operation that deserves all praise. His advisers also thought that it would bring him success in the elections. The Labor Party, which had been the largest party in the Knesset for decades, had shrunk in the polls to 12, even nine seats out of 120. With the help of the Gaza atrocity it has now gone up to 16 or so. That's not a landslide, and there's no guarantee that it will not sink again.
What was Barak's mistake? Very simply: every war helps the Right. War, by its very nature, arouses in the population the most primitive emotions – hate and fear, fear and hate. These are the emotions on which the Right has been riding for centuries. Even when it's the "Left" that starts a war, it's still the Right that profits from it. In a state of war, the population prefers an honest-to-goodness rightist to a phony leftist.
This is happening to Barak for the second time. When, in 2000, he spread the mantra "I have turned every stone on the way to peace, / I have made the Palestinians unprecedented offers, / They have rejected everything, / There is no one to talk with" – he succeeded not only in blowing the Left to smithereens, but also in paving the way for the ascent of Ariel Sharon in the 2001 elections. Now he is paving the way for Binyamin Netanyahu (hoping, quite openly, to become his minister of defense).
And not only for him. The real victor of the war is a man who had no part in it at all: Avigdor Lieberman. His party, which in any normal country would be called fascist, is steadily rising in the polls. Why? Lieberman looks and sounds like an Israeli Mussolini, he is an unbridled Arab-hater, a man of the most brutal force. Compared to him, even Netanyahu looks like a softie. A large part of the young generation, nurtured on years of occupation, killing, and destruction, after two atrocious wars, considers him a worthy leader.
While the U.S. has made a giant jump to the left, Israel is about to jump even further to the right.
Anyone who saw the millions milling around Washington on inauguration day knows that Obama was not speaking only for himself. He was expressing the aspirations of his people, the Zeitgeist.
Between the mental world of Obama and the mental world of Lieberman and Netanyahu there is no bridge. Between Obama and Barak and Livni, too, there yawns an abyss. Post-election Israel may find itself on a collision course with post-election America.
Where are the American Jews? The overwhelming majority of them voted for Obama. They will be between the hammer and the anvil – between their government and their natural adherence to Israel. It is reasonable to assume that this will exert pressure from below on the "leaders" of American Jewry, who have incidentally never been elected by anyone, and on organizations like AIPAC. The sturdy stick, on which Israeli leaders are used to lean in times of trouble, may prove to be a broken reed.
link to gush-shalom.org
The first question all reporters should ask any Israeli spokesperson is,
"How can we believe a syllable you say, when you banned reporters from our lawful jobs of seeing what you actually did?"
And we need to keep demanding that "our" "news"people keep claiming that right.
Returning to Mitchell from that rather lengthy excursion, Susie, I was just lying back and thinking and a phrase from an old Tom Waits song floated back into my mind:
a used piece of jet-trash…
I wonder if it means something.
I found this on another blog, very funny.
The Little Dickie Silverstein Marching Song
I am a little kapo,
It makes my mommy mad,
Cause when I am a kapo,
Those Zionists get sad!
I celebrate the jihad,
and terror all the while,
I fill my blog and web page,
With loud salutes of Sieg Heil!
I want to see them Zraelis,
All dumped out in the sea,
My swastika a waving,
Cause everything’s bout me.
Thanks Susie, for those articles. Unfortunately those myths are yet to be shattered in the U.S. media.
Sorry about the length, though, Ahmed and Rowan. I'll try to cut more next time.
I am a little kapo,
all about me,
Madoff is my daddy,
Menorah heavy,
I light up with joy
At the death of a goy
& you can throw in any jew
Who wants to be true.
Seems you witnessed a group of Palestinians dancing and singing over the death of a pregnant jewish woman, and through the use of low grade drugs, wrote a poem.
Congrats!
FROM ABOVE: "a phrase from an old Tom Waits song floated back into my mind"
ME: That happens to me as well!
"We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in Blue." – Bob Dylan
chris berel: Better go talk to your Hasbara mentor. You suck. U are not up to the job. The people on this blog are too smart for you. Are you even an ashkenazi? You need at least their paltry IQ to deal here.
Based on Witnesses comment, I'm asking for a raise. I've clearly earned it.
I'm asking for a raise. I've clearly earned it.
—–
I agree. When a person prostitutes themselves this badly, and really sucks at it to boot, it would be far too humiliating to do it on the cheap.
Get whatever you can from your paymasters, because whatever the amount, it clearly isn't enough. Maybe joining the IDF would be more honest work (for you).
Prostitutes? Are you claiming that you post hogs swill for the money, not because you believe the hogs swill?
You actually believe what you post?
My apologies. I thought you were just being funny. If you didn't realize that I was showing witness to be a fool, you are dumber then I thought.
In fact, isn't Philip begging for money, like a prostitute?
Little Dickie Silverstein is one of the worst anti-Semitic bloggers on the web, widely referred to as a kapo. A site that exposes him is now at link to kapodickie.blogspot.com<
Do you really expect any better from many of the posters here? I just found out that Mondoweiss is a prominent feature on David Duke's site. Sort of a court Jew thing.
Yeah, right chris berel, Duke has lots of power, more than AIPAC. I will give you this much: Duke wants to insure the white race by
arguing they are ever faster the minority (due to their own intellectual integrity, rather than tribal loyalty). AIPAC similarly wishes to insure jewish survival and continuity. Court Jews were the middleman between the elite royal power and the masses of goy cattle, which The Court and the Jews both exploited in tandem. The Court Jew's job was to fund elite Goy comfort and continued power.
That was in the eye's of the Court. In their own eyes, the Court Jew's function was to survive in lands where his kind did not hold top power, and to do so in luxury.
Jews in the current USA are full members of the Court itself. Duke
has no real power at all. What you do is confuse Samizdat with MSM propaganda. You are like Goebbels saying the White Rose
is in power and must be killed for the health of the nation.
I didn't think Duke had any power, just an annoying gadfly, sort of like yourself.
I understood the new court jew was there to legitimize the top fellow as having a best friend who is Jewish. The money thing is passe.