A great Israeli, former IAF captain Yonotan Shapira, interviewed on BBC:
"If Obama will go into the White House and continue to act like a slave and not like a leader, I don't see any change coming. If he continues to play golf and act like a slave, forced by AIPAC… and not to talk about the horrible crimes happening in my country now, I don't see any change coming to the world.
"I risked my life for many years… in operations for many years in the Israeli Air Force… As a former rescue pilot this is the most important rescue mission I can take on myself… We're in great danger. If people want to help me as an Israeli and a Jew, they need to put massive pressure on the Israeli government for a cease-fire right now…"
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Unfortunately, the "Power Rangers" preclude our fulfilling Mr. Shapira's request. Israeli Haim Saban owns the (U.S.) Democratic Party lock, stock and barrel!
our leaders, those that make policy so that those that are elected can follow are souless creatures, men and women without hearts
the economic downturn is the only hope we have for people to wake up and demand change.
change in foreign policy, change in leadership.
obama is a joke just like most of us expected. a slave to the powers he serves….a real suckup to power.
ron paul …for change.
The world is different. Obama need not be a slave to the old Israel Lobby.
He should be a partner to the new one, so that the Israel Lobby adds to his voice in relation to Israel.
Witty will lead every jew to their grave
we all hoped that Obama would not be a slave to the Israel lobby but Rahm Emanuel put an end to those hopes. and when is the "new" lobby coming? it hardly looks like J Street is getting much traction. meanwhile it's business as usual and congress and the white house both look like "Israeli Occupied Territory" as this AIPAC release demonstrates.
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Unfortunately, the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" preclude our fulfilling Mr. Shapira's request. Israeli Haim Saban owns the (U.S.) Democratic Party lock, stock and barrel!
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Superdelegates Turned Down $1 Million Offer From Clinton Donor – May 19, 2008 02:50 PM
by Nico Pitney and Sam Stein
One of Sen. Hillary Clinton's top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization's two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.
Haim Saban, the billionaire entertainment magnate and longtime Clinton supporter, denied the allegation. But four independent sources said that just before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Saban called YDA President David Hardt and offered what was perceived as a lucrative proposal: $1 million would be made available for the group if Hardt and the organization's other uncommitted superdelegate backed Clinton……
ENTIRE ARTICLE –
link to huffingtonpost.com
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AND FROM MATTHEW YGLESIAS:
10 Jun 2007 08:46 am
If you're interested in the foreign policy views of major Hillary Clinton financial backer Haim Saban, there's no need to follow the Atrios path of attempting guilt by association with Kenneth Pollack. He discussed his views on the Middle East and Persian Gulf region in great detail in a reasonably recent interview with Haaretz:
"When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler. They speak the same language. His motivation is also clear: the return of the Mahdi is a supreme goal. And for a religious person of deep self-persuasion, that supreme goal is worth the liquidation of five and a half million Jews. We cannot allow ourselves that. Nuclear weapons in the hands of a religious leadership that is convinced that the annihilation of Israel will bring about the emergence of a new Muslim caliphate? Israel cannot allow that. This is no game. It's truly an existential danger."
SOURCE –
from Finkelstein's web site:
THE METHOD OF COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT SO FAR HAS PROVED EFFECTIVE
MOSHE DAYAN, JUNE 18th 1950
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WANT TO END THE VIOLENCE IN GAZA? BOYCOTT ISRAEL
By Naomi Klein, The Nation
January 09, 2009 "Alternet" — – It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — BDS for short — was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop."
Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.
1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures — quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.
It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.
2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid." That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.
3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.
4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.
Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.
Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."
Ramsey says that his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."
It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.
Naomi Klein's latest book is The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
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Boycotting Israel over the war and occupation may be a good idea but I don't think it's legal in America, at least for businesses. If I am not mistaken any company which refuses for political reasons to buy Israeli goods (anything from electronics to canned tuna) can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Department of Commerce. My understanding is the law is rigorously enforced and guilty parties are severely sanctioned.
Antiboycott Laws:
During the mid-1970's the United States adopted two laws that seek to counteract the participation of U.S. citizens in other nation's economic boycotts or embargoes. These "antiboycott" laws are the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA).
Objectives:
The antiboycott laws were adopted to encourage, and in specified cases, require U.S. firms to refuse to participate in foreign boycotts that the United States does not sanction. They have the effect of preventing U.S. firms from being used to implement foreign policies of other nations which run counter to U.S. policy.
Primary Impact:
The Arab League boycott of Israel is the principal foreign economic boycott that U.S. companies must be concerned with today. The antiboycott laws, however, apply to all boycotts imposed by foreign countries that are unsanctioned by the United States.
Who Is Covered by the Laws?
The antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) apply to the activities of U.S. persons in the interstate or foreign commerce of the United States. The term "U.S. person" includes all individuals, corporations and unincorporated associations resident in the United States, including the permanent domestic affiliates of foreign concerns. U.S. persons also include U.S. citizens abroad (except when they reside abroad and are employed by non-U.S. persons) and the controlled in fact affiliates of domestic concerns. The test for "controlled in fact" is the ability to establish the general policies or to control the day to day operations of the foreign affiliate.
The scope of the EAR, as defined by Section 8 of the EAA, is limited to actions taken with intent to comply with, further, or support an unsanctioned foreign boycott.
What do the Laws Prohibit?
Conduct that may be penalized under the TRA and/or prohibited under the EAR includes:
Agreements to refuse or actual refusal to do business with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.
Agreements to discriminate or actual discrimination against other persons based on race, religion, sex, national origin or nationality.
Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about business relationships with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.
Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about the race, religion, sex, or national origin of another person.
Implementing letters of credit containing prohibited boycott terms or conditions.
The TRA does not "prohibit" conduct, but denies tax benefits ("penalizes") for certain types of boycott-related agreements.
What Must Be Reported?
The EAR requires U.S. persons to report quarterly requests they have received to take certain actions to comply with, further, or support an unsanctioned foreign boycott.
The TRA requires taxpayers to report "operations" in, with, or related to a boycotting country or its nationals and requests received to participate in or cooperate with an international boycott. The Treasury Department publishes a quarterly list of "boycotting countries."
How To Report:
The EAR requires reports of receipts of boycott requests to be filed quarterly on form BIS 621-P for single transactions or BIS 6051P for multiple transactions received in the same calendar quarter.
TRA reports are filed with tax returns on IRS form 5713. This form is available from local IRS offices.
Penalties:
The EAR prescribes the penalties for violations of the Antiboycott Regulations as well as export control violations. These can include:
Criminal:
The penalties imposed for each "knowing" violation can be a fine of up to $50,000 or five times the value of the exports involved, whichever is greater, and imprisonment of up to five years. During periods when the EAR are continued in effect by an Executive Order issued pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the criminal penalties for each "willful" violation can be a fine of up to $50,000 and imprisonment for up to ten years.
Administrative:
For each violation of the EAR any or all of the following may be imposed:
General denial of export privileges;
The imposition of fines of up to $11,000 per violation; and/or
Exclusion from practice.
Boycott agreements under the TRA involve the denial of all or part of the foreign tax benefits discussed above.
The $10,000 maximum per violation specified in the EAA is adjusted periodically pursuant to law for inflation. The maximum civil penalty for any violation committed after October 23, 1996 is $11,000 per violation.
Where to Get More Information:
U.S. Department of Commerce
BIS/Office of Antiboycott Compliance
Room 6098
1401 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20230
(202) 482-2381
There is an old imported PBS series called Upstairs, Downstairs. It's
a good model for the USA government today. 95% of the USA is
downstairs. They don't even count. Their job is merely to service
the elite political POV and luxury needs.
I say, let's back Israel to the hilt, including bombing Iran after Gaza is demolished sufficiently. Let's also deny transparency as we are doing to the roots of, and continuation of the elite's continued economic plan, which Obama is observing with a smokescreen of
money transfer to the (mostly) minority have-nots, from the majority
have-nots.
We need the Gaza murder, an Iran bombing, and continuation of
status quo economic and monetary policy so that, beat sufficiently into the ground, the American masses will finally rise up from the ground. It will take awhile. But we are slowly getting there. The Weimar Republic was not defeated overnight.
I say a company should pursue a boycott against Israel in violation of U.S laws and then have the case fought out in court – possibly the supreme court.
I'm wondering whether a constitutional lawyer(I'm not very informed on the U.S legal system)could find something unconstitutional in that law. It's my understanding that corporations are considered individuals under the law -subject to same kinds of rights, apparently)
"They have the effect of preventing U.S. firms from being used to implement foreign policies of other nations which run counter to U.S. policy."
Even if U.S foreign policy runs counter to international law?
I don't know what I'm talking about, really – I'm just trying to have some hope.
I'm certainly on board with Naomi Klein, but Eva Smagec's post on U.S law is a little dispiriting…
That's Eva 'Smagacz'.
Sorry, Eva….
There's no doubt that while goy Americans were sleeping (as usual) the policy was passed into law that equated Israel with the the USA.
So, what's new?
Gentiles can thank their own selfish reps and members in all 4 branches of government.
I agree with Jewish leaders who call on the American people to
keep killing themselves in behalf of "the USA and Israel, our very
special partner."
That's a rather unusual position to have for somebody who calls his/herself "citizenUSA".
So you think goys should kill themselves for the jew?
Just out of curiosity – why would you agree with that Mr.CitizenUSA?