As reported in Ha'aretz the world's diplomatic corps is beginning to turn on Israel after over two weeks of attacking Gaza. Today, President Evo Morales announced that Bolivia is breaking relations with Israel and he wants the International Criminal Court to bring genocide charges against top Israeli officials.
Also today, the EU said that the ongoing negotiations with Israel to boost their political and trade ties will be put on a "time out." Although the EU insists this is not a sanction due to the war in Gaza, Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal, the EU envoy to Israel, did say:
"In a war situation, in a situation in which Israel is at war, using
its war means in a very dramatic way, in a powerful way in Gaza,
everybody realises that it is not the appropriate time to upgrade
bilateral relations which normally take place in a more … peaceful
context."
Cibrian-Uzal declined to say how long the "time out" will last.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html?hp
Israeli Rights Groups Call for War Crimes Inquiry
The American Congress passes a resolution praising Israel's behavior. The British Parliament hears cries to withdraw the ambassador, stop arms sales, embargo trade, and investigate war crimes.
Who knew there was such "antisemitism" across the Atlantic?
No resting in peace for Gaza dead
GAZA (Reuters)
Stench, debris and human remains greeted Palestinians in the city of Gaza on Wednesday after an Israeli missile strike at dawn — but in this case no one died.
A big explosion tore through the increasingly packed Sheikh Redwan cemetery, shattering tombstones and ripping bones and recently buried flesh from the earth.
"The planes have struck even the dead. There is nothing the planes have not hit in the Gaza Strip," lamented Abu Fayez al-Shurafa, leaning on a cane.
He moved around the graveyard with others who live nearby, gathering remains, righting fallen grave markers, wincing at the smell. "I was shocked they would dare do this. The flesh of the dead flew in them streets and we are collecting them in bags."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/usTopNews/idUKTRE50D5EP20090114
As kraut Truman opined for the memory books, after he had been sold into office by the Zionists, when the classical underdog becomes the
uber hund, nothing is sacred except the uber hund. All is allowed.
Nothing has changed. As with Truman, the Arabs had no vote or real effective money in 1948 to assure goyische kopf titular American leaders, and now, with Obama–he will copy Bush, Clinton. All hail the Israel plantation.
As I mentioned on a different blog I recently heard the former Dutch Foreign Minister and erstwhile European Commissioner for Foreign Relations, Hans van den Broek, complain in a Dutch TV-program about Israel's consistent violation of international law.
He was of the opinion that Israel had gotten away with this because there never had been any effective sanctions from the West. He hinted that for Europe such sanctions could be found in the numerous treaties between Israel and the EU which have given Israel a privileged status thus far.
I put up a blog entry on Palestinian Foreign Policy Realism.
It was originally a comment on Professor Walt's blog entry An unconvincing defense.
So all the democracies that the US refuses to recognize–Venezuela, Bolivia, Palestina–are ganging up on our faux democracies, mine included.
Can anyone still be unconvinced that we're on the wrong side of history?
Wow, you gotta read this screed by David Horowitz. Here are the last two grafs:
The author of this repulsive, traitorous statement, Wisconsin Professor Jennifer Lowenstein, is herself a Jew, but obviously a self-hating member of the tribe, the likes of which have a sordid lineage going back to the “capos” who shoveled their companions into the ovens and collaborated with their murderers. Like many of her political comrades in the secular and religious Left, she has joined the forces of Islamic barbarism that are ranged against the civilized people of America and Israel. And she is only one of many. In the midst of the global war that radical Islam has declared on the West, the conflict in Gaza has revealed the presence of a fifth column in the West so detached from its own communities and civilized values that it now constitutes a clear and present danger to our survival.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=ED3F303D-47FE-424E-A236-E38064C655B9
Citizen, thanks for reminding us all of Truman's cynical betrayal of the Palestinian people. Harry Truman seemed to be proud of his lack of "democratic," liberal principle, for he bragged about the vote-grabbing nature of his machiavellian corruption in creating Israel several times:
1. "In all my political experience I don't ever recall the Arab vote swinging a close election."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/sep/29/politics
2. 'In a Nov. 10, 1945 meeting with American diplomats brought in from their posts in the Middle East to urge Truman not to heed Zionist urgings, Truman had bluntly explained his motivation:
"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."'
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0591/9105017.htm
3. When the State Department, the Pentagon, and all major career diplomats in the US stood against support for establishment of Israel, President Truman explained his decision to his cabinet (privately) very clearly as relating to the lobby and voting adding that “I have no Arab constituency” (Truman papers and many history books). The US went on to twist the arms of other countries to support partition and imposing of a Jewish state on Palestine.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/iraq-pal-israel.html
The contrast between the US and Europe in voicing apposition is huge. Americans in power are required to shut up or support. But don't be fooled by European gestures, they are hitherto, gestures. Just look at the allies troops in Aghanistan, that is the same war as is being fought in Gaza and Iraq, and was fought in Lebanon. It is against Islam. Jewish power is not at all dented, and is rather absolute. I don't think it is any good at all for the jews but that is another story. Yet I wouldn't want to predict the future. Most definitely the people everywhere are aghast. But EU time out don't mean much, unfortunately.
More great insight on the abominable Congressional vote lauding that Mythical "jewish and democratic" state.
Our current Congress and future president have no more courage than Truman, and are setting us all up for a future just as fraught as Truman quite knowingly bequeathed. He knew, he was warned, and "our"–the Lobby's–congress can never say didn't know, as well.
The Black Congressional Caucus and Israel
Sullying Dr. King's Legacy
By GLEN FORD
In addition to the usual nonsense about the U.S. maintaining an "unwavering commitment to the…State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (as if a settler state based on race-ethnicity can be democratic) with secure borders (Israel is the only state in the world that refuses to say where its borders are), the Resolution invokes the United Nations and its Charter (Israel is the unchallenged world champion violator of UN Resolutions, dating from shortly after its declaration of independence, in 1948).
Could it be that Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Milwaukee's Gwen Moore are the only Black Caucus members who remember that Israel was racist South Africa's closest ally, the apartheid regime's hi-tech weapons quartermaster and godfather to its nuclear bomb project? Do the seven members that voted "present" – Donna Edwards (MD), Keith Ellison (MN), Hank Johnson (GA), Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI), Barbara Lee (CA), Donald Payne (NJ), Diane Watson (CA) – believe that by refusing to take a position on Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza, they somehow salvage the Caucus's claim to be the "conscience of the Congress?"
Where has John Conyers' conscience disappeared to? In July of 2006, when the House passed an equally noxious Resolution in support of Israel's systematic destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, killing over 1,000 people and displacing one million, Conyers and fellow Detroiter Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick were the solitary CBC members to vote "Nay." (Oakland's Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters voted "present.") Then came the Democratic victory in the midterm congressional elections and Conyers' chance to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee – at Speaker Nancy Pelosi's pleasure. Conyers picked a fight with Jimmy Carter over the former president's book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Conyers objected to Carter's use of the term "apartheid" in the book's title, saying it "does not serve the cause of peace, and the use of it against the Jewish people in particular, who have been victims of the worst kind of discrimination, discrimination resulting in death, is offensive and wrong." Translation: Not just Israel, but Jews are off limits to criticism.
It appears the old John Conyers has left the scene without those of us who used to know him having had a chance to say goodbye. The Israeli lobby has that kind of effect on erstwhile progressives and anti-war folks. The Zionist ideology, and especially the chilling effect of Zionist power, is probably the second-greatest impediment to creation of a sustained American peace movement – the first obstacle being the ideology of American Manifest Destiny, which is in practice quite compatible with Zionism.
However, African Americans are least susceptible to the Manifest Destiny/Zionist Mythology combo. Both ideologies wreak of racism, and most Black people know it. The Congressional Black Caucus knows it, too, but they are terrified of offending Israel's innumerable political hit men.
Zionist power helped knock off two CBC members who refused to tow Tel Aviv's line, in 2002. Georgia's Cynthia McKinney and Alabama's Earl Hilliard found themselves heavily outspent and ultimately unseated by otherwise puny challengers in Democratic primary contests. AIPAC bragged of its ability to shut down independent-minded Black politicians who fail to understand that U.S. foreign policy is shaped by whatever is deemed good for Israel. Bullying works, especially against the meek. Except for Maxine Waters and Gwen Moore, the Congressional Black Caucus is out of the anti-war business.
That also goes for the Congressional Progressive Caucus which, with 71 members, claims to be the "single largest partisan caucus" in the U.S. House, but whose members voted overwhelmingly in support of Israeli barbarity. About two-thirds of the voting members of the Black Caucus also belong to the Progressive Caucus – meaning, they are members of two defunct organizations, and doubly useless to the cause of peace.
Glen Ford is editor of Black Agenda Report, where this article appears. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/ford01142009.html
YouTube: We will not go down (song for Gaza)
******************************************
I read parts of the latest Der Spiegel (the mirror) print edition. One article is on Israel's strict control of journalists. The prepared PR efforts were easy to recognize here on TV. But they are much focussed on victims. I recognized these efforts immediately without needing the Spiegel interview: Traumatized women, highly fanatic in interviews: Let us bomb them into dust. Let them suffer. Well chosen! In another article I found this gem:
Nevertheless, this is a war without victory, a war that can hardly be won any more, be it morally or militarily. How can these young Israeli soldiers defeat Hamas fighters who carry children in their arms as living shields, mingle with civilians and hide out in hospitals and schools? Hamas celebrates a triumph with each Israeli soldier it kills or abducts, no matter how small that number is. But Israel loses with each dead civilian.
Now imagine the same reader recently watched the same TV documentary I did. Richard C. Schneiderwho presented the above mentioned women and managed to pick out an average Palestinian family on the run with its 30+ kids, 18 missing. They must be on the arms of the Hamas fighters above. [irony alert] …
Here comes Martin Indyk in the same issue about the "innocent" American mind:
SPIEGEL: What kind of Middle East policy do you expect from him?
Indyk: He will reach out to both sides. America is Israel's closest ally and will remain so. But Obama has the potential to develop much more influence in the region than his predecessors. His narrative as the son of a Kenyan father, his childhood in Muslim Indonesia, his middle name Hussein, his rise to power as the first African-American president on his own merits without wealth or a famous name behind him — all that deeply impresses the Arabs.
…
SPIEGEL: To what extent can Obama change course at all?
Indyk: We Americans have this wonderful but frightening innocence, a belief that we have a mission to transform troubled parts of the world. Even more troubling is that we not only think it is our responsibility but that we can actually remake the Middle East in our own image as a peaceful, democratic place. It is that instinct which George W. Bush and Bill Clinton shared in the Middle East, even though they pursued the objective of transformation in two very different ways — one by peace-making, one by war making. But they shared that basic naïvety and they both failed. Now we have to be less naïve and more humble. I am sure Obama has understood that.
sorry: I really have to fix this missing "preview" button issue.
To read more on apartheid IN Israel, see:
(we knew about the tyrannical banning of Arab parties, but Cook offers more revolting details).
Left Claims Ban is "Patriotic"
Israel Bars Arab Parties From Elections
By JONATHAN COOK
Meanwhile, Israeli police admitted they arrested about 600 people involved in protests against the Gaza offensive, some of them for stone-throwing. Adalah lawyers said more than 200 people, most of them Arab, were still in jail.
“We’re talking about mass arrests,” said Abeer Baker, adding that Israel was exploiting a 30-day window before an indictment had to be filed to hold suspects without producing evidence.
In addition, the Shin Bet, Israel’s secretive domestic security service, has called in dozens of Arab leaders for interrogation. Ameer Makhoul, head of the Ittijah organisation, which promotes Arab causes in Israel, was detained last week. He said a security official who interrogated him threatened to jail him over demonstrations he helped to organise in support of Gaza.
“The officer called me a rebel threatening the security of the state during time of war and said he would be happy to transfer me to Gaza,” Mr Makhoul said.
Haaretz, a leftist Israeli daily newspaper, has called the interrogations “intimidation tactics to prevent legitimate protest”.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook01142009.html
Thanks, MRW. I just checked the Loewenstein article to see if she actually uses the word "evil." Of course, she doesn't. That's just typical desperate Horowitz. I read the opposition to try to get a grip on the complexity of the issues, but I draw the line at Horowitz; he's just a waste of my time.
According to Der Spiegel, the dead in Gaza have now passed the 1,000 mark. Schon mehr als tausend Tote im Gaza-Streifen.
but I draw the line at Horowitz; he's just a waste of my time.
Posted by: delia | January 14, 2009 at 06:32 PM
No S**T, completely agree with you. Think that was the first Horowitz article I've read in a long time. I get tired of the internal screeching, the hyperbole.
delia: I draw the line at Horowitz; he's just a waste of my time.
LeaNder: Enjoy UBM/David Mills has a whole Horowitz thread. This is the first. I had monitored FrontPageMag for a couple of years–post 911–to finally leave in disgust. What cliched it for me was UBM's issue: Racism. But David Mills did a really good job. The whole thread is worth reading.
FrontPageMag surely is an important part of the distributive network. It offered the Dave Gaubartz hoax: "I found WMD's in Iraq but the American army tries to hide them." And Gaubartz leads us to the to other parts of the network like the American Thinker and in the end to SANE
The …er "Time Out"?
Was the most polite sanction I have ever seen. LOL
But a sanction it what it is.
Source: The Guardian
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, today argues that the use of the "war on terror" as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks has been a mistake that may have caused "more harm than good".
In an article in today's Guardian, five days before the Bush administration leaves the White House, Miliband delivers a comprehensive critique of its defining mission, saying the war on terror was misconceived and that the west cannot "kill its way" out of the threats it faces.
British officials quietly stopped using the phrase "war on terror" in 2006, but this is the first time it has been comprehensively discarded in the most outspoken remarks on US counterterrorism strategy to date by a British minister.
UK-US relations have been particular sour in recent days after Washington reneged on a pledge to back a largely British-drafted UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The White House over-ruled US diplomats after a demand from the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/15/war-
in the name of the God of Abraham…come to your senses.
http://counterpunch.com/giroux01142009.html
From Mississippi to Gaza
Killing Children With Impunity
By HENRY A. GIROUX
The unsettling and deeply disturbing images of children in Gaza mutilated, bleeding, and dead evoke similar images from our collective memory. One such image is that of Emmett Till, whose body arrived home in Chicago in September 1955. White racists in Mississippi had tortured, mutilated, and killed the young 14-year-old African-American boy for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Determined to make visible the horribly mangled face and twisted body of the child as an expression of racial hatred and killing, Mamie Till, the boy's mother, insisted that the coffin, interred at the A.A. Ranier Funeral Parlor on the South Side of Chicago, be left open for four long days. While mainstream news organizations ignored the horrifying image, Jet magazinepublished an unedited photo of Till's face taken while he lay in his coffin. Shaila Dewan points out that "[m]utilated is the word most often used to describe the face of Emmett Till after his body was hauled out of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. Inhuman is more like it: melted, bloated, missing an eye, swollen so large that its patch of wiry hair looks like that of a balding old man, not a handsome, brazen 14-year-old boy."
Till had been castrated and shot in the head; his tongue had been cut out; and a blow from an ax had practically severed his nose from his face—all of this done to a teenage boy who came to bear the burden of the inheritance of slavery and the inhuman pathology that drives its racist imaginary. The photos not only made visible the violent effects of the racial state; they also fuelled massive public anger, especially among blacks, and helped to launch the Civil Rights Movement.
Hamas accepts Egyptian truce: Spain
Spain says the Hamas movement has accepted an Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire to put an end to Israel's military aggression in Gaza.
"Hamas is going to publicly express its support and acceptance," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told the reporters Wednesday after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The truce calls for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the densely-populated Gaza Strip, which would be followed by negotiations on long-term arrangements including an end to the blockade of the impoverished regional coast.
An unnamed Egyptian official said earlier that the Palestinian resistance group had agreed to the proposal and that Cairo was awaiting Israeli response, AFP reported.
A report by the Saudi-owned Arabic language Al Arabiya claimed that Hamas would accept the truce after adding some amendments, including the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
"There are still points of difference on the initiative and these points have not been resolved so far, the initiative in its present form does not realize the [Palestinian national] interest. Specific points in it have to be changed… We believe there is no initiative which cannot be modified or changed," Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan told Al Jazeera television.
The senior Hamas officials, who are holding talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo, are to announce the outcome of the negotiations later in the day.
A senior Israeli defense ministry official, Amos Gilad, is expected to travel to Cairo on Thursday to discuss the details of the initiative designed to halt the war in the Gaza Strip.
More than 1,015 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,700 others have been wounded in the Israeli war on Gaza.
Tel Aviv says its operation's objective is to put an end to rocket attacks on southern Israel. At least 10 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the operation.
The Hamas movement, the democratically-elected government of the Gaza Strip, demands a cessation of Israeli attacks and the opening of the Gaza border — which has been closed due to the 18-month Israeli blockade.
Hamas accepts Egyptian truce: Spain
Horowitz's reference to "kapos shovelling jews into the ovens" derives not from history, but from pornography. We've all seen the pornographic fantasy drawings by "ex prisoners" in which this and many other most improbable things are shown "occurring".
Actually, holocaust porn is quite popular among israeli jewish males. It is also largely made by jewish males, though they are american ones, in most cases, from the san fernando valley studios. Take the positively canonical "ilse, she-wolf of the ss". This is in fact a jewish pornographic revenge fantasy, in which the jewish prisoner conquers the glacial ilse by the power of his irresistable cocksmanship. It's a thin basis to build yet another generation of war propaganda upon, isn't it?
It's a thin basis to build yet another generation of war propaganda upon, isn't it?
Guess that depends on the circumference, Rowan.
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