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Total number of comments: 18 (since 2011-10-27 19:23:40)

gracie fr

Am passionate about the Palestinians seeing a fare end to their dilema

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  • 'New York Review of Books' calls it 'apartheid' and prepares Americans for the end of the Jewish state
    • gracie fr May 16, 2012 at 1:26 pm with 10 replies

      David Shulman writes, ""The new cabinet will continue to entrench the occupation and to legalize the massive theft of Palestinian lands while loudly complaining that the Palestinians are responsible for the collapse of negotiations." And of course in view of Israeli front page news manipulations, subversions and reverse psychology this is likely to come to pass over time. However, under the cover of an attack on Iran (as all options still remain on the table) the fate of thousands of Palestinians could get a lot worse should the Jewish state begin to accuse them collectively of being potential fifth column. Notwithstanding unsubstantiated evidence and/or false flag attacks, the Jewish state will finally have the ideal excuse to initiate the long dreamed of “Transfer process” in a final step to rid Eretz Israel of its unwanted inhabitants…..Has anybody else had this nightmare…????

  • Rep. Pitts in damage control mode following call for Arafat-Sharon negotiations
    • gracie fr May 16, 2012 at 1:38 pm

      Or it could be that Representative Pitts is marching, albeit with great confusion, in tune with the information AIPAC’s junior lobbyists are telling him…..

  • Tail has stopped wagging, so dog can stop talking about war with Iran
    • gracie fr April 30, 2012 at 4:18 pm

      Perhaps Yuval Diskin's recent statement that Benjamin Netanyahu had a latent "messianic complex" frightened the more rational minds in Washington. The article appeared in Ha’aretz (link to haaretz.com
      "I don't believe in either the prime minister or the defense minister. I don't believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings") and made the front page of the Huffington Post ( Yuval Diskin said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak – who have been saber-rattling for months – have their judgment clouded by "messianic feelings" and should not be trusted to lead policy on Iran.....) link to huffingtonpost.com
      Messianism is the belief in a messiah, a savior or redeemer. For decades, the Jewish intelligentsia has fought a long hard public relations campaign to vilify Muslims and largely succeeded. The state of the world is seen as hopelessly flawed and unmanageable (primarily due to radical Islam, Communism’s convenient replacement) far beyond normal human powers of correction, and intervention through a specially chosen and divinely supported human is deemed necessary. Jews received benevolent treatment in ancient Persia (as the Vetran’s Today article points out), until the 16th Century Savavids and late 19th century Qajars. Both later day kingdoms initiated pogroms on par with those of the Russian Tsars.
      Plucky little Israel as a country, claims to have defeated its Arab neighbors in 1948 and again in 1967 by way of tactical military and intelligence superiority, still has a strange inferiority complex even though it’s nuclear stockpile and vast compendium of weapons and surveillance technology are cutting edge.
      This being said, imagine the consequences of an Israeli total eradication of the remnants of the ancient Persian Empire. Does Netanyahu’s messianic obsession ( with the support of the Lubavitcher Rebbe,now deceased link to haaretz.com
      with Iranian nuclear capabilities have roots in the annals of history?

  • How to win friends and influence people -- to bomb Iran
    • gracie fr March 29, 2012 at 5:33 pm

      ...Yes the Oded Yinon stategy for Israel
      link to cosmos.ucc.ie
      mentioned in the French overview of the current situation in Syria
      link to scribd.com

    • gracie fr March 29, 2012 at 4:50 pm

      Actuall, there may be more to this than meets the eye. Ever since Azerbaidjan gained its statehood status after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, strong cultural, economic and regional links have tied it to Iran. Religious affinities have encouraged the process. The Muslim population is approximately 85% Shi'a and 15% Sunni; differences traditionally have not been defined sharply. Most Shias are adherents of orthodox Ithna Ashari school of Shi'a Islam (twelver). But very recently, relations between Iran and its neighbor have soured significantly over allegations that the Azeri government provided assistance to Israel in the attacks and deaths of several of their nuclear scientists. One must question the timely convenience of such a rift between two regional entities, once so friendly, in light of the ongoing hysterical call to bomb Iran’s nuclear plants….
      "Someone counts on using the Iranian Azerbaijanis against the Islamic republic. However, these attempts have had and will have little success. The Azeri factor in Iran became a state issue. The Iranian Azeris simply have no reasons for any serious discontent. The spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic is their representative. Moreover, half of the Iran's elite is Azerbaijanis who strongly support the leadership of their country....."

      link to english.pravda.ru

  • Latest expulsion from the occupied territories: 55 Harvard students
    • gracie fr March 22, 2012 at 5:19 pm

      As we retreated, an officer pushed several students toward the bus. They seized identification from Palestinians traveling with us, and placed Shireen and the bus driver under arrest. We were told we would be taken to a nearby checkpoint to be searched. Two officers boarded the bus as the police vehicles escorted us to the checkpoint. When asked why we were being detained, one responded, “I don’t know,” and later refused to answer. At the checkpoint, Shireen was driven from the premises and later released. No Harvard students were searched or arrested.
      Harvard Crimson op-ed piece
      link to thecrimson.com

  • MSM jailbreak: Chris Hayes devotes 2 hours to conflict with panel of 2 Zionists and 2 Palestinians
    • gracie fr March 12, 2012 at 10:28 am with 2 replies

      Perhaps Chris Hayes had the blinders lifted on a trip to Israel and the West Bank with a group of American journalists on a trip sponsored by the New America Foundation during the summer of 2010. He wrote a heartfelt article for The Nation, filled with his personal impressions. There is something about an eye witness encounter that really changes how one responds to the accusations and rhetoric of pro-Zionist commentary after a confrontation with facts on the ground.
      link to thenation.com

  • The end of the 'two-state solution' is the beginning of a more just future
    • gracie fr February 20, 2012 at 2:55 pm

      As Jeff Halper notes, time is of critical importance in devising a solution to the Israel/Palestine problem. Indeed at the current rate of settler expansion there will be very little territory left to negotiate a two state solution and life under one unitary government is filled with thorns. This leaves a sort of federated entity, the shape of which remains to be seen. The Israeli demands would be such to crush it before finishing the mission statement.
      Lately I have found myself getting exceedingly cross as the awareness of Israeli injustice has never been as high and growing. Many hopeful people bought in to Oslo, convinced that President Clinton’s Whitehouse lawn extravaganza would solve the conflict, eventually iron out all the snags and because of blind optimism, many advocates for an equitable solution sat on the sidelines. Of course life for the Palestinians only got worse as the bombs went off and the Wall went up. The American tragedy of September 11 was pie in the sky for counter terrorism in all its shapes and forms coopting as it did a Cold War attitude towards Muslims.
      It is imperative that the American public wakes up. Thanks to campus action, paneled discussions, outspoken activists, trips to Israel, questioning church congregations, and an instant electronic news feed, more Americans are coming around which gives me some hope. Jamil Toubbeh has posted an interesting, albeit somewhat disheartening article on the Palestine Chronicle website “Obsession with Israel: Variegated Trojan Horse” calibrating many of the abysmal potholes in the rough road ahead.
      link to palestinechronicle.com

  • Would you buy a used metaphor from this warmonger? (Niall Ferguson's 'creative destruction' echoes Rice's 'birth-pangs')
    • gracie fr February 6, 2012 at 3:18 pm with 2 replies

      Niall Ferguson is a nervy sort of Brit who still regrets the end of the British Empire’s civilizing mission. He has taken it upon himself in the circles of punditry, to endorse the United States’ necessity to fill the gap and be the new “enlightened” beacon of civilization”. This stance did not exactly endear him to Pankaj Mishra whose demeaning review of Ferguson’s “Civilization: The West and the Rest” in the London Review of Books (November 3, 2011) struck a blow to the man’s ego. A rancorous flow of commentary ensued in the Review’s pages that spilled over onto the pages of The Guardian and beyond, culminating in the threat of a law suit on Ferguson’s part.
      It seems to have been a bluff as there has been no further word of pending legal action that I am aware of…
      link to lrb.co.uk

  • Israel is trying to hook us into a war with Iran-- Matthews and Baer speculate
    • gracie fr January 13, 2012 at 2:21 pm

      Most likely, Chris Mathews is playing coy because he doesn't want to get slammed as anti-Semetic if and when the higher-ups make that call in response to complaints by "offended viewers". Nothing could be worse for one of CNN's star hosts than to be put on "probation" during an election year.... Stop squabbling....The Iran escalation is serious......

  • Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone to discuss 'On History' in NYC
  • A Jewish voice left silent: Trying to articulate 'The Levantine Option'
    • gracie fr January 10, 2012 at 1:21 pm

      As with food, scholarship and literature, the same kind of overriding Ashkenazi dominance is prevalent in music where Klezmer has obfuscated the rich contribution of Sephardic Jews in both instrumental and lyric traditions. For this, one must salute the initiative among others, of Spanish early music icon Jordi Savall and his wife Montserrat Figueras. Following in the footsteps of Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles, who was the first mainstream classical artist to record Sephardic repertory, specifically, two songs in her 1962 release, “Spanish Song of the Renaissance”, Savall’s ensemble Hespérion XX et XXI (since 2001) has provided enthusiasts with a selection of early music by Ladino composers and lyricists, often anonymous, and made them come alive to modern listeners….

  • Expendables of a waning empire
    • gracie fr December 31, 2011 at 8:25 am

      As the military tactician he was, Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) recognized the importance of strategic overview. If you really want to dominate anything, it pays to hold the
      high ground… and hang on to it. ). From a military perspective, domination boiled down to one simple thing: keeping the heights. In Chapter 17 he states, “. First, every height may be regarded as an obstacle to approach; secondly, although the range is not perceptibly greater in shooting down from a height, yet, all geometrical relations being taken into consideration, we have a better chance of hitting than in the opposite case; thirdly, an elevation gives a better command of view. How all these advantages unite themselves together in battle we are not concerned with here; we collect the sum total of the advantages which tactics derives from elevation of position and combine them in one whole which we regard as the first strategic advantage.”

      The Israelis recognized the importance of “the heights” as a means of defense early on and used to their advantage. When it came to settlement building Ariel Sharon superseded the Allon Plan with one of his own whereby new construction would be built on the tops of ridges in a double parallel. Aerial surveillance soon became an adjunct to watching over a restive Palestinian population. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Syrian missile batteries in Lebanon caused heavy damage to Israeli fighter jets. As a result, Israel developed the first modern UAV. for real-time surveillance, electronic warfare and decoys. The images and radar decoying provided by these UAVs helped Israel to completely neutralize the Syrian air defenses at the start of the 1982 Lebanon War, resulting in no pilots downed
      The earliest “extra-judicial killing” from the air were carried out by Israeli helicopter gunships firing missiles. But then on July 22, 2002, in what was referred to by Sharon as "one of our greatest successes," Israel ascended another rung in the ladder of escalation aerial warfare , using a one-ton bomb dropped from an F-16 fighter jet to kill Salah Shihada, the leader and founder of Hamas' military wing, killing fifteen civilians, including nine children . The IDF was exempt from combat operations on the ground.
      The United States has a long history in the development of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) dating back to WWII. Precursors of today’s models were widely used in the by the US military in Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina for surveillance purposes. The first extra judicial killing in a foreign country came in 2002, a suspected al-Qaeda operative Qaed Salim Sinanal-Harethi, who was allegedly involved in killing 17 US sailors on the USS Cole, was killed in a drone attack while traveling in a car with six other people in Yemen.

      Although astronomically expensive to produce at first, drone technology has come way down in cost. It is touted as a lifesaving innovation as the collateral damage on the ground is “contained” and Western troops spared unnecessary death and casualties. The plans for bigger more sophisticated RPAs and UAVs is ongoing at a rapid pace. Although the Gorgon Stare is reported to have serious glitches, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (Darpa) Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance – Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) is in the pipeline. Rest assured that futures drone technology will be on the market before myriad of legal quandaries are codified into an acceptable human rights doctrine. In view of the unlawful and growing number of civilian deaths and the undeniable blowback they cause, we have no choice but to demand a freeze on drone technology.

  • Two revealing headlines
  • Now he tells us (Jeffrey Goldberg says 'many' American Jews regard occupation as 'moral disaster')
    • gracie fr December 6, 2011 at 11:15 am with 1 replies

      On a deeper level, Israel’s campaign of acceptable “Jewishness” interfered with the very core values of the modern American family: the freedom to choose one’s life partner beyond the confines of religion, a choice based on affinities, the ability to compromise, shared life goals and mutual respect. Of course Judaism might and does play an important role in personal selection of one’s spouse, but not exclusively. That the State should decide, that the religious apparatus on which the State has built its identity should interfere with the institution of marriage went beyond the pale for many American Jews as does the Haredim treatment of women
      Furthermore, the prohibition to marry “ undesirable persons” or outsiders, or condemn parents for instilling in their children a liberal worldview which values the universality of all customs and friendships goes against the grain of American egalitarianism and equality, already in short supply in the United States….

  • Welcome Annie Robbins as Writer at Large
  • A point for the Israel lobby theory, from Panetta
    • gracie fr December 6, 2011 at 9:02 am

      Pamela, I have wondered about this too. What is it that Israel holds over Washington's head that makes an American dissenting view impossible? Isn't it true that the Israeli tech industry is the security gate-keeper at many US airports and has provided spyware/software to the Pentagon and intelligence gathering branches of the government...???

  • The case for invading Iran
    • gracie fr November 16, 2011 at 2:31 pm

      Don't forget Norman Podhoretz's cold war rant "The Case for Bombing Iran
      I hope and pray that President Bush will do it. " in the May 30, 2007 issue of Commentary Magazine

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