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  • Assange's first guest on RT world premier: Nasrallah says US & Israel seek civil war in Syria
    • Walid April 19, 2012 at 4:04 am

      "Abraham is no minor figure in the Quran. He’s the “Friend of God,” and very near and dear to Muslim hearts."

      "friend of God" in Arabic is "al-Khalil". Al-Khalil is also the Arabic name for the city of Hebron, where about 500 Zionists are making life miserable for 175,000 Palestinians. Crazy numbers.

  • Israel mobilizes special forces to deport 'flytilla' activists
    • Walid April 13, 2012 at 4:16 am

      "... The government said last week it denied visas to some journalists because of an overflow of visa requests."

      Why the fuss, pabelmont; Bernie Ecclestone just declared that there's absolutely nothing wrong happening in Bahrain therefore safe to have the Bahrain Grand Prix next week. Not enough visas to go around for both political and sports journalists.

      From the Daily Mail:

      "... Despite pictures of violence and riots in Bahrain, Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone has staggeringly claimed there is nothing wrong.

      The 81-year-old said: 'All the teams are happy to be there. There's nothing happening. I know people who live there and it's all very quiet and peaceful.'

      Read more: link to dailymail.co.uk

    • Walid April 12, 2012 at 9:21 pm

      The French JDL sickos are back in the news; 6 months back, they ran ads to hire miltary veteran thugs to protect Israeli settlers. Now they're running ads to attract shit disturbing thugs for the air flotillas departing from French airports. From Haaretz in Sept 2011:

      "French JDL recruiting Jews with military experience to 'defend' Israeli settlements

      Rightist group, founded by late Rabbi Meir Kahane, is bringing volunteers to counter Palestinian marches on settlements planned for week of September 20.

      By Danna Harman

      An extreme right-wing Jewish group in France is recruiting Jews with military experience for a solidarity mission to Israel in order to help “defend” Jewish settlements in the West Bank from Palestinian protesters who are expected to march toward some of them on or around September 20.

      The organization that put out the call for militant Jews is the French branch of the Jewish Defense League, or Kach, an organization established by Meir Kahane in the late 1960s and banned in the United States and Israel, but tolerated in France."

      link to haaretz.com

  • Israel's man in Egypt throws his hat into the presidential race
    • Walid April 15, 2012 at 4:28 am

      "I think Khairat al Shater will walk it."

      Seafoid, the President's chair has been reserved by the US for Amr Moussa. Yesterday, Suleiman, which is Israel's candidate, along with al Shater and eight others from the list of 25 runners were disqualified by Egypt's presidential electoral commission . If the US wants Moussa in the job, nobody else has any chance of winning. The disqualified candidates have 48 hours to appeal the decision.

    • Walid April 11, 2012 at 1:57 am

      "I don’t believe US policy has a hundred per cent control over anybody, people can rise over any obstacle through a bottom-up egalitarian approach and challenge the hierarchies of power."

      Aiman, it was the Americans that brought the brothers out of the dog house after having helped keep them there for 55 years. Now you're saying they should change their skin, adopt a more universal philosophy that welcomes Christians and other groups and challenge their American benefactors. Not very realistic. Egypt is not in a position to challenge any hierarchy as it could use all the help it could get, especially the American one.

    • Walid April 10, 2012 at 3:08 pm

      "And Israelis get an average of $1000 per person in aid/kickbacks from the US .
      It’s unsustainable."

      The US still has lots of catching up to do to reach world poverty levels. If it can still dump billions in freebies to Israel and Egypt in spite of having 43 million Americans without health care, things are either not as bad as they look or the US has a sick mentality. More on things unsustainable is Egypt's population growing by a million each year with an almost identical number joining the labour force without an equal number of jobs being created to absorb them. There's more to Egypt's problems than simply having dumped Mubarak and inherited the Brothers in his place. 3 years back, Frontline had something about this problem in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world that the West still hasn't grasped. Arab spring and free internet for kids have nothing to do with it; it's about jobs, food, water and so on:

      "... When we look at Egypt, and especially Cairo -- Egypt being the most populous country in the Arab world, and Cairo, I believe the most populous Arab city -- it seems kind of like a microcosm of what’s going on in the rest of the Middle East.

      Well, Egypt is by far the largest country in the Arab world and, each year, you have 850,000 new entrants to the labor market there that need jobs. The World Bank said that the Arab world has to create 100 million jobs -- 20 million to solve the current unemployment and 80 million for new entrants into the labor market. So this statistic predicted that by 2020, 80 million jobs would have to be created for the new entrants. If you take a look at the current size of the labor market across the region, you have 54 million jobs that exist today. These 54 million jobs took 50 years to create, and, in less than 15 years, we have to create 80 million jobs for new entrants in the labor market.

      The country where the youth unemployment is most severe is Egypt, because you have 22 million youth today between the ages of 15 and 29. And amongst the unemployed in Egypt, 83 percent are youth.

      From what we’ve read, a lot of these young people graduate, and they’re waiting 2, 3, even 6 years, to find a job?

      Well, for 75 percent of Egyptian youth, it takes them five years until they get to their first job. What are they doing in these five years? They’re just hanging out at home and on the streets, unable to graduate into adulthood, to have self-respect and dignity."

      link to pbs.org

    • Walid April 10, 2012 at 1:51 pm

      "The first problem is the approach of the Muslim Brotherhood. It would have more going for itself as Egyptian Brotherhood instead of Muslim Brotherhood, the dissolution of identity politics, by including Copts and all sectors of society."

      Aiman, it's not about what they call themselves but their aspired return to the fundamentals of Islam and this return doesn't have any room in it for Copts or anything else that's distant from fundamentalist Islam. Yes, like it or not, the US carries a big stick and a big voice on how the elections will play out.

    • Walid April 10, 2012 at 11:08 am

      "Perhaps the Brotherhood should consider a Constitution like Iran or Lebanon. All minorities are represented."

      Don't be misled by some of them. Some are there to ensure representation by the minorities' clan and religious leaders more than by the minorities themselves. They help maintain the peace since they define which part of the pie each leader gets to control. Syria too had a constitution and it respected all its minorties, but 66% of parliamentary seats were reserved for the ruling party. Israel that brags about being the only true democracy in the ME doesn't even have a constitution and it doesn't give equal rights to half the people under its control. In fact, it actual steals from them to give to the privileged other half.

    • Walid April 10, 2012 at 2:57 am with 4 replies

      You need to have the US in your corner to win, like Moussa. After 55 years, the US agreed only to let the Brothers play in the game, not to become its owners.

    • Walid April 10, 2012 at 2:31 am

      A former Mubarak Foreign Minister until sidetracked to the AL, one of his last duties as Sec-Gen of the AL was to ask for the NATO bombardment of Libya but when the bombing started, he absurdly announced that the AL didn't really want things to get that far. He has to be America's and Israel's favourite among the current list of 25 candidates; Israelis saying that they'd love to have the Mubarak clone and sure loser Suleiman win has to be one of their satanic gimmicks to help front runner Moussa as most of the other candidates are not pro-Israel. Tantawi sent up a trial ballon in Alexandria a few months back but it wasn't received favourably so the coming President will be the first in about 55 years to not have come from the military. Ideally, Baradei should have been a candidate but his ideals got in the way and he was put in the dog house by the US for his intransigence on Iran.

  • NY high school students visit Western Wall, Israel Museum, and AJC, but Foxman blasts them for daring to meet Palestinians
    • Walid April 10, 2012 at 6:51 am with 14 replies

      With over 30 such museums already existing in the US and another 90 or so in 23 other countries, Foxman should learn this thing about diminishing returns. Force-feeding so many kids on these horrors is starting to backfire and making them wonder why these things that happened to the Jews are being made to happen all over to the Palestinians by Jews. There will soon be a 6th such memorial opened in Israel; it's the one being built over the ruins of the Mamilla Palestinian cemetery currently under destruction. Those along with the visits to Auschwitz are Jonestown in slo-mo on a universal scale.

  • Episcopalian twit (a review of JFK's former mistress's memoir)
    • Walid April 9, 2012 at 4:42 am with 3 replies

      I'm trying to figure out where the word "Episcopalian" fits in all of this and how far I could have gotten talking about Lewinsky as the "Jewish" something or other.

  • 'The Crisis of Zionism' and the contradictions of Israel as a liberal democratic fantasy
    • Walid April 4, 2012 at 9:17 am

      "It’s doubtful that after several visits with the Ottoman officials of the Sublime Porte, that Herzl’s aims were kept secret from the Palestinian notables".

      It wasn't so much those early Herzl-Sultan under the table and over the table deals that spooked the Arabs as much as the universal call to "repatriate" all the Jews of the world to Palestine and the Palestinians and other Arabs erroneously imagined that there were zillions of them that would eventually drown out the Arab presence in Palestine and neighbouring areas. Before the Sultan became history in 1918, the Jews had bought only 20 or 25% of the total land they held at partition. The other 80% was acquired between 1924 and 1948 through purchases mostly by individuals and companies (and not the JNF).

      "... Without the existence of a substantial territorial base, neither the League of Nations nor the Peel Commissioners would have considered the option of a Jewish or Arab state in 1937. A geographic nucleus for a Jewish state had emerged by 1937 because relatively few Jews were willing to commit time, energy, and money to the process of Jewish nation-building. After the middle of the 1930s the JNF played a significant organizational role in consolidating the individual efforts of earlier immigrants. Examining the process, methods and priorities of land acquisition allows one to understand how and why a Jewish state came into existence in May 1948.

      By May 1948 Jews acquired approximately two million of Palestine's 26 million dunams. In terms of Palestine's total land area under the Mandate, this was a small percentage. But these two million purchased dunams were among the most cultivable. They were neither in the hill regions of the West Bank/Judea-Samaria regions nor south of Beersheba. Jewish land acquisition focused on the valley and coastal regions of Palestine from 1920 through 1936. Before and after these years land was purchased also in the Galilee and later in the southern portions of Palestine, between Beersheba and Gaza. At the end of the Mandate Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip (320,000 dunams) and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan annexed the West Bank/Judea-Samaria (6 million dunams).

      Until 1939, more than two-thirds of the land acquired by Jews was purchased by private individuals and companies, not institutions of the Jewish Agency or yishuv. This was accomplished by private purchases, land transfers not recorded in the sub-district land registry offices, from official registered transfers by Arab sellers and concessionary agreements with the British. The data in Table 1 show that the JNF was only a minority purchaser of all Jewish-acquired land by the time of the Peel Report's partition recommendation. It is noteworthy that the suggestion to establish a Jewish state was made because land was purchased by individual investors, entrepreneurs, settlers, pioneers and private companies, and not by the JNF. "

      link to ismi.emory.edu

    • Walid April 4, 2012 at 5:49 am

      Sami Abu Shehadeh's heartbreaking story in 2009 about the dispossession of the Palestinians of Jaffa:

      link to electronicintifada.net

      It makes one wonder that the Palestinians in the 1930s knew what the Zionists were up to with their planned massive immigration projects and why they (the Palestinians)opposed them so much. Today, Jews and non-Jews are discovering for themselves that Zionism in the Middle East was a cancer.

  • The Palestine National Orchestra: a view from the violin section
    • Walid April 3, 2012 at 1:36 pm

      "... the fact that Israel allowed a performance in Israel proper without much noted hindrance, shows again that the acts of sabotage elsewhere are a chosen Israel policy."

      eGuard, it has to do with all the "normalizing" that's going on by the Israelis and their pals or by some of the Arabs inadvertently going along with it. Whenever you read any of these "feel-good" stories about some joint Israeli-Palestinian enterprise or other, you have to ask yourself what the subtle normalizing message is being passed. Nothing good can come out of any thing to do with Israel.

    • Walid April 2, 2012 at 6:19 am

      "... You question the importance of a peace concert in Gaza. I would have thought that was obvious. Hamas allowed it to happen. It was Israel they were afraid wouldn’t, which is why it was kept under wraps until the last minute. "

      Kamanja, it sounds like you're being coached by the Mondo librarian. Looking at your quote above, it makes one wonder if it's Hamas or Israel that is the violent one that has to change its ways. Love it or hate it, Hamas was democratically elected in the last elections that the Carter Observer Group said had been the cleanest they had ever seen. I'm not a fan of Hamas, but I'd choose it over the viciousness of Israel any time.

    • Walid April 2, 2012 at 6:08 am

      Kamanja, I corrected my sloppy reference to the Said Foundation that should have been the "Edward Said National Conservatory of Music" but you're insisting in not understanding the distinction.

      Mariam Said is the V-P. of the Barenboim-Said Foundation in the US that is associated with the WEDO which explains her outburst against
      the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and her defense of the super-Zionist Barenboim that believes (in so many other words), that each Palestinian kid spending a few hours practicing music are so many hours less for him thinking about becoming a terrorist. If you just want to take part of what Barenboim said and you happen to believe that all Palestinian kids are potentila terrorists, it's your business. But for me, Barenboim is a scumbag for saying it.

      As to the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (ESNCM) which stopped accepting donations from the Barenboim-Mariam outfit after their insults to the Palestinian people that I erroneously referred to as the Said Foundation, this ESNCM has nothing to do with Barenboim, Edward Said or Mariam Said as until Edward Said died, it used to be known simply as the National Palestinian Conservatory of Music. Out of respect for the late Edward Said, a remarkable classical pianist himself and 20-year music critic in the American press, the National Conservatory was renamed it the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.

      Whether or not Mariam Said defends Barenboim because he's working at cross-current with Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)'s and the ESNCM's anti-normalization efforts, the guy is still bad news for anything to do with the BDS movement.

    • Walid April 2, 2012 at 1:25 am

      eGuard, there's no doubt Barenboim's a great musician, but at the end of the day, like all Zionists, he's a Zionist.

    • Walid April 2, 2012 at 1:20 am

      Kamanja, you are listening to the kamanja in your head and not understanding what I'm saying. Maybe it's from my not having properly identified the difference between WEDO that's a product of the Barenboim-Said Foundation, of which Mariam Said is an officer and necessarily a defender of this foundation and of Barenboim "good" work, and the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (ESNCM) which was the Palestinian National Conservatory until it was simply renamed to include Edward Said's name after his death and which Mariam Said has nothing to do with. Part of ESNCM's funding had been coming from the Barenboim-Said Foundation and the ESNCM decided to stop accepting this funding after Daniel Barenboim made the nasty remarks about Palestinians being terrorists and Hamas being a terrorist organization during Israel's last vicious war on Gaza, despite his speaking out against the occupation. Barenboim is a great musician but above all, he is a Zionist mouthpiece making the abnormal Israeli occupation appear normal. Your kamanja needs tuning.

    • Walid April 1, 2012 at 2:36 am with 10 replies

      "... The PNO faces the logistical and funding challenges common to all orchestras. But in addition it confronts something far more impenetrable: an ever-present military occupation and crippling apartheid laws. Sold to the West as self-defense, Israel's hold on daily Palestinian life seeks to destroy what its tanks and F-16s can't. Thus the PNO is an act of defiant normalcy, a refusal to be defined by the 64 years of neo-colonial oppression that is the reality of everyday existence in Palestine." (Tom Suarez)

      Annie, this is more than just about good music and its problems in crossing Israel's hurdles to reach Palestinian ears, it's about Israel's never-ending attempts at snuffing out the Palestinian culture and presence on the land. Working at cross-current with the PNO, the PYO and other Said Foundation cultral groups, there's the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra initially set up by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim although today the Said Foundation is no longer associated with it for good reason. Barenboim, a great musician in spite of being an ardent Zionist, uses the Divan Orchestra to project a false image of normalcy between Israelis and Palestinians.

  • Land Day in Pictures: Israel, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank
    • Walid April 1, 2012 at 1:00 am

      "MY COMMENT: These Land Day protests are completely “beyond the pale”!"

      Great site, Dickerson, thanks. Now I know what this term exactly means and where to get the story on other ones; had no idea there was a Jewish historic connection to "beyond the pale".

      Israel also marks Land Day each tear by preparing its rubber bullets, smoke bombs, water canons, razor wire and spiking its soldiers to hurt and maim as many Palestinians and their supporters as possible. It's an opportunity for the word's most moral army to let off some steam. It will get another in 45 days on Nakba Day.

    • Walid March 31, 2012 at 1:35 pm

      The protest in Lebanon was weak because of the imposed location 9 miles from the border to prevent another cold-blooded massacre by the Israelis. Had it been at the border like at last year's Nakba Day protest at the Lebanon-Israel border, over 100,000 would have gathered there but there would have also been many Palestinians and Lebanese killed by the zio maniacs.

  • The Global March to Jerusalem, a brave and admirable attempt to awaken the world’s conscience
    • Walid March 30, 2012 at 11:14 am

      "... If the scale is based on how many times Jerusalem is used in the holy books..."

      Chu, if you want to go by the numbers game, Lebanon is mentioned 71 times in the OT but it doesn't make it more holy and it doesn't give it any more rights to anything, even if the cedars used to build Solomon's temple and the tradespeople that built it came from Lebanon. The archaeos are sniffing in the wrong place. I wouldn't put it past the Israelis to start planting some bogus "finds" in locations convenient to expell more Palestinians.

    • Walid March 30, 2012 at 10:58 am

      "I didn’t actually calculate the figures for Jerusalem’s holiness to Christians. Anyone want to try?"

      The whole region is holy to the 3 religions, RoHa. For Christians, it's about 2000 years any way you calculate it. The Anno Domini is off by about 4 years as Jesus was born (according to Matthew) in the reign of Herod that died in 4 B.C according to Josephus. If you base it on Jesus' first recorded trip to Jerusalem it was in his 12th year when he visited to the temple. His final visit was on Palm Sunday at age 33 when he made his trimphant entrance to claim his kingdom and fulfill the prophecies of Daniel and Isaiah. It wasn't long after that Jesus' half brother James became the Bishop of Jerusalem but all these dates are of little consequence. I'd guess that the actual date Jerusalem became Christian was when the Byzantine Emperor Constantine sort of became Christian in 324 AD rebuilt Jerusalem as a Christian center of worship and built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335 AD. Jerusalem had received special recognition at the First Council of Nicaea convened by Constantine in 325.

      Getting back to the Muslims' claim over Jerusalem, it goes back to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Saul, David, Solomon, Jesus and most of the others that are considered the first Muslims, so you can figure out the rest. As to Jerusalem's history of about 1400 years ago, Jerusalem became prominent 55 years after the death of the Prophet and the ensuing wars of succession when the Umayyads of Damascus decided to have a pilgrimage site of their own to compete with the one at Mecca and built the famous mosque there.

      And an even more recent history of Jerusalem and in light of today's Land Day, it should be recalled that the Jerusalem house Ghada Karmi grew up in and was chased from by the zio-thieves in 1948 is today partly owned by the New York Times to house its Jerusalem bureau chiefs.

      Article and photo of the stolen house:
      link to electronicintifada.net

  • Hundreds of soccer fans crowd Jerusalem mall: 'Death to Arabs!'
    • Walid March 26, 2012 at 12:50 pm

      Asherpat, more on what you're saying about Wiki from the Guardian (and NYT and Haaretz) of a couple of years back:

      Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups

      Two Israeli groups set up training courses in Wikipedia editing with aims to 'show the other side' over borders and culture

      Rachel Shabi in Jerusalem and Jemima Kiss

      guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 August 2010 20.52 BST
      link to guardian.co.uk

      Two Israeli groups have set up 'Zionist editing' courses with aims to alter perceptions about Israel. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty Images

      Since the earliest days of the worldwide web, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has seen its rhetorical counterpart fought out on the talkboards and chatrooms of the internet.

      Now two Israeli groups seeking to gain the upper hand in the online debate have launched a course in "Zionist editing" for Wikipedia, the online reference site.

      ... Wikipedia is one of the world's most popular websites, and its 16m entries are open for anyone to edit, rewrite or even erase. The problem, according to Ayelet Shaked of Israel Sheli, is that online, pro-Israeli activists are vastly outnumbered by pro-Palestinian voices. "We don't want to give this arena to the other side," she said. "But we are so few and they are so many. People in the US and Europe never hear about Israel's side, with all the correct arguments and explanations."

      Like others involved with this project, Shaked thinks that her government is "not doing a very good job" of explaining Israel to the world.

      And on Wikipedia, they believe that there is much work to do.

      ... Meanwhile, Yesha is building an information taskforce to engage with new media, by posting to sites such as Facebook and YouTube, and claims to have 12,000 active members, with up to 100 more signing up each month. "It turns out there is quite a thirst for this activity," says Bennett. "The Israeli public is frustrated with the way it is portrayed abroad."

      The organisiers of the Wikipedia courses, are already planning a competition to find the "Best Zionist editor", with a prize of a hot-air balloon trip over Israel.

    • Walid March 26, 2012 at 9:28 am

      "BTW the Israeli danger is not from hooliganism so much (though sometimes it becomes Nakba like murderous violence), but the adoption of a one state solution being pushed by Ali A, and his friends at Foreign Policy mag. "

      Bilal, Ali's a Palestinian, are you? You sound a lot like eee that used to justify or water down Israel's evils by comparing them to bigger American ones as you are doing here.

    • Walid March 25, 2012 at 12:04 pm

      "... The soccer fans do not represent the majority of Israeli’s and Jews.
      ... There are far more Israeli’s who are dovish on peace and do wonderful things building people to people relationships, no matter who they are."

      giladg, something wrong with your numbers; you don't have the latest statistics on how most Israelis feel about Arabs. Here's a small sampling from Wiki although more recent surveys in Israel show that the majority in Israel, especially the teens are very anti-Arab and in the survey conducted during the phosphorus show over Gaza. I don't make much about the chanting by Israelis since I've heard much worse being chanted against Israel and America as the chanting was by about a million people, not just 500 at at football game. But I've never heard about 20 Arabs ganging up on an Israeli like the Israeli cowards did at the mall in this story. The Wiki numbers:

      "... In 2006, a research institute poll reported that 41% of Israelis support Arab-Israeli segregation, 40% believed "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens", and 63% believed Arabs to be a "security and demographic threat" to Israel. the poll found that more than two thirds would not want to live in the same building as an Arab, 36% believed Arab culture to be inferior, and 18% felt hatred when they heard Arabic spoken.[50]

      In 2007, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel reported that anti-Arab views had doubled, and anti-Arab racist incidents had increased by 26%.[64] The report quoted polls that suggested 50% of Jewish Israelis do not believe Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights, 50% said they wanted the government to encourage Arab emigration from Israel, and 75% of Jewish youths said Arabs were less intelligent and less clean than Jews.

      The Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel reported a tenfold increase in racist incidents against Arabs in 2008. Jerusalem reported the highest number of incidents. The report blamed Israeli leaders for the violence, saying "These attacks are not the hand of fate, but a direct result of incitement against the Arab citizens of this country by religious, public, and elected officials."[65]

      In March 2009, following the Gaza War, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drew criticism when several young soldiers had T-shirts printed up privately with slogans and caricatures that were deemed offensive to Palestinians.[66][67][67][68]

      link to en.wikipedia.org

  • 'I didn't say I liked Beinart's book' -- J Street head sells his star guest out to his antagonist, Goldberg
    • Walid March 24, 2012 at 2:57 am with 1 replies

      Hostage, you're saying you dropped out of J Street because it didn't follow through on its anti-settlements campaign; was it because you were in it because you felt it was un-American for tax-exempt charities to be funding illegal settlements or was it because you felt that the settlements were wrong? It's confusing because I get the feeling that you have an antipathy to BDS eventhough you want justice for the Palestinians. Is that justice motivated by your concern for the Palestinians or are you like Bienart because you're only afraid for Israel? In short, are for or against the BDS movement?

    • Walid March 23, 2012 at 3:17 pm with 3 replies

      I've been trying to figure out from the start what's the difference between J Street and AIPAC. They have the same goals of looking out for Israel but are taking different roads to reach them.

      Speaking of both AIPAC and JStreet, an organization with Lebanese roots is somehow involved in both. It attended a past AIPAC conference and will be attending the coming J Street one and it's causing a big stir with those that still consider Israel as Lebanon's enemy and with al-Akhbar that raised a stink about it; from the Arab Digest:

      "Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East" at AIPAC!

      March 18, 2012
      The Arab Digest
      link to thearabdigest.com

      Dr. Michele Dunne, the Director of Atlantic Council Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, has spoken at an AIPAC Policy conference to better inform the Israel lobby cadres. The Rafik Hariri center was established by a Bahaa Hariri donation. Bahaa is the eldest son of late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The director, a former White House and State Department official, was at an AIPAC policy conference panel on Egypt, alongside the infamous Israeli General Michael Herzog, who was a leading military figure during the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon. You can find below more details on the conference, including the participation of Dr. Shibli Talhami:

      link to aipac.org

      The Hariri organization reply:

      "Hariri’s office slams Al-Akhbar newspaper
      link to nowlebanon.com

  • 'Safe European home'?
    • Walid March 23, 2012 at 4:34 pm

      "During the 1950s Mossad commited several black flag operations against jews in Iraq to convince them of the need of moving to Israel."

      Same thing happened to the Jews of Beirut that were refusing Israel's orders to leave, until the Israeli navy shelled the Magen Avraham Synagogue in 1982. Between 1948 and 1982, 34 years passed and it gives an idea how the Jews in Lebanon had been treated during these years to have stayed so long in Beirut after the creation of Israel and how desperate was Israel to empty Lebanon of its Jews.

      As to Israeli black flag operations against non-Jews, you had Cairo, Limassol, Lillehammer, and London that I can think of.

    • Walid March 23, 2012 at 4:02 pm

      "Marine Le Pen today is telling everyone who will listen that this act (the killings) vindicates here anti-islam agenda."

      Not too bright this Marine Le Pen, yesterday she was bitching about Sarkosy letting the Emir of Qatar buy real estate somewhere in France. She doesn't know that France needs Qatar much more than Qatar needs France and any country would welcome Qatar's money. The most this Islamophobe can hope for in the vote is 20%.

      Tarek Ramadan has a good analysis of the Toulouse story and how the politicians are toying with it:

      link to counterpunch.org

  • Responses to Toulouse murders from Palestinian orgs and Jerusalem mourners
    • Walid March 21, 2012 at 5:59 pm with 1 replies

      "... The same could be said for stars and stripes in a particular context.
      ... All that said, it does seem to have been a very dignified, moving occasion."

      Furkan Dogan didn't get no stars and stripes and Obama didn't fly to Istanbul for condolences and campaign photos.

      Eleanor, there's nothing dignified in a foreign flag being flown in a country other than over the foreign country's embassy. If the marchers wanted a dignified and solemn march, they would have gone to the holocaust memorial but going instead to the Bastille and stopping by the Kahanists hangout and creating a stir there showed that it was politically motivated.

      There is nothing dignified in using this sad episode to hustle some immigrants to go to Israel to help with its demographic problems.

    • Walid March 21, 2012 at 5:19 pm

      Eleanor, une marche silencieuse en hommage aux victimes ou plutôt une manifestation bruyante dirigée par un mouvement extrémiste Kahaniste avec drapeaux d'un pays étranger et affiches et banderoles à caractère politique et vocation électorale?

    • Walid March 21, 2012 at 4:13 pm with 2 replies

      For Dimadok's sake and to avoid any disappointments for him, I'm saying here that the killing of these innocent Jewish civilians in Toulouse is awful and I hope the killer gets caught and punished for it.

      But I also have to add that I find Israeli and French politicians milking this sad event obscene and they should be ashamed of themselves. Their theatrics can only invite other crazies to commit similarly horrible acts.

      ... Ayoub Asaliya was on his way to school last Sunday, but there's no political capital to be gained by Sarkozy or François Hollande because of it.

  • Tonight in S.F.: Ziad Abbas on the marginalization of Palestinian refugees within the peace process
    • Walid March 20, 2012 at 2:25 pm

      Those marginalizing the Palestinians' right of return right after Israelis, were those that signed peace treaties with Israel that disregarded the refugees return, followed by those leaders that gave away the store with Oslo and then those of today whose antics we learned about thanks to Jazeera's leaked Palestinian Papers and their discussions involving accepting that only a few thousand refugees would return, and finally those Arabs in a rush to normalize relations with Israel without regard of how this would adversely affect the refugees's right of return. Without recognizing and discussing these and getting the Arabs' help, the refugees don't have a chance. Israel has been stalling since 48 to nullify any chances of any returns and discussions by Israel about refugees has been limited to a fraction of the original refugees that would be allowed to return. There are probably less than 10% of the original refugees still alive today that Israel "may" recognize as refugees but it wants to have nothing to do with the other 6 million Paletinians. Israel has been playing a dirty and wicked waiting game all along.

  • March 15 one year later in Gaza: Has the fire gone cold?
    • Walid March 20, 2012 at 5:04 am

      Pam, back in early January 2011, there was a 176-comment Mondo thread on this subject with several quetions raised about what was behind this youth movement and no one could provide a clear answer. At the time, I had the impression that the manifesto was more an anti-Hamas one than a call for unity between the Palestinian factions. Since the youth involved are speaking with you, would you please ask them to clear up that point.

      The January 2011 Mondo discussion:

      link to mondoweiss.net

  • 'Daily Beast' ode to Livni makes no mention of Gaza assault
    • Walid March 21, 2012 at 4:51 am

      Mndwss, she's really a guy, but don't tell anyone.

    • Walid March 21, 2012 at 4:39 am with 1 replies

      lysias, if you remember the sequence of events that preceded Israel's barbaric onslaught on Gaza on December 27,2008, the barracuda was shuttling all over the place filling in other countries about the planned attack and the last was with Mubarak that appears to have given the final green light. Livni, an ex-Mossad spy and daughter of the Irgun terrorist that did the King David Hotel massacre, was part of a satanic plan to kill Gazans that had been hatched almost a year in advance. In preparation for the war, Livni had hired ex-UN Ambassador Gillerman to head a special department to coach Israeli FM peronnel in over 100 embassies around the world on how to jump into action with press releases and appearances on talk shows to to drum up support for Israel's war on Gaza the minute the war would be declared.

      Chris McGreal of the Guardian wrote about the preparations and of Gillerman's participation one week into the war:

      "... Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN until a few months ago, was brought in by the Foreign Ministry to help lead the diplomatic and PR campaign. He said that the diplomatic and political groundwork has been under way for months.

      "This was something that was planned long ahead," he said. "I was recruited by the foreign minister to coordinate Israel's efforts and I have never seen all parts of a very complex machinery - whether it is the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the prime minister's office, the police or the army - work in such co-ordination, being effective in sending out the message."

      In briefings in Jerusalem and London, Brussels and New York, the same core messages were repeated: that Israel had no choice but to attack in response to the barrage of Hamas rockets; that the coming attack would be on "the infrastructure of terror" in Gaza and the targets principally Hamas fighters; that civilians would die, but it was because Hamas hides its fighters and weapons factories among ordinary people.

      Hand in hand went a strategy to remove the issue of occupation from discussion. Gaza was freed in 2005 when the Jewish settlers and army were pulled out, the Israelis said. It could have flourished as the basis of a Palestinian state, but its inhabitants chose conflict.

      Israel portrayed Hamas as part of an axis of Islamist fundamentalist evil with Iran and Hezbollah. Its actions, the Israelis said, are nothing to do with continued occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza or the Israeli military's continued killing of large numbers of Palestinians since the pullout. "Israel is part of the free world and fights extremism and terrorism. Hamas is not," the foreign minister and Kadima party leader, Tzipi Livni, said on arriving in France as part of the diplomatic offensive last week.

      Earlier in the week Livni deployed the "with us or against us" rhetoric of George W Bush's war on terror. "These are the days when every individual in the region and in the world has to choose a side. And the sides have changed. No longer is it Israel on one side and the Arab world on the other," she said. "Israel chose its side the day it was established; the Jewish people chose its side during its thousands of years of existence; and the prayer for peace is the voice sounded in the synagogues."

      It was a message pumped home with receptive Arab governments, such as Egypt and Jordan, which view Hamas with hostility. "Large parts of the Muslim and Arab world realise that Hamas represents a greater danger to them even than it does to Israel. Its extremism, its fundamentalism, is a great danger to them as well," said Gillerman. "We've seen the effect of that in numerous responses, in the public statements made by [Egypt's] President Mubarak and even by [Palestinian president] Mahmoud Abbas and other Arabs. This is totally unprecedented."

      Indeed, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said his government knew exactly what was coming: "The signs that Israel was determined to strike Hamas in Gaza for the past three months were clear. They practically wrote it in the sky. Unfortunately they [Hamas] served Israel the opportunity on a golden platter."

      Also crucial was what was not said. Just a few months ago Livni was talking of wiping out Hamas, but that would be unpalatable to much of the outside world as a justification for the assault. So now the talk is of pressing Gaza's government to agree to a new ceasefire. Occasionally someone has got off-message. A couple of days into the assault on Gaza, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, said it would continue for "as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas completely". Infuriated Israeli officials in Jerusalem warned her that such statements could set back the diplomatic offensive."

      link to guardian.co.uk

    • Walid March 21, 2012 at 3:41 am

      Robert, the problem is not with what Israel chooses to call itself and of course it's not new. The problem is with Israel's overt plans of erasing any Palestinian Arab vestiges from the land and this means either the elimination or the transfer out of 20% of its population that is Arab or their full assimilation into the Zionist culture. It's just a matter of time before all Arabic writing will be removed from street signage and all Arabic sounding names changed for Hebrew ones. It's also a matter of time before Arabic would no longer be taught to Arabs in schools. This is what this Jewish state controversy is about. Anyone that doesn't get it is either pretending or stupid. If Israel were to give guarantees to its Arabs that this is not going to happen at any time in the future, no Arab would object to what Israel chooses to call itself.

      Hostage, if you'd rather believe the word of a negotiator that hasn't negotiated a single thing for the Palestinians and that can't negotiate his way out of a broom closet, that's your business. Every other Palestinian believe these people are collaborators and irrespective that these "funny" concessions about returning 10,000 refugees over several years out of a total of about 5 million and surrendering rights to a good part of East Jerusalem having never been formalized because they were just useless chatter, just the fact of agreeing to discuss them in the first place is seditious enough in my book; you're apologizing and putting up a smoke screen for undeserving people.

    • Walid March 20, 2012 at 4:19 pm with 6 replies

      More on Livni from YNet of Jan 2011 about her transfer plans revealed by Jazeera:

      link to ynetnews.com
      In January 2008, according to the secret Palestinian records of more than a decade of failed peace talks, former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei told Livni that the Palestinians would never accept the transfer of Israeli Arabs. But Livni, who currently heads the opposition, presented the offer again in June of that year.

      PLO Secretary-General Yasser Abd Rabbo fiercely slams Qatari network for exposing papers documenting negotiations between PA, Israel. 'Quotes said in ironic tone were presented as Palestinian answers,' he says; calls for independent Palestinian body to investigate leak

      Full Story

      The current leader of the Kadima party explained privately that there are "some Palestinian villages located on both sides of the 1967 line about which we need to have an answer, such as Beit Safafa, Barta'a, Baqa al-Sharqiya and Baqa al-Gharbiya," the Guardian reported.

      Earlier, she had made clear that such swaps also meant "the swap of the inhabitants," but Palestinian negotiators rejected the proposal, according to documents revealed by the British newspaper.

      During the talks, Livni said, "Israel is a Jewish state, and I want to stress that our nation is the Jewish nation."

      On Sunday it was revealed that the Palestinian negotiators were willing to concede sections of east Jerusalem to Israeli control as part of a final peace deal, and the memos released on Monday revealed they also agreed that only 10, 000 refugees and their families – out of a total refugee population exceeding 5 million – could return to Israel as part of a peace settlement.

      The leaked confidential documents revealed that PLO leaders also accepted Israel's demand to define itself as an explicitly Jewish state, in sharp contrast to their public position.

      According to the documents, in 2008 then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested that Palestinian refugees could be resettled in South America. "Maybe we will be able to find countries that can contribute in kind," she said, "Chile, Argentina, etc."

      While chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in exchange for an extension of the construction moratorium in the West Bank racist, the secret documents show that his position was quite different behind closed doors.
      "If you want to call your state a Jewish state, you can call it that," he told Livni at the time, "Just as Iran and Saudi Arabia define themselves as Islamic or Arab."

  • Kill other peoples, but not your own
    • Walid March 19, 2012 at 4:11 am

      I have no admiration for the Syrian regime but I still find it absurd to hear CNN report that the Syrian army massacred hundreds of civilians in one incident and in one room in Homs. More from Sharmine Narwani in al-Akhbar from about 3 weeks back in an article in which she details the bogus stories about the Syrian regime killing Syrian civilians and the wild numbers of casualties reported by the armed insurgents; some bits and pieces from Narwani:

      ,,, Nir Rosen, an American journalist who spent several months insides Syria’s hot spots in 2011, with notable access to armed opposition groups, reported in a recent Al Jazeera interview:

      “Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation of the cause of the deaths. Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters, but the cause of their death is hidden and they are described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces, as if they were all merely protesting or sitting in their homes. Of course, those deaths still happen regularly as well.”

      “And, every day, members of the Syrian army, security agencies and the vague paramilitary and militia phenomenon known as shabiha ["thugs"] are also killed by anti-regime fighters,” Rosen continues.

      The report issued in January by Arab League Monitors after their month-long observer mission in Syria – widely ignored by the international media – also witnessed acts of violence by armed opposition groups against both civilians and security forces.

      The Report states: “In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the observer mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against government forces and civilians...Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children...In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers.” The observers also point out that “some of the armed groups were using flares and armour-piercing projectiles.“

      Importantly, the report further confirms obfuscation of casualty information when it states: “the media exaggerated the nature of the incidents and the number of persons killed in incidents and protests in certain towns.”

      On February 3, the eve of the UN Security Council vote on Syria, news broke out that a massacre was taking place in Homs, with the general media assuming it was true and that all violence was being committed by the Syrian government. The SOHR’s Rami Abdul Rahman was widely quoted in the media as claiming the death toll to be at 217. The Local Coordination Committees (LCCs), which provide information to the VDC, called it at “more than 200,” and the Syrian National Council (SNC), a self-styled government in absentia of mainly expats, claimed 260 victims.

      The next day, the casualty count had been revised down to 55 by the LCCs. (link: link to bbc.co.uk)

      ... While the overwhelming perception of Syrian casualties thus far has been that they are primarily unarmed civilians deliberately targeted by government forces, it has become obvious these casualties are also likely to include: Civilians caught in the crossfire between government forces and opposition gunmen; victims of deliberate violence by armed groups; “dead opposition fighters” whose attire do not distinguish them from regular civilians; and members of the Syrian security forces, both on and off duty.

      ... The very first incident of casualties from the Syrian regular army that I could verify dates to 10 April 2011, when gunmen shot up a bus of soldiers travelling through Banyas, in Tartous, killing nine. This incident took place a mere few weeks after the first peaceful protests broke out in Syria, and so traces violence against government forces back to the start of political upheaval in the country.

      “Witnesses” quoted by the BBC, Al Jazeera and The Guardian insisted that the nine dead soldiers were “defectors” who had been shot by the Syrian army for refusing orders to shoot at demonstrators.

      Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, debunked that version on his Syria Comment website. Another surviving soldier on the bus – a relation of Lt. Col. Yasar Qashur, #6022 on the SOHR list, whose funeral I link to above – denied that they were defectors too. But the narrative that dead soldiers are mostly defectors shot by their own troops has stuck throughout this conflict – though less so, as evidence of gunmen targeting Syrian forces and pro-regime civilians becomes belatedly apparent.

      ... People have to stop this knee-jerk, opportunistic, hysterical obsession with numbers of dead Syrians, and ask instead: “who are these people and who killed them?” That is the very least these victims deserve.

      Full article:
      link to english.al-akhbar.com

    • Walid March 19, 2012 at 2:14 am

      Syria is a chapter in the undeclared war of Sunni purists on what they consider heretical Shias centered in Iran, so you can't really compare it to Haiti, Guatamala and so on. Keep in mind that Assad and most in his regime and commanding military officers are of the minority Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam but that oddly and wisely, the civil rule of the land as well as the national educational program have always been based on Sunni Sharia precepts and undoubtedly one of the main reasons why the Assads have been accepted for the past 50 years by the Sunni majority and avoiding civil unrest. Nothing had changed in Syria's iron-fisted rule up until about a year ago when Assad's fall from grace in the eyes of the West came about and out of nowhere only because of his loyalty to the Iran and this became no longer tolerable to Sunni fundamentalist neighbours Turkey, Gulf states and Israel. A year ago, Assad was told by the West that if he were to drop his support for Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran, he could go on doing whatever he wanted in Syria, but he refused. The same Sunni-Shia rumble is also at the root of what's been happening for years in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam and other conflicts in the region.

    • Walid March 18, 2012 at 9:27 am with 1 replies

      Anyone here remember Ghassan Bin Jiddo, the Tunisian TV journalist that resigned from a major Gulf news network last May because he wouldn't go along with his bosses' marching orders on how to conduct his reports on Syria?

      At the end of this month he will be opening his own Arabic satellite all-news TV network from his Beirut studios. When he announced his project, a ton of investors rushed to put money into it but he was picky and insisted on accepting only small investments to keep control of his editorial content. He turned down an offer of a$20 million investment from a wealthy Palestinian for that reason. He promises honest unbiased reporting of the news.

  • Sabeel conferences in Sacramento, March 16-17 and Sunnyvale, March 23-24
    • Walid March 18, 2012 at 12:22 pm

      The brother that's in politics and a paid consultant for the Democratic Party is James; the other one that's a pollster is John. James rubbed a lot of Lebanese-Americans the wrong way in his pushing them towards the Democrats, especially those thare were ardent Republicans. Although James may mimic AIPAC's tactics, I doubt if he would ever criticize that group. In fact, he comes across as an anti-Iran campaigner:

      By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH | CounterPunch | March 16, 2012

      Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and brother of the well-known pollster John Zogby, recently published an article on “Dealing with Iran” in Huffington Post that is problematic on a number of grounds.

      To begin with, Dr. Zogby claims that Iran harbors “aspirations for regional hegemony,” and it is therefore a “threat” to its neighbors: “Make no mistake, the regime in Tehran is a meddlesome menace and their aspirations for regional hegemony do pose a threat, not to Israel . . . but to the Arab Gulf States.” Dr. Zogby goes even one step further, arguing that Iran is more than just a threat; it is “the real danger to its … neighbors.”

      Israel’s Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar recently admitted (boastfully) that the Israeli government had succeeded in distracting the attention of the entire world away from the Palestinians to the Iranians. Dr. Zogby’s argument that Iran is “the real danger to its neighbors” shows that Mr. Sa’ar is, indeed, justified in boasting about the fantastic success of Israel’s policy of distraction. Instead of blaming the US-Israeli axis of aggression for the never-ending and escalating turbulence in the Middle East, Dr. Zogby blames Iran!

      But let us examine Dr. Zogby’s allegation in light of reality: (1) Iran has not invaded (or threatened invasion of) any country for over 250 years. (2) Iran was invaded in 1980 by Saddam Hussein, which culminated in the devastating 8-year war—a war that was instigated, supported and sustained by Western powers and their proxy regimes in the Persian Gulf region. (3) The “Arab Gulf States,” headed by the Saudi kingdom, are collaborating with the US-Israeli axis of aggression in their efforts to destabilize and overthrow the Iranian government. (4) The “Arab Gulf States,” not Iran, serve (literally) as military bases of Western powers that support Israel and its policies of settlements and occupation.

      Against this background, Dr. Zogby’s claim that Iran is a “meddlesome menace” is obviously counterfactual and preposterous.

      Ironically, Dr. Zogby’s claim that Iran poses “the real danger to its neighbors” is flatly rejected by the Arab people. Public opinion polls have consistently shown that the overwhelming majority of the Arab neighbors of Iran view the U.S. and Israel as the real threats, not Iran. For example, the most recent recent (2011) and most comprehensive public opinion survey to date, which covered 12 Arab/Muslim counties and 16,731 face-to-face interviews, and which was conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), found that “by a 15-1 ratio, Israel and the US are seen as more threatening than Iran.”

      for Full article
      link to counterpunch.org

      As to Jeremy having missed the train, he never really had any intention of getting on it in the first place and it showed through last week when he got all tied in knots over the Florida bogus resolution for one state.

      And those people removing Iranian history from US textbooks while pushing the holocaust story are obscene.

    • Walid March 17, 2012 at 12:49 pm

      Annie, it's great the BDS crowd is around and getting its little victories but I don't think it will be enough to succeed in ending the occupation. The big disappointment is with Arabs that are working against the BDS current, some inadvertently and some knowingly. How can BDS win against the bad guys when Palestinians and other Arabs aren't into it? While Code Pink is doing great work harassing Ahava and may it put it out of business, Estée Lauder products are sold in 7 Arab countries; Beirut has 10 Starbucks and 12 stores carrying Lauder's products and a Veolia company transporting students.

    • Walid March 17, 2012 at 5:44 am

      Annie, Teta answered your question:

      "When protests and pickets proliferate outside Starbucks and Home Depot, and outside the numerous outlets for major grocery chains THAT SUPPORT THE ZIONIST AGENDA, then progress will begin."

      BIOC is right, talking about boycotting because of the settlements only is like Teta's guy going in circles around the lamp post. The source of the problem of occupation isn't in the settlements, it's in Israel proper. Getting churches, universities and so on to divest because of the settlements is turning into a sad joke. The divestments and the boycotts should be about Israel.

  • From M1 to Marcel Khalife, musicians from around the world join the call for 'Jerusalem for Us All'
    • Walid March 16, 2012 at 4:44 am

      Rim Banna is very good; one of the greats on the new album is Marcel Khalifeh that never misses an opportunity to speak or sing out for Land Day. He adapted a couple of Mahmood Darwich's poems to song. In a musical duel video here between him on oud with someone on bouzouki in one of his compositions, "Ya Bahriyeh":

      link to youtube.com

  • The myth of Israel's favorable treatment of Palestinian Christians
    • Walid March 18, 2012 at 7:59 am

      The Christian population of the Middle East is definitely in decline everywhere. Lebanon that at one point had about 15% of the ME's Christians has lost close to a third of them through economic emigration in the last 4 or 5 years and Egypt that contained about 50% of the ME's Christians has been seeing major drops too. Last month it was reported that as soon as the results of the Egyptian elections were announced that showed the fundies getting the majority of parliamentary seats, 10,000 Copts lined up at foreign consulates to apply for visas. There's a rumour going around that the US has opened the floodgates to allow in Copts.

      In spite of the public relations brouhaha about the brotherly love between Muslims and Christians, just about the only place where Christians have not been made to feel unwelcome is in Lebanon. In spite of the West's concern for Christians, those that have been the most responsible for emptying the Middle East of its Christians are the countries of the West. During Lebanon's civil war, the US sent a fleet of ships to transport the Christians out of Lebanon but to Lebanon's good fortune, the Christians refused to leave. More recently 50% of Iraq's Christians fled and the other 50% are living in terror because the US decided to liberate Iraq. Last month, Sarkozy told the Lebanese Patriarch that's on a worldwide tour campaigning to repatriate Christians to the Middle East, that he should arrange for Lebanon's remaining Christians (over a million) to move to France and other countries in Europe where they'd be welcome and safe. The Patriarch declined the offer and told him that he was on a mssion to bring back the Christians, not to help them leave and the Patriarch's refusal to go along with the relocation of Christians has gotten him in hot water with the pro-US Christian factions in the country.

      With the fundamentalists' aversion to Christians and any non-Sunni Muslims having already taken over or about to take over in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Syria and with Israel that doesn't want any non-Jews, the Christians in the ME have reason to worry. This morning Egypt's chief Muslim cleric (of Al-Azhar) refused to meet with the Lebanese Patriarch that's currently on tour in Egypt. Anyone that says there's no trouble for Christians in the Middle East needs to catch up on what's been happening.

    • Walid March 16, 2012 at 1:36 pm

      Many fled with the IDF to Israel. For those that had remained in Lebanon and given themselves up, Nasrallah gave the order that not a hand was to be put on them and not a word of insult thrown at them or any of their families. And this is exactly what happened. The Lebanese Government gave the collaborators a quick trial and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 3 months to a year or so depending on the seriousness of their collaboration. For those that it could be proven that they had had a hand in the killing of Lebanese, the sentence was death but there weren't many in that category as the killers and jailers had fled to Israel. A couple of years later, more Lebanese families that had fled to Israel got homesick and their wives and children were given a last chance to return to their homes without punishment while the men were tried according to their collaboration. A few hundred remained on welfare in Israel but now 12 years later, they want to return to Lebanon and face the music but the Lebanese Government is not letting them. Their welfare benefits in Israel have been reduced and they are living in misery with exception to the SLA's commanding general that's operating a restaurant in TA. Since most of those remaining in Israel are Christians, Christian Members of Parliament are campaigning to have a law passed to allow them to return but they're not getting anywhere with it.

    • Walid March 16, 2012 at 11:18 am

      "... like the former South Lebanese Army that enforced the Israeli occupation and some spies that Israel managed to recruit (many of whom have now been caught).

      Inanna, Josh Ruebner provided numbers on this. While the SLA was viewed as a Christian army because most of its commanders were Christian, only half of its footsoldiers were Christian with the remainder comprised of Shia Muslims (30%), Druze Muslims (13%) and Sunni Muslims (7%). According to HR Watch, the SLA also filled its ranks through the involuntary conscription of residents of the occupied zone, including children.

    • Walid March 15, 2012 at 3:49 pm

      Fida's book will help the Israeli cause more than the Palestinian-Christian one. In it, she'll be telling Palestinians that have been aspiring to return that such a return to Israel is going to be a living hell. She lived in the comfort and pleasant atmosphere of Cyprus all her life until in her early 20s when she returned to occupied Palestine now called Israel; what was she expecting, to be received on a red carpet because she was a Christian and not a Muslim accustomed to Israel's yolk and mistreatment? Whether toward Christians or Muslims, Israel is an equal opportunity tyrant. Her book will be a disservice to all Palestinians. And Oren is a jerk that no one should take seriously.

  • Fighting from civilian areas? Perfectly understandable-- in Syria
    • Walid March 15, 2012 at 1:03 pm

      "As awful as the Asad regime may be, it is not in our interest to destroy his regime."

      Something is not right with that statement, Toivo.

    • Walid March 15, 2012 at 12:12 pm with 1 replies

      "And you can go and look at the Arab Leagues Report (pepe escobar wrote about it) it kind of gets in the way of the GCC/NATO narrative, but why let facts get in the way of your warmongering?"

      The doctoring or cooking up of stories is being done by both sides. Now it's just a matter of which party is doing most of it. One side is into overstatements while the other is into understatements.

    • Walid March 15, 2012 at 12:06 pm

      More on the subject from Voltairnet but still unconfirmed by France:

      13 February 2012,
      Thierry Meyssan revealed on the first Russian television channel that Syria had captured a dozen French soldiers. Voltaire Network is now in a position to confirm that as of 26 February the number of French prisoners is 18 (eighteen).

      If Paris admits that they were on a mission, they will be entitled to prisoner-of-war status and protected by the relative Geneva Convention; but if Paris denies having sent them, they will be considered as foreign civilians and judged in Syria for their crimes, which are punishable by the death penalty.

      France has opened three negotiation channels via the Russian Federation, the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman.

      The ambassador of France, Eric Chevallier, returned urgently to Damascus on 23 February.

      Kofi Annan has been appointed as the joint United Nations-Arab League envoy on the Syrian crisis.

      Aware of the potential use it can make of the captives in the midst of the French electoral campaign, Damascus called on Syrian state media not to raise the matter at this time. It thus reserves the possibility of dealing with it under the radar if this option proves to be more advantageous. While acknowledging the uniqueness of this situation, the Syrian journalists, who were quick to adapted to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the new media law, growled that limits are again being imposed for reasons of national security.

      If negotiations are kept secret, France will have to quietly pay very heavy war indemnities, either in cash or by way of economic privileges. If they are made public, France can hope to reduce the bill, but Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppe will have some explaining to do to their fellow citizens. Their political camp would compromise its chances of winning the presidential election, with the president even risking to be brought before the High Court (Articles 35 and 68 of the Constitution).

      In the Rainbow Warrior affair (1985), where there was a sunken ship and one person killed, France had formally apologized and had paid a compensation of $ 7 million to New Zealand and $ 8.16 million to Greenpeace. Above all, Paris had to consent to the importation of sheep of New Zealand partially destroying its own sheep industry. In exchange, the two detained French agents were released. Ironically, Laurent Fabius, the Prime Minister whose government had ordered the attack on the Rainbow Warrior, is tipped to become foreign minister if the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, becomes the next president of France. The latter happens to be former brother-in-law of Lt. Col. Gerard Royal, who commanded the operation.

      In the secret war against Syria, France and its allies are responsible for a conflict that caused the death of at least 3,000 Syrian soldiers and 1,500 civilians, plus economic losses and the sabotage of infrastructure estimated at least $ 3 billion.

      Source : “France opens negotiations with Syria to recover its 18 agents”, Voltaire Network, 27 February 2012,
      link to voltairenet.org

  • Obama rejects a Syrian deal because his team wants F15s (and other stuff I learned at lunch)
    • Walid March 15, 2012 at 9:40 am

      "Maliki. He says, There must be no foreign intervention in an Arab nation. The man installed by foreign intervention!

      Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me."

      Phil needs a Shia friend to get a second opinion on why and how the cookies are crumbling all over the ME. Until then you'll continue getting either a one -sided version or at worst, no version at all; Bahrain and Syria come to mind.

    • Walid March 14, 2012 at 11:02 am

      "... You don’t write about the Palestinians. You only write about Israel. "

      ... and Zionists.

  • Shadia Mansour, first lady of Arabic hip-hop, featured in Esquire mag contest
    • Walid March 16, 2012 at 5:14 am

      "How do you apply the concept “good” to the concept “hip-hop”?"

      I'm not the one that said she was good, RoHa, I'm just quetioning the fact that she's getting flowers thrown at her simply because she's a Palestinian. The big American guy in the video that's giving Israel the finger salute isn't pretty either. Maybe my taste in music isn't that great, but here are the words she is singing intended as a warning to Israelis to stop wearing the koffiyeh because it isn't theirs:

      "Verse 1

      Good morning cousins, y’all welcome, come in

      What would you like us to serve you, Arab blood or tears from our eyes?

      I think that’s how they expected us to receive them

      That’s why they got embarrassed when they realized their mistake

      That’s why we rocked the kuffiyeh, the white and black

      Now these dogs are startin to wear it as a trend

      No matter how they design it, no matter how they change its color

      The kuffiyeh is Arabic, and it will stay Arabic

      The gear we rock, they want it; our culture, they want it

      Our dignity, they want it; everything that’s ours, they want it

      Half your country, half your home; why, why? No, I tell em

      Stealin’ something that ain’t theirs, I can’t allow it

      They imitatin us in what we wear, wear; from this land enough, what else do you want?

      About Jerusalem, Jerusalem, would they be worried, how can you humans?

      Before y’all ever rocked a kuffiyeh, we here to remind em who we are

      And whether they like it or not, this is our clothing style

      Chorus

      That’s why we rock the kuffiyeh, cuz it’s patriotic

      The kuffiyeh, the kuffiyeh is Arabic

      That’s why we rock the kuffiyeh, our essential identity

      The kuffiyeh, the kuffiyeh is Arabic

      Come on, throw up the kuffiyeh (throw that kuffiyeh up for me)

      The kuffiyeh, the kuffiyeh is Arabic

      Throw it up, come on “Bilad Al Sham” (Greater Syria)

      The kuffiyeh is Arabic, and it will stay Arabic

      Verse 2

      There’s none yet like the Arab people

      Show me which other nation in the world was more influential

      The picture is clear, we are the cradle of civilization

      Our history and cultural heritage testify to our existence

      That’s why I rocked the Palestinian gear

      From Haifa, Jenin, Jabal al Nar to Ramallah

      Let me see the kuffiyeh, the white and red

      Let me throw it up in the sky; I’m

      Arab, and my tongue creates earthquakes

      I shake the words of war

      Listen, I’m Shadia Mansour, and the gear I’m rockin is my identity

      Since the day I was born raisin people’s awareness been my responsibility

      But I was raised between fear and evil; between two areas

      Between the grudging and the poor, I seen life from both sides

      God bless the kuffiyeh; however you rock me, wherever you see me

      I stay true to my origins, Palestinian"

    • Walid March 14, 2012 at 12:26 pm with 2 replies

      "Haven’t the Palestinians suffered enough?"

      If she wasn't Palestinian, would she have been that good?

  • Egypt is looted, and the U.S. press calls it 'reform'
    • Walid March 14, 2012 at 5:30 am

      "... i can’t help but see zionist ideologues as a key, if not required driver. "

      Anonymous, Dan is not wrong but for most at MW, Zionism and Israel are the center of the universe and everything else such as this interesting discusion on the evils of privatization pushed by the IMF, the WB and US Aid that James North is attempting to start is not much than minor detail on what's happening in the rest of the world, especially the ME.

  • Netanyahu says, You also refused to bomb Auschwitz
    • Walid March 7, 2012 at 5:10 am

      "Come to think of it, what exactly did the ADL do in these (WW II) years?

      eGuard, it depends on which version of history is recounted by the ADL itself and by anti-ADL sites. The ADL says they worked against the communists while anti-ADL sites say that the ADL actually helped USSR spies infiltrate government positions. The ADL claimed to be against the famous witch hunts while on its site it claims that " During this decade, ADL began its major fact-finding operation and began accumulating its famous storehouse of accurate, detailed, unassailable information on extremist individuals and organizations. ADL expanded its staff and began to monitor and investigate the rapidly multiplying fascist groups in the U.S. "

      The other guys said it was covering up for Soviet spies.

      ADL's site:
      link to adl.org

  • Consequences of an attack on Iran are no joke
    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 9:32 am

      "So Nasralla being a smart guy might choose to sit this one out like he did during Cast Lead."

      Oleg, your assessment of what Hizbullah would do or don't do is wrong. The Shia are looking forward to the "final battle" to take place in downtown TA more than you can imagine. There is no doubt that Lebanon's infrastructure would be destroyed but there's also no doubt about the same happening to Israel's.

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 9:18 am

      "The authors also warn that “Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE will be heavily affected by the radionuclides.” (Are the Arab states of the Gulf who supposedly are so eager for Israel to contain Iran’s regional ambitions aware of this?" (Marsha Cohen)

      That's a new one for me. Americans have relatives at the military bases in Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE. What's the US to do about the 40,000 servicemen and almost equal number of civilians posted in these countries?

  • Responding to commenters on recent bannings
    • Walid March 6, 2012 at 7:53 am

      Yea to bring back everybody and to the start of discussions on more than simply Israel and the Zionists. It would interesting to discuss something about Palestinians that doesn't involve their getting clobbered by Israel.

    • Walid March 6, 2012 at 6:49 am

      I agree there's no reason for you to worry, LeaNder, I was just pulling your leg; the guy must have been very interesting but very spooky too as are all extremists, especially the religious kind.

    • Walid March 6, 2012 at 6:31 am

      The last bit that was missed in my reply to Newclench, from his al-Ahram link:

      "... The attempt by holocaust deniers to play down the number of holocaust victims is obscene, as whether one million or 10 million Jews were killed, the result is still genocide and this would never justify Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. Such obscene number games on the part of holocaust deniers are hardly different from Zionist Jewish denial of the Palestinian nakba and are also similar to the continued Zionist attempts to play down the number of Palestinian refugees. "

    • Walid March 6, 2012 at 6:10 am

      "Finally…. the term itself was born as political. It can’t ‘become’ political when it has been that way from the start. But fine, don’t trust my analysis. Go read Professor Joseph Massad….. link to weekly.ahram.org.eg "

      Great link to Massad's views on the origins and the misuse of the word "antisemite" and the reason behind denying the holocaust by some Arabs, Clench, especialy these bits from it:

      "This is important, as many people in the Arab world and outside it think that European Jews are the ones who called themselves "Semites", rather than European Christian racists who invented the term. Of course this misunderstanding is understandable given the fact that Zionism, which adopted wholesale anti-Semitic ideologies, would also call Jews "Semites" and would begin to consider Jews as Semites racially from the late 19th century to the present. In this sense not only do many Arabs think that "Semites" is a Jewish-invented category but so do many European Jews who were (and in some contexts remain) victims of this anti-Jewish designation."

      "... While holocaust denial in the West is indeed one of the strongest manifestations of anti-Semitism, most Arabs who deny the holocaust deny it for political not racist reasons. This point is even conceded by the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim Orientalist Bernard Lewis. Their denial is based on the false Zionist claim that the holocaust justifies Zionist colonialism. The Zionist claim is as follows: Since Jews were the victims of the holocaust, then they have the right to colonise Palestine and establish a Jewish colonial-settler state there. Those Arabs who deny the holocaust accept the Zionist logic as correct. Since these deniers reject the right of Zionists to colonise Palestine, the only argument left to them is to deny that the holocaust ever took place, which, to their thinking, robs Zionism of its allegedly "moral" argument. "

    • Walid March 6, 2012 at 4:51 am

      "So the war with International Jewry was already beyond the planning stages before the rally at Madison Square Garden ever happened."

      Nobody here is arguing that point, Hostage, unless you're picking up where Shmuel left off and where LeaNdr started pissing up the wrong rope with the non-issue that someone here ( probably me) is pretending that the Jews brought the holocaust on themselves by having called a worldwide boycott of German goods. If you're not, please disregard this post.

      The boycott issue was raised here as part of the banning discussion because a novice modertor mistook my post about the 1933 boycott. It had been to discuss a successful universal boycott campaign in history; nothing more.

      In case you missed my March 4th assertion:

      "... Walid says:
      March 4, 2012 at 12:03 pm
      ... But as American has already noted, the Nazis were not in need of an excuse to do what they evidently had planned to do and the Jewish boycott probably did nothing much more than accelerate that which was about to happen in any event. The Jews were already on the receiving end of Nazi malvolence even before the boycott was called."

    • Walid March 5, 2012 at 4:33 pm

      "Walid, sorry I admittedly tend to hyperventiallate on these issues. My problem is that I know the mindset too well."

      LeaNdr, Ok so the guy is so much of a nut for his Germany that he doesn't believe it's guilty of anything and he doesn't believe something or other about the holocaust and this has landed him in the courts; thanks for the info and I hope nobody ever holds something against you simply because you knowingly worked for a neo-Nazi.

      Now that we have this out of the way, what was it in the Walendy article that didn't ring true to you and what was it in that article that conflicted with information on the same subject from the other links I provided, which were the Jewish Virtual Library, the American Jewish Historical Society and the Nizkor site that's dedicated to the memory of the holocaust victims?

    • Walid March 5, 2012 at 5:48 am with 1 replies

      "Now suddenly we find out that it really ain’t about the ‘wars/ideas/middle east’, but about jewish americans and zionism."

      I'm with you on that one, Taxi, but I add Israel to the list. Problem is not with the new rules but with this site's fixation on Israel and nothing by Israel. Even Zionism is discussed or not discussed in function of Israel because it may lead to its "delegitimization" or some other bugaboo. Mondo's getting to be only about Israel.

      Anyway Taxi, off-topic and to add a bit of colour since there is no other thread to discuss it, have you seen the video that's been out for a couple of days about what some of the Libyan heroes of the Arab Spring have been up to? This is a sampling of the Benghazi freedom-fighters' mentality NATO, BH Lévy and friends gave to Libya. Ironically, it was aired by Jazeera but you won't be seeing it in the West:

      link to youtube.com

      The 300 separate militias should be announcing the formation of a new Libyan confederation of 2 states very soon. Politicians and leaders of Eastern Libyan tribes are meeting tomorrow in Benghazi to declare the eastern one as the territory of Cyrenaica, extending from the borders of Egypt in the east to the Sirte in the west.

      In another Arab Spring country that had excited many here, Tunisia's universities' year is practically shot because of openings and closings due to the new niqab rule and because the freedom fighters there that are now in power are having problems with so many women attending universities (50% of total) when they should be at home making babies and are refusing to wear the niqab. Shmuel hesitated too long in opening his chain of niqab stores there.

      As to the Egyptian Arab Spring, Egypt's and the Arab world's top comic, Adel Imam, has been "retroactively" sentenced to 3 months in jail by the new Islamist regime for having joked about Islam in his past movies and the Salfists are warning that the sale of alcohol is about to stop. Belly dancers have been asked to look for other work. Phil had his falling off the horse on the road to Damascus moment about Egypt's Arab Spring when he was in Cairo during the riot and massacre of the Copts but no longer talks about it.

    • Walid March 5, 2012 at 2:51 am

      "What us the Catholic church doing today that you find so reprehensible?"

      Duscany, for one thing, it's still rotating exposed delinquent priests and bishops to other unsuspecting and unwarned parishes and dioceses. But on the other hand, clerics of other faiths like Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Protestant , Jews and so on aren't any less represensible for what they too are doing to the people. Maybe the Catholic Church gets all this attention because it's the biggest. But along with the bad, there's the good that was done and compared to other faiths or weighing its good deeds against its bad ones, we'd probably find the Catholic Church at the top of the list.

      On something else way off-topic, for a blog that's about the Middle East, this "banning" thread is the only one of the current 20 where non-Israel stuff is being discussed; it's also the one with the most comments.

    • Walid March 4, 2012 at 10:29 pm

      "Congratulations, Walid, Udo Walendy is of course a really important voice on the issue. He wrote:

      Wahrheit für Deutschland – Die Schuldfrage des Zweiten Weltkriegs
      which means: Truth for Germany – The Question of Guilt for the Second World War. He will also tell you that Ausschwitz is a Jewish invention."

      LeaNder, I just saw your post here and you're going to have to help me with the Udo Walendy thing and tell me in which post or link I made reference to this character and if he happens to have authored one of the articles I discussed, please tell me the part in it you don't agree with; the name doesn't ring a bell.

      It should have become obvious to you by now that I'm neither a fan of the Nazis nor an Auschwitz denier. You're pissing up the wrong rope since I don't believe in martyrs and this is your second stab at it.

    • Walid March 4, 2012 at 2:28 pm

      "Walid, maybe I don’t understand, but wouldn’t Evian support the necessity of a Jewish state? And how is this related to your other arguments here?"

      Nothing to do with the boycott, LeaNder, it was a reflection on what Shmuel said about the Transfer Agreement having been beneficial to both the Zionists that wanted to save Jews and to the Nazis that wanted to get rid of Jews. Evian too had been about the Nazis trying to dump their Jewish population on countries sympathetic to their plight but that did not want them. The despicable rejection of the Jews by the 32 countries that included the US signaled to the Nazis that they could do whatever they wanted with the Jews.

      I have no problem with Jews or any other people aspiring for a homeland, but not at the cost of getting it at the expense of another people. Had the 32 countries accepted to take in the Jews when they were given the opportunity, they would not have suffered the holocaust. In my book that makes more than one country guilty for it.

    • Walid March 4, 2012 at 1:55 pm

      "... Certainly discussions about conflicts between Haredi and secular Jews in Israel, between neoconservative and progressive Jews in the United States, and between Israelis and the world in general are directly germane to Mondoweiss, right? ..."

      Sean, more eggshells and taboo stuff I think because it borders on a discussion of the Shlomo Sand kind that they don't want to get into.

    • Walid March 4, 2012 at 12:03 pm

      "I have no doubt that the trade unions had their own reasons and organisation for the boycott of Nazi Germany, regardless of whether they joined an existing boycott or initiated one of their own."

      Shmuel, I don't doubt it either; so many political decisions are made for $$$ reasons whether by governments or trade unions. I don't use the term "Jewry" and the dramatic terms such as "economic warfare" or "Jews declared war" are by others and in most instances, by Jews accompanied by gloating at the successes of the boycott. Reading through the various documents about our subject, I came upon several references to German Jewish leaders being concerned with the repercussions. But as American has already noted, the Nazis were not in need of an excuse to do what they evidently had planned to do and the Jewish boycott probably did nothing much more than accelerate that which was about to happen in any event. The Jews were already on the receiving end of Nazi malvolence even before the boycott was called.

    • Walid March 4, 2012 at 9:26 am

      "I wonder how the trade unions responded after “International Jewry”* supposedly changed its mind about the boycott."

      Shmuel, you're still at the "mere footnote in history" point. The trade unions came on board only in June 1933 whereas the Jewish declaration of economic war on the Nazis began on March 12 of that year.

      From where did you gather that the Jews had changed their mind about the boycott; everything I'm reading is saying that from the moment the Jews declared their worldwide boycott at the Madison Square Garden on March 27, 1933, the boycott spread like wildfire throughout the world and hurt Hitler's regime very badly. American and other governments joined the boycott. On June 3, Lord Melchett and the British Trade Unions Congress took the initiative and issued formal invitations to the independent boycott committees of the world to assemble in London on June 25 to establish an international boycott council. Melchett titled the boycott convention the World Jewish Economic Conference.

      Edwin Black wrote:
      "... At about the same time (June 1933), the World Economic Conference, convened by FDR, was underway in London, but it achieved just the opposite of what it set out to achieve: an economic collaboration of the parties to world trade to remedy the economic crisis. A Reich cabinet meeting on June 23, 1933, reported:

      "...Pessimistic as were the expectations with which the [German] delegation went to London, they were outdistanced by far. Germany found among all states an attitude that hardly could be worse. "

      On Samuel Untermyer's recommendation, the World Jewish Economic Conference was postponed to July 20 and relocated to Amsterdam. About 35 countries were to participate. For weeks they had exchanged experiences, discussed successful boycott ideas, compiled long lists of manufacturers and sellers seeking alternatives for German goods, discussed countermeasures against boycott-breakers and even founded a special boycott publication: The Jewish Economic Forum.

      From a California-based German-American blog:

      link to read-all-about-it.org

      The Jewish Virtual Library wrote that the boycott was still going strong after 3 years:

      link to jewishvirtuallibrary.org

    • Walid March 4, 2012 at 5:35 am

      Tree, thanks for the detailed description on the mecanics of the Transfer Agreement. It was very interesting and the part about the limited amount of cash Jews were allowed to take with them reminded me of a similar story from the Egypt of the late 50s or early 60s when Nasser limited the amount the Egyptian Christians were allowed to take with them when they were "encouraged" to leave, which was something like $200. Those that left were mostly from the wealthy or the educated, which weakened Egypt even more.

      Of course more than 50,000 Jews made it out of Germany; that number was about those that formed part of the Transfer Agreement.

      As to the Zionist funny stuff with the bad guys, I already have my hands full with the boycott issue and we saw how JB ran into a brick wall because of it so I'll pass on that one. Discussing something from the ever-growing list of Jewish taboos make you feel like you're walking on eggshells or of being anxious when around a spinster where you have to measure your every word or action to not injure; it's tiring.

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 7:12 pm

      "respectfully disagree. I think that the calls for boycott and the potential threat they posed were blown out of all proportion by the Nazi propaganda machine"

      Shmuel, these events were happening less than 90 days into the life of the shaky Nazi regime. A minute effect from the boycott was about to have a disastrous effect on an economy already in shambles and only a month after Hitler burned down the Reichstag to blame it on the communists and Jews and suspend civil liberties.

      Add to that the spook effect by the British Labor boycott that LeaNder mentioned and there's no need for further propaganda.

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 6:58 pm

      "Transfer Agreement was clearly in the Nazi interest, in any case. "

      I agree, Shmuel, and 5 years after the 50,000 were transferred, there was the disastrous conference of 32 countries led by the US at Evian that sort of threw Europe's Jews to the lions. But it's not nice to talk about that either.

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 5:56 pm

      Keith, drop Gil-White; most of the stuff he wrote is discussed by Edwin Black in the Nizkor link above. It's great reading eventhough you only have the 3 chapters. It seems many prominent Jews accept the importance of the March 1933 Jewish boycott, but not those at Mondo. That boycott succeeded in getting 50,000 Jews as well as $100 million of their assets out of Germany. There are a lot of other sources to this story on the net but you have to make your way through the maze of hate sites also discussing it to reach the good ones.

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 5:02 pm

      No aggravation, Shmuel; always a pleasure to hear from you.

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 4:52 pm

      "... Well, it’s always helpful to pose as a martyr for the truth in these contexts. Just as the idea that everything you ever heard is absolutely wrong."

      LeaNder, you're fighting the wrong battle with the wrong person; I was never an admirer of Hitler's legacy. Nonetheless, the 1933 boycott is a fascinating subject and to shy away from it by ignoring it, ridiculing it, belittling it, or throwing some Hitlerisms at it is to also pose as a martyr.

      The Jewish boycott of German business yielded results, according to Edwin Black's book on the Transfer Agreement about a negotiated arrangement in 1933 between Zionist organizations and the Nazis to transfer some 50,000 Jews, and $100 million of their assets, to Jewish Palestine in exchange for stopping the worldwide Jewish-led boycott threatening to topple the Hitler regime in its first year. His book that covers the Jewish boycott that appears to be spooking some here was prefaced by former New York Times Books editor-in-chief Edward T. Chase, and contained a powerful new Afterword by Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham H. Foxman. Excerpts were published in the Jewish Virtual Library linked in an above post as well as in the Nizkor Project that's dedicated to the memory of holocaust victims:

      link to nizkor.org

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 1:28 pm

      Annie, that's interesting, not because of the unreliable Wiki, but because looking into this, I see Wiki is copying the March 15, 1937 date from the Jewish Virtual Library:

      wrongly dated photo
      link to jewishvirtuallibrary.org

      But, another Jewish Virtual Library article by Edwin Black titled "Could We Have Stopped Hitler?" has the correct March 27, 1933 date. It's an interesting article that also covers the Transfer Agreement that Yourstruly mentioned below but that I didn't get into because I was concentrating on boycotts:

      link to jewishvirtuallibrary.org

      By the way, Yourstruly had posted a comment on the same subject and when I responded to it, my post was rejected and Yourstruly's was deleted. Also, the AJHS link you are talking about is the subject of the discussion with Shmuel

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 11:41 am

      "If that isn’t apology for genocide playing on racist stereotypes, it’s pretty close, and I don’t blame Phil and Adam for not wanting to allow such discussions here in the first place."

      Hi Shmuel, I'm glad you cleared up the racism thing; my answer was about to go out and I've had to delete half of it after your post scriptum. I don't take much anything from anyone on face value, especially from the likes of scumbags like Goebbels. I got into this subject simply out of my curiosity of history and to reach the 2 sources I listed, I had to dig for them through several sites of dubious caliber that were probably playing the anti-Jewish racist angle, but the two sites I cited, especially the respectable AJHS one discussed the issue from a historical perspective with no hidden agenda.

      BTW, where this came from was from the Cobban thread of about 2 weeks back about some anti-BDS professor bad-mouthing Barghoutti's intentions and had branded him a Nazi boycotter of sorts. To this, I had responded, that the Jews had started first with the boycotts and provided the AJHS link but my post was refused. The moderator probably thought I was trying to score something but had he read the AJHS link I provided, he'd have seen this was not my intent.

      Shmuel, I believe that if you re-read the AJHS article with an open mind, you'd see where I'm coming from. I can understand how seeing the word "Goebbels" in an article can turn you completely off and I can't blame you for feeling this way. But this should not stand in the way of exploring a historical fact that so far you consider merely a footnote in the history of the period. I guess you can say I'm into this for the chicken or the egg answer to a question concerning boycotts, and in no way having anything to do with pinning the cause of the war on the Jews. As far as I'm concerned, those that caused the war were those people that drafted the Versailles and the Nazis took it from there. As to the mere footnote issue you raised, I leave you with a small passage from the American Jewish History Society article:

      "... On March 27th, the AJCongress and its allies convened simultaneous protest rallies at Madison Square Garden in New York, in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and 70 other locations. The New York rally was broadcast worldwide. An overflow crowd of 55,000 inside the Garden and in the streets outside heard AJCongress president Bernard Deutsch, American Federation of Labor president William Green, Senator Robert F. Wagner, former New York governor Al Smith and several Christian clergy call for an immediate cessation of the brutal treatment being inflicted on German Jewry."

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 8:51 am

      Hi Danaa, I learned a few things from JB, especially about Lebanon that he covered at a time of war and his description of the games of chicken the Israeli military were playing with the US marines in Beirut. There has to be something defective about the Israeli military. The Germans and French that had joined the UNIFIL peacekeeping force to protect Israel after the 2006 war were repeatedly mock-attacked by the Israeli air force. At one point, the French were seconds away from launching a missile at an Israeli plane. What makes Israelis act like that?

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 8:23 am

      "This comment sounds like you want hasbarists so we can talk to them about things, in which case it was fine to respond to Richard.

      ... I would actually welcome seeing debate and discussion between anti-Zionists, various forms of Zionists, and also discussion of other developments in the Arab and/or Muslim world that have little directly to do with Israel, but by people who are experts. "

      Yes, Donald, I welcome posts by eee, hophmi, WJ., Werdine and even Witty because they break the monotony of the talk about the Zionists and Israelis. Like you, I also welcome discussions about other Mid-East issues that don't have anything to do with Israel. This blog advertises itself as a war of ideas about the Middle East but all that is ever talked about are Israel, Zionists and more Zionists and whatever else that has to do with Israel. It's mostly an Israel discussion group with not much interest in anything else, a glance at the titles of articles here shows it. Palestine is discussed only when something is done to it by Israel.

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 7:36 am

      Shmuel, you want to disprove that which you haven't yet read. Gil-White has his bio on his site and he states there that he was fired from the University of Pennsylvania (I think) because his reasearch into American foreign policy was getting too close for the university's comfort, I guess somewhat like what happened with JB's research.

      You skipped over my primary source, which was the American Jewish Historical Society and you didn't say if this society was in the same class as the other one you found dubious, the Barnes Review.

      I'm trying to remember a third credible source where I read that the initial January 1933 boycotting of Jewish businesses by the Nazis that preceded the massive and violent national boycott against Jews of April 1, 1933 according to prominent Jews, had been grossly exaggerated. It was that alleged exaggeration that kicked-off the public call by Jews at the Madison Square Garden rally on March 27th to massively boycott German goods to bring Germany to its knees that provoked the retaliatory boycott of April 1st by the Nazis.

      What you'll find in Gil-White's piece, are the fine details of what happened between the American Jews' decision of March 12 to call for the boycott, the subsequent efforts by European Jews, some American Jewish leaders and the German Zionists to short-circuit the planned boycott because they feared the repercussions, the actual official announcement of the boycott on March 27th in front of 40,000 attendees at MSG, and Germany's reaction of April 1st.

    • Walid March 3, 2012 at 1:45 am

      "... dubious source?"

      Shmuel, thanks for answering, I got it from the American Jewish Historical Society; in a nutshell:
      a. Nazis came to power on January 30, 1933
      b. Nazis imediately began harrassing Jewish businesses
      c. Jews in the USA declared economic war on Germany March 12, 1933
      d. European Jewish leaders try to stop the Jewish boycott March 19, 1933
      e. Nazis react with violent boycott of Jewish businesses April 1, 1933

      American Jewish Historical Society's link I had provided in my initial post:
      link to ajhs.org

      A more detailed review of the dramatic back and forth trans Atlantic goings-on between pro and anti Jewish leaders and the part about the Paris meeting of March 19th to block the boycott and a short history on the assimilation of Jews in Germany provided by Francisco Gil-White's Historical and Investigative Research blog:
      link to hirhome.com

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 3:48 pm

      "You apparently do not know what the word “antisemitism” means. "

      Newclench, given the history of how this term originated and in which circumstances it was used, I'm always amazed how much it's being used by Jews themselves to describe what in plain language signifies "Jew-hater". At times I feel some actually get some thrill or other using that term to describe others they dislike. I find it insulting for Jews to be using it instead of the much more descriptive "Jew-hater".

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 3:35 pm with 91 replies

      "Phil, is there truth to what Jeff was trying to discuss, or do you believe his position to be patently false?"

      The same question keeps going through my mind about my 3 rejected posts that dealt with the 1933 Jewish worldwide call to boycott German goods. If such an event was false, I'd appreciate someone setting me straight about it.

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 3:28 pm

      Thanks for the answer, Annie.

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 3:18 pm with 10 replies

      jewishgoyim, Witty's highjacking happened only because others jumped on the opportunity to start stoning him. Witty simply dropped a stink bomb and the people that responded to it were the ones fueling the threadjacking. I think he actually added colour here, especially when James North gave us his English interpretations of Witty's posts. With most of the hasbarists gone, we're left all talking to each other about the things we already know.

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 2:56 pm

      "To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence of organised calls to Palestinian civilians, by Palestinian or other Arab leaders, in print or on radio, to leave their homes in order to make way for the victorious Arab forces. "

      Shmuel and Annie, I only used that as an example but it wasn't organized calls to evacuate. As Annie said, not many Americans know what the nakba is about, but preventing people like eee from talking about it is also taking away from me an opportunity to refute it and give someone that had never heard of it the opportunity of learning about it. The same argument should apply to the benefit of a Jew refuting someone's argument about the collusion of the Zionists with the Nazis and this argument has nothing to do with denying the holocaust. Speaking for myself, I believe the holocaust did happen but why can't I discuss the Zionist collusion as it concerns it?

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 12:03 pm

      Annie, why is it that someone can dictate what you can or cannot deny? If someone wants to deny something or other about the Nakba, he has a right to do so. There is so much misinformation and disinformation flying back and forth by both Palestinians and Jews about what happened, what appears as a denial to one person may be the gospel truth to another. If for example eee is adamant that all the Palestinians fled of their free will, is he to be condemned for it? I just read above from Shmuel that the story of Palestinians having left at the request of their leaders is a canard; I'm sure that some Palestinians did. Maybe not many, but some did, so does that make me a denier? This concern about Nakba denial is the same one that prevents honest discussions about Zionism and about the holocaust. Saying that such and such a subject is off-limits doesn't make sense.

    • Walid March 1, 2012 at 3:14 pm with 3 replies

      Sean, I've had 3 posts on the same subject refused here because the moderators didn't find them fit for this site and while my pride took a beating for it, I respected their decision. To have re-posted them on a parallel site would have been of little value since it was here and within the context of what was being discussed that they had a meaning.

    • Walid March 1, 2012 at 2:53 pm with 2 replies

      "Also Jeff sought to have a discussion of the Jewish historical role in the rise of the Nazis in Germany here. As we have made clear, this is not a subject we want any part of. It generally leads to anti-semitism and Holocaust denial, which we won't tolerate on the site, and unquestionably hurts our ability to reach out." (Phil)

      In the rise of Nazis, wasn't JB elaborating on the role of the Zionists in it much more than on that of the Jews in general and how does a discussion on a historical truth lead to antisemitism and holocaust denial when the actual discussion doesn't go anwhere these 2 issues?

  • Journalists Mike Murphy of NBC and Donna Brazile of CNN to speak at conference promoting Iran war
    • Walid March 1, 2012 at 3:37 pm

      Donna Brazile appears often as a guest on CNN but Idon't think she works there. She's a political strategist for the Democrats and what she says will reflect what these guys are thinking.

  • Barghouthi and Erakat can reach young Americans
    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 8:05 am

      Annie, Muslims don't believe that Christ was crucified. The Quran says the Christ was taken up to heaven without having been killed or crucified. Barghoutti goofed on that one and there's no excuse for it. We're always complaining how Jews keep milking the holocaust and here we have a Muslim using a Christian issue he is not supposed to believe in.

      BTW, I'm basing this on WJ's statement on what shown; I didn't see any of it either.

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 4:48 am

      "The “complications” of Zionism notwithstanding, the Zionist project was necessitated by a coming storm.” (WJ)

      How much of the coming storm was provoked by Zionism is open to discussion. The Zionist project for Palestine was on the drawing board decades before the Third Reich was even conceived. It began with Theodor Herzl in 1895 that wrote in his diary, "we shall endeavour to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed – the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly", followed by Nachman Syrkin in 1898 in his book. Israel Zangwill got into it in it in his 1904 but became much more open about it 25 years later. In 1910, Arthur Ruppin and Leo Motzkin campaigned actively for transfer with the American Edward Norman openly joining the collective effort to transfer the Palestinians in 1933. Rothschild had gotten on board about transfers in 1929.

      In 1934, Ben-Gurion picked up the torch and began talk about transferring Bedouins of the Galilee to Syria and to Jordan. In 1937 he wrote, “Is the proposal a voluntary one or a compulsory one? It is difficult for me to believe in a compulsory transfer, and it is difficult for me to believe in a transfer by agreement.” He noted in his diary that the proposal to transfer the Arabs out of the proposed Jewish State would give a bargaining counter. “If the Arabs agree to give us the Dead Sea and the Negev - it may be worth our while to forgo their compulsory transfer from the plains, as proposed by the Commission.” In November 1937, the Jewish Agency set up a Committee for Transfer of Arabs and during the course of the following seven months this Committee regularly met, and assembled information and statistical data, in order to work out a programme for the compulsory transfer of Arabs from Palestine.

      In 1938, Ben-Gurion shifted his attention to transferring Palestinians to Iraq.
      By the end of 1938, Chaim Weizmann got into the act. He put forward the suggestion for the transfer of Arabs from Palestine to Iraq. In November 1938, just a few days after Kristallnacht, Weizmann believed that the Jews would be prepared to raise between twenty to thirty million pounds for such a scheme and it could be used to either enable Iraq to settle 300,000 Jews or to transfer 100,000 Arabs from Palestine “whose land would then pass to Jewish immigrants.”

      By that time, the British started backing away from talk of transfer but were replaced by the Americans that promoted the planned transfers in US newspapers and even the Saudis are started wondering if this wouldn't be a good thing to transfer out the Palestinians. The Iraqis had just finished a major irrigation project and were badly in need of people and cash and were considering the Zionist proposal and by the time the partition was announced, the Palestinians were ripe for transfer from all the talk and public advertisement about their impending transfer.

      All this to say that the "coming storm" you mentioned about the complications of Zionism had nothing to do with the planned transfer of Palestinians and the Americans and Iraqis you discussed were in on those plans.

    • Walid March 2, 2012 at 2:29 am

      WJ, the farhud massacres were provoked by the British but this is never mentioned because it dilutes the Zionist persecution narrative. There are more stories on how the over 200,000 Arab Jews of Iraq were happy, safe and living in harmony with other Iraqis than the story of the few hundred Jews that were massacred as a result of a British decision that provoked it and let it take place when they could have stopped it.

      Iraqi Arab-Jew Violette Shamash's story of the farhud told by her daughter:
      link to memoriesofeden.com

      "... Farhud IN 1941, suddenly, the harmony that had characterised neighbourly relations between the Jews and the Muslim majority in Iraq for decades, if not generations, evaporated when Nazi sympathisers overthrew the government. The rise of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani was backed by a sinister cleric who was Britain's Most Wanted — the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had been wreaking havoc in Palestine with a campaign of terrorism against Jewish and British targets. It was a significant development no one in the community could ignore.

      Britain was on the back foot in World War II. It was losing to Germany in Greece and North Africa, suffering horrendous casualties in the Blitz and both men and material in U-boat attacks on shipping in the North Atlantic. Rashid Ali seized the moment to take sides with Berlin and deny the British the oil supplies that were vital to her war effort (the navy depended on them totally in the Mediterranean). He dispatched a force to threaten the RAF desert airbase at Habbaniya, west of Baghdad, and laid seige to the British Embassy in whose grounds some 300 terrified expatriates (among them the distinguished writer, Freya Stark) took shelter for a month. An air war raged, with cadet pilots bravely flying sortie after sortie in ancient biplanes against Iraqis in modern aircraft. It would later be hailed as the Second Battle of Britain, though their bravery has gone unrecognised.

      Furious, Churchill ordered an immediate invasion to effect regime change, even though it probably meant having to engage Hitler's forces in yet another theatre of war. Luckily, however, Berlin was slow to respond to Baghdad's calls for assistance. The RAF fought and won a brilliant battle that has been virtually forgotten by military historians, and the invading troops crossed 600 miles of desert with orders to enter and recapture Baghdad. After a historic march a forward column led by Brigadier Joe Kingstone arrived at the city gates — and halted.

      revealed: the truth behind the killings

      It was a stunning achievement against great odds. But three miles from their objective, their orders had unexpectedly changed. Although victory was theirs, for they had created a stranglehold on the city and the tyrant had fled, the triumph was deliberately muffled. Extraordinarily, one man, British Ambassador Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, had been granted the right of final decision over military as well as diplomatic matters — and the steps that he took meant no British soldier set foot in the city while the Jews were being killed in their hundreds over the two days of mayhem.

      The troops, led by the Household Cavalry, were obliged to camp on the right bank of the Tigris, well outside the city, while the left bank erupted in violence. Cornwallis — safe in his embassy on the right bank, facing the riot zone in the Old City across the river — refused pleas by his own senior staff to call them in, and they were powerless to act. Frustrated, they remained at ease in their bivouac beneath the palm trees. The senior commander, Major-General George Clark, entered the city as the ambassador's guest only once the rioting was over — quelled by Iraqi soldiers.

      The events of 1 and 2 June had apocalyptic implications for the descendants of Abraham: nothing short of the termination of 2,600 years of Jewish settlement in the land of Babylon. Yet strangely, the shameful role played by the British has never been properly investigated or explained and has forever remained an enigma, perplexing Iraqi Jews the world over.

      Now, in a final section of Memories of Eden, my husband (a former London Sunday Times journalist) exposes the truth behind the fateful events of 1941, shedding new light on the British stand and the diplomatic fiasco behind it."

      WJ, I don't believe BDS will achieve its objective but I still support it and wish it many successes because Israel deserves to be made uncomfortable. The South Africa boycott worked because the major countries supported it but these same countries are now bucking it and have enacted or are enacting laws against it. Arabs began the boycott of Jewish goods in Palestine as far back as 1920 but with little success. The only Arab country still seriously boycotting Israel is Lebanon while all the others are almost working against the boycott.

    • Walid February 29, 2012 at 11:35 pm with 12 replies

      WJ, the part about the crucified Jesus is definitely offensive and unessential; did the rest of the presentation make sense to you?

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