Read more here:DEBKAfile

Filed under "Linking for Thinking", so... what do you think?

Of course, these computer models probably aren't aware that all of the allegedly lost polar ice has now frozen back. Or maybe they didn't hear any of the latest research that continues to debunk the entire man-made global warming myth. Perhaps the computer just forgot to take into account that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently reports that polar bear populations are on the rise. There are currently between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears, which is up from the low of 5,000 to 10,000 in the 1950's and 1960's.

Now of course, we should expect the environmental lobby and the EPA to accept any computer model that furthers their agenda of man-made global warming. However, we should not accept the Bush administration recognizing the same kind of computer generated models without asking the hard questions and challenging the "facts" laid out by the environmental lobby. For this, the Bush administration should be ashamed. They have largely given the opponents of legitimate domestic energy production (i.e. Progressives and Democrats) another reason not to explore for any oil or natural gas in the entire state of Alaska. Can't you just hear Chuck Schumer arguing that drilling in Alaska will threaten the population of polar bears 45 years from now?

Maybe if conservatives and Republicans are lucky, domestic energy production will be at the forefront of the Presidential campaign this year. It's funny that the main people you hear railing against the U.S. purchasing oil from the Middle East are Democrats, yet Democrats are the main opponents of domestic energy production.

As reported by Gateway Pundit:

Which party blocked the development of new sources of petroleum?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling in ANWR?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off the coast of Florida?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off of the east coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off of the west coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked building oil refineries?-- Democrat
Which party blocked clean nuclear energy production?-- Democrat
Which party blocked clean coal production?-- Democrat

We are in very grave danger of being completely dependent on foreign oil because of the Democrats in Washington, and yet the general public blames the Republicans for America's dependence on foreign oil. Despite the fact that oil is at $127 a barrel, Democrats continue to demonize American oil companies and impede their ability to search for new oil reserves or tap the known reserves that would bring down the global price of oil.

But now, thanks to the pandering by the Bush administration and liberal "environmental friendly" Republicans like John McCain, we might very well see Alaska added to the "No Drilling" zone as well. And all because a computer owned by someone in the environmental lobby told us that there might be fewer polar bears in 2053. Unless this pandering by some on the right stops, the Republicans are heading for a monumental and embarrassing defeat in November.

Hezbollah Spy Prouty Gets $750 Fine, NO JAIL TIME; Same for Sis-in-Law, but $500 Fine Carter appointed judge no less

20th 9-11 hijacker has all charges DROPPED!

What's next? Will the Palestinian imam on trial in New Jersey for lying on his immigration application about being arrested and a member of Hamas, be allowed to stay in the U.S. and continue preaching jihadi hatred?

Descending into Madness in Iraq -- and Beyond

By Tom Engelhardt

The last war won't end, but in the Pentagon they're already arguing about the next one.

Let's start with that "last war" and see if we can get things straight. Just over five years ago, American troops entered Baghdad in battle mode, felling the Sunni-dominated government of dictator Saddam Hussein and declaring Iraq "liberated." In the wake of the city's fall, after widespread looting, the new American administrators dismantled the remains of Saddam's government in its hollowed out, trashed ministries; disassembled the Sunni-dominated Baathist Party which had ruled Iraq since the 1960s, sending its members home with news that there was no coming back; dismantled Saddam's 400,000 man army; and began to denationalize the economy. Soon, an insurgency of outraged Sunnis was raging against the American occupation was raging.

After initially resisting democratic elections, American occupation administrators finally gave in to the will of the leading Shiite clergyman, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and agreed to sponsor them. In January 2005, these brought religious parties representing a long-oppressed Shiite majority to power, parties which had largely been in exile in neighboring Shiite Iran for years.

Now, skip a few years, and U.S. troops have once again entered Baghdad in battle mode. This time, they've been moving into the vast Sadr City Shiite slum "suburb" of eastern Baghdad, which houses perhaps two-and-a-half million closely packed inhabitants. If free-standing, Sadr City would be the second largest city in Iraq after the capital. This time, the forces facing American troops haven't put down their weapons, packed up, and gone home. This time, no one is talking about "liberation," or "freedom," or "democracy." In fact, no one is talking about much of anything.

And no longer is the U.S. attacking Sunnis. In the wake of the President's 2007 surge, the U.S. military is now officially allied with 90,000 Sunnis of the so-called Awakening Movement, mainly former insurgents, many of them undoubtedly once linked to the Baathist government U.S. forces overthrew in 2003. Meanwhile, American troops are fighting the Shiite militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, a cleric who seems now to be living in Iran, but whose spokesman in Najaf recently bitterly denounced that country for "seeking to share with the U.S. in influence over Iraq." And they are fighting the Sadrist Mahdi Army militia in the name of an Iraqi government dominated by another Shiite militia, the Badr Corps of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose ties to Iran are even closer.

Ten thousand Badr Corps militia members were being inducted into the Iraqi army (just as the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was demanding that the Mahdi Army militia disarm). This week, an official delegation from that government, which only recently received Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with high honors in Baghdad, took off for Tehran at American bidding to present "evidence" that the Iranians are arming their Sadrist enemies.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

Today's front pages of every Israeli newspaper and all of our media, are screaming about Olmert's maybe going to have to step down because it looks like maybe he's going to be charged with criminal charges about stuff he did while mayor of Jerusalem.

Doing a daily editorial cartoon, however, means that I try to comment on the most important story.

So I was torn between the Olmert corruption story and Hezbollah's declaration of war on the Lebanese government, where the moves by the Iranian/Syrian axis now seem to be taking a dangerous turn.

So did I pick the significant topic to "cover" ?

What do you think?

Read More Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen

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WASHINGTON - While this week’s trip by President George W. Bush to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt was never conceived as a triumphant “victory lap” around the region, the swift rout of U.S.-backed forces by Lebanon’s Hezbollah Friday has provided yet another vivid illustration of the rapid decline in Washington’s influence in the Middle East during his tenure.

The events in Lebanon will no doubt cast a long shadow over Bush’s tour, which begins Tuesday. After all, it was only three years ago that he hailed the “Cedar Revolution” there as vindication of the kind of democratic transformation of the region that he insisted the invasion of Iraq was designed to launch.

Three years and a brief war between Israel and Hezbollah later, the Iranian- and Syrian-backed group appears more powerful and entrenched than ever, just as its Sunni Islamist ally in the Palestinian Territories (PT), Hamas, remains solidly in control of Gaza and grows in popularity in the West Bank in major part due to the apparent lack of progress in peace talks — formally initiated by Bush himself at Annapolis last November — between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government.

“The politics on the ground are absolutely miserable,” Jon Alterman, a Middle East specialist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here, told the New York Times Sunday. “It’s hard to remember a less auspicious time to pursue Arab-Israeli peacemaking than right now. U.S. power and influence are at low ebb in the region,” he added.

Bush will travel to Israel Tuesday to help it celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding and then fly on to Saudi Arabia, presumably to appeal — as he did in January when he last traveled to the region — for a major increase in oil production to bring some relief to U.S. (and Republican candidates), and then to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where he will address the World Economic Forum and meet with a collection of Sunni Arab leaders, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah.

Apart from Israel, to which Bush has been by far the most indulgent president in the Jewish state’s history, he is likely to get his warmest — if most anxious — reception when he meets with the assembled Sunni leaders, many of whom are as concerned about Shi’a Hezbollah’s show of force as is Israel.

Like Bush himself, not to mention Israel, they see Hezbollah’s victory as another in a series of advances by Iran in its effort to shift the balance of power in the Gulf and the wider region against Washington and its allies there. It is an impression that Bush, somewhat ironically, will be eager to reinforce, if only to revive the dying embers of his hopes for a de facto U.S.-Sunni Arab-Israeli coalition against Tehran, even without a viable Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

“To me, it’s the single biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, the Iranian regime,” he told an interviewer from Israel’s TV Channel 10, according to a partial transcript released Monday. “Their funding of Hezbollah — look what’s happening in Lebanon now, a young democracy trying to survive… (I)t’s in Israel interest that the Lebanese democracy survives. You need to be concerned about Iran, and you are concerned about Iran and so are we.”

Indeed, five years after the White House declared “Mission Accomplished” on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, virtually all analysts here agree that almost everything Bush has done in the region — from invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein and then rejecting an Iranian offer to negotiate a settlement on all outstanding issues; to pressing for the total isolation of Hamas after it won (U.S.-backed) democratic elections in the Palestinian Territories (PT) and egging on the Israelis in their attack on Lebanon and Hezbollah in 2006 — has undermined U.S. standing and influence, even as it enhanced Tehran’s.

Even in Iraq, recent U.S. attacks on Muqtada al Sadr’s “Mahdi Army”, particularly in Baghdad’s Sadr City, appear to have bolstered the government factions with the closest and most-longstanding ties to Iran — the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its Badr Organisation, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Da’wa party.

The fact that Tehran itself played a key role in brokering the truces between Sadr and the government in both Basra last month and in Sadr City last weekend underlines the degree to which Iran is effectively challenging Washington in what neo-conservative hawk Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) admits “is the only arena (in the region) where the administration is capable of moving effectively against Tehran.”

And while there is little evidence that Washington played any role in pushing the Lebanese cabinet to order the dismantling of Hezbollah’s communications network at Beirut’s airport — the act that provoked Friday’s offensive — its staunch support for the “March 14″ Coalition; its deployment of a U.S. naval destroyer off Lebanon’s coast as the political crisis in Beirut intensified in March; its supply of some 400 million dollars in military aid and training to the Lebanese army and security forces (which stayed out of the fighting); and its covert backing (with Saudi Arabia and Jordan) of Sunni militias, in some cases disguised as private-security firms, intended to counter Hezbollah no doubt contributed to a grave miscalculation by the government.

“These Sunni militiamen proved a complete failure, and America’s proxies in Lebanon barely put up a fight despite their strident anti-Shiite rhetoric,” noted Nir Rosen, a regional expert at the New America Foundation who described Hezbollah’s offensive as “the death throes of the Bush plan for the ‘New Middle East’.”

“Now it is clear that Beirut is firmly in the hands of Hezbollah, and nothing the Americans can do will dislodge or weaken this popular movement, just as they cannot weaken the Sadrists in Iraq or Hamas in Gaza,” he said.

Still, some observers believe Hezbollah’s victory may yet serve the administration’s ends, if only by reminding the Sunni leaders with whom Bush meets later in the week that, in Gerecht’s words again, “Tehran is on a roll”, and they need the U.S. and even Israel to contain it and roll back its influence.

Indeed, some analysts believe the weekend’s events may add to the gradually growing clamour by hawks in and outside the administration to take military action — if only, for now, limited strikes on weapons factories and training sites inside Iran allegedly used by the Revolutionary Guard to train “terrorists” in Iraq, Lebanon, and the PT — to “put Iran in its place”.

“The next couple of days may be critical,” said one former senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer with expertise on the region, who added that any decision to “strike will actually motivated by an irresistible urge, stemming from pure frustration over continuing American impotence throughout the region, just to ‘do something’…even though the actual positive gain in this case would be minimal, while the downside risks are enormous.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy, and particularly the neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

I have just been watching George Bush's address to the Israeli Presidential Conference Facing Tomorrow 2008, having heard snatches of it on the radio overnight. There was little substance in what he said, and I listened to it right through three times.

More substantial is A Somber Anniversary by Avi Shlaim.

Israelis approach the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of their state in a subdued and somber mood. Israeli society is deeply divided, and there is no consensus on how to mark the milestone. On the one hand, Israel can boast some stunning successes: a democratic polity with universal suffrage; a highly developed, some might say overdeveloped, multiparty system; an independent judiciary; a vibrant cultural scene; progressive educational and health services; a high standard of living; and a per capita GDP almost the size of Britain's.

The ingathering of the exiles has worked. Israel's population has reached 7,241,000, nearly ten times what it was in 1948. Forty-one percent of the world's Jews live in the Jewish state, speaking the Hebrew language that was confined to liturgy when Zionism was born at the end of the nineteenth century. In its central aim of providing the scattered Jews with a haven, instilling in them a sense of nationhood and forging a modern nation-state, Zionism has been a brilliant success. And these achievements are all the more remarkable against the background of appalling tragedy: the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World War II...

The moral case for the establishment of an independent Jewish state was strong, especially in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The case for a Jewish state was also bolstered by the international norm of self-determination for national groups. Based on this norm, the UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947, provided a charter of international legitimacy for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. However, there is no denying that the establishment of the State of Israel involved a massive injustice to the Palestinians. Sixty years on, Israel still has not arrived at a reckoning of its sins against the Palestinians, a recognition that it owes the Palestinians a debt that must at some point be repaid.

The conflict with the Palestinians, and with the Arab world at large, has cast a very long shadow over Israel's life. For the first forty-five years of the state's existence, Israel's leaders were unwilling to discuss the right of the Palestinians to national self-determination. In 1969 Prime Minister Golda Meir adopted an extreme position--hardly an uncommon one at the time--in denying that a Palestinian people existed at all. But the dilemma had been there all along, and the early Zionists were well aware of it, even if they seldom talked about it. The dilemma, in a nutshell, was that the Jewish aspiration to sovereignty in Palestine could not be reconciled with the Palestinian people's natural right to sovereignty over the same country. This was the "hidden question" that Zionist teacher Yitzhak Epstein addressed in an article in 1907. It was not long before the hidden question was transformed into an open and deeply contentious issue...

During the past forty-one years Israel has tried every conceivable method of ending the conflict with the Palestinians except the obvious one: ending the occupation. The occupation has to end, not simply because the Palestinians deserve no less but in order to preserve the values for which the State of Israel was created. In any case, whether Israelis like it or not, an independent Palestinian state is inevitable in the long run--when the game is no longer worth the candle. The moral, political and psychological cost of the occupation cannot be sustained indefinitely. Just as Israel withdrew under duress from southern Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005, so, eventually, will it be compelled to relinquish all but a tiny fraction of the West Bank.

To its credit, the Israeli public has never been as implacably opposed to an independent Palestinian state as the politicians of the right. The question now is whether Israel will give the Palestinians a chance to build that state or strive endlessly to frustrate it. That is the real test of statesmanship as Israel enters its seventh decade. At the time of writing there is precious little evidence to suggest that Israel's leaders are willing to rise to the challenge. They appear united in their determination to preserve Israel's military and economic control over the West Bank. Yet there is some ground for optimism. The Palestinians learned from their own mistakes: they put rejectionism behind them, moderated their program and opted for a two-state solution. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Israelis will one day learn from their mistakes and elect leaders who recognize the need for a genuine two-state solution. Nations, like individuals, are capable of acting rationally--after they have exhausted all the alternatives.

See also Israeli History at 60 by Carlin Romano.

...Conventional Israeli history held that Palestinians fled their homes in 1948 because their leaders ordered them to do so, confident they'd return once the five Arab countries that attacked Israel on its first day crushed the new state. But in that book, Morris attributed the flight of the Palestinians — called al-naqba, or "the catastrophe," by Arabs — to a mixture of causes. Some fled under direct attack. Some left in panic because they feared an attack. And some followed orders from Palestinian authorities. Morris also shook up standard Israeli history by declaring that Israelis, and not only Palestinians, committed massacres. (In a 2004 revised edition, he maintained those general views.)

In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Morris resisted the allegation that Jewish leaders before 1948 approved an official policy of "transfer," or expulsion, that prompted the flight of more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, some 60 percent of Palestine's pre-war population. In a much-cited line, Morris stated that "the Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab." Morris also stressed that Palestinian flight ultimately resulted from the war launched in 1947 by Palestinians themselves, followed on May 15, 1948, by the attack on Israel by Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan. But few paid attention to that observation.

Israelis on the right denounced Morris as an "Israel hater," while Palestinians thought he didn't go far enough. The Palestinian anthropologist Sharif Kanaana, of Birzeit University, wrote that Morris's view was "more dangerous than the previous line of Israeli propaganda" because it was "more sophisticated."...

In a 2002 piece in The Guardian, Morris admitted that his thinking about whether Palestinians want peace had "radically changed" as a result of the second intifada. While most Israelis no longer seek a "Greater Israel," he wrote, Palestinians cling to their dream of a "Greater Palestine" that requires Israel's elimination. Those views seem to have made him less critical, at least in interviews, of Israeli behavior in 1948...

Even before his political views began to evolve, Morris found himself catching fire from both right and left. From the right, Efraim Karsh, a professor of Mediterranean studies at King's College London and author of Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians" (1997), claimed that Morris "systematically falsifies evidence" in his work. Morris initially dismissed Karsh's attacks as "a melange of distortions, half-truths, and plain lies," but defended himself with greater specificity down the line.

From the left, the younger new historian Ilan Pappé, author most recently of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), engaged him in vituperative exchanges. Reviewing Pappé's A History of Modern Palestine (2004) for The New Republic, Morris recalled that they'd once walked together "in uneasy companionship." He then charged that Pappé's "appalling book" included "errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography." The reason was that Pappé "consciously wrote history with an eye to serving political ends," intent on "blackening the Zionists and whitening the Palestinians."

The contretemps illustrates the treacherous landscape in which both men work...

In 1948, by contrast, Morris broadens the context in which the war should be judged, both psychologically and geographically. Ben-Gurion, he writes, "failed fully to appreciate the depth of the Arabs' abhorrence of the Zionist-Jewish presence in Palestine … an abhorrence anchored in centuries of Islamic Judeophobia with deep religious and historical roots. The Jewish rejection of the Prophet Muhammad is embedded in the Qur'an and is etched in the psyche of those brought up on its suras." Morris contends that the "1948 war, from the Arabs' perspective, was a war of religion as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory."

That doesn't reduce Morris's admirable willingness to state facts as he sees them and apportion blame to both sides. "In truth," he writes of the 1948 war, "the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and POW's in deliberate acts of brutality." On the other hand, "Zionist expulsionist thinking" was "at least in part a response to expulsionist, or murderous, thinking and behavior by Arabs and European Christians."...

In his thoughtful, just-published A History of Histories, John Burrows, a professor of European thought at the University of Oxford, praises the community spirit among Clio's devotees, first expressed by Polybius, who believed "that if he died before he completed his history, another historian would carry the subject on."

Doubtless some peer would do the same for a departed Israeli historian. It's equally clear that others would cheer the fact that the biased, manipulative so-and-so was gone. The past, historians say, is another country. Israeli history is another galaxy.

Romano teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania.

See also Israel and the Palestinian territories (The Guardian UK.)

Einstein's paradoxes

Albert Einstein famously rejected the offer of the presidency of Israel. About Einstein this writer, not Israel-friendly admittedly, was however right enough in 2003: 

Einstein is one of my favorite twentieth-century characters. He was remarkable, and I don't mean only for his profound contributions to our understanding of the physical world. He was someone who drove authoritarians like J. Edgar Hoover mad. He was one of those rare souls, like George Orwell, who despite mistakes and flaws, consciously worked to direct his actions, and redirect them after missteps, by principles of decency, humanity, and rational thought. He never subscribed to menacing slogans like "My country, right or wrong" or "You're either with us or against us." Quite the opposite, he knew any country was capable of being wrong at times and did not deserve blind allegiance when it was.

Einstein's was one of the most important names lent to the cause of Zionism. His name and visits and letters raised a great deal of money towards establishing universities and resettling European Jews suffering under violent anti-Semitism long before the founding of Israel.

But even in a cause so dear to his heart, Einstein never stopped thinking for himself. He not only opposed the establishment of a formal Israeli state--he was after all a great internationalist--but he always advocated treating the Arabic people of Palestine with generosity and understanding...

Einstein's position on religion has been claimed in support by both theists and their adversaries. Just what that position was has emerged recently in that letter recently publicised in The Guardian: Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear. (I have seen worse puns in a headline!)

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel's second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God's favoured people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."...

In his later years he referred to a "cosmic religious feeling" that permeated and sustained his scientific work. In 1954, a year before his death, he spoke of wishing to "experience the universe as a single cosmic whole". He was also fond of using religious flourishes, in 1926 declaring that "He [God] does not throw dice" when referring to randomness thrown up by quantum theory.

His position on God has been widely misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheism/religion divide but he always resisted easy stereotyping on the subject.

"Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him," said Brooke. "It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions ... but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion."

Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

There is a follow-up by Andrew Brown in Comment is Free.

...Einstein did flay in this letter almost everything that Gutkind believed in. The claim that Jews were special seemed to him absurd; the civilised interpretation of the Bible, an artificial distortion of the text; even the claim the humans have free will had been exposed by Spinoza. But he didn't regard these theological views as fundamental. He didn't really think they interfered with the "striving to make life beautiful and noble," and he meant those words. And it seems to me that if he really believed that a devout Jew - or any kind of devout believer - really shared his striving to make life beautiful and noble, he had not merely rid himself of religious belief. He had rid himself of belief in atheism too. This is a lack of faith really worth having.

I really do think I understand what Brown is saying there, and believe (?) it is probably a very fair account of Einstein's position. Paradoxical, in short. But conservative or orthodox people of the Abrahamic faiths have too rarely tolerated paradox and uncertainty, and the same may be said of many atheists. The comments on Brown's article provide plenty of examples.

Last time that happened Israel went into Gaza and 120 people died, something like that. Gazans stayed clear of their windows for fear of snipers. I think last time three rockets (or mortars) hit Ashqelon, and there was some death.
This time only injuries were reported. The reports give some indication of what happened, but do not necessarily reflect the truth. It was said two seriously hurt. This is a well defined medical category.
If there was death, there would also be every reason to conceal it. Either so as not to embolden the enemy. Nor to panic one's own population. Similarly a less than serious injury, could actually mean temporary shock. And such distortions of the truth would be common military practice anywhere in the world.
Why was the fire activated now, with the full knowledge that this is a red line for Israel? Hamas has been saying it will use force up until the last minute, until a hudna (a ceasefire) is agreed.
Bush is in Israel now, and not for nothing, and not for three days to celebrate Israel's anniversary.
So clearly actions speak louder than words. And Hamas wasn't happy with what was offered. It would seem to be a very organised organisation. Maybe the orders came from Damascus?
The Israelis have been threatening to invade Gaza for months. It really is not something they want to do, or they would have done it already. Also when they have been making incursions, they have been meeting some fierce resistance, but we never hear about it.
There is something ludicrous about the Israelis launching an offensive while Bush is there. It is just no longer the way things are done. Leaders are always well away from where the trouble is. And of course it wuld ruin all the plans for a public show of a peace agreement.
In proxy wars, and maybe in all our modern wars it is the innocents who suffer the most. And the unfolding events confirm that. Tonight an Israeli air raid killed two Palestinians.
So we can expect the sides to continue trying to kill each other until there is an agreement. Which I think some would like to be signed in Sharm in about four days before Bush goes back. This also seems like Hamas is setting the agenda at this moment.
As for Bush himself, it would take a big stretch of the imagination to think he has a preference for particular details in the agreement. However there are a lot of people who do, Israelis and their Western backers. These backers have been getting publicity in the Olmert scandal case as people funding his election and the settlers in the west bank. And there are Israelis asking why financiers who reside in the US are having so much power over their lives.
The graph since 2003 until now, of timing and tactics has consistently favoured the other side.
Choose your words for the other side: Arabs, Muslims, Terrorists, Insurgents, Resistance, Axis of Evil, indigenous, the peoples will, the oppressed, the democratically elected.
A little truth could go a long way.

It is difficult to understand why PM Olmert continues his no-Palestinian compliance implementation of the Road Map to peace, but Prof. Paul Eidelberg, President of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, gives us a clue. Prof. Eidelberg says multiculturalists liberals like PM Olmert have developed what he defines as demophrenia, which is a schizophrenic-like blindness to reality.² The reality is ordinary Palestinians democratically elected Hamas to represent them. They want Hamas to maintain Islamic law and the pre-1948 anti-Zion position. The bombs exploding in Israel’s cities is glaring evidence that the Palestinians and their leaders have no real intentions of honoring the Road Map or any other treaty.

When Ben Gurion and other Israeli leaders signed the Declaration of Independence on May 4, 1948, they created a Jewish state in which principles of Torah and democracy would guide the nation. This was outlined in my previous article on the subject. At the same time, they agreed to the two-state plan outlined by U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 for the ancient land. Israeli Jews complied with their part of the United Nations agreements, the surrounding Arabs Nations did not. Instead, they launched a multi-pronged military attack to eliminate the rising Zionist state from the Arab nation.

The continued use of the term Arab nation by Hamas and many other Islamic peoples is instructive. It depicts the vision of a single Islamic empire in the Middle East. This imperial vision rooted in Qu’ranic and Ottoman history is still being frustrated both by western imperial rule and the continued existence of the Jewish state. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was the dominating rule of the more powerful pax Britannia. Since then, it has been pax Americana that has hindered Islamic imperial aspirations.

The war of Israel’s independence was won not by any imperial military power but by the divinely blessed determination of the Jewish people. The odds of a relatively small nation of people defeating the armies of multiple Islamic nations was small. This fait accompli is reminiscent of the biblical battles won by the ancient nation of Jews. When Israel was fulfilling God’s will, they won every time.

What the Arab nations failed to accomplish in 1948, the creation of the PLO was meant to achieve. The PLO initiated the 6-Day War that resulted in the liberation of Jerusalem and other parts of the ancient land. The liberation of the land was not a goal sought after by the Israel’s government. It was simply taken in defense of the nation’s collective existence. Yet, the Palestinians fighters did expose those areas of geographic vulnerability that today still require Israel’s possession for Israel’s national security.

It is true the Jews agreed to two states in the ancient land. They agreed to do so for peaceful coexistence, but peace only exists with two cooperating parties. Since the establishment of the Jewish state, they have had to fight against an intractable but defeated aggressor who only recently claims willingness to play by the rules. Few nations on earth, if any, exist because they gave back lands they were forced by war to take in order to survive. Yet, United States and other world leaders demand Israel do what they never would or could.

During Independence Day celebrations, citizens of the Jewish state of Israel will remember 60 years of continuous hostilities with a people always desirous to eliminate their Jewish national existence. After such a long time, one would think that the Jewish people and their leaders would see the two-state solution as an impossible goal. Before the unilateral disengagement from Gaza, surveys revealed that the majority of people were against land for peace deal with Syria but they favored the unilateral disengagement plan for Gaza.³ Then as now, the primary concern was the end of violence against Jews in Gaza. Since then, polls show that the majority no longer favor further withdraws.⁴ Yet, a slight majority still favor the two-state solution.⁵ Maybe demophrenia affects too many citizens as well, but not every one is blind to the reality that the so-called occupation exists on useless paper and in the minds of those whose dream of a renewed Islamic imperialism.

The Palestinian Authority (PLO) has never complied with international agreements including the stipulation to end all terrorist attacks. In a recent press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called on Hamas leaders to end their coup to hold new elections for governance of the whole of Gaza and the West Bank. Columnist David Singer rightly interprets Abbas’ statement as a rejection of the Road Map’s requirement to dismantle all terrorist organization and aggression against Israel.⁶. Recent bombing of Ashkelon reveals the resistance to Israel’s existence has yet to subside. Abbas told the Jordanian daily al-Dustor that he not only was opposed to calling Israel a Jewish state but also requiring Hamas to acknowledge its right to exist. He only required it of the unity government. More importantly, he said, “At this time, I object to the armed struggle, since we are unable to conduct it; however, in future stages things may change..." ⁷.

The distrust voiced by citizens of the Jewish state towards both the Palestinians and their leaders is well founded. Originally, Likud party leader Ariel Sharon was elected as Prime Minister because he was presumably opposed Oslo. He and his replacement Ehud Olmert betrayed the party and the settlers they had help to establish to implement Labor’s disengagement plan by forming Kadima.⁸ Their betrayal lead to thousands of traumatized homeless citizens and to the escalation of violence and war by Islamic terrorist. If PM Olmert has his way, thousands of more citizens living in Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem will be made homeless as well.

It is hoped that during Israel’s 60th year of statehood, citizens of Zion will achieve their freedom from the deceptions of failed political peace plans and the terrible affects it has had on the many of them. Making politicians directly accountable to voters through Constitutional reform is one step towards ending corruption in government and blatant disregard of the constituent trust exemplified by leaders like Sharon, Olmert, and others leaders. In a recent commentary, Prof. Eidelberg wrote:

If Israel is to survive, the institutions of the State will have to be radically overhauled. We shall need a constitution designed to maximize accountability, a precondition of the rule of law as opposed to the arbitrary rule of fools and scoundrels. We must make the Legislative and Executive and Judicial branches of government accountable to the People. As for the People, they must revitalize the Torah, the covenant of their forefathers, who knew they were accountable to God.⁹

Prof. Eidelberg explains how this can occur in a 2002 paper titled Israel’s Problem, and Getting Back to a National Camp.

… members of the Legislature must be INDIVIDUALLY elected and accountable to the voters. This means we must eliminate fixed party lists and establish regional elections. Fixed party lists enables party leaders in the cabinet of the Executive branch to dominate the Legislature and to ignore Jewish public opinion BETWEEN elections. You cannot be a true Jewish nationalist if you tolerate a political system that enables nationally elected officials to compromise the PERMANENT interests and territorial assets of the Jewish people. Hence Israel needs a political system that broadens the political horizons of legislators by inducing them to represent diverse groups and opinions, which can only be accomplished by regional elections the practice of every democracy. Regional elections will increase the power of Jewish voters, decrease the power of parties, make the Legislature more independent of the Executive, and thereby establish, for the first time in Israel’s history, a system of checks and balances essential to good government.

However, you cannot have a Jewish democracy so long as the Supreme Court not only determines its own membership, but also champions the indiscriminate equality and normless freedom of secular democracy at the expense of Jewish principles and values. Therefore, judges should be nominated by the President and confirmed by the democratically elected Legislature, and they should not have the power to nullify laws enacted by the representatives of the people.

To promote a public philosophy and national unity, as well as balanced government and the rule of law, a concise constitution is essential, one clearly and proudly based on Jewish principles and values.¹⁰

If you would like to help make the needed Constitutional changes, read and sign the Petition for Constitutional Change.

_______________________________

NOTES:

1. Daily Israel Report, 12 May 2008.

2. "Does Olmert Have a Mental Disorder?," The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, 13 May 2008.

3. Aaron Lerner, "3 Disengagement Polls," IMRA, 16 April 2004

4. "Poll: Israelis opposed to further withdrawals," The Jerusalem Post, 19 March 2008; Dr. Aaron Lerner, "Poll: 20% Support evacuation of all communities if Palestinians fulfill all obligations in final deal," IMRA, 23 November 2007.

5. "Peace Index Poll: Israeli Jews: 47%:40% peace process" historic mistake, 23% favor Green Line as future border," IMRA, 10 April 2008.

6. "Abbas Tears Up The Road Map," Canadian Free Press, 7 May 2008.

7. "Abbas in Briefing to Jordanian Daily Al-Dustour: I Am Against the Armed Struggle – But In Future Stages Things May Change," Special Dispatch Series No. 1861, MEMRI, 6 March 2008.

8. Yehud Poch, "Complete Betrayal," Israel Insider, 21 November 2005; Rick Kelly, "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the putrefaction of official Israeli politics," WSWS, 8 June 2006; Carl in Jerusalem, "Olmert announces he will divide Jerusalem," Israel Matsav, 1 January 2008.

9. "No Accountability in Israel: On a sham democracy," The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, 5 February 2008.

10. The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, 5 February 2002.

President Bush warned in an interview Tuesday that the Democratic presidential candidates' plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States" and would "embolden" terrorists.

In a White House interview with Politico and Yahoo News - a president's first for an online audience - Bush said his doomsday scenario for a premature withdrawal "of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

Mr. Bush is still pitching his FEAR and DANGER rhetoric as if its pertains to something yet to come. America, and the world should feel comfortable while the Bush team is at the helm? The FEAR and DANGER are HERE and NOW.

The Bush team made Iraq worse for everyone but the terrorists. The terrorists must have enjoyed those years of no Iraqi government. They had the "run of the streets" to themselves. They could recruit, train and do human target practice without fear of "law and order". There was none.

The streets of Baghdad were, and to some extent still are unsafe. Hugely unsafe. And the ones who brought CHAOS to Iraq wants the world to listen to their future - predicting WISDOM? .Maybe the world should listen - politely - and then discard it.

The WISDOM(foresight) would have been right-at-home in 2003. But the Bush team neocons have not demonstrated they have mastered the manager's tasks of "managing resources" and "predicting outcomes".

The Bush team's "WISDOM" is more than a "day late" and more than a "dollar short". Where is the Bush team's completed task that displays professionally "predicted outcomes"? "Stay the course" does not qualify because that could be considered a gamble that the laws of chance would give the "managers" a win "sooner or later".

It is begining to look like the world is being told: "Do it my way, or the SKY will fall". Is that predicting outcomes? Will America be damaged by terrorist again? Nobody knows. But the Bush team has challenged terrorists to "BRING IT ON" and that idea is likely still incubating in the minds of some terrorists.

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Technorati : , baghdad, bush, iraq, middle east, rhetoric, streets, terrorist, troops

President Bush warned in an interview Tuesday that the Democratic presidential candidates' plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States" and would "embolden" terrorists.

In a White House interview with Politico and Yahoo News — a president's first for an online audience — Bush said his doomsday scenario for a premature withdrawal “of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

"The United States pulling out of Iraq or pulling out of the Middle East or not maintaining a forward presence would send all kinds of signals throughout the Middle East," he said in the Roosevelt Room. "And it would shake everybody's nerves, and it would embolden the very same people that we're trying to defeat.

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.

Read the rest:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10314.html

Strangely, half the people at the party were economics students. I quit my job, packed up my life and went to the opposite side of the world... and yet economics continues to stalk me.

I like house parties. But as I walked around, talked crap, listened and played guitar and drank & smoke too much, it all felt vaguely familiar. I know this lifestyle. I've been here before. Ah, yes. I remember now. My university days! Chapter 3.

On Sunday I had gone walking around town -- tower of david, armenian quarter and the ultra-orthodox (and quite strange) Mea She'arim district. On Monday I went walking again -- through the russian compound, mamilla shopping area and the new city, and then later at night independence park. And on Tuesday I went walking again -- through the city into arab east jerusalem, where I caught a bus to Bethlehem (in the west bank), and then walked around Bethlehem.

Behtlehem is a pretty and interesting city, with more to see & do compared with Jericho. The narrow windy streets are full of local traders who don't expect to see solo travellers. And the town is full of old churches, including the Church of the Nativity, where Jesus was born. The one building actually includes three churches -- Greek orthodox, Armenian & Catholic.

I spent a while looking around and trying to meditate on whether Jesus was worthy of praise. I'm still not sure. I had thought I could include Jesus in my pantheon as the "god of compassion and tolerance" because he did have a few nice ideas along those lines. But somebody pointed out to me that he was also a bit of a fanatic (smashing shops near holy sites), and it also occured to me that Jesus believed in Yahweh (who I don't like) and perhaps others might be better role models. Perhaps the buddha?

After a solid week of partying, I am finally taking a night off. I'm still not sure of my plan. I just finished reading "Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse (journey of self-discovery) and want to read "Survivor" by Chuck Palahniuk (author of "fight club"). I also would like to see the dome of the rock... and undoubtably there will be some new parties to distract me. But at some stage I really should get my act together and escape Jerusalem. The question is when?

Warning

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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

linktv

For more: http://linktv.org/originalseries
"Lebanon Calm Before the Storm," Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
"Lebanese Army Warns Against Display of Arms," Dubai TV, UAE
"Future TV Resumes Broadcast," Al Arabiya TV, UAE
"Hariri's Press Conference," Al Arabiya TV, UAE
"Saudi & Iranian Reactions to Lebanese Conflict," Al Jazeera English, Qatar
"Israel Beefs Up Security Ahead of Bush's Visit," IBA TV, Israel
"Sudan Blames Chad for Unrest," Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
"Bronze Age Temple Discovered in Syria," Syria TV, Syria
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1202993&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26] from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

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I recently came across a discussion by an American muslimah living in the US lamenting her "homesickness" for an Arab country she visited. Another Muslimah from that country questioned whether "homesickness" was the correct word/concept. This is just one particular thread but I have read many similar ones over the last year that express similar ideas. Many times Western Muslims glamorize the Arab world as a place where "real" Islam is practiced and often confuse Arab culture with Islamic mandates. I've written about this before with regard to converts taking Arab names, wearing Arab clothes and eating only Arab foods. I thought it might be interesting to share my perspective on the issue of Arabophilia.

I have lived in Qatar for 9 years now. I loved it when I first came here -- actually LIVING and WORKING here, rather than traveling, visiting or sightseeing. When I went home after 10 months here I did find myself anxious to return here but can't really say I was "homesick". Sure I was fascinated with "the other" and found a fair degree of "exoticism" in living and traveling in the Middle East but in time I did actually find myself more and more at home here. Now, I can say I truly get "homesick" if I am away for a while but that is because I actually maintain my home here and do not maintain a home in any other country.

Most of the women I notice succumbing to the Romantic notion of "the Other" are young women who have converted and married Arabs, subsequently suffering rejection from their families. Sometimes the family doesn't adapt well to the outward changes in their daughter (e.g., perhaps she has started covering her hair or face); they may feel estranged with the new son-in-law's culture or they may be puzzled and hurt by their daughter's rejection of the religious values they raised her with. It can even be as simple as non-religious parents not understanding how they now cannot have a glass of wine at Thanksgiving in the presence of their daughter. Regardless of the triggers, a parent whose child makes this major life altering decision is definitely going to need time to adjust to the changes. When the daughter is young (teens or twenties) it's only natural that the parent might assume that rebellion is the driving force behind these changes.

But sisters, just give it some time and be patient. Let them see you are the same daughter they have loved and raised. Make sure they know that as a Muslim you will still be devoted to them as your parents. And for God's sake, don't make them associate your becoming a Muslim with a rejection of everything they value and hold dear. Or at least, don't rub it in their faces! LOL!

The United States will always be my home, even if I never return to live there. There are many things I don't like (maybe even hate) about the US but wisdom and maturity has taught me that you can't run away from home and really negate who you are. At most you will be an ex-pat in Arabia like me, comfortable and happy. But like me you will never be an Arab, so the sooner you get comfortable with WHO you are the more you will feel connected to WHERE you are.

we tried scouring the hypermarkets and stores but no sign of the elusive bugguong. not even those fabled vietnamese nước mắm or fermented fish sauce or paste. what's readily available are those patis, fish sauce, from the philippines and some imported from thailand. and of course those bottled pseudo-bugguongs called bagoong alamang or shrimp paste which are not even the freshest you can get but already sauteed and putrefying in additives.

and you'll wonder why don't some enterprising pinoys try to legally export quantities of export-quality halal bugguong (monamon or tirong) in the middle east? so that you'll not content yourself "smuggling" in a plane a pity jarful of it wrapped and sealed like a stinking mummy and surreptitiously concealed in your luggage.  i've read somewhere in a certain magazine before that somebody has invented a way to solidify bugguong into cooking cubes ala-knorr and maggi broth cubes. i wish this method is popularized and commercialized so you can freely fill in a bagful of bugguong cubes in your hand carry suitcase and cradle it in your lap as if it's your precious child, without fear that its heavenly fragrance may irritate some infidel nostrils, or may threaten to emit a smell as sinister as a malodorous biological weapon of mass destruction.

but enough of those silly protestations. be sensible. those cravings are just a normal condiment of the exilic life, the ofw life. of missing something, terribly missing something treasured and precious to palate. and to your heart. but let alone missing terribly someone, some ones, loved ones. bear with your foolish gastronomic cravings and try and learn to live without a goddamn foul-smelling bugguong!

but why not remedy this silly need? fortunately, sohar, the city where my wife is residing, is a coastal area (in fact, almost all oman cities and towns lies along the coast) facing the gulf of oman. and there are some fishing communities here, with lots of omanis fishing for a living (mind you, even a "small time" omani fisherman is a "big time" compared with say, most pinoy fishers. their fishing gears and vessels are too modern or "high tech" compared to what our ordinary fishermen are using. omani fishing boats are those stylish big and speedy ones with expensive outboard motors similar to vessels used by wealthy sportsmen who gamefish for sheer fun). there are fish ports in sohar where you can buy the freshest catch for a pittance (although, prized fish like yellowfin tuna and king fish are still priced, expensive, costing an omani rial or two a kilo). there are bountiful catch of anchovy, mackerel, sardine, herring, ponyfish, scad fish, squid, cuttle fish and even baby sharks and other smaller fish so fresh some are still wiggling and wriggling. yes, monamon, bilis, sapsap and other small fishes which are fodders for the kumikilaw or mangngilaw monster in you. and yes, the bugguong man in you, why not? eureka! with lots of monamons and bilis and abundant salt around, you can make your own d.i.y. (do-it-yourself) bugguong!

so, there. we bought some kilos of the freshest bilis or herrings (monamons were not available that one thursday day when we went out "fishing") and we stuffed some in a plastic garapon, jar, with ample amount of rock salt, with hopes that in a week or two, we can satisfy our earthly urges with a promising bugguong. a gracious bugguong no matter what the outcome will be it would still be the same luxurious bugguong.

and look, the blessed fermenting fish in its lovely concoction of pure and simple bugguong juice, the sacred juice of ilokanistic life and lives, the divine liquid of ambrosial proportions! what a blessing, what a bliss, indeed!

An eight year old girl blew up after she was used as a suicide bomber by Al-Qaeda. The girl walked up to Iraqi military forces and seconds later a hidden bomb was detonated remotely.

An Iraqi captain was killed and four soldiers were injured in the blast.

The bombing is being reported by British news agencies, but has been confirmed by United States military personnel. Full article HERE.

A little girl was sacrificed by a group of heartless monsters. Words fail me at the moment. I am heartbroken. :(

Anti-immigration MP Geert Wilders has cancelled the first of a series of debates on the ‘islamisation of the Netherlands’ because not enough Muslims have agreed to attend, news agency ANP reports on Friday.

Wilders pledged discussions on the issue as a follow-up to his anti-Koran film Fitna, which links Islam with violence and terrorism.

Of the 175 people who signed up for the debate in Waddinxveen on May 16, only a handful are Muslims, says ANP.

‘This is not enough for a constructive and open debate on the real dangers of the islamisation of the Netherlands and the failure of immigration and integration politics of the past decade,’ says Wilders’ PVV party in a statement. The party has nine seats in the 150-seat parliament.

Six imams and a local politician turned down an invitation to appear at the debate because they were not allowed to contribute to the agenda and their call for an independent chairman was rejected, says ANP.

Imam Yassin Elforkani told ANP that Wilders was not prepared to give Muslims any influence over the meeting in line with normal procedures. ‘Wilders wants to do everything himself. He does not want a balanced debate,’ said Elforkani. - © DutchNews.nl

Submit to our control or we won't debate you! And the protests against Fitna are going strong in Pakistan - check out the 'tiny minority of extremist' pictures from MEMRI!

Gregory Gause is the director of the Middle East studies program at the University of Vermont (full disclosure: UVM is my alma mater, I did my undergraduate studies there in comparative religion and Chinese history). This morning, I talked with Gause about the recent history of the Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry in Lebanon, about the lack of real options for Saudi Arabia there, and how the issue looks from George W. Bush's perspective as he makes his final visit to the region as president. Bush is in Israel today, marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. Listen to part of my conversation with Prof. Gause here.

I also spoke with Vali Nasr this morning. He's a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts Unversity, and the author of "The Shia Revival." Here's Prof. Nasr talking about why he thinks regional powers, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, are not eager to see Lebanon descend into yet another all-out civil war.

And finally, here's the story that went on the air today.

]]> http://gto7.wordpress.com/?p=935 Wed, 14 May 2008 18:31:36 +0000 No Compromises http://gto7.wordpress.com/?p=935 NC points out: I realize this has made its circles around the blogosphere, but as we celebrate Israel's 60th Birthday this month it's a good reminder of who came first:  The Israelis or the made up people group calling themselves Palestinians.  If they were honest they would name themselves something like:  Hateisraelistines.

By Yashiko Sagamori

• If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history", I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:
• When was it founded and by whom?
• What were its borders?
• What was its capital?
• What were its major cities?
• What constituted the basis of its economy?
• What was its form of government?
• Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
• Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
• What was the language of the country of Palestine?
• What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?
• What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese Yuan on that date.
• And, finally, since there is no such country today,  what caused its demise and when did it occur?
• You are lamenting the "low sinking" of a "once proud" nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of?
• And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that give s them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?
• I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day "Palestinians" to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.
• The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it "the Palestinian people" and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the "West Bank" and Gaza, respectively?
• The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so called "Palestinians" have only one  motivation: the destruction of Israel, and in  my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation" -- or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.
• In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?Find ancient sites of Israel by clicking on map.

But the question is: why stop there? It looks bad to make stupid jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner. It looks bad to take August off. It looks bad to not know what you're talking about during a press conference. It looks bad to cut taxes for the rich while sending (certainly poorer) troops off to war. And so on.

Bush made the comment about giving up golf in an interview with Politico and Yahoo News. I've tried to avoid posting about him because what's the point? But the man is still in charge and still has the potential to do more damage, so I thought it might be nice to know where his head is at these days.

At any rate, I read the transcript. Nothing really worth reading. He was disappointed by the flawed Iraqi intelligence. He thinks Congress is stalled (which it is). I'll leave you with Bush's own words:

"Popularity is fleeting, Michael. Principles are forever."

Don't we know it.

[EN]

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As a 10-year-old growing up in Johannesburg, I celebrated Israel's birth, 60 years ago. I unquestionably accepted the dramatic accounts of so-called self-defensive actions against Arab violence, to secure the Jewish state. The type of indoctrination South African cartoonist Zapiro so bitingly exposes in his work, raising the hackles of scribes such as David Saks of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. When I became involved in our liberation struggle, I became aware of the similarities with the Palestinian cause in the dispossession of land and birthright by expansionist settler occupation. I came to see that the racial and colonial character of the two conflicts provided greater comparisons than with any other struggle. When Nelson Mandela stated that we know as South Africans "that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians," [1] he was not simply talking to our Muslim community, who can be expected to directly empathize, but to all South Africans precisely because of our experience of racial and colonial subjugation, and because we well understand the value of international solidarity.

When I came to learn of the fate that befell the Palestinians, I was shaken to the core and most particularly when I read eye-witness accounts of a massacre of Palestinian villagers that occurred a month before Israel's unilateral declaration of independence. This was at Deir Yassin, a quiet village just outside Jerusalem, which had the misfortune to lie by the road from Tel Aviv. On 9 April 1948, 254 men, women and children were butchered there by Zionist forces to secure the road. Because this was one of the few such episodes that received media attention in the West, the Zionist leadership did not deny it, but sought to label it an aberration by extremists. In fact, however, the atrocity was part of a broader plan designed by the Zionist High Command, led by Ben Gurion himself, which was aimed at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the British mandate territory and the seizure of as much land as possible for the intended Jewish state.

There are many accounts that corroborate the orgy of death at Deir Yassin, which went far beyond the Sharpville massacre of 1960 that motivated me to join the African National Congress. [2] My reaction was: if Sharpville had appalled me, could I be indifferent to the suffering at Deir Yassin?

Fahimi Zidan, a Palestinian child who survived by hiding under his parents' bodies, recalled: "The Jews ordered [us] ... to line up against the wall ... started shooting ... all ... were killed: my father ... mother ... grandfather and grandmother ... uncles and aunts and some of their children ... Halim Eid saw a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister ... who was ... pregnant. Then he cut her stomach open with a butcher's knife ... In another house, Naaneh Khalil ... saw a man take a ... sword and slash my neighbor ..." [3]

One of the attacking force, a shocked Jewish soldier named Meir Pa'el, reported to the head of his Haganah command:

"It was noon when the battle ended...Things had become quiet, but the village had not surrendered. The Etzel [Irgun] and Lehi [Stern] irregulars ... started ... cleaning up operations ... They fired with all the arms they had, and threw explosives into the houses. They also shot everyone they saw ... the commanders made no attempt to check the ... slaughter. I ... and a number of inhabitants begged the commanders to give orders ... to stop shooting, but our efforts were unsuccessful ... some 25 men had been brought out of the houses: they were loaded into a ... truck and led in a 'victory parade' ... through ... Jerusalem [then] ... taken to a ... quarry ... and shot ... The fighters ... put the women and children who were still alive on a truck and took them to the Mandelbaum Gate." [4]

A British officer, Richard Catling, reported:

"There is ... no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young school girls were raped and later slaughtered ... Many infants were also butchered and killed. I also saw one old woman ... who had been severely beaten about the head with rifle butts ..." [5]

Jacques de Reynier of the International Committee of the Red Cross met the "cleaning up" team on his arrival at the village:

"The gang ... were young ... men and women, armed to the teeth ... and [had] also cutlasses in their hands, most of them still blood-stained. A beautiful young girl, with criminal eyes, showed me hers still dripping with blood; she displayed it like a trophy. This was the 'cleaning up' team, that was obviously performing its task very conscientiously."

He described the scene he encountered on entering the homes:

"... amid disemboweled furniture ... I found some bodies ... the 'cleaning up' had been done with machine-guns ... hand grenades ... finished off with knives ... I ... turned over ... the bodies, and ... found ... a little girl ... mutilated by a hand grenade ... everywhere it was the same horrible sight ... this gang was admirably disciplined and only acted under orders." [6]

The atrocity at Deir Yassin is reflective of what happened elsewhere. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has meticulously recorded 31 massacres, from December 1947 to January 1949. They attest to a systematic reign of terror, conducted to induce the flight of Palestinians from the land of their birth. As a result, nearly all Palestinian towns were rapidly depopulated and 418 villages were systematically destroyed.

As Israel's first minister of agriculture, Aharon Cizling, stated in a 17 November 1948 Cabinet meeting: "I often disagree when the term Nazi was applied to the British ... even though the British committed Nazi crimes. But now Jews too have behaved like Nazis and my entire being is shaken." [7] Despite these sentiments, Cizling agreed that the crimes should be hidden, creating a lasting precedent. That such barbarism was conducted by Jewish people a mere three years after the Holocaust must have been too ghastly to contemplate, as it would constitute a major embarrassment for the state of Israel, held-up as a "light unto nations;" hence the attempts to bury the truth behind a veil of secrecy and disinformation. What better way to silence enquiry than the all-encompassing alibi of Israel's right of self-defense, condoning the use of disproportionate force and collective punishment against any act of resistance.

Precisely because Israel was allowed to get away with such crimes, it continued on its bloody path. According to Ilan Pappe, "Fifteen minutes by car from Tel-Aviv University lies the village of Kfar Qassim where, on 29 October 1956, Israeli troops massacred 49 villagers returning from their fields. Then there was Qibya in the 1950s, Samoa in the 1960s, the villages of the Galilee in 1976, Sabra and Shatila in 1982, Kfar Qana in 1999, Wadi Ara in 2000 and the Jenin Refugee Camp in 2002. And in addition there are the numerous killings B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights organization, keeps track of. There has never been an end of Israel's killings of Palestinians." [8] The slaughter of 1,500 Lebanese civilians in Israel's indiscriminate bombardment of that country in 2006; the daily deaths in the Palestinian territories, the 120 in Gaza in a week -- including 63 on a single day -- in March 2008, one third of whom were children, form part of the same bloody thread that links Israel's shameful past with that of today.

Israel will soon mark the 60th anniversary of its establishment. In so doing, Israelis and the Zionist supporters would do well to acknowledge the reasons why, for Palestinians and freedom-loving people throughout the world, there will be no cause to celebrate. Indeed, it will be a period of mourning and protest action; a time to recall the countless victims that lie in Israel's wake, as epitomized by the suffering inflicted on the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, the original site of which is ironically located just a stone's throw away from where the present day Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, was built.

Unless Israel confronts the past, as so many have attempted to do in South Africa, it will continue to be viewed with revulsion and suspicion. Israelis will continue to regard Arab life as worthless and will continue to live by the sword and deceit, feigning surprise when Palestinians violently respond. Without dealing with the agony it has caused there can be no healing and no solution. To do so is to create the basis for all life to be cherished and for Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace, with justice. By being aware of the roots of the conflict, and pledging our solidarity, we South Africans can do our bit to help bring about a just solution and the freedom that Nelson Mandela referred to. I believe that South Africans like Zapiro are doing just that.

Ronnie Kasrils is South African Minister of Intelligence.
Endnotes
[1] Nelson Mandela, International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Pretoria, 4 December 1997.
[2] See Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel, Pantheon, 1988); David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, Faber and Faber, 2003; Benny Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, 2004); Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, 2006.
[3] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, Faber and Farber, 2003, p. 249-50.
[4] Yediot Aharonot, April 1972. This letter only came to light with Pa'el's consent in 1972. David Hirst ibid p. 251.
[5] David Hirst, ibid and Report of the Criminal Investigation Division, Palestine Government, No. 179/110/17/GS, 13, 15, 16 April 1948. Cited in David Hirst, p. 250.
[6] David Hirst ibid and Jacques de Reynier, A Jèrusalem un Drapeau flottait sur la Ligne de Feu, Editions de la Baconnière, Neuchâtel, 150, p. 71-6 and Hirst ibid p. 252.
[7] Tom Segev, The First Israelis, Owl Books, 1998, p. 26.
[8] Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, 2006, p. 258. """

~~~

[RO]

""" Când aveam zece ani, în Johannesburg, am sărbătorit naşterea Israelului, cu 60 de ani în urmă. Am acceptat fără întrebări mărturiile acţiunilor aşa-zis de apărare împotriva violenţei arabilor, în numele securităţii statului evreiesc. Tipul de îndoctrinare pe care caricaturistul sud-african Zapiro îl expune atât de virulent în lucrările lui, suscitând reacţiilor unor scribi ca David Saks de la Comitetul Deputaţilor Evrei din Africa de Sud. Atunci când am fost amestecat în lupta noastră de eliberare, am devenit conştient de similarităţile cu cauza palestiniană în privinţa deposedării de pământ făcute de o ocupaţie expansionistă. Am ajuns să înţeleg caracterul rasial şi colonialist al celor două conflicte. Atunci când Nelson Mandela a declarat că noi ştim, ca sud-africani, “că libertatea noastră este incompletă fără libertatea palestinienilor” [1] nu vorbea doar comunităţii noastre islamice, care se presupune că are o simpatie directă, ci tuturor sud-africanilor, tocmai datorită experienţei noastre legate de subjugarea rasială şi colonialistă, şi pentru că noi înţelegem bine valoarea solidarităţii internaţionale.

Atunci când început să mă informez despre soarta palestinienilor, am fost zguduit îndeosebi când am citit mărturii oculare despre masacrarea sătenilor palestinieni care a avut loc cu o lună înainte de declararea unilaterală a independenţei Israelului. Este vorba despre Deir Yassin, un sat liniştit de pe lângă Ierusalim, care a avut neşansa să fie pe drumul dinspre Tel Aviv. În 9 aprilie 1948, 254 de bărbaţi, femei şi copii au fost măcelariţi de către forţele zioniste. Dat fiind că era unul dintre puţinele asemenea episoade care a fost difuzat de mass-media în Occident, liderii zionişti nu l-au negat, dar s-au gândit să-l eticheteze ca fiind o aberaţie a extremiştilor. În fapt, totuşi, atrocitatea era parte dintr-un plan larg pus la cale de Înaltul Comandament Zionist, condus de Ben Gurion însuşi, al cărui scop era eliminarea pe criterii etnice a palestinienilor din teritoriul aflat sub mandat britanic şi acapararea unei zone cât mai mare posibil pentru viitorul Stat evreiesc.

Sunt multe mărturii despre orgia morţii de la Deir Yassin, care a mers mult dincolo de masacrul de la Sharpville din 1960 care m-a motivat să mă alături Congresului Naţional African [2]. Reacţia mea a fost: dacă Sharpville m-a îngrozit, cum aş putea fi indiferent la suferinţa de la Deir Yassin?

Fahimi Zidan, un copil palestinian care a supravieţuit ascunzându-se sub corpurile rudelor sale, îşi amintea: “Evreii ne-au ordonat... să ne aliniem lângă un zid... au început să tragă... toţi... au fost omorâţi: tatăl meu... mama... bunicul şi bunica... unchi şi mătuşi şi unii dintre copiii lor... Halim Eid a văzut un bărbat trăgând un glonte în gâtul surorii mele... care era... gravidă. Apoi i-a tăiat burta cu cuţitul unui măcelar... În altă casă, Naaneh Khalil... a văzut un bărbat scoţând o... sabie şi ciopârţindu-l pe vecinul meu...” [3]

Unul dintre cei din forţa de atac, un soldat evreu în stare de şoc, numit Meir Pa’el, raporta şefului său din Haganah:

“Era amiaza când bătălia a luat sfârşit... S-a făcut linişte, dar satul nu se predase. Membriii miliţiilor Eţel [Irgun] şi Lehi [Stern]... au început... operaţiunile de curăţire. Trăseseră cu toate armele pe care le aveau, şi aruncaseră explozive în case. Împuşcaseră pe toţi pe care îi vedeau... comandanţii nu făceau nici o încercare să evalueze... numărul morţilor. Eu... şi un număr de locuitori i-am implorat pe comandanţi să dea ordine... să se oprească focul, dar eforturile noastre n-au avut efect... vreo 25 de bărbaţi au fost scoşi din case, au fost încărcaţi într-un... camion şi conduşi într-o “paradă a victoriei”... prin... Ierusalim [apoi]... duşi într-o carieră de piatră... şi împuşcaţi... Luptătorii... au pus femeile şi copiii care erau încă vii într-un camion şi i-au dus la Mandelbaum Gate.” [4]

Un ofiţer britanic, Richard Catling, raporta:

“Nu este... nici un dubiu că multe atrocităţi sexuale au fost comise de către evreii atacatori.Multe fete de vârstă şcolară au fost violate şi ulterior asasinate... Mulţi copii au fost şi ei măcelăriţi. Am văzut o bătrână... care fusese lovită groaznic cu paturile puştii în cap...” [5]

Jacques de Reyner de la Comitetul Internaţional al Crucii Roşii s-a întâlnit cu echipa “de curăţare” la sosirea lor din sat:

“Banda... era formată din tineri... bărbaţi şi femei, înarmaţi până în dinţi... şi [aveau] de asemenea hangere în mâini, multe dintre ele încă murdare de sânge. O tânără frumoasă, cu ochi criminali, mi-a arătat stiletul ei încă însângerat, mi l-a prezentat ca pe un trofeu. Aceasta fusese echipa “de curăţare”, care în mod evident îşi îndeplinise sarcina foarte conştiincios.” A descris scena pe care a întâlnit-o atunci când a intrat în case:

“... printre mobilele zdrobite... am găsit câteva corpuri... “curăţirea” fusese făcută cu arme automate... grenade de mână... şi terminată cu cuţitele... am întorc corpurile, şi... am găsit... o fetiţă... mutilată de o grenadă de mână... peste tot era aceeaşi privelişte oribilă... banda aceasta era admirabil de disciplinată şi acţiona numai la ordine.” [6]

Atrocitatea de la Deir Yassin este exemplară pentru ce s-a întâmplat peste tot. Istoricul israelian Ilan pappe a înregistrat cu meticulozitate 31 de masacre, din decembrie 1947 până în ianuarie 1949. Ele sunt mărturia unei domnii sistematice a teroarei, instaurată pentru a-i alunga pe palestinieni de pe pământurile lor natale. Ca rezultat, aproape toate oraşele palestiniene au fost rapid depopulate şi 418 sate au fost sistematic distruse.

În calitate de primul ministru al agriculturii Israelului, Aharon Cizling, declara în timpul întâlnirii Cabinetului din 17 noiembrie 1948: “Sunt adesea în dezacord atunci când termenul de nazişti este aplicat britanicilor... deşi britanicii au comis crime naziste. Dar acum evreii s-au comportat şi ei ca nişte nazişti, şi întreaga mea fiinţă este zguduită.” [7] În ciuda acestor sentimente, Cizling a fost de acord ca crimele să fie ascunse, creând un precedent. Faptul că asemenea barbarism a fost comis de poporul evreu la doar trei ani după Holocaust trebuie să fi fost prea dezgustător de contemplat, putând constitui o sursă de stânjeneală majoră pentru Statul Israel, care se voia o “lumină printre naţiuni”. De aici încercările de a îngropa adevărul în spatele unei perdele de fum şi dezinformare. Ce cale poate fi mai bună pentru a reduce la tăcere orice investigaţie decât ultra-generosul alibi al dreptului pe care Israelul îl are la auto-apărare, conducând la utilizarea forţei disproporţionate şi a pedeapsa colectivă împotriva oricărui act de rezistenţă.

Tocmai pentru că Israelului i s-a permis să scape cu asemenea crime, continuă pe calea lui sângeroasă. Conform lui Ilan Pappe, “La cinsprezece minute cu maşina de Universitatea din Tel-Aviv este satul Kfar Qassim unde, în 29 octombrie 1956, trupele israeliene au masacrat 49 de ţărani care se întorceau de pe câpuri. Apoi a fost Qibya în anii ’50, Samoa în ’60, satele din Galileea în 1976, Sabra şi Şatila în 1982, Kfar Qana în 1999, Wadi Ara în 2000 şi tabăra de refugiaţi din Jenin în 2002. Lor li se adaugă numeroasele crime cărora B’Teselem, organizaţia israeliană pentru drepturile omului, le ţine numărătoarea. Nu a existat niciodată un sfârşit al crimelor Israelului împotriva palestinienilor.” [8] Masacrarea a 1500 de civili libanezi în bombardamentele nediscriminatorii pe care Israelul le-a lansat împotriva acestei ţări în 2006. Morţii zilnici din Teritoriile Palestiniene, 120 la număr în Gaza într-o săptămână – din care 63 într-o singură zi – în martie 2008, o treime dintre ei fiind copii, fac parte din acelaşi traseu sângeros care leagă Israelul de trecutul său ruşinos.

În curând Israelul va sărbători 60 de ani de la înfiinţare. În acele momente, israelienii şi suporterii zionismului ar face bine să-şi dea seama care sunt motivele pentru care, din punctul de vedere al palestinienilor şi al oamenilor iubitori de libertate din întreaga lume, nu va fi nimic de sărbătorit. Într-adevăr, va fi o perioadă de jale şi de acţiuni de protest, un moment de rememorare a nenumăratelor victime care zac în urma Israelului, simbolizate de suferinţa provocată locuitorilor din Deir Yassin, al cărei vatră este localizată în mod ironic la doar o aruncătură de piatră de memorialul Holocaustului, Yad Vaşem.

Până când Israelul nu se confruntă cu trecutul său, aşa cum mulţi au încercat să facă în Africa de Sud, va continua să fie privit cu dezgust şi suspiciune. Israelienii vor continua să privească viaţa arabilor ca pe ceva fără valoare şi va continua să trăiască prin violenţă şi înşelătorie, mimând surpriza atunc când palestinienii vor răspunde violent. Atâta vreme cât nu vor lua în serios agonia pe care au cauzat-o, nu va fi nici vindecare, nici soluţie. Făcând-o, vor crea baza pentru valorizarea tuturor vieţilor, făcându-i pe palestinieni şi pe israelieni să trăiască în pace, cu justiţie. Conştientizând rădăcinile conflictului, şi promiţând solidaritatea, noi Sud-Africanii putem să ne aducem aportul pentru o soluţie justă şi pentru libertatea despre care a vorbit Nelson Mandela. Cred că Sud-Africani ca Zapiro tocmai asta fapt.

Note:
[1] Nelson Mandela, Ziua Internaţională a Solidarităţii cu Poporul Palestinian, Pretoria, 4 decembrie
[2] Vezi Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel, Pantheon, 1988); David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, Faber and Faber, 2003; Benny Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, 2004); Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, 2006.
[3] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, Faber and Farber, 2003, p. 249-50.
[4] Yediot Aharonot, April 1972. This letter only came to light with Pa'el's consent in 1972. David Hirst ibid p. 251.
[5] David Hirst, ibid and Report of the Criminal Investigation Division, Palestine Government, No. 179/110/17/GS, 13, 15, 16 April 1948. Cited in David Hirst, p. 250.
[6] David Hirst ibid and Jacques de Reynier, A Jèrusalem un Drapeau flottait sur la Ligne de Feu, Editions de la Baconnière, Neuchâtel, 150, p. 71-6 and Hirst ibid p. 252.
[7] Tom Segev, The First Israelis, Owl Books, 1998, p. 26.
[8] Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, 2006, p. 258. """

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Okay, so 'local' is stretching it a bit. Bishop Allen are named after the street in Central Square where the founding members lived while at school in Cambridge (and which is half a block from zed equals zee mission control). As seems to be the case for many musical Cantabrigians, the hipster 'hood down I-95 beckoned, and Bishop Allen relocated to make their quirky, charming indie-pop in Brooklyn. The song below, "Click Click Click Click", is a wonderfully infectious soundtrack to these late spring/early summer days. Check them out at the Middle East tomorrow (Thursday, May 15); more tourdates here.

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MP3: Bishop Allen - Click Click Click Click