Open Letter To Ehud Olmert

[Nur]

Which of the two men is the leader of the greatest power on earth and which is the boss of a small client state? A visitor from another planet, attending the press conference in Jerusalem, would find it hard not to answer: Olmert is the president of the great power, Bush is his vassal .

 

Olmert is taller. He talked endlessly, while Bush listened patiently. While Olmert anointed Bush with flattery that would have made a Byzantine emperor blush, it was quite clear that it is Olmert who decides policy, while Bush humbly accepts the Israeli diktat. And Bush's flattery of Olmert exceeded even Olmert's flattery of Bush .

 

The Hands of Esau, By Uri Avnery

 

 

Mr. Olmert

 

 

As the practical leader of the Planet Earth, I ask your cooperation in maintaining the peace in Somalia.

 

Mr. Prime Minister, as you have been following the news lately, the Islamic Courts of Somalia have liberated the country from the grip of the CIA supported anarchist warlords, the Islamic Courts have finally liberated the nation and the criminals are on the run, Mogadishu is the most peaceful city in the world and to maintain this peace we need assistance of a real world leader.

 

The IGAD with the approval of the AU have declared war on poor Somalia, just when we thought that we can have peace, they are calling back their troops from Darfur ( they cant afford to pay their troops with salary paid by NATO, because most of it was deposited in Swiss Accounts of the African Leaders. Now the same corrupt African Leaders are coming to the aid of one of theirs, to get more money by maintaining poor people's misery cycle in Somalia ) in order to bring these troops to poor Somalia, which is guaranteed to flare up a civil war of unexpected proportions, this time between Somalis and their neighbors, after this flare-up, all of East Africa may be inflamed just like Somalia, and if the uncontrolled fire continues, Africa will disintegrate, these fleeing Africans will take boats from the upper Nile and from Ethiopia's blue Nile to Egypt, Egypt will inflame, and the flame will reach Israel in no time. Remember Martin Luther King's saying : " Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere "

 

Since the TFG ( Transitional Federal Government of Somalia), is driven by Ethiopia, Ethiopia is driven by two members of the IGAD ( Kenya and Ethiopia), the IGAD is driven by the African Union, The AU is driven by the World Bank and NATO ( With Single Agenda), The World Bank is driven by the United Nations, the United Nations is driven by the USA, The USA is driven by the Neocons, The Neocons are driven by Israel, and Israel is driven by you. I ask you for once to stand up for justice, make the Islamists your friends for a change, not corrupt politicians, if you make the islamists in Somalia your friends and order Condoleeza to call Coffe Anan, to Call, Wolfowitz, to call Alpha Oumar Konaré, to Call, MWAI KIBAKI and Meles Zinawi, to STOP the Troop Deployment in Somalia, if you do that, I will assure you that Islamists will also have a change of heart, imagine, Israel making such a positive gesture, I also understand that what I am asking is quite expensive, as the military industry of Israel and USA will suffer losses for not shipping huge amounts of weapons to Africa , which in turn will strain your finances, but hey, Israel needs an image change in the Muslim world, why not start with Somalia?

 

The benefit of Israel standing with the Islamic Courts and stopping the imminent war being triggered by Ethiopia and Kenya, is as follows:

 

1. Islamists worldwide will look at Israel favorably, the rhetoric will become reconciliatory.

 

2. Muslims worldwide will purchase Isreali made goods which will make up for the losses from the Military hardware Israel sells to Africans who have more guns than food.

 

3. Israel can become the Banking Center of the Middle East, a core competency for Israel can find an application right behind its backyard.

 

 

Of Course, I am assuming that you will reach an equitable agreement with Hamas also, its impossible to have peace when your neighbors don't have it, short of trying to wipe them out like Hitler tried to do to your people unjustly, and you are a living proof that no one can oblitrate a race to extinction, if German War Efficiency failed that feat, I doubt anyone else can do it

 

 

Regards

 

 

Cag Bakeyle Jr.

Former Somali Anarchist

Now reconditioned peace maker

 

 

2006 eNuri Political Satires

The Art Of Saying It, Without Saying It

[Shakti]

Mr nur, without being a lickspittle, I would like to thank u for being a generous contributor on this site. I personally come to this site, just to read ur threads (and to make my devilish comments.)

Sir, ur threads are not only educational but my reason for living. So thank 4 ur enlightenments and may Allah bless your soul

[Nur]

Devilangle

 

For readers like you, all four chambers of my heart goes out to reach and share the little we know of this complex world of ours. Jazakkallahu Kheiran for your kind comment

 

 

Nur

[Nur]

I guess Isreali Prime Minister does not have a sense of humor when the issue is affecting Israeli and American weapons export to the poorest nations in Africa. Please lift th food embargo, but keep the weaopns embargo, we have enough weapons to kill each other, but not enough to eat in our break time, I mean between battles.

 

Besides, we Somalis are known to be natural fighters, we love wars, life is tough in Somalia, most people want to go to paradise, so in a way, your weaopns shipment is relieving the pain of hungry and oppressed people whose only hope is to die, but Somalis, like to die in style, with full dignity as martyrs.

 

You can also send Isreali oranges grown on stolen Palestinian lands, we will pay the Palestinians, through Isreali Banks, overseen by Coffee Anan and Condoleeza, Bancrupt and Indebted African Union, and you can keep an eye on the Finances, making sure that our Banana Anarchist Republic remains a good channel for your weapons exports for another decade of synthetic wars.

 

 

Cag Bakeyle

 

Cheif Anarchist

Baidoa,

[Nur]

Sir

 

The war is just beginning, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your decision to let the war happen, I knew we Somalis have the wrong impression about Isreal, we always thought that you are the enemy of Somalia, but now, after witnessing your global directive to your followers of the NEOCON to relay to Bush, who in turn asked Cofee Anan to look the other way if aske about Ethiopias invasion in Somalia, who in turn passed your directive to Europeans who are actually nice humanitarian people otherwise, and others to stay out of this fight, and to let Tigree Junta troops invade Somalia to dimantle it and make it Gazza strip Vesrion II.

 

Because of your great decision, as the unchallenged world leader, Somalis have for the first time in ages forgotten their clan differences, they are suddenly awaken by the threat of being eaten wholesale by the Christian Empire of Ethiopia, they see the religious dimension of the conflict much clearer now because of your actions and the lack of some. We even see now a new opportunity as the oppressed Muslim masses of the Oromo, Somalis and others ethnic groups in Ethiopia becoming emboldened to seek freedom from the Proxy Tigree Imperialism in East Africa. Take it from an experienced warlord, weopons once released, are difficult to collect them back, the Ethiopian soliders of the oppressed minority will never give their AKs up, the least they can get is 150 Dollars for their rifles, which is equivalent to their yearly salaries, because the Ethiopian Generals have stolen their money.

 

Sir, we Somalis after 16 years of imposed Civil war are the best natural fighters, all the bad ones died, this breed is very resisitent to tanks and artillery, they approach death with a smile, after hitting rock bottom, we have no where to go but up, either freedom to live our chosen way, or to heaven, which is much higher. Our opponents, cant say the same, an African proverb says, when two vessles collide, the fuller vessel spills.

 

 

Chief Cag Bakeyle

Repenting Ex Warlord and Ex Member of the TFG government.

Daynuunaay, Somalia

[Nur]

Nomads

 

Mr. Olmert ignored my please, now, all hell is loose on the horn of Africa, The Bush administration is to Israel, like the TFG is to Ethiopia, Somalis need to directly nogotiate with Israel for peace in the Horn, one can not negotiate with soldiers, a real decision maker like the Likud Party is helpful.

 

 

Nur

[Nur]

Bush’s America

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

 

08/15/07 "ICH" -- -- “ No American President can stand up to Israel .”

 

These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974). Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent-minded American military leader .

 

Admiral Moorer knew what he was talking about. On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked the American intelligence ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173. The Israelis even strafed the life rafts, machine-gunning the American sailors leaving the stricken ship.

 

Apparently, the USS Liberty had picked up Israeli communications that revealed Israel’s responsibility for the Seven Day War. Even today, history books and the majority of Americans blame the conflict on the Arabs.

 

The United States Navy knew the truth, but the President of the United States took Israel’s side against the American military and ordered the United States Navy to shut its mouth. President Lyndon Johnson said it was all just a mistake. Later in life, Admiral Moorer formed a commission and presented the unvarnished truth to Americans. http://www.ussliberty.org/moorerfindings.htm [see also http://www.usslibertyinquiry.com/evidence/usreport s/moorer.html ] and [http://www.counterpunch.org/weir06232007.html ] and [http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070608/ news_lz1e8boston.html ]

 

The power of the Israel Lobby over American foreign policy is considerable. In March 2006, two distinguished American scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, expressed concern in the London Review of Books [ http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html ] that the power of the Israel Lobby was bending US foreign policy in directions that serve neither US nor Israeli interests. The two experts were hoping to start a debate that might rescue the US and Israel from unsuccessful policies of coercion that are intensifying Muslim hatred of Israel and America. The Israel lobby was opposed to any such reassessment, and attempted to close it off with epithets: “Jew-baiter,” “anti-semitic,” and even “anti-American.” Today Israeli citizens who oppose Zionist plans for greater Israel are denounced as “anti-Semites.”

 

Many Americans are unaware of the influence of the Israel lobby. Instead they think of the US as “the world’s sole superpower,” a macho new Roman Empire whose orders are obeyed without question or the insolent nonentity is “bombed back to the stone age.” [ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle _east/article647188.ece ] Many Americans are convinced that military coercion serves our interest. They cite Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now they are ready to bring Iran and Pakistan to heel with bombs.

 

This arrogance results in the murder of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of men, women and children, a fate that many Americans seem to believe is appropriate for countries that do not accept US hegemony.

 

Coercion is what American foreign policy has become. Macho superpatriots love it. Many of these superpatriots derive vicarious pleasure from their delusions that America is “kicking those sand niggers’ asses.”

 

This is the America of the Bush Regime. If some of these superpatriots had their way every “unpatriotic, terrorist supporter” who dares to criticize the war against “the Islamofacists” would be sent to Gitmo, if not shot on the spot.

 

These Bush supporters have morphed the Republican Party into the Brownshirt Party. They cannot wait to attack Iran, preferably with nuclear weapons. Impatient for Armageddon, some are so full of hubris and self-righteousness that they actually believe that their support for evil means they will be “wafted up to heaven.” [see http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18 165.htm ]

 

It has come as a crippling blow to Democrats that “their” political party is comfortable with Bush’s America, and will do nothing to stop the Bush regime’s aggression against the Iraqi people or to prevent the Bush regime’s attack on Iran.

 

The Democrats could easily impeach both Bush and Cheney in the House, as impeachment only requires a majority vote. They could not convict in the Senate without Republican support, as conviction requires ratification by two-thirds of Senators present. Nevertheless, a House vote for impeachment would take the wind out of the sails of war, save countless lives and perhaps even save humanity from nuclear holocaust.

 

Various rationales or excuses have been constructed for the Democrats’ complicity in aggression that does not serve America. Perhaps the most popular rationale is that the Democrats are letting the Republicans have all the rope they want with which to produce such a high disapproval rating that the Democrats will sweep the 2008 election.

 

It is doubtful that the Democrats would assume that men as cunning as Karl Rove and Dick Cheney do not understand the electoral consequences of a low public approval rating and are walking blindly into an electoral wipeout. Rove’s departure does not mean that no strategy is in place.

 

So what does explain the complicity of the Democratic Party in a policy that the American public, and especially Democratic constituencies, reject? Perhaps a clue is offered from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune news report (August 1, 2007) that Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison will spend a week in Israel on “a privately funded trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Federation. The AIEF--the charitable arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)--is sending 19 members of Congress to meet with Israeli leaders. The group, made up mostly of freshman Democrats, has plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and [puppet] Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The senior Democratic member on the trip is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has gone three times. . . . The trip to Israel is Ellison’s second as a congressman.”

 

According to the Star-Tribune, a Republican group, which includes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, Minn), led by Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Va) is already in Israel. According to news reports, another 40 are following these two groups during the August recess, and “by the time the year is out every single member of Congress will have made their rounds in Israel.” This claim is probably overstated, but it does show careful Israeli management of US policy in the Middle East.

 

Elsewhere on earth and especially among Muslims, the suspicion is rife that the reason the war against Iraq cannot end, and the reason Iran and Syria must be attacked, is that the US must destroy all Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine, turning an entire people into refugees driven from their homes and from the lands on which they have lived for many centuries. Americans might think that they are merely grabbing control over oil, keeping it out of the hands of terrorists, but that is not the way the rest of the world views the conflict.

 

Jimmy Carter was the last American president who stood up to Israel and demanded that US diplomacy be, at least officially if not in practice, even-handed in its approach to Israel and Palestine. Since Carter’s presidency, even-handedness has slowly drained from US policy in the Middle East. The neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime has abandoned even the pretense of even-handedness.

 

This is unfortunate, because military coercion has proven to be unsuccessful. Exhausted from the conflict, the US military, according to former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, is “nearly broken.” Demoralized elite West Point graduates are leaving the army at the fastest clip in 30 years. [ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2147 052,00.html ] Desertions are rapidly rising. A friend, a US Marine officer who served in combat in Vietnam, recently wrote to me that his son’s Marine unit, currently training for its third deployment to Iraq in September, is short 12-16 men in every platoon and expects to be hit with more AWOLs prior to deployment.

 

Instead of re-evaluating a failed policy, Bush’s “war tsar,” General Douglas Lute, has called for the reinstitution of the draft. Gen. Lute doesn’t see why Americans should not be returned to military servitude in order to save the Bush administration the embarrassment of having to correct a mistaken Middle East policy that commits the US to more aggression and to debilitating long-term military conflict in the Middle East.

 

It is difficult to see how this policy serves any interest other than the very narrow one of the armaments industry. Apparently, nothing can be done to change this disastrous policy until the Israel Lobby comes to the realization that Israel’s interest is not being served by the current policy of military coercion.

 

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

[Nur]

As predicted by eNuri Future Forcasters, Africa is in ethnic rivalry flames, from Kenya to Chad, Ethiopia is also sitting on a ethnic time bomb, all the while, world leaders aka as the "international Community of the Rich" are enjoying the sights of agony on nightly news, as it represents the "liberation of African Natural Resources".

 

Nur

[Nur]

All the President's Nazis (Real and Imagined):

 

An Open Letter to Bush

 

By Larisa Alexandrovna

Dear Mr. Bush,

 

19/01/08 "Huffington Post" -- 15/05/08 -- -- Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush, of your words today:

 

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.

 

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

 

Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!

 

The All-American Nazi

 

Your family's fortune is built on the bones of the very people butchered by the Nazis, my family and the families of those in the Knesset who applauded you today:

 

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.

Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

 

Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism.

 

--snip--

 

Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel that were confiscated by the U.S. government during World War II.

 

Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

 

Oh, but there is much more too:

 

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war, Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".

I cannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kind of lineage. Can you? No, I don't think so. But you can lie brazenly and attack a sitting US Senator on foreign soil by comparing him to Nazi sympathizers? Let us continue down memory lane to help those who applaud you understand just what it is they are celebrating.

 

The All American Traitor

 

Your family did not stop with supporting fascists and Nazis abroad, did they Mr. Bush? Surely you must know of your grandfather's role in the treasonous plot of 1933 to overthrow democracy in America? Let me remind you.

 

Grandpa Bush -- that is to say, your grandfather -- wanted fascism imported into the United States, or as you now call this type of transformation, "exporting democracy." Prescott went so far as to subsidize a coup attempt in order to achieve his dream of a fascist America (see BBC report below):

 

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American

In other words, not only was your grandfather a self-professed fascist, he was a Nazi sympathizer and a war profiteer who should have stood trial at the Hague instead of buying his way into the US Senate. He was also a traitor, twice over.

 

Now clearly the crimes of Prescott Bush are not your fault, Mr. George W. Bush. Let us therefore judge your actions and words on their own merit.

 

Iraq is your Poland

 

Your reminiscence today about the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany should have been seen as your own condemnation of your own abhorrent actions against Iraq. The morbid irony of what you said will likely never register with your or your speechwriter. To truly grasp the grotesqueness of what you said requires that you have both a conscience and some understanding of history. We know you possess neither.

 

I will therefore make your history lesson brief, but to the point. The unprovoked attack on Poland by Germany was a war crime just as your attack against Iraq -- based on lies -- is a war crime. This is not my opinion. This is not a political attack. This is a fact. Consider the words of the esteemed former chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, regarding your war of aggression against Iraq:

 

"...Prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Moreover, your reckless verbiage and partisan pandering using something as tragic and criminal as Germany's war of aggression against Poland is an insult to all victims of those atrocities.

 

My grandfather's sister and parents were having supper in their Warsaw home when a German bomb erased them from this planet. Your evoking the German atrocities against Poland in order to play dirty politics against Democrats is as offensive to me as if you had pinned a swastika onto your lapel.

 

Even your own words appear to be penned by Hitler's ghost all the while you imply that Democrats are Nazis and/or terrorists -- something you have done over and over. Your lies and Hitler's lies even have the same purpose.

 

When you, Mr. Bush, said "see in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," were you aware of Adolf Hitler's eerily similar statement? Hitler said "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."

 

Yet if words alone were your only weapon and words strung together into lies your only crime, you might be seen as simply the loathsome, unethical dilettante and despot that you are. Unfortunately, your crimes are many and so similar to those of the Nazi regime that at times one wonders if you are not yourself reenacting that very history you used today as an insult against a political opponent.

 

Your very own concentration camps

 

You ordered the creation of secret camps all over the world and on US territory where you also authorized the torture of countless men, women and children is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, international law, and domestic law. In other words, you authorized war crimes.

 

We don't know the number of people you have had disappeared, tortured, and possibly murdered. Although we have some idea of what these numbers may be, I doubt the full truth of it all will ever be known.

 

In 2005, I had a CENTCOM document leaked to me illustrating that since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, more than 70,000 men, women, and children have been detained at one of your various camps Mr. Bush. We don't know what happened to them, if they were tortured, raped, or murdered. What we do know is that less than 2% of those 70,000 had any sort of charge brought against them in a court of law. None of those alleged crimes, by the way, were acts of terrorism. We don't know if that 70,000 figure was the actual and full count of detainees in US custody around the world in 2005. But it is safe to say that in the last 3 years since this document was published, the number of detainees has likely grown.

 

What we also now know, in great horror, is that at least one of your camps had a crematorium in it, which some of the US soldiers stationed there suspected was used for burning bodies:

 

 

 

"We had some kind of incinerator at the end of our building," Specialist Megan Ambuhl said. "It was this huge circular thing. We just didn't know what was incinerated in there. It could have been people, for all we knew -- bodies." Sergeant Davis was not in doubt. "It had bones in it," he said, and he called it the crematorium. "But hey, you're at war," he said. "Suck it up or drive on."

What we also now know is that Dick Cheney and senior members of your administration carried out a plan of torture and abuse that violated international and domestic law with regard to human rights, down to the type of torture tactics that would be used against prisoners in our custody. This plan, we now know, was approved by you.

 

Has the mirror cracked yet from this much fact or are you still peering into the political sphere hoping to ascribe your own crimes to others? It won't work. It never has and it certainly won't work now. We know far too much about you and yours.

 

I could continue listing the litany of your crimes, both against the United States and against foreign nations. I won't. We know what you are and what you have done. Having roughly 1,000,000 dead Iraqis under your belt should have shamed you into the parasitic hole you came out of, attaching yourself to the blood of this nation and sucking it dry. Instead, you parade around, the globe-trotting horror show and anti-Semite that you are.

 

Yes, you are an anti-Semite

 

Would you say no, you are not an anti-Semite? Consider your own words when you thought no one was keeping score:

 

 

 

"You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you Herman?" a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.

When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: "I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."

 

Only an anti-Semite would think this type of humor is acceptable. Did you tell the Jews of Israel they were going to hell? No, instead, you told them that American Democrats are Nazi sympathizers and in an act of sheer indecency, the right wing Likud party orchestrated the greatest applause you ever got. For shame!

 

What this blind adoration finally proves to me is that the right-wing regime that has overtaken Israel cares nothing for its people, its heritage, and the tragic history that they now honor by applauding a man whose family-fortune was built on the bodies of their loved ones. Like their Republican (and Lieberman) counterparts in the United States, Likud does not represent its people, rather, it represents its owners. Likud has traded Israel, its Jews, their heritage and history for the same golden calf purchased and sold by the far-right wing in the United States.

 

I am ashamed of you Mr. Bush. I am ashamed of those who applauded your political porn played out against the hallowed backdrop of the Holocaust. I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation.

[Nur]

With Friends Like These...

 

By Uri Avnery

 

20/05/08 "ich' -- - Lately we are flooded with friends. The Great of the Earth, past and present, come here to flatter us, to fawn on us, to grovel at our feet.

 

“God, save me from my friends, my enemies I can deal with myself!” says an old prayer.

 

They disgust me.

 

Let’s take, for example, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Her pandering was free of any criticism and she reached new heights of obsequiousness in her speech to the Knesset. I was invited to attend. I relinquished the privilege.

 

I shall also pass the pleasure when I am invited to the session with the hyper-active Nicholas Sarkozy, who will try to break the flattery record of his German rival.

 

Before that we were visited by John McCain’s mentor, the evangelical pastor John Hagee, the one who described the Catholic Church as a monster. Oozing sanctimonious flattery from every pore, he forbade us, in the name of (his) God, to give up even one inch of the Holy Land and commanded us to fight to the last drop of (our) blood.

 

However, not one of them has come close to George Bush. Approaching the end of the most disastrous presidency in the annals of the Republic, he really forced a lighted match into the hand of our government, encouraging it to ignite the barrel of gunpowder between our feet.

 

BUT THE list of present-day leaders who participate in the pandering competition pales in comparison with the long parade of Has-Beens who lay siege to our gates.

 

A world-wide swarm of Has-Beens is flying from place to place like bees, all for one and one for all. This week they alighted in Jerusalem, on the invitation of Has-Been No. 1: Shimon Peres, a politician who in all the 84 years of his life has never won an election, and who was finally handed, out of sheer compassion, the largely meaningless title of President of Israel.

 

The common denominator of this group is that their prestige at home is close to nil, while their standing abroad is sky-high. Their mutual adoration compensates them for the lack of respect in their own countries.

 

One of the senior members of this club is Tony Blair, who has been pushed from power in his own country but is not content to enjoy his pension and raise roses. As a consolation prize he has been granted the pleasure of playing around with our conflict. Every few weeks he convenes a press conference to present the good tidings of his phenomenal success in ameliorating the lot of the Palestinians, while the actual situation in the occupied territories goes from bad to worse. Our security establishment treats him like a bore who has to be thrown a crumb from time to time to keep him happy.

 

In the conference that took place this week there were also some good people, but the scene was stolen by the Has-Beens, from the retired war criminal Henry Kissinger to the dethroned peace hero Mikhail Gorbachev (whom I still consider a hero for preventing bloodshed during the collapse of the Soviet empire.) Pity to see him in this company.

 

All the participants in this orgy heaped mountains of fawning adulation on Israel. Not one of them had a word of criticism. No occupation. No settlements. No Gaza blockade. No daily killings. Just a wonderful, peace-loving state that the bad, bad terrorists want to throw into the sea.

 

Not one of the guests stood up to warn us against going on with the present policy. Not one of them stood up to proclaim the truth: that the continuation of this policy may lead our state to disaster.

 

He who has friends like these has no need for enemies. A person who sees his friend playing Russian roulette and offers him bullets - is he a real friend? One who sees his friend standing on the brink of an abyss and tells him “go ahead” - is he a friend?

 

Among the fraternity of flatterers, the ones that attracted the most attention were the Jewish billionaires from America (who also paid for the extravaganza).

 

Several of them were summoned to police headquarters immediately on arrival to give evidence on the affair that is rocking Israel now - the corruption investigation of Ehud Olmert.

 

A smell of corruption has accompanied Olmert right from his beginnings in politics, 45 years ago. But this time, the smell is overpowering. The police has made it known that the American-Jewish billionaire Moshe Morris Talansky has been supplying him with cash-filled envelopes for years.

 

Where have we seen this before? Of course, in American movies and TV-series. Somebody opens a suitcase stuffed with bundles of banknotes. The donor invariably belongs to the Mafia, and the recipient is generally a corrupt politician. Can it be that Olmert has never seen these films - he of all people, who started his career with demagogic speeches denouncing “Organized Crime”?

 

But it is not Olmert who interests me in this affair so much as Talansky.

 

He belongs to a species of “Israel-loving” billionaires, most of them resident in the US, but also in Canada and Switzerland, Austria and Australia and other places.

 

They are all Israeli patriots. They are all philanthropists. All contribute millions to Israeli politicians. And almost all of them support our extreme Right.

 

What makes them run? What induces these billionaires to do what they are doing?

 

A research in depth discovers that a great many of them made their money in dark corners. Some are gambling barons, casino-owners with all the inevitable connections with violence, crime and exploitation. One at least made his fortunes from brothels. Another was involved in a scandal involving old people’s homes. Yet another is a scion of a family who made their money bootlegging during prohibition days. Some are arms merchants of the most despicable kind, selling weapons to the political gangs which sow death and destruction in Africa.

 

But money, as is well known, does not smell.

 

Most of the multi-millionaires of this kind feel that they are not receiving the honor due to them. Their co-billionaires, high society people, treat them with disdain. A person reaching this position is not satisfied with money alone. He craves honor. Such honor can be bought in Israel, on the cheap.

 

Israel is selling honor of all kinds, no questions asked. For a suitable donation, even a gambling-hell owner will be received by the Prime Minister, dine with the President, put his name on a university building.

 

(Once I wrote a light-hearted piece about the Third Temple, may God build it soon, Amen: the Rosenstein Holy of Holiest, the Rosenzweig altar, the Rosenberg cherubim, etc.)

 

Just after the Six-day War, during the great days of our generals, a new fashion spread among the best Jewish billionaires: to keep an Israeli general, in order to present him to friends as a pet. Some generals found no fault in this. It was owed to them, after all.

 

One billionaire kept Ezer Weizman, the Air Force hero (who had to resign from the presidency when it came out). Two billionaires adopted Ariel Sharon and set him up in the largest farm in the country. Shimon Peres was no general (and not even a soldier), but at least three billionaires took him under their golden wings.

 

No billionaire ever lost money by keeping an Israeli general, supporting an Israeli politician or making a generous donation to an Israeli cause. Ego is ego, patriotism is patriotism, but business is business.

 

That’s where the corruption set in. A person who donates millions to a politician in Israel (or, for that matter, the US, or Italy or any other place on the globe) knows full well that he will get it back with interest. When the politician becomes a minister, or Prime Minister, or President, the supporter has hit the jackpot.

 

In politics there is no innocent donation. One way or another, the donor will reap his reward - many times over. That’s true in the US, that’s true in Italy, that’s true in Israel, too. If the donor declares to the police that he has no business interests in Israel, all it means is that they must dig deeper.

 

The Olmert affair confirms anew what we have known for a long time: the fuel Israeli politics runs on is not just money, but money from abroad. To win primaries and campaign in elections, a candidate needs millions, and these almost always come from foreign donors.

 

Foreign billionaires financed Olmert in the party primaries, and they financed him in the general elections, in which he was assured of becoming Prime Minister. After being elected, he started Lebanon War II, with all its death and destruction. It can be said: American Jewish billionaires killed the soldiers and civilians, Israeli and Lebanese, who lost their lives in the war.

 

In his speech to the Jerusalem conference, Shimon Peres lauded Israeli chutzpa. What we need is more chutzpa, he said. That sounded fetching and naughty, but was pure poppycock.

 

I want to speak about another chutzpa. Not metaphorical, but real. Simple chutzpa. The chutzpa of billionaires in New York and Geneva and all the other places who interfere in our elections and determine the fate of our nation. The chutzpa of donating for a war in which not their sons, but ours, are killed. The chutzpa of sending billions for the establishment of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, and especially in Jerusalem, which are put there for the express purpose of preventing peace and imposing on us a permanent war, a war that threatens our future - not theirs.

 

Let’s be clear: I am not criticizing well-meaning donors, who feel a moral need to contribute to a hospital wing or a university building in Israel. I appreciate people who send a few hundred dollars to a political cause close to their heart. I object to foreign billionaires who aspire to dictate the direction of our state.

 

Perhaps in other countries, too, politicians receive donations from foreign sources. But it is generally a marginal phenomenon. Here it is a major factor.

 

That is one of the ill effects of the definition of Israel as a “Jewish State”. Because of this, these donors do not look like what they are - impertinent foreigners who interfere in our lives and corrupt our state - but like “warmhearted Jews” who support a state that belongs to them as well.

 

Gideon Levy has recently written an article in which he begged them to “leave us alone”. Being a less refined person than he, I shall say this in a ruder way: Go home and take your money with you. We are not for sale. Stop trying to manage our life (and death)!

[Nur]

Revoking Israel's UN Membership

 

By Snorre Lindquist and Lasse Wilhelmson – Stockholm

 

December 11, 2008 " Palestine Chronicle" Dec 03, 2008 -- The Gaza Strip is now the largest concentration camp in the world. The situation grows steadily more insufferable for the 1.5 million Palestinians who live there. Deliveries of food, medicine and fuel are made difficult or stopped altogether. Child malnutrition is increasing. Water supplies and drainage have ceased to function. Children die for lack of healthcare. Tunnels to Egypt, dug by hand, are the only breathing space. Journalists and diplomats are denied entry. Israel is planning more military efforts. The Palestinians in Gaza are now to be starved into surrender and become an Egyptian problem.

 

The UN should use the word apartheid in connection with Israel and consider sanctions with the former South Africa serving as a model. Miguel dÉscoto Brockman, president of the UN General Assembly, conveyed this message at a meeting on November 24th 2008 with the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon present.

 

The 1976 Nobel peace prize laureate, Mairead McGuire from Ireland, recently suggested a popular movement demanding that the UN revoke Israel’s membership. The international community now needs to put tangible pressure on Israel in order to stop its war crimes.

 

Not once, during the past 60 years, has Israel shown any intention of living up to the requirements stipulated by the UN, in connection with the country’s membership in 1948, namely that the Palestinians who had been evicted from their homes should be allowed to return at the earliest possible opportunity. Moreover, Israel holds the hardly flattering world record of ignoring UN resolutions.

 

It can be questioned from the aspect of human rights legislation whether Israel is a legitimate state. Established practice between states usually requires borders that are legally maintained and a constitution, neither of which Israel has. These requirements are also named in the UN resolution (181) Partition Plan for Palestine, approved by the General Assembly in November 1947. The plan was accepted by the Zionists Jews in Palestine but rejected for excellent reasons as unjust by the Arab states. Only decisions made by the UN Security Council are mandatory. Later on, Israel unilaterally laid claim to a considerably larger portion of land than that suggested by the UN.

 

The eviction of eighty per cent of the Palestinians who lived west of the 1947 armistice line, and Israel’s refusal to allow them to return is the human rights argument for expelling Israel from the UN. Not only has Israel played the Partition Plan false but has, by its actions, thwarted the grounds – fragile from the start – for its UN membership.

 

Israel makes use of various strategies to achieve its goals, the same goals as for over a hundred years ago: As few and as well controlled and weakened Palestinians as possible in areas as small as possible between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. And to try and get acceptance worldwide for the theft of land that is vital to the “state” that calls itself “Jewish and democratic”. This obviously bears no similarity to a peace process.

 

Why does nobody ever comment on the fact that Israel’s prime minister never misses an opportunity to harp on about how important it is that the rest of the world and the Palestinians recognise Israel, not as a democratic country for all its citizens, but as a “Jewish state”?

 

What would we have said if South Africa’s Prime Minister, in a similar way, had demanded recognition of South Africa as a “white and democratic state”, thus de facto accepting the racist apartheid system that allowed non-whites to be classified as lesser human beings?

 

In the article The end of Zionism, published in the Guardian on September the 15th 2003 the Jewish dissident and former speaker of Knesset, Avraham Burg wrote:

 

“Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out … We cannot keep a Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot be democracy without equal rights for all who live here, Arab as well as Jew ... The prime minister should present the choices forthrightly: Jewish racism or democracy.”

 

No support can be found in The UN recommendation concerning a Jewish and a Palestinian state for unequal rights for the citizens of each country. Neither is there any indication as to how a “Jewish” state could become Jewish. There is support, however, for the intention that demographic conditions should be held intact at partition. Interpreting into the text an intention concerning characteristics of a “Jewish state” tailored to the ideology of Zionism is wholly in contradiction with the text of the resolution.

 

Even the Balfour Declaration, which entirely lacks human rights status, notes that the Jewish national home in Palestine should in no way encroach upon the rights of the Palestinians. Neither did US President Truman recognise Israel as a Jewish state. On the contrary, he ruled out precisely that formulation before making his decision to recognise Israel.

 

Thus, the legitimacy of a “Jewish state” so urgently sought by Israel lacks support in international documents that concern the building of the state. Israel’s government is, of course, fully aware of this. Why else would it keep on searching for this recognition?

 

The UN should now embark on a boycott of the apartheid state of Israel and, with the threat of expulsion from the UN, demand that Israel allows the evicted Palestinian refugees to return in accordance with the UN resolutions 194 and 3236.

 

With this done, meaningful peace talks can proceed and various solutions be reached for co-habitation with equal rights for all people between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. No such solution can be compatible with the preservation of a Jewish apartheid state.

 

- Snorre Lindquist is a Swedish Architect of, among other things, the House of Culture in front of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem on the West Bank. Contact him at snorre_lindquist@hotmail.com.

 

- Lasse Wilhelmson is a commentator on the situation in the Middle East, and is a member of a local government in Sweden for 23 years, four of which in an executive position. Contact him at: lasse.wilhelmson@bostream.nu. The writers contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

[Nur]

A short path, from Gaza to Somalia

 

By Daniel Levy

 

Israel news

 

As the defined period for the Gaza cease-fire comes to an end today, preceded by a new cycle of violence, Israelis are being treated to a predictable dose of political posturing and chest-thumping. "We must do something, exact a price," we hear. Yes, the rocket fire needs to stop, but there is no military answer to this predicament.

 

To recap: For most of the six months of the cease-fire, relative quiet prevailed, and life returned to near-normal for the residents of Sderot and environs (though not for Gazans, who remained under siege). Then on November 4, an Israeli operation sparked a new round of dangerous, if controlled, violence - characterized by occasional Israeli strikes and incursions, matched by Palestinian rockets and shooting across the border.

 

The cease-fire, while far from ideal, was an improvement over what had preceded it. Of course, Hamas sought to upgrade its military and defensive capacities during this period, as Israel should have been doing on the other side of the border - it would have been absurd to expect otherwise. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail and the cease-fire will be extended - it is in the interests of both sides. The military alternative is not an attractive one - from Israel's side, escalation leading to partial or full reoccupation of Gaza, from Hamas, rockets and perhaps armed attacks from the West Bank in response. It also has no obvious exit strategy.

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But the debate in Israel about continuing the cease-fire largely misses the point. Whether or not it's extended, Israel's overall approach toward Gaza is dangerously mistaken. A siege designed to depose Hamas rule (a problematic goal in itself, but that's another story) risks triggering a social collapse that would have devastating consequences for all concerned. Anyone in search of a cautionary tale, and a peek at a possible future scenario for Gaza, should look at Somalia - which has the dubious distinction of having reintroduced piracy to the daily news lexicon, and from which Ethiopian troops are now planning to withdraw following an ugly two-year occupation.

 

Somalia has gone through 17 years of impoverishment, chaos, destruction and warlords, featuring 13 transitional governments - and is somehow still getting worse. In June 2006, having overrun most of the country, a coalition known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), together with businessmen and clan leaders, ousted the various warlords and the woefully ineffectual Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) from the capital Mogadishu. The following months of ICU rule, despite the often unpopular imposition of strict Islamic law, according to The New York Times, "turned out to be one of the most peaceful periods in modern Somali history."

 

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is beginning to approximate that of Somalia, where 77 percent of the population requires emergency humanitarian support, and the rate of malnutrition is the world's highest. Food insecurity in Gaza currently runs at 56 percent and is deteriorating rapidly, 42 percent of the Strip's population is unemployed and 76 percent is receiving humanitarian assistance (all UN figures). Harsh closures have effectively led to Gaza becoming deindustrialized, and Israeli reluctance even to replenish tattered banknotes is demonetizing the economy. There is a slippery slope from an entrenched humanitarian crisis into bloody anarchy and ungovernable chaos - especially when arms are ubiquitous and there is an open wound of unresolved national grievance.

 

One thing that can prevent a descent into the abyss is the existence of recognized and accepted political leadership. At the very least, Hamas today is an address for possible deals and decision-making, but Israel's assassinations and imprisonment of its leaders take their toll. An Israeli military escalation would likely accelerate the splintering of Hamas' leadership and the emergence of more radical alternatives; that was the effect of Ethiopia's intervention in its backyard. Both Somalia and Palestine are in need of broad and inclusive power-sharing arrangements, brokered internationally and insulated from neighborhood vetoes.

 

If Israel were again to find itself stuck in Gaza, don't expect international forces to come riding to the rescue. Ethiopia's military hoped to be replaced by an internationally sanctioned African Union force, but the troops couldn't be summoned. Handing over a Gaza that's been re-invaded by Israel to Arab and international forces is equally unrealistic.

 

Finally, there is the destabilizing regional effect of failed states. In Somalia's case, it was Eritrea and Djibouti that bore the brunt of the impact, in addition to Ethiopia, and of course the infamous piracy in the oil-shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden. Alongside Israel, Egypt is most immediately affected by turmoil in Gaza - with potentially severe consequences for regime stability and legitimacy, and for security in the Sinai and beyond.

 

Gaza is not yet Somalia. But the warning signs are there. There was nothing inevitable about the disintegration of Somalia. It happened as a result of misguided policies - notably of the current Bush administration and Ethiopia - which should not be repeated by Israel in Gaza.

 

Israel must do more than extend a cease-fire - Israel must allow Gaza to breathe, to reconnect to the world, to live on more than international handouts, and to reclaim its dignity. Could Hamas benefit in the short term? Perhaps. But worse things can happen - and not just to the Palestinians. For Israel, too, much is at stake. It's no fun to live in a Somalia, and no picnic either being its next-door neighbor.

 

Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the New America and Century Foundations, was previously an adviser in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative

[Nur]

"Who The F*** Does Netanyahu Think he Is?"

 

By Alan Hart

 

November 24, 2009 "ICH" -- It’s not often that stories about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict make me laugh but one by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, did. Because he is the corporation’s correspondent supporters of Israel right or wrong most love to hate – from time to time they pressure the BBC to fire him – I imagine he enjoyed writing it.

 

In a vivid background report for From Our Own Correspondent, headlined Tough Lessons for Obama on Mid-East peace, Jeremy recalled some of the “false dawns” of previous presidential peace efforts.

 

One was a trip by President Clinton to Gaza in 1998 when Netanyahu was enjoying his first period as Israel’s prime minister. “Yes”, Jeremy added, “an American president in Gaza. It is not conceivable these days.”

 

After noting that Netanyahu drove Clinton mad, Jeremy went on:

 

After he (Netanyahu) had lectured the president about the Middle East, Mr. Clinton famously asked his aides: “Who the (bleep) does he think he is? Who’s the bleeping superpower here?” Only he did not say bleep.

 

What President Clinton actually said was, “Who the fcuk does he think he is? Who’s the fcuking superpower here?”

 

After recalling in his own way how President Obama has been humiliated to date by Netanyahu in his second period as prime minister, Jeremy commented that he, Obama, “might be using Bill Clintonesque language about Mr. Netanyahu.”

 

My own speculation is that Obama behind closed doors might even be outdoing Clinton in his use of expletives about Netanyahu.

 

But really there’s no cause for laughter. Tears of rage are more appropriate.

 

The documented truth, which flows through my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is that every occupant of the Oval Office has at one point or another, and as President Ford once put it, been made “as mad as hell” by Israeli prime ministers. So the use of presidential expletives to describe them and Zionist lobby leaders at moments of great tension probably has a history going all the way back to Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence.

 

Even before that there were moments when President Truman could not contain his anger at the tactics Zionists were employing to bend him and the United Nations to their will. At one cabinet meeting Truman blurted out, “Jesus Christ couldn’t please them when he was here, so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck.”

 

In Memoirs published long after the events, Truman was very frank about Zionist coercion in the countdown to the General Assembly vote on the partition plan resolution. He wrote:

 

The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but the White House too was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders – actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats – disturbed and annoyed me. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favourable votes in the General Assembly. I have never approved of the strong imposing their will on the weak whether among men or nations.

 

As it happened, the campaign of threats to cause a number of sovereign nations to turn their intended “No” to partition votes into “Yes” votes or to abstain was executed by the Zionist lobby with the assistance of a hit-squad of 26 U.S. senators. The whole effort to bend the UN General Assembly to Zionism’s will was co-ordinated by Zionism’s eyes and ears in the White House, David K. Niles. (He once confessed that “had Roosevelt lived, Israel probably would not have become a state.” President Roosevelt was opposed to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, and there is a good case for believing, I make it in my book, that if he had lived, he would have used the United Nations to say “No” to Zionism’s colonial enterprise).

 

When Truman subsequently learned how one sovereign nation in particular, Haiti, had been threatened in his name, he wrote in a memorandum not de-classified until 1971 that “pressure groups (he meant Zionist pressure groups) will succeed in putting the United Nations out of business if this sort of thing is continued.”

 

Events were to prove Truman more right than wrong on that account.

 

Eisenhower was the first and the last American President to contain Zionism (when he insisted in 1956/57 that Israel, after its collusion with Britain and France in war on Nasser’s Eygpt, should withdraw from occupied Arab territory without conditions).

 

There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that President Kennedy, if he had been allowed to live, was intending in a second term to continue Eisenhower’s containment of Zionism, and that as a result of doing so there would not have been a shift of U.S. policy in favour of Israel right or wrong. In that event, and in all probability, the 1967 war would not have happened – Greater Israel would not have been created; and the Zionist state would not have been allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

 

Though it contained no expletives, the most explicit statement of anger I am aware of was the one made by presidential candidate Kennedy after he had been taken to a meeting with Zionist funders in New York. After it, back in Washington, he went for a walk with an old and trusted friend, newspaper columnist Chares L. Bartlett. According to his account, Kennedy said:

 

As an American citizen I am outraged to have a Zionist group come to me and say – “We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you let us have control of your Middle East policy. They wanted control!”

 

In my view the question of who the bleep does Netanyahu think he is misses the point. It is that he knows who he is – another Israeli prime minister who, with the assistance of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, has got another American president by the testicles. At least for the time being.

 

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years.. More. Please visit his website http://www.alanhart.net