As The Arabs See The Jews

[Nur]

" As The Arabs See The Jews "

 

By His Majesty King Abdullah OF Jordan And Palestine

 

The American Magazine November, 1947

 

 

I am especially delighted to address an American audience, for the tragic problem of Palestine will never be solved without American understanding, American sympathy, American support.

 

So many billions of words have been written about Palestine—perhaps more than on any other subject in history—that I hesitate to add to them. Yet I am compelled to do so, for I am reluctantly convinced that the world in general, and America in particular, knows almost nothing of the true case for the Arabs.

 

We Arabs follow, perhaps far more than you think, the press of America. We are frankly disturbed to find that for every word printed on the Arab side, a thousand are printed on the Zionist side.

 

There are many reasons for this. You have many millions of Jewish citizens interested in this question. They are highly vocal and wise in the ways of publicity. There are few Arab citizens in America, and we are as yet unskilled in the technique of modern propaganda.

 

The results have been alarming for us. In your press we see a horrible caricature and are told it is our true portrait. In all justice, we cannot let this pass by default.

 

Our case is quite simple: For nearly 2,000 years Palestine has been almost 100 per cent Arab. It is still preponderantly Arab today, in spite of enormous Jewish immigration. But if this immigration continues we shall soon be outnumbered—a minority in our home.

 

Palestine is a small and very poor country, about the size of your state of Vermont. Its Arab population is only about 1,200,000. Already we have had forced on us, against our will, some 600,000 Zionist Jews. We are threatened with many hundreds of thousands more.

 

Our position is so simple and natural that we are amazed it should even be questioned. It is exactly the same position you in America take in regard to the unhappy European Jews. You are sorry for them, but you do not want them in your country.

 

We do not want them in ours, either. Not because they are Jews, but because they are foreigners. We would not want hundreds of thousands of foreigners in our country, be they Englishmen or Norwegians or Brazilians or whatever.

 

Think for a moment: In the last 25 years we have had one third of our entire population forced upon us. In America that would be the equivalent of 45,000,000 complete strangers admitted to your country, over your violent protest, since 1921. How would you have reacted to that?

 

Because of our perfectly natural dislike of being overwhelmed in our own homeland, we are called blind nationalists and heartless anti-Semites. This charge would be ludicrous were it not so dangerous.

 

No people on earth have been less "anti-Semitic" than the Arabs. The persecution of the Jews has been confined almost entirely to the Christian nations of the West. Jews, themselves, will admit that never since the Great Dispersion did Jews develop so freely and reach such importance as in Spain when it was an Arab possession. With very minor exceptions, Jews have lived for many centuries in the Middle East, in complete peace and friendliness with their Arab neighbours.

 

Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and other Arab centres have always contained large and prosperous Jewish colonies. Until the Zionist invasion of Palestine began, these Jews received the most generous treatment—far, far better than in Christian Europe. Now, unhappily, for the first time in history, these Jews are beginning to feel the effects of Arab resistance to the Zionist assault. Most of them are as anxious as Arabs to stop it. Most of these Jews who have found happy homes among us resent, as we do, the coming of these strangers.

 

I was puzzled for a long time about the odd belief which apparently persists in America that Palestine has somehow "always been a Jewish land." Recently an American I talked to cleared up this mystery. He pointed out that the only things most Americans know about Palestine are what they read in the Bible. It was a Jewish land in those days, they reason, and they assume it has always remained so.

 

Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is absurd to reach so far back into the mists of history to argue about who should have Palestine today, and I apologise for it. Yet the Jews do this, and I must reply to their "historic claim." I wonder if the world has ever seen a stranger sight than a group of people seriously pretending to claim a land because their ancestors lived there some 2,000 years ago!

 

If you suggest that I am biased, I invite you to read any sound history of the period and verify the facts.

 

Such fragmentary records as we have indicate that the Jews were wandering nomads from Iraq who moved to southern Turkey, came south to Palestine, stayed there a short time, and then passed to Egypt, where they remained about 400 years. About 1300 BC (according to your calendar) they left Egypt and gradually conquered most—but not all—of the inhabitants of Palestine.

 

It is significant that the Philistines—not the Jews—gave their name to the country: "Palestine" is merely the Greek form of "Philistia."

 

Only once, during the empire of David and Solomon, did the Jews ever control nearly—but not all—the land which is today Palestine. This empire lasted only 70 years, ending in 926 BC. Only 250 years later the Kingdom of Judah had shrunk to a small province around Jerusalem, barely a quarter of modern Palestine.

 

In 63 BC the Jews were conquered by Roman Pompey, and never again had even the vestige of independence. The Roman Emperor Hadrian finally wiped them out about 135 AD. He utterly destroyed Jerusalem, rebuilt under another name, and for hundreds of years no Jew was permitted to enter it. A handful of Jews remained in Palestine but the vast majority were killed or scattered to other countries, in the Diaspora, or the Great Dispersion. From that time Palestine ceased to be a Jewish country, in any conceivable sense.

 

This was 1,815 years ago, and yet the Jews solemnly pretend they still own Palestine! If such fantasy were allowed, how the map of the world would dance about!

 

Italians might claim England, which the Romans held so long. England might claim France, "homeland" of the conquering Normans. And the French Normans might claim Norway, where their ancestors originated. And incidentally, we Arabs might claim Spain, which we held for 700 years.

 

Many Mexicans might claim Spain, "homeland" of their forefathers. They might even claim Texas, which was Mexican until 100 years ago. And suppose the American Indians claimed the "homeland" of which they were the sole, native, and ancient occupants until only some 450 years ago!

 

I am not being facetious. All these claims are just as valid—or just as fantastic—as the Jewish "historic connection" with Palestine. Most are more valid.

 

In any event, the great Moslem expansion about 650 AD finally settled things. It dominated Palestine completely. From that day on, Palestine was solidly Arabic in population, language, and religion. When British armies entered the country during the last war, they found 500,000 Arabs and only 65,000 Jews.

 

If solid, uninterrupted Arab occupation for nearly 1,300 years does not make a country "Arab", what does?

 

The Jews say, and rightly, that Palestine is the home of their religion. It is likewise the birthplace of Christianity, but would any Christian nation claim it on that account? In passing, let me say that the Christian Arabs—and there are many hundreds of thousands of them in the Arab World—are in absolute agreement with all other Arabs in opposing the Zionist invasion of Palestine.

 

May I also point out that Jerusalem is, after Mecca and Medina, the holiest place in Islam. In fact, in the early days of our religion, Moslems prayed toward Jerusalem instead of Mecca.

 

The Jewish "religious claim" to Palestine is as absurd as the "historic claim." The Holy Places, sacred to three great religions, must be open to all, the monopoly of none. Let us not confuse religion and politics.

 

We are told that we are inhumane and heartless because do not accept with open arms the perhaps 200,000 Jews in Europe who suffered so frightfully under Nazi cruelty, and who even now—almost three years after war’s end—still languish in cold, depressing camps.

 

Let me underline several facts. The unimaginable persecution of the Jews was not done by the Arabs: it was done by a Christian nation in the West. The war which ruined Europe and made it almost impossible for these Jews to rehabilitate themselves was fought by the Christian nations of the West. The rich and empty portions of the earth belong, not to the Arabs, but to the Christian nations of the West.

 

And yet, to ease their consciences, these Christian nations of the West are asking Palestine—a poor and tiny Moslem country of the East—to accept the entire burden. "We have hurt these people terribly," cries the West to the East. "Won’t you please take care of them for us?"

 

We find neither logic nor justice in this. Are we therefore "cruel and heartless nationalists"?

 

We are a generous people: we are proud that "Arab hospitality" is a phrase famous throughout the world. We are a humane people: no one was shocked more than we by the Hitlerite terror. No one pities the present plight of the desperate European Jews more than we.

 

But we say that Palestine has already sheltered 600,000 refugees. We believe that is enough to expect of us—even too much. We believe it is now the turn of the rest of the world to accept some of them.

 

I will be entirely frank with you. There is one thing the Arab world simply cannot understand. Of all the nations of the earth, America is most insistent that something be done for these suffering Jews of Europe. This feeling does credit to the humanity for which America is famous, and to that glorious inscription on your Statue of Liberty.

 

And yet this same America—the richest, greatest, most powerful nation the world has ever known—refuses to accept more than a token handful of these same Jews herself!

 

I hope you will not think I am being bitter about this. I have tried hard to understand that mysterious paradox, and I confess I cannot. Nor can any other Arab.

 

Perhaps you have been informed that "the Jews in Europe want to go to no other place except Palestine."

 

This myth is one of the greatest propaganda triumphs of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the organisation which promotes with fanatic zeal the emigration to Palestine. It is a subtle half-truth, thus doubly dangerous.

 

The astounding truth is that nobody on earth really knows where these unfortunate Jews really want to go!

 

You would think that in so grave a problem, the American, British, and other authorities responsible for the European Jews would have made a very careful survey, probably by vote, to find out where each Jew actually wants to go. Amazingly enough this has never been done! The Jewish Agency has prevented it.

 

Some time ago the American Military Governor in Germany was asked at a press conference how he was so certain that all Jews there wanted to go to Palestine. His answer was simple: "My Jewish advisors tell me so." He admitted no poll had ever been made. Preparations were indeed begun for one, but the Jewish Agency stepped in to stop it.

 

The truth is that the Jews in German camps are now subjected to a Zionist pressure campaign which learned much from the Nazi terror. It is dangerous for a Jew to say that he would rather go to some other country, not Palestine. Such dissenters have been severely beaten, and worse.

 

Not long ago, in Palestine, nearly 1,000 Austrian Jews informed the international refugee organisation that they would like to go back to Austria, and plans were made to repatriate them.

 

The Jewish Agency heard of this, and exerted enough political pressure to stop it. It would be bad propaganda for Zionism if Jews began leaving Palestine. The nearly 1,000 Austrian are still there, against their will.

 

The fact is that most of the European Jews are Western in culture and outlook, entirely urban in experience and habits. They cannot really have their hearts set on becoming pioneers in the barren, arid, cramped land which is Palestine.

 

One thing, however, is undoubtedly true. As matters stand now, most refugee Jews in Europe would, indeed, vote for Palestine, simply because they know no other country will have them.

 

If you or I were given a choice between a near-prison camp for the rest of our lives—or Palestine—we would both choose Palestine, too.

 

But open up any other alternative to them—give them any other choice, and see what happens!

 

No poll, however, will be worth anything unless the nations of the earth are willing to open their doors—just a little—to the Jews. In other words, if in such a poll a Jew says he wants to go to Sweden, Sweden must be willing to accept him. If he votes for America, you must let him come in.

 

Any other kind of poll would be a farce. For the desperate Jew, this is no idle testing of opinion: this is a grave matter of life or death. Unless he is absolutely sure that his vote means something, he will always vote for Palestine, so as not to risk his bird in the hand for one in the bush.

 

In any event, Palestine can accept no more. The 65,000 Jews in Palestine in 1918 have jumped to 600,000 today. We Arabs have increased, too, but not by immigration. The Jews were then a mere 11 per cent of our population. Today they are one third of it.

 

The rate of increase has been terrifying. In a few more years—unless stopped now—it will overwhelm us, and we shall be an important minority in our own home.

 

Surely the rest of the wide world is rich enough and generous enough to find a place for 200,000 Jews—about one third the number that tiny, poor Palestine has already sheltered. For the rest of the world, it is hardly a drop in the bucket. For us it means national suicide.

 

We are sometimes told that since the Jews came to Palestine, the Arab standard of living has improved. This is a most complicated question. But let us even assume, for the argument, that it is true. We would rather be a bit poorer, and masters of our own home. Is this unnatural?

 

The sorry story of the so-called "Balfour Declaration," which started Zionist immigration into Palestine, is too complicated to repeat here in detail. It is grounded in broken promises to the Arabs—promises made in cold print which admit no denying.

 

We utterly deny its validity. We utterly deny the right of Great Britain to give away Arab land for a "national home" for an entirely foreign people.

 

Even the League of Nations sanction does not alter this. At the time, not a single Arab state was a member of the League. We were not allowed to say a word in our own defense.

 

I must point out, again in friendly frankness, that America was nearly as responsible as Britain for this Balfour Declaration. President Wilson approved it before it was issued, and the American Congress adopted it word for word in a joint resolution on 30th June, 1922.

 

In the 1920s, Arabs were annoyed and insulted by Zionist immigration, but not alarmed by it. It was steady, but fairly small, as even the Zionist founders thought it would remain. Indeed for some years, more Jews left Palestine than entered it—in 1927 almost twice as many.

 

But two new factors, entirely unforeseen by Britain or the League or America or the most fervent Zionist, arose in the early thirties to raise the immigration to undreamed heights. One was the World Depression; the second the rise of Hitler.

 

In 1932, the year before Hitler came to power, only 9,500 Jews came to Palestine. We did not welcome them, but we were not afraid that, at that rate, our solid Arab majority would ever be in danger.

 

But the next year—the year of Hitler—it jumped to 30,000! In 1934 it was 42,000! In 1935 it reached 61,000!

 

It was no longer the orderly arrival of idealist Zionists. Rather, all Europe was pouring its frightened Jews upon us. Then, at last, we, too, became frightened. We knew that unless this enormous influx stopped, we were, as Arabs, doomed in our Palestine homeland. And we have not changed our minds.

 

I have the impression that many Americans believe the trouble in Palestine is very remote from them, that America had little to do with it, and that your only interest now is that of a humane bystander.

 

I believe that you do not realise how directly you are, as a nation, responsible in general for the whole Zionist move and specifically for the present terrorism. I call this to your attention because I am certain that if you realise your responsibility you will act fairly to admit it and assume it.

 

Quite aside from official American support for the "National Home" of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist settlements in Palestine would have been almost impossible, on anything like the current scale, without American money. This was contributed by American Jewry in an idealistic effort to help their fellows.

 

The motive was worthy: the result were disastrous. The contributions were by private individuals, but they were almost entirely Americans, and, as a nation, only America can answer for it.

 

The present catastrophe may be laid almost entirely at your door. Your government, almost alone in the world, is insisting on the immediate admission of 100,000 more Jews into Palestine—to be followed by countless additional ones. This will have the most frightful consequences in bloody chaos beyond anything ever hinted at in Palestine before.

 

It is your press and political leadership, almost alone in the world, who press this demand. It is almost entirely American money which hires or buys the "refugee ships" that steam illegally toward Palestine: American money which pays their crews. The illegal immigration from Europe is arranged by the Jewish Agency, supported almost entirely by American funds. It is American dollars which support the terrorists, which buy the bullets and pistols that kill British soldiers—your allies—and Arab citizens—your friends.

 

We in the Arab world were stunned to hear that you permit open advertisements in newspapers asking for money to finance these terrorists, to arm them openly and deliberately for murder. We could not believe this could really happen in the modern world. Now we must believe it: we have seen the advertisements with our own eyes.

 

I point out these things because nothing less than complete frankness will be of use. The crisis is too stark for mere polite vagueness which means nothing.

 

I have the most complete confidence in the fair-mindedness and generosity of the American public. We Arabs ask no favours. We ask only that you know the full truth, not half of it. We ask only that when you judge the Palestine question, you put yourselves in our place.

 

What would your answer be if some outside agency told you that you must accept in America many millions of utter strangers in your midst—enough to dominate your country—merely because they insisted on going to America, and because their forefathers had once lived there some 2,000 years ago?

 

Our answer is the same.

 

And what would be your action if, in spite of your refusal, this outside agency began forcing them on you?

[Nur]

Lessons Somalis can learn from Palestinians!

 

The following article shows how leadership changes over time. The contrast between King Abdullah and Abbas is similar to the contrast behween Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan and Sheikh Sharif.

 

Enjoy the article.

 

 

Another PA Betrayal

 

By Khalid Amayreh

 

October 06, 2009 "IHC" -- The Palestinian Authority (PA) decision to defer until March a vote on the “Goldstone report” at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva constitutes a huge betrayal of Palestinian people.

 

Likewise, the stuuupid and disgraceful feat immensely serves the Israeli goal of covering up the Nazi-like crimes the Israeli occupation army committed during its manifestly criminal war on the Gaza Strip nine months ago.

 

Endorsement of the report by UNHRC would probably have paved the way for the prosecution of Israeli war criminals before the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

 

The PA has given a plethora of mostly mendacious pretexts to justify the scandalous act which numerous Palestinians, ordinary people as well as intellectuals, have described as an expression of national treason.

 

To be sure, the Palestinians had on their side a solid majority of 33-35 member-states out of the 47-member council, which means the Goldstone commission report could have been easily endorsed by the UNHRC and referred to ICC or ICJ.

 

Hence, the only real interpretation of the PA decision to delay a vote on the report is that the Ramallah regime wanted only to appease Israel and the Obama administration irrespective of the disastrous effects and ramifications on the Palestinian cause, especially on the unwept victims of Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

 

Well, if Israel can get away with murdering 1300 Palestinians and utterly destroying half of Gaza, the next holocaust would probably assume European proportions. After all, the world can’t be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves.

 

Prior to the decision, there were reports that President Obama personally intervened behind the scenes, asking the PA leadership to stop pushing for the endorsement of the report since according to him doing so would undermine “diplomatic efforts.”

 

Similarly, another report suggested that the PA had reached a deal with Israel whereby the apartheid Zionist regime agreed to license a business venture partially owned by wealthy businessmen linked to the PA in return for the latter agreeing to defer discussion of the Goldstone report at the UNHRC.

 

The PA ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ibrahim Khreishi, was quoted as saying that the Palestinian leadership was interested in a “compromise text.”

 

“It will help us explain to the Israelis that the international community is with the Palestinians to achieve their hopes and dreams.”

 

What a stuuupidity! After more than 42 years of a criminal military occupation, do we still have to explain our suffering to the Israelis?

 

Does Mr. Khreishi really think that all the Israelis needed to desist from their Nazi-like crimes against our people was just a “convincing explanation”?

 

Does the PLO ambassador think a “compromise text” would make the despicable thugs and war criminals in Tel Aviv reconsider their criminal approach vis-à-vis the Palestinians?

 

And what does a “compromise text” mean anyway? Did Israel not commit war crimes and crimes against humanity knowingly, willfully and deliberately against innocent people in Gaza?

 

Didn’t Israel rain death, using state-of-the-art of the American technology of death, on unprotected civilian neighborhoods, killing and maiming thousands of innocent men, women and children?

 

Didn’t Israel rain white phosphorous on large parts of Gaza, incinerating innocent life all over the coastal territory?

 

Didn’t Israel knowingly and deliberately rain bombs from high altitudes on homes, mosques, colleges, hospitals and schools all over Gaza?

 

So, how could any human being with any semblance of honesty and morality try to make these crimes look less nefarious and less satanic by agreeing to adopting a “compromise text”?

 

Of all people in the world, we Palestinians must call the spade a spade especially when we see that proverbial spade in the hands of our grave diggers, tormentors and child killers.

 

The Judeo-Nazi army, navy and air force murdered our people en mass in Gaza and the West Bank. They committed their horrendous crimes in broad daylight and in full view of the entire world.

 

There were no extenuating circumstances or controversial accounts of what really happened. The so-called “Qassam rockets” are largely a red-herring and shouldn’t be used in the same phrase with the horrendous Israeli machine of death since the enormity and deadliness in both cases are totally incomparable.

 

And above all, the person who prepared the report, Richard Goldstone, is a Jew, actually a Zionist Jew, who would never overplay and exaggerate these war crimes against a virtually completely unprotected people whose very physical survival has always depended and continues to depend on the good will of the international community.

 

Hence, the Palestinian people, the longest-lasting victims of genocidal racism, and the entire free world around us would like to know what is it that makes the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah and its disoriented ambassador in Geneva cringe so submissively in the face of Zionist pressure?

 

Don’t you people have any modicum of honor and national dignity? After all, we are talking about real crimes and hundreds of children mercilessly murdered by the army of these thuggish Zionist spokespersons who are now shamelessly bragging about swaying the PA ambassador into helping the Israeli propaganda cause.

 

Nevertheless, it is probably unfair to pin all the blame on Khreishi, a mere functionary who had to heed the ****** instructions from Ramallah.

 

True, Khreishi should have resigned rather than be part to an ignominious act of national betrayal. But the ultimate villain is, of course, the Palestinian judenrat in Ramallah which has become inured to sacrificing Palestinian national interests for the sake of appeasing Israel and pleasing the Obama administration in the hope of getting a “payoff” of some kind.

 

Interestingly, however, the “payoff” given to the PA that we have seen so far is in the form of more Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, more Jewish provocations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque esplanade, and more Jewish violence and terror against unprotected Palestinian citizens in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

 

As to the Obama administration, It, too, has been “rewarding” the PA for its perfidy and betrayal of its own people by turning a blind eye to Israeli settlement expansion and by insisting that the PA resume talks with the arrogant government of Benyamin Netanyahu without any preconditions.

 

Well, people who don’t respect themselves don’t deserve respect from others. More over, an authority that torments, tortures and kills its own citizens in order to please the Israeli occupier and obtain from it a certificate of good conduct is utterly unqualified to be a true representative of the Palestinian people.

 

Finally, it is probably safe to assume that the PA dreads a thorough discussion of the Goldstone report as much as Israel does.

 

According to certain sources, the PA had consistently urged Israel to pursue the criminal war on the Gaza Strip to the end.

 

Israel is also believed to possess damning evidence showing some PA officials pleading with Israel to keep up the war on Gaza in order to crush Hamas.

 

Hence, it is highly likely that the PA has found itself in an exceedingly embarrassing situation, which explains why it doesn’t want to see a public discussion of the Goldstone report take place anytime soon as this would reveal many shocking and embarrassing secrets about PA connivance with Israel in carrying out the Nazi-like onslaught on the Gaza Strip.

[Castro]

Originally posted by Nur:

Lessons Somalis can learn from Palestinians!

What lessons could these be yaa sheikh Nur?

[Nur]

Castro bro.

 

In Palestine, we have a situation in which Israel has blatantly breached the Geneva convention, war crimes have been committed with support of US and EU and in full view of the Arab world, yet it took an honest Jewish Judge to call it a war crime, while the head of the "Palestinian Authority" Mr. Abbas deflects the war crimes allegations to cover his own rear end. It is said that Abbas has asked Israel to continue the siege and bombardment of Gaza to get rid of his Hamas competitors. The Gazans stood firm, and the attempt to force them to submission failed. They chose to die on their feet and not to live on their knees!.

 

The parallel here is a similar enemy installed government in Somalia, the so called TFG whose past Warlord President Abdullahi Yusuf and Geddi, and current Sheikh Sharif and Sharmarke who have routinely allowed Burunudi and Ugandan AMISOM Mercenaries in cold blood to use Battle Grade Shelling on the Civilian populated Market of Bakara for avenging the attacks by the armed resistance groups, so in order to silence the resistance, AMISOM with the tacit approval of the TFG targets the civilians. If investigated by Mr. Goldstone, it will undoubtedly prove to be a similar war crime if not worse.

 

One Lesson we can learn from the Palestinian experience is that truth can even come from an unlikely source, like an Ethiopian or a Ugandan Judge, who might show that war crimes have been committed in Somalia by the very people we are asked to accept as TFG Government!

 

 

Another lesson is that the political circus cage of the TFG is infested with warlords whose war crime resumes competes with that of the Hutu in Rwanda and the Sebs in Bosnia. In that Circus parliament, we have more than a dozen war criminal clowns whose hands are freshly stained with 16 years of contract assassinations, rape of the nation by allowing the dumping of toxic waste on Somali coasts and the destruction of fauna and flora, who have since been anointed by Mullah Bush and his later day disciples as friends of the free world and allies against terrorism.

 

 

Nur

[Nur]

Mossad's Licence to Kill

 

The killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh bears the hallmarks of the ruthless Israeli intelligence service. One of the leading chroniclers of the agency gives a unique insight into its methods.

 

By Gordon Thomas

 

February 19, 2010 "The Telegraph" -- The Mossad assassins could have felt only satisfaction when the news broke that they had succeeded in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas military commander, in Dubai last month.

 

The Israeli government's refusal to comment on the death has once more gained worldwide publicity for Mossad, its feared intelligence service. Its ruthless assassinations were made famous by the film Munich, which detailed Mossad's attacks on the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Long ago, the agency had established that silence is the most effective way to spread terror among its Arab enemies.

 

In the past year, al-Mabhouh had moved to the top of Mossad's list of targets, each of which must be legally approved under guidelines laid down over half a century ago by Meir Amit, the most innovative and ruthless director-general of the service. Born in Tiberius, King Herod's favourite city, Amit had established the rules for assassination.

 

"There will be no killing of political leaders, however extreme they are. They must be dealt with politically. There will be no killing of a terrorist's family unless they are also directly implicated in terrorism. Each execution must be sanctioned by the incumbent prime minister. Any execution is therefore state-sponsored, the ultimate judicial sanction of the law. The executioner is no different from the state-appointed hangman or any other lawfully-appointed executioner."

 

I first met Amit in 2001 and through him, I talked to the spies of Mossad, the katsas, and finally, to the assassins, the kidon, who take their name from the Hebrew word for bayonet. They helped me write the only book approved by Mossad, Gideon's Spies. Amit said the book "tells like it was – and like it is".

 

Amit showed me a copy of those rules at our first meeting. After two years of training in the Mossad academy at Herzlia near Tel Aviv, each recruit to the kidon is given a copy.

 

The killing in Dubai is a classic example of how Mossad goes about its work. Al-Mabhouh's 11 assassins had been chosen from the 48 current kidon, six of whom are women.

 

It has yet to be established how al-Mabhouh was killed, but kidon's preference is strangling with wire, a well-placed car bomb, an electric shock or one of the poisons created by Mossad scientists at their headquarters in a Tel Aviv suburb.

 

The plan to assassinate Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had been finalised in a small conference room next to the office of Meir Dagan, who has run Mossad for the past eight years. The 10th director-general, Dagan has a reputation as a man who would not hesitate to walk into a nameless Arab alley with no more than a handgun in his pocket.

 

Only he knows how many times he has asked a prime minister for legal permission to kill a terrorist who could not be brought to trial in an Israeli court, along with the kidon to whom he shows the legally stamped document, the licence to kill.

 

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's name had been on such a document, which would have been signed by Benyamin Netanyahu. That, like every aspect of a kidon operation, would be firmly denied by a government spokesman, were he to be asked. This has not stopped Dubai's police chief, Lt-General Tamin, from fulminating against the Israeli prime minister.

 

Two years ago this week, Dagan sent a team of kidon to Damascus to assassinate Imad Mughniyeh. His Mossad file included details of organising the kidnapping of Terry Waite and the bombing of the US Marine base near Beirut airport, killing 241 people. The United States had placed a £12.5 million bounty on his head. Dagan just wanted him dead.

 

Mossad psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioural scientists, psychoanalysts and profilers – collectively known as the "specialists" – were told to decide the best way to kill Mughniyeh.

 

They concluded that he would be among the guests of honour at the Iranian Cultural Centre celebrations in 2008 for the celebration of the Khomeini Revolution. The team rigged a car-bomb in the headrest of the Mitsubishi Pajero they discovered Mughniyeh had rented, to be detonated by a mobile phone. As Mughniyeh arrived outside the Culture Centre at precisely 7pm on February 12, the blast blew his head off.

 

At Mughniyeh's funeral in Beirut, his mother, Um-Imad, sat among a sea of black chadors, a sombre old woman, who wailed that her son had planned to visit her on the day after he died. She cried out she had no photograph to remember him by. Two days later she received a packet. Inside was his photograph. It had been posted in Haifa.

 

The list of kidon assassinations is long and stretches far beyond the Arab world. In their base deep in the Negev Desert – the sand broken only by a distant view of Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona – the kidon practise with a variety of handguns, learn how to conceal bombs, administer a lethal injection in a crowd and make a killing look accidental.

 

They review famous assassinations – the shooting of John F Kennedy, for example – and study the faces and habits of potential targets whose details are stored on their highly restricted computers. There, too, are thousands of constantly updated street plans downloaded from Google Earth.

 

Mossad is one of the world's smallest intelligence services. But it has a back-up system no other outfit can match. The system is known as sayanim, a derivative of the Hebrew word lesayeah, meaning to help.

 

There are tens of thousands of these "helpers". Each has been carefully recruited, sometimes by katsas, Mossad's field agents. Others have been asked to become helpers by other members of the secret group.

 

Created by Meir Amit, the role of the sayanim is a striking example of the cohesiveness of the world Jewish community. In practical terms, a sayan who runs a car rental agency will provide a kidon with a vehicle on a no-questions basis. An estate agent sayan will provide a building for surveillance. A bank manager sayan will provide funds at any time of day or night, and a sayan doctor provides medical assistance.

 

Any of these helpers could have been involved in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Mossad has recently expanded its network of sayanim into Arab countries.

 

A sayan doctor in the West Bank provided details of the homoeopathic concoction Yasser Arafat used to drink. When he died in 2004, his personal physician, Dr al-Kurdi, said "poisoning is a strong possibility in this case".There have been reports that more than a dozen terrorists have died from poisoning in the past five years,.

 

Within the global intelligence community, respect for Mossad grew following the kidon assassination of Dr Gerald Bull, the Canadian scientist who was probably the world's greatest expert on gun-barrel ballistics. Israel had made several attempts to buy his expertise. Each time, Bull had made clear his dislike for the Jewish state.

 

Instead he had offered his services to Saddam Hussein, to build a super-gun capable of launching shells containing nuclear, chemical or biological warheads directly from Iraq into Israel. Saddam had ordered three of the weapons at a cost of $20 million. Bull was retained as a consultant for a fee of $1 million.

 

On the afternoon of March 20, 1990, the sanction to kill Bull was given by the then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. Nahum Admoni, the head of Mossad, sent a three-man team to Brussels, where Bull lived in a luxury apartment block. Each kidon carried a handgun in a holster under his jacket.

 

When the 61-year-old Bull answered the doorbell of his home, he was shot five times in the head and the neck, each kidon firing their 7.65 pistol in turn, leaving Bull dead on his doorstep. An hour later they were out of the country on a flight to Tel Aviv.

 

Within hours, Mossad's own department of psychological warfare had arranged with sayanim in the European media to leak stories that Bull had been shot by Saddam's hit squad because he had planned to renege on their deal.

 

The same tactics had been placed on stand-by on October 24, 1995, for the assassination of Fathi Shkaki who, like Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, had reached the top of Mossad's target list as a result of his terrorist attacks.

 

Two kidon – code-named Gil and Ran – had left Tel Aviv on separate flights. Ran flew to Athens, Gil to Rome. At each airport they collected new British passports from a local sayan. The two men arrived in Malta on a late-afternoon flight and checked into the Diplomat Hotel overlooking Valetta harbour.

 

That evening, a sayan delivered a motorcycle to Ran. He told hotel staff that he planned to use it to tour the island. At the same time, a freighter that had sailed the previous day from Haifa bound for Italy radioed to the Maltese harbour authorities that it had developed engine trouble. While it was fixed, it would drop anchor off the island. On board the boat was a small team of Mossad communications technicians. They established a link with a radio in Gil's suitcase.

 

Shkaki had arrived by ferry from Tripoli, Libya, where he had been discussing with Colonel Gadaffi what Mossad was convinced was a terrorist attack. The two kidon waited for him to stroll along the waterfront. Ran and Gil drove up on the motorcycle and Gil shot Fathi Shkaki six times in the head. It had become a kidon signature.

 

When the police came to search Shkaki's bedroom they found a "Do not disturb" sign on his door – a signature that was repeated in last month's Dubai killing.

 

Gordon Thomas is the author of 'Gideon's Spies'.

 

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010

 

 

..............................................

 

From The Times

February 19, 2010

 

Dubai wants head of Mossad arrested over Hamas assassination

 

Ron Prosor, the Israeli Ambassador to Britain, attended a meeting at the Foreign Office

Hugh Tomlinson in Dubai and Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem

 

The Dubai chief of police called yesterday for the arrest of Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, if it is proved that the Israeli spy agency was behind the assassination of the Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

 

Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan Tamim called on Interpol, in a statement last night, to issue a red arrest notice seeking Mr Dagan’s extradition “as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is most likely now”.

 

An insider close to the case confirmed that Mr Dagan and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, are top of the Gulf state’s wanted list.

 

“Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al-Mabhouh,” General Tamim said. “It is 99 per cent, if not 100 per cent, that Mossad is standing behind the murder.”

Times Archive, 1973: British protest over false passports

 

Britain protested to the Israeli Government yesterday over the supply of falsified British passports to agents during their attacks in Beirut

 

* Israel fears UN censure move led by Britain

 

* Israeli agents kill guerilla leaders in Lebanon

 

 

* Britain demands 'full cooperation' from Israel

 

* Mossad ties are vital for UK security

 

* Dubai points finger at Mossad over Hamas 'hit'

 

Police in Dubai said that they would release new evidence in the coming days that proves that the assassination can be traced to the Mossad headquarters in Herzliya, a suburb north of Tel Aviv. Officials have never ruled Mossad out of their investigation but have stopped short of accusing the Israeli spy agency directly until now.

 

Some Israeli commentators are openly calling for Mr Dagan to resign, arguing that the diplomatic row and negative publicity generated by the assassination are unacceptable.

 

Gideon Levy, a correspondent for the Hebrew daily Haaretz, accused the Mossad chief of acting recklessly. “We have long forgotten that Mossad is supposed to be an intelligence-gathering organisation, not one that sows death, and that a lawful state does not operate hit squads.

 

“To the roars of approval by the pundits, Dagan has just been given another year on job [sic], his eighth. Why? Partly because he’s a specialist at liquidation,” he wrote.

 

However, officials in the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that it was “highly unlikely” that Mr Dagan would step down before his tenure expires.

 

The softly spoken former paratrooper was wounded twice in more than 30 years of service in the Israeli Army. He served as head of the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, and became a confidant of Ariel Sharon, the future Prime Minister, during their years in the Israel Defence Forces.

 

A former Mossad agent who worked for Mr Dagan told The Times that he was likely to ride out the storm: “Mossad is facing a lot of anger right now over the use of British and European passports. I don’t know if Mossad was actually involved or how they got those passports, though I can say that Dagan isn’t the kind of man to care about angering a few people to get the job done. He is what you would call a one-man show.”

 

Talk of Mr Dagan’s unwillingness to share power surfaced early in his tenure, when The Jerusalem Post reported that more than 200 Mossad agents had resigned over his style.

 

Officials in Dubai have conceded that it could be almost impossible to catch al-Mabhouh’s killers. Even if the assassins were somehow identified, the United Arab Emirates has no diplomatic relations with Israel, let alone judicial co-operation agreements.

 

So far the only suspects being held are three Palestinians accused of working with the Israelis. Ahmad Hasnin, a Palestinian intelligence operative, and Anwar Shekhaiber, a Palestinian Authority official in Ramallah, were arrested in Amman and have been extradited to Dubai, Jordanian officials said. A third man, named by Palestinian media as Nahro Massoud, a Hamas security operative, was arrested in Damascus. All three were residents of the Gaza Strip until the Hamas takeover in June 2007, and a Hamas official in Gaza said that it was “likely” that they knew al-Mabhouh, who was killed in his hotel room in Dubai on January 19.

 

Dubai’s police chief said that one of the Palestinians extradited from Jordan had been observed meeting one of the suspected Mossad agents.

 

Israel has long had a far-reaching network of Palestinian collaborators. In the past, defence officials have acknowledged that Israel’s security establishment depends highly on “turning” Palestinians into collaborators using various methods that include blackmail, money or threats.

 

Mr Dagan’s predecessor, the British-born Ephraim Halevy, was known for a more diplomatic approach, Amir Oren, a military correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz, said. “Dagan, meanwhile, is not trying to come across as diplomatically elegant.”

 

While some Israelis have argued that Mr Dagan should resign, many are pleased with the way he runs the agency. “Mossad have renewed the aura that the name used to generate in the region,” Alon Ben David, an Israeli intelligence analyst, told Israeli radio.

 

 

The Murder of Palestinian Mahmoud Al Mabhouh

 

 

http://video.gulfnews.com/services/player/bcpid4267205001?bctid=66672644001

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ9FVKsdTvg&feature=player_embedded

[Sherban Shabeel]

King Abdullah's letter is such a good synthesis of what this whole conflict is about.

 

I commend you for this post!

[ailamos]

^ I second that Nur, excellent letter from the late King. Thanks for posting it.

[Nur]

Warning: For Mature Audience only! Following article includes some objectionable language, the context of this language however vividly portrays the authors feelings and grievances, I hesitated to post, but the strength of her message forced a rare exception.

 

 

War After War After War

 

Another Year, Another Post

 

....The Westerner is a bag of slimy hypocrisy...like nasal snots...and am not just talking about governments here, am talking of "people".

 

By Layla Anwar

 

March 19, 2010 "Arab Woman Blues" -- Remembering, not that I have ever forgotten...remembering not that I have been given a chance to forget...

 

This post may not be a coherent, cohesive one... who gives a fcuk ? I certainly don't...there is nothing coherent or cohesive about occupation and exile...and it's not like am up for a Pulitzer price in Literature either...

 

This post may be a collection of rambling lines...so what ? I've heard nothing but ramblings and rumblings for the past 7 years...and am no more royalist than the king...

 

This post might have no beginning and no end, this post might be a reflection of a state of limbo...who cares? It's been a limbo for two decades already...

 

The Westerner is a bag of slimy hypocrisy...like nasal snots...and am not just talking about governments here, am talking of "people". You'd have every aspect of your life destroyed because of their "free choice" as in "democratically" electing their governments, and they get all flustered if you give them the royal finger...and tell them -- fcuk you people of the lie...you are nothing but deceit.

 

I mean how could you ? How could you insult them, use foul language, indulge in vulgarity, how could you speak their own language ?! Only they, are allowed to fcuk you and the "good kind souls" among them come and "save you" from their fcuking your life...

 

That's the West for you - in one simple paragraph. Oh and you have to be so grateful too...because they "reached out" for you...but you just don't want to be saved, you are a stubborn, obstinate creature - you want Justice...that does not go too well in their books...you know why ? because these people don't care about justice, their whole lives are based on blatant injustices...their whole lifestyle is based on injustices, their whole system is based on Injustice...oh yes it sure is...and you need not be a reader of contemporary history either...but these bassttaards want you with permanent blinkers on...like those donkeys they can lead by making them smell a carrot dangling in front...

 

And if you reject, loudly reject both the donkey and the sheep, you are not one of them....and you will never be one of them...

 

Ah these Arabs, ah these Muslims, terribly unruly...then they would pull out some article or another and stick it under your nose and tell you -- see, see how terribly oppressive, oppressed, you people are -- see ?!

 

And that after they've blown your home, your family, your kids, your life to fcuking pieces...like a jigsaw puzzle...

 

And you go searching for the pieces, trying to make it whole again...but you know you can't...you know it has become an impossibility...but never mind, as long as you don't insult those sons of bittches...as long as you keep your "dignified" posture, on four, looking for the pieces...while they shove another article under your nose telling you how oppressive, oppressed you are...

 

We were all gathered in the dark room, in one corner of the room, huddled, almost piled up on top of another...like corpses about to be collectively buried in some anonymous mass grave...there was a little candle burning, flickering, imperceptibly so...maybe the only warmth, for we were shivering...

 

Each round we'd think the time has come...the time has come with the walls shaking and the windows shattering...we stopped replacing them...we just used garbage bags and tape instead...maybe that was a symbol for what was to come later...tape your mouth, seal your lips while your life has become a pile of garbage...

 

I remember each one would give the other "instructions", if you so and so is still alive, he/she should not forget to do so and so...and with every round, we'd say our prayers all over again, asking forgiveness for our short lived lives, our failures and omissions, and remind one another of the will...if you are still alive, remember, promise you will remember... I suppose another way of reaching immortality in those deadly minutes that preceded and followed every round of Freedom...

 

At first there were sirens, and some would scream "ghara, ghara, here they come again" (air raid, air raid) as if we had a say in the matter, as if we could stop it, as if we controlled the sky or those who rode it...so we huddled again and again...like terrified animals before a storm, before an earthquake...

 

When the sirens stopped working, it was the brave ones who went to the mosques and start chanting Allahu Akbar - God is the Greatest...these became our sirens -- Allahu Akbar...

 

In the aftermath of each round of Freedom and Liberation, each would take a deep breath, and try to reach someone else, another relative, a neighbor, to check on them...

 

Rosaries - praying beads would be left on each one's seat, marking it as -- this is my place, this is where I was when it all happened...marking our territory with praying beads...half angels and half animals, surviving on prayer and instinct...awaiting death...

 

It's funny how it is all coming back, as if it was yesterday...it's like a closed locked door and I just turn in the key, open it and here it is all over again...

 

There are things I don't want to remember, but they impose themselves on me, imperiously so...and it's like one scene takes me to another one, like in a train ride...like a film I can't stop...like a film I am anxiously waiting for to end...

 

One scene leads to another, like in a labyrinth...no wonder this is a door I never wanted to open...

 

War after War after War...back in the tunnel, swirling back...subtracting years, 1991, the fireworks of another liberation. 1980, 1973, 1967...I remember them all...one by one...

 

What is there to say ? Apart from swinging from shivers to numbness back to shivers, back to nothing...

 

The same scene repeats itself...windows shattering, plastic and tapes, glued to the radio for the latest news, hoping batteries won't run out, and more sirens...all the sirens sound the same...Baghdad and beyond -- same sirens, same wars...

 

Israeli air raids in 1967 and 1973, I was there too...I laugh when I think about it, laugh sarcastically, as if Destiny wanted me to be a witness...

 

I remember another shelter...this one was very damp...it was in the basement of a building...not really a shelter but more like an underground storage room...it smelled bad...humidity and piss...I remember Dad grabbing the radio, and Mom pulling me by the arm - Yalla Layla, let's go...and I'd hear the thunder outside shaking the earth beneath my feet...and after so many rounds of "punishment" from the Sky, I'd say to my mother - do we really have to go to this dark room, can't we just die here in our home ?

 

I remember her just pulling me by the arm down the stairs -- no time for a reply, every minute counted...hurrying down the stairs whilst everything shook...and ending up in that dark humid, smelly room, smelling of rot and piss...there would be several families there...again each family would take a corner, gather and huddle together...waiting for the final verdict, waiting for the final sentence, waiting...to see if God, the Universe, MIG fighter jets...decide who will live and who will die that day...

 

And so it is in this part of the world, from 2010 to all the way back...their raids and bullets fly over your head taking you from up and their articles take you from down....and they still shove them under your nose telling you how oppressive - oppressed you are...

 

Well I did warn, I did say I am not sure how or when this will end...I knew when I turned that key into that locked door, I was opening a can of worms...

 

Needless to say I had much difficulty falling asleep, and when I eventually did, I was woken up every hour or so with terrible nightmares. I am not sure if nightmare is the correct word, more like very powerful dreams, one sequence after another, that left me drenched in cold sweat, gasping for air...

 

I could not fall asleep, even though I was dead tired...I kept tossing and turning and out of the blue images of my dying grandmother flashed before my eyes...I saw when uncle handed me her medical report, the first thing I read was - Prognosis Negative. It was too late to do anything. Not that there was much we could do in view of the circumstances...the family decided not to tell her how ill she was...but she knew...

 

I remember being by her side and holding her frail transparent hands, with the blue veins showing, all dried up...I said " Bibi, it will all be fine " - she smiled and said "I know why am so ill, it's the wars, they killed me...I kept the frights inside and now they are killing me..."

 

Do those who pride themselves on Liberation and Mission Accomplished ever think of how "frights kept inside" actually act like delayed time bombs and bullets? Do the Medical Associations of the "civilized" world, ever consider the long term effects, of such a "negative prognosis" ? I very much doubt it...I very much doubt that Bibi or the thousand others will ever cross their callous indifferent minds...

 

So against this background of specific memories, I finally managed to doze off, only to be shaken out of this much desired state by a potent sequence of a dream...

 

I dreamt it was pitch black all around me...I was in some airport tarmac, I had just landed and about to cross a border...I was carrying no luggage, there was no suitcase waiting for me...I only had a small plastic bag with essentials in it...

 

I saw my dad waiting for me on the other side of the fence...I had to go through customs but I had no papers, no documents...they checked and checked again the contents of my plastic bag, I was delayed...I told my dad, I will join them later on, I am being kept here for a while...

 

The second sequence was also very potent...I then saw myself in a gathering of men, Arab men from different nationalities...supposedly "supporters of the cause", they were just sitting drinking coffee and smoking...and theorizing...they were Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, for the most part...and at the same time they were trying to sell me things, goods, stuff that was worthless...I said to one of them, but I have already paid you so much, and I got nothing in return, why should I pay you more...you have given me nothing...so he retorted - come on you know how much we care about you, we even gave you a discount... I replied - a discount for what, you gave me nothing, I gave you everything I had... So one of the guys hugged me and said - you know we are brothers and I said - are we really ?....I left this gathering very upset, and headed to the empty street, again it was pitch black...again I was carrying nothing but this plastic bag...

 

The third sequence was the most telling....as I was walking down that dark street, a car pulls up on the curb, I noticed it had no lights, I felt danger...the man in the car said - have no fear I live here in this street...but he had an Egyptian accent and he was driving a car that had no Egyptian license plates...and in the dream I was not in Egypt...I knew he was lying and that I was in trouble...He got out of the car, he was a very big man, looked like a monster, he just put his hands on my mouth and he tried to rape me...I fought back as hard as I could, I wanted to scream, shout, but he suffocated my voice with his big hands, I had a small alarm in my hand, like a small siren, emitting the same sound when the bombs were about to fall...I sounded the siren, it was loud...I could hear it in the empty street, I was waiting for my "brothers" to show up -- no one did....

 

I woke up trembling...I felt so nauseous I wanted to vomit, but I had nothing in my stomach to vomit...I laid in bed for a while gathering my senses, reminding myself it was just a dream...only to realize that it was no dream, it was reality...

 

Iraq was betrayed and raped by the Arab "brothers" first..

 

An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...

 

Who am I ? The eternal Question . Have not figured it out fully yet . All you need to know about me is that I am a Middle Easterner, an Arab Woman - into my 40's and old enough to know better. I have no homeland per se. I live in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Egypt simultaneously...All the rest is icing on the cake.

 

Copyrights reserved 2006-2010

[Nur]

US Funds Israel’s Apartheid Roads Plan

 

Settlers benefit from Israeli-only routes

 

By Jonathan Cook

 

May 16, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Jerusalem -- The construction of sections of a controversial segregated road network in the West Bank planned by Israel for Palestinians -- leaving the main roads for exclusive use by settlers -- is being financed by a US government aid agency, a map prepared by Palestinian researchers has revealed.

 

USAid, which funds development projects in Palestinian areas, is reported to have helped to build 114km of Israeli-proposed roads, despite a pledge from Washington six years ago that it would not assist in implementing what has been widely described as Israel’s “apartheid road” plan.

 

To date the agency has paid for the construction of nearly a quarter of the segregated road network put forward by Israel in 2004, said the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ).

 

The roads are designed to provide alternative routes to connect Palestinian communities, often by upgrading circuitious dirt tracks or by building tunnels under existing routes.

 

Meanwhile, according to human rights groups, Israel has reserved an increasing number of main roads in the West Bank for Israelis so that Jewish settlers can drive more easily and quickly into Israel, making their illegal communities more attractive places to live.

 

The US agency’s involvement in building a segregated West Bank road infrastructure would run counter to Washington’s oft-stated goal, including as it launched “proximity talks” last week, to establish a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity.

 

“The displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank’s main roads improves the appeal of the settlements by better integrating them into Israel,” said Suheil Khalilieh, the head of settlement monitoring at ARIJ. “Conversely, creating an inferior, alternative network of local roads makes travel between the main regions of the West Bank difficult and time-consuming for Palestinians.”

 

Israel proposed the creation of two separate road systems in 2004, after many of the West Bank’s main roads had been sealed off to Palestinians following the outbreak of the second intifada.

 

Ariel Sharon, the then-prime minister, argued that segregated infrastructure would create “contiguity of transportation” for Palestinians and help to alleviate economic hardship resulting from hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints that restrict Palestinian movement.

 

The international community was asked to finance 500km of roads for the Palestinians, later termed “fabric of life” roads, including upgrading agricultural tracks and constructing many underpasses and bridges, at a cost of $200 million.

 

The Palestinian Authority, however, objected, saying the plan would further entrench the illegal settlements in the West Bank and justify confiscating yet more Palestinian land for the new roads.

 

That position was backed by international donors, including the US, which declared it would not finance any road projects against the PA’s will.

 

Despite the US promise, however, a map of the West Bank recently published by ARIJ shows that 23 per cent of the “alternative” road network Israel proposed has been built with USAid money.

 

Many of these roads are located in so-called Areas B and C, more than 80 per cent of the West Bank that was assigned to Israeli security control by the Oslo accords. Israel oversees all road projects in these areas.

 

Mr Khalilieh said the PA was being effectively bullied into conceding the road infrastructure wanted by Israel.

 

“What happens is that USAid presents a package deal of donations for infrastructure projects in the West Bank and the Palestinians are faced with a choice of take it or leave it. That way the PA is cornered into accepting roads it does not want.”

 

He said some roads were also being approved because of a lack of oversight by the PA. An inter-ministerial committee to vet proposed roads to ensure they did not contribute to the Israeli plan had been inactive since 2006, he said, following the split between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian elections.

 

After PA officials were presented with ARIJ’s map, Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, issued a statement last weekend denying that the PA had contributed to the Israeli-proposed road network.

 

 

 

However, in a sign that such reassurances were unlikely to dampen concerns, he reconvened the inter-ministerial committee to conduct field vists to check on road projects that had been carried out or were in progress.

 

Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian government spokesman and a former planning minister, said the PA was taking the issue “very seriously” and was doing everything possible to resist the emergence of an “apartheid system” in the West Bank.

 

He added that, if roads were being built that served the settlers’ interests, “that is not supposed to happen”.

 

According to USAid’s figures, it has financed 235km of roads in the West Bank in the past decade, and is preparing to add another 120km by the end of this year.

 

Critics add that in some cases the upgrading by USAid of minor roads, even those not included in the Israeli plan, has worked to the same end of keeping Palestinians off the West Bank’s main highways.

 

USAid officials were unavailable for comment.

 

Among roads for Palestinians funded by USAid are several projects south of Bethlehem that appear to be providing an “alternative” to Road 60, a busy highway that has traditionally linked Jerusalem with the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Hebron in the southern West Bank.

 

Israel has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to Road 60 because it also serves as a fast direct route for Jewish settlers in the Gush Etzion bloc driving to and from Jerusalem.

 

As a result, residents of several nearby Palestinian villages, including Batir, Wadi Fukin, al Walaja and Husan, have been forced off Road 60 and on to USAid-funded side roads and underpasses to connect them to Bethlehem and other neighbouring communities.

 

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said 170km of roads in the West Bank were either off-limits to Palestinians or highly restricted, creating what the organisation has called “forbidden roads”.

 

B’Tselem noted that, after the 2004 scheme for complete separation was rejected by donors, Israel adapted the plan, using bridges, tunnels and interchanges to create partial separation, with Israelis “traveling on the fast upper levels, and Palestinians on the lower levels”. It concluded: “The plan allows Palestinian vehicles to travel on only 20 per cent of the [West Bank] roads on which Israeli vehicles travel.”

 

Ms Michaeli added that the growing dependence of Palestinian traffic on underpasses meant that Israel was in a position to control or even sever connections between Palestinian areas with only one military jeep.

 

Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, the director of Badil, a Bethlehem-based organisation that has lobbied against road segregation in the southern West Bank, said there was considerable domestic and international pressure on the PA to agree to roads dictated by Israel, if only because they often eased the existing restrictions on Palestinian movement.

 

“Sadly, the PA is helping to build its own Bantustans,” she said. “Palestinian towns and villages connected by back roads and tunnels while the settlers control the main highways is what the US appears to mean when it talks about a viable Palestinian state.”

 

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

 

[Hales]

Nur

 

I dont think the main reason for why the Goldstone report was deferred was because it would expose PAs bad handling of the siege at the time.

 

But i believe that it was because Abbas was threatened by the Israelis.

If he didnt defer it he would have faced according to Palestinian officals a "second Gaza".

 

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/diskin-to-abbas-defer-un-vote-on-goldstone-or-face-second- gaza-1.261541

 

[THis is old news laakin, it might have been

refuted.]

 

The King Abdullah letter refutes and defeates all talking and debating points for the zionists. I beleive it covers all angels of their claims to Palestine and he is especially commendable for concentrating on the history of the region in the article; because thats one of the main things zionists tend to bring up in debates.

 

It should be shoved into the face of zionists like Raamsade next time, when they come here arguing.

 

The parallel here is a similar enemy installed government in Somalia, the so called TFG whose past Warlord President Abdullahi Yusuf and Geddi, and current Sheikh Sharif and Sharmarke who have routinely allowed Burunudi and Ugandan AMISOM Mercenaries in cold blood to use Battle Grade Shelling on the Civilian populated Market of Bakara for avenging the attacks by the armed resistance groups, so in order to silence the resistance, AMISOM with the tacit approval of the TFG targets the civilians. If investigated by Mr. Goldstone, it will undoubtedly prove to be a similar war crime if not worse.

 

You should know that Alshabaab is no better than Amisom when it comes to killing civillians and both dont intend to but do it out of reckleckness; lets leave it at that, the fact that in war civillians are terrorised.

Instead why not talk about how Alshabaab refuses to negotiate with the TFG and create peace for Somalia.

The civillians should be the point of concerns, in Mogadish 70% are displaced. For what exactly! over nothing but old men bickering over squadle and squible over how to rule with Shariah law and who is allied with who.

TFG overlooked the fact that they were aligned with Alqaeda and called on them to negotiate on how to stop the government and be part of the new government, Alshabaab should also overlook that the TFG is alligned with the UN and international community.

If we dont have the International community behind Somalias restoration; then who will?

[Nur]

Hales

 

You write:

 

You should know that Alshabaab is no better than Amisom when it comes to killing civillians and both dont intend to but do it out of reckleckness; lets leave it at that, the fact that in war civillians are terrorised.

 

Bro. How long have you followed the news of the current war in Somalia? from which sources do you get your information?

 

Bro. You have to do forensic news analysis to understand what is happening in Somalia without a live witness of the events on ground zero where people are dying, I have just talked to a shop keeper at the Bakaaraha Market who would've given you a different picture if you could speak with him.

 

Nur

[Nur]

Jewistan: Finally Recognizing Israel as the Jewish State

 

By Francis Boyle

 

October 20, 2010 "ICH" -- Israel’s Likudnik Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached into his bag of Zionist tricks and pulled out a brand-new demand that had never surfaced before in the history of the Middle East Peace Process going all the way back to their beginning with the negotiation of the original Camp David Accords conducted under the personal auspices of U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1978: The Palestinians must recognize Israel as “the Jewish State.” Not surprisingly, the Zionist controlled and funded Obama administration publicly endorsed this latest roadblock to peace that was maliciously constructed by Israel.

 

Netanyahu deliberately shifted the goal-posts on the Palestinians. It would be as if the United States of America demanded that Iran recognize it as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) State as a condition for negotiating and then concluding any comprehensive peace settlement with it. Of course such demands are racist and premeditated non-starters to begin with.

 

Netanyahu’s racist ultimatum would lead to the denationalization of the 1.5 million Palestinians who are already less than third-class citizens of Israel and set the stage for their mass expulsion to the Palestinian Bantustan envisioned by Netanyahu as the “final solution” to Zionism’s “demographic problem” created by the very existence of the Palestinians. This racist and genocidal demand would also illegally terminate the well-recognized Right of Return for five million Palestinian refugees living around the world as required by U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194(III) of 1948, by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 13(2) (1948), and by general principles of public international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights law.

 

This would doom all prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians forever, and pave the way for the creation of “Greater Israel” dominating the entire former Mandate for Palestine, both of which objectives have been the intention of Netanyahu and Likud all along.

 

But if Netanyahu is really serious about Israel being recognized internationally as “the Jewish State” then there is a simple manner by which this universal diplomatic status can instantly be achieved unilaterally and without the consent of the Palestinians. Under basic principles of international law, every state is free to change its own name if it so desires: e.g., from Congo to Zaire then back to Congo. Therefore Israel is free to change its name to Jewistan -- the State of the Jews.

 

Thereafter every state in the world that has diplomatic relations and treaty relations with Israel will henceforth necessarily have to recognize it as Jewistan -- the State of Jews -- and deal with it as such by that name on a daily basis. The name of Jewistan would automatically replace the name of Israel in the United Nations System, at all other concerned international organizations, and on all bilateral and multilateral treaties to which Israel is currently a contracting party. Indeed, in the aftermath of its serial genocidal atrocities perpetrated against the Palestinians and the Lebanese, Israel has quite understandably been seeking to “re-brand” itself. Jewistan is Israel’s perfect new moniker.

 

In fact, Israel has never been anything but a Bantustan for Jews setup in the Middle East by the White racist and genocidal Western colonial imperial powers in order to serve as their racist attack dog and genocidal enforcer against the Arab and Muslim world. From the very moment of Western imperialism’s genocidal conception of Israel in 1947-1948, Israel has historically always functioned as Jewistan – the world’s Bantustan for the Jews. So Israel might as well finally change its name today to Jewistan, own up to its racist birthright, and make it official for the rest of the world to acknowledge.

 

Of course, all the Black Bantustans in racist criminal apartheid South Africa were eventually dismantled and no longer exist. The same will eventually happen to the racist criminal apartheid Jewish Bantustan in the Middle East no matter what name they call themselves. Actually, Jewistan/Israel is more closely analogous to the genocidal Yugoslavia that collapsed as a State, lost its U.N. membership, and no longer exists as a State for that precise reason.

 

In either event, when this Israeli Bantustan for Jews predictably collapses as a State, all the Palestinian refugees living in their Diaspora around the world will be able to return to their homes as guaranteed by Resolution 194. Such is the ultimate solution for securing the Palestinian Right of Return under International Law. In the meantime, the Palestinians should sign nothing with Jewistan/Israel and let this Bantustan for Jews collapse of its own racist and genocidal weight. Good riddance!

 

FRANCIS A. BOYLE is a leading American expert in international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

 

He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. He served as legal adviser to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993. In 2007, he delivered the Bertrand Russell Peace Lectures. Previous Russell Lecturers have included E.P. Thompson, Elena Bonner, Edward Said, Ramsey Clark, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Joseph Rotblat, Johan Galtung, and Noam Chomsky.

 

Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign and is author of, inter alia, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Destroying World Order, Biowarfare & Terrorism. And Tackling America’s Toughest Questions.

 

He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.