by Stuart Littlewood   Intifada Palestine

So the Albuquerque Episcopalians got jumpy and ‘disinvited’ the Friends of Sabeel who had booked their cathedral for a conference.

Sabeel is an international peace movement which calls itself the Voice of Palestinian Christians.

Why would one Christian group snub another? The excuse for turning away the conference was concocted by the Dean of the Cathedral, the Very Rev. J. Mark Goodman. “We said our prayers and deliberated thoughtfully and purposefully,” he explained.

It seems he and his Episcopalian colleagues didn’t like the way the conference would be dealing with “a political issue that has polarized people in ways that we felt were unhelpful. We did not want to introduce a polarized issue into the life of the Cathedral that would have the potential to divide rather than unite. Our decision was not based upon anti-Palestinian positions. In fact, many on the Vestry [i.e. the church directors] are very sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people, yet they were concerned about the rhetoric of the literature from Sabeel.”

He denied they were put under pressure from Zionists. Nevertheless they had invited a local rabbi to come and speak to the Vestry, a rather odd thing to do when, presumably, they were all acquainted with the endless crimes committed by the Jewish State against the Christian communities in the Holy Land. Do they usually turn to rabbis for advice?

Goodman also said Vestry members had attended his recent Forum classes, after which they had misgivings about serving as conference hosts.

“This summer at General Convention, I served on a committee that dealt in a focused way with resolutions about the conflict between Israel and Palestinians,” he went on. “It was my personal prayer that we would craft resolutions that were balanced and offered a way forward with positive engagement with each side, seeking a way forward that would bring security, dignity and peace to a region that has known strife for too long. I believe we succeeded.”

Note the reliance on “positive engagement”. What exactly does that mean – more interfaith dialogue? “We succeeded”, he says. But how does he measure success? And why is he not pressing for the enforcement of international and humanitarian law and the implementation of UN resolutions, the only route to justice? The Episcopalian approach implies that some sort of equivalence, or level playing field, already exists between the powerful aggressor and the weak victim, the robber and the robbed, the armed occupier and his unarmed dispossessed prisoner.

How did these churchmen, far removed from the rotten reality, become experts on “security, dignity and peace” in the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom? Have they been there, rolled up their sleeves and immersed themselves in the snakepit that the Holy Land has been allowed to become? What makes him and his mates think they’ve found a way forward while Palestine remains under brutal occupation?

The mission statement provided by Goodman’s church says: “The Cathedral continues to honor its responsibility to be a good steward and shepherd in the community and the world.” A huge and worthy commitment indeed. However, the cathedral’s own relatively peaceful community and inconsequential little world have been rudely rocked by scandal http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/29044 following claims that it was headed for bankruptcy and members were deserting. The cathedral accountant blew the whistle and allegations were made about the misuse of collection money, liberal imbibing of expensive wine and Vestry members “trashing the cathedral’s endowment by $2 million through complacency, and of not disciplining the dean”.

The regional bishop moved quickly to hush it up in an operation that local church workers said was “like a quiet version of the Spanish Inquisition”. There’s more about it here http://www.examiner.com/review/readers-seek-solace-book-about-episcopal-church

If only this sort of tomfoolery were all that Christian churches in the Holy Land had to worry about. Unfortunately the Episcopalians seem pretty confused, or downright ignorant, about the depths of evil to which the Israeli occupation has sunk. This is from their official report ‘Israel-Palestine: Convention supports positive investment – Bishops agree to postpone indefinitely debate on corporate engagement’ http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2012/07/10/israel-palestine-convention-supports-positive-investment/ ….

Bishop John Tarrant of South Dakota urged opposition to Resolution C060 [which calls on the church to engage “in corporate social responsibility by more vigorous and public corporate engagement with companies in the church’s investment portfolio that contribute to the infrastructure of the Occupation”]. He spoke about the town of Rawabi, currently under construction north of Ramallah in the West Bank, that will provide opportunities for affordable home ownership, employment and education. Tarrant said that the project, envisioned by a group of Palestinian businessmen, would inject about $80 million into the Israeli economy.

“It gave me the sense that there are Palestinians that understand the importance of mutuality if the two states are going to exist side by side,” he said.

He reminded the house of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s charge for Episcopalians ‘to go as emissaries…to go into the world of God’s dream’. “I believe there are Palestinians and Israelis now that are going into the world with God’s dream.”

Has Bishop Schori been to the world of God’s dream and seen what’s there?

And why would Bishop Tarrant want to inject all those $millions into the Israeli economy when Israel has been strangling the Palestinian economy to death, seizing its land and water and withholding Palestine’s tax revenues?

Bishop Charles Bennison of Pennsylvania said the movement to support boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel was unwise. “We need more, not fewer, economic ties to Israel. The more isolated Israel becomes the more dangerous the situation becomes.”

It turns out that Episcopalians are against boycott and divestment. Instead the bishops have supported a resolution on positive investment in the Palestinian Territories, as if that will do the slightest good while the illegal occupation and blockade continue. Meanwhile they agreed to postpone indefinitely the conversation on corporate engagement.

To them, it seems, going as emissaries into God’s dream involves kicking the can down the road like the rest of wretched Christendom (with a few honourable exceptions). Was anybody at the Convention truly concerned with right versus wrong, good versus evil, the rule of international law versus the rule of the gun-butt, the F-16, the helicopter gun-ship, the tank shell, illegal detention and the hard-to-get permit to go anywhere.

Their own Bishop is a victim of Israel’s apartheid policies

The Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem himself is a classic victim of the machinations of the cruel occupation. Suheil Dawani is Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, which is a part of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and The Middle East. This covers Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. He was installed in April 2007, but in March 2011 Israel cancelled his residency permit making it well nigh impossible for him to carry out his duties. As a non-Israeli he needs a temporary residence permit. The Israelis played fast and loose, granting a permit initially then turning him down.

Here’s the explanation http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=17766 . “The bishop is a native of the Holy Land and has spent most of his life and ministry there, but cannot obtain either citizenship or legal residence in Israel, since he was born in Nablus, in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, but has not been annexed to Israel. East Jerusalem, on the other hand, where the Anglican Cathedral and Diocesan offices are situated, was also occupied at the same time, but Israel annexed it and considers it part of its national territory (although no other country in the world recognizes this annexation). Therefore, Bishop Dawani is considered by Israel to be a foreigner who can only visit – let alone live in – East Jerusalem with a special permit, which the Israeli authorities can either grant or deny at their sole discretion.”

Get it?

There’s a religious war going on in the Holy Land and Dawani was wide open to this sort of dirty trick. After six months of aggravation and international pressure, during which Israel’s Interior Ministry accused him of “improper” land dealings on behalf of the church and the Palestinian Authority, the illegal occupiers granted residency permits to the bishop and his family.

But here’s the catch… those permits will have to be renewed when they expire, whenever that may be or whenever the Israelis choose.

So the Israelis have the bishop’s balls in a vice. Keep quiet Dawani and all you Anglicans/Episcopalians while we carry on with our ethnic cleansing. Keep quiet while we trash the Palestinian economy, confiscate their lands and water resources, continue the blockade, erase their culture and humiliate their families, drive out the Christians and Muslims and disrupt the religious life of those who stubbornly remain.

Keep quiet or we’ll revoke your permit again.

The Catholics similarly walk on eggshells and are mercilessly bullied in their homeland. Their priests are harassed and obstructed and often prevented from going about their pastoral duties. Many are ‘imprisoned’ in their parish – if they leave it to visit relatives or holiday in another part of the Occupied Territories or in neighbouring countries like Jordan and Lebanon, the Israelis may not let them back in.

So imagine what it’s like for the Muslims.

The simple truth is that the Jewish State is the world leader in rampant lawlessness and interfaith bullying, while the wet and wimpish Anglicans respond with their clapped-out formula of interfaith dialogue and other verbal diarrhoea. For 64 years it has got us and our Palestinian brothers and sisters precisely nowhere.

The good folks of Sabeel must now be wondering what they’ve done to deserve same-faith friends like the Albuquerque Episcopalians.

Stuart Littlewood

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Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.

Dr. Elias Akelh

By Dr. Elias Akleh   Intifada Palestine

Iran poses a great threat to Zionist terrorist state of Israel. Iran poses even greater threat to the present hegemonic world order controlled by the Western power elite through their financial institutions and the undemocratic United Nation with all its many branches. In the perspective of both Israel and the Western power elite, Iran, as a threat, needs to be weakened and eliminated through regime change, through economic sanctions, through terror attacks, and if need be through war.

The roots of Iran’s confrontation with the West go back to 1908 when oil was discovered in Iran by Burmah Oil Company, later called Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), and finally became British Petroleum (BP). During WWI the British government bought a controlling share of the company because it needed Iran’s oil for its Royal Navy.

When the Persians expressed their dissatisfaction with their meager share of 16% of the net profits a British caused coup in 1925 got rid of Shah Mozzafar al-Din and installed Reza Pahlavi in his place. Pahlavi served the British until WWII during which he became friendlier with Germany after it invaded USSR in 1941. The British and the Red Army, then, invaded Iran, got rid of Pahlavi and installed his 22 years old son Mohammad in his place. American forces also entered Iran and operated the southern part of the Trans-Iranian Railway that transported oil. After the war the allied forces withdrew from Iran but AIOC kept its monopoly over the oil fields.

Iranians kept asking for a fair share of their oil industry, but the AIOC refused to re-negotiate and rejected all proposed compromise. In 1951 the pro-Western Iranian Prime Minister Ali Razmara was assassinated and replaced by Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Parliament created the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the oil fields were nationalized.

The United Kingdom was furious and raised an anti-nationalization case at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. After losing their case British Prime Minister Winston Churchill resorted to the US for help, but president, then, Harry Truman was very busy with his war in Korea. However, in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower became the president and authorized Operation Ajax, a joined British MI6 and American CIA coup led by Kermit Roosevelt, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Mosaddegh and transformed the government into an oppressive constitutional monarchy led by Mohammad Pahlavi until 1979. As a result of the coup AIOC returned to Iran but accompanied with five other American oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell with their own shares of Iran’s oil monopoly.

In January 1978 the Iranian Islamic Revolution ignited causing the Shah to leave the country in January 1979, and an Islamic Republic with Ayatollah Khomeini as supreme leader was established. On 4^th of November 1979 a group of Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran taking 52 American hostages accused of being CIA operatives plotting to overthrow the revolutionary government as was done to Mosaddegh’s government in 1953. President Carter’s military and diplomatic rescue attempts failed and the hostages were not freed until January 1981 according to the Algiers Accords.

Encouraged by the CIA and financed by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, CIA man Saddam Hussein, then President of Iraq, engaged Iran into what is known as the Eight Years War 1980 – 1988. The aim was to engage both countries into a war of attrition that weakens both countries and brings huge profits to the Western military complex. To lengthen the war and to increase the casualties and the devastation both Israel and the US provided intelligence information to both parties and sold them weapons including chemical weapons, sold by Donald Rumsfeld to Saddam Hussein, that resulted in, among many, the massacre of Halabja. The war finally ended in August 1988 according to UN Resolution 598 without any territorial gain by either party.

The CIA had also failed to topple Ahmadinejad’s administration during the 2009 Iranian election through the use of social media; internet, twitter and facebook, to push people into the streets demonstrating against the election.

Iran had become a real thorny bone in the throat of Zionist controlled American administrations when the Iranian government financed and armed Lebanese Hezbollah, whose armed struggle forced Israeli occupation forces to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, and also inflicted heavy casualties on the Israeli tanks during Israel’s aggression against Lebanon in 2006.

Iran had to be dealt with. Iran became the target of huge media propaganda attempting to demonize its leadership especially Ahmadinejad, who was accused of anti-Semitism, holocaust denying, and threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Iran also was accused of developing nuclear weapons without any real evidence and even with continuous sudden and stringent IAEA inspections. Economic sanctions and oil embargo were imposed on Iran. Penalty and punishment was imposed on countries who would buy Iranian oil, although lax exemptions were later granted to virtually all countries due to failure of the embargo and to the rise of oil prices. Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated by Mossad/CIA backed assassins. American-backed terrorist Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MKO) conducted terrorist attacks against government buildings and against ethnic civilian minorities to incite ethnic conflict. American administration has just removed the MKO from its terrorist list. Cyber war had been waged against Iranian nuclear facilities, and nuclear equipment sold to Iran by German Seimens company contained explosives aimed at sabotaging Iranian nuclear facilities.

In violation of international laws Israel continues to threaten to attack Iran and bomb its nuclear facilities. Israel is the only country possessing nuclear weapons in the Middle East as revealed by their own nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu. There are indisputable evidence that Israel had stolen weapons-grade uranium for its nuclear weapons program from American Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation in Apollo, Pennsylvania in 1950s and 1960s. Israel did not just build nuclear weapons but is also proliferating nuclear weapons as evidence show that Israeli Shimon Peres, now Israel president, was trying to sell three sizes of nuclear bombs to apartheid South Africa’s defense minister PW Botha in 1975. This was also documented by the book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Alliance with Apartheid South Africa” by Sasha Polakow-Suransky. God knows who else had bought nuclear weapons from Israel. Israel did not sign, and refuse to sign the NPT.

Not mentioning its many wars of aggression against Palestine and its neighboring Arab countries, its violation of international and humanitarian laws and daily terror attacks against Palestinian civilians, its assassinations of officials and terror attacks all over the globe, its illegal bombardments of Iraq and Syria, its illegal piracy against freedom flotillas in international seas, and its international laws violating threats to devastate Lebanon and to nuke Iran, Israel is accusing Iran of being threat to the region and to the world, although Iran have not committed or threatened to commit any war of aggression against any other country during the last 200 years.

One can easily discern who is the war mongering threat to world peace when comparing Iranian Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN with Israeli Netanyahu’s pathetic “this is a bomb, this is a fuse” speech. When Ahmadinejad addresses heads of states with logic and respect, Netanyahu insults their intelligence by his condescending demeanor as if talking to third grade students. When Ahmadinejad talks peace, Netanyahu talks war. When Ahmadinejad talks global interests, Netanyahu talks Israeli only interests. When Ahmadinejad talks harmonious religious utopia, Netanyahu talks racist religious elitism. When Ahmadinejad talks global consciousness, Netanyahu talks egocentric Judaic consciousness. When Ahmadinejad talks global holocausts, Netanyahu talks Jewish only holocaust. When Ahmadinejad addresses the concerns of all nations, Netanyahu addresses only Israeli concerns and talks us vs others. When Ahmadinejad speaks of citizenship of the whole world, Netanyahu speaks Jewish only state. When Ahmadinejad calls for return to monotheism and cites Jewish, Christian, and Moslem prophets and messengers such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, Netanyahu cites his racist god and Jewish only prophets; Isaiah, Amos and Jeremiah. Netanyahu accuses Iranian leaders of waiting for a medieval holy man to appear after a devastating holy war to spread radical Islam, yet he forgets that Zionist Israeli Jews are waiting for a Messiah, a cosmic terrorist, who would wage a holy war to purge the promised land from all non-Jewish heathens; Christians as well as Moslems, and build a temple, from which to rule the whole world.

Iran poses a great threat to the present Western hegemonic world order because its leader is pointing to the utter failure of the present world order in maintaining peace and prosperity and is calling for a new joint global management of the world with fundamental changes and structural reforms to the UN and to the Security Council based on real democracy and equal rights to all member nations by eliminating the veto power of few countries, who dominate and manipulate global politics, economy and culture to attain their racist ambitions. Iran is calling for an end to expansionist capitalism, to the elimination of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and to a return to monotheism to eliminate sectarian wars. Iran is also calling for reforming the current unjust and unfair economic structures and setting up a new international economic order based on human and moral values and obligation to allow potential talents of all nations to flourish. Ahmadinejad called for the elimination of present centers of power that seek supremacy based on domination and conquer of others through wars.

What makes Iran more dangerous is not the fact that it possesses advanced long range weapons that could destroy American military bases in the Arabian Gulf States and all the foreign naval armadas crowding the Persian Gulf and could also reach and devastate the state of Israel, but the fact that Iran will be heading the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) for the next three years. NAM consists of 120 member countries from across the globe making two thirds of world countries and 60% of world population and represents the biggest single voting bloc in the 193-member General Assembly at the UN. NAM countries support Iran’s call for the new joint global management, assert Iran’s right to pursue peaceful nuclear technology, oppose war against Iran and deplore Israeli continuous threat to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran has become a major global player that could not be isolated nor ignored on the global theater.

Of course the present pro-Zionist Western hegemonic world order will not sit idle and will muster every way to ruin Iran. Western military has been very busy devising military actions against Iran and studying their costs and effects. “Weighing Benefits and Costs of Military Action Against Iran” is an analytical report by the Iran Project and authored by 32 respected national security experts such as former security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, and military generals such as Anthony Zinni. The report indicates that military action against Iran would be very costly to the US. “Given Iran’s large size and population, and the strength of Iranian nationalism, we estimate that the occupation of Iran would require a commitment of resources and personnel greater than what the US has expended over the past 10 years in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined” the report stated. Despite this analysis the US and Israel continue to conduct war games in the Persian Gulf testing the feasibility of each new war scenario drawn by American military.

The big question that poses itself is whether Iran would become the nucleus of a global spring that would create a real democratic new world order, or would it be the target of a comprehensive Middle Eastern war, possibly nuclear, whose devastating effects would hit all countries without exception.

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About the Author

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the “Nakba” of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the “Nakseh” of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

Jonathan Cook

by Jonathan Cook

For the first time in its history, Israel is seeking to equate millions of Palestinians in refugee camps across the Middle East with millions of Israeli citizens descended from Jews who, before Israel’s establishment in 1948, lived in Arab countries.

According to Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, whose parents were originally from Iraq and who has been leading the government campaign, nearly a million Jews fled countries such as Iraq, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen. That figure exceeds the generally accepted number of 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war.

Israel’s goal is transparent: it hopes the international community can be persuaded that the suffering of Palestinian refugees is effectively cancelled out by the experiences of “Jewish refugees”. If nothing can be done for Arab Jews all these years later, then Palestinians should expect no restitution either.

Over the past few weeks that has been the message implicit in a social media campaign called “I am a refugee”, which includes YouTube videos in which Jews tell of being terrorised while living in Arab states after 1948. Mr Ayalon has even announced plans for a new day of national commemoration, Jewish Refugee Day.

This month, the Israeli foreign ministry and US Jewish organisations formally launched the initiative, staging a conference in New York a few days before the opening sessions of the General Assembly.

Israel’s choice of arena – the UN – is not accidental. The campaign is chiefly designed to stifle the move announced by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his General Assembly speech last week to begin seeking UN status for Palestine as a non-member state.

After opposition from the US forced the Palestinians to abort their bid for statehood at the UN Security Council last year, Mr Abbas is expected to delay making his new request until November, after the US presidential election campaign to avoid embarrassing President Barack Obama.

Mr Abbas’s move has spurred Israel to take the offensive.

Anyone who doubts that the Israeli government’s concern for Arab Jews is entirely cynical only has to trace the campaign’s provenance. It was considered for the first time in 2009, when Mr Netanyahu was forced – under pressure from Mr Obama – to deliver a speech backing Palestinian statehood.

Immediately afterwards, Mr Netanyahu asked the National Security Council, whose role includes assessing strategic threats posed by Palestinians, to weigh the merits of championing Arab Jews’ case in international forums.

The NSC’s advice is that Arab Jews, known in Israel as Mizrahim and comprising a small majority of the total Jewish population, should be made a core issue in the peace process. As Israel knows, that creates a permanent stumbling block to an agreement.

The NSC has proposed impossible demands: contrition from all Arab states before a peace deal with the Palestinians can be reached; a decoupling of refugee status and the right of return; and the right of Arab Jews to greater compensation than Palestinian refugees, based on their superior wealth.

Israel is working on other fronts too to undermine the case for Palestinian refugees. Its US lobbyists are demanding that UNRWA, the UN agency for the refugees, be dismantled. And bipartisan pressure is mounting in the US Congress to count as refugees only Palestinians personally displaced from their homes in 1948, stripping millions of descendants of their status.

The Palestinians are deeply opposed to any linkage between Arab Jews and Palestinian refugees. Not least, they argue, they cannot be held responsible for what took place in other countries. Justice for Palestinian refugees is entirely separate from justice for Arab Jews.

Source: The National

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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.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meets leaders of Neturei Karta International (www.nkusa.org) an anti-Zionist Jewish group on Monday, September 24, 2007, at the start of a visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly meeting.

This video is banned for broadcast on News Networks in USA, Israel and Europe. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel and US does not want you to see. Jewish religious leaders and prominent
businessmen Greet Ahmadinejad with Inshallah and Bless him for long life. Jews have lived in Iran for thousands of years. Over 30,000 Jews live in Iran.

by Dr. Lawrence Davidson

I. The Israel Lobby and How it Operates

Much is being made of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s involvement in the on-going American presidential campaign.  His public stance has been characterized as an Israeli effort to  “openly…topple [President] Obama.”  The truth is that the only thing unusual about this meddling is its open and advertised nature.  In a more discreet fashion, Zionist pressure bordering on blackmail and bribery goes on every day.  

I have written elsewhere about this corrupting process that I call “lobbification.“  In brief, this is how it operates:

Step One:  A lobbyist, in this case someone from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), approaches Congresspersons or Senators.  At some point in time that means every single one of them has been approached:  all 435 voting members of Congress and every one of the 100 voting members of the Senate.  Party affiliation is not an issue here.  

Step Two:  The lobbyist offers to organize financial campaign assistance, positive media coverage, briefings on situations in the Middle East, trips to Israel, etc. 

Step Three: All that is asked in return is that the recipient consistently vote in a pro-Israel way.  In other words, AIPAC wants the politician to surrender a part of his or her mind to the lobby — that part that might exercise critical and considered judgment on issues pertaining to Israel.  

Step Four: There are several unspoken, but publicly acknowledged, consequences of turning down this offer, or alternatively,  managing to get elected on your own and then voting the wrong way.  

1. If you say no, the same offer will be made to your opponent both at the primary and general election levels. 

2. If you are elected and vote against Israel,  AIPAC  will do all it can, sooner or later, to see you defeated. It has a good record of turning such people out of office. 

Step Five:  If you sign up for this Faustian bargain and are elected, the lobby becomes your permanent partner.  It is a constant presence.  Its agents are always hovering about,   rating your performance, letting you know they are there.  Prove yourself reliable and they will underwrite you for life. 

II. The President and Red Lines

President Obama made this bargain as solidly as have most other politicians in Washington.  You can witness him affirming and reaffirming this deal in front of AIPAC conventions, while addressing the United Nations General Assembly,  on those rare occasions when he addresses the press, and whenever else he feels it is politically necessary.  He was even willing to debase his own national party convention to make a point of his loyalty to the Israel lobby. 

Yet all this has proven insufficient.  The issue over which Obama has fallen short is Iran. 
 
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu (the deus ex machina of the Israel lobby) insists that Iran is preparing to build nuclear weapons and,  taking that assumption on faith, their nuclear energy program should be stopped or placed under international control.  It should be noted that, back in 2002, Netanyahu incorrectly made the same charge against Iraq and that today, just as in 2002, there is no real evidence for his assertion about Iran’s aims.  All U.S. intelligence agencies agree that the Iranians are not presently developing nuclear weapons.  Nonetheless, Netanyahu, who appears prone to OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) when it comes to other people’s nuclear programs, demands that Washington set “red lines”  for Tehran which, if crossed, would trigger U.S. military action. In other words, on the basis of unsupported Zionist fears, the Israeli government is trying to maneuver the United States into yet another Middle East war.  To his credit, President Obama has refused to comply with the demand for “red lines.”

The standard retribution practiced by the Israel lobby against a recalcitrant American politician is to try to get him or her kicked out of office.  Usually this is done in a low-key way and most Americans don’t even know it is happening.  But this time the act of revenge, driven by an egocentric and bellicose Israeli Prime Minister,  is being carried out in full public view.  Here are some of the ways Netanyahu is doing this:

1. Netanyahu has joined Mitt Romney in accusing Barack Obama of being too easy on Iran and too unresponsive to an ally, Israel.

2. Netanyahu has acquiesced in the use of his image and words in a blatantly false and distorted media campaign that accuses Obama of being “cozy” with the Society of Muslim Brotherhood.

3. Netanyahu has asserted that Obama has “no moral right” to pressure Israel not to attack Iran.  What the Prime Minister leaves out is that such an attack would constitute aggression under international law and violate treaties to which both the U.S. and Israel are signatories.   Under these circumstances it would be immoral if President Obama did not pressure Israel to hold its fire. 

4. When accused of interfering in the presidential elections, Netanyahu has replied, “This is not an electoral issue….I think there is a common interest of all Americans of all persuasions to stop Iran.”  The bit about this not being “electoral” is clearly disingenuous.  If Netanyahu wants to hold an opinion about alleged common interests that is fine.  However, if as the head of a foreign government, he publicly and repeatedly asserts that opinion in ways that aid one candidate for president over another, he has certainly made both himself and his opinion, an “electoral issue.” 

III. Conclusion 

There is speculation that, if Mr. Obama is reelected, then Prime Minister Netanyahu’s indiscreet behavior might result in “a sea change in U.S.-Israeli relations.”  Unfortunately this  is highly unlikely.  The system of “lobbification” is solidly in place at the national political level.  When it comes to Israel,  only two things are likely to change it:

1. Meaningful campaign finance reform that would free politicians from their present reliance on lobby affiliated contributions.  

2. The Israel-American connection becomes a voting issue such that continued blind support for Israel hurts a politician’s chance of election.   

Neither of these possibilities seem to be on the horizon:

It is the way the U.S. political system is run that makes politicians so vulnerable to  lobby power. The fact that there are some lobbies out there that have decent and humane goals is not sufficient to justify a system that otherwise does so much damage.  For instance, under the present circumstances it is impossible to define the national interest in an objective way.  As it stands, the national interest is replaced by the parochial interests of lobbies that are successful at suborning Congress and the White House–Zionists pushing support for a racist and expansionist foreign power, Cuban-Americans carrying on a 53 year old vendetta against the government in Havana, the NRA striving to protect the right of every American to own a submachine gun, and the like. 

In large part it comes down to money and how it is used manipulate leaders and parties.  There is something age-old about this situation.  It was the Roman Senator and master rhetorician Cicero (108 to 43 BCE) who said  “Nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecunia possit.” Translated as: “No fortification is such that it cannot be subdued with money.”  That is still the rule by which lobbyists live.

Lawrence Davidson
Professor of History
West Chester University
West Chester, PA 19383-2133

ldavidson@wcupa.edu
Blog:  www.tothepointanalyses.com

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DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON is professor of Middle East history at West Chester University in West Chester, PA, and the author of America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University of Florida Press, 2001), Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003), and Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing American National Interest (University of Kentuck Press, 2009).

by Stuart Littlewood

A seventeen-year-old girl trembling with grief and rage told me how she witnessed her teenage cousin being shot through the head by Israeli soldiers. They had been walking to school together and the soldiers were taunting him. In response he had picked up a rock. She accused me and all Americans of knowing about these daily abuses against Palestinians but not caring. I tried to tell her that most Americans do not know about these tragedies, and that we would never support those who perpetrate them. But her belief that the average American is savvy about international politics was as strong as it was naive. “Of course Americans know we’re suffering over here,” she retorted.“ You’re the most powerful nation on earth. And everyone has a television. I know you know.”

These words are borrowed from David Hazard’s excellent book Blood Bothers, which charts the life of Father Elias Chacour, a remarkable Christian Palestinian who grew up on the shores of Galilee and saw his beautiful world shattered by the Israeli occupation.

Like countless others he was made a refugee in his own country.

The beautiful shores of Galilee: a land of milk and honey, now with a bitter taste. (photo: Stuart Littlewood).

Americans aren’t alone in their ignorance. British people too seem largely unaware of how tragedy was allowed to overtake the Palestinians, and how this once-peaceful province of the Ottoman Empire, renowned for its antiquities and culture, became a land scarred by conflict, where everyday humiliation stokes the fires of hatred. You cannot get in or out, or move around, without running the gauntlet of Israeli customs, baggage searches, roadblocks and checkpoints under the sneer of contemptuous, sunglassed troops. Even in remote countryside you’ll run into one of 700 armed checkpoints.

Young guns : Tasked with dispossessing Palestinians and expanding the Jewish State… Israeli troops: They call themselves “the most moral army in the world”.

The Israeli Defence Force is largely made up of National Servicemen and women – teenagers drafted in and trained to use lethal force. They have a reputation for being trigger-happy. On the other hand they don’t all wish to play the ‘heavy’ or necessarily agree with their orders. The two pictured here were likable lads and cracked a smile for the camera. But all the time I was aware of a third guard nearby with a gun on my back.

The truth about Palestine doesn’t sit well with Britain’s now crumbling reputation for fair play. Its name has been airbrushed from maps and purged, like a dirty word, from diplomatic lexicons. Even today the subject is only haphazardly taught in our schools. For older generations like mine it was never on the curriculum.

To understand why, one must at least dip a toe into the complicated history of the last 90 years. To help readers over this hurdle, I offer this ‘potted’ version. At least it will explain why I grabbed my camera and went to see Palestine for myself.

For centuries long our land enslaved

by Turkish kings with sharpened blade.

We prayed to end the Sultan’s curse,

the British came and spoke a verse.

“It’s World War One, if you agree

to fight with us we’ll set you free.”

The war we fought at Britain’s side,

our blood was shed for Arab pride.

At war’s end Turks were smitten,

our only gain, the lies of Britain.

Stephen Ostrander’s simple verse manages to cut through mountains of rhetoric to the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

There was a Jewish state in the Holy Land some 3,000 years ago, but the Canaanites and Philistines were there first. The Jews, one of several invading groups, left and returned several times, and were expelled by the Roman occupation in 70AD and again in 135AD. Since the 7th century Palestine has been mainly Arabic. During the First World War the country was ‘liberated’ from Turkish Ottoman rule after the Allied Powers, in correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca in 1915, promised independence to Arab leaders in return for their help in defeating Germany’s ally.

However, a new-Jewish political movement called Zionism was finding favour among the ruling elite in London, and the British Government was persuaded by the Zionists’ chief spokesman, Chaim Weizman, to surrender Palestine for their new Jewish homeland. Hardly a thought, it seems, was given to the earlier pledge to the Arabs, who had occupied and owned the land for 1,500 years – longer, say some scholars, than the Jews ever did.

Arthur Balfour (left) and Lord Rothschild conspired to betray Britain’s guarantees to the Arabs who fought alongside us in the First World War

The Zionists, fuelled by the notion that an ancient Biblical prophecy gave them the title deeds, aimed to push the Arabs out by populating the area with millions of Eastern European Jews. They had already set up farm communities and founded a new city, Tel Aviv, but by 1914 Jews numbered only 85,000 to the Arabs’ 615,000. The infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917  – actually a letter from the British foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild – pledged assistance for the Zionist cause with apparent disregard for the consequences to the native majority. Calling itself a “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations”, it said:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing and non-Jewish communities….

But Balfour, a Zionist convert, later wrote:

In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land.

Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham

There was opposition, of course. Lord Sydenham warned: “The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country may never be remedied. What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

The American King-Crane Commission of1919 thought it a gross violation of principle. “No British officers consulted by the Commissioners believed that the Zionist programme could be carried out except by force of arms. That, of itself, is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist programme.”

There were other reasons why the British were courting disaster. A secret deal, called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, had been concluded in 1916 between France and Britain, in consultation with Russia, to re-draw the map of the Middle Eastern territories won from Turkey. Britain was to take Jordan, Iraq and Haifa. The area now referred to as Palestine was declared an international zone. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration and the promises made earlier in the McMahon-Hussein letters all cut across each other. It seems to have been a case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing in the confusion of war.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Lenin released a copy of the confidential Sykes-Picot Agreement into the public domain, sowing seeds of distrust among the Arabs. Thus the unfolding story had all the makings of a major tragedy. Subsequent crimes – on both sides – flow from this triple-cross. The Zionist organization asked to submit its proposal for Palestine to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, hitching a ride on the British request to be granted a mandate over Palestine in order to implement the Balfour Declaration. The Zionist case included the statement that “the land itself needs redemption. Much of it is left desolate. Its present condition is a standing reproach. Two things are necessary for that redemption – a stable and enlightened government, and an addition to the present population which shall be energetic, intelligent, devoted to the country, and backed by the large financial resources that are indispensable for development. Such a population the Jews alone can supply.”

Prominent US Jews opposed to this move handed President Woodrow Wilson a counter-statement objecting to the Zionists’ plan, and asked him to submit it to the peace conference. It said the scheme to reorganise the Jews as a national unit with territorial sovereignty in Palestine “not only misrepresents the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.”

These teenage gunslingers are sometimes friendly, sometimes not. (photo: Stuart Littlewood).

Foreseeing the future with uncanny accuracy, it went on to say, “We rejoice in the avowed proposal of the Peace Congress to put into practical application the fundamental principles of democracy.

That principle, which asserts equal rights for all citizens of a state, irrespective of creed or ethnic descent, should be applied in such a manner as to exclude segregation of any kind, be it nationalistic or other. Such segregation must inevitably create differences among the sections of the population of a country. Any such plan of segregation is necessarily reactionary in its tendency, undemocratic in spirit and totally contrary to the practices of free government, especially as these are exemplified by our own country.”

Their statement quoted Sir George Adam Smith, a noted biblical scholar and the acknowledged expert on the region, who had said: “It is not true that Palestine is the national home of the Jewish people and of no other people… It is not correct to call its non-Jewish inhabitants ‘Arabs’, or to say that they have left no image of their spirit and made no history except in the great Mosque… Nor can we evade the fact that Christian communities have been [there] as long as ever the Jews were… These are legitimate questions stirred up by the claims of Zionism, but the Zionists have not yet fully faced them”.

America, England, France, Italy, Switzerland and all the most advanced nations of the world, it said, are composed of representatives of many races and religions. “Their glory lies in the freedom of conscience and worship, in the liberty of thought and custom which binds the followers of many faiths and varied civilizations in the common bonds of political union.

“A Jewish State involves fundamental limitations as to race and religion, else the term ‘Jewish’ means nothing. To unite Church and State, in any form, as under the old Jewish hierarchy, would be a leap backward of two thousand years.

Hamas Resistance, tasked with defending the Palestinian homeland against illegal occupation by the brutal armed invader Israel. Demonized by the West and branded “terrorists”. Unfriendly if provoked, but good for a laugh here. (photo: Stuart Littlewood).

“We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State.”

But Wilson apparently failed to put the document before the Conference.

In 1922 the League of Nations placed Palestine under British mandate, which incorporated the principles of the Balfour Declaration. Jewish immigration would be facilitated “under suitable conditions” and a nationality law would allow Jews taking up permanent residence to acquire Palestinian citizenship (in sharp contrast to the Jews-only law now operated by a dominant Israel).

But the high commissioner was soon recommending a halt to Jewish immigration for fear that it would create a class of landless Arabs. That same year the British government, aware of Arab concerns that the Balfour Declaration was being interpreted in an “exaggerated” way by Zionists and their sympathisers, issued a White Paper to clarify the position.

“The terms of the Declaration referred to,” it said, “do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded ‘in Palestine’. In this connection it has been observed with satisfaction that at a meeting of the Zionist Congress, the supreme governing body of the Zionist Organization, held at Carlsbad in September, 1921, a resolution was passed expressing as the official statement of Zionist aims the determination of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people on terms of unity and mutual respect, and together with them to make the common home into a flourishing community, the upbuilding of which may assure to each of its peoples an undisturbed national development…

“It is also necessary to point out that the Zionist Commission in Palestine, now termed the Palestine Zionist Executive, has not desired to possess, and does not possess, any share in the general administration of the country. Nor does the special position assigned to the Zionist Organization in Article IV of the Draft Mandate for Palestine imply any such functions. That special position relates to the measures to be taken in Palestine affecting the Jewish population, and contemplates that the organization may assist in the general development of the country, but does not entitle it to share in any degree in its government.

“Further, it is contemplated that the status of all citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the law shall be Palestinian, and it has never been intended that they, or any section of them, should possess any other juridical status.

“It is necessary,” said the White Paper with masterly ambiguity, “that the Jewish community in Palestine should be able to increase its numbers by immigration. This immigration cannot be so great in volume as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals. It is essential to ensure that the immigrants should not be a burden upon the people of Palestine as a whole, and that they should not deprive any section of the present population of their employment.”

However, the White Paper denied that a promise had been made to the Arabs ahead of the Balfour Declaration. “It is not the case, as has been represented by the Arab Delegation, that during the war His Majesty’s Government gave an undertaking that an independent national government should be at once established in Palestine. This representation mainly rests upon a letter dated the 24th October, 1915, from Sir Henry McMahon, then His Majesty’s High Commissioner in Egypt, to the Sharif of Mecca, now King Hussein of the Kingdom of the Hejaz. That letter is quoted as conveying the promise to the Sharif of Mecca to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs within the territories proposed by him. But this promise was given subject to a reservation made in the same letter, which excluded from its scope, among other territories, the portions of Syria lying to the west of the District of Damascus. This reservation has always been regarded by His Majesty’s Government as covering the vilayet of Beirut and the independent Sanjak of Jerusalem. The whole of Palestine west of the Jordan was thus excluded from Sir Henry McMahon’s pledge.

“Nevertheless, it is the intention of His Majesty’s government to foster the establishment of a full measure of self-government in Palestine. But they are of the opinion that, in the special circumstances of that country, this should be accomplished by gradual stages…”

From this point onwards, the situation would go from bad to worse.

© Stuart Littlewood 2007

Visit: www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk

Radio Free Palestine series:

• A Wake-up Call — Stuart Littlewood

About the author: Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood’s articles are published widely on the web. He is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk “Lawlessness must have painful consequences for the lawless, not their victims.” (Stuart Littlewood)

The Israeli army’s chief of staff states that in the past three years, “US taxpayers have contributed more to the Israeli defense budget than Israeli taxpayers,” according to a report in the Jerusalem Post, a prominent Israeli newspaper.

by Alison Weir

According to the report, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi made the statement during a speech on September 11th. In it he emphasized: “We must preserve ties with the United States. I believe this is a security necessity.”

According to the newspaper the speech was at the Calcalist Conference, which appears to be an annual event in Tel Aviv sponsored by the Calcalist newspaper, an Israeli Hebrew-only daily financial newspaper. It is is part of the group that publishes Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest circulation newspaper in Israel.

American taxpayers give Israel over $3 billion per year (over $8 million per day), more than to any other nation, despite the fact that Israel is smaller than New Jersey and is in the top 30 richest countries in the world.

Per capita, Israelis receive $10,000 more U.S. tax money than average.

Some of the other top recipients of US tax money, Egypt and Jordan, were provided this assistance in return for diplomatic recognition of the Israeli state.

According to the Congressional Research Service, Israel is given this money in a lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year. Americans then pay interest on money they have given to Israel, while Israel makes interest on it.

In recent years Israel has reported a lower unemployment rate than the US and a better account balance.

Ashkenazi’s statements are extremely significant, since this is the first time that an Israeli leader has pointed out that American taxpayers pay more to Israel’s defense budget than do Israelis.

If the costs of the Iraq war, which was largely pushed by Israel partisans in the Bush administration, were added into the equation, the American tax money on behalf of Israel would quite likely dwarf the amount paid by Israeli taxpayers.

Some top economists predict that the cost of the Iraq war will be $3 trillion.

Israel has a population of about 7 million people.

Today, Israel partisans are similarly pushing attacks on Iran.

Israel has frequently been accused of using American funds in violation of U.S. arms control laws.

Ashkenazi and War Crimes Accusations

IN 2010 Turkey issued an arrest warrant for Ashkenazi for Israeli forces’ killing of 9 civilians, including one who held American citizenship.

In 2008 a complaint was filed at the Hague accusing Ashkenazi of war crimes. Accusers stated:

On 27th December 2008, the suspect, Chief of Staff, ordered the Israeli army to attack densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip. For three weeks, 1,500 tons of bombs were dropped from the air on residential neighborhoods in Gaza and tens of thousands of artillery shells were fired from tanks. For 3 weeks, the army damaged and destroyed houses, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, water and electrical plants, killed more than 1,300 people, hundreds of them children, and injured about 5,300 people. Thousands of houses were bombed or shelled and 50,000 residents were made homeless, without shelter.

Prior to this, the suspect was part of a group, which implemented a siege on 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, denying them a regular supply of food, water, medicine, fuel and electricity for 18 months.

According to international law, it is absolutely prohibited to bomb residential areas in a way that interrupts the lives of civilians; to carry out executions without trial, to collectively punish; to destroy or damage hospitals, schools and homes. The prohibitions against collective punishment were enshrined in the Geneva Conventions after the behavior of the Nazis in Europe during World War II when they destroyed entire villages to punish residents for sheltering the resistance. 194 countries agree with the prohibitions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

In December 2008, a complaint was filed in the Hague against the suspect, on suspicion that he had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for ordering the siege of Gaza.

Source: Veterans News Now

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Alison Weir is an American freelance journalist and founder and Executive Director of If Americans Knew and president of The Council for National Interest.
Ms. Weir writes and speaks on issues covering the situation in Palestine/Israel, addresses the historical context and provides critique of how the media covers issues which challenges U.S. foreign policy and well-funded lobby interests. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation. It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue.
For more information visit her website at Allison Weir Official Web Site She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org.

Sabra-Shatila Massacre

Franklin Lamb

Shatila Camp.

The Sabra-Shatila Massacre: it seems like a dozen weeks, not 30 years ago. This year American citizens received messages to stay away from Beirut and the annual commemoration of the Israeli facilitated Massacre at Sabra-Shatila from their State Department and Beirut Embassy. The latter’s staff on 9/19/12 completed destroying sensitive documents and packing all non-essential items.  The French government too told its citizens not to come to Beirut or participate in “mass gatherings because of concerns over sudden random violence”.

But they came.  Despite the well-meaning admonitions from their governments, they came in numbers greater than ever before. They came to bear witness with the survivors and their families to the horror of this crime against Palestinians and to plead for justice.

One elderly lady from Haifa, Palestine said bitterly, as foreign delegations paid their respects at Shatila’s Martyr’s cemetery, “At least God is punishing Sharon!”  She was referring to the coma the architect of the massacre went into six years ago and who is being sustained in a vegetative mass at the cost of $ 400,000 annually, partly paid for by American taxpayers.  She lamented, that not one person has ever been arrested, no one tried, or convicted and Israel has refused to open its file on the events surrounding the slaughter. Nor has the American government ever demanded that Israel do so. The Lebanese government has never even investigated the massacre as a crime.

Authors, photo-chroniclers and historians of the 1982 massacre, Mya Shone and Ralph Schoenman, replied to a recent New York Times article on the massacre by reminding us this week that “Ha’aretz recounted on September 26, 1982 the high level planning that preceded the invasion in service to “the long term objective aimed at the expulsion of the whole Palestinian population of Lebanon beginning with Beirut.”  Shone and Schoenman remind us that the London Sunday Times reported on the same day: “This carefully pre-planned military operation (to send Israeli selected militia into Shatila while the IDF sealed the camp to prevent possible escape) to ‘purge’ the camps was called Moah Barzel (Iron Brain); the plan was familiar to Sharon and Begin and was part of Sharon’s larger plan discussed by the Israeli cabinet on July 17.”

Each year, local or regional events impact the annual Shatila commemoration events differently. This year during some of the five days of events that took foreign visitors to Palestinian camps including Shatila and Mar Elias camps in Beirut, Burj Shemali and Al-Buss camps in the south and up north to Nahr al Bared (Cold River) which was destroyed by the Lebanese army in 2007 during the Fateh al Islam events, there were discussions at meetings and on the buses of the arrival back into Shatila camp and the other 11 camps of approximately 10, 000 Palestinian refugees from Syria. They are being received as honored guests by fellow Palestinians but they urgently need help.

Arriving refugees tell of how there are some splits in their community over the Syrian chaos the same as in the Shia, Sunni, Christian, and Druze communities. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which was ejected five weeks ago from Yarmouk camp by other Palestinians,  is claiming that Palestinians who do not not endorse President Assad 100 percent are with Al Qaeda and the FSA (Free Syrian Army).  On the other hand, the FSA claim that Palestinians who refuse to join them are with Ahmad Jabril, the PFLP-GC leader. Yamouk camp residents pay the price from both sides. Most Palestinians want nothing to do with the politics of the Syrian crisis but only to live in peace.

Most of those who were recently forced out of Yarmouk camp in Damascus and back into Shatila had never visited the locus of the slaughter they miraculously survived 30 years ago. Some expressed deep emotions on returning and observing parts of the camp that remain much the same as they were following the nearly 50 hours of butchery between September 16-18, 1982.

One gentleman from Yarmouk camp,  a Christian, who in 1976 was driven out of Tel A Zaatar Palestinian camp as it was destroyed by Christian militia, and who was living in Shatila at the time of the 1982 massacre, expressed his shock of how the current residents are living at such low heath, nutrition, and social-economic standards.  He expressed surprise to a visiting American delegation at finding no right to work or ability to own a home. Both of which, he explained, plus many more rights are enjoyed by Palestinian refugees in Syria. All the Palestinian refugees arriving from Syria, who were interviewed by this observer, found conditions in Shatila to be much worse today than at the time of the massacre, 30 years ago.

Most of the Palestinians arriving from Syria are temporarily staying with friends or relatives in Lebanon’s 12 camps. 500 families are temporarily lodged in Saida, 30 miles south of Beirut, with 350 families sardine-canned in Ein el Helwe camp, already extremely densely populated with approximately 20,000 refugees. Roughly 500 Palestinian families, refugees once more, are housed temporarily in the Bekaa valley bordering Syria, including 250 families staying at Jilil (Wavell) camp. Scores or other Syrian Palestinian refugees are being housed in Bedawi camp near Tripoli. A major problem in all the camps is that the severe overcrowding and limited water and electricity are creating extended family tensions.

To date not much organized aid has been distributed.  UNWRA is still in the process of making lists of the arriving refugees from Syria, reminding one of the time it took for that UN agency to access the needs of the Nahr al Bared displaced refugees in 2007. The UNCHR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, whose mandate does not include Palestinians, is also studying the problem.

But the need for aid is now and urgent. Meeting with individuals on 9/20/12 from the Palestinian camp committees and the local and international NGO community, three urgent needs were identified facing the refugees from Syria, whose numbers swell following each Palestinian killed in Syria.  On 9/19/20, 18 more Palestinians were killed and so the numbers coming to Lebanon will swell over the next few days.

Among the three most urgent problems facing the arriving Palestinians from Syria are Social problems ranging from finding places to live, food, education and preventing youth from joining local Lebanese militia who offer $100 per day to Palestinian youth to work as hired guns. A few do fight on both sides of the Syrian conflict while their mothers and fathers are urging them to ‘stay off the streets.”

UNWRA has the capacity to help with elementary and secondary schooling in its 52 schools in Lebanon. Hoda al Turki, the hard working spokesperson for UNWRA in Lebanon has been worried about the difference in curriculum in UNWRA schools in Lebanon and Syria schools where Palestinians are educated. UNWRA does not operate schools in Syria. But the afternoon of 9/20/12 a solution was announced and a curriculum has been agreed on. One of the problems was that Syrian schools teach the Nakba and Palestinian history but UNWRA schools are forbidden to teach anything about Palestine lest its funding be cut by the US government under pressure from the Zionist lobby.

So far the medical needs of the arriving refugees are being met at UNWRA facilities.

Some are proposing housing the refugees in schools, as was done following the Nahr al Bared fighting, but the schools are needed for classes.

One very important Lebanese governmental humanitarian gesture was announced today ( 9/20/12) and it is that Lebanese General Security, in charge of visa and immigration matters, has waived all fees for arriving and departing Palestinian refugees.  Permission to remain, previously granted for only 7 days, will be granted indefinitely without Kafkaesque applications and interview processes. This is a major boon for the refugees since they have been ruthlessly exploited on both sides of Maznaa Lebanon-Syria border crossing, with demands for bribes and per head “transit fees” which quickly stripped many families of the limited cash they had.

One example: While trying to cross into Lebanon two weeks ago, Um Ahmad was confronted by a security guard who barked:  “if there is no phone number in Lebanon you need to go back to where you came from in Syria”. She replied to the security officer, “Sir, you should show us some mercy please.  You know that we are running away from war, we are not here on a vacation.”  He replied coldly:” no phone number, no entry!” A request for a bribe was delivered.

The government of Lebanon deserves praise for its humanitarian action. Hopefully the Syrian government will follow suit and facilitate the departure and hopeful return of Palestinian refugees.

The main economic problem is that the arriving refugees, like all Palestinians in Lebanon will not be allowed to work.

The third problem is with security issues.  Lebanon has announced that it cannot absorb more refugees. Yet the figure of 10,000 more expected Palestinians may easily double. For Palestinians who have been in Lebanon since 1948, many are reaching their limits of tolerance of the conditions they are forced to live in without elementary civil rights.

There is general agreement here that while ‘photo-op’ one time NGO aid distributions help and are much appreciated, the way they tend to be unorganized so far is resulting in refugee families being herded like cattle from place to place to receive various forms of limited aid and they are being stripped of their dignity.  Sometimes refugees are forced to sit in the sun until the TV crews arranged by the donors arrive to film this “act of charity in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

To its credit, Hezbollah has been helping some. The Syrian refugees whether Sunni, Christian or Druze have received some aid from a center near Saida.  Hezbollah Social Work Committee member Alhaji Mohammed al-Haj said Hezbollah was assisting our “Syrian brothers as part of the duty to return the favor for what they did for us in the July war and out of a moral and national obligation of the resistance.”

What is required without further delay is for an urgent stakeholders meeting to be convened. Including the PLO factions, local and international NGO’s,  Donors, the Palestine Red Crescent Society, UNRWA, EU and UN groups as well as local political parties in order quickly produce an executable plan  avoiding duplications, to address these needs.

Shatila camp residents, on this 30th anniversary of one of their darkest hours, are planning to lead this call with a unified, strong, sustained Palestinian voice to help their sisters and brothers from Syria.

**********

Franklin P. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut and Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC Email: fplamb@gmail.com

by Stuart Littlewood

Irrepressible Palestinian children… But smiles of happiness may turn to tears of frustration when they grow up to find their dreams dashed in a country ravaged by decades of military occupation… where lands and resources have been stolen, education curtailed, freedom cancelled and travel made almost impossible.

How will they build a career or raise a thriving family? Separated from friends and relatives, amenities and opportunities by encroaching barriers, roadblocks and checkpoints, excluded from their Holy City, and stripped of heritage, economic prosperity and even healthcare, they seem destined for a life of despair in what Chomsky calls “the dungeons that are left”.

This is not an academic book. It’s a wake-up call, a snapshot of the situation in Palestine through ordinary westerners’ eyes. Our reasons for writing it were fourfold…

This horror story needs to be told. The British and American public seem to know little about the Arab-Israeli conflict even though it is central to world peace. Palestinians hope visitors to their tortured land will speak to the outside world on their behalf. And the trampling of human justice in the Holy Land, of all places, is an affront to civilised people.

Having begun, a fifth reason soon made itself felt: the indifference of the West’s political élite and media. They avoid honest debate and suppress the truth, even to the extent of burying a critical Foreign Office report. Many seem to regard Israel as exempt from normal standards of behaviour. Worse, they turn the sanctions screw on an already abused and impoverished Palestinian people, pushing them to the edge of a humanitarian crisis and collapsing their fragile economy.

There’s no such thing as “Radio Free Palestine”, as far as we know, except on the other side of the world in California. But there ought to be. Somewhere in the Middle East or Europe a “Free Palestine” station should be broadcasting its heartrending message, its cry for justice… loud and clear… to the so-called civilized world.
Of course the Occupation – and resistance to it – has to be seen in historical context… how the real trouble started in 1897 when Theodore Herzle organised the first Zionist Congress with the express aim of establishing Eretz Israel, a Jewish homeland, in Palestine. And how Zionist leaders like Chaim Weizmann canvassed British politicians, who were persuaded to the idea.

How, after World War One, Britain the occupying power and the mandated government in Palestine, made free with Arab lands and paved the way for a Zionist takeover that has infuriated Arabs and blighted East-West relations ever since.

And how, in 59 years, the Israelis have become past-masters in the art of land theft, ethnic cleansing and subjugation, perversely earning the approval of western leaders in the process.

What I saw during my visits to the West Bank in 2005 and 2006 made me angry. What has happened back home is even more disturbing – US, British and EU politicians ganging up to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority and collectively punish the people, while still at pains to sidestep their responsibility to call Israel to account.

And the contemptible spectacle of Israel’s high-tech military machine venting its fury on the helpless citizens of the Gaza Strip, smashing their infrastructure and reducing their lives to an even deeper shade of hell… all because Israeli leaders cannot accept that hardline Hamas is now the Palestinians’ chosen government.

We are accustomed to the White House aiding and abetting Israel’s unlawful expansionism and shielding them from criticism. Now EU ministers inexplicably reward Israel with trading privileges while the Separation Wall steals another 10% of Palestinian territory, including the richest agricultural land and nearly all the water.

In short, Britain has joined the US and Israel in a conspiracy of injustice. No-one I have met, knowing the situation on the ground, agrees with the idea that “recognising” a brutal, armed occupier is a right or proper precondition for receiving aid. Israel exists; and one has to accept the fact. But recognition must be earned, usually by good conduct. And when has Israel ever “recognised” Palestine? The question on most people’s lips is, why won’t the civilised world put pressure on the Israeli regime to comply with UN resolutions and international court rulings and withdraw to its pre-1967 borders?

So far, the Israelis’ definition of the situation and their pretence that the Occupation is for security reasons have been allowed to prevail. Now, at last, there are calls for the situation to be re-framed in terms that reflect the truth.

Most people in the west, who readily identify with Bethlehem, would have been appalled to hear the organisation Open Bethlehem reporting that over 70% of its population now live below the poverty line and unemployment has soared to more than 60%.

“Once a prosperous middle class town, Bethlehem has been economically suffocated and the post-election sanctions have brought the local population to the brink of disaster.”
And this chilling warning from The Economist only added to the sense of foreboding:

“After millennia of violent conquest and reconquest, Jerusalem, centre of pilgrimage, crucible of history and the world’s oldest international melting-pot, is changing hands once more, but with a slow and quiet finality.”

The last conquest of Jerusalem

A girl who worked for the Palestinian National Authority in Ramallah emailed me:

“Our daily life and work, believe me, is getting worse. We haven’t been paid for months… Some of my colleagues can’t come to work anymore because simply they don’t have money for the transportation. On Thursday we made a protest in front of the entrance of our ministry demanding the international community to end up this isolation and asking for our salaries. The mothers are bringing their babies and kids to work everyday because they can’t pay for the kinder-yards or the baby sitters. I don’t have kids but both my parents work also in the PNA….”

A few weeks later her emails stopped. A knock-out blow, then, for this family and heaven knows how many others. Her words, on top of all the other distress calls, were the spur to finishing the book as quickly as possible.

© Stuart Littlewood 2007

Related Posts:

• Top Ten Reasons Israel tried to Censor CBS Bob Simon’s Report on Palestinian Christians

• Democracy Now! Netanyahu in 2001 US Won’t Get in the Way of Israeli Expansionism 

• ***********

About the author:

Stuart Littlewood’s articles are published widely on the web. He is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk “Lawlessness must have painful consequences for the lawless, not their victims.” (Stuart Littlewood)