Update on Where YOUR US Tax Dollars Go

Still waiting for those new textbooks (forget the new school)? How about repairing a few bridges, or a hospital. Sorry, Israel is ahead of the line here, to the tune of about 30 BILLION dollars which supports the likes of Ehud Barak. Don't you feel good helping such a hero? Isn't it worth your kids making due with the out of date school books? Oh, and make sure your car shocks are ok. The roads aren't going to get repaired soon either.

Blue Ibis
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Barak: profile of a brutal child-killer

Khalid Amayreh
Uruknet
Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:10 ED

Ehud Barak, the certified Zionist war criminal, is threatening to turn Gaza Strip into a full-fledged concentration camp.

©n/a

Last week, the Israeli war minister who is believed to be responsible for the murder of hundreds of Palestinian children during the first few months of the Aqsa Intifada in 2000 and 2001, disclosed a new policy toward the Gaza Strip resembling very much the manner in which the Nazi authorities treated Jews in the course of World War II.

Barak said he would make sure that very little food and medicine will be allowed to reach Gaza. He also said that Israel would cut off electricity supplies to the hermetically blockaded costal enclave which already looks very much like a concentration camp.

For those who don't know, Barak has a long history of criminality and murderousness toward the Palestinians. In 1998, when he wanted to impress the Israeli public to elect him as Prime Minister, he had to remind them of the most graphic details of one of his murderous missions in Beirut.

The ghoulish tactic worked, and the Israeli Jewish public gave him a certificate of good conduct.

Now Barak is planning to become Prime Minister once again, and his way to expedite and accelerate his plans in this regard is by murdering Palestinian children nearly on a daily basis.

On Thursday, 20 December, the Israeli occupation army murdered three additional Palestinian minors in the Gaza Strip. One of the boys was crushed to death by an American-supplied bulldozer. Graphic pictures of the badly-mutilated boy were shown all over the world, while Israeli boys and girls on talkback forums were busy congratulating themselves "on teaching Palestinians a lesson.!"

More than 20 Palestinian civilians, including 9 children have been murdered by the Israeli occupation army so far this month.

The Israeli army acknowledges rather reluctantly that civilians are killed when tanks fire their heavy artillery shells onto crowded Palestinian neighborhoods.

And every time Palestinian civilians are murdered, which happens routinely, the Israeli government says "sorry," claiming that the victims are not targeted deliberately and the victims are merely "collateral damage."

Well, one doesn't have to be a great military expert to understand that when tanks fire their heavy shells onto crowded civilian neighborhoods, children and civilians will be killed and maimed.

In the final analysis, killing knowingly is killing deliberately, and when the killing happens on a daily basis and the number of civilian victims is in the hundreds or thousands, intent becomes irrelevant.

It is widely understood that one of the main reasons for the persistent and unmitigated pornographic killings of helpless and unprotected Palestinians is the disgraceful silence of the international community, especially the United States , toward Israeli criminality.

This is not a new behavior. The US always looked the other way whenever Israel indulged in murdering civilians, even when there is no question as to the deliberate targeting of civilians, as was the case during Israel's genocidal campaign against Lebanon in 2006, as testified by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations.

Of course, a country that killed or caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians under the false rubric of ridding Iraq of its non-existent weapons of mass destruction can't be expected to behave morally.

After all, the last thing racist and Godless Ashkenazi Jews who hold the Bush administration by the throat, is matters of justice and morality.

But the world is not only America and Israel . There are millions of other peoples around the world who don't accept America's Nazi-like approach toward international politics, which is based on unilateralism, hegemony and coercion.

Today, the creeping Jewish genocide in Palestine takes many forms. These include starving millions of innocent Palestinians, barring Palestinians from accessing food and work, mainly by transforming their population centers into detention camps and constantly killing Palestinians, including children.

True, the scope of the daily killings has not reached the Auschwitz levels. But the fact that it hasn't is not attributed to Zionist morality or magnanimity but rather to concerns about possible reactions by the international public opinions.

This means that Israel, a country that has much in common with Nazi Germany, wouldn't hesitate to adopt a more daring approach toward the Palestinians if the world's callous indifference toward the Palestinian plight continued.

In short, the world has to make its stand clear. Is it willing to allow Israel to commit a holocaust by killing and/or causing the death of tens of thousands of Palestinians?

Does the world believe that a holocaust against the Palestinians will be kosher just because Jews, not Germans, happen to be the perpetrators?

In the early 1940s, the world, or much of it, stood silent as the Gestapo, SS and the Wehrmacht were exterminating innocent people, Jews and non-Jews in order to fulfil the nefarious concept of "the Master race."

Now, the world is passively watching Israel's creeping genocide against the Palestinians, all in the name of Jewish nationalism and "the chosen people."

Has humanity reverted to the age of cannibalism?

The Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See

Notice the family is considered by one soldier to be "dirty" , sub-human. Isn't that the same thing Jews suffered in Germany? And this was 2002. Things have only gotten worse.

Blue Ibis.
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Israeli army embarrassed by video broadcast

CBC News, 19 March 2002

The Israeli army has expressed a note of contrition after a television station aired a videotape showing an army assault on a Palestinian home in which a mother of five children died. When CBC News spoke with Ismail Hawarjeh at Bethlehem's hospital earlier this month, there was no way to verify the story he told about how his wife had died, until Israel's Channel 2 broacast the tape last weekend.

The Palestinian school administrator said his wife Huda had been killed in their home by an Israeli tank shell during the army's March 8 assault on the Aida refugee camp. The army wouldn't comment and foreign journalists weren't allowed inside the camp.

But Israeli media were allowed to ride along with the soldiers, and they went right into the Hawarjeh home. An Israeli camera recorded the army blowing off the door, and found Huda Hawarjeh bleeding on the floor.

The pictures conformed to Ismail Hawarjeh's story about his wife being hit by shrapnel in the front hallway of the house, and about the Israeli soldiers doing little to help her for an hour while she bled to death in front of her five children.

Finally, the soldiers allowed an ambulance to come to a nearby street, and soldiers helped Hawarjeh carry his wife to it. Doctors tried to revive her at the hospital but couldn't.

Huda Hawarjeh was one of seven people to die in the Bethlehem area that day.

The Israeli army allows the media such close access on the understanding it can embargo anything it doesn't want broadcast.

The tapes of the assault on the Hawarjeh home fell into that category. But Channel 2 broke the embargo anyway.

The army, government and many Israeli citizens didn't like what they saw.

Channel 2 showed Hawarjeh begging soldiers to allow an ambulance through. The camera captured the terror of the woman's daughter, and her brother's attempt to stop her from showing the soldiers her fear.

After the woman was finally taken out, one of the soldiers looked into the camera and said: "I don't know what we're doing here. Purification, maybe. It's dirty here. I don't know why a good Hebrew boy should be here, so far from his home."

The soldiers tore the home apart, evidently looking for weapons.

Another daughter begged them not to demolish the home's wall. Soldiers commonly smash walls to move into adjacent houses.

Israeli spokesman Ranaan Gissin said the government was disappointed by the decision to air the tapes. "I would have expected a little bit more self-censorship on the part of the Israeli media," he said.

Ma'ariv, Israel's second-biggest newspaper, ran the story on its front page on Monday, under a banner headline that read "Gaffe!"

[That's all the Zionists think this is. A procedural faux pas instead of what it is, yet another violation of human rights. Oh wait. I forgot. Palestinians aren't human.]

The army, after trying to suppress distribution of the pictures, admitted the soldiers' actions pushed the boundaries of public acceptance.

"Our action is so difficult to be done that it is to the extremities of acceptance," said Olivier Rafowicz, an Israeli Defence Force spokesman.

He called what happened in the Hawarjeh home "a mistake."

Comment:

At one point in the video an Israeli soldier says. "I don't know what we're doing here. Purification maybe. It's dirty here. I don't know why a good Hebrew boy should be here so far from his home."

These are people he is talking about!

That Israel is able to kill innocent Palestinians while saying what amounts to how hard it is to do the killing without being condemned is sickening.

It Was Forty Years Ago This Week . .

Amid all the nausea inducing hoopla this week about the fortieth anniversary of the "great Zionist victory" against those who never had a chance (see here) comes another anniversary. One which, like the Palestinian cause, is still waiting for justice. How is it that such a small country, kept afloat only by the obscene level of aid given by the United States, can apparently dictate the results of an investigation into its own crimes?

Blue Ibis
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Searching for the Truth About the USS Liberty

Ward Boston
Counterpunch
Sat, 09 Jun 2007 23:04 EDT

Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel's June 8th 1967 bombing of the USS Liberty.

On that sunny, clear day 40 years ago, Israel's combined air and naval forces attacked our American intelligence-gathering ship for two hours, inflicting 70 percent casualties. Thirty four American sailors died and 172 were injured. The USS Liberty remained afloat only by the crew's heroic efforts.

Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd -- president of the Court of Inquiry -- that President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of "mistaken identity".

The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for forty years. What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel's actions ­ even when they kill Americans?

On June 8th, survivors of Israel's cruel attack will gather in Washington, DC to honor their dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors themselves to testify publicly.

For decades, I have remained silent. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to share the truth.

Admiral Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy's official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.

We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.

I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.

I am outraged at the efforts of Israel's apologists to claim this attack was a case of "mistaken identity."

Admiral Kidd told me that after receiving the President's cover-up orders, he was instructed to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense Department, and rewrite portions of the Court's findings. He said, "Ward, they're not interested in the facts. It's a political matter and we cannot talk about it." We were to "put a lid on it" and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.

I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and including in the original transcript, is now missing.

I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel ­ even when they kill Americans -- in the halls of Congress?

Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink "the American ship".

Surely uncovering the truth about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more important than protecting Israel. And surely forty years is long enough to wait.

Ward Boston served as chief counsel to the Navy's Court of Inquiry into the attack on USS Liberty and as a naval aviator in World War II on the carrier Yorktown, and as an FBI agent prior to his assignment to the Navy's Judge Advocates General Corps. He is a graduate of the Law School of the College of William and Mary, and a resident of Coronado, California.

For more information see this story in Navy Times by Bryan Jordan.

The Six-Day "War" at 40: The Theme is Fraud

So, it's the anniversary of the "great Zionist victory". An illegal state born of deception (no Arab states were present at the UN when the resolution was passed) and fed on the blood of those who's homes and futures and very lives were taken from them to give space to these interlopers. And they know it. . . . . .

Blue Ibis

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Even after 40 years, Abba Eban's great fraud defines the official version of the 1967 War

Greg Felton
Canadian Arab News
Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:21 EDT

Some people make history; some people invent it. Abba Eban falls into the latter category. As Israel's foreign minister at the time of the 1967 War, Eban delivered a speech to the Security Council that must rank as the most erudite, sophisticated fraud ever heard by the world body.

He did nothing less than invent for our consumption the twin myths of Egyptian aggression and Israeli self-defence, all the while intoning the requisite verities of peace and international law. Eban stood history on its head and the non-Arab world was only too willing to embrace his dissembling and deceit.

Eban was an easy man to like, respect and believe, because he was cultured and thoroughly Western. He was one of us. Born Aubrey Solomon Meir, in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1915 Eban was educated in Britain and spent much of his adult life in politics. Among his numerous accomplishments are:

- Israel's first permanent delegate to the United Nations (1949-1959);
- Ambassador to the United States (1950-1959); and
- Israeli foreign minister (1966-1974).

Compared to the brutal gangsterism of Begin, Sharon, Shamir, Olmert, and Netanyahu, Eban stands like a colossus of conspicuous decency. Unfortunately, the comparison is purely relative. For all of his dovishness and diplomatic acumen Eban was still a zionist, and therefore an apologist for aggression and a spokesman for an outlaw state.

As the world marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 War, Eban's looking-glass reality is given new life as the zionist media dutifully reinforce the founding myths of the war. Even today, with the benefit of the Internet and hindsight, those who point out the errors of fact and tendentious arguments in Eban's speech stand little chance of a fair hearing, if they get a hearing at all.

If Israel's illegal Occupation of Palestine is to end, as it must, Eban's speech must be subjected to honest analysis, because a polite liar is still a liar, and the fruit of this particular lie is the genocide of Palestine.

Eban's speech runs more than 4,800 words and can be viewed here: For brevity's sake, I will focus on two key themes.

Israel's existence was threatened.

Abba Eban: "Two days ago...an army, greater than any force ever assembled in history in Sinai, had massed against Israel's southern frontier. Egypt had dismissed the United Nations forces which symbolized the international interest in the maintenance of peace in our region. Nasser had provocatively brought five infantry divisions and two armoured divisions up to our very gates; 80,000 men and 900 tanks were poised to move.

"...As time went on, there was no doubt that our margin of general security was becoming smaller and smaller. Thus, on the morning of 5 June, when Egyptian forces engaged us by air and land, bombarding the villages of Kissufim, Nahal-Oz and Ein Hashelosha we knew that our limit of safety had been reached, and perhaps passed. In accordance with its inherent right of self-defence as formulated in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Israel responded defensively in full strength. Never in the history of nations has armed force been used in a more righteous or compelling cause."

First, Egypt's president Gamel Abdel Nasser did not "provocatively" bring five infantry divisions and two armoured divisions up to "[Israel's] very gates." Eban's doom-and-gloom scenario is propaganda, as Israel's generals and politicians later confessed, e.g.:

Mordechai Bentov, cabinet minister: "This story about the danger of extermination has been a complete invention and has been blown up a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territories." (cited in Le Monde, June 3, 1972)

Menachem Begin, leader of Gahal Party: "In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." (cited in New York Times, Aug. 21, 1982.)

Gen. Matityahu Peled: "To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal [Israeli army]." (cited in Ha'aretz, March 19, 1972.)

The second fallacy, related to the first, is the idea that Israel's use of armed force was the most righteous and compelling in history. Leaving aside the sanctimonious hyperbole, Eban makes no mention of Israel's repeated border aggressions against Syria that precipitated the conflict, or that Egypt and Syria had signed a mutual defence pact the previous year.

Israel precipitated the 1967 War by staging border aggressions against Syria and seizing Syrian land in the demilitarized zone between the two countries. From 1948 to 1967, Syria reported more than 1,000 armed clashes, and in a candid 1976 interview, Moshe Dayan admitted that Israel provoked 80 percent of them:

"We would send a tractor to plow some [disputed] area... and we knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.... I made a mistake in allowing the conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time."

Therefore, Nasser's provocative [sic] build-up on the Sinai had nothing to do with Israel, per se, but with the need to come to Syria's aid. Moreover, and this point is never mentioned, Nasser had reluctantly sent 100,000 of his best troops to fight in Yemen's civil war and was in no position to start hostilities.

Nasser did evict the UN peacekeeping force, and he did close the Red Sea port of Eilat, but these were marginal actions, as Israel well knew. Nevertheless, Eban blew them out of proportion and repeatedly invoked Eilat as justification for invasion: "There was in this wanton act a quality of malice. For surely the closing of the Strait of Tiran gave no benefit whatever to Egypt except the perverse joy of inflicting injury on others. It was an anarchic act, because it showed a total disregard for the law of nations..."

Israel's "right to exist"

Abba Eban: "The central point remains the need to secure an authentic intellectual recognition by our neighbours of Israel's deep roots in the Middle Eastern reality. There is an intellectual tragedy in the failure of Arab leaders to come to grips, however reluctantly, with the depth and authenticity of Israel's roots in the life, the history, the spiritual experience and the culture of the Middle East.... There are not two categories of States. The United Arab Republic, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon - not one of these has a single ounce or milligram of statehood which does not adhere in equal measures to Israel itself."

Eban is reinforcing the Israel-as-victim myth, which is still heard to day as "picking on Israel." Of course, the Palestinians get no mention because at this time they are not even deemed to exist. Note also how Israel's equivalence with other states is merely asserted, not proven. The reason is simple - Israel's roots have no depth or authenticity - it is an artificial, un-Semitic, Western creation born of guilt, terrorism and blackmail. It has no place in the culture of the Middle East; it is a foreign body that is destroying the very culture of which Eban claims it is a part.

The real perversity of Eban's speech is his genteel hypocrisy. He condemned Nasser for violating the law of nations, but says nothing of Israel's transgressions against Palestine or Syria. He spoke of the equality of sovereignty, but made no mention of Israel's conditional admission to the UN or of its refusal to finalize its borders. He spoke of peace, yet said nothing about Israel being responsible for breaking the peace.

Less than two weeks after he addressed the Security Council, Eban gave a more accurate account of Israel's contempt for international law: "If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of 'Israel' returning to the armistice lines [pre June 1967 borders] 'Israel' would refuse to comply with the decision." (New York Times, June 19, 1967.)

Eban seemed so reasonable, educated and Western that to disbelieve him was unthinkable. Now, we must do more than think about it - we must recognize Eban as an artful liar, and engender public discussion about the real cause of the 1967 War.

Too Angry to Make Up A Title

Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ!!

Every time I think I am going to post about something else (anything else!!) besides murderous Zionist/Neocon psychopaths, something like this comes along.

How can an Israeli stay in Palestine and sleep at night, knowing that acts like this secure their place?

Blue Ibis

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Why Was the Palestinian Mother of Eleven Murdered While Trying to Protect Her Deaf Husband?

by Paul Findley
mediamonitors
Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:27 EST

"U.S. media are generally brave, except where Israel is concerned. So are members of Congress. So is the presidency. And the rest of us? Almost everyone is afraid to criticize Israel, no matter how barbaric its behavior."

Alison Weir, a California journalist and activist who chronicles the bias in U.S. media coverage of Middle East events, bestirred many Americans - perhaps many thousands - in early October with a powerful, chilling Internet account of the largely unreported murder of a Palestinian mother of 11 children by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

Itemad Ismail Abu Mo'ammar was fatally shot while trying to rescue her deaf husband from a severe beating by Israeli soldiers, who were furious because he did not answer their questions.

Weir wrote:

"Foolishly or valiantly, how is one to say, the 35-year-old woman interfered. She tried to explain that her husband was deaf and couldn't hear their questions. Then she attempted to stop them from hitting him. So they shot her. Several times. She didn't die, though. That took longer, because the soldiers refused to allow an ambulance to transport her to a physician. Finally, after approximately five hours, one was permitted to take her to a hospital where physicians were able to render one service: pronounce her dead. Why did this all happen? The family lived behind the residence of a resistance fighter wanted by Israel. The death of Itemad was simply 'collateral damage' in a failed Israeli assassination-kidnapping operation."

Weir searched major U.S. media - broadcast and print - from coast to coast, and found Itemad's death reported in only three newspapers, a single-sentence notice in each. One of the three, The Washington Post, reported inaccurately that the woman was killed by an Israeli tank round. After exchanging messages with Weir, the Post cleared for publication her letter that explained that multiple bullets, fired close up - not a tank round - were the cause of death. But the Post reneged. The letter was not published. Why? Weir's explanation: "After all, these were only Palestinians, and it was just another mother dead."

Ponder the "why" of the shooting. Although the distraught woman struggled to get the armed soldiers to stop beating her deaf husband, she surely posed no physical threat to them. Even if they did not understand what she said, she was, at worst, an inconvenience, hardly deserving to be shot.

Now consider the "why" of the aftermath. Were the hearts of the Israeli squad so hardened that they could not act with compassion as the husband and children watched helplessly through unavailing tears as the woman bled to death? Why did they want her dead?

This Gaza atrocity is not an isolated aberration. Israeli brutality is commonplace, and so is American silence in response. What transformed the soldiers, their military superiors, as well as the civilian leaders of the Israeli government into callous brutes? Is the whole Israeli governmental system so corrupted with anti-Arab passion that mercy for a dying mother is nowhere to be found?

Other questions beg answers. Will the killers be punished or even rebuked? Will messages of regret, consolation, and - yes - compensation be sent to the survivors? Sadly, I know from the wells of memory the answer to these two questions is no.

Such messages should come from Washington, not just from Israel, as the guns and bullets used in the killing were almost certainly gifts of the U.S. government. Will the U.S. ambassador deliver messages to the aggrieved, as well as a threatening protest to Israeli officials, demanding an end to the brutal treatment of innocent people? Here again, the answer is no.

Why the cover-up in major U.S. media? The awful circumstances of Itemad's death were not reported, because major media are afraid - yes, afraid - to feature Israeli criminal behavior. Israel's influence is suffocating. Imagine the intense, sustained coverage that would have dominated major media if the roles in Gaza had been reversed, with a dying Israeli woman denied medical service for hours by Palestinians who had shot her at close range for no good reason.

U.S. media are generally brave, except where Israel is concerned. So are members of Congress. So is the presidency. And the rest of us? Almost everyone is afraid to criticize Israel, no matter how barbaric its behavior.

U.S. silence in the face of an Israeli atrocity is a green light to more crime. If we look at our own hands, we may find a trace of Itemad's blood right there in plain sight.