"Thu Mar 13,11:16 AM ET An Israeli policeman looks at the car in which two Israeli armed guards were killed by Israeli soldiers in an friendly-fire incident near the West-Bank settlement of Pnei Hever March 13, 2003. Israeli soldiers and a helicopter gunship shot dead the two Israeli armed guards in the West Bank after mistaking them for Palestinian gunmen, the army said." [Reuters, March 13, 2003]

[This is how Palestinians are indiscriminately slaughtered. Once determined to be a "terrorist," they are finished. Not a terrorist? Oh, sorry. We thought you looked like one.]
Aerial hunt for fleeing suspect cannot be justified,
Haaretz (Israel), March 16, 2003
"Thursday's incident east of the Zif junction, in which two Israeli security guards were killed by IDF fire from the air and the ground, have been avoided? This tragic incident most probably could have been prevented, had the troops and their commanding officers been made aware of the fact that two armed guards were present in the area. The preliminary investigation into the deaths has so far failed to determine whether the soldiers in the field were furnished with this information by the divisional headquarters in Hebron. If they did have this information, some measure of doubt would have crossed the minds of the officers who ordered their soldiers to open fire, and the minds of the soldiers who were so quick to fire volley after volley of lethal shots at who they assumed were terrorists. It may also be the case that the order to open fire violated the standard rules of engagement, governing troops' behavior when faced with terror suspects fleeing the scene ... The worst aspect of Thursday's event is that, from the moment the erroneous operation began, the two security guards became fleeing quarry that had no chance. They were not given any opportunity to identify themselves. After one of the guards, Yehuda Ben-Yosef, was killed next to his car, a helicopter fired a missile at his colleague, Yoav Doron. It is safe to assume that Doron saw the helicopter and realized that it was an Israeli force. The fact that he continued to run indicates that he understood that he had wandered into the middle of a terrible mistake ... But there has never been a case like Thursday's, when an Air Force helicopter hunted down an Israeli fleeing for his life. Even a high state of alert on account of reports of a terrorist infiltration cannot justify the aerial shooting of a lone figure in an open field."

Smearing the Antiwar Movement. Neocon Thought Police on the Prowl,
by Justin Raimondo, Etherzone, October 28, 2002 issue
"As if to confirm what some opponents of this war have been saying – but not too loudly – about this being a war for Israel, the Bush administration is now 'weighing an Israeli proposal for a joint operation in Iraq's western desert to disarm Iraqi missiles before they could be launched against Israel.' That this war has always been about Israel is a matter of simple geography. For all the President's palavering about the 'threat to Americans' posed by Iraq, those 'weapons of mass destruction' Saddam supposedly has couldn't even reach Europe, let alone the U.S. But Tel Aviv is well within range. Indeed, the prospect of Iraqi missiles raining down on Israel has been one of the chief deterrents against a move by Israel's far-right Likud government to ethnically cleanse Palestine of Arabs – a plan that is increasingly popular among Israelis – and/or move the IDF back into Lebanon. The U.S. occupation of Iraq will eliminate that deterrent – and set up Israel to deal with Hizbollah the Syria in the regional conflagration to follow. The oddly showy attempts by U.S. government officials to downplay the extent of U.S.-Israeli collaboration have never been too convincing – if they were, you see, the Israeli lobby in the U.S. would be outraged, and that would be the end of that. But who's kidding whom? The coming war in the Middle East will be a joint operation between Washington and Tel Aviv in every sense, not only militarily but also on the political and diplomatic fronts. In the blockbuster second issue of The American Conservative, Paul W. Schroeder, professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, disdained the Oedipal explanation for the origins of the President's war plans, writing: 'Much more plausible is the suggestion that this plan is being promoted in the interests of Israel. Certainly it is being pushed very hard by a number of influential supporters of Israel of the hawkish neoconservative stripe in and outside the administration (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, and others) and one could easily make the case that a successful preventive war on Iraq would promote particular Israeli security interests more than general American ones.'"

Arab legislators aren't equal,
International Herald Tribune, October 29, 2002
"Israel calls itself the only democracy in the Middle East, a description readily accepted in the West. Only critics in the Arab world and a handful of radical Israeli academics have challenged this orthodoxy, observing that the country is really a democracy only if you are a Jew. Azmi Bishara, a former philosophy professor and now an Arab member of the Knesset, calls Israel a 'tribal democracy.' Not included in the tribe, he says, are the country's million Arab citizens, a fifth of the population. Although they have the vote, they have long complained that they are excluded from participation in the government. Since the mid-1990s they have campaigned for the Jewish state to become a state of all its citizens. The Jewish Israeli public and political establishment angrily oppose such reforms, claiming that they would destroy Israel as a Jewish democratic state. However, a new report, 'Silencing Dissent,' commissioned by Israel's Arab Association for Human Rights, challenges the view that Israel can extol its virtues as a democracy while defining itself as a state for Jews. Our research throws up disturbing facts about the operation of Israel's parliamentary democracy that are little appreciated outside Israel ... The special treatment meted out to the Arab legislators has every appearance of being designed to intimidate and silence them. In fact, new pieces of legislation passed by the Knesset this past summer will do just that. Israel's election committee will now be able to ban any party from running which implicitly denies that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state."

Before Jewish fascism takes over,
by Yossi Sarid, Ha'aretz (Israel), October 29, 2002
"They're putting the historical cart before the horses, to drag the horses after them down the slippery slope until we once again crash, for the third time; they are enlisting history into the cause to make sure the zealots of our day can once again bring us to destruction ... Gush Emunim's path to their heaven and our hell is paved with violence and brutal expressions of refusal and rebellion, always supported by Ariel Sharon (all the quotes are in the archives), who to this day, now as prime minister, is playing a double game together with his good friend, the most important man in the territories, that one from the Jewish Underground, Ze'ev Hever, also known as Zambish. Together, Sharon and Zambish are zambushing Fuad Ben-Eliezer and Shimon Peres. And the Yesha Council leaders will continue denying their paternity over the 'hilltop youth,' while the sanctimonious, self-righteous politicians who prepared the groundwork for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin will continue using their saccharine rhetoric about 'the unity of the nation' warning about 'civil wars' and 'baseless hatred.' If today's zealots continue on the path of their ancestors, I'm not sure the opposing camp will continue the tradition of surrender and panic exhibited by the moderates of the Second Commonwealth. We have the right of self-defense from the likes of Effi Eitam, his rabbis and pupils, before they bring down the horrors upon us, before Jewish fascism runs over us all."

No Respite for West Bank Locals,
National Geographic, October 2002
"The latest news from the West Bank, occupied by Israel since June 1967, differs from earlier reports only in that the situation for the vast majority of inhabitants has grown even worse. Take, for example, one of the most fundamental human requirements: water. The drought that has been ravaging the entire Middle East for several years hit Israel hard, and Palestinians, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, have been undergoing 'a severe water shortage.' Two hundred thousand Palestinians on the West Bank found themselves without any access to a water pipeline network and therefore had to rely in part on supplies brought in by tanker, which cost them three to five times as much as piped water. However, the tankers often come from areas that are under Israeli curfew (meaning that all outside movement is forbidden.) They therefore have to wait until the curfew is lifted before filling up and setting off to make deliveries. The roughly 8,500 people living in the town of Bayt Furik, for example, totally depend in water brought in from the city of Nablus, which has been frequently under curfew for most of the day since May. The Israeli military authorities allow tankers to enter Bayt Furik only between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. In consequence, each of the 13 tankers serving the town can make only one delivery a day, as opposed to the four or five daily deliveries that they usually made before the present disturbances, known as the Al Aqsa intifada, began in September 2000. The effect of this severe reduction in summer water supply on the town’s beef and chicken industry has been predictably severe, just one more reason why some 70 percent of the inhabitants of the occupied territories are living on $2 a day or less."

Judge Labels U.S. 'Irrational' In Fearing Int'l Crimes Court,
[Jewish] Forward, October 18, 2002
"The first chief prosecutor at the tribunal set up to adjudicate claims of war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia is saying that American 'fear' of the International Criminal Court 'is completely unjustified,' and 'borders almost on the irrational.' In a visit to the Forward offices, South African Justice Richard Goldstone said that the court 'has been seriously weakened in attempts to get the United States on board.' Goldstone said that unlike the United States, 'Israel has good cause to be suspicious of international organizations' including the United Nations — although he believes it is in Israel's best interest to join the International Criminal Court. 'I think Israel is being treated partially by the United Nations,' said Goldstone, who sits on South Africa's Constitutional Court and is president of World ORT Union, a Jewish-led international technical and technology-training organization. 'While a lot of criticism of Israel at the United Nations has been in my view justified, it's been absolutely partial and many countries have done far worse things and nothing's said' ... The court, which sits in the Dutch city of The Hague, will have jurisdiction over war crimes, genocide and other 'crimes against humanity' committed after July 1, 2002. The United States and Israel are among the 138 countries that signed the treaty creating the court but both have declined to ratify it; the United States withdrew its signature in May ... According to Goldstone, Israel doesn't 'seem to be following the United States in taking any active action against the ICC; they're not likely to because, I guess, politically they don't want to antagonize more than necessary the rest of the world.' Goldstone noted that the 'United States and Israel are the only democracies not to have ratified the criminal court treaty.' 'I would have thought that Israel would have wanted to be part of a movement to put a stop to impunity for war criminals,' he said, citing the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremburg tribunals. 'As I said, they are obviously scared and backing off because they don't want the court to be used against them.'"

8 Palestinians killed, including 3 children,
Ha'aretz (Israel), October 18, 2002
"IDF tank shelling killed eight Palestinians, including three children, and wounded some 40 others in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, Palestinian sources said. Rafah residents said that five tanks shells hit several houses. Dr. Ali Mussa of al-Najar hospital in Rafah said the dead included a 70-year-old woman and at least three children aged 13, 12 and nine. About ten of the injured were in serious condition, he said."

U.S. considers Israeli plan for joint operation to neutralize Iraqi missiles,
nj.com, (The Associated Press), October 18, 2002
"The Bush administration is considering an Israeli proposal to send U.S. special forces into Iraq's western desert to knock out Iraqi missile sites in the event of war, a U.S. official said Friday. In a joint operation, Israel would furnish the United States with intelligence about the sites and how to disarm them early in the conflict, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Israel's aim is to sharply reduce the risk of an Iraqi missile attack. Israel presented the proposal during Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's talks this week in Washington with President Bush and senior White House, Pentagon and State Department officials."

Settlers attack Palestinian olive pickers in West Bank,
Ha'aretz (Israel), October 18, 2002,
"Dozens of [Jewish] settlers prevented the residents of the West Bank villages of Akrabeh, Inabus near Nablus from picking olives Saturday, firing in the air and demanding that the Palestinians leave the area ... Six Palestinian families set out Friday from the village of the West Bank village of Hirbat Yanun, leaving it completely abandoned. Once home to 25 families, members of the Sobih clan said they were fleeing after four years of worsening attacks by settlers who have set up illegal outposts on nearby hilltops. The attacks have become increasingly frequent in recent months, they said. Groups of masked settlers have charged into the village, coming at night with dogs and horses, stealing sheep, hurling stones through windows and beating the men with fists and rifle butts, Palestinian residents told the Associated Press. An electricity generator has been scorched by fire, knocking out power to the village. Three large water tanks were tipped over and emptied, the residents said. Palestinians complain bitterly of land lost over the past decades of Middle East conflict. Yanun is believed to the first time in recent years that Palestinians have abandoned an entire village due to the conflict ... An IDF spokesman, who did not want his name used, said soldiers try to prevent conflict between settlers and Palestinians, but that forces are primarily in the area to protect Israelis from attacks by Palestinian militants."

Israel, Iraq and the US,
by Edward Said, Counterpunch, October 19, 2002
"[Ariel] Sharon is now Israel's prime minister, his armies and propaganda machine once again surrounding and dehumanising Arafat and the Palestinians as 'terrorists'. It is worth recalling that the word 'terrorist' began to be employed systematically by Israel to describe any Palestinian act of resistance beginning in the mid-1970s. That has been the rule ever since, especially during the first Intifada of 1987-93, eliminating the distinction between resistance and pure terror and effectively depoliticising the reasons for armed struggle. During the 1950s and 60s Ariel Sharon earned his spurs, so to speak, by heading the infamous Unit 101, which killed Arab civilians and razed their houses with the approval of Ben-Gurion ... The main difference between 1982 and 2002 is that the Palestinians now being victimised and besieged are in Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1967 and where they have remained despite the ravages of the occupation, the destruction of the economy, and of the whole civilian infrastructure of collective life. The main similarity is of course the disproportional means used to do it, eg, the hundreds of tanks and bulldozers used to enter towns and villages like Jenin or refugee camps like Jenin's and Deheisheh, to kill, vandalise, prevent ambulances and first-aid workers from helping, cutting off water and electricity, etc. All with the support of the US whose president actually went as far as calling Sharon a man of peace during the worst rampages of March and April 2002. It is significant of how Sharon's intention went far beyond 'rooting out terror' that his soldiers destroyed every computer and then carried off the files and hard drives from the Central Bureau of Statistics, the Ministry of Education, of Finance, of Health, cultural centres, vandalising officers and libraries, all as a way of reducing Palestinian collective life to a pre- modern level."

UN concerned about poverty among children in Israel,
Ha'aretz (Israel), October 21, 2002
"The commission responsible for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, has expressed its concern over 'the very high percentage of children living in poverty, particularly those living in large families, in single-parent families and Arab families,' in Israel and in the territories. 'The committee is concerned that discrimination persists in [Israel] and that non-discrimination is not expressly guaranteed constitutionally. In particular the committee is concerned about discrimination against girls and women, especially in the context of religious laws; inequalities in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights of Israeli Arabs, Bedouin, Ethiopians, children with disabilities and children of foreign workers.' The commission 'encourages the state party to take all possible measures to reconcile the interpretation between religious laws with fundamental human rights.' The panel expressed its 'deep concern' about 'inhuman and degrading practices' and 'torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children by police officers... [and] encourages the state party to take all possible measures to reconcile the interpretation between religious laws with fundamental human rights.'"

Commander charged with torturing Palestinian boy,
Guardian (UK), October 22, 2002
"An Israeli army commander has been relieved of his post after being charged with torturing a young Palestinian boy in Bethlehem while interrogating him as to the whereabouts of his father. Lieutenant Colonel Geva Saguy is awaiting a court martial on several charges, including ordering the boy to strip naked, holding a burning paper under his testicles, threatening to ram a bottle into his anus and threatening to shoot him. The boy's name and age have not been revealed. A military court was told that Lt Col Saguy was trying to obtain information about the boy's father - described as a 'wanted Palestinian' - during the army's invasion of Bethlehem in April. Lt Col Saguy was charged with extortion, behaviour unbecoming an officer and exceeding his authority to the point of endangering human life. He was relieved of his post on the orders of the military court after it turned down a request for the charges to be thrown out. The army had resisted the move for several months. A sergeant is accused of translating Lt Col Saguy's threats into Arabic and of beating the youth."

Home PM plans to ask U.S. for aid that could top $10 billion,
Ha'aretz (Israel), October 22, 2002
"An inter-ministerial team headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, is working on a proposal requesting American economic assistance that could top $10 billion. The team includes representatives from the treasury, the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry. A government source said the reason for the aid request stems from the United States' expected campaign against Iraq coupled with the American desire that Israel not interfere with Washington's plans or use IDF troops against Iraq. Sources at the Prime Minister's Office said yesterday that American readiness to provide economic assistance has not been made in concrete terms. However, a number of ideas have cropped up in Jerusalem over the type of aid Israel could use: cash, guarantees for low-interest bank loans from American banks, direct state-to-state loans from the U.S. treasury, and the conversion of some American defense aid into shekels. Currently, Washington provides Israel $2.1 billion a year that must be spent in the United States on defense supplies. One proposal is for $2 billion to be converted to shekels and used to purchase defense equipment from Israeli manufacturers in the hope that it would invigorate the Israeli economy."

Rights groups: Israel is waging a campaign to silence Arab MKs,
Ha'aretz (Israel), October 23, 2002
"Israel is carrying out at a 'campaign for silencing Arab members of Knesset [the Israeli Parliament],' and has adopted a 'strategy aimed at denying the [Arab] minority its voting rights, contrary to its international obligation,' organizations representing Arab minority rights said in two ground-breaking reports presented to the Knesset yesterday. According to reports prepared by the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) and the Mussawa Center, Israel's nine Arab MKs have been targets of a concerted policy of physical attack by security forces and their freedom of movement has been restricted. There are also a number of legal and legislative processes in the works aimed at neutralizing their political activity, the reports note. Since the current Knesset was convened in May 1999, eight of the Knesset Arab MKs have been physically hurt in 11 attacks carried out by military police, according to the rights organizations; most of the MKs were attacked more than once, and in seven cases medical treatment was required. 'In most of the cases, security forces knew who they were attacking,' the HRA report claims. According to both reports, no proceedings were taken against the attackers, despite complaints filed by the MKs."

Settlers defying Israeli law Actions spark fear in the region,
Boston Globe, October 23, 2002
"Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories have suddenly broken into open defiance of the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on multiple fronts, threatening the stability of the ruling coalition and creating an environment that some Israelis compare to that which led to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Across the rocky, rolling hills of the northern West Bank, which the settlers call by the biblical name Samaria, settlers are attacking Palestinians attempting to harvest their olives - a major ritual of Palestinian society and an important source of income for the impoverished rural population. Olive harvesters have been beaten, shot at, wounded, and, in one case, killed... In the past week alone, a Palestinian was found crawling through the groves near an Itamar outpost after allegedly being beaten severely by residents, Palestinian villagers fled their homes after a settler rampage, and numerous olive harvesters were threatened. The injured man had three broken fingers, and was burned and bruised all over his body, according to the doctor in Nablus who treated him. A relative who took him to the hospital said the man told him settlers hung him upside down in a tree, with his hands tied behind his back, while beating him. In other Samarian settlements, Israeli police said, armed, masked settlers torched seven cars owned by Palestinians after the Palestinians refused to leave their olive groves."

Israeli embassy told to move,
Aftenposten, (Norway), October 24, 2002
"Closed streets, barricaded sidewalks and heavily armed guards just behind Norway's royal palace have taken their toll on Oslo officials' patience. After years of neighbor complaints over security measures at the Israeli embassy, city authorities now agree the embassy must move within four years. The Israeli embassy on Parkveien in Oslo has been a security nightmare for local officials. Fears of terrorist attack have led to security demands from the Israeli embassy that city and state politicians have tried to meet. The city has paid for round-the-clock police patrols at the embassy, agreed to block off the street it sits on (earlier one of busiest in the city) and allowed the embassy to violate building codes by erecting such things as a steel fence around the gracious old rented mansion that the embassy leases. Now city officials agree that the very threat of terrorist attack means the embassy must be re-located. They now think its current site, across the street from the palace where both King Harald and Queen Sonja live, is a threat to the entire area."

World press freedom ranked,
BBC (UK), October 23, 2002
"This is the first time press freedom has been ranked The international journalism pressure group Reporters Without Borders has published a list judging 139 countries on their respect for press freedom. At the top of the list are Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands. North Korea, China and Burma are at the other end of the scale. There are some surprises for Western governments - the United States ranks below Costa Rica and Italy scores lower than Benin ... The US' 17th place was lowered because of the number of journalists arrested for refusing to reveal their sources, the report says ... Elsewhere, the organisation places the Palestinian Authority (82) higher than Israel (92) in terms of press freedom. Israel's ranking was hurt by what the pressure group claims are 'a large number of violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights' in the West Bank and Gaza." [Iraq is listed at the bottom, at 130]

Academics' statement: Israeli gvmt may be contemplating crimes against humanity, by Jacob Katriel, indymedia, Sep 22, 2002 jkatriel@tx.technion.ac.il
"Members of Israeli academe are invited to add their name to the statement presented below by sending an email to jkatriel@tx.technion.ac.il Urgent warning: The Israeli government may be contemplating crimes against humanity. We, members and friends of Israeli academe, are horrified by US buildup of aggression towards Iraq and by the Israeli political leadership's enthusiastic support for it. We are deeply worried by indications that the 'fog of war' could be exploited by the Israeli government to commit further crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing. The Israeli ruling coalition includes parties that promote 'transfer' of the Palestinian population as a solution to what they call 'the demographic problem'. Politicians are regularly quoted in the media as suggesting forcible expulsion, most recently MKs Michael Kleiner and Benny Elon, as reported on Yediot Ahronot website on September 19, 2002. In a recent interview in Ha'aretz, Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon described the Palestinians as a 'cancerous manifestation' and equated the military actions in the Occupied Territories with 'chemotherapy', suggesting that more radical 'treatment' may be necessary. Prime Minister Sharon has backed this 'assessment of reality'. Escalating racist demagoguery concerning the Palestinian citizens of Israel may indicate the scope of the crimes that are possibly being contemplated. We call upon the International Community to pay close attention to events that unfold within Israel and in the Occupied Territories, to make it absolutely clear that crimes against humanity will not be tolerated, and to take concrete measures to prevent such crimes from taking place. add your comments 187 Signatories, so far. by Jacob Katriel 11:30am Sun Sep 29 '02 Dr. Issam Aburaiya, Jerusalem Prof. Zach Adam, Rehovot Dr. Amotz Agnon, Jerusalem Prof. Colman Altman, Haifa Dr. Janina Altman, Haifa Tammy Amiel-Houser, Tel Aviv Chaya Amir, Tel Aviv Dr. Shmuel Amir, Tel Aviv Prof. Daniel Amit, Jerusalem/Rome Elinor Amit, Tel Aviv Prof. Yali Amit, Chicago Dr. Yossi Amitay, Kibbutz Gvulot Dr. Meir Amor, Montreal, Canada Dr. Yonathan (Jon) Anson, Beer Sheva Dr. Ariella Azoulay, Tel Aviv Dr. Riva Bachrach, Tel Aviv Dr. Rachel Tzvia Back, Tel Aviv Prof. Shalom Baer, Jerusalem Prof. Ron Barkai, Tel Aviv Dr. Anat Barnea - Givat Chaim Ichud Prof. Dan Bar-On, Beer Sheva Dr. Avner Ben-Amos, Tel Aviv Tammy Ben-Shaul, Haifa Prof. Zvi Bentwich, Jerusalem Prof. Matania Ben-Artzi, Jerusalem Prof. Linda Ben-Zvi, Tel Aviv Avi Berg, Tel Aviv Dr. Louise Bethlehem, Hod Hasharon Prof. Anat Bilezki, Tel Aviv Uri Bitan, Beer Sheva Prof. Elliott Blass, Cambridge, MA Prof. Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Jerusalem Dr. Yair Boimel, Haifa Prof. Daniel Boyarin, Berkeley Prof. Haim Bresheeth, London/Jerusalem Ido Bruno, Jerusalem Prof. Victoria Buch, Jerusalem Shula Carmi, Jerusalem Smadar Carmon, Toronto Raz D. Chen-Morris, Jerusalem Ilan Cohen, Pordenone, Italy Dr. Nicole Cohen-Addad, Tel Aviv Dr. Mike Dahan, Jerusalem Dr. Uri Davis, Sakhnin Athena Elizabeth DeRasmo, Haifa Ronit Dovrat, Firenze Dr. Avishai Ehrlich, Tel Aviv Dr. Hala Espanioly, Nazareth Prof. Aharon Eviatar, Tel Aviv Dr. Zohar Eviatar, Haifa Debbie Eylon, Jerusalem Dr. Ovadia Ezra. Tel Aviv Prof. Raphael Falk, Jerusalem Moris Farhi, London, UK Prof. Emmanuel Farjoun, Jerusalem Prof. Raya Fidel, Seattle Pnina Firestone, Jerusalem Prof. Gideon Freudenthal, Tel Aviv Dr. Elizabeth Freund, Jerusalem Meir (miro) Gal, New York Prof. Chaim Gans, Tel Aviv Gadi Geiger, Cambridge, MA, USA Dr. Amira Gelblum, Tel Aviv Prof. Avner Giladi, Haifa Prof. Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv Dr. Snait Gissis, Tel Aviv Dr. Daphna Golan-Agnon, Jerusalem Dr. Anat Goldrat-First, Netanya Dr. Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni, Tel Aviv Dr. Neve Gordon, Beer Sheva Dr. Yerah Gover, New York Prof. Charles W. Greenbaum, Jerusalem Dr. Lev Grinberg, Beer Sheva Prof. Yossi Guttmann, Haifa Ran HaCohen, Tel Aviv Prof. Uri Hadar, Tel Aviv Jeff Halper, Jerusalem Shoshana Halper, Jerusalem Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem, Jerusalem Dina Hecht, Jerusalem Dr. Sara Helman, Beer Sheva Prof. Hanna Herzog, Tel Aviv Prof. Ze'ev Herzog, Tel Aviv Prof. Hannan Hever, Jerusalem Dr. Tikva Honig-Parnass, Jerusalem Shirly Houser, Tel Aviv Tal Itzhaki, Haifa Prof. Eva Jablonka, Tel Aviv Andrea Jacobs, Austin, Texas Prof. Sabre Kais, Nahif/Purdue USA Dr. Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, Haifa Aya Kaniuk, Tel Aviv Prof. Jacob Katriel, Haifa Prof. Tamar Katriel, Haifa Prof. Uri Katz, Haifa Prof. Baruch Kimmerling, Jerusalem Dr. Gady Kozma, Rehovoth Prof. Richard Kulka, Jerusalem Dr. Haggai Kupermintz, Boulder, Colorado Judy Kupferman, Tel Aviv Dr. Ron Kuzar, Haifa Dr. Idan Landau, Beer Sheva Dr. John Landau, Jerusalem Dr. Ariela Lazar, Evanston Dr. Ronit Lentin, Dublin Prof. Micah Leshem, Haifa Erez Levkovitz, Jerusalem Prof. Rene Levy, Lausanne Prof. Shimon Levy, Tel Aviv Prof. Joyce Livingstone, Haifa Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky, London/Jerusalem Dr. Orly Lubin, Tel Aviv Dr. Ivonne Mansbach, Jerusalem Prof. Uri Maor, Tel Aviv Dr. Ruchama Marton, Tel Aviv Dr. Anat Matar, Tel Aviv Dr. Nina Mayorek, Jerusalem Prof. Paul Mendes-Flohr, Jerusalem Rahel Meshoulam, Cambridge, MA Dr. Uriel Meshoulam, Cambridge, MA Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, Jerusalem Jo Milgrom, Jerusalem Menucha Moravitz, Ramat-Gan Susy Mordechay, Giv'ataim Dr. Pnina Motzafi-Haller, Ottawa, Canada Prof. Ben-Tzion Munitz, Tel Aviv Dr. Dorit Naaman, Kingston, Ontario Regev Nathansohn, Tel Aviv Prof. Adi Ophir, Tel-Aviv Omer Ori, Jerusalem Prof. Avraham Oz, Haifa Dr. Ilan Pappe, Haifa Prof. Yoav Peled, Tel Aviv Gabriel Piterberg, UCLA Prof. Igor Primoratz, Jerusalem Amos Raban, Tel Aviv Tali Raban, Tel Aviv Shakhar Rahav, Berkeley Dr. Haggai Ram, Beer Sheva Dr. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Beer Sheva Prof. Zvi Razi, Tel Aviv Prof. Tanya Reinhart, Tel Aviv Prof. Fanny-Michaela Reisin, Berlin Dr. Nira Reiss, New York Dr. Rivki Ribak, Haifa Prof. Freddie Rokem, Tel Aviv Dr. Avihu Ronen, Tel Hai Prof. Henry Rosenfeld, Haifa Dr. Maya Rosenfeld, Jerusalem Ouzi Rotem, Philadelphia Hava Rubin, Haifa Itai Ryb, Jerusalem Amalia Sa'ar, Haifa Dr. Dalia Sachs, Haifa Dr. Hannah Safran, Haifa Tami Sarfatti, UCLA Dr. Nita Schechet, Jerusalem Hillel Schocken, Tel Aviv Dr. Zvi Schuldiner, Jerusalem Uri Segal, Louisville, KY Ruben Seroussi, Tel Aviv Dr. Erella Shadmi, Mevasseret Zion Prof. Nomi Shir, Beer Sheva Dr. Miriam Shlesinger, Tel Aviv Aharon Shabtai, Tel Aviv Dr. Rann Smorodinsky, Haifa Orly Soker, Sapir-Jerusalem Dr. Yehiam Soreq, Tel Aviv Nurit Steinfeld, Jerusalem Dr. Eva Teubal, Jerusalem Prof. Gideon Toury, Tel Aviv Dr. Dudy Tzfati, Jerusalem Roman Vater, Tel Aviv Dr. Roy Wagner, Tel-Aviv Prof. Bronislaw Wajnryb, Haifa Prof. Pnina Werbner, Keele Dr. David Wesley, Tel Aviv Elana Wesley, Tel Aviv Tamar Yaron, Montreal & Kibbutz Hazorea Dr. Mamoud Yazbak, Haifa Dr. Michael Yogev, Haifa Kim Yuval, Tel Aviv Prof. Moshe Zimmermann, Jerusalem Prof. Nahla Abdo-Zoubi, Nazareth/Ottawa Nava Zuckerman, Tel Aviv Dr. Moshe Zuckermann, Tel Aviv Michal Zweig, Herzelia

Power Bloc Turkey and Israel Lock Arms,
Third World Traveler (from The Progressive magazine), December 1998
"Last December, when Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz visited the White House, a coalition of human-rights and arms-control groups urged President Clinton to confront him about Turkey's pervasive human-rights violations and its ongoing repression of the Kurds. Not all members of the American human-rights community were so critical, however. On December 17, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent Jewish organization that seeks to combat anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination, presented Yilmaz with its Distinguished Statesman Award and honored him at a gala dinner attended by the leaders of several major American Jewish organizations. 'Turkey stands as a country committed to democracy and the promotion of tolerance,' proclaimed ADL director Abraham Foxman in a press release distributed at the time. According to the ADL, its Distinguished Statesman Award goes 'to those leaders who exhibit an extraordinary dedication to regional and world peace, and who possess a special commitment to promoting human and civil rights.' Such high praise for Turkey and its head of state prompted a sharply worded rebuttal from the Washington Kurdish Institute. Yilmaz's treatment of the Kurds, the group wrote to Foxman, 'amount[s] to little more than ethnic cleansing." ... So why would the ADL and other Jewish leaders lavish such praise on Yilmaz? The reason is Turkey's burgeoning military partnership with Israel. In February 1996, Turkey and Israel signed a historic military training agreement, followed six months later by an arms-industry cooperation pact. Since that time, military and economic ties between the two countries have blossomed. Both nations now fly and train in one another's airspace, share sophisticated intelligence information, enjoy extensive trade relations, and cooperate on joint security and weapons projects.

Rabbi in Hebron Says Annihilation of Non-Jews Acceptable, Palestine Chronicle, November 16 2002
"A prominent Israeli rabbi with thousands of followers said during a Sabbath homily in the settlement in Kiryat Arba'a Saturday that halacha, or Jewish religious law, 'essentially supported the annihilation of non-Jews in Israel.' The rabbi, Rav Leor, said most rabbinic authorities 'of the past and the present accepted the opinion that the lives of non-Jews don't' enjoy the same sanctity as the lives of Jews.' 'Hashmadat goyem' (the extermination of non-Jews), he said was an established principle in Jewish theology. The rabbi is affiliated with the messianic Jewish movement known as Gush Emunim which is represented in the Israeli Knesset by seven Knesset members. The movement is represented in the Israeli government by Minister without portfolio Ed Eifam of the National Religious Party (NRP) ... IAP NEWS (iap.org). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).

Middle East: The West Bank: A Dustbin for Israeli Industrial Waste?,
Demographic, Environmental and Secuirty Issues Project,
May 2001
"Some Palestinian West Bank towns have become 'dustbins' for Israeli industrial wastes -- including toxic wastes -- raising cancer rates 5 to 10 times normal according to local Palestinian doctors and politicians. Dr. Abdul-Rahmen Abu-Hanih, who has been practicing medicine in the area for the last 11 years, has 'witnessed a tenfold increase in the incidence of cancer -- mainly leukemia, prostate cancer and Hodgkin’s disease' in the town of Azzun reports the Manchester Guardian Weekly. (August 2, 1998, 'Palestinians pay price for Israel's toxic waste,' by Julian Borger in Azzun, the West Bank) The Guardian reporter explains that the town is 'a victim of its political geography...[It] is only 30 km from the industrial conurbation of Tel Aviv, but since it lies in the occupied West Bank, under army jurisdiction, Israeli waste-disposal laws are not fully enforced. So every few nights trucks appear from the west and empty their cargo on Azzun's doorstep.' It is a pattern repeated in the nearby Palestinian towns of Qalqilya and Tulkarm -- forming a triangle of ecological desolation ... Environmentalists say the West Bank is suffering the overspill effects of a profound Israeli ecological crisis. The seriousness of the situation was brought home in July 1997 when a bridge over the polluted Yarkon river collapsed during an international sports event. Four Australian athletes died, two of them from simply swallowing the toxic water ... As Israel tries to curb pollution, whole factories are on the move to cheaper, under-policed sites."

Israel Masada Now U.N. Heritage Site,
Newsday, October 31, 2002
"Hundreds of Israelis climbed this ancient hilltop fortress Thursday, where Jewish rebels chose suicide over capture by Roman troops, to celebrate its addition to a U.N. list of cultural treasures. The Judean mountain promitory overlooking the Dead Sea is where where a last group of Jewish holdouts sought refuge from Roman legions who had already destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Israeli soldiers now come here at the start of their military training to swear an oath to protect the country. Boys celebrate coming-of-age rituals here. Many come to pray. Masada and the ancient Mediterranean port city of Acre in northern Israel were included in the World Heritage list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization last year -- the first two Israeli sites to make it onto the UNESCO list. A plaque commemorating the Masada site was unveiled Thursday as dancers and musicians performed for diplomats, Cabinet ministers and nearby residents. The listing puts it on a par with the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Egypt ... Israelis have vowed not to let Masada fall again. If challenged, Israel will not commit suicide but will fight to the death, said Avia Oann, 55, standing among the pillars. 'We must learn from it, not to make the same mistake,' she said." [The Masada story of Jewish heroism is not true. It is fabrication]

`Now we have only hostility in our hearts.' Jenin residents tell the story of Operation Defensive Shield,
By Goel Pinto, Ha'aretz (Israel), October 31, 2002
"'In memory of Iyad Samoudi, producer in charge of `Jenin, Jenin,' who was killed by IDF bullets, after the completion of filming on 23.6.02, in the village of Al Yamoun.' This is the opening caption of Mohammed Bakri's documentary film, 'Jenin, Jenin.' The film, to be screened tonight at the Jerusalem Cinematheque and tomorrow night at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, portrays Jenin residents' perspective on Operation Defensive Shield. This week, right-wing politicians called for the cancellation of the screenings. MK Yuri Stern of the National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu faction argued that the film amounted to incitement. The Likud faction representative in the Tel Aviv city council, Yeshayahu Drori, contacted Mayor Ron Huldai and asked him to reprimand Alon Garbouz, the director of the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, or remove him from his job. These requests are surprising, given the fact that Stern and Drori did not see the film and based their remarks solely on rumors. Had they bothered to ask the director for a copy of the 50-minute film, they would not have made fools of themselves. 'Jenin, Jenin' is not a shocking film and the testimony heard in it is familiar to anyone who has ever watched foreign television reports about events in Jenin. Nevertheless, it is a sad film that shows Israel, as a democratic and enlightened state, in a miserable light. Even those who explain the horrors of war as stemming from an existential need, cannot silence its victims ... Israeli television viewers will also not see this film. Only a few will have the chance to see it at the Cinematheques. But those who see it will not forget the words of one witness: 'Children can be given birth to, houses can be built and even a wife can be replaced, but our feelings cannot be changed. Now we have only hostility in our hearts. How will they bring back the days when we were calm and agreed to live with them?'"

The Strategic Function of U.S. Aid to Israel,
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, by Stephen Zunes, October 31, 2002
"Since 1992, the U.S. has offered Israel an additional $2 billion annually in loan guarantees. Congressional researchers have disclosed that between 1974 and 1989, $16.4 billion in U.S. military loans were converted to grants and that this was the understanding from the beginning. Indeed, all past U.S. loans to Israel have eventually been forgiven by Congress, which has undoubtedly helped Israel's often-touted claim that they have never defaulted on a U.S. government loan. U.S. policy since 1984 has been that economic assistance to Israel must equal or exceed Israel's annual debt repayment to the United States. Unlike other countries, which receive aid in quarterly installments, aid to Israel since 1982 has been given in a lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year, leaving the U.S. government to borrow from future revenues. Israel even lends some of this money back through U.S. treasury bills and collects the additional interest. In addition, there is the more than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds that go to Israel annually in the form of $1 billion in private tax-deductible donations and $500 million in Israeli bonds. The ability of Americans to make what amounts to tax-deductible contributions to a foreign government, made possible through a number of Jewish charities, does not exist with any other country." [U.S Financial Aid To Israel: Figures, Facts, and Impact Summary Benefits to Israel of U.S. Aid Since 1949 (As of November 1, 1997): "Foreign Aid Grants and Loans $74,157,600,000. Other U.S. Aid (12.2% of Foreign Aid) $9,047,227,200. Interest to Israel from Advanced Payments $1,650,000,000. Grand Total $84,854,827,200. Total Benefits per Israeli $14,630"]

No War with Iraq,
The Nation, November 4, 2002 issue
[Compilation of links to articles and web sites against a war with Iraq]

Attack of the Oxymorons. Israel Goes Fascist? It Could Happen,
by Justin Raimondo, Etherzone, November 2, 2002
"For if recent political developments are any indication, [Israel] is on the road to fascism, and worse. Far worse…. Whenever anyone invokes God, or His will, as a rationale for action, the specter of violence and bloodshed looms large. It's only natural, therefore, that it should loom even larger in that part of the world designated 'the Holy Land,' most of which is today the nation of Israel. It should also come as no surprise to anyone that Israel is witnessing the rise of a politicized form of fundamentalism, what I have called Israel's Taliban. Its political expression has been not only the meteoric growth of the Likud party, and of that party's extreme right wing, which is now grasping for power, but also the development of a'"settler' movement of right-wing extremists who are the successors to the outlawed Kach movement founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. If you thought Ariel Sharon was an extremist, take a look at his probable successor [Benjamin Netanyahu ... This underscores the ideological essence of the man, rooted, many believe, in the mindset of his famous father, Benzione Netanyahu, a Israeli historian. As a 1997 PBS News Hour profile pointed out: 'The elder Netanyahu has written that Israel owes its independence from the British in 1948 not so much to diplomacy but to the armed attacks, sabotage, and bombings carried out by Israel's underground, called the Irgun.'"

What Did You Do in the Internet War, Daddy?
by Edgar J. Steele, conspiracypenpal, November 2, 2002
"'I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?' ----Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation.' Indeed. And many are wondering where I am right now. My web site (www.conspiracypenpal.com) is down and my email accounts have all been suspended. My (soon-to-be-ex) domain hosting ISP, FeaturePrice.com, refuses even to talk to me about it. Things finally got too hot for them, you see. Saturday night, I posted http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/y2k2.htm to my web site after sending it out to this list. Included in it was a link to a video showing Israeli soldiers dragging an unarmed Palestinian out of a shop, then shooting him in the back as he attempted to walk away. I uploaded the full video clip, all 2mb of it, to my site since it had been sent to me via email. Within 24 hours, my web site was taken down. I keep a local duplicate of the entire site, of course, and have already uploaded everything to a new web hosting ISP that promises not to censor my site or my email. We'll see. It takes a day or so for DNS pointers to be redistributed over the Internet, but shortly you should be able to visit my web site again, at the same address, of course. More importantly, you will be able to download the video that has somebody in such a dither: http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/images/israelistreetjustice.wmv "
Sharon eyes 'Samson option' against Iraq,
The Scotsman (Scotland), November 3, 2002
"In Biblical times, the Israelites relied on God to triumph over their enemies. These days the Israeli government puts its faith in the godlike power of its formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons to annihilate its foes. The alarming prospect of Israel unleashing its weapons of mass destruction is high on the list of concerns of strategic planners and analysts as the United States prepares to attack Iraq as part of its ‘War on Terror’. According to experts, a retaliatory nuclear strike against Baghdad in the event of a chemical or biological weapons attack against Israel has never been more likely - particularly with Ariel Sharon in power ... Many believe Sharon would be prepared to use his deadly arsenal. As Israel’s most respected military affairs commentator, Ze’ev Schiff, put it: 'If Iraq strikes at Israel with non-conventional warheads, causing massive casualties among the civil population, Israel could respond with a nuclear retaliation that would eradicate Iraq as a country.'"

Israel reportedly helping with U.S. war preparation,
by John Diamond, USA TODAY, November 3, 2002
"Israel is secretly playing a key role in U.S. preparations for possible war with Iraq, helping to train soldiers and Marines for urban warfare, conducting clandestine surveillance missions in the western Iraqi desert and allowing the United States to place combat supplies in Israel, according to U.S. Defense and intelligence officials. The activities are designed to help shorten any war with Iraq and keep Israel out of it. But working with Israel on the war effort is highly sensitive. It could undercut already shaky support for an invasion among friendly Arab states. Because Israel's activities are classified, they have drawn little attention or criticism in the Middle East ... Israeli infantry units with experience in urban warfare during the Palestinian uprising helped train U.S. Army and Marine counterparts this summer and fall for possible urban battles in Iraq, a foreign defense official says. The Israelis have built two mock cities, complete with mosques, hanging laundry and even the odd donkey meandering down dusty streets. A defense official said the sites far surpass U.S. facilities. The location of the training centers is classified. The Pentagon has beefed up stocks of ammunition, fuel and other basic military staples at six storage depots in Israel over the past year, U.S. Defense and intelligence officials say. The material is not part of normal U.S. military aid to Israel but would be held in reserve for possible use by U.S. forces in combat contingencies, such as a threat to Israel by a neighboring state or commando missions into western Iraq by U.S. forces."

Foreign Ministry hauls Belgian diplomat over the coals,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 4, 2002
"The Belgium ambassador to Israel, Wilfred Geens, says his comments published yesterday, in which he was quoted as calling Infrastructure Minister Effi Eitam 'a fascist,' were 'twisted and fabricated,' but a senior Foreign Ministry official said that the comments reflect a trend of foreign ambassadors 'crossing red lines' in their willingness to criticise Israel in public. Geens is said to have described the territories as 'the biggest detention camp in the world,' and labelled the 'humiliation of Palestinians' by Israeli soldiers at roadblocks as 'an unacceptable collective punishment contrary to international law and also contrary to human values,' in a interview published on Friday in the Arabic weekly newspaper, Kulal Arab. The comments echoed those attributed to British ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles last month in a leaked conversation with IDF Major General Amos Gilad, coordinator of government activities in the territories."

Attack Iran the day Iraq war ends, demands Israel,
Times Online, November 4, 2002
"Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called on the international community to target Iran as soon as the imminent conflict with Iraq is complete. In an interview with The Times, Mr Sharon insisted that Tehran — one of the 'axis of evil' powers identified by President Bush — should be put under pressure 'the day after' action against Baghdad ends because of its role as a 'centre of world terror'. He also issued his clearest warning yet that Israel would strike back if attacked by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons, no matter how much Washington sought to keep its controversial Middle Eastern ally out of any war in Iraq."

11% of women have been beaten at home in a widening cycle of violence,
by Ruth Sinai, Ha'aretz (Israel), November 4, 2002
"R.K. is one of 214,000 battered Israeli women - 11.2 percent of the women in the country - who have been assaulted by their husbands. About 142,000 of them were beaten this year, 40,000 required medical treatment and 15,000 were hospitalized. Some 146,000 women were raped at least once and 2 percent of these were threatened with murder in the past year, according to the most comprehensive report to date on domestic violence in Israel. The report was compiled by the Minerva Center for youth research in Haifa University with the participation of 2,841 women and 510 men. It was released by Labor and Welfare Minister Shlomo Benizri. The findings on child abuse are even worse than those on violence against women. Some 417,000 children up to the age of five (57 percent of the children this age) have suffered moderate corporal punishment such as being shaken, pushed or slapped, while 46,000 - 6.3 percent - suffered more harsh punishment including blows from fists or being beaten with a stick or belt. Of the six to 18 year olds, more than 550,000 - 39 percent of all the children - suffered moderate violence in past year, while 115,000 (8 percent) suffered severe violence. Professor Zvi Isikovitz and Professor Gidon Fishman, who conducted the research, say the use of harsh violence toward children increases with age. Isikovitz says he was less shocked by the findings about the scope of violence than the willingness of the victims to justify it." ... Benizri asked Education Minister Limor Livnat to increase education about violence from a very young age, and especially to make children understand that women are not a punch bag for men, and to undermine the tendency of women to justify violence against them."

Amnesty report accuses Israeli military of war crimes,
New Zealand Herald, November 4, 2002
"Amnesty International has accused the Israeli military of crimes against humanity and war crimes in its operations in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus earlier this year, in a report published today. The report comes after Britain's Scotland Yard opened an investigation into Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz, who was head of the Israeli army until his retirement in July, on allegations of war crimes. Lt-Gen Mofaz over the weekend accepted a new job as Defence Minister in Ariel Sharon's government. The charges of war crimes are not going away, despite repeated attempts by the Israeli authorities to brush them under the carpet. Today's report includes detailed evidence that Israeli soldiers unlawfully killed Palestinians civilians, blocked medical access to the wounded, used Palestinians as human shields, tortured prisoners, and unnecessarily destroyed civilian houses. Many of these crimes are not isolated incidents, says Amnesty, but 'committed in a widespread and systematic manner, in pursuit of government policy', which means they can be prosecuted as crimes against humanity under the statute of the newly formed international criminal court. The report calls on the international community to bring those responsible to justice. Though it was Jenin that grabbed the world's attention after Israeli army bulldozers levelled an entire neighbourhood of more than 100 civilian houses, the city was not unique. In addition to the already widely known witness accounts of atrocities committed by the Israeli army in Jenin in April, Amnesty's report describes similar crimes committed at the same time in another West Bank city, Nablus. Among the dead were eight members of a single family, the al-Shu'bis, who were buried alive when Israeli soldiers bulldozed their house on top of them, including three children, their pregnant mother and their 85-year-old grandmother. The soldiers continued to demolish the house even though neighbours told them people were inside. The report quotes Ahmad al-Najjar, who told Amnesty: 'I saw the house tilt over. Without even thinking I yelled to the soldier in the bulldozer, 'Let the residents leave the house.' At this point the soldier came out of the bulldozer, took his weapon and started to fire in my direction.'" [The Amnesty International report may be found here]

US warns companies over Israel boycott,
BBC, November 5, 2002
"The United States has threatened to fine US companies that take part in an Arab lead economic boycott of Israel. 'The US government is strongly opposed to restrictive trade practices or boycotts targeted at Israel,' said Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Kenneth Juster. 'The Commerce Department is closely monitoring efforts that appear to be made to reinvigorate the Arab boycott of Israel and will use all of its resources to vigorously enforce US anti-boycott regulations.' Mr Juster's threat came after 18 of the 22 members of the Arab League agreed to 'reactivate' a half-century-old ban on trade with Israel last week. US laws ban the participation by US nationals and companies in unsanctioned foreign government trade boycotts, especially the Arab League's boycott of Israel. The Department of Commerce has issued more than $26m (£16.7m) in fines and turned down export licences to those found violating the law."

Jewish board condemns 'sensationalist' doccie,
Indepenent Online, November 07 2002
"The South African Jewish Board of Deputies has slammed e.tv for the screening of a hard-hitting documentary on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, highlighting abuses of innocent Palestinians by Israeli troops. Palestine is Still the Issue was broadcast on the current affairs programme 3rd Degree on Wednesday night. It was produced by John Pilger, a columnist for the UK Daily Mirror, and was, he said, aimed at being 'pro-justice, not pro-Palestine' ... But Israeli Rami Elhanan, who was interviewed for the documentary, would have disagreed. Elhanan, whose 14-year-old daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 1997, said: 'If you think from the head and not the guts, if you look at what has made these people do this, people with no hope, who are desperate enough to commit suicide, you have to ask yourself if you have contributed in any way to this despair and craziness. It did not come out of the blue.' He was not the only Israeli interviewed on the documentary who took a critical view of the situation. Others, including historians and former Israeli soldiers, spoke harshly of the way Palestinians are oppressed and humiliated. Palestinian Mona al-Farra, also interviewed for the documentary, said: 'Our destiny is not in our hands. They (Israelis) are controlling every detail of our lives.'"

Leader of Turkey's winning party slams ''terrorism of Sharon'',
Al Bawaba, November 7, 2002
" The leader of Turkey's winning party refused Wednesday to commit to allowing U.S. warplanes to use Turkish bases in any war with Iraq and declined to say whether his country's close military ties with Israel will be maintained. In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party said Turks consider Israeli policies toward Palestinians to be 'terrorism,' but added that Turkey would not link its close economic ties with Israel to popular anger. 'The whole Turkish population is very critical of what is going on in Palestine,' Erdogan said. 'Our public does not view this as anything anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic. They see it as the terrorism of Sharon.' 'Turkey has to play a more active role,' he added."

A new, worrying phenomenon in religious Zionism,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 8, 2002
"Yitzhak Meir, a member of the National Religious Party's executive, was very surprised to hear some of the songs that were sung during the recent Simhat Torah celebrations at his synagogue in Kochav Yair. In the midst of the familiar texts, he suddenly discerned new words: Samson's prayer from the book of Judges (16:28) - 'O Lord God! Please remember me, and give me strength just this once, O God, to take revenge of the Philistines, if only for one of my eyes.' The chose of these words, expressing the desire for revenge, troubled Meir. While arguing about this text with some of his friends at the synagogue, Meir heard another unfamiliar song - an upbeat tune about the young Moshe slaying the Egyptian taskmaster: 'He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.' (Exodus 2:12) ... Meir began to ask some of his young acquaintances about these new songs and learned that the music for the song about Samson was composed by Dov Shurin, who is associated with the outlawed Kach movement of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane ... Meir also discovered that in some of the places where this song of vengeance is popular, the young people dance to the song while waving knives ... Rabbi Aviner, who heads the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem, referred Meir to a legal (halachic) ruling he wrote in response to someone who complained that the words to the song about Samson 'seem to be unethical.' In his ruling, Rabbi Aviner wrote in praise of vengeance and noted that the prohibition against taking vengeance does not apply to serious cases like lethal attacks. The rabbi emphasized that there is a value in vengeance in the national realm as an expression of deterrence."

Israelis fear war crimes arrests,
Guardian (UK), November 12, 2002
"The Israeli government has ordered an urgent assessment of whether its politicians and soldiers could face arrest and trial for war crimes while travelling abroad. The move follows a report by the justice ministry that singled out Britain, Spain and Belgium as the most likely to prosecute Israeli officials who breach international law. But the government fears there is a growing trend towards global justice that could see Israelis effectively barred from visiting a host of states. 'We are building a map of all those countries that might give us a headache,' said Ra'anan Gissin, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon."

FROM WAR ON TERROR TO PLAIN WAR. Israel: walled in, but never secure,
by Matthews Brubacher, Le Monde diplomatique, November 2002
"Israeli government funding for settlements in the occupied territories has long been condemned by the United Nations. Now it has provoked resignations from the government resulting in new elections in Israel. But the real tragedy of what is happening there can be seen in the security barrier that Israel is building around the West Bank and Jerusalem, which is twice as long and three times as high as the Berlin Wall. A new 360km security wall is being built by Israel around the West Bank and Jerusalem, and it will radically change both the geographical and political landscape of the Middle East. By putting up a wall that is three times the length and twice the height of the Berlin Wall, Israel will unilaterally annex a substantial part of the West Bank and tighten military cordons around Palestinian population centres, effectively imprisoning their residents. A security wall was originally established in Gaza during the first intifada (1987-1993) when Israel enclosed it behind a sealed electrical fence. This fence allowed Israel to control its 16 settlements in the Gaza Strip, as well as all Palestinian movement. Today Israel still controls about 50% of Gaza, and 1.2m Palestinians remain confined to an area less than twice the size of the city of Washington DC. Building a wall around the West Bank means that the Palestinians living there will soon share a similar fate to those Palestinians who live in Gaza. The first stage of the wall will separate most of the northern West Bank from Israel. This wall is being built inside the 1967 Armistice line, annexing many settlements, surrounding several key Palestinian areas and dissecting others. Palestinian areas, such as Qaffin, will be deprived of 60% of their agricultural land, while other areas, such as Qalqiliya, will be both deprived of land and be cut off from the West Bank and Israel. The wall in these areas is costing Israel over a million dollars for every kilometre: it is fortified with eight metre-high cement walls, and guard towers every 300m with a two metre-deep trench, barbed wire and a security road. The first stage of this northern wall will run almost 100km from Salem to Kufr Kassem and will mean annexing 1.6% of the West Bank, including 11 illegal Israeli settlements and over 10,000 Palestinians. Israel intends to incorporate this area into Israel in such a way that, when the final status negotiations resume, the cost of reversing these actions will be so high they will be considered irreversible. ... Unlike the medieval fortress-like construction in the north, these "walls" [in the Jerusalem area] will be built with electric wire fencing and a security road, at points combined with trenches, cement walls and motion detectors. The two walls are like a necklace, as the security wall will act as a thread to connect existing Israeli settlements and military sites ... When the wall from the northern West Bank to Jerusalem is completed, Israel will have annexed over 7% of the West Bank, as well as 39 illegal Israeli settlements with 270,000 settlers, and also 290,000 Palestinians; 70,000 of these do not have Israeli residency and so have no right to travel or get services from Israel, although Israel is depriving them of their livelihoods in the West Bank. These Palestinians are extremely vulnerable and will probably be gradually forced to emigrate from these areas."

The Israeli Spy Ring Scandal,
(Reproduction of the infamously censored Carl Cameron Fox News TV stories. Links to the original Fox News site say: "This story no longer exists."]

Theft of a Nation,
by William Baker,
" The Jewish state idea is not in my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with narrow-mindedness and economic obstacles. I believe it is bad. I have always been against it." Albert Einstein- 1948
"The cause of unrest in Palestine, and the only cause, arises from the Zionist movement, and from our promises and pledges in regard to it." Sir Winston Churchill- June 14, 1921, House of Commons
"A Zionist state in Palestine can only be installed and maintained by force and we should not be a party to it." President Franklin Roosevelt- March 5, 1945

State Dept. official: All U.S. aid to Arab world under review,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 16, 2002
"The United States is reviewing all its aid to the Arab world to see how much it can redirect to programs that promote democracy and the rule of law, a State Department official said on Friday. The review includes all assistance to Egypt, the second largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and one of Washington's best friends in the Arab world, he said ... But the Egyptian government has upset the United States at least twice this year, first by jailing prominent Egyptian-American sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim and more recently by allowing state television to broadcast a series which American Jewish groups say is anti-Semitic. U.S. diplomats in Cairo have been watching the series, 'Knight without a House', as it unfolds during the fasting month of Ramadan and have concluded that they do not like its treatment of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 'We are very disappointed that the Government of Egypt TV station would air a program that includes scenes treating the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic forgery, as fact,' the U.S. official said. "This broadcast does great harm to Egypt's reputation. We will continue to express to the government of Egypt our serious concern over this matter. This kind of program does not contribute to the climate of mutual understanding and tolerance that the Middle East so needs,' the official added. Egypt and the United States have also been at odds this year over U.S. threats to attack Iraq ... U.S. officials say they believe that antagonism toward the United States in the Arab world is based on ignorance, misunderstanding or propaganda by Arab governments. Arabs say their main problem is with U.S. policies."

US Aid to Israel. Feeding the Cuckoo,
Counterpunch, November 16, 2002
"Since Sept. 11, Americans have thought of themselves as the target of terrorists, emanating mainly from the Middle East. It may thus surprise them to learn that their own actions are in large part responsible for their problems and resentment in the Middle East. In particular, we argue that the massive aid flows and armaments transfers to Israel are largely responsible for the problems between Israelis and Palestinians today. The repercussions of this conflict reverberate everywhere in the region to the great detriment of the rights of the people in the area, but remarkably, also to the detriment of the US's long-term interests. Americans by nature tend to look closely at their government's expenditures, to trim the fat wherever they can find it--welfare, social security, health care, education 85 all except when it comes to Israel. A valuable exercise for any American would be to examine the huge handouts given to Israel, which may reveal shocking facts and motivate them to a take closer look at what is done in their name. Here is a quick overview of US aid flows to Israel ... Take the Jewish population of Israel (5.24m)--the primary beneficiaries of the aid, and one obtains a $540 per capita benefit just for 2001--four times as much as the touted Tax Cut of 2001 to Americans! Now, if the hard-working American families ever find this out, what can one suppose they would think of it?"

The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers: True Lies About U.S. Aid to Israel,
by Richard H. Curtiss, sianews.com, November 17, 2002
For many years the American media said that 'Israel receives $1.8 billion in military aid' or that 'Israel receives $1.2 billion in economic aid.' Both statements were true, but since they were never combined to give us the complete total of annual U.S. aid to Israel, they also were lies--true lies ... Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that 'Israel receives $3 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid.' That's true. But it's still a lie. The problem is that in fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000. One can truthfully blame the mainstream media for never digging out these figures for themselves, because none ever have. They were compiled by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. But the mainstream media certainly are not alone. Although Congress authorizes America's foreign aid total, the fact that more than a third of it goes to a country smaller in both area and population than Hong Kong probably never has been mentioned on the floor of the Senate or House. Yet it's been going on for more than a generation. Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few committee members who actually mark it up. And almost all members of the concerned committees are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. These congressional committee members are paid to act, not talk. So they do and they don't. The same applies to the president, the secretary of state, and the foreign aid administrator. They all submit a budget that includes aid for Israel, which Congress approves, or increases, but never cuts. But no one in the executive branch mentions that of the few remaining U.S. aid recipients worldwide, all of the others are developing nations which either make their military bases available to the U.S., are key members of international alliances in which the U.S. participates, or have suffered some crippling blow of nature to their abilities to feed their people such as earthquakes, floods or droughts. Israel, whose troubles arise solely from its unwillingness to give back land it seized in the 1967 war in return for peace with its neighbors, does not fit those criteria. In fact, Israel's 1995 per capita gross domestic product was $15,800. That put it below Britain at $19,500 and Italy at $18,700 and just above Ireland at $15,400 and Spain at $14,300. All four of those European countries have contributed a very large share of immigrants to the U.S., yet none has organized an ethnic group to lobby for U.S. foreign aid. Instead, all four send funds and volunteers to do economic development and emergency relief work in other less fortunate parts of the world. The lobby that Israel and its supporters have built in the United States to make all this aid happen, and to ban discussion of it from the national dialogue, goes far beyond AIPAC, with its $15 million budget, its 150 employees, and its five or six registered lobbyists who manage to visit every member of Congress individually once or twice a year. AIPAC, in turn, can draw upon the resources of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof group set up solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel. Among them are Hadassah, the Zionist women's organization, which organizes a steady stream of American Jewish visitors to Israel; the American Jewish Congress, which mobilizes support for Israel among members of the traditionally left-of-center Jewish mainstream; and the American Jewish Committee, which plays the same role within the growing middle-of-the-road and right-of-center Jewish community. The American Jewish Committee also publishes Commentary,one of the Israel lobby's principal national publications. Perhaps the most controversial of these groups is B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League. Its original highly commendable purpose was to protect the civil rights of American Jews. Over the past generation, however, the ADL has regressed into a conspiratorial and, with a $45 million budget, extremely well-funded hate group." ... America's $84.8 billion in aid to Israel from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the interest the U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Or, put another way, the nearly $14,630 every one of 5.8 million Israelis received from the U.S. government by Oct. 31, 1997 has cost American taxpayers $23,240 per Israeli. It would be interesting to know how many of those American taxpayers believe they and their families have received as much from the U.S. Treasury as has everyone who has chosen to become a citizen of Israel. But it's a question that will never occur to the American public because, so long as America's mainstream media, Congress and president maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever know the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers."

Subject: Amazon.Com & Israel,
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002
[Letter of protest circulated over the Internet] "Dear Amazon, I have been shocked to get an e-mail from Prof. Mona Baker of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology which indicated that your company advertises itself in the Israeli press via a logo which reads: 'Buy Amazon.Com and Support Israel' and which displays an Israeli flag ..."

Learning the Hard Way,
Sobrans, November 19, 2002
“'The Israelis now possess all the nuclear secrets of the United States.' This is the conclusion of Sean McDade, an investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, after studying a sophisticated Mossad computer theft operation against the United States two years ago. Evidently the Mounties don’t spend all their time riding horses. 'Compared to this espionage coup,' McDade added, 'it can be categorically stated that the Jonathan Pollard case is insignificant.' McDade’s memorandum is quoted in Gordon Thomas’s recent book Seeds of Fire (Dandelion Books), which also deals extensively with Israel’s secret dealings with the Chinese government. Since China sees the United States as its enemy, U.S. nuclear secrets would be a precious bargaining chip for the Israelis. McDade surmised that this story, 'if made public,' might cause a 'major scandal.' That depends on whether the American media and American politicians want to make an issue of it. And when it comes to our Israeli 'allies,' they are very, very forgiving. The Israelis have never paid a penalty for Pollard’s spying, though they still refuse to return, or even to identify, the stolen documents. So the full damage still can’t be assessed. And the Israelis keep pressing American presidents for Pollard’s release from prison! Israel, we are told, is 'our only reliable ally in the Middle East.' It’s bad enough having Israel’s friendship, but we also get its enemies into the bargain. All this for a mere five billion bucks a year! What a deal!"

Israel Eyes Up to $10B in U.S. Aid advertisement,
Washington Post, November 21, 2002
"Israel will ask the United States for loan guarantees aimed at jump-strating its economy which has been damaged by two years of violence and the request will total between $8 billion and $10 billion, a senior government official said Thursday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the Finance and Defense ministries are finalizing the request and would forward it to the United States in the coming days. The request for guarantees on foreign bank loans would be in addition to the $2.9 million in direct loans and grants that Israel receives annually from the United States, the official said. Israel, which receives the largest U.S. aid package of any country, relies on the loan guarantees to borrow at lower interest rates ...The United States guaranteed $10 billion in loans for Israel a decade ago to help it absorb immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Angry over Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, then-President George Bush held up the guarantees until the hard-line Yitzhak Shamir was replaced as Israeli prime minister by more moderate Yitzhak Rabin, who signed an interim peace treaty with the Palestinian Liberation."

Israel's Choice,
The Nation, November 21, 2002
"Returning to Israel after an extended absence can be a disturbing experience. On the way back from the airport to my Jerusalem apartment, I noticed new posters tacked onto utility poles and bridges along the highway. They read: Transfer= Peace and Security. The meaning was unambiguous: Israel must expel the 3 million Palestinians living in the occupied territories--and perhaps even its own Palestinian citizens--in order to achieve peace and security. While racist slogans have become pervasive in Israel, it was this particular message--the notion of expulsion as a political solution--that unhinged me. One does not need to be a Holocaust survivor to recognize the phrase's lethal implications ... After more than two years of armed conflict, which has left close to 2,500 people dead--including 300 Palestinian and eighty Israeli children--most Israelis see the situation as hopeless, a view that is, ironically, shared by many Palestinians ...Not surprisingly, the Palestinian economy has also collapsed--a recent Israeli military report states that between 60 and 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Israelis on the left and right now realize that the conflict cannot be resolved under the current conditions, regardless of the amount of military force Israel employs ... If Israel's next leader is to overcome the current crisis, he will have to decide whether to abandon the notion of a Jewish state, employ a policy used by the darkest regimes (not least the Third Reich) or dismantle the settlements and bring the Jewish settlers back home. Each of these options negates certain elements of the Zionist project, suggesting that the settlements constitute a contradiction; they are now destroying the very project that initiated and upheld them. They have come back to turn the Zionist dream into a nightmare."

IDF: British UNRWA worker in Jenin mistakenly shot by soldier,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 24, 2002
"An initial IDF investigation into the death of Iain Hook, a British UNWRA [United Nations] official who was killed Friday during a gunfight between soldiers and Palestinians in the West Bank city of Jenin, revealed that he was mistakenly shot by an IDF soldier. Israel Radio reported that Hook was shot by accident after emerging from a caravan during the gunfight holding a mobile phone, which was mistaken by the soldier for a grenade. Great Britain is demanding that Israel fully investigate the death of the 50-year-old Hook, the first foreign UN official to die in over two years of fighting .. In the Jenin shootout, Hook was killed while trying to evacuate staff from the small UN compound, made up of mobile trailers, in the Jenin refugee camp during a prolonged clash between IDF soldiers and Palestinian gunmen, a UN statement said ... A UN statement said IDF soldiers refused immediate access for an ambulance to take Hook to the hospital, and that it wasn't known whether the delay caused Hook's death ... Hook was a senior manager in UNRWA, the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees, and was in charge of a $27 million project to rebuild the Jenin camp, which Israel has targeted frequently in search of militants responsible for attacks against Israelis. Two local Palestinian workers for UNRWA were killed previously ... UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was 'greatly disturbed' that the army prevented the ambulance from getting through immediately, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York. Elsewhere in the camp in different shooting incidents, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and an Irish national wounded."

UN rejects Israeli account of British official's killing,
Independent (UK), November 25, 2002
"The United Nations dismissed as 'not credible' yesterday an Israeli army claim that Palestinian gunmen fired from inside a UN compound in the West Bank city of Jenin on Friday before its soldiers shot dead Iain Hook, a 52-year-old British relief worker. Paul McCann, a spokesman for the UN relief agency, said: 'Our preliminary findings are completely contrary to what the Israeli army said. The compound is quite small. At no point did we lose control of the site. There were no militants on the site. I am very sad and angry that the man was shot dead while working in a clearly marked UN compound.' A security expert from UN headquarters in New York began immediately to investigate in greater depth how Mr Hook, who was heading a £17m project to rebuild the Jenin refugee camp razed in an Israeli invasion in April, met his death. He was transferred last night to an Israeli forensic medicine laboratory near Tel Aviv, but UN officials were awaiting his family's decision on where to hold a post-mortem examination. Palestinians showed up in big numbers with flowers when the dead man was put into a UN ambulance for transfer to Jerusalem ... Although Israel apologised for the 'error', the shooting provoked a crisis in its relations with the UN and Britain. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, demanded a full investigation ... Elsewhere on the West Bank, Israeli troops yesterday barred worshippers from attending services in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. They reoccupied the city of Jesus Christ's birth on Thursday after a Hamas suicide bomber killed 11 Israelis on a Jerusalem bus. Thursday's bus bombing provoked a series of attacks by angry Jews against Arabs and their property in Jerusalem."

Rice to present U.S. response to Israel's $14 billion aid request,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 26, 2002
"U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was expected to give her country's response to Israel's request for 14 billion in aid following a White House meeting Monday with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bureau chief Dov Weisglass, Treasury Director-General Ohad Marani, and Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon. Marani informed Rice of Israel's economic situation and requested $10 billion in loans and $4 billion in special military aid, to be spread over the course of several years. President George Bush is expected to quickly approve the request with minor changes, Israeli sources said."

Israel rejects new technology proliferation code of conduct,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 26, 2002
"Israel announced Monday that it would not join a new International Code of Conduct aimed at blocking proliferation of ballistic missile technology, saying the new ICOC does not meet the needs of the Middle East. The ICOC members met Monday night in The Hague, Holland, without Israeli representatives present. The ICOC calls on member countries to adopt 'confidence building measures' and behave transparently in matters of missiles and satellite launches. Every member-country is required to report on missile systems in its arsenals, provide advance notice of any missile or satellite launch, and issue an annual report on launches."

UNRWA: Hook was killed by a single bullet to the back,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 26, 2002
"The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has rejected Israel's version of the events leading to Friday's fatal shooting by Israeli troops of Iain Hook, a British consultant who was working on a British government contract with the agency. An UNRWA spokesman in Geneva said Tuesday that Hook was hit in the back by a single buller, at a time when there was no military action in the area of the UNRWA compound. UNRWA also denies that Palestinian gunmen were in the UN compound from which Hook, 53, emerged and was shot dead and has termed Israel's version of the events 'incredible.' The UN agency said Hook was armed only with a cellphone he was using to try to evacuate UN staff while a gunbattle raged in the area. Hook was killed inside the UNRWA compound at the Jenin refugee camp. Paul McCann, a UN spokesman, said the army's claim that gunmen were inside the compound was wrong. 'Our preliminary inquiry does not agree with the statement that firing could have come from the UNRWA compound. In fact, it is quite clear from our inquiry so far that this report of firing from the compound is totally incredible,' he said. He said that 'the compound is very small and at no stage did we lose control of it. There were no Palestinian militants in the compound.'"

Israelis Flock to Buy Guns, Pack Heat at Services Up in Arms,
Village Voice, November 27 - December 3, 2002
"Unemployment and inflation are skyrocketing in Israel, but fear and paranoia are also soaring, and so business is booming for gun dealers and security companies. Israeli society is becoming so militarized that hosts of weddings and bar mitzvahs sometimes can't attract guests unless they reveal the number of armed guards that will be on hand and even what firm they're from. It's not just rightists and settlers who are arming themselves. At the Magnum Gun Store in West Jerusalem, a first-time buyer waits in a line that runs out the door and down the block. A 40-year-old lawyer, David moved from Chicago several years ago. 'I vote Meretz [the Left-wing party], and so do most of my friends,' he says with a shrug, referring to one of the country's more left-leaning parties. 'But to be honest, I think I'm the last person I know to finally get a gun.]" A balding man next in line is growing noticeably impatient with such dovish sentiments. He wears a T-shirt emblazoned with an F-16 jet streaking across the front, and the message 'Don't Worry, America, Israel Will Protect You' ... Security-technology companies are reporting record profits, and in Tel Aviv there are waiting lists to buy hidden cameras. No one, however, has done as well as the gun dealers. Some Jerusalem stores have been extending their hours to accommodate the overflow of customers ... Even while praying. David Lau, rabbi of Tze'irei Modi'in synagogue and son of Israel's chief Ashkenazi rabbi, drew wide attention with his reinterpretation of religious law in which he argued that due to the current climate, Jews could now remain holstered even on Shabbat. Historically, it was strictly forbidden within Orthodox doctrine to work, handle money, or carry weapons on the Sabbath, but Lau ruled that, based on the religious tenet of pikuach nefesh (saving a life), the faithful could now carry them. 'It was a deviation from our tradition,' Lau admitted to The Jerusalem Post. In less Orthodox circles, guns have been present, and even encouraged, in synagogues for some time. At Shitblach Synagogue in West Jerusalem there is a large sign pasted on the bulletin board that reads: 'Worshippers who have firearms are requested to bring them to prayer service.' B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, points out that there are countless incidents of Israeli civilian attacks on unarmed Palestinians and of settlers using their weapons to coerce farmers off their land. But many Israelis worry more about the potential harm to one another."

Palestinian shot dead in Bethlehem,
Ha'aretz, November 28, 2002
"Palestinian sources reported Wednesday evening that IDF troops killed 33-year-old Ataf Abiya in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Earlier Wednesday, IDF troops shot dead a Palestinian as he was banging a drum to announce the beginning of the Ramadan fast in a refugee camp near the West Bank town of Nablus, hours after senior local Hamas and Fatah military commanders were killed in the Jenin refugee camp in what security sources said was an Israeli assassination ... IDF troops opened fire on Jihad a-Natour, 24, as he was going from alley to alley in the camp to announce the beginning of the dawn-to-dusk fast. Military sources told Israel Radio that a-Natour was shot after he had violated the curfew imposed on the camp, and that another Palestinian curfew violator had been arrested."

Canada Calling Federal Court of Canada to Decide Landmark Case on Jewish Charity,
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002, page 43
"Members of the Canadian Jewish community are anxiously awaiting a decision by the Federal Court of Canada regarding a tax appeal launched by a Jewish charity. The decision could mean that the Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel (CMDA) loses its charitable status for financing activities beyond Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries, in contravention of Canadian policy. Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem are considered 'contrary to international law and unhelpful to the peace process,' according to the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA). Canada’s Department of External Affairs considers the settlements an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. About two years ago, the CCRA notified the CMDA that its charity registration was being revoked for operating in the occupied territories. Canadian tax laws permit donors to claim a tax deduction for contributions to registered charities. Provisions of the Income Tax Act allow donors to write off part of their charitable contributions and thereby reduce their taxable income by as much as 20 percent. The deduction provisions of the Income Tax Act, aimed at encouraging private contributions to charities, appear to have been used quite successfully by supporters of Israeli settlement activity, considered illegal under international law."

Mossad's escapades legendary. But Israeli secret service has had some failures in recent years,
San Francisco Chronicle, December 2, 2002
"Few intelligence organizations have the mythic stature of Israel's Mossad secret service and its vaunted Special Operations unit. Established in 1951 to stymie the country's enemies, the Mossad's escapades are still synonymous with James Bond-style secret agents, covert kidnappings and assassinations, despite some notable glitches in recent years. Last week's bombing of the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, that killed three Israelis and 10 locals has brought the Mossad -- Hebrew for 'the Institution' -- into the spotlight once again. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ordered Mossad agents to 'hunt down' those behind the suicide bombing and the launching of missiles that missed an Israeli airliner taking off nearby just minutes earlier. ... RESENTMENT AGAINST ISRAELIS. Israel is also considering whether impoverished local Kenyans, resentful of the Israeli presence in the Indian Ocean resort, aided the perpetrators. Israeli tourists have become so prevalent over the years that restaurant menus are often written in Hebrew, and souvenir store owners are able to talk with the visitors in their native tongue ... The secretive agency has always had the cooperation of the CIA, which helped train its agents and provides it with sophisticated equipment ... /Israel doesn't want to be perceived as conducting a one-man show against Muslim fundamentalists because that would play into their hands -- presenting this as a war between Muslims and Jews,' [Yossi] Melman said."

Four Palestinians killed in territories,
Ha'aretz (Israel), December 2, 2002
"Four Palestinians were killed in several incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Monday, including one who was killed when Islamic Jihad fired two mortars at the Erez industrial zone in the Gaza Strip, hitting laborers coming home from work ... Earlier Monday, a Palestinian bystander was shot and killed during a gunbattle in the center of Tul Karm between Palestinian militants and Israeli troops attempting to arrest them, said one of the militants, who spoke on condition of anonymity ... Earlier in the day, IDF troops imposing a curfew in the West Bank city of Jenin shot dead a Palestinian youth and wounded 20 others in a crowded market, Palestinian witnesses and hospital sources said. Most of the wounded were school children, who suffered light to moderate injuries. Palestinian witnesses said the troops left Jenin after arresting two senior Islamic Jihad militants, Mohammed Aqal and Murad Hasnin. Another eight men were detained for questioning. During the operation in Jenin, the IDF found two rifles and ammunition clips. The troops, backed by two tanks and two armored vehicles, opened fire on Palestinians shopping for groceries ahead of the four-day Eid el-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, the witnesses said."

Mossad agents sent in to kill,
The Australian (Australia), December 2, 2002
"As soon as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon learned of last Thursday's terrorist attacks in Kenya, he summoned Mossad chief Meir Dagan to a meeting that promises to have momentous consequences for the conduct of the US-led war on terror. War had been declared on the state of Israel by the global Islamic terror syndicate, Mr Sharon told Israel's top anti-terrorist expert. Change your priorities and get the enemy one by one. Mr Sharon's blunt order on the day of his re-election to the leadership of his right-wing Likud party will compel Mossad – Israel's secret service for intelligence and special operations – to resort to the kind of measures it has not taken for 30 years. According to a well-informed source, the service has alerted sleeper agents in Saudi Arabia and Yemen to hunt down the planners of the attacks on the Israeli-owned tourist hotel and Israeli passenger plane at Mombasa. Codenamed Warriors, these highly trained agents who volunteer to live under cover in Arab countries normally remain dormant except in wartime, when their mission is to undermine Arab preparations for strikes against Israel. The last time such a serious order was given was in 1972. The then prime minister, Golda Meir, ordered Mossad to kill the Palestinians involved in the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. All but one were eliminated over six years. Mr Dagan is a veteran of such operations and is reputed to have killed more than 30 Palestinian terror suspects in Gaza during the 1970s ...'If bin Laden was involved in the Kenya attack, this man is a walking corpse,' said one agent. 'The price tag on Jewish blood is very high.' Others criticised Mossad's decision to activate the Warriors as overkill. One source said: 'Muslim terrorism is not a critical threat to the state of Israel. We should keep these people for an all-out war.'"

NY Times Palestinian Woman, 95, Killed by Israeli Gunfire by Michael Wines, New York Times, December 3, 2002
"A 95-year-old Palestinian woman was fatally shot by Israeli troops today as a car in which she was riding sped down a West Bank highway closed to Palestinian vehicles, hospital officials said. She was the oldest known victim in the current 26 months of fighting. The woman, Fattier Mohammed Hassan, died from a bullet wound in the back, according to an official in a Ramallah hospital quoted by The Associated Press. A second woman in the car, 41-year-old Kifaya Rafat, was wounded in one leg. Israeli and Palestinian spokesmen gave markedly different explanations of how the shooting occurred. From her hospital bed, Ms. Rafat told the news agency that Israeli troops approached the car as it neared a checkpoint outside Ramallah, broke its windows and then retreated and began firing at it from a distance. An Israeli military spokesman said that troops tried to stop an automobile traveling on a road barred to Palestinian vehicles for security reasons, then fired into the air when the driver refused to stop. When the car continued down the road, the Israeli official said, troops fired at its wheels in an effort to stop it. Patricia Smith, the head of Palestine Monitor, an organization that keeps a record of casualties in the conflict, said in a telephone interview that Ms. Hassan appeared to be the oldest victim on record of Israeli-Palestinian fighting."

Family tells how Israelis buried deaf father alive,
The Independent (UK), December 3, 2002
"Beside the pile of flattened concrete, all that was left of his home, Maher Salem described yesterday how his 68-year-old father was killed when the Israeli army demolished the house on top of him. When he found his father, Mr Salem said, the old man's head was 'like a bar of chocolate, it was only two centimetres thick'. The Israeli army swept into Beit Lahiya, a sandy town in the north of the Gaza Strip, late on Saturday night. The man they came for was Mr Salem's brother, Hisham, a senior Islamic Jihad militant and the man who ordered a suicide bombing on Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street in 1996 that killed 20 Israelis. The wanted man was at the wake for his father yesterday – the Israeli army would love to get as close to him as we did. A couple of Apache helicopters hovered on the horizon; given the Israeli policy of assassinating militants, waiting around was not a good idea. The army did not catch Mr Salem – the Israeli newspapers gave his name as Hisham Thab, the family told us it was Salem – on Saturday night. Instead, they demolished his family home. It was a six-storey house: three generations of the family lived here. Yesterday all you could see was a huge, layered mound of smashed concrete, family possessions poking out in places: a bed, a chair, a rug. 'They came at around 10.50 that night,' said Maher Salem. "There were more than 25 tanks. All the men, we escaped from the house minutes before they got to it. We were in my car about 100 metres from here. 'They shot at us. We got out of the car and ran. We could hear them shouting over a loudspeaker, telling all the people inside the house to come out in the next three minutes.' Inside the house, he said, were only the women and children of the family and his father, Ashur. The old man lived on the sixth floor, where he was alone, sleeping, on the night the army arrived. He was deaf, Mr Salem said, and could not hear the soldiers shouting for everyone to come out. Fathiye Salem, the old man's niece, was one of the women in the house at the time. She told how when they heard the soldiers, the women and children ran out of the house. "I shouted at the soldiers, 'My uncle is sleeping on the sixth floor, he's deaf'," Ms Salem said. "They pointed their guns at us and shouted, 'Go! Go! Go!' Then the soldiers put dynamite inside the house and blew it up, the women said. There was no time for them to remove any goods. 'We got back at 2.20am,' resumed Mr Salem. 'We were asking what happened to my father but no one knew. We started looking for him in the rubble. At 9.20am we found his hand.' The old man's head had been crushed under a beam. There has been controversy in the past over Palestinian claims that people have been buried alive when the Israeli army demolished their houses. In one case, in Jenin, Palestinians said their relative had been buried. He later turned up alive. But this time there was a body. It had been buried when we arrived. We saw the freshly dug grave. And hundreds had turned up for the wake. This was not a show for the media: there were no other journalists in sight. It would not be the first time claims of this sort turned out to be true: in Nablus in April, eight members of a single family died when a soldier bulldozed their house on top of them. Their bodies were found, and the case has been well documented by international human rights groups."

UN employees send Israel protest petition,
Ha'retz (Israel), (from Reuters), December 4, 2002
"A group of 64 UN workers based in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip issued a petition on Tuesday calling on Israel to stop what they said has been the harassment, beating and killing of United Nations staff. 'For two years, United Nations staff have been subject to escalating harassment and violence by Israel's military, so that the protection supposed to be afforded by the blue letters of the UN is being steadily eroded,' said the petition, released in Gaza. Asked about the statement, an Israeli military official said: 'We reject the suggestion Israeli soldiers intentionally try to harass UN personnel. We respect the work of the United Nations, and that includes our commitment to their safety ... In the current Palestinian uprising for statehood, UN officials have accused the army of firing on health clinics, schools, ambulances and other installations run by UN agencies. Israel has in turn accused UN officials of letting refugee camps run by UNWRA be used as safe havens for militants behind suicide bombings and doing nothing to stop gunmen from firing at Israeli troops from UN installations. The signatories of the petition said they were writing in their personal capacities. They included citizens of the United States, Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Finland, Spain, Jordan, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, Tanzania, Luxembourg and Colombia."

Israel's role in China's new warplane,
Asia Times, December 4, 2002
"The recent unveiling (sort of) of China's first domestically designed (sort of) fighter jet was the culmination of a long saga of international military-hardware wheeling and dealing that has seen US-designed or -funded high-tech weaponry fall into the hands of potential military rivals. The showpiece of many years' work, dating back to the late 1980s, recently happened - albeit unobserved - when China confirmed the existence of, but did not unveil, the Jian-10 fighter jet. It had been reported that the J-10 (F-10 being the export version, using North Atlantic Treaty Organization designation) would be shown in public for the first time during the fourth China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition (Airshow China 2002) held in Zhuhai in southern Guangdong province from November 4-10, but the plane did not appear. The J-10 is a multi-role single-engine and single-seat tactical fighter, with a combat radius of 1,000 kilometers. Although billed as a domestically produced fighter, in truth the J-10 could not have happened without the help of other countries, especially Israel. The program began in the late 1980s and is thought to be based on an Israeli design. It contains Israeli and Russian avionics, and is powered by Russian engines. Chinese engineers developed the J-10 from a single F-16 provided by Pakistan, and with assistance from Israeli engineers associated with Israel's US-financed Lavi fighter program, which was canceled in 1987, according to the Federation of American Scientists website. The Lavi was based on the US F-16 and built with US$1.3 billion in aid from Washington. In 1983, when US support for the Lavi commenced, the program was opposed vigorously by the Defense Department, partly because of re-export concerns. An early supporter of the Lavi was George Shultz, then secretary of state in the administration of US president Ronald Reagan. Shultz would later label his advocacy of the program a 'costly mistake'.

Robert Maxwell Was a Mossad Spy. New claim on tycoon's mystery death,
By Gordon Thomas And Martin Dillon, Mirror, (UK), Decemer 5, 2002
[Robert Maxwell, born Ludwig Hoch, was a Jewish immigrant from Czecheslovakia to Great Britain]
"Eleven years after former Daily Mirror owner Robert Maxwell plunged from his luxury yacht to a watery grave, his death still arouses intense interest. Many different theories have circulated about what really happened on board the Lady Ghislaine that night in May 1991. Some believe the 67-year-old tycoon simply slipped into the sea, perhaps after a few drinks. Others think Maxwell took his own life amid increasing troubles in his business empire - after his death investigators discovered he had been secretly diverting millions of pounds from two of his companies and from employee pension funds in an effort to keep solvent. But now, after two and a half years of investigative journalism, we believe we have unearthed the true story of Maxwell's death and can reveal how he was murdered by the Israeli secret service, Mossad. Our work, supported by documents, including FBI reports and secret intelligence files from behind the Iron Curtain, shows Maxwell had worked as a secret super spy for Mossad for six years. The Czech-born millionaire and former Labour MP died the way he had lived - threatening. He had threatened his wife. Threatened his children. Threatened the staff of this newspaper. But finally he issued one threat too many - he threatened Mossad. He told them that unless they gave him £400million to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them. In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe. On top of that he had built himself a position of power within the crime families of eastern Europe, teaching them how to funnel their vast wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens around the globe. MAXWELL passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities and insatiable appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women. He told his controllers who they should target and how they should do it. He appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador to the Soviet Bloc. Mossad saw the advantage in that. Having learned many of the key secrets of the Soviet empire, Maxwell was given his greatest chance to be a super spy. Mossad had stolen from America the most important piece of software in the US arsenal. Maxwell was given the job of marketing the stolen software, called Promis. Mossad had reconstructed the software and inserted into it a device which enabled them to track the use any purchaser made of the it. Sitting in Israel, Mossad would know exactly what was going on inside all the intelligence services that bought it. In all, Maxwell sold it to 42 countries, including China and Soviet Bloc nations. But his greatest triumph was selling it to Los Alamos, the very heart of the US nuclear defence system. The more successful Maxwell became the more risks he took and the more dangerous he was to Mossad. At the same time, the very public side of Maxwell, who then owned 400 companies, began to unwind ... The group of Mossad plotters sensed, like Solomon, he could bring their temple tumbling down and cause incalculable harm to Israel."

Israeli Icon Under Fire. Did the nation's most celebrated archaeologist deliberately deceive the public about Masada?,
Chronicle of Higher Education, December 6, 2002
"On the last day of October, a cavalcade of foreign dignitaries and Israeli officials joined hundreds of ordinary citizens making their way to the top of a plateau overlooking the Dead Sea. They gathered to proclaim this secluded fortress, called Masada, one of the world's most important historical sites -- a place worthy of global attention and protection. The United Nations, which put the Israeli mesa on the list of World Heritage Sites, chose the place in part to commemorate the Jewish rebels who held the lofty stronghold, and eventually perished there, in the waning days of a revolt against the Roman Empire in AD 73. In its report on Masada, the U.N. concludes that 'the tragic events during the last days of the Jewish refugees who occupied the fortress and palace of Masada make it a symbol both of Jewish cultural identity and, more universally, of the continuing human struggle between oppression and liberty.' One prominent Israeli scholar, though, stayed home. He tossed aside his invitation and instead made scornful remarks to the news media. For Nachman Ben-Yehuda, a sociologist who is dean of the faculty of social sciences at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Masada stands as a symbol of national mythology and academic deception -- a case study of how archaeologists can hijack the scientific method for ideological purposes. In his controversial new book, Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Myth of Masada (Prometheus/Humanity Books), Mr. Ben-Yehuda accuses Israel's most celebrated archaeologist, the late Yigael Yadin, of professional misconduct in his excavations at the site during the 1960s. After studying transcripts of conversations and documents written during the work and years later, Mr. Ben-Yehuda concludes that Yadin conducted 'a scheme of distortion which was aimed at providing Israelis with a spurious historical narrative of heroism' ... Over the past decade, Mr. Ben-Yehuda has dedicated a large portion of his time to exposing what he sees as the Israeli self-delusion over Masada."

Jewish group banned from Concordia University,
CBC, Dec 6, 2002
"There's more conflict at Montreal's Concordia University. The Jewish group Hillel has been suspended by the student union for handing out pamphlets at an information table. The student council says those pamphlets violate Canadian law. Hillel says the pamphlets were recruitment propaganda for the Mahal faction of the Israeli Defence Forces. It's a volunteer service that enlists non-Israelis to fight on the country's behalf. Co-president Noah Joseph says an intern placed the pamphlets on the table for two hours. But the Concordia Student Union (CSU) says they contravene Canada's Foreign Enlistment Act because armed forces from other countries are not allowed to recruit in Canada. Joseph says Hillel lawyers are looking into the allegations. But he believes there's another reason his group has been targeted by the student union. 'The CSU is not going after us over one issue. They've been trying to get us for a while and they've found something with which they can pounce on us,' said Joseph. CSU spokesman Ralph Lee says that's not the case ... Lee says the suspension means Hillel's funding is frozen and it is not allowed to set up any information tables."

PETITION CIRCULATED ON THE INTERNET:
"Please consider signing this petition, and spread the word. ----Original Message Follows---- I am sending you a site for a group of people in the Netherlands headed by Gretta Duizenberg, who is supporting the Palestinian cause. She raised the Palestinian flag on the balcony of her house in Amsterdam. As a consequence, she has received 5000 death and hate letters from pro-Israelis in the Netherlands. However, she received 60,000 supporting e-mails/letters, from Dutch and Arabs in the Netherlands. She wants to collect 6 million e-mail signature to go to the Dutch and European parliaments to request an end to the Israeli occupation. The Jewish lobby has been very active and filed a lawsuit against her. She needs our support to collect the 6 million signatures from all over the world to challenge them. Let's support someone who is helping us without any money and at great personal risk. She is invited by Yassir Arafat to visit Ghazza in late November 2002. She is looking forward to collecting the 6 million signatures before traveling to Ghazza. Please forward to as many people as possible to sign. The on the group's website www.stopdebezetting.nl (It means stop the occupation.) Click on the English version. Translation of the submittal form is as follows: Naam: name Beroep/Functie: Function (occupation?) Plaats: location

University to let Israeli journalist speak on campus,
Globe and Mail (Canada), December 9, 2002
"Israeli journalist Gideon Kouts will be permitted to speak at the campus of the University of Quebec at Montreal after school officials reversed an earlier decision yesterday that forced organizers to cancel the event. The university had said the group that organized the visit breached its agreement to book classroom space and upset some students with its ads for the event. That drew accusations of censorship from the Canada-Israel Committee, which is organizing the lecture ... Mr. Kouts made international headlines this fall when his accreditation for the Francophonie summit in Beirut was revoked. Lebanese officials made the move when they found out Mr. Kouts is a dual French-Israeli citizen. He had also filed reports to an Israeli TV station, which authorities said was against the law. He plans to discuss the incident in a lecture entitled, From Durban to Beirut, the exclusion of Israel and Jews. Philippe Elharrar, director of the Canada-Israel Committee, said Saturday that Montreal's Jewish community was 'deeply concerned' about the university's decision. He accused the university of caving to pressure from pro-Palestinian students' ... In a letter sent to organizers Friday, Pierre Robitaille, assistant to the university's vice-rector of administration, said Montreal's Hillel Centre violated the arrangement under which the room was made available, including no advertising for the event."

Mossad - The World's Most Efficient Killing Machine,
by Gordon Thomas, Rense.com, December 9, 2002
"Rafi Eitan, the legendary former Operations Chief of Mossad told me when we sat together in his living room in a north Tel Aviv suburb: 'I always tried to kill when I could see the whites of a person's eyes. So I could see the fear. Smell it on his breath. Sometimes I used my hands. A knife, or a silenced gun. I never felt a moment's regret over a killing.' Meir Amit, when he had been director of Mossad, later insisted 'we are like the official hangman or the doctor on Death Row who administers the lethal injection. Our actions are all endorsed by the State of Israel. When Mossad kills it is not breaking the law. It is fulfilling a sentence sanctioned by the prime minister of the day' ... [Dagan, the tenth man to head Mossad] would allow them to use proscribed nerve toxins. Dum-dum bullets. Ways of killing that not even the Mafia, the former KGB or China's secret service use ... Every person with proven field experience was on a plane to Kenya within an hour of the [recent] massacre ... They were the men and women of kidon, Mossad's ultra-secret assassination unit. Their sole job in Mombasa was to find and kill the perpetrators of the massacre: those behind the three bombers who had gone to their deaths laughing. The kidon would kill the planners of the massacre after they had traced them to their lair - wherever it was. It might take months - as it had with avenging the murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But the kidon would find the men behind the Mombasa outrage and kill them. They would use a small laboratory of poisons, sealed in vials until the moment came to strike. They had long and short-blade knives. Piano wire to strangle. Explosives no bigger than a throat lozenge capable fo blowing off a person's head. An arsenal of guns: short-barrel pistols, sniper rifles with a mile killing range. The team chosen to go to Mombasa had local language skills. They could pass for Arabs or for Indian traders. Between them, they spoke Swahili and other dialects. They dressed the part; they looked the part. They also understood the closed language of their world. They had learned how to memorise fibres - precise physical descriptions of people. Neviof , how to break into an office, a bedroom, or any other given target and plant listening bugs - or a bomb. Masluh, the skill of shaking off a tail. The women had learned how to use their sex. To be ever ready to sleep with someone to obtain vital information ...'We try to never use the same method twice. Our technicians spend all their time devising new ways to kill,' a Mossad source told me last week."

Report: Israel helping China build new fighter jet,
World Tribune, December 9, 2002
"A new report says Israel has helped China develop a new fighter jet built with Russian components and is weighing a Chinese request for an Israeli radar system. A report by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation said China has sought Israeli radar for its new J-10 Chengdu fighter-jet. The J-10 is said to make extensive use of foreign components, largely from Russia, Middle East Newsline reported. Military discussion between Israel and China have not been in the news since the Jewish state cancelled the Phalcon airborne early-warning radar to Beijing last year. The cancellation came after heavy U.S. pressure. The report also cited 'possible Israeli design assistance' for China's HQ-9/FT-2000 surface-to-air missile and the SONG conventional submarine."

Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US,
The Christian Science Monitor, December 9, 2002
"Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person. This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby. For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War. And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy. Considering Israel's deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don't pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out. Israel's request could be part of a supplemental spending bill that's likely to be passed early next year, perhaps wrapped in with the cost of a war with Iraq. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years. Adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel. 'Consequently, politically, if not administratively, those outlays are part of the total package of support for Israel,' argues Stauffer in a lecture on the total costs of US Middle East policy, commissioned by the US Army War College, for a recent conference at the University of Maine. These foreign-aid costs are well known. Many Americans would probably say it is money well spent to support a beleagured democracy of some strategic interest. But Stauffer wonders if Americans are aware of the full bill for supporting Israel since some costs, if not hidden, are little known. One huge cost is not secret. It is the higher cost of oil and other economic damage to the US after Israel-Arab wars. In 1973, for instance, Arab nations attacked Israel in an attempt to win back territories Israel had conquered in the 1967 war. President Nixon resupplied Israel with US arms, triggering the Arab oil embargo against the US. That shortfall in oil deliveries kicked off a deep recession. The US lost $420 billion (in 2001 dollars) of output as a result, Stauffer calculates. And a boost in oil prices cost another $450 billion. Afraid that Arab nations might use their oil clout again, the US set up a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That has since cost, conservatively, $134 billion, Stauffer reckons. Other US help includes: • US Jewish charities and organizations have remitted grants or bought Israel bonds worth $50 billion to $60 billion. Though private in origin, the money is "a net drain" on the United States economy, says Stauffer. • The US has already guaranteed $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel, and $600 billion in "housing loans." Stauffer expects the US Treasury to cover these. • The US has given $2.5 billion to support Israel's Lavi fighter and Arrow missile projects. • Israel buys discounted, serviceable "excess" US military equipment. Stauffer says these discounts amount to "several billion dollars" over recent years. • Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its $1.8 billion per year in military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel. US help, financial and technical, has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up almost half of Israel's manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers. • US policy and trade sanctions reduce US exports to the Middle East about $5 billion a year, costing 70,000 or so American jobs, Stauffer estimates. Not requiring Israel to use its US aid to buy American goods, as is usual in foreign aid, costs another 125,000 jobs. • Israel has blocked some major US arms sales, such as F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. That cost $40 billion over 10 years, says Stauffer. Stauffer's list will be controversial. He's been assisted in this research by a number of mostly retired military or diplomatic officials who do not go public for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic if they criticize America's policies toward Israel."

Israel Wins World's Worst Housing Rights Violators Award,
rense.com, December 11, 2002
"The Geneva based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) has identified the countries guilty of most consistently abusing and defying international housing rights law in 2002 for its new annual Housing Rights Violators Award. Israel is among the ten states chosen to receive the award. The list of the top ten housing rights violators includes BURMA (Myanmar), COLOMBIA, CROATIA, GUATEMALA, INDIA, ISRAEL, PAKISTAN, USA and ZIMBABWE. The countries were selected on the basis of reliable data which confirmed the widespread occurrence of housing rights violations in recent years with a particular focus on the previous twelve months. Over the past two years Israel has continued with impunity to violate international human rights and humanitarian law. International human rights organizations have denounced the brutal policies of the Israeli government, including the practice of house demolition, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Israel fails to abide by its obligations under all international human rights conventions, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a.o. Israel's major housing rights violations identified by COHRE in 2002 include the following: * In April 2002 Israeli forces destroyed hundreds of homes in the Jenin Refugee Camp leaving 4,000 people homeless. From April 2001 to April 2002 over 400 houses were completely destroyed and another 200 seriously damaged in the Gaza Strip, leaving 5,000 people homeless. Between September 2000 and September 2001, 5,000 residential buildings were destroyed in the West Bank. Homes are demolished for 'administrative' and 'punitive' reasons. * Palestinian Arabs - who in 1948 owned most of Israel and now own only 3 per cent of the land - are severely restricted from building on this 3 per cent because of discriminatory laws and practices. Thus thousands of Palestinians who had no chance of ever getting a building a permit live in fear of having their non- permitted homes demolished by the Israeli Authorities. In July 2002 the Israeli cabinet voted for the adoption of a bill to restrict access to 'state land' (predominantly expropriated land from Palestinians) to Jews only. Non-Jews may not purchase the land and are rarely permitted to even use the land, leaving them with nowhere to go ... For more information on the COHRE Housing Rights Violator Awards Project, please feel free to contact COHRE at: The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) International Secretariat 83 rue de Montbrillant 1202 Geneva Switzerland Tel: + 41 22 734 1028 Tel: + 41 22 734 1052 Tel: + 41 22 734 1057 Fax: + 41 22 733 8336"

Zionism and Nazism. We can't tell the difference. Can you?
Islamic Association for Palestine
[Juxtaposition of echoing photographs of Nazi and Israel actions]

British academic boycott of Israel gathers pace,
Guardian (UK), December 12, 2002
"Evidence is growing that a British boycott of Israeli academics is gathering pace. British academics have delivered a series of snubs to their Israeli counterparts since the idea of a boycott first gained ground in the spring. In interviews with the Guardian, British and Israeli academics listed various incidents in which visits, research projects and publication of articles have been blocked. Colin Blakemore, an Oxford University professor of physiology, who supports a boycott, said: 'I do not know of any British academic who has been to a conference in Israel in the last six months.' Dr Oren Yiftachel, a left-wing Israeli academic at Ben Gurion University, complained that an article he had co-authored with a Palestinian was initially rejected by the respected British journal Political Geography. He said it was returned to him unopened with a note stating that Political Geography could not accept a submission from Israel. Mr Yiftachel said that, after months of negotiation, the article is to be published but only after he agreed to make substantial revisions, including making a comparison between his homeland and apartheid South Africa. The issue of a boycott was highlighted in the spring when two British academics, Steven and Hilary Rose, had a letter published in the Guardian supporting the idea. It was signed by 123 other academics."

Converted to Islam? The Government Will Send You To A Psychiatrist,
oznik.com (from Ha'aretz [Israel], December 12, 2002
"The [Israeli] Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Religious Affairs are doing all they can to prevent official recognition of Jews who convert or marry a Muslim. At the Interior Ministry, the Population Registry dismisses documents from the Shara'aite court and requires converts to Islam to show a conversion document from the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Those who turn to the Ministry of Religious Affairs have to suffer harassment and humiliation, after which they are given nothing. The Association for Civil Rights is considering an appeal to the Supreme Court."


Eyeless in Israel,
by Gideon Levy, rense.com (from Ha'aretz), December 15, 2002
"Is it too much to ask Israelis to take a look, even a glimpse, at what's going on in their backyard? Are we even capable of dropping our relentless preoccupation with primaries and the battle between Tnuva and Strauss over cottage cheese, to pay attention to what is happening in the territories under our occupation? A foreigner who happened to find himself here wouldn't believe his eyes: A few weeks before the general elections - a period that is supposed to be marked by an airing and sharpening of views - Israel continues to close its eyes, not to see, not to hear and not to know what it is doing to three million people who live less than an hour from our homes. If this crass disregard is hard to accept in normal times - the approach being that what doesn't interest me doesn't exist - on the eve of elections that are considered (as always) critical, it is nothing short of criminal. Here are a few updates from the past few days: Five unarmed Palestinians, probably desperate workers who were using a ladder to enter Israel from the Gaza Strip to find work, were shelled by a tank and killed on Thursday. On Monday, soldiers killed a Palestinian who was mentally handicapped. On Sunday, soldiers shot two women and three children in Rafah, on the border with Egypt. One of the women, a mother, was killed along with her two children, aged four and 15, and the other woman suffered serious injuries. The soldiers said they thought the women and children were terrorists. A week ago Friday, 10 people were killed, including one woman and two employees of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, in a failed liquidation operation in Al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Earlier that week, a 95-year-old woman who was traveling in a taxicab near Ramallah was shot to death by a soldier. And a couple of days before that, soldiers demolished a building, burying under the rubble a 70-year-man who was inside. All told, more than 30 Palestinians were killed in the first 10 days of December, at least half of them innocent civilians. What was once an 'anomaly' has become a daily event, and what the army used to investigate, it no longer even reviews. Does anyone care? Innocent victims - women, children, the aged - exist only on our side. Most Israeli media outlets report these events cursorily, if at all, and no politician makes any reference to them. To this bloody harvest we need to add the mass arrests. According to data of the IDF Spokesman's Office, 3,094 Palestinians are currently incarcerated in military facilities alone; 932 of them have been placed in administrative detention (arrest without trial). In other words, there are nearly a thousand individuals detained for a six-month period without any prospect of trial, many of them in two makeshift detention facilities, Ketziot and Ofer, in which the conditions are apparently particularly difficult. Otherwise, it is hard to explain why the IDF has prevented reporters from visiting these sites for months. These are facts and statistics that should be of great concern to public opinion, even if the public in question is constantly threatened by terrorism. Daily killing of innocent people and mass arrests without trial are issues that should at least be the subject of public discussion, but here no one takes an interest, as though the matter doesn't have a decisive influence not only on the victims themselves, of course, but also on security and on the character of the regime and society in Israel. But that is not enough. If the acts of killing and the arrests are marginally reported by the media, the imprisonment of the entire Palestinian people is continuing uninterrupted and unreported. Whole cities, parts of which lie in ruins, are under almost unceasing curfew; an entire population is unable to move from one village to the next or from city to city without the authorization of the occupation army - but within the Israeli public there is not even an echo of this. No one asks why, or for how long, or whether this state of affairs does not induce terrorism rather than prevent it. The security experts say in an appallingly uniform voice that this is the only way, and hardly anyone protests. It is more than likely that the majority of the public doesn't know (and couldn't care less) whether the Palestinians are now under curfew or just closure or maybe encirclement. The focus is exclusively on our own difficulties and pain, which are certainly grave enough. Are Israelis afraid to sit in cafes? It's been a long time since Palestinians could even dream of that. Is it scary to travel on a bus in Israel? There is no longer any such travel in the territories. Afraid to fly? Most Palestinians have never flown. Unemployment is rising? That is nothing compared to the malnutrition and near hunger in the territories, where the great majority of the residents are not terrorists. A few weeks remain before the elections. No one is mentioning the responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Shaul Mofaz and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer for the killing and destruction. The Labor Party leader, Amram Mitzna, talks a lot about separation and about what's good for Israel's security - but not a word about morality or justice."

Israel Has 5,000 Palestinians in Custody,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), December 18, 2002
[NOTE: There are about 3 million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, 5000 jailed as possible "terrorists." Per the American population of 280 million people, a parallel percentage in the United States would represent over 450,000 people jailed without charges for suspicion of political activity]
"During Israel's forays into the West Bank in recent months, the army has detained more than 5,000 Palestinian men in roundups that government officials say have slowed, but not halted, attacks on Israel. About 1,000 of those prisoners face indefinite detention without trial -- a status easily renewed every six months. For Israel's security forces, the roundups that began in March amid an unprecedented wave of Palestinian suicide bombings have proved the most effective tool in limiting attacks. Israeli human rights groups have protested the mass arrests, but with Israelis still facing bombings and shootings, broad public support remains. 'These arrests have directly contributed to the reduction in terror attacks we have witnessed in recent months,' the army said in a written response to The Associated Press ... . The Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners says about 5,500 Palestinians arrested since the fighting began in September 2000 remain incarcerated ... Of the total, more than 1,200 Palestinians have been convicted in Israeli military courts and are serving sentences, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and others ... To accommodate the increasing number of prisoners, Israel has reopened the Ketsiot prison in the Negev Desert. More than 1,000 Palestinians were detained there at the beginning of this month, including 840 under 'administrative detention,' meaning they can be held indefinitely without charge, B'Tselem said. During the first Palestinian uprising of 1987-1993, the camp was notorious for its harsh conditions _ overcrowded cells, frequent reports of beatings, excessive heat in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, a lack of family visits. The prison closed in 1996 but reopened in April. 'Many of those recently detained without charge have been subject to torture and ill-treatment,' said Hisham Abdel Razek, the Palestinian Minister for Prisoners ... Today, prisoners being interrogated are permitted little or no sleep for days or weeks, Fares said. They are forced to stand for hours as their feet swell with pain. Interrogators tell a prisoner his relatives have been killed, or that the family home will be demolished if he does not confess, he said."

Rabbi of nearby settlement killed in shooting attack in Gaza,
Ha'aretz (Israel) December 21, 2002
"A 40-year-old Israeli civilian was killed Friday morning in a shooting attack near the Gush Katif bloc of settlements in the southern Gaza Strip. The man was named as Rabbi Yitzhak Arameh, the rabbi of the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Netzer Hazani. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the shooting ... A Palestinian passenger was killed in the West Bank town of Jenin in a collision between an IDF tank and a minibus Thursday evening, Palestinian sources reported. The sources said it was an accident, although the minibus driver maintained the tank deliberately crashed into his vehicle. The IDF provided no immediate reaction. Earlier Thursday, Palestinian sources reported that an 11-year-old Palestinian girl was shot to death in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah during a gunfight between IDF troops and armed Palestinian militants. The Israeli army said it was checking the report. Witnesses said soldiers stationed at the Tarmit military outpost on the border with Egypt opened machine-gun fire at a residential area, adding one of the gunshots hit the child in the chest. Hospital officials identified the victim as Nadda Maddi. Thousands of mourners buried the body of a 15-year-old youth from Rafah Thursday who was shot dead Wednesday afternoon, also by Israeli soldiers stationed on the border. The latest fatality was the third child or youth to be killed this week by Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip towns of Rafah and Khan Younis."

[NOTE: Why would it be NECESSARY that a small minority of Jewish professors keep a petition against Israel alive? Think about it.]
Jewish Professors Keep Divestment Drive Alive,
Common Dreams (from Boston Globe), Decmeber 21, 2002
"The national movement to pressure universities to pull their investments from Israel has been battered this year by critics who call it divisive and anti-Semitic. But it has shown remarkable staying power in large part because of an unusual group of supporters: Jewish professors. Hundreds of college professors nationwide have signed petitions calling for divestment from Israel, among them several dozen Jewish professors who call their signatures an act of political conscience ... Modeled on an anti-apartheid campaign that led campuses to divest from South Africa in the 1980s, the petition criticizes Israel's actions in the occupied territories and calls on universities to sell any investments in Israel, and in companies that do business there. It has circulated at more than 50 campuses, including Harvard, MIT, Yale, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Although most university presidents have repudiated or rejected its demands, the petition has had a powerful impact on campus. It has become a flashpoint for arguments among students - particularly Jews and Muslims - and triggered a far more popular counter-petition supporting Israel. Since they signed, Spelke and other Jewish professors have been bombarded with e-mail and letters accusing them of betraying fellow Jews and Israel, of self-loathing and anti-Semitism, and - most disturbing to some - of giving comfort to suicide bombers in Israel. Most prominently, Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers has publicly suggested that the divestment movement has anti-Semitic overtones. Spelke and others say they see it not as a matter of religion or psychology but of conscience, and their intensely personal responses to the charges of anti-Semitism have helped keep the divestment movement alive. ''The best way we as a society can debate this is not to poke fingers - `Oh, you're saying that because you're anti-Semitic' or `Oh, you're saying that because you're Jewish' - but rather to evaluate the arguments straight up,'' Spelke said ... Raw emotion has marked much of the debate, and Jewish supporters of Israel have not been shy about labeling the petition as anti-Semitic. ''I don't know if these people themselves are anti-Semitic, but Jews and non-Jews alike have a responsibility to get their facts right - Israel is under attack, and a petition that doesn't acknowledge this but only condemns Israel is anti-Semitic,' said Asher Schachter, a Harvard Medical School instructor who is one of 439 Harvard faculty to sign an anti-divestment petition - far more than the 75 faculty at Harvard who support divestment. ... Ken Olum, a member of the Tufts physics department who helped organize a divestment petition on campus, said he has wrestled so long with his frustrations with Israel, and with widespread Jewish support for the government there, that he has stopped identifying himself as a Jew when people discuss religion, the Middle East, or other subjects. 'The fact that a lot of people who count themselves as among the Jewish people are doing a great evil, an un-Jewish evil, has been overwhelming,' Olum said. 'The moral stakes here are too great to not take this stand.'''

Palestinians have international law on their side,
by Stephen Zunes, The Progressive Media Project
"Crown Prince Abdullah is pressing President Bush to sympathize more with the Palestinian cause. Bush should heed that call. And he should do so not because the United States needs Saudi oil, nor because Bush wants Saudi support for a war on Iraq, but because the Palestinians simply have a better case than the Israelis. In virtually all the outstanding issues -- the extent of the Israeli withdrawal, the status of Jerusalem, the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and the fate of the Palestinian refugees -- the Palestinian position is far more consistent with international law and U.N. Security Council resolutions than is that of Israel. For example, the Fourth Geneva Convention -- a legally binding international treaty -- forbids any country from transferring any part of its civilian population onto lands seized by military force. This makes every Israeli settlement outside of Israel's internationally recognized pre-1967 borders illegal. The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted two resolutions -- 446 and 465 -- that confirmed this and declared that Israel must withdraw all of its settlers. But in the U.S.-backed peace proposals put forth by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in July 2000, 85 percent of the settlers and their settlements and surrounding areas would have been incorporated into a greatly expanded Israel."

Honorary Doctorate Speech - Turin University,
by Harold Pinter (27th November 2002)
[Playwright Pinter is of partial Jewish descent]
"The US is at this moment developing advanced systems of 'weapons of mass destruction' and it prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has more of them than the rest of the world put together. It has walked away from international agreements on biological and chemical weapons, refusing to allow inspection of its own factories. The hypocrisy behind its public declarations and its own actions is almost a joke. The United States believes that the three thousand deaths in New York are the only deaths that count, the only deaths that matter. They are American deaths. Other deaths are unreal, abstract, of no consequence. The three thousand deaths in Afghanistan are never referred to. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead through US and British sanctions which have deprived them of essential medicines are never referred to. The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to. Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high. Babies are born with no brain, no eyes, no genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths or rectums, all that issues from these orifices is blood. The two hundred thousand deaths in East Timor in 1975 brought about by the Indonesian government but inspired and supported by the United States are never referred to. The half a million deaths in Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Argentina and Haiti, in actions supported and subsidised by the United States are never referred to. The millions of deaths in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are no longer referred to. The desperate plight of the Palestinian people, the central factor in world unrest, is hardly referred to. But what a misjudgement of the present and what a misreading of history this is. People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget. They strike back. The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of the United States over many years, in all parts of the world. In Britain the public is now being warned to be "vigilant" in preparation for potential terrorist acts. The language is in itself preposterous. How will - or can - public vigilance be embodied? Wearing a scarf over your mouth to keep out poison gas? However, terrorist attacks are quite likely, the inevitable result of our Prime Minister's contemptible and shameful subservience to the United States. Apparently a terrorist poison gas attack on the London Underground system was recently prevented. But such an act may indeed take place. Thousands of school children travel on the London Underground every day. If there is a poison gas attack from which they die, the responsibility will rest entirely on the shoulders of our Prime Minister. Needless to say, the Prime Minister does not travel on the underground himself. The planned war against Iraq is in fact a plan for premeditated murder of thousands of civilians in order, apparently, to rescue them from their dictator. The United States and Britain are pursuing a course which can lead only to an escalation of violence throughout the world and finally to catastrophe."

Soldier Gets 65 Days For Killing 95 Year Old Woman,
by Amos Harel and Arnon Regular, Ha'aretz (Israel), December 27, 2002
[Also posted at rense.com]
"An Israel Defense Forces soldier who killed a 95-year-old Palestinian woman earlier this month has been sentenced to 65 days in military prison. The incident occurred on December 3, at a roadblock at Ramallah's northern entrance. The soldier, from a Paratroopers unit, fired at a taxi which the army claims was traveling on a road forbidden to Palestinian vehicles. The woman, Fatma Obayed, who was in the car, was wounded fatally in the neck by the shots. An IDF inquiry established that the shots were fired without justification, since the taxi did not pose a mortal threat to the soldiers. The soldiers at the checkpoint failed to follow the IDF's rules of engagement, the inquiry found. The soldier was tried a few days after the incident by his battalion commander. The shooting victim's family was outraged yesterday by what it regarded as an unjustifiably light sentence for the soldier. Mohammed Obayed, the victim's grandson who lives in A'atara northwest of Ramallah, stated angrily: 'The Israeli army thinks that it is humanitarian and progressive, but this sentence shows its true face. The soldier's action was a very grave matter, but in my opinion whoever judged the soldier bears much greater responsibility since he has encouraged Palestinian blood to be spilled in the future. Other solders will understand that the price to be paid for such an act is just two months in prison.'"

Stop the Wall: PENGON Launches the Apartheid Wall Campaign,
Palestine Chronicle, December 27 2002
"Contrary to worldwide news reports, the Wall (also referred to as the 'fence' or 'security fence') which Israel is currently building in the northeast of the West Bank, as well as in the Bethlehem and Jerusalem areas, will not mark the 1967 border, also known as the Green Line. Rather, amidst some of the most fertile land in Palestine, this latest unilateral offensive will be a further exercise in Israel’s annexation of lands, destruction of agriculture and property, and violation of human rights. The construction and destruction revolving around the Apartheid Wall is to move full-force in the coming months and the Wall could be completed in less than one year. The prospects of a completed wall are horrific, and will translate into the confiscation and annexation of some 10% of the West Bank, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dunums of farmland including the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of trees, the demolition of homes, and the tragic “advancement” of the closure and siege policy that will leave thousands of families landless, jobless, hungry, and hopeless. The image of cities and villages encircled by checkpoints, by-pass roads, and settlements is now being accompanied by an 8-meter high concrete wall with trenches, electric fences, sensors, cameras, and armed watchtowers."

Joint Harvard-MIT Petition for Divestment from Israel,
Refuse and Resist
"We, the undersigned are appalled by the human rights abuses against Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government, the continual military occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory by Israeli armed forces and settlers, and the forcible eviction from and demolition of Palestinian homes, towns and cities. We find the recent attacks on Israeli citizens unacceptable and abhorrent. But these should not and do not negate the human rights of the Palestinians. As members of the MIT and Harvard University communities, we believe that our universities ought to use their influence - political and financial - to encourage the United States government and the government of Israel to respect the human rights of the Palestinians. We therefore call on the US government to make military aid and arms sales to Israel conditional on immediate initiation and rapid progress in implementing the conditions listed below. We also call on MIT and Harvard to divest from Israel, and from US companies that sell arms to Israel, until these conditions are met: Israel is in compliance with United Nations Resolution 242 which notes the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war, and which calls for withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from occupied territories. Israel is in compliance with the United Nations Committee Against Torture 2001 Report which recommends that Israel's use of legal torture be ended ..."

Israel's Sacred Terrorism,
written by Livia Rokach, A study based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary, and other documents. Foreword by Noam Chomsky,
"Popular support of Israel over the last quarter of a century has been based on a number of myths, the most persistent of which has been the myth of lsrael's security. Implying the permanent existence of grave threats to the survival of Jewish society in Palestine, this myth has been carefully cultivated to evoke anxious images in public opinion to permit, and even encourage, the use of large amounts of public funds to sustain Israel militarily and economically. "Israel's security" is the official argument with which not only Israel but also the U.S. denies the right of self-determination in their own country to the Palestinian people. For the past three decades it has been accepted as a legitimate explanation for lsrael's violation of international resolutions calling for the return of the Palestinian people to their homes. Over the past thirteen years Israel has been allowed to evoke its security to justify its refusal to retreat from the Arab and Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Security is still the pretext given by successive Israeli governments for widespread massacres of civilian populations in Lebanon, for expropriations of Arab lands, for the establishment of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, for deportations, and for arbitrary detentions of political prisoners. Although the security of the Arab populations in the whole region has been repeatedly threatened over these years by overt and covert warfare, terrorist plots and subversive designs, and although UN resolutions demand the establishment of secure borders for all states in the region, so far only lsrael's security has been at the center of international discussion."

Israeli Court Says Reservists Must Serve,
Yahoo! News (from Associated Press), Dec 30, 2002
"Israel's Supreme Court ruled Monday that army reservists cannot refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while four Palestinians were killed by troops in ongoing violence. Another Palestinian died under unclear circumstances in the West Bank city of Hebron. Palestinians said an 18-year-old was taken away by Israeli border police and beaten, then was brought back and died. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. In its ruling, the high court sidestepped a decision on whether Israel's 35-year occupation of the disputed territories violates international law. Eight reservists contended that Israel's occupation is illegal, and therefore they have the right to refuse duty there. The court ruled that reservists cannot choose their assignments. Since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting 27 months ago, more than 500 Israeli soldiers have refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza, saying they are unwilling to help perpetuate military rule over another people. Dozens of soldiers have been sent to military jails for periods ranging from a few days to a month or more. Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, and withdrew from Palestinian population centers as part of interim peace deals in the mid-1990s. But it reoccupied most areas in June, as part of an offensive against Palestinian militants who have been attacking Israelis with bombs and guns. The court said accepting the reservists' demands could further deepen the rifts in Israeli society. 'The considerations of state security and the integrity of Israeli society must be considered against the arguments of conscience and belief,' Justice Dorit Beinisch wrote."

Sharon takes on rabbis over Jewish identity. Religious and secular clash over right to settle in Israel,
The Guardian (UK), December 31, 2002
"Ariel Sharon has called on religious leaders to make it easier to become a Jew to revive the immigration that provides a buffer to the burgeoning Arab population. The prime minister's remarks follow a call by one of his own cabinet for a ban on immigration by secular Jews, exposing a deep divide in the government between those who say an influx from the former Soviet Union threatens Israel's religious identity and those who increasingly fear the high Arab birthrate. The ultra-orthodox health minister, Nissim Dahan, revived debate on the issue by declaring that secular Jews and those who do not qualify as Jewish under religious law, which is more stringent in its definition than government legislation, should not be allowed to settle in Israel. 'We prefer a Jew overseas to a gentile in Israel,' he said. But Mr Dahan was quickly shot down by the prime minister, who said: 'It should be possible for anyone who wants to become a Jew to do so.' Israel's establishment is split on the issue. At the heart of the disagreement is the decade-long wave of immigration in which about 1 million Russians and citizens of the former Soviet republics have come to Israel under the 'grandfather clause' of the Law of Return, which permits anyone with a Jewish grandparent to obtain Israeli citizenship. The clause was introduced in 1970 as a response to the Nazi definition of a Jew as anyone with a Jewish grandparent. Orthodox rabbis say that up to 70% of the arrivals in recent years do not qualify as Jewish under religious law, which requires an individual's mother to have been Jewish. The government estimates that 25% of all Russian immigrants are not Jewish according to religious law and need to convert. Most do not, partly because the process is laborious and partly because the Russian community tends to be secular. The interior minister and leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai, says such figures threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. 'By the end of the year 2010 the state of Israel will lose its Jewish identity,' he said. 'A secular state will bring ... hundreds of thousands of goyim [gentiles] who will build hundreds of churches and will open more stores that sell pork. In every city we will see Christmas trees."

Bulldozing history,
Globe and Mail, December 31, 2002, Page A10
"Early this month, the Israeli army ordered property seizures and house demolitions in Hebron. I hope that Canadian architects, and everyone who values the global architectural heritage, will join Palestinian and Israeli architects who have come together in protest against this planned destruction of historic buildings in the West Bank city. These buildings, in the Jaber neighbourhood, date from the Mamluk to the Ottoman period (15th to 19th centuries). They form an integral part of the fabric of the old town. Incredibly, this destruction is being proposed despite an uncompleted rehabilitation project for historic Hebron receiving an Aga Khan award for architecture in 1998. The clearance is intended to link two Jewish settlements. As many as 103 buildings (Palestinian homes) will be affected. Apart from the human misery being created, it represents a cavalier disregard for global heritage and warrants condemnation by the world community."

Holocaust survivors protest IDF treatment of Palestinians,
Christian Science Monitor, December 31, 2002
"Ha'aretz reports that a group of Holocaust survivors, calling itself the 'Forum of Holocaust survivors and descendants to halt the deterioration of Israeli humanism' has begun a petition to protest the way Israeli defense forces are treating Palestinians. The petition reads 'Israeli society is descending into a quagmire of violence, brutality, disrespect for human rights, and contempt for human life' and that 'domination of another people against its will contradicts the lessons of the Holocaust, morally, humanely, and politically.' 'Palestinian terror is a despicable crime,' says the petition by Zvi Gil, the forum coordinator, and journalist Raoul Teitelbaum, immediately following that obvious statement with 'we cannot clear our conscience in light of the mass, arbitrary destruction of civilians' homes, uprooted olive trees, and orchards shaved to the ground. We cannot accept the extensive disruptions of daily life and abuse, for its own sake or not, at the checkpoints.' News of the petition comes as Israeli human rights group B'Teselem released a new report yet again accusing Israeli troops of beating Palestinians and continuing to use Palestinians as human shields, even though the Israeli Supreme Court has granted an injunction against the practice and the IDF has repeatedly promised to stop. Meanwhile, Palestinians officials accused IDF troops of beating a Palestinian teenager to death on Monday. Witnesses allege the youth was working at a gas station in south Hebron when an Israeli jeep patrol arrived. Soldiers pulled the youth into their jeep and drove off. The witnesses allege the soldiers returned 15 minutes later, driving through the gas station, pushing the youth's body out without stopping. Israeli officials say they are investigating the incident. The Boston Globe reports that such incidents are some of the 1,200 cases of Palestinian civilian deaths at the hands of Israeli soldiers in more than two years of fighting, according to Palestinian and international human rights monitoring groups. Human rights activists and military specialists says the deaths are 'the result of a military that has not properly investigated civilian deaths and has created an atmosphere in which soldiers are not held accountable.'"

Background/ Israel's watchdog turns on its master,
Ha'aretz (Israel), January 1, 2003
"The Central Elections Committee, the government watchdog meant to oversee the democratic process, appeared to have turned on its master this week, raising fears over the direction of Israeli democracy as the panel quashed the Knesset candidacy of Israel's best known Arab lawmakers, while giving a green light to a former senior aide and onetime successor to Meir Kahane. In short order, the Central Elections Committee flew in the face of recommendations by the Attorney General and the Supreme Court justice that chairs the panel, allowing former extremist Kach movement leader Baruch Marzel to remain on the ballot for the January 28 elections, then disqualifying the candidacy of Arab legislator Ahmed Tibi. Early on Wednesday, the committee again defied the advice of its chairman, narrowly striking down the candidacy of firebrand Arab lawmaker Azmi Bishara. Ironically, the law under which Tibi and Bishara were banned was last strengthened in order to bar the avowedly anti-Arab Kahane from politics. As amended in 1985, the law states that 'A candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objects or actions, expressly or by implication, include one of the following: 1) negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people; 2) negation of the democratic character of the State; 3) incitement to racism.' The language of the law points to bedrock tensions in a society struggling to balance clashing aspirations and demands ... The committee action was the latest in a series of recent moves which have sparked fierce discussion over the future of democracy in Israel. Last month, a rarely enforced censorship statute was invoked to prohibit the showing of a prominent Israeli Arab actor-director's documentary film on IDF actions in the Jenin refugee camp. An effort is also underway to curb and perhaps outlaw the Islamic Movement, an Israeli Arab political organization active largely in the north. Concern for the democratic process has also risen as a result of burgeoning police probes into allegations of bribery, blackmail, granting of sexual favors, and involvement of racketeers in the December 8 Likud Knesset primary elections. Civil liberty issues have meanwhile been raised in published drafts of the platform of the far-right National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose leaders openly advocate what they call 'voluntary transfer' of Palestinians. The draft platform also reportedly calls for a state which is 'Jewish first and foremost, and which is also democratic' ... Arab politicians and pollsters warned Wednesday that if the court allows the disqualifications to stand, a sharply-felt boycott by Arab voters would likely ensue. The very fact that parties are being disqualified from Knesset candidacy is in itself an indication that Israeli democracy is threatened, observes Ha'aretz commentator Avirama Golan."

Israel's human shields draw fire. Human rights groups return to court over army's use of Palestinian civilians,
Guardian (UK), January 2, 2003
"Basem Maswadeh knew he was in trouble when an Israeli soldier pushed him into the barber's chair and reached for the clippers. The humiliation of a shaved head - or, more accurately, having chunks of hair ripped out by the brutal wielding of the shears - was the start of an ordeal that culminated with Mr Maswadeh and two friends standing in a Hebron street as Israeli troops shot over their shoulders at stone-throwing Palestinians. 'The soldiers hid behind our backs as they pushed us forward,' said Mr Maswadeh. 'Then they put their guns on our shoulders and began shooting. We felt our eardrums burning, but when we tried to put our hands over our ears, they beat our hands away. The noise was terrible because the gun was right next to my ear.' The soldiers fired dozens of plastic bullets, using the three Palestinian men as shields, before the crowd dispersed. In May, as Israeli human rights groups sought a supreme court order barring soldiers from seeking protection behind human shields after their widespread use during the army's assaults on Jenin and other West Bank cities, the military admitted the policy was illegal and said it would stop. But human rights groups will return to court on Sunday to argue that the army has only ended such abuses selectively, and is in breach of court orders. 'The method is the same each time,' says Israel's most prominent human rights group, B'Tselem. 'Soldiers pick a civilian at random and force him to do dangerous tasks that put their lives at risk' ... The army says it has issued an order barring the use of human shields, but it contends that another policy, known as the 'neighbour procedure', can continue because it is not illegal. The 'neighbour procedure' involves soldiers 'requesting' of civilian that they enter buildings and demand that wanted men inside surrender. Human rights groups say that almost no one does such a thing voluntarily."

Israel: Germs, gas and A-bombs. Fingers on all the buttons. The world's best-known and most efficient 'secret' manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction is not Iraq, not even North Korea, but Israel, Neil Sammonds looks at a nuclear, biological and chemical warfare programme that even the Israeli Knesset cannot get access to, let alone the United Nations,
Index on Censorship, January 3, 2002
"In September 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear site, revealed to the Sunday Times that the nuclear military programme based there had produced 'over 200' nuclear warheads. Days later he was tricked into flying to Rome where he was abducted by Mossad agents and secretly transported to Israel. In November 1986, he was tried in camera and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment, 14 of which were spent in solitary confinement. In 1999, in response to a petition from Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the government released about 40 per cent of the trial documents. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that Israel has the world's fifth largest stockpile of nuclear warheads (more than Britain, which it believes has 185). In February 2000, Knesset member Issam Mahoul said Israel had '200 to 300' nuclear weapons; in August of that year, the Federation of American Scientists said that Israel could have produced 'at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200'; the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates 200. Other sources, including Jane's Intelligence Review, estimate between 400 and 500 thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. What Dimona is to Israel's nuclear programme, the Israeli Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) at Nes Ziona is to its chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programme. The high-security facility is absent from aerial survey photographs and maps, on which it has been replaced by orange groves. Except for token visits to Dimona by a Norwegian team in 1961 and a US team in 1969, there has been no international scrutiny. Even the Knesset is denied access. However, the 1993 report by the Office of Technology Assessment for the US Congress states that Israel has 'undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities' and is 'generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme'. Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies states that Israel has conducted extensive research into gas warfare and is ready to produce biological weapons. According to an exhaustive study by Karel Knip, a Dutch journalist, the IIBR's work has included the synthesis of nerve gases such as tabun, sarin and VX. The October 1992 crash an of El Al cargo plane in Amsterdam that caused at least 47 deaths and caused hundreds of immediate and subsequent mysterious illnesses led to the disclosure in 1998 that flight LY1862 was carrying chemicals including 50 gallons of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) - enough to produce 594 pounds of sarin. The DMMP was supplied by Solkatronic Chemicals Inc of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and was destined for the IIBR. Avner Cohen has catalogued reported uses of biological weapons by Jewish forces during the 1948 war in Palestine. The Israeli historian Uri Milstein alleged that 'in many conquered Arab villages, the water supply was poisoned to prevent the inhabitants from coming back.' Milstein states that one of the largest of such covert operations caused the typhoid outbreak in Acre in May 1948. The Palestinian Arab Higher Committee reported in July 1948 that there was some evidence that Jewish forces were responsible for a cholera outbreak in Egypt in November 1947 and in Syrian villages near the Palestinian-Syrian border in February 1948. In May 1948, the Egyptian ministry of defence stated that four 'zionists' had been captured while trying to contaminate artesian wells in Gaza with 'a liquid which was discovered to contain germs of dysentery and typhoid'. In 1954, it was widely reported that defence minister Pinchas Lavon had proposed using BW for special operations. Cohen says: 'Israel has presumably employed biological or toxin weapons for special operations.' In 1955, Prime Minister Ben Gurion ordered the weaponisation and stockpiling of chemical weapons in case of a war with Egypt. Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky claims that lethal tests have been performed on Arab prisoners at the IIBR. There are allegations that Israel has used CBW on numerous occasions: Chemical defoliants used by the army against Palestinian lands, including Ain el-Beida in 1968, Araqba in 1972 and Mejdel Beni Fadil in 1978; Armed nuclear missiles in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars; Chemical weapons in the 1982 war on Lebanon, including hydrogen cyanide, nerve gas and phosphorus shells; In the 1980s lethal gases against Palestinian civilians and Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli Jewish prisoners. Discussing delivery systems, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists states that Israel's F-16 squadrons based at Nevatim and Ramon are the most likely carriers of nuclear warheads and that a small group of pilots has been trained for nuclear strikes ... Israel also has three Dolphin-class submarines, the Dolphin, the Leviathan and the Tekuma, which are reportedly modified to carry nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. It is widely believed to possess a tactical nuclear capability, including small nuclear landmines, and strategic nuclear warheads that it can fire from cannons. The UN Security Council regularly calls on Israel 'urgently to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.' Israel has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, but is one of only four countries in the world - with Cuba, India and Pakistan - not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Arafat: Israel building Berlin Wall Arafat described the wall as 'unacceptable' Palestinian leader,
BBC (UK), January 4, 2002
"Yasser Arafat has accused Israel of constructing a 'Berlin Wall' around Jerusalem. French newspaper Le Parisien reported the comments in an interview with Mr Arafat which was also published on its web site. In the following excerpts, Mr Arafat told the newspaper that international bodies must intervene if there is to be peace in the Middle East ... . 'Right now, the Israelis do whatever they want, and their sole aim is to strangle us. They are destroying us so that they are better able to start building a wall. The wall will be longer than 350 km. The line followed by the wall cheats considerably with regard to the 'green line' which was established as a border in 1967' ... How can they be allowed to build this 'Berlin Wall' around Jerusalem, the Holy City of three religions? It's unacceptable! Public opinion needs to realise what's happening."

Israel's image of liberal democracy takes a battering,
Telegraph (UK), January 4, 2003
"Angie Zelter, a human rights activist from Norfolk, had a lesson in the Israeli government's tough new policy towards foreigners when she flew in to Tel Aviv this week. She had been summoned to appear in a trial of a Jewish settler who allegedly assaulted her but the trial had been cancelled and the authorities decided to deport her immediately. She was bundled in a blanket on to an Austrian Airlines plane, where she sat on the floor of the cabin, shouting that she did not want to go. The pilot refused to take off with her and she was held in an airport cell for three days. With the help of the British embassy, she secured a court hearing against her deportation, but the judge ruled she was a danger to state security. She flew back to London on Thursday. 'Every state has the right to deport whoever it wants,' said her lawyer, Shamai Leibowitz. 'But this case was unusual and shocking in that the judge did not need a word of evidence to rule that she was a threat and should be sent home.' The case of Mrs Zelter, 52, is just one of hundreds where Israel's formerly open policy of letting just about anyone in on a tourist visa has been replaced by one of deep suspicion of anyone who looks as if they might be helping or offering support to the Palestinians. From humble backpackers to doctors and aid workers, all have been deported or held in cells while embassies or employers try to get them out. Rabbi Arik Asherman, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, knows Mrs Zelter well and worked with her during the autumn olive harvest, a time of frequent clashes between Palestinian farmers and Jewish settlers. 'We worked closely with the Israeli security forces. It is beyond me that she should be kicked out,' he said. 'All she did was organise the Palestinians to reach their fields but perhaps some people see even that as a threat.' Developments in the Israeli courts and politics have given Israel's image of a liberal democracy a battering. Activists believe that the tensions in Israel - between Left and Right, religious and secular, Jews and Arabs - have reached crisis point. Rabbi Asherman chooses his words carefully. 'We have seen over the past year some very worrying signs of growing intolerance,' he said. 'On the whole our society still has a very high tolerance for dissident opinions - more than the US after September 11 - but I do see signs that this could change, and change very quickly' ... Politics has swung massively to the Right and the subject of the expulsion of the Palestinians - previously considered taboo - is openly discussed by the extreme Right parties, though always under the code of 'voluntary transfer'. The latest focus of fear is Israel's Arab minority, 20 per cent of the population. With elections scheduled in three weeks the central election committee, dominated by politicians of the Right, disqualified two of the most outspoken Arab members of the Israeli parliament - Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi - from running again. This decision has become a watershed in relations between the Israeli establishment and the Arab minority and reflects Israel's fear of an Arab 'enemy within'. The case is to be heard by the Supreme Court next week and there are strong indications that it may reverse the bans. But this will not hide the fact that the decision to bar the unruly Arab members of the Knesset was popular - supported by 70 per cent of Israelis, according to opinion polls - and betokens the breakdown of one of the planks of Israeli democracy."

Fears mount as Israel's 'Berlin Wall' threatens to imprison the West Bank It is eight metres high and up to 220 miles long -- and, say Palestinians, it is part of a blatant plan to seize their assets and force them off their land,
Sunday Herald (South Africa)
"It makes the Berlin Wall look like the work of amateurs. Israel is building a barricade in and around the occupied Palestinian West Bank which will be four times the size of communist Germany's claim to fame -- and light years ahead of it technologically. The eight-metre-high wall is made out of huge, grey, concrete slabs and has watchtowers built into it every 300 metres or so. On either side of it are military roads, complete with tanks and armoured Jeeps, trenches, some six metres wide and four metres deep, barbed wire, cameras, motion sensors, electrified fencing and exclusion zones of between 35 and 50 metres. In parts, special material will be laid to detect infiltrators' footprints. In all it is about 100 metres wide and has been and will continue to be built entirely on Palestinian land. It's difficult to say exactly how long the finished wall will be as Israel has not released complete maps. Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations have had to deduce its path using military orders for land seizures and lists of which illegal Israeli settlements will be to the west of the wall. Their conclusion is that it will run the entire 220-mile length of the West Bank and could even encircle it and be built not just on the border between the West Bank and Israel, but on the border between the West Bank and Jordan as well, effectively making the West Bank a huge open-air prison . It will not be a straight wall. It will twist and turn, jutting, at times, tens of miles into the West Bank to include settlement clusters and corridors. Huge walled arms are expected to punch deep into the occupied territory, especially around the holy cities of Nablus and Hebron which have been settled by extremist, religious Jews. Nor will it follow the green line, the 1949 armistice line between Israel and the Arab states which now delineates Israel and the West Bank and -- according to the Palestinians -- should be used as the basis of a border between and independent Palestine and Israel ... To include as many of the settlements as possible in Israel and exclude as many of the Palestinians as possible, the wall will have to do a series of spectacular twists and bends . Its first phase, the 70-mile-long northern part of the wall has been under construction since July. To date, 15 Palestinian villages have found themselves stuck between the wall and the green line and a further 15 villages have found themselves cut off from their farm land, now on the 'Israeli' side of the wall, and thus their livelihoods and way of life. In one area, a contiguous 90sqkm has already been seized. Homes have been demolished and farmland destroyed to make way for the wall. Hundreds of homes in Palestinian towns such as Qalqiliya and Tulkarem now look out on the wall and have its cameras look into their rooms. Qalqiliya will be surrounded by the wall on three sides. The only entrance into and out of the town is an Israeli-manned checkpoint, one metre wide for pedestrians and about five metres wide for cars."

Top Lawyer Urges Death For Families Of Bombers Lewin: 'A Policy Born of Necessity',
by Ami Eden, [Jewish] Forward, June 7, 2002
"A prominent Washington attorney and Jewish communal leader is calling for the execution of family members of suicide bombers. Nathan Lewin, an oft-mentioned candidate for a federal judgeship and legal advisor to several Orthodox organizations, told the Forward that such a policy would provide a much-needed deterrent against suicide attacks. Under the proposal, which Lewin unveiled in the current issue of the opinion journal Sh'ma, family members would be spared if they immediately condemned the bombing and refused financial compensation for the loss of their relative. (Lewin's article appears on the web at http://www.shma.com/may02/nathan.htm.) While a 20-month spate of suicide bombings has been met in the Jewish community with calls for increasingly Draconian preventive measures, Lewin appears to be the first Jewish communal leader to approve publicly of the concept of executing innocent civilians in the hopes of curbing terrorism ... Lewin argued that the biblical injunction to destroy the ancient tribe of Amalek serves as a precedent in Judaism for taking measures that are 'ordinarily unacceptable' in the face of a mortal threat ... Several leading Jewish figures, including Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, argued that the plan represented a legitimate if flawed attempt to strike a balance between preventing terrorism and preserving democratic norms. But the proposal was strongly condemned by the head of the Reform movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, and the executive vice chairwoman of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Hannah Rosenthal ... In an article that appeared in the Sh'ma journal alongside Lewin's essay, Brandeis University Jewish studies professor Arthur Green wrote, 'I only wonder how long it will take [Lewin], by the force of this proof-text, to go all the way and suggest that the Palestinian nation as a whole has earned the fate of Amalek [genocide]' ... Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, rejected the notion that Lewin should be elbowed out of communal life. They argued that his proposal represented a legitimate attempt to forge a policy for stopping terrorism. Foxman declined to take a stand on the actual proposal, citing his policy of deferring to Jerusalem on Israeli security issues. Though they declined to endorse the controversial proposal, top officials at the O.U. and Agudath Israel of America, for whom Lewin has done legal work, expressed sympathy for Lewin's efforts to curb what they described as an unprecedented wave of suicide attacks in Israel. '[Lewin] is not a Kahanist; he is not a nut,' said Richard Stone, chair of the O.U.'s Institute of Public Affairs ... Rabbi William Altshul, headmaster of the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Washington, D.C., told the Forward that he did not regret the decision to honor Lewin this week at the school's annual dinner ... Even as several observers rejected the notion of blackballing Lewin, they offered substantive critiques of his argument. Dershowitz, author of 'Why Terrorism Works' (Yale University Press, 2002), and terrorism researcher Steven Emerson, who both favor the limited use of torture to extract information about an impending terrorist attack, said that they balked at the execution of innocent civilians ... Dershowitz argued that the same level of deterrence could be achieved by leveling the villages of suicide bombers after the residents had been given a chance to evacuate (an idea Lewin disparagingly likened to "using aspirin to treat brain cancer"). Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Orthodox Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, N.J., a trained lawyer known for hawkish views on Israeli security issues, argued that a policy of mass deportations, rather than executions, could serve as an effective, but less deadly, deterrent against future attacks. Several observers defended Lewin by noting that the United States killed tens of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Moral Defense of Israel,
Ayn Rand Institute
[This links to an entire web page with various articles in defense of the brutal, racist Jewish state; Ayn Rand was Jewish, as are many in her "Objectivist" movement, including current Executive Director, Israeli-born Yaron Brook] This ARI web page includes titles such as "Israel Morals Match Rand Ideology"] See also "Ayn Rand on the Death of Innocents in War", also War, Nuclear Weapons and "Innocents" : "With full moral certainty we must urge our government to defend our lives, even if that requires nuclear weapons and hundreds of thousands of deaths in terrorist countries." Also, "The Immorality of a "Compassionate War" on Terrorism" "On the first day of bombing Afghan military targets, our Air Force was busy delivering charity food packages stamped 'This food is a gift from the United States of America.' We have already lavished on the Afghans more than 450,000 aid packages. Not only is such alms-giving expensive (the President has pledged $320 million worth of food and medicine), but it also betrays an obscene inversion of morality."

A Decision That Hurts Israeli Democracy,
by David Newman, New York Times, January 6, 2003
"Even amid conflict, Israelis have always applauded themselves for allowing anyone to run for office - including those who reject the very raison d'être of a Jewish state. Only rarely has a political party been banned from the elections, the most notable being Kach, the extreme rightist anti-Arab party founded by Meir Kahane. But now, with a round of Knesset elections three weeks away, Israel has much less reason for pride. While Mr. Kahane's successor, Baruch Marzel, was allowed to run for office as the No. 2 candidate for another extreme rightist party, the two most prominent Arab legislators in the outgoing Knesset, Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara, were barred by the Central Election Committee last week. The committee, composed of representatives of the parties that have Knesset seats and two neutral members (both of whom opposed the decision), described Mr. Tibi and Mr. Bishara as consistently expressing opposition to the existence of a Jewish state (as contrasted with a state of 'all its citizens' in which everyone is equal, Jew or Arab). Under Israeli law, such opposition bars a person's candidacy. Mr. Bishara was also accused of supporting armed resistance in the occupied territories, an accusation he denied. Mr. Marzel, whose candidacy was in danger because of his association with the banned Kach, could run, the committee members decided, because he had assured them that he no longer held to the racist policies of Kach - even though he is often shown on television promoting 'transfer,' a code word for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. The final decision on Mr. Tibi's and Mr. Bishara's candidacies now rests with the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear the candidates' appeals tomorrow. But even if the court overturns the ban, Israeli Arab voters' faith in the election system has been broken. The message could not be clearer: if you are a Jewish extremist, you can go on the campaign trail. But if you belong to the Arab minority and do not openly toe the government line, you cannot be part of the election game ... Even if the Supreme Court allows Mr. Tibi and Mr. Bishara to run, Israeli Arabs will remain reluctant to vote, because the message of the election committee has been heard loud and clear in Arab towns and villages. Who can blame them? No Israeli prime minister has ever given leaders of the Arab parties significant positions of power. [David Newman is professor of political geography at Ben Gurion University of the Negev].

Israel Plans to Close W. Bank Universities After Tel Aviv suicide blasts, Cabinet targets campuses said to be used for recruiting militants,
Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2002
"Angered by the deadliest suicide attack in nearly a year, Israel vowed Monday to shut down three universities in the Palestinian territories and restrict the travel of Palestinian leaders in an effort to crack down on militants ... . Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet decided to shut down three West Bank Palestinian universities: Bir Zeit near Ramallah, An Najah in Nablus and Islamic College in Hebron, according to Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin. Prisoners interrogated by Israel have described those campuses as recruitment grounds for militant organizations, Gissin said ... The Palestinian Central Council was to meet Thursday in Ramallah to review a draft of the Palestinian constitution, but Israeli officials said Monday that they will block the meeting. Israel also forbade a Palestinian delegation to travel to London later this month to discuss reform and eventual statehood with international mediators."

EU Condemns Israel,
Macedonian Press Agency, January 8, 2003
"The Greek presidency of the EU condemned the decision of the Israel Government to block the departure of Palestinian officials for London, as well as the movements of senior Palestinians in general, does not contribute to the efforts made by the international community to carry forward the reform process and to bring an end to the violence. According to a communique from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this decision perpetuates hatred and extremism."

Liberman's Supreme Soviet Purging Israel of Dissenters,
by Uri Avnery, antiwar.com, January 8, 2003
"[A]n important [Israeli] party, represented in the Knesset, has mentioned my name in its official election platform. Under the heading 'Legislation and strict supervision of organizations and activists of the extreme left', the National Union party's program says: 'We shall anchor in legislation more severe measures, including the cancellation of citizenship, against people like Uri Avnery, Leah Tsemel and refuseniks of all kinds, who are defaming the country abroad' ... The leader of the National Union party is Avigdor (Ivette) Liberman, a person brought up in the Bolshevik education system of Stalin and who has absorbed – as we can see – the racist and power-hungry attitudes of the red tyrant. He has come here when everything was ready, to a state that we have created (literally) with our blood, and now demands, no more no less, to cancel our citizenship. To be angry, because Liberman, together with National Religious leader Effi Eytam and some of the Likud leaders, is in the vanguard of the dirty column that is besieging Israeli democracy. Last week they succeeded in inducing the majority of the politicians in the General Election Committee to disqualify two Arab Knesset-members (Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara) and an Arab election list (Balad) from participating in the elections, expelling in practice 20% of Israel's citizens from the political arena ... Liberman's program shows clearly that something similar is happening now in our country. They started with the incitement against the Arab citizens and their expulsion from the political system. Now they speak of eliminating the 'extreme left'. Is there any doubt, that in the next stage they will demand the elimination of all the left, 'moderate' and 'patriotic' as they may be? And then, following the historic precedents, it will be the turn of the "liberal" Likud members. An apocalyptic vision? Not really. The President of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, this week compared our situation with Nazi Germany. In the presence of the President of Israel, the Chief Justice, himself a Holocaust survivor, said that 'if it has happened in the country of Kant and Beethoven, it can happen everywhere. If we do not defend democracy, democracy will not defend us!' (It will be interesting to see how he will conduct himself next week, when he will have to decide on the Tibi-Beshara expulsion case.) In Israel, we don't like to make comparisons with the dark regimes. The memories are too fresh, and nobody in Israel advocates genocide. But undoubtedly, parties and leaders who openly advocate 'transfer', would have been called anywhere else in the world Neo-Fascists ... For 54 years, the State of Israel has prided itself of being 'the only democracy in the Middle East'. All Israeli propaganda abroad, and especially in the United States, is based on this slogan. Now Liberman and the Libermen come and try to destroy Israeli democracy, our creation, and to set up a kind of Fascistan, somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Palestinians Under 35 Banned From Israel,
Las Vegas Sun (from Associated Press), January 07, 2003
"Israel banned Palestinians younger than 35 from entering the country to work Tuesday, even if they have permits, the latest punitive measure after a double Palestinian suicide bombing in Tel Aviv killed 22 bystanders. Israel also drew complaints from Britain by banning Palestinian negotiators from attending a London session planned for discussing reform in the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli government has said it would close three Palestinian universities in response to the attacks, but took no action Tuesday ... On Tuesday, Israel further tightened restrictions, saying only Palestinian workers age 35 and over could enter Israel, the military said. Before the current conflict erupted in September 2000, more than 100,000 Palestinian workers crossed into Israel every day, providing a key source of income for the West Bank and Gaza. When the fighting began, Israel at first banned all Palestinians from entering for security reasons, saying that would keep attackers out of the country. Now, only about 25,000 workers and 8,000 merchants have permits to enter, said Ophir Chacham, spokesman for Israeli military administration. The new ban meant that most workers with permits would be idled. Early Wednesday, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian taxi driver near the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, witnesses said. They said the man was watching Israeli tanks moving through the area when he was shot. The Israeli military had no immediate comment."

No 'Jewish character' in Nazareth,
by Odai Basharat, Ha'aretz (Israel), January 10, 2002
"What's new is that since 1992, since the establishment of the Rabin government, an unprecedented delegitimization campaign has been waged against the country's Arab population. The prime minister's reliance on Arab MKs in the establishment of his government cost him his life. Israelis are prepared to accept Arabs as citizens, even as ones who have equal rights, but they are not willing to accept them as citizens who wield genuine influence which can determine the course of major issues facing the state. In this respect, the Jewish character of the state is vigilantly protected. And since it cannot be acknowledged explicitly that Arabs have no right to fashion the state's policies, heavy-handed hints are thrown out here and there, such as the call for a 'clear majority' which was heard in 1999 when there was discussion about a national referendum concerning the fate of the Golan Heights, and the goal was really to nullify any impact made by Israel's Arab population. Not only the right objected vehemently to the 'impudence' of Arabs who sought to influence Israel's national agenda. What is called the 'left' accepted, at least tacitly, this prohibition against Arab influence. Among members of Israel's 'left,' calls were heard favoring the rule of a Jewish majority on issues of national import. The Central Elections Committee's disqualification of Knesset members Tibi and Bishara, and the latter's Balad party, has only one goal: to minimize the Arab population's political clout. We will struggle against this effort, because our future is at stake; and all of Israel's democratic forces should join this campaign, because what begins with Arabs could end in places that cannot be foreseen."

Interview of Ilan Pappe,
Samizdat, February 5, 2003
[IN FRENCH: Free translation]

A Challenge To Israel's Nuclear Blind Spot,
Washington Post, March 11, 2002
"No matter the subject, Israelis love to debate. On any given day, you can hear a nation of self-styled pundits engaged in ferocious discussion, often at high volume. All topics, from the political to the personal, are fair game. All except one: the nuclear weapons that Israel possesses but refuses to acknowledge. A thick canopy of ambiguity shrouds Israel's nuclear program, held in place by legal restrictions that generally prohibit the disclosure of state secrets -- including public discussion of Israel's nuclear weapons. The only way journalists and academics have been able to address the issue is by attributing any facts to 'foreign sources' -- a device that allows Israel to pretend it is keeping the world guessing about its nuclear capability. This deliberate policy of obfuscation is called 'nuclear opacity.' This week that policy will be challenged -- not by some foreign enemy of Israel, but by one of its own. Avner Cohen is an Israeli scholar who has been living in the United States for three years because he fears arrest for publishing a political history of Israel's nuclear weapons program. Today, he plans to leave his home in Takoma Park and fly back to Tel Aviv, where he intends to confront the powerful defense establishment in the name of academic freedom. There is a surreal aspect to this, because the broad facts of the matter are widely known. Israel constructed its first nuclear device on the eve of the 1967 Middle East War, and now, according to CIA estimates, has between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or any other accord that would require it to account for the nuclear material it produces at its Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert. And yet, publicly, Israel will only say that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East ... Avner Cohen wants to discuss that policy of opacity in public. Cohen hasn't been back to Israel since 1998, when his book about the political history of Israel's nuclear bomb program was published in the United States without the approval of the Israeli censor. The book, 'Israel and the Bomb,' includes no technical or operational details about Israel's nuclear arsenal, only a meticulously researched history of Israel's decision to go nuclear, based on declassified public documents and Cohen's interviews with key players in the effort. But the book doesn't attribute anything to 'foreign sources,' and angry Israeli defense officials have threatened in the press to prosecute Cohen if he ever returns home again."

[Is this what so many Jews have promised as Jewry's "mission to the world?"]
Israel unleashes its death squads,
Sunday Tasmanian, January 19, 2003
"Israeli death squads have been authorised to enter 'friendly' countries and assassinate opponents in a move that raises the prospect of political killings in Australia. Agents of the Israeli secret service Mossad have been given free rein to kill those deemed to be a threat to the Jewish state – wherever they are hiding. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has until now refused permission for assassinations on the home ground of allies, has reversed the policy as part of a more aggressive approach to terrorism. The move was revealed by former Mossad agents in a series of interviews with US news agency United Press International. It was later confirmed by US intelligence officials. They said the policy raised the potential for killings in countries with close ties to Israel, including the US, Britain and Australia ... A third source said Mr Sharon wanted 'greater operational maneuverability' for Mossad. Asked if that meant assassinations within allied countries, he said: 'It does' ... Israel has in the past sent hit squads to kill opponents in hostile countries such as Lebanon, and snatch squads have been used extensively throughout the world. Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina in 1960, taken to Israel and executed. In 1986, scientist Mordechai Vanunu was snatched in Rome and transported to Israel after revealing details of Israel's nuclear weapons program. He was sentenced to 18 years jail, only being released from solitary confinement in 1998. One of the few known cases of Mossad hitmen carrying out an assassination on friendly soil occurred on July 21, 1973, when a Mossad team shot dead Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi as he walked home from the cinema with his pregnant wife in the Norwegian ski resort of Lillehammer. The assassins apparently mistook Bouchikhi for Hassan Salameh, a PLO intelligence chief suspected of masterminding the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Gullow Gjeseth, who led a Norwegian Government inquiry into the shooting, said: 'This was much more than a murder. This was a violation of Norwegian sovereignty.' In January 1996, Israel paid undisclosed damages to Bouchikhi's family, but refused to admit responsibility for the killing. Mossad is thought to have struck again in October 1995, when the head of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, Fathi al-Shikai, was gunned down on the streets of Malta. The hit, though never formally claimed, had all the trademarks of the agency. A return to such killings is expected to raise concerns among Israel's Western allies. The assassinations are likely to be carried out by a unit of Mossad's secret Metsada department called the Kidon, a Hebrew word meaning 'bayonet'. The agents will have to answer to Mr Dagan, who has been described by a CIA agent as having a 'real killer instinct'. Officially, Israel has refused to confirm or deny the policy change." [Same story at London's Daily Telegraph and the Australian]

Israel Razes Dozens of Palestinian Shops in West Bank,
FoxNews, January 21, 2003
"Israeli forces staged the biggest demolition in the West Bank in years on Tuesday, destroying 62 shops in a Palestinian village. Also Tuesday, Israel's Supreme Court relaxed a ban on soldiers using Palestinians as 'human shields' or ordering Palestinians to knock on doors of Islamic militants' houses. Human rights advocates denounced the decision. In Gaza, Palestinians fired rockets at two Jewish settlements, damaging buildings but causing no casualties, settlers and the military said. In the village of Nazlat Issa, next to the West Bank border with Israel, seven bulldozers guarded by 300 soldiers destroyed shops and market stalls. Dozens of protesters threw stones at troops, who fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets. Other demonstrators chanted 'Down with the occupation.' Israel says the shops were built illegally. The mayor of the village accused Israel of waging war on the Palestinian economy. The 170-shop market in Nazlat Issa drew many Israeli customers before the outbreak of fighting in September 2000. The market is a main source of income for the village's 2,500 residents, said the mayor, Ziad Salem, adding that Israeli officials informed shop owners the market would be bulldozed. Israeli troops have demolished hundreds of Palestinian homes, many in the Gaza Strip, in the past 28 months of fighting. In Gaza alone, more than 5,700 Palestinians have been made homeless, according to Palestinian officials. Many of the buildings were razed in military offensives, with Israel saying the structures provided cover for Palestinian gunmen. Since July, Israel has also demolished dozens of homes of Palestinians involved in bombing and shooting attacks on Israelis. Human rights groups say the demolitions constitute collective punishment, while Israel says they are an important deterrent. In August, human rights groups had praised a Supreme Court injunction against Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as protection in raids on suspected Islamic militants. The court on Tuesday amended the ruling to say soldiers could use Palestinians if the Palestinians agree. There have been numerous Palestinian complaints about Israeli practices that endanger them, and while the military denies using Palestinians as human shields, journalists have documented the practice."

Photographers Say They Were Beaten by Israeli Police Men Claim They Were Threatened,
Editor and Pulbisher (from Associated Press), January 22, 2003
"Photographers for The Associated Press and the French news agency Agence France-Press (AFP) were beaten by two Israeli border policemen as the journalists tried to photograph troops driving quickly down the street Tuesday with two Palestinian teens clinging to the hood of their jeep. Nasser Ishtayeh, a Palestinian photographer for the AP, was not seriously injured, but he suffered bruises on one ear and the side of his face and visited a local clinic for examination. The AP complained to the Israeli army and demanded the incident be investigated and the soldiers punished. The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident. Ishtayeh, who has worked for the AP for nine years, had headed out with Jafar Ishtayeh, a photographer with AFP, to check out a report that youths were throwing stones at Israeli forces during a curfew. The Ishtayehs are distant relatives. Not far from the scene, the two saw a jeep driven by four Israeli paramilitary border policemen speeding down the road with two teenage Palestinian boys hanging from the hood of the vehicle, grabbing onto a protective metal grate in front of the windshield to keep from falling off. The two were not tied to the jeep in any way, Nasser Ishtayeh said. Ishtayeh said it appeared the policemen were using the boys as human shields against a group of about 20 stone-hurling youths about 550 yards down the road -- which would be a violation of Israeli military orders and a Supreme Court ban of the practice. The two journalists pulled to the side of the road, and standing beside an armored car clearly marked with 'TV' signs in thick tape, they tried to photograph the jeep, according to Nasser Ishtayeh. The policemen sped up to the two photographers, got out, and aimed their rifles at them before they could take any pictures. The Israelis beat the two men's faces with their fists, Ishtayeh said, and demanded to know if the two had taken any pictures of them. Nasser Ishtayeh said one policeman tightened the camera strap around his neck. 'We are here in Nablus, and we see you all the time,' the policeman said, according to Ishtayeh's account. 'If we see a picture of us published anywhere, we're going to kill you like this,' the soldier said, gesturing with his hand as if running a knife across his neck. Anne Gwynne, 65, a British woman spending three months in the West Bank with a pro-Palestinian activist group called the International Solidarity Movement, said she tried to help Ishtayeh and his colleague. 'I saw the soldiers kicking the photographers and beating them and shouting at them,' she said. "I tried to stop that. A soldier kicked and beat me with a rifle butt on my back. He was shouting, cursing.'"

Israel's New Policy of Terrorism on American Soil,
Etherzone
"A recent UPI report outlined Israel’s new policy of assassinating suspected terrorists on American soil. In other words, Israel is now going to officially carryout terrorism on U.S. soil. Isn’t that what murder is? As an American citizen you cannot murder, why should agents of a foreign government have any such right in your country? The UPI report read, 'Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, former Israeli intelligence officials told United Press International.' UPI claims to have verified this information with a dozen informants. The report goes on to say that Israel will go forward with this policy, 'even if it risks complications to Israel's bilateral relations.' Such a policy by Israel that has no regard for the national sovereignty of the United States requires a reevaluation of an existing allied relationship. It is a callous disregard for not only the laws of the United States, but also the security, safety, and rights of its citizens. What Israel terms as targeted assassinations is really the commencement of a low-grade war against its enemies. By carrying out acts of war on American soil, Israel will be committing acts of war against the United States. Bringing its war to America, Israel is endangering the lives of Americans, including American Jews. Surely, as Israel’s campaign of terror is carried out against its enemies, there will be retaliatory action in the United States by Islamic militants. Are synagogues and Jewish schools immune from such horror? They will likely be the first targets. While less than three percent of Americans are Jews, and respectively three percent are Muslims, do we want them battling it out in our streets? By proclaiming its license to kill on American soil, Israel places itself on the list of rogue nations diametrically opposed to the United States. Terrorism may be acceptable in the third world. It is not acceptable in the United States. This policy by definition is state sponsored terrorism. Maybe there should be weapons inspectors taking a look at Israel’s nuclear program next? How exactly do we determine the innocence of the murdered victims? Since Israel now has no regard for the nation where it murders perceived terrorists, it is safe to say that they would also have no regard for the nationality of the alleged terrorist. What if some of them are American citizens? Are we going to allow a foreign nation to murder U.S. citizens too? The UPI report also says, 'Israeli hit teams, which consist of units or squadrons of the Kidon, a sub-unit for Mossad's highly secret Metsada department, would stage the operations'. If Israeli hit teams are in place in the United States, what will prevent them from targeting U.S. officials that aren’t willing to send billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel? Far fetched, not really when we’re talking about a nation that is openly planning terrorism in the United States. Yes, openly, because a story this sensitive would have never leaked unless it was meant to be leaked. If Israel is going to have a policy of terrorism on U.S. soil then it is not only plausible that it will kill American citizens that it considers to be enemies, but it is also likely that they will attack American targets and try to blame it on the enemies of Israel. It’s bad enough that according to a PBS Transcript Senator Graham of the Select Committee On Intelligence said that classified evidence reveals that foreign governments were involved in the September 11th attacks. Now another nation is threatening to expand its terrorism to America."

The Zionist Hate Machine,
Indymedia

'Cloned baby' said to be in Israel,
BBC (UK), January 30, 2003
"The company which claims to have created the world's first cloned baby has said the child is well, and now living in Israel. The announcement triggered the collapse of a private legal hearing in the United States. Representatives of Clonaid told the court in Florida that the baby was in Israel and therefore outside the court's jurisdiction. In the absence of any DNA proof, many scientists have dismissed Clonaid's claim that a baby has been cloned. The company is funded by the French-based Raelian sect, which believes humans were cloned by aliens. The case against the company was brought by Miami lawyer Bernard Siegel, who argues that if Clonaid has actually created a cloned baby it should be taken into care for its own welfare. The court was told that Clonaid no longer had any contact with the parents of the baby, because continued ties with the family would lead to the child's identification and subsequent removal by the authorities. Clonaid's chief executive, Dr Brigitte Boisselier, testified under oath that the baby, named Eve, was living in Israel. Warning Dismissing the case on Wednesday, Circuit Judge John Frusciante warned Clonaid of the implications of cloning."

Academic Boycott: In Support of Paris VI,
by Tanya Reinhart [a professor of Linguistics in Tel Aviv],
Dissident Voice, January 29, 2003
"In April 2002, following the Israel's 'operation' in Jenin, first calls for institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities appeared in England and in France. The British petition called to freeze European Union contracts with Israeli university as long as Israel continues its present policy. What started as the individual voice of concerned academics, has become lately a formal resolution of a French university ... Bodies ranging from the Jewish Lobby, to conservative parties all came up with the standard anti-Semitism accusations.'"Several hundred protesters, including the philosophers Bernard Henri-Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut, a leading Paris politician, the Nazi-hunting lawyer Arno Klarsfeld and Roger Cukier, the president of the Jewish umbrella organisation CRIF, waved banners and chanted slogans outside the campus entrance' (Guardian Jan 7, 2003). Threats of potential consequences and budgetary cuts if the university does not retract its decision came from official governmental sources. Under this pressure a second discussion of the resolution was scheduled for this week. But Paris VI did sustain the pressure. In the board meeting on Monday January 27, 2003, the previous resolution was reconfirmed with an overwhelming majority. A similar resolution was subsequently approved by two other French universities in Grenoble and in Montpellier ... Most of the Israeli academics, just like their colleagues in France, supported the boycott of apartheid South Africa, which contributed to the end of apartheid. This means that they recognize boycott as a legitimate means for the international community to enforce a change, when serious breaches of moral and civil principles occur. The question, then, is whether the analogy between Israel and South Africa's apartheid is correct. I believe that even much before its present atrocities, Israel has followed the South-African Apartheid model. Behind the smokescreen of the Oslo 'Peace process', Israel has been pushing the Palestinians in the occupied territories into smaller and smaller isolated enclaves-- a direct copy of the Bantustans model. Unlike South Africa, however, Israel has managed so far to sell its policy as a big compromise for peace. Aided by a battalion of cooperating 'peace-camp' intellectuals, they managed to convince the world that it is possible to establish a Palestinians state without land-reserves, without water, without a glimpse of a chance of economic independence, in isolated ghettos surrounded by fences, settlements, bypass roads and Israeli army posts -- a virtual state which serves one purpose: separation (Apartheid). But what Israel is doing under Sharon far exceeds the crimes of the South Africa's white regime. It has been taking the form of systematic ethnic cleansing, which South Africa never attempted. Since April last year (following the Jenin 'operation') we are witnessing the daily invisible killing of the sick and wounded being deprived of medical care, the weak who cannot survive in the new poverty conditions, and those who are bound to reach starvation. Since the US is backing Israel, and the European governments are silent, it is the moral right and duty of the people of the world to do whatever they can on their own to stop Israel and save the Palestinians. In fact, a boycott on Israeli institutions, economy and society is already taking place and growing: consumers boycott, tourism boycott, divestment movement in the US campuses, and cultural boycott."

The Attack On Liberty.In 1967, Israeli Forces Bombarded a U.S. Intelligence Ship, Killing 34 Americans and Leaving a Legacy of Suspicion, Washington Post, February 1, 2003; Page C01
"On June 8, 1967, in one of the periodic explosions of violence we've learned to expect in the Middle East, an American intelligence ship named the USS Liberty was attacked with rockets, cannon fire and torpedoes while in international waters off the town of El Arish in the Sinai desert. Thirty-four Americans were killed and 171 injured in what would remain the largest post-World War II loss of U.S. lives in the Middle East until the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983. But unlike that latter attack, or the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the suicide bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden, Yemen, which killed 17 less than three years ago, the attack on the Liberty was not made by terrorist bombs but by the jet fighters and torpedo boats of the nation of Israel. The attack on the Liberty has never been fully explained. Official reports by both the Israelis and the U.S. Navy declared it accidental: 'a case of mistaken identity' during the Six-Day War. But today, dozens of Web sites still argue one side or another, and they're multiplying ... The attack on the Liberty was not simply a case of a single bomb going astray. According to those who survived, it continued for nearly two hours. It involved rocket and napalm attacks by multiple flights of Israeli jet fighters, a simultaneous torpedo attack by three vessels of the Israeli navy and the machine-gunning of lifeboats tossed overboard as the Liberty survivors prepared to abandon their wounded ship. Last month, during a program on the Liberty at the Middle East Institute here, Parker said those on record as believing that the Israeli attack was deliberate include former secretary of state Dean Rusk, former CIA chief Richard Helms, Adm. Thomas Moorer (a former chief of naval operations) and a host of former directors of the National Security Agency, as well as then-President Lyndon B. Johnson ... Meanwhile a BBC documentary last June presented documents purporting to link the attack and its subsequent coverup to a mysterious covert operation the United States and Israel planned against Egypt, complete with nuclear weapons. As the United States prepares for war in Iraq, the attack on the Liberty looms like a specte ... "They tried to kill all the witnesses,' Phil Tourney, president of the Liberty Veterans Association, said recently. 'They didn't want any one of us left alive.' The official reports have been repeatedly rejected as insufficient by Liberty survivors and a sizable group of historians and scholars, who contend that the Israeli attack was deliberate. It was intended, many say, to erase the Liberty before its electronic eavesdropping could discover events Israel was anxious the world not know. They say as well that a coverup (if not a conspiracy) has kept the truth about the incident from the American public for more than 35 years. They point to crucial NSA intercepts of Israeli radio signals known to have been made during the attack -- intercepts that remain classified by the U.S. government in the name of national security. That restriction has already lasted more than a decade longer than the one that cloaked 'Ultra' -- the most crucial and tightly held code-breaking operation of World War II. 'There has never been a real investigation,' says James Bamford, author of 'Body of Secrets,' a critically praised 2001 investigative history of the NSA that includes perhaps the most concise documented account of the attack on the Liberty. Disinformation was a major strategy employed by the Israelis in the Six-Day War from the beginning, he says, and the U.S. government, preoccupied at the time with the Vietnam War and the Cold War, chose to avoid looking closely at what happened to the Liberty. 'An investigation is what we did after the Cole bombing when we sent agents to Aden, or after the bombings at the embassies in Africa, when we sent agents there to find who was responsible,' Bamford says. 'Nobody was ever sent to Israel to ask questions about the Liberty. We just took the Israelis' word for what happened.' A Navy court of inquiry, Bamford says, 'concerned itself with the ship's response to the attack. They never even questioned most of the survivors about why all those Americans died. And neither has Congress to this day.' And unlike the two U.S. pilots who face possible court-martial for the 'friendly fire' bombing of Canadian troops last year in Afghanistan, no Israeli has ever been tried or reprimanded for the 205 U.S. casualties on the Liberty ... Bamford, who clearly won the cooperation of many at the NSA in writing 'Body of Secrets,' points out that a special public law exempts the NSA from the Freedom of Information Act so that only Congress or the White House has access to what's classified there. At the Johnson library, tape recordings of LBJ's phone calls and office meetings are slowly being declassified, but it will be more than a year before archivists deal with those of June 1967. There is no certainty even then that anything dealing with the Liberty will come to light. But as debate continues about the U.S. role in the Middle East, a growing chorus of voices is asking why an incident as central to our current involvement in the region as the attack on the Liberty continues to be shrouded for 'national security' after so many years."

Profile. Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky Israel's great dissembler,
Redress, March 12, 2001
"We have chosen to profile Anatoly Sharansky, the Israeli deputy prime minister and leader of Yisra'el Ba'aliyah, the Russian immigrants' party in Israel, because he encapsulates the paradox of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel, a paradox that is the hallmark of Zionists throughout the world. That is, how can a people that has suffered so much over the ages, from pogroms in Europe to Nazi genocide, emulate their historical oppressors and be so lacking in empathy with their victims, the Palestinian Arabs? ... In 1973 he applied for an exit visa to Israel, but, like all Soviet citizens who had worked in the military-industrial complex, he was refused on security grounds. He then became involved in an Israeli-sponsored worldwide campaign to put pressure on the Kremlin to give special treatment to Soviet Jewish citizens by allowing them to emigrate to Israel, irrespective of whether or not they had worked in the defence sector. In 1977 he was arrested on suspicion of spying for the US, and in the following year he was found guilty as charged and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment. He was released in 1986 in a US-Soviet spy exchange. Prior to his emigration to Israel, Sharansky liked to portray himself as a symbol of the struggle for human rights, and since then he has made much of his status as a former 'victim of totalitarian oppression'. However, his belief in human rights, nurtured at the height of the Cold War, appears to have been heavily tainted with the culture of the Soviet-American power struggle, which justified the cynical use of practically anything as ammunition in the superpower rivalry for global dominance. Unlike most of us, Sharansky apparently does not believe that human rights are universal and indivisible, that is, applicable to all human beings everywhere and irrespective of their race, colour or creed. Not only does he oppose any Israeli concessions that may eventually lead to the realization of the Palestinians' right to self determination, but he advocates policies that could only mean the dispossession of more Palestinians living in Israel, and the illegally occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. No wonder that he was one of the very few people to have amicable relations with the former ultra right-wing prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. Sharansky began his political career in Israel by becoming head of the Zionist Forum, an organization dedicated to lobbying on behalf of Soviet immigrants. However, not content with being a mere 'welfare worker', in 1995 he founded the Yisra'el Ba'aliyah party, with the immediate aim of bringing in another million Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and of encouraging a further million Jewish citizens of the United States and the European countries to immigrate to Israel. For him, the value of peace with the Palestinians is measured solely by the extent to which it would work towards achieving the overriding goal of encouraging Jewish citizens of other states to immigrate to Israel."

Israeli Repression and the Language of Liars,
by Tim Wise, AlterNet, May 8, 2002
"[T]he term is repeatedly used to describe Israel – as in 'the only democracy in the Middle East.' This, despite the fact that Israel has no constitution; despite the fact that Israel is defined as the state of the Jewish people, providing special rights and privileges to anyone in the world who is Jewish and seeks to live there, over and above longtime Arab residents. This, despite the fact that Israel bars any candidate from holding office who thinks the country should be a secular, democratic state with equal rights for all. This, despite the fact that non-Jews are restricted in terms of how much land they can own, and in which places they can own land at all, thanks to laws granting preferential treatment to Jewish residents. This, despite that fact that even the Israeli Supreme Court has acknowledged the use of torture against suspected 'terrorists' and other 'enemies' of the Jewish state ... The Soviet Union also had elections, of a sort. And in those elections, most people could vote, though candidates who espoused an end to the communist system were barred from participation. Voters got to choose between communists. In Israel, voters get to choose between Zionists. In the former case, we recognize such truncated freedom as authoritarianism. In the latter case, we call it democracy ... If what we see in Israel is indeed democracy, then what does fascism look like? I’m sorry, but I am over it. As a Jew, I am over it. And if my language seems too harsh here, that’s tough. Because it’s nothing compared to the sickening things said by Israeli leaders throughout the years ... [I]n my Hebrew School, where we were taught that Jews were to be 'a light unto the nations,' instead of this dim bulb, this flickering nightlight, this barely visible spark whose radiance is only sufficient to make visible the death-rattle of the more noble aspects of the Jewish tradition. Unless we who are Jews insist on a return to honest language, and an end to the hijacking of our culture and faith by madmen, racists and liars, I fear that the light may be extinguished forever."

Auto-Emancipation,
by Leon Pinsker, 1882
(Influential early Zionist work)

Israeli officer tried for sabotaging raid,
Guardian (UK), February 3, 2003
"An Israeli military intelligence officer has been court-martialled for refusing to obey an order he said targeted innocent Palestinians in retaliation for a suicide bombing, and was therefore illegal. The trial of the officer, who has been identified only as Lieutenant A, has divided the prestigious intelligence corps unit 8200. The officer was accused of deliberately withholding military intelligence needed to plan an air force attack on a Fatah office in the West Bank city of Nablus. The military high command ordered the assault in the wake of dual suicide bombings in Tel Aviv last month that claimed 23 lives. The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv quoted colleagues of the lieutenant as saying he became suspicious about the order when he was asked to identify a building and find out how many people were likely to be in it at the time of the attack. It is more usual for intelligence officers to be asked to identify specific individuals the army wants to target and their whereabouts. The newspaper said that the officer took this to mean that the Israeli military intended 'to cause random casualties, and he balked at the order'. He continued to hold back intelligence at his disposal because he feared that the operation 'would lead to the death of innocent Palestinians', the newspaper added. Without the intelligence, the raid was abandoned. Lieutenant A was court-martialled by his unit commander. He argued in his defence that the order was illegal because it was primarily aimed at killing Palestinian civilians, not known fighters. The unit commander rejected the plea, dismissed Lieutenant A from the intelligence service and transferred him to low-level administrative work. But the case has divided the Israeli military. Senior officers said the young officer should have expressed his concerns to a superior officer, not unilaterally withheld intelligence and foiled the mission. The unit's commanders have also argued that it is not for intelligence officers to determine what is legal. They are merely obliged to provide the information; the decision on how to use it lies with combat units on the ground. But junior officers pointed to a law enacted after the Kafr Kassem massacre of 47 Arabs by Israeli border policemen in 1956. 'We are taught that law says it is illegal to kill except in very specific circumstances. This case is being widely talked about in the army now and there's a lot of people who think he was right to do what he did,' said one officer. 'You do not have to be the triggerman to be guilty of a crimr' ... In December, Israel's high court rejected a claim by eight reserve soldiers that they were not obliged to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. The eight argued that it would be illegal for them to obey orders that maintain 'a system which consists entirely of collective punishment of a civilian population'".

IDF kills teen in Nablus; Gaza woman dies in demolished home,
Ha'aretz (Israel), February 6, 2003
"IDF forces Wednesday demolished the home of a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and his 65-year-old stepmother was crushed to death inside after apparently failing to hear warnings to leave the premises, Palestinian security officials said. In the West Bank, troops killed a Palestinian policeman in a raid on his base in Qalqilya. Witnesses said the man was shot as he and others fled. According to Israeli military sources, he had refused orders to halt ... Palestinian security officials said the family home of Baha Saeed, a militant from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, was blown up by the IDF, and that the body of Saeed's step-mother Kamila, 65, was found under the debris. She had apparently not heard IDF warnings to leave. 'She was partly deaf and apparently she was not aware of what was happening,' said Khaled Saeed, one of Kamla's stepsons. 'Israeli troops were acting in a brutal way, they got us all out of the house so fast and in an aggressive manner, they gave no chance for us to see who was out and who was in,' he said, adding that three of his brothers were detained by troops."

Belgium Appeals Court rules Sharon can be tried for genocide. FM Netanyahu recalls ambassador from Belgium for consultations, Ha'aretz (Israel), February 12, 2003
"Benjamin Netanyahu recalled Israel's ambassador from Brussels, Yehudi Kinar, for consultations in response to a 'scandalous' ruling by Belgium's supreme appeals court Wednesday that a genocide lawsuit against Ariel Sharon could go ahead once he no longer enjoyed immunity as prime minister. The supreme court also said investigations could proceed against former IDF division head Amos Yaron, who does not have the same immunity as Sharon. Yaron, director-general of the Ministry of Defense, was the only other one named in the original complaint filed with Belgian prosecutors two years ago. 'This decision is scandalous, and it legitimizes terror and damages those who fight terrorism,' Netanyahu said in a statement. 'Belgium is hurting not only Israel but the entire free world, and Israel will respond to it very severely' ... Danny Shek, a senior official from Israel's Foreign Ministry, who attended the court hearing, said that the court proceedings cast 'a shadow on the relations between Belgium and Israel in the past year and a half.' The supreme court ruling opened the way for survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees to press their case against the prime minister. The Palestinians had appealed against a lower court ruling last June that Sharon could not be prosecuted for the massacre in the Sabra and Chatilla camps in Beirut because he was not in Belgium. The plaintiffs are using a Belgian human rights law that claims universal jurisdiction allowing the country's courts to try crimes against humanity and genocide, no matter where they were committed."

Sharon Faces Belgian Trial After Term Ends,
New York Times, February 13, 2003
"Israeli officials reacted with outrage today to a decision by Belgium's highest court that Belgium could try Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for war crimes once he leaves office. Benjamin Netanyahu, the foreign minister, lashed out at the decision as 'an affront to truth, justice, and the right of the state of Israel to defend itself against terrorism.' 'We in Israel and the Jewish people as a whole have had enough of blood libels on the soil of Europe, and we are going to fight this one with everything we have,' he said. Israel recalled its ambassador for consultations, while Mr. Netanyahu summoned Belgium's ambassador for a dressing-down. Israeli officials said that ambassador replied that he was not authorized to speak about the matter. Human rights group were delighted by the court's decision. They hailed it as permitting victims of genocide and war crimes to pursue justice regardless of where in the world the crimes were perpetrated. The Israeli case is one of many pending in Belgium that involve violations of human rights. Mr. Sharon and a senior official in the defense ministry, Amos Yaron, are being sued by survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon by Lebanese Christian militiamen, who were backed by invading Israeli forces. Mr. Sharon was defense minister at the time of the massacre, in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. An Israeli commission later held Mr. Sharon indirectly responsible. He resigned his post but was not prosecuted ... Other Israeli officials were equally harsh. The justice minister, Meir Sheetrit, referred to Belgium as 'this small and insignificant nation,' wondering how it could present itself as 'the judge for the whole world.' Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, dispatched a severe letter to Belgium's king. Mr. Sharon remained silent today about the matter. Several Israeli officials said that Israel might work to block new Belgian efforts to increase American investment."

Shin Bet grabs laptop from Palestinian's U.S. lawyer,
Haaretz (Israel), February 19, 2003
"An American lawyer in Israel to collect testimony from Palestinians in a case against the Israeli government, had his personal computer confiscated yesterday at Ben-Gurion International Airport by members of the Shin Bet security service. The attorney, Stanley Cohen, represents U.S. citizens of Palestinian origin in claims submitted in American courts against the Israeli government. Cohen has spent the past two weeks gathering evidence in the territories for the purpose of submitting the material to a federal court in Washington. The court will be hearing a claim submitted by Cohen and a group of lawyers on behalf of 19 American Palestinians against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and members of the outgoing cabinet, Israel Defense Forces officers, U.S. President George W. Bush and American weapons manufacturers that supply arms to the IDF ... Cohen, a 48-year-old American Jew, made a name for himself in 1995, when he represented Hamas leader Mussa Abu Marzuk who was facing an Israeli extradition request. The extradition request was rejected and Abu Marzuk was released following 22 months in detention in the United States ... [Cohen said:] 'This is a critical blow to attorney-client relations and I advise the Israeli authorities not to make any use of the data in the computer against my clients. I intend to add myself to the claim I filed in Washington on behalf of the Palestinians.'"

[Walt Disney, declared by the Jewish community to have been an "anti-Semite," is probably rolling over in his grave because of what the Disney "world" has become" from Disney's Jewish CEO, Michael Eisner, on down.]
Disney's Shamrock mulls $100 mln Israel fund,
Forbes, Feberuary 24, 2003
"Shamrock Holdings of California Inc, the investment arm of Disney heir Roy Disney, is examining the possibility of setting up a $100 million investment fund in Israel, a financial sector source said on Monday. The fund could eventually reach $250 million with part of the money coming from abroad, the source said, adding that Shamrock Chairman Stanley Gold was planning to meet Israeli institutional investors this week. Potential investors include insurers Migdal Insurance Holdings , which is controlled by Italy's Generali , and Israel's Phoenix Insurance ... . Shamrock's other main investments in Israel are mobile phone service provider Pelephone and Tadiran Communications."

rael Forms Hard-Line Government,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), February 26, 2003
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ended weeks of political bargaining Wednesday with an agreement establishing a coalition government dominated by fierce opponents of Palestinian statehood, clouding hopes for any peace initiative ... Sharon has already offered the foreign affairs portfolio to outgoing Finance Minister Silvan Shalom - a 45-year-old Likud stalwart with little diplomatic experience and aspirations of succeeding Sharon ... Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz kept his post in the new government. A proponent of the military crackdown on the Palestinians, Mofaz has said he would like to see Palestinian Yasser Arafat expelled. Right-wing firebrand Tzahi Hanegbi was named internal security minister. In 1980, Hanegbi received a six-month suspended sentence for leading a chain-wielding attack on Arab students at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, where he was student union chairman. Hanegbi has since expressed regret. Yisrael Katz, who is to become agriculture minister, was convicted in the same university attack. In addition to Sharon's 40-seat Likud faction, most of whose members are hawkish, the coalition includes the six-seat National Religious Party, a patron of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, and the seven-seat National Union, which has members who advocate pushing the Palestinians out of the West Bank. The coalition also includes the moderate Shinui Party, giving it a comfortable majority of 68 in the 120-seat Knesset. Shinui supports peace efforts in principle, but its leaders say the issue is moot for now and are instead focusing on a domestic agenda of reducing the influence of religion in Israel. The coalition's guidelines are not expected to include acceptance of the so-called "road map" to peace put forth by the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia, which calls for a Palestinian state and an end to Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank and Gaza. 'This means we don't have a road map any more,' said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat. He said he hoped President Bush would 'see the light' and press Israel for moderation."

[Jews again are apparently intent upon fulfilling stereotypes: they sue, sue, sue. Jewish lawyer culture -- towards self-aggrandizement and censorship -- runs amuck. There are Jews suing Iran for Palestinian violence against Jews in Israel, there are Jews suing the U.S. government for not having bombed Auschwitz, Jews suing the U.S.. Army for Holocaust-era complaints, and on and on.]
Israeli soldiers sue over film,
BBC, February 26, 2003
"Five Israeli reserve soldiers are suing an Israeli Arab film director they accuse of libelling troops who fought in the battle for the Jenin refugee camp. They accuse Mohammed Bakri of libellously portraying them and their comrades as war criminals in the film Jenin, Jenin, which was recently banned in Israel. Over eight days of fighting in April 2002, 53 Palestinian gunmen and civilians were killed along with 23 Israeli soldiers as they searched for militants. Speaking about his film, Mr Bakri has suggested that his critics are not prepared to accept his version of the 'truth'. The soldiers, who are also suing two Israeli cinemas which screened it after its October release, are claiming 2.5m shekels ($500,000) in damages. 'We received an emergency call-up order and went out to fight in order to defend our homes,' one of the reservists told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. 'We fought slowly, day after day, in order to avoid harming the civilian population. This film portrays us as war criminals' ... The cinemas which showed it before the ban are being sued for screening images of the soldiers without their permission."

The Great Wall of Denial,
by Gila Svirsky, Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel), February 28, 2003
"The lives of Palestinians in the occupied territories have been thoroughly disrupted since Sharon came to power, far more than under any preceding Israeli prime minister. The mystery, however, is not the reign of terror - this is no mystery under Sharon - but the indifference of Israeli citizens to that behavior. How is it possible that through two and a half years of increasingly cruel conduct of our army, the Israeli public has had almost nothing to say about soldiers... *** urinating on school computers and defecating on the rugs of homes they have garrisoned for use; *** accidentally demolishing the homes of innocent people that happen to be near the homes deliberately destroyed *** preventing the residents of entire cities from leaving their houses for weeks on end (no exceptions - not for chemo, dialysis, childbirth, buying food, attending school, or visiting your sick mother); *** damaging 27 Palestinian ambulances beyond repair and wounding 187 medical personnel [www.palestinercs.org] ; *** and assassinating people without the niceties of trial and due process, not to mention reckless shootings in which 126 innocent children aged 13 or younger (including 19 toddlers and infants aged 5 or younger!) have lost their lives [www.btselem.org]. Why, I am trying to understand, are we Israelis so blind to this brutality? Where are the expressions of revulsion by decent Israelis? Why don't the major newspapers report these heart-wrenching stories (not just the liberal and much smaller-circulation Ha'aretz)? Why didn't a single Jewish political party in the recent election criticize the government for its policy of collective punishment? Why are the brave young men and women who refuse to carry out these crimes disparaged in the media, while even Peace Now and the Meretz party don't come to their support? Why are only a handful of people willing to apply the label 'war crime' to the deeds of the army - deeds that merit this designation under any objective reading of the international instruments of law? The lack of outrage and compassion in Israel is difficult to understand. Is it a reflection of the fact that Israelis are uninformed? Or are they aware and indifferent? I believe that Israelis do know the truth. They know because some stories - the most poignant - do reach the media. A month ago, they saw a scene on Israeli TV of a young boy on crutches forced everyday to scale a muddy checkpoint wall to get to school. They know because they do reserve duty in the territories - or their family and friends do - and some even brag about the dirty tricks they saw or did. They know because some watch CNN, the BBC, or other foreign media, even when they dismiss these reports as anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic. But enough stories do get through for Israelis to know what is happening, to understand the brutal reality. So the question is, why is there indifference? ... Furthermore, innocent bystanders have been killed on our side, too, making it harder for Israelis to feel compassion for those they regard as supportive of the attacks. Nevertheless, the completely lopsided balance of power and suffering has not penetrated the consciousness of the Israeli public as a whole. The violence on both sides is reprehensible, but most Israelis behave as if only our people are its victims them, are the perpetrators of the crimes. Third, much blame goes to our political and rabbinical leaders who engage in fear mongering and dehumanization of the other. Racism is rampant in Israel, from popular Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who called all Arabs 'snakes', to President Katsav who told a group of bar-mitzvah boys, 'The Palestinians don't behave as if they come from the same planet as we do.' The National Union Party, a member of Sharon's new government, openly advocates ethnic cleansing - the 'transfer', as they call it, of all Arabs from Israel and the territories. Is it any wonder that so few pay attention to the suffering of those who have been devalued and dehumanized? Meanwhile, our military leaders repeat the mantra that 'The IDF is the most moral army in the world.' There may be many more reasons for Israeli indifference. Eitan Felner, former Director of the B'Tselem human rights organization, referred to Israel's behavior as typical of an adult who has been abused as a child and consequently becomes an abusive adult, just as Jews were abused in Europe and now take it out on others [NY Times, date?]. Many Israelis believe they hold exclusive rights to the category 'Suffering Victims', and are unable to view themselves as having inflicted suffering and victimhood on others. But the important question is, how do we penetrate the numbness of Israelis, soldiers and civilians alike, about the wrongness of our actions - wrong morally and stupid strategically. As virtually everyone has recognized by now, the brutal policies only create more bitterness and desire for revenge. How do we get the message across to Israelis that the government is undermining our security in the territories with each act of humiliation and cruelty? How do we convey to Israelis that we are behaving in some ways like the persecutors of Jews have behaved from time immemorial? Israeli peace and human rights activists have been wracking our brains over how to accomplish this."

An End to the Israel Experiment? Unmaking a Grievous Error,
by Kirkpatrick Sale, CounterPunch, March 3, 2003
"Now that Ariel Sharon has been returned to power and his regime endorsed in its brutal occupation of Palestine, it seems to me that the time has come to ask whether the 50-year-old experiment known as the state of Israel has proven to be a failure and should be abandoned. Two things seem abundantly clear from the long months of multi-ethnic carnage in the Middle East. The first is that Israel cannot live in peace with the Palestinians unless it finally establishes a dictatorial apartheid rule and confines them in Arab bantustans. The second is that the Palestinians will not live in peace with Israel, not even if they achieve their promised statehood, for they share the deep, decades-old hostility to the Jewish state that has not abated but increased throughout the Arab world in recent years. We may disregard as hollow the rhetoric claiming that Israel would be accepted if it was confined to its pre-1967 borders, which is something that it will not do, anyway. With the Likud electoral victory, we can expect, even if eventually some American-brokered peace plan is nominally agreed upon, that Israel will fortify its borders, continue occupying Palestinian territory at will, bolster its support for West Bank settlements, and keep on using military retaliation for any Palestinian acts of sabotage or terror. And that Palestine, though most of its armed organizations will have been decimated, will be unable or unwilling to stop such acts, including suicide bombing, newly fueled by the hatred stemming from the present Israeli occupation. Israel will win this little war against the intifada, and Palestine will be effectively disembowled, but there will not be peace. In fact, there is guaranteed to be more violence. And there will continue to be violence as long as Israel exists amidst a population that for the most part abhors, and in only a few quarters tolerates, its presence. We all understand the reason for Israel's existence in the first place. Guilt, and reparation. But was it not a certain recipe for unrest and disorder to forcibly establish a Jewish homeland in the Middle East and, in effect, put down 2 million Jews in the middle of 200 million Arabs? What would have happened if it was decided in 1948 that 2 million African-Americans should be returned to, say, a partitioned Ghana, supported by an annual $6 billion in aid from the American government? Or, perhaps more to the point, if those African-Americans, who arguably deserve reparation of some kind, were established in that part of the Middle East, approximating the present borders of Israel, that their African ancestors settled from about 100,000 years ago on? Their claims of priority would vastly outrank any Biblical ones for the Jews, but it is hard to think that they would have been welcomed by the Arabs there, and tolerated only if they had superior military power and the support of the U.S. Yes, I am arguing that the original idea of a Jewish state, from the Balfour Declaration on down, was a mistake, and to establish it in an Islamic Middle East essentially by force and with the emiseration of millions of natives was a tragic mistake. We are reaping the awful results of that error today."

Back Home Background / Vicious circle in the Gaza Strip,
Haaretz (Israel), March 4, 2003
"Overpopulated, underprivileged Gaza, the stepchild of Israel and the Palestinians alike, is presenting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new government with its first military policy challenge, a literally vicious circle of violence so inconclusive that it has raised an outcry among the very Israelis the policy was designed to protect. In the West Bank, there has been ongoing debate among Palestinians over the efficacy of mounting attacks in Israel proper. In the Gaza Strip, however, Palestinian rage over civilian casualties in IDF raids - estimated to constitute as much as 30 percent of total Palestinian casuaties in Gaza violence involving Israel - has kept support for Hamas gunners at fever pitch ... Increasingly, however, Sderot [an Israeli town] residents as well as military analysts are calling into question the wisdom of a strategy which has resulted in large numbers of Palestinian civilian deaths, bolstering the motivation of Hamas to launch new terror strikes ... Monday's IDF raid on a central Gaza refugee camp left eight Palestinians dead, among them a teenage boy and a pregnant woman who was killed when IDF engineers demolished the house of a militant who had lived next door, causing her house to collapse as well, crushing her to death. The funerals for the eight sparked furious demonstrations of support for Hamas and for new rocket attacks against Sderot ... Hamas, true to form, vowed fresh vengeance ... Gaza has long been a hotbed for Islamic fundamentalism. The more than one million Palestinians in the Strip live in a sector that is one of the most densely-populated areas on the face of the earth, with a birth rate to match."

[New bureaucratic forms of discrimination in Jewish Israel.]
Identity crisis. You can register as any of 132 nationalities on your ID card - except `Israeli',
Haaretz (Israel), March 5, 2003
"If anyone ever decided to collect all the identity cards ever issued by the Interior Ministry and study the various entries listed under the 'nationality' heading, they would be in for a surprise. They would find that Israel has citizens or permanent residents described - at least in their identity cards - as 'Assyrians' and 'Tatars.' They would find 'Senegalese,' 'Bolivians' and 'Canadians.' But as hard as they might try, they would not be able to find any identity cards in which the bearer is described as 'Israeli.' The Interior Ministry's list of possible nationalities offers 132 authorized options for registration of nationality on a ministry-issued identity card. The choices include over a hundred different countries, as well as a selection of ethnic groups and religions. One country not appearing on the list, however, is the State of Israel. The nationality entry appearing on identity cards was nullified two months ago by the Knesset; until then, most citizens of Israel were simply described as 'Jewish' ... The list remained secret. Having despaired of their direct entreaties to the ministry, several academics and public figures, all of whom belong to the association - petitioned the Tel Aviv District Court three weeks ago. They asked the court to instruct the Interior Ministry to disclose the list, as required by the Freedom of Information Law ... The reasons for the Interior Ministry's efforts to suppress the information may lie in nine categories that might be construed as somewhat out of the ordinary among the 132 nationality options. They refer to the registration of unclear cases: 'Not registered,' 'Transfer error,' 'Under investigation,' 'As yet unregistered,' 'Under examination,' 'No nationality,' 'Unknown,' 'Not known' and 'Undetermined.' The significance of each of these entries may be comprehensible only to ministry officials. In a few cases, the entry was chosen at the request of the bearer of the identity card (as in the case of atheists), but usually they indicate that in terms of the Interior Ministry, there is some problem or other with 'the Jewish identity' of the bearer of the card (improper conversion, missing documents, etc.)."

[Israel's keen strategy to end suicide bombings:]
World Bank criticises Israel. Many Palestinians live on $2 a day,
BBC (UK), March 5, 2003
"Israeli-imposed closures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are continuing to cause severe economic problems for Palestinians, according to a new report from the World Bank. It says more than half the Palestinian population is now living on less than two dollars a day and that only massive foreign aid is preventing full economic collapse. This is an attempt by the World Bank to quantify in facts and figures the enormous human suffering the conflict with Israel is causing the Palestinian people. 'I have less interest in apportioning blame, than looking at the consequences of the conflict,' Nigel Roberts, director of the World Bank in Gaza and the West Bank, told BBC News Online. The report indicates that the main cause has been Israel's closure of routes from Palestinian areas into Israel and the imposition of curfews and closures in Palestinian towns and villages ... [T]he Bank stresses that the actions of the Israeli Government are the key to the Palestinian economy ... Half the workforce is without a job and 60% - about two million people - live on less than $2 a day, compared with 21% before the intifada."

Background / Palestinians: Israelis 'deserved' Haifa bombing,
by Danny Rubinstein, Haaretz (Israel), March 6, 2003
"Satisfaction among Palestinians following the Wednesday's bus bombing in Haifa was much greater than after previous attacks. This was the impression received by a group of Palestinian journalists who carried out interviews in the West Bank and Gaza Strip ... Even senior Palestinian Authority officials, who condemned the attack, added that it was only to be expected considering Israel's 'daily slaughter,' as a spokesman for the PLO in Ramallah said. Palestinian sources gave details Wednesday on the overall number of Palestinian deaths during the intifada, and particularly the number killed over the last few days. According to data from Dr. Moussa Bargouti, one of the leaders of the National Party, and an activist for citizens' rights in Ramallah, some 85 percent of Palestinians killed since the start of the intifada were civilians. Other Palestinian sources said that since the last suicide bombing, on Jauary 6 in Tel Aviv's old central bus station, 156 Palestinians have been killed - including 17 children - and only 40 of them were armed. During the last few days, for example, a pregnant woman and a 75-year-old man were killed in the Gaza Strip, as well as a deaf youth in Tul Karm."

Israeli raid kills old man on donkey,
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), March 6, 2003
"A 75-year-old man is the latest in a growing number of Palestinian civilians to fall victim to Israel's crackdown in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Relatives said the man was shot while riding a donkey near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. His death came a day after an Israeli tank and helicopter raid on a Gaza refugee camp which killed eight people, including a pregnant woman and two youths. Nuha Maqadma, 38, a mother of 10, was crushed when her house collapsed as Israeli troops blew up a nearby building belonging to a political leader of the Hamas resistance movement ... [T]he apparent upsurge in civilian casualties is attracting criticism within Israel itself. On Tuesday the Ha'aretz newspaper reported that 25 of the 72 Palestinians killed by Israel in February were civilians, including three children under 10. A separate report suggested Israeli commanders were unwilling to authorise investigations into killings by their troops. This week the mounting wave of civilian casualties attracted rare criticism from the United States."

Foreign Ministry fumes over BBC report,
Jerusalem Post, March 6, 2003
"[Israeli[ Ministry officials were furious with the British Broadcasting Corporation after a BBC report cast doubt on the authenticity of an Israeli statement that said the suicide bomber in Wednesday's attack carried a letter linking the attack to the September 11 attacks. Foreign Ministry officials said it was unthinkable that the BBC should attribute ulterior motives to the Israeli and question their integrity when the BBC 'routinely accepts Palestinian lies.'"

Israeli Troops Raid Gaza Refugee Camp. Palestinian rescuers inspect a burned three-story building during the Israeli Incursion into the Jabalya refugee camp northern Gaza Strip,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), March 6, 2003
"Israeli troops hunting Islamic militants after a deadly suicide bombing stormed this refugee camp Thursday in a raid that left 11 Palestinians dead and 110 wounded. On Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, killing 14 Israelis and an American teenager. That attack and Israel's deadly incursion into Jabalya camp marked an escalation of violence in the volatile Mideast at a time when a U.S. offensive against Iraq appeared to be drawing closer. Eight of those killed in Jabalya, including three boys ages 12, 13 and 14, died in disputed circumstances. Palestinian witnesses said the eight were killed by an Israeli tank shell fired toward camp residents crowding around a burning building ... Doctors said tank shell shrapnel caused most of the injuries and that 29 of the 110 wounded were in serious condition - including 12 minors. A Reuters cameraman and photographer were among the wounded."

[Again and again and again: non-Jews are garbage in the Jewish state. Thank God for the only "democracy" in the Middle East. Israel is a racist hellhole. Period]
Gov't sells expired protective kits to foreign workers,
Haaretz (Israel), March 12, 2003
"The defense establishment is selling gas masks and atropin injections that have passed their expiry dates to foreign workers, according to a study conducted by Haaretz. The study revealed that the gas masks on sale to foreign workers were manufactured in 1982, whereas the gas masks distributed to Israeli citizens are from 1984 and later. The atropin injections for foreigners are from 1995, while Israelis are getting injections made in 1996 and later. Not only are the gas masks and injections outdated, and hence unfit for use, but the foreign workers are being made to pay NIS 200 for the kits. Half of this will be reimbursed when they return their kits, while the remainder of the sum will remain with the defense establishment. There are an estimated 200,000 foreign workers in Israel. The state ruled that these workers were not eligible for free gas-mask kits, but decided in January that the foreigners would be allowed to purchase kits at special distribution centers set up countrywide at Hamashbir Lazarchan branches and post offices. The foreign workers who showed up to buy kits were not told the masks they were buying were different from those distributed to Israelis, and were given no information about the expiry issue. In contrast, Israeli citizens have been instructed by the Home Front Command to replace masks manufactured prior to 1984 and atropin injections made before 1996. Each gas-mask kit comes with a 22-number bar code, with the third and fourth digits indicating the year of manufacture of the mask. The 13th and 14th digits denote the injection's production date. Foreign workers have said that their requests to replace kits purchased in the past with new ones were rejected, with the workers being required to pay the full sum for their new kits."

Photographs of Israeli atrocities

[Pulling the U.S. into war: Some things never change.]
USS LIBERTY SURVIVOR ANSWERS QUESTIONS AFTER VIEWING 'DEAD IN THE WATER',
by Delinda C. Hanley, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, p. 84, April 2003 [paper edition]
"The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) sponsored a sold-out showing of the BBC documentary 'USS LIBERTY Dead in the Water' on Feb. 22 at Visions Cinema in Washington, DC. Over 250 viewers from both the Arab-American community and the neighborhood joined LIBERTY survivors to watch this gripping film, a finalist in the Vancouver Film Festival, which is available from the AET Book Club for $30. During the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS LIBERTY, killing 34 Americans. 'Dead in the Water' presents startling new evidence that the Israeli attack was no accident, and that it very nearly caused World War III. The film provides convincing evidence that because the United States believed that the unmarked fighter jets that attacked the USS LIBERTY were Egyptian, a punishing U.S. response was only narrowly averted when fighter jets were recalled minutes from bombing Cairo. Israel, the film charges, meant to sink the LIBERTY and blame Egypt, to draw the United States into their 1967 war. That would have pulled in Russia, and a world-wide conflict could have ensued. In the question-and-answer session after the film, LIBERTY survivor John Hrankowski, fielded questions from an audience worried that, once again, Israel was drawing the U.S. into a conflict that could inspire World War III. One person asked Hrankowski how American reporters agreed to suppress the story at the time (even President Lyndon Johnson was shocked that the attack on an American ship was only on the last pages of THE NEW YORK TIMES!)." [To contact the LIBERTY Association write to PO Box 53347, Washington, DC 20009 or call (202) 222-0173]

American Teens Volunteer in Israeli Army,
Grand Forks Herald (Nebraska) (from Associated Press), Mar. 15, 2003
"When Omer Friedman told his parents he was leaving California to join the Israeli army for three years, they offered to buy the 18-year-old a new car if he reconsidered. The bribe didn't work. Friedman joined 19 other Americans in a volunteer program that brings American Jews to Israel for army service, and closer to a bloody conflict that has killed thousands in just 29 months. He could see combat as early as July ... Friedman's decision to leave the United States comes as many of his Israeli counterparts dream of escaping the Jewish state's stagnant economy, brutal conflict with the Palestinians and potential dangers associated with a U.S.-led war with Iraq ... More than 200 soldiers have been killed during 29 months of fighting, and several of them have been Israeli-Americans. More than 2,200 Palestinians have also been killed. Yeela Porat, 18, from Sunnyvale, Calif., scrapped college plans and her job at Starbucks to enlist in the Israeli army. Her fellow employees didn't understand why she would want to leave. 'They think it has to be political ... but it's not. It has to do with a feeling of where you belong, and you can't explain that to them,' said Porat, who was born in Israel but left as a child. More than 100,000 Americans live in Israel, holding dual citizenship. The volunteer program, which began four years ago, has brought dozens of Americans to the Israeli army ... Many say they'll stay in Israel after their service, but some are keeping their options open. Israel encourages Jews of all nationalities to immigrate. Yossi Nachemi left his family in Chicago for the Israeli army. For the 21-year-old, coming to Israel was a dream realized. He changed his name from Joe Osgood to the name his grandfather gave up decades ago, and signed up for the army. He initially hid his plans from his parents. 'I feel like I'm fighting not only for Israel, but for the Jewish people,' he said. Chen Bloom, 19, from Boston, said she often received strange looks from Israelis when she told them she'd volunteered. 'People say 'what were you thinking?'' she said, shrugging. 'I feel I'm making a difference.' Other acknowledge there's also the draw of adventure, and the urge to escape the boredom of suburbia."

WARNING VERY GRAPHIC: THE BLOODY REALITY THE "CONTROLLED MEDIA" WILL NEVER LET YOU SEE....AND THIS IS WHAT RACHEL CORRIE DIED FOR.....THIS WAS HER CAUSE!, GoOff, March 18, 2003

[This is pathetic. These Jews are hell-bent upon fulfilling the most sinister of stereotypes about Jews. In this case, even as Jews destroy the non-Jewish other, they're angling to their snug victim role -- with attendant financial reparations from the impoverished real sufferers. Time for a class action suit by Palestinians against Israel that has stolen their land -- and against the world-wide clan that has brought this monster to fruition. The Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people is unrelenting, omnipresent, total.]
Back Home. Their day in court,
Haaretz (Israel), March 21, 2003
"Hundreds of Israelis whose businesses have suffered because of the intifada are trying to sue the Palestinian Authority for damages. The courts are sympathetic and the money is there, but some legal experts believe the plaintiffs won't see a penny of it. 'Even though I hold left-wing views, I have no great love for the Palestinian Authority,' says Yoram Cohen, one of the owners of Moment Cafe in Jerusalem. Cohen is suing the PA for NIS 3.5 million for damages caused to the coffee house in a terrorist attack last March. Says Saeb Erekat, the PA's minister for self-government, 'Israelis who sue the PA are doing a very grave thing. They are trying to plunder the money of Palestinian children, poor people and the ill.' 'I was hurt, and at this stage I have to see to my own needs,' Cohen says. 'I don't want to be the patsy who suffers, and as far as I am concerned I don't care where the money comes from. I see myself getting money from the PA and not from some poor Palestinian toddler.' More than 200 people who were affected by terrorist attacks and about 100 companies have recently filed suits against the PA in Israeli courts. They are demanding a total of about NIS 2 billion for direct or indirect damage they have sustained as a result of the Palestinian terrorism of the past two and a half years. The Egged bus cooperative is demanding compensation of NIS 52 million for the buses that were blown up in suicide bombing attacks, 60 hotels are asking for NIS 150 million for business they have lost, 11 insurance companies want NIS 400 million for claims they have had to honor, Kenes (an organization that organizes conferences) is demanding NIS 25 million for canceled meetings, and Moment is seeking NIS 3.5 million. Thirty tour guides who have been rendered unemployed because of the drastic drop in tourism are soon to file suit, along with dozens of Jerusalem building contractors. Two weeks ago, 75 of those who were affected by the terrorist attack on the number 18 bus in Jerusalem in February 1996 filed a damage suit of NIS 545 million against the PA. So sweeping is the flood of suits that a law firm hired to file them has prepared a standard form for plaintiffs. Those who wish to join in need only add their names. And this is just the beginning."

In Israel, distress signals from Ethiopians,
By Ben Lynfield, The Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2002
"The gap between black and white Israelis seems, with some exceptions, to be growing. For Ethiopians, it is visible in impoverished neighborhoods, soaring unemployment, and the highest high-school dropout rate of any Jewish group in Israel. Twenty-six percent of Ethiopian youths have either dropped out or do not show up for classes most of the time, raising concerns that the community's current difficulties may become chronic. Drug use, including glue-sniffing, is on the rise, and criminal activity, hardly known among Ethiopians before they came to Israel, has been growing. Ethiopian Jews, who number just over 1 percent of the more than 6 million Israelis, arrived mostly in two waves: during the early 1980s and then in a dramatic US-backed airlift a decade ago. Most started almost from scratch in education and job skills. There were also cultural differences. 'In Ethiopia, children look down when their teacher talks,' Mr. Ishete says, in contrast to native Israeli children, who look their teachers right in the eye. For the Ethiopians, 95 percent of whom were subsistence farmers, the leap to 21st-century, first-world Israel was so enormous as to be hard to grasp, he adds. But not everyone is sympathetic. Israeli mayors unabashedly urge the government to keep Ethiopian immigrants away from their cities ... Asher Elias, a staff member at the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews (IAEJ) [says:] "Ethiopians have lots of motivation to become Israelis, but they are not accepted ... In jobs, in education, people feel they are discriminated against because they are black. I'm not saying it is right or wrong, but it is what we are feeling, and that is enough.' A low point in the relationship between Ethiopian Jews and Israelis came in 1996, when it was revealed that Israeli hospitals had thrown out all blood donated by Ethiopians. 'These were donations to help other Israelis,' Mr. Elias says. '[Ethiopians] said to each other: 'What do they think? That we are not humans?' 'Habad, one of Israel's stronger orthodox religious groups, doesn't recognize Ethiopians as Jews or allow their children into its kindergartens ... Israelis are developing a negative image of Ethiopians, warns Yair Tsaban, who was immigration minister during the second immigration wave. 'The absorption of the Ethiopians could be a source of pride for the country,' he says. 'But if the Ethiopian immigrants are associated with crime and violence in the minds of other Israelis, there can be alienation. People could ask 'Why have they been brought here?'"

Fingers on all the buttons. The world's best-known and most efficient 'secret' manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction is not Iraq, not even North Korea, but Israel,
Indexonline, January 3, 2003
"In September 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear site, revealed to the Sunday Times that the nuclear military programme based there had produced 'over 200' nuclear warheads. Days later he was tricked into flying to Rome where he was abducted by Mossad agents and secretly transported to Israel. In November 1986, he was tried in camera and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment, 14 of which were spent in solitary confinement. In 1999, in response to a petition from Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the government released about 40 per cent of the trial documents. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that Israel has the world's fifth largest stockpile of nuclear warheads (more than Britain, which it believes has 185). In February 2000, Knesset member Issam Mahoul said Israel had '200 to 300' nuclear weapons; in August of that year, the Federation of American Scientists said that Israel could have produced 'at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200'; the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates 200. Other sources, including Jane's Intelligence Review, estimate between 400 and 500 thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. What Dimona is to Israel's nuclear programme, the Israeli Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) at Nes Ziona is to its chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programme. The high-security facility is absent from aerial survey photographs and maps, on which it has been replaced by orange groves. Except for token visits to Dimona by a Norwegian team in 1961 and a US team in 1969, there has been no international scrutiny. Even the Knesset is denied access. However, the 1993 report by the Office of Technology Assessment for the US Congress states that Israel has 'undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities' and is 'generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme'. Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies states that Israel has conducted extensive research into gas warfare and is ready to produce biological weapons. According to an exhaustive study by Karel Knip, a Dutch journalist, the IIBR's work has included the synthesis of nerve gases such as tabun, sarin and VX. The October 1992 crash an of El Al cargo plane in Amsterdam that caused at least 47 deaths and caused hundreds of immediate and subsequent mysterious illnesses led to the disclosure in 1998 that flight LY1862 was carrying chemicals including 50 gallons of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) - enough to produce 594 pounds of sarin. The DMMP was supplied by Solkatronic Chemicals Inc of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and was destined for the IIBR. Avner Cohen has catalogued reported uses of biological weapons by Jewish forces during the 1948 war in Palestine. The Israeli historian Uri Milstein alleged that 'in many conquered Arab villages, the water supply was poisoned to prevent the inhabitants from coming back.' Milstein states that one of the largest of such covert operations caused the typhoid outbreak in Acre in May 1948. The Palestinian Arab Higher Committee reported in July 1948 that there was some evidence that Jewish forces were responsible for a cholera outbreak in Egypt in November 1947 and in Syrian villages near the Palestinian-Syrian border in February 1948. In May 1948, the Egyptian ministry of defence stated that four 'zionists' had been captured while trying to contaminate artesian wells in Gaza with 'a liquid which was discovered to contain germs of dysentery and typhoid'. In 1954, it was widely reported that defence minister Pinchas Lavon had proposed using BW for special operations. Cohen says: 'Israel has presumably employed biological or toxin weapons for special operations.' In 1955, Prime Minister Ben Gurion ordered the weaponisation and stockpiling of chemical weapons in case of a war with Egypt. Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky claims that lethal tests have been performed on Arab prisoners at the IIBR. There are allegations that Israel has used CBW on numerous occasions: Chemical defoliants used by the army against Palestinian lands, including Ain el-Beida in 1968, Araqba in 1972 and Mejdel Beni Fadil in 1978; Armed nuclear missiles in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars; Chemical weapons in the 1982 war on Lebanon, including hydrogen cyanide, nerve gas and phosphorus shells; In the 1980s lethal gases against Palestinian civilians and Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli Jewish prisoners."

Israel simply has no right to exist/ Peace might have a real chance without Israelis' biblical claims Special report: Israel and the Middle East,
by Faisal Bodi, The Guardian (UK), January 3, 2001
"Several years ago, I suggested in my students' union newspaper that Israel shouldn't exist. I also said the sympathy evoked by the Holocaust was a very handy cover for Israeli atrocities. Overnight I became public enemy number one. I was a Muslim fundamentalist, a Jew-hater, somebody who trivialised the memory of the most abominable act in history. My denouncers followed me, photographed me, and even put telephone calls through to my family telling them to expect a call from the grim reaper. Thankfully, my notoriety in Jewish circles has since waned to the extent that recently I gave an inter-faith lecture sponsored by the Leo Baeck College, even though my views have remained the same. Israel has no right to exist. I know it's a hugely unfashionable thing to say and one which, given the current parlous state of the peace process, some will also find irresponsible. But it's a fact that I have always considered central to any genuine peace formula. Certainly there is no moral case for the existence of Israel. Israel stands as the realisation of a biblical statement. Its raison d'être was famously delineated by former prime minister Golda Meir. 'This country exists as the accomplishment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be absurd to call its legitimacy into account.' That biblical promise is Israel's only claim to legitimacy. But whatever God meant when he promised Abraham that 'unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the Euphrates,' it is doubtful that he intended it to be used as an excuse to take by force and chicanery a land lawfully inhabited and owned by others. It does no good to anyone to brush this fact, uncomfortable as it might be, under the table ... By the time the UN accepted a resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947, Jews constituted 32% of the population and owned 5.6% of the land. By 1949, largely as a result of paramilitary organisations such as the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gang, Israel controlled 80% of Palestine and 770,000 non-Jews had been expelled from their country ... Far from being a force for liberation and safety after decades of suffering, the idea that Israel is some kind of religious birthright has only imprisoned Jews in a never-ending cycle of conflict. The 'promise' breeds an arrogance which institutionalises the inferiority of other peoples and generates atrocities against them with alarming regularity. It allows soldiers to defy their consciences and blast unarmed schoolchildren. It gives rise to legislation seeking to prevent the acquisition of territory by non-Jews. More crucially, the promise limits Israel's capacity to seek models of coexistence based on equality and the respect of human rights. A state based on so exclusivist a claim to legitimacy cannot but conceive of separation as a solution. But separation is not the same as lasting peace; it only pulls apart warring parties."

May 11, 2002 "Nobody Should Preach to Us Ethics, Nobody!" Israel, a Light unto Nations?,
By Kathleen Christison, Former CIA political analyst, Counterpunch, May 11, 2002
"In the never-ending propaganda show designed to depict Israel as a moral nation victimized by immoral terrorists and anti-Semites, CNN recently ran a film clip of the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin declaiming, as only he could, 'Nobody should preach to us ethics, nobody!' And, of course, few do. It's the general assumption among the vast majority of Americans that no on can preach ethics to Israel, that light unto nations. No nation is more ethical or more innocent--or so we are told. But I can't get something I recently saw off my mind. Every so often in the midst of a deluge of information something leaps out at you as unique--utterly electrifying, utterly horrifying, almost mind-altering in a way. One's senses become dulled after months, years, of reading about and seeing images on television of innocents dead from Palestinian terrorist attacks, of other innocents dead from Israeli tank or sniper fire, of cities and refugee camps devastated, in recent weeks of the entire civilian infrastructure of Palestinian society destroyed. But one searing article leapt out the other day that has stuck in my craw, and I cannot let go of it. In an article in the May 6 issue of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz entitled 'Someone Even Managed to Defecate into the Photocopier,' Amira Hass--an honest, courageous Israeli woman who has spent years living among Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza--described the scenes of destruction at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture left behind after Israeli military forces lifted their siege of the towns of Ramallah and its suburb al-Birah, where the ministry is located. Entering the building after its month-long occupation by an Israeli military unit, ministry officials, foreign cultural attaches, and reporters found a scene of grotesque vandalism. Equipment from the local radio and television station had been hurled from windows in the multi-story building, electronic equipment was destroyed or had been stolen, furniture was broken and piled up on heaps of papers, books, computer disks, and broken glass. Children's paintings had been destroyed. And then there was this, as described by Hass: 'There are two toilets on every floor, but the soldiers urinated and defecated everywhere else in the building, in several rooms of which they had lived for about a month. They did their business on the floors, in emptied flowerpots, even in drawers they had pulled out of desks. They defecated into plastic bags, and these were scattered in several places. Some of them had burst. Someone even managed to defecate into a photocopier. The soldiers urinated into empty mineral water bottles. These were scattered by the dozen in all the rooms of the building, in cardboard boxes, among the piles of rubbish and rubble, on desks, under desks, next to the furniture the soldiers had smashed, among the children's books that had been thrown down. Some of the bottles had opened and the yellow liquid had spilled and left its stain. It was especially difficult to enter two floors of the building because of the pungent stench of feces and urine. Soiled toilet paper was also scattered everywhere. In some of the rooms, not far from the heaps of feces and the toilet paper, remains of rotting food were scattered. In one corner, in the room in which someone had defecated into a drawer, full cartons of fruits and vegetables had been left behind. The toilets were left overflowing with bottles filled with urine, feces and toilet paper. Relative to other places, the soldiers did not leave behind them many sayings scrawled on the walls. Here and there were the candelabrum symbols of Israel, stars of David, praises for the Jerusalem Betar soccer team.' This is not a tale we are ever likely to see in the American press, so the vast majority of Americans who think with Menachem Begin that nobody can preach to Israel about ethics, that Israel's army is the only moral army in the world and always employs the doctrine of 'purity of arms,' will go on thinking that way. But I cannot. I am forced to ask some questions that that American majority will no doubt never hear: Can it, for instance, be called terrorism if an entire unit of the Israeli army forsakes purity of arms and spends a month crapping on floors, on piles of children's artwork, in desk drawers, on photocopiers? Is this self-defense, or 'rooting out the terrorist infrastructure'? Is it anti-Semitic to wonder what happened to the moral compass of a society that spawns a group of young men who will intermingle their own religious and national symbols with feces and urine, as if the drawings and the excrement both constitute valued autographs? Do they think Israeli shit is cleaner, holier than anyone else's? Why are my taxes paying for this army? How can Palestinians ever make peace in the face of filth and disrespect like this?"

The Secret Arsenal of the Israeli State,
MSNBC
"DIMONA: Once described as a 'textile factory,' the Dimona Center actually produces about 40 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium every year and has been doing so for 10 and possibly 20 years Israel has produced enough plutonium at Dimona to construct between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons ... Israel could [also] ... have as many as 35 thermo-nuclear weapons."

A-G's directive denies citizenship to Jews who converted in Israel
by Mazal Mualem, Haaretz (Israel), March 26, 2003
"People who move to Israel and convert here are no longer eligible to receive citizenship under the Law of Return, according to a new directive formulated by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein in December. The order, which was formulated in conjunction with the Interior Ministry's legal advisers, also denies citizenship under the Law of Return to anyone who resided in Israel illegally. Until now, people who converted here were eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return. The Interior Ministry said it has no data on how many such people received citizenship last year, but there have always been people who come here specifically for the purpose of converting, undergoing rigorous Orthodox conversion courses that culminate in conversion by the Orthodox rabbinate. The new directive was drafted in response to a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by a foreign worker who, after living here for several years, converted and then applied for citizenship under the Law of Return. In their response to the court, Rubinstein and the Interior Ministry said that over the last few years, many foreign workers, including illegal ones, have 'exploited' conversion as a tool with which to obtain Israeli citizenship."

Israelis Victims No Longer?,
CounterPunch, March 28, 2003
"When, after the wars of 1967 and 1973, Israel held onto conquered land (in defiance of U.N. resolutions) and continued to dispossess Palestinians, [Holocaust survivor Primo] Levi urged the Israelis not to use a 'sacred history of suffering' as the rationale for their 'tribal aggression'----a very different position to that taken by another Auschwitz survivor, Eli Wiesel. Through his writings and his witness to that terrible moment, Wiesel has earned iconic status as the quintessential moral man. However, his embrace of the temptation that Primo Levi spurned is seldom recognized. No matter how brutal Israeli actions become, Wiesel is silent or defensive, always reserving his sympathy for Jews. His public utterances reveal a chilling indifference to the plight of Palestinians. Last fall, even as the UN was trying to pave the way for peaceful disarmament, Wiesel was calling with pious insistence for war against Iraq. Historical amnesia allows him to forget that before the establishment of Israel, Arabs, unlike Europeans, were, on the whole, hospitable to their Jewish minorities. It is a stance that comes perilously close to the one satirized by the Israeli novelist Amos Oz in The Slopes of Lebanon: 'Our sufferings have granted us immunity papers, as it were, a moral carte blanche. We were victims and have suffered so much. Once a victim, always a victim, and victimhood entitles its owners to a moral exemption' ... Manipulation of the Holocaust has had, for many years, a distorting effect on US political discourse. A majority of American Jews and their cultural and political organizations continue to regard criticism of Israel as prima facie evidence of anti-Semitism. In May last year, writing in the New York Review of Books, Professor Tony Judt confronted the myth of 'the small victim community,' arguing that 'since 1967 Israel has changed in ways that render its traditional self--description absurd. It is now a colonial power, by some accounts the world's forth largest military...by comparison, Palestinians are weak.' Calling him Israel's 'dark id,' Judt warned that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has encouraged a contempt and cynicism towards Palestinians that will be 'hard to shake.' Israeli novelist and poet Yitzhak Laor paints an even bleaker picture. The 'fat, old, pork-eating hedonistic General' is how he describes Ariel Sharon -- seeing him as emblematic of both the corruption and the decline of democracy. Palestinians have been erased from Israeli consciousness and with the Left and the peace movement on the ropes Laor holds out little hope of the country transforming itself from within. 'Does anybody think that Israel is capable of getting itself out of this mess without help?' he asks. While the United States is the only country with the authority to rein in Sharon, it is unlikely to oblige now that powerful Zionists are shaping George Bush's policy in the Middle East -- and critics are too easily silenced when opposition to the Israeli government is equated with anti-Semitism."

In Israel: Netanyahu’s nephew victimised for refusing military service,
By Harvey Thompson, goOff.com, March 29, 2003
"Jonathan Ben-Artzi, a 20-year-old physics student, has served a total of 214 days in military imprisonment for refusing to fight in the Israeli army. He has now spent more time in prison—stretching seven sentences—than any other Israeli conscientious objector and was recently designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. What has made Ben-Artzi’s case especially sensitive for the Israeli authorities is that his uncle is the former prime minister and now Likud Finance Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu. Jonathan Ben-Artzi expanded on his case in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper on March 11. His account underlines the brutal and intimidating treatment handed out by the Israeli state against its own citizens who refuse to participate in its murderous offensive against the Palestinians ... Called up to the AIC on November 10 after completing his fourth sentence, Jonathan was not allowed to address the committee. According to his parents, Jonathan had prepared to read the following statement: 'According to Amnesty International, more than 50 children under the age of 12 have been killed by Israeli Army fire, during the first seven months of 2002 alone. You have not sentenced even one of the perpetrators of these crimes. But you’re sentencing me for the fifth time, just because I refuse to take part in such activities.'”

The soldier is evil, the soldier is Israel,
by Amira Hass, Haaretz (Israel), April 3, 2003
"Last Thursday, someone from the village of Salem, east of Nablus, called and said the soldiers had been holding 'hundreds of people - women, adults and children - for the past three hours' and were not allowing them to pass. Rifles held at an angle of 60 degrees and fingers on the trigger make the soldiers' intentions clear. It's almost standard practice, say residents of the three villages east of Nablus - Salem, Dir al-Khateb and Azmut: An IDF force positions itself at the foot of the hill of the new Askar refugee camp, alongside what was once a short asphalt road that reaches the three villages and is now a mess of mud and piles of torn-up tarmac. The force holds up people for no apparent reason, the residents say, from both directions - from the west, to Nablus, or from the east, from Nablus to the villages. The soldiers often force people to backtrack; and they frequently accompany their actions with offensive speech and insults. Some even use force. A military source was convinced that the directives are to check only that men between the ages of 16 and 40 have permits from the Civil Administration to move from the villages to Nablus and vice versa, and that there are no intentions to prevent women, the elderly and children from passing through the checkpoints. The reality on the ground is different: Without explanation and without any apparent checks, the soldiers do indeed hold these people up - for 10 minutes, or an hour or two, and more, all day, twice a day - men and women. This is the only thoroughfare for these three villages, and it's only for pedestrians (in fact, it's only for able-bodied pedestrians, as life-threatening danger lurks for anyone who has even a little difficulty walking). The sick and pregnant women also have to make the journey on foot, and go through a series of explanations and attempts to persuade the soldiers to allow them to continue to climb or wait for the ambulance that is slow to arrive. There is no commercial way of ferrying agricultural produce and food to and from the villages because there is no authorized thoroughfare for Palestinian vehicles - contrary, by the way, to an explicit promise made by the IDF to the High Court of Justice some two years ago in response to a petition against the closure policy submitted by an association of doctors: The IDF promised that every blocked and enclosed Palestinian community has a thoroughfare for direct vehicle traffic. In practice, most villages are blocked to rapid movement of emergency vehicles. The IDF is not honoring its promise to the High Court, and the soldiers are operating contrary to what their commanders are promising to the media. At most of the roadblocks that are manned by soldiers and include obstacles (mounds of dirt or ditches designed to prevent vehicular traffic), alongside which army patrols sometimes stop, the soldiers are adding to the institutionalized difficulty - the fruits of a policy from above - and are improvising insults and harassments of various kinds ... Even if the Palestinians are able to recognize the extraordinary 'good soldier,' even if only one soldier in every four is abusive, he is the one who determines what the day will be like. He is the one who is etched in memory. He is Israel."

[Sexual assault statistics from the Jewish homeland: "The Light unto the World."]
Aid centers: Most sexual assault victims in 2002 were minors; one-third were under 12,
by Ruth Sinai, Haaretz (Israel), April 8, 2003
"More than 2,300 girls and boys under the age of 12 were victims of sexual assault in the past year, constituting 30 percent of the new cases reported to the sexual assault aid centers. Almost 26 percent of the victims were 13 to 18 years old ... Forty percent of the sexual assaults were carried out in the victim's home. 'The home, of all places, which should be a safe, protective and supporting place, is where many of the horrors take place,' states the report. About half of the victims refrained from going to the police. The most prevalent attack - 26 percent of the new calls - was rape, including gang rape. About 16 percent of the callers complained about incest by fathers (6.5 percent), brothers (2.6 percent) or other relatives. Some 14 percent complained of indecent acts. About 30 percent of the 110 gang rape victims who called the Tel Aviv aid center were men. Out of 519 calls reporting non-gang rape to this center, 25 percent were men. Some 20 percent of the victims of indecent acts reported in Tel Aviv were men. 'The sexual assault of boys, male youths and men is a hushed-up crime, which is almost completely absent from discourse in Israeli society,' the report states. 'It does not occur to the victims that anyone would listen to their ordeal.' The centers operate a hotline and support groups, and accompany the victims during the criminal procedures ... According to the report, the largest group of victims - constituting 19 percent - were attacked by family relatives, 4.2 percent were attacked by a spouse, and 14 percent by a friend or acquaintance. Only 12 percent of the assaults were perpetrated by a complete stranger."

[In Israel, non-Jews -- indigenous Arabs and European, Asian, and African "immigrant workers" -- are treated like animals. This is the country U.S. soldiers are dying for in Iraq.]
'They kick the workers in the head until they bleed',
By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz (Israel), April 8, 2003
"'Approximately one thousand Bulgarian men are living under inhumane conditions on construction sites in Israel. They are beaten, prevented from seeking medical help, and in the past year, have been shot at along the Israel-Palestinian border while they worked. Their passports are collected as they step off the plane, and are returned to them two years later, when their contract expires.' These are the opening lines of an article appearing this week on the cover of '24 Hours' a widely distributed newspaper in Bulgaria. The article is based on the first-person account of a Bulgarian construction worker who worked in Israel until the fall of 2002. The worker, who spoke anonymously, had been recruited for work in Israel by Bacheisky, a company whose manager told the newspaper that he has sent over 2000 workers to Israel, and had never heard any complaints. Bacheisky is a local agent for Yitzhak Tsarfati of Rishon Letzion, who owns a company that supplies construction and manpower services in Israel. Despite his claim of never having heard complaints from workers sent to Israel, numerous complaints have been heard, although it seems as if everyone who has heard them prefers to remain silent: the workers are usually too scared to go to the police or to the support organizations; the contractors are satisfied with the disciplined workers, whose diligence and professionalism has gained the Bulgarians a sterling reputation; and the Israeli and Bulgarian diplomats prefer to know as little as possible, for their own reasons. Serious charges of kidnapping, imprisonment and beating of four workers were submitted to the police over two-and-a-half years ago, but the file has been gathering dust in the prosecutor's office. 'Our workers don't run away,' assures the headline in a brochure put out by Tsarfati, in which he also offers contractors $5,000 in compensation for every runaway. Tsarfati's workers have made a name for themselves. They do not run away from their employers, unlike Romanian and Chinese workers, who have broken their contracts. Denia Sibos, an Israeli contracting firm, has had to contend with over 700 runaways, says Gideon Shavlovich, a project manager who is intimately familiar with the trade ... The question is what methods does Tsarfati use to guarantee that his crews won't run away. 'I have recently received disturbing reports about a manpower contractor, Yitzhak Tsarfati of Rishon Letzion, who treats the workers that he brings from Bulgaria with severe violence. It has been alleged that he imposes a reign of terror that is intended to prevent them from running away from him..." wrote MK Yuri Stern (National Union-Yisrael Beitenu) this week to Police Major General Yaakov Ganot, who oversees immigration cases. 'The workers are too frightened to complain, partly because Mr. Tsarfati threatens to hurt their families in Bulgaria, where he has widespread businesses and connections,' writes Stern, a former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Workers Committee. ... All of the workers interviewed for this article stipulated that they would only talk on condition that their names would not be revealed. One consented to have the physical signs of his beating photographed. In order to avoid his identification, Ha'aretz omitted descriptions of many of the instances. Two of the men asked that the car that transported them to the interview site wait outside their residence with its lights off. One worker said that he was beaten in public, on the grounds of his dormitory, in order that his friends would see, and be frightened. Others said they were beaten in the shower room of their dormitory. 'They're really poor wretches. The most terrifying methods are used against them. Their families are under threat,' says a building supervisor in a large construction firm. The executive director of the Contractor's Association, Major General (res.) Yehuda Segev, says that after hearing rumors about the ostensible 'terror' used against the workers, he called in Tsarfati for a conversation, partly to ask him how it is that his workers do not run away ... Hundreds of Tsarfati's 800 workers are housed in caravans in the Lod industrial zone, living in conditions that to the visitor from the outside seem dismal and crowded. The site is encompassed by a high concrete wall, with guards posted around the encampment in the evening hours. Workers on the site report that 40 men share a single shower. In other sites in Israel, his workers say that they have no heating or air-conditioning, and anyone who wants a television or satellite antenna must buy it himself. Workers report 'penalties' of up to $150 that are imposed on anyone who refuses to go to work because he doesn't feel well, or is late coming back from shopping or going out with friends. The workday begins at 6 A.M., and ends at 6 P.M. or later, with half an hour off for lunch. On days that they work until 9 P.M., the workers receive another quarter-hour break for dinner ... A no less disturbing aspect of the affair is Tsarfati's connections with Emanuel Zisman, the man who served as Israeli ambassador to Bulgaria until November 2002, as well as with his predecessor, David Cohen. Zisman and Cohen's names appear as character references in Tsarfati's brochure, along with their cell phone numbers."

Doing the US's Dirty Work. The Colombian Paramilitaries and Israel,
By Jeremy Bigwood, Narco News Bulletin, April 8, 2003
"I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis." -Carlos Castaño, Mi Confesión, 2002
"According to his recently published autobiography, Carlos Castaño was only 18 years old when he arrived in Israel in 1983 to take a year-long course called '562.' Castaño, a Colombian, had come to the Holy Land as a pilgrim of sorts, but not to find peace. Course 562 was about war, and how to wage it, and it was something Carlos Castaño would eventually excel at, becoming the most adept and ruthless paramilitary leader in Latin America’s history ... In the 1980s, these paramilitary groups were disparate and poorly trained, sometimes involving themselves in bloody internecine turf battles. In order to take the offensive against the steady advances of the leftist guerrillas, the paramilitaries needed both unification and political/military training. While these paramilitaries essentially worked towards the same goals as US foreign policy, the US government could not directly support them because of their death squad tactics. But others could. Exactly how Carlos Castaño got to Israel is still a mystery, as is precisely which entity trained him there. But whoever set it up, the Israeli course '562' definitely had a strong effect on Castaño. 'Something clicked in me, and I began to behave differently...My perception of this war changed radically after my trip to Israel,' he said in his best-selling autobiography, which is a series of interviews edited by Spanish journalist Mauricio Aranguren Molina ... Most importantly for the eager student, he 'received lectures on how the world arms business operates, and how to buy arms.' And of course, there was also a military component: 'I received instruction in urban strategies, how to protect oneself, how to kill someone or what to do when someone is trying to kill you... We learned how to stop an armored car and use fragmentation grenades to enter a target. We practiced with multiple grenade launchers, and learned how to make accurate shots with RPG-7s, or shoot a cannon shell through a window.' 'We also took complementary courses on terrorism and counter-terrorism, night vision equipment, and parachuting. We also learned how to make homemade bombs. In short, we learned what the Israelis know, but, in all sincerity, very little of all of this has been applied to the war in Colombia. I got a very good basic education, and there I learned how to do the most important thing – I learned how to control fear' ... Castaño summarizes his epiphany in Israel in the following terms: 'Upon returning to Colombia, I had become another person... I learned an infinite amount of things in Israel and to that country I owe part of my essence, my human and military achievements, although I repeat, in Israel I didn’t only learn about things related to military training. There I became convinced that it was possible to destroy the guerrillas in Colombia. I started to understand how a people could defend itself against the whole world. I understood how to bring into the 'cause' a person who had something to lose in the war, with the aim of converting him into the enemy of my enemies.' By 1985, shortly after Castaño returned to Colombia, some of the paramilitary groups that were springing up had become completely dependant on the monies from drug trafficking. Indeed, some paramilitary units had merely evolved as such from drug protection rackets ... But apparently this training by fellow Colombians was not enough, and in 1987 the Israelis were called in to help, probably through Colombian Army intermediaries. In the mainstream media the 16 Israeli and some British trainers were presented as 'mercenaries,' perhaps because of the bias of the Colombian DAS agents who wrote a report on them. These foreign military trainers were far too well connected to be ordinary 'mercenaries'—they clearly acted with some government approval, most definitely that of Israel, and probably of some US entity also – as we shall see below. Castaño, who attended these courses, said that members of the Colombian Army had actually arranged the courses, which featured the training by a famous Israeli officer, Yair Klein. Again, it was Castaño ally Henry Perez who picked the candidates - along with drug kingpin Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha. According to his book, Carlos Castaño took part in the courses, and their organization occupied five of the 50 scholarships. According to the DAS document: A group of five Israelis taught the course called 'PABLO EMILIO GUARIN VERA' in the 'El Cincuenta' school of Puerto Boyocá. The instructors were in the area for a period of 45 days after having entered the country through Cartegena (Bolivar). Initially, they stayed in the "El Rosario" residence of Puerto Boyocá and later in a rustic house on the Isla de la Fantasía (Fantasy Island)... Another thirty scholarships were awarded so that the best students could undergo further training in Israel, just as Castaño had done: 'According to what these instructors said, they were going to send the best 30 students for further schooling in a special course that would be taught in Israel.' Thirty paramilitaries being sent to Israel would have clearly required the permission of the Israeli Defense Forces - the Israeli government. It is hard to imagine anything else for a country continually at war. And there was also a Nicaraguan Contra connection: 'TEDDY, the Israeli interpreter told our source that they should shorten and speed up the course because they had promised to train the Nicaraguan Contras in Honduras and Costa Rica' ... In Colombia you see the black assault rifles everywhere. Both the US-backed Army and the National Police use them. These are not, as you might imagine, US M16s, but they are the famous Israeli Galil assault rifle, an imitation of the Russian Kalashnikov series but marketed in Latin America using the smaller, but faster (and messier) .223 round - the same as the M16. The Galil has been manufactured by the Israeli Military Industries since 1972 and has been a considerable success. But the Israelis themselves do not use many Galils in their own operations inside (and outside) Israel, because they get M16s free from the US. But in Latin America, the Galil is the main weapon of both the Guatemalan and Colombian governments. In the Guatemalan case, the US did not wish to be seen overtly supplying the Guatemalan military as it conducted countless massacres in the countryside during the 1980s. So Israel stepped in and not only supplied the weapons, but also built a munitions factory in Coban, a mountainous, but relatively unconflicted region of the country. While the Israelis made out well on the deal, it was not so sweet for the Guatemalans: the factory was most of the time immersed in humid clouds, and the resulting ammunition was often damp, producing misfires. But in Colombia, Israeli Military Industries didn’t merely set up a munitions factory to make bullets; they set up an entire Galil assault rifle factory in Bogotá. Of the Colombian version of the weapon, only the barrel is imported from Israel. Who pays for this? Colombia? Think again. The Isreali assault rifles are paid for through US military aid to both Israel and Colombia. As such, it is yet another way the unwitting US taxpayer is underwriting the Colombian bloodletting."

Correspondent: ISRAEL'S SECRET WEAPON,
BBC (transcript), March 17, 2003
"This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.01 Correspondent Theme Music 00.00.11 Music 00.00.11 Graphic Which country in the Middle East has undeclared Nuclear weapons? 00.00.16 Graphic Which country in the Middle East has undeclared biological and chemical capabilities? 00.00.21 Graphic Which country in the Middle East has no outside inspections? 00.00.26 Graphic Which country jailed its nuclear whistleblower for 18 years? 00.00.31 Title page ISRAEL'S SECRET WEAPON" [Discussion of Israeli nuclear weapons whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu].

Jewish Group Probed for Blast at Palestinian School,
Reuters, April 9, 2003
"An explosion wounded 20 students at a Palestinian high school in the West Bank on Wednesday, and Israeli police said they were investigating whether it was the work of Jewish vigilantes. Lutfi Abu Oun, mayor of the village of Jaba'a, said two of the teenagers were seriously hurt and all of the wounded were taken to hospitals in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus. School headmaster Ismail Salah said the explosion tore through a classroom for 16-year-old boys just as they returned from a midday recess. Desks and chairs were thrown about and splintered, and pools of blood and glass shards littered the floor, witnesses said. An unknown Jewish group calling itself 'Revenge of the Infants' claimed responsibility for the blast in a message sent to Israeli reporters' pagers, police said."

Foreign cameramen finally receive work permits,
by Annette Young, Haaretz (Israel) , April 11, 2003
"In the face of growing international criticism, the government has reversed its decision and agreed to issue work permits to foreign cameramen on the grounds they are not taking away jobs from their Israeli counterparts. Members of the foreign media were informed Wednesday of the decision, which followed heavy lobbying from members of the Foreign Press Association, capped off by a visit earlier this month to Israel by delegates from the International Press Institute (IPI) who met senior government officials. "We are very happy that the government has righted this wrong," said Tami Allen-Frost, the deputy chairwoman of the Foreign Press Association. From early 2002, foreign cameramen have run into problems when it comes to obtaining work permits, ever since the Government Press Office (GPO) transferred this function to the government's Employment Service. Some 15 cameramen - including those working for NBC, BBC, CNN and ITN - have found it difficult to obtain work permits on the grounds that they are foreign nationals. The Employment Service regarded cameramen as technical operators, arguing the networks should employ Israelis instead. However, foreign media representatives and the IPI insisted that under an international agreement, all camera operators should be treated as journalists, as is the case for stills photographers ... However, there was still no sign of resolving the impasse between the foreign media and the government over the accreditation of Palestinian journalists. As a result, foreign correspondents wishing to cover the intifada are limited in what they can cover, since Israeli cameramen are usually barred by Israeli authorities from entering Palestinian territories."

[The following grotesquely fraudulent statement is brought to you by the world's most famous "anti-hate" organization. The ADL serves as a front organization for racist Israel. Read the truth about Israeli "colorblindness" and its "democracy" here, or here.]
Israel: The Facts,
Anti-Defamation League,
"Civil Rights Israel is a colorblind society, comprised of Jews and non-Jews from at least 100 different countries from diverse ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Democracy is the cornerstone of the State. Israel ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. It guarantees the freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture. Israel safeguards the Holy Places of all religions. All Israeli citizens, regardless of religion, ethnicity or color are accorded full civil and political rights, and equal participation in all aspects of Israeli social, political and civil life."

[It's open season on American peace activists in Israel. Murdering them is now a weekly occurence.]
British peace activist shot by IDF troops in Gaza Strip,
by Tsahar Rotem, Haaretz (Isarel), April 12, 2003
"Israel Defense Forces troops firing from a tank critically wounded a British man Friday as he and other activists in a pro-Palestinian group approached an army position on the edge of a Gaza refugee camp, witnesses said. The Briton, Thomas Hurndall, 21, from Manchester, suffered a head injury that left him comatose and hooked up to a respirator, said doctors. He was the second foreigner to be harmed in a week. A third member of the group, the International Solidarity Movement, was killed while trying to stop an Israeli army bulldozer a month ago, near where Hurndall was shot Friday. The IDF had no comment about Friday's shooting... . The activists wanted to set up a protest tent on the road, in an attempt to block incursions, said Hamra and Khalil Abdullah, a Palestinian who works with the group but who is not a member. Along the way, the protesters were joined by several children, the witnesses said. When the group was about 200 yards away from three tanks, soldiers opened fire from a tank-mounted machine gun, the witnesses said. Hurndall and another foreign activist tried to get two children out of the line of fire, Hamra and Abdullah said. 'Thomas grabbed one of their hands and as soon as he did that a tank fired at him, hitting him in the head,' Hamra said. The photographer said the children were not throwing rocks at the troops and that he saw nothing that would have provoked the troops. Hurndall was declared brain dead after arriving at Rafah Hospital, said Dr. Ali Musa ... A few blocks from where Friday's shooting occurred, American activist Rachel Corrie, 23, was killed on March 16 while trying to stop an Israeli army bulldozer. Witnesses said the bulldozer ran her over and then backed up. The army said the driver did not see her and that her death was an accident. Corrie, a student in Olympia, Washington, was the first member of the group to be killed in 30 months of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. Last week, Bryan Avery, 24, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was shot in the face while walking with a fellow activist in the West Bank town of Jenin."

[The expected cover-up:]
Israeli report clears troops over US death. Peace activist killed by bulldozer acted 'illegally and dangerously,
The Guardian (UK), April 14, 2003
"An Israeli army investigation into the death of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, has concluded that its forces were not to blame for her death. It accused Corrie and other members of the International Solidarity Movement of 'illegal, irresponsible and dangerous' behaviour. Corrie, 23, was crushed to death by an army bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, as she protested against house demolitions. The investigation, led by the chief of the general staff of the Israeli Defence Force, found that Israeli forces were not guilty of any misconduct. The result of the investigation comes as Tom Hurndall, 21, from London lies in hospital with severe brain damage after being shot in the head on Friday by an Israeli soldier as he tried to help a Palestinian woman and her children. Mr Hurndall was also a peace activist working with the ISM. He was shot in a different area of Rafah while wearing the same kind of bright orange vest as Corrie when she died. Yesterday his family arrived from London to visit him in hospital in the southern Israeli town of Beersheva. The army report obtained by the Guardian says Corrie: 'was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.' 'The finding of the operational investigations shows that Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved.' However, Joe Smith, 21, from Missouri who witnessed Corrie's death said that the army's description bore little resemblance to what he saw. 'Rachel was kneeling 20 metres in front of the bulldozer on flat ground. There was no way she could not have been seen. We only maintain positions that are clearly visible.' 'She had been doing this all day but this time the driver did not stop. Once she had fallen under the bulldozer, the driver stopped when she was under its middle section and reversed,' he said. The report also says that the army was patrolling no man's land by the border zone, searching for explosives. But according to Mr Smith, Corrie believed that they intended to demolish the house where she had been staying ... Tom Wallace, a spokesman for the ISM, said that the army's investigation had been far from credible and transparent as it had promised. 'The conclusions are outrageous. If they found that the driver was not culpable what did they find to explain this? How could they find a driver who had run someone over in a slow and deliberate manner in no way responsible?' he said. Corrie's parents, Craig and Cynthia, from Washington, had called on the US state department to investigate the death of their daughter."

Israel to use flechette shells,
News 24, April 14, 2003
"Israel's Supreme Court has given the army the green light to use controversial flechette tanks shells which spray thousands of darts over hundreds of metres, ripping apart anyone in the killing zone. Physicians for Human Rights, an Israeli advocacy group, said the use of such shells was in contravention of the Geneva Convention covering the rules of warfare and should be banned. It said the shells had killed 10 innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip since the start of the Palestinian urpising, or intifada, in September 2000. The army has argued that it has used the weapons very selectively in its fight against terrorism. Israeli media reports have said the army uses the shells mainly against mortar crews firing rounds at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. 'If we bowed to your demand today, we would be asked tomorrow the ban the army from using teargas and sound bombs,' one of the judges quipped. According to Jane's Defence Weekly, the British military analysis journal, Israel uses flechette shells acquired from the United States in the 1970s which fire 5 000 darts in in a cone-shaped pattern 300m long and about 94m wide. The rounds were developed for use against infantry units."

Hundreds of Palestinian Minors in Custody,
Yahoo!News (from Assoicated Press) Apr 17, 2003
"About 300 Palestinian minors have been rounded up in Israeli army sweeps over the past year and are being held in crowded lockups, some without charges, lawyers and human rights monitors say. The army acknowledges it has locked up teens, but treats those over 16 as adults, despite international conventions defining minors warranting special treatment as those under 18. Israel says militant groups often recruit teens, pointing to a 16-year-old suicide bomber, Issa Bdair from Bethlehem, who killed two Israelis in a blast in Tel Aviv last year. Several other bombers have been minors. Roundups of Palestinians have intensified in the past year, and the International Committee of the Red Cross says a total of 7,600 Palestinians are currently in custody. Red Cross officials say they have visited 260 minors in Israeli lockups. Israeli human rights monitors, including the respected B'tselem group, estimate about 300 Palestinians under 18 are in detention, and say many of those detained are held for minor offenses, such as throwing stones. A 14-year-old, Ali Rahman, said he was jailed for eight days after throwing a stone at an army jeep that drove past his home in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. Ali said he slept on a floor with a blanket, sharing a cell with 15 other boys at the West Bank's Etzion military detention center. Israeli human rights lawyer Tamar Peleg represents several Palestinian teens, including Mohammed Najar from Bethlehem who was first arrested when he was 15. Najar is being held in so-called administrative detention, a practice held over from British Mandate rule that allows the army to jail Palestinians without trial or charges. He is serving the first of renewable six-month detentions in the Ketziot tent camp, a crowded prison in Israel's southern Negev Desert. Peleg, who works for Israel's Center for the Defense of the Individual, said military prosecutors didn't have enough evidence to charge Najar with a crime, but persuaded a military judge he was dangerous enough to keep locked up anyway. Before being sent to Ketziot, he spent 45 days in solitary confinement in a West Bank army lockup because a judge ordered him held separately from adult prisoners. The day after he turned 16, he was moved to Ketziot prison, Peleg said. The lawyer said Najar is one of about 30 minors, half of them under 16, being held without trial or charges. Some of the other young prisoners she's met at military judicial hearings have complained of beatings, hunger, overcrowded rooms stuffed wall to wall with mattresses and too few trips allowed to the toilet. Many are interrogated without the presence of lawyers and are held for months without visits from their parents, she said. Israel is in violation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines minors as younger than 18, said Jessica Montell, director of B'tselem. The treaty, which Israel signed and ratified, says the arrest and imprisonment of children should be a last resort and for the shortest appropriate time, and they should not be jailed with adults. It also gives minors the right to legal assistance, visits from relatives and to be informed of the charges against them."

Israel Continues U.S. Policy of Killing Journalists/Witnesses.,
AP Cameraman Shot and Killed in West Bank,
The March for Justice, April 19, 2003
"An Israeli soldier shot and killed a cameraman with Associated Press Television News who was covering a skirmish between troops and rock-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus on Saturday, witnesses said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment but said it was looking into the shooting. Nazeh Darwazeh, 45, was filming clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians that began early Saturday. Doctors said Darwazeh died of a bullet wound to the head. Video footage taken by a Reuters cameraman showed young Palestinian men running up an alley toward a parked armored personnel carrier. After they threw rocks at the vehicle, troops fired shots. Witnesses said several firebombs were thrown toward the vehicle, and later footage showed a small area in the back of it on fire. The footage then showed a man with a rifle in green combat fatigues kneeling down between the armored personnel carrier and the wall of a house at the top of the alley. Witnesses identified the man as an Israeli soldier. The footage showed him pointing his weapon toward the journalists. Seconds later, Darwazeh was seen lying in a doorway in a pool of blood. He and other cameramen, still photographers and reporters had been at the bottom of the alley and were wearing brightly colored vests that said `Press.'"

UK envoys held at gunpoint by Israelis,
by Chris McGreal, The Guardian (UK), May 6, 2003
"Israeli forces opened fire above a British embassy convoy and held it at gunpoint in Gaza while it was carrying diplomats and the family of an English peace activist left in a coma by an Israeli bullet. Two armoured Range Rovers with diplomatic plates were forced to halt as they drove through the Abu Houli crossing on Sunday, even though British officials had notified Israeli forces of their arrival 10 minutes earlier. The group was en route to the Rafah refugee camp where Tom Hurndall, 21, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper last month as he tried to protect a five-year-old girl. During the standoff one of the diplomats, Andrew Whitaker, emerged from one car with his hands above his head to try to talk to soldiers hidden behind concrete pillboxes, while the British defence attache to Tel Aviv, Colonel Tom Fitzallen Howard, phoned the army for an explanation. 'There's a complete lack of control. They fire without warning,' said Tom Hurndall's father, Anthony, who was in one car with his wife and 12-year-old son. 'As we passed the first pillbox a shot was fired over the cars. We weren't clear why, or what was happening. Nobody came out, we couldn't tell if we were supposed to get out or go on. 'The political officer from Jerusalem bravely got out of the car and had to put his hands over his head not knowing if they viewed us as hostile. They wouldn't let us move from under their guns.' After several minutes a hand emerged from one of the pillboxes and waved on the vehicles without explanation. Mr Hurndall said Col Fitzallen Howard immediately called the army contact he had spoken to minutes earlier. "His immediate reaction was to say he didn't get the message down in time. The colonel said: 'Regardless of that, why did you fire at us? You shot at official embassy cars for no reason.' The Israeli's excuse was that we didn't stop. He said we were supposed to go through one by one but that is simply not true,' Mr Hurndall said. 'Then they tried to say they did it to check our documents but they never did.'"

Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US,
By David R. Francis, The Christian Science Monitor, December 9, 2002
"Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person. This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby. For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War. And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy. Considering Israel's deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don't pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out. Israel's request could be part of a supplemental spending bill that's likely to be passed early next year, perhaps wrapped in with the cost of a war with Iraq. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years. Adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel. 'Consequently, politically, if not administratively, those outlays are part of the total package of support for Israel,' argues Stauffer in a lecture on the total costs of US Middle East policy, commissioned by the US Army War College, for a recent conference at the University of Maine. These foreign-aid costs are well known. Many Americans would probably say it is money well spent to support a beleagured democracy of some strategic interest. But Stauffer wonders if Americans are aware of the full bill for supporting Israel since some costs, if not hidden, are little known. One huge cost is not secret. It is the higher cost of oil and other economic damage to the US after Israel-Arab wars. In 1973, for instance, Arab nations attacked Israel in an attempt to win back territories Israel had conquered in the 1967 war. President Nixon resupplied Israel with US arms, triggering the Arab oil embargo against the US. That shortfall in oil deliveries kicked off a deep recession. The US lost $420 billion (in 2001 dollars) of output as a result, Stauffer calculates. And a boost in oil prices cost another $450 billion. Afraid that Arab nations might use their oil clout again, the US set up a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That has since cost, conservatively, $134 billion, Stauffer reckons. Other US help includes:
• US Jewish charities and organizations have remitted grants or bought Israel bonds worth $50 billion to $60 billion. Though private in origin, the money is "a net drain" on the United States economy, says Stauffer.
• The US has already guaranteed $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel, and $600 million in "housing loans." Stauffer expects the US Treasury to cover these.
• The US has given $2.5 billion to support Israel's Lavi fighter and Arrow missile projects.
• Israel buys discounted, serviceable "excess" US military equipment. Stauffer says these discounts amount to "several billion dollars" over recent years.
• Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its $1.8 billion per year in military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel. US help, financial and technical, has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up almost half of Israel's manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers.
• US policy and trade sanctions reduce US exports to the Middle East about $5 billion a year, costing 70,000 or so American jobs, Stauffer estimates. Not requiring Israel to use its US aid to buy American goods, as is usual in foreign aid, costs another 125,000 jobs.
• Israel has blocked some major US arms sales, such as F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. That cost $40 billion over 10 years, says Stauffer. Stauffer's list will be controversial. He's been assisted in this research by a number of mostly retired military or diplomatic officials who do not go public for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic if they criticize America's policies toward Israel."

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