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"GO BACK IMMEDIATLEY OR WE ARE GOING TO SHOOT" - MARY ROBINSON COMES OUT JEWISH

August 30, 2001

ISRAELIS THREATEN TO SHOOT TOP U.N. OFFICIAL
"Go back immediately, or we are going to shoot"

ISRAELI "DEATH SQUADS" - Official and Unofficial

SO...THE U.N.'S MARY ROBINSON IS JEWISH

"I know that you people will not understand easily, but you are my friends, so I tell you that I am a Jew, and I will not accept this fractiousness to torpedo the conference."

MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 8/30: Talk about humiliation. When the U.N.'s top human rights official was in occupied Palestine last year her car was shot at by Israeli settlers -- the Israeli army doing nothing to stop them. Now we learn that the very same Mary Robinson is herself Jewish and has been using her position to head off the urgently needed world censorship of Israel for its racist and apartheid-like policies.

That occupation army has however managed on its own to shoot and threaten dozens of international journalists in the past year, even wounding a top CNN reporter though the network chose to hush up the whole affair. And that occupation army made a point a few days ago of taking over at gunpoint Lutheran Churches and schools in the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, not far from Jerusalem, apparently to show the Lutherans of their distain for the church's recent resolution in the U.S. calling on the American Congress to stop the funding that makes Israel's occupation possible.

Yesterday that same Israeli occupation army threatened the top U.N. official of UNRWA, the organization in existence for nearly as long as the U.N. itself whose mission is to help Palestinian refugees.

As for Mary Robinson. The problem is not that she is Jewish. The problem is that she has not revealed this in the past and that she can now be understandably accused of having a personal "conflict of interest" because of the way she has conducted herself and especially because she has been leading the charge to prevent Israel being vilified at the Durban Conference as so many others think is both fitting and necessary.

ISRAEL ARMY LEAVES PALESTINIAN TOWN
By Ibrahim Hazboun

BEIT JALLA, West Bank (AP - 30 August) - Israeli tanks and troops withdrew early Thursday from this Palestinian town, ending a two-day takeover after Palestinian gunmen said they would stop firing at a nearby Jewish neighborhood.

The understanding was reached in intense Israeli-Palestinian phone diplomacy, with help from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and European Union officials.

Israeli tanks and jeeps drove out of Beit Jalla just before dawn Thursday. After daybreak, residents gathered in the streets in celebration. Masked gunmen shot in the air, and women clapped and cheered. One gunman in a ski cap had ammunition belts draped across his chest and fired burst from a machine gun.

Also Thursday, an Israeli man sitting in a restaurant in a Palestinian village was killed by a shot to the head by a Palestinian militant, police said. The masked assailant fled, said police spokesman Rafi Yaffe.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops barred a convoy with senior U.N. officials, led by Peter Hansen, commissioner of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, from passing a roadblock. Hansen was on his way to the Rafah refugee camp to inspect homes demolished by Israeli army bulldozers a day earlier.

Israeli troops have been blocking the main access road to Rafah since Wednesday, with a tank parked across it and more armored vehicles positioned nearby. When the five-car U.N. convoy, accompanied by journalists, approached the roadblock Thursday, Israeli troops did not let it pass.

Hansen got out of his vehicle, wearing U.N. uniform and a bulletproof jacket. A soldier atop the tank shouted at him in English: ``Go back immediately, or we are going to shoot.'' The U.N. convoy eventually turned back and Hansen said it would try to reach Rafah on backroads.

The army said it permitted Hansen to pass, but that he declined. Journalists witnessing the scene said no such offer was made.

Earlier in the day, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's convoy was permitted to pass along that road, with his armored limousine weaving through the barriers. Arafat was en route to Durban, South Africa, to attend a U.N. conference on racism.

The Israeli pullout from Beit Jalla came two days after Israeli tanks and troops entered the West Bank town, following a heavy exchange of fire between Palestinian gunmen there and Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood built on war-won land and annexed to Jerusalem.

Witnesses said the tanks and armored personnel carriers withdrew after the shooting stopped around midnight, five hours before the withdrawal began.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said troops would remain near the town to ensure that the gunfire would not resume, but stopped short of threatening another raid in the event of renewed shooting.

``If the shooting is resumed, we will consider our steps. We have to act with presence of mind, judiciously,'' he said. ``I don't want to threaten, but hope that this time Arafat will keep his word.''

The withdrawal followed a late-night meeting of top government officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Ben-Eliezer. Peres raised the possibility that once calm was restored in Beit Jalla and Gilo, he could begin talks on a comprehensive truce with Arafat next week.

In Beit Jalla, Palestinians celebrated the withdrawal as a victory. ``Our people taught the Israeli occupation a big lesson,'' said Hassan Abed Rabbo, the local leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah group.

Families whose houses had been occupied by the Israeli soldiers were visited by well-wishers. ``My house was the first to be occupied and the last to be liberated,'' said Bishara Kharouf, 56. ``I cannot describe my feelings, but it is freedom.''

Israel's two-day presence in Beit Jalla marked the longest incursion into Palestinian territory since the fighting began 11 months ago. The United States sharply criticized the raid, and the withdrawal highlighted the relative limitations in Israel's array of reprisals for Palestinian attacks.

Heavy shooting on Gilo earlier this week had been triggered by the killing of a senior PLO official, Mustafa Zibri, in a pinpointed Israeli missile attack.

In the two days when Israeli forces held positions in the town, Palestinians continued to fire on Gilo. For the first time, the Palestinians fired 50-caliber machine-guns and 60mm mortars at the Jewish neighborhood.

In the exchanges of fire in Beit Jalla, one Palestinian policeman was killed and at least 20 people were injured, Palestinians said. An Israeli was wounded in Gilo just before the incursion began.

ISRAELI DEATH SQUADS KILL PALESTINIANS
By JOSHUA BRILLIANT

JERUSALEM, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- Israeli security authorities said Wednesday they believe one or two squads of Israeli militants have killed five Palestinians in drive-by attacks in the West Bank in recent months.

"We aren't seeing any beginning of an underground, but a squad or two definitely carried out four attacks," a senior security source told United Press International on condition of anonymity.

The latest incident occurred early Wednesday when three Palestinians -- a father and his two sons -- were traveling by car from Hizmeh near Jerusalem toward the Jordan Valley.

"Apparently a car passed them and (someone in it) fired on it," Superintendent Rafi Yaffe of the Israeli police in the West Bank said. The driver, Hader Kanan, 26, of Hizmeh, was killed. His father and brother were injured.

The commander of the Israeli police in the West Bank, Brig. Gen. Shahar Ayalon, said the car bore Palestinian license plates. "It was difficult to make a mistake about its identity," he said.

The Palestinian Authority claims several groups of Jewish militias and death squads are very active in the West Bank, especially in Hebron, Jerusalem and Ramallah. The PA says it has warned the Israeli government several times that the groups carry out daily attacks on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank and Gaza.

A group calling itself the Committee to Secure Roads claimed responsibility three months ago for killing four family members from Hebron, among them a four-month old baby boy. After Wednesday's shooting, the group contacted several foreign reporters claiming responsibility for the attack.

Palestinian security officials said they gave U.S. and Israeli officials a list of 60 people who are alleged members of an Israeli terrorist group responsible for murdering Palestinian citizens in Gaza and the West Bank in the last few years.

In earlier attacks on Palestinian motorists, a truck driver was shot and killed by unknown assailants in June. Three members of one family were killed in the southern West Bank in July, and recently a taxi driver was killed south of Nablus by a stone thrown at him from a passing car.

The Palestinian security source told UPI the attackers probably belong to "a very small squad."

"The modus operandi was quite similar in all incidents," he said, and evidence at the scene of the killings shows a connection, though some elements of the killings differ leading security officials to believe there are multiple Israeli hit squads.

The source suggested settlers might be behind the attacks. "It is someone who lives in the area who (would also have) the motive," he said.

The settlers' leaders have strongly condemned the assassinations. "Murder is murder and innocent people must not be hit be they Jews or Arabs," a leader said in a recent statement.

Police, the army and the Israel Security Agency have no clue as to who has been behind the attacks, but the security source told UPI: "It's a question of time until they make a mistake and when they do, we'll be there to discover it." (with reporting by Saud Abu Ramadan in Gaza)

ROBINSON IN DURBAN: I AM A JEW
By Herb Keinon and Janine Zacharia

Jerusalem Post - JERUSALEM -August 30: Waving a book of anti-Semitic cartoons distributed at the anti-racism conference in Durban, UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson - in a dramatic act of identification with the Jews vilified in the pamphlet - declared "I am a Jew" at an NGO dinner there last night.

Shimon Samuels, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris, said that after he showed Robinson the booklet, she stood up, waved it and said, "This conference is aimed at achieving human dignity. My husband is a cartoonist, I love political cartoons, but when I see the racism in this cartoon booklet, of the Arab Lawyers' Union, I must say that I am a Jew - for those victims are hurting. I know that you people will not understand easily, but you are my friends, so I tell you that I am a Jew, and I will not accept this fractiousness to torpedo the conference."

Samuels, head of the Jewish caucus at the anti-racism conference, said that the booklet, which he said contained vile anti-Semitic cartoons, was handed out at registration, and that several of the Jewish groups in Durban had complained about it.

Meanwhile, less than 24 hours before the Israeli delegation's plane to the UN anti-racism conference in Durban is scheduled to take off, no decision has yet been made on whether it will participate, or at what level.

"We'll have to decide in the morning, because our last plane out is tomorrow evening," one Foreign Ministry official scheduled to attend the conference said last night.

The US announced yesterday it is dispatching Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Michael Southwick and a small delegation to South Africa to try to amend language in a proposed final communique that is offensive to Israel and Jews, before the conference opens tomorrow.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Southwick could leave Durban before the conference's official opening, if the language singling out Israel is not taken out.

The State Department announced earlier this week that Secretary of State Colin Powell would not attend the conference because of the anti-Israel clauses.

President George W. Bush said last week that the US would not take part at all if the conference "picks on" or denigrates Israel for its treatment of Palestinians.

"We felt it was necessary for us to have representatives out there to do what the president asked us to do, and that's to work to eliminate this language," Boucher said yesterday. "If we can do that, then we can make the further decisions on how we participate." If Southwick remains, Israel will have to decide whether to send Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior or dispatch a lower-level official.

Some American Jewish leaders, who lobbied Powell not to attend, are said to have urged Melchior not to go.

One Foreign Ministry source said if a delegation is sent, it should be at a level that will enable it to be as effective as possible.

Attempts by the US to have the anti-Israel language taken out of the proposed resolutions have not yet yielded any fruit, Israeli officials said.

A source briefed on the US plans said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had persuaded Powell that the language - including clauses describing Zionism as a movement based on racial superiority and others describing Israeli actions as ethnic cleansing - could be struck from the document only if an American delegation were present to support such a move.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley said he still hasn't decided whether to attend and that Canada has "very serious" concerns about a push to single out Israel.

Echoing earlier comments by Powell, Manley said, "The purpose of this conference should be to set a mark for countries to observe in trying to eradicate racist practices. It shouldn't be targeted at any countries. The text such as it is that I've seen goes much too far in singling out one country, in this case Israel."

According to a report received by the Foreign Ministry, a group from the World Union of Jewish Students, which set up a booth yesterday at the non-governmental organization part of the conference, was confronted by Palestinian students chanting anti-Israeli slogans.

According to the ministry, the Jewish students sang: "All we are saying is give peace a chance." The Palestinians responded by chanting, "We will redeem Palestine through blood and fire." This was only one of many complaints registered by Jewish groups about harassment at the conference, though conference director Moshe More said no serious incidents have been reported so far.

"I feel besieged, there's anti-Semitism and hate literature at the world racism conference. It couldn't get much worse," said Anne Bayefsky, a professor from New York's Columbia University Law School. "Some of the Jewish delegates are hiding their accreditation badge because it identifies them as from Israel or as Jewish. Some are considering leaving Durban altogether." More said "protesters can express their views, but we have a strong contingent of police. There have been no physical attacks on anyone." Stacy Burdett, representing the Anti-Defamation League, said some of the 200 Jewish representatives in Durban were shocked by their treatment, and felt unfairly singled out.

Pamphlets circulated at the NGO meeting caricatured Jews, and posters carried slogans overlapping the Star of David with the swastika. Many pro-Palestinian delegates wore T-shirts with a slogan equating Israel with apartheid and colonialism, and calling it an occupying power that kills civilians.

"There is a real sense of hostility toward Jewish people," said Karen Pollock, director of the London-based Holocaust Education Trust. "We are being intimidated." The South African police have said that the safety of the 7,000 delegates attending the meeting is a high priority, and more than 3,000 police and soldiers have been deployed.


August 2001


Magazine






IDEOLOGICAL CEASE-FIRE OR SELL-OUT AT DURBAN?
(August 31, 2001)
It's not likely this is the end of it, but indications are that the Arafat crowd -- as of the moment still in the pay of the U.S., Israel, and the despicable Arab "client regimes" -- has found a way to back away from the badly needed ideological confrontation, with the help of non other than that slimmy man for all seasons who never misses an opportunity to interject himself Jesse Jackson.

ASHRAWI SPEECH IN DURBAN
(August 31, 2001)
Hanan Ashrawi is no real hero, and she's made some terrible hard-to-forgive political mistakes in the "peace process" years in her search for the limelight and VIP status.

DURBAN AND ROBINSON AND ANNAN
(August 31, 2001)
A pamphlet distributed at the United Nations anti-racism conference in South Africa equating the Star of David with a swastika has prompted the UN human rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, to declare at an official dinner: "I am a Jew".

"GO BACK IMMEDIATLEY OR WE ARE GOING TO SHOOT" - MARY ROBINSON COMES OUT JEWISH
(August 30, 2001)
Talk about humiliation. When the U.N.'s top human rights official was in occupied Palestine last year her car was shot at by Israeli settlers -- the Israeli army doing nothing to stop them. Now we learn that the very same Mary Robinson is herself Jewish and has been using her position to head off the urgently needed world censorship of Israel for its racist and apartheid-like policies.

HABASH AND CARLOS HAVE THEIR SAY
(August 30, 2001)
Aging guerrilla leader Carlos the Jackal called from his French jail cell Wednesday for worldwide attacks on Israel and the United States in support of the Palestinian uprising.

A LAND WITHOUT HOPE
(August 29, 2001)
Gaza is the largest prison in the world. Most of its one million plus inhabitants, in a sense inmates, have never been let out. Whether the term be "ghetto" or "concentration camp" or just "prison", the historical parallels are all too damning.

THE U.S. MAKES IT ALL POSSIBLE
(August 29, 2001)
What we should all be thinking when the U.S. State Department spokesman gets in front of the cameras is -- "You've Got To Be Kidding!" Instead, the American government with its super sophisticated PR apparatus dishes it out. The gullible, or should we say complicitous, corporate media then broadcasts it -- not just CNN, also the rest of the networks along with PBS followed up by the big daily newspapers and newsweeklies --all lemming-like.

TIME TO SUSPEND ISRAEL FROM U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY
(August 28, 2001)
The American President and Vice-President both are giving public expressions of support to the Israelis; while the American CIA, military and Congress make Israeli policies possible with a continual flow of money, guns, and information.

"INVITING HELL TO BREAK LO0SE" - PFLP LEADER ASSASSINATED TODAY
(August 27, 2001)
The Israelis are clearly planning to totally crush the Palestinians -- Minister Uzi Landau is publicly saying as much -- probably thinking they can buy themselves still more years to consolidate their grip on the occupied territories and probably scheming for the opportunity to push as many Palestinians as they can across the Jordan and into a Hashemite Kingdom that will eventually, sooner or later, implode into a Palestinian State.

A MOST COURAGEOUS AND DEDICATED ISRAELI JOURNALIST
(August 26, 2001)
If we had an award for Middle East Journalist of the year, the Israeli writer Amira Hass would be very high on that list. A few years ago, long before it became politically correct to term Israeli policies "apartheid like", especially in Jewish and American circles, Amira Hass was doing just that in her writing and speaking.

ISRAEL WINNING PROPAGANDA WAR - MASSIVELY
(August 26, 2001)
The terribly weak, confused, and co-opted Arab regimes, Arafat's included, are miserably losing the "propaganda war". Sure, the Israelis have suffered in some quarters in some ways; but nothing compared to the Palestinians.

THE LATEST FROM GAZA GHETTO
(August 25, 2001)
About 400 fanatical "settlers" have forced their way into homes in the middle of Hebron, a city of 120,000 Arabs. About 6000 fanatical "settlers" contnue to occupy about 35% of the Gaza Strip, amidst more than 1 million Palestinians.

ISRAEL'S IDEOLOGICAL FOUNDATION
(August 25, 2001)
If you want to understand what the Israelis are doing, and why, you have to understand the ideological underpinnings of what is called "Revisionist Zionism". This article was published many years ago in The Washington Post by Mark Bruzonsky, today the Publisher of MER.

JUST IMAGINE, A MILLION + INJURED IN A YEAR
(August 24, 2001)
If adjusted for differing population sizes, these would be the dead and casualties figures if a foreign military power occupied the United States and did to Americans what Israel, with U.S. money and arms, is doing to the Palestinians. And that's just in the past year or so.

WITH ARAFAT AND COMPANY IN COMMAND, THERE IS NO HOPE.
(August 24, 2001)
As usual there is no serious introspection and self-criticism here. Arab and Palestinian Americans have failed miserably over a very long period of time to even establish viable organizations and publications. Moreover they have no lobbying and professional presence even worth discussion in the crucial capital of Washington, DC, even today.

SUICIDE BOMBERS - MADE BY ISRAEL AND THE USA
(August 23, 2001)
It didn't begin this way. A few generations ago Arabs and Jews lived together in the same neighborhoods of the once Holy Land. In the 40's the famous Arab mayor of Haifa Hassan Shukri's only son married a Jewish woman.

ISRAELIS "DEBATE" BOTH "SEPARATION" AND "DEPARTURE"
(August 23, 2001)
Two rather insightful articles follow about how confused and insecure many Israelis have become, even though this often comes across to others as heightened arrogance and self-centeredness. In the first from Ha'aretz some Israelis are hedging their bets and wondering just what the future holds. There is a deep down awareness, not quite conscious for many, that what they are doing to the Palestinians could possibly in the future backfire in an orgy of hatred and recriminations far beyond today's situation.

KILLING AND DESTROYING - THE ISRAELI WAY
(August 21, 2001)
Even as the U.N. Security Council gathered to demonstrate once again how badly it has been neutered and cast aside when it comes to the Middle East, the Israelis are further unleashing their basic policy of killing, destroying, repressing. General Barak, the previous PM, is busy taking credit for having "exposed" the Palestinians and "fathered" the concept of "unilateral separation" (i.e., apartheid forever).

UN NOW AND THEN
(August 20, 2001)
Today's United Nations is pretty much an "appendage of the (U.S.) State Department". And that's not our phrase, it's one used by a senior U.N. official not that long ago in one of those quiet unpublicized off-the-record Washington discussions.

THE "PEACE PROCESS" FRAUD AND CONSPIRACY
(August 20, 2001)
Professors Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Tanya Reinhart -- Jewish American, Palestinian American, and Israeli -- all have explained this month why the "Peace Process" was a fraud, a deception, a conspiracy, from the start.

PLEADING FOR PEACE; ANALYSIS IS WAR
(August 18, 2001)
Everything stops for tea in Britain, or so they say. So when Angie Zelter and her fellow foreign protesters found their way from Palestinian-ruled Bethlehem to Jerusalem blocked by Israeli soldiers and police on Saturday, Zelter ever so politely ventured a few words of advice.

A SUICIDE BOMBER'S WORLD
(August 18, 2001)
In a sense, a very important sense, the "Suicide Bombers" now so much in the news should have stamped on them "Made in Israel, Encouraged by USA". There were few if any "Suicide Bombers" just a few years ago. The phenomena first arose out of Israel's destructive invasion of Lebanon in and before 1982, then the occupation of about 10% of that country which only ended last year.

DATELINE WASHINGTON: ONE ARAB DISASTER AFTER ANOTHER
(August 17, 2001)
Months ago now the relatively new group of Muslim "client organizations" headquartered in Washington repeatedly promised at one press conference after another a wave of civil disobedience throughout the U.S. in view of what Israel and the U.S. are doing to the Palestinians.

ANTI-US/ISRAEL DEMOS IN SOUTH AFRICA
(August 17, 2001)
The pathetically weak and terribly mislead Arab and Muslim groups in the US aren't doing any protesting worth mentioning about this or anything else; but thousands of South Africans are doing the work for everyone...and "internationals" are on the way.

WHY WE HAVE ALL BECOME SUICIDE BOMBERS, DR EYAD SARRAJ-MER FLASHBACK
(August 16, 2001)
A few weeks ago I said that the struggle of Palestinians today is how not to become a bomb and that the amazing thing is not the occurrence of the suicide bombing, rather the rarity of them.

HAVE WE A PREDICTION HERE? YASS?
(August 16, 2001)
Beneath that thick Israeli arrogance, many Israelis are really far more confused, and far more fearful, than they are going to admit. Theirs' is a complicated psychology especially as the scars of the Holocaust remain deeply buried and only occasionally visible.

DEATH IN BETHLEHELM, MADE IN AMERICA
(August 15, 2001)
While the Israeli Army surrounds Bethlehem and many of the "autonomous Palestinian population centers" created through the Apartheid-style "peace process", it is American weapons and money that make the brutal military occupation possible.

ISREALI STORM TROOPERS BEAT, SHOOT, TORTURE, KILL
(August 14, 2001)
How ironic that the Jewish Israelis are acting like modern-day storm troopers, perpetrating ongoing Crystal Nachts, their victims akin to dark images from the Warsaw Ghetto of yesteryear...and so many "Good Israelis", so sadly reminiscent of the "Good Germans" of their own terrible past when they themselves were powerless victims, are cheering with mindless hatred

USED "PEACE PLAN" FOR SALE CHEAP - CAVEATE EMPTOR!
(August 14, 2001)
Gee..isn't this interesting. With the legitimacy of the Jewish State of Israel -- i.e. Zionism -- about to be challenged by much of the world in Durban; and with the "peace process" itself about to be finally condemned as a "new form of apartheid" -- just as so many of the independent experts have been saying for years now -- the Israelis are embarking on a major international public relations campaign whose top dogs are none other than soft barkers Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, chief architects and salesmen of the very same.

SALAMI ESCALATION
(August 14, 2001)
The Israelis are preparing everyone psychologically for more. Rather than everything at once, Sharon's tactics are a war version of "triangulation" which has become so famous in American political infighting. In this way he gets to be called "restrained" by many, creates the climate of confusion and anticipation that he wishes, uses Peres and Eliezer to confuse world opinion and even some of the more gullible Arab "leaders", and craftily prepares for that day when the tanks will roll in and roll over...and not just leave after a few hours of death and destruction.

NOW RUSSIANS PREDICT MID-EAST WAR SOON
(August 13, 2001)
The Israelis have been trying for years now to "reconfigure" the Middle East to their further advantage. That's really what the war for Lebanon that erupted most fiercely in 1982 was all about; and its what the various responses to the Intifada have always been about as well -- most especially the disengenous "peace process" which has now worse than collapsed.

A PEOPLE CRUSHED, DISPOSSESSED, TORTURED...
(August 13, 2001)
"His was not an act of 'mindless terror', the words Israeli spokesmen use. He was the logical product of a people who have been crushed, dispossessed, tortured and killed in terrible numbers." Fisk on the 'Suicide Bomber'

ON TO DURBAN...WITHOUT THEM - PART II
(August 12, 2001)
Well we weren't expecting United Nations officials to heed our advice about Durban and get on with things, with or without the constantly threatening and vetoing Americans (see Part 1 published yesterday). In recent years some of their colleagues at the very highest levels of today's U.N. have in fact resigned in moral disgust -- and even said so in public.

EGYPT MIGHT MOVE ARMY INTO SINAI?
(August 12, 2001)
It's not likely to happen -- Egypt's Third Army moving into Sinai for the first time since 1973 -- but it could. And in the Middle East there are historical precedents that this is sometimes the way big wars start with an initial bombardment of threats, bluffs, feints, and then the confusion takes on a life of its own.

SYMBOL OF PALESTINE CAPTURED AND RAPED
(August 11, 2001)
"Israeli riot police on horseback yesterday charged into protesters sitting outside Orient House, the barricaded mansion that serves as an unofficial Palestinian capital, reopening the battle for Jerusalem. The occupation of Orient House, headquarters of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Jerusalem, by the Israeli army is one of the biggest acts of aggrandisement since the intifada began 11 months ago."

ON TO DURBAN...WITHOUT THEM
(August 10, 2001)
Conclusion first: Let the Americans and the Israelis stay home. So be it. There's been enough blackmail and bribery and vetoing for such a very long time now. The Americans and the Israelis have been two against the whole world so many times when it comes to the international community of nations. It was just a few years ago that the U.S. single-handedly black-balled Boutros Ghali and sent him packing.

SHARON OF ISRAEL - DANGEROUSLY CUNNING
(August 10, 2001)
Ariel Sharon has a terrible history of brutality and murder, and indeed by the usual definitions these days he is at the very least indictable as a war criminal. Even so, especially now in his new role as Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon is an extraordinarily crafty and sophisticated strategist as well as tactician.

ISRAEL FLAG FLIES OVER ORIENT HOUSE
(August 10, 2001)
They never ever let Yasser Arafat come to Jerusalem. And Arafat missed his moment on the day of Feisal Husseini's burial earlier this summer when he could have, and should have, called their bluff. Now the Israelis, commanded by General Sharon, have done what they have been planning to do for some time, using the excuse of yesterday's terror bombing on Jaffa Road -- they have closed Orient House, the very symbol of things Palestinian in East Jerusalem, as well as many other organizations associated with the PA.

ORIENT HOUSE CLOSED - STRATEGIC BLOW AGAINST PALESTINIANS LIKELY
(August 9, 2001)
NEWSFLASH -- 8/09/2001, 9:30pm -- For first time Israel has closed down Orient House in Jerusalem along with nine other offices associated with the Palestinian Authority

USS LIBERTY - ABANDONED AT SEA AND AT HOME BECAUSE?
(August 9, 2001)
Tonight at 8pm (ET) on the History Channel part of the story about the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty on 8 June 1967 is going to be told. But from preliminary indications, just part, and not necessarily the most important historical parts which really involve top secret intrigue at the highest levels of the CIA, NSA, and White House complete with super secrets of state the Americans continue to want to keep out of sight out of mind.

THE REAL USS LIBERTY STORY
(August 9, 2001)
The real questions -- and answers -- have been avoided for a very long time by the American Government, and in this case also by the "free and independent" American media. And from the preliminary indications, tonight's History Channel documentary about the USS Liberty doesn't actually answer the key questions (as it could) nor even deal with the key subject of the crucial role of the CIA (as it should).

THE CRUCIAL ISRAELI-TURKISH-US MILITARY ALLIANCE,THE ARABS ARE SURROUNDED
(September 9, 2001)
It was just a few years ago that in all likelihood the Mossad and CIA helped the Turk's capture Kurdish Leader Abdullah Ocalan after first pushing him out of exile in Syria, the Moscow, then Greece, and then grabbing him in Nairobi. It was three years ago last month that MER first published an article about the great importance of the new military alliance that has developed between Israel and Turkey -- "New U.S./Turkey/Israel Alliance Circumvents and Bottles Up The Arabs." And it was two years ago that the prolific and courageous British journalist, Robert Fisk, first gave us some of the details behind the new strategic military relation Turkey actually courted with Israel.

WITH THE HELP OF U.S. ARMS MANUFACTURERS, THE CIA, CONGRESS, AND THE PENTAGON
(August 8, 2001)
The Israelis are controlling, repressing, dispossessing, and assassinating the Palestinians not on their own. They are doing so with the constant and considerable help of American arms manufacturers, the CIA, and of course the U.S. Congress (which of course is supposed to represent the will of the American people) which constantly appropriates billions yearly for Israel and sanctions (or the threat thereof) against Israel's foes

HIZBULLAH ON A ROLL
(August 7, 2001)
Israeli security forces have completely shut down access in and out of five large Palestinian towns following the killing of a pregnant Jewish settler, Israeli public radio said Monday, quoting security officials. The army sealed off the West Banks towns of Nablus, Tulkarem, Jericho, Ramallah and Qalqilya, the radio said, adding that it had partially closed the towns of Hebron, Bethlehem and Jenin.

WILL THE REAL YOSSI BEILIN PLEASE STAND UP
(August 4, 2001)
Like in the movie LION OF THE DESERT, those who profess sympathy and understanding can often cause the most harm. The well-meaning Lieutenant Colonel who befriends Omar Muhktar, lures him into deceptive "peace negotiations" in the desert, and then salutes him as his own involvement leads to Muhktar's being hanged from the gallows, is an illustrative symbol from the past.

SHARONS PUBLIC RELATIONS WAR
(August 7, 2001)
One thing about countries that have democratic features and most especially a professional and independent press -- sometimes insightful even amazing little tidbits result either from leaks or investigations. Like today's story about how Ariel Sharon himself is also the Commanding General in Israel's public relations war, shaking up and countermanding his troops in this arena as well.

ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS WAR IN 2002
(August 6, 2001)
Israeli sources said military intelligence has drafted a report that warns of the increasing likelihood of regional war in 2002. The report said the war could be sparked by either an Israeli offensive against the Palestinian Authority or an escalation in tension along Israel's border with Lebanon

TARGET EVERYONE EVERYWHERE
(August 5, 2001)
It has not happened yet, but it is now the direction things are heading. Soon the Palestinians may start responding to Israel's increasingly brutal military occupation, unprecedented anywhere else in the world of our day, by targeting Israeli political leaders and maybe Zionist leaders outside of Israel.

EGYPT IN THE ERA OF THIEVES
(August 5, 2001)
The Egypt of Hosni Mubarak and associates has terribly betrayed itself. It is a regime of sadistic torture and omnipresent corruption. It is a country of gross repression and escalating fear. And to a certain extent all this is at least in part the legacy of the Camp David agreement Egypt was tricked and bribed into signing two decades ago, and for which Anwar Sadat was assassinated by his own soldiers on military parade.

IRAEL ENFLAMES PALESTINIANS- HATRED WILL LAST LONG INTO THE FUTURE
(August 5, 2001)
In the past week the Israelis have substantially escalated the conflict with the Palestinians and risked enflaming not only the Palestinians but Arabs and Muslims around the world. Now senior Palestinian political leaders are being targeted.

ASSASSINATION POLICY EXPANDED- EXPECT A NEW LEVEL OF CLANDESTINE WARFARE
(August 4, 2001)
In a sense it would be like the going after the associates of Jerry Adams and his Sein Fein colleagues in Northern Ireland. It was a policy followed to a lesser extent by the White South African government when it tortured and murdered persons associated with the ANC, almost in fact secretly poisoning Nelson Mandela in his prison cell

"SECRET PLAN" TO SEND OBSERVERS TO ISRAEL
(August 3, 2001)
The very idea that the Americans and the Brits, after their long history of treachery and deception in the Middle East, are now going to do something other than continue on in that tradition is rather ludicrous. All the current talk at the moment -- especially from the Europeans and the usually gullible "peace" and "human rights" NGOs -- about helping the Palestinians by sending them "observers" is indeed a fitting CIA response to the predicament the American government finds itself in at the moment.

ISRAEL THREAT TO INVADE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES IS REAL
(August 3, 2001)
The Palestinians and their allies and supporters are extremely ill-prepared for what is happening. Israeli military might remains overwhelming, and political support remains amazingly strong, especially in view of today's situation with Ariel Sharon Prime Minister, the "peace process" undergoing slow and tortuous cremation, and Israel attacking Palestinians in the occupied territories with tanks and gunships heretofore reserved for real warfare between armies.

11 YEARS, 1.5+ MILLION DEAD, SEETHING HATRED EVERYWHERE
(August 2, 2001)
Eleven long bloody years. In the years just before the Gulf War there was the destruction of Lebanon, the terrible bloodletting of the U.S.-instigated Iran-Iraq orgy, the Kissinger-legacy of the Kurdish sell-out.




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