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ASHRAWI SPEECH IN DURBAN

August 31, 2001

MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 8/31: 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. Among them, to be specific, she didn't follow the lead of the Chairman of the Palestinian negotiating delegation in 1993, Dr. Haidar Abdul-Shafi, who refused to attend the White House "peace signing" ceremony -- rather she gleefully endorsed it all with a big smile. And at the worst moments of double repression, even while her colleague Dr. Iyad Sarraj was under arrest and being tortured by the Arafat regime, Ashrawi endorsed all that was happening as an Arafat-appointed "Minister" while so many others were already seriously struggling against the now unmasked "apartheid peace process". Of late Ashrawi has actually agreed to be the spokesperson for the lamentable and disfunctional Arab League, the very same body that helped bring about genocidal policies toward Iraq, has done so little for so long for the Palestinians, and is clearly the controlled creature of the leading American-sponsored Arab "client regimes" of the region. This said, Ashrawi is a most gifted writer and speaker, and though she purposefully leaves out some crucial insights and analysis, her speech a few days ago to the NGOs meeting in Durban in advance of the official conference is nevertheless important and worth reading.

Address by Hanan Ashrawi to The World Conference Against Racism,
Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerances

Durban, South Africa August 28, 2001

Sisters and Brothers,

>From Jerusalem, from the heart of Palestine, a land besieged, and repeatedly violated by a most brutal Israeli military occupation, I have come to join you today. From the midst of the people of Palestine, a tortured nation, guilty only of an unwavering commitment to freedom, dignity, and independence, I have come to join you today. From the depths of unredeemed history, I have come to join you today. I represent a narrative of exclusion, denial, racism, and national victimization, but I also come with a message of hope, redemption, and historical vindication embodied in the spirit and the will of a people that has refused to succumb to all forces of oppression, violence, cruelty, and injustice.

In convening this conference, you are the authentic embodiment of courage in withstanding the forces of domination, subjugation, and enslavement. We stand together today to launch a truly global mission of empowerment and solidarity, to give voice to the silenced, to give a reality to the invisible, to give recognition to the denied, and to give credence to the victimized.

In times of adversity, and during the darkest nights of the soul, we look to you for affirmation and action as an antidote to the failure of established power systems, including governments a failure characterized by self-interest, power politics, absence of will, and impotence. I take this opportunity to recognize before you those valiant men and women who had left the comfort of their homes in Europe and the US and joined us in Palestine to provide popular protection, a human shield in the face of Israeli abuses, violence, and violations against the Palestinian people.

I come to you today with a heavy heart leaving behind a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba [catastrophe], as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism, and victimization.

More than half a century ago [53 years], the Palestinians as a people were slated for national obliteration, cast outside the course of history, their identity denied, and their very human cultural and historical reality suppressed. We became victims of the myth of a land without a people for people without a land whereby the West sought to assuage its guilt over its horrendous anti-Semitism by the total victimization of a whole nation. Zionism sought to implement its agenda of exclusivity by usurping not only the lands and rights of the Palestinians, but also by confiscating their utterance and distorting their historical narrative.

In 1948, we became subject to a grave historical injustice manifested in a dual victimization: on the one hand, the injustice of dispossession, dispersion, and exile forcibly enacted on the population that has come to be known as the refugee question that currently encompasses more than 5 million Palestinians. On the other hand, those that remained were subject to the systematic oppression and brutality of an inhuman occupation that robbed them of all their rights and liberties including their national identity on their own land.

The creation of the state of Israel was no heroic and legendary accomplishment as depicted by the version of history propagated by the conquerors. It is time to lift the veil, to examine the facts themselves, and to come to grips with the horrific price paid by an innocent nation for the mere fact of its existence as well as for the greed and moral blindness of others. The days of denial must come to an end. The Palestinian people deserve their day in the sun as an equal among nations, and as a tribute to the human will that cannot be broken. As a Palestinian, as a woman, and on behalf of my people, I stand before you today to lay claim to my/to our humanity. From the non-existent Palestinians (there is not such thing as Palestinians; they never existed (Golda Meir, 1969) we have undergone a metamorphosis willfully inflicted upon us by Israeli-imposed diction and policies that have variously depicted us as two-legged vermin, cockroaches, beasts walking on two legs, a people that have to be exterminated unless they are resigned to live as slaves, grasshoppers to be crushed, crocodiles, and vipers. [A comprehensive list with representative samples is available]

Such a systematic and racist dehumanization was also accompanied by policies of violent expulsion. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, not one village, not one tribe should be left (Joseph Weitz, 1940).

There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1939).

Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. It is important to speak Hebrew, but it is even more important to be able to shoot or else I am through at playing with colonizing (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1939).

We must do everything to insure they never return. The old will die and the young will forget. However, for those that remained in spite of all of Israels military coercion and attempts at forced expulsion, other (and equally sinister) plans were in the making: We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters. (David Ben Gurion).

To the rest of the world, we were reduced to the Aristotelian dualism of pity and fear the pitiful refugees, of the fearful terrorists. But never were we perceived or addressed in the fullness of our humanity.

The Palestinians today continue to be subject to multiple forms and expressions of racism, exclusion, oppression, colonialism, apartheid, and national denial. Our right to self-determination, hence sovereignty and statehood, has been withheld by force and made subject to the approval of our oppressor. The refugee populations, mostly stateless people, are bereft of the rudimentary civil, human, political, and national rights, left at the mercy of host countries that view them either as a demographic threat, or as unwelcome guests. While Israel has legislated a law of return to bring in Jews from all over the world into historical Palestine, it persists in rejecting the Palestinian refugees Right of Return and in refusing to abide by UN res. 194, a legal commitment which the international community was supposed to guarantee and implement.

The Palestinians who remained in what has become Israel are experiencing in their historical homeland the worst system of apartheid, exclusion, and racial discrimination--their towns and cities either taken over entirely, or turned into ghettos and enclaves as the non-Jewish population of Israel. Many continue to be displaced persons in their own land, witnesses to the destruction of their villages. Over 500 villages were razed in the original ethnic cleansing campaign that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel. Those of us who came under Israeli occupation in 1967 have languished in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip under a unique combination of military occupation, settler colonization, and systematic oppression.

Rarely has the human mind devised such varied, diverse, and comprehensive means of wholesale brutalization and persecution. Since 1967, Palestinian land has been expropriated at an increasing pace, while whole Jewish populations have been brought in, in a calculated scheme of settler colonization. Throughout the land, an artificial and colonial grid of infrastructure was superimposed on our authentic reality to create a spurious settler superstructure as a means of Israeli demographic, geographic, and extraterritorial incursions into Palestine. So-called bypass roads for the exclusive use of the illegal Jewish settler population, tear through the heart of Palestinian land, to bypass Palestinian realities and create a unique form of racism. In the meantime, settler vigilantes habitually unleash the full force of their extremism and violence, carrying out campaigns of terror against defenseless Palestinian families and villages. Israels state terrorism is implemented by both military and settler perpetrators with political duplicity and legal impunity.

Another unique manifestation of Israeli racism is the blatant and sinister policy of demographic engineering. To maintain the Jewish character, or the purity of the state of Israel, the Palestinians have been depicted and dealt with as a demographic threat. Proposed remedies included calls for forced birth control and population management, to transfer and expulsion of whole communities, to the racist and punitive unilateral separation scheme currently being advocated.

In Jerusalem, land expropriation, ID confiscations, home demolitions, withholding of building permits, and the importation of settler colonies within and around the city have become constant elements of Israels demographic engineering through ethnic cleansing.

Jerusalem is also under siege in an attempt to isolate it from its Palestinian context and environment, and to extricate it from the heart of Palestine, as the center of political, cultural, economic, social, and educational activity and as the future capital of our state. Such Israeli unilateral measures seek to consolidate Israels illegal annexation of occupied Jerusalem, and to impose a Jewish exclusivity on a Palestinian city that has always been pluralistic and tolerant. Onslaughts on Christian and Islamic holy sites and activities while banning Palestinian worshipers from reaching their holy places of worship betray a willful policy of intolerance and a violation of the right and freedom to worship.

A state of siege has been imposed not only on the West Bank and Gaza, but also within these territories, to transform each village, town, and city into an isolated prison thereby destroying every aspect of human life, including economic, educational, health, and social cohesiveness in an attempt to sever every fiber of the fabric of normal life. Israeli occupation troops using tanks, helicopter gunships, F-16s, military barges, and checkpoints not only render a whole Palestinian population captive in 64 isolated bantustans, they also use the full force of their military power against a vulnerable and defenseless people. Daily, they shell Palestinian homes, assassinate Palestinian activists and leaders, destroy crops and fields, indulge in cold-blooded murder of children and other innocents while implementing a policy of deliberate humiliation and suffocation at every checkpoint.

The Israeli occupation has also hijacked the concept of security rendering it applicable only to Israelis while depriving the Palestinians of every aspect of personal, political, legal, territorial, historical, cultural, economic, and even human security. As a blanket cover for its systematic abuses, Israel has also abused the essence of the concept, exploiting it for the sake of eradicating any mention of the occupation, and claiming the illogical right to have a secureor even a safe and pleasantmilitary occupation that is in itself the very antithesis of peace, security, and human rights.

As the world watches, Israel has succeeded in evolving and imposing another grand deception in the form of an official spin that not only dehumanizes and demonizes the Palestinians, but also as an attempt at blaming the victim and resuscitating labels that represent us as subhuman species, and genetically violent terrorists, hence undeserving of any human treatment. At best, a false symmetry is manufactured between occupier and occupied, oppressor and oppressed, (as in the call on both sides to stop the violence) serving to eradicate the full horror of the occupation while depriving the victims of their right to resist. Given the disequilibrium of power, the American insistence on a bilateral solution only serves to give Israel license to exploit the asymmetry of power and to pursue its policies of subjugating a whole nation and imposing a unilateral and unjust solution.

The Israeli solution is firmly imbedded in the tainted mentality of occupation as license to dictate by force of arms illegal and punitive realities that would further exacerbate the conflict and the suffering of the Palestinian people. Refusal to intervene by the US and the international community as a whole has given Israel a free hand to continue to act with impunity and immunity as a country above the law and beyond accountability, while the Palestinians continue to be deprived of protection of the law and the minimal imperatives of moral and human decency. We continue to plead for a global rule of law that would check the aggression of the powerful, and eliminate the ongoing dehumanization of the Palestinian people. Such absence of will and abrogation of responsibility on the part of the international community has not only perpetuated the Nakba and prolonged the suffering and victimization of the Palestinian people, but has also served to undermine the quest and chances for peace throughout the region.

When we joined the peace process launched in Madrid in 1991, we did so as an act of will, as a commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the aim of ending the occupation of 22% of historical Palestine and the establishment of our independent state on the territory occupied by Israel in 1967. As victims, we rose above the pain of the moment and reached out to our occupiers to wrench the course of history away from inevitable conflict, towards reconciliation based on justice and parity. Buttressed by the confidence of the peoples will to endure and resist oppression, as manifested in the intifada of 1987, we offered Israel and the world a unique opportunity to legitimize a daring pursuit of peace, and to gain a constituency for an equitable resolution.

Unfortunately, the peace process became a punitive process manipulated by Israel to pursue its policies of expansion, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, and subjugation of the weaker side by force. It further served as a guise to rationalize the separation of the people from the land and to fragment both the people and the land, transforming the occupied Palestinian territories into a series of isolated reservations or Bantustans while maintaining full Israeli hegemony and direct control. While seeking to bestow retroactive legitimacy on illegal Israeli settlements, and on Israels annexation of Jerusalem by force, it also sought to negate the Palestinian refugees right of return thereby denying the very essence of peace and destroying its foundations.

The so-called generous offer of Barak has been exposed for the sham that it is an occupiers version of whats good for the natives, based only on whats good for Israel, thus ensuring further conflict and instability rather than cementing a fair and durable solution. Having been historically the victims of war and conflict, we found ourselves the victims of a flawed and unjust peace process.

Sharons incursion into the Haram Al-Sharif on September 28, 2000, was only the calculated spark that ignited a powder keg already in place as a result of the inequities of the process itself. The use of live ammunition and lethal force against the unarmed Palestinian protestors unleashed horrific forces of hostility, racism, and orchestrated violence against the captive Palestinian people. The continued intensification of these measures sends an ominous and stark message of brutality and is symptomatic of the regression to fundamentalist Zionism witnessed in the bloodbaths of the 1940s. By claiming that this is the continuation of Israels War of Independence, Sharon is sending a message to the Palestinian people and to the whole world that the national eradication and the ethnic cleansing of the 1948 Nakba are still in process.

The current Israeli government represents the most lethal combination of extremist right-wing political ideology, religious fundamentalism and zealotry, and unbridled forces of militarism with a deceptive veneer of the civilized face of the Labor party. Sharon is the same army general who had committed crimes against humanity in such atrocities as the Qibya massacre of 1953, the cleansing of Gaza in 1973, the invasion of Lebanon and the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla of 1982. Intent on pursuing this bloody path and on repeating the mistakes of history, Sharon has not learned that no amount of brutality, cruelty, or violence can break the will of a people determined to gain its freedom, dignity, and independence. He shows no signs of drawing the right historical conclusions that colonialism is by nature a temporary form of enslavement, and that a people colonized cannot be brought to their knees by the colonizers stifling measures of subjugation and containment.

Sisters and brothers, I appeal to you today, to restore the absent Palestinians to the agenda of humanity, to validate our reality and rights, to recognize and alleviate the pain and suffering of this tortured nation, and to give recognition to the Palestinian narrative long denied. You are the only source of empowerment for a people who feel abandoned and disempowered, but who have never lost faith in human solidarity and a shared vision of emancipation.

I appeal to you, as I have often done to governments and global fora, not to adopt the stance of cowardly neutrality, for in the struggle against oppression, injustice, racism, intolerance, colonialism, and exclusion, there can be NO neutrality. We are all called upon to take sides on behalf of the victim, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed, and to stem the tide of evil and prevent the forces of darkness from prevailing. Here, there is no US veto to deprive us of protection and our rights, nor is there censorship or blackmail to intimidate governments ruled by self- interest.

Let this meeting radiate the pure light of the human spirit that can never be dimmed or contained. Our path to the future must be based on the redemption of history and the past, free of the shackles of inherited inequities. Our legacy to the future must be based on the rectification of the painful legacies of the past. Sisters and brothers, Never before has an occupation army imposed such a total and suffocating siege on a captive civilian population, then proceeded to shell their homes, bomb their infrastructure, assassinate their activists and leaders, destroy their crops and trees, murder their civilians at will, steal their lands, and then demand that they acquiesce like lambs to the slaughter. Never before have the victims been denied the right to articulate, and gain recognition for, the horrendous atrocities being committed against them as a matter of policy, but were rather blamed and punished for the fact of their victimization.

On behalf of the Palestinian people I appeal to you to have the courage to intervene, to ensure that the oppressor is held accountable and the victim is protected, to enact those principles and values that not only protect lives but that also imbue life with the human qualities that make it worth living. Despite our overwhelming pain, we have not surrendered to the forces of occupation, colonization, racism, and dehumanizationnor have we adopted their moral distortions. I ask you also not to succumb, but to maintain and enhance the struggle for dignity, equality, freedom, and justice as an act of collective affirmation on behalf of humanity as a whole.


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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