Peace Dinner, by Carlos Latuff

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-blog/2009/06/09/

Bibi Back at the White House – The Consistency of Israeli Duplicity Comes Ever More Clearly into Focus – by Jeff Gates

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the White House July 6th, it's time to recall how Tel Aviv deceived Washington throughout the entirety of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

U.S. military leaders will be watching this meeting very closely, as will the veterans community.

For me, confirmation of Israel's strategic duplicity came in a meeting with Harry McPherson who served as counsel and speechwriter for Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ entered the Senate in 1948 with Louisiana Senator Russell Long for whom I served as counsel and speechwriter.

At his law offices in Washington, Harry described his arrival in Tel Aviv the night that the 1967 War began. That war typifies the consistency of this ongoing deceit.

He flew in the night before from Vietnam through Hong Kong. He knew on arrival that something was amiss because the airport lights were off. He checked into his hotel and was awakened early on June 5th by Wally Barbour, the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

A pear-shaped diplomat with a penchant for yellowing Palm Beach suits, Barbour called to tell Harry that the war had just broken out-to which he replied, "But I just come from the war."

Barbour picked him up at the hotel and they hurried to the foreign ministry for a brief meeting before conferring with the Israeli chief of military intelligence. In response to their repeated question, "Did the Egyptians attack?" McPherson and Barbour received only evasive answers. As air raid sirens wailed, McPherson recalls in A Political Education:

Barbour suggested that we might continue the discussion in the underground bunker. The general studied his watch. "No, that won't be necessary. We can stay here." Barbour and I looked at each other. If it wasn't necessary, the Egyptian air force had been destroyed. That could only have happened so quickly if it had been surprised on the ground. We did not need to ask for confirmation, but left at once to cable the news to Washington.

Israel was neither under attack nor under threat of attack as its leadership has since conceded. Air raid sirens were just props in the stagecraft of waging war by way of deception.

The Israel-as-victim storyline was stage-managed by Zionist extremists to make both Israeli citizens and foreign observers believe that the Jewish state was endangered. As with the phony intelligence that induced the U.S. to war in Iraq in March 2003, the facts in June 1967 differed dramatically from the geopolitical narrative.

Under cover of that false attack, Tel Aviv occupied land belonging to its neighbors. The bulk of that property is still held by force 43 years later with the support of the U.S. as its oft-duped ally.

Servicing the Commander-in-Chief

In the lead-up to Israel's Six-Day Land Grab, Johnson was lobbied by U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg. LBJ had moved Goldberg from the Supreme Court to the U.N. so he could be replaced with Abe Fortas, Johnson's personal lawyer. Fortas was a senior operative in a network of Zionists who helped produce the Johnson presidency and shaped its policies.

When Goldberg used heart-rending rhetoric to weave for Johnson a storyline about Israeli vulnerability and the pending victimization of hapless Jews at the hostile hands of an Arab "ring of steel," LBJ waved a Central Intelligence Agency report predicting that Israel could win any war in the region in two weeks.

When Goldberg persisted, Johnson ordered the CIA to revisit their analysis. The agency returned with a revised report concluding that Israel could win any war in the region in one week.

On June 4th, at a Fortas-hosted dinner for Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and New York investment banker John Loeb, Fortas cautioned Johnson that war might soon erupt in the Middle East.

When the president turned to McNamara for his opinion, the Pentagon chief agreed with Johnson that there would be no war. Johnson then confirmed that U.S. intelligence agencies agreed with McNamara's assessment. Johnson left for the White House at 10:58 p.m.

Less than six hours later, at 4:30 a.m. on June 5th, National Security Adviser Walt Rostow called LBJ to announce that Israel had attacked Egypt. Mathilde Krim, a former Irgun operative, was Johnson's guest at the White House that night. Before informing anyone else, LBJ stopped by the blonde beauty's bedroom to tell her, "The war has started."

Not until 7:45 a.m. did Johnson speak with Soviet Premier Aleksi Kosygin who expressed his hope and expectation that the U.S., as Israel's closest ally, would restrain Tel Aviv.

Mathilde Krim was the wife of Arthur Krim, chairman of the Finance Committee for the Democratic Party and president of United Artists. While Johnson was in the Senate, Krim bought land near the LBJ Ranch in Texas where he built "Mathilde's House." When Arthur was away on business, Johnson routinely took Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to visit Mathilde.

An Inside Job

In the war's first few hours, the "victimized" Israelis destroyed the Egyptian Air Force while its aircraft were still on the ground. Walt Rostow sent Johnson a memo describing the success of Tel Aviv's "vulnerable" military as "the first day's turkey shoot." By evening, the Jordanian air force was also largely destroyed.

Johnson also received a memo from Arthur Krim that read, "Many arms shipments are packed and ready to go to Israel, but are being held up. It would be helpful if these could be released." Johnson ordered them released.

By evening of the second day, two-thirds of the Syrian air force had been destroyed. The glee in the State Department Operations Room was palpable, leading Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow to caution, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, do not forget that we are neutral in word, thought and deed."

At the State Department's mid-day press briefing, spokesman Robert McCloskey repeated Rostow's official "neutrality" lie. Zionist advisers surrounded Johnson in the decision-making that lent U.S. support to the 1967 war. "Everyone around me, without exception was pro-Israel," recalls Johnson speechwriter Grace Halsell. She identified more than a dozen close advisers to Johnson, including Walt Rostow, his brother Eugene and Arthur Goldberg.

White House counsels Leo White and Jake Jacobsen were likewise pro-Israel as were two key speechwriters: Richard Goodwin, husband of biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Ben Wattenberg whose parents moved to the U.S. from Palestine. Likewise domestic affairs adviser Larry Levinson and John Roche, an avid Zionist and Johnson's intellectual-in-residence.

The Non-Separation of Powers

In the lead-up to this Israeli aggression, Fortas served as an enabling back channel between the Israeli embassy and the White House. Fortas had known Israeli Ambassador Avraham Harman since the ambassador's arrival in Washington in 1959. During the March 1960 visit to Washngton of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Fortas sponsored a breakfast at his home attended by Harman and Johnson who was then Senate Majority Leader.

Fortas' biographer conceded: "For several weeks before the crisis erupted into war, the Israeli ambassador was ‘in very frequent contact' with Fortas and regularly visited the justice at his chambers or his house." An outspoken Zionist, Fortas also attended a critical White House strategy meeting on the Middle East on May 26th, ten days before the land grab began.

When it came to Israel, Fortas was never neutral. "When they get back from Egypt," a law clerk in his Supreme Court chambers overheard Justice Fortas say, "I'm going to decorate my office with Arab foreskins."

Throughout the six days of carnage that Israel inflicted on its neighbors, Near East experts met daily with Johnson in the Cabinet Room. Fortas attended each meeting. Reflecting on comments by Fortas to Johnson at their June 4th dinner party, John Loeb wrote to Fortas on June 6th: "You were prophetic about the Middle East. Thank the Lord the President has you as a friend and counselor."

In 1968, Johnson failed in his attempt to elevate Fortas to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Fortas resigned in May 1969 in the wake of a series of scandals. In the summer of 1970, The New York Times reported his registration as a lobbyist for Kuhn, Loeb & Company.

Fortas cemented his relationship with Johnson in 1948 when, in LBJ's first Senate race in Texas, the Washington lawyer finessed the extensive vote fraud apparent in the Democratic primary in which Johnson claimed an 87-vote victory, including 200 votes tallied in alphabetical order.

A Fortas-devised legal strategy led to Johnson's name appearing on the November ballot as the Democratic Party nominee. In a strongly Democratic state, that primary victory assured the ambitious Texan a victory in the general election and a seat in the U.S. Senate. Decades later, those familiar with this political history continued to refer to him as "Landslide Lyndon."

A Strategic Provocation

The Six-Day Slaughter of 1967 pre-staged the geopolitical dynamics for all that has followed-not only in the Middle East but also in the U.S. as Israel's violent taking of land outraged everyone in the region and set American foreign policy on today's ruinous course.

The periodic carnage visited on Palestinians ensures that this strategic provocation remains fresh in the minds of Muslims worldwide. Reactions to these serial provocations, in turn, fuel the plausibility of the latest storyline, The Clash of Civilizations and its corrosive counterpart: the Global War on Terrorism with "Islamo fascism" the essential Evil Doer branding.

Israel has performed with reliable consistency every act required to provoke and sustain extremism in the Muslim world. Only by duplicity has the Zionist state sustained a U.S. alliance whose main effect has been to make America appear guilty by association.

On August 9, 2000 in a White House ceremony, President Bill Clinton presented Johnson paramour Mathilde Krim with the Medal of Freedom. By then this former Irgun terrorist had been rebranded as a high-profile medical researcher and AIDS activist adored and promoted to political prominence by her pro-Israeli supporters in Hollywood.

It's not expected that Israeli-American Rahm Israel Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff to Barack Obama, will urge that Monica Lewinsky receive the nation's highest civilian honor. It's not yet known what role Emanuel and White House political strategist David Axelrod have played in sustaining our costly "special relationship" with the Jewish state.

As yet another Israeli Prime Minister arrives in Washington with yet another rationalization for continuing this entangled alliance, a nomination is pending for the appointment to our highest court of a third Jewish Zionist for a court with just nine jurists. In time, historians will identify the role played by the Israel lobby (and Emanuel/Axelrod) in the nomination of Elena Kagan.

Based on the consistency of "Bibi" Netanyahu's duplicitous conduct over decades, Barack Obama needs to know when an Israeli Prime Minister is once again deceiving a U.S. president. History suggests a reliable test: are his lips moving?

The End of History

Though the U.S. has been deceived with stunning consistency for more than six decades, a mid-course correction remains possible. If this latest president can concede to himself that his political career is a product of those complicit at this deceit, he may yet emerge as the transformative leader that his supporters once hoped he could be.

If Barack Obama can be honest with himself, he will speak candidly to the American people and explain why this long-running deceit must be brought to a speedy close. If on July 6th he announces support for a one state solution, that will start to unwind this perilous alliance.

Senior military leaders have confirmed the common source undermining U.S. national security. Should the current commander-in-chief fail to act consistent with the known facts, this latest political product of the Chicago Outfit may risk their continued allegiance.

To advance peace, he needs only declare U.S. support for the designation of Jerusalem as an international cultural site under the protection of U.N. troops. To end the multi-decade cycle of provocation/reaction, he needs only reassign 30,000 U.S. troops to Palestine to rebuild a destroyed society, resettle its ousted people on occupied land and secure Israel's nuclear arsenal.

The Zionist experiment was a failure before it began. An overdue end to this apartheid regime can begin July 6th. Or this perilous alliance can continue-at untold cost in blood and treasure.

July 6th could be a defining moment for a president in need of such a moment. That date could also mark the restoration of American values to U.S. foreign policy and grant solace to those moderate and secular Jews long appalled at the conduct of Zionists who in 1948 deceived a U.S. president to recognize as a legitimate state their extremist enclave in the Middle East.
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/07/06/bibi-back-at-the-white-house/

Obama, Netanyahu, and Middle East Peace

During his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu tomorrow, President Obama is expected to “focus on broad topics relating to an ultimate Middle East peace plan, rather than specific issues that continue to vex Israeli-Palestinian relations.” In other words, Obama is expected to talk about the “core issues”—borders, East Jerusalem, and refugees.[1]

Now being the smart man that he is (and I’m actually not being sarcastic here), Obama must realize that Netanyahu has no intention of compromising on these issues. Yes, Netanyahu has proposed granting the Palestinians a “state,” but it turns out that this “state” isn’t really a state at all. Under Netanyahu’s plan, the Palestinians would not be permitted to have an army, and Israel would retrain control of the area’s borders and airspace. Netanyahu has also made it clear that Israel will never relinquish East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and other parts of the West Bank.[2]

Although this non-state might sound reasonable to the likes of Avigdor Lieberman (provided, of course, that Netanyahu also agrees to “transfer” a good number of Israeli Arabs out of Israel), Obama—who, we’ve already established, is a smart man—must realize that it’s not reasonable to the Palestinians. Nor, for that matter, to the rest of the world, which has repeatedly voted in the UN General Assembly that Israel must (1) withdraw from “the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem,” (2) acknowledge that the Palestinians have “the right to self-determination and the right to their independent State,” and (3) resolve the refugee crisis in conformity with Resolution 194.[3]

So, assuming that he really wants to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, Obama’s task will be to persuade Netanyahu to do what Netanyahu obviously has no intention of doing. Now how, you might be wondering, how oh how, can Obama accomplish this?

Martin Indyk, who served as US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton years, writes that the president must find a way to “overcome the mistrust” that has “permeated and poisoned their personal relationship and build a partnership for peace.” In order to accomplish this, Indyk writes, “Obama should invite [Netanyahu] alone to Camp David for an afternoon walk in the woods. For his part, since he models himself on Winston Churchill, Netanyahu needs to make a real effort to take Obama into his confidence, much as Churchill wooed Roosevelt in the run-up to America’s entry into World War II.”[4]

Such a touching scene there: Barry and Bibi walking alone in the woods. Perhaps, if time allows, they could even go for a picnic, maybe even find a nice spot on the green and watch the sun set.

Of course, such actions will do absolutely nothing to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. If Obama is really serious about doing this, then he would do well to listen to James Baker, who, in March, suggested how the president could curb Israeli settlement expansion: “I would…stress United States taxpayers are giving Israel roughly $3 billion each year, which amounts to something like $1,000 for every Israeli citizen, at a time when our own economy is in bad shape and a lot of Americans would appreciate that kind of helping hand from their own government. Given that fact, it is not unreasonable to ask the Israeli leadership to respect U.S. policy on settlements.”[5]

Baker, of course, has the right to dole out such advice. In early 1992, he and President Bush I. told Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that they would freeze a $10 billion loan guarantee until Israel halted its settlement construction. “Israeli leaders told us they would just get the money from the U.S. Congress,” Baker recalls. “Our reply was, ‘We’ll see you on Capitol Hill.’” Baker and Bush ended up prevailing, as “[t]he Israeli public rejected Shamir’s ideological hard line” and in the June elections voted in Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor Party, which had “pledged to restore friendly relations with the United States.”[6]

If Obama applied enough pressure, he might be able to bring an end to Netanyahu’s coalition government, which in turn might pave the way for a Kadima-Labor government, which itself might be willing to make a reasonable offer to the Palestinians. Yes, there are a lot of mights there, and I’m not holding my breath. But if Obama really does want to resolve the conflict (and I think he does), and if he really is such a smart man (and we’ve agreed that he is), then perhaps—perhaps—it’s possible.


Notes

[1] Ali Weinberg, “Obama, Netanyahu meeting to avoid specifics, settlements,” First Read from NBC News, 2 July 2010.

[2] “PM’s Speech at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University,” Prime Minister’s Office, 14 June 2009; Barak Ravid and Agencies, “Netanyahu: Israel will never share Jerusalem with Palestinians,” Haaretz, 12 January 2010; Jonathan Lis, “Netanyahu: Israel will never cede Jordan Valley,” Haaretz, 3 February 2010; “Netanyahu: Israel must have West Bank presence after peace deal,” Associated Press, 20 January 2010.

[3] “Responding to Avigdor Lieberman,” 29 June 2010; “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine (A/64/L.23),” United Nations General Assembly, 23 November 2009; “Following Two-Day Debate, General Assembly Adopts Six Draft Resolutions On Question of Palestine, Middle East,” United Nations General Assembly, 2 December 2009.

[4] “A quiet diplomacy on the Mideast peace path,” Washington Post, 2 July 2010.

[5] Akiva Eldar, “James Baker’s Advice for Obama on Forging Middle East Peace,” Haaretz, 23 March 2010.

[6] Ibid.; William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, 2004, p. 501.
http://donemmerich.blogspot.com/

The Most Honorable Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu

y Mohamed Khodr* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz
In response to the world's outrage (except the U.S.) against Israel's May 31st murderous attack on peace activists aboard the "Free Gaza Flotilla" delivering humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu and his Cabinet on Monday, June 14, 2010 voted in favor of creating an internal commission called the "Independent Public Commission" that includes three Israelis and two foreign observers to investigate the legality and circumstances of the IDF's raid on the Flotilla that led to the death of nine Turkish peace activists.

As its practice Israel has never allowed an international investigation of its war crimes. Israel flatly rejected the U.N.'s "statement" calling for such an investigation. Obama as usual caved in to Israel's rejection and agreed to an internal Israeli investigation.

The appointed members of the investigation commission are:

1. Former Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel: 75, Chair
–Justice Turkel has declared that he doesn't believe this panel should exist and dismisses the need for foreign observers

2. Shabtai Rosen: 93, Professor of International Law
–From 1948-1967 he served as a legal adviser in the Foreign Ministry. In 1953 Ben Gurion directed Ariel Sharon's elite force 101 to attack the West Bank village of Qibya (Operation Shoshana). Sixty nine innocent Palestinians were massacred; many in houses blown up over their heads; along with the destruction of 45 homes, a school and a mosque. Shabtai Rosen advised Moshe Sharett, Foreign Minister, to cover up the massacre by passing a law allowing collective punishment of Palestinian border settlements and blaming them for initiating the attack to which the IDF responded. In other words, a cover up of this war crime.

When the world condemned Israel for the attack Ben Gurion issued a statement denying that the IDF was involved. He said:

"None deplores it more than the Government of Israel, if … innocent blood was spilled… The Government of Israel rejects with all vigor the absurd and fantastic allegation that 600 men of the IDF took part in the action … We have carried out a searching investigation and it is clear beyond doubt that not a single army unit was absent from its base on the night of the attack on Qibya."

Decades of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arab nationalities were constantly denied by Israel, blamed on the victims, with no allowance for international investigation of its war crimes from massive ethnic cleansing to repeated massacres and genocide against civilians.

3. Brigadier General Amos Horev: 86, former president of Haifa's Technion.

The Two Foreign Observers are:

1. Lord William David Trimble, from Northern Ireland:
–Co-Founder of "Friends of Israel", ironically, formed the same day of the deadly IDF raid, May 31, 2010. He is joined by staunch supporters of Israel like John Bolton, Dore Gold, and Spain's former right-wing prime minister, Jose Aznar.

At its founding, the group released this statement:

"This initiative is promoted by people who are not Jewish and whose motivations are based on the deep conviction that Israel is part of the Western world. In fact, today Israel is a fundamental actor for the future of the West. Although the peace process is important, the members of Friends of Israel Initiative are more concerned about the onslaught of radical Islamism as well as the specter of a nuclear Iran since these are threats affecting not only Israel, but the entire world. The sponsors of this Initiative believe there is no West without Israel."

2. Ken Watkin: Former Canadian judge advocate general.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move to set up an inquiry would demonstrate clearly "to the entire world that the state of Israel acts according to law, transparently and with full responsibility."

According to the Prime Minister's Office, the commission's mandate will be limited to:

* Addressing the legality of the Gaza naval blockade
* Legality of Israel's actions within the context of International Law, and the Goldstone Report.
* Examine the identity, actions and real intentions of the flotilla's organizers, especially the Turkish group IHH, which Israel alleges has ties to terrorist groups.

The two foreign observers will not be able to view confidential material or vote on any decision by the commission.

The commission will not hear testimony from the flotilla passengers. It will not interview participating IDF soldiers in the attack but will rely on the IDF's internal investigation report that found Israel acted legally and in compliance with international law in its "self defense" raid of the Flotilla where its soldiers were ambushed, attacked, lynched, and shot.

According to a CNN report Deputy Minister Daniel Ayalon said there were 75 mercenaries on board the ship with ties to Al Qaeda. He stated that weapons were found on board the ships and that $10,000 was found on the dead bodies. He said that it's Turkey and the passengers who owe Israel an apology for the raid, not Israel.

The first meeting of the commission was held on Wednesday, June 16, prior to the arrival of the two foreign observers. It was decided that the discussion will be held in Hebrew but that the observers will have access to English translations when warranted.

After a few quick meetings the Commission submitted its final report to Prime Minister Benjamin on July 4, 2010.
The Report states:

At the request and appointment by the Most Honorable Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Turkel Commission carried out its duty faithfully, transparently, and in an open and fair minded manner depending solely on the facts as presented by Israel is proud to issue its final report as follows: It was a deep honor to serve Israel and its Jewish people.

WHEREAS Israel's history has been one of victimhood at the hands of Arab armies and Palestinian terrorism.

WHEREAS Arab armies attacked Israel in 1967. Israel nevertheless defeated the invaders and was forced to occupy the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

WHEREAS the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem showed their gratitude to the benevolent and civilizing Israeli presence in Eretz Israel by adopting terrorism as their modus operandi against innocent Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers.

WHEREAS Hamas, a terrorist organization in Gaza, violently took over Gaza in 2005 thereby establishing an existential Islamist threat to Israel's security.

WHEREAS in self defense Israel four years ago had to establish a total blockade of Gaza by air, land and sea to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas that has fired thousands of rockets over six years killing 3 Israeli civilians.

WHEREAS Israel in self defense attacked Gaza for 23 days in 2008-2009 that resulted in the killing of 13 Israelis, 3 of them civilians, the rest were honorable and courageous soldiers.

WHEREAS 700 Israeli haters and Anti-Semites from Turkey and 40 nations decided to sail a Flotilla (Free Gaza Flotilla) to break Israel's legal naval blockade of Gaza, a "terrorist Iranian entity"; Israel in self defense tried to peacefully warn the Flotilla that their approach to Gaza is a breach of Israel's security and sovereignty.

WHEREAS the Flotilla ignored Israel's repeated warnings, the IDF had no choice but to approach the Flotilla and board it peacefully in International Waters to prevent weapon smuggling to Hamas.

WHEREAS militant members of the Flotilla attacked the IDF with various weapons forcing the soldiers to open fire in self defense which tragically resulted in injured soldiers and the death of nine Turkish citizens.

After reviewing all the videos, facts, and testimony by Israel's Prime Minister, the Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Israel's Chief of Staff, the Commission has reached the following conclusions:

1. Israel's siege and naval blockade of Gaza is legally justified under the U.N. Charter and International Law that grant member states the right to self defense by any means necessary.
2. Given that the Flotilla was repeatedly warned not to approach Israel's legal naval blockade of Gaza and that Israel is willing to deliver their aid to Gaza and the Flotilla's outright rejection of the warning, Israel had no choice but to board the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara that carried hundreds of so called "peace activists".
3. Given that the ship was boarded by lightly armed soldiers, the militants on board attacked and injured several soldiers who in self defense fired their weapons killing nine of the Turkish mercenaries.
4. We find the international community's outrage at this incident to be outrageous and Anti-Semitic. No nation will allow militants with weapons to breach its sovereignty and deliver weapons to a terrorist organization. Hamas is a terrorist organization with a few hundred lightly armed militants dedicated to the annihilation of Israel, the world's fourth most powerful army in possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons.
5. We find the Goldstone Report to be biased, unsubstantiated, and Anti-Semitic in its conclusion that Israel committed "war crimes", and "crimes against Humanity" in its incursion into Gaza in 2008-2009. The Goldstone panel refused to meet with Israeli officials to hear their balanced view of the circumstances surrounding the incursion. The claim that Israel used banned weapons is false.

We agree with the statement of Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman regarding the Goldstone Report:

"[the] commission's conclusions were pre-determined… members of the panel did give the facts a chance to confuse them."

6. We support Israel's historical principle never to allow an international investigation of its self defense operations because Israel knows well that the entire world (except Obama, Congress, and the Jewish dominated financial system, banks and media) hates Israel and wishes its total destruction. No other civilized nation from the U.S., Canada, Europe, to Australia, have ever allowed an international investigation into their war crimes against innocent civilians across the third world.
7. We applaud Israel's honorable decision to internally investigate this incident, a process lacking in many countries such as Iran, China, Russia, and most of the Muslim world.
8. We condemn Turkey, an Islamist state, a harborer and supporter of terrorist states like Iran and the terrorist organizations of Hezbollah and Hamas, for its deliberate support of the Flotilla's provocative actions against Israel forcing its hand to raid the Flotilla.
9. We applaud the Arab States (especially Egypt that is Israel's partner in Gaza's siege by building another Apartheid Wall to seal its Rafah crossing into Gaza) in their private support of Israel's siege of Gaza and its action against the Flotilla. In particular we express our deepest gratitude to Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, who asked President Obama to tell Israel NOT to lift the naval blockade of Gaza in order to further weaken Hamas.
10. Finally the Commission wishes to express their deep gratitude to America, the only country in the world that constantly stands with Israel, in the person of President Obama and Congress for understanding, supporting, and blocking any Anti Semitic international investigation of Israel's self defense operation against the Flotilla.

Our Conclusion despite the worldwide attack on the members and mandate of this honorable Commission (Haaretz called it a "farce") by world governments, U.N. organizations, the European Parliament, the International Red Cross, and all Human Rights Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, we deem that the Turkel Commission carried out its duty in a legal, credible, and honorable manner. If you don't believe us ask the Congress of the world's sole superpower, the United States.

Thereby our final conclusions and recommendations are as follows.

1. We find Israel Not Guilty of all charges brought against it by the International Community. It broke no laws but simply acted on its right to self defense.
2. We recommend that the report of the Turkel Commission be the final word on this matter and that no further investigation be carried out by the U.N. or any other entity.

We the Undersigned, Members of the Commission present this Final Report to the Honorable Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu on July 4, 2010.

–Former Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel
–Shabtai Rosen: Professor of International Law
–Brigadier General Amos Horev

The Two International Observers:
–Lord William David Trimble
–Ken Watkin.

Netanyahu Bloodthirsty Pirate by Latuff

http://latuff2.deviantart.com/art/Netanyahu-Bloodthirsty-Pirate-166396940?q=gallery%3ALatuff2%2F22821988&qo=8

Bibi Netanyahu's Babe: Kneepad Diplomacy Lives!

By Dr. Alan Sabrosky* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

There has been something verging on the surreal in the US-Israel interplay over the past year or so, culminating in the kick in – er, the face delivered to Vice President Biden two weeks ago with Israel's surprise announcement of yet more new settlement construction, and capped by Secretary of State Clinton's groveling submission to Netanyahu at a recent AIPAC conference. Her speech was the verbal equivalent of what a White House intern allegedly did for her husband once (or more) upon a time, supposedly earning "Presidential kneepads" thereby.

Israeli officials have repeatedly not only ignored but also openly insulted in word or deed the persons or policies of almost every senior American official with whom they have dealt, including Clinton, Biden, Middle East Envoy George Mitchell, and President Obama himself.

And they have taken it, one and all, occasionally with brief bursts of verbal anger that rapidly subsided into yet another steadfast affirmation of the eternal, undiminished, unchallenged and unchallengeable US willingness to underwrite the security of Israel, and especially to its absolute unwillingness to deny Israel a single dollar, bomb or bullet. God knows, I wish they had even half the same demonstrated commitment to the security of the United States and the well-being of the American people — but then, no one can easily serve two masters.


Creating a Shambles and Calling it Policy

Sure, America's Middle East policy is a shambles. America's standing is much lower now than when Obama came into office. The Iraq war is winding down, with no certainty at all how that country will go. Afghanistan is a mess, but then, Alexander the Great couldn't do much with it either, so that's no surprise. And Israel — not wanting America to be bored with only one and a half wars — evidently is trying to help by encouraging us into war with Iran, to spare them the cost of attacking it. Such a friend!

Then there are the long-suffering Palestinians, a people whose situation Obama himself declared in his one bright moment in Cairo last June to be "intolerable." Hello? Mr. Obama, did you sleep through so many classes that the meaning of that word slipped past you? Something that is "intolerable" needs to be put right, and by any objective measure, the US has the power on absolutely every dimension needed to do just that.

Ah, but that would mean actually doing something to Israel, or at least withholding something from it, or perhaps even voting against it in the UN. And that would mean bypassing Congress and going to the American people. And that isn't going to happen, at least with this Administration. Obama just isn't the man to do that job.

From Bad to Worse

The whole thing almost reminds me of a turnabout "battered spouse" exercise, in which the stronger lets the weaker do the beating, murmuring "now, dear" at intervals but letting the beatings continue. And as usual, whenever anyone else dares to point out what is happening, the battered spouse staunchly affirms a determination to stand by the battering partner, no matter what happens.

What is manifestly going to happen is that a demonstrably bad situation is going to get worse, and more than a few people are making that abundantly clear. Probably the only thing that might jolt the Israeli-dominated train of US Middle East mismanagement off its tracks, would be a catastrophe following a US strike against Iran producing US casualties way beyond those from the Vietnam War — something that could happen all too easily. And then, yet again, there is Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian Bantustan….

More dangerously, Clinton's hat-in-hand, I-love-you-now-and-forever verbal burlesque at the AIPAC conference makes two things abundantly clear. One is the extraordinary extent of Zionist control within and over the US Government — when you hurt someone or some Administration and it comes back for more, you have them. The other is how little the members of AIPAC themselves, at least nominally US citizens, care about the US itself — there isn't any longer even a facade of "dual loyalty," only loyalty to Israel alone.

I am very old-fashioned, and a decade in the US Marines gave me an odd affinity for qualities such as pride and loyalty and duty and honor. I'd like to hope that somewhere way down deep these supposed "leaders" of the most powerful country on earth would find something of those qualities in themselves, or at least acquire a sense of shame, and understand that they are there to safeguard America and Americans, and not to sustain Israeli militarism, racism and colonialism.

If they did, then Israel would find itself confronting sanctions and embargoes, its aid from the US would end, and the illegal blockade of Gaza would be forcibly broken — and that would be just for starters.

But that, too, isn't likely in the here and now. In the Middle East, as in so many other areas of public policy, the US Government and its so-called "leaders" simply are not a part of any workable solution. So perhaps we should just send them all some diplomatic kneepads emblazoned with the Star of David — although I do wonder what kind of a cigar Netanyahu will flash.

Netanyahu AIPAC speech disrupted by CodePink activists in settlement protest

Code Pink Disrupts Netanyahu Speech, Pulls Off AIPAC Hoax

Activists with the group Code Pink interrupted Netanyahu’s speech on two occasions with calls to freeze settlement building and end the US-backed blockade of the Gaza Strip. One protester said Israel is guilty of war crimes. Earlier in the day, Code Pink pulled off a hoax by releasing a fake press release in AIPAC’s name calling for a complete freeze on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. Code Pink members also dressed up in suits and handed out copies of the statement outside the AIPAC conference to confused attendees. Several major news outlets picked up the statement before AIPAC issued a denial.
http://gazasolidarity.blogspot.com/

So Israel Wants Peace? Really?

In his latest column for the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer again shows himself to be little more than a mouthpiece for the Israeli government. In response to Hilary Clinton’s recent demand that Israel “show in word and in deed its seriousness about peace” (Krauthammer’s paraphrase), he writes:

Israelis have been looking for peace—literally dying for peace—since 1947, when they accepted the U.N. partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. (The Arabs refused and declared war. They lost.)

Israel made peace offers in 1967, in 1978, and in the 1993 Oslo peace accords that Yasser Arafat tore up seven years later to launch a terror war that killed a thousand Israelis. Why, Clinton’s own husband testifies to the remarkable courage and vision of the peace offer made in his presence by Ehud Barak (now Netanyahu’s defense minister) at the 2000 Camp David talks. Arafat rejected it. In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered equally generous terms to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Refused again.

In these long and bloody 63 years, the Palestinians have not once accepted an Israeli offer of permanent peace, or ever countered with anything short of terms that would destroy Israel…

Under Obama, Netanyahu agreed to commit his center-right coalition to acceptance of a Palestinian state; took down dozens of anti-terror roadblocks and checkpoints to ease life for the Palestinians; assisted West Bank economic development to the point where its GDP is growing at an astounding 7 percent a year; and agreed to the West Bank construction moratorium, a concession that Secretary Clinton herself called “unprecedented.”


Just replace Krauthammer’s references to “Netanyahu” with first-person pronouns, and you’d have something that could have easily come from the mouth of the prime minister. Poor, besieged Israel, a lamb among wolves. Israel, which has been desperately seeking peace with its Arab neighbors for over sixty years now. Poor, poor Israel.

Of course, no serious historian could read this tripe without rolling his eyes. It’s true that the 1947 UN Partition Plan was accepted by Jewish leaders and rejected by Arab leaders, but we need to remember the context here. When the modern Zionist movement began in 1881, there were just a handful of Jews living in what was to become Mandate Palestine, 13,000 Jews compared to 457,000 Arabs. In 1947, after sixty years of steady Jewish immigration, there were still only about half as many Jews as Arabs, 650,000 to 1.2-1.3 million (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims).

So when the Truman administration pushed through the 1947 Partition Plan (among other means, by threatening to cut off financial aid to Greece and threatening to impose a rubber embargo on Liberia), Zionist leaders were ecstatic. For, although Jews made up half the population of Palestine, the UN Plan granted them approximately 55% of the land. Not surprisingly, Palestinians found the plan completely unacceptable. One-third of them would now be forced to live under Jewish rule.

Since then, Israel has gradually taken control of more and more Palestinian territory. After the 1947 and 1948 wars, Israel controlled 78% of Mandate Palestine. After the 1967 War, it controlled 100%.

Now it’s true that Israel did not start the 1947 and 1948 wars. The first war was started by local Palestinian guerillas, the second by neighboring Arab nations. But after achieving victory, it seemed clear that, contrary to Krauthammer’s claims, Israel was far more interested in expanding its borders than making peace with its enemies. As Israeli historian Avi Shlaim notes, “The files of the Israeli Foreign Ministry…burst at the seams with evidence of Arab peace feelers and Arab readiness to negotiate with Israel from September 1948 on.” Shlaim describes how Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, though undoubtedly desiring peace, “knew that for formal peace agreements Israel would have to pay by yielding territory to its neighbors and by agreeing to the return of a substantial number of Palestinian refugees, and he did not consider this a price worth paying” (The Iron Wall).

As can be evidenced by various internal documents, Ben-Gurion and many other early Israeli leaders intended to ultimately possess all of what they deemed to be Biblical Israel. For instance, Ben-Gurion wrote in a 1938 letter, “[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state—we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel.”

After starting and then quickly defeating its enemies in the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel began building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Its purpose behind these settlements has always been clear, to create “facts on the ground” that would enable it to permanently expand its borders.

Although Krauthammer speaks of Israel’s repeated peace overtures, Israel has never made a peace offer that complies with international law. While international law prohibits nations from acquiring territory through force and from transferring their own populations into occupied territories, at Camp David even Ehud Barak, with his “remarkable courage and vision,” only offered to return 91% of the West Bank and to withdraw from 63% of Israeli settlements. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who served as Israel’s foreign minister at the time, later stated that had he been a Palestinian he too would have rejected the offer. (And I’ve said nothing about Israel’s refusal to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes; I hope to write about this issue sometime in the near future.)

As far as Netanyahu’s “acceptance of a Palestinian state” goes, the truth is that he has never offered something that could reasonably be considered a “state.” As he stated in his speech at Bar-Ilan University last June, “The territory controlled by the Palestinians will be demilitarized, namely without an army, without control of its airspace and with effective security measures to prevent weapons smuggling.” Elsewhere, Netanyahu has made it clear that he has no intention of relinquishing East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and presumably other parts of the West Bank.

I find it hard to believe that Krauthammer is unaware of these facts. Though I generally disagree with him, I’ll be the first to admit that he’s an intelligent, well-informed individual. But for reasons which perhaps only he knows, he has decided against writing honest analysis and has instead decided to parrot the same propaganda that can be heard from the Israeli right. I imagine he realizes that, if most Americans knew the actual historical record, they would be less likely to continue looking the other way as their politicians persist in giving billions of dollars to Israel every year and turning a blind eye to even its most egregious sins.
http://donemmerich.blogspot.com/

PRESIDENT CLINTON AND NOW OBAMA – WHO THE BLEEP, (actually it was f***) DOES NETANYAHU THINK HE IS?

It’s not often that stories about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict make me laugh but one by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, did. Because he is the corporation’s correspondent supporters of Israel right or wrong most love to hate – from time to time they pressure the BBC to fire him – I imagine he enjoyed writing it.

In a vivid background report for From Our Own Correspondent, headlined Tough Lessons for Obama on Mid-East peace, Jeremy recalled some of the “false dawns” of previous presidential peace efforts.

One was a trip by President Clinton to Gaza in 1998 when Netanyahu was enjoying his first period as Israel’s prime minister. “Yes”, Jeremy added, “an American president in Gaza. It is not conceivable these days.”

After noting that Netanyahu drove Clinton mad, Jeremy went on:

After he (Netanyahu) had lectured the president about the Middle East, Mr. Clinton famously asked his aides: “Who the (bleep) does he think he is? Who’s the bleeping superpower here?” Only he did not say bleep.

What President Clinton actually said was, “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

After recalling in his own way how President Obama has been humiliated to date by Netanyahu in his second period as prime minister, Jeremy commented that he, Obama, “might be using Bill Clintonesque language about Mr. Netanyahu.”

My own speculation is that Obama behind closed doors might even be outdoing Clinton in his use of expletives about Netanyahu.

But really there’s no cause for laughter. Tears of rage are more appropriate.

The documented truth, which flows through my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is that every occupant of the Oval Office has at one point or another, and as President Ford once put it, been made “as mad as hell” by Israeli prime ministers. So the use of presidential expletives to describe them and Zionist lobby leaders at moments of great tension probably has a history going all the way back to Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence.

Even before that there were moments when President Truman could not contain his anger at the tactics Zionists were employing to bend him and the United Nations to their will. At one cabinet meeting Truman blurted out, “Jesus Christ couldn’t please them when he was here, so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck.”

In Memoirs, published long after the events, Truman was very frank about Zionist coercion in the countdown to the twice-postponed General Assembly vote on the partition plan resolution. He wrote:

The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but the White House too was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders – actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats – disturbed and annoyed me. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favourable votes in the General Assembly. I have never approved of the strong imposing their will on the weak whether among men or nations.

As it happened, the campaign of threats to cause a number of sovereign nations to turn their intended “No” to partition votes into “Yes” votes or to abstain was executed by the Zionist lobby with the assistance of a hit-squad of 26 U.S. senators. The whole effort to bend the UN General Assembly to Zionism’s will was co-ordinated by Zionism’s eyes and ears in the White House, David K. Niles. (He once confessed that “had Roosevelt lived, Israel probably would not have become a state.” President Roosevelt was opposed to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, and there is a good case for believing, I make it in my book, that if he had lived, he would have used the United Nations to say “No” to Zionism’s colonial enterprise).

When Truman subsequently learned how one sovereign nation in particular, Haiti, had been threatened in his name, he wrote in a memorandum not de-classified until 1971 that “pressure groups (he meant Zionist pressure groups) will succeed in putting the United Nations out of business if this sort of thing is continued.”

Events were to prove Truman more right than wrong on that account.

Eisenhower was the first and the last American President to contain Zionism (when he insisted in 1956/57 that Israel, after its collusion with Britain and France in war on Nasser’s Eygpt, should withdraw from occupied Arab territory without conditions).

There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that President Kennedy, if he had been allowed to live, was intending in a second term to continue Eisenhower’s containment of Zionism, and that as a result of doing so there would not have been a shift of U.S. policy in favor of Israel right or wrong. In that event, and in all probability, the 1967 war would not have happened – Greater Israel would not have been created; and the Zionist state would not have been allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

Though it contained no expletives, the most explicit statement of anger I am aware of was the one made by presidential candidate Kennedy after he had been taken to a meeting with Zionist funders in New York. After it, back in Washington, he went for a walk with an old and trusted friend, newspaper columnist Chares L. Bartlett. According to his account, Kennedy said:

As an American citizen I am outraged to have a Zionist group come to me and say – “We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you let us have control of your Middle East policy. They wanted control!”

In my view the question of who the bleep does Netanyahu think he is misses the point. It is that he knows who he is – another Israeli prime minister who, with the assistance of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, has got another American president by the testicles. At least for the time being.

Alan Hart.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East. Author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews: The False Messiah (Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews). He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets on www.twitter.com/alanauthor

Netanyahu: The Obscene Liar

By Khalid Amayreh


Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is a manifestly fascist-minded demagogue who thinks that everything Jewish must override everything non-Jewish, regardless of all considerations.

He is also a first-class liar who believes that lying to the world, including Jews, is the first line of defense against growing opposition to genocidal Israeli criminality.

Indeed, like Nazi Germany, which waged war on Europe and killed or caused the death of millions in the name of self-defense, Israel is doing the same thing by threatening and attacking its neighbors, especially the helpless Palestinians who have been trying for decades to rid themselves of the Nazi-like Israeli occupation of their country.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu is a true pathological liar. Falsifying reality is simply an inherent and conspicuous character of the notorious bigot.

Netanyahu claimed this week that nuclear-armed Israel is the world’s most threatened county.

He was quoted by the Ha’aretz newspaper as saying that “ Israel is facing enemies who don’t conceal their intentions, who first attack us physically and then attack our right to self-defense.”

But Is Israel really a threatened country?

Obviously, the claim is a big lie because Israel is actually a threatening, not a threatened country. Israel, which possesses a huge stockpile of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, has been attacking other countries from day-1 of its hateful existence.

Indeed, Israel has been trying relentlessly to annihilate the national existence of another people, the Palestinians, by arrogating their land, demolishing their homes and towns, and expelling them from their ancestral homeland.

Harsh ethnic cleansing, which takes a variety of aspects, has always been and continues to be Israel ’s modus operandi in treating the Palestinians. Israel is probably the only country in this world that thrives on murder, theft and lies, a country that murders children on their way to school and then cries out “self-defense! Holocaust! terror.!

In his monologue of lies, Netanyahu also claimed that Palestinian “rocket attacks” on Israeli settlements were not experienced by any other country since German attacks on Britain during WWII.

Well, if the term “pornographic lies” has any meaning, it is people like Netanyahu and his colleagues who give it meaning.

After all, no honest person under the sun can compare the extremely primitive projectiles fired by desperate Palestinians resistance fighters on Israeli settlements, with the German raids and rocket attacks against London and other British cities.

Indeed, while the German missile and other attacks on British cities killed thousands of Britons, eight years of Palestinian rocket firing on Israel killed less than ten Israeli settlers. In other words, more people would die in a single traffic accident in Israel than they would in eight years of Palestinian “rocket attacks”.

More to the point, a single attack by Israeli fighter-bombers, e.g. F-16s and F-15s, would cause more death and devastation than all Palestinian rockets would in many years.

This is exactly what happened during the past ten years. Israeli aerial and artillery attacks on Palestinian population centers killed thousands of innocent Palestinians. Thousands others were maimed and badly injured. In fact, it is amply safe to state that for every Israeli settler killed by Palestinian “rockets,” a thousand Palestinians, mostly children, women and other innocent civilians, were killed by the Jewish Wehrmacht, deceptively known as “Israeli Defense Forces.”

This massive Israeli criminality culminated in the virtual genocide in Gaza last winter, when hundreds of Israeli war planes, the state-of-the-art of the American technology of death, rained bombs, depleted uranium and white phosphorus, on unprotected Palestinian towns.

The pornographic killings in Gaza proved to be far more satanic and diabolic than many of the crimes committed by the Nazis. The Nazis attacked a super-power at least by that era’s standards and bombed well-protected towns, Whereas the Nazis of our time, the Israelis, rained death on totally unprotected refugees who had absolutely no means of defense or protection against the virtual genocide.

Actually, what Israel did to Gaza and Gazans in December and January can be compared to the extermination of Germany’s real or perceived enemies during the War.

In both cases, innocent and helpless people were mercilessly murdered en mass for political or ideological reasons. Hence, the appropriateness of the term “Nazis of our time.”

Like Netanyahu is doing today, many Nazi leaders and ideologues tried to rationalize and justify their evil acts by claiming that Germany, the motherland, was facing mortal threats and the German nation was faced with either of two choices, destroying the enemies using a no-holds-barred approach, or be destroyed itself.

But Israel is using the same Nazi arguments very lightly, not to repulse any real threats, but rather to justify real crimes against humanity being committed against the captive Palestinians.

Otherwise, how can people of any semblance of rectitude buy the big lie that a country that possesses more 300 nuclear heads, and has one of the strongest armies in the world, and above that controls the government of the world’s only superpower, is threatened more than any other state in the world?
It is, of course, unlikely that Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders think in their hearts that they are not lying. They do know they are lying. This is quite natural for a state that is based on lies and myths such as the claims that Palestine didn’t exist and the Palestinians were not a distinctive nation and that Israel didn’t expel the native Palestinians to the four corners of the globe.

In light, it is very important that the peoples of the world, men and women who value honesty and justice, be constantly on the alert to confront and refute Zionist hasbara lies with the same aggressiveness and resolve with which they confront Zionist crimes.

In short, Israel must not be allowed to translate its pornographic lies into a license to commit a holocaust against the Palestinian people and other peoples of the Middle East.

The Zionists are capable of doing the unthinkable. They behave as the way the Nazis behaved because they possess the same mindset. The only difference lies in name, place and circumstances.

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