[wvns] Palestinians see Israel with 'Birthright' tour

Fourteen-year-old Jum'a Ismail's horizons expand as he leaves Jalazoun refugee camp on trip taking Palestinian refugee children to Israel to visit villages of their ancestors

West Bank youth see Israel with 'Birthright' tour

Reuters

08.23.09

Fourteen-year-old Jum'a Ismail lives 50 km (30 miles) from the Mediterranean but had never seen the sea. The Palestinian youth had never set eyes on an Israeli civilian or an airport.

Juma'a's horizons expanded this summer, when he left Jalazoun refugee camp in the West Bank with "Birthright Replugged" on a trip taking Palestinian refugee children to Israel to visit the villages of their ancestors.

"It's an attempt to get out, while they still can," said the program's creator, Dunya Alwan.

Once Palestinian children turn 15, they must carry Israeli-issued West Bank identity cards and are no longer able to travel through Israeli checkpoints without special permits.

"Birthright Replugged" is partially funded by the Carter Center's Peace Program, founded by the former US president Jimmy Carter. It takes groups of 20 Palestinian children into Israel twice yearly.

Alwan, an Iraqi-American from a Jewish-Muslim family, calls her work a counterweight to "Birthright", the program offering Jewish youth from around the world an all-expenses-paid, two-week trip to Israel to foster ties to the Jewish state.

Eye-opener

Movement from the West Bank to Israel was easier before the second Palestinian uprising that began in 2000. Suicide bombings on Israeli buses and cafes triggered a security clampdown that is only now loosening, under international pressure.

Palestinians must still carry ID cards to move around the West Bank. Getting into east Jerusalem, also captured by Israeli forces in the 1967 war, or into Israel itself, is nearly impossible for most.

That puts the Mediterranean coast and Israel's international Ben-Gurion airport, out of range. Alwan says her little trips may be the first and last opportunity for the youngsters.

Birthright RePlugged guide (L) speaks to Palestinian youths during their visit to the ruins of old Arab market near Lod near (Photo: Reuters)

On their return to the West Bank, they cannot stop talking about the sea, the airport, how Israeli Jews and Arabs coexist, and how they have no roadblocks to worry about.

"They don't ever seem to think about if there is going to be a checkpoint ahead or not," says 14-year-old Haneen al-Nakhla. "We're always worrying and calculating those kinds of things."

They are puzzled to see Israelis who are neither soldiers carrying weapons, or settlers, who also tend to be armed.

Realities

Some 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. Israel is home to 7 million, of whom 20 percent are Arab Israelis.

"We had no idea how many Jewish people there would be. There are more than Arabs," said Haneen.

"The Arabs and Jews talk to each other, like it's normal. I thought it was really strange. We don't ever talk to Jewish people at home."

Alwan's tour does not alter sentiments; the students all support a Palestinian "right of return" to homes and land lost in the 1948 war over Israel's creation – a demand Israel says would destroy the Jewish character of the state.

For Alwan, simply showing the teenagers the former homeland turns an idealized dream into realities they can discuss.

Lydda, or Lod in Hebrew, was where their grandparents once lived. It's now part of the sprawling airport outside Tel Aviv.

"These kids see the challenges and complexities. They see that what they have rights to now has an airport on it," Alwan said.

Sobering it may be, but the airport is a big hit. Most of the teenagers have never flown or even been close to a plane, and they take countless photographs.

"I had to take pictures to show my family. They've never seen an airliner either," said Jum'a, who at home hardly notices the watchtowers, razor-wire fences and high concrete walls of the barrier Israel has erected in the West Bank.

The normality of Israel's heartland shocked them. "I really felt how much I live under occupation," says Haneen.

She has decided she "would really like to become an airline stewardess", and Jum'a says: "I definitely want to be a pilot."

Back home, the Jalazoun kids seem conflicted. They start a sentence arguing for peace and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis, then end up saying there's no hope of it.

But a talk with participants of past trips, who are a bit older now, suggests that ideals of coexistence tend to develop.

Ahmawd Ghazawy, 19, from Jenin refugee camp, was on the first Birthright Replugged trip in 2007.

"Before 1948 there were Jews and Arabs and they lived in peace," he says. "It could happen again."

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[wvns] GLOBAL ELDERS TRIP TO MIDDLE EAST

GLOBAL ELDERS TRIP TO MIDDLE EAST
By Debbie Menon
August 31, 2009

I usually love elders, I really do. They are indeed usually forebearers of "the Truth."

With due respect to "The Global Elders" I am rather dismayed to put it lightly, by their recent trip to the "Occupied Territories," primarily for their cowardly and limp-willed lack of forcefulness with Israel.

All fine rhetoric, the same kind of nicey-nicey talk we have been hearing, over and over again for sixty years now.

They met with Shimon Peres, under not one but two Israeli flags, and the PLO quislings, but not a single member of Hamas, the democratically elected representatives of the people of Palestine or under a Palestinian banner.

They went to Palestine to see what was happening. This was presumably a fact-finding mission, perhaps even intended to show solidarity with Palestinians. It was certainly not a mission in which they wished to show support or acceptance of Israel or the status quo!

Gaza is not a State, but it is part or Province of the autonomous and legitimate State of Palestine, and it is governed by Hamas, yes, I deliberately reiterate here, the freely and democratically elected Party selected to Govern in the only free and impartial election ever held in Palestine or even in the Middle East or Arab world, for that matter.

Yet, the Israelis denied the Global Elders access to visit the Gaza strip, in Palestine. This is an illegal act, and might be considered an Act of War in an International Law.

And, although they met with the illegal governors of Fatah, the Israeli puppet quisling "government" of Palestine, and the President of "Israel," they did not meet with the head of Hamas.

Instead of protesting and demanding free passage, they acceded or yielded to the Israeli denial of access as if the Israelis had authority to grant or deny access to Palestine or the Gaza.

Not only did these leaders, not insist on or demand access as they had the right to do, but they then paid an official call on the President of Israel, who, by the act of denying them access to a free and sovereign state himself is perpetrating an International War Crime.

I might note that, it is illegal for a US citizen to pursue or engage in private diplomatic exchange or communications with a foreign official of State in any case, so diplomacy might be well-left in the hands of those who are authorized to practice it.

At best, the Global Elder leaders mission might have been called a public relations mission. If so, in my estimate they have failed miserably through lack of forcefulness, principle and courage.

By submitting and yielding to the forceful and illegal intimidation of Israel, and then meeting with the President of Israel in amicable convention, they are making tacit acknowledgement of Israel's authority in this matter;

Are they not?

The best "diplomacy" or PR they could have practiced would have been to drive into the Gaza with those other folks who went in by trucks, which they did not do!

Au Contraire the "blockade runs" by Greta Berlin and Co. of the Free Gaza Movement and George Galloway and Co. of the VIVA-Palestina Movement, stood upon principle and demonstrated the guts to risk their lives and take a stand for those principles.

The Elders, next best chance at diplomacy would be to hitch a ride on the next boat trip with Greta Berlin and Cynthia McKinney. How many of them will?

The toothless paper tigers and diplomats at the United Nations and the United States Government and others whom Mainstream Media parade daily as paragons of diplomacy do not even have the power or the courage to demand access to Gaza, which they and Palestine hold as rights of passage under International Law, and human rights.

The US Government, by it's '"silence" on the "Israeli piracy" of the Free Gaza Boat and "imprisonment of US citizens," by the Israeli government, and by failing to demand their rights of passage, and then actually meeting with the perpetrator, they have not only failed in their duty as representatives of a peoples government, they have indicated submission and surrender to the dictates of Zionism!

A spade is a spade. A limp-willed wimp is a limp-willed wimp, and natural fertilizer is natural fertilizer, where I come from!

I am comfortable with my position and very uncomfortable with theirs.

And, I am not being negative! In the face of all of this passive negativism I think what I have said is the only positive call for someone to take some action instead of continuing to drag on with a six decade-old lament of a bad situation, about which no one of authority has taken any positive position or concrete effective action to this date.

Or in this case, six decades of the same old tactics which have produced absolutely no progress, while, to the contrary, so much more has been stolen.

"Elderly Statesmen and Corporate Media Pundits" sit and junket around, pontificating, and pronouncing, being nice, la talking nicey-nicey and trying to not offend anyone.

"I think this is a perfect example of a totalitarian government regime's ability to make us believe what they want us to believe, over and over again. I think that it is interesting in what is ostensibly a democracy" - Bill Hicks said that. May his Soul, Rest in Peace. He was way ahead of the times.

What I am saying is, it is long past the time to stop being cowards and start demanding something concrete.

Palestine, Lebanon, the Middle East and what they are permitting Israel to do there, is bad enough, but that is merely a small beginning to the big problem which no one has even acknowledged, discussed or begun to confront. And, we talk about investigating some more dead fish in a small pond, and talk about some more "alleged" crimes. It makes me sick!

The ball is in US President Obama's court and, if he does not put it into play, then someone else, such as the "Elders" had better stop talking and start demanding some kind of concrete action.

They are all men of stature and influence and, although none of them has the sovereign authority of a President or Head of State, two of them were, and all together they carry a hellova lot more moral weight than this US President does legal authority.

I am simply full to the brim with listening to and watching this madness, which recommends more futile sessions and keeping the peace, and not offending anyone.

People are being slaughtered by a tiny Nation of unprincipled, amoral, ghouls and butchers, by God, and these men, leaders and governments of the world run around putting on nice faces, being nice to everyone, sticking in their thumbs and pulling out plums and saying "Look at me Ma, what a good boy am I!" For Chrissakes, people are being killed almost daily because of all of this deceit in plain sight!

And, the Press and the rest of the world laps and sucks it up, while awaiting for the next outrage, the next invasion of Gaza, the bombing of Iran, the Invasion of Lebanon once again, and the final scene where there will be no more Palestine or Palestinians to make an issue of. And, eventually the scene will move on, and replay itself out in a new venue, the same script the same game and the same outcome.

This is the way the world is, and this is Israel, the remorseless, unprincipled barbaric in the most and truest sense, of nations. I think the ruthless barbaric sense of superiority and invincibility Israel is, is in the myth of their "Nation" if not their blood, for there is no such thing as an ethnic or blood Jew or "people." These God's chosen people? My God!

I tire of this charade, and it is time someone began calling these shenanigans, what it is, spades are spades, and naming Zionist Israelis for what they are and, not simply calling them to account, but going to their house, knocking on their door, dragging them out, holding their feet to the fire and calling them to account... at the end of a figurative rope if necessary, and virtual ropes if at all possible!

This is my humble opinion, it is not offered for argument or debate. It is simply what I think. Take it or leave it, agree or disagree as you like.

If it is too harsh for anyones taste or diet, then read the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Readers Digest for opinion.

(Debbie Menon is an independant writer, based in Dubai. She can be reached at debbiemenon@gmail.com)

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[wvns] Liberal Jews, Sex & The New Satanic Order

The following article is a good advertisement for more emphasis on E. European Jewish studies at the high school and college level.

I wrote in Issues and Questions in the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism:

As long as US strategic foreign policy is hitched to Israel, whether an American citizen supports the alliance between the USA and Israel or opposes it, he must be distressed by the inadequacy of Jewish studies in America because a good background in Judaica is necessary in order to make an informed judgment on this policy. The discipline of Jewish studies, which is dominated by racists, tribalists and Zionists, has simply failed the obligation to educate Americans.[iv] The wrong issues are debated while important questions are not posed.

The same rule applies as much to US social politics as to US foreign policy. To conservative Christians, the influence of secular liberal Jews may seem Satanic, but Jewish behavior arrises from historic Jewish social political economy.

Yiddish Jewry historically practiced early marriage, early sexual initiation, frequent divorce, and frequent remarriage in a sort of serial polygamy. Eastern European Catholic and Orthodox Christians tended to consider Jews promiscuous.

As Eastern Europe and the Czarist Empire (not just Jews -- see Turgenev's Отцы и дети [Otzy i Deti] published in 1862) lost its faith, Jews dropped the marriage and divorce component of the Jewish sex sequence].

During the period of Jewish reform from Moses Mendelson until the present day, Jews at first tried to accomodate themselves to gentile ways, but at the middle of the 19th century with increasing Jewish political and economic power, they began to train non-Jews into conforming to Jewish social norms.

Blog entries on this subject include:

• Origins: Zionist Gay Pubic Diplomacy
• Jewish, Zionist War Against Salvation
• Followup: Jewish, Zionist War Against Salvation
• Stephen Walt: New Father Coughlin??
• Was Fr. Coughlin an Anti-Semite?
• Gilad Atzmon - Organ Donation and Theft in Contemporary Jewish Folklore.

Liberal Jews, Sex & The New Satanic Order
by Henry Makow Ph.D.

Born in 1949, my lifespan corresponds to a massive social engineering campaign on the part of Satanic elites to destroy the institution of marriage and family.

This has been done by separating sex from both love and marriage ("sexual liberation,") and by teaching young women to seek careers instead of motherhood ("feminism.")

Why? To make us servile. The Elite first needs to destroy the four legs of human identity: family, race, God (religion,) and nation to change human nature.

Who? Illuminati bankers like the Rothschild are the mainspring of the "Elite" and control the mass media. They belong to the Sabbatean movement, a Satanic Jewish heresy of the 17th Century which many Jews opposed. The Sabbateans went underground and infiltrated Gentile society through fake conversion and intermarriage. They took over Freemasonry and used it to subvert all important social institutions and political movements, including Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Liberalism and Zionism. Their headquarters is the Bank of England and the City of London.

LIBERAL JEWS & SEXUAL LIBERATION

New York Liberal Jews like Norma Klein probably had no idea she was advancing the Satanic Sabbatean agenda in the 1970's and 1980's when she taught teenagers to have sex. The author of 30 books, she thought she was liberating young people from the chains of religious superstition. I'll bet she didn't know that the Sabbateans are a sex cult, and premarital sex, wife swapping and orgies are part of their dogma. Most Liberal Jews are unconscious of the Luciferian role they play by thumbing their nose at what is natural, healthy and decorous.

In a recent article, "Teen Shpilkes," [anxiety] Eryn Loeb revisited this seminal influence on her life and was struck, not by the soft core porn, or the vulgarity, but by the "pervasive Jewishness" of Klein's work. It focuses entirely on "secular Jews...often professors or writers, friendly progressive types who...all own The Joy of Sex and are happy to discuss its contents with their precocious, introspective offspring... There are affairs, divorces, abortions, ardent feminists, gay characters and lots of sex --all portrayed with Klein's distinctive casualness and honesty at a time when nearly all of these things were destined to stir up controversy."

For example, "Domestic Arrangements" (1981) finds 14-year-old Tatiana Engelberg nonchalantly detailing her sexual awakening: "Daddy takes everything very hard which is probably why he got so hysterical when he found Joshua and me fucking in the bathroom at four in the morning."

In "Beginner's Love" (1983) 17-year-old Leda Boroff gets pregnant and considers abortion versus adoption. "There aren't very many Jewish babies...I could probably sell it for a year's tuition at Yale."

Normal Klein grew up in New York among "extremely liberal left-wing Jews." Her father was a psychoanalyst and in her home "Freud had replaced God in whom [her] father had decided early on he didn't believe."

There it is in a nutshell. Liberal-Left Jews are going to build a heaven of their own design without God (and without considering anyone else.)

God would interfere with their ability to do whatever they like, especially regarding sex.

Liberal Jews are humanists, which means they make men like Freud their Gods and sex their holy sacrament. They are Luciferians and don't even know it.

CONTRAST

Compare the above "Jewish" or secular position with Vic Biorseth's Catholic point of view.

Biorseth writes:

In the received wisdom of Western civilization, throughout it's two thousand year history, the primary physical purpose for sex is procreation, and the primary social and spiritual purpose for sex is the foundation of the family. It is therefore reserved for the married state, in which sex has another purpose, that being, bonding of man and wife, the formation of the social "glue" that binds parents more strongly to each other to form the solid foundation of the family unit.

I don't agree with his opposition to contraception. However, it's clear to me that free sex is the ersatz religion of our time, one designed to undermine our social institutions and humanity.

Sex without love is body without soul. It is a rejection of our true identity soul, which is our connection to God. We are "made in God's image." Our connection to God, and our obedience to God, (i.e. what is healthy and good) is what makes us human, and protects us from evil.

When there is love, there is commitment.

It's amazing how we are obsessed with healthy food, exercise and air but don't care about pervasive pornography, promiscuity, mayhem and satanism in the mass media. "Man does not live by bread alone."

Sex without love is a denial of God and our humanity. That's why Klein's book is called "It's OK If You Don't Love Me." We can still have sex.

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[wvns] “I Was 12 When Sent to Guantanamo”

Afghan freed from Guantanamo prison to sue U.S.
Associated Press, Washington Post

Washington, 27 August (WashingtonTV)—The family of a young Afghan held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for more than six years, plans to sue the US government, his lawyers said on Thursday.

Mohammed Jawad returned to Afghanistan on Monday, less than a month after a federal judge in Washington ordered his release, on grounds that his confession to throwing a grenade that wounded two US soldiers in Kabul, was coerced by torture, according to the Washington Post.

Jawad and his family say he was 12 years old when he was arrested in 2002, and that he is now 19. But the US Defense Department has said that a bone scan showed he was about 17 when taken into custody, according to the Associated Press. His defense lawyers say photos taken in Guantanamo showed that he had not gone through puberty.

The family plans to sue for compensation in US courts, alleging that Jawad was submitted to various types of torture while imprisoned, including sleep deprivation and beatings, one of his defense lawyers told AP.

Jawad met Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday, in a private meeting at the presidential palace.

In a statement, Karzai said he hoped that improvements to the Afghan justice system would allow the Afghan government to prosecute its own citizens accused of attacking American forces, reports AP.

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"I Was 12 When Sent to Guantanamo"
IslamOnline.net & Newspapers

"All I could do was hope that one day I'd be free and back home in Afghanistan with my mother," said Jawad [R].

CAIRO — Mohammed Jawad is still struggling to pick up the pieces of his lost childhood and teenage years after languishing for seven whole years in America's notorious Guantanamo detention center on terror charges.

"I hadn't done anything — they took me for nothing," the young Afghan, who was released to Afghanistan earlier this week, told The Times on Thursday, August 27.

Jawad was arrested in 2002 when he was 12 on suspicions of throwing a grenade at US invading troops in Afghanistan.

"They knew I was underage but they did not care about my age."

The teenager was first sent to a Kabul airbase before being flown to notorious Guantanamo, where his ordeal began.

"There was a lot of oppression when I was in Guantanamo," said a weary-looking Jawad.

"I was oppressed the whole time until I was released."

He described having his hands bound and stretched behind his back, and being forced to eat by bending over and putting his mouth into a plate of food.

"Can Obama Bring Back My Mother, Life?"

Living With Guantanamo Scars

"They insulted our religion and our holy Qur'an, they insulted us and behaved in an inhumane way," he lamented.

"And these inhumane actions were not for just one day, one week or one month."

The US has been holding hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo for years, branding them unlawful enemy combatants to deny them legal rights under the American legal system.

President Barack Obama ordered in January the detention camp to be closed within a year and his administration is studying what to do with the nearly 230 prisoners still held there.

Reunion

Spending seven years in Guantanamo, Jawad was released to Afghanistan earlier this week after a US judge ruled that his confession had been obtained by force.

"All I could do was hope that one day I'd be free and back home in Afghanistan with my mother," he recalled.

Jawad was arrested when he was living with his mother in Kabul, as his father died during fighting against the Soviets in the 1980s.

His mother could not believe her son would be back into her arms.

Hearing of his return, the bereaved mother fainted in a fit of hysterics, said a family friend.

She only realized that her beloved son was back again when she checked for a distinctive bump on the back of his head, said Sher Khan Jalalkhil, a close friend of Jawad's father.

"We searched for him for nine months," he recalled.

"We didn't know if he had been killed, or kidnapped, or got lost. His mother went crazy."

The mother only got a sigh of relief when she was told by a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross that Jawad was in Guantanamo.

But she got terrified as news kept coming about the horrific treatment of detainees at the notorious detention camp.

Jawad is now making plans to resume his studies — first in Afghanistan, then maybe overseas — and train to become a doctor.

Asked if he would consider studying in the US, he hesitated and looked to the assembled elders for advice.

"I have not made any plans yet."

His lawyer Eric Montalzo said they would be asking for compensations for the hellish years he spent behind Guantanamo walls.

"He has been in a cage for seven years. So it's very difficult for him," he said.

"He is a fragile human being and we need to protect him and his interests."

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[wvns] Cindy's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

The Anti-War movement obtained meagre traction during the Bush administration because a lot of Democrats were completely estranged from the Bush administration. Now that Democrats control the government, the little leverage anti-war folk had is gone.

The Jewish aspect of the anti-War issue under Johnson, GW Bush, and Obama is worth considering: Anti-War: 1960s versus 2000s.

The Silence of the Antiwar Movement is Deafening
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland
By JOHN V. WALSH

August 28, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- Cindy Sheehan will be at Martha's Vineyard beginning August 25 a short way from Obama's vacation paradise of the celebrity elite but very far from the Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq where the body bags and cemeteries fill up each day as Obama's wars rage on. She will remain there from August 25 through August 29 and has issued a call for all peace activists to join her there. For those of us close by in the New England states and in New York City, there would seem to be a special obligation to get to Martha's Vineyard as soon as we can.

A funny thing has happened on Cindy Sheehan's long road from Crawford, Texas, to Martha's Vineyard. Many of those who claim to lead the peace movement and who so volubly praised her actions in Crawford, TX, are not to be seen. Nor heard. The silence in fact is deafening, or as Cindy put it in an email to this writer, "crashingly deafening." Where are the email appeals to join Cindy from The Nation or from AFSC or Peace Action or "Progressive" Democrats of America (PDA) or even Code Pink? Or United for Peace and Justice. (No wonder UFPJ is essentially closing shop, bereft of most of their contributions and shriveling up following the thinly veiled protest behind the "retirement" of Leslie Cagan.) And what about MoveOn although it was long ago thoroughly discredited as principled opponents of war or principled in any way shape or form except slavish loyalty to the "other" War Party. And of course sundry "socialist" organizations are also missing in action since their particular dogma will not be front and center. These worthies and many others have vanished into the fog of Obama's wars.

Just to be sure, this writer contacted several of the "leaders" of the "official" peace movement in the Boston area – AFSC, Peace Action, Green Party of MA (aka Green Rainbow Party) and some others. Not so much as the courtesy of a reply resulted from this effort - although the GRP at least posted a notice of the action. (It is entirely possible that some of these organizations might mention Cindy's action late enough and quickly enough so as to cover their derrieres while ensuring that Obama will not be embarrassed by protesting crowds.) We here in the vicinity of Beantown are but a hop, skip and cheap ferry ride from Martha's Vineyard. Same for NYC. So we have a special obligation to respond to Cindy's call.

However, not everyone has failed to publicize the event. The Libertarians at Antiwar.com are on the job, and its editor in chief Justin Raimondo wrote a superb column Monday on the hypocritical treatment of Sheehan by the "liberal" establishment. (1) As Raimondo pointed out, Rush Limbaugh captured the hypocrisy of the liberal left in his commentary, thus:

"Now that she's headed to Martha's Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: `Enough already.' Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we're not interested, we're not going to cover you going to Martha's Vineyard because our guy is president now and you're just a hassle. You're just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they're through with her and they're through with her. They don't want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president."

Limbaugh has their number, just as they have his. Sometimes it is quite amazing how well each of the war parties can spot the other's hypocrisy. But Cindy Sheehan is no one's dupe; she is a very smart and very determined woman who no doubt is giving a lot of White House operatives some very sleepless nights out there on the Vineyard. Good for her.

Obama is an enormous gift to the Empire. Just as he has silenced most of the single-payer movement, an effort characterized by its superb scholarship exceeded only by its timidity, Obama has shut down the antiwar movement, completely in thrall as it is to the Democrat Party and Identity Politics. Why exactly the peace movement has caved to Obama is not entirely clear. Like the single-payer movement, it is wracked by spinelessness, brimming with reverence for authority and a near insatiable appetite to be "part of the crowd." Those taken in by Obama's arguments that the increasingly bloody and brutal AfPak war is actually a "war of necessity," should read Steven Walt's easy demolition of that "argument." (2) Basically Obama's logic is the same as Bush's moronic rationale that "We are fighting them over there so we do not have to fight them over here." There is a potential for "safe havens for terrorists," as the Obamalogues and neocons like to call them, all over the world; and no one can possibly believe the US can invade them all. However, the ones which Israel detests or which allow control of oil pipelines or permit encirclement of China and Russia will see US troops sooner or later.

The bottom line is that everyone in New England and NYC who is a genuine antiwarrior should join the imaginative effort of Cindy Sheehan in Obamaland this week and weekend. We owe it to the many who will otherwise perish at the hands of the war parties of Bush and Obama.

1.See: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/23/war-coverage-and-the-obama-cult/
Or go to Antiwar.com and make a contribution while you are there. It's almost as good as CounterPunch.com.
2.See:http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/18/the_safe_haven_myth
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com He welcomes comments, and he looks forward to seeing crowds of CounterPunchers at Martha's Vineyard this week and weekend.

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War Coverage and the Obama Cult
Why we aren't getting the real story
by Justin Raimondo
August 24, 2009

There was a time when Cindy Sheehan couldn't go anywhere without having a microphone and a TV camera stuck in front of her. As she camped out in front of George W. Bush's Crawford ranch, mourning the death of her son Casey in Iraq and calling attention to an unjust, unnecessary, and unwinnable war, the media created in her a symbolic figure whose public agony epitomized a growing backlash against the militarism and unmitigated arrogance of the Bush administration. It was a powerful image: a lone woman standing up to the most powerful man on earth in memory of her fallen son.

Touting "an exclusive interview with Cindy Sheehan" on Good Morning America, four years ago ABC anchorman Charles Gibson intoned: "Standing her ground. She lost her son in Iraq, she opposes the war, now she's camped out at President Bush's ranch and says she won't leave until he meets with her."

The level of coverage only increased in the coming days and weeks. As Cindy continued her vigil, Gibson enthused:

"All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush's ranch."

Flashing across their television screens, viewers saw the headline "MOM ON A MISSION: IS ANTIWAR MOVEMENT GROWING?" as Gibson averred:

"This morning a war of words. All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush's ranch. But is anyone in the White House feeling the heat?"

That was then. This is now: in an interview [.mp3] with Chicago's WLS radio on Aug. 18, Gibson was asked whether his network planned to cover Sheehan's plans to travel to Martha's Vineyard, where she is protesting the escalation of the war in Afghanistan while President Obama is vacationing there. Gibson's answer:

"Enough already."

It is one thing to decide war protests aren't newsworthy, that they're just the irrelevant emanations of a fringe element radically out of step with the 99 percent of the country that's marching happily off to war. That, however, is very far from being the case.
Back in 2005, Cindy represented a minority that was on its way to becoming a majority. Today, she starts off her renewed vigil with over half of the American people agreeing with her that the Afghan war isn't worth it.

Yet Gibson's announced news blackout is being observed well nigh universally: aside from Rush Limbaugh, only the generally conservative Boston Herald, the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, a daytime MSNBC news show, and a few blogs bothered noticing Sheehan's determination to be "an equal opportunity vacation disruption," as the Herald writer put it. The bitterness of conservatives over the obvious double standard is expressed by Limbaugh in terms of the usual partisan rhetoric:

"When she's out there revving up people against George W. Bush, it's, let's cover her 24/7, let's make sure we have our cameras out there outside Bush's ranch when she's there, whatever she's saying, whatever she's doing, if she goes down and meets with Hugo Chavez, our cameras will be there. They could not get enough of her. Now that she's headed to Martha's Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: `Enough already.'

Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we're not interested, we're not going to cover you going to Martha's Vineyard because our guy is president now and you're just a hassle. You're just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they're through with her and they're through with her. They don't want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president."

While Cindy is nobody's pawn – as she is proving by her actions – the general point Limbaugh is making seems all too true. So why isn't he cheering?

After all, what did this pro-war blowhard have to say about Cindy back when Gibson was breathlessly broadcasting her every utterance? Well, he basically said she was a traitor and a fraud, comparing her to Bill Burkett, who provided CBS with phony "evidence" purporting to show Bush's failure to show up for National Guard training. "Her story," he said, "is nothing more than forged documents." Sheehan's crusade, he claimed, was all part of a "coordinated" plan by the "far Left," which he seemed to equate with the Democratic Party.

In the beginning of this year, when a caller asked "where are all the … Cindy Sheehans, the Code Pink Tuscaderos [sic] of the Democratic Party" now that Obama is in the White House, Limbaugh replied:

"Well, frankly, that doesn't bother me. I had enough of Cindy Sheehan to last me a lifetime. She was always a nonfactor anyway. I mean, Cindy Sheehan, this is a poor woman who's lost her mind, and then that fact was used by the Drive-By Media to further drive her crazy into making everybody and her think that she was relevant, only because she was willing to accept enough money from a California PR film to build and occupy a little shack across the road from Bush's house down in Crawford, Texas."

Aside from the fact that he has no idea whether or not she has the same media handlers – the True Majority group, founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, hired Fenton Communications to handle Cindy's media relations and thanked her when she (prematurely) announced her "retirement" from peace activism – one has to wonder what Rush is complaining about. Gibson is doing just what the bombastic radio commentator always wanted him to do: ignoring Cindy's antiwar protest.

Can't we all just get along? On the higher levels of the commentariat, the "Left" and the "Right" are slow-dancing in perfect harmony whenever Obama plays a martial tune. Now that the Obamaite think-tanks, such as the Center for a New American Security and the Center for American Progress, are holding joint conferences with Rush's neocon buddies – Bill Kristol and his Foreign Policy Initiative – hailing Obama's Afghan "surge" and proffering advice on how best to go about it, Rush ought to relax. He and Keith Olbermann can now march together, arm in arm, into the glorious war-torn future, united in steadfastly ignoring the Cindy Sheehans of this world.

We, of course, are not ignoring her passionate protest, including in our news section – but, then again, we don't fit into the Left/Right dichotomy that the "mainstream" media is stuck in and has a financial interest in promoting. With Keith Olbermann capturing the self-described "left-wing" pro-Obama demographic, and Limbaugh/Hannity/O'Reilly going after the anti-Obama crowd, they're divvying up the demographic pie, with Fox News settling for the older crowd, and MSNBC going for the younger and more "hip" set.

Here at Antiwar.com it isn't about demographics or Obama, and it certainly isn't about the two major parties, both of which now accept the central premise of America's wars: that the U.S. has both the right and means to police the world.

In rejecting that onerous principle, we stand outside the bipartisan "consensus" and the whole ersatz Left/Right division of American opinion – whose proponents exhibit a curious unity when it comes to the vital question of foreign policy.

As much as Limbaugh and his right-wing brothers and sisters railed against the "liberal" media for undermining the war effort, they never really questioned the factual basis of the administration's case for invading Iraq: that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," that he was on the verge of attacking his neighbors, and that he had proven links to the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Instead, they reported these claims uncritically – even as they were being debunked right here on this Web site.

The lesson of all this is simple: the "mainstream" media simply can't be trusted. That's why newspapers are losing circulation at a rapid clip, and television news is fading in importance. It's not the Internet that's killing off the sainted mandarins of the "mainstream" – it's their role as transmission belts for official propaganda, whether it be from the government or the partisan opposition. They're shills, and everybody knows it.

That's why Antiwar.com is more important than ever – and isn't it ironic that we're clinging to life by a very thin thread, just at the moment when we're needed the most?

Oh, well, life is like that, you know. I never expected it to be easy. Yet even I have to admit that this fundraising campaign is beginning to scare me: we're way behind where we were at this point last time around, to say nothing of last year. The number of contributors is equivalent, and even shows signs of increasing, but the amounts are smaller by as much as half. We all are facing some hard economic times. It just means we'll have to extend our fundraising campaign by as much as a week – hopefully not more. But we'll do what we have to do to stay afloat.

If you haven't given, or even if you have, I want to extend this appeal to all my readers, even the ones who don't agree with some (or much) of what I have to say in this space. You may love Obama or you may bitterly oppose him: whatever. You need to realize, however, that this isn't about him. It's about maintaining a skeptical approach to the foreign policy currently being conducted by those geniuses in Washington, who think they know all there is to know to bring order to a disorderly world.

It's about maintaining a wonderfully complete source of hard news, as well as an outlet for dissenting opinions – often colorfully expressed – in an age of ideological conformity and bland "pragmatism."

It's about maintaining the tradition of independent journalism in a world where "journalists" are bought and sold like the ladies of Amsterdam's red-light district and events are viewed through a partisan prism.

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[LA NP Examiner] Fictional film 'Inglourious Basterds' hyped while true story of revenge hidden

In his Variety review entitled Inglourious Basterds, Todd McCarthy writes:

Never less than enjoyable and more than that in the second half, "Basterds" is divided into five "chapters," the first being "Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France." Wording not only reflects the Sergio Leone-style nature of the opening scene, in which notorious Nazi "Jew Hunter" Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) arrives at a farmhouse to ferret out a hidden Jewish family, but honestly reflects the fantastical nature of the narrative to come.

[For more information about the film, see the NY Times article entitled Inglourious Basterds (2009): Tarantino Avengers in Nazi Movieland by Manohla Dargis.]

Because this movie is fictional, its content need not be factual. Yet as historical fiction, the film should have some connection to the historical reality. In occupied France, Jews were typically rounded up by French police or the Gestapo, which was technically under the SS but was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (State Security Main Office) and was an a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO or security police). The SS, SD, SIPO, and Gestapo did not use military ranks like colonel (Oberst) but had their own separate rank hierarchy. Landa should have been identified as a Police or Gestapo Colonel (Standartenführer). The idea of even a rank as low as a Police or Gestapo Captain (Hauptsturmführer) conducting solo investigations to ferret out Jews is quite ridiculous.

In the pop cultural environment created by movies like Inglourious Basterds, which depict Hollywood Nazis as the personification of absolute evil, Zionist Hasbarah (propaganda),

• which Nazifies legitimate Palestinian resistance to Zionism,
• which the organized Jewish community and numerous Israel advocates are trying to render pervasive throughout German and world culture, and
• which is discussed in Zionist Hate Crime in Germany,

is incitement to hatred and violence against Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims.

Right now by attempting falsely to depict Grand Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini as an anti-Semitic genocidal Nazi collaborator, Benjamin Weinthal, Karl Rössler, the UferHallen Gallery, Maya Zehden, and Heinz Buschkowsky are engaging in the commission of a serious hate crime under German law. The German Police should start arresting the perpetrators, shut down the UferHallen Gallery, and seize this criminal exhibit. In the aftermath of the Marwa al-Sherbini murder, Germany has a duty to act swiftly against the Zionist, Arabophobic, and Islamophobic hate-mongers.

Because of massive web distribution of this Zionist blood libel against Palestinians via Jewish-Zionist Internet social networking, this Zionist conspiracy is operating on a global scale.

In the aftermath of the Gaza Rampage, countless Zionist crimes against humanity, and the current Jewish-Zionist black market organ-trading skandal, I am waiting for the Hollywood movie whose heroes are avenging crimes committed by Zionists representing the personification of absolute evil. I won't hold my breath.

The review below provides some perspective on the pop cultural distortion that movies like Inglourious Basterds represent.

Fictional film 'Inglourious Basterds' hyped while true story of revenge hidden

August 29, 7:12 PMLA Nonpartisan ExaminerRobert Stark

Over the last year or so, there have been countless movies about the Nazis and the Holocaust, such as the “The Reader,” “Valkyrie,” “Defiance” and “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” A popular new film, the "Inglorious Basterds" directed by Quentin Tarantino and produced by the Weinstein brothers is promoted by Hollywood and the press as a fictional tale of a group of Jewish American GI's led by a redneck Lieutenant played by Brad Pitt, who seek vengence against the Nazi's in occupied France during WWII. Throughout the film there are many gruesome scenes of vengence, including scalpings and torture.

Eli Roth, who plays a leading role in the film as the "Bear Jew", says that the idea of vengence is "...almost a deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling. My character gets to beat Nazis to death. That’s something I could watch all day. My parents are very strong about Holocaust education.” On a similar note, one of the films producers, Lawrence Bender told Tarantino that “As your producing partner, I thank you, and as a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you, motherf--ker, because this movie is a f--king Jewish wet dream.”

In the ADL Statement they say that the film "...is an allegory about good and evil and the no-holds barred efforts to defeat the evil personified by Hitler, his henchmen, and his Nazi regime. If only it were true!"

There is no need to come up with a fictional story while there is a true chapter of WWII history most people have no clue about. A Jewish American Author named John Sack risked his career and even his life to tell the story of Jews who sought revenge in his controversial book An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945. The story tells of Jews who oversaw prison camps in Poland under the Communist occupations. According to Sack, they not only sought revenge against German soldiers, but also innocent German and Polish civilians.

Sack states in his book that the revenge included torture and rape of women and children. Sack estimates 60-80,000 died in these camps. Sack interviewed one survivor named Lola, who was an official at the prison and lost most of her family in the Holocaust. She admited that they treated the prisoners much worse than she was treated at Auschwitz by the Nazis. Sack said "Lola at Auschwitz wasn't locked in a room night and day. She wasn't tortured night after night." She told Sack: "Thank God, nobody tried to rape us. The Germans weren't allowed to." But all of that happened to German girls at Lola's prison in Gleiwitz"

Solomon Morel who lost most of his family in the holocaust brutally oversaw the prison camp. Morel fled to Israel after the book was published. Israel has refused to extradite Morel to Poland to face war crimes.

Most major publishers refused to publish Sack's book and major media outlets ignored it once it was published. John Sack was villified by the Jewish Establishment, such as the Executive Director of the World Jewish Congress. He was labeled a self-hating Jew and even an anti-semite. Self Proclaimed fighter of Holocaust Denial, Deborah Lipstadt, stated, on "the Charlie Rose Show" that Sack was a Neo-Nazi and an anti-semite and told him personally he was worse than a holocaust denier, despite the fact that he shares the mainstream view of the holocaust.

The media and major Jewish organizations were opposed to the book because they percieved it as portraying Jews in a negative light, possibly stirring up anti-semitism and weakening their power to exploit the tragedies commited by the Nazis for their own political agenda. However these same organizations are promoting Tarantino's fictional film.

Sack's message from his book was not to promote hatred against Jews. Instead, the books purpose was to prove that Jews are no different from any other group of people who have suffered from persecution but aren't immune from committing autrocities against others.

Behind an Eye for An Eye: Revenge, Hate and History by John Sack

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v20/v20n1p-9_Sack.html

[Note another book worth reading and related to post-WW2 crimes against Germans is A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944 - 1950, by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas.

The author tends to avoid identifying the ethnicity of Jewish planners and perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing but always identifies Jews (with the exception of Lev Kopelev) opposing this crime. My blog entry Yom Kippur and Ashkenazi Genocidalism discusses an alleged Jewish war crimes perpetrator, who has so far escaped interrogation with regard to his activities at the end of WW2.]

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[B & I] Watch Your Language!

In the context of Biblical Studes University of Sheffield Emeritus Professor Philip Davies makes an important point that I have emphasize in How to talk about Zionism, a new improved guide. Language matters! -- particularly in the context of Biblical studies, E. European studies, or modern Jewish studies and in discussion of ME political issues or achaeology.

Note that Professor Davies does not once use the phrase "the Jewish people," the word Jew, or any of this words derivations.

For more information, see

• From Ancient to Modern Judaism and
• Makdisi Overlooks US Journalistic Nazification.

Watch Your Language!

By Emeritus Professor Philip Davies
University of Sheffield, England
August 2009

About twenty years ago, I gave a conference paper called “Do Old Testament Studies Need a Dictionary?”¹ In those days, “Old Testament” was unselfconsciously used—but so were biblical categories of description. I was railing against “Academic Bibspeak,” in which key terms were not translated into meaningful modern equivalents but remained fossilized within biblical scholarship. My argument was that to be “critical” we had to analyze one kind of vocabulary by using another, and not in its own—and thus be able to offer a “judgment” by translating the vocabulary.

Rereading this old piece recently—for the first time since its publication, I think—I expected symptoms of youthful brashness and was not disappointed. Did I also recognize how far the discipline had progressed since? Just a bit.

Here is one of my original proposed dictionary entries (p. 333):

ISRAEL

(a) A probably fictitious entity supposedly composed of the elements of two nation-states formed in Palestine during the Iron II period under the kings David and Solomon

(b) The name given to a kingdom centered in the Ephraimite hill country of Palestine between the end of the 10th and the end of the 8th centuries BCE, possibly deriving its name from a group mentioned in the MERNEPTAH STELE.

This entry greatly oversimplified the issue: the Israels that the biblical writers offer us are more varied and variegated: the books of Deuteronomy, Kings, Ezekiel, Chronicles, and Ezra, for instance, all differ on what “Israel” includes (make up your selection from Samarians, Judeans, and Judeans claiming to be returned from exile, proselytes,gerim). It is now clearer, too, that Judah and Israel probably originated independently, developed independently and, though closely associated during their history (by temporary political union and vassalage), were at their demise antagonistic neighbors. Yehud and Samerina later must have combined into some kind of religious unit called “Israel”: the Pentateuch is a set of texts canonized by both Judeans and Samarians and describe this “Israel” as a fictitious twelve-tribe nation existing from patriarchal times, enslavement in Egypt, and escape to the land of Canaan. While a few historians accordingly now speak of “Israel and Judah,” distinguishing their social and religious attributes and their memories of the past, it is all too common to find “Israel” used without discrimination between the two kinds of Israel or between either of them and Judah.

The problem does not stop there. Many scholarly books mention the “religion” of “Israel” as “Yahwism.” As far as I know, Yahweh was a god worshipped in Israel and Judah, and apparently also in Teman and elsewhere. But a “religion of Yahweh”? There was no “Baalism” “Mardukism,” or “Elism.” Deities are not religions. Indeed, it is misleading to use the word “religion” to imply a system of belief and practice. In the ancient Near East, people venerated many deities and participated in many cults simultaneously. Their “religion” was an amalgam of these—ancestral cults, city cults, royal cults, national cults, cults of sacred places, and so on. People were far too religious to have one “religion.”

And what are “the prophets”? Do the “prophetic books” include Joshua to Kings? Daniel? Jonah? Were false prophets still prophets nonetheless? What made them “false,” anyway? I can find no adequate anthropological or sociological description of “prophet”: it’s a biblical category masking as social description Wilson proposed “intermediary”² but without much success.

Many other terms still need to be replaced. The “ark” of the covenant was a box. “Righteousness” (tsedeq) can mean “innocence,” “integrity” or “honesty”: a “covenant” is a treaty. “Salvation” very often means no more than “safety” or “security.”

Then we have “bless,” “glory,” “holy”—cultic and liturgical language that is quite technical. It persists in modern Christian liturgy, but how many Christians know what “blessing God” means—let alone “blessing his holy name”? Many such terms are alien to the sphere of everyday life: others can be illuminated by modern language. Hesed, for example, sometime used of God and sometimes of humans, has its closest English equivalent in “loyalty,” signifying the obligations incumbent on both client or patron in the kind of relationship quite familiar to anyone who has seen The Godfather. Human’s hesed is “respect” (yir’ah). The relationship entails a “deal” or “understanding” and sometimes the patron makes an offer (“promise”) that cannot be refused (“rejected,” ma’as). A good patron’shesed is benevolence or generosity (“grace”), and he gives “protection” (yeshu‘ah, “salvation”).

Moving further, “heaven” should be replaced by “sky” (shamayim). Or should we say “space”—if we think God lives in any particular place.

All right: we can’t turn everything in the Bible into modern language. But we need both to defamiliarize it to those who think it speaks directly to their modern religion and familiarize it to those for who (rightly) think its religious discourse is alien. In any case, we need to use a proper critical descriptive language in our biblical scholarship. A dictionary is still a good idea.

1 “Do Old Testament Studies Need a Dictionary?” in Clines, Fowl & Porter (eds), The Bible in Three Dimensions, Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990: 321-35.

2 R.R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel [sic], Philadelphia: Fortress 1980.

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[Truthdig] Israel's Toy Soldiers

Even though the IDF routinely engages in terrorism, mass murder, and crimes against humanity and even after the Gaza Rampage this past winter, the Jews, who take the eight week course

• which indoctrinates Jews in hatred, violence, and racism and
• which is described below

will not be charged with taking part in terrorist training.

Israel’s Toy Soldiers

Posted on Oct 1, 2007

facebook.com

This photo of Marva participants was posted on the Facebook group “Marva best 2 months ever.”

By Chris Hedges

If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist “madrassa,” or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.

The Marva program, part summer camp part indoctrination, was launched in Israel in 1981. It allows participants, who must be Jewish and between the ages of 18 and 28, to fire weapons, live in military barracks in the Negev desert and saunter around in an Israeli military uniform saluting and taking long hikes with military packs. The Youth and Education Corps of the Israel Defense Forces run four 120-strong training sessions a year.

“Upon arrival, the participants experience an abrupt change into army life: wearing uniforms, accepting army discipline, and learning the programs and lessons integral to the program,” the Let Israelis Show You Israel Web site reads. “The program includes military content such as: navigation, field training, weapons training, shooting ranges, marches and more, as well as educational content such as: Zionism, Jewish Identity, history and knowledge of the land of Israel. All of this is taught in Hebrew in an intensive eight weeks.”

“The participants finish the program after completing a short, intensive, exhilarating military experience that allows them to taste Israel in a way that they never could before—as part of the Israel Defense Forces,” the site reads. “They leave the program with a feeling of belonging and a strong connection to Israel, and many return to Israel to continue the connection that was created in the framework of the Marva course.”

There are, of course, gushing testimonials about the program.

“I spent the first few days of Marva doubting my decision, wondering why I had come, wondering if there was any way out. With all of the running, yelling orders, discipline and Hebrew, I felt horribly out of place,” writes Canadian David Roth of his summer. “It was a completely different world from the one I was used to. All that changed, though, by the end of the first week. We had our first ‘Masa’ (Hike). It was very hard, but at the end, we all knew, our M16s were waiting for us at the ‘tekes’ (Ceremony). We got through the 8 kilometers and had our ‘tekes’ and got our guns. It felt amazing, and from that point on Marva was incredible.”

How have we reacted when we discovered that American Muslims were being taught in a foreign country to fire machine guns at paper figures and simulate military maneuvers? And what about the summer schools in Gaza organized by Islamic Jihad designed to train young Palestinians in the basics of military life? These Gaza camps, uncovered in 2001, were widely denounced by Israel as proof that the Palestinians were teaching their children to hate and kill.

The argument in favor of camps in Israel, as opposed to camps in Pakistan, is that these young men and women are not going to come back and use what they have learned to harm Americans. They are not terrorists. Muslims, however, have not cornered the market on terrorism and violence. Radical Jews have also been involved in terrorist attacks in Israel and the United States.

I discovered an American in Israel in 1989 named Robert Manning. A huge, burly man, Manning was living in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kiyrat Arba. When I found him he was carrying a pistol, a large knife strapped to his leg and an M-16 assault rifle. He was part of a Jewish terrorist group called Committee for Protection and Safety of the Highways that set up ad hoc roadblocks and pulled Palestinians from cars to beat and often shoot them. He was a follower of Meir Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense League, who was implicated in terrorist attacks in the United States and Israel. Manning served as a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank.

Manning was wanted in California for murder. He had been charged in a 1980 mail-bomb killing as part of his involvement in the Jewish Defense League. The bomb was intended for the owner of a local computer firm, but the package holding the device was opened by the firm’s secretary, Patricia Wilkerson, who was killed instantly by the blast.

Manning, full of bluster and a bitter racism toward Arabs, used as his pseudonym the name of the FBI agent in charge of his case, a bit of humor that backfired on him by confirming my suspicion of his identify. I obtained the picture from his California driver’s license and showed it to his neighbors at Kiyrat Arba. They identified him from the photo. I wrote an article affirming that Manning, heavily armed and an active member of the Israeli army, was living in a Jewish settlement. The Israeli government, until that moment, said it had no information about his location. He was extradited in 1993 and sentenced the next year to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 30 years. He is in a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

Those who go through the Marva summer program are indoctrinated as thoroughly as Muslims who go overseas and are told they are part of a greater jihad for Islam. The results, given Israel’s close alliance with the United States, may not be negative for those in power in the United States, but it may be very negative for those Americans defined as the enemy, especially Muslims, should we suffer another 9/11. The program inculcates hatred and a belief in the efficacy of violence to solve the problems in the Middle East. It identifies Israel with militarism. It feeds the idea that a Jew born in Brooklyn has a birthright to settle in Israel that is denied to an American of Palestinian descent.

Jerusalem, aside from being one of the most beautiful cities in the world, is one of the most literate, creative and intellectual. Do these young men and women really know the best of Israel by spending eight weeks playing soldier and glorifying the military? Is the cause of Israel advanced by mirroring the twisted militarism of Islamic fundamentalists?

Terrorists arise in all cultures, all nations and all religions. We have produced more than our share. Ask the people of Vietnam or Iraq. The danger of a military program such as these is that it solidifies a mind-set of us and them. It romanticizes violence. It widens the divide that leads to conflict. It makes dialogue impossible. There are great Israeli institutions, from the newspaper Haaretz to the courageous Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem to Peace Now. A summer working for them, rather than wearing an army uniform, unleashing bursts of automatic fire in the desert and singing Israeli patriotic songs, might actually help.

[Note from Joachim]

Information about the Marva summer program in IDF racism and terrorism training can now be found here.

As far as I know, there are also several programs for Americans to volunteer to serve as civilian para-military assistants to IDF. Rahm Emanuel served in one during the first Gulf War.

Lots of American Jews make aliyah, serve in the IDF, and then return to the USA to serve as masbirim, saya`nim, and subversives on behalf of Zionism.

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic is a particularly prominent example.

If an American Jew serves in one of the Israeli military or para-military civilian services or if he takes Israeli citizenship, he should be stripped of American citizenship on the quite reasonable presumption that after the intense Zionist indoctrination he will subordinate American interests to "what's good for the Jewish people."

Loosing citizenship was the rule for those doing such service before May 29, 1967 when thanks to hysteria orchestrated by Jewish-Zionist-dominated media in the lead-up to the IDF sneak attack on Egypt Jewish Zionist subversive and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas manipulated the Supreme Court into overturning the established precedent of Perez v. Brownell, 356 U.S. 44 with the decision in Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253

Ever since Fortas' treason, Zionists have been able to recruit and indoctrinate young American Jews via Israeli military or para-military civilian service in order to turn them into agents of a racist, murderous, genocidal state, which has no values in common with the US and which uses its agents in the USA to poison the American political, economic, and legal system.

In the aftermath of the Gaza Rampage, there is no doubt that the IDF should receive the status of Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity with the legal consequence that both Zionist agents in the USA and also American Jews interfering with US foreign policy by buying stolen property in Palestine will be subject to arrest for aiding and abetting terrorism.

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