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100 Years On: The Balfour Declaration Explained

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This week, Palestinians around the world are marking 100 years since the Balfour Declaration was issued on November 2, 1917.

The declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when Britain publicly pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” there.

The pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 – and the conflict that ensued with the Zionist state of Israel.

It is regarded as one of the most controversial and contested documents in the modern history of the Arab world and has puzzled historians for decades.

What is the Balfour Declaration?

The Balfour Declaration (“Balfour’s promise” in Arabic) was a public pledge by Britain in 1917 declaring its aim to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

The statement came in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community.

It was made during World War I (1914-1918) and was included in the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

The so-called mandate system, set up by the Allied powers, was a thinly veiled form of colonialism and occupation.

“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East 

The system transferred rule from the territories that were previously controlled by the powers defeated in the war – Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria – to the victors.

The declared aim of the mandate system was to allow the winners of the war to administer the newly emerging states until they could become independent.

The case of Palestine, however, was unique. Unlike the rest of the post-war mandates, the main goal of the British Mandate there was to create the conditions for the establishment of a Jewish “national home” – where Jews constituted less than 10 percent of the population at the time.

Upon the start of the mandate, the British began to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine. Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population.

What the map of #Palestine looked like 100 years ago

A post shared by AJ Labs (@aj_labs) on

Though the Balfour Declaration included the caveat that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, the British mandate was set up in a way to equip Jews with the tools to establish self-rule, at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.

Why was it controversial?

The document was controversial for several reasons.

Firstly, it was, in the words of the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, “made by a European power … about a non-European territory … in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory”.

In essence, the Balfour Declaration promised Jews a land where the natives made up more than 90 percent of the population.

Secondly, the declaration was one of three conflicting wartime promises made by the British.

When it was released, Britain had already promised the Arabs independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1915 Hussein-McMahon correspondence.

The British also promised the French, in a separate treaty known as 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, that the majority of Palestine would be under international administration, while the rest of the region would be split between the two colonial powers after the war.

The declaration, however, meant that Palestine would come under British occupation and that the Palestinian Arabs who lived there would not gain independence.

Finally, the declaration introduced a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in international law – that of a “national home”.

The use of the vague term “national home” for the Jewish people, as opposed to “state”, left the meaning open to interpretation.

Earlier drafts of the document used the phrase “the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish State”, but that was later changed.

In a meeting with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1922, however, Arthur Balfour and then-Prime Minister David Lloyd George reportedly said the Balfour Declaration “always meant an eventual Jewish state”.

The question of why the Balfour Declaration was issued has been a subject of debate for decades, with historians using different sources to suggest various explanations.

While some argue that many in the British government at the time were Zionists themselves, others say the declaration was issued out of an anti-Semitic reasoning, that giving Palestine to the Jews would be a solution to the “Jewish problem”.

In mainstream academia, however, there are a set of reasons over which there is a general consensus:

  • Control over Palestine was a strategic imperial interest to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal within Britain’s sphere of influence
  • Britain had to side with the Zionists to rally support among Jews in the United States and Russia, hoping they could encourage their governments to stay in the war until victory
  • Intense Zionist lobbying and strong connections between the Zionist community in Britain and the British government; some of the officials in the government were Zionists themselves
  • Jews were being persecuted in Europe and the British government was sympathetic to their suffering

BYE BYE First Amendment: Democrats Join Republicans In Bill Criminalizing Speech Critical Of Israel

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Will the Federal Government Make It Illegal to Protest Israel?

This article by Celisa Caracal  was originally published at AlterNet. 
A growing number of Republicans and Democrats in Congress are backing a bill that would criminalize support for the international boycott against Israel, also known as the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

Named the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, the bill so far has garnered support from 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats in the Senate. A similar piece of legislation introduced in the House of Representatives has 237 co-sponsors—63 Democrats and 174 Republicans. With the intent to suppress the BDS movement and others allied with the boycott against Israel, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act imposes harsh punishments: any person guilty of violating the law faces a “minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.”

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act was introduced by Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin on March 23 and was drafted with the help of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In fact, passage of the bill was listed as one of the group’s top lobbying priorities for 2017.

The bill would build upon two laws, the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945, the former law making it illegal for U.S. corporations to cooperate with the boycott of Israel. The Office of Anti-Boycott Compliance under the Department of Commerce was created to enforce this very measure.

READ MORE: Introduction to the Israel Lobby (AIPAC) 

In addition to its already draconian felony punishments, the law would penalize people for requesting information about boycotts against Israel and would extend the boycott ban into any parts of Israel, including the settlements that were deemed to violate international law by the United Nations. The act would also expand upon the prohibition of partaking in boycotts sponsored by foreign governments to include boycotts from international organizations like the U.N. and the European Union.

On July 17, the American Civil Liberties Union published a letter it sent to all senators urging them to not support the bill on the basis that “it would punish individuals for no reason other than their political beliefs.” While the ACLU clarified that it takes no position on the international boycott of Israel, the statement asserts that, under the First Amendment, the government cannot punish people just because of their “expressed political beliefs.”

The ACLU statement further criticizes the bill for specifically singling out businesses and individuals who do not do any business with Israel for expressed political beliefs.

“There are millions of businesses and individuals who do no business with Israel, or with companies doing business there, for a number of reasons,” the statement reads.

The statement notes that the bill ignores those companies that choose not to do business with Israel purely for pragmatic reasons outside of political belief, instead punishing “businesses and individuals based solely on their point of view.”

This is not the first time lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum have attempted to infringe on First Amendment rights with the goal of silencing supporters of the BDS movement. Many college students in recent years have faced punishment for expressing support for Palestine and the BDS movement and for pushing their college administrations to cut ties with corporations that conduct business with Israel.

In 2015, members of the Board of Regents who oversee the University of California system—along with support from University president Janet Napolitano—attempted to pass speech codes that would severely crack down on forms of Israel criticism and anti-Israeli activism. Students at any UC campus violating the speech codes would be faced with suspension or even expulsion.

This March, the New York State Senate passed two bills that would strip funding from students and college organizations that participate in “hate speech related to Israel” or partake in boycotts of “Israel and American allied nations.” A third bill passed that same week would prohibit the state from contracting with or investing in businesses that support the BDS movement.

Ironically enough, a number of the bill’s supporters include Democratic lawmakers who have positioned themselves as leaders of the anti-Trump resistance. California Sen. Ted Lieu, who is one of the bill’s co-sponsors, has previously championed the protection of civil liberties and announced he would send monthly donations to the ACLU to resist Trump. New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, the latter of whom has been floated as a potential 2020 contender to Trump, have also co-sponsored the bill despite their purported support of civil liberties.

It also seems that a number of Senate Democrats have blindly backed a bill they have little knowledge of, according to inquiries sent to co-sponsors of the bill by the Intercept.

When told of the ACLU’s letter, Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan said, “What’s the Act? You’ll have to get back to me on that.” Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez from New Jersey, considered a reliable congressional ally to AIPAC, told the Intercept, “I’d want to read it….I’d have to look at it.”

With politicians providing lip service to protecting civil liberties and First Amendment rights, it is baffling and alarming that so many of these “free speech advocates” would throw support behind a bill that is not shy about its intent to punish people for their political beliefs.

 About the author: Celisa Calacal is a junior writing fellow for AlterNet. She is a senior journalism major and legal studies minor at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. Previously she worked at ThinkProgress and served as an editor for Ithaca College’s student newspaper. Follow her at @celisa_mia.

You Can Now Pretend To Kill Palestinians At Israeli Tourist Camps For Only $115

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These part-propaganda, part-morbid fantasy “terror camps” provide tourists a chance to play the role of IDF soldiers in dramatic situations.

Holidays are all about having fun, exploring new places and relaxing in the sun. However, the latest tourist attraction in Israel seems to be the complete opposite of that.

Apparently, half a dozen of fantasy terror camps have popped up throughout Israel and the West Bank, offering tourists from across the globe a chance to pretend-kill terrorists, who look suspiciously like Palestinian Arabs, only for $115 per person.

These facilities allow visitors to train like IDF soldiers and act in a variety of stimulated situations — including an explosion at a Jerusalem marketplace, a stabbing attack, a sniper tournament and a live demonstration with attack dogs.

The two-hour “training camp,” which is frankly part-propaganda and part-morbid amusement, provides travelers “a taste of the Israeli military experience,” according to Haaretz.

Caliber 3 in the Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Etzion in the West Bank is reportedly the most popular of all these “anti-terror” camps. IDF Colonel Sharon Gat established the facility, which later inspired several others across the country, back in 2003. He said approximately 15,000 to 25,000 tourists visit Caliber 3 each year and the majority of the visitors are American Jews.

However, in recent years, these military stimulation sites, which do nothing but promote the anti-Palestinian sentiment, have also gained massive popularity among travelers from Brazil, Argentina, France, Italy, Russia and China — even those who are on work-related trips and religious pilgrimages.

It is also important to note the tourists use actual guns and have former soldiers and retired officials to guide them.

–>Read More Here<–

The Rothschilds Own Israel – and Direct its Genocidal Policy

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This article by Makia Freeman was originally published at The Freedom Articles.

The Rothschilds own 80% of Israel, according to Simon Schama.

They built the Israeli Supreme Court.

They own Reuters and the Associated Press (AP), the two biggest media agencies in the world.

They have a controlling share in the Royal Dutch oil company, the Bank of England and the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association).

They foment wars, install presidents, dethrone kings and bankrupt nations, such is their power.

The Rothschilds typically operate behind the scenes.

In the case of Israel, the Rothschilds engineered WWI and waited until 1917 when Britain was in trouble. The Rothschilds then promised the British Government that they could get the US to enter WWI (on the side of Britain) and thus ensure Britain’s victory over Germany et al. However, they wanted something in return: Palestine. Thus the Balfour Declaration was created, which is an official letter from the British Government Foreign Secretary James Balfour to Baron Rothschild. It states that: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

There is a big problem with this.

Palestine was never Britain’s to give away.

It rightfully belongs to the Arab and Palestinian people living there.

The Rothschild Zionist Jews came in, took over and forcibly evacuated and killed millions of Palestinians who lived there.

They are still committing genocide to this day.

The Rothschilds’ Family Logo. The Rothschilds got the British Government in 1917 to promise them Palestine (in exchange for getting the US into WWI). They own 80% of Israel.

The creation of the Zionist state Israel was massively unjust right from the start. Something conceived in iniquity breeds conflict down the road.

ALSO READ: The Complete History Of The ‘House Of Rothschild’

It is no exaggeration to say that the founding of Israel itself may be the precursor to WWIII.

Zionist Israel controls the governments of the US, Britain, Canada, France and more – and the Rothschilds control Israel.

About the author:  Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative news / independent media site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com (FaceBook here), writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwide conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.

California Lawmakers OK Bill Penalizing Companies Boycotting Israel

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“AB 2844 is both an attack on the constitutional rights of Californians and a waste of taxpayer money,” read a statement from the Coalition to Stop AB 2844.

Companies boycotting Israel would lose California government contracts, under bill passed by California lawmakers.
Companies boycotting Israel would lose California government contracts, under bill passed by California lawmakers.

teleSUR| Both houses of California’s legislature have now approved a bill to ban state government agencies from awarding contracts to companies that choose to join the international boycott against Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine.

The bill, AB 2844, if passed, would be a serious attack on the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid and its treatment of Palestinians.

Companies who choose to boycott Israel, would be accused of being in violation of the state’s civil rights law and would not be permitted to accept a California government contract of $US100,000 or more.

The bill, which has eight different amendments, was eventually passed 60 to 0 in the assembly, and will now go to Governor Jerry Brown for has to decide whether to veto or sign the bill into law by the end of September.

BDS and civil rights advocates have urged Brown to veto the bill, while supporters of the bill have made much of the trade ties between the U.S. and Israel, as well as Israel’s positive treatment of LGBTQ persons as a reason for supporting AB 2844 – ignoring Israel’s long history of oppressing and collectively punishing Palestinians.

“AB 2844 is both an attack on the constitutional rights of Californians and a waste of taxpayer money, estimated to cost upwards of $140 million annually, according to the California Department of Finance, which opposes it,” read a statement from the Coalition to Stop AB 2844, which includes over 100 civil society organizations.

“Government should not be in the business of punishing supporters of BDS, whether corporations, universities, organizations or individuals, by denying them contracts,” said Nasser Barghouti from the U.S. Campaign to End The Israeli Occupation.

criticize-21

A number of other states, including New York and New Jersey, have passed similar laws to outlaw the boycott of Israel.

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The Banking ‘Transfer Agreement’ Between Hitler and the Zionists

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Follow the money…

21STCENTURYWIRE| In a recent interview for Book TV, investigative journalist Edwin Black talks about his extraordinary book, “The Transfer Agreement” and its 25th Anniversary republication.

Best-selling author Black, who himself is Jewish, outlines an apparently coordinated effort between the Nazis, American and European Jewish Zionists and the British, in a financial operation where millions in profit was generated between two banks set up to handle the transfer of Jewish assets out of Germany – Pal Troy (or Pal Treu) Bank in Germany, and the Anglo-Palestine Bank located in British Palestine. Question: who owned these two banks?

(Video) Rabbi Weiss Explains Zionism vs Judaism and Zionists Have Hijacked the Jewish Religion  

With the help of Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to British Palestine (now Israel) between 1933 and 1941 through the “Transfer Agreement” between Nazis and Zionists, where Jewish property with an estimated valued at $100 million – was transferred out in the form of German industrial goods used to build Israel’s early European-style infrastructure.
In the beginning, it was all about money, but when the deals soured and America entered the war, the Transfer Agreement came to a halt, and other monies began pouring into Nazi Germany from the bankers in New York.

This is an uncomfortable, yet key piece of complex financial history that many modern scribes are quite unwilling to explore…

7 Game Changing Events That Are Going To Happen By The End Of September

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september2

Is something really big about to happen? For months, people have been pointing to the second half of this year for various reasons. For some, the major concern is Jade Helm and the unprecedented movement of military vehicles and equipment that we have been witnessing all over the nation. For others, the upcoming fourth blood moon and the end of the Shemitah cycle are extremely significant events. Yet others are most concerned about political developments in Washington D.C. and at the United Nations. 

To me, it does seem rather remarkable that we are seeing such a confluence of economic, political and spiritual events coming together during the second half of 2015. So is all of this leading up to something? Is our world about to change in a fundamental way? Only time will tell. 

The following are 7 key events that are going to happen by the end of September…

Late June/Early July – It is expected that this is when the U.S. Supreme Court will reveal their gay marriage decision. Most believe that the court will rule that gay marriage is a constitutional right in all 50 states. There are some that believe that this will be a major turning point for our nation. (UPDATE: Supreme Court rules in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide)

July 15th to September 15th – A “realistic military training exercise” known as “Jade Helm” will be conducted by the U.S. Army.  More than 1,000 members of the U.S. military will take part in this exercise.  The list of states slated to be involved in these drills includes Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California, Mississippi and Florida.

July 28th – On May 28th, Reuters reported that countries in the European Union were being given a two month deadline to enact “bail-in” legislation.  Any nation that does not have “bail-in” legislation in place by that time will face legal action from the European Commission.  So why is the European Union in such a rush to get this done?  Are the top dogs in the EU anticipating that another great financial crisis is about to erupt?

September 13th – This is Elul 29 on the Biblical calendar – the last day of the Shemitah year. Many are concerned about this date because we have seen giant stock market crashes on the last day of the previous two Shemitah cycles.

On September 17th, 2001 (which was Elul 29 on the Biblical calendar), we witnessed the greatest one day stock market crash in U.S. history up until that time. The Dow plummeted 684 points, and it was a record that held for exactly seven years until the end of the next Shemitah cycle.

On September 29th, 2008 (which was also Elul 29 on the Biblical calendar), the Dow fell by an astounding 777 points, which still today remains the greatest one day stock market crash of all time.

Now we are approaching the end of another Shemitah year.  So will the stock market crash on September 13th, 2015? Well, no, because that day is a Sunday.  So I guarantee that the stock market will not crash on that particular day. But as Jonathan Cahn has pointed out in his book on the Shemitah, sometimes stock market crashes happen just before the end of the Shemitah year and sometimes they happen within just a few weeks after the end of the Shemitah.  So we are not just looking at one particular date.

September 15th – The 70th session of the UN General Assembly begins on this date.  It is being reported that France plans to introduce a resolution which would give formal UN Security Council recognition to a Palestinian state. Up until now, the United States has always been the one blocking such a resolution, but Barack Obama is indicating that things may be much different this time around.

September 25th to September 27th – The United Nations is going to launch a brand new sustainable development agenda for the entire planet. Some have called this “Agenda 21 on steroids”. But this new agenda is not just about the environment.  It also includes provisions regarding economics, agriculture, education and gender equality. On September 25th, the Pope will travel to New York to give a major speech kicking off the UN conference where this new agenda will be unveiled.

September 28th – This is the date for the last of the four blood moons that fall on Biblical festival dates during 2014 and 2015. This blood moon falls on the very first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, it will be a “supermoon”, and it will actually be visible in the city of Jerusalem. There are many that dismiss the blood moon phenomenon, but we have seen similar patterns before.  For example, a similar pattern of eclipses happened just before and just after the destruction of the Jewish temple by the Romans in 70 AD.

Perhaps none of this alarms you.  But when you add everything above to the fact that the elite definitely appear to be feverishly preparing for something, a very alarming picture emerges.

For example, due to fears that a “natural disaster” could interrupt their operations in New York, the New York Fed has been working hard to build up a satellite office in Chicago.

What kind of “natural disaster” could possibly be so bad that it would cause the entire New York Fed to shut down?

And NORAD has decided to move back into the base deep inside Cheyenne Mountain after all these years. The threat of an electromagnetic pulse was the reason given for this decision.

By themselves, perhaps those moves would not be that big of a deal. But let’s add all of the weird movements of military vehicles and equipment that we have been witnessing lately to this discussion.  I included this list from Intellihub in a previous article, but I believe that it bears repeating…

On March 13th, Intellihub founder Shepard Ambellas detailed photos and documentation of nearly 40 U.S. Army soldiers, wielding training rifles and dressed in full combat gear, participating in an urban warfare style training drill just outside the Texarkana Regional Airport perimeter.

In the middle of April, a report out of Big Springs, Texas revealed that a train full of military equipment and over a dozen helicopters had arrived in the town ahead of Jade Helm 2015.

Photographs taken in Corona, California a few days later added to the Jade Helm speculation after they showed a MRAP full of what looked to be U.S. Marines driving down the 1-15 freeway. “In broad daylight with not a care in the world”

On April 24th a shocking report on Intellihub News detailed armed troops seen confronting angry protesters in a “professional news package”of riot control training released by the military

“A massive buildup, a lot of movement and its undeniable at this point,”read the headline” on April 25th after a convoy was seen in Oroville, California that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Moving into May, photographs taken in Indiana showed a massive military convoy heading down the freeway. The photos, taken by a concerned citizen, show the convoy heading west on I-70 for reasons unknown.

Two days later, video footage, this time out of Texarkana, Arkansas, highlighted a convoy of Humvees driving down the highway as well as a trainload of military vehicles that was seen shortly after.

In mid May, Intellihub reporter Alex Thomas published a detailed report that confirmed that the military was indeed training to take on the American people, this time in the form of domestic house to house raids.

The next day a new report, also by Alex Thomas, proved that Marines were actually practicing for the internment of American citizens.

On May 18th, a train full of hundreds of military Humvees was spotted, further revealing the increased military buildup across the country leading into Jade Helm 2015. The train was heading towards Cleveland for unknown reasons although a possible connection to planned upcoming protests had been mentioned.

This past week a massive military war game simulation called Raider Focus was announced. The war game will include the largest military convoy seen on the roads of Colorado since World War II.

Finally, a report published detailed a stunning propaganda move by the military involving a New Jersey school and the worship of the military on the streets of America. “As parents, teachers, and students looked on with joy, Marines from the Special-Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force landed helicopters on the baseball diamond of a New Jersey school.”

What does all of this mean?

It is hard to say. We have imperfect information, so it is difficult to come up with perfect conclusions.

But what I will say is that I believe that the second half of 2015 is going to be extremely significant. I believe that events are about to start accelerating greatly, and I believe that life in America is about to change dramatically.

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream

EX-ISRAELI SOLDIER SPEAKS OUT …WHAT HE SAYS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL!

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VIA| This talk by Eran Efrati was filmed in Denver, Colorado on March 3, 2014 as part of The Soldier and the Refusenik U.S. tour with Maya Wind. Eran discusses his experiences in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and then more broadly discusses Israel, its relationship to the U.S. and the global expansion of militarism.

Eran Efrati, 28, was born and raised in Jerusalem. After graduating high school he enlisted in the IDF, where he served as a combat soldier and company sergeant in Battalion 50 of the Nachal Division. He spent most of his service in Hebron and throughout the West Bank.

ex-israeli-soldier-speaks-out-against-israel

In 2009, he was discharged and joined Breaking the Silence, an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers working to raise awareness about the daily reality in the Occupied Territories. He worked as the chief investigator of the organization, collecting testimonies from IDF soldiers about their activities. He also guided political tours and to the West Bank and worked to educate Israeli youth about the reality of being a soldier in an occupying army. His collected testimonies appear in the booklet “Operation Cast Lead” and their most recent release “Our Harsh Logic”.

Since leaving Breaking the Silence, his investigative reports appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Today he is active with the Israeli groups Anarchists Against the Wall and Boycott from Within.


KEY POINTS FROM THIS LECTURE

There is a heavy indoctrination in Israel, from an early age in schools, which uses the holocaust to create paranoia and fear against ‘the enemy’

Israeli soldiers are trained intensively for a war, whilst their actual military duties are to subdue and control Palestinians

Israeli soldiers routinely humiliate, intimidate, arrest, beat and kill civilian Palestinians to ‘protect’ illegal Jewish settlers in occupied territories

Many Israeli soldiers are aware what they are doing is wrong, but have no way out and feel pressured to continue

Palestinians who require medical attention, have to go through military checkpoints – to do this they require permits

  • They give these permits to lawyers of ‘Doctors without borders’ and then prevent them from going to the West Bank – meaning Palestinians do not receive permits
  • Israel uses a clever process to cover itself legally to the world

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli soldiers were traumatised and confused the atrocities they saw in Gaza

  • Israel would bomb civilian areas to clear the way for Israeli ground forces, use tank shells, air-strikes and illegal white phosphorus

When wanting to speak out, via the ‘Breaking the Silence Campaign‘ the Haaretz newspaper refused to publish soldier testimonies after pressure by IDF Spokesman

  • Breaking the Silence campaign itself was censored by the IDF Spokesman
  • All media in Israel has to go through the IDF censorship

The Israeli government and military make a lot of money by selling its weapons to other repressive regimes around the world

Israel tries and tests its weapons on Palestinians – ‘this is not (just) an occupation’ this is a laboratory for Israeli military weapons

Israel uses undercover units in the occupied territories to start riots, and then justify the use of weapons against Palestinian protesters

All police departments in the US are trained by the Israeli military and are taught the same brutal tactics used against Palestinians

US police departments have already used such tactics in suppressing protests in the US, such as the Occupy movement

Hit Israel where it hurts the most, boycott Israel

“Everybody knows, the apartheid regime will stop. The question is how fast, and how many people are going to die… until it will happen?” – Eran Efrati, Ex-Israeli Occupation Soldier

Terrorism’s Warped Ideology Only Applies to Those Whom Oppose America & Its Allies

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Alex Kane

The government and mainstream media’s definition of terrorism is very convenient. (convenient for them)

The definition of terrorism seems simple enough. The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that it is “the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal.”

But America’s leaders and corporate media have a radically different definition of terrorism.

terror your either with us or a terrorist

“In the mainstream American media, the ‘terrorist’ label is usually reserved for those opposed to the policies of the U.S. and its allies,” Tomas Kapitan, professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, recently wrote in a column for the  New York Times. This terrorist label is usually slapped on Muslims, even when they use violence in the context of a war zone like the Gaza Strip over the summer.

Since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. has waged a war on terror. But as the writer Glenn Greenwald has repeatedly pointed out, the tactic the U.S. is waging battle against has lost its fundamental meaning.

In the eyes of the U.S. elite, terrorism today means an act of political violence carried out by Muslims opposed to U.S. foreign policy. When political violence is carried out by non-Muslims, a different label is used. And when the U.S. and its allies launch wanton attacks on civilians to achieve a political goal, it is justified by invoking the specter of “terrorism.”

The U.S., it seems, feels free to use terrorism—in the dictionary sense of the word—to wage a war on terrorism. Just look at the indiscriminate drone strikes the U.S. has carried out in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, which have terrorized the civilian populations there in the name of fighting terrorism.

Recent acts of violence show this reality clearly.

On October 22, a Canadian man named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot and killed a soldier guarding a war memorial in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. He moved into the Canadian Parliament and also fired shots. American news outlets quickly labeled the incident a terrorist act, though at the time they had no indication of what motivated the attacker. President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also invoked terrorism when they denounced the attack.

In the days after the attack, the picture became hazier. U.S. and Canadian officials said that Zehaf-Bibeau was connected to people who had a “radical Islamist” ideology. But he also had a criminal record and suffered from mental illness. In a New Yorker column, the Canadian writer Heet Jeer noted that “Zehaf-Bibeau talked not just about an external battle but an internal struggle with demons, spiritual beings he felt had a real existence. That was a battle he was fighting in his own mind, which may have been the ultimate source of the violence that he inflicted on the world.”

Nevertheless, Zehaf-Bibeau was called a terrorist before these relevant facts came out, exposing the hollowness of the word terrorism.

The immediate labeling of the event in Canada as a terrorist attack stands in stark contrast to a violent incident on American soil that took place last June. Jerad and Amander Miller killed two police officers in Las Vegas before going into a Walmart, where they shot another person before being slain by police officers. The Miller couple were right-wing extremists. After killing the officers, the Millers covered one of the officers with a flag of the Nazi swastika and a yellow flag with the words “Don’t Tread On Me.”

By the classic definition of the word, the Millers were terrorists. But as the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi pointed out at the time,

“few media accounts have described the Millers as terrorists or their actions as terrorism.”

In 2010, Andrew Stack crashed his plane into a building with Internal Revenue Service employees, killing one. He left behind an anti-government suicide note. The Department of Homeland Security’s initial statement on the attack said there was:

“no reason to believe there is a nexus to terrorist activity.”

Since 9/11, mainstream U.S. discourse has become saturated with fears over (Muslim) terrorism. It’s easy to forget that the government’s focus on terrorism is fairly new. Remi Brulin, a scholar whose work focuses on the discourse around terrorism, documented this history in a recent talk delivered at New York University.

Brulin explained that American government focus on terrorism as a problem came to the fore in 1972, after Palestinian militants killed Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Munich, Germany. In a memo explaining the U.S. position on a UN resolution condemning terrorism at that time, the State Department offered a narrow definition of the word. The department said that terrorism was an act of political violence that occurs in territory outside of the state where the perpetrator is from and outside the state that the act was directed against.

America’s narrow definition didn’t last long.

By the Reagan era, U.S. officials had adopted the Israeli discourse.

As Brulin has explained, this discourse posits that what separates terrorists from the civilized world is the valuing of innocent life. Taken at face value, it bears a close resemblance to the common understanding of the word. But “the Israeli discourse…has been fundamentally ideological. It has been the discourse of de-legitimization, and of de-humanization,” Brulin argues. Israel and the U.S. use the word terrorism to describe the political violence carried out by its enemies. But when those states carry out acts of violence at civilians or allow their allies to do so, the word terrorism does not come up in mainstream discussion.

Tomas Kapitan’s New York Times essay points to the 1982 massacre of thousands of civilians in a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. The perpetrators were Lebanese Phalangists, key Israeli allies. An Israeli investigative committee would later determine that Ariel Sharon, the Israeli defense minister at the time, bore “personal responsibility” for the attack and that he decided the Phalangists should be sent in to the camp. This was not thought of as terrorism, though. Instead, Israel’s commission of inquiry on the massacre only referred to Palestinian terrorists–a clear example of how the rhetoric of terrorism is exploited “to direct attention away from [states’] own acts of terror,” as Kapitan writes.

Terrorism is a politicized and racialized term. The words terrorism and terrorist are principally used to delineate which political actors can use violence legitimately and which cannot. In the realm of international politics, only Western states and their allies can use violence aimed at civilians to achieve political goals. But when Muslims do it, they are called terrorists and delegitimized, regardless of whether they were, in fact, using the tactics of terrorism.

If terrorism is to mean anything, the word should be used to describe all acts of political violence that target civilians. But if it’s not, “the whole analytical category of ‘terrorism’ needs to be abandoned,” as Heet Jeer suggested on Twitter.

Given the word’s use as a rhetorical weapon to justify state violence, the day when the category of terrorism is abandoned is far off.

Alex Kane is AlterNet’s New York-based World editor, and an assistant editor for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

source

Facts All US Citizens Need to Know About Israel and Palestine

By

Robert Barsocchini

  • Gaza (along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem) is occupied Palestinian territory under international law, determined by the vast majority of the world, as well as the highest court in the world, the UN’s International Court of Justice. Gaza cannot commit aggression against Israel, since Israel is in constant and continual commission of illegal aggression against Palestine by occupying it (illegally and sadistically blockading it and frequently committing terrorism against its civilians, including by targeting them with chemical weapons provided by US taxpayers – see “Rain of Fire” by Human Rights Watch). As documented by Amnesty Int’l, Human Rights Watch, and many others,
  • Israel intentionally targets and murders civilians, including children, en masse.
  • Israel also kidnaps and tortures children, including by keeping them in outdoor cages, over night, in winter.
  • But, even ignoring international law and that Gaza is under illegal Israeli occupation, Gaza did not initiate this current round of violence; Israel did:
    • Western/US/Israeli propaganda says the violence started with the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youths on June 12th. That is a lie:
    • On May 20th, the Israeli government murdered 2 unarmed Palestinian teens, one on video, and wounded a third.
    • The firing of pathetic scrap metal rockets from impoverished Gaza, which have killed no one, were in fact launched in response to earlier Israeli bombings, killings, assassinations, and arrests of Palestinians, including children.
  • Since the year 2000, Israel has killed 1,500 Palestinian children, while Palestinians have killed 132 Israeli children. That means Israel has killed over 1,000% percent more Palestinian children than vice versa.
  • According to a landmark, comprehensive study of all of Israel’s wars, by Zeev Maoz, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, former head of the Graduate School of Government and Policy and of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and former academic director of the M.A. Program at the Israeli Defense Forces’ National Defense College:
    • “. most of the wars in which Israel was involved were the result of deliberate Israeli aggressive design . None of these wars – with the possible exception of the 1948 War of independence – was what Israel refers to as Milhemet Ein Berah (war of necessity). They were all wars of choice . ” – Defending the Holy Land, pg. 35, (bold added)
    • “I review a number of peace-related opportunities ranging from the Zionist-Hashemite collusion in 1947 through the collapse of the Oslo Process in 2000. In all those cases I find that Israeli decision makers – who had been willing to embark upon bold and daring military adventures – were extremely reluctant to make even the smallest concessions for peace . I also find in many cases Israel was engaged in systematic violations of agreements and tacit understandings between itself and its neighbors.” – Defending the Holy Land, pg. 40
  • Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other country. That includes Iraq under Hussein.
  • Hamas is the government elected by Gaza in elections that Jimmy Carter (and many others) observed and said were completely fair and free. Israel constantly says Hamas uses human shields. But in Israel’s biggest massacre of Gaza, the one in 2009, all the human rights organizations, including Amnesty, HRW, and the jurist Richard Goldstone, found that Hamas DID NOT use human shields. On the contrary, Israel used human shields, which is a regular practice for Israel. Israel uses civilians as human shields.
    • Israel forced Palestinian civilians to dig and lay naked in trenches around Israeli tanks. See hereat 6:45.
      • XIV. THE USE OF PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS AS HUMAN SHIELDS
      • “The Mission received allegations that in two areas in north Gaza Israeli troops used Palestinian men as human shields… The Mission found the foregoing witnesses to be credible and reliable. It has no reason to doubt the veracity of their accounts and found that the different stories serve to support the allegation that Palestinians were used as human shields.”
  • Noam Chomsky: “Hamas is regularly described as ‘Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.’ One will be hard put to find something like ‘democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus’—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.”
  • In the history of all rocket and mortar fire into Israel, 26 people, total, have been killed. And remember, Palestine breaks ceasefires far less often than Israel, as documented above.
    • This number of 26 is in contrast to the minimum number of 1,400 people who were murdered by Israel in a single one of its terrorist atrocities, the 2009 Gaza Massacre.
    • Noting that in the current massacre, zero Israelis and over 100 Palestinians have thus far been killed, and noting that Gaza is a concentration camp – Israel allows no one to enter or leave –Dan Sanchez gives a perfect description of the disparity in arms between the US/Israeli war machine and Palestinian scrap metal projectiles: “They [the Gazans] are like fish in a barrel, being blasted by a shotgun from above. It’s like some of the fish in the barrel pathetically spitting water at the gunman, and [US media calls] that a “shooting battle.”
  • The rhetoric and tactics of Hamas and other groups resisting Israeli occupation and colonization can be brutal (though far less so than Israel). Propagandists try to attribute this to anti-Semitism, to distract from the fact that these groups are resisting having their country stolen and their people dispossessed and annihilated. Native American resistance to European colonizers was sometimes extremely brutal, as was their rhetoric, but everyone universally recognizes that this was not because of “anti-White-ism”, or “anti-European-ism”, but because they were having their land stolen and their people massacred, the same thing that Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
    • Palestinians have the right under international law to resist occupation, ethnic cleansing, colonization, aggression, and annexation. Miko Peled, son of an Israeli general, recently statedthat if Israel doesn’t Like rockets, they should decolonize Palestine. Dr. Norman Finkelsteinnotes that “The Palestinians have the right to use arms to resist an occupation . However, the fact that morally and legally they have that right doesn’t mean that it’s the most prudent strategy. In my opinion, a national Palestinian leadership committed to mobilizing nonviolent resistance can defeat the Israeli occupation if those of us living abroad lend support to it.”
  • In 1948, the people who wanted to form a Jewish state carried out a massiveterror and ethnic cleansing campaign against the occupants of Palestine, expelling about half of them (750,000) from their land and into concentrated areas (Gaza and West Bank). Israel has slowly continued colonizing even those areas, which were specifically reserved by the UN for Palestinians. Israel takes all the best land and resources, such as water. Here is a visualization of what has happened, and is currently happening with massive support from Obama:

map-story-of-palestinian-nationhood

  • Israeli settlement building in Palestine is a war crime under international law. Under Obama, Israeli settlement building is up over 130%.
  • For about 40 years, there has been an international consensus that Israel must stop colonizing territory outside its 1967 borders. The consensus has been blocked by the United States, in isolation from the international community (much like the USA’s isolated, strong support for South African Apartheid). Every year there is a UN vote on the issue, and every year it goes about 165 to 2, the world against the US and Israel. This continues under Obama. All human rights groups support the consensus, as does Hamas, the Arab League, Iran, the Organization of the Islamic Conference… Virtually everyone, except the US and Israel. (More details on this page.)
  • Palestinians are brutalized, repressed and impoverished by Israel. To get a quick visual understanding of the difference between Gaza and Israel, take a look at the images of people and cities being wantonly pummeled by Israeli terrorism when you search the word “Gaza“, and the images of opulence, wealth and luxury that come up when you search “Tel Aviv“.
  • Israel, whose government intentionally targets, tortures, and murders civilians, including children, including with chemical weapons, and whose government uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, and whose government is the last entity on Earth carrying out old-style ethnic cleansing and colonization of foreign countries, is the single biggest recipient of US aid, at over three billion dollars a year and huge amounts of lethal weaponry such as attack helicopters and white phosphorous chemical explosives.
  • To reiterate, Obama requested more military aid for Israel than any president ever. This is not because Obama and the USA love Jewish people. Obama was recently an accomplice in a literal neo-Nazi-led coup d’etat in Ukraine, and is currently fully supporting the junta-integrated Ukrainian government, which is staffed with several neo-Nazis in high ministries, and which uses neo-Nazi paramilitaries to carry out massacres (and possibly genocide) against people resistant to the junta. The actual reason the US supports Israel is discussed below.
  • As Amnesty International has noted, all aid to Israel is illegal under international (and US) law, because Israel is a consistent violator of human rights.
Amnesty International also noted that Israel’s 2009 massacre of Gaza would not have been possible without the illegal funding (money and weapons) and support Israel gets from the USA.

This is also true of the current massacre Israel is committing in Gaza.

However, in a way, that is good news.

That means US citizens can STOP the massacres.

If we stop our money and weapons-flow to Israel, which is illegal anyway, we stop Israeli terrorism! All we have to do is stop committing a crime, and we will stop more crimes! That’s great news.

Here is a previous example of how this has worked: When the USA cut its funding for Indonesia’s genocide against East Timor, which the USA was funding almost exclusively, Indonesia was forced to stop and withdraw. All it took was cutting off our illegal flow of money and weapons to the criminals.
The same thing would happen if we cut our illegal funding for Israel’s genocides and acts of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, colonization, and annexation against Palestine.

But since the USA is an anti-democratic country, the only way to stop US plutocrats from using our money to fund Israeli terrorism is to force it through massive, non-violent pressure.

One way it happens is when it becomes too politically costly for the plutocracy to keep funding genocide and terror, meaning the costs of their illegal support outweigh the benefits, as in Indonesia. In that case, massive publicity and indigenous resistance accomplished the goal.

But Israel is the USA’s main imperial – and nuclear – base for controlling the Middle East, which US planners, in 1945, called the greatest material prize in world history, due to the oil and gas. Thus, it might require more, as in non-violently making our country into a democracy so that people control their own institutions and money, and thus the way we operate as a society and interact with the world.
Last note: To be clear, Israel is a legal state, but only within the borders allotted to it by the United Nations – the Pre-1967 borders, which existed before Israel started eating away, through terror, ethnic cleansing, colonization, and annexation, at the areas reserved by the United Nations for Palestinians, as well as areas of other countries, such as Syria (the Golan Heights).
Per international law, US domestic law, and common sense, Israel doesn’t deserve any support until it abandons isolationism and accepts that it can’t steal other people’s countries, and stops blockading and withdraws its soldiers and settlers, all there illegally, from those countries.

Israel is, militarily, the most powerful country in the Middle East, by far. Removing our support for the Israeli government (which we are legally required to do) will not put Israelis in danger. It will pressure the Israeli government to stop doing what endangers Israelis, which is committing aggressive acts against Israel’s neighbors.

If Israel ends its status as a consistent violator of human rights, decolonizes Palestine, and respects its neighbors, it could be a pleasure – and legal – to work with and support Israel.

Germany, Japan, and South Africa went from being the most reviled countries on Earth to being some of the most admired. Maybe Israel could undergo the same transformation, but not unless we, US citizens, help by ceasing to enable Israeli terrorism and war crimes by illegally supporting them.

Source: Washington’s Blog