Senator John McCain is greeted by an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man as he arrives at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, March 19, 2008. (Photo: AP)

By Ramzy Baroud

Abstract: A study of the political, religious and cultural factors underlying the pro-Israeli bias apparent in the Western media today, as depicted in the mainstream news and television programmes.

As Palestinians hurriedly buried their loved ones in the Gaza Strip following a deadly Israeli onslaught, which further contributed to Gaza’s worst humanitarian crisis since 1967 [1], US and Israeli celebrities rallied at a Los Angeles benefit concert for the Israeli town of Sderot, located near the border of Gaza. [2] Hollywood movie stars Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, Valerie Harper and comedian Larry Miller mingled with Israeli celebrities such as singer Ninet Tayeb and others. Children from the Israeli town of Sderot, which received the lion’s share of homemade Palestinian rockets, were cheerful nonetheless. Song and dance, interrupted occasionally by solemn messages of support delivered via satellite by both Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates, replaced the cries of sirens the images of huddling families in the town’s shelters. It was a bittersweet moment, that of solidarity, a renewal of the vow made too often, that Israel’s plight is that of America, and Israel’s security is an American priority, and, indeed, ‘God loves those who love Israel’.

Welcome to America’s parallel reality on Israel and Palestine, barefaced in its defying of the notions of commonsense, equality and justice, ever-insistent on peeking at the Arab-Israeli conflict from a looking glass manufactured jointly in the church, in the Congress and in the news room, where the world is reduced to characters interacting in a Hollywood-like movie set: good guys, well groomed and often white-skinned vs. bad guys bearing opposite qualities.

One may become accustomed to watching, reading and listening to the chorus of support that America – its politicians, most of its mainstream media and a large conglomerate of its churches and clergies – tirelessly offer Israel. But one must never dismiss such support, as typical, expected or, as some of Israel’s supporters would put it, ‘special’ and ‘historic’. As simplistic and naïve in its articulation as the so-called pro-Israeli sentiment in the United States may be, in actuality, its intricate manifestation of political, religious, and cultural factors are as old, in some way, as the United States itself. To understand these factors, some deconstruction is in order. This article merely aims at shedding light at some of these factors and the history behind them.

Religion Meets Politics – Old and New

“They own the [Holy] land, just the mere land, and that’s all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven’t any business to be there defiling it. It’s a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them.” — Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, 1894.

Americans are commonly accepted for being more religious than their Western counterparts, whether in Canada or in Europe. After all, the American Dream was largely initiated by what is widely interpreted as a religious pilgrimage on board the Mayflower in 1620. The history of colonization of the American continent, of course, goes back to earlier years; nonetheless, it was that particular ‘pilgrimage’, in cultural consciousness, that defined the historic relationship between the immigrants from Europe and the so-called New World. One rather significant omission which often occurs is the recognition of the many nations in the new physical landscape, which in fact existed.

Although the Native Americans’ plight has received a somewhat fair share of deserved analysis, I mean to emphasize here an important component that makes their story most relevant to my argument. Native Americans were dismissed as non-existent, were seen as an obstacle to the harbingers of civilizations, and, when they were recognized as an entity, political or cultural, it was meant merely to juxtapose their backwardness, their irrelevance, their savageness, with the progressiveness, the relevance and the civility of the newcomers.

They too, the immaterial ‘Indians’ may have merely owned the land (although Native Americans didn’t believe in such a concept to start with), but it’s “our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy.” The religious aspect of colonization is significant in the sense that it validates the cruelty of the physical uprooting, the massacring and the dismissal of entire races. “Where a command and a faith are present, in certain historical situations conquest need not be robbery,” Martin Buber wrote once. [3] If God, particularly the American God, justifies such acts, who are we, mere mortals, to defy His will? America was and remains in the minds of some, a Holy Land, with many of its towns bearing the name Salem, just like city of Jerusalem, occupied and illegally annexed by Israel. Such notions as legality and illegality might be relevant to the United Nations (itself rendered irrelevant once by US President George W. Bush himself) [4], but among large circles of American religious institutions, these notions are extraneous to the point of ridicule.

But there is more, of course, to the ‘special relationship’ that justified Israel’s robbery of Palestinian land in an American religious, political and intellectual landscape than their combined search for a holy land and their textual, often selective interpretations of the Old Testament.

In 1879, a scale model of the Holy Land known as the Palestine Park was constructed on Lake Chautauqua, New York by Reverend John Heyl Vincent. J. A. Miller explains, Palestine Park was a “visual aid for the legions of Sunday school teachers who flocked to the Chautauqua Institute to bone up on biblical history and geography.” It was the “first ever example of a theme park, a quintessential American construct.” [5] It featured: “…a life-size Tabernacle built to the specifications given in Exodus, a pyramid, a model of Jerusalem, and a small scale replica of the biblical Holy Land itself - complete with a ten-foot-long Dead Sea, a smaller Sea of Galilee, and markers for important biblical sites - landscaped into the rocky terrain of the shoreline …which serves as the Mediterranean Sea.” [6]

The Chautauqua Institute was established five years before the Park, and “spawned hundreds of ‘assemblies’, throughout America, their popularity lasting until radio and cinema decimated their customer base.” That customer base was not only large, but influential, for it included such luminaries as “Amelia Earhart, Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, George Gershwin and at least nine presidents. Ida Tarbell, famed muckraker of Standard Oil, happily recollected cavorting on Palestine Park’s Mount Hermon as a girl.” [7]

Miller argues, that although there were many smaller precursors on American church grounds, “Palestine Park is the iconic example of what geographer John Kirtland Wright called geopiety, ‘a deep religious devotion to a vision of the Holy Land concocted from a ‘curious mix of romantic imagination, historical rectitude, and attachment to physical space’.” [8] He proceeds, “Geopiety is a particularly Protestant obsession originating in England in the 16th century and culminating in the Balfour Declaration. Long before Herzl revved up the Jewish branch of geopiety, the Archbishop of York pugnaciously encapsulated the concept in 1875: “Our reason for turning to Palestine is that Palestine is our country. I have used that expression before and I refuse to adopt any other”. [9]

While these roots continued to be firmly planted, newer religious phenomena helped contribute to that construct, thus widening the parameters of the Park to include a larger segment of American society, using television as the new and relentless platform. Welcome to the Armageddon-seeking American Evangelicals. While the advocacy for Israel by various evangelical churches is both bizarre – since the ultimate objective of this crowed is the annihilation of most Jews and the conversion of some as prerequisites for the Rapture – and widely acknowledged, their influence on the political culture of America is not equally recognized. Pastor John Hagee, for example, a “televangelist to 99 million viewers and pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, established Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in 2005 following the publication of his book, ‘The Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World.’ Hagee envisions CUFI as the Christian version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby whose political clout has significant influence on US foreign policy in the Middle East.” [10]

Journalist Max Blumenthal took his cameras to the CUFI’s Washington-Israel Summit held in July 2007, in Washington DC. The result was a documentary entitled, “Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour.” It opens with a dialogue with former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who was asked how important is the Second Coming is in his support of Israel. “Obviously, it is what I live for. Really, I hope it comes tomorrow. Obviously, we need to be connected to Israel to enjoy the Second Coming of Christ.” [11]

Robert Weitzel reports, “John Hagee is not without fawning friends in Washington. Presidential hopeful John McCain made a campaign stop at the Summit and admitted to the audience that, ‘It’s very hard trying to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan . . .’ House Minority Whip Roy Blunt followed McCain to the podium and assured the faithful that ‘This is a mission, this is a vision that I believe is a vision for God’s time.’ Senator Joe Lieberman was there and described Pastor Hagee as an “Ish Elokim,” a man of God. Never one to be left out of a well-attended Christian Right convocation, President Bush sent his best wishes, ‘I appreciate CUFI members . . . for your passion and dedication to enhancing the relationship between the United States and Israel. Your efforts set a shining example for others . . .’ [12]

Popular Culture

To examine the relationship between political and religious cultures and the popular culture in America is not an easy task, since the relationship is neither one-way nor linier. However, those preaching their version of God, aspiring to hold on to their political powers, understood well how to communicate their messages to the general public. Pop cultures are hardly shaped by polemics, reason and dialectics but by rather seemingly simple and indirect gestures that overtime ingrain lasting impressions. Combined with an already existing bias regarding Palestine, as disseminated by religious and political institutions, popular culture is constantly bombarded with positive imagery and language depicting Israel, and negative representations of Palestinians.

In popular sitcoms such as Friends, Malcolm in the Middle and others, references are quite often made of Israel. One of Friends’ main characters, Chandler, had an Israeli girl friend, attractive and funny. When it was time to break up, he feared that her fighting skills, obtained during her service in the Israeli army would make such a task too difficult. That image of Israel, and the Israelis, being funny, attractive and fearsome is recurring in American television. Palestinians on the other hand are mentioned, sporadically (outside the evening news), and almost always in a negative light. I was up for a big surprise watching an episode of American Dad, one of the most watched animation programs following the Simpsons. The show comes across as progressive, in a roundabout sort of way. A young boy, one of the show’s main characters, was frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to operate a homemade rocket. “If a five year old Palestinian boy can do this, so could I.” In another segment, another reference was made to the “anti-Zionist Aryan brotherhood,” an imaginary group that equates an anti-Zionist affiliation to white supremacy. Many such references are made on American television as well as the big screen. However, I will focus the remaining part of the article on media language and its contribution to the manufacturing of an alternative, convenient reality regarding the Middle East, but Israel and Palestine in particular.

Media Language

In the competitive world of media today, swift and conveniently selective reporting is of prime importance. GoogleNews, for example, claims to scan 4,500 news sources, of which only a few are highlighted as main stories. There are thousands of similar services, all competing to produce a story in the fastest time. Thorough - and thus slower - reporting is relegated and crucial information often appears too little too late.

The corporate media’s depiction of the Gaza story, following Hamas’ election victory in January 2006, and which culminated in the clashes between Fatah and Hamas and the latter’s capture of Gaza in June 2007, was reduced to a few typical headlines, depicting Palestinians as unruly, uncivilized, criminal and unpredictable (thus incapable of being a trustworthy peace partner, as often parroted by Israel.)

The imprisonment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza – where a humanitarian crisis, unemployment and poverty are still underway – should have been depicted first and foremost as a humanitarian disaster compelled by an Israeli siege. The dates related to the successive stages of the siege should follow a line of political, not ‘security’ logic. Any reasonable timeline of recent events could easily verify that (the formation of the Hamas government in March 2006, the ousting of the pro-Israeli Palestinian security apparatus in June 2007 and so on being followed by dramatic Israeli moves to tighten the siege on Gaza, Hamas’ stronghold).

But little of that seemed relevant to the way the Gaza story was amply reported. Like the Iraq story, where the two main trusted sources are the occupation and its puppet Iraqi government, any story of relevance to Israel and Palestine has to be validated by the official Israeli source and to a lesser but growing extent by their allies among Palestinians. The rest are ‘extremist’, radical and hell-bent on the destruction of the ‘Jewish state.’ Note how the Jewishness of Israel is often emphasised whenever the word ‘destruction’ or similar words are infused.

This is what Bridget Johnson wrote in the Los Angeles Daily News, chastising the United Nations’ Human Rights Council for its condemnation of Israel’s siege on Gaza: “There was zero mention of Hamas’ continued rocket attacks on Israel — which preceded the cut-off of supplies that has caused such an uproar — or Hamas’ refusal to renounce violence against and attempted destruction of the Jewish state.” [13] The claims were preposterous – especially that of a small group’s ‘attempted destruction’ of a country saturated with nuclear arms. The words ‘destruction’ and ‘Jewish state’ are simply passed as an innocent ‘opinion’, read by millions of Americans. There are many notable omissions as well. Hamas has repeatedly called for a mutual ceasefire, that was also repeatedly rejected or simply ignored by Israel. The siege followed the democratic election of Hamas, not the rocket attacks. Also conveniently missed is the disparity between the numbers of Israelis killed as a result of the Palestinian rockets – 10 in six years of violence – and Palestinians killed by Israeli ‘retaliation’ - over 120 Palestinians in Gaza alone within 9 days, starting February 27. [14] The killing of any civilian anywhere is tragic, but the facts are rarely contextualised by the media. This is only the tip of the iceberg since human suffering cannot only be measured by those who die, but also those who continue to live in perpetual torment. For Johnson, this is irrelevant, since this is not about right and wrong, but a war of language. To win the war, one must have command over language – and the way it’s manipulated – and access to platforms that reach the largest number of readers. An easy recipe to victory in this non-conventional war is an intentional mix of terms as Islamic extremism, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Jewish state, security, existential threats, right to exist, juxtaposed with images or clips of angry Palestinian youth burning Israeli and American flags, ‘side-by-side’, and you will have an American public and government standing in eternal solidarity with Israel.

While most US politicians are self-seeking, power hungry and would do whatever it takes to be elected, the average American, unlike what it may seem, is not born ‘pro-Israel’, and ‘anti-Palestinian.’ Most Americans are pro-the-manufactured, yet misleading images of Israel reach their homes through television, wait at their doorsteps in the morning and confront them through the web. Israel has mastery over the language of the Western media, which, again, helped create a parallel reality that has little correlation to the real world, that of facts, numbers and actual events. That alternative universe only exists on the pages of New York Times, the images of CNN, and the blabber of Fox News ‘experts’. According to that narrative, Palestinians, are irrational, suicidal, demonic, mad, extremists, self hating, and all the rest.

Conclusion

There is no serious, equitable debate regarding Palestine and Israel in the US media, nor any other cultural, political and religious circles. If the existing narrative is to be called a debate, then it’s one with an imagined, not real, language, almost entirely irrelevant to the realities in Palestine and Israel. It’s one that is largely predicated on a narrow minded, apocalyptic religious discourse which for decades has found itself an accepted point of departure for most politicians, even those who falsely pose as liberals. Between the two discourses, that of misguided religious fantasies and pandering politicians, there exists enough room for alternative narratives. Unfortunately, that space is too overwhelmed by cultural misconceptions, institutional bias and deliberate confusion, introduced and instilled deliberately by media producers, pundits and the other manufactures of American popular culture. Until the gatekeepers of pop culture in America are seriously challenged, Palestine will continue to reside in the American imagination as a battle between good and evil, a ‘Holy Land’ that must be wrestled from the hands of those who might have owned the land, at one point, but now, they “haven’t any business to be there defiling it.”

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

(This article was first published in the Palestine Internationalist Journal, Volume 3 Issue 3, Apr 2008 – South Africa)

Bibliography

[1] Gaza humanitarian Crisis ‘Worst Since 1967′, MSNBC. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23497420/
[2]) U.S., Israeli Stars Rally at L.A. Benefit Concert for Sderot. www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959308.html
[3] Martin Buber, On Zion:The History of an Idea, 1974, p. 146
[4] Matthew Rothschild, Bush Trashes the United Nations. The Progressive, April 2003. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_4_67/ai_99818480
[5] J. A Miller, Palestine Park, The Palestine Chronicle, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13390, Jan 8, 2008
[6] Timothy Beal, Roadside Religion, 2005, p. 28
[7] J. A Miller, Palestine Park, The Palestine Chronicle, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13390, Jan 8, 2008
[8] Timothy Beal, Roadside Religion, 2005, p. 28
[9] Issam Nassar, “In Their Image”, Jerusalem Quarterly, October 2003 www.jerusalemquarterly.org/details.php?cat=4&id=185
[10] Robert Weitzel, Children of Palestine and Israel: Cannon Fodder for the Rapture, The Palestine Chronicle, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13592
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid
[13] Bridget Johnson, The U.N. can learn something from Rambo. The Los Angeles Daily News. www.dailynews.com/columnists/ci_8102360
[14] Aljazeera, Hamas sets terms for Israeli truce. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B09F81FA-14D9-4BCA-A7BD-AF2E52693830.htm; and Amnesty International, Children and civilian bystanders in Gaza death toll: www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/children-and-civilian-bystanders-gaza-death-toll-20080303

David Cesarani, The Guardian

The comment surrounding Israel’s 60th anniversary mostly focused on the character of the Jewish state in its sixth decade and its apparently unending struggle with the Palestinians. Little attention was paid to Britain’s role in the emergence of Jewish statehood and its responsibility for the nakba, the Arab catastrophe in 1948. Yet if there was ever an appropriate moment for historical self-reflection, surely this is it.

After Britain was awarded the mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations, in 1922, colonial policy in Palestine was to oversee the development of both the Jewish and the Arab sectors, as cheaply as possible or at a profit. Yet the two sides were not evenly matched.

The worldwide Zionist movement poured investment and immigrants into Palestine. During the 1920s neither arrived in impressive quantities. But after the Nazis took power in Germany the trickle of impoverished immigrants from Poland turned into a flood of comparatively well-off German Jews. By the 1930s the Jewish sector of the economy, fortified by exclusive practices, was overwhelming the Arab one.

Palestinian farmers were blighted by undercapitalization and hampered by a patronizing colonial administration that believed in preserving their “picturesque” way of life. When they saw the demographic balance tilting, the Arabs attempted to seize the levers regulating immigration, but they were no match for the Zionist politicians and their allies in London. Having lost faith in the political process and British good will, they turned to armed revolt. Between 1936 and 1939, the British security forces crushed the Arab rebellion in Palestine. Social and economic decay was now compounded by defeat.

Ironically, at just this moment, with Europe on the brink of war, Britain conceded everything the Palestinian Arabs had demanded short of immediate independence. A white paper in 1939 decreed that Jewish immigration would be limited to paltry numbers and after five years the population, inevitably comprising an Arab majority, would determine the country’s future.

The war changed everything. Palestinian Jews volunteered in large numbers for the British army; thousands received training and combat experience. Winston Churchill, the wartime prime minister, was pro-Zionist and edged British policy back toward partition. Attitudes toward Zionism were transformed by the mass murder of the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe.

After the war the Labour Party was swept into office. Traditionally it was pro-Zionist, but Prime Minister Clement Attlee, and Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, were impressed when the military said they needed Palestine for strategic reasons. And with the British economy drained by six years of warfare, Bevin wanted to avoid anything that would antagonize the oil-producing states.

So the white paper was retained and the Royal Navy ordered to prevent the survivors of Nazi genocide reaching Palestine. Jews around the world were enraged by what seemed a heartless policy. It made no difference to them if Attlee and Bevin sincerely believed that the refugees from the ghettos and camps would be better off living securely in the countries from which they had been kidnapped by the Nazis.

Bevin also believed that Britain and the US had to cooperate in world affairs. Yet President Truman repeatedly deferred to the electoral calculus that gave American Jewish voters a say in foreign policy. If Britain had acceded to Truman’s call to admit 100,000 Jews from Europe into Palestine in 1945 it would probably have had to put down a few Arab riots, but might still have been there a decade later. Instead, Attlee and Bevin tried to get American loans and help to stay in Palestine while at the same time placating the Arabs. This policy was doomed and merely provoked an armed Jewish uprising that the police and army were ill-equipped to suppress.

Jewish terrorists tormented the security forces. Sniping, roadside bombs, mines and massive explosions, such as the King David Hotel bombing, drove the troops mad. In reprisal, police and soldiers repeatedly attacked innocent Jews, most viciously, in August 1947, after the Irgun hanged two British sergeants in revenge for the hanging of three of their fighters. (There were anti-Jewish riots in England, too.) While a political solution seemed as elusive as ever, senior officers in Palestine warned Whitehall that they were loosing control of their own men.

Britain’s role in Palestine may have been conveniently forgotten because it was a diplomatic and military defeat of immense proportions, ending in squalid acts of vengeance. Recently released documents in The National Archives confirm Jewish suspicions, denied at the time, that in February 1948 British Army deserters used truck bombs to blow up a stretch of Ben Yehuda Street, in Jerusalem, killing 52 people.

However, the Palestinians were the chief victims of British policy. After the UN announced the partition of Palestine in November 1947, Bevin ordered the army and the administration to remain strictly neutral. He had made it clear that the British would not enforce any solution, least of all one they thought was unfair to the Arabs. Unfortunately, this policy had the opposite effect to what was intended.

Bevin may have hoped the Arabs would overwhelm the Jews in the communal war that raged for the next six months. But the Palestinian Arabs lacked any national organization. Their fighting forces were village-based militias. They could cut roads and isolate Jewish settlements, but they were never a real threat to incipient Jewish sovereignty. Moreover, by maintaining the status quo, the British effectively defended the Jews when they were at their weakest.

As a result, the Jews were able to consolidate the territory assigned to them by the UN and expel most of its Arab population. After Israel declared its independence in May 1948, civil war was superseded by invasion. British even-handedness now took the form of an arms embargo. Yet it hurt the Arabs more. The Israeli forces were being equipped mainly from the Soviet bloc. The armies of Egypt and Jordan depended on British supplies and, in the latter case, British officers. Britain in effect contributed to Israel’s survival by hobbling the armies that were attempting to wipe it out at birth. The Arab invasion proved to be half-hearted and ineffectual, yet it gave Israel wholly reasonable grounds for seizing more territory and displacing more Arabs.

Bevin was occasionally bothered by these developments. But he withheld recognition from Israel more out of sheer spite. The two countries nearly came to war when Israeli Spitfires shot down several RAF planes patrolling over the Egyptian border in January 1949. This aerial humiliation capped a disastrous chapter in the end of the British Empire. We may think it is best forgotten, but by refusing to enforce a settlement that the British government did not like it condemned the Palestinians to a far worse fate. And that is something to think about.

By Remi Kanazi

Free speech is not without consequence. In the United States, for example, criticism of Israel is tantamount to heresy.

Former US President Jimmy Carter felt a societal backlash last year after the release of his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which condemned Israel’s apartheid-style policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. Consequently, and without foundation, Carter was branded by many in the American press as a one-sided, anti-Semitic propagandist. Similarly, Harvard professor Stephen Walt and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer were lambasted for a paper the two co-authored that discussed the power of the Israel lobby and its adverse effect on American policy. Additionally, Norman Finkelstein, an esteemed professor at Depaul University and author of the bestselling book, The Holocaust Industry, witnessed a McCarthyite-style campaign mounted against him when he came up for tenure. Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s human rights abuses and of pro-Israel apologist and Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz. Predictably, it was Dershowitz who led the anti-tenure campaign against him; ultimately, Finkelstein was not only denied tenure, but he lost his job at Depaul.

The attacks against Carter, Finkelstein, Walt and Mearsheimer serve as a few well-known examples of the consequences writers and intellectuals face when they breach the line and criticize Israel. Furthermore, the condemnation writers and intellectuals of Arab descent face are invariably higher than Jews of conscience, former presidents, and highly regarded academics. As a result, many writers often acquiesce to the demands of the mainstream. Their self-censorship usually appears in the form of “toning down the message,” be it to please editors or critics—essentially to conform to the reality of purported pragmatism. Yet, this “pragmatism” is a euphemism for acceptance of a repressive status quo and is analogous to the “necessary” practical thinking that silenced a multitude of commentators during the Oslo years - the supposed time of peace. Unsurprisingly, untold Palestinian suffering followed as a result of increased settlement expansion, land confiscation, checkpoints and seizures, and the ultimate failure of Camp David 2000.

Shying away from perceived controversial matters may help to protect a mainstream career, but the intent of a political analyst should not be to produce works of fiction. The vast majority of Americans weren’t open to criticism of US policy during the run-up to the war on Iraq, mainly due to the media’s complicity in promoting the war, but criticism was still the appropriate course of action based on the facts, and Americans would have been better off for it today.

A man who combined principle, activism, and human appeal quite masterfully was distinguished educator and commentator, Edward Said. In the realm of academia and Middle East analysis, Said was by no means viewed as the quintessential radical. Nonetheless, his positions were radical when juxtaposed with “conventional wisdom”: he was a proponent of the one-state solution, an unwavering critic of the Israeli government, and an ardent supporter of the ostensibly controversial right of return. Said was still heavily criticized throughout his career and endured incessant attacks by his detractors, yet his accessible personality and articulate message kept him relevant.

Sadly, Said’s relative acceptance has been the exception rather than the rule. In recent years, there has been increased emphasis on putative pragmatic dialogue. However, this accentuation on so-called rational and balanced thinking has proven to be little more than a sinister means to pressure the oppressed to accept the position of the oppressor. The greatest leaders of the last hundred years didn’t shy away from controversy; they remained persistent, and saw their visions brought to fruition; be they Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, or Mahatma Gandhi. Nevertheless, one cannot overlook that even paramount figures have been castigated for “overstepping” their boundaries, namely Martin Luther King who was chided for speaking out against the war in Vietnam, imperialism, and social injustices that plagued the US.

This week, Palestinians across the US commemorated 60 years of displacement. Yet, the lens the Palestinian people are expected to look through under the pragmatist vision is one that sees a dispossessed people as necessary victims for a righteous state to take form. Unfortunately, waves of writers and commentators continue to adopt this line in fear of retribution, in exchange for nicer houses and comfortable livings, or a combination of both. That is their free will. Free speech is not without consequence. Nonetheless, losing piece of mind is the only repercussion a writer should fear.

-Remi Kanazi is the editor of the forthcoming anthology of poetry, Poets For Palestine, which can be pre-ordered at www.PoetsForPalestine.com. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: remroum@gmail.com.

B’Tselem: 231 Palestinians have been assassinated, 385 innocent bystanders murdered since 2000.

By Stuart Littewood

Some readers will remember the 1969 film The Assassination Bureau, a tongue-in-cheek romp based on Jack London’s unfinished novel. The setting is the turn of the century a hundred years ago, a fanciful time for regime change and the purging of corrupt monarchs and cruel tyrants. The Bureau’s hit team is for hire provided that Ivan Dragomiloff, founder and mastermind, deems the targeted killing “socially justifiable” and there’s proof of the candidate’s misdeeds.

Eventually, however, the moral rectitude of the enterprise gives way to financial greed, and the day comes when the Bureau accepts a mission to eradicate an unnamed but prominent public figure. The fee is paid in advance, proof supplied, job accepted… then the name is revealed. The target is Dragomiloff himself. The Assassination Bureau cannot go back on its word and Dragomiloff finds himself pitted against the killing machine he himself created and perfected…

Assassination is the targeted killing of persons usually for political or ideological (and often insane) motives. This is OK, but not OK.

In 1976, US President Ford issued an Executive Order which was enacted after revelations that the CIA had made several attempts on the life of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Henceforward targeted political killings were outlawed: “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” Every US president since then has upheld Ford’s prohibition on assassinations… or somehow got round it.

Carter and Reagan reaffirmed the ban, although it didn’t stop the US bombing Gaddafi’s home in 1986 in the hope of rubbing him out, or the Clinton administration firing cruise missiles at suspected guerrilla camps in Afghanistan in 1998, or Bush instructing the CIA to engage in “lethal covert operations” (based on an intelligence ‘finding’) to destroy Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation.

Nice and Legal, Though

White House and CIA lawyers claim that an intelligence ‘finding’ makes a difference because the ban on political assassinations doesn’t apply in wartime. Hey presto! the right sort of finding puts everything on a war footing. They also say that the prohibition won’t prevent the US taking action against terrorists. And in the wake of 9-11 it won’t stop the United States acting in self-defence. So… all the US has to do is invent or manufacture a ‘finding’, label the folk who stand in their way ‘terrorists’ and claim the murder was an act of self-defence in a war situation, and they’re home and dry.

Reports suggest the Bush administration has got together with Israel to establish the legal framework for a new American targeted-assassination policy. The Israelis, of course, are world experts. Annoying pockets of resistance to their land-grabs, ethnic cleansing, abductions, illegal settlements and other criminal activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are answered with the wholesale imposition of specially concocted warfare laws for the benefit of Israel’s ’self-defence’, or ‘homeland security’, but which trample on everyone else’s rights. This is the sort of chicanery that suits Bush admirably as he presses ahead with his war-without-end on terror.

Israel’s liking for assassination and murder goes way back to pre-State days when such atrocities were practised against Arab and British targets by the Irgun, a thoroughly unpleasant organisation that believed political violence and terrorism were legitimate tools for removing obstacles to the Zionist cause and driving the Arabs off their lands. Assassination became official Israeli policy in 1999 when the military planned ‘initiated attacks’ to stop Yasser Arafat’s militia, the Tanzim, from firing on illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israelis demonstrated rare ingenuity in bumping off bomb maker Yahya Ayyesh. In 1996 this master-technician in the art of suicide bombing had been on Israel’s most-wanted list for 3 years. Shabak (Israel’s secret service) finally tricked a friend into giving Ayyash a booby-trapped cell phone. When Ayyash used it, Shabak detonated it.

Earlier this year they excelled themselves again by terminating Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyeh, ‘the Fox’, with an exploding headrest in his Mitsubishi.

However, their preferred method of assassination is the airstrike, which is lazy, lacking in finesse and often messy. In 2002 Israeli F-16 warplanes bombed the house of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of Hamas, in Gaza City scandalously killing not just him but at least 11 other Palestinians, including seven children, and wounding 120 others.

In 2004 at the second attempt Hamas’s spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, wheelchair-bound since the age of 12, and nine innocent bystanders were killed in a helicopter gunship attack. Yassin had survived an F16 bomb blast the previous year. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon characterised Yassin as “the mastermind of Palestinian terror” and a “mass murderer”, which was comical coming from the war criminal who ran Israel’s death squad, Unit 101, and was found indirectly responsible for the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem 231 Palestinians have been assassinated, 385 innocent bystanders murdered and heaven knows how many injured or mutiliated by Israel since the second intifada in 2000. “The use of state assassinations by Israel against Palestinian suspects is undermining the rule of law and fuelling the cycle of violence in the region” warns Amnesty International.

But this systematic extermination is regarded as “legal and legitimate” by Israel’s attorney-general. “If anyone has committed or is planning to carry out terrorist attacks, he has to be hit. It is effective, precise, and just,” said Israeli minister Ephraim Sneh in 2001, careless of the frequent lack of precision, the collateral casualties and the possibility that his information is wrong… and the justice of it?

It’s catching though. The US State Department similarly describes its own hits on Al-Qaeda as “legal and necessary.” But pre-emptive strikes are not America’s only tool. There’s the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay where hundreds of prisoners of ‘war’, from 13 years old upwards, are held long-term under inhuman conditions, without ‘due process’ and in flagrant breach of Geneva Conventions. Many have now been ‘rendered’ to other countries. It’s a living death and many will actually die in unlawful captivity, victims of a quite different form of assassination.

US Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News: “If you’ve got an organisation that has plotted or is plotting some kind of suicide bomber attack, for example, and they [the Israelis] have hard evidence of who it is and where they’re located, I think there’s some justification in their trying to protect themselves by pre-empting.”

This endorsement gave a welcome boost to Sharon’s accelerated assassination programme. Arafat claimed the Israeli cabinet had approved a plan to kill a large number of leading Palestinians. Sharon denied it but defended assassinations as a “defensive counter-terrorism measure”. He said he had sent the Palestinians a list of 100 terrorists the Palestinian Authority must arrest, otherwise Israel would continue to “exercise our right of self-defence.”

We’re told Israeli advisers are now training US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency methods in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders. Urban warfare specialists are sharing the skills they have honed against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in order to help the US set up its own hunter-killer teams.

Israeli Death Squads in the UK?

Even more worrying are reports that Israeli death squads have been authorised to enter “friendly” countries and kill those suspected of being a threat to the Jewish state wherever they are hiding. Targeted killings were pretty much restricted to Occupied Palestine but the appointment of a new Mossad director, Meir Dagan, in 2002 changed all that.

Sharon was said to have given his old friend Dagan a mandate to revive the traditional methods of Mossad, including assassinations abroad, even at the risk to Israel’s bilateral relations. So our Home Secretary, the fragrant Jacqui Smith, had better tell us truthfully whether Mossad hoodlums are at this moment prowling the streets of London, Bradford, Glasgow and Manchester snuffing out plotters against their regime.

-Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

Bush began by praising Sharon as ‘one of Israel’s greatest leaders.’

By Ira Glunts

In a talk eerily reminiscent of his “Axis of Evil” speech, President George W. Bush told the Israeli Knesset on May 15 of his commitment to vanquish any group that opposes his vision of American hegemony in the Middle East. He specifically included Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda as the enemies in his “war against terror and extremism.” Oddly he did not include the Taliban, whom the US military is currently fighting in Afghanistan, on his list of Muslim enemies. Perhaps this is because his Israeli hosts do not perceive the Taliban as an immediate threat to their security.

It is difficult to know whether Bush’s exaggerated bellicosity derives from his desire to please the Israelis, play to his political base in the United States, or is simply another occasion for him to engage in the type of ominous saber-rattling that has been characteristic of his administration. President Bush emphasized his dedication and resolve to press on with his aggressive foreign policy by proclaiming that the war on terror is “an ancient battle between good and evil.” Considering the current unstable political situation in both Gaza and Lebanon, plus the diplomatic crisis in US/Iranian relations, one has to wonder if the President’s words signify that the US has immediate plans for an increased military engagement in the region.

Bush began his remarks by praising Ariel Sharon as “one of Israel’s greatest leaders” and reiterating his provocative statement that the former Israeli Prime Minister was “a man of peace.” Sharon, who is considered the major architect of the Israeli settlements, is reviled among Palestinians. Apparently oblivious to how his Sharon statement compromised his credibility, Bush compounded his flight of fancy by telling his listeners that “Israel has always worked tirelessly for peace.” I imagine that many of the members of the Knesset in their self-serving obtuseness may actually believe that this is true, but to the rest of the world this is simply a statement that Israel will not, at least under Bush’s watch, be required to make any concessions to its enemies.

The present practice among American politicians is to shamelessly pander to Israeli and Jewish-American interests as they are understood and transmitted by lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Bush, rising to the celebratory occasion, did not disappoint his listeners. First Bush substituted the name “Eretz Yisrael” for Israel. This biblical term is generally associated with the settlers who believe that Israel should retain all of the West Bank. He then reiterated the false argument, albeit popular among Israelis, that to be against a Jewish state is anti-Semitic. This is obviously not true, since all Jews do not support the State of Israel, especially as it is represented by its current policies of occupation and human rights violations. Bush further endeared himself to his audience by comparing the futility of negotiating with the groups he labeled “terrorists” with trying to negotiate with the Nazis in 1939. The Israelis often recall the British appeasement of the Nazis when attempting to counteract criticism of their own actions. Ariel Sharon famously employed the appeasement argument to criticize the US for opposing his 2002 reinvasion of the West Bank. In that case, President Bush backed down from his blunt admonitions to the Israelis to withdraw their invading troops from Palestinian-controlled areas.

The Palestinians were notably excluded from Mr. Bush’s speech except for one brief mention of a future state. In the context of this speech, such a state could be easily interpreted as the truncated mini-state that many in the Israeli establishment would be willing to consider. There was no mention of the so-called Annapolis Peace Process that the Americans are currently sponsoring, and which Bush occasionally trumpets as his Israeli/Palestinian plan for peace. There was no mention of the ongoing creation and expansion of settlements, which the Bush administration sometimes timidly proclaims are not helpful in moving the peace process forward. These omissions surprised and delighted many of the Israelis who were present. The fact that Bush was so effusive in his praise of the Israelis and basically neglected the Palestinians was a clear signal that the President is not committed to the peace negotiations in which his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is now involved.
The best Bush could come up with as a rosy future for the Middle East in 60 years was decidedly modest. He described the relationship among nations there by stating “it doesn’t mean Israel and its neighbors will be the best of friends.” The American President’s hope for the region in the future is a Pax Isra-Americana over which the Arabs will have no choice.

What was most startling about the speech was Bush’s aggressive talk about Israel’s enemies and how the US was ready to act against the many groups that both countries consider “terrorists,” groups that in the US President’s mind, are beyond redemption. One such group is the Iranian government. The US administration’s war drums are beating louder and louder for military confrontation against Iran. There have been reports that the neocons in the government feel that now is the time for at least a “surgical” attack against that country’s nuclear sites. In Lebanon there is an increasingly unstable political and security situation where Hezbollah forces are flexing their military muscle. In 2006 Israel, with American backing, tried to vanquish Hezbollah, but failed. Will Bush now use the American military in Lebanon or encourage the Israelis to do so? In Gaza, Hamas is gaining support due to the failure of its opponents to deliver on their promise to improve conditions and achieve statehood. Could this bellicose tone from Bush signal that the Israelis have a green light for a massive reinvasion of the Gaza Strip, as proposed by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak?

In a speech filled with hyperbole and emotional appeals, Bush derided those who cannot “fathom the darkness in these men [the terrorists]” and those that harbor the “foolish delusion” that we can negotiate a peaceful settlement. This latter statement has been interpreted to be an implied criticism of ex-President Jimmy Carter who met with Hamas leaders recently. It has also been seen as directed against Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who, despite the pointed objection of administration officials and his Democratic primary opponent Senator Hillary Clinton, has continually expressed a willingness to negotiate with Syrian and Iranian leaders. Obama issued a statement which said that he has never advocated negotiating with terrorists. The Illinois Senator does not perceive the governments of Iran or Syria to be terrorists, as Bush does. Additionally, by criticizing those who want to talk to the terrorist enemy, Bush is again telling the Israelis that the US will not pressure them into engaging in meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians, since Hamas is part of the evil enemy. Unfortunately, like Bush Obama also considers Hamas a terrorist organization who is not an appropriate negotiating partner, despite its standing as a legally and democratically-elected government.

As we learned from the “Axis of Evil” speech, tough talk from George Bush can foreshadow disastrous consequences for both his enemies and the people of the United States who will be paying for his military adventures in countless ways for many years. Hopefully, Bush’s term will expire before he can act militarily against those whose names he called out during his speech. However, even if Bush does not order US forces into another ill-conceived military engagement, the next President will inherit not only the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a huge war lobby with a very effective propaganda machine, that will make it difficult for any US leader to avoid staying the same horrific course.

Seth Freedman, The Guardian

In sharp contrast to last week’s Independence Day celebrations on the streets of West Jerusalem, the east side of the city took on an air of mourning Thursday, as the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) was marked. All over Gaza and the West Bank, demonstrations took place to commemorate the fate that befell the Palestinian people in 1948, and — despite their residing inside Israel proper — East Jerusalem residents were just as eager to make their voices of protest heard.

I headed to Damascus Gate on Thursday morning, to see for myself how high emotions were running amongst the demonstrators — yet before I’d even arrived I was already knee-deep in discussion about the conflict. Upon learning my reasons for crossing the divide into East Jerusalem, my Arab cab driver poured out a stream of invective against the Israeli authorities, bemoaning the situation he and his people had been forced to endure for 60 years.

Beginning with a scathing attack on George Bush — “He only cares about the Israelis; he’s not done a single thing for the Arabs in all his time as president” — he grew steadily angrier and more bitter as we circumvented the Old City walls en route to the protest. “We have no rights in our own land,” he muttered, “and even then the Israelis aren’t satisfied. It’s not enough for them to control us and humiliate us in our homes; now they want to drive us out of Jerusalem completely.”

“It’s a systematic program to get rid of us”, he assured me, sucking furiously on his cigarette. “They make our lives hell — they give us no (municipal services); they don’t let us build in our own neighborhoods, so people are forced to move out as the population grows; and they make us feel as though we don’t belong.” As I got out of the cab, next to a phalanx of border policemen fanning out to encircle the protesters, he beckoned me back to deliver his parting thoughts: “If you think I sound angry now, wait till the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. As long as Israel carries on behaving like this, our rage is only going to get worse.”

His words rang in my ears as I watched nine- and ten-year-old children stand defiantly alongside their parents at the protest. Several of them clutched cheap plastic poles with the UN flag flying atop them in the breeze; the words “Right of Return — 194” emblazoned across them in bold black letters. The children were under no illusion about what measures had to be taken to redress the injustices suffered by their forebears, and demanding the right of return suggested the time for talk of two states had been and gone.

A local shopkeeper told me just as much, asking me not to attach his name to his words, “since this country isn’t quite as democratic as they’d like you to think”. The right of return for Palestinian refugees was, he said, “something we can never give up on, not whilst every Jew on earth is allowed to move here without hindrance. Maybe if they said ‘no more Jewish immigrants — we’re full up’, then I’d consider it, but that’s not going to happen. They let people from Europe and Africa move here, yet refuse to discuss the issue of refugees (who came from here originally).”

“Any agreement with the Palestinian Authority must include the right of return, or at least significant compensation for those expelled. I know that Jews were kicked out of Arab lands too, and they should also be compensated, but on a much smaller scale. After all, they might have lost property, but we lost an entire country.”

At this point, his eyes glazed over and his tone took a marked shift away from the here and now and into the realms of fantasy born out of years of frustration with the status quo. “The truth is, my friend, that Nasser was right. He said that ‘What’s taken by force can only be returned by force’. We’re never going to get what we deserve from the Israelis. The only way we’ll have our dignity restored is when the Arab world stands up and fights for us and our rights.”

“And it will happen”, he declared forcefully, his eyes blazing as he spoke. “It might not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen in the next 50 years. I am one of the most moderate men around here, but — believe me — if an Arab army rises up to fight the Israelis, I’d join them myself. Not the groups carrying out suicide bombings, mind you, but a real army that had the power to take on the Israelis.”

“My son gets so furious when he is humiliated at checkpoints”, he went on. “He asks me ‘why should we deal with these kind of people at all? Better to live under the occupation, sign no agreements whatsoever, and wait for the Arab world to come to our aid’”.

His sentiments were distressingly similar to those of the embattled Jews in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, who bore their oppression at the hands of the Cossacks and others by falling back on waiting for messianic redemption. By retreating into an otherworldly shell, they were able to block out the injustice and iniquities that they were dealt, and focus on a time when they would be delivered salvation by a higher power.

For the shopkeeper, the “Arab world” is the messiah; the white knight who will ride in on his trusty steed to right all the wrongs and restore to the Palestinians their dignity and honor. Despite the last 60 years of history suggesting otherwise — that the Arab world is neither powerful nor interested enough to take serious action on the Palestinians’ behalf — he clings to this belief like a shipwreck survivor to a narrow plank of wood.

As each year passes, and the Palestinians feel ever more scorned by Israel and her allies, it’s no wonder that they seek comfort in droves in the arms of the extremists. Dogmatism and fundamentalism can promise them the moon, whilst the facts on the ground remain the same, and the longer the status quo persists, the stronger groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad grow. For them not to achieve utter domination amongst their people before the 70th anniversary of Israel’s creation, much must be done to convince the Palestinians that there is an alternative — but no one on the Palestinian side is holding their breath.

Palestinian refugee children (Photo: Matthew Cassel)

By Ramzy Baroud

‘Don’t ask for what you never had,’ is the underlying message made by supporters of Israel when they claim Palestine was never a state to begin with.

The contention is, of course, easily refutable. Following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th Century, colonial powers plotted to divide the spoils. When Britain and France signed the secretive Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916, which divided the spheres of influence in west Asia, there were hardly any ‘nation-states’ in the region which would fit contemporary definitions of the term.

All borders were colonial concoctions that served the interests of the powerful countries seeking strategic control, political influence and raw material. Most of Africa and much of Asia were victims of the colonial scrambles, which disfigured their geo-political and subsequently socio-economic compositions.

But Palestinians, like many other people, did see themselves as a unique group linked historically to a specific geographic entity. All That Remains by Professor Walid Khalidi is one leading volume which documents a thriving pre-Israel history of Palestine and the Palestinian people. Such history is often overlooked, if not entirely dismissed. Some choose to believe that no other civilization ever existed in Palestine, neither prior to nor between the assumed destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE until the founding of Israel in 1948. But what about irrefutable facts? For example, the Israeli Jerusalem Post was called the Palestine Post when it was founded in 1932. Why Palestine and not Israel? Whose existence, as a definable political entity, preceded the other? The answer is obvious.

It isn’t the denial or acceptance of Israel’s existence that concerns me. Israel does exist, even if it refuses to define its borders, or acknowledge the historic injustices committed against the Palestinian people. The systematic and brutal ethnic cleaning of the majority of Palestinian Christians and Muslims from 1947 to 1948 is what produced a Jewish majority in Palestine and subsequently the ‘Jewish state’ of Israel.

Also worth remembering are the equally systematic attempts at dehumanising Palestinians and denying them any rights. When Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time, compared Palestinians in a Jerusalem Post interview (August 2000) to “crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more,” he was hardly diverting from a consistent Zionist tradition that equated Palestinians with animals and vermin. Another Prime Minister, Menahim Begin referred to Palestinians in a Knesset speech as “beasts walking on two legs.” They have also been described as “grasshoppers”, “cockroaches” and more by famed Israeli statesmen.

Disturbingly, such references might be seen as an improvement from former Prime Minister Golda Meir’s claim that “there were no such thing as Palestinians…they did not exist.” (June 15, 1969)

To justify its own existence, Israel has long subjugated its citizens to a kind of collective amnesia. Do Israelis realise they live on the rubble of hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns, each destroyed during a most tragic history of blood, pain and tears, resulting in an ethnic cleansing of nearly 800,000 Palestinians?

As Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, nothing is allowed to blemish the supposed heroism of its founding fathers or those who fought in its name. Palestine, the Palestinians, and an immeasurably long relationship between a people and their land hardly merit a pause as Israeli officials and their Western counterparts carry on with their festivities.

While some conveniently forgot many historic chapters pertinent to the suffering of Palestinians, Israeli leaders — especially those who took part in the colonization of Palestine — were fully aware of what they did. David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, warned in 1948, “We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return.” By ensuring that Palestinians were cut off from their land, Ben Gurion has hoped that time will take care of the rest. “The old will die and the young will forget,” he said.

Moshe Dayan, a former Israeli Defence Minister also had no illusions regarding the real history beneath Israel’s momentous achievements. His speech at the Technion in Haifa (April 4, 1969) was quoted in the Israeli daily Haaretz thus: “We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village.”

Israel has, since its foundation, laboured to undermine any sense of Palestinian identity. Without most of their historic land, the relationship between Palestinians and Palestine could only exist in memory. Eventually though, memory managed to morph into a collective identity that has proved more durable than the physical existence on the land. “It is a testimony to the tenacity of Palestinians that they have kept alive a sense of nationhood in the face of so much adversity. Yet the obstacles to sustaining their cohesiveness as a people are today greater than ever,” reported the Economist (May 8, 2008).

Living in so many disconnected areas, removed from their land, detached from one another, fought with at every corner, Palestinians have not just been oppressed physically by Israel, but physiologically as well. There are attempts from all angles to force them to simply concede, forget, and move on. It is the Palestinian people’s rejection of such notions that makes Israel’s victory and ‘independence’ superficial and unconvincing.

Sixty years after their Catastrophe (Nakba), Palestinians still remember their past and present injustices. Of course more than mere remembrance is necessary; Palestinians need to find a common ground for unity — Christians and Muslims, poor and rich, secularist and the religious — in order to stop Israel from eagerly exploiting their own disunity, factionalism and political tribalism.

But, despite Israel’s hopes and best efforts, Palestinians have not yet forgotten who they are. And no amount of denial can change this.

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Bertrand Russell wrote: The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was ‘given’ by a foreign power to another people.

By Ron Forthofer

After WWII, political pressure increased for a Jewish state instead of a homeland in Palestine. This pressure was due in part to the terrible guilt felt by people in the U.S. and other nations over the horrific suffering of several groups during the Nazi era, especially that of the Jews during the Holocaust. The pictures detailing the wretched conditions of Jews barely surviving the concentration and extermination camps and of the piles of bones from some of the millions killed were incredibly powerful.

In addition, a weakened Britain was ready to end its control of the Palestine Mandate partly due to the burden of maintaining 100,000 troops there and partly due to the guerilla campaign waged by Jewish terrorists. One additional factor in the British decision to end the mandate by May 1948 was the intense pressure put on Britain after it prevented Holocaust survivors from entering Palestine.

This decision by the British prompted the United Nations to form the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on May 15, 1947. The committee issued a majority report on August 31, 1947 recommending the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states and an U.N. administered area around and including Jerusalem. Three members (India, Iran and Yugoslavia) of the eleven nations on the committee voted instead in favor of a single federal state with separate Arab and Jewish constituent states. Australia abstained. The U.N. General Assembly discussed the partition resolution in November.

Before that session, on September 22nd, Loy Henderson, director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, warned Secretary of State George C. Marshall of the dangers of partition. Here is an excerpt of his comments:

“The UNSCOP [U.N. Special Committee on Palestine] Majority Plan is not only unworkable; if adopted, it would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future.

“The proposals contained in the UNSCOP plan are not only not based on any principles of an international character, the maintenance of which would be in the interests of the United States, but they are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [U.N.] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based.

“These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race against persons outside of Palestine.”

The U.S. State Department was firmly against the partition. However President Truman overrode the Department. In 1945, Truman spoke to four U.S. ambassadors to Arab countries and bluntly said: “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”

On November 29th, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 calling for the partition passed. Following the adoption of the resolution, Arab countries proposed to query the International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants. This attempt was narrowly defeated.

Jews generally welcomed the partition plan while Palestinians and Arabs strongly opposed it. Palestinians supported a one democratic state solution. They also were outraged that the U.N. General Assembly was taking their land against their will and giving it to another people. For perspective, in 1947 Jews owned about 6% of the land in Palestine and accounted for about 1/3 of the population. The partition gave Jews control of about 55% of Palestine, including most of the coastal area.

Some of the numerous people who have commented on the injustice of this situation are quoted next. In 1956 David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, told Nahum Goldman, the president of the World Jewish Congress: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister-designate in 1947, made a similar point saying the Zionist plan neglected “one not unimportant fact…Palestine was not a wilderness or an empty, uninhabited place. It was already somebody else’s home.”

In 1956, Moshe Dayan, a military hero to Israelis, said: “What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.”

Shortly before his death in 1970, Bertrand Russell, one of the leading philosophers of Western thought during the 20th century, summarized the issue very well, saying:

“The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was ‘given’ by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.”

After the partition passed, fighting began almost immediately and quickly escalated. On March 19th, 1948 the situation had become so critical that the U.S. renounced partition as unworkable and called for a U.N. trusteeship. It was too late.

Commenting on the fighting, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote: “In truth, however, the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and POWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of 1948.” As a result of these atrocities and other military actions, about 250,000 Palestinians had already fled their homes before Israel declared its independence on May 14th. Fighting intensified when, on May 15th, neighboring Arab countries sent troops to aid the beleaguered Palestinians. Contrary to Israeli propaganda, Israeli forces substantially outnumbered Arab forces in battles and were also better armed. By the end of the fighting in 1949, Israel controlled 78% of Palestine and had driven approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. These Palestinians lost their lands, homes and most of their possessions. Israel also destroyed well over 400 Palestinian villages. There is debate about whether or not the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was planned or simply happened as a result of the fighting. It is clear that the removal of large numbers of Palestinians was necessary if Israel were to be a majority Jewish state.

On December 11, 1948 the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 that, among other items, called for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes or for compensation to those choosing not to return. Unfortunately, the world has not yet dealt with the terrible effects of the Nakba.

The past and current Israeli dispossessions of Palestinians represent grave violations of human rights. However, it is arguable that the U.N. partition resolution was an even greater crime. In a misguided effort to atone for the horrific human tragedy of the Holocaust, the U.S. led the effort that forced Palestinians to pay the price for atonement. The partition plan stole Palestinian land and gave it to another people without much if any consideration for Palestinian rights. Truman’s support for this partition trumped U.S. interests, morality and international law, not to mention the rights of Palestinians. Shamefully, the U.S. continues to support the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.

-Ron Forthofer is a retired professor and former Green Party candidate for Congress in 2000 and for Governor of Colorado in 2002. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Palestinians will remain steadfast in their determination to remain on what is left of their traditional land.

By Kim Bullimore

Abu Zureyk, Al Abbasiyya, Abu Shusha, Ayan az Zaytun, Awlam, Azz Zema, AHaiqia, Balad ash Sheikh, Bayt Daras, Beer Sheba, Bi’ne, Burayr, al Dawayima, Dayr el Asad, Deir Yassin, Eilbourn, Haifa, Hawwassa, Husayniyya, Ilut, Ijzim, Isdud, Jish, al Kabri, al Khisas, Khibbyza, Lydda, Majd al Kurum, Mansura al Khayt, Nasir ad Din Khribet, Qazaza, Qisarya, Sa’sa, Safsaf, Saliha, Sha’b, Al Samiyya, al Tantoura, al Tira, Tel, Geze, Umm al, Shauf, al Wa’ra al-Sawda, Wadi ‘Ara.

Like the names of the dead, the names of these villages bring heartbreak to all Palestinians. Sixty years ago, last month, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began.

Sixty years ago, up to six weeks before the British mandate of Palestine was terminated and the state of Israeli was even declared, Zionist terror gangs began their forcible expulsion of more than 122 Palestinian villages and began carrying out military assaults on more than 270 other villages [1].

Sixty years ago on April 9, 1948, 254 unarmed Palestinian men, women and children were murdered in the village of Dier Yassin by Zionist terror gangs - the Irgun (aka as Etzel) lead by Menachin Begin (who was to become a later Prime Minister of Israel) and the Stern Gang (aka as the Lehi). More than 40 other Palestinian villages and towns were to suffer the same fate as Dier Yassin.

The massacre that took place at Dier Yassin was just one of many carried out, as part of a co-ordinated effort between the Zionist terror gangs, the Irgun and the Stern Gang and the Haganah (which was the main Jewish underground organisation which later became the present day Israeli Defence Force) to ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinians from historic Palestine prior to the UN partition in May 1948. “Plan Dalet” as the operation was known, was carried out under the authority and leadership of David Ben Gurion, the future first Prime Minister of Israel. Its aim was to strike fear and terror into the indigenous Palestinian population in order to ethnically cleanse them from the new state of Israel and to gain even more land for the Zionist state than had been designated under the UN partition plan.

According to the operational orders listed under Plan Dalet, Zionist forces were to carry out the “destruction of [Palestinian] villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those populations centres which are difficult to control continuously”. The operational orders went on to state that the Zionist terror forces should mount “search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed forces must be destroyed and the population expelled outside the borders of the state. The villages which are emptied in the manner described above must be included in the fixed defensive system and must be fortified as necessary” [2]

The plan stated “in the absence of resistance, garrison troops will enter the village and take up positions in it or in locations which enable complete tactical control. The officer in command of the unit will confiscate all weapons, wireless devices, and motor vehicles in the village. In addition, he will detain all politically suspect individuals. After consultation with the [Jewish] political authorities, bodies will be appointed consisting of people from the village to administer the internal affairs of the village. In every region, a Jewish] person will be appointed to be responsible for arranging the political and administrative affairs of all [Palestinian Arab] villages and population centers which are occupied within that region”.

The absence of resistance, however, did not save Dier Yassin, just as it did not save dozens of other Palestinian villages and towns. According to Israeli Zionist historian, Benny Morris, the Zionist terror forces carried out at least 24 massacres against Palestinians between April and May 1948 before the declaration of the state of Israel. Palestinians, however, put the number of massacres as being as high as 40.

Morris notes in a 2004 interview with Ha’aretz reporter, Ari Shavit, that “In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves”. Morris goes onto note, that the action took place as a direct result of orders given by David Ben Gurion. According to Morris, “various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres” [3]

Upon hearing of the massacre, which took place at Dier Yassin and other villages, thousands of Palestinians in more than 85 other villages and towns fled their homes in fear of their lives [4]. The Zionist terror forces then wiped Dier Yassin off the map, as it did with hundreds of other Palestinian villages and built new Zionists towns and cities in their place. On the ground where Dier Yassin, once stood, now stands the Israel town of Givat Shul and the settlement of Har Nof.

The Zionist reign of terror against the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948, however, did not end with Dier Yassin. On April 18, Zionist gangs stormed the Palestinian city of Tiberias in the Galilee, ethnically expelling more than 5,500 Palestinians from their homes. Four days later, 70,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes in the port city of Haifa [5]. In the months prior to the assault, the Zionist terror gangs had carried out a series of bombings against Haifa’s Palestinian residents [6]. On December 30, the previous year, a Zionist bomb planted in a Palestinian residential neighbourhood killed 6 and injured 41 others. The Zionist bombing sparked riots amongst Palestinian workers at a nearby oil refinery and resulted in the killing of 41 Jewish workers. The Haganah and the Irgun (Etzel) planted a second bomb the following evening resulting what became known as the New Years Massacre at Balad al Shayk, killing more than 60 people. Two months later in February 1948, the Irgun (Etzel) rolled barrels packed with gasoline and explosives down Haifa’s hills into the Palestinian al’ Abasayah Arab neighbourhood. The barrels exploded in an inferno of flames, destroying most of the residential area, causing its residents to flee in terror. One month later on March 22, ten weeks before the state of Israel was declared, the Zionist terror gangs disguised as British officers planted a car bomb, killing 36 Palestinians, the majority of whom were women and children. The bomb blast was so intense it destroyed several public buildings.

Not satisfied with only ethnically cleansing indigenous Palestinians from the land designated as part of a new Jewish state under the UN Partition plan, the Zionist forces moved to begin ethnically cleansing Palestinians from towns and cities which UN had deemed part of a Palestinian state under partition. On April 25, the Irgun (Etzel) began a three week bombing campaign of the “Bride of Palestine”, the port city of Jaffa, which was supposed to be part of a UN sanctioned Palestinian state. Jaffa, which was often referred to as the “centre of heaven” by its residents because of its beauty and location half way between Haifa and Gaza, was the most populous centre in British Mandate Palestine: home to 90,000 Palestinians. With the advent of the Zionist terror campaign, however, the city was to fall from heaven. The assault was so fierce that in the Manshiyyeh quarter, every single building except one was obliterated (the one building left partly standing has since been turned into a museum to glorify the military prowess of the Irgun/Etzel). As the bombing continued, more than 55,000 people fled in terror.

Over the next weeks, more and more villages and towns were to “fall from heaven”. In addition to Dier Yassin, Tiberas, Haifa and Jaffa, more than 400 other Palestinian villages and townships were ethnically cleansed during Plan Dalet and the subsequent war which took place. More than 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes, never allowed to return.

Today, as Israel celebrates “60 years of independence”, the Al Nakba of the Palestinian people continues. On May 5, the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz published a report which noted that since the creation of the Israeli state 60 years ago, there have been 1,634 Israeli civilians killed and 14,000 injured by “acts of terror” [7]. What the article did not mention, however, was that in the much shorter period of 7.5 years (from September 2000 to March 2008 since the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada) that more than 3615 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli state “acts of terror” and 25,650 Palestinian civilians had been wounded [8]

The Haaretz article, also failed to mention that since its creation 60 years ago, the Israeli state has continued the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people via a war of attrition and in the name of “security”. The illegal Israeli occupation which is now in its 40th year, along with all its manifestations – the checkpoints, the wall, the illegal settlements, the illegal confiscation of land, the restriction of freedom of movement, arbitary arrest and administrative detention, target assassinations, aerial bombing, the siege of Gaza – while all aimed at controlling the Palestinian population is also aimed at systematically driving the Palestinian people off their land.

Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada, Israel has destroyed more than 13% of Gaza’s agricultural land alone. During the same period the Israeli state, via its occupation forces, has demolished completely more than 2932 Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip alone, while a further 2848 were partially demolished [9]. These acts of terror against a Palestinian civilian population were carried out as illegal and punitive collective punishment or in order to make way for the illegal expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and the infrastructure needed to serve these colonies. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights, house demolitions have resulted in more than 13,000 Palestinians being left homeless [10]. In addition, through out the Occupied West Bank, dozens of dozens of Palestinian villages remained “unrecognised” and deemed illegal by the Israeli occupier, although they have existed for decades and even hundreds of years prior to the establishment of the Israeli state. The Israeli state’s refusal to recognise these villages is designed to legitimise the ongoing, systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the traditional homes and lands by its occupation forces and its “civil administration” in the OPT.

Israel continues its policy of ethnic cleansing by also regularly restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians. Israel’s policy while carried out in the name of “security” is designed to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population through “quite transfer” by making life so difficult for Palestinians that they will “voluntarily” leave. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the OPT, “the restrictions of movement that Israel has imposed on the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories over the past five years are unprecedented in the history of the Israeli occupation in their scope, durations and in the severity of damage that they have caused to the three and half million Palestinians who reside there” [11].

Today, Israel will ‘celebrate’ its creation and as we hear the fire works the illegal settlements around us, the Palestinian people will remember their dead, their imprisoned and their loved ones in refugee camps through out the Middle East and their family and friends who make up the 7 million strong Palestinian Diaspora around the world. Today, as Israel baths itself in vulgar nationalism and the glorification of its military prowess, the Palestinian people will recall the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of their home land. And today, as the Israel celebrates the ethnic cleansing of another people in order to create “a homeland for the Jews”, the Palestinian people will remain in a state of sumoud (steadfastness) in their determination to remain on what is left of their traditional land and to be a free people once again.

-Kim Bullimore is currently living the Occupied West Bank, where she is a human rights volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (www.iwps.info). She has a blog www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com and is a regular writer on Palestine-Israel issues. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Notes:

[1] Palestine 1948: Map of towns and villages depopulated by Zionist Invasion
Prepared by Salman Abu-Sitta, 1998. Produced by Palestine Land Society.

[2] Sefer Toldot Hahaganah [History of the Haganah], vol. 3, ed, by Yehuda Slutsky (TelAviv: Zionist Library, 1972), Appendix 48, pp 1955-60.

[3] Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris by Ari Shavit, 16 January 2004

[4] Palestine 1948: Map of towns and villages depopulated by Zionist Invasion
Prepared by Salman Abu-Sitta, 1998. Produced by Palestine Land Society.

[5] Neff, D., (1994) Arab Jaffa Seized Before Israel’s Creation in 1948 in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

[6] Haifa Refinery Riots, Middle East Web

[7] Haaretz, 5 May, 2008, 16 Israeli civilians killed this year in terror acts, 1,634 since May, ‘48

[8] and [9] Palestinian Centre for Human Rights www.pchrgaza.org/PCHR/statistics.html

[10] and [11] B’Tselem: Israeli information centre for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories www.btselem.org/English/

Johann Hari, The Independent

In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence — and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors.

My own case isn’t especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me “a Jew-lover”, “a Zionist-homo pig” and more.

Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn’t controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes.

The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high- profile “pro-Israel” writers and media monitoring groups — including Honest Reporting and Camera — said I am an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked.

Any attempt to describe accurately the situation for Palestinians is met like this. If you recount the pumping of sewage onto Palestinian land, “Honest Reporting” claims you are reviving the anti-Semitic myth of Jews “poisoning the wells.” If you interview a woman whose baby died in 2002 because she was detained — in labor — by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint within the West Bank, “Honest Reporting” will say you didn’t explain “the real cause”: the election of Hamas in, um, 2006. And on, and on.

The former editor of Israel’s leading newspaper, Ha’aretz, David Landau, calls the behavior of these groups “nascent McCarthyism”. Those responsible hold extreme positions of their own that place them way to the right of most Israelis. Alan Dershowitz and Melanie Phillips are two of the most prominent figures sent in to attack anyone who disagrees with the Israeli right. Dershowitz is a lawyer, Harvard professor and author of The Case For Israel. He sees ethnic cleansing as a trifling matter, writing: “Political solutions often require the movement of people, and such movement is not always voluntary … It is a fifth-rate issue analogous in many respects to some massive urban renewal.” If a prominent American figure takes a position on Israel to the left of this, Dershowitz often takes to the airwaves to call them anti-Semites and bigots.

The journalist Melanie Phillips performs a similar role in Britain. Last year a group called Independent Jewish Voices was established with this mission statement: “Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peace and security.” Jews including Mike Leigh, Stephen Fry and Rabbi David Goldberg joined. Phillips swiftly dubbed them “Jews For Genocide”, and said they “encourage” the “killers” of Jews. Where does this come from? She says the Palestinians are an “artificial” people who can be collectively punished because they are “a terrorist population.” She believes that while “individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project”. Honest Reporting quotes Phillips as a model of reliable reporting.

These individuals spray accusations of anti-Semitism so liberally that by their standards, a majority of Jewish Israelis have anti-Semitic tendencies. Dershowitz said Jimmy Carter’s decision to speak to the elected Hamas government “border[ed] on anti-Semitism.” A Ha’aretz poll last month found that 64 percent of Israelis want their government to do just that.

As US president, Jimmy Carter showed his commitment to Israel by giving it more aid than anywhere else and brokering the only peace deal with an Arab regime the country has ever enjoyed. He also wants to see a safe and secure Palestine alongside it — so, last year, he wrote a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. It is a bland and factual canter through the major human rights reports.

There is nothing there you can’t read in the mainstream Israeli press every day. Carter’s comparison of life on the West Bank (not within Israel) to Apartheid South Africa is not new. The West Bank is ruled in the interests of a small Jewish minority; it is bisected by roads for the Jewish settlers from which Palestinians are banned. The Israeli human rights group B’tselem says this “bears striking similarities to the racist Apartheid regime”.

Yet for repeating these facts in the US, Carter has widely called “a racist”. Several universities have even refused to let the ex-president speak to their students.

These campus battles often succeed. Norman Finkelstein is a political scientist in the US whose parents were both Jewish survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. They lost every blood relative. He made his reputation exposing a hoax called From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters which claimed that Palestine was virtually empty when Zionist settlers arrived, and the people claiming to be Palestinians were mostly impostors who had come from local areas to cash in. Finkelstein showed it to be scarred by falsified figures and gross misreading of sources. From that moment on, he was smeared as an anti-Semite by those who had lauded the book. But it was when Finkelstein revealed two years ago that Alan Dershowitz had, without acknowledgement, drawn wholesale from Peters’ hoax for his book The Case For Israel, that the worst began.

Dershowitz campaigned to make sure Finkelstein was denied tenure at his university. He even claimed that Finkelstein’s mother — who made it through Maidenek and two slave-labor camps — had collaborated with the Nazis. The campaign worked. Finkelstein was let go by De Paul University, simply for speaking the truth.

Are the likes of Dershowitz and Phillips and Honest Reporting becoming more shrill because they can sense they are losing the argument? Liberal Jews — the majority — are now setting up rivals to the hard-right organizations they work with, because they believe this campaign of demonization is damaging us all. It damages the Palestinians, because it prevents honest discussion of their plight. It damages the Israelis, because it pushes them further down an aggressive and futile path. And it damages diaspora Jews, because it makes real anti-Semitism harder to deal with.

We need to look the witch hunters in the eye and say, as Joseph Welch said to Joe McCarthy himself: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

McCain criticises Carter’s meeting with Hamas, calling it ‘a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader.’ (Photo: Reuters)

By Stuart Littlewood

I don’t know about you, but Hillary Rodham Clinton scares the pants off me.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran,” she ranted when asked what she’d do if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel. Not only that, she’ll “totally obliterate them”… 70 million people.

Jeepers… what kind of lunatic would drag us all into World War 3 to defend a lawless, racist regime like Israel?
I see the Council on Foreign Relations helps keep tabs on the stooge-for-Israel inclinations of each presidential candidate, so how’s Hillary doing? “Clinton co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006,” says the CFR. “She also sponsored a Senate resolution in 2007 calling for the immediate and unconditional release of soldiers of Israel held captive by Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Was she concerned about the 9,000 Palestinians, including women and children, abducted from their homes and held in Israeli jails? Apparently not.

Since taking office in 2000, Clinton has regularly supported military and financial aid packages to Israel. In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) she spouted the now-compulsory mantra: Hamas should not be recognised “until it renounces violence and terror and recognises Israel’s right to exist.”

She supports Israel’s ‘security wall’ and its declared purpose of preventing terrorist attacks. Does she support the wall’s undeclared purpose - which has nothing to do with security - and the way it bites deep into Palestinian territory?

Barack Obama has said the United States must isolate Hamas. He also co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 and called on the Palestinian leadership to “recognise Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region”. OK, why don’t America and Israel get serious about implementing the dozens of UN resolutions on the subject? He doesn’t say.

He called Carter’s meeting with Hamas leaders “a bad idea”, so what’s his pledge to talk with US adversaries without preconditions worth? If elected, Obama will insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel. Does this mean paying them even more billions of US tax dollars so that they can fire even more high-tech munitions at Gaza, vaporize more women and kids and knock out more infrastructure that Britain and the EU paid for?

John Sidney McCain the Third says he’s “proudly pro-Israel” and argues that there can be no peace process “until the Palestinians recognise Israel, forswear forever the use of violence, recognise their previous agreements…” Has he asked Israel to do the same? No.

He criticises Carter’s meeting with Hamas, calling it “a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader”. And he wants the United States to continue providing Israel with whatever military equipment and technology it needs. If elected McCain would “work to further isolate the enemies of Israel”. Surely his time would be better spent worrying about why half the world hates the US.

McCain even thinks Israel’s military action in Lebanon in 2006 was justified. He’s willing to use military force against Iran if it acquires a nuclear weapon and poses a “real threat” to Israel. Well, we know from past experience what “real threats” boil down to. And guess what: he too co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006.

What is this Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act they all so desperately wanted? It doesn’t make nice reading. The idea is to heap misery on any Palestinian government in which Hamas has a hand, ignoring the fact that the resistance movement is democratically elected and shows no sign of running away. The Act demands everything from the Palestinians and nothing from Israel, which can do no wrong in Washington’s eyes but, as everyone outside America knows, is the biggest terror organisation and law-breaker in the region.

Palestinians are perfectly entitled to put up armed resistance against illegal military occupation. Nevertheless the US requires them to end their struggle, get on their knees and publicly kiss their tormentors’ ass. They must re-commit to the Road Map and the two-state solution even though the ‘irreversible facts on the ground’ Israel is hurrying to establish and the im