Ziegler: Israel is the worst colonial regime

Read it here

UN expert reveals extent of Israel’s rights abuses

"Many of Israel's laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination," UN human rights envoy John Dugard said.


Some Israelis agree with Mr Dugard that
the occupation is fuelling Palestinian resistance

Amina Anderson
Aljazeera Magazine

It's highly unlikely to hear fierce criticism against Israel or the United States from somebody with a serious job title. But John Dugard, the special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council for the Palestinian territories, proved otherwise.

Earlier this year, the retired South African law professor wrote a report for the UN General Assembly in which he compared Israel’s actions to those of apartheid South Africa.

According to the BBC, the word “apartheid" appeared 24 times in the 24-page report.

"It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel's laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination," the report said.

Although Dugard has been visiting the occupied West Bank and Gaza for the past seven years, his position as a UN human rights monitor doesn’t allow him to make any decisions on UN policy; only to offer recommendations and critical analysis.

But now it seems that Mr Dugard is fed up. He used to accuse Israel of collectively punishing the Palestinians, but now he also holds the international community, and the United Nations itself, responsible for the Palestinians’ suffering.

A few week ago, Mr Dugard was reported to have criticised the UN Secretary General for failing to stand up to Israel. In a recent interview with the BBC, he said that his catalogues of what he sees as Israeli human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories fall on "deaf ears" in the Secretary General's office.

He also said that he would urge the United Nations to withdraw from the "Quartet" of Middle East mediators -- which includes the U.S., Russia, EU and UN -- unless it properly addresses Palestinian human rights.

"In my most recent report to the General Assembly, which I will present later this month, I will suggest that the Secretary General withdraw the UN from the Quartet, if the Quartet fails to have regard to the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories," he told the BBC.

Instead of overseeing the “peace process” between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Quartet is hampering the Palestinian right to self-determination, Mr Dugard says.

His argument is not just that the Quartet is failing to heal the rift between the resistance group Hamas, which controls Gaza, and President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, but that the UN, through the Quartet, is siding with the president’s party.

“The weak response by the quartet is because it’s heavily influenced" by the U.S.,” he said. “The UN is not playing the role of an objective mediator that behoves it.”

Mr Dugard also warned that Palestinian leaders have high hopes about next month’s peace conference with the Israelis. He fears that a third intifada, or uprising, could be unleashed if the Palestinians’ expectations are not met.

According to the BBC, many Western diplomats and UN officials based in the Middle East agree with Mr Dugard’s political analysis, but most of them are not as outspoken as him.

Even inside Israel, many believe that the occupation has distorted and damaged Israel’s global image. Some Israelis also agree with Mr Dugard that the occupation is fuelling the Palestinian resistance.

Mr Dugard even compared the actions of Palestinian fighters to those of the French Resistance during World War II.

"History is replete with examples of populations that have resisted military occupation," he said. "I can't see why one shouldn't draw these analogies."

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The Israel Lobby targets Haaretz, read it here

Perestroika: James Fallows Says "Mainly... Jewish" Faction Pushes for Iran Showdown, read it here

Grossman said the study shows a pattern
practiced by hundreds and thousands.
Israelis Enjoy Torturing Palestinians

CAIRO — Israeli soldiers enjoy torturing Palestinians, both men and women, and many of them use it to discharge energy, according to a recent study by an Israeli psychologist.

Read it here

Palestinians’ Lives Invisible to Israelis
by Edward Mast
Common Dreams.org

On a visit to Tel Aviv last month, I asked some Israeli friends what people in Israel were saying about the Palestinian situation. Not much, they told me. Israelis are more concerned about the corruption charges against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, coming on the heels of corruption charges against previous governments. Palestinians and their issues, my friends told me, are becoming more and more invisible to the Israeli people.

Palestinian lives are kept invisible in David Brumer’s Oct. 10 guest column, “Despite concerns, Israel a vibrant country.” Also invisible are Israel’s military occupation and the ongoing takeover of Palestinian land. If Brumer had traveled to the other side of the wall, as I did, he could have witnessed the many ways that the Israeli occupation crushes people with poverty, violence and injustice.

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Israel shaken by Troops' Tales of Brutality against Palestinians

Summer Camp Teaches U.S. Teens To Fight Israeli Style

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He spent seven years in the Middle East and reported frequently from Iran. His latest book is American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

http://www.alternet.org

Oil, Israel, and America: The Root Cause of the Crisis
By Scott Ritter

The Big Lie: ‘Iran Is a Threat’
by Scott Ritter

Israeli soldiers Shoot Indiscriminately at Palestinian women in Protest Demo


Link

The BBC's Neocon Propaganda War

The BBC's approach to war and world affairs is, first and foremost, a reflection of the British puppet state's viewpoint. It is questionable that the BBC was ever an independent organization. But, along with the widespread damage to civil and judicial freedoms caused by the noxious Blair de facto dictatorship, the BBC's reputation has dropped to an all-time low of news-whoring.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am constantly warning them that the Mainstream Media (MSM) in both the US and the UK --or USUK for convenience-- is deliberately fuelling speculations that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and that, for this reason, the US and possibly Israel might carry out a 'preemptive' attack on that country.

The BBC's approach amounts to blatant warmongering. No amount of complaints appear to make the slightest bit of difference. Financed by a compulsory tax in the form of a licence fee, payable by anyone owning a television receiver in the UK, the BBC has huge resources to hand and is a major international satellite broadcaster.

BBC 24 News is received across the planet and many viewers mistakenly believe that it practises a balanced reportage. This is nothing more than a myth which the BBC is, itself, responsible for having perpetuated. The reality is that, particularly under the oppressive Blair regime, the BBC has become a servile tool for the broadcasting of USUK war propaganda.

This was reflected some time ago in comments made by Professor Professor Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel committee, when he observed that "media organisations could receive the Nobel peace prize in future."

Prof Lundestad mentioned several contenders, such as CNN, the New York Times, Le Monde and El País.

However, he made a notable exception of the BBC. "Some years ago, the BBC would have been an obvious candidate because it was the international model for news organisations. Nowadays, it is more debatable." He added: "We all know about the problems the BBC has had in recent years," without elaborating.

(The Guardian, 7 October 2006)

What he wouldn't elaborate on was the manner in which Tony Blair had fired the then BBC Director, Greg Dyke, for his daring to criticize Blair on the Irak War and the --to say the least-- dubious circumstances surrounding the 'suicide' of the ex-IAEA inspector, Dr David Kelly, who was scapegoated by the Blair regime.

Ever since Dyke's 'resignation' (he was fired on Blair's instructions) the BBC has taken an extreme lurch to the neocon right and the promotion of the Bush-Cheney-Blair-Zionist war party. Greg Dyke was replaced by a leading zionist, Michael Grade.

Two recent instances of the BBC's highly propagandistic news coverage has been its anti-Chávez reportage on Venezuela and a complete news-blackout on the arrest and trial of two members of the neo-nazi British National Party who were caught with what was reported locally as the largest weapons-haul ever made by the British police.

Not to be unfair, that news-blackout affected the entire British MSM and appears to have been at the behest of Blair.

The above are just two instances taken at random. The actual list of the BBC's right-wing bias would be unending.

PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING!

The BBC is preparing Britain and the rest of the world for US military aggression on Iran. Ever since Bush started his vicious propaganda campaign against Iran, the BBC has meekly followed suit. No doubt, on Blair's insistence.

Just last night on its News 24 programme it screamed out that the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) had 'leaked' a document proving that Iran was 'secretly developing weapons-grade' fissile material. It conspicuously failed to say anything more about this document so I conducted my own search and found this Reuters press release.

Can anyone find any evidence here that the IAEA is warning of Iranian nuclear weapons development? The Reuters/Yahoo article goes on to make the customary speculations but evidence there is none.

That didn't stop the BBC in its headlong rush to serve its neocon bosses in Downing Street and Washington, DC. Not only is the BBC sure that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb but that it threatens the continued existence of that famously peaceable nation, Israel, with the nasty terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, provocatively flying its flags along the Israel-Lebanon frontier.

The BBC then interviewed several Israeli 'experts' who, naturally, spoke in the most objective manner of how Israel was victim to threats from Iran and why a 'pre-emptive' attack against its nuclear reactors would, therefore, be the most sensible thing to do.

Of course, no mention was made by the BBC's jejune reporter, Matthew Price, of the terrible radioactive aftermath to which such an attack would lead, making Chernobyl pale into significance, or the even greater holocaust of a US-led attack using so-called 'low-yield' tactical nuclear weapons.

To get things into perspective, these 'low-yield' tactical nukes are capable of anything between a third to six times the destruction caused by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombs. The US Military now considers this level of destruction to be "acceptable." And so does the BBC apparently which keeps its lips sealed about the US nuclear option.

The BBC has, so far, failed to report on another significant statement from Iran that that country is reluctant to exit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it, unlike Israel, is a signatory.

So much for its 'balanced' reporting.

The BBC's approach to war and world affairs is, first and foremost, a reflection of the British puppet state's viewpoint. It is questionable that the BBC was ever an independent organization. But, along with the widespread damage to civil and judicial freedoms caused by the noxious Blair de facto dictatorship, the BBC's reputation has dropped to an all-time low of news-whoring.

Does it care? I doubt it. It and its employees now see themselves sliding down the slippery slope to privatization so, in the meantime, will do anything to ingratiate themselves with Britain's rulers. It's a very sad day when a well-known British dissident (himself a victim of Blair's tyranny), ex-Ambassador Craig Murray, admits to better treatment from Rupert Murdoch's SKY News than from the BBC.

Those in Britain who are concerned at the rapidity their country is being turned into a police state should, without any further delay, launch a popular campaign to expose the BBC's dirty warmongering. A vital part of such a campaign should be the promotion of a countrywide non-payment of the annual licence fee, the BBC's life-blood.

The BBC should also be subject to a mass letter-writing campaign in which it is warned that it and its employees would be held to be war criminals for their further promotion of illegal military occupations by the USUK and for their gleeful promotion of a possible upcoming war against Iran.