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

Christine Louis-Quéré: Daniel Pipes is not a Zionist.

It is said that Daniel Pipes is a Zionist. I must emphatically negate any claim by this Neocon to the right to call himself a Zionist.

Typically and in character with holders of the most fascist and extreme right political views, Pipes is clearly working as the head of hidden organisations.

Those neo-nazis that attach themselves to him do so with the intention of spilling blood on a world scale, thereby allowing supremacists and US Neocons to divide and rule.

This network appears as a kind of underground organisation with cowardly little types such as the anonymous ‘Grouik-Grouik’ acting as intermediaries alongside other internet groups such as ajm.ch, SIOE (Stop Islamisation of Europe) etc. repeating the same sentiments and implicit conclusions. As soon as an article, characterised by manipulative language understood by his savants, appears on Daniel Pipes’ hate propaganda website you see all his grubby partisans spring into action with their destructive poison.

I am a Zionist and a Socialist.

David Ben-Gurion had on his work-desk a bust of our Comrade Lenin; he referred to Lenin as the Prophet of the original Revolution.

The enemies of the Land of Israel are my enemies; the enemy’s of Israeli pro-US Neocons are my friends.

That is clear enough. I would rather present Zionism as did the Jewish Communist, Herbert Pagani, in his song 'L'etoile d'Or' and commentary, 'Pleading for My Land'.

http://libertedepenser.info/articles7.php

http://www.factsofisrael.com/blog/archives/000215.html

Whatever Pipes may pretend to be one thing is sure: together with his colleagues, using intellectual terrorism, he is a purveyor of racism, anti-semitism and war.These people worm themselves into every available organisation, even authentic Zionist ones, in order to putrefy thought through using their grey propaganda.


Pipes

There exists an incredible underground relationship between holocaust deniers, revisionists, neocons, sectarian groups, evangelists and Trotskyists! Naturei Karta, Dieudonné, National Front, KKK, Tribu Ka, mnsf.info, are some of the groups working to destabilise European institutions.Who profits from this? Not you, not me, only a Capitalism which remains unchanged in character since it supported and financed Hitler in the ‘thirties. At this point it is necessary to point out that the present Iranian regime behaves like George Bush, using the same scare tactics to repress their own people and restrict their freedoms.

Despite our individual political or philosophical convictions, world peace requires mutual respect between nations and religions. A round table is thus called for.

Pipes’ politics does not work in that direction. He is Bush’s CIA-funded agent!

And we certainly don’t need any lessons from Bush in regard to his grandfather’s participation in the Holocaust.

http://libertedepenser.info/articles28.php

http://libertedepenser.info/affaires114.php

http://www.rense.com/general18/bushsgrandfather.htm

If Pipes is able to work with a family which has never apologized for the criminal acts of it forefathers he’s got a serious problem. For us it’s a question of decency.

The Goebbels Big Lie technique they use has been exposed, it’s just a case of time before they burn out and shut down.

As Bush himself said, “The game is over!”

We return the compliment.

Christine Louis-Quéré, 7th of October 2007

__________

And for our friends and comrades, here's an invitation to join and support the Progressive Front for Renewal


"Freedom is never offered but torn from the hand of the Oppressor"



Link

Front Progressiste du Renouveau

Link

http://libertedepenser.info/fpr.php

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/Socialist_Zionism.html

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-19129728.html

http://www.jewishmag.com/43mag/bengurion/bengurion.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/il2/borochov/poale.html

Hashomer Hatza'ir - Zionist socialist youth movement, founded in Europe in 1916, to prepare Jewish youth for kibbutz life in Israel. In addition to Zionism, its ideology meshes Jewish culture with universal culture and values and it retains strong ties with the left-wing kibbutz movement today.

The Reviews of Walt and Mearsheimer: Moving Past the 'Lobby' and Getting Stuck in the 'Middle'
by Jeremiah Haber
The Magnes Zionist

The reviews of Walt and Mearsheimer’s book-length version of the 'Israel Lobby' in the mainstream media have run from the mixed to the negative.

More accurately, they have been negative, with some crumbs thrown to the authors for having raised certain questions and broken certain taboos. The consensus of the reviews that I have seen is that the book is a one-sided indictment against Israel’s policies and supporters, a screed that needs to be balanced.

That certainly seems to have been the view of the Washington Post, which commissioned Samuel Freedman to review the Israel Lobby together with Abe Foxman’s 'refutation,' The Deadliest Lies. Freedman, who teaches journalism at Columbia University, and who wrote an interesting book called Jew vs. Jew a few years back, has a lot to say against both books.

To his credit, he takes Walt and Mearsheimer much more seriously than Abe Foxman, whose silly little book I leafed through in Barnes and Nobles. Freedman is an intelligent man and a first-rate journalist. But his implied conclusion that the truth lies somewhere in the middle reveals him in all his glory as a liberal Zionist – hardly the fairest reviewer for a book on the Israel Lobby. And yet, virtually all the reviews in the major media outlets have been by liberal Zionists, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

By 'liberal Zionism' I mean the view that supports the state of Israel as founded in 1948 by political Zionists like Ben-Gurion. While liberal Zionists are often critical of Israeli policies (especially those advocated by the Israeli right and their hawkish allies, e.g., the settlements), they assume that a) that there are two sides to the Israel-Palestine story, and b) a lot of justice is on the Israeli side.

So when they read works by such disparate authors as Walt and Mearsheimer, Jimmy Carter, Tony Judt and Norman Finkelstein, they cannot refrain from saying, “Yeah, but what about the responsibility of the Palestinian side for the mess?”

This is because they fundamentally accept the Zionist narrative of Jewish history that culminates in the State of Israel, and they reject the Palestinian narrative that a foreign settler movement displaced the natives who, as the majority population in Palestine, had every expectation of a belonging to an Arab Palestine with a Jewish minority.

Now, one can favor Israel over the Palestinians without accepting the justice of the Zionist narrative. One can argue that Israel is a state recognized by the United Nations and that there is a prima facie case for favoring a state over a non-state collective, a favored position that will evaporate when Palestine becomes a state. But this is not the position taken by the reviewers. To a man they appeal to the comfortable (and banal) adage that the truth lies between the two extremes. The difficulty, however, is that they locate the 'center' in the Zionist camp. Those who take a position that dissents from political Zionism, even if that position accepts de facto the state of Israel, are dogmatic and one-sided.

The triumph of Zionism in this country is not so much that nobody 'normal' today questions the wisdom, or the justice, of the establishment and continued existence of a Zionist state. Rather, it is that nobody questions the correctness of the Zionist narrative that justifies the Jewish claim to a state at the expense of the Palestinian claim. Because if they did, then the failure to establish a strong and vibrant Palestinian state sixty years after the UN supported such a state, a state that is at least the equal of the Jewish state, would not allow them to sleep at night.

I am not saying that reviewers should have been chosen who reject the Zionist narrative. But why not ask people who have no vested interest in either narrative to review the book? Or, if liberal Zionists, are being asked, why not liberal Palestinians, like Rashid Khalidi (who happens to be critical of the book’s thesis.)?

As long as the world does not impose a solution that levels the playing field between Israeli Jew and Palestinian, there is no point in talking about 'balance'. The situation there is incredibly skewed in favor of Israel, which has virtually all the cards, and against the Palestinians, which has virtually none.

Let me demonstrate Freedman’s fundamental acceptance of the liberal Zionist narrative with the following passage.

It is certainly the right of Mearsheimer and Walt to advance these arguments, and their analysis of Camp David in particular echoes that of Robert Malley, one of the American mediators there. There is no lack of Israeli culpability in the Middle East morass, most obviously for the settlement enterprise. Still, one can leave this book with only the faintest realization that the political majority in Israel had been prepared to withdraw from most of the occupied territories to conclude a peace agreement with a Palestinian state -- until the Al-Aksa intifada brought terrorism as deeply into sovereign, pre-1967 Israel as the Tel Aviv beachfront.

Having withdrawn from all of Gaza in 2005, Israel received a steady barrage of rocket attacks, which undermined public support for further disengagement from portions, at least, of the West Bank. The authors do not have to concur with the Israeli reaction to those events, but they prove their intellectual dishonesty in barely even mentioning them… Thus, while Mearsheimer and Walt endorse a two-state solution, they still lump into the nefarious Israel lobby some of the very diplomats -- Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross, to name two -- who tried to negotiate precisely such a peace agreement.

Here you have in a nutshell the faith of the liberal Zionist.

Israel is indeed responsible for much of the Middle East morass, “most obviously for the settlement enterprise,” as if everything pre-1967 was just hunky-dory and could be solved by a simple withdrawal to the 67 borders by ceding “much of the occupied territories,” with a “peace agreement.” It seems that according to Freedman, the Israel-Palestinian conflict could have been solved via Oslo, were it not for the al-Aksa intifada, “that brought terrorism as deeply into sovereign, pre-1967 Israel as the Tel Aviv beachfront.”

Aside from the fact that this factually incorrect -- Palestinians blew up Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv before, during, and after Oslo, it assumes that Israelis were once willing to conclude a peace agreement with the Palestinians that would create a strong, secure Palestinians state. As I have written before, this is pure balderdash. Nobody in Israel, except those on the extreme left, have ever supported the establishment of a Palestinian state -- rather, they support an emasculated demilitarized 'state' that survives because of its neocolonial relation to Israel, and that will not pose a threat to the security of the Jewish state.

Freedman, the liberal Zionist, seems to believe that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. That is also balderdash. Israel never 'withdrew' from Gaza; it redeployed its troops for the most part on the other side of the 'Green Line' and later imposed a crippling siege against Gaza, when the Palestinians elected Hamas. In short, the people who felt that Gaza could be most effectively controlled by the presence of settlers and IDF troops lost out to the people who felt that Gaza could be most effectively controlled by withdrawing the settlers and the IDF. But the control of Gaza was never once in doubt.

This is the classic Zionist debate – the sort of 'Jew vs. Jew' that Freedman should have written about: How does one control the maximum amount of territory with the minimum responsibility for the natives? Had Ariel Sharon been interested in giving peace a chance – and, to his credit, he never once even hinted in that direction – he would have negotiated a withdrawal with the PA, and, more importantly, he would have negotiated a final settlement.

But the Gaza withdrawal was never about peace – and Sharon had the guts to say that. In fact, the Gaza withdrawal was intended to humiliate the Palestinians by implying that negotiating with them made as much sense as negotiating with wild animals. (Remember the liberal Zionist Benny Morris’s solution for the Palestinians in his interview with Ari Shavit – put them in cages.) Only a liberal Zionist, who identifies troop-redeployments with peace overtures, can spin the Gaza withdrawal as an opportunity for peace.

Because Freedman is a liberal Zionist – and I don’t criticize him for that, only the editors for asking him to review the book without full disclosure -- he is shocked that Walt and Mearsheimer lump Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross in the Israeli lobby. How dare they throw these two liberal peacemakers into the same camp as Abe Foxman, AIPAC, Daniel Pipes, and Norman Podhoretz? I mean, how many times were Indyk and Ross called self-hating Jews by the rightwing? And how hard did they labor for peace?

But the truth is that virtually all Jews in the US, from the far right to the Peace-Now-Meretz left, are a part of the Israel Lobby, or if you don’t like that term (I don’t), they are strong supporters of Israel, each in their own way. Again, this is not a criticism – believe me, some of my best friends are liberal Zionists (full-disclosure: I am a card-carrying member of Meretz, although, in my defence, I joined the party just to vote for Yossi Beilin in the primaries) . To see how deeply Zionist Dennis Ross is, one needs only read a few pages of The Missing Peace. The fact that he doesn’t share the 'Islamofascist' neuroses of Podhoretz and Pipes doesn’t make him into a centrist on Israel-Palestine.

So, who is on really in the middle and not just in the 'middle'? Well, Walt and Mearsheimer, Carter, Chomsky, Khalidi, for a start. They are all willing to allow a strong Zionist state in Palestine -- more than I can say for most Israelis with respect to Palestine.

Because the Zionist narrative has been accepted by the mainstream liberal press in the US, (but not, necessarily, by Middle East experts), one doesn’t need an AIPAC or a Foxman or a Dershowitz to make the case for Israel. The latter will always serve as the 'bad cops' to 'good cops' like Tom Friedman, Richard Cohen, Dennis Ross, etc. The real question is – and Walt and Mearsheimer don’t raise it – why has Israel been so successful in getting the Zionist narrative accepted?

It is not just the alleged political clout or money of an Israel Lobby. There may be many factors -- liberal Christian guilt for Christian antisemitism, sympathy for the Jews after the Holocaust, the shared Judaeo-Christian heritage on the Bible (the secret weapon of the Zionist), the success story of Jews in the US, including the high intermarriage rates, which makes it more difficult for Christians to act against members of their family. The Palestinians have failed to make the same impact on the consciousness of American non-Jews as have the Jews. They haven't been around as much. And they are 'oriental' in the a way that ashkenazi Israelis are not.

And they are Arab, and, mostly, Muslim.

__________

also, I was lobbied by the 'Israel lobby'
Read it here

Corrupt Britannia sinks below the Waves

The British establishment is reeling with scandals. We can only hope that this signals its terminal implosion, something which should have occurred half a century ago.

Like a terrier with its teeth embedded deep into the ankles of the Royal Family, billionaire Mohammed Al-Fayed continues with a determined campaign to expose Prince Philip and Prince Charles as being the architects of Princess Diana's death. Whether or not Diana was pregnant by Al-Fayed's son, Dodi, he insists that neither Philip or Charles could bear the thought of Diana getting married to the Egyptian she loved.

Philip's racist comments are well-known but never commented on by a fawning British MSM which does everything it can to protect the collapsing image of Britain's royals. But, with the recent resignation of Lady Butler-Sloss, Coroner at the current investigation into Diana's death, even Britain's MSM is beginning to smell a putrefying rat in the official story that the death was caused by an accident.

No one in the British establishment, it appears, has the courage to take on such an investigation and to face the consequences of the truth behind what was very possibly a cover-up of what happened that night in a Paris underpass. Who, in Britain, would dare to point to the royals as being criminals, let alone murderers? It's just not going to happen. The British are particularly good at whitewashes, snow jobs, and you can expect another one of those in a story which will run and run like Jack the Ripper's.

And then there's Blair and the cash for honours scandal in which he and his cronies handed out peerages to the wealthy in return for their huge 'donations' to the Labour Party. Now what we're beginning to see is the tip of the iceberg exposing how British zionism continues to play a seriously corrosive part in the country's politics and foreign policy.

Britain's attorney-general and old-time Blair crony, Lord Goldsmith, is squirming at the accusation being made by certain British MPs like the Liberal, Norman Baker, that he is no way qualified to make a final decision whether or not the public prosecutor should act upon police recommendations to bring charges in the cash for honours scandal.

The reason Baker gives is that both Goldsmith and Lord Levy --who was twice arrested and is presently under bail-- are both leading members of the parliamentary British-Israel and Commonwealth Committee which recently funded a trip to Israel by Lord Goldsmith. It should never have done so says Baker and what is more serious is that Goldsmith should have no influence on any decision whether or not to charge his crony Levy with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Despite Goldsmith's squeals that he promises to receive "independent advice" on the matter the British MSM seem in no mood to buy any more lies from the man who twice changed his mind on whether Britain should have gone to war in Iraq.

The Jewish establishment, finely-tuned to the slightest criticism, has already accused the British police of 'anti-semitism' for daring to arrest "Britain's premier Jew", Lord Levy. It seems that certain people should remain above the law. So we can expect more indignant cries from those quarters in the near future. And I expect to be accused of anti-semitism for even mentioning it!

The ordinary proles very rarely get a glimpse into the corrupt workings of their country's establishment. These two stories, however, emanate a stink much closer to home than (vide Shakespeare) anything 'rotten in Denmark.'

Here's an example of how the corruption in the Royal household is intimately linked to the corruption in the Blair administration. You really can't distinguish one from the other, can you?

Palace told Blair aide: beware of honours probe chief

The Observer

"Buckingham Palace is today thrust into the centre of the 'cash for peerages' affair as The Observer discloses that the most senior courtier in Buckingham Palace expressed deep unease to Downing Street about the Metropolitan Police officer leading the investigation."