Fury Over Amnesty Report

http://www.totallyjewish.com/
Fury Over Amnesty Report
by Jeremy Last - Thursday 7th June 2007

Israel has hit back at a report by human rights group Amnesty International released to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War which calls for Israel to be prosecuted in the world's courts for committing war crimes against the Palestinians.

Entitled

"Enduring Occupation: Palestinians under siege in the West Bank,"

the Amnesty report includes chapters with headings such as "Israeli settlements – the reason for the restrictions" and "violations of international law."

In a statement released on Monday, the Israeli justice ministry dismissed the report as "one-sided, immoral, and riddled with mistakes and numerous factual and legal inaccuracies."

Using personal stories as examples, the report focuses on the plight of the Palestinians who are forced to go through roadblocks and checkpoints to travel around the West Bank.

Dismissing Israel's reasoning behind creating "a web of military checkpoints and blockades," the report's authors wrote: "The Israeli authorities contend that this regime of closures and restrictions is necessary to prevent Palestinians from entering Israel to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks. However all the checkpoints, gates, blocked roads are located inside the West Bank, not between the West Bank and Israel."

Accusing Israel of breaking the law, the report added: "The stringent restrictions on movement imposed for years by the Israeli authorities on more than two million Palestinians who live in the West Bank are unlawful as they are disproportionate, discriminatory and violate the right to freedom of movement."

The justice ministry spokesman complained that the Amnesty report all but ignores the "centrality of Palestinian terrorism" to the conflict and its results as well as Israel's human rights record.

"The report's total disregard of the conduct of Palestinian terrorist organizations and of the war crimes that they perpetrate daily, when they directly and indiscriminately target civilian populations while using the local population as human shields, is another outstanding example of the significant problems embodied in the report," the spokesman said.

"Israel views with the utmost importance the safeguarding of human rights and invests abundant resources in doing so, in keeping with its commitment to values and to international law."

In the report Amnesty International called for Israel to dismantle all West Bank settlements and roadblocks but also urged Palestinians to end attacks on Israeli civilians, claiming that an international force is needed to monitor both sides.

"For 40 years, the international community has failed adequately to address the Israeli-Palestinian problem; it cannot, must not, wait another 40 years to do so," Amnesty regional director Malcolm Smart said.

The Jerusalem based organisation NGO Monitor called on those involved in the publication of the report to resign. In a statement NGO Monitor sid the Amnesty report "provides more evidence of AI's strong political agenda on Arab-Israeli issues."

Instead of working to improve human rights, the NGO Monitor said Amnesty International "undermine the basis of universal human rights."

"This Amnesty report, following tendentious condemnations of Israel, demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of this organization. We call on the members of Amnesty International, including Amnon Vidan who heads the Israeli branch to submit their resignations in protest," said Gerald Steinberg, Executive Director of NGO Monitor.

'The USS Liberty': America's Most Shameful Secret

'The USS Liberty': America's Most Shameful Secret
by Eric S. Margolis

NEW YORK – On the fourth day of the 1967 Arab Israeli War, the intelligence ship 'USS Liberty' was steaming slowly in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula. Israeli armored forces were racing deep into Sinai in hot pursuit of the retreating Egyptian army.

'Liberty,' a World War II freighter, had been converted into an intelligence vessel by the top-secret US National Security Agency, and packed with the latest signals and electronic interception equipment. The ship bristled with antennas and electronic 'ears' including TRSSCOMM, a system that delivered real-time intercepts to Washington by bouncing a stream of microwaves off the moon.

'Liberty' had been rushed to Sinai to monitor communications of the belligerents in the Third Arab Israeli War: Israel and her foes, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

At 0800 hrs, 8 June, 1967, eight Israeli recon flights flew over 'Liberty,' which was flying a large American flag. At 1400 hrs, waves of low-flying Israeli Mystere and Mirage-III fighter-bombers repeatedly attacked the American vessel with rockets, napalm, and cannon. The air attacks lasted 20 minutes, concentrating on the ship's electronic antennas and dishes. The 'Liberty' was left afire, listing sharply. Eight of her crew lay dead, a hundred seriously wounded, including the captain, Commander William McGonagle.

At 1424 hrs, three Israeli torpedo boats attacked, raking the burning 'Liberty' with 20mm and 40mm shells. At 1431hrs an Israeli torpedo hit the 'Liberty' midship, precisely where the signals intelligence systems were located. Twenty-five more Americans died.

Israeli gunboats circled the wounded 'Liberty,' firing at crewmen trying to fight the fires. At 1515, the crew were ordered to abandon ship. The Israeli warships closed and poured machine gun fire into the crowded life rafts, sinking two. As American sailors were being massacred in cold blood, a rescue mission by US Sixth Fleet carrier aircraft was mysteriously aborted on orders from the White House.

An hour after the attack, Israeli warships and planes returned. Commander McGonagle gave the order. 'prepare to repel borders.' But the Israelis, probably fearful of intervention by the US Sixth Fleet, departed. 'Liberty' was left shattered but still defiant, her flag flying.

• The Israeli attacks killed 34 US seamen and wounded 171 out of a crew of 297, the worst loss of American naval personnel from hostile action since World War II.

Less than an hour after the attack, Israel told Washington its forces had committed a 'tragic error.' Later, Israel claimed it had mistaken 'Liberty' for an ancient Egyptian horse transport. US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and Joint Chiefs of Staff head, Admiral Thomas Moorer, insisted the Israeli attack was deliberate and designed to sink 'Liberty.' So did three CIA reports; one asserted Israel's Defense Minister, Gen. Moshe Dayan, had personally ordered the attack.

• In contrast to American outrage over North Korea's assault on the intelligence ship 'Pueblo,' Iraq's mistaken missile strike on the USS 'Stark,' last fall's bombing of the USS 'Cole' in Aden, and the recent US-China air incident, the savaging of 'Liberty' was quickly hushed up by President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

The White House and Congress immediately accepted Israel's explanation and let the matter drop. Israel later paid a token reparation of US $6 million. There were reports two Israeli pilots who had refused to attack 'Liberty' were jailed for 18 years.

Surviving 'Liberty' crew members would not be silenced. They kept demanding an open inquiry and tried to tell their story of deliberate attack to the media. Israel's government worked behind the scenes to thwart these efforts, going so far as having American pro-Israel groups accuse 'Liberty's' survivors of being 'anti-Semites' and 'Israel-haters.' Major TV networks cancelled interviews with the crew. A book about the 'Liberty' by crewman James Ennes' was dropped from distribution. The Israel lobby branded him 'an Arab propagandist.'

The attack on 'Liberty' was fading into obscurity until last week, when intelligence expert James Bamford came out with Body of Secrets, his latest book about the National Security Agency. In a stunning revelation, Bamford writes that unknown to Israel, a US Navy EC-121 intelligence aircraft was flying high overhead the 'Liberty,' electronically recorded the attack. The US aircraft crew provides evidence that the Israeli pilots knew full well that they were attacking a US Navy ship flying the American flag.

Why did Israel try to sink a naval vessel of its benefactor and ally? Most likely because 'Liberty's' intercepts flatly contradicted Israel's claim, made at the war's beginning on 5 June, that Egypt had attacked Israel, and that Israel's massive air assault on three Arab nations was in retaliation. In fact, Israel began the war by a devastating, Pearl-Harbor style surprise attack that caught the Arabs in bed and destroyed their entire air forces.

Israel was also preparing to attack Syria to seize its strategic Golan Heights. Washington warned Israel not to invade Syria, which had remained inactive while Israel fought Egypt. Bamford says Israel's offensive against Syria was abruptly postponed when 'Liberty' appeared off Sinai, then launched once it was knocked out of action. Israel's claim that Syria had attacked it could have been disproved by 'Liberty.'

Most significant, 'Liberty's' intercepts may have shown that Israel seized upon sharply rising Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch a long-planned war to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem, Golan and Sinai.

Far more shocking was Washington's response. Writes Bamford: 'Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident.' Why?

Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this 'third rail' issue.

Commander McGonagle was quietly awarded the Medal of Honor for his and his men's heroism – not in the White House, as is usual, but in an obscure ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard. Crew member's graves were inscribed, 'died in the Eastern Mediterranean..' as if they had be killed by disease, rather than hostile action.

A member of President Johnson's staff believed there was a more complex reason for the cover-up: Johnson offered Jewish liberals unconditional backing of Israel, and a cover-up of the 'Liberty' attack, in exchange for the liberal toning down their strident criticism of his policies in the then raging Vietnam War.

Israel, which claims it fought a war of self defense in 1967 and had no prior territorial ambitions, will be much displeased by Bamford's revelations. Those who believe Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and Golan will be emboldened.

Much more important, the US government's long, disgraceful cover-up of the premeditated attack on 'Liberty' has now burst into the open and demands full-scale investigation. After 34 years, the voices of 'Liberty's' dead and wounded seamen must finally be heard.

May 2, 2001

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2001

Eric Margolis [send him mail] is foreign correspondent for the Toronto Sun.

Conscientious Objectors Abused by the Israeli Military

CounterPunch

Conscientious Objectors Abused by the Israeli Military

by YIGAL BRONNER
January 17, 2003

Jonathan Ben Artzi's (or Yoni as his friends know him) first experience with the Israeli justice system was a positive one. As a student at an elite Jerusalem prep school, he found that he could no longer bear the militaristic atmosphere or the overt role the military played in his education. When his class was bussed to a military training center for an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) orientation as part of his school program, Yoni refused to go. He also insisted that his parents be refunded for this "course," and that the fees be returned to his sole Arab classmate, who was literally taken off the military bus. Yoni simply felt that a school should prepare its students to be better citizens-- not soldiers. But this position, which for many may seem rather commonsensical, is considered extremely radical in Israel.

The high school, for its part, retaliated by preventing Yoni from graduating and denying him his diploma. It took a year and half of an uphill legal battle for this decision to be overruled by an Israeli court. In a tiny and cramped courtroom, Yoni, by then a college freshman majoring in mathematics, finally had a graduation-ceremony of sorts.

But this small victory is now a fading memory for Yoni, who has spent the last six months in a military prison. Yoni is a pacifist and has been one ever since he was twelve. He simply opposes wars. He cannot picture himself bearing arms. Furthermore, he is incensed by Israel's ongoing occupation of Palestine, by the atrocities and war crimes it commits, and by the endless cycle of violence its leaders market as a necessary component of life in Israel. Long before he was due to be drafted, it was clear to Yoni that he could not and would not participate in this march of folly; he would not join the military.

Yoni was one of the organizers of a seniors' letter addressed to Prime Minister Sharon and signed by some three hundred high school graduates, which announced their refusal to be drafted. The group's entire leadership is now behind bars.

One might have expected the state of Israel to respect the decisions of conscientious objectors like Yoni and his friends. After all, Israel has signed several international treaties which oblige it to wave military service for those who -- due reasons of conscience or religious belief -- feel incapable of taking up arms. These covenants require the state to assign civil rather than military service to such people. But the Israeli government, and more precisely the military prosecutor Menachem Finkelstein, have decided to ignore their obligations towards international law.

Instead the state has incarcerated the conscientious objectors in military prisons, for an indefinite period of time. Opposing the draft is simply too subversive a position in Israel-- too threatening to a militaristic establishment which has lived off the occupation and the ongoing war for so long.

Before throwing Yoni and his friends in jail, however, the Israeli government had to address its obligation to the above-mentioned international treaties, and so in a cynical effort to appear law abiding, it created a committee of "conscience-experts" whose role was to examine the motivations of the seniors. This committee has found that not one of the graduates is a real conscientious objector. They are all pretenders, it claims, and as such their place is in jail.

It would seem that the motivations of someone like Yoni, who risked his school diploma for his pacifist beliefs, should be beyond suspicion. After all, the decision to sue his own school was not without ramifications. Yoni had to pay a high social price for standing up for his unpopular beliefs. Moreover, anyone who reads his school essays will find that ever since eighth grade, he has had a very clear pacifist worldview. These essays were handed over to the military's "conscientious experts" who examined the evidence, and yet they found that Yoni was not really guided by his conscience. Yoni, the experts concluded, was simply a troublemaker, which, according to some twisted logic, also made him a perfectly suitable candidate for military service.

Accordingly, Israel and military prosecutor Finkelstein are not really violating their commitment to exempt conscientious objectors from military service-- there just aren't any objectors in their midst. As for trouble-making seniors, these exist in large quantities and have to be disciplined. There is no international law against this.

What, then, is the suitable punishment for the crime committed by Yoni and his friends, those trouble makers who masqueraded as people of conscience?

The answer to this question is simple: whatever it takes to break them.

Yoni has so far been sentenced to seven consecutive prison-terms, amounting to 196 days, and there does not seem to be an end in sight. He has been told time and again that he would be released at once, if he were to give up his principals. He would then be exempted from army service for mental reasons, they insinuated. The process would be simple: there would not be a team of experts this time. If he would only agree to see a psychiatrist, they would declare him mentally unfit instantly

But Yoni is still strong, and insists that his conscientious position is not some kind of mental illness. Yoni's parents, Ofra and Matania, are also strong, although they are growing increasingly bitter with the state in which they chose to raise their children. People of conscience, in Israel and abroad, must take a stand in Yoni's case. We need to raise our voice in his support. We should demand that this young man be released immediately and be reunited with his parents. It does not take a pacifist or even a political like-minded person to realize that he's done more than enough to earn his second diploma and become a graduate of the prison academy.

Yigal Bronner teaches South Asian literature at the Tel Aviv University and has recently spent four weeks in military prison for refusing to serve as a reservist in the occupied territories. He can be reached at ybronner@post.tau.ac.il

***

Israel's Conscientious Objectors: The Categorical Imperative

Israel's Conscientious Objectors
The Categorical Imperative
By URI AVNERY
December 29, 2003

Some years ago, when the jury for the annual Israel Prize announced its award to Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, I decided to invite him to give a lecture to the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, the group that established the first contacts with the PLO.

"I am ready to come," he said, "on one condition: I shall speak only about the duty to refuse to serve in the occupied territories."

For him, that was the alpha and omega of the fight against the occupation.

I told him that he was free to speak about whatever he saw fit, even if I myself did not quite share his view.

(The lecture, by the way, had an unexpected result. In his usual provocative style, Leibowitz compared the Special Units of the Israeli army to the Nazi SS. His words were published, aroused a storm of protest and the prize jury wanted to cancel the award, whereupon Leibowitz himself announced that he refused it.)

Since then I had an ongoing debate with myself about this hard and painful subject.

I am not a pacifist, in the sense of totally refusing to bear arms. My heart is certainly with Yonathan Ben-Artzi, who is standing trial now because of his uncompromising pacifistic stand. He is a wonderful and admirable youngster. But as a member of a generation that experienced the war with the Nazis, I cannot accept the principle that every war is evil. Once the Nazis had taken hold of Germany and started to carry out their aggressive designs, there was no way of stopping them other then by force of arms.

As long as there is no world order and no world government, no world legislature or world police (all of which I hope will be in place by the end of the 21st century), no country can do without with a defense force. And as long as there is no world government that enables every people striving for liberty to attain its goal by peaceful means, freedom-fighters will need to use arms.

But Leibowitz was no pacifist. He did not advocate a general refusal to bear arms, but the refusal to serve the occupation. He believed

• in the moral value of this refusal,
  
• in the duty of every moral person to draw a line between himself and an unjust regime and
  
• to declare that he will not lend his hand to a policy that is inhuman, immoral and illegal by its very nature. He also believed
  
• that the personal example of the objectors was bound to influence the general public.

This approach is beset, of course, with several pitfalls, which made me hesitate.

• First, it undermines the democratic order. The army is supposed to serve the legal government that was elected by the citizens. If you refuse to follow the orders of the legal government, you shake the very foundations of democracy.

• Second, you legitimise the same actions by your opponents. According to the "categorical imperative" of Immanuel Kant, you have to behave

  "as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature".

  If A has the right to refuse to serve the occupation, B has the right to refuse to remove settlements.

• Third, you corrupt the army. If all moral people leave the army, it will remain in the hands of the immoral ones. The checkpoints will be manned exclusively by Arab-haters, operations will be executed by sadists. But if the decent people remain in the army, they can influence its spirit, preventing by their very presence injustices and atrocities, or, at least, bringing them to light.

I have always had a lot of respect for conscientious objectors. I know how much courage is needed for a young person (and an old one, too) to withstand the social pressure of family, comrades and neighbors and to bear the consequences. I am impressed much more by such moral fortitude than by physical heroism in battle, when you know that all the people are behind you. (And I speak as one who has served in a so-called "elite unit".)

Therefore I have always supported an individual's right to refuse. But I myself was not ready to call upon young people to follow this line. My position was that persons must decide for themselves where they will best serve the fight against the occupation--inside or outside the army.

But I feel that my position is changing.

1. First of all, many soldiers have convinced me that it is almost impossible to withstand the pressure inside the army. The brainwashing is intense and unrelenting; those in the higher ranks are more and more like robots with blunted senses, the products of the occupation; not to mention the members of the religious academies connected with the army, Arab-haters and settlers with "knitted kippas" (associated with the extreme right-wing national-religious party.)
2. Second, the occupation itself has become a monster that nobody can serve without losing his humanity.
   

• When the members of the "cream of the Israeli army", the Sayeret Matkal (General Staff commandos) say so and refuse to go on, their testimony is persuasive.
  
• When the Airforce combat pilots revolt against their commander, who has said that he "feels nothing but a slight bump" when he releases a bomb that kills women and children, respect is due to them.
  
• When five 19-year old youngsters choose to go to prison rather than enjoy the freedom of the occupiers, Kant himself would have saluted them. The protest against an immoral regime is a categorical imperative.

Does this refusal prepare the ground for the refusal of right-wing soldiers? There is, of course, no symmetry between freedom-lovers, who refuse to take part in an ongoing injustice, and the settlers, who are themselves part of the injustice. But if one recognizes the right to refuse for reasons of conscience, one must apply Kant's principle to them, too. If there ever is an evacuation of the settlements, the right of a soldier to refuse to take part for reasons of conscience must be assured.

• Is this a blow against democracy? Most certainly.But this is a blow for the good. Israeli democracy is being whittled away with every day of occupation.
  

We are witnessing an continuous decline:

• the government has become Sharon's kindergarten,
  
• the Knesset attracts general contempt,
  
• the Supreme Court has largely become an instrument of the occupation,
  
• the media are marching in step.
  

It is the refusers who have introduced a moral dimension into the public discourse.

The accumulation of refusals, with one act inspiring the next and one military unit influencing another, is bound to have a lasting effect on the general public. It is both an expression of change and a stimulus for change.

But above all, the act of refusal shines like a beacon in the darkness. It drives out the despair that has infects every part of the collective body. It restores faith in the State of Israel and its younger generation.

Of course, the objectors are few. They are a small minority of the people and the army. But the course of human history would have been quite different without such minorities--people who had the courage to march on when the chorus of conformists shouted: "Stop!"

And not least: these people allow us to be proud again. A nation that has sons like these can have hope.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.

USS Liberty survivor assails former Navy lawyer's view

USS Liberty survivor assails former Navy lawyer's view
July 22, 2007 12:00 AM

Among the saddest aspects of the USS Liberty story is that it brings out of hiding a phalanx of die-hard Liberty opponents who exhaust themselves trying to disprove our eyewitness accounts and experiences.

• I was a lieutenant on the bridge of USS Liberty for several hours up to and during the early minutes of the attack.
  
• Although wounded, I remained awake, alert and in touch with my men throughout.
  
• Among other things, it was obvious from the extended, prolonged, close attack on our clearly marked ship that this was no accident.
  
• Other evidence collected later confirmed that impression, as did intercepts of the attacking pilots who clearly knew they were attacking an American ship.

The facts are:

• The attack was preceded by hours of close reconnaissance by Israeli aircraft. We were fired upon for more than 75 minutes.
  
• The attack included 40 minutes of very close machine-gunning of firefighters and stretcher-bearers long after the attackers viewed our flag and clear markings in English from less than 50 feet away.

U.S. Air Force intercept operators heard the pilots repeatedly identifying us as American during the attack. There was no doubt that the pilots knew they were killing Americans. This is widely known within the U.S. intelligence community, despite the heated denials of our attackers and their American supporters.

The attack ended only after the Israelis machine-gunned our life rafts in the water, a war crime that we have reported repeatedly to a disinterested government.

Contrary to A. Jay Cristol's false claim (in Viewpoints last week), numerous U.S. officials, including

• Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
• Joint Chiefs Chairman Tom Moorer,
• National Security Agency Director Gen. Marshall Carter,
• CIA Director Richard Helms and
• many other former senior officers from all of the U.S. intelligence agencies, have agreed that the attack was deliberate.

Cristol seeks to discredit our eyewitness accounts by maligning our motives and falsely claiming Arab financing and influence. Contrary to Cristol's false claims, the Liberty Veterans Association was organized by Master Chief Petty Officer Stan White and myself with no help from former congressmen or anyone else. Just paying the phone bills for this effort was a strain on both of our household budgets. We had no financial support and certainly no Arab money.

Cristol's little essay leans heavily on what he calls the "Navy Court of Inquiry" transcript. He neglects to mention that the court's own legal counsel swears that the transcript was illegally changed in Washington after it was signed. Key testimony, including my own as officer of the deck, was blocked from the record or removed. (See www.ussliberty.org/bostondeclaration.pdf.)

Cristol likens the attack to friendly fire. Rusk said of this case,

"Accidents do not occur through repeated attacks by surface vessels and aircraft. ... (This attack) involved combined forces. The ship was flying an American flag. . . . I did not accept the Israeli explanation."

(See www.ussliberty.org/supporters.htm for the full statement and others by senior U.S. officials who dispute Cristol.)

Cristol claims that several congressional investigations have concluded that the attack was an accident. False. (See www.ussliberty.org/thebiglie.htm.)

The librarian of Congress reported on July 26, 2006, that there has never been a congressional investigation. Liberty survivors offer $10,000 cash to anyone who can prove that there has been. Neither Cristol nor anyone else has applied for that award. (See www.ussliberty.org/challenge.htm.)

Cristol blames the Liberty Veterans Association for causing survivors distress. On the contrary, the association and its camaraderie have been our greatest comfort. Since the Cristol apologia last Sunday, I have heard from several angry shipmates who are still traumatized by the deaths of their shipmates. Now, many are having sleepless nights and other post-traumatic stress disorder effects renewed specifically by the denials and false statements in Cristol's article.

Cristol always seems perplexed that we crew members take the attack on our ship personally and can't understand why we won't accept that it might have been an accident. The explanation is simple. Cristol's Navy "career" was that of a weekend warrior reserve lawyer. He never served in combat or anywhere near combat. He has never been shot at. Those of us who suffered through an hour long, well-coordinated, combined arms (air/ship) attack against our ship, seeing our shipmates killed and wounded, know the difference between an accident and a deliberate attack. Cristol obviously does not. To have our eyewitness accounts dismissed by someone who wasn't there and knows nothing about what happened only worsens the trauma we still experience.

The false accounts of our opponents illustrate once again why we survivors have sought for 40 years to have a full, complete, open investigation where we can testify under oath. Catch us in a lie and we go to jail. We are prepared to take that risk. Our opponents fear giving us that opportunity. Our story is true. Cristol's is not.

James Ennes, a retired Navy officer, is author of "Assault on the Liberty."

The Right of Return of the Jewish People

The Right of Return of the Jewish People

By Bradley Burston

Last update - 15:57 24/07/2007

To my Palestinian friends, on the anniversary of the Nakba of the Jews:

Let us take this opportunity to talk about the Right of Return. Yours and also ours.

It is only fitting that it was this week - the week of the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av, the anniversary of the expulsions of Jews from the Holy Land into exile - that Israel's Education Ministry announced that it had approved a controversial textbook for Israeli Arab third-graders. The book teaches that some Palestinian Arabs were driven from their homes and became refugees in 1948, and that some Arab villages in the new state of Israel were destroyed during and after the war.

There are many among us Jews who think it obscene, masochistic, defeatist, that on this anniversary of a succession of calamities that befell the Jews, the textbook also notes that Arabs use the word Nakba, or catastrophe, to describe the 1948 war.

They should think again.

It is only right and just that the Jews begin to acknowledge the pain and the dismemberment and the loss which Palestinians feel over the war that gave birth to Israel and in the course of which thousands and thousands of Palestinians lost their homes, some because they fled, hoping soon to return, others because they were forced from them.

Just as we should begin to expect that you, the Palestinians, begin to acknowledge the open wounds of the Jews.

There is no topic which causes our peoples more discomfort. The wounds run so deep, that we tend to see only our own pain, our own people's catastrophe.

When Jews listen to Palestinians describe their loss of home and loss of lives, we too often roll our eyes and dismiss their grief as exaggerated, predicated on myth, tailored to political motives, false.

Our Palestinian friends, meanwhile, have grown inured, even contemptuous of, our agony over the Holocaust and our mourning of the victims of terrorism and war.

It is time, on this, our Nakba Day, to ask you to think again as well.

Three generations after your Nakba, you hold out hope that the rusting keys you treasure will someday hang again in the homes you keep in your hearts.

It may not be reasonable, but it is necessary, to accept that 130 generations after our Nakba at the hands of Babylon, and 100 generations after our Nakba at the hands of Rome, we still hold a key of our own.

Those of you who cannot bring yourselves to acknowledge the pain of the Jews, those of you who console yourselves by deciding that today's Jews are not the descendants of ancient Israel, those of you who take comfort in rejecting the notion that Jews have valid claims to this land, should know this:

This is our home. Exactly as it is yours. Your Noble Sanctuary is our Har-Habayit, the Mountain of our Home, the very center of Judaism for 3,000 years. It is that very compound that is our home, not that vestige below it, that souvenir, that Wailing Wall, that mere retaining buttress, that you watch us visit as you stand above us.

Our home is that home, and you are occupying it. You are occupying the most sacred ground we have.

Secular, religious, exiled to six continents, we have carried the rusted key to that Home wherever we have gone. If you can't see it, it's because we carry it in our bones, our memory, our hearts, the darkness in our souls.

Belittle this at your peril. Deny this to your detriment. This is what you need to know about the Right of Return, ours as well as yours, and about holy men, ours as well as yours:

There is no knowable justice in this world. Not for you, and not for us. Keep the right of return where it belongs. It is a part of you. But it is not a part of this world.

Our right of return is no more realizable than yours. It is a right to nothing more than memory. Our right of return is the legacy of a Home which no longer exists in a kindom which no longer exists, yours the legacy of a home which no longer exists in a village which no longer exists.

This one God of ours does not offer the Jews and the Palestinians justice. This one God of offers our two peoples life, if we choose to find a way to swallow our right to return to all that was once ours, and act, for once, as adults.

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An academic boycott of Israel?

An academic boycott of Israel?
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Jul. 23, 2007 22:02 | Updated Jul. 24, 2007 15:08

The British Medical Journal has launched an on-line poll of readers around the world - doctors, researchers, journalists - as well as nonreader members of the general public on whether they favor an academic boycott of Israel that has advocated by several UK unions.

Arguments against an academic boycott of Israel are voiced by Prof. Michael Baum, a professor emeritus of surgery at University College London, a self-declared secular Jewish Zionist and a renowned expert on breast cancer who frequently visits Israel.

Baum argues that

"Israeli universities and research institutes are no more agents of Israel than Oxford or Cambridge are of the United Kingdom. And they are not responsible for repression of Palestinians in the occupied territories - a policy which is universally unpopular. Furthermore, it is nonsense to suggest that you can target the institution without damaging the individual."

He dismisses "the big lie that Israel is an apartheid state," describing the country as a multicultural mosaic with Jews, Muslims, Christians and other faiths, with a fifth of the citizenry Israeli Arabs who are free to vote and express their views and whose religious institutions are respected.

Baum notes that he worked as a young surgeon in the early '60s in a hospital in northern Israel "that served Arab villages, kibbutzim, new immigrant townships and ancient communities of Arabs and Jews in Nazareth, Afula and Tiberias. A fifth of the doctors and nurses were Arabs, trained at the expense of the Israeli government. Arab and Jewish patients were treated with the same respect in adjacent beds. This is still true in all Israeli hospitals... I would go even further and state that Israel provides more academic freedom for Arab scholars than anywhere else in the Middle East."

Baum concluded that he believes "passionately that we can all do our bit for peace by building bridges between British, Israeli and Palestinian academics and physicians. Through this collaboration and dialogue the health and welfare of all will improve, leading to increasing mutual respect and trust; sowing seeds for a peaceful solution ahead of any road map.

"However, if you still support the boycott, remember to stop using laptops with Pentium processors, and do not transfer files using USB hub drives, both of which are the fruits of Israeli academic inventions."

The pro-boycott view is voiced by Dr. Tom Hickey of the University of Brighton's arts and architecture faculty. He is chairman of the University and Colleges Union, which voted to favor a boycott. Hickey argues that a boycott might encourage the Israeli government to reach a settlement with the Palestinians. He cites the occupation of the territories, demolition of homes "as collective punishments," the separation of farmers from their land and discrimination against Palestinians in the supply of water, along with - he charges - "harassment, and humiliation at checkpoints, visa and travel restrictions and enormous problems of infrastructural decay and underfunding."

Hickey claims "there is strong evidence of the complicity of Israeli academic institutions. No Israeli college or university has publicly condemned what is being done in the occupied territories in the name of every Israeli citizen. Some Israeli educational institutions have established campuses for settlers on illegally confiscated land; others conduct archaeological digs on land from which Palestinian farmers have been expelled."

"We are accused of unfairly singling out Israel - the Jewish state - and hence of being anti-Semites. We are asked why we do not propose a boycott of other states whose policies are barbaric and inhuman, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Zimbabwe. But whether a boycott is appropriate in such places depends on the merits of each individual case. In the case of Israel, we are speaking about a society whose dominant self-image is one of a bastion of civilization in a sea of medieval reaction. And we are speaking of a culture, both in Israel and in the long history of the Jewish Diaspora, in which education and scholarship are held in high regard. That is why an academic boycott might have a desirable political effect in Israel, an effect that might not be expected elsewhere," Hickey continued.

The president of the Israel Heart Society, Prof. Basil Lewis, has written to the president of the British Medical Association (BMA, which publishes the British Medical Journal), Prof. Parveen Kumar, protesting against the poll on the proposed academic boycott of Israel. He says it was "disappointing to see the poll posted on the BMJ Web site, which essentially implies that it is something BMA seriously considers. We would further like to stress our outrage at the main reason stated on the poll for a possible 'no' vote, i.e. the fact that some Israeli academicians cooperate with Palestinians."

"Is this the reason for not supporting an academic boycott rather than the simple concept of universal academic freedom? [It is] a pity that the BMA and BMJ would risk credibility regarding scientific truth in favor of politics," Lewis writes..

Anyone can access the poll and anonymously participate.

Participants are also invited to type in the reasons for their choice.

Hezbollah leader suggests Israel may be behind attacks on U.N. peacekeepers

Hezbollah leader suggests Israel may be behind attacks on U.N. peacekeepers

The Associated Press

Published: July 24, 2007

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Militant Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah suggested Tuesday that Israel may be behind two recent bomb attacks that targeted United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

Six peacekeepers belonging to the Spanish contingent were killed on June 24 when a bomb struck their armored personnel carrier in the country's south, marking the first such attack against the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.

On July 16, a roadside bomb struck a U.N. jeep in the village of Qassimiyeh near the southern port city of Tyre, causing damage to the vehicle but no casualties.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. But in a videotape earlier this month, al-Qaida's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri blessed the attack against the Spanish contingent, fuelling speculation that it was carried out by al-Qaida-linked militants.

In an interview Tuesday on the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television, Nasrallah said that while it was possible that al-Qaida or other extremist groups were behind the attacks, Israel could also be the culprit.

"Why not Israel?" Nasrallah said, adding that "Israel has an interest in attacking UNIFIL with the aim of transforming the force into a multinational force under Chapter 7."

He was referring to a section of the U.N. Charter that empowers a U.N. force to suppress threats to international peace and security — reflecting what could be his perception that Israel hopes to see U.N. troops actively moving against Hezbollah guerrillas in the future.

• He also suggested Israel may want UNIFIL out of Lebanon, in case of another Israel-Hezbollah war.

"It will be very embarrassing for the Israelis, especially if they are thinking in the next war to launch a large-scale land invasion (of south Lebanon), to have UNIFIL troops there," Nasrallah said.

He said Hezbollah, which promptly condemned both bombings, was "concerned" by the attacks which were "worrying."

In the first part of the interview, broadcast Monday, Nasrallah claimed his group has rockets that can reach any corner of Israeli territory. The interviews marked a year since the monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.

After Monday's segment, celebratory gunshots and fireworks erupted in Beirut's southern Shiite Muslim and pro-Hezbollah suburbs.

Last summer's war began on July 12, 2006 after Hezbollah fighters crossed into Israel, killing three soldiers and seizing two. Israel then invaded southern Lebanon and pounded the country with massive bombardments that destroyed most roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

More than 1,000 Lebanese — mostly civilians — were killed in the monthlong fighting, while 158 Israelis died, including 119 soldiers.

Nasrallah has refused to say whether the two seized Israeli soldiers were alive or dead.

Nasrallah also reiterated claims that Lebanon's Western-backed government of Fuad Saniora colluded with Israel and the U.S. to launch the war against Hezbollah.

Saniora's government has been locked in a bitter power struggle with the opposition, led by the Syria and Iran backed Hezbollah. Saniora has rejected the opposition's demand for a veto power in a new national unity government.

Nasrallah claims the United States opposes such a government for Lebanon.

"The Americans consider that forming a national unity government in Lebanon is a gain for Iran and Syria at a time when they are in big trouble in Iraq," he said. "This is not true."

12.Conclusion II

12.CONCLUSION II

We hope that this look at the historical record concerning the root cause of the Middle East conflict will give second thoughts to all who have previously supported Israel's actions.

The persecution of the Jews for centuries in Europe was the worst of many stains on the European record, and the Zionists' desire for a place of sanctuary is certainly understandable. Like all other colonial enterprises, however, Zionism was based on the total disregard of the rights of indigenous inhabitants. As such, it is morally ndefensible. And, as previously stated, all subsequent crimes—and there have been many on both sides—inevitably follow from this original injustice to the Palestinians.

Given the damage that has been done to the Palestinian people, Israel's obligation is to make whatever amends possible. Among these should be assisting the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in the entire West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel should not object to this state and, in addition, should help with its foundation via generous reparations. Besides being the right thing to do, this would stop the sporadic acts of violence against Israel, as the Palestinians' legitimate desire for their own state would be realized. Moreover, all laws that discriminate against non-Jews living in Israel should be repealed. All citizens should enjoy full and equal rights, as should any Palestinians who wish to return to their ancestral homeland. These refugees should, as a matter of principle, be compensated for their lost homes and land.

As U.S. citizens, we have a special obligation to see that justice is done in this matter. U.S. financial aid to Israel has been, and continues to be, enormous; and our diplomatic support is the crucial factor allowing Israel's continued occupation of Arab territories. We strongly recommend that you contact your elected representatives in Washington and urge them to insist that, as a precondition of continued support, Israel must abide by the consensus of world opinion and withdraw to its 1967 borders, as demanded in numerous UN votes.

American Jews in particular have a special responsibility to acknowledge the Palestinian point of view in order to help move the debate forward. As Chomsky writes in his Peace in the Middle East?,

"In the American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice, whatever one may think of the competing claims. Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even begin."

In the long run, only by admitting their culpability and making amends can Israelis live with their neighbors in peace. Only then can the centuries-old Jewish tradition of being a people of high moral character be restored. And only in this way can real security, peace and justice come to this ancient land.

Thank you for taking the time to read "The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict"

11.Conclusion I For Jewish Readers

11. CONCLUSION I For Jewish Readers

As we have seen, the root cause of the Palestine-Israel conflict is clear. During the 1948 war, 750,000 Palestinians fled in terror or were actively expelled from their ancestral homeland and turned into refugees. The state of Israel then refused to allow them to return and either destroyed their villages entirely or expropriated their land, orchards, houses, businesses and personal possessions for the use of the Jewish population. This was the birth of the state of Israel.

We know it is hard to accept emotionally, but in this case the Jewish people are in the wrong. We took most of Palestine by force from the Arabs and blamed the victims for resisting their dispossession. If you run into someone's car, for whatever reason, simple justice demands that you repair it. Our moral obligation to the Palestinian people is no less clear. It is time for all Jewish people of good conscience to make whatever amends are possible to the Palestinians in order to live up to the best part of the Jewish tradition—its ethical and moral basis.

Any criticism of Israel is traditionally seen by American Jews as harmful to the Jewish people, even if the criticism is true. But "my people, right or wrong, my people" is no different than "my country, right or wrong, my country". Once we start down the slippery slope where the ends justify the means we have left behind any claim to morality. Along with millions of other American Jews unaffiliated with the major U.S. Jewish organizations, we are outraged at the Israeli government's ongoing oppression of the Palestinians and feel that it has been the ruination of the high moral standing of the Jewish people.

The Israeli government could solve the Palestine/Israel crisis tomorrow. It actually would be in the best interests of its citizens to do so because random acts of terrorism against Israelis would cease if Palestinian demands for a viable, independent state were accepted and compensation for Arab losses made.

Here in America, we Jews are thoroughly assimilated into the mainstream of society and hold positions of power and influence in every field of endeavour. We do not need to be in a defensive mood any more. We can afford to change out attitude from "is it good the the Jews?" to "Is it good?" At the very least, American Jews need to categorically state that we cannot condone Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and the intentional murder and crippling of Palestinian protestors armed only with rocks, as documented in reports by the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israeli groups like B'Tselem, etc.

According to a survey commissioned by the five largest American Jewish organizations, but suppressed by them afterwards, 20% of American Jews support Palestinian demands and 35% say that Jerusalem should be shared. This, in the face of a near-total blackout of the Palestinian position in our press, is very impressive. Join this growing segment of American Jews by contacting Not In My Name, at www.nimn.org, a group that is spearheading a coalition of Jewish groups to protest the Israeli occupation.

Israel's long-term interests can best be served by supporting Israeli peace groups, like Gush Shalom (www.gush.shalom.org), not the Israeli government and its brutal repression, which just leads to endless violence. Israeli peace groups rightfully criticize their government and we should too, since they claim to act in our name. American groups like the Jewish Peace Lobby, Jewish Voice For Peace and the Middle East Children's Alliance also deserve your support. Don't compromise yout ethics in blind support of bad politics—work for a just soultion instead.

Please write for more free copies of this booklet to the address on the back page and ask your Jewish friends to consider the information presented here. For everyone's sake. Peace.

Important Note: at the end of the next section, ConclusionII, there is a list of Jewish organizations in America and Israel, and links to their websites, which are informative and interesting. We encourage to explore them with an open mind.

end of section 11.Conclusion I For Jewish Readers

the final section is 12.Conclusion II

10.Views Of The Future

10.Views Of The Future

A future free of ethnocentrism

"The first challenge, then, is to extract acknowledgement from Israel for what it did to us...But then, I believe, we must also hold out the possibility of some form of coexistence in which a new and better life, free of ethnocentrism and religious intolerance, could be available...If we present our claims about the past as ushering in a form of mutuality and coexistence in the future, a long-term positive echo on the Israeli and Western side will reverberate. "Edward Said in "The Progressive", March 1998

The answer? A sovereign Palestinian state.

"The final destination of a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement has begun to emerge from the political haze. Such a settlement must...give the Palestinian people a sovereign, uncontested, independent state of their own. This is a matter of justice and practicality. If a truly lasting and stable peace is the goal, there is no other option...The mere trappings of statehood will not suffice. The state has to be real and workable. The following are its essential conditions.

Territorial integrity and contiguity...Any further dissection of Palestinian territory would make it politically and economically impossible to maintain a state...There can be no civilian pockets under Israeli rule on Palestinian land...

A sovereign capital in Jerusalem. East Jerusalem is Palestine's historical, spiritual and commercial heart. To exclude it from a Palestinian state is unthinkable...

"Justice and fairness for refugees...As a matter of principle, the Palestinians right to return or be compensated for their lost homes and land is nonnegotiable...Israel must acknowledge the suffering and hardship Palestinian refugees have faced as a result of their eviction from their homeland, and must assist in their rehabilitation and reabsorption." A.S. Khalidi, Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, February 11, 1997.

Palestinian refugees claim to repatriation is realistic, as well as just

Palestinian engineer and parliamentarian Salman Abu Sitta...(showed) that 'the return of the refugees is possible with no appreciable dislocation of Jewish residents.' This is because '78 percent of the Jewish population of Israel lives on only 15 percent of the land'...

"Ironically, the land in the upper Galilee from which a very large percentage of the refugees were driven is so lightly populated because most of the immigrants [that] settled there refused to remain so far from the centers of Israeli urban life in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem...Of those actually cultivating those former Palestinian fields, many are non-Jewish Thais, Rumanians and others slated to return to their countries at the end of their contracts." Richard Curtiss from June 2000 issue of "Washington Report On Middle East Affairs."

Israeli professor calls for a new Zionism

"It was our nationalism...which drew the country into an occupation and settlement of the West Bank...None of the leaders of the Labor movement believed that the Palestinians deserved the same right [as Jews] because none of them believed in universal rights. Pretending, like [Arthur] Hertzberg and others do, that the Occupation and the colonial situation created in the last thirty years was merely the product of the Arab refusal to recognize Israel, is no more than looking for an alibi and falsifying history...

"The time has come to say that if the settlements in Judea and Samaria or in the very heart of Hebron are the natural, logical and legitimate continuation of the original intention of Zionism, then we need another Zionism. If a 'Jewish State' that does not recognize the absolute equality of all human beings is considered to be closer to the spirit of the founding fathers than a new liberal Zionism, then it is time to say good-bye to the ghosts of the founders, and to start forging for ourselves an identity detached from the mystical ramifications of our religion and the irrational side of our history." Israeli professor of political science, Ze'ev Sternhell, in "Tikkun", May/June 1998.

Sources for further research on Palestine and Israel

These short quotes do not, of course, prove the assertions made here. The historical evidence, however, is overwhelming and is available in fully documented form in the books cited. Particularly useful sources are:

1. "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice" by John Quigley, professor of law at Ohio State University. Duke University Press, 1990.
2. "The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians" by Noam Chomsky, professor at MIT and "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (NY Times). South End Press, 1983.
3. "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel" by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. An honest history of Zionism by a noted Israeli scholar who teaches at Haifa University. Olive Branch Press, 1993.
4. "Bitter Harvest" by Sami Hadawi. A very complete look at the documentary evidence of the creation of the state of Israel, by a Palestinian Christian who lived through that period. Caravan Books 1979.

For articles from the alternative and Israeli press, please see ZNet at www.lbbs.orgwww.commondreams.org/viewsarchive.htm. and

A wealth of information on Palestine/Israel is to be found at www.geocities.com:0080/CapitolHill/Senate/7891.

Another very useful resource is the Jewish Voice for Peace. To join their mailing list, e-mail shlensky@socrates.Berkeley.edu.

Also, the American Educational Trust, publisher of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (a great magazine) has a large selection of books available. Write for their free catalog to:
AET, PO Box 53062
Washington, DC 20009.

Our booklet can also be found on the web at www.cactus48.com

end of section 10.Views Of The Future
next section is 11.Conclusion I For Jewish Readers