OPEN LETTER TO: AL-JAZEERA, BBC, CNN, PRESS TV AND DEMOCRACY NOW
OPEN LETTER TO: AL-JAZEERA, BBC, CNN,
PRESS TV AND DEMOCRACY NOW
By: Angie Tibbs, Canada
Hello,
I have just watched a most amazing video entitled “Gaza in Plain Language”,
a collaboration between Anthony Lawson and Joseph Mowrey.
This is a critical must see presentation for anyone who is unaware of what really happened
in Gaza during the Israeli 26 Day bombardment of the Gaza strip in Dec. 2009, and it is
equally important for those of us who are only too well aware, to make sure we will
never forget.
The death and destruction brought to bear on the people of Gaza by Israeli forces
during this time frame was horrific.
Mr. Lawson and Mr. Mowrey have combined their energies to produce an excellent,
hugely informative, and heartbreakingly honest piece of work that needs to be seen
by everyone.
I hope (no, I beg) that you will air this video so that your viewers can see for themselves
what the people of Gaza have endured. We cannot hide this atrocity as if it never were.
I wish to thank Mr. Lawson and Mr. Mowrey for this most important presentation.
Their dedication to spreading the truth about the horrors of Gaza is appreciated and
applauded.
Please take this outstanding production and present it to your viewers, Al Jazeera,
BBC, CNN, Press TV and Democracy NOW.
Sincerely,
Angie Tibbs
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I hope you will reserve nine minutes and 41 seconds of your time to look at this video.
Gaza in Plain Language
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFK5TNcmEmg
The article “Gaza in Plain Language”, by Joe Mowrey, was first published by Dissident Voice (http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/gaza- in-plain-language/).
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Gaza in Plain Language
By Joe Mowrey
I hope you will reserve nine minutes and 41 seconds of your time to look at this video.
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFK5TNcmEmg
It really is time that the story of what is being done to the oppressed people of Gaza gets as wide a coverage as possible,
in these days of overt and blatant mainstream-media bias for Zionist Israel.
If it arouses your anger and compassion as much as it did mine, when reading Joe Mowrey’s fine essay and editing the video, please share it with as many people as you can.
The article “Gaza in Plain Language”, by Joe Mowrey, first published by Dissident Voice (http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/gaza- in-plain-language/), was brought to my attention by Robert H. Stiver, and I immediately agreed to do a video treatment of it. Joe and I shared the research effort, and we would like to thank all of those whose video and photographic work is included in this chilling tale of a fledgling nation gone mad. We have used this material in good faith; as fair comment; for no personal gain and in the interests of truth and justice.
We have not been able to contact and thank every contributor, personally, but we do so now. Without your efforts, which were so much more harrowing than ours, because you saw the slaughter, the devastation and the grief first hand, this video would not have been possible. We dedicate this video to the people of Gaza, and to all of those decent people who are trying to help them.
Although some people will attempt to characterised it as such, what I have read and the pictures put to Joe Mowrey’s words do not amount to anti-Semitism. If it needs an “ism”, call it anti-Nasty-Peopleism. Which is an ism that decent people, the world over, should adopt and develop, because if we don’t, the nasty people will always win.
Many thanks to Kim Peterson, Joshua Frank and Sunil K. Sharma of Dissident Voice, where one will always find unflinching commentary in support of human rights and social justice. Also thanks to the Coalition for Prisoners’ Rights (CPR), in Santa Fe, New Mexico (http://www.realcostofprisons.org/coalit ion.html). The seed for “Gaza in Plain Language,” as well as other articles by Joe Mowrey, was originally planted in the form of a brief commentary called, “Crime of the Month” in the monthly CPR newsletter.
Source links for the statistics relayed in this presentation are available on request from Joe Mowrey, jmowrey@ix.netcom.com. Or better yet, do your own research. You will discover documentation for many more horrors concerning the fate of the children of Gaza than have been elucidated in this video.
-Anthony Lawson
Anthony Lawson
Anthony Lawson (known professionally as Tony Lawson) is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad agency creative director and voice over. He used to be known for shooting humorous commercials, but doesn’t find much to laugh about, with the way the world is going, these days.
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CHRISTMAS BOMBING TIED TO MOSSAD/CIA PLOY FOR MORE TERROR FUNDING
Underwear Bomber Redux – Was Mutallab An Israeli “Secret Weapon”?
By way of deception… thou shalt control key airports
By Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley For OpEdNews
(editorial note: Veteran Today broke this story initially and thanks Joe Quinn and Naill Bradley for their fine journalism and great investigative work. Gordon Duff for the staff of Veterans Today)
After repeatedly denying that the Christmas Underwear Bomber™ had any help in his misguided attempt to blow up Detroit-bound Flight 253 on Christmas day 2009, or that there was any sign of an accomplice on over 200 hours of Amsterdam airport security tapes, the US government recently, and very quietly, chose to admit that it had been watching Mutallab all along and that it’s now looking for his accomplice at Amsterdam airport.
In one of only a few mainstream news reports on the US government’s reversal, the Detroit News stated:
The State Department didn’t revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counter-terrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.
Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.
“Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one soldier in that effort.”
ABC News also reported:
Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.
Of course, that’s not an admission that Mutallab had an accomplice, but it says a lot following six weeks of repeated denials on the existence of accomplices.
Detroit attorney Kurt Haskell and his wife Lori
If US federal counterterrorism officials, aka the FBI, specifically requested that Mutallab be allowed to fly to Detroit from Amsterdam, it lends a lot more credence to the report by lawyer and eyewitness Kurt Haskell who has repeatedly claimed that Mutallab was escorted to the gate in Amsterdam by a “sharply dressed Indian-looking man”. If we accept Haskell’s statement (and at present there is no reason not to) then a reasonable explanation is that the accomplice was tasked with ensuring that Mutallab got on the plane and was a member of either the US intelligence services or the intelligence services of another US-friendly nation.Haskell himself has presented just such an analysis on his web site.
Haskell himself has presented just such an analysis on his web site.
But what are we to make of the claim by the US State Department that the goal of this little maneuver was to “get closer to apprehending the terror network he [Mutallab] is accused of working with”?
Surely if US intelligence was aware that Mutallab was a terrorist threat they would have at least taken the precaution of making very sure that the flight onto which he was to be escorted was not a target of the “terror network”? Surely a thorough rub down, or a strip-search would not have been out of the question for such a threat to US national security?
Take your pick; either US intelligence is so incompetent that they did not first check if this known terrorist was carrying a bomb onto the plane, or they staged the entire operation themselves in order to keep the Islamic terrorism bandwagon rolling.
One of the most interesting things about the Christmas day underwear bombing fiasco is that it played out on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. If Mutallab had no passport and was escorted to the gate by a “sharply-dressed man”, then it is unlikely that he went through normal security checks at the airport. We have no doubt that an agent of the US government could quite easily bypass security at any airport, but we also believe it would be difficult to prevent this fact from leaking out to the press, particularly from officials and security personnel working at Amsterdam Schiphol airport.
To enable a person to bypass all airport security would require a very particular presence at the airport in question, something akin to a little self-contained “kingdom”.
Recently, Joe exchanged a few emails with a Dutch reporter who has extensive experience of the internal workings of Amsterdam airport. He told me:
Israel [...] needs US-weapons – and spare-parts. Most of this stuff is since many years brought to Israel by cargo planes (Hercules, B-747) that used Schiphol (Amsterdam) as the needed half-way-stop. Officially they were civil planes, but they were treated as state – (military) planes. There is legally a big difference in status.
Because this weaponry was in many cases of a very sophisticated and for that reason classified kind, it needed protection on the way from the US to Israel. The Dutch authorities therefore agreed upon the fact that Israel was given a special secluded area (hangar and apron) that would be guarded by Israeli personnel.
These guardians were not of El Al (Israeli national airline). They were members of Shin Bet, the Mossad-branch that looks after civil safety. For the young people that manned it, it was a way of performing their conscription duties.
Members of Shin Bet did not only guard military airplanes. They also provide for safety of passenger-planes. I do not know whether it is the same at other airfields, but at Schiphol everyone could see them at work at the gates of El Al planes.
In fact the young girl who flew as a passenger with the Israeli cargo-plane that crashed in Amsterdam (Anat Solomon) had done a tour as a Shin Bet safety-officer at Schiphol and flew home for her wedding.
El Al cargo plane crash Amsterdam
After the crash members of the Shin Bet-group at Schiphol were speedily brought to the crash-site, to see if they could gather some of the classified stuff that was on board the crashed plane. Officially this was in contradiction with Dutch laws about the treatment of crash-sites, but it was agreed to by a secret agreement between the Dutch and Israeli government – as a logical consequence of the fact that only Israelis would know what sort of classified weaponry was onboard.
Facts about the existence of an ‘Israeli part of Schiphol’ were officially given by the Parliamentary Enquiry Commission; they were given in interrogation reports (of El Al and Shin Bet personnel) by the police, they were given by Mr. Jeroen Pelttenberg, El Al’s station-manager at Schiphol, and by some other people that were in some way or another confronted with the situation.
These guardians were not of El Al (Israeli national airline). They were members of Shin Bet, the Mossad-branch that looks after civil safety. For the young people that manned it, it was a way of performing their conscription duties.
Members of Shin Bet did not only guard military airplanes. They also provide for safety of passenger-planes. I do not know whether it is the same at other airfields, but at Schiphol everyone could see them at work at the gates of El Al planes.
The El Al cargo crash into an apartment block in the Bijlmer suburb of Amsterdam in 1992 gives us an idea of the “sophisticated weaponry” and “spare parts” the Mossad was (still is) siphoning from the US arsenal through its transport hub at Amsterdam airport. Israelis arrived at the scene of the crash to retrieve incriminating evidence (the dead and injured residents of Bijlmer be damned). Over 1,000 local residents and emergency workers had developed respiratory, neurological and mobility ailments, as well as a rise in cancer and birth defects, by the time an investigation by Dutch journalists in 1998 brought the cargo’s true manifest to light:
Almost six years after the event, on 30 September 1998, editors Harm van den Berg and Karel Knip of the Dutch paper NRC Handelsblad published the results of an extensive investigation they had carried out into the crash. They had obtained the freight documentation for the flight, and made public for the first time its real cargo. The manifest confirmed the plane was carrying 400 kilograms of depleted uranium as ballast, but also showed that it carried among its cargo about 10 tons of assorted chemicals. The chemicals included ten 18.9-litre plastic drums of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), and smaller amounts of isopropanol and hydrogen fluoride: three of the four chemical precursors for the production of Sarin nerve gas.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office immediately denied that Flight 1862 had been carrying Sarin precursors. When this was contradicted hours later by an El Al spokesman, the Prime Minister’s office acknowledged that the chemicals were onboard but stated that “the material was non-toxic and was to have been used to test filters that protect against chemical weapons”. An explanation that Earth Island Journal found “puzzling”, since “it only takes a few grams to conduct such tests. Once combined, the chemicals aboard Flight 1862 could have produced 270 kilos of sarin – sufficient to kill the entire population of a major world city.”
On January 29, 1999, Dutch attorney general Vrakking testified at official hearings that the El Al security detachment at Schiphol was a branch of the Mossad. It also emerged that El Al planes are never inspected by Dutch customs or the Dutch Flight Safety Board at Amsterdam Schiphol.
Journalists say Dutch security officials have told them that the Netherlands has allowed Israel to make secret military air shipments through Schiphol since the 1950s. Former Dutch Defense minister Henk Vredeling, in an interview with Dutch TV NOS – and apparently caught unawares of the legal implications of admitting complicity in a war crime – proudly recounted secret weapons transports to Israel during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. These shipments apparently lie outside the Atlantic Alliance military treaties because the aircraft going to Israel are not refueled at NATO air bases but at the commercial airport of Schiphol.
The Mossad “state within a state” at the airport has taken full advantage of this loophole. “Schiphol has become a hub for secret weapons transfers because El Al has special status there. Dutch authorities have no jurisdiction over Israeli activities at the airport,” said Henk van der Belt, a member of an investigation team set up by Bijlmer residents.
One of the investigators working on behalf of the Bijlmermeer survivors said that Schiphol had become, and continues to be, “a hub for Israeli secret weapons transfers”. The question we need to answer is; was Mutallab also an Israeli secret weapon in the promotion of the war on terror?
Given the Mossad’s free reign over its little “kingdom” within Amsterdam Schiphol, coupled with the fact that Israeli security firm ICTS is in charge of the regular security operation there, it’s worth reflecting upon a couple of other incidents in recent years. Before the Underwear Bomber came the Shoe Bomber:
Six months prior to Reid’s near shoe bombing of American Airlines flight 63 from Paris to Miami in December 2001, while memories of 9/11 were still fresh in everyone’s mind, Reid attempted to board an El Al flight from Schiphol to Tel Aviv.
Reid was taken aside by El Al security and identified as a terrorist suspect. Reid paid for a one-way ticket with cash and would not reveal what he planned to do in Israel.
However, rather than turning Reid into Dutch security for further action, he was allowed to board the El Al flight by Israel’s Shin Bet security so his movements during his five days in Israel could be monitored.
Six months later, Reid attempted to ignite his shoe on the flight from Paris to Miami. Israel had not informed British, American, or any other security agency of the concerns about Reid. Reid’s aunt, Claudette Lewis who raised Reid in south London, was quoted as saying she believed her nephew had been “brainwashed.”
Reid later said El Al failed to detect that he had explosives in his shoes on the flight to Tel Aviv, an amazing revelation considering the Israeli airline’s tight security.
The links between El Al security and Mossad are extremely close with abundant cross-pollination of senior personnel back and forth.
The security company that allowed Reid to board American Airlines 63 at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris was ICTS (International Consultants on Targeted Security) International. ICTS’s senior management are all ex-Israeli security officials, many of whom for El Al security.
It was ICTS that largely developed the passenger “profiling” procedures used at Schiphol and other airports around the world through its subsidiary, ICTS Holland Products BV.
Bear in mind that ICTS also shared security duties on 9/11 at Boston’s Logan Airport and handled security for London’s bus system. This Israeli security firm, effectively a front for the Mossad, has therefore had its personnel on the ground to oversee arguably the four most notorious “al-Qaeda terrorist attacks” against American and British targets.
According to former Mossad spy Victor Ostrovsky, the Mossad organization is relatively small. But the ethos it embodies – rule over others by way of deception – runs deep through its front companies that link ramified networks comprising some of the ‘best’ (most noxiously evil) psychopaths globally.
In 2006 a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai was escorted back to Schiphol by Dutch fighter planes after the crew became suspicious of some passengers’ behavior. Granted that in the hysterical post-9/11 climate you only need to wear a beard and whisper Allah to warrant suspicions, but 12 people were nevertheless arrested before the Dutch government announced it was a false alarm. A trial run for future scenarios involving Northwest Airlines perhaps?
Last February a Turkish Airlines Boeing crashed upon landing at Schiphol. Another incident that smacks of spy vs spy games, four of the nine passengers killed were US “Boeing employees” returning from Turkey after pitching a “sophisticated airborne radar station” – to be installed in a Turkish airforce Boeing 737 – to the Turkish military brass on behalf of the Pentagon.
Zombie Nation
Amsterdam Schiphol has had the DNA-tearing ‘naked’ scanners in operation since 2007. Although that’s irrelevant in Mutallab’s case because he was escorted around normal security procedure, the incident was used to promote these machines en-masse, a plan we are told was on the backburner until now because of ‘fears for people’s privacy.’
Completely overlooked is the brazen conflict of interest exemplified by former head of the Department of Homeland Security and dual US-Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, who ran around giving dozens of media interviews touting the need for the US government to buy more full-body scanners. He stands to net a tidy profit through his security consultancy firm Chertoff Group, which along with other notable former Senators and TSA officials make up the “full-body scanner lobby” that represents the manufacturers cashing in on the sale of these insidious dehumanization devices.
Along with the psychopaths in the US government, racist hard-liners in Israel believe the survival of the state of Israel lies solely in its military strength and that this strength arises from the need to answer the constant threat of war.
Of course, fighting a real and well-equipped enemy is very risky. After all, you might lose. The next best thing is to create the enemy yourself and play both sides against the middle, as they say. Unfortunately it is the masses of ordinary people that find themselves in the middle of the deranged games that psychopaths play.
Source: Veterans Today
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Christmas Day Crotch Bomber Tied to Israel, FBI
By: Jeff Gates
“Agent Butler paid rent and cashed checks for the two hijackers while they were being advised by Al-Awlaki. What did Butler want to know? Was Ghazal funding Mel Rockefeller with whom he had traveled to Iraq in 1997. While in Baghdad they confirmed that Saddam Hussein had mothballed his WMD program after the 1991 Gulf War and that he was prepared to negotiate his departure—without this war. The FBI has yet to speak with Mel Rockefeller.”
Umar Abdulmutallab & Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki - THE "PATSY" AND THE "ASSET
The Christmas Day “terrorist” is the latest in a series of staged incidents meant to make The Clash of Civilizations appear plausible and “the war on terrorism” rational.
The storyline does not hold together. Not even a little bit. As usual, the source of this media-fueled fear campaign traces directly to Tel Aviv—with a supporting role by the FBI.
How did a young Nigerian Muslim without a passport “slip through” security at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport? Not only did his itinerary feature an illogical travel route, he paid cash for a high-priced last-minute ticket and boarded without checked baggage. How?
ICTS International, the security screening company at Schiphol, was founded by former members of Shin Bet, Israel’s civil security agency, and Israeli executives in charge of El Al security. ICTS had already proven its expertise in mounting this type of operation.
In December 2001, Richard “The Shoe Bomber” Reid “slipped through” ICTS security at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Huntleigh USA, an ICTS subsidiary, shared responsibility for security at Logan International Airport in Boston where hijackers for two of the four 911 jets “slipped through” airport security. It gets better.
The Crotch Bomber told U.S. authorities that radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki counseled him on the incident. Born and raised in New Mexico, Al-Awlaki moved to Yemen in 2004 after advising the two 911 hijackers who trained in San Diego. He also advised U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan who is charged with shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009.
It’s not yet clear whether FBI agents were monitoring the Nigerian while he too was advised by Al-Awlaki. If not, that would be an anomaly in a repetitive pattern of FBI complicity.
FBI agents not only monitored Major Hasan and Al-Awlaki before the Fort Hood shootings, they also monitored the San Diego hijackers while they were advised by Al-Awlaki. It gets better.
Though the Nigerian was foiled while trying to ignite 80 grams of PETN, an explosive sewn into his underwear, that amount was barely enough to dislodge the arm on his seat – of course that assumes it could have been ignited.
Without a blasting cap, this “terrorist incident” was doomed to failure even before he “slipped through” security. Could this get even better? Oh yeah.
We were told about his father alerting the C.I.A. station chief in Lagos However we were not informed that his father, a banker, oversaw a Nigerian defense firm that hired Israeli Defense Forces personnel to train Nigerians—in security.
Nor were we told that, for decades, Nigeria has been a central hub for Israelis laundering the proceeds of their transnational organized crime. That’s not all.
The Iraq War Connection
Four days after 911, San Diego special agent Steven Butler came to the San Diego home of Iraqi-American Munther Ghazal, the Iraqi closest to Saddam Hussein then living in the U.S.
That’s the same day Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz proposed in a principal’s meeting at Camp David that the U.S. should invade Iraq. Iraq?!
Agent Butler paid rent and cashed checks for the two San Diego hijackers while they were being advised by Al-Awlaki. What did Butler want to know? Was Ghazal funding Mel Rockefeller with whom he had traveled to Iraq in 1997.
While in Baghdad, they confirmed that Saddam Hussein had mothballed Iraq’s WMD program after the 1991 Gulf War—and was prepared to negotiate his departure without this war. That was four years before 911. The FBI has yet to interview Mel Rockefeller.
Meanwhile, the usual suspects are once again profiting off the misery of both sides in a “Clash” that they played a key role in creating. It was Jewish Zionist Bernard Lewis who first coined the term, The Clash of Civilizations.
Only later was Harvard professor Samuel Huntington branded with that premise when his book by that name was published in 1996, five years before 911.
Israeli-American Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security (aka the rabbi’s son), now promotes firms that manufacturer highly intrusive body scanners that are terrific for spotting crotch bombers unless, of course, an Israeli firm is in charge of security.
News reports suggest that the stock of body-scanning firms soared $3 billion in value after this latest “terrorist” incident. Imagine the glee among clients of the Chertoff Group.
Meanwhile the U.S. has been transformed from the wealthiest nation to the world’s largest debtor. Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz projects a $3 trillion tab for a war based on fixed, flawed and outright fabricated intelligence—every cent of it borrowed, including $700 billion in interest.
Tel Aviv: The Common Source of Terror
That’s not all. Controlling shares in ICTS are held by Menachem Atzmon, board chairman since 2004. While treasurer of Israel’s long-dominant Likud Party, Atzmon was convicted of campaign finance fraud. His co-treasurer, Ehud Olmert, resigned as Prime Minister in 2008 after being acquitted of fraud amid multiple corruption charges.
Did I forget to mention that ICTS was also handling security for London’s bus system when the U.K. was targeted for its terrorist attack? Did I neglect to note that six months prior to the Shoe Bomber’s flight on American Airlines, Richard Reid was stopped at Schiphol while boarding an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. Shin Bet allowed him to board so he could be monitored in Israel.
Did the Israelis inform their loyal ally about Richard Reid? What do you think?
Remember the October 1983 truck bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut that left 241 Americans dead? A former Mossad case officer conceded they had a description of the truck. Did our ally tell us? What do you think?
Our withdrawal from Lebanon left the field open to those who specialize in displacing facts with what targeted populations (including our own) can be deceived to believe.
Recall our belief in Iraqi WMD? Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda? Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories? Iraqi yellowcake uranium from Niger? Iraqi meetings in Prague? All were false. All were traceable to Tel Aviv. Are you still having trouble connecting the dots?
As the U.S. sinks into bankruptcy, we are ridiculed abroad for failing to acknowledge the obvious: Americans have long been the target of a fraud operated by Israelis, pro-Israelis and those supportive of their goals for the region.
What better way to wage war on the U.S. than from within? How else can Israel expand except by duping its super power ally to wage wars for Greater Israel? Never mind the cost in blood and treasure. As an ally, the U.S. is easily portrayed as guilty by association.
Those promoting the Crotch Bomber scare are part of the problem. In the Information Age, this latest false flag operation is typical of how treason proceeds in plain sight yet, to date, with impunity. Those media outlets marketing this latest lie are an enemy within.
Jeff Gates
Jeff Gates: A widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates’ latest book is Guilt By Association—How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008). His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. For two decades, an adviser to policy-makers worldwide. Counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980-87)
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International Criminal Court complaint filed against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice and Gonzales
Bush to The Hague ?
Request for international arrest warrants
6 February 2010
A leading US professor of law has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court prosecutor against former US President George W. Bush and a number of his senior lieutenants alleging crimes against humanity for their policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” and requesting that the ICC prosecutor obtain international arrest warrants against Mr Bush and his co-accused.
Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, USA, has filed a complaint with the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague against US citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales (the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings.
“Extraordinary rendition” is a euphemism for the enforced disappearance of persons and their consequent torture. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitutes crimes against humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the ICC.
The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless, the Accused have ordered and been responsible for the commission of actions considered as crimes under the ICC statute within the respective territories of many ICC member states, including several in Europe. Consequently, the ICC has jurisdiction to prosecute the Accused for their ICC statutory crimes under Rome Statute Article 12(2)(a) that affords the ICC jurisdiction to prosecute for ICC statutory crimes committed in ICC member states.
The complaint requests:
- That the ICC prosecutor open an investigation of the Accused on his own accord under Rome Statute article 15(1); and
- That the ICC Prosecutor also formally “submit to the [ICC] Pre-Trial Chamber a request for authorization of an investigation” of the Accused under Rome Statute Article 15(3).
For similar reasons, the highest level officials of the Obama administration risk the filing of a follow-up complaint with the ICC if they do not immediately terminate the Accused’s criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition, which the Obama administration has continued to implement.
The complaint concludes with a request that the ICC prosecutor obtain international arrest warrants for the Accused from the ICC in accordance with Rome Statute articles 58(1)(a), 58(1)(b)(i), 58(1)(b)(ii), and 58(1)(b)(iii).
Please contact the ICC prosecutor by letter, fax or email – contact details below – to demonstrate your support for this complaint.
The Honourable Luis Moreno-Ocampo
Office of the Prosecutor
International Criminal Court
Post Office Box 19519
2500 CM, The Hague
The Netherlands
Fax No.: 31-70-515-8555
Email: OTP.InformationDesk@icc-cpi.int
A copy of the submission to the ICC prosecutor is below and is also available here.
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Bush to The Hague
International Criminal Court complaint filed against
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice and Gonzales
Request for international arrest warrants
19 January 2010
Dear Sir,
Please accept my personal compliments. I have the honour hereby to file with you and the International Criminal Court this Complaint against US citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales (hereinafter referred to as the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition.” This term is really a euphemism for the enforced disappearances of persons, their torture, severe deprivation of their liberty, their violent sexual abuse and other inhumane acts perpetrated upon these Victims. The Accused have inflicted this criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” upon about one hundred (100) human beings, almost all of whom are Muslims/Arabs/Asians and people of colour. I doubt very seriously that
the Accused would have inflicted these criminal practices upon 100 white Judaeo- Christian men.
The Accusedʼs criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” are both “widespread” and “systematic” within the meaning of Rome Statute Article 7(1).
Therefore the Accused have committed numerous “Crimes against Humanity” in flagrant and repeated and longstanding violation of Rome Statute articles 5(1)(b), 7 (1)(a), 7(1)(e), 7(1)(f), 7(1)(g), 7(1)(h), 7(1)(i), and 7(1)(k).
Furthermore, the Accusedʼs Rome Statute Crimes Against Humanity of enforced disappearances of persons constitutes ongoing criminal activity that continues even as of today.
The United States is not a contracting party to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless, the Accused ordered and were responsible for the commission of these ICC statutory crimes on, in, and over the respective territories of several ICC member states, including many located in Europe. Therefore, the ICC has jurisdiction over the Accused for their ICC statutory crimes in accordance with Rome Statute Article 12 (2)(a), which provides as follows:
1. Article 12
Preconditions to the Exercise of Jurisdiction
…
2. In the case of Article 13, paragraph (a) or (c), the Court may exercise its
jurisdiction if one or more of the following States are Parties to this Statute or have accepted the jurisdiction of the Court in accordance with paragraph 3:
(a) The State on the territory of which the conduct in question occurred…
So, the fact that United States is not a contracting party to the Rome Statute is no bar to the ICCʼs prosecution of the Accused because they have ordered and been responsible for the commission of Rome Statute Crimes against Humanity on, in, and over the respective territories of several ICC member states.
Consequently, I hereby respectfully request that the Court exercise its jurisdiction over the Accused for these Crimes against Humanity in accordance with Rome Statute Article 13(c), which provides as follows:
Article 13
Exercise of Jurisdiction
The Court may exercise its jurisdiction with respect to a crime referred to in Article 5 in accordance with the provisions of this Statute if:
…
(c) The Prosecutor has initiated an investigation in respect of such a crime in
accordance with Article 15.
Pursuant to Rome Statute Article 13(c), I hereby respectfully request that you
initiate an investigation proprio motu against the Accused in accordance with Rome Statute Article 15(1): “The Prosecutor may initiate investigations proprio motu on the basis of information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.” My detailed Complaint against the Accused constitutes the sufficient “information” required by Article 15(1).
(2) Furthermore, I respectfully submit that this Complaint by itself constitutes “a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation” under Rome Statute Article 15
(3). Hence, I also respectfully request that you formally “submit to the Pre-Trial
Chamber a request for authorization of an investigation” of the Accused under
Rome Statute Article 15(3) at this time. Please inform me at your earliest
convenience about the status and disposition of my two requests set forth
immediately above.
Based upon your extensive human rights work in Argentina, you know full well from direct personal experience the terrors and the horrors of enforced disappearances of persons and their consequent torture. According to reputable news media sources here in the United States, about 100 human beings have been subjected to enforced disappearances and subsequent torture by the Accused. We still have no accounting for these Victims. In other words, many of these Victims of enforced disappearances and torture by the Accused could still be alive today. Their very lives are at stake right now as we communicate. You could very well save some of their lives by publicly stating that you are opening an investigation of my Complaint.
As for those Victims of enforced disappearances by the Accused who have died,
your opening an investigation of my Complaint is the only means by which we might be able to obtain some explanation and accounting for their whereabouts and the location of their remains in order to communicate this critical information to their next-of-kin and loved-ones. Based upon your extensive experience combating enforced disappearances of persons and their consequent torture in Argentina, you know full well how important that objective is. The next-of-kin, loved-ones, and friends of “disappeared” human beings can never benefit from psychological “closure” unless and until there is an accounting for the fates, if not the remains, of the Victims. In part that is precisely why the Accusedʼs enforced disappearances of about 100 human beings constitutes ongoing criminal activity that continues as of today and will continue until the fates of all their Victims have been officially determined by you opening an investigation into my Complaint.
Let us mutually suppose that during the so-called “dirty war” in Argentina the
International Criminal Court had been in existence. I submit that as an Argentinean human rights lawyer you would have moved heaven and earth and done everything in your power to get the ICC and its Prosecutor to assume jurisdiction over the Argentine Junta in order to terminate and prosecute their enforced disappearances and torture of your fellow Argentinean citizens. I would have done the same.
Unfortunately, the ICC did not exist during those darkest of days for the Argentine Republic when we could have so acted. But today as the ICC Prosecutor, you have both the opportunity and the legal power to do something to rectify this mass and total human rights annihilation, and to resolve and to terminate and to prosecute the
- “widespread” and “systematic” policy and practice of enforced disappearances and consequent torture of about 100 human beings by the Accused. Unfortunately, the new Obama administration in the United States has made it perfectly clear by means of public statements by President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder that they are not going to open any criminal investigation of any of the Accused for these aforementioned Crimes against Humanity. Hence an ICC “case” against the Accused is “admissible” under Rome Statute article 1(complementarity) and article 17. As of right now you and the ICC Judges are the only people in the entire world who can bring some degree of Justice, Closure and Healing into this dire, tragic, and deplorable situation for the lives and well-being of about one hundred “disappeared” and tortured human beings as well as for their loved-ones and next-of-kin, who are also Victims of the Accusedʼs Crimes against Humanity. On behalf of them all, as a fellow human rights lawyer I implore you to
open an investigation into my Complaint and to issue a public statement to that effect.
Also, most regretfully, the new Obama administration has publicly stated that it will continue the Accusedʼs policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition,” which is really their euphemism for enforced disappearances of human beings and consequent torture by other States. Hence the Highest Level Officials of the Obama administration fully intend to commit their own Crimes against Humanity under the ICC Rome Statute – unless you stop them!
Your opening an investigation of my Complaint will undoubtedly deter the Obama administration from engaging in any more “extraordinary renditions” – enforced disappearances of human beings and having them tortured by other States. Indeed your opening of an investigation into my Complaint might encourage the Obama administration to terminate its criminal “extraordinary rendition” program immediately and thoroughly by means of issuing a public statement to that effect.
In other words, your opening an investigation of my Complaint could very well save the lives of a large number of additional human beings who otherwise will be subjected by the Obama administration to the Rome Statute Crimes against
Humanity of enforced disappearances of persons and their consequent torture by
other States, inter alia.
The lives and well-being of countless human beings are now at risk, hanging in the balance, waiting for you to act promptly, effectively, and immediately to save them from becoming Victims of Rome Statute Crimes against Humanity perpetrated by the Highest Level Officials of the Obama administration as successors-in-law to the Accused by opening an investigation of my Complaint. Otherwise, I shall be forced to file with you and the ICC a follow-up Complaint against the Highest Level
(4) Officials of the Obama administration. I certainly hope it will not come to that. Please make it so.
Finally, for reasons more fully explained in the Conclusion to my Complaint, I
respectfully request that you obtain ICC arrest warrants for the Accused in
accordance with Rome Statute articles 58(1)(a), article 58(1)(b)(i), article 58(1)(b) (ii), and article 58(1)(b)(iii). The sooner, the better for all humankind.
I respectfully request that you schedule a meeting with me at our earliest mutual
convenience in order to discuss this Complaint. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
This transmission letter is an integral part of my Complaint against the Accused and is hereby incorporated by reference into the attached Complaint dated as of today as well.
Please accept, Sir, the assurance of my highest consideration.
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
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Blair: Gaza’s great betrayer
It’s more than a year since Israel launched its immoral attack on Gaza and Palestinians are still living on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. So what has Tony Blair done to further peace in the region? Virtually nothing, argues the historian Avi Shlaim
Tony Blair in June 2009 speaking at a press conference in Gaza calling for a quick reconstruction. Photograph: Hatem Moussa/AP
The savage attack Israel unleashed against Gaza on 27 December 2008 was both immoral and unjustified. Immoral in the use of force against civilians for political purposes. Unjustified because Israel had a political alternative to the use of force. The home-made Qassam rockets fired by Hamas militants from Gaza on Israeli towns were only the excuse, not the reason for Operation Cast Lead. In June 2008, Egypt had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. Contrary to Israeli propaganda, this was a success: the average number of rockets fired monthly from Gaza dropped from 179 to three. Yet on 4 November Israel violated the ceasefire by launching a raid into Gaza, killing six Hamas fighters. When Hamas retaliated, Israel seized the renewed rocket attacks as the excuse for launching its insane offensive. If all Israel wanted was to protect its citizens from Qassam rockets, it only needed to observe the ceasefire.
While the war failed in its primary aim of regime change in Gaza, it left behind a trail of death, devastation, destruction and indescribable human suffering. Israel lost 13 people, three in so-called friendly fire. The Palestinian death toll was 1,387, including 773 civilians (115 women and 300 children), and more than 5,300 people were injured. The entire population of 1.5 million was left traumatised. Across the Gaza Strip, 3,530 homes were completely destroyed, 2,850 severely damaged and 11,000 suffered structural damage.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, tending to the needs of four million Palestinian refugees, stated that Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age”; its inhabitants reduced to building homes from mud after the fierce 22-day offensive.
War crimes were committed and possibly even crimes against humanity, documented in horrific detail in Judge Richard Goldstone’s report for the UN human rights council. The report condemned both Israel and Hamas, but reserved its strongest criticism for Israel, accusing it of deliberately targeting and terrorising civilians in Gaza. The British government did not take part in the vote on the report, sending a signal to the hawks in Israel that they can continue to disregard the laws of war. Gordon Brown’s 2007 appointment as a patron of the Jewish National Fund UK presumably played a part in the adoption of this pusillanimous position.
One year on, the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas on earth, continues to teeter on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, in force since June 2007, restricts the flow not only of arms but also food, fuel and medical supplies to well below the minimum necessary for normal, everyday life. Reconstruction work has hardly begun because of the Israeli ban on bringing in cement and other building materials to Gaza. Thousands of families still live in the ruins of their former homes. Hospitals, health facilities, schools, government buildings and mosques cannot be rebuilt. Nor can the basic infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City’s sewage disposal plant. Today, 80% of Gaza’s population remain dependent on food aid, 43% are unemployed, and 70% live on less than $1 a day.
Meanwhile, the so-called peace process cannot be revived because Israel refuses to freeze settlement expansion on the West Bank. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently agreed to a temporary freeze of 10 months, but this does not apply to the 3,000 pre-approved housing units to be built on the West Bank or to any part of Greater Jerusalem. It’s like two men negotiating the division of a pizza while one continues to gobble it up.
Politically, the disjunction between words and deeds persists. Appeals to the Israeli government to lift or relax the blockade of Gaza were not backed up by effective pressure or the threat of sanctions. In fact, the only effective pressure was applied by the US on the Egyptian government – to seal its border with Gaza. Egypt has its own reason for complying: Hamas is ideologically allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic opposition to the Egyptian regime. The tunnels under the border separating Egypt from the Gaza Strip bring food and material relief to the people under siege. Yet, under US supervision and with the help of US army engineers, Egypt is building an 18-metre-deep underground steel wall to disrupt the tunnels and tighten the blockade.
The wall of shame, as Egyptians call it, will complete the transformation of Gaza into an open-air prison. It is the cruellest example of the concerted Israeli-Egyptian-US policy to isolate and prevent Hamas from leading the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Hamas is habitually dismissed by its enemies as a purely terrorist organisation. Yet no one can deny that it won a fair and free election in the West Bank as well as Gaza in January 2006. Moreover, once Hamas gained power through the ballot box, its leaders adopted a more pragmatic stand towards Israel than that enshrined in its charter, repeatedly expressing its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire. But there was no one to talk to on the Israeli side.
Israel adamantly refused to recognise the Hamas-led government. The US and the European Union followed, resorting to economic sanctions in a vain attempt to turn the people against their elected leaders. This cannot possibly bring security or stability because it is based on the denial of the most elementary human rights of the people of Gaza and the collective political rights of the Palestinian people. Through its special relationship with the US and its staunch support for Israel, the British government is implicated in this shameful policy.
At present the British public is preoccupied with Tony Blair and the war in Iraq. What is often overlooked is that this was only one aspect of a disastrous British policy towards the Middle East, inaugurated by Blair, and which shows no sign of changing under his successor.
One of Blair’s arguments used to justify the Iraq war was that it would help bring justice to the long-suffering Palestinians. In his House of Commons speech on 18 March 2003, he promised that action against Iraq would form part of a broader engagement with the problems of the Middle East. He even declared that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was as important to Middle East peace as removing Saddam Hussein from power.
Yet by focusing international attention on Iraq, the war further marginalised the Palestinian question. To be fair, Blair persuaded the Quartet (a group consisting of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia) to issue the Roadmap in 2003, which called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But President George Bush was not genuinely committed and only adopted it under pressure from his allies. Ariel Sharon, Israel’s hard-line prime minister at the time, wrecked the plan by continuing to expand Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Could Blair really not have realised that for Bush the special relationship that counted was the one with Israel? Every time Bush had to choose between Blair and Sharon, he chose Sharon.
Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 was not a contribution to the Roadmap but an attempt to unilaterally redraw the borders of Greater Israel and part of a plan to entrench the occupation there. Yet in return for the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon extracted from the US a written agreement to Israel’s retention of the major settlement blocs on the West Bank. Bush’s support amounted to an abrupt reversal of US policy since 1967, which regarded the settlements as illegal and as an obstacle to peace. Blair publicly endorsed the pact, probably to preserve a united Anglo-American front at any price. It was the most egregious British betrayal of the Palestinians since the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
In July 2006, at the height of the savage Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, Blair opposed a security council resolution for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire: he wanted to give Israel an opportunity to destroy Hezbollah, the radical Shi’ite religious-political movement. One year later, in June 2007, he resigned from office. That day he was appointed the Quartet’s special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. His main sponsor was Bush and his blatant partisanship on behalf of Israel was probably considered a qualification. His appointment coincided with the collapse of the Palestinian national unity government, the reassertion of Fatah rule in the West Bank and the violent seizure of power by Hamas in Gaza.
Blair’s main tasks were to mobilise international assistance for the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, to promote good governance and the rule of law in the Palestinian territories, and to further Palestinian economic development. His broader mission, was “to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap”.
On taking up his appointment, Blair said that: “The absolute priority is to try to give effect to what is now the consensus across the international community – that the only way of bringing stability and peace to the Middle East is a two-state solution.” His appointment was received with great satisfaction by the Israelis and with utter dismay by the Arabs.
In his two and a half years as special envoy, Blair has achieved remarkably little. True, Blair helped persuade the Israelis to reduce the number of West Bank checkpoints from 630 to 590; he helped to create employment opportunities; and he may have contributed to a slight improvement in living standards in Palestine. But the Americans remained fixated on security rather than on economic development, and their policy remains skewed in favour of Israel. Barack Obama made a promising start as president by insisting on a complete settlement freeze on the West Bank, but was compelled to back down, dashing many of our high hopes.
One reason for Blair’s disappointing results is that he wears too many hats and cannot, as he promised, be “someone who is on the ground spending 24/7 on the issue”. Another reason is his “West Bank first” attitude – continuing the western policy of bolstering Fatah and propping up the ailing Palestinian Authority against Hamas. His lack of commitment to Gaza is all too evident. During the Gaza war, he did not call for a ceasefire. He has one standard for Israel and one for its victims. His attitude to Gaza is to wait for change rather than risk incurring the displeasure of his American and Israeli friends. As envoy, Blair has been inside Gaza only twice; once to visit a UN school just beyond the border and once to Gaza City. His project for sanitation in northern Gaza was never completed because he could not persuade the Israelis to allow in the last small load of pipes needed. A growing group of western politicians has publicly acknowledged the necessity of talking to Hamas if meaningful progress is to be achieved; Blair is not one of their number.
Blair has totally failed to fulfil the official role of the envoy “to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap”, largely for reasons beyond his control. The most important of these is Israel’s determination to perpetuate the isolation and the de-development of Gaza and deny the Palestinian people a small piece of land – 22% of Mandate-era Palestine, to be precise – on which to live in freedom and dignity. It is a policy that Baruch Kimmerling, the late Israeli sociologist, named ”politicide” – the denial to the Palestinian people of any independent political existence in Palestine.
Partly, however, Blair’s failure is due to his own personal limitations; his inability to grasp that the fundamental issue in this tragic conflict is not Israeli security but Palestinian national rights, and that concerted and sustained international pressure is required to compel Israel to recognise these rights. The core issue cannot be avoided: there can be no settlement of the conflict without an end to the Israeli occupation. There is international consensus for a two-state solution, but Israel rejects it and Blair has been unable or unwilling to use the Quartet to enforce it.
Blair’s failure to stand up for Palestinian independence is precisely what endears him to the Israeli establishment. In February of last year, while the Palestinians in Gaza were still mourning their dead, Blair received the Dan David prize from Tel Aviv University as the “laureate for the present time dimension in the field of leadership”. The citation praised him for his ”exceptional intelligence and foresight, and demonstrated moral courage and leadership”. The prize is worth $1m. I may be cynical, but I cannot help viewing this prize as absurd, given Blair’s silent complicity in Israel’s continuing crimes against the Palestinian people.
Professor Avi Shlaim
Avi Shlaim is professor of international relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and the author of Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (Verso, 2009). His fee for this article has been donated to Medical Aid for Palestine
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Please, Mr. President, Stop Talking Nonsense
by:Alan Hart
At a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida on 28 January, President Obama explained what in his view had to happen if there is to be a two-state solution which would see Israel and the Palestinians living side by side in peace and security. He said, “Both sides are going to have to make concessions”.
My own view is that Israel’s still on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank has destroyed the prospect of a two-state solution on any basis the Palestinians could accept. But for the sake of discussion I’ll pretend that is not necessarily so.
Israel is not required to make concessions. Israel is required to accept and implement UN Security Council resolutions which call for an end to its occupation and, more generally, to cease regarding itself as being above and beyond international law.
The Palestinians made the concession necessary from their side long ago.
There were three related reasons why Yasser Arafat and his mainstream PLO leadership colleagues decided that they had got to compromise with Israel if their people were ever to obtain a minimum but just about acceptable amount of justice.
- The first was the reality of the existence of the nuclear-armed Zionist state – not a legitimate existence (as the true story of its creation proves) but a fact of life
- The second was the knowledge that the Arab regimes were never going to fight Israel to liberate Palestine, and, would collude with Zionism-and-America to prevent the PLO becoming an effective resistance movement in terms of guerrilla activities.
- The third was the realisation that all the major powers of the world were committed to Israel’s existence inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war.
It took the pragmatic Arafat six long years, from 1973 to 1979, to sell the idea of compromise with Israel first to his Fatah leadership colleagues and then to the Palestine National Council (PNC), the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side. And it was a mission that Arafat knew from the start could cost him his credibility with his own people and perhaps even his life. Why? Because he was asking them to accept what most thought was “unthinkable” – recognizing and thus legitimizing Israel’s existence inside its pre-1967 borders in return for only 22% of all the land the Palestinians were claiming.
In fact the full extent of the concessions Arafat persuaded his leadership colleagues to accept and be prepared to make went even further than that. Though they could say so in public until they had something concrete to show for their policy of politics and compromise, they accepted, and Israel was informed, that the Palestinian right of return would have to be limited to the territory of the Palestinian mini-state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem its capital or the whole of Jerusalem an open, undivided city and the capital of two states.
At the end of 1979, shortly after Arafat had persuaded the PNC to endorse his policy of politics and compromise with Israel, I had the first of many meetings with him. His comment on the PNC vote – 296 for his policy and only four against – was this: “How far we have travelled in six years. No more this silly talk of driving the Jews into the sea. (A statement Arafat and his Fatah colleagues never made). Now we are prepared to live side by side with them in a mini-state of our own. It is a miracle.”
It was the miracle of Arafat’s leadership. What he needed thereafter was an Israeli partner for peace. At a point it seemed that Israeli Prime Minister Rabin might be the partner, but he was assassinated by a Zionist zealot. The assassin was not de-ranged. He knew exactly what he was doing. Killing the peace process Arafat’s policy of politics and compromise had set in motion.
There are no more concessions the Palestinians can make for peace. President Obama’s statement that they must is absurd and obscene. Unclear is whether he was speaking out of ignorance of real history or from Zionism’s script.
Alan Hart
Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East. Author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews: The False Messiah (Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews). He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets on www.twitter.com/alanauthor
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Israel: Occupation or Apartheid?
Jamal Dajani
VP of International News, Series Producer of Mosaic News, Link TV
Posted: February 5, 2010 10:01 AM
The dreaded “A-Word” has once again made its way into Israeli media, not by a leftist “self-hating Jew”, but by a prominent Israeli politician, the Minister of Defense, who is a decorated soldier and a former prime minister as well. “A” is for Apartheid.
An awful word that evokes awful memories, presumably left behind in the annals of history in places such as Soweto and Cape Town. A word that has invited rage, insults, and attacks against a former US president who received a Nobel Peace Prize.
This past Tuesday, however, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that if Israel does not achieve a peace deal with the Palestinians, it will have to become a binational state or be an undemocratic apartheid one if it remains as it is.
“The simple truth is, if there is one state” including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, “it will have to be either binational or undemocratic. … if this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state,” Barak said at the Herzliya Conference north of Tel Aviv.
Though rarely used by Israeli leaders in connection to the Palestinians, the term “apartheid” is becoming more common to describe the current reality on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
More than two years ago, on the anniversary of the 1947 UN partition plan that would have divided British mandate Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned of this same scenario. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Ehud Olmert said Israel was “finished” if it forced the Palestinians into a struggle for equal rights.
If the two-state solution collapsed, he said, Israel would “face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished”.
But veteran Israeli journalist David Michaelis believes that a South African-style apartheid system has already emerged due to Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian territories.
“What Ehud Barak intended to do is to send a stark warning that Israel is heading towards a binational situation; however, we are already in a binational situation, and an apartheid system that’s working very well for the Israeli military and government.”
Five years ago David Michaelis and I jointly interviewed Palestinians and Israelis about the prospect of a binational state. Most Palestinians we spoke to then were thinking of independence and most Israelis were thinking of separation. At the time, the Israeli government was frantically building the Separation Wall, and only a handful of Israelis entertained the idea of binational coexistence. One such person we interviewed who predicted what Ehud Barak is currently cautioning of was Meron Benvenisti, a former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem.
Benvenisti has recently published an elaborate article in Ha’aretz chronicling how Israel became a de facto binational regime.
“The attempt to mark the settlements, and the settlers, as the major impediment to peace is a convenient alibi, obfuscating the involvement of the entire Israeli body politic in maintaining and expanding the regime of coercion and discrimination in the occupied territories, and benefiting from it,” he argued.
According to him, the violent events of the (second) intifada brought the Jewish-Israeli public to a crossroads in relation to their neighbors-enemies. Benvenisti argues that Israeli-Jews turned their backs on the Palestinians, erasing them from their consciousness and imprisoning them behind impenetrable walls, and became willing to congregate in a ghetto and pray that the Mediterranean might dry up or a bridge be built to connect them with Europe.
This mentality is manifested in two, recently constructed, architectural monuments whose symbolism transcends their functional value: The gigantic Separation Wall and the colossal Ben Gurion air terminal. The former is meant to hide the Palestinians and erase them from Israeli consciousness and the latter serves as an escape gateway.
David Michaelis concurs and believes that most Israelis prefer to live in denial and avoid the subject of apartheid.
“The peace process is a misnomer, and the word occupation is misleading because it’s really about systematic control.”
How long can Israelis live in this denial and pretend that apartheid-like conditions do not exist?
Well you’ve heard the expression, “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”
OPEN LETTER TO ELTON JOHN
Send your own message to Elton John
Dear Elton John:
Elton John
Like much of the world, we think you’re a good bloke. You came out when it was
difficult; you admitted your addictions were stronger than you were; you’ve
poured money into AIDS research. Oh, and then there’s the music – not bad at all.
But we’re struggling to understand why you’re playing in Israel on June 17. You
may say you’re not a political person, but does an army dropping white
phosphorus on a school building full of children demand a political response?
Does walling a million and a half people up in a ghetto and then pounding that
ghetto to rubble require a political response from us, or a human one?
We think it needs a human response, and we think that by choosing to play in Tel
Aviv you’re denying this. You’re behaving as if playing in Israel is morally
neutral – but how can it be? How can the cruelties Israel practises against the
Palestinians – fundamentally because the Palestinians are there, on Palestinian
land, and Israel wants them to go – be morally neutral?
Okay, you turn up in Ramat Gan, and it gets to that ‘Candle in the Wind’ moment,
and thousands of lighters flicker – but there won’t be any Palestinians from the
Occupied Territories swaying along with the Israelis – the army won’t let them
leave their ghettoes. Please read what Judge Goldstone said about the onslaught
on Gaza; what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been saying
for decades about the crimes committed against the Palestinians. Of course the
Israeli state denies it has a case to answer, though it’s knee-deep in ethnic
cleansing and land-theft and the endless daily suffocating of Palestinian lives and hopes.
Political or not political, when you stand up on that stage in Tel Aviv, you line
yourself up with a racist state. Do you want to give them the satisfaction?
Please don’t go.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Haim Bresheeth
Mike Cushman
Professor Steven Rose
Professor Jonathan Rosenhead
London, February 2010
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Time for an American Intifada?
By: Jeff Gates
ISRAEL PLANS THROUGH DECEPTION
During the 1960 Christmas season, Americans flocked to the theaters to see Exodus, a 3-1/2 hour epic film featuring handsome freedom fighters and a riveting romance amidst the heroic triumph of Jewish Destiny over Arab Evil Doers. Set against a Yuletide backdrop of Biblical prophecy, moviegoers marveled as exiled Jews returned to their fabled promised land, a staple of popular culture to which Americans are first exposed as children in “Sunday school.”
Many moviegoers failed to realize that Exodus was not fact but fiction. Even now, few Americans realize the storyline was adapted for the screen from a 1958 novel by Leon Uris. The biggest bestseller since Gone with the Wind—a novel set during the Civil War of the 1860s—the film adaptation was directed by Hollywood icon Otto Preminger. The blockbuster’s stars included a young Paul Newman with his leading lady a blond Eva Marie Saint.
The cast included character actor Lee J. Cobb and Peter Lawford, married to Pat Kennedy, a sister of John F. Kennedy who was elected president the same year. By then, Lawford was a famous member of pop culture’s high profile “Rat Pack” that included singer Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Joey Bishop. Italian crooner Sal Mineo, then a teen heartthrob, received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of a Jewish émigré.
An Oscar should have been awarded to Israel and its supporters for portraying this extremist enclave as a legitimate nation-state when, in reality, its founding traces to an alluring storyline. Forty-five years after the release of Exodus, American naiveté was again targeted by Jewish storytellers to induce the U.S. to war in the Middle East—only this time for real.
Then as now, Americans are easily swayed by sympathetic portrayals of an enclave granted nation-state recognition by President Harry Truman, a Christian-Zionist. The Missouri Democrat had famously read the Bible cover-to-cover five times by age 15. Truman was a True Believer in the same way that fundamentalist Christians believe—truly believe—that their Messiah will not return until the “Israelites” recover their ancestral home.
Preying on similar beliefs, Republican George W. Bush, another Christian-Zionist president, was induced with phony intelligence to wage war in Iraq. The false intelligence was traceable to Israelis, pro-Israelis or assets developed for that purpose. That invasion had long been a priority goal of those who believe—truly believe—in their right to an expansionist Greater Israel.
Yet as Shlomo Sand chronicles in The Invention of the Jewish People (2009), the historical evidence is scant either for an exile or an “exodus.” As with the movie, the return of a “Jewish People” to a Jewish homeland is “a conscious ideological composition” meant “to claim a higher cultural lineage” than what can be supported by the facts.
In lieu of the novel-writing skills of Leon Uris, the Zionist narrative featured Biblical archeologists such as William F. Albright who, in the 1920s, traveled to the Holy Land to excavate artifacts that would, as Sand puts it: “reaffirm the Old Testament and thereby the New.”
By interpreting his finds in Christian-Zionist terms, Albright and his colleagues not only unearthed Biblical “facts” that shaped the Sunday school curriculum, they also helped pre-stage the perceived legitimacy of a Jewish people returning from exile to a Jewish homeland. As Sand points out, if there was no exodus, how can there be a return? If there is no “Jewish People,” how can there be a homeland?
Yet these widely held beliefs remain the premise underlying Israel’s expansionist agenda and its rationale for heaping six decades of abuse on Palestinians who have lived there for centuries.
Political Expedience or Biblical Prophecy?
White House counsel Clark Clifford cautioned Truman that his reelection was unlikely absent the funding that Jewish-Americans—with Israel’s recognition—were eager to provide. In early May 1948, General George C. Marshall, Truman’s Secretary of State, argued vigorously against recognition. Strong objections were also heard from the diplomatic corps, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Marshall, the top-ranked U.S. military officer in WWII, was outraged that Clifford put domestic political expedience ahead of U.S. foreign policy interests. Marshall told Truman that he would vote against him if he extended sovereign status to an enclave of Zionist terrorists, religious fanatics and what Albert Einstein and Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt called “Jewish fascists.” Marshall insisted that State Department personnel never again speak to Clifford.
In March 1948, a Joint Chiefs paper titled “Force Requirements for Palestine” predicted the “Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the U.S.] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.” Those objectives included an expansionist agenda for Greater Israel that envisioned the taking of Arab land, ensuring armed clashes in which the U.S. was destined to become embroiled.
The Joint Chiefs listed Zionist objectives as:
· Initial Jewish sovereignty over a portion of Palestine,
· Acceptance by the great powers of the right to unlimited immigration,
· The extension of Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine,
· The expansion of “Eretz (Greater) Israel” into Transjordan and portions of Lebanon and Syria, and
· The establishment of Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East.
Akin to the fictional portrayal in Exodus, those Zionists lobbying Truman assured him they would remain within the initial boundaries. We now know that was a lie. They also promised that the Zionist state would not become what it quickly became: a theocratic and racist enclave—albeit widely marketed by pro-Israeli media as the “only democracy in the Middle East.”
To remove all doubt as to the extremist goals of the Zionist project, the Joint Chiefs assessment added ominously:
“All stages of this program are equally sacred to the fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders. The program is openly admitted by some leaders, and has been privately admitted to United States officials by responsible leaders of the presently dominant Jewish group–the Jewish Agency.”
Deceit from the Outset
A beguiling combination of Hollywood fiction, manipulated beliefs and outright lies remain at the core of this entangled alliance and the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship.” The deceit deployed to advance the hegemonic goals of the Zionist project remains obscured by an undisclosed media bias reinforced by a widespread pro-Israeli influence in popular culture. As with the 1960 film, the ongoing manipulation of thought and emotion lies at the core of this duplicity a half-century later.
In The Persuasion Explosion (1985), author Art Stevens reports that Exodus was a public relations ploy launched by Edward Gottlieb who sought a novelist to improve Israel’s image in the U.S. The name Uris originates with Yerushalmi, meaning “man of Jerusalem.” The film rights to Exodus were sold in advance of the book’s publication. Translated into dozens of languages, this masterpiece of mental and emotional manipulation quickly became a global phenomenon as its created favorable impressions of Israel.
The rewards are real for those who offer aid and comfort to this trans-generational deceit. When Truman’s campaign train traversed the nation as part of a 1948 whistle-stop tour, grateful Jewish nationalists refueled his campaign coffers with a reported $400,000 in cash ($3.6 million in 2010 dollars). Those funds helped transform his anticipated loss into a victory with support from pro-Israeli editorial boards that—after recognition—boosted Truman’s sagging popularity.
The Creation of Reliable Assets
Clark Clifford was rewarded with his career goal when he emerged as a top-paid Washington lawyer. After proving himself a pliable personality, he remained a reliable asset. During the G.H.W. Bush presidency, his combination of political prominence and perceived credibility provided cover for a massive bank fraud involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International aided by Roger Altman, his Ashkenazi law partner.
In 2009, Hollywood released an action thriller (The International) starring Clive Owen and a similar storyline involving the International Bank of Business and Credit. Neither Clifford nor Altman had experience in banking when their law firm enabled what prosecutors charged was a global criminal operation.
Media reports described the BCCI scheme as the largest bank fraud in history. This $20 billion transnational operation even featured the requisite Hollywood component: Clifford’s protégé was married to Lynda Carter, the star of Wonder Woman, a 1970s fantasy-adventure television series.
The real fantasy in this long-running geopolitical fraud lies in why U.S. lawmakers continue to befriend and defend a “nation” that has for so long—and so consistently—deceived and betrayed its most loyal ally. As a badly miscast Eva Marie Saint asked in her most memorable line in Exodus: “When will it ever end?”
The greatest wonder will be if, based on facts confirming the depth and duration of this duplicity, those lawmakers urging continued support for Israel are not charged with treason. [See: “How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy”
To restore its national security, the U.S. must shake off its entangled alliance with this extremist enclave. “Shaking off” is the literal translation of “intifada.” Those who know the true facts behind this trans-generational deception are quickly reaching the conclusion that the recognition of this enclave as a legitimate state was key to this ongoing fraud. Others may be waiting for the movie, American Intifada.
Source: Opinion Maker
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Jeff Gates
Jeff Gates: A widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates’ latest book is Guilt By Association—How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008). His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. For two decades, an adviser to policy-makers worldwide. Counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980-87)
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- ***************************Please note one small victory, take the time to support and thank Santana for canceling his concert he had planned in Zionist Israel, the concert had been planned for June.... fanmail@santana.com Could Santana's cancellation create a chain reaction? I hope so! Editor E.F.
Carlos Santana
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Open Letter to Carlos Santana Concerning his Concert in Zionist Israel
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Get your Intifada Widget
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Until now quite a few people have talked about filing complaints against George Bush, Dick Chaney and Condoleezza Rice, et al., for committing War Crimes and also Crime against Humanity, in the International Criminal Court in Hague; but Professor Francis Boyle has actually done it. I have been waiting eagerly to hear this good news for a couple of years now, and I am truly happy and relieved that Professor Boyle has taken this action.
I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to him for showing a great deal of courage. The Iraq War has been an unnecessary, unprovoked, and a most abominable war.
Yesh Prabhu, Plainsboro, NJ
http://asanevoiceforpeaceinthemiddleeast.blogspot.com
Cynthia McKinney: I Finally Made it to Gaza; No Wonder the Israelis Didn’t Want Photos Taken
Cynthia Mckinney
***************The Viva Palestina convoy, led by George Galloway, is about to leave Gaza after having been permitted to enter for a period of 24 hours after waiting 11 days in Cairo for permission to enter Gaza. That in and of itself is a major story when expanded to include the inability of Gazans to exit The Strip--even if only to enter another part of their country, the West Bank or to move about freely in the fictional "Palestinian State."
I say fictional because it continues to dwindle even while peace talks are underway. Fictional, because Palestinian elections deemed by international observers to be free and fair, don't count if the US- and Israel-approved party loses, and the winners get to sit for years in an Israeli jail. Fictional, because they use Israel's currency here, the shekel, and the international roaming on our US cell phones indicates calls are from Israel.
Gaza is beautiful. Gaza is full of life, despite Israel's Operation Cast Lead. And now, I have seen, Gaza has been bombed to smithereens. I think I've mastered my video camera enough to share some images with you. I'll post them on the sites below when I return.
In the meantime, my fellow Americans and citizens of the world, we have a lot to do to put right all the wrong things done in our name. Much love to all of you who helped me, guided me, prayed for me, to make this successful entry into Gaza happen. Viva Palestina!!Free Gaza!!--
Greta Berlin
Everyone said it couldn't be done, that we were insane, that we would never get into Gaza. But we did, and we got in four more times before Israel began to stop us. But we will go again and again. Never underestimate the power of determined people, especially those people working for justice for the Palestinians.
Greta Berlin,
an American human rights activist
and co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement
Palestine, My Bride (Poem by Shakeel Syed)
Dreams … Aspirations,
Love … Laughter,
Tears … Sorrow,
All in you, yet unrealized,
O Palestine, My Bride …
Your Silwan … screams,
Your Gaza … gagged,
Your Hebron … horrified,
Your Ramallah … wrenching,
All in you, yet in tears,
O Palestine, My Bride …
Your green gardens … brown,
Your flowing rivers … dried,
Your mighty mountains … humbled,
Your dreamy deserts … ruined,
All in you, yet you smile,
O Palestine, My Bride …
O Palestine, My Bride …
You measure yourself not in miles … but in
Checkpoints and Roadblocks,
You name your cities & towns - not by name …
but by Walls, Fences & Barriers,
You visit your Villages and Hamlets … but through
Trenches and over Boulders,
All in you – keep smiling and
All of me - keep dreaming
for your Love & Laughter,
for my Tears & Sorrow,
One Day – O Palestine
You Will Be My Bride
end
The Spirit of Humanity: Poem from Prison by Mairead Maguire
Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire
***************For Gaza and the Palestinian People
‘Spirit of humanity'
As long as
The people of Palestine
Have no liberty, no freedom
Those of us with a voice to speak
Must speak
As long as
The children of Gaza
Live in fear of Israeli
Bombs and occupation
Those of us with a voice to speak
Must speak
As long as
Six million Palestinian refugees
Are deportees around the world
Those of us with a voice to speak
Must speak
As long as
Millions of god's children
Are hungry, imprisoned, and without hope
Those of us with a voice to speak
Must speak
Because it is in speaking
We find our liberty, our freedom
And no prison bars can take away
Our peace, our love
Which is the true spirit of humanity
*****************
(for Gaza and the Palestinian people)
Mairead maguire - Nobel Peace Laureate (in Ramle - Israeli prison) 3lst june, 2009
Source: http://www.propheticimagery.com
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