Iraq after Saddam

10. Reflecting back on more than six years of a disastrous occupation of Iraq we can now safely say that what has been achieved is diametrically opposed to the original hypothesis of the wars ideological promoters. The principle myth underlying the illegal 2003 invasion lies now in ruins. It has proved to be America's greatest foreign policy failure ever, effecting the whole of the ME and undermining prospects for political change for decades to come. What replaced Saddam is a corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state, far worse than before the invasion. The largest winners were the Islamist Shiite parties which are now dominating the scene and could well in coming years align themselves to Teheran. The present Iraqi "government" is guilty of the same - if not worse - human rights violations than what the previous regime - allegedly - had been accused of.

collective punishment

9. Israel to-day has one of the most despicable regimes in the world, masquarading behind a facade of being democratic. Israel is a purely Jewish state and only Jews (with a few exceptions) can apply for citizenship. The ultra conservative Likud party is even considering compulsary circumcision rituals for Ethiopian Jews applying for citizenship. How democratic is that ?

The Israel occupation of the West Bank is one of the most brutal and cruel occupations of our times. Armed Jewish settlers, illegally colonizing the occupied territories have been terrorizing the local Palestinina population for decades, supported by the IDF, meeting out collective punishments by blowing up Palestinian houses and bulldozing them down into to the ground; uprooting Palestinian olive groves and thus depriving the local Arab population from their livelyhood; long queues at roadblocks even preventing people urgent medical care including pregnant women; constant harrassments by armed settler thugs; indiscriminate shooting and killings of innocent people even children and closing schools. These brutalities have been going on for the last sixty years. Anyone wanting more information on this I strongly recommend reading Philip C. Winslow "Victory to us is to see you suffer" . Winslow of UNWRA worked for three years in the West Bank and Gazastrip.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED WEBSITE

< www.palestineremembered.com >

About double standards

8. America claims - as it does - to stand or Freedom and Justice in the world and devoted to "liberating the oppressed in occupied countries". The big question that springs to mind is why then does it not liberate the Palestinian people in the by Israeli for the last forty years occupied West Bank ? It would take the American military probably five minutes to chase the armed Jewish settlers out. That would earn Obama the noblest of Noble Prizes. Or can olive oil not compete with Iraqi oil ?

SWASTIKA ANTICS

7. Contributed by T.T. from Christchurch.
The irony about the swastika controversy is that when history about the present day is written, the Star of David flag is being displayed alongside it. The sixty years harassment, persecution and displacement of the Palestinians will earn Israel a place in infamy alongside
Nazi Germany. Both have persued ruthless policies, justified - to themselves at least - by their exclusivity, one using the title Master Race, the other The Chosen People. After the Gaza massacre most people in the world finally realised there is not much to choose between them.

PIPEDREAMS

6. Obama's "two state" solution (Press 20/05/09) has all the hallmarks of a PR stunt. It will prove to be a pipedream. Over the last sixty years and longer, there have been numerous proposals for partition by both sides. To-day there are some 121 settlements in the occupied West Bank - illegal under international law (Art 49 Geneva Convention) - housing some 470,000 Jews. This Jewish expansionist policy has always been backed and supported by Natanyahu. Obama talks about halting further expansion of settlements, but not a word about the removal of these illegal settlements, the removal of eight meter high concrete walls and a return to the pre-1967 situation in accordance with U.N. Resolution 242. It's unrealistic and foolish to think that the Jewish squatters of Palestinian land are going to withdraw peacefully. It's too late for a two state solution now and mark my words Obama is not going to change that. !

Jewish origins

5. Zionists base their questionable rights to expel Palestinians from their ancestral land on the Old Testament. (See Numbers 33:50-56). Modern research has shown these claims to be quite untenable. The majority of Israelis currently living in Israel are of East European origin. They are in fact not Semites, but Khazars, Mongols and Huns. Hence most Israelis to-day do not have ancestors who ever lived in Palestine, nullifying all claims, biblical or Zionist, to any traditional, ancestral or religious ownership of the land. Recent DNA testing of both native Palestinian Jews and Arabs indicate that many have common ancestry, leading to speculation that both groups were in fact Canaanites, who later split in Jews and Arabs. Many of these Jews converted to Islam round 630 ad. The Jewish Israeli historian Tom Sagev reviewing the book :"When and How Was the Jewish People Invented ?" by Shlomo Zand (or Sand) from TelAviv University in the Jewish newspaper Ha'retz wrote: "There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened, hence there was no return" (of the Jewish diaspora).
Thanks to P.C. for this information

Obama's peace efforts

4. By trying to bolster Mahoud Abas, the Obama adminstration is repeating the same mistakes it made before with Arafat at the time, because the Palestinian people are supporting Hamas
- their democratically elected representatives - en mass. A so called "sovereign" Palestinian state is a mere pipedream. Such a completely landlocked enclave existing in the shadows of a military giant can and will never be an acceptable option for the Palestinians. It could never be a genuinely sovereign state by any stretch of the imagination.
The only viable solution to the ME crisis is for the Jews to abandon their (undemocratic) "one religion state" and to proclaim a UNITARY state embracing both Jews and the indigenous Palestinian/Arabs, now living in refugee camps, in accordance with UN resolution 194 sub 11 as indeed was envisaged during the Mandate years by the British during the nineteen thirties and forties. Both Ernest Bevin and Churchill already predicted that a solely Jewish state would be disastrous for the region as it would entail a permanent state of war between the Zionist and their Arab neighbors. History has shown how right they had been.

Below follows the original letter of 06/06/09 as it was submitted to the editor.

3. CORE ISSUES
Your editorial (Press 06/06/09) regarding Obama's efforts to come to terms with the Islamic world fails to address essential core issues, that hopefully may ensure an enduring peace in the ME. The key to any just and lasting settlement between Israelis and Palestinians still remains implementation of various UN resolutions and in particular the Palestinians legal Right of Return to their homeland, guaranteed to them by UN Resolution 194 and also clearly unambiguously guaranteed by international law under the Geneva Convention, yet consistently violated by Israel. They rightly will continue to confront an official Israeli policy of anti-repatriation and the Zionist denial of the NAKBA (The Catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arab population during 1947/48 by the new immigrant Jews. For a better understanding of the ME problems I strongly recommend reading "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Ilan Pappa, historian and senior lecturer political sciences at Haifa University, Israel."

2 FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

On the 4the August 209 I filed a complaint against the Christchurch Press with the NZ Press Council on the grounds of the editor withholding information from letters published in the letter pages. Art. 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) sub 2 states"

"Everyone should have the right of freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally,
in writing or in print , in the form of art or through any other media of his choice."

The complaint was not upheld by the New Zealand Press Council on the grounds that "freedom of expression" relates only to the relation between a "citizen and his Government". So: Freedom of Expression is a LIMITED right; there ARE FRONTIERS !


I do fully recognise the editor's right to reject, abridge or edit letters for linguistic, spelling, style and other literary error, which surely is what "editing" is about.

However, deliberately and consistently removing essential background references to books and other literature and sources of information from letters could not simply be explained by just "editing". It amounts to CENSORSHIP which I feel impinges on a person's right to freely express himself and impart information to the general public.

I regard "freedom of expression" and freely imparting information via the media as an integral and inalienable part of the democratic process.
The traditional corporate news media should NOT control and hold a monopoly in what readers may or may not hear. To-day we have an increasingly well informed educated core of people deriving their information from a broad spectrum of sources. Information disseminated to the general public via our mainstream local and national media is only "the tip of the iceberg" so to speak which in addition is also very often politically one-sided orientated. Hence members of the public commenting and contributing to the "letters of the editor" pages are providing a democratically healthy "counterweight", which should not be adversely interfered with in such a profoundly undemocratic manner.

1 INTRODUCTION

This blogsite is the result of a personal very disappointing experience with our local newspaper The Christchurch Press. For many years I have contributed to the letter pages of The Press, mainly on the Middle East conflict. However the editors consistently removed all relevant references to sources of information from my letters. Also numerous efforts I made by referring to this blogsite were deleted from letters. So the question remains is this editing or is this censorship ?
You may have noticed that reports, information and letters to the editor relating to Israel, unlike Iraq at the time, are extremely scarce an sketchy, such in spite of the fact that events in the Middle East with its huge oil reserves and an ever increasing threat of escalating into a far more serious war with Iran, is also of paramount importance to our own very way of life and standard of living.
I am sure there must have been scores of letters to the editor that have been withheld from publication. When the editor was asked about this, the answer was: "We are currently not debating Israel".
We have watched on TV and read something about the Israeli onslaught on GAZA and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land and although all very sketchy and biased reporting the public is supposed to form an opinion, without having any notion about the historical events that have lead up to one of the most shocking humanitarian disasters of our times. This complete absence of background information does manifest itself in the very shallowness of the very few debates on the conflict in our daily newspapers.
It is with this in mind and the refusal of the news media to inform the public adequately and responsibly that I had decided to launch this blogsite in the hope to give some open minded people a little insight into the history of the creation of Israel, one of the most suppressed stories by our western, pro-Israel news media.
This blogsite does not purport to cover everything that has happened over the last sixty/seventy years in that part of the world. That would surely be a quite impossible task. But I do hope that it might encourage some readers to do their own research. Our city libraries have some excellent literature on the subject. However in time I will add and revise where necessary and refer to books, websites and other material when it comes to hand. I would also be very grateful for corrections, information and other comments from readers if they wish to contribute and improve the quality of the information.
News concerning the Middle East and in particular relating to the Israel/Palestinian question is largely dominated and tainted by the hugely financially powerful American Zionist lobby AIPAC(American Israel and Jewish Affair Committee) and in our part of the world the AIJAC (Australian/Israel and Jewish Affair Council). These Zionist lobby groups constantly exert intense pressure on Governments and our news media, amongst others Fairfax to which the New Zealand news media are affiliated and have great influence on the appointments of board of directors and the subsequent selection of editors. The Australian Jew Antoni Loewenstein in his book "My Israel Question" has gone to great length exposing these behind the scene activities of these organisations. The eminent British historian the late George Antonius warned us already many years before Loewenstein that: (quote)

"Zionist propaganda is active, well organised and widespread at any rate in the democracies of the West, is largely amenable to it, it commands many of the channels for the dissemination of news, and more particular those in the English speaking world"
Antonius continues: "Arab propaganda is, in comparison, primitive and infinitely less successful: Arabs have little of the skill, polyglottic ubiquity or financial resources which make Jewish propaganda so effective. The result is, that fore a score of years or so, the world has been looking at the Palestine mainly through Zionist spectacles and has unconsciously acquired the habit of reasoning on Zionist premises."