91. Historians make no mention of an expulsion of the inhabitants of Judea after the destruction of the second Temple or after the Bar-Kokhba revolt. There does not exist one single study or book written by any of the world's historians devoted to an alleged 'exile of the Jews' by the Romans, for the simple reason that no such forcible expulsion ever took place. Yet Zionism needed a solid ethnocentric legitimacy in order to justify the pursuit of conquest and expansion of territory and managed to have this 'legimacy' recognized by wide circles of western opinion. For example the conquerors of the Holy City could not appear, even in part,as descendants of Berber horsemen or Khazars. They had to be the heirs of the warriors of the great 'Kingdom of David'. Hence a whole historiographic heritage of the world's most renowned historians was unacceptable to Zionism, had to be ignored and kept hidden from Israel's citizens and students. It was replaced by a 'seculerised' mythhistory of the Old Testament. However it is a bitter irony of history that rather than continuing the lines of pluralistic research into this rich tradition, from the early 1970's the hunt was on in Israeli laboratories of molecular biology, for marks of a DNA common to all 'children of Israel'.
Link to Post 72
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Palestinian State ?
90. Do we see cracks appearing in the western world protecting the Zionist state ? Britain seeking to open diplomatic relations with the Palestinian authority, Latin American countries recognizing a Palestinian state on the West Bank ? Would it not be wonderful to have a genuine sovereign democratic multicultural Palestinian state where Arabs, Christians and Jews can live in peace and harmony together, where a Jew can marry an Arab and vise verse. Could this eventually lead to a unitary state ? Is that where Zionism is afraid of because it would set a great example to the Israeli ONE religion only state. However the Zionist regime in Israel would never allow this to happen. It will no doubt invent new provocations, as they did in Gaza, and continue their belligerence and war against the Palestinian people, thus ensuring ever more American military and economic aid and the western world's Zionist dominated corporate media will invariably comply.
Monday, December 6, 2010
GENETIC RESEARCH
89. I have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the original ancient Palestinian Jews and Arabs belong to the same race. Zionists vehemently deny this fact. During the 1950's they carried out extensive research to prove that Jews are a pure race. At first exhaustive research was done on possible characteristic Jewish fingerprints and as from the 1970's biologists were trying to find a genetic marker common to all Jews. All their findings proved to be inconclusive and unsupported by any scientific findings. Their attempts to justify Zionism through genetics is reminiscent of the work of late 19th century anthropologists and later in Nazi Germany, where attempts were made to 'scientifically' discover specific characteristics of Europeans to prove the existence of the "Master Race". As of to-day nu study based on anonymous DNA samples have succeeded in identifying a genetic marker specific to Jews and it is not likely that any future study will. Is it not somewhat ironical that they are precisely the very descendants of the Holocaust survivors who are engaged in 'research' to find a biological Jewish identity ? Hitler would no doubt be very pleased if Zionists had succeeded. However it is all the more repulsive that this kind of research should be carried out in a state that for many years has followed a policy of "Judaization" of the country, in which even to this day a Jew is not allowed to marry a non-Jew.
THE 70 YEAR 'JEWISH EMPIRE'
88. Only during the empire of David and Solomon, did the Jews ever control some of Palestine. The empire lasted 70 years ending in 926 BC. Some 250 years later the Kingdom of Judah had shrunk to a small province round Jerusalem. Yet the Jews solemnly pretend they still own Palestine. (name derived from Greek 'Philistine').After the great Muslim expansion about 650 AD Arabs as well as a small minority of Jews have lived there for more than 1300 years in complete peace and harmony together. I wonder if the world would have ever seen a stranger sight than a group of people seriously pretending to claim a land because their ancestors happened to live there some 2000 years ago. Remember Palestine is also the birthday of Jesus Christ and Christianity. But would any Christian nation to-day claim it on that account. The Jewish 'religious claim' to Palestine is as absurd as the 'historic claim'. The Holy Places, sacred to the great religions, must be open to all of them.
WHO PERSECUTED THE JEWS ?
87. Incidentally the persecution of the Jews has been almost entirely confined to the Christian nations of Europe, notably Poland, Russia, and of course Nazi Germany. Jews have lived for many centuries in the Middle East in complete peace and harmony with their Arab neighbors. They were always a small minority. When Spain was an Arab possession Jews developed freely and reached unprecedented importance. Syria, Iraq. Lebanon, Iran and other Arab centres have always contained prosperous Jewish colonies and have always received generous treatment (even under Saddam and Iran to-day) far and far better than in Christian Europe. Even after the Zionist creation of the colonial settlers state of Israel in 1948 the overwhelming majority of the Diaspora Jews did not return to 'The Promised Land', simply because they considered themselves nationals of the countries in which they happened to live. An American Jew sees himself as an American, nor an Israeli.
THE COLONIAL SETTLERS STATE
86. There can never be peace with he Islamic world as long as the US supports Israel and allows this country to violate international law and commit crimes against humanity. Indonesia (as far as I am aware and several other countries) has never recognised the State of Israel. The latter is seen by the majority of mankind as a colonial settlers state, same as eg Rhodesia, South Africa, Angola etecetera. It depends economically and military entirely on the United States (the surrogate mother country), where as far as foreign policy is concerned the Zionists lobby is in the drivers seat. Israel has become an increasingly heavy burden on the US and its citizens who at the end of the day are paying dearly for keeping this rogue state in existence, which same as Hitler's 'thousand years Reich' will not be for ever. One day you will be able to buy a book entitled:"the Rise and Fall of Israeli Zionism".
IRONY
85.The irony is that 20th century immigrant colonial settlers, mostly from eastern Europe, who had over time had converted to Judaism, are now killing the real original Jews most of whom converted to Islam when overrun by Arab forces some 1300 years ago. Arabs and REAL Palestinian Jews are both Semites, thy belong genetically to the same race, but worshipped different religions. In ancient times they tolerated each other well and used to live in peace and harmony together. Not so the foreign converted Jews, who genetically are related to the people of southern Russia. many of the remaining Palestinian Jews joined the Arab armies during their conquests round the Mediterranean and east of the Byzantine Empire into the Caucuses and became proselytizers for the Jewish religion. The original homeland of most to-days surrogate Israelis is situated in southern Russia, the former Kingdom of Khazaria. Israelis are worshipping the false Messiah, probably difficult to swallow for many of them.
THE WANDERING JEWS
84. I found the remarks of one of your correspondents rather hilarious when he mentioned 'The Wandering Jew', a piece of not so clever deception from Zionist mythology. If it was true and Palestine, according to the same mythology was an 'empty country', than one may wonder why it took some 2000 years before a Theodore Herzl exhorted Jews to return to this 'empty contry'. In 1939 the world Jewish population stood at 16.7 million. During the first half of the 20th century most Jews emigrated to the US, before it stopped any further immigration into the country. In 1920 Jewish population of the US already stood at 3.6 million. The 1947 Straton Bill would have allowed 400,000 holocaust survivors to enter the US, but was defeated by the strong powerful Zionist lobbies, who wanted them as manpower for their colonial settler state. European Jewry has always preferred America as their 'chosen country' and few American (and elsewhere) Jews are willing to swap America for Israel.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
EXERPTS FROM LITERATURE
82. 'Israeli Exeptionalism' by M. Shalid Alam; Professor of Economics at Northeastern University in Boston.
page 9 ......Over time, this growing emphasis on the "radical uniqueness" of Israel would give rise to racist tendencies. Since the Jews were the chosen instrument of God's intervention on earth, some Jewish thinkers took this to mean that Jews were no subject to the laws of nature and society. In other words, as long as the Jews believed that they were acting as instruments of God's will, they did not have to place themselves under the laws of Gentile nations.
page 26.....In general, the Zionists wanted to believe that the Palestinians were not a people; they had no attachment to their land, no national identity, no national aspirations. If they are not a people, then we can take away their land from them. The irony is palpable. The Jews - who were not yet a people, because they had no land they could call their own - asserted that the Palestinians, who had their own land, were not a people. This not so clever deception had only one end: so that people without a land could steal it from another people who had it.
page 34.....The tragedy of Israel is not fortuitous. Driven by history, chance, and cunning, the Zionists wedged themselves between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam, and by harnassing the strength of the first against the second, they have produced a conflict that can only grow deeper over time. In this conflict. Israel's triumphs are temporary, are indeed illusionary, since they evoke deeper, wider response from the societies that suffer the devastation of its triumphs. In the long run, in the time scale of history, by relentlessly pressing its advantages, Israel only ensures that its adversaries will slowly build the defences that will eventually rise to match Israel's military might and its expansionist ambitions.
page 36 .....In addition, the humiliation of the Islamicate has also given rise to radical factions- their numbers still minuscule - who have decided to use violence to achieve their political ends. This destabilizing dialectic has now brought the West itself into direct confrontation against the Islamicate. We are now staring into the precipice. Yet, there is little appreciation in the West of the scale of this impending disaster: or the will to pull back from it.
page 39....... David Ben Gurion, 1956 (quote) "Why should the Arabs make peace ? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country"
page 51....."History does not support the presence of an irrisistible Jewish yearning for Palestine. "Why, during these thousands years have not the Jews really tried to return to this country ? Why was it necessary to wait until the end of the Nineteenth Century for Herzle to succeed in convincing them of this necessity ?
page 61 Moshe Dayan, April 1956 (quote): "We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or a house".
page 71.... David Ben-Gurion, 1938 (quote) "I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral"
..................Benny Morris, 2004 (quote) "Without uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here".
page 83.....The changes in the spatial distribution of the world's Jewish population between 1800 and 1930 were equally important in preparing the grounds for Zionist success.In 1700, only about 16 percent of the world's Jews lived in Western and Central Europe and its overseas extensions, regions that would become centers of global capitalism over the next two centuries. At this time, 49 percent of the world's Jewish population lived in Eastern Europe and 35.5 percent in the Islamicate. This demographic weakness was remedied substantially by the middle decades of the twentieth century, due primarily to the growing migration of Jews to destinations westward.. In 1939, Europe's share of the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa had increased substantially. Most importantly, British Jewish population had increased from an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 in the early 1800s to 300,000 by 1914, due mostly to immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe since the early 1800s. The growth of Jewish population in the United States was more dramatic, having increased from 2,500 in 1800 to one million in 1900 and 3,6 million in 1920".
page 85......The long centuries of Jewish exposure to finance, commerce, estate management, and the crafts had equiped them better than most Gentiles to succeeed as international traders, bankers, speculators, industrialists, and stockbrokers in Europe's emerging capitalist economies.
..............Already, in the early nineteenth century, Jewish families owned thirty of the fifty-two private banks in Berlin; in Vienna, by the end of the nineteenth century, "40 percent of the directors of public banks were Jews or of Jewish descent, and all banks but one was administered by Jews."
........"in an age when the press was the only mass medium, cultural or otherwise, the liberal press [in Europe] was largely a Jewish press"
page 88.....In addition to the internal migration of Jews in Europe - from small towns and rural centres to the cities, and from Eastern Europe to destinations in Central and Western Europe - there occurred a migration of similar magnitude from all over Europe, to the new world and especially the United States. The cross-Atlantic migration of Jews was pregnant with consequences for the Zionist movement. Because of these migrations, by the third decade of the twentieth century, the United States became home to the world's largest concentration of Jews.
page 91......Once Zionism began to draw substantial support from Jewish communities in the West, and from important centres of Jewish power - in finance, industry, politics, media and academia - we can expect that these Jewish communities would increasingly use their influence to mobilize the support of Western governments.
page 123....In the 1930's, the Nazis banned all Jewish organizations, except those with Zionist aims; they even allowed the Zionists to fly their blue-and-white flag with the Star of David at its centre. In violation of the Jewish boycott of the Nazi economy, the Zionists promissed cash and made concessions to Nazi Germany if they directed Jewish emigrants to Palestine......Brenner has documented several episodes of collaboration between Zionist mainstream Jewish organizations and fascist governments in Germany, Italy and Japan.
page 139.......Zionism was a grave assault on the history of the global resistance to imperialism that unfolded even as the Jewish colons in Palestine laid the foundations of their colonial settler state. The Zionists sought to abolish the ground realities in the Middle East established by Islam over the previous thirteen hundred years. They sought to overrun the demography of Palestine, to insert a European presence in the heart of the Islamicate, and to serve as the forward base for the Western powers intent on dominating the Middle East. The Zionist could succeed only by combining the forces of the Christian and Jewish West in an assault that would almost certainly be seen as the, latter-day Crusade to marginalize the Islamicate peoples in the Middle East. It was delusional to assume that the Zionist challenge to the Islamicate would go unanswered.
page 154........When all the advences of the Zionist movement are brought together - the dramatic growth in the cadre of activists, the mass mobilization of Jews, and the support of the American Jewish establishment, we begin to acquire a better estimate of the political influence that the Zionist movement could now exercise over the U.S. political system. The Zionists had now become a force in the elections to the Congress and the president, and they had built up a network for lobbying congressmen, senators, and the White House.
page 168.....Far from making concessions to Palestinians and Arabs to advance peace, Israel had an opposite interest in escalating its conflicts with the Arabs. American support for Israel could only increase as Israel succeeded in escalating its conflicts with its adversaries. Israel was free to deny the Palestinians the right of return, attack the Palestinians in the refugee camps in Gaza and Jordan, accelerate the influx of Jewish colonists into Israel, augment its military superiority over the Arabs, and engage in frequent attacks against Arab targets. Anything that provoked Arab belligerence would bring rich payment offs in higher levels of American support. (emphasize added)
page 193.....The value of annual economic and military assistance to Israel increased dramatically in 1970 and 1974, never dipped below $ 3 billion between 1985 and 2000, and has declined only trivially since then. Moreover, Israel has received this aid on terms that are not available to other recipients. For many years now, the Congress has approved aid commitments to Israel automatically, without any discussion or dissent. Israel has received all its aids in the form of grants since 1985, spends most of it on weapon systems, receives all of the assistance at the beginning of each year, bypasses the Department of Defence in making military purchases..............
page 200.....The equation of the Jewish lobby with a narrowly defined "pressure group" is misleading. We have argued - a position that is well supported by the evidence - that Jewish protagonists of Zionism have worked through many different channels to influence public opinion, the composition of political classes, and political decisions. They work through the institutions and media that shape public opinion to determine what Americans know about Israel, how they think about Israel, and what they can say about Israel. (emphasize added)
Once we recognize the scale of the financial resources the Israel lobby commands, the array of political forces it can mobilize, and the tools it commands to direct public opinion on the Middle East, we would shrink from calling it a lobby.
page 9 ......Over time, this growing emphasis on the "radical uniqueness" of Israel would give rise to racist tendencies. Since the Jews were the chosen instrument of God's intervention on earth, some Jewish thinkers took this to mean that Jews were no subject to the laws of nature and society. In other words, as long as the Jews believed that they were acting as instruments of God's will, they did not have to place themselves under the laws of Gentile nations.
page 26.....In general, the Zionists wanted to believe that the Palestinians were not a people; they had no attachment to their land, no national identity, no national aspirations. If they are not a people, then we can take away their land from them. The irony is palpable. The Jews - who were not yet a people, because they had no land they could call their own - asserted that the Palestinians, who had their own land, were not a people. This not so clever deception had only one end: so that people without a land could steal it from another people who had it.
page 34.....The tragedy of Israel is not fortuitous. Driven by history, chance, and cunning, the Zionists wedged themselves between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam, and by harnassing the strength of the first against the second, they have produced a conflict that can only grow deeper over time. In this conflict. Israel's triumphs are temporary, are indeed illusionary, since they evoke deeper, wider response from the societies that suffer the devastation of its triumphs. In the long run, in the time scale of history, by relentlessly pressing its advantages, Israel only ensures that its adversaries will slowly build the defences that will eventually rise to match Israel's military might and its expansionist ambitions.
page 36 .....In addition, the humiliation of the Islamicate has also given rise to radical factions- their numbers still minuscule - who have decided to use violence to achieve their political ends. This destabilizing dialectic has now brought the West itself into direct confrontation against the Islamicate. We are now staring into the precipice. Yet, there is little appreciation in the West of the scale of this impending disaster: or the will to pull back from it.
page 39....... David Ben Gurion, 1956 (quote) "Why should the Arabs make peace ? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country"
page 51....."History does not support the presence of an irrisistible Jewish yearning for Palestine. "Why, during these thousands years have not the Jews really tried to return to this country ? Why was it necessary to wait until the end of the Nineteenth Century for Herzle to succeed in convincing them of this necessity ?
page 61 Moshe Dayan, April 1956 (quote): "We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or a house".
page 71.... David Ben-Gurion, 1938 (quote) "I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral"
..................Benny Morris, 2004 (quote) "Without uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here".
page 83.....The changes in the spatial distribution of the world's Jewish population between 1800 and 1930 were equally important in preparing the grounds for Zionist success.In 1700, only about 16 percent of the world's Jews lived in Western and Central Europe and its overseas extensions, regions that would become centers of global capitalism over the next two centuries. At this time, 49 percent of the world's Jewish population lived in Eastern Europe and 35.5 percent in the Islamicate. This demographic weakness was remedied substantially by the middle decades of the twentieth century, due primarily to the growing migration of Jews to destinations westward.. In 1939, Europe's share of the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa had increased substantially. Most importantly, British Jewish population had increased from an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 in the early 1800s to 300,000 by 1914, due mostly to immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe since the early 1800s. The growth of Jewish population in the United States was more dramatic, having increased from 2,500 in 1800 to one million in 1900 and 3,6 million in 1920".
page 85......The long centuries of Jewish exposure to finance, commerce, estate management, and the crafts had equiped them better than most Gentiles to succeeed as international traders, bankers, speculators, industrialists, and stockbrokers in Europe's emerging capitalist economies.
..............Already, in the early nineteenth century, Jewish families owned thirty of the fifty-two private banks in Berlin; in Vienna, by the end of the nineteenth century, "40 percent of the directors of public banks were Jews or of Jewish descent, and all banks but one was administered by Jews."
........"in an age when the press was the only mass medium, cultural or otherwise, the liberal press [in Europe] was largely a Jewish press"
page 88.....In addition to the internal migration of Jews in Europe - from small towns and rural centres to the cities, and from Eastern Europe to destinations in Central and Western Europe - there occurred a migration of similar magnitude from all over Europe, to the new world and especially the United States. The cross-Atlantic migration of Jews was pregnant with consequences for the Zionist movement. Because of these migrations, by the third decade of the twentieth century, the United States became home to the world's largest concentration of Jews.
page 91......Once Zionism began to draw substantial support from Jewish communities in the West, and from important centres of Jewish power - in finance, industry, politics, media and academia - we can expect that these Jewish communities would increasingly use their influence to mobilize the support of Western governments.
page 123....In the 1930's, the Nazis banned all Jewish organizations, except those with Zionist aims; they even allowed the Zionists to fly their blue-and-white flag with the Star of David at its centre. In violation of the Jewish boycott of the Nazi economy, the Zionists promissed cash and made concessions to Nazi Germany if they directed Jewish emigrants to Palestine......Brenner has documented several episodes of collaboration between Zionist mainstream Jewish organizations and fascist governments in Germany, Italy and Japan.
page 139.......Zionism was a grave assault on the history of the global resistance to imperialism that unfolded even as the Jewish colons in Palestine laid the foundations of their colonial settler state. The Zionists sought to abolish the ground realities in the Middle East established by Islam over the previous thirteen hundred years. They sought to overrun the demography of Palestine, to insert a European presence in the heart of the Islamicate, and to serve as the forward base for the Western powers intent on dominating the Middle East. The Zionist could succeed only by combining the forces of the Christian and Jewish West in an assault that would almost certainly be seen as the, latter-day Crusade to marginalize the Islamicate peoples in the Middle East. It was delusional to assume that the Zionist challenge to the Islamicate would go unanswered.
page 154........When all the advences of the Zionist movement are brought together - the dramatic growth in the cadre of activists, the mass mobilization of Jews, and the support of the American Jewish establishment, we begin to acquire a better estimate of the political influence that the Zionist movement could now exercise over the U.S. political system. The Zionists had now become a force in the elections to the Congress and the president, and they had built up a network for lobbying congressmen, senators, and the White House.
page 168.....Far from making concessions to Palestinians and Arabs to advance peace, Israel had an opposite interest in escalating its conflicts with the Arabs. American support for Israel could only increase as Israel succeeded in escalating its conflicts with its adversaries. Israel was free to deny the Palestinians the right of return, attack the Palestinians in the refugee camps in Gaza and Jordan, accelerate the influx of Jewish colonists into Israel, augment its military superiority over the Arabs, and engage in frequent attacks against Arab targets. Anything that provoked Arab belligerence would bring rich payment offs in higher levels of American support. (emphasize added)
page 193.....The value of annual economic and military assistance to Israel increased dramatically in 1970 and 1974, never dipped below $ 3 billion between 1985 and 2000, and has declined only trivially since then. Moreover, Israel has received this aid on terms that are not available to other recipients. For many years now, the Congress has approved aid commitments to Israel automatically, without any discussion or dissent. Israel has received all its aids in the form of grants since 1985, spends most of it on weapon systems, receives all of the assistance at the beginning of each year, bypasses the Department of Defence in making military purchases..............
page 200.....The equation of the Jewish lobby with a narrowly defined "pressure group" is misleading. We have argued - a position that is well supported by the evidence - that Jewish protagonists of Zionism have worked through many different channels to influence public opinion, the composition of political classes, and political decisions. They work through the institutions and media that shape public opinion to determine what Americans know about Israel, how they think about Israel, and what they can say about Israel. (emphasize added)
Once we recognize the scale of the financial resources the Israel lobby commands, the array of political forces it can mobilize, and the tools it commands to direct public opinion on the Middle East, we would shrink from calling it a lobby.
Friday, October 1, 2010
EDITING OR CENSORING ?
81. "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"
George Antonius (historian)
"Many of you are uninformed about the conflict in the Middle East not because you don't want to know, but because you have been misinformed by the "Israeli-occupied" media......Just how many would die and how much global environment would be polluted and destroyed by the fallout in the event of an apocalyptic endgame in and over Palestine are matters for speculation. But that it could happen is reason enough for every man, women and child on planet earth to be aware that they have a stake in what is happening in the Middle East."
Alan Hart (Former ITN and BBC 'Panorama' correspondent author of 'Zionism The real Enemy of the Jews; Vol. One: The false Messiah."
Question: Could the editing of letters on certain politically sensitive subjects such as the Middle East conflict be a form of disguised censorship ? Here is my story, so judge for yourself.
Those readers who have followed my blog from the beginning know that the blog was 'born' as a result of a controversy that developed over time with one of our national, also our local news paper The Christchurch Press, for short 'The Press'. Over the years I have been a prolific contributor, not only to The Press, but already during the sixties and seventies while still living in the Dunedin area. I wrote numerous letters on the Vietnam War to the Otago Daily Times (ODT). I never had any problems getting my very often lengthy letters (in small print) published (with references) and I am still grateful to the editors making the necessary corrections in spelling and style. Sometimes they were edited or abridged a little, but never were references to sources of information removed, which is as one can see from Post 60 my concern with the editing rules of The Press. After an absence from New Zealand for several years when we lived in The Netherlands and in the Irish Republic, I returned to this country as a retiree and settled in Christchurch. After the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003 I took up the pen again and resumed writing letters to the editor, this time to the The Press.. Again from 2003 to 2009 I had numerous letters published, on an average one a month, with little or no problems. In January 2009 I was even awarded for the 'best letter of the week'. Sure, some letters were rejected and somewhat edited, as happened with other the letters of other contributors as well. I never had any problem with that whatever. I think I am a reasonable and tolerant person and fully appreciate the problems an editor has to cope with when making his selections from the deluge of letters submitted.
But apparently times had changed. Problems were beginning to surface after I had filed a complaint with the NZ Press Council (adjudication 2094 November 2009. Complaint not upheld) and letters dealing with the Israeli/ Palestine conflict specifically. Very often essential passages and references to sources of information were carefully excised from letters. Initially I did not think much of it, but as times passed by it became more or less sort of a regular pattern. I emphasize 'specifically', because previously there had never been real problems. Also letters on different subjects and more notable for instance on the subject of 'Climate Change', a subject probably deemed more 'neutral' , letter writers were frequently referring to sources of information, such as
websites and articles in scientific magazines.
When I discussed this with other contributors to the letter pages, it emerged that they often encountered similar problems when writing letters dealing with the ME conflict. From my blog one can see that I am very well versed on the subject of the ME conflict, at least much better than the average person and probably better than editors and politician as well. The editors of the The Press are well aware of my blog, because on several occasions attempts were made to have the blog mentioned in my letters. I have read numerous books on this immensely important protracted conflict, written by reputable and well known historians (Benny Morris, Martin Gilbert to mention only a few) as well as publications from several independent investigate journalists, correspondents and the like. I also - alas to no avail - had drawn attention to The Press books review editor on new book releases worth mentioning in the section of the weekly book reviews. Once I alerted one of The Press reporters to a talk that was to be given in Christchurch by Antony Loewenstein, the Australian Jewish author of the book entitled: 'My Israel Question'. Loewenstein is an outspoken critic of the Zionist lobbies also denoted as the 'Zionist Power Configuration', aggressively and actively
operating all over the 'western' world and their huge influence on the western corporate media. Although the reporter initially responded to my call and enquired about the venue, he never turned up. Did his boss prevented him from attending ? There was no response when I called him later. Once a contributor wrongly quoted one of the U.N. Resolutions. I responded by quoting the correct text, which could easily be verified by visiting Googles. My letter was promptly rejected. When I requested the editor to rectify the erroneously quoted text in the rubric 'Putting it right' the reply was that the rubric was 'not a forum for a squabble between two correspondents'. The Press maintains that it is devoted to accuracy and correctness.
From all this one cannot dismiss the impression that there is a tendency to suppress and misinform the general public, which becomes evident from editorials, as well as the very one sided, selective and scanty information the reading public is being offered. So my convictions are based not on just on a casually, fleeting, unfounded remark, but on a virtual consensus of views of many eminent historians, independent correspondents, journalists and further substantiated by personal observations and experiences when dealing with the corporate media and their self-appointed guardians, in this country such as the NZ Press Council. These convictions and experiences are shared by other letter writers to The Press, with whom I have regular contacts. The NZ Press Council established in 1972 according to its own information is funded by newspaper publishers. In the Council's Statement of Principles it maintains that (quote): "The Print media is jealous in guarding freedom of expression ('sic' my emphasize) not just for the publishers' sake, but, more importantly, in the public interest. In complaint resolutions by the Council freedom of expression and public interest will play dominant roles"
The decision of the Chief Editor of The Press to exclude me from contributing to the letter pages was a direct response to a letter to the Editor, in which I queried the Editor's editing rules. In my letter I simply expressed an opinion on those rules, which should never have been a reason to exclude a person from access to the letter pages. If I had been in breach of their editing rules, I would have accepted that as indeed I have done on several occasions before. However there is a huge difference between accepting editing rules, or criticising them, which should be everybody's civil right in a genuine democratic society. So when looking at the NZ Press Council's stated Principles it becomes abundantly clear that the Council is not adhering to its own guidelines. So the underlying reasons for excluding me from the letter pages may therefore well have been for very different reasons . The editors are well aware of my political views and convictions concerning the quite dubious role of the by now from various sources emerging well documented evidence that western corporate media are profoundly Zionist infested and 'editing' is often no more than a self imposed form of censorship. The editors are also aware of this webblog. In the absence of any credible explanation for denying me access to the letter pages this could well be the real underlying motives from barring me from their opinion pages. The editor once became very angry when I suggested to him that The Press, as part of the Australian Fairfax media group and subsequently part of the western mainstream corporate news media, is also likely to be Zionist infested. Of course this is merely an opinion, though a well founded opinion as elaborately explained in the foregoing. The question however is, should one be 'punished' for entertaining and expressing such an opinion by exclusion ? If the answer to that question is in the affirmative than we are dealing here with 'bully boy' tactics.
On 18 August 2010 I filed another complaint to the NZ Pres Council on the aforementioned grounds. The complaint was dismissed. SUMMARY:
From my personal experiences with the NZ media and in particular The Christchurch Press and the media funded NZ Press Council I have come to the conclusion that as far as my personal experiences with The Christchurch Press there exist a complete absence of any accountability, there is no transparency, no balance or fairness whatever. Selection and frequency of publication of letters is very personal and biased and judged on political opinions and views. There is complete contempt for the rights of inividuals wanting to participate in open debate. Editing in my experience has indeed become a form of disguised censorship. Editors are free to manipulate letters at will and weaken the message the author of the letter is trying to convey.
There are numerous ways in which he can do that while at the same time projecting a faked semblance of 'balance'. For a short while The Press published a list of rejected letters, which to some extent somewhat enhanced transparency, fairness and balance. This practice, unfortunately was very short lived and abandoned. I come to the final conclusion that the NZ Press Council, as we have seen before has a mere window dressing function.
George Antonius (historian)
"Many of you are uninformed about the conflict in the Middle East not because you don't want to know, but because you have been misinformed by the "Israeli-occupied" media......Just how many would die and how much global environment would be polluted and destroyed by the fallout in the event of an apocalyptic endgame in and over Palestine are matters for speculation. But that it could happen is reason enough for every man, women and child on planet earth to be aware that they have a stake in what is happening in the Middle East."
Alan Hart (Former ITN and BBC 'Panorama' correspondent author of 'Zionism The real Enemy of the Jews; Vol. One: The false Messiah."
Question: Could the editing of letters on certain politically sensitive subjects such as the Middle East conflict be a form of disguised censorship ? Here is my story, so judge for yourself.
Those readers who have followed my blog from the beginning know that the blog was 'born' as a result of a controversy that developed over time with one of our national, also our local news paper The Christchurch Press, for short 'The Press'. Over the years I have been a prolific contributor, not only to The Press, but already during the sixties and seventies while still living in the Dunedin area. I wrote numerous letters on the Vietnam War to the Otago Daily Times (ODT). I never had any problems getting my very often lengthy letters (in small print) published (with references) and I am still grateful to the editors making the necessary corrections in spelling and style. Sometimes they were edited or abridged a little, but never were references to sources of information removed, which is as one can see from Post 60 my concern with the editing rules of The Press. After an absence from New Zealand for several years when we lived in The Netherlands and in the Irish Republic, I returned to this country as a retiree and settled in Christchurch. After the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003 I took up the pen again and resumed writing letters to the editor, this time to the The Press.. Again from 2003 to 2009 I had numerous letters published, on an average one a month, with little or no problems. In January 2009 I was even awarded for the 'best letter of the week'. Sure, some letters were rejected and somewhat edited, as happened with other the letters of other contributors as well. I never had any problem with that whatever. I think I am a reasonable and tolerant person and fully appreciate the problems an editor has to cope with when making his selections from the deluge of letters submitted.
But apparently times had changed. Problems were beginning to surface after I had filed a complaint with the NZ Press Council (adjudication 2094 November 2009. Complaint not upheld) and letters dealing with the Israeli/ Palestine conflict specifically. Very often essential passages and references to sources of information were carefully excised from letters. Initially I did not think much of it, but as times passed by it became more or less sort of a regular pattern. I emphasize 'specifically', because previously there had never been real problems. Also letters on different subjects and more notable for instance on the subject of 'Climate Change', a subject probably deemed more 'neutral' , letter writers were frequently referring to sources of information, such as
websites and articles in scientific magazines.
When I discussed this with other contributors to the letter pages, it emerged that they often encountered similar problems when writing letters dealing with the ME conflict. From my blog one can see that I am very well versed on the subject of the ME conflict, at least much better than the average person and probably better than editors and politician as well. The editors of the The Press are well aware of my blog, because on several occasions attempts were made to have the blog mentioned in my letters. I have read numerous books on this immensely important protracted conflict, written by reputable and well known historians (Benny Morris, Martin Gilbert to mention only a few) as well as publications from several independent investigate journalists, correspondents and the like. I also - alas to no avail - had drawn attention to The Press books review editor on new book releases worth mentioning in the section of the weekly book reviews. Once I alerted one of The Press reporters to a talk that was to be given in Christchurch by Antony Loewenstein, the Australian Jewish author of the book entitled: 'My Israel Question'. Loewenstein is an outspoken critic of the Zionist lobbies also denoted as the 'Zionist Power Configuration', aggressively and actively
operating all over the 'western' world and their huge influence on the western corporate media. Although the reporter initially responded to my call and enquired about the venue, he never turned up. Did his boss prevented him from attending ? There was no response when I called him later. Once a contributor wrongly quoted one of the U.N. Resolutions. I responded by quoting the correct text, which could easily be verified by visiting Googles. My letter was promptly rejected. When I requested the editor to rectify the erroneously quoted text in the rubric 'Putting it right' the reply was that the rubric was 'not a forum for a squabble between two correspondents'. The Press maintains that it is devoted to accuracy and correctness.
From all this one cannot dismiss the impression that there is a tendency to suppress and misinform the general public, which becomes evident from editorials, as well as the very one sided, selective and scanty information the reading public is being offered. So my convictions are based not on just on a casually, fleeting, unfounded remark, but on a virtual consensus of views of many eminent historians, independent correspondents, journalists and further substantiated by personal observations and experiences when dealing with the corporate media and their self-appointed guardians, in this country such as the NZ Press Council. These convictions and experiences are shared by other letter writers to The Press, with whom I have regular contacts. The NZ Press Council established in 1972 according to its own information is funded by newspaper publishers. In the Council's Statement of Principles it maintains that (quote): "The Print media is jealous in guarding freedom of expression ('sic' my emphasize) not just for the publishers' sake, but, more importantly, in the public interest. In complaint resolutions by the Council freedom of expression and public interest will play dominant roles"
The decision of the Chief Editor of The Press to exclude me from contributing to the letter pages was a direct response to a letter to the Editor, in which I queried the Editor's editing rules. In my letter I simply expressed an opinion on those rules, which should never have been a reason to exclude a person from access to the letter pages. If I had been in breach of their editing rules, I would have accepted that as indeed I have done on several occasions before. However there is a huge difference between accepting editing rules, or criticising them, which should be everybody's civil right in a genuine democratic society. So when looking at the NZ Press Council's stated Principles it becomes abundantly clear that the Council is not adhering to its own guidelines. So the underlying reasons for excluding me from the letter pages may therefore well have been for very different reasons . The editors are well aware of my political views and convictions concerning the quite dubious role of the by now from various sources emerging well documented evidence that western corporate media are profoundly Zionist infested and 'editing' is often no more than a self imposed form of censorship. The editors are also aware of this webblog. In the absence of any credible explanation for denying me access to the letter pages this could well be the real underlying motives from barring me from their opinion pages. The editor once became very angry when I suggested to him that The Press, as part of the Australian Fairfax media group and subsequently part of the western mainstream corporate news media, is also likely to be Zionist infested. Of course this is merely an opinion, though a well founded opinion as elaborately explained in the foregoing. The question however is, should one be 'punished' for entertaining and expressing such an opinion by exclusion ? If the answer to that question is in the affirmative than we are dealing here with 'bully boy' tactics.
On 18 August 2010 I filed another complaint to the NZ Pres Council on the aforementioned grounds. The complaint was dismissed. SUMMARY:
From my personal experiences with the NZ media and in particular The Christchurch Press and the media funded NZ Press Council I have come to the conclusion that as far as my personal experiences with The Christchurch Press there exist a complete absence of any accountability, there is no transparency, no balance or fairness whatever. Selection and frequency of publication of letters is very personal and biased and judged on political opinions and views. There is complete contempt for the rights of inividuals wanting to participate in open debate. Editing in my experience has indeed become a form of disguised censorship. Editors are free to manipulate letters at will and weaken the message the author of the letter is trying to convey.
There are numerous ways in which he can do that while at the same time projecting a faked semblance of 'balance'. For a short while The Press published a list of rejected letters, which to some extent somewhat enhanced transparency, fairness and balance. This practice, unfortunately was very short lived and abandoned. I come to the final conclusion that the NZ Press Council, as we have seen before has a mere window dressing function.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
80.The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
Highly recommended and essential reading for anyone who wants to have a thorough understanding of the historical background of the present day Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The web is from 'Jews for Justice in the Middle East'.
Highly recommended and essential reading for anyone who wants to have a thorough understanding of the historical background of the present day Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The web is from 'Jews for Justice in the Middle East'.
Friday, August 27, 2010
79. EXCERPTS FROM THE U.N. GOLDSTONE REPORT
The following excerpts are just a small selection from 130 paragraphs of what is commonly known as the 'Goldstone report'. I suggest readers to make themselves familiar with the entire text, which can be found in James Petras book entitled: "Warcrimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America".
The President of the Human Rights Council established the United Nations Fact Finding Mission in April 2009 and appointed Justice Richard Goldstone to head the Mission. Goldstone was a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Three other appointed members were Prof. Christine Chinkin, Prof. of International Law of the London School of Economics and Political Science; Ms Hina Jilani, Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, also a member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Dafur ; and Colonel Desmond Travers, a former Officer in Ireland's Defence Force and member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.
The Mission repeatedly sought to obtain the cooperation of the Government of Israel. After numerous attempts had failed, the Mission sought and obtained the assistance of the Government of Egypt to enable it to enter the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing. (Blogger: This refusal in itself amounts already to an admission of guilt.)
The UN General Assembly endorsed the thorough documentation of Israel's war crimes and state terrorism revealed in the Goldstone Report with 114 votes and 18 against. The 18 votes against were - as could be expected - Israel and the United States, several East European client states and some insignificant island dependencies. United Nation endorsement represents over 80% of the world's population............
#27 The blockade comprises measures such as the restrictions on goods that can be imported into the Gaza and the closure of border crossings for people, goods and services, sometimes for days, including cuts on the provision of fuel and electricity. Gaza's economy is further severely affected by the reduction of the fishing zone open to the Palestinian fishermen and the establishment of a "buffer zone" along the border between Gaza and Israel which reduces the land available for agriculture and industrial activity. In addition to creating an emergency situation, the blockade significantly weakened the capacities of the population and of health, water and other public sectors to react to the emergency created by the military operations................
#28 The Mission holds the view that Israel continues to be duty-bound under the Fourth Geneva Convention and to the full extent of the means available to it to ensure the supply of foodstuff, medical and hospital items and others to meet the humanitarian needs of the population of the Gaza Strip qualification...................
#32 Israeli armed forces launched numerous attacks against buildings and persons of the Gaza authorities............On the information available to it, the Mission finds that the attacks on these buildings constituted deliberate attacks on civilian objects in violation of the rule of customary international humanitarian law whereby attacks must be strictly limited to military objectives. These facts further indicate the of the grave breach of extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.....................
#38. The Mission also examined the precautions taken by Israeli forces in the context of three specific attacks they launched. On the 15 January2009, the UNRWA field office compound in Gaza City came under shelling with high explosive and white phosphorous munitions. The Mission notes that the attack was extremely dangerous, as the compound offered shelter to between 600 and 700 civilians and contained a huge fuel depot. The Israeli forces continued the attack over several hours in spite of having been fully alerted to the risks they created. The Mission concludes that Israeli armed forces violated the customary international law requirement to take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and method of attack with a view to avoiding and in any event minimizing incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects....................
#39. The mission also finds that, on the same day, the Israeli forces directly and intentionally attacked the Al Quds Hospital in Gaza City and the adjacent ambulance depot with white phosphorus shells. The attack caused fires which took a whole day to extinguish and caused panic among the sick and wounded who had to be evacuated. The mission finds that no warning was given at any point of an imminent strike. On the basis of its investigation, the Mission rejects the allegation that fire was directed at Israeli fores from the Hospital......................
#42. In drawing legal conclusions on the attack against al-Fakhura junction, the Mission recognizes that for all armies proportionality
decisions, weighing the military advantages to be gained against the risk of killing civilians, will present very genuine dilemmas in certain cases. The Mission does not consider this to be such a case. The firing of at least four mortar shells to attempt to kill a small number of specified individuals in a setting where large numbers of civilians were going about their daily business and 1,368 people were sheltering nearby cannot meet the test of what a reasonable commander would have determined to be an acceptable loss of civilian life for the military advantage sought. The Mission considers thus the attack to have been indiscriminate in violation of international law, and to have violated the right to life of the Palestinian civilians killed in these incidents.......................
#43 The Mission investigated eleven incidents in which Israeli forces launched direct attacks against civilians with lethal outcome (Chapter XI) The cases examined in this part of the report are, with one exception, all cases in which he facts indicate no justifiable military objective pursued by the attack. The first two incidents are attacks against houses in the Samouni neighborhood south of Gaza City, including the shelling of a house in which Palestinian civilians had been forced to assemble by the Israeli forces. The following group of seven incidents concern the shooting of civilians while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags and in, in some of the cases, following an injunction from the Israeli forces to do so. The facts gathered by the Mission indicate that all the attacks occurred under circumstances in which the Israeli forces were in control of the area and had previously entered into contact with or at least observed the persons they subsequently attacked, so that they must have been aware of their civilian status. In the majority of these incidents, the consequences of the Israeli attacks against civilians were aggravated by their subsequent refusal to allow the evacuation of the wounded or permit access to ambulances...........
#44 These incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli forces moving into Gaza provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population. The Mission found strong corroboration of this trend emerging from its fact-finding in the testimonies of Israeli soldiers collected in two publications it reviewed.........
#45 The Mission further examined an incident in which a mosque was targeted with a missile during the early evening prayer, resulting in the death of fifteen, and attack with flechette munition on a crowd of family and neighbours at a condolence tent, killing five. The Mission finds that both attacks constitute intentional attacks against civilian population and civilian objects...................
#50 Already at the beginning of the military operations, the Al Bader flour mill was the only flour mill in the Gaza Strip still operating. The flour ill was hit by a series of air strikes on 9 January 2009 after several false warnings had been issued on the previous days. The Mission finds that its destruction had no military justification.........From the facts it ascertained, the Mission finds there has been a violation of the grave breaches provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Unlawful and wanton destruction which is not justified by military necessity amounts to a war crime. The Mission also finds hat the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purposes of customary international law and may constitute a war crime. The strike on the flour mill further constitutes a violation of human rights provisions regarding the right to adequate food and means of subsistence.................
#55. The Mission investigated four incidents in which Israeli forces coerced Palestinian civilian men at gun point to take part in house searches during the military operations(Chapter XIV). The Palestinian men were blindfolded and handcuffed as they were forced to enter houses ahead of the Israeli soldiers..........Published testimonies of Israeli soldiers who took part in the military operations confirm the continued use of this practice....................
#63. In the framing of Israeli military objectives with regard to the Gaza operation, the concept of Hamas 'supporting infrastructure' is particularly worrying as it appears to transform civilians and civilian objects into legitimate targets. Statements by Israeli political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza indicate that the military conception of what was necessary in a war with Hamas view disproportionate destruction and creating the maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve not only military but also political goals.....................
#67. As a result of the razing of farmland and the destruction of greenhouses, food insecurity is expected to further worsen in spite of the increased quantities of food items allowed into Gaza since the beginning of the military operations. Dependence on food assistance increases. Levels of stunting and thinness in children and of anaemia prevalence in children and pregnant women were worrying already before the military operations. ......... In the water and sanitation sector, the destruction of the infrastructure (such as the destruction of the Namar wells and the attack against the water treatment plant described in Chapter XII), aggravated the preexistent situation..........
#68. The number of persons suffering from mental health problems is also bound to increase. The Mission investigated a number of incidents in which adults and children witnessed the killing of their loved ones. Doctors at Gaza Community Mental Health Programme gave information to the Mission on psychosomatic disorders, on a widespread state of alienation in the population, and on "numbness" as a result of severe loss. They told the Mission that these conditions were likely to in turn increase the readiness to embrace violence and extremism. (suicide bombers ?) They also told the Mission that 20 percent of children in the Gaza strip suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorders..................
#74. The condition of life in Gaza, resulting from deliberate actions of the Israeli forces and declared policies of the Government of Israel - as they were presented by its authorized and legitimate representatives - with regards to the Gaza Strip before, during and after the military operations, cumulatively indicate the intention to inflict collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip in violation of international humanitarian law.................
#75. The Mission considered whether the series of acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of sustenance, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country, that limit their access a court of law and an effective remedy, could amount to persecution, a crime against humanity. From the facts available to it, the Mission is of the view that some of the actions of the Government of Israel might justify a competent court finding that crimes against humanity have been committed.
#75. The Mission considered whether the series of acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of sustenance, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country, that limit their access a court of law and an effective remedy, could amount to persecution, a crime against humanity. From the facts available to it, the Mission is of the view that some of the actions of the Government of Israel might justify a competent court finding that crimes against humanity have been committed.
(to be continued)
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
ZIONISM v. ANTI-SEMITISM
78. Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two different concepts. Zionism is an ideology based on the ethnic cleansing and the domination of an undemocratic one religion only, apartheid's state.It is Zionism that obstructs the peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict and therefore needs to be removed from the pages of history to make place for a genuinely democratic unitary sate, with equal rights for both the original, indigenous in 1948 expelled inhabitants living in huge refugee camps all over the M.E. and the non-indigenous Jewish immigrants from abroad, regardless of race, gender and creed. Only that will bring an end to more than sixty years of war, oppression, discrimination and injustice to the Palestinian people and will transform Israel into a genuine democratic state. Even many Jewish people living to-day in liberal western democratic societies have voiced their disgust about the discrimination and exclusions experienced by Palestino-Israelis at the hands of the Zionist regime over the last sixty years or so. Because of these profoundly undemocratic laws and policies Israel could never have become part of the European Union or one of America's fifty states.
Link to Post 73
Link to Post 73
Friday, August 13, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
PSEUDO PATRIOTISM
76. The following letter was e-mailed to the authors of two articles in the Sunday Star (08/08/'10)
Dear Finlay and Michael,
Most NZ'ers see present days wars from only one pseudo-patriotic perspective: 'Your country right or wrong', as it was seventy years ago and before. I am one of those who can vividly remember being under occupation and resisting foreign occupation. Propaganda from our corporate news media 'informs' us that we are 'training Iraqi/Afghan police'. Did you know that the Germans in occupied Europe had their collaborators, who for the Judas kiss (we call it more appropriate 'penny') served the occupiers. ? The Maquis in France and the Partizans in Yugoslavia. In The Netherlands the Germans had an entire division of the Dutch Waffen SS. Needless to say that those who collaborated with the invaders were targeted by the Dutch 'terrorists' and severely punished or executed after liberation. The Soviet Union under the brutal communist regime of Stalin at the time, nevertheless put up a fierce resistance. So have and still have the Iraqis and the Afghan people. I am not fooled by all these euphemistic propaganda stories in order to shore up support of the American interest, because I have seen it all before. You see, the Love for ones country is inherent in every person and in all genuine patriotic people the world over, irrespective under what regime people live and is not an exclusive phenomenon only western/American people are endowed with.
Dear Finlay and Michael,
Most NZ'ers see present days wars from only one pseudo-patriotic perspective: 'Your country right or wrong', as it was seventy years ago and before. I am one of those who can vividly remember being under occupation and resisting foreign occupation. Propaganda from our corporate news media 'informs' us that we are 'training Iraqi/Afghan police'. Did you know that the Germans in occupied Europe had their collaborators, who for the Judas kiss (we call it more appropriate 'penny') served the occupiers. ? The Maquis in France and the Partizans in Yugoslavia. In The Netherlands the Germans had an entire division of the Dutch Waffen SS. Needless to say that those who collaborated with the invaders were targeted by the Dutch 'terrorists' and severely punished or executed after liberation. The Soviet Union under the brutal communist regime of Stalin at the time, nevertheless put up a fierce resistance. So have and still have the Iraqis and the Afghan people. I am not fooled by all these euphemistic propaganda stories in order to shore up support of the American interest, because I have seen it all before. You see, the Love for ones country is inherent in every person and in all genuine patriotic people the world over, irrespective under what regime people live and is not an exclusive phenomenon only western/American people are endowed with.
WHOME ARE WE SERVING ?
75. Bob Riggs in 'New Hiroshima's remain probable' (Perspective 06/08/'10) touches on a very true point when he maintains that without the stimulus of foreign wars and interventions, the U.S.economy might fall apart. Waging wars have become a vital and essential part of the U.S. economy, what President Eisenhouwer once warned for and called the Military Industrial Complex These wars waged mainly against poor and defenseless Muslim countries, killing many thousands of civilians are only creating more 'terrorists' and making the world an ever increasingly more dangerous place. By sending our young men to these American war zones, NZ soldiers are only serving U.S. interests. John Key has blood on its hands by sacrificing NZ soldiers in these pointless, endless wars. It's time New Zealand woke up and realized what they are fighting for.
Letter rejected by the Editor, but remember I was banned from the letter pages.
Letter rejected by the Editor, but remember I was banned from the letter pages.
Monday, August 2, 2010
KIA ORA GAZA
74. Gaza's 1.5 million people are imprisoned by the State of Israel in a giant concentration camp, enforcing the blockade of medical and essential food supplies for the Gaza people. Eighteen New Zealand volunteers are planning to join the next relief flotilla of boats (including an American ship) scheduled for later this year in a renewed attempt to break the siege of Gaza and asking for your donation .
PLEASE DONATE GENEROUSLY.
Their website is: "Kiaoragaza.net" . For more information you can also contact Grant Morgan by e-mail: < grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz >
PLEASE DONATE GENEROUSLY.
Their website is: "Kiaoragaza.net" . For more information you can also contact Grant Morgan by e-mail: < grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz >
Sunday, August 1, 2010
THE ILLUSION OF THE TWO STATE SOLUTION
73. A genuine independent, sovereign Palestinian state will and cannot possibly ever happen. Neither the Israelis nor Palestinians will ever agree to such a solution. Just realise for a moment what this will mean. Sovereign states have their own standing armies, police, press, TV stations etc.. Sovereign states can make alliances with the countries of their own choosing. The envisaged Palestinian state will be a divided country; the Gaza strip on the Mediterranean Sea and the landlocked West Bank. It is not difficult to grasp that Palestinians, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, will ever agree to such torn-up state, which will be subjected to Israeli intimidation and manipulations at will. At best it will exist under suzerainty of the Zionist state. Israelis on the other hand will never accept a genuine independent sovereign neighboring state, which is very likely to align itself eventually with countries such as Iran Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Syria. Then there is also the question of the illegal settlements, the so called security wall encircling and separating entire villages in the West Bank. It has the distinct appearance of a long term deliberately designed policy in order to thwart any attempt to create an independent Palestinian state. Of course successive U.S. administrations are well aware of this. The settlers will never give up the illegally acquired stolen Palestinian land. The Zionist aim still is and has always been a Greater Israel (Eretz Israel) and their present policies are very clearly pointing that way. Israel wants to preserve its exclusive, but undemocratic (perceived) Jewish identity, but has always, since its very inception, been faced with the demographic dilemma how to get rid - short of direct genocide - of the original native Palestinian population it expelled from the then British mandate after 1948. Besieged Gaza and also the West Bank to some extent is subjected to a protracted slow strangulation, by depriving the population from essential foodstuffs, shelter and basic medical care and thus slowly undermining peoples health. An outbreak of an epidemic would wipe out part of this undernourished population in no time. And all this takes place under the phony pretext of "rockets fired into Israel by Hamas". This sinister Zionist policy is a deliberately designed long term strategy plan, which takes time to carry out. The now already decades old so called 'road maps' and 'peace talks' or what ever one may call it, are part of that long term U.S./Israeli design. Whether it will succeed or not is any body's guess.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
THE MYTH OF THE JEWISH "RACE"
72. A) Scarcely any scholar has contradicted the assertion that there was no forced exile of a Jewish people in the first century ad. and most critics are perfectly well aware that the Bible is not a book of history. The secularisation of the Old Testament was conducted by the Zionist regime in parallel with the nationalization of the "exile". The myth that recounted the expulsion of the "Jewish people" by the Romans became the supreme justification for claiming historical rights over a Palestine that Zionist rhetoric had transformed into the "Land of Israel". We have here a particular astonishing example of the molding of a collective memory. But what happened to the population of Judea if it did not undergo exile by the Romans ? In the early days of colonization even prominent Zionist leaders, including Ben Gurion all believed that the native Palestinians ("fellahs") they encountered were descendants from the ancient Jewish people, and that the two populations had to be reunited. They knew perfectly well that there was never an exile in the first century ad., and they logically concluded that the great mass of the Jews had converted to Islam with the arrival of Arab forces in the early seventh century. It is most likely that to-days Palestinians derive from a variety of origins, just like all contemporary peoples. Each conqueror left his mark in the region: Egyptians, Persians and Byzantines fertilized the local women and many descendants must still be there. Hence an inhabitant of Hebron is probably much closer in origin to the ancient Jews than the majority of those across the world, who identify themselves as such.After exhausting all the historical arguments, several critics have seized on genetics. In the 1950's research was carried out in Israel on characteristic Jewish fingerprints, and from the 1970's, biologists in their laboratories (also in the U.S.) have sought a genetic marker common to all Jews. These attempts to justify Zionism through genetics is reminiscent of the procedures of late 19th century anthropologists who very scientifically set out to discover the specific characteristics of Europeans. As of to-day, no study based on anonymous DNA samples has succeeded in identifying a genetic marker specific to Jews, and it is not likely that any study ever will. The bitter irony to see the descendants of the Holocaust survivors set out to find a biological Jewish identity: Hitler would certainly have been very pleased. And it is even all the more repulsive that this kind of research should be conducted in a state that has waged for years a declared policy of "Judaization of the country" in which even to-day a Jew is not allowed to marry a non-Jew.
Source: Shlomo Sands; History Department University of Tel Aviv , Israel
B) The Old Testament was the basis on which contemporary Zionism justified their "return to the Promised Land of God's Chosen People". However their attempts to reconstruct the Bible so as to fit their ideological vision clashed with modern scientific research, anthropologically, ethnically and genetically. Findings at excavation sites over the last century have proved otherwise. Besides nobody knows who wrote the Old Testament. It had probably many authors, was edited and re-edited over the centuries and often contradicts itself. It is certainly not a history book. Also Zionist "historians" in the face of new and findings frequently had to change their stories. As a matter of interest, the Israeli Universities in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, have two history departments: the Department of General History and an Department of Jewish History ! So we have already established the fact that there is virtually a complete consensus amongst historians (on which the evidence presented here is based) that there never was an exodus, exile or expulsion of Jews in the first century ad.after the destruction of the second Temple and causing the alleged Diaspora of the Jewish people around the globe. So the question remains what happened to the Jewish population during that time. The answer is nothing (!), they remained where they had been for thousands of years before. Virtually all historians are pretty well unanimously convinced that the land of the Jews , which are genetically also Semites, was invaded and conquered by the Islamic Arab armies during the seventh century ad. and that the Jewish population en mass converted to Islam. The reason for this is that the Arabs offered the Jewish peasants tax exemptions it they converted to Islam, which proved to be powerful incentive for most of them to change religion. Those who stuck to the Jewish religion were well tolerated and even joined their brethren in the Arab armies in the conquest of the North African countries south of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Morocco, Ethiopia and into Spain ( Sephardim Jews) where they got as far as the Pyrenees. (Ethiopian Jews were later also invited into Zionist Israel). The Spanish Sephardim Jews were also well tolerated and were not persecuted until the 15th century. The Spanish Inquisition brought an end to this and many Jews fled into western Europe and England. The Jews became mainly proselytizers for the Jewish faith, but were eventually not able to compete against the spread of the Islamic and later Christian faith as they were accepted by the majority of the populace in Asian Minor and the people of the western world. Jewishness is sometimes denoted as a "women's religion" and one reason for men reluctant to embrace the Jewish faith was ritual circumcision.
The Khazar Empire. However what is more important in this narrative from a Jewish Diaspora perspective is the advances and conquests of the Islamic armies into Asian Minor, east of the Byzantium Empire, which stretched to about half way present day Turkey. In the North they advanced as far as present day Georgia, where they were halted by the Caucasian Mountains, west of the Caspian Sea. They also advanced to the north, east of the Caspian Sea, where the pagan tribes were converted to Islam and some to Judaism. However, the Islamic armies were not only halted by the Caucasian Mountains, but they were confronted by the Khazarians. The Khazarian Empire, with the capital Itil, stretched form north of the Caspian Sea to present day Ukraine, although the western parts of the empire (to-day's Ukraine) was inhabited by the Magyar under suzerainty of Khazaria. Its centre was situated at the Don delta. Khazaria is of unique importance because it reveals the ethnic origins of the people (Israelis) who to-day inhabit former Palestine. Khazaria in the eighth century ad. at the time of the Islamic expansion eastwards, was a for that time well organized, flourishing empire with a standing army. The population was a mixture of pagans, Christians and Islamics, living peacefully together. The Islamic armies failed to penetrate and conquer the territory of Khazaria. However towards the end of the eighth century the Khazar King (The Kagan) converted to Judaism. Reasons for his conversion are speculative, but it is thought to have been more of a shrewd diplomatic move so as to remain on a good footing with the two southern and eastern rival empires. After all Khazaria was faced with two adversities the Christian (Roman/Byzantine) empire as well as from the Islamic expansion in the east. Judaism became henceforth the state religion of the Khazars and a large number of the populace converted to the Jewish religion over the centuries. Although occasionally skirmishes took place against attempted, but unsuccesful incursions of the Islamic armies there was by and large a flourishing trade between the three rivals and Khazar trade routs extended well into the Islamic world, even as far as Baghdad. Although Jews were initially during the first millennium well tolerated and accepted in the Roman Empire, this came gradually to an end with the spreading of Christianity within the empire. Jews were given the choice to convert to Christianity or killed often in a gruesome manner. Many Jews choose to live and converted to the Christian faith, other die-hard Jews fled to Khazaria. But this was only a trickle in comparison with the mass conversions of Khazar people to the Jewish faith.
It were the East Scandinavian Vikings (Varangians) who towards the end of the first millennium brought the Khazar Empire to and end, although Khazaria as a state was to last for another two centuries. They were called the 'Rhos' (derived from Swedish 'rodhers' meaning rowers) from which our present day word Rus is derived. They came down the big rivers, the Don and the Dnjepper in huge fleets of some 500 boats, each with 100 warriors. However before that time the first waves of Magyars had already begun to migrate westwards to what to-day is Hungary. During the following four to five centuries this protracted migratory trek was subsequently followed by Khazarians, driven away first during the Viking/Khazar wars, later by the Mongol hordes from eastern Siberia and later also during the outbreak of the plague. These huge migrations over many centuries have accounted for the large numbers of Jews in eastern Europe, mainly in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and later to some extent Austria. A survey carried out round 1900 showed that there were some 500,000 Jews living in west Europe, against more than five million in eastern Europe. During the first half of the 20th century and as a result of Nazi persecutions in Germany, most west European Jews fled to America (and not to Palestine !). Before the second world war there had been a trickle of east European colonist Jews into Palestine, initially living in peaceful coexistence with the native Palestinians. Problems began when, after WW 2 huge numbers of East European displaced persons, from the Nazi concentration camps, began to upset the demographic composition of the country.
I shall finish this brief historical narrative with a quotation from Arthur Koestler book 'The Thirteenth Tribe'. But it is obvious that I cannot cover everything from his book in this blog, so I urge readers strongly to do some reading for themselves:
"The evidence quoted in previous chapters adds up to a strong case in favour of those modern historians - whether Austrian, Israeli or Polish - who, independently from each other, have argued that the bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but from Caucasian origin.....The stream moved in a consistent westerly direction, from the Caucasus through the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central Europe.....The numerical ratio of the Khazar to the Semitic and other contributions is impossible to establish. But the cumulative evidence makes one inclined to agree with the consensus of Polish historians that 'in earlier times the main bulk originated from the Khazar country'; and that accordingly, the Khazar contributions to the genetic make-up of the Jews must be substantial, and in all likelihood dominant".
In March 1983 the lifeless bodies of Arthur Koetsler and his wife were found in their London flat. Were they assassinated by agents of Israel's Mossad ?
Footnote: The important racial differences described in Koetsler's book were already fully documented and acknowledged in authoritative reference works, such as the Encyclopedia Judaica. The subject however was suppressed and never became available to the reading public. Koetsler's book "The Thirteenth Tribe" changed all that and the book became a major embarrassment to the Zionists. They were left in a difficult position and were unable to accuse him of anti-Semitism, because Koetsler was a Jew himself.
Go to Googles and enter: "Islamic Jewish Relations". It makes interesting reading, as it shows the very close similarities between Islam and Judaism.
Link to Post 5
Monday, July 5, 2010
SERIOUS DEVELOMENTS
71. Is war with Iran imminent ? We have recently seen a number of serious developments in the Middle East involving U.S., Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran. While almost completely ignored by the mainstream western news media, there is considerable alarm around the world and in particular in the Middle East. Some of these developments are unprecedented and could denote as sharp escalation in U.S./Nato and Israeli campaign against Iran, or even all out war. What are these disturbing developments ? On June 18 a U.S. naval carrier group, reportedly accompanied by an Israeli vessel passed through the Red Sea and towards the Persian Gulf. The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Force, included an aircraft carrier, guided missile cruiser, destroyers and an German frigate. Israeli air force recently unloaded military equipment at a Saudi Arabia airbase near the city of Tabuk. Even more ominously, the Saudis are reported to have realigned their missile defense system to allow fro an air corridor for Israeli warplanes in the event of a war with Iran. U.S. forces stationed in Azerbaijan have massed along the Iran/Azerbaijan border. There are speculations that if the U.S. and Nato attempts to inspect Iranian ships in order to enforce the new sanctions, the resulting confrontation may lead to war. Fidel Castro has issued a warning of the horrendous catastrophe which could ensue following a U.S./Israeli war against Iran.
See also links to Post 39 and 57
See also links to Post 39 and 57
Sunday, July 4, 2010
RELOCATION OF POPULACE
70. Lieberman, Israel's far right foreign minister, is contemplating a new plan ("blue print" he calls it) to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It demands most of the country's large Palestinian minority (majority before they were expelled by the Jews in 1948) to be stripped of citizenship and relocated outside Israel's future borders. He accused many of Israel's 1.3 million Palestinians of acting against Israel and their leaders "actively assisting those who want to destroy the Jewish state. (which had destroyed the Palestinian state in 1948). True peace he claimed can come only when landswaps and exchange of populated territories, creating two largely homogeneous states. Netanyahu's government has all but stopped paying lip service to US sponsored "proximity" talks with the Palestinians following an outrage of global public opinion after Israeli attacks on Gaza 18 months ago and on a Gaza bound flotilla four weeks ago in which nine peace activists were killed. Israel's relations with the international community are likely to deteriorate further later this year when a ten month partial freeze on settlement expansion in the West Bank expires. Other looming diplomatic frustrations for Israel are the return of the Goldstone report to the United Nations, accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza. However Israel is expected to push ahead with its unilateral policies towards Palestinians and refuse to engage in a meaning full peace process regardless of international repercussions.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
MARITIME LAWS
69. Under Art. 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person or group of persons to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process. One cannot attack a ship and then claim self-defence if the people on board are resisting the armed hijackers. According to international law, the actions of the Israeli military were beyond the law and should be treated exactly the same as the Somali pirates hijacking ships off the African coast. Under maritime law anyone is legally entitled to resist unlawful capture, abduction and detention by any means at his/hers disposal.
Reference: Law of the Seas, Part VII
Artcle 87(a) provides for "Freedom of Navigation"
Article 88 states: 'The high seas shall be reserved for peaceful purposes'
Article 89 states: "No State may validly purport to subject any part of the high seas to its sovereignty"
Reference: Law of the Seas, Part VII
Artcle 87(a) provides for "Freedom of Navigation"
Article 88 states: 'The high seas shall be reserved for peaceful purposes'
Article 89 states: "No State may validly purport to subject any part of the high seas to its sovereignty"
GAZA FREEDOM FLOTILLA
68. Thank you for the Paul Mcgeough article giving us a non-Israeli version of events, a version that Israel does not want the world to hear, having confiscated all computers, cameras and cellphones. The American "Anne Jones" that McGeough mentions (Press 07 June) is probably Ann Wright, a former diplomat and Army Colonel, who resigned from the military in 2003 as a protest against the Iraq Iraq War. She has been very active in promoting the safety of women in the military from sexual abuse, rape to put it bluntly, by males in the military. There have been many such cases in Iraq. We have never met but I have had the privilege of talking to her over the telephone about shared concerns over the increased militarization of Guam. Ann Wright is a very brave principled American women. I'm not surprised that she took part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
Contributed by L.G.
*Letter rejected by the editor because: "the letter is not being debated in the letter pages".
*L.G. "Not being debated ?? The most urgent issue in the world to-day."
*My commment: "The Press doesn't want us to know either". We have had this sort of answers several times before when writing on the Israel/Palestinian issues.
Contributed by L.G.
*Letter rejected by the editor because: "the letter is not being debated in the letter pages".
*L.G. "Not being debated ?? The most urgent issue in the world to-day."
*My commment: "The Press doesn't want us to know either". We have had this sort of answers several times before when writing on the Israel/Palestinian issues.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
PAPESTINIAN MINORS MOLESTED
66. 
Israeli "soldiers" (thugs is a better word) have been putting children behind bars. This fact is well documented by several human rights organisations. They are often sexually abused, including rape. Israelis are arresting appr. 700 minors every year. They are not allowed any access to lawyers or family. The practice is to break children's spirit. The Palestinian Chapter of Defence for Children (DCI) has collected 100 sworn affidavits this year of Palestinian children, under the age of 18, who said they were mistreated by their Israeli interrogators. Fourteen of them say they were sexually abused or threatened with sexual assault, including rape, if they confess what their interrogators accused them of. It is the powerful impact of sexual abuse has on these children that DCI has sounded the alarm at the highest possible international levels. The organisation has communicated affidavits to the Special UN Rapporteurs on Torture, hoping to galvanise enough international pressure to bring these abuses to an end.
Israeli "soldiers" (thugs is a better word) have been putting children behind bars. This fact is well documented by several human rights organisations. They are often sexually abused, including rape. Israelis are arresting appr. 700 minors every year. They are not allowed any access to lawyers or family. The practice is to break children's spirit. The Palestinian Chapter of Defence for Children (DCI) has collected 100 sworn affidavits this year of Palestinian children, under the age of 18, who said they were mistreated by their Israeli interrogators. Fourteen of them say they were sexually abused or threatened with sexual assault, including rape, if they confess what their interrogators accused them of. It is the powerful impact of sexual abuse has on these children that DCI has sounded the alarm at the highest possible international levels. The organisation has communicated affidavits to the Special UN Rapporteurs on Torture, hoping to galvanise enough international pressure to bring these abuses to an end.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
64. Rodney Brooks (The Press 29/05) is chairman of the (New Zealand) KBRM and an apologist of Israel's terrorist policies perpetrated against a virtualy defenceless Palestinian civilian population. That alone already disqualifies him for having a valid and objective opinions. He is indeed the very last person that should be taken seriously and listened to. It's curious that there is no other country in the world, which so much feels the need to justify its existence and policies so aggressively expounded by a worldwide string of powerful propaganda organisations, targeting governments and western news media. In America this is the hugely influential lobby AIPEC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) , financially supported by wealthy American Zionist Jews for the last sixty odd years which has been proven to be extremely effective in targeting and bribing members of Congress and to a larger extent determining America's foreign policy towards the Middle East and Israel in particular, a country unable to survive without the continued economic and military support (three billion annually) from the US. It's counterpart is the Australian AIJAC, also a financially powerful strong lobby with the same aims as AIPEC. However, although strong and powerful they (the Zionists) are afraid of objective legitimate criticism, even from Jewish people themselves and that is exactly the very reason for the existence of these lobbies.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Aid convoy sets off for Gaza
63. State piracy at high sea in international waters. Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Aid convoy sets off for Gaza
Friday, May 21, 2010
62. The following is a letter submitted to the NZ Listener by a Christchurch couple who visited the West Bank last year.
"Thank you for the interview with Antony Loewenstein (Listener May 15-21 2010) But I must challenge the reporter's insinuation that Israel would be wise not to become a democracy for all its people, because "violence is rampant in South Africa". Excuse me, but violence, State-sanctioned violence, is rampant in Israel. Readers should see the reports from Defence of Children International www.dci-pal.org/ about the shocking way Palestinian children are arrested in the middle of thee night, accused of throwing rocks at the Wall, yes at the Wall, beaten, made to sign confessions in Hebrew, a language they don't understand. I have a friend who has been a Christian Peacemaker in Hebron four times. Part of her duties there was to escort small children to school so they would not be attacked by settlers. Settlers and their children throw rocks at Palestinians, adults and children, while Israeli soldiers look the other way. See www.cpt-org/hebron for more example of disgusting behaviour. My husband an I visited the West Bank last November. While we were at the Bethlehem University, the story broke out about a woman in early twenties, within a few month of graduation, who was hauled off a bus, blindfolded, hog-tied and taken to Gaza. We also heard many stories about the daily harassment and humiliations faced by students as they try to make their way to class. Then there is Gaza, an open air overcrowded prison. Uri Avnery, the founder of Gush Shalom, has described the siege, still on-going, as 'genocide in slow motion'. This was before the December 2009 bombing and invasion, described by the American Chris Hedges as 'not a war, but murder'. There are Israeli Jews who oppose their regime, most notably members of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, http://www.icahd.org/. The West does not help those brave people in ICAHD by pretending the status quo is acceptable. I suspect that the only way for Israel to evolve into a less violent society, would be for it to become a democratic state for all its people, as are the countries with which Israel falsely claims to share values."
L & M. G.
Letter rejected.
The following letter was submitted to the Christchurch Press by the same contributors.
"Prominent linguist, intellectual, and social critic Noam Chomsky and his daughter have been denied entry into Israel (Press, 18 May). The 81 year-old was kept waiting around at the Allenby Bridge crossing point from Jordan into Israel for 5 hours, which included 2 hours of interrogation, only to have Denied Entry stamped into his passport and thus forced to return to Amman. As the crossing is about 400m below sea level, Chomsky's treatment would have been exhausting even for a much younger man. Chomsky had been invited to deliver a lecture at a Palestinian University near Ramallah. His treatment and subsequent denial of entry is just one small sample of Israel's contempt for Palestinians and for anyone, including diaspora Jews, who is critical of their regime. I wonder, will any American government complain about this "Stalinist" (Chomsky's own description) treatment of one of its most eminent citizens ? Sadly, I doubt it.
Contributed by L.G.
"Thank you for the interview with Antony Loewenstein (Listener May 15-21 2010) But I must challenge the reporter's insinuation that Israel would be wise not to become a democracy for all its people, because "violence is rampant in South Africa". Excuse me, but violence, State-sanctioned violence, is rampant in Israel. Readers should see the reports from Defence of Children International www.dci-pal.org/ about the shocking way Palestinian children are arrested in the middle of thee night, accused of throwing rocks at the Wall, yes at the Wall, beaten, made to sign confessions in Hebrew, a language they don't understand. I have a friend who has been a Christian Peacemaker in Hebron four times. Part of her duties there was to escort small children to school so they would not be attacked by settlers. Settlers and their children throw rocks at Palestinians, adults and children, while Israeli soldiers look the other way. See www.cpt-org/hebron for more example of disgusting behaviour. My husband an I visited the West Bank last November. While we were at the Bethlehem University, the story broke out about a woman in early twenties, within a few month of graduation, who was hauled off a bus, blindfolded, hog-tied and taken to Gaza. We also heard many stories about the daily harassment and humiliations faced by students as they try to make their way to class. Then there is Gaza, an open air overcrowded prison. Uri Avnery, the founder of Gush Shalom, has described the siege, still on-going, as 'genocide in slow motion'. This was before the December 2009 bombing and invasion, described by the American Chris Hedges as 'not a war, but murder'. There are Israeli Jews who oppose their regime, most notably members of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, http://www.icahd.org/. The West does not help those brave people in ICAHD by pretending the status quo is acceptable. I suspect that the only way for Israel to evolve into a less violent society, would be for it to become a democratic state for all its people, as are the countries with which Israel falsely claims to share values."
L & M. G.
Letter rejected.
The following letter was submitted to the Christchurch Press by the same contributors.
"Prominent linguist, intellectual, and social critic Noam Chomsky and his daughter have been denied entry into Israel (Press, 18 May). The 81 year-old was kept waiting around at the Allenby Bridge crossing point from Jordan into Israel for 5 hours, which included 2 hours of interrogation, only to have Denied Entry stamped into his passport and thus forced to return to Amman. As the crossing is about 400m below sea level, Chomsky's treatment would have been exhausting even for a much younger man. Chomsky had been invited to deliver a lecture at a Palestinian University near Ramallah. His treatment and subsequent denial of entry is just one small sample of Israel's contempt for Palestinians and for anyone, including diaspora Jews, who is critical of their regime. I wonder, will any American government complain about this "Stalinist" (Chomsky's own description) treatment of one of its most eminent citizens ? Sadly, I doubt it.
Contributed by L.G.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
SUPPORT FOR PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE
61. The New Zealand branch for the support of the Palestinian resistance can be found by visiting: < http://wpnz-pflp-solidarity.blogspot.com/ >
Once the world was silent when the Nazis exterminated the Jews. To-day, eighty years later the Palestinian people are being persecuted by the Israeli Zionists, starved and living under the most appalling conditions in GAZA and in refugee camps all over the ME. They are denied the right of return to their their native country, which contravenes international law (Geneva Convention Art 49 ; UN Res. 194 and 3236 the latter stipulates that the right of return is an 'unalienable right'). Remember: silence is guilt by association.
Once the world was silent when the Nazis exterminated the Jews. To-day, eighty years later the Palestinian people are being persecuted by the Israeli Zionists, starved and living under the most appalling conditions in GAZA and in refugee camps all over the ME. They are denied the right of return to their their native country, which contravenes international law (Geneva Convention Art 49 ; UN Res. 194 and 3236 the latter stipulates that the right of return is an 'unalienable right'). Remember: silence is guilt by association.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
EDITING RULES
60. The following 'Postscript' (15/05/2010) from the letters editor deals with the Christchurch Press editing rules.
"A letter overloaded with references is an obstacle course we don't want our readers to run. Their pleasure surely, is in reading prose that flows-not in making their way through texts cluttered with obstacles. Some contributors delight in showing learning by way of backing up every assertion with references to books and websites. Their diligence is undoubted but unnecessary. The Press is not a scholarly journal. It is a daily paper produced for the general the general reader, and that guiding notion extends to the letters it publishes. We value contributions that address issues in away comprehensible to all our readers. This is not a plea for letters that avoid complicated issues, but a plea for making complexity understandable. Neither is it a warning to specialists to not write to the editor. Far from it. A main pleasure is to read expert opinion when it is plainly expressed. One type of reference we do need is that pointing to the date and issue being written about appeared in the paper. That lets readers turn to the story that sparked the letter".
My comments:
This so called 'explanation' of the editing rules is sheer nonsense. It is a gross exaggeration to state that an occasional casual short reference makes a letter "scholarly", or make "the text cluttered with obstacles". These are completely false assertions. Moreover the editor is also inconsistent in his rulings. There have been scores of letters over the years referring to books, website etc. to validate and back up an opinion, which was especially the case on the subject of Global Warming. Not so long ago a letter was published consisting almost entirely of one long quotation. Some letter writers are allotted more space and more frequent access to the letter pages than others. It always boils down to "who writes what". The editor is using his arguments as a means to control any information readers are better not be made aware of. Fair and legitimate criticism is not tolerated and is being "punished" by exclusion from the letter pages. I think it's time that the editorial staff of the Christchurch Press should have a good hard look at themselves.
*)
Few days after this letter had been rejected by the letters editor because of "lack of space, some letters had to be excluded", I received word from the Chief Editor that I had now been definitely barred from the letter pages.
"A letter overloaded with references is an obstacle course we don't want our readers to run. Their pleasure surely, is in reading prose that flows-not in making their way through texts cluttered with obstacles. Some contributors delight in showing learning by way of backing up every assertion with references to books and websites. Their diligence is undoubted but unnecessary. The Press is not a scholarly journal. It is a daily paper produced for the general the general reader, and that guiding notion extends to the letters it publishes. We value contributions that address issues in away comprehensible to all our readers. This is not a plea for letters that avoid complicated issues, but a plea for making complexity understandable. Neither is it a warning to specialists to not write to the editor. Far from it. A main pleasure is to read expert opinion when it is plainly expressed. One type of reference we do need is that pointing to the date and issue being written about appeared in the paper. That lets readers turn to the story that sparked the letter".
My comments:
This so called 'explanation' of the editing rules is sheer nonsense. It is a gross exaggeration to state that an occasional casual short reference makes a letter "scholarly", or make "the text cluttered with obstacles". These are completely false assertions. Moreover the editor is also inconsistent in his rulings. There have been scores of letters over the years referring to books, website etc. to validate and back up an opinion, which was especially the case on the subject of Global Warming. Not so long ago a letter was published consisting almost entirely of one long quotation. Some letter writers are allotted more space and more frequent access to the letter pages than others. It always boils down to "who writes what". The editor is using his arguments as a means to control any information readers are better not be made aware of. Fair and legitimate criticism is not tolerated and is being "punished" by exclusion from the letter pages. I think it's time that the editorial staff of the Christchurch Press should have a good hard look at themselves.
*)
Few days after this letter had been rejected by the letters editor because of "lack of space, some letters had to be excluded", I received word from the Chief Editor that I had now been definitely barred from the letter pages.
Friday, May 14, 2010
REJECTED LETTERS
59. So the new Israeli ambassador, tongue in cheek, has the audacity to call Israel a "democratic" state, where 20% of non-Jews are enjoying "full democratic rights". Apart from the fact that these 20% non-Jews have become second class citizens, the demography of Palestine was quite the reverse before 1948, with 20% Jews and 80% Palestinians. (visit: http://www.1948.org.uk/). Where is this majority of the population now ? Almost a million Palestinians were expelled by force of arms between 1947 and 1949 from what to-day is called Israel and are now living under miserable conditions in Gaza, West Bank and huge refugee camps all over the Middle East. During the same period there was a huge invasion of legal and mostly illegal Jewish immigrants from the Diapora. In 1948 Palestinians all of a sudden found a Jewish Cuckoo in their nest. In a real democracy these God forsaken, by the world forgotten souls should be recognized and included in the democratic process. Only that will bring peace to the Middle East.
Posted 8 May and rejected.
59 (a)Kathy Nilsson from California (8/05) revealing letter is raising an interesting question when she states that John Key is from Jewish extraction. I have always suspected Key to be Jewish. Not that that matters, because I profoundly condemn anti-Semitism. However the important question here is whether or not Key is amenable to Zionism and supports Israel's continued oppression of the Palestinian people ? Has he been instrumental in the re-opening of the Israel embassy in Wellington last month ? There are many very good Jews in Israel and beyond who are fervent anti-Zionists and strongly oppose Israel's inhuman policies in the occupied territories.
Posted 9 May 2010 and also rejected.
( John Key is currently New Zealand's Prime Minister)
59 (b)Some weeks ago the Christchurch Press published an article by Benny Morris, one of the most notorious Israeli historians. In a footnote the editor referred to one of the many books he had written on the creation of Israel. Although Morris is a "pro-Israel" historian he is quite honest about the appalling massacres perpetrated by the then Jewish terrorists between 1947 and 1948, validating the many eyewitness horror stories during the expulsion of some 700,000 native Palestinian inhabitants from their homeland. When defending these shocking atrocities in an interview the interviewer remarked: 'There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that' Morris replied: 'If you expect me to burst into tears, I am sorry to disappoint you. There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the twenty-first century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing' .
Posted 13 May 2010 Letter rejected.
*) I must remind readers once again that the Christchurch Press is reluctant to publish any letters from the public dealing with the Israel/Palestinian conflict and has not done so for quite a long time.
Posted 8 May and rejected.
59 (a)Kathy Nilsson from California (8/05) revealing letter is raising an interesting question when she states that John Key is from Jewish extraction. I have always suspected Key to be Jewish. Not that that matters, because I profoundly condemn anti-Semitism. However the important question here is whether or not Key is amenable to Zionism and supports Israel's continued oppression of the Palestinian people ? Has he been instrumental in the re-opening of the Israel embassy in Wellington last month ? There are many very good Jews in Israel and beyond who are fervent anti-Zionists and strongly oppose Israel's inhuman policies in the occupied territories.
Posted 9 May 2010 and also rejected.
( John Key is currently New Zealand's Prime Minister)
59 (b)Some weeks ago the Christchurch Press published an article by Benny Morris, one of the most notorious Israeli historians. In a footnote the editor referred to one of the many books he had written on the creation of Israel. Although Morris is a "pro-Israel" historian he is quite honest about the appalling massacres perpetrated by the then Jewish terrorists between 1947 and 1948, validating the many eyewitness horror stories during the expulsion of some 700,000 native Palestinian inhabitants from their homeland. When defending these shocking atrocities in an interview the interviewer remarked: 'There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that' Morris replied: 'If you expect me to burst into tears, I am sorry to disappoint you. There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the twenty-first century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing' .
Posted 13 May 2010 Letter rejected.
*) I must remind readers once again that the Christchurch Press is reluctant to publish any letters from the public dealing with the Israel/Palestinian conflict and has not done so for quite a long time.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
LEST WE FORGET
For a comprehensive review of the origins of the Palestinian/Israel conflict visit: http://www.1948.org.uk/ LEST WE FORGET
Strongly recommended reading: "Palestine A Personal History" by Karl Sabbagh. The author was the lead broadcaster and correspondent for the BBC Arabic Service during World War 2. When the war ended he was sent to New York to cover the fateful UN 1947 vote. From there he witnessed the partition and the birth of a new state called Israel. The book is enlightening and humane and deals mainly with the events leading up to the creation of Israel in May 1948.
Strongly recommended reading: "Palestine A Personal History" by Karl Sabbagh. The author was the lead broadcaster and correspondent for the BBC Arabic Service during World War 2. When the war ended he was sent to New York to cover the fateful UN 1947 vote. From there he witnessed the partition and the birth of a new state called Israel. The book is enlightening and humane and deals mainly with the events leading up to the creation of Israel in May 1948.
Monday, May 3, 2010
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
58. The 1917 Balfour Declaration can be considered as the "precursor" ultimately leading to the creation of Israel. It is the most notorious document on the Middle East, sealing the fate of a nation, called Palestine. It has caused 90 years of death and destruction. The declaration was presented as a major statement of British policy in the ME and was enshrined in the League of Nation's mandate by which Britain effectively governed Palestine, after the defeat of the Turkish forces of the Ottoman empire by the Allied Forces. (in which New Zealand participated). Arthur Balfour was Secr. of State for Foreign Affairs at the time became friendly with a group of eager and devoted British Zionists under leadership of a certain Chaim Weizmann, a chemist from Manchester University. Balfour being Jewish himself appeared to be well disposed to the idea for the creation of a Jewish homeland and persuaded the British Government to accept the Zionist plans to create a homeland for the Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine. This led to what is now known as the "Balfour Declaration" and the Palestinians would eventually find a "Cuckoo in their nest". However the majority of Jews in Britain as well as in the Diaspora were kept ignorant of what was hatched out behind their backs by a small club of Zionists . They were led by the Presidents of two British Jewish organisations: The Board of Deputies and The Jewish National Association. They had - as we are all aware of to-day - already fore casted the dire consequences of pursuing the Zionist plans, same as later several British and American statesmen were warning for. "The proposal will be all the more inadmissible, because they the Jews are and probably for long will remain a minority of the population of Palestine, and it might involve them in the bitterest feuds with their neighbors of other races and religions, which would severely retard their progress and find deplorable echoes in the Orient". Obviously at the time they were unaware of Zionist plans to expel most of the native Arab/Palestinians from their ancestral homeland (ethnic cleansing), so as to achieve a favorable demographic landscape. One of them was Edwin Montagu, Secr. of State for India. He became a constant irritation and frustration to the Zionist movement. His objections were that Palestine was inadequate to form a home for either Jewish or other people as it ignored the fact that making Palestine a national home for the Jews, would necessitate the permanent denial of self determination to 670,000 Palestinians who formed nine-tenth of the population. According to the eminent historian Arthur Koestler, the Balfour Declaration meant that 'one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third'. But that is not quite true. In fact, one nation promised the country of another nation to a small group of men who claimed to represent an ethnic group, although they had the support of half of them.
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In July 1937, after continued unrest between the native Palestinian Arabs and the new Zionist/Jewish immigrant arrivals , the British Government decided to somewhat soften the Balfour Declaration of 1917, after an inquiry by a royal commission headed by Lord Peel - the so called Peel Commission - which culminated in a 404-page report. It exhaustively traced the history of the conflict and presenting realities, came to the conclusion that the Mandate was unworkable and that Jews and Arabs could not live under one political roof. Partition was recommended, with the Jews getting 20% (Galilee appr. 40 x 40 km and the Coastal Plains appr. 70 x 12 km) on which they could establish their state. The majority Arab population was to be allotted more than 70% (the present West Bank and the Negev). Something little less than 10% of the country, including the holy cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem (for obvious conflicting religious reasons) and a narrow strip connecting these cities to the Mediterranean Sea at Jaffa, were to remain under British control. It was also recommended that the 300,000 Arabs living in the for the Jewish state earmarked territory should be transferred, either voluntary or under compulsion to the Arab part of Palestine. The 1,250 Jews living in in areas for earmarked for Arab sovereignty were to be moved to the Jewish area.
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Because of the continued infighting between immigrant Jews and the native Arab Palestinians the British government issued in May 1939a new White Paper, which promised the Palestinian inhabitants of the Mandate statehood and independence within ten years. (the same as the other countries that before 1918 were once part of the Ottoman Empire:Syria, Lebanon. Jordan, Iraq). This severely curtailed the continued invasion of Jewish immigrants from abroad into the Mandate. A limit was imposed of 15,000 entry certificates per year for five years. All further immigration was conditional to Arab approval, so ensuring an overwhelming Arab majority when independence came. The White Paper amounted to a complete reversal both of the Balfour Declaration policy and its much modified Peel Commission recommendations, only two years before. However, Jewish illegal immigration, mainly from eastern Europe and Russia continued unabated until May 1948.
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Total population figures between 1800 - 1882 of eight Palestinian cities (Jewish populations in between brackets):
Jerusalem (1800) 12,000 (Jews 2,000); Safad (1836) 6,000 (Jews 1,500); Nablus (1829) 15,000 (Jews 50); Nablus (1860) 24,000 Jews 300; Hebron (1847) 28,500 (Jews 2,500); Acre (1843) 8,000 (Jews 150); Haifa (1829) 2,500 (Jews 50) Haifa (1870) 3,180 (Jews 900).
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Jews and Palestinians in those days lived in peace and harmony side by side. The troubles began shortly after the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the massive influx from "Jewish" immigrants (go to Post 5 Shlomo Sand: "When and How was the Jewish People invented") that had entered Palestine illegally. Surely Britain (and later the U.N.) had no business offering the nation of one people to the people of many nations.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
EXCERPTS FROM NEWSPAPER REPORTS
55.Following are excerpts from newspaper reports prior to the take over of Palestine by the Zionists. * 22 July 1946: Zionists guerrillas bomb the British HQ and the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, resulting in 42 dead, 53 injured and 52 missing. * 17 November 1946: Eight British servicemen killed by Jewish terrorists when a mine planted underneath a truck exploded, carrying people from a cinema. * 24 April 1947: British barracks blown up by terrorists belonging to the Stern Gang. * 16 January 1948: Seven children killed when their house was blown up by Jewish terrorists belonging to the Haganah. During the the preceding six month 2000 people were killed: 1069 Arabs, 769 Jews, 123 British and 23 others. * 11 March 1948: Offices of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem blown up. * 22 March 1948: Zionist terrorists blew up two areas in Arab quarters in Haifa, killing 17 people and injuring 150. Four mortar bombs fell on a British police station. Fierce fighting was reported in Haifa.
And they have the audicity to call Hamas terrorists ! And all this happened BEFORE 15 May 1948 the day that the "State of Israel" was proclaimed.
It is estimated that in 1948 there were 1.35 million Arabs living in Palestine and 650,000 Jews, mainly from immigration between 1930 and 1948. Especially after World War II there was a huge influx of Jewish immigrants from Europe into Palestine. They were survivors of the Nazi concentration camps but most of them from Eastern Europe and Russia. They came by shiploads, however attempts by the British to stop them often failed. Some of the ships were diverted to Cyprus. For population numbers go to Post 26 "The creation of Israel". Post 5 "Who invented the Jewish People".
And they have the audicity to call Hamas terrorists ! And all this happened BEFORE 15 May 1948 the day that the "State of Israel" was proclaimed.
It is estimated that in 1948 there were 1.35 million Arabs living in Palestine and 650,000 Jews, mainly from immigration between 1930 and 1948. Especially after World War II there was a huge influx of Jewish immigrants from Europe into Palestine. They were survivors of the Nazi concentration camps but most of them from Eastern Europe and Russia. They came by shiploads, however attempts by the British to stop them often failed. Some of the ships were diverted to Cyprus. For population numbers go to Post 26 "The creation of Israel". Post 5 "Who invented the Jewish People".
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