Reckless Apartheid Fighter

Andre Pshenichnikov (24) is a most unusual kid. So unusual that he is languishing in Egyptian jail for crossing the border without proper papers. But his story begins earlier. I  first heard of him when this young programmer from a Tel Aviv suburb stayed in Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. He did not go there to explore Palestinian way of life, or to write for a newspaper; he was not looking for publicity, he did not hide nor emphasize his Israeli identity. He did not act as an activist, marching at demos and enjoying popularity. He just rented a room, worked at a building site or waited tables in a tourist restaurant just like any Palestinian youth of his age in Deheishe, lived with ordinary people on his salary.

Andre did the impossible. He crossed the biggest chasm there is. Imagine a white boy from Philly, picking cotton and living with blacks in a cabin on a Mississippi plantation in the days of Jim Crow. No Freedom Rider went that far. He broke an important taboo: so many Israelis are convinced that the Palestinians would kill them on sight, at first occasion. By his example he refuted this fantasy. He renounced apartheid personally by living with Palestinians.

It did not work out very well:  “I was always under suspicion”, – he says. People were hostile to him, excepting a few brave ones. Palestinians did not understand what he was doing there and subtly hinted at it by seizing him and passing him to Israeli security like a hot potato. Israelis charged him with entering the Palestinian Territories – it is forbidden by Israeli law.

He was not cooled off by this setback. He decided to continue his personal crusade – declared that he gives up his Israeli citizenship and asked for a Palestinian one. He’s got no reply from the PNA. Though there are many Israelis who would like to, the PNA does not position itself as an alternative government for the land.

Andre Pshenichnikov (his long last name can be translated as Wheaten)  was born in the USSR just before its collapse; his parents took him to Israel. He graduated from Israeli school and served in the Israeli army,  but he remained a good, idealistic Russian boy. He failed as a Jew, but passed with honours as a human. It is amazing that such Turgenev-style kids still exist in our pragmatic age, and they still go out to “join the working people”.  And the working people still surrender these good-wishers to the security forces, for they could not understand them.

Some young kids are positively influenced by what they witness in their military service.  The occupation is so brutal, that it comes as a shock – and this shock causes them to reject the Israeli official thinking. After  army service they emigrate or withdraw from public life; some go further. Andre Pshenichnikov, a Soviet-born son of a Russian Christian mother, was unable to understand his Zionist-brainwashed comrades who humiliate Palestinians at checkpoints, arrest the men and insult the women, or shoot Palestinian children for sport. That’s why he went to Deheishe.

His left-wing pro-Palestinian friends invited him to a conference in Cairo. The police took away his passport – the reckless kid hastily stepped over the Egyptian border without documents, with just a few newspaper clippings about himself. If he thought he’d get a hero welcome, he was wrong. The Egyptians arrested him and sentenced him to two years of prison, though such a crime usually is published by a fine, or a week of detention. To them he was just another dubious Israeli. Perhaps the Israeli secret services have requested of their Egyptian colleagues to keep Andre under wraps as long as possible. His sincere idealistic desire to support Palestinians to such a degree was understood neither in Deheishe nor in Sinai. It is tragic that people who cross lines make others extremely suspicious. This was the case with German anti-Nazis in the WWII: people often weren’t sure what to make of them, but they were the bedrock of post-war change.

Such kids are necessary if we want to undo the apartheid in Palestine/Israel. They should be promoted by  Arab governments, not locked up. There are too few Israelis and/or Jews who live amongst native Palestinians. A few Israelis, men (Uri Davis) and women (Neta Golan), got married over the Green line. Amira Haas lived in Gaza and Ramallah, but she wrote for the Haaretz. Bigger part of my life passed in Palestinian seaside town of Jaffa, but it is a traditionally cosmopolitan city under Israeli rule, and many Israelis, artists and writers, live there. Andre did an important step.

Now Andre’s mother country, Russia, has learned of his fate and decided to help her hitherto lost son. The PNA should do more to help him out, and so can our friends and friends of Palestine in Egypt and elsewhere. Let him be free! Though his actions were reckless, his intentions were noble, and we need such people.

The Disappearing Middle Eastern Christians

Fourteen centuries of Islam have fatally undermined Christianity in the land of its birth. The decline of the Christian remnant in the Middle East has been accelerated in recent decades, and accompanied by the indifference of the post-Christian West to its impending demise. Once-thriving Christian communities are now tiny minorities, and in most countries of the region their percentages have been reduced to single digits. Whether they disappear completely will partly depend on Western leaders belatedly taking an interest in Christian plight and persecution. This seems most unlikely, as the examples of Iraq, Egypt and Syria demonstrate.

In Syria the Obama administration is fully committed to supporting the rebels, although it should be well aware of the ideological outlook and long-term objectives of Bashar al-Assad’s foes. They are Sunni fundamentalists. The partnerships forged thus far are ominous. The New York Times reported last June that CIA officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, deciding which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms. The weapons are being funneled across the Turkish border “by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood.”

Syria is the region’s only remaining country where Christians live effectively as equals with their Muslim neighbors. It has the second largest Christian community in the region (after Egypt), some 2.5 million strong. Most of them are supporting President Bashar Al Assad amidst ongoing rebellion in the country because they prefer a dictator who guarantees the rights as a religious minority to the grim future that Assad’s departure might bring. According to George Ajjan, an American political strategist of Syrian origin, an existential fear about a bloody fate awaiting them—should the Assad regime fall in Syria—is the main driver behind the Christian community’s almost unanimous support of its policies:

“The secular regime of the Baath Party dominated over the past four decades by the Alawites, a heterodox Shiite sect to which the Assad family belongs, undoubtedly secured life and liberty for the Christians— although dire economic circumstances resulting from the regime’s failure to provide growth have driven many middle-class Christians to emigrate, seeking a better standard of living abroad. Taking that into account, the commonly-cited figure of 10% Christians is perhaps close to double the real number living in Syria at the start of the uprising.”

It is not to be doubted that if the Obama Administration is successful in its stated objective of bringing Assad down, the Christians in Syria will follow their Iraqi brethren into exile. The predictable consequences of Assad’s fall and the Brotherhood’s victory would be the creation of a Shari’a-based Islamic state.

According to political analyst James Jatras, it sometimes appears as if Washington’s policy toward the unrest sweeping the Middle East is impacted by a network of Muslim Brotherhood agents working in cohorts with Obama who is only pretending to have strayed from his Islamic birth (as defined by Sharia). If this scenario is even only partly correct, Jatras says, then it would be hard to see how the result would be different from the one we have:

“If the conscious goal of the policy were the final uprooting of Christ’s followers from the region of His birth and earthly ministry, it could not have been better crafted. No one can doubt that should the regime of Bashar al-Assad fall, Syria’s Christians (primarily Orthodox), already singled out for attack by the ‘democratic’ opposition, would be subject to a full-scale campaign of elimination that they (unlike the Alawites, who at least can try to defend themselves in mountain areas in which they predominate) are unlikely to survive as a living community. It is thus not too strong to accuse, in so many words, those bipartisan champions of ‘Free Syria’ who urge outside intervention of advocating Christian genocide, whether or not that is their conscious intention.”

That this scenario seems acceptable to the Obama Administration became obvious in October 2011 when Dalia Mogahed, Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, blocked a delegation of Middle Eastern Christians led by Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai from meeting with Obama and members of his national security team at the White House. Mogahed reportedly cancelled the meeting at the request of the Muslim Brotherhood in her native Egypt. Rai has warned repeatedly that a Brotherhood-led regime would be a disaster for Syria’s Christian minority, but his admonitions are unwelcome in Washington.

Last July, the Department of State vigorously lobbied against bipartisan Congressional legislation to send “protection envoys” to the Middle East to examine the position of the Christian minorities. The State Department called the protection envoy role “unnecessary, duplicative and likely counter-productive.” In the meantime, tens of thousands of Syria’s Christians have already fled rebel-controlled areas as Islamists who dominate in the rebel ranks target them for murder, extortion and kidnapping. As George Ajjan concludes, this gradual downward demographic pressure of recent years will explode with the exodus of Christians from Syria that is occurring and will accelerate without an end to the current armed conflict:

“Should the uprising continue, with the regime losing control of more and more territory to armed rebels and law and order further breaking down, Christians will increasingly become the targets of intimidation tactics, kidnapping, and overt hostility—if not ethnic cleansing from mixed areas.”

At the same time, Administration officials pressed Egyptian generals into gradual surrender to the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of the country. The decision to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as a strategic partner has been on the cards at least since February 10 of last year—one day before Hosni Mubarak’s resignation— when President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made an astounding statement. He told the House of Representatives Select Committee on Intelligence that the Brotherhood “is an umbrella term for a variety of movements… a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam.”

The assertion by a top-ranking member of Obama’s team that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular” defies belief. It came into being in 1928 as an outright reaction against secularism, which the Egyptian elites had largely embraced during the British dominance in the country. To this day the Brotherhood’s simple credo remains the same: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Contrary to Clapper’s assurances, the Brotherhood is an archetypical Islamic revivalist movement that opposes the ascendancy of secular ideas and advocates a return to integral Islam as a solution to the ills that had befallen Muslim societies. Today it has branches in every traditionally Muslim country and all over the world, including the United States. Its members share the same long-term goal: the establishment of a world-wide Islamic state based on Sharia law. As is to be expected, they believe that the Koran and the Tradition justify violence to overthrow un-Islamic governments, and they look upon America as a sworn enemy.

During the Cold War, Washington routinely pandered to various Islamists as a means of weakening secular Arab nationalist regimes. In the mid 1950s, the Americans even promoted the idea of forming an Islamic bloc—led by Saudi Arabia—to counter the Nasserist movement. That approach may have made some sense during the Cold War, but it certainly makes none today. The strategy of effective support for Islamic ambitions against the Soviets in Afghanistan has helped turn Islamic radicalism into a truly global phenomenon detrimental to U.S. security interests. The ridiculous notion that the Muslim Brotherhood can become America’s user-friendly partner merely proves that the architects of our Middle Eastern policy have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Egypt’s dwindling Copts have seen their position deteriorate over the past year from precarious to perilous. Already facing discrimination and harassment from Mubarak’s secular regime, they now see that things could get a lot worse under the Islamists who are now poised to take complete power. Their annus horribilis started on New Year’s Day 2011, when a powerful car bomb targeted a Coptic church in Alexandria, killing 25 parishioners and wounding nearly 100 just as they were finishing midnight liturgy. The next turning point was the Maspero massacre on October 9, 2011, when 27 unarmed Christian protesters were killed and hundreds more injured, not by some shadowy Islamic extremists but by the military.  An official commission—established by the Army—has unsurprisingly absolved the Army of all responsibility for the killings.

Egypt shows that the prospect of the end of Christianity in Syria as a direct consequence of American policy is not unique, nor limited to one party or administration. The almost complete Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt already is accompanied by an accelerating Coptic exodus, as church attacks and kidnappings (mainly of girls, who after rape and supposed “conversion” to Islam are denied return to their families).

The process is accelerating. On August 1 Sherif Gadallah, a prominent lawyer from Alexandria, submitted a report to the public prosecutor demanding the exclusion of Copts from the committee in charge of forming Egypt’s constitution. That same week a sectarian crisis escalated in the village of Dahshur, only 25 miles south of Cairo, where hundreds of Muslims torched and looted Coptic businesses and homes. “As 120 families had already fled the village … the businesses and homes were an easy game for the mob to make a complete clean-up of everything that could be looted,” said Coptic activist Wagih Jacob. “The security forces were at the scene of the crime while it was taking place and did nothing at all.” The Coptic Orthodox Church issued a statement criticizing officials “for not dealing firmly with the events, demanding the speedy arrest of the perpetrators, the provision of security to the village Copts, their return to their homes, and monetary compensation for all those affected.” Its adherents see the Dahshur incident as a continuation of the Mubarak-era policy of collective punishment of Copts. Renowned Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-Aswany said, “What if the Americans acted the same way as the extremists of Dahshur; would you accept the expulsion of Muslims of America in response to Bin Laden’s terrorism?”

Egypt’s ongoing transition to what passes for democracy in the Muslim world is going to make matters far worse for the Copts, who are fearful the army and courts will not shield them from ever-greater discrimination and harassment. The Freedom and Justice Party, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, now controls the country’s parliament, and the president is a Brotherhood disciple. The adherents of political Islam are in charge. Their spiritual leader is Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, who in a recent video reminded the faithful that Christians are infidels. The Sheikh’s position is in line with orthodox Islamic teaching, which may explain the fact that he is still hailed in the West as a moderate. Five years ago, a U.S. News article described him as “a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam.” As a result, according to an August 14 report in El Fegr, jihadi organizations openly distribute leaflets inciting for the killing of Copts and promising them “a tragic end if they do not return to the truth” (Islam). The letter even names contact points and a location, Sheikh Ahmed Mosque in Kasfrit, where those supportive of such goals should rally after Friday prayers and join forces.

“Liberation” of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship has devastated that country’s Christian community, with many taking refuge in Syria, where they are now again under threat. “At least proponents of Muslim liberation in the Middle East can claim, however implausibly, that the negative impact on local Christians is an unintended and regrettable consequence of a fundamentally humane and progressive program,” James Jatras says.

“But in the Balkans, specifically in Kosovo and in Muslim-controlled areas of Bosnia, no crocodile tears are required. The victims are Serbs, and of course they deserve everything they get. But excuses and window-dressing aside, the bottom line is the same: Washington—supposedly the great global opponent of jihad terror—in fact is the consistent supporter of militant Islamization of one country after another, with the predictable result of streams of Christian refugees, burned churches, murdered clergy, and enslaved girls. Given the collusion between our government and media, not one American in ten has a clue what our government is doing in our name and with our money.”

Iraq’s dwindling Christian population marked Christmas 2011 with bomb attacks across Baghdad that killed dozens of them. After U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from the country, Christian exodus from Iraq accelerated. “Our faithful in Iraq live in fear,” Chaldean Bishop Shlemon Warduni complained, “they feel there is no peace, no security, so they go where they can live in peace… The government cannot ensure their lives.”

The Christian community in Iraq was some two million strong before the US-led invasion of 2003. Up to four-fifths is estimated to have left the country in recent years following a series of attacks by Muslim extremists. While they were still there, the U.S. forces did little to protect them, leaving the task to the Iraqis. On October 31, 2010, an assault on a Baghdad church left 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security force members dead. According to Louis Sako, Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk, “the security forces are not sufficiently prepared to ensure the protection of Christians.” He says that 57 churches and houses of worship in Iraq have been attacked since the invasion with a thousand Christians killed and more than 6 000 wounded.

At the outset of the Islamic conquests under Muhammad’s successors all of these lands were 100 percent Christian. By the time the Ottomans took over they had a Christian plurality, and in Palestine and Lebanon the outright majority. Under the British Mandate (1919-1947), Palestine officially was a Christian country. Bethlehem, for instance, had a population that was 90 percent Christian. Today, they are disappearing: Bethlehem is now less than 10 percent Christian. Among almost three million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, only 50,000 Christians remain. Within the pre-1967 borders of Israel there are six million people; only two percent are Christians. In the city of Jerusalem the Christian population has declined from 45,000 in 1940 to a few thousand today. At the current rate of decline, the Christian population will be a fraction of one percent in the year 2020, and there will be no living church in the land of Christ

If the Jewish or Muslim population of America or Western Europe were to start declining at a similar rate, there would be an outcry from their co-religionists all over the world. There would be government-funded programs to establish the causes and provide remedies, and heart-rendering Hollywood movies. The endangered minority would be awarded instant victim status and be celebrated as such by the media and academia. But the disappearing Middle Eastern Christians, or their remnant, remain invisible to the Western world. It is evidently hard to be “post-Christian” without becoming anti-Christian.

Occupy The War Contractors /Profiteers

As America begins to awaken and take to the streets, let us remember the happily profitable WAR contractors/Profiteers who are scattered across the country. Over decades past, and still, they have received billions for designing, building, and transporting the weapons of war which have destroyed other nations and are now being deployed here at home against us.

They are directly responsible for sound cannons, droids, and other weapons now aimed at ordinary Americans as well as people around the world. War is being made on us and those providing the weapons are right next door, in many cases.  We need to acknowledge this and act.

Some of these weapons, for instance the Sound Cannon, also known as the Long Range Acoustic Device, are already being used against us as we protest. LRAD Corporation and is only one example.

From the wikipedia:

“ Against protesters:

The LRAD device was on hand at protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City[6] but not used; it was extensively used against opposition protesters in Tbilisi, Georgia, in November 2007.[7]

The magazine Foreign Policy has revealed that LRADs have been sold to the government of the People’s Republic of China. American companies have been banned from selling arms to China since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Local residents of Dusit in Bangkok witnessed it in use during protests of Triumphfactory employees against dismissals on August 28, 2009.[8] The LRAD was used for the first time in the United States in Pittsburgh during the time of the G20 summit on September 24–25th, 2009.[9][10] Pittsburgh police again utilized LRAD as a precautionary measure to prevent unruly crowds from getting out of control following the 2011 Super Bowl. LRAD systems were also purchased by Toronto Police for the 2010 G20 summit.

In 2009, the government of Honduras used it on at least two occasions, on September 22 and 25, to communicate to those seeking refuge in the Brazilianembassy. In addition to embassy staff, these included the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, his family, and some supporters and journalists.

LRAD was also used against college students in the city of Macomb, Illinois at the Wheeler Block Party at Western Illinois University (“WIU”)[11] on May 1, 2011.[1]

LRAD was also reportedly[12] used by the Oakland Police Department during the clearance of the Occupy Oakland encampment on the morning of 25 October 2011.

Polish Police also acquired LRAD on december 2010 and used them to communicate with protesters during 11 November 2011 riots in Warsaw city. [13]

LRAD use was also reported as the New York City Police department cleared protestors during the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park on the morning of 15 November 2011.”

LRAD Corporation is located at 15378 Avenue of Science, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92128 USA
Phone:             858.676.1112.

The company which produces tasers, Taser International, their subtext is “Protect Life,” has its international headquarters at 17800 N. 85th St. Scottsdale, AZ. Another office is located in Arlington, Virgina, and yet another, TASER Virtual Systems at 5464 Carpinteria Ave, Suite I, Santa Barbara, CA 93013.

On August 28^th Anonymous released the following information on the producer of drones, which many expect will soon be deployed against Americans within the United States, are all paid for by tax payers.

“August 28, 2011, Alastair Stevenson reports in the International Business Times: The hacker collective Anonymous has released a fresh batch of data taken from Vanguard Defense Industries, a Pentagon and FBI contractor.

The data release was revealed via a post on tor2web.org and later publicised (sic) on the group’s AnonymousIRC Twitter account. In it the group claimed to have released “1GB of private emails and documents belonging to Vanguard Defense Industries (VDI).”

But these are the obvious problems, the end products also imply subcontracters who provide software and other essentials without which the products could not be produced.

There are also the old line, military-industrial complex corporations which are very conscious they are a corporate military presence on alien territory, for instanceNorthrop Grumman. A friend of mine, a mind-mannered software engineer, and his partner, inadvertently drove into the company parking lot during broad daylight in Maryland to be met by ‘security’ wearing flack jackets and carrying AK47s.

Some defense contractors are open to their relationship with us. Others are covert.

Santa Barbara, that lovely resort where so many 1%ers live on the Pacific coast above Los Angeles, is also the headquarters for Green Hills Software, yet another defense contractor located at 28 Sola St., Santa Barbara, CA 93103. Notice the significant partners on their “defense customers” page for this company who are more easily recognizable.

Complex weapons systems, high level encryption, and other expensive toys used in war, are produced behind the seemingly safe and friendly doors of businesses which donate to local charities as they cash their government checks and pump out their products of death. We need to rethink our attitude here.

War is the health of the corporate state. General Smedley Butler said this of corporate war profits in his book, “War is a Racket,” written in 1937. “The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.

Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely pocketed. Let’s just take a few examples:

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people — didn’t one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn’t much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let’s look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump — or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!”

The Occupy Movement is about confrontation. Since its inception more protests have begun and are broadening out in scope.

Protests are traditional tools for awakening the public and growing a movement but awakening is only the first step.

It is time to move directly to accountability. No person of conscience should have participated in making these weapons, no matter how profitable or what justifications were offered by those ‘in authority.’

We are facing a reality which includes a corrupt system of justice and elected officials who demand they not be held accountable for their actions. This cannot be tolerated.

We can no longer accept a moral justification based on lies sold to us by government and corporations. Instead, we should non-violently demand accountability and simultaneously work taking each of these areas into account with parallel efforts.

War Contractors/Profiteers

• How much was paid to each specific corporation, owner, and specific employee for these weapons or components which were used to produce weapons or controls on Americans and others around the world?
• What damage has been done to each of us, to others around the world, to our environment?
• What is owed to us, as individuals, for these damages? Certainly enough to reboot the system as we continue the fight to return governance to the most local level.

Asking the questions begins the process which ends in collecting and ending the use of a bogus ‘sovereign immunity’ to hold onto ill-gotten gains. If we stay in the Corporate-Government (Greedville) paradigm we cannot win.

Keeping us divided, Right and Left, was a strategy built into their game plan.

War contractors build a cultural shield around themselves.  This shield is extended to their employees.

Keeping us apart has involved the use of oppositional cultural icons and ideas. As humans, we build our own worlds of these, ignoring the contractions as long as possible.

War is made only for the profit of corporations and to enlarge the power of Greedville. The people pay and bleed, Greedville profits.

This accounts for the shrill calls for a free market from people who should know a free market cannot exist if government is involved. This reinforces the R – L division.

What is a Free Market?

For more on this look at the use of Milton Friedman as a ‘free market economist.’ Those who knew him personally knew he was Chicago School and therefore entirely amenable to the use of government at the federal level.

This largely minimized the voice of Murray Rothbard, whose ideas define the free market far more exactly.

Markets are part of how we cooperate with each other. They cannot work unless our individual rights are affirmed and our system for justice is available to all, no matter what their income or condition.

War Contractors / Profiteers have built themselves into a privileged class, apart from the rest of us. This makes it very much in their interest to ignore the reality now about to hit all of us. Their lives have not changed. Ours have.

ACTION:

If these involved as war contractors are ignorant of the connection between their livelihoods and encroaching death and fascism we need to inform them directly.

To accomplish this we must have the facts in advance.

This requires research on each ‘contractor.’

Each ‘contractor, also needs to become visible to us and to the general population.

A site using google earth or other similar program can accomplish this. We can, in effect, ‘tour’ the contractors, heightening awareness nationally and within our communities.

This should impact those employed at each facility, as well as their owners, stock holders, boards of directors, and business partners.

The personal lives of those involved can be penetrated. We can confront them and this, we must do.

Research each contractor, each part and component of what they spend.

Confront, owners, employees, their subcontractors and suppliers, and so awaken a broad range of Americans to what is happening to all of us.

Always destroy the will of the enemy to resist before engagement begins.

[Originally written early last year, this grows truer every day. We need to start to anticipate what is coming far more effectively.]

1984 Is NOW: A Cyber Conversation With Roy Tov

Ever since my first of seven trips to Israel Palestine, I begin every day wondering what would Dorothy Day report today regarding USA policy vis-à-vis Israel Palestine?

I have no doubt that Day would be praying for and reporting on two particular brothers born of different Jewish mothers –one Moroccan and the other South American.

In 1963, Vanunu’s family planned on moving to “the land of milk and honey” but were banished to the ethnically cleansed village of Beersheba, which had been envisioned to be a part of the Arab state in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Following the declaration of Israel’s independence, the Egyptian army amassed its forces in Beersheba as a strategic and logistical base but in October 1948, Israeli Forces conquered the city.

Ro’i Tov was born in South America but grew up in a tight-knit communist kibbutz along the Jordan Valley. Against the odds, he graduated from Tel Aviv University and also the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Tov’s second book, The Cross of Bethlehem II: Back in Bethlehem shares “how he was caught between staying steadfast in his Christian faith and remaining obedient to his country’s military. Caught in a military that challenges his spiritual and moral beliefs, Tov achieved the rank of captain while serving in the IDF. When he left Israel and threatened to disclose the details of what he’s witnessed to the world, Tov became a refugee, traveling to Thailand, China, the United States and Bolivia, where he became first a refugee, and afterwards a political prisoner.”

For decades Tov has been monitored, followed, trapped, poisoned and brutally beaten to get him to shut up, and although he has been silenced from speaking in public due to the damage inflicted upon his throat he cannot be silenced on the Internet or on printed page, because he is driven to share the story of his soul.

Regarding the ongoing violence against him, Tov explained:

“You could ask why I wasn’t assassinated during the 2009 attack. The attack was predicted. I told Bolivia’s refugees office that I was about to be attacked already in March, four months before the violent event. They laughed at me; understandably so since the Bolivian government was a side to the attack. I asked for help from my congregation. They denied it, despite my request not being financial; they have been bought by the aggressors. Since the attack was predicted I took precautions. Substantially before it, I asked for political asylum in Iran. They got copies of all my documents. They have copies of documents I don’t have anymore. This is what saved my life. I was treated by them seriously and even met the ambassador. Neither Israel nor Bolivia knows what would have happened following a successful assassination. As far as they know, Iran may come out and
credibly have denounced the crime. Instead, they inflicted a slowly killing wound.”

In another email Roy wrote:

“I don’t have a Facebook account, because after I
 opened one, it was deactivated in less than two hours. This is not a coincidence. Victor Ostrovsky disclosed the 
fact that American Jews are used by Mossad as ‘sayanim,’ (‘helpers’ in
Hebrew, the word bears connotations of ‘traitors’ as well).

Previously Roy wrote:

“Is Zuckerberg Mossad?

“I care very little about Mark Zuckerberg’s formal statistics; he was born – at least in spirit – in 1984. On September 2010, he gave an interview to the Oprah Winfrey Show. Among other things he suggested not to talk about politics or religion.

“Politics can be defined as ‘the peaceful solution of conflicts.’ The only alternative to politics is violence and war. Religion defines ones attitude toward God and his fellow humans. As such religion is the base for our politics. There is no other choice for each one of us to be actively involved in both. Any other claim takes us straight into the criminal hands of the Big Brother; then, every year would become 1984.”

In The Cross of Bethlehem, Roy explained:

“The year was 1983, but at school we were already studying Orwell’s 1984, a book which frightened us by its similarity to life in Israel. The Lebanon War, which had begun a year earlier, was still called ‘the War for the Peace of Galilee’ by the government. The Hebrew possessive contraction brought together the two words which sounded exactly like ‘War-Peace,’ creating a perfect Orwellian oxymoron. We all skipped the obvious contemporaneous context of the book in our commentaries; such semantics could belong only to the enemy and we lived in an enlightened society.

“Our government could not have made such an Orwellian choice consciously. And yet a little voice in my head told a different story, one that must be kept to myself. The glitch allowing such a subversive book to be on our reading list could only be interpreted as some inconsistency of the system.

“However, a frightening alternative explanation was that 1984 had been placed on the Education Ministry’s official list of books intentionally, so that we would forever fear authority and behave. It was our first lesson in government manipulation of its people.”

Orwell’s nightmare titled, “1984″ was published in 1949. When I reread it a few years ago, I was struck at how much Vanunu reminded me of Winston Smith, Orwell’s man with an independent thought that Big Brother found so threatening that they tortured him beyond his endurance in order to break him, brainwash him and strip him of his humanity.

In 1987, from Ashkelon Prison, Vanunu wrote:

I had no choice. I’m a little man, a citizen, one of the people, but I’ll do what I have to. I’ve heard the voice of my conscience and there’s nowhere to hide…yes, it’s there all right. I’m all right. I do see the monster. I’m part of the system. I signed this form. Only now I am reading the rest of it. This bolt is part of a bomb. This bolt is me…Who else knows? Who has seen? Who has heard?” [1]


”


A working prophet, is able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul. Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away…the irresistible human addiction to power were already long in place…the means of surveillance in Winston Smith’s era…are primitive next to the wonders of computer technology…most notably the Internet.” [2]

“Universal peace and justice are the goals of man, and the prophets have faith that in spite of all errors and sins…[and] although under the illusion of fighting for peace and democracy…all the fighting nations lost moral considerations…the unlimited destruction of civilian populations…atomic bombs…can human nature be changed so that man will forget his longing for freedom, dignity, integrity, love-can man forget that he is human?” [3]

The Orwellian named “Fabric of Life Road” in occupied Palestine is in reality an apartheid road; separate and unequal. Palestinians must travel through sewage and tunnels, but Israelis ride on only well maintained contiguous highways. On The Wall that divides Jerusalem from her sister city the little town of Bethlehem, the Ministry of Tourism had draped a doublespeak sign that proclaimed “Peace be with you” but there is no peace in the Holy Land, for Justice has not been done unto the indigenous people.

In Orwell’s epic, Winston Smith played the role of the archetype of all threats to Big Brother; an individual with an open and free mind, independent thought, memory of history, a voice of dissent and willing to take bold action. Orwell’s Big Brother tortured all threats in order to get inside their head and then to brainwash them into accepting doublethink as truth.

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot compare to the 21st century slaughter that could be achieved by thermonuclear weapons with capacities to wipe out 100% of a country within minutes. The Industrial Military Complex cranks out new weapons about every five years and soon the minds driven mad with doublethink-”war is peace”- will create 100 or 1,000 megaton bombs!

“Orwell demonstrates the illusion of the assumption that democracy can continue to exist in a world preparing for nuclear war…leaders…have only one aim, and that is power…and power means to inflict unlimited pain and suffering to another human being……how can a minority of one be right?…we spend a considerable part of our income and energy in building thermonuclear weapons, and close our minds to the fact that they might go off and destroy one third or one half of our population and that of the enemy…another example of doublethink-from a Christian standpoint” is the evil of killing any other. [Ibid]

From emails Vanunu wrote between March 24-27, 2008:

“Court hearing postponed to May 13, 2008-the appeal against 6 month prison sentence for speaking to foreign media. I found out about the change a few days before Easter, but not until Easter Day, did I learn about the day for the next hearing. My lawyer and prosecutor want to move it to different day.

“I think the hearing was postponed because, from the beginning of the trial until now, they really don’t know what they want. All was a game to try to put me under new pressure to see if they can gain something by holding me here…

“All this means is that Israel just continues what they have done since my release in 2004, delaying and holding me here…instead of sending me for real freedom…they want me very poor and angry, but I am surviving…One thing is very clear: my case is over. They should let me go free…There is a lot of suffering here…Israel wants to hide so much because it is not good for its image as a democracy and a friend of America…

“1984, yes I read it many times and many years ago. 1984 is here now…”

Tov continues:

“In The Cross of Bethlehem I describe two technologies transfers to Israel, which I saw from very close. The one from America cost me my earthly life; I became a refugee.

“Given this background, the life story of Mark Zuckerberg looks slightly different from what mainstream media claims. He was born into a Jewish family; his compromise to Judaism was so big that he had a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13. Don’t laugh at this; this isn’t just a familiar event with good food. A Bar Mitzvah is the formal acceptance of Judaism from those born into Jewish families. It isn’t a familiar obligation, but an act of choice. Growing up in a Communist Kibbutz, I must tell that only a minority of its kids chose to participate in such a questionable event. Yet, Mark was happy to participate.

“That means Mark Zuckerberg was in an excellent position to become a formal ‘sayan’ of the Mossad. Did he become one? Let’s see. He entered Harvard, and violated its computers, robbing an important database. He belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. Then, Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally making them believe he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com (later called ConnectU); in such a way, Mark Zuckerberg stole the technology that allowed him to build Facebook.

“One could claim that Mossad wanted to get formal access HarvardConnection.com technology. It is useful for monitoring and controlling social networks, as I recently discovered after opening a Facebook account. Spotting Zuckerberg as a cooperative individual wasn’t hard. Giving him an informal tip on how to break into Harvard’s computers was even easier. Explaining him how to trick out the technology from Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra – none of them would have cooperated with Mossad – was also easy. Afterwards, the marketing of Facebook against other social media networks was easy due to the Harvard connection, everybody wanted to share the splendor.

“Facts speak for themselves: Zuckerberg stole technology in a method not unknown to Mossad. It belongs to the most faithful recruitment base of that organization. Let me ask you, Mr. Zuckerberg: are you Mossad?” [4]

I doubt Roy will ever receive a reply but I am well acquainted with Zionist trolls all over the Internet and the primary reason I was Primary Administrator of the Facebook Cause: Free Mordechai Vanunu [currently with 5,417 MEMBERS ] was precisely to send a message to Israel that the World would not ignore or forget Vanunu.

LEARN MORE:
Martial Law, Karma, Facebook and Vanunu

On July 28, 2011, Tov’s lawyer wrote:

“Roy, have a look at this report of what a UN torture investigation agency is doing for a US soldier in solitary confinement here:

“The United Nations is investigating a complaint on behalf of Bradley Manning that he is being mistreated while held since May in US Marine Corps custody pending trial. The army private is charged with the unauthorized use and disclosure of classified information, material related to the WikiLeaks, and faces a court martial sometime in 2011.

“The office of Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture based in Geneva, received the complaint from a Manning supporter; his office confirmed that it was being looked into. Manning’s supporters say that he is in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; this could be construed as a form of torture. This month visitors reported that his mental and physical health was deteriorating.

“I would make sense to make a similar complaint to the UN about your Bolivia treatment. I was unaware that the UN investigated individual human rights cases. The one above concerns solitary confinement in a US prison… The fact that the UN is helping 1 man does not mean they will help all…”

LEARN MORE: Before Manning and Assange: There was Vanunu Mordechai
Read more…

Roy added:

“In The Cross of Bethlehem II there is one chapter dedicated to 
Mordechai Vanunu, a true hero of our era. I expand there on the
 reasons for his and our persecution.

“On three other central chapters in
 the book I expand on what he has described as ‘psychological torture,’
 but I prefer to call ‘psychological warfare.’”

Roy concluded, “In another show of the 
pettiness and ungodliness of its culture, Israel won’t allow the 
rise—or even respect their basic human rights —of any of its own
 preaching for the Lord. One advantage People of God have is their capability to rejoice in the Kingdom of God, where ‘there shall be no
 more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be anymore pain’ (Revelations 21:4).

“I have faith we both will emerge
 victorious out of our respective tests and enjoy the best coffee in the universe at Celestial
Jerusalem. My prayers are for him and all other victims of evil.” ###

My faith compels me to pray for Tov and Vanunu and to work to have their stories known.

I do believe that The TRUTH and only The TRUTH can and WILL SET US ALL FREE.
+ Godspeed on it!

 

CONTACT:
Roy Tov 
  http://roytov.com/

Notes

1. http://vanunu.com/

2. Thomas Pynchon, Foreword, Centennial Edition 1984

3. Erich Fromm, Afterword, Centennial Edition 1984

4. http://www.roytov.com/articles/zuckerberg.htm

Christ Was Never A Christian

But He Was Tortured And Crucified By Occupying Forces…

For many Christian churches, Palm Sunday is referred to as “Passion Sunday” and it marks the beginning of Holy Week, which concludes on Easter Sunday.

The biblical account of Palm Sunday can be found in Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:28-44; and John 12:12-19.  They tell the story of when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the crowds greeted him by waving and covering his path with palm branches. The story goes that immediately following this triumphant celebration Jesus began his tortured journey to the cross.

The Stations of the Cross (or Way of the Cross; also called the Via Dolorosa, Way of Sorrows, or just The Way) is a series of artistic representations depicting Christ Carrying the Cross to his crucifixion in the final hours or Passion of Jesus before he died.

2,000 years ago the cross had no religious meaning and was not a piece of jewelry. When Jesus said, “Pick up your cross and follow me” everyone then understood he was issuing a POLITICAL statement, for the main roads in Jerusalem were lined with crucified agitators, rebels, dissidents and any others who disturbed the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces.

Jesus was never a Christian, for that term was not even coined until the days of Paul, about 3 decades after Jesus walked the earth a man.

Jesus was a social justice, radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security of the Temple authorities by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God already LOVED them just as they were: sinners, poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Military Occupation.

What got Jesus crucified was disturbing the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces and teaching the subversive concept that Caesar only had power because God allowed it and that God preferred the humble sinner, the poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Occupation above the elite and arrogant.

During my second [of seven] Reality Tours through the West Bank, I was introduced to Sabeel, Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center Contemporary Way of Cross.

The Sabeel way, transforms the traditional Christian tradition of meditating upon the journey that Christ took after his condemnation as he carried his cross to where he was crucified with an updated meditation on empire and occupation.

In Jerusalem there are fourteen plaques along The Via Delarosa hanging on the walls of buildings depicting where Christ may have fallen three times, meets his mother, is stripped, nailed and dies.

The Contemporary Way suggests fourteen reflections beginning with 1948, The Nabka: The Catastrophe which followed the failure of the UN partition plan of ‘47 when the Irgun and Stern Gang [Zionist terrorist groups] depopulated 400 villages and forced 726,000 Palestinians to flee to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.

Station Two reflects on those refugees and the 460,000 more that fled during the War of 1967. Currently there are 675,670 registered refugees in the West Bank, 938,531 in Gaza and over two million in Arab countries who have never received compensation and have been denied the right to return as guaranteed in Articles 13 and 15 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in UN Resolution 194.

At Anata, [Jerusalem's refugee camp] The Wall is butted up to the boy’s high school. The ‘playground’ where around 800 male adolescents ‘play’ is in reality a slab of cement about the square footage of a basketball court and is walled in on all four sides by the high school, two small cement walls and Israel’s Separation Wall.

A refugee informed me that on a daily basis, “The Israeli Occupation Forces show up when the children gather in the morning or after classes. They throw percussion bombs or gas bombs into the school nearly every day! The world is sleeping; the world is hibernating and is allowing this misery to continue.”

I wandered around taking photos and was warmly greeted by a teenage boy who asked my name and where I was from. I cringed when I said America, for I am ashamed that over one hundred billion USA dollars since 1948 has supported the occupation, promoted violence and helped build The Wall which is “financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile. The Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [1]

A five-minute car ride from the refugee camp, lies an Orwellian Disney Land of lush green grounds in the colony called the Pizgatzeev settlement. I was sick at heart and in my gut as I rode less than a mile into the colony and counted three playgrounds and a swimming pool. I still wonder how many USA tax dollars helped to build them.

As my Sabeel group was praying a gunshot issued from the Anata refugee camp, then another and another in rapid succession. I was told that the IDF was showering the refugees with gunfire and that terror is just a normal daily occurrence. I lost it completely then, and sobbed uncontrollably. I felt like the Magdalena when she could not find her Lord, and then I thought of Jesus, and how he cried buckets of tears over Jerusalem.

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it.-Luke 19:41

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” -Matthew 23:37

While in Bethlehem in July 2007, I also met with Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, the Pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas church in Bethlehem since 1988 who was also born in that little town in Occupied Territory.

Raheb spoke with passion:

“We are not spectators, we have a role to play…we are nonviolent but I have problems with nonviolence; people from abroad come here and give us sermons on nonviolence and I appreciate it, but why don’t they preach nonviolence to Israel and America?

“It’s a miracle that the Palestinians are so nonviolent in spite of the abuse we live with on a daily basis. If you lived here every day you would get fed up too. The world assumes it is the Palestinians who are the violent ones, but nonviolence is who we are. If you operate in a system of violence you will also be violent when you go home.

“Palestinians who throw stones; and many think that is ok, but I say why do that? One day you will throw stones at Palestinians too and that is exactly what happened in Gaza, but the reason is the occupation! Where do you think Hamas learned to torture? In Israeli prisons from their captors!

“There is no way to end the violence without first ending the occupation!

“Our Palestinian government was boycotted for a year and a half by America and the EU: this is violence! As long as the violence is exercised against us that is OK with the world. When the Presbyterians talked divestment the Zionist rose up and said ‘you can’t do that!’

“I started interfaith dialogue in 1985 because Christians should not be islands and you don’t dialogue just with yourself, you must dialogue with the other and the biggest temptation for the church is to stay within their walls and only be dedicated to their own members; which leads to a dead church.

“We are called to go out, and we do not just preach with words, people here are fed up with words; they hear one thing and see another with their eyes.

“They hear peace, peace, peace and for 85 years the politicians have been working for peace and the situation gets worse. Blair, and all the politicians are into PR for themselves; they do nothing for our situation.  Blair got himself a good job marketing himself and he will come and go and Israel will continue building the wall, settlements and carving the West Bank into Swiss cheese; Israel gets the cheese and we Palestinians fall into the holes!

“Fifty million American dollars went to build the checkpoints to ‘make our lives easier’ we were told, but these checkpoints and terminals are not for people, they are for cattle!

“We have too much religion and it suffocates us! If God would speak today he would say, ‘I am fed up with your religion!’ The more religion there is; the less spirituality.

“During the Israeli invasion in 2002 when the Church of Nativity was occupied by the IDF and Palestinians were sheltered within, as an eyewitness I wrote 18 short stories that will keep you awake at night, in my book “Bethlehem Beseiged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble.” [2]

One of the refugees I spoke with in Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp told me, “I left Gaza on March 20, 2007. My husband has been there ever since he was sent there in 2002, after Bethlehem was besieged.

“It began on an ordinary day, helicopters and airplanes circled above and tanks came up the street. The soldiers were on the roof and breaking in doors and through walls. The resistance fighters and many young people ran to Manger Square. The soldiers stole money and jewelry.  The Franciscan father Abraham Feltus sheltered my husband in the Church of the Nativity. After it was all over, I went and prayed and lit candles there.”

Reported by the National Catholic Reporter on 4/26/2002, “the standoff between the Israeli Defense Force and the 250 Palestinians holed up inside the church along with 45 monks, nuns and priests…is taking a toll on both those inside the church and without. Bethlehem residents living near Manger Square, where the church is located, continue to live under curfew. The Israeli army has said it will continue its siege, which began April 3, until it captures about 30 men inside the church whom the army says are wanted as terrorists.

“Reached by telephone April 16, Franciscan Fr. Amjad Sabbara, parish priest at St. Catherine’s Church, the Latin church that adjoins the 1,400-year, old Orthodox basilica enshrining Christ’s birthplace, said the most serious problem for all those at the Church of the Nativity is water. The Nativity complex, which includes Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian monasteries in addition to the basilica, has one well. With some 250 more people now living there, water is running low. So far, the Israelis have permitted the delivery of a crate with 20 bottles of water, but no food. Sabbara reported that those inside the church are living on one meal a day.

“A youth who escaped from the Church of the Nativity April 15 provided a fuller picture of the squalid conditions inside the church. In an article printed in The New York Times April 17, 16-year-old Jihad Abdul Rahman said cold and the stench from rotting bodies and gangrenous wounds drove him from the church. There was no water for washing and only one toilet for the 250 Palestinians taking shelter inside the church, Rahman said.

“Dwindling supplies of food and water are not the only problems those inside the church are contending with. The Israeli army is exerting psychological pressure by blasting loud music and shrieking cries at night as well as intermittent demands to those inside the church to give themselves up.

“It’s the Noriega technique,” said Bethlehem resident Br. Kenneth Cardwell, referring to the tactics the U.S. government adopted in its efforts to dislodge former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega from the Vatican embassy in Panama City where he sought refuge in 1989.

“They play really repulsive music very loudly. They broadcast loud commands to surrender in the middle of night. They explode huge explosive charges and then lesser flash-bangs I call them. We’re a half-mile away and we wake up five, six times a night with this racket. There are blimps with a cable below. There’s been a drone flying overhead all day today. Yesterday colored gasses wafted across the square,” Cardwell said.

He added that a box dangling from a large crane the Israeli army has brought into or close by Manger Square “gave a laser light show the other night and that was pretty exciting…all the computers of the Palestinian Authority in Bethlehem have been destroyed in what he called a deliberate attempt by the Israeli government to destroy the Palestinian economy and the Palestinian Authority.”

Cardwell added, “We watch on TV the great support Israel is receiving from the Jewish people in the United States. If they only knew what this government is doing to the Palestinian people, they would repent in dust and ashes. American Jewry has a very high sense of moral responsibility for the widow, the stranger and the orphan, and they just are blind to what the Israeli government is doing.”  [IBID]

Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy ends his emails with:

“Jesus did not simply ‘suffer and die,’ just as Abel did not simply ‘suffer and die.’ Jesus was ‘tortured and murdered,’ and He responded to His torturers and murderers with a Nonviolent Merciful Love. ‘Suffered and died’ are minimizing, obscuring, evasive, amnesia-inducing, all-purpose, generalizing words. They do not convey properly the Gospel history of what took place on Golgotha. They do not convey properly the revelation and glory of God in Jesus during His final hours on earth, nor do they convey properly the revelation of the redeeming and redemptive Way of God through Jesus. The raw animal pain of suffering and death is not what saves. Identification with Jesus being tortured and murdered is identification with Jesus loving—loving the Father by doing the Father’s will and loving those responsible for His torture and murder. Communion with the tortured and murdered and risen Jesus Christ is communion with a love that conquers any evil and is stronger than death.”- Center for Christian Nonviolence

Jesus is also called The Prince of Peace and although I no longer attend or support any church institution, because I love Jesus and try to follow him, I am connected to the mystical Body of Christ and the most rigid of Christian fundamentalists are my sisters and brothers.

St. Paul, who never failed to express his freedom of speech, warned the followers of Christ, NOT to judge the unbeliever but to provoke the believer onto good works.

Ever since my first trip to Israel Palestine in 2005, my work, hope and prayer has been to mend, heal and repair the flabby Body of Christ in the West by trying to reconnect it to its very roots in the land where Jesus walked and taught that it is the peacemakers who are the children of God; not those that bomb, torture or occupy others.

The Christian EXODUS from the Holy land-which is in pieces; Bantustans, has rendered their numbers from 20% of the total population to less than 1.3% since 1948. Their dwindling numbers are due to low birth rates coupled with their escape from a brutal, inhumane military occupation, which is aided and abetted by American foreign policy and ‘we the peoples’ tax dollars.

Every individual Christian is but one cell in the cosmic Body of Christ.

“So in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” -Romans 12:4

“Its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part [of The Body] suffers, every part suffers with it.”-1 Corinthians 12:25-26

The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and all the prophets said, “You will recognize the believers in their having Mercy for one another, and in their Love for one another, and in their Kindness towards one another; like the body, when one member of it hurts, the entire body hurts.”

In the gospel [good news] told in Mark 3: 31-35, the mother of Jesus’ and his brothers arrived at the house where he was teaching.

Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him out. The crowd around Jesus told him, “Your mother, sisters and brothers are outside asking for you.”

Jesus replied, “I am here with my mother, sisters and brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother, sister and mother.”-Mark 3: 31-35

“What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” – Micah 6:8

Being just means correct, true, accurate, right and fair.

Merciful is to have, feel and show compassion, that sense of viscerally feeling the pain of another and being moved to help.

Being humble is knowing yourself-the good and the bad-for both cut through every human heart and all FREE WILL means is we get to choose which rules ours.

Notes

1. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007

2.  MEMOIRS of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory

Christ At The Checkpoint And Up Against The Apartheid Wall

“When I come here and see the situation here, I find that what is happening here is ten times worse than what I had experienced in South Africa. This is Apartheid.”- Arun Gandhi, after his 2004 visit to The Holy Land.

This week in Bethlehem, the second international Christ at the Checkpoint Conference concluded with a “major breakthrough in the evangelical world” and was attended by over 600 Evangelical Palestinian Christians, Christian Zionists and Messianic Christians.

They came together with “Hope in the Midst of Conflict” under the banner “Christ at the Checkpoint,” to seek understanding between Jews and Christians and reflect on ‘what would Jesus do’ about the Israeli occupation of Palestine and concluded with:
The Christ at the Checkpoint Manifesto:

1. The Kingdom of God has come. Evangelicals must reclaim the prophetic role in bringing peace, justice and reconciliation in Palestine and Israel.
2. Reconciliation recognizes God’s image in one another.
3. Racial ethnicity alone does not guarantee the benefits of the Abrahamic Covenant.
4. The Church in the land of the Holy One, has born witness to Christ since the days of Pentecost. It must be empowered to continue to be light and salt in the region, if there is to be hope in the midst of conflict.
5. Any exclusive claim to land of the Bible in the name of God is not in line with the teaching of Scripture.
6. All forms of violence must be refuted unequivocally.
7. Palestinian Christians must not lose the capacity to self-criticism if they wish to remain prophetic.
8. There are real injustices taking place in the Palestinian territories and the suffering of the Palestinian people can no longer be ignored. Any solution must respect the equity and rights of Israel and Palestinian communities.
9. For Palestinian Christians, the occupation is the core issue of the conflict.
10. Any challenge of the injustices taking place in the Holy Land must be done in Christian love. Criticism of Israel and the occupation cannot be confused with anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of the State of Israel.
11. Respectful dialogue between Palestinian and Messianic believers must continue. Though we may disagree on secondary matters of theology, the Gospel of Jesus and his ethical teaching take precedence.
12. Christians must understand the global context for the rise of extremist Islam. We challenge stereotyping of all faith forms that betray God’s commandment to love our neighbors and enemies. [1]

Also this week, peace and justice activists in Johannesburg concluded a week of programs highlighting the similarities between the Apartheid regime in South Africa and that of Israel.

Learn More about that @ Prophets on Apartheid: Part 1

Prophets on Apartheid: Part 2

Israeli Apartheid Week is a global annual international series of events held in cities and campuses with the goal to educate people about Israeli Apartheid and because ‘it’s always about the money’ to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns.

Last year, Israeli Apartheid Week took place in more than 40 cities across the globe and the good news is that over 100 participated this year!

When it came to South African Apartheid, the US was one of the last to get on-board and only did so when President Ronald Reagan was forced to sign a Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act “because the citizens’ movements in the United States had so effectively turned around United States politics that the Republican senators were telling him that it was in the interest of the Republican Party to sign.”

Last week in D.C. thousands of US Christians united with Jewish AIPAC supporters who converged on the Capitol to lobby Congress in support of the state of Israel and push America into war with Iran.

The Christians who attended the “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference sought to answer, “How should Christ followers respond to this political, multi-faceted conflict?”

They desired “to promote awareness, a message of unity, and contribute to peace and justice for all of the world’s inhabitants. [With] hope to be challenged and to challenge the global church on its moral, ethical, and prophetic responsibility.”

In 1948 there were 29,000 Palestinian Christians living in the land many call Holy but because of The Christian Exodus, they number less than 10,000 today; not because of Judaism or Islam, but because of a brutal and illegal military occupation that denies their human rights and prevents them from reaching their jobs, land, holy sites and families which have been separated by Israel’s wall.

“Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007]

During the conference, the Mayor of Bethlehem, Victor Batarseh, spoke about the Apartheid Wall and other “walls in this world – walls of religion, race, gender… we want to break down all the seen and unseen walls in the world. [he thanked the delegates for] breaking down the wall – not physically, but psychologically [and continued] we live in a big prison in this city but as Muslims and Christians we always have hope” and he concluded by saying that “with your help we can achieve peace.” [3]
The first time I met Mayer Batarseh was when he traveled to Florida in 2005, to meet with Mayor Buddy Dyer, with the hope to re-ignite The Twinning Agreement that was signed in May 2001 by the then Mayors of Bethlehem and Orlando.

The Twinning Agreement is a sister-pact that affirmed Orlando and Bethlehem would encourage tourism to the other and promote a global community. I followed up on Mayor Batarseh’s visit with my own visit to Mayor Buddy Dyer’s office one week after the Mayors had met.

I informed the Orlando Mayor’s public relations representative about an opportunity to help the city of Bethlehem and was seeking the Mayors support in getting the word out about two events that were already scheduled and my involvement with Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund, who imported goods crafted by the artisans in Bethlehem that volunteers sold throughout the world. We returned 100% of all proceeds back to the crafts people and any remaining went to help support the children who endure in the refugee camps of the Holy Land.

Mayor Buddy Dyer did not even have the common courtesy to respond to any of my three follow up emails and multiple phone calls.

I also informed The Orlando Sentinel about the opportunity for the Central Florida community to do something to make true the words of the Twinning Agreement without traveling all the way to the Little Town of Bethlehem in occupied territory.

I got nowhere, but I keep writing about it because the proverb is; ‘if you want to change the world: WRITE!’

In 2006, while I was in Bethlehem I again met Mayor Batarseh and he told me:

“When the occupation is ended there will be peace. If the world boycotted Israel for six months they would comply with the UN Resolutions which is all we want! There is state terrorism and Israel must be forced to recognize our right to exist. For the past ten years Hamas has worked with and helped the poorest of people, they have built schools and orphanages. The PA took the money but Hamas was providing the social services!

“Israel is a state built on religious beliefs. The US and EU and all the free world are against theocracies. But Israel has the right to do anything! The world needs to WAKE UP! If there is no peace in the Holy Land there can be no peace anywhere. End the occupation and there will be peace the very next day. All the terrorism in the world can be traced back to the Palestinian situation. All the money spent on weapons and war could eliminate world poverty.” [4]

There can be no peace without justice and there is no justice without accepting the truth.

There is more than enough blame to be shared by all but playing that game- as well as living in the past- has got no soul!

For this American struggling Christian Anarchist and candidate for US HOUSE of Representatives, who seeks to change US foreign policy and challenge all Christians, I propose believers and unbelievers would do well to consider just WHO their Jesus is.

The gospel [which means good news] that Jesus preached, was very political and a direct challenge to the politically powerful, arrogant, self-satisfied and self-righteous.

Two thousand years ago the Cross had NO symbolic religious meaning and was not a piece of jewelry.

When Jesus said: “Pick up your cross and follow me,” everyone back then understood he was issuing a POLITICAL statement, for the main roads in Jerusalem were lined with crucified agitators, rebels, dissidents and any others who disturbed the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces.

Jesus was never a Christian, for that term was not even coined until the third decade after his crucifixion.

Jesus was born, lived and died a devout Jewish nonviolent Palestinian whose last message to his community was “Put down the sword!”

In the latter days of Nero’s reign [54-68 A.S.] through the domination of Domitian [ 81-96] Christians were persecuted for following the nonviolent, loving and forgiving Jesus.

That Jesus was first left behind when Augustine penned The Just War Theory.

Augustine was the first Church Father to consider the concept of a Just War and within 100 years after Constantine, the Empire required that all soldiers in the army must be baptized Christians and thus, the decline of Christianity began.

With the justification of war and violence supplied by Augustine’s Just War Theory, wrong became right. Nothing much has changed in two millennial, for in today’s Orwellian world politicians claim the way to peace is through war and that nuclear weapons provide protection.

The first mention of Israel in the Bible is in Genesis 32, when Jacob wrestled, struggled and then clung to the Divine Being and was then renamed Israel. I contend that ANYONE who does the same is that Biblical Israel too!

1.http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com/index.php/about-us/2012-press-release

2. http://tehrantimes.com/world/96218-south-africa-highlights-israeli-apartheid/

3. http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/national/1042-christ-at-the-checkpoint-addresses-challenges-for-palestinian-church

 4.:

Response to George Mitchell Regarding Why It Is Apartheid

“This is much worse than apartheid. Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic.”

In the third ATLANTIC EXCHANGE series, Senator George Mitchell, former U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East, is featured in the segment of Is Peace Possible?, a multimedia presentation and special report on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the opening comments, Robert Wexler who retired from congress to become president of The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, claims, “no one agrees less than 80%” with Senator Mitchell.

I won’t quibble over percentages, but as only an “honest and objective view” is the way forward, I offer why Senator Mitchell gets it wrong about apartheid.

When the “A” word comes up at around the 50-minute mark, Mr. Mitchell expresses his disapproval of using “complicated words” and “inflammatory words and phrases that create aggravation and hostility”.

Not facing the true facts on the ground creates aggravation and increases hostility and although Apartheid is complex, the word itself is not.

According to a 2007 UN report,, Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein said, “Israel today was an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status…even if the wall followed strictly the line of the pre-1967 border, it would still not be justified. The two peoples needed cooperation rather than walls because they must be neighbors.” [1]

“An apartheid society is much more than just a ‘settler colony’. It involves specific forms of oppression that actively strip the original inhabitants of any rights at all, whereas civilian members of the invader caste are given all kinds of sumptuous privileges.” [2]

On May 14, 1948, The Declaration of the establishment of Israel affirmed that, “The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.”

However, reality intrudes, for “The truth, which is known to all; through its army, the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.”- Israeli Minister of Education, Shulamit Aloni quoted in the popular Israeli newspaper, Yediot Acharonot on December 20, 2006,

How could a state founded on “equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants” come to be such a state of hypocrisy?

A Little History:

On July 5, 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return by which Jews anywhere in the world, have a “right” to immigrate to Israel on the grounds that they are returning to their own state, even if they have never been there before. [3]

On July 14, 1952: The enactment of the Citizenship/Jewish Nationality Law, results in Israel becoming the only state in the world to grant a particular national-religious group—the Jews—the right to settle in it and gain automatic citizenship. In 1953, South Africa’s Prime Minister Daniel Malan becomes the first foreign head of government to visit Israel and returns home with the message that Israel can be a source of inspiration for white South Africans. [IBID]

In 1962, South African Prime Minister Verwoerd declares that Jews “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” [IBID]

On August 1, 1967, Israel enacted the Agricultural Settlement Law, which bans Israeli citizens of non-Jewish nationality- Palestinian Arabs- from working on Jewish National Fund lands, well over 80% of the land in Israel. Knesset member Uri Avnery stated: “This law is going to expel Arab cultivators from the land that was formerly theirs and was handed over to the Jews.” [IBID]

On April 4, 1969, General Moshe Dayan is quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz telling students at Israel’s Technion Institute that “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don’t even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don’t blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either… There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”[IBID]

On April 28, 1971: C. L. Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times, quoted South African Prime Minister John Vorster as saying that Israel is faced with an apartheid problem, namely how to handle its Arab inhabitants. Sulzberger wrote: “Both South Africa and Israel are in a sense intruder states. They were built by pioneers originating abroad and settling in partially inhabited areas.” [IBID]

On September 13, 1978, in Washington, D.C. The Camp David Accords are signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter. The Accords reaffirm U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which prohibit acquisition of land by force, call for Israel’s withdrawal of military and civilian forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and prescribe “full autonomy” for the inhabitants of the territories. Begin orally promises Carter to freeze all settlement activity during the subsequent peace talks. Once back in Israel, however, the Israeli prime minister continues to confiscate, settle, and fortify the occupied territories. [IBID]

On September 13, 1985, Rep. George Crockett (D-MI), after visiting the Israeli-occupied West Bank, compares the living conditions there with those of South African blacks and concludes that the West Bank is an instance of apartheid that no one in the U.S. is talking about. [IBID]

In July 2000, President Bill Clinton convenes the Camp David II Peace Summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Clinton—not Barak—offers Arafat the withdrawal of some 40,000 Jewish settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, all of which are interconnected by roads that cover approximately 10% of the occupied land. Effectively, this divides the West Bank into at least two non-contiguous areas and multiple fragments. Palestinians would have no control over the borders around them, the air space above them, or the water reserves under them. Barak calls it a generous offer. Arafat refuses to sign. [IBID]

August 31, 2001: Durban, South Africa. Up to 50,000 South Africans march in support of the Palestinian people. In their “Declaration by South Africans on Apartheid and the Struggle for Palestine” they proclaim: “We, South Africans who lived for decades under rulers with a colonial mentality, see Israeli occupation as a strange survival of colonialism in the 21st century. Only in Israel do we hear of ‘settlements’ and ‘settlers.’ Only in Israel do soldiers and armed civilian groups take over hilltops, demolish homes, uproot trees and destroy crops, shell schools, churches and mosques, plunder water reserves, and block access to an indigenous population’s freedom of movement and right to earn a living. These human rights violations were unacceptable in apartheid South Africa and are an affront to us in apartheid Israel.” [IBID]

October 23, 2001: Ronnie Kasrils, a Jew and a minister in the South African government, co-authors a petition “Not in My Name,” signed by some 200 members of South Africa’s Jewish community, reads: “It becomes difficult, from a South African perspective, not to draw parallels with the oppression expressed by Palestinians under the hand of Israel and the oppression experienced in South Africa under apartheid rule.” [IBID]

Three years later, Kasrils will go to the Occupied Territories and conclude: ”This is much worse than apartheid. Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armored vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale.” [IBID]

April 29, 2002: Boston, MA. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu says he is “very deeply distressed” by what he observed in his recent visit to the Holy Land, adding, “It reminded me so much of what happened in South Africa.” The Nobel peace laureate said he saw “the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. Referring to Americans, he adds, “People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful. Well, so what? The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.” [IBID]

In November 2005, this reporter attended the Gainesville, Florida, Anarchist’s Against the Wall Power Point Lecture by Jonathon Pollak, an intense young Israeli and organizer for Anarchist’s Against the Wall/AAtW, which is a collaborative NONVIOLENT resistance and civil disobedience group of Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals who are dedicated to bringing the separation/apartheid wall down and ending the occupation of Palestine.

Pollak said, “Although Israel marketed the Wall as a security barrier, logic suggests such a barrier would be as short and straight as possible. Instead, it snakes deep inside the West Bank, resulting in a route that is twice as long as the Green Line, the internationally recognized border. Israel chose the Wall’s path in order to dispossess Palestinians of the maximum land and water, to preserve as many Israeli settlements as possible, and to unilaterally determine a border.

“In order to build the Wall Israel is uprooting tens of thousands of ancient olive trees that for many Palestinians are also the last resource to provide food for their children. The Palestinian aspiration for an independent state is also threatened by the Wall, as it isolates villages from their mother cities and divides the West Bank into disconnected cantons [bantusans/ghettos]. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem conservatively estimates that 500,000 Palestinians are negatively impacted by the Wall.

“We believe that, as with Apartheid South Africa, Americans have a vital role to play in ending Israeli occupation - by divesting from companies that support Israeli occupation, boycotting Israeli products, coming to Palestine as witnesses, or standing with Palestinians in nonviolent resistance.” [4]

In June 2005, a young American who had moved to Israel because of the incentives of Aliyah told me:

“Aliyah means ‘going up,’ and this deal was hard to pass by. I get fifteen hundred shekels or about thirty-six hundred dollars a year in increments to help with my expenses. I can apply for unemployment benefits after seven months, as long as I look for a job.

“I just completed Ulpan, which was five hundred hours of Hebrew language immersion studies that took five months, five hours a day, for five weeks. I get subsidized rent and just moved out of the Absorption Center Projects. All the new immigrants get room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months in Israel. We also receive free medical care and all the doctors here are dedicated. We can go to the university with 100 percent of the tuition paid by the government. College is much cheaper here; it’s about three thousand to four thousand dollars a year. Until I am thirty years old, I can receive up to three years of education for my master’s degree.” [5]

Apartheid can be summed up as a structured process of gross human rights violations perpetrated against a conquered ethnic majority by a state and society mainly controlled by an invading ethnic minority and its descendants, mainly immigrants, that have been deemed part of the ethnic elite.

The following nine categories make up the necessary, sufficient, and defining characteristics of apartheid regimes:

1. Violence: Apartheid is a state of war initiated by a de facto invading ethnic minority, which at least in the short term originates from a non-neighboring locality. In all main instances of apartheid most if not all members of the invading group originate from a different continent. The invading ethnic minority and its self-defined descendants then continue to dominate the indigenous majority by means of their military superiority and by their continuous threats and uses of violence.

2. Repopulation: Apartheid is also a continuation of depopulation and population transfer. One example is seen in the obliteration of the indigenous Bedouins that Israel denies free movement to graze their herds and are silently transferring the Bedouins to new locales, such as atop of garbage dumps.

3. Citizenship: The indigenous people are often denied citizenship in their own country by the apartheid state authorities, which are ironically and irrationally, run and staffed by the recent arrivals to the country.

4. Land: Apartheid entails land confiscation, land redistribution and forced removals, almost without exception to the benefit of the invading ethnic minority. Usually, members of the ethnic majority are forced on to barren and unfertile soils, where they must also try to survive under impoverished and overcrowded conditions.

5. Work: Apartheid displays systematic exploitation of the indigenous class in the production process and different pay or taxation for the same work.

6. Access: There is ethnically differentiated access to employment, food, water, health care, emergency services, clean air, and other needs, including the need for leisure activities, in each case ensuring superior access for the favored ethnic community.

7. Education: There are also different kinds of education offered and forced upon the different ethnic groups.

8. Language: A basic apartheid characteristic is the fact that only very few of the invaders and their descendants ever learn the language(s) of the indigenous victims.

9. Thought: Finally, apartheid contains ideologies or ‘necessary illusions’ in order to convince the privileged minorities that they are inherently superior and the indigenous majorities that they are inherently inferior. Much of apartheid thought is shaped by typical war propaganda. The enemy is dehumanized by both sides’ ideologies, words and other symbols are used to incite or provoke people to violence, but mostly so by the invaders and their descendants. [6]

During my 2005 visit to Hebron, there were 450 Israeli settlers and 3,000 Israeli Forces who patrolled the streets with their weapons at the ready and refused us access through one of the many checkpoints.

My guide was Jerry Levin, who had been a secular Jew and CNN’s Mid East Bureau Chief in the 1980′s when he was kidnapped in Lebanon and held for nearly a year by the Hezbollah. During his captivity, on a Christmas Eve, Jerry had a mystical experience of Jesus and miraculously escaped a short time later. [Jerry shares that story in “Reflections on My First Noel” by HOPE Publishing House].

When I met Jerry, he was a full time volunteer with CPT/Christian Peacemaker Teams and he told me, “Most of the soldiers don’t like the CPTs. Whenever they won’t let us through, we just go another way, and always, eventually, get where we want to go.” [7]

The village of Hebron had once been a thriving Palestinian neighborhood, but now the narrow, winding stone streets between the colonists and the indigenous people are only connected to the other by a deeply sagging netting that the squatters hurl huge rocks, shovels, electronic equipment, furniture, and all manner of debris upon with hope it will break and hit an unfortunate Palestinian upon the head.

Levin informed me, “It gets cleaned out about every year or so. Come back in a few months, and this netting will be much closer to your head. The settlers just throw whatever they want onto the netting; they do what ever they want and get away with it. The CPT’s run interference by nonviolent resistance; we get the children and woman to where they need to be going and back again. Sometimes, the settlers curse and stone us all; it keeps it interesting.” [8]

Hundreds of now empty formerly Palestinian homes had been spray-painted by the settlers with Stars of David and graffiti such as: ”GAS THE ARABS.”

When Minister of Intelligence in South African Government, Ronnie Kasrils returned to Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, he wrote how it was “like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency. It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints — more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers on the trigger…A journey from one West Bank town to another that could take 20 minutes by car now takes seven hours for Palestinians, with manifold indignities at the hands of teenage soldiers…The monstrous apartheid wall cuts off East Jerusalem…Bethlehem too is totally enclosed by the wall, with two gated entry points. The Israelis have added insult to injury by plastering the entrances with giant scenic posters welcoming tourists to Christ’s birthplace.” [9]

On the cover of my second book, Meir Vanunu provided the photo of the enormous Orwellian sign Karlis referred to, which hung upon The Wall next to the checkpoint that leads from Jerusalem to her sister city, Bethlehem: ”PEACE BE WITH YOU” in English and Hebrew.

The Wall or as Israel prefers to spin it as a ‘security barrier’, “is designed to crush the human spirit as much as to enclose the Palestinians in ghettos. Like a reptile, it transforms its shape and cuts across agricultural lands as a steel-and-wire barrier, with watchtowers, ditches, patrol roads and alarm systems. It will be 700km long and, at a height of 8m to 9m in places, dwarfs the Berlin Wall. The purpose of the barrier becomes clearest in open country. Its route cuts huge swathes into the West Bank to incorporate into Israel the illegal Jewish settlements — some of which are huge towns — and annexes more and more Palestinian territory.” [10]

If The Wall is truly to keep out terrorists, why was it not built on Israeli land?

“It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers.”- Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad. [Ibid]

“The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine, has shrunk to perhaps 10% to 12% of living space for its inhabitants, and is split into several fragments, including the fertile Jordan Valley, which is a security preserve for Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defence Force. Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically sealed prison…roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in apartheid South Africa.” [Ibid]

On December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his relentless work confronting and challenging South Africa’s Apartheid regime spoke to The Guardian: “I’ve been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. I have seen the humiliation at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about…Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice…If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.”

George Mitchell, Robert Wexler and I do agree with Tutu that peace can come to the Holy Land; but only if it is a JUST peace which ensures equal human rights, liberty and self-determination for all the people of that troubled land.

Justice requires honoring International Law and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace asenvisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.” - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the establishment of Israel
“From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:
“When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’” [11]

“What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8

As Americans we all need to understand every one of us who pay taxes is culpable.

“Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007]

Learn more:

Is Peace Possible?

YES!

1.  http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444320,00.html

2.  Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77.
3.  The Link, “About That Word Apartheid”, April-May 2007, Published by Americans for Middle East Understanding, Inc.
4. Eileen Fleming, Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory, pages 55-56

5. Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77.
6. KEEP HOPE ALIVE, by Eileen Fleming, page 99.
7. Paraphrased from pages 71-73, Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present.
8.  KEEP HOPE ALIVE, page 105.
9. Ibid
10.  Mail & Guardian, Israel 2007: Worse than Apartheid, by Ronnie Kasrils.

11. Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007

“I Can’t Do This Any More”: Homeless People In America Are Dying

As I was walking down Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley yesterday, I passed a homeless man huddled against the cold at a bus stop bench near the corner of Shattuck and Channing — and the man was talking to himself.  “I just can’t do this any more,” he was saying.  “I just can’t.”

I felt so bad for this poor guy that I gave him a few dollars — yeah, like a measly two bucks might even begin to help stop his hunger, chill, weariness and desperation.

A week from now — or perhaps a month from now or, hopefully, maybe even a year — that man will most probably be dead.

Living out in the cold, having very little food to eat, having no healthcare or dental care options, having no warm place to stay, lacking even a toilet or a shower, having nothing but rags to wear, and having no place to feel safe?  That level of deprivation can actually kill people.  Under these bleak circumstances, I myself would probably be dead within days.  And what about you?  How long could you survive that kind of merciless gauntlet, that kind of ordeal?

“I can’t do this any more.”

And recently the mayor of Oakland has actually had the chutzpah to accuse OWS of committing “economic violence”.  That really takes some nerve — when you consider that, for the past 30 years, 99% of America has had to suffer endless and brutal economic violence under the jackboot of Wall Street and banksters and their lapdogs in Congress, on the Supreme Court and in the White House.  “Economic violence”?  Us?  You gotta be kidding, Mayor Quan!

And also here’s a belated Christmas carol video, coming to us from the deep and dreamless streets of Bethlehem — where people still optimistically celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, even after having suffered over 60 years of occupation under corporatist Israel’s brutal and merciless jackboots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtSTLWLpSD0&feature=share

I wonder if Americans will be holding up even half as well as the Palestinians have done after we too have spent 60-plus years under corporatist domination.

Probably, if American corporatists have their way by then, most of the rest of America will be homeless too — and, like the man on the corner of Shattuck and Channing, muttering desperately to ourselves, “I can’t do this any more.” 

Christ Under Occupation: Christmas In The Holy Land

This weekend millions of cultural Christians throughout the world will flock into churches and sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and hear stories of Nazareth and Jerusalem.

Too few know the 21st century realities about the land where Jesus/AKA The Prince of Peace promised that the Peacemakers are the children of God.

The indigenous Christian population in the Holy Land has shrunk from 20% in 1948 to less than 2% in Israel and the West Bank today.

In 1970, The World Christian Database reported that the Christian population in the West Bank was 5.3% of that population and in 2011 their numbers have shrunk to half that.

Most all Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land never even visit the occupied territories or meet a Palestinian Christian for they tour with Israeli led groups and miss the reality tours conducted by organizations like SABEEL. [Read more... 

The day is rapidly approaching when that troubled piece of real estate many claim is holy will be bereft of the most highly educated and consistently nonviolent Palestinians –the indigenous Palestinian Christians/AKA The Forgotten Faithful.

Researches predict that if things do not change very soon, Holy Land churches will be nothing more than museums for Christian communities across the region are declining due to low birth rates coupled with increasing emigration due to the persecution and violence rooted in the now 44 years of Military occupation of Palestine.

Some Christian leaders and many politicians claim the rise of radical Islam in the area is causing the decline of indigenous Christians and it does contribute, but the bigger truth is that it is religious fundamentalism within Judaism and Christianity entwined with Israeli-USA government policies versus justice and equal human rights for Palestinians that is most culpable!

In Israel, the indigenous Palestinians are labeled “Israeli-Arabs” and approximately 9% are Christian.

There are also growing numbers of Messianic Jews whose ethnicity is Jewish but they recognize Christ as the Messiah and they are supported by global Christian Zionists who profess strong support for Jewish people but are blind, deaf and dumb to their sisters and brothers in Christ: the indigenous Palestinian Christians who are most Forgotten Faithful.

The little town of Bethlehem is festooned with sparkling decorations but for those who know the brutal truth it is just smoke and mirrors over the military occupation of Palestine.

Nabil Giacaman, co-owner of a souvenir shop called Christmas House is a third-generation woodcarver who daily witnesses around 200 tour buses that roll in from the Israeli side of The Wall for a quick visit to the Church of the Nativity. The pilgrim-tourists are all escorted directly from the bus to the church and then back again without any time to browse the nearby shops.

Giacaman laments, "My total sales the other day were $4.13. My shop is in the middle of it all, but it gets worse every year. We have tourists, but not profits." [1]

The decades-old political conflict aided and abetted by USA foreign policy also is an economic battle raging between Israel and the West Bank based Palestinian Authority and the livelihoods of all Palestinian merchants.

“At 1.1 million a year, the number of Christian pilgrims — those who describe their visit as chiefly spiritual in purpose — now surpasses Jewish tourism to Israel. Many of the top Christian sites are in the West Bank, and tourists have been returning in droves thanks to a recent lull in violence.

“Many Christian pilgrims belie the image of austere travelers sleeping in religious hostels. These visitors, mostly Catholics and Christian evangelicals, spend about $200 a day on hotels, restaurants and souvenirs, compared with an average of $140 for all tourists, according to Israeli figures.” [Ibid]

That would be gospel/good news for Palestinian businesspeople but the simple truth is that most all visitors to the Holy Land arrive by air in Israel and immediately join Israeli-led tours so they never get to see what is hid behind the faux-painted and extensively landscaped apartheid wall which is adorned with graffiti-against the occupation in the West Bank.
Recently, Israel’s Tourism Ministry opened a “religious affairs desk” and launched Christian-themed websites and a YouTube channel to entice them.

The Israeli government is also providing free trips for government officials and religious leaders from Latin America, Africa and Europe and in 2011, 81 members of Congress took an AIPAC political vacation and never spent an hour in occupied territory.

For Christmas, Israel is offering free bus transportation to Bethlehem for midnight Mass so that the pilgrims can avoid the lengthy wait at Israeli checkpoints. The Tourism Ministry is also promoting an alternative to Bethlehem [under the control of the Palestinian Authority] by inviting pilgrims and foreign diplomats to the Israeli city of upper Nazareth for a Christmas market which will be staffed by Israelis and no doubt supplied with goods made in the settlements-all of which are illegal under international law.

Palestinian Authority Tourism Minister Kholoud Daibes, contends that Israel collects 90% of pilgrim-related revenue and said, “They are promoting occupied territory as part of Israel.” [Ibid]

The mayor of upper Nazareth Mayor Shimon Gapso refused to allow Christmas trees to be placed in his town square and told the AFP, “The request of the Arabs to put Christmas trees in the squares in the Arab quarter of Nazareth Illit is provocative. Nazareth Illit is a Jewish city and it will not happen — not this year and not next year, so long as I am a mayor. Nazareth is right next door and they can do what they want there.” [2]

The town’s indigenous Palestinian and Christian minority accused him of racism. A 35-year-old Christian resident of Nazareth Illit nailed it, “The racism of not putting a tree up is nothing compared to the real racism that we experience here.”

“When we asked the mayor to put up a Christmas tree in the Arab neighbourhoods of Nazareth Illit he said this is a Jewish town, not a mixed town,” said Shukri Awawdeh, a Muslim Arab member of the town council.

Awawdeh said there were 10,000 Arabs, most of them Christian in the town and there was also a large community of Christian Russian immigrants.

“We told him that decorating a tree is just to share the happiness and cheer with other people in the town,” said Awawdeh.

“People here, Jews, Christians and Muslims live in harmony, but when the mayor does something like that, it does not make things better.” [Ibid]

Last year, Israel began allowing Israeli tour guides to lead groups in Bethlehem and only Israeli approved tour guides are allowed into Israel. Legislation is also pending that will require all Jerusalem guides to be Israeli citizens.

Professor Virginia Tilley wrote:

“Just twenty years ago, Christian pilgrims could still walk to the old city of Jerusalem or Rachel’s Tomb on ancient trails laid down over five thousand years among the rocky hills of Judea, following the footpaths of prophets and disciples that wove among the springs and valleys of biblical legend. Just twenty years ago, shepherds still tended their flocks by night around the hills of Bethlehem, playing on wooden flutes. Now these sacred landscapes are paved over, blocked off, and the West Bank is an uglified mess of four-lane highways, broken up by hideous concrete barriers and electrified fences, the old olive terraces crushed and buried under acres of monolithic Jewish-only apartment blocs. The shepherds are arrested, harassed and gone. The ancient trails are gone forever. Millennia of humanity’s historical heritage, razed and effaced in a scant few decades, to serve not natural population growth but an artificial state-sponsored project to take over land in the name of an exclusive ethnic nationalism. The loss is heartbreaking on so many levels that it cannot be expressed.

“And the world’s great Churches, whose cathedrals are nested in all this? To Israeli authorities, quiet pleas, in stiff meetings behind closed doors, tactical manoeuvres to keep privileges and access. To the world, silence or token gestures, even as Israel’s construction and archaeological excavations press up against their churches’ very walls.” [3]
Maria Khoury writes from the last remaining self-sufficient Christian West Bank village of Taybeh, where they produce Holy Land olive oil and beer. Her latest email was titled:

Politics at Christmas

It’s that special time of year where you simply want to wish everyone a blessed holy Christmas celebration but I can’t help it that it’s the only chance I get to remind my friends of the horrors that are still happening where Christ was born.  Every time I travel to Boston, I simply feel I am escaping from the day-to-day misery of Israeli occupation and take a break from seeing the new illegal Israeli settlement getting bigger in front of my kitchen window in Taybeh.

By the way, Israel approved 4,000 new settlement homes in East Jerusalem.   These days, I cannot even get the Orthodox Churches to invite me to speak about the Christian community in the Holy Land because people don’t want to hear politics.  Although I don’t mean to be political but I am giving my life to promote a Christian presence in the very land where Christ lived, was crucified and resurrected for my salvation.

I am very sorry, I have a need to tell someone that this year, Israel, doubled up its efforts in demolitions of Palestinian property over 500 homes, wells and other structures to add to over 24,000 Palestinian homes that have been demolished since 1967. This also means displacing more than 1,000 people just in the last few months not to mention over 700,000 Palestinians who ran away at gun point to save their lives when Israel was created in 1948 creating the catastrophe of the current eight million Palestinian refugees who have no right to return to their home.

No one is paying attention to the twenty human rights organizations including Amnesty International reporting Jewish settler violence against Palestinians increased in 2011. The attacks from settlers are up 50% because maybe they are going crazy with Palestine’s effort for full UN membership and the recent admission of Palestine to UNESCO, thus over 10,000 olive trees were deliberately damaged this year alone to add to the over one million trees that have been uprooted since 1967. This is a huge destruction to Palestinian livelihood and to the mother earth.

If anyone knows Newt Gingrich personally can you please tell him that with my own eyes I have seen my late father-in-law’s birth certificate (1925) that was entitled “State of Palestine” issued under the British Mandate!

Mr. Gingrich said Palestinian people were invented.  I did not know what he means? Because before the peace talks and Oslo Peace Agreement (1993) it was forbidden to even say the word Palestine.  With my own eyes I have experienced a historic moment when I saw the Palestinian flag raised for the first time at the Friends Boys School in Ramallah in November 1996 without the students being shot at by soldiers or thrown in jail.  Also I need Newt Gingrich to know that it took two Palestinian pounds (local language called Jeneh Philestinee) to pay for the tuition at FBS (1920’s) when our uncle Hanna Khoury was a student, which was a huge financial burden for his father the local Orthodox priest in Taybeh.

Please forgive me to remind you that more hard worked tax payers’ money was sent to Israel this year because seven million dollars a day from the USA was not enough to keep up this awful occupation that includes hundreds of checkpoints and more illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  It is currently costing more than 8 million dollars a day in military aid to support what I call the 51^st state and very spoiled child of the USA.  If you have an only child or an only son you might know what I mean. Parents are not supposed to have favorites but we do.  Israel has ignored more than 65 United Nation resolutions.

I am being so political that I have to keep saying the Jesus prayer every second to keep my sanity!

Please, Dear Lord, remind me that these most holy days all eyes are on Bethlehem which is a big prison with the wall surrounding it and help me stop being political because people will pray for peace.

“I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born for you.”  (Luke 2:13)

We keep our hope because we believe life with Christ overpowers death. His Light overcomes the darkness of our times.  Christ’s love is the answer to the current hate and discrimination.

Palestine exists in the heart of every Palestinian child and a needed Christmas gift of 47 years would be the end of occupation.  Christ is Born!  Glorify Him! Wishing all of you a most blessed Holy Nativity celebration with all of your loved ones.  And, I wish not to be remembered for politics but for someone who believes Christ is our greatest gift.- Maria C. Khoury, Ed. D.

OK Maria, but please remember that Christ was never a Christian for that term was not even coined until the third decade after he walked your homeland a Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up against a corrupt Temple and agitated the status quo of a brutal Military Occupation.

And “Christ you know it ain’t easy” to persist in the good fight for justice and peace when one’s only weapons are truth and love.

1. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel-christians-tourism-20111220,0,510422,full.story

2. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=344641

3. http://www.australiansforpalestine.net/55553#more-55553

Occupy The Defense Contractors

As America begins to awaken and take to the streets let us remember the happily profitable defense contractors who are scattered across the country. Over decades past, and up until today, they have received billions for designing, building, and transporting the weapons of war which have destroyed other nations and are now being deployed here at home against us.

Do you feel safer because a river of weapons is being produced from the money you sweat to make?

Some of these weapons, for instance the Sound Cannon, also known as the Long Range Acoustic Device, are already being used against us as we protest. LRAD Corporation and is only one example.

From the wikipedia:

“ Against protesters:

The LRAD device was on hand at protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City[6] but not used; it was extensively used against opposition protesters in Tbilisi, Georgia, in November 2007.[7]

The magazine Foreign Policy has revealed that LRADs have been sold to the government of the People’s Republic of China. American companies have been banned from selling arms to China since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Local residents of Dusit in Bangkok witnessed it in use during protests of Triumph factory employees against dismissals on August 28, 2009.[8] The LRAD was used for the first time in the United States in Pittsburghduring the time of the G20 summit on September 24–25th, 2009.[9][10] Pittsburgh police again utilized LRAD as a precautionary measure to prevent unruly crowds from getting out of control following the 2011 Super Bowl. LRAD systems were also purchased by Toronto Police for the 2010 G20 summit.

In 2009, the government of Honduras used it on at least two occasions, on September 22 and 25, to communicate to those seeking refuge in the Brazilian embassy. In addition to embassy staff, these included the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, his family, and some supporters and journalists.

LRAD was also used against college students in the city of Macomb, Illinois at the Wheeler Block Party at Western Illinois University (“WIU”)[11] on May 1, 2011.[1]

LRAD was also reportedly[12] used by the Oakland Police Department during the clearance of the Occupy Oakland encampment on the morning of 25 October 2011.

Polish Police also acquired LRAD on december 2010 and used them to communicate with protesters during 11 November 2011 riots in Warsaw city. [13]

LRAD use was also reported as the New York City Police department cleared protestors during the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park on the morning of 15 November 2011.”

LRAD Corporation is located at 15378 Avenue of Science, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92128 USA
Phone:             858.676.1112.

The company which produces tasers, Taser International, their subtext is “Protect Life,” has its international headquarters at 17800 N. 85th St. Scottsdale, AZ. Another office is located in Arlington, Virgina, and yet another,TASER Virtual Systems at 5464 Carpinteria Ave, Suite I, Santa Barbara, CA 93013.

On August 28^th Anonymous released the following information on the producer of drones, which many expect will soon be deployed against Americans within the United States, are all paid for by tax payers.

“August 28, 2011, Alastair Stevenson reports in the International Business Times: The hacker collective Anonymous has released a fresh batch of data taken from Vanguard Defense Industries, a Pentagon and FBI contractor.

The data release was revealed via a post on tor2web.org and later publicised (sic) on the group’sAnonymousIRC Twitter account. In it the group claimed to have released “1GB of private emails and documents belonging to Vanguard Defense Industries (VDI).”

But these are the obvious problems, the end products also imply subcontracters who provide software and other essentials without which the products could not be produced.

There are also the old line, military-industrial complex corporations which are very conscious they are a corporate military presence on alien territory, for instance Northrop Grumman. A friend of mine, a mind-mannered software engineer, and his partner, inadvertently drove into the company parking lot during broad daylight in Maryland to be met by ‘security’ wearing flack jackets and carrying AK47s.

Some defense contractors are open to their relationship with us. Others are covert.

Santa Barbara, that lovely resort where so many 1%ers live on the Pacific coast above Los Angeles, is also the headquarters for Green Hills Software, yet another defense contractor located at 28 Sola St., Santa Barbara, CA 93103. Notice the significant partners on their “defense customers” page for this company who are more easily recognizable.

Complex weapons systems, high level encryption, and other expensive toys used in war, are produced behind the seemingly safe and friendly doors of businesses which donate to local charities as they cash their government checks and pump out their products of death. We need to rethink our attitude here.

War is the health of the corporate state. General Smedley Butler said this of corporate war profits in his book, “War is a Racket,” written in 1937. “The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.

Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely pocketed. Let’s just take a few examples:

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people — didn’t one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn’t much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let’s look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump — or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!”

The Occupy Movement is about confrontation, about letting those profiting know we are on to them and will no longer tolerate their assumption of moral justification. Instead, we will non-violently disrupt their lives, never stopping until we, who produce the wealth, control what we justly earn so that our world can be safe for all of humanity.

Research each contractor, each part and component of what they spend. Occupy all of them.

The Fierce Urgency of Conversation with Christian Israeli Dissident Roy Tov

Part One…

“The Shen Beet, you know, like your FBI and the Mossad, like your CIA.” – Mordechai Vanunu

Last October and just before the publication of BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010 a supporter of Vanunu’s who had become a friend of mine three years prior told me about another dissident Israeli and former military officer who had also converted to Christianity and been involved in high-level scientific programs.

A major difference between Vanunu and Roy Tov is that Tov left Israel for South East Asia and wrote his insights of the Zionist state in The Cross of Bethlehem

A major similarity is that, to this very day, both brothers remain in the cross hairs of the Mossad.

Tov added, “but most readers would probably not be aware I had been formally recognized by Bolivia as a political refugee in 2005. This would put things in a clearer perspective, especially the Bolivian treason against me. They accepted me and then sold me out to my persecutors.”

The latest in Vanunu’s saga is that for the second time, on 13 November, the Israeli Supreme Court failed again to meet the announced deadline to respond to Vanunu’s appeal to revoke his citizenship. Follow that story at Vanunu’s You Tube Channel: 

The only way I can bear the waiting for Vanunu’s freedom from Israel is by imagining the delay is because SECURITY [Shen Beet and Mossad] are searching for a graceful way out of the wall they backed themselves up against by failing to imagine a little muckraker like me would expose their Vendetta against Vanunu and send it to them:

In the Mail To: 3 Judges of Israel, Obama and Hillary 

I just ordered my copy of The Cross of Bethlehem and a book review will follow, but this begins what I hope and intend will be a series of Internet conversations with Tov.

It begins with Tov’s response to my inquiry for an Internet interview:

“Eileen, my fierce urgency is for real. I can’t tell you if I’ll be able to breath tomorrow. I can’t tell you if another criminal Bolivian hired by Israel will attack me again this night.”

Roy also wrote:

“Seldom do I publish day after day, but yesterday something happened. After I published Rabbinical Fake: 6000 Differences I was attacked, as it often happens after I write on religious items condemning Judaism. It’s not the first time it happens or that I report it on this website, but this time it was a viciously hard hit.

“My food was poisoned and I barely managed to arrive at the guesthouse where I was staying. After several aspirins and coffees, I was able to reach the nearest internet kiosk and send a few update emails including one to a leading American human rights lawyer who is trying to help in my case.

“Back in the guesthouse I collapsed.

“Today I decided to make this public, despite the negative impact (literally so) it may have on me. I fear another violent attack by the Bolivian authorities. Let me be clear: the attack was organized and performed by Bolivian authorities and funded by Israel.

“In The Cross of Bethlehem I describe a Bolivian intelligence officer who admitted openly that Israel asked to ‘keep an eye on me.’

“That was in March 2007. Since then I have no peace. A wide variety of harassment methods are routinely used against me; from time to time I describe them in the website. I was forced to move out of the church. I was forced to live in cheap guesthouses, all the time in the move.

“At the Internet kiosks my memory cards are a favorite target. I am harassed while eating and while walking. Israel cannot logically answer me, thus it physically attacks me.

“In July 2009 I was savagely attacked by a Bolivian – Israeli team, which was performed with the help of the local police (to say the very minimum). I was left with nothing. Copies of my documents mysteriously disappeared at the same time from the refugees’ agency and from the immigrations authorities. No explanation was ever offered for this last event. As a result, I have been illegitimately made into a prisoner of the Bolivian state, unable to leave the country that gave me refuge in order to sell me out to my persecutors.

“Since then, my throat – badly hurt during the coward attack – keeps deteriorating. I can’t neither teach nor preach. Interviews are impossible; after speaking for a while I fold in pain.-Bolivian Refugee 461/2005 Betrayed by those who gave refuge [1]

Roy explains that “as of now I barely speak, have difficulties eating and constantly suffer from pain” in his throat.

Previously he wrote:

“On the morning of July 23, 2009, I was forced to leave the church building where I was living very early, a few minutes before 7 AM. The noise was impossible and I knew that complaining to the brothers would be useless; I’d tried that too many times. I left the building and headed downwards, towards La Paz downtown…twice in my way down suspicious 4×4 trucks crossed my way. They advanced too slowly, as if in a reconnaissance mission, and were out of place. At that hour I never met even one. I chose to advance faster and eventually reached the Santa Cruz and Illampu corner a few minutes later; this is where “El Lobo” – an Israeli owned restaurant which apparently doubles as a Mossad substation.

“Somewhat down that street, four Israeli men were waiting. Probably following their expectations, I moved away from them as fast as possible, meaning I entered the Linares Alley. This is the center of the backpackers’ area in La Paz, featuring many souvenir stores half hidden in a maze of narrow alleys. Fearing they would follow me, I immediately turned left and began descending a steep and unnamed alley leading to Murillo Street and to what I thought would be safety. Halfway down, I heard some muffled steps behind me. I turned around exactly when a small, stocky Bolivian man reached me, bypassed me, and stopped about a yard ahead of me, blocking my escape route. “Roy” he said.

“That was impossible; I use a Spanish name with Bolivians. Feeling what was going on, I turned backward just in time to see one of the Israelis that I had seen instants before on the Santa Cruz Street. Another man was out of sight, and jumped on me from behind; his arm wrapped my throat. He had a solid piece of metal on the inner part of his elbow; he pressed it on the lower part of my neck. He pulled backwards and I fell, another man picked up my feet at that moment and pushed them away from me. That increased the pressure on my neck. I felt the neck making a funny noise and everything turned black.

“I was awake. Nobody was near me. My backpack and all my documents have been taken away. I stood up. Nothing seemed broken, tough my neck felt funny. I headed down to Murillo Street. Unsurprisingly, there were two policemen waiting there. Crime in Bolivia pays dividends to the police; seldom a crime is committed without the police knowing or even helping it. This is not secret; it’s all over the Bolivian media. I approached them and shouted “I’ve been attacked.” Standing next to me, the policemen barely herd the weak whisper that came out of my broken throat. I repeated that and pointed at the alley…afterwards I was at the emergency room of a Catholic hospital, which cooperates with the refugees’ office.

“I had no intentions of letting them perform intrusive tests or to let them inject we with drugs. Local hospitals are famous for causing infections that demand additional treatments (and create bonus incomes for the hospital). After a physician examined my throat, he wanted to give me cortisone to avoid the inflammation. I refused. They refused to let me go. “You’ll suffocate to death otherwise,” a nurse told me.

“They brought a new syringe and show me the cortisone ampoule. Eventually, after some thirty minutes, I began experiencing difficulties in my breathing and agreed to the injection.

“In the early afternoon, I returned for the forensic examination. While waiting in the large inner yard of the building, R.G. appeared. He is the Bolivian intelligence officer described in The Cross of Bethlehem. In March 2007 he admitted ’Israel asked to put an eye on you.’

“His son is one of the Bolivians working in a joint false-missionaries program with the CIA; Bolivian missionaries can enter where Americans cannot. I ignored him. Then, the physician told me my throat had been badly crashed. Later that year permanent damage to my throat was diagnosed; since then it is slowly and steadily deteriorating. I won’t describe here the subsequent contacts with official bodies here, but nobody doubts the Israelis and the local police carried out a joint crime; apparently the Bolivian intelligence had also had a profitable role. Thirty coins of tin for a Bolivian Judas…..Meir Dagan slept well that night.” [2]

Meir Dagan stepped down as the head of Mossad in early 2010 and went “on the offensive in a series of briefings with journalists and public appearances because he feels that Israel’s security is being mismanaged by Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Ehud Barak, the defence minister.” [3]
Dagan said, “I decided to speak because when I was in office, Diskin [the head of Sin Bet/internal security agency], Ashkenazi [the head of the army] and I could block any dangerous adventure. Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi [Netanyahu] and Barak” who have all been replaced by men chosen by the current government. [Ibid]

Dagan has publicly warned against Israel attacking Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons stating “if Israel attacks Iran, it will find itself at the centre of a regional war that would endanger the state’s existence. Dagan’s intervention is dangerous for Netanyahu because it comes from the right wing of Israeli opinion rather than the left, where the prime minister would expect criticism.” [Ibid]

Dagan had once been in charge of aggressive Israeli actions abroad and in recent years his ‘accomplishments’ included connections to assassinations in Lebanon, Syria, Dubai and an air attack on a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria.

Ben Caspit of the Maariv newspaper wrote: “He is one of the most rightwing militant people ever born here…who ate Arabs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When this man says that the leadership has no vision and is irresponsible, we should stop sleeping soundly at night.” [Ibid]

The best and only way I know to disturb the sleep of willfully ignorant hypocrites in high places is to give voice to the voiceless and those at risk of loosing theirs- as Tov literally is!

If all goes as planned this article is the first in a series of Internet conversations with Tov whose expose can be ordered here:

The Cross of Bethlehem | The Memoirs of a Refugee

1. http://www.roytov.com/refugee/evo.htm
2. http://www.roytov.com/refugee/aaa.htm
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/03/israel-government-reckless-mossad-chief

Deja vu Redux: Anat Kamm and Mordechai Vanunu

[Tel Aviv] – On Sunday, the Tel Aviv District Court sentenced former Israel Defense Forces soldier Anat Kamm to four-and-a-half years in prison for “collecting, holding and passing on classified information without authorization”.

Kamm was convicted in February under a plea bargain admitting guilt to gathering and storing of over 2,000 classified military documents from the Central Command office [under Maj. Gen. Naveh] during her army service. Kamm passed on the documents to reporter Uri Blau whoseinvestigative report in Haaretz Magazine exposed misconduct by the Israel Defense Forces/IDF.

“The report reveals that the IDF had approved well in advance the targeted killing of Malaisha [on June 20, 2007, during a routine military raid in the West Bank] contravening the High Court ruling and intentionally misleading the public. The report was attributed to ‘classified IDF documents’ and had been approved by the Military Censor before going to press.”[1]

Blau made use “of classified material from those documents as the basis for two newspaper articles. In the first, published in late October 2008, Blau accused the IDF of defying a High Court of Justice ruling against the targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists. The next article, published a few weeks later, similarly intimated that the IDF had earmarked Palestinian terrorists for targeted killings, and included a photocopy of a targeted-killing order Kamm had given Blau.” [2]

In her own testimony, Kamm described “Maj. Gen. Naveh’s office as ‘embarrassing in terms of information security’ and testified that she had not undergone any security check prior to being assigned to her army role, even though she had access to the most confidential documents.” [Ibid]

Kamm’s trial maybe over, but no decision has been announced whether Israel will prosecute Uri Blau for reporting the brutal truth. Also pending is the Supreme Court decision on or before November 13^th regarding nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu’s request to implement Israel’s citizenship revocation law against himself.

Background:

Twenty-four years after the Mossad kidnapped Vanunu from Rome after luring him from London, they returned to track down another who followed his conscience but was labeled a traitor by a state and public who view truth tellers as a threat to their sense of security.

The prey this time was Uri Blau, who went into hiding after writing a series of reports exposing lawbreaking approved by Israeli army commanders. Blau could face a lengthy jail term for espionage and Israeli security services warned they would “remove the gloves” and track down the “fugitive felon.”

The military censor, who prevents publication of information that they deem could harm Israel’s national security, approved Blau’s story for publication in Haaretz .

Kamm had originally been charged under Israel’s espionage and treason laws but the amended indictment dropped the charge of deliberately intending to harm state security, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

The Israeli court initially gagged all news and details of Kamm’s arrest but after a cyber storm of Internet reporting, the gag order was lifted.

Shortly after her arrest, Kamm admitted to copying the documents while serving in the office in charge of operations in the West Bank, between 2005 and 2007.

The 23 year old said she acted out of conscience to expose war crimes and she believed she would be forgiven for her honesty and integrity.

Another prelude to the Kamm affair began in July 2009, when Kamm’s brothers in spirit from Breaking the Silence, an Israeli human rights group published 54 testimonies from Israeli soldiers regarding their experiences during Operation Cast Lead.

The testimonies exposed the gaps between the reports given by the army in January 2009 regarding the “accepted practices; the destruction of hundreds of houses and mosques for no military purpose, the firing of phosphorous gas in the direction of populated areas, the killing of innocent victims with small arms, the destruction of private property, and most of all, a permissive atmosphere in the command structure that enabled soldiers to act without moral restrictions.” [3]

On February 3, 2010, The Independent reported that a high-ranking officer who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, admitted that Israel’s army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives and “that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as ‘means and intentions’– whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter.” [4]

The Déjà Vu:

Kamm and Vanunu share the same attorneys. Kamm was initially accused of treason and espionage but Vanunu was convicted of both.

Kamm and Vanunu both acted on moral and ideological grounds in a spirit of dissent from government policies of war and deceptions.

Kamm had been under house arrest for two years and faces 54 months behind prison bars.

Vanunu endured 18 years in a windowless tomb sized prison cell for exposing Israel’s 7-story underground clandestine WMD facility in the Negev.

To this day, the Dimona nuclear plant uninspected by international inspectors and Vanunu remains captive in Tel Aviv.

On April 14, 2010, Vanunu wrote, “The restrictions, not to leave the country for one more year renewed. Now 7 years since my release AFTER 18 YEARS in Israel PRISON. The Israel stupid spies will not get any thing from here.”[5]

The media blackout over Vanunu’s historic freedom of speech trial and resultant 78 days of solitary confinement for speaking to foreign media in 2004 has continued, but on or before November 13^th, the Israeli Supreme Court is to render its decision regarding:

Vanunu Mordechai asking ,CANCEL,Revoking my Citizenship-MAY 5-2011.

On October 10, 2011, Vanunu wrote: “About Nov. 13^th we don’t know what will happen. Because even if they will cancel my citizenship, it doesn’t mean they will send me free, they can still keep me here, but we believe this is the way out from Israel. If they will not cancel my Israel citizenship, then the court will decide to hear the case, and then the judges in the court hearing will decide if they will force the interior minister to follow his Israel laws, and cancel my citizenship. Any way they must let go free after 25 years. VMJC.” vanunuvmjc

Brief Background on Vanunu:

In 1986, after being clubbed, drugged, bound and kidnapped by the Mossad in Rome then transported back to Israel for a closed-door trial.

Vanunu was also rendered defenseless when the court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow Vanunu’s own statements regarding his intentions to be considered in his defense.

In 1986, Nuclear Physicist, Frank Barnaby was employed by the London Sunday Times to interrogate Vanunu and review the 57 photos he had obtained at various restricted/top secret locations in the Dimona. Barnaby spent three days with Vanunu in London before he was lured and abducted by the Mossad from Rome. Barnaby attended Vanunu’s closed-door trial and was called by the defense to give expert testimony. Barnaby testified:

“I found the fact that Vanunu was able to smuggle a camera and films into and out of Dimona and photograph highly sensitive areas in the establishment astonishing…I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times…I found Vanunu very straightforward.

“After questioning him about his motives for violating Israel’s secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically. Israel’s political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel’s nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy.

“The knowledge that Vanunu had about Isreal’s nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the design of today’s Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed since then…Modern nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the mid-1980.”[6]

Blau could be charged with espionage. Vanunu was convicted of it.

In exchange for a promise protecting both him and his source from investigation, Blau returned 50 documents but authorities claimed he still held hundreds more classified documents. While on holiday a friend warned Blau that the Shin Bet had broken into his home and ransacked it. Blau later learned that the Israeli secret police had been monitoring his telephone, e-mail and computer for months.

On February 22, 2006, it was revealed in court that Israel had asked Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu’s Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained.

Vanunu wrote, “Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details…three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated…it is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad.

“Sfard [Vanunu's attorney] proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage.

“The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense.”[7]

Vanunu’s secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for “attempting to leave the country” when he attempted to celebrate mass at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the confiscation of his private property by thirty IDF that stormed into his room at St. George’s Cathedral in 2004, Vanunu wrote had all “been done under the false and misleading statements to the courts of ‘suspicion of espionage’, and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes…and the fact is that I have not committed any crimes.”[Ibid]

Legally Speaking:

Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights upholds that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention”, including abduction of a person by agents of one state to another state.

Section 99 of the Israeli Penal Code, treason is defined as “an act calculated to assist (an enemy) in time of war…delivering information with the intention that it fall into the hands of the enemy.”

Section 113 defines aggravated espionage as “deliver(ing) any secret information without being authorized to do so and with intent to impair the security of the state” and a sub-clause provides for a penalty of seven years for the unauthorized collection, preparation, recording or holding of secret information; if this is done with intent to impair the security of the state and then, the penalty is increased to 15 years.

“We have a dangerous precedent here, whereby the handing over of material to an Israeli newspaper … is seen by the prosecutor’s office as equivalent to contact with a foreign agent,” said Eitan Lehman, Ms Kamm’s lawyer. “The very notion of presenting information to the Israeli public alone is taken as an intention to hurt national security.” [8]

After Kamm’s sentencing the state prosecutor Hadas Porrer-Gefni, told reporters the panel of three judges had given a “strong message” to young people on mandatory army service and that young people should be made aware of Kamm’s sentence before embarking on their mandatory IDF service. “The judgement should be learned in every school and every basic training unit in the army, so that anyone who thinks he can take classified documents knows what punishment he will get.” [9]

Blau published stories based on documents provided by Kamm.

The documents exposed how the army command approved policies that broke international law and violated the rulings of Israel’s courts.

Blau’s reports revealed that senior commanders approved extra-judicial assassinations in the occupied territories that were almost certain to kill Palestinian bystanders and the army issued orders to execute wanted Palestinians even if they could be safely captured in violation of a commitment to the high court.

Blau also exposed that the defense ministry compiled a secret report showing that the great majority of settlements in the West Bank were illegal even under Israeli law.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said its research had shown that “in many cases soldiers have been conducting themselves in the territories as if they were on a hit mission, as opposed to arrest operations.”

The crimes of the state are blatant but it is the truth tellers who are convicted as enemies.

Journalists should be a thorn in the side of Governments and Institutions and expose hypocrisy in high places; and healthy democracies thrive on dissent.

In Israel, the SECURITY forces, IDF and Justice system have colluded to make freedom of conscience and freedom of the press “just another word for nothing left to lose” and until whistle blowers are respected as people acting on conscience for the greater good, doing the right thing because it’s the right thing, may just have to be “good enough” for all.

Notes

1. Timeline the Anat Kamm Affair

2. Anat Kamm gets 4.5 years for stealing military documents

3. AROUND 30 ISRAELI SOLDIERS TESTIFY ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES IN OPERATION CAST LEAD – A NEW BOOKLET BY “BREAKING THE SILENCE”

4. Israeli Commander We Rewrote The Rules of  War for Gaza

5. www.youtube.com/user/vanunuvmjc

6. www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/barnaby.pdf

7. BEYOND NUCLEAR:Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker:2005-2010

8. Mossad Operation Threatened Against Reporter

9. Comment: Kamm sentence a deterrent against leaks

The Slow Hand of Justice and The Apartheid Wall

[Jerusalem]–After nearly five years since a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli border policeman killed 10 year Abir Aramin, her family was awarded $430,000 by an Israeli court.

The Israeli authorities initially insisted that a stone thrown by Palestinian protesters caused her fatal injury, but the Jerusalem district court finally ruled on the 25th of September that the state of Israel was responsible for the child’s death and Judge Orit Efal-Gabai said there was no doubt that the bullet, which struck Abir was fired in violation of orders.

Abir’s father, Bassam Aramin, never blamed the “18-year-old boy for shooting an innocent 10-year-old girl”, but always held Israeli government policies to blame.

On 16 January 2007, Abir Aramin, her sister and two friends were on their way to buy sweets after school in the Anata refugee camp, which is near Jerusalem on the West Bank side of Israel’s Wall when she was shot in the head with a rubber bullet by the Israeli Border Police.

After three days on life support Abir’s struggle ended- but not the struggle for justice her parents have been seeking ever since. Although awarded monetary compensation for “lost years” and for burial expenses, the recognition by the Israeli court perhaps maybe the justice they have sought.

In 2007, Avichay Sharon, of Combatants for Peace stated, “Over the past two years, the Israeli Border Police and IDF forces have been creating provocations near the school district of Anata [which] has become a part of the daily routine for the children. Ever since construction started on the separation barrier surrounding Anata, the jeeps have been roaming the streets especially near the schools and shooting grenades and tear gas along with rubber bullets.

“Many children have been injured in the past by these brutal actions of the soldiers and on January 16th it became deadly. As in many other cases the police replied that the soldiers were shooting in response to stones thrown at them by children. Even though all the evidence and witnesses stated that no stones were thrown that day” the prosecution initially dismissed the Aramin family’s case, claiming lack of evidence.

Bassam Aramin, Abir’s father and co-founder of Combatants for Peace said, “I’m not going to lose my common sense, my direction, only because I’ve lost my heart, my child. I will do all I can to protect her friends, both Palestinian and Israeli. They are all our children.”

When Abir’s father, Bassam Aramin was seventeen he was sentenced to seven years in an Israeli prison for belonging to the then-outlawed Fatah movement. Although soldiers in prison had beaten him, he decided that he would not become a prisoner of hatred.

The “Combatants for Peace” are Palestinians and Israelis, who had once all been involved in perpetuating the cycle of violence-Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle to end the occupation of their homeland. All decided to put down their guns and instead work together in the good fight for justice that can bring peace through nonviolent actions by raising voices of conscience and seeking to create political pressure on both Governments to end the violence and end the military occupation of Palestine.

On one of my seven trips to Israel Palestine, in March of 2006, I visited the Anata refugee camp and saw the thirty-foot high concrete apartheid Wall at the boy’s high school that fences in around 800 Palestinian adolescents, whose only playground is a slab of cement about the square footage of a basketball court.

A resident refugee informed me that on a daily basis, “The Israeli Occupation Forces show up when the children gather in the morning or after classes. They throw percussion bombs or gas bombs into the school nearly every day! The world is sleeping; the world is hibernating and is allowing this misery to continue.”

A moment later, a teenage boy approached me as I was taking photos and asked me my name and where I was from. I cringed admitting I was American for “financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [1]

On 9 July 2004, the International Court of Justice/ICJ, ruled that The Wall was illegal that it must come down and also that compensation should be paid to all who have been affected.

The ICJ Judges also decided 13-2 that signatories to the Geneva Convention were obliged to enforce “compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law” and the U.N. General Assembly also passed a resolution 150-6 supporting the ICJ’s call to dismantle the wall.” [2]

Less than a five-minute car drive from Anata, I entered into an Orwellian Disney Land Colony of lush green grounds called the Pizgat Ze’ev settlement.

All the settlements/colonies in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

I was sick at heart as I traveled through the colony and counted three playgrounds and a swimming pool and wondered how many USA tax dollars helped to build them.

Within fifteen minutes after leaving Anata, as I stood next to a playground in Pizgat Ze’ev, a barrage of gunshots issued from the refugee camp and my guide informed me that the Israeli soldiers were showering the refugees with gunfire and terror, which is a “normal’ daily occurrence for them.

I lost it completely and sobbed uncontrollably, as I imagined the Magdalena did when she could not find her Lord.

And then I thought how Jesus cried buckets of tears over Jerusalem when he “saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you had only known what would bring you peace but it is hidden from your eyes.’”- Luke 19:42

Lady Justice, the Roman Goddess of Justice, an allegorical personification of the moral force of justice is depicted wearing a blindfold to indicate that justice should be meted out objectively, not based in favor of- or against- ethnicity, power, or weakness, but on blind impartiality.

Following Sunday’s court ruling, the Aramin family’s lawyer told the Ynet news website: “We are happy that justice has come to light and are still working to award the family compensation for all the suffering it has gone through. [Aramin] is a peace activist whose attitude has not changed since the incident. That is one positive aspect of this story.”

Another positive aspect of this story is that the state of Israel has admitted responsibility.

1. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs , Jan/Feb. 2007
2. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs , July 2009

Slavoj Zizek and Freedom Flotilla

The Flotilla to Gaza was stopped in its tracks by the omnipresent Israelis and their friends in Greece and France. A part of a pattern? Probably. But first I want to heed an advice.

“I wish,” wrote G K Chesterton in his Plea for Hasty Journalism, “that at the beginning or end of all the articles we read, there were a brief note stating the situation in which the work was written. Thus we should read, `Will Australia adopt Bimetallism?’ then, in small letters, `Top of Omnibus’; or some such place in which we journalists do most of our learned research and compilation. We should see in some excited morning paper the headlines, `Battle at Ping Cho still in Progress, by an Eyewitness. Latest’. Then in the usual place would be the note, `A.B.C. shop, Strand’. The thing would throw a kind of flush of colour into our articles. Nature would creep into them as she creeps into the colour of flowers and wine.”

An avid follower of GK, I am inclined to fall in with his proposition and admit that this piece on the latest developments in the Middle East was written at dawn — in Chianti country near Siena, amid pomegranate trees in ginger blossom, pink and white roses, the tender green of olive trees meshing with the bright green of vineyards, stony path meandering among the slopes, light mist crowning the mountaintops, tiny streams at the bottom of deep and steep dales, and, at night, firefly dances above the scented chaparral. The figs are still green and hard, and yet they bulge, pregnant with sweetness. The few farms are scattered among rolling hills; here you can still pass a day without seeing a man. The human touches here are light and universally benevolent: you see clipped hedges, tended vines, freshly watered flowers.

Tuscany tugs a familiar chord in my heart, like discovering your own name spoken in a foreign tongue. It might be a twin sister to Palestine. My mountain refuge in Siena province might easily have been found somewhere between Ain Karim and Beth Jallah, or anywhere southwest of Jerusalem. The grapes of Bethlehem Cremisan are as just as good as the best Sangiovese. The churches have the same names and the same frescoes adorn their walls: the Visitation church of Ain Karim is a short hike from San Gimignano, where the Romanesque façade memorialises the memory of crusades with the Jerusalem Cross of St John’s Knights — though the church itself is now a wine shop. Just as Tuscany was once riven between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Palestine has been torn between the Fatah and Hamas.

And yet Siena fared better than has our Holy Land. Though it was repeatedly invaded and subjugated (notably by the Medici, hell-bent on global domination in 1555), it had never suffered the indignity of Cyclopic separation walls. The people of Siena have always been free to sit under their own fig trees and enjoy the fruit of their own vines, something definitely denied to the natives of the Palestinian Highlands.

This might be an appropriate place to honour the most recent attempt to liberate the Holy Land, or at the very least to remind the word of its captivity. I salute my noble friends of the Freedom Flotilla who put out to sea but were stopped by means both fair and foul.

In long-ago 1820 Lord Byron wrote the following stanzas, seemingly with the Freedom Flotilla in mind:

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,

Let him combat for that of his neighbours;

Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,

And get knock’d on the head for his labours,

To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,

And is always as nobly requited;

Then battle for freedom wherever you can,

And, if not shot or hang’d, you’ll get knighted.

While their efforts have yet to earn them knighthoods, the Fates have been kind to them: they were not killed as were the brave Turks in the last year’s attempt; yes, their boats were sabotaged, but they were not dynamited as was the Sol Phryne. Moreover, their ostensible failure was as good as a victory, nay, even better for it remains a powerful exposé of the techniques of our elusive, ruthless and arbitrary enemy.

Among the Freedom Flotilla, for the first time, were Russians; they have slowly overcome the strategic collapse of 1991 and are now re-joining the struggle. The brave Russian journalist Daria Aslamova shared her frustrations with the millions of readers of the dynamic KP (Komsomolskaya Pravda), the largest-circulation newspaper in Russia. She was the only mainstream journalist on board, and she was able to report: “All the Mediterranean ports were closed in face of the Freedom Flotilla. In breach of maritime law, the boats were detained in the Greek ports. Now we see who is the real master of the Mediterranean, who is bossing the world – it is Israel.” The strong words and stronger emotions invoked by blockades will destroy Israel faster than long, uneventful jaunts to Gaza.

Another powerful illustration of the enemy’s brute strength and its critical shortsightedness was the fly-in. A few hundred Europeans had planned to visit the West Bank, to walk in the footsteps of Abraham and Christ, to see the ancient villages so reminiscent of Tuscany, to meet local people. While an Italian Ministry of Tourism would bless such an initiative, the Israelis instead prevented the majority of these visitors from even boarding their planes, let alone tour Bethlehem and Bir Zeit. And they did it all with the active collaboration of various European states and airlines. Yes, Israel robbed Palestine of one fistful of dollars, but their actions highlighted to all the less-discussed but equally strangling blockade of the West Bank.

Yet Israeli’s ability to force Europeans to say uncle does bode ill for the planned show of force in the UN this September. Not only has the US Congress threatened to stop paying its dues, the European states seem to have caught a case of cold feet. Without Europeans, passage of a pro-Palestinian resolution is unlikely – this as Europe agonizes over even the thought of upsetting Jews.

Never has Jewish stock climbed to such dizzy heights; it has surpassed its historical limits, ascending to loony peaks that bespeak the Dotcom madness of 2000. Perhaps we could create a new index of political capital (the Dow Jews?) that rates the obsequious suck-ups coming from members of the US Congress. How high can it climb? How long can it defeat the law of gravity before the inevitable crash?

The US Senate applauds Netanyahu, just as their Roman predecessors once greeted Caligula’s horse; the most famous contemporary fashion designer and the top film director are publicly fed to the lions for daring to utter disparaging words about Jews; the Greek government cooperates with Tel Aviv to permanently halt the flotilla, even as Senator Mark Kirk calls upon US Special Forces (presumably Navy Seals) to deal with brave Americans marooned on the flotilla ship “Audacity of Hope” like they once dealt with Osama bin Laden.

But the cherry on the cake belongs to Slavoj Zizek. He went “full Monty” during his recent visit to Tel Aviv at the invitation of some sincerely dissident Israelis. They expected words of encouragement, but instead he informed them that fighting anti-Semitism is more important than defending Palestinians.

The Slovenian philosopher spoke kindly of the swindler Bernie Madoff, who was “a scapegoat who was easy to blame, when in fact the real problem is the system that allowed and even pushed Madoff to commit his crimes.” Indeed, it must have been ‘the system’ that pushed poor Mr. Madoff into crime, just as it was ‘the system’ that pushed Shylock to enter into money-lending and Jack the Ripper into the business of carving.

From that rocky start it was plain sailing to his philippics against the plague of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe and the world: “even the most oppressed and poor Palestinian should not be tolerated for being anti-Semitic.” No doubt the professor referred to the anti-Semitism of objecting to Jews seizing Palestinian lands. The real suffering, and the real problem, is European and American anti-Semitism, he declared. Does the professor know something we don’t? Are European and American Jews being tortured in dark dungeons while their houses are confiscated by blue-eyed Aryans? But the best was still to come.

Zizek said that “someone from the Democratic Republic of Congo would sell his mother into slavery in a heartbeat for the chance to move to the West Bank”.

This must be the quote of the year.

High school teachers may well use this wonderful, historical, and geographical quote in this year’s exercises:

Q   If a black from the Democratic Republic of Congo would sell his mother into slavery in a heartbeat for the chance to move to the West Bank, whom and in how many heartbeats would he sell into slavery for the chance to join the French unemployed or Greek workers or American strikers? 

Perhaps Zizek, as a laureate of yesterday’s Left, has invented the ultimate defence for the coming waves of IMF austerity programmers; the final answer to silence Western workers who may have the audacity to demonstrate against the strictures of international finance. They should declare that they are following the diktat of ‘the system’, and that they are not to blame; indeed, it is they who are the true victims of ‘the system’. And anyway, it’s worse in the Congo.

Here is a better question for this year’s students:

Q    If a black from the Democratic Republic of Congo would sell his mother into slavery in a heartbeat for the chance to move to the West Bank, whom and in how many heartbeats would Slavoj Zizek sell into slavery for the chance to move into the intellectual establishment of the Right?

The answer is obvious. Zizek would sell all of Palestine, and throw in his own immortal soul for free. As for his mother, he would not only sell her, but would actually deliver her. This is one professor who knows that the best strategy for self-promotion is to whine about anti-Semitism and to defend the world’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of Madoffs.

His crass and racist rhetoric caused not the slightest ripple. His brave and sincere dissident hosts either missed it entirely, accepted it as normal, or looked the other way. Indeed, what would you expect from a black? Maybe he would sell his mother into slavery for a chance to serve his white master. The historical and international aspects of slavery have been excised; it has been reduced to something blacks bring upon themselves, or twisted into a way for blacks to get ahead. But no harm done.

The kindly professor will not be banned from the Cannes festival. His servile rhetoric will be noticed by Bernard Henri Levy and other powerful luminaries. He will get more and more invitations to speak in greater and greater venues.  Even my critique will bring him extra coverage. I cringed as Zizek’s speech approached the great lines from David Mamet (“the Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all”), but he held himself back.

As long as visiting professors know on which side their bread is buttered, we shall be condemned to witnessing repetitions of the Flotilla debacle. As long as we misunderstand the importance of Palestine for the world’s future, we shall be trapped in an endless “Middle East Crisis”.

CNN Catches up to The New Fourth Estate Regarding Walid Shoebat

On 13 July 2011, CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported on the so-called Islamic terrorist export, Walid Shoebat, who has been duping The MSM and making a mint off of Americans claiming he is now a devout Christian after years as a Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist. [1]

See Video here: http://t.co/7o0UkZf

On 25 February 2008, this reporter attended one of Walid Shobat’s shows in Melbourne, Florida and most all of the 2,000 seats at The King Center in Brevard County were filled with fannies attached to Americans who paid $18.00 for a seat and upwards of $1,000.00 to attend the pre-show meet and greet with the ‘three stooges’ of Christian fundamentalism during their “WAKE UP AMERICA! Confessions of 3 X-Terrorists” show.

“Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani [who was a no show that night] are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges…to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family…Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims.” [2]

This event was sponsored by Project: Restoration, an “educational performing arts ministry that emphasizes Hebraic teaching and support of Israel. [Whose] mission [and] ministry is to restore the biblical and historical truth of God’s word regarding His commandments, His people, His land, and His coming kingdom [by working] together with Christian and Jewish communities to bless Israel and the Jewish people. [For they] believe that we are living in a time spoken of by prophets as the end of times when Israel will be a ‘cup of trembling in the hands of the nations’ and that we must stand with Israel and the God of Israel [for the] Restoration of the Kingdom of Israel and the return of Israel’s King, Yeshua ha Maschiach (Jesus the Messiah).” [3]

Missing from the Christian website and the rhetoric from the speakers were the teachings of Jesus who warned that, “What ever you do unto the least; you do it unto God…Stop judging…Stop condemning…Forgive and you will be forgiven…For the measure with which you measure any other will be measured back unto you.” [Luke 6:36-38] and Jesus’ promise that, “The Peacemakers shall be called the children of God.” [Matthew 5:9].

While the teachings of Jesus were neglected, I was most encouraged when Walid kicked off his show claiming that the “stupid” New York Times and a “stupid” journalist [this reporter] who interviewed his relative Kamal Younis were smearing his good reputation of being an ex-terrorist by exposing his fabricated biography.

From his pulpit, Walid insisted that his father is a fundamentalist and that Kamal Younis’s brother Jawad lost his arm making a bomb and is an attorney who defends other terrorists.

On 3 February 2008, I published my interview with Kamal Younis, titled “USA Air Force Academy Feb. 6, 2008: Failure of Intelligence to Support the Troops” from which I excerpt:

The infamous darling of fear filled fundamentalist Christians and Jews of the cult spewed by the likes of John Hagee and the idiot wind blown on FOX’s Hannity & Colmes, Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto show, will be show boating at the annual political forum at the US Air Force Academy on Feb. 6, 2008.

Walid Shoebat, author of “Why We Want to Kill You” has built a lucrative speaking career by manipulating the fears and whipping up hatred between Jews and Muslims and he claims to be a former Islamic terrorist who has converted to Christianity.

Shoebat also feels very strongly that the ongoing war against Israel has nothing to do with an Arab desire for a Palestinian state, “Never in history was there a Palestinian state,” said Shoebat, “we never wanted a Palestinian state – even today the Palestinians do not want a Palestinian state. They want the destruction of the Jews, period. It’s a religious holy war.”

Keith Davies, the director of the Walid Shoebat Foundation announced that not just Walid, but two other ‘former terrorists’ s would be filling the heads of our troops and he was, “delighted that the United States Air Force has recognized the brave stand that these men take in educating the American people on the real causes of terrorism. The fact that the Academy has invited our speakers is an important step as to understanding the issue of terrorism and the issues surrounding the problems of the Middle East.”

The Navy failed to protect the troops when they failed to investigate the history of Walid Shoebat!

I learned from one of Walid’s many Palestinian American relatives, Kamal Younis, who checked his facts with other relatives and everyone of them agreed that, “Walid’s entire biography is a manufactured fabrication. His handlers have taken one point and have twisted it and built up a fictional story.”

That fictional story can be read @ www.shoebat.com/bio.php

Kamal clued me in, “His bio claims that his grandfather was the Muslim Mukhtar (chieftain) of Beit Sahour-Bethlehem. It neglects to mention that Beit Sahour is adjacent to Bethlehem, not a part of Bethlehem and also ignores the fact that in Beit Sahour at that time there were eight tribes; two Muslim and six Christian. Walid’s grandfather was only the Mukhtar for one of the Muslim tribes. Walid’s bio claims his grandfather was a friend of Haj-Ameen Al-Husseni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and notorious friend of Adolf Hitler. Walid’s grandfather never even met him and was a peaceful man.

“I helped Walid’s father Ahmad get a job and we both attended Humboldt State College in Arcata, California, from 1954-1960. Walid was born in September of 1960 in Beit Sahour after his American mother and father returned there from America. His older sister and brother were born in the USA, and the family lived in Jericho until 1968, then in Saudia Arabia for two years then returned to Beit Sahour.

“In 1976, his sister Mona was coming home from school with her friends and were stopped and beaten up by Israeli soldiers, they nearly broke Mona’s back. This made Walid very angry and shortly thereafter he attended his first demonstration against the occupation. In 1977 Walid was caught distributing Palestinian flags and was arrested and held for about two weeks in Mascubia Prison, until his mother went to the Embassy and got him released.

“The biggest act of ‘terror’ he ever committed was to glue Palestinian flags on street posts. But, when he was in jail he met someone who invited him to join a group against Israel. In 1977 Walid and his friends put packages behind a bank, but there were no explosives in it. That year he also met some Jehovah Witnesses and joined them for a while.

“Walid speaks about his grandfathers whom he never met, never knew and he labels them as terrorists! I knew them and they were peaceful men.

“Walid came to the U.S. in 1978 and met an Afghani friend and they went into business together, but it didn’t work out, so he moved to Chicago in 1981 where many cousins live and asked for help. He went to Loop College [now Harold Washington College] and was appointed as a foreign student advisor; a position offered him so he could pay his tuition.

“The repo man took Walid’s truck and after that he went back to California. He met a Palestinian girl there and they got married and had a son. But, he beat his wife and that marriage broke up.

“Walid’s maternal grandparents were wealthy and when they died Walid was to share the inheritance with his sister and brother, but his siblings never received a dime from their grandparent’s estate. And, while his own father was in a nursing home in California Walid took his mother and moved far away from him to another city.

“Walid claimed on CNN that he met Sheikh Jamal and was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and claimed he had been a member of a U.S. sleeper cell terrorist group. All his relatives doubt this greatly, but we do believe he is being paid big money to keep saying bad things about Muslims.” [4]

On 5 February 2008, I received an email threat of a lawsuit from Walid’s handler unless I apologized and recanted what I reported.

I emailed back that I would do neither but took Walid up on his offer to engage in a dialogue. I have yet to receive a reply or a legal notice, but I did publish the email threat and parts of Walid’s epistle defending his terrorist past with my side of the dialogue on the 7th of February: http://j.mp/nbTQjA

I have known Walid’s relative, Kamal Younis as a friend since 2003. I met him through the non-profit Interfaith Olive Trees Foundation for Peace dedicated to raising awareness of and funds to purchase fruit bearing trees on both sides of The Wall in Israel Palestine who hope to replace the over one million trees destroyed by The Wall. The International Court of Justice in The Hague has deemed The Wall is illegal and it must fall.

“Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [5]

During my five trips to Israel Palestine, I went to Walid’s birthplace; Beit Sahour, a suburb of Bethlehem. I met 8 of his relatives who fed me, gave me a bed and then accompanied me for two days through the Dheisheh refugee camp, which is 100% Muslim and a five minute taxi ride from the Church of The Nativity in The Little Town of Bethlehem: Occupied Territory. Over half of the 11,000 resident refugees of Dheisheh are children under 18 and they exist on less than one square kilometer of the ‘Holy’ Land. I interviewed old men, dozens of teenagers and mothers, but I did not meet any fundamentalist terrorists.

Back to the 2008 Walid Shoebat Show:

Walid’s oratory style is part pep talk and part exhortation with a Hitler-eske intensity and his show is slickly produced to incite the masses.

Walid spewed that, “I love FOX News, but not Geraldo Rivera! His biggest mistake wasn’t drawing the line in the sand in Iraq; it is his support of a Palestinian state.”

The audience roared with laughter and exuberant applause, which was repeated as Walid preached, “Islam is a revolutionary faith out to destroy all governments. Muslim nations have a command from Allah to rule the world. Islam is a constitutional form of government. When you have a senator take the oath of office on the Koran he is pledging to uphold Sharia law and not the Constitution.”

The next morning, I phoned Walid’s relative Kamal Younis the good news that his name was mentioned from the King Center stage and filled him in that his brother Jawad is another supposed terrorist.

Kamal laughed, “Walid is a master of spin! He takes one iota of truth and creates a fiction! It is true my brother is an attorney. It is true that he lost his left hand and some fingers from his right; it was in 1954 and I think my brother was in the sixth grade. Jawad and a half dozen of his friends were out playing under the olive trees in Beit Sahour. They found a grenade left over from the ’48 war, but they didn’t know what it was. Jawad brought it home and got a hammer. He began banging on the grenade hoping to open it up but it exploded! The explosion killed one of the children and we almost lost Jawad too. Today my brother is a well-respected attorney in Amman, Jordan. We all know that King Hussein does what ever the CIA wants, so it would be impossible for Jawad to defend terrorists.

“Walid’s father is no fundamentalist. I have known his father since we were young men, we went to college together. Walid’s father was not too bright and was always at the bottom of the class. In fact, both his parents have something wrong upstairs. Walid’s father is a simpleton, he is a simple man but also an honest and peaceful man. He is religious in that he would pray five times a day, but not a fundamentalist at all. None of Walid’s relatives are extremists, only Walid is. It’s apparent Walid is involved in a smear campaign with fundamental Christian Zionists to convince Jews and Christians that Islam is out to get them.”

I also told Kamal that although the after show crowd around the table of hundred dollar video sets at the “WAKE UP AMERICA! Confessions of 3 X-Terrorists” show, was three people deep, I made my way through to one of the merchants and handed him my WeAreWideAwake.org business card with phone number and asked him to deliver it to Walid as coming from the ‘stupid’ reporter who had been in the audience and would love to interview him.

I am still waiting.

1. Preview EX Terrorist Rakes in Homeland Security Bucks
2. www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080211_the_war_against_tolerance
3. www.project-restoration.org
4. www.wearewideawake.org
5. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007

Christians Flee Holy Land in Mass Modern Exodus

Dateline Jerusalem:  Christian Trail of Tears on the Move While Archbishop of Canterbury Plays Blame Game…

In a recent BBC radio interview for the program “”World at One” the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed concerns about Christian minority populations all across the Middle East where life for Christians was “becoming unsustainable.”

The Archbishop is also organizing a conference to raise awareness of the “hemorrhaging of Christian populations from the Holy Land. The fact that Bethlehem, a majority Christian city just a couple of decades ago, is now very definitely a place where Christians are a marginalized minority. We want that to be a little bit higher on people’s radar. We want the public profile of the situation of Christians there to be better known. And we see that as of course part of a general hope to raise the profile of Christians in the region.”

The Archbishop noted that in the Little Town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, Christians are now the “marginalized minority…It’s not ethnic cleansing exactly because it’s been far less deliberate than that I think. What we’ve seen though is a kind of Newtonian passing on of energy or force from one body to another so that some Muslim populations in the West Bank, under pressure, move away from certain areas like Hebron, move into other areas like Bethlehem. And there’s nowhere much else for Christian populations to go except away from Palestine.” [1]

In 1947, 20% of the total population of the Holy Land was Christian. Today, less than 1.3% of the total population of that troubled piece of real estate is Christian.  Unless things change very soon, Holy Land churches will soon be nothing more than museums for the Christian Exodus coupled with their low birth rates may be the end of Christianity in the Holy Land.

In response to the Archbishops’ omissions, Rifat Odeh Kassis, Kairos Palestine Coordinator wrote:

“Your inaccurate and erroneous remarks cite Muslim extremism as the greatest threat facing Christians in Palestine and the primary reason for our emigration. Your statements about Bethlehem are particularly faulty and offensive especially when you say that the movement of Muslims into the Bethlehem area, where space is limited, is forcing Christians to leave.

“Equally shocking is how Your Grace managed, diplomatically –instead of being prophetic, as one would expect you to be, not to mention the Israeli occupation, the separation wall, Israel  confiscation of Palestinian land, its policies that violate freedom of movement and worship (Palestinians in Bethlehem cannot, for instance, go to Jerusalem), or its brutal crackdowns on nonviolent protests as one of the major reasons that push not only Christians to emigrate, but also many other Palestinians.

“We were hoping that Your Grace would have a different voice than the one in mass media and other right wing political parties, which exploit our sufferings to fuel some islamophobic tendencies and negative images about Islam. Indeed, this is what the Israeli occupation persistently tries to do. It demonizes Islam in a way that deflects blame from the repression levied by the state itself…in the Bethlehem area alone there are 19 illegal Israeli settlements (such as nearby Har Homa built on Jabal Abu Ghneim) and the wall that have devoured Christian lands and put Bethlehem in a chokehold…

“Since Your Grace did not meet or consult with any Palestinian Christians during your recent visit here, we are wondering why would you be suddenly interested to speak on our behalf? This troubles us…Finally, we would like to remind Your Grace that Christian Palestinians need advocates for the truth. It is the truth, and only the truth, that will lead to peace and justice in our home.” [2]

On my third of seven trips to Israel and Palestine since 2005, Hind Khoury, who was the delegate general of the Palestine Liberation Organization in France from 2006 through 2010, informed this reporter:

“The truth has been hidden, and it has been maneuvered by an oppressive and violent occupation.

“This occupation violates every single human right imaginable. Governments today are getting their own way to serve their own interests which are: money and power.

“It is ethnic cleansing that is happening in Jerusalem. Bethlehem is a ghetto, an island, an open-air prison! When the gate in Beit Jala is done, it will completely isolate Bethlehem from her sister city Jerusalem which is only three miles away.

“Before Hamas won the elections there were 370 checkpoints. There are now 25% more. Because of the moral bankruptcy of the PA, Hamas won the elections and they should not be feared. They have an open mind and open heart and many of them say: ‘Fight them with love.’

“The International community put conditions on Hamas, but it is not about Israel’s existence we are speaking of, it is the existence of Palestine and Human Rights that must be addressed! The world is unbalanced and the polarization just increases the violence. Civil society must become responsible.”

In 2006, Reverend Chris Ferguson, Representative for the World Council of Churches said:

“I go to Bethlehem because of the Biblical injunction to visit the prisoners. In 2001, the World Council of Churches, the Middle East Council of Churches and others decided that the world ecumenical community was not doing enough about this conflict. Now, we have joined hands and are working together globally to mobilize the international society to demand policy change. The absence of settlers does not mean there is freedom in Gaza.”

He spoke those words seven months after the “Disengagement” in Gaza, which was nothing more than redeployment, for Israel has maintained total control and all access to Gaza by land, sea and air.

During the “disengagement” 25 of over 150 settlements were dismantled, and 8,475 of over 436,000 settlers [less than 2% of settlers] were evacuated.

As of October 2005, 12,800 new settlers had moved into the West Bank, which are 50% more settlers than were evacuated! Gaza is less than 6% of the Occupied Territories and that leaves 94% of Palestinian territories under the boot of the IDF.

During my 2006 visit to the Little Town of Bethlehem which is Occupied Territory, I met four of the newly elected members of Hamas, and for the fourth time I met the Mayor of Bethlehem, Victor Batarseh.

Mayor Batarseh spoke about the dire need for tourists and pilgrims to sleep and eat in Bethlehem for unemployment was well over 50% and the Bethlehem Municipality was borrowing money to pay its own employees.

The first time I met Mayer Batarseh was when he traveled to Orlando Florida, to meet with Mayor Buddy Dyer, with the hope to re-ignite The Twinning Agreement that was signed in May 2001 by the then Mayors of Bethlehem and Orlando.

The Twinning Agreement is a sister-pact that affirmed Orlando and Bethlehem would encourage tourism to the other and promote a global community.

I followed up on Mayor Batarseh’s visit with my own visit to Mayor Buddy Dyer’s office one week after the Mayors had met and I informed the Orlando Mayor’s public relations representative about an opportunity to help the city of Bethlehem.  I was seeking the Mayors support in getting the word out about two events that were already scheduled and my involvement with Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund which imported goods crafted by the artisans in Bethlehem that volunteers sold throughout the world and returned 100% of all proceeds back to the crafts people and helped support the children who endure in the refugee camps of the Holy Land.

Mayor Buddy Dyer did not even have the common courtesy to respond to any of my three follow up emails. I also informed The Orlando Sentinel about the opportunity for the Central Florida community to do something to make true the words of the Twinning Agreement without traveling all the way to the Little Town of Bethlehem in occupied territory. I got nowhere then, but I persist to be a voice of conscience.

During my March, 2006 trip to Bethlehem, Mayor Batarseh informed me:

“When the occupation is ended there will be peace. If the world boycotted Israel for six months they would comply with the UN Resolutions, which is all we want! There is state terrorism and Israel must be forced to recognize our right to exist. For the past ten years Hamas has worked with and helped the poorest of people, they have built schools and orphanages. The PA took the money but Hamas was providing the social services!

“Israel is a state built on religious beliefs. The US and EU and all the free world are against theocracies. But Israel has the right to do anything! The world needs to WAKE UP! If there is no peace in the Holy Land there can be no peace anywhere. End the occupation and there will be peace the very next day. All the terrorism in the world can be traced back to the Palestinian situation. All the money spent on weapons and war could eliminate world poverty.”

In 2006, I also met with four newly elected Hamas members but I still haven’t met any terrorists. Two had been elected to the Palestinian Parliament/PLC and two to the Municipality/local government. PLC Representative, Anwer M. Zboun, lives in the Abiet refugee camp and has a Masters Degree in Physics.

Zboun began with a smile and said, “We welcome you to our home and the Holy City of Bethlehem. We are suppose to be terrorists, are you afraid?

“We are a Palestinian resistance movement and we are not against any people. We are against the occupation. We want to rebuild what the occupation has destroyed. Hamas was born from the suffering of the Palestinian people and we belong to the global Muslim movement. It was on December 14, 1987 after an Israeli driver killed nine Palestinians that the first Intifada [uprising] began and the Islamic Resistance movement in Palestine was renamed Hamas.

“Hamas is a national liberation movement based on Sharia; Islamic Laws and Orders. Hamas is not against any religion. We are not a terrorist movement, but we resist the occupation. Christians voted for us for many reasons and they know we are faithful to this cause: that God knows better than we ourselves know what is for our benefit. We do not force anyone to believe as we do. The public and private schools both teach Islam and Christianity.

“In November 1988 Arafat issued a birth certificate for the Palestinian State and under religion he stated: ‘None.’ This is because we are a secular state. As Muslims and Christians we live together peacefully and our attitude is citizenship is for everyone. Everybody should have freedom of belief, traditions and a personal life. Hamas does not propose anything that contradicts Christianity.

“Our slogan is: Remove Suffering for everyone. The issue of Israel is about the occupation. We have no problems with religious beliefs; our problem is that Israel is illegally occupying our land. Since March 2005, we have honored a unilateral cease-fire. But Israel martyred 200 Palestinians, injured 1,200 and has detained 3,500. Many are under the age of sixteen. In the last two weeks Israel has killed twenty-five Palestinian and yet we have maintained the cease-fire. Israel does not recognize us and recognition takes both sides.

“Abbas has stated that we do recognize Israel, but there must be clear borders and Israel does not yet have them. The PA recognized Israel ten years ago but we Palestinians are detained in an open air prison. We resist the occupation, which is our right guaranteed under International Law. International Law demands Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders, release the prisoners, and stop the assassinations, illegal wall and home demolitions.

“Hamas defines terrorism as a violation of the rights of others and their property. Bush defined terrorism as evil. We are weak with resources and our voice is not heard in the West, only the voice of America and Israel gets press. America asked us to hold democratic elections and we did. We thank everyone who was involved in our transparent and democratic elections. We did what the USA asked and now they are punishing our people. Democracies are supposed to respect and not intervene in what others want.

“We had democratic and transparent elections and how are we rewarded? By the EU and the USA who have cut funds to the poorest of people who live under occupation. Hamas suggested that the International community monitor all the financial aid to assure that it went to the people and not to Hamas. We offered this suggestion to the world and we have been ignored.

“So now we look to the Arab and Muslim world to strengthen our local infrastructure and economy and hope to bring back investors. We know there are people in Europe and America who will not allow us to go hungry. We believe aid and support are in Gods hands and not governments.”

On 15 March 2006, I was in Nazareth and learned from Fuad Farah, Board member of Sabeel and the Chairman of the Orthodox National Council in Israel, that “90% of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, never even meet any Palestinian Christians!

“No Christians can live here anymore. They fled in ‘48 and their homes were destroyed in the ‘50’s for the settlers. Christians once were 20% of the total population of the Holy land, today we are less than 2% and maybe in thirty years there will be no Christians here if things do not change soon. There are more Christians in India and Syria than there are in the Holy Land!

“The reasons are many and include our low birth rate, migration due to lack of economic opportunities especially for the most highly educated, Muslim and Jewish fundamentalism, land confiscation and now Nazareth has become a retirement community because our young people all leave!”

I imagine if I were a young Palestinian with an opportunity to leave that troubled land; I would too and Palestinians all tell me that is exactly what the Israeli government hopes for!

In 2006, I also met BADIL [Arabic for Alternative] Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.

The Founder, Muhammed Jaradat, grinned as he said, “I learned to speak English in prison, I was arrested first at 13 years old and spent a total of 5 ½ years in prison because I was a peace activist. I was arrested for winning a high school student union election in my village and charged with terrorism!”

“They said I was a gangster that I was against Israeli rights, but justice for Palestinians means justice for Israelis too! The issue of the right to return is the ultimate issue. The refugee issue is the core issue and since 1948, 800,000 Palestinians have been evicted from their homes and their families land.

“Two-thirds of Palestinian people are refugees. A democracy is supposed to be that the majority rules. But we have been told to SHUT UP about the refugee issue. If you really want to solve a problem you must attack the roots and that leads to the refugee issue.

“International Law, the Declaration of Human Rights and UN Resolutions all affirm the rights of refugees. For 57 years and 157 times the UN General Assembly has affirmed the right for refugees to return home, resettle with compensation or to choose a new country.

“The Israelis claim there is not enough room in the Holy Land but according to their own documentation in 2000, 86% of Israeli Jews live on 15% of Israel proper. 90% of state land is Palestinian land! The problem is not that there is not enough room, the problem is racism. I was born here but I am not a citizen of any country. They can revoke my residency at any moment.

“From 1989 to 1993 Israel absorbed 1.1 million new immigrants from the former Soviet Union who have illegally settled in the West Bank and Gaza. Historic Palestine is 26,000 square kilometers, about the size of Texas. The separation mentality has been at work since the 1930’s. Uniting this country with universal and basic human rights is the only way to success in the future. Israel has built the facts on the ground to not have two states. We are not stupid, we live under the harshest of conditions and we have survived. We have been divided into 28 different countries but we are united on the goal to achieve our human rights.

“The future depends on what happens to Palestinians and we are the legal owners of this land and Israel needs to get its nose down and realize they are living in the Arab world. Christian Zionists are the most destructive group of all and they want Israel to use their bomb. Who will they destroy? They will destroy themselves. The Dimona reactor is leaking and will cost more to remove than it did to build.” [3]

But that is another story that I told in BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010

• Christians in the middle east archbishop on world at one
• Kairos Palestine letter to Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of canterbury-London
• “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory” by Eileen Fleming

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