Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Israeli Confessions - a YouTube find...



Monday, November 09, 2009

Yes!


Monday, November 02, 2009

Israel has already castrated Obama

"THE PALESTINIAN Authority yesterday rejected the Obama administration's call for unconditional resumption of negotiations with Israel and castigated the US for dropping its demand for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank..."

Damn right they should be castigated... Mr. Obama has already been castrated by his Zionist buds in the Administration.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Look at us, so blameless!


Who told the despicable Hillary-Hillel-Clinton that she can mediate between Palestinians and Zionists? Look at this revolting picture and throw your shoes, underwear, and used tampons on these two smug bastards. She looks at him as if saying: "am I pleasing you my master?"

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Do unto others...

Jerusalem / PNN - The Israeli-controlled Jerusalem Municipality demolished the Ghaoui family tent today and confiscated it contents.

The family was living in the tent after the occupying Israeli administration forcibly evicted them from their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and gave the house to settlers.

It is from the overtaken Ghaoui home that Jewish extremists have waged several attacks on the citizens of the neighborhood; attacks which Israeli police and soldiers haved witnessed, but did not intervene until the Palestinian victims and other residents began to defend themselves. Among the victims over the past week are children and women.

The Ghaoui family is one of hundreds of Palestinian families that have either been evicted or face eviction in East Jerusalem.

In addition to serving as their house, the tent that the Ghaoui's were living in was also a solidarity tent and was the epicenter of a nonviolent resistance movement that challenged the policies of occupation.

Chief Justice of Palestine Sheikh Taysir Tamimi described on Wednesday the continued destruction of homes in East Jerusalem and the ensuing homelessness as ethnic cleansing.


And the Palestinians should not fight with rocks, bottles, knives, clubs, bombs, and every possible and conceivable weapon as a response to this? Let me hear that bitch Hillary say something about "Israel's rigbts". Yes Israel, you deserve major payback and you have it coming.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Ewa Jasiewicz, Free Gaza Coordinator in Gaza

Monday, October 05, 2009

Abbas, be a man, do the right thing!



Sunday, October 04, 2009

This is treason!

...Fath is no more than armed collaborationist gangs that kill the Palestinian people on behalf of the Israeli state to minimize deaths to the occupiers. And notice that the new language of the Ramallah regime: the new buzz word is "khata'" (mistake or error). This is not mistake or error. A mistake is when you press the wrong button in the elevator. This is betrayal and treason.

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/10/this-is-clear.html

Friday, October 02, 2009

Abbas and his cronies must be removed!

If Israel can metaphorically be represented as the hardest of granites in terms of their intransigence and obstinacy, then the Palestinian Authority under clown Abbas should aspire to nothing more than muddy shale for yielding time and again to pressures from the US and Israel. Yes, the Goldstone report is jettisoned by the Palestinian Authority and for this and other crimes against his people, Abbas and his group need to be removed from their positions of power.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10807.shtml

Thursday, September 24, 2009

We Are Angry - By Mazin Qumsiyeh

We are angry
By Mazin Qumsiyeh


We are angry at rhetoric of oppression
Hafrada-Segregation-Apartheid and Security
Two-states, one state, cantons and autonomy
The chosen state’s right to exist

While colonialism can persist
Addictws now to talk about talking
And hold meetings about more meetings

Maybe to revive the “peace process” charades

to ensure no peace for a few more decades

giving the monster created by Western powers

time to gobble more of the holy pieces

and belch its pleasure in more negotiations

devoid of human rights or UN resolutions



We are angry at statistics of oppression
11,000 political prisoners
534 Destroyed villages and towns
35% seeking stolen jobs
450 km of apartheid walls
7 million displaced or refugees

1.5 million uprooted fruiting trees

1.5 million in Gaza besieged
62 years of justice denied

We are angry at manufactured misery
Epidemics and pandemics
Genocides hidden with polemics

Swelling ranks of the disempowered

Phosphorous bombs on Gaza showered

An apartheid wall that snakes around

Running sewage in the streets abound

Children barefoot in a refugee camp in 2009!
While the unelected leaders repeat the same line


We are angry at spies
Some come take pictures and pretend to care

Others just watch and hope to avoid the glare
Some punished by law or by a guilty conscience

Others abandoned by their racist masters
Some feed stomachs but starve their souls

Others fall for carnal desires as fleeting as the empty goals
Some serving the colonial racist regime

Others think it safer with the quisling theme
Some commit suicide or die forgotten
Others repent and are soon forgiven


We are angry at hypocrisy
Those who claim then need their human right

While not sparing children from their plight

Those who champion International laws

While leaving heavy trails of bloody claws
Those who smile plunging knives in your back
While screaming loudly that they are under attack

Those who use a religious heritage to support overt racism

While defaming anyone who dares to speak out: “anti-semitism”!


We are angry at collaborators
Those with nice suits and those with guns
Those who sell their people for shekels
Those who do it out of ignorance

And those who with malice and malfeasance

Presidents, Pundits, and peasants

Large or small petty criminals


We are angry at being angry
While it may help us break the chains
Yet our love through anger diminishes

And our faith in humanity shrinks

And even what we want for ourselves

So maybe this final anger motivates ….

To shed anger and keep high our heads and spirits
In our world there are many who deserve merits
good, honest, brave activists
Philanthropists, protestors, poets…

men and women of all life stages

tailor-made therapists for all ages
Political Prisoners and Martyrs

Intellectuals and small farmers

Working to plant the blood-soaked lands

With cactus, figs, olive trees, and almonds

watering hopes and dreams like a growing grape vine

tendrils reaching out to free beloved immortal Palestine

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home

http://qumsiyeh.org

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Why do I hate Israel?

Published on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Electronic Intifada
The Goldstone Report and the Battle for Legitimacy

by Richard Falk

Richard Goldstone, former judge of South Africa's Constitutional Court, the first prosecutor at The Hague on behalf of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia, and anti-apartheid campaigner reports that he was most reluctant to take on the job of chairing the United Nations fact-finding mission charged with investigating allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the three week Gaza war of last winter. Goldstone explains that his reluctance was due to the issue being "deeply charged and politically loaded," and was overcome only because he and his fellow commissioners were "professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation," adding that "above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war," as well as the duty to protect civilians to the extent possible in combat zones. The four-person fact-finding mission was composed of widely respected and highly qualified individuals, including the distinguished international law scholar Christine Chinkin, a professor at the London School of Economics. Undoubtedly adding complexity to Goldstone's decision is the fact that he is Jewish, with deep emotional and family ties to Israel and Zionism, bonds solidified by his long association with several organizations active in Israel.

Despite the impeccable credentials of the commission members, and the worldwide reputation of Richard Goldstone as a person of integrity and political balance, as well as of being an eminent jurist, Israel refused cooperation from the outset. It did not even allow the UN undertaking to enter Israel or the Palestinian territories, forcing reliance on the Egyptian government to allow the UN mission entry to Gaza at the Rafah Crossing. As Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has observed, however much Israel may attack the commission report as one-sided and unfair, the only plausible explanation of its refusal to cooperate with a UN fact-finding mission of this sort and seizing the opportunity to tell its side of the story was that it had nothing to tell that could hope to overcome the overwhelming evidence of the Israeli failure to carry out its attacks on Gaza last winter in accordance with the international law of war. No credible international commission could reach any set of conclusions other than those reached by the Goldstone report on the central allegations.

In substantive respects the Goldstone report adds nothing new. Its main contribution is to confirm widely reported and analyzed Israeli military practices during the Gaza war. There had been several reliable reports already issued, condemning Israel's tactics as violations of the laws of war and international humanitarian law, including by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a variety of respected Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. Journalists and senior UN civil servants had reached similar conclusions. Perhaps, most damning of all the material available before the Goldstone report was the publication of a document entitled "Breaking the Silence," containing commentaries by 30 members of the Israeli army who had taken part in Operation Cast Lead (the Israeli official name for the Gaza war). These soldiers spoke movingly about the loose rules of engagement issued by their commanders that help explain why so little care was taken to avoid civilian casualties. The sense emerges from the testimony of these Israeli soldiers who were in no sense critical of Israel or even of the Gaza war as such, that Israeli policy emerged out of a combination of efforts "to teach the people of Gaza a lesson for their support of Hamas" and to keep Israeli military casualties as close to zero as possible even if meant massive death and destruction for innocent Palestinians.

Given this background of a prior international consensus on the unlawfulness of Operation Cast Lead, we must first wonder why this massive report of 575 pages has been greeted with such alarm by Israel and given so much attention in the world media. It added little to what was previously known. Arguably, it was more sensitive to Israel's contentions that Hamas was guilty of war crimes by firing rockets into its territory than earlier reports had been. And in many ways the Goldstone report endorses the misleading main line of the Israeli narrative by assuming that Israel was acting in self-defense against a terrorist adversary. The report does describe the success of the ceasefire with Hamas that had cut violence in southern Israel to very low levels, and attributes its disruption to Israel's attack on 4 November 2008, but nowhere does it make the inference that would seem to follow, that the Israeli attacks were an instance of the international crime of aggression. Instead, the report focuses its criticism on Israel's excessive and indiscriminate uses of force. It does this mainly by examining the evidence surrounding a series of incidents involving attacks on civilians and non-military targets. The report also draws attention to the unlawful blockade that has restricted the flow of food, fuel and medical supplies to subsistence levels in Gaza before, during and since Operation Cast Lead. Such a blockade is a flagrant instance of collective punishment, explicitly prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention setting forth the legal duties of an occupying power.

All along Israel had rejected international criticism of its conduct of military operations in the Gaza war, claiming that the Israeli army was the most moral fighting force on the face of the earth. The Israeli army conducted some nominal investigations of alleged unlawful behavior that consistently vindicated the military tactics relied upon and the top Israeli political leaders steadfastly promised to protect any Israeli military officer or political leader internationally accused of war crimes. In view of this extensive background of confirmed allegation and angry Israeli rejection, why has the Goldstone report been treated in Tel Aviv as a bombshell that is deeply threatening to Israel's stature as a sovereign state? Israeli President Shimon Peres called the report "a mockery of history" that "fails to distinguish the aggressor and a state exercising the right of self-defense," insisting that it "legitimizes terrorist activity, the pursuit of murder and death." More commonly Israel's zealous defenders condemned the report as one-sided, biased, reaching foregone conclusions, and emanating from the supposed bastion of anti-Israeli attitudes at the UN's Human Rights Council. This line of response to any criticism of Israel's behavior in occupied Palestine, especially if it comes from the UN or human rights non-governmental organizations, is to cry "foul play!" and avoid any real look at the substance of the charges. It is an example of what I call "the politics of deflection," attempting to shift the attention of an audience away from the message to the messenger. The more damning the criticism, the more ferocious the response. From this perspective, the Goldstone report obviously hit the bull's eye! Being willing to level such a harsh attack against a person as deeply sympathetic to Israel as Judge Goldstone indicates that no truth-teller will be exempted from vilification.

Considered more carefully, there are some good reasons for Israel's panicked reaction to this damning report. First, it does come with the backing of an eminent international personality who cannot credibly be accused of anti-Israel bias, making it harder to deflect attention from the findings no matter how loud the screaming of foul play. Any fair reading of the report would show that it was balanced, took full and sensitive account of Israel's arguments relating to security, and indeed gave Israel the benefit of the doubt on some key issues. Secondly, the unsurprising findings are coupled with strong recommendations that do go well beyond previous reports. Two are likely causing the Israeli leadership great worry: the report recommends strongly that if Israel and Hamas do not themselves within six months engage in an investigation and follow-up action that meets international standards of objectivity with respect to these violations of the law of war, then the UN Security Council should be brought into the picture, being encouraged to consider referring the whole issue of Israeli and Hamas accountability to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Even if Israel is spared this indignity by the diplomatic muscle of the United States, and possibly some European governments, the negative public relations implications of a failure to abide by this report could be severe.

Thirdly, whatever happens in the UN system, and at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the weight of the report will be felt by world public opinion. Ever since the Gaza war the solidity of Jewish support for Israel has been fraying at the edges, and will likely now fray much further. More globally, a very robust boycott and divestment movement has been gaining momentum ever since the Gaza war, and the Goldstone report will clearly lend added support to such initiatives. There is a growing sense around the world that the only chance for the Palestinians to achieve some kind of just peace depends on shaping the outcome by way of the symbols of legitimacy, what I have called the legitimacy war. Increasingly, the Palestinians have been winning this second non-military war. Such a war fought on a global political battlefield is what eventually and unexpectedly undermined the apartheid regime in South Africa, and has become much more threatening to the Israeli sense of security than has armed Palestinian resistance.

A fourth reason for Israeli worry stemming from the report, is the green light given to national courts throughout the world to enforce international criminal law against Israeli suspects should they travel abroad. Such suspects could be detained for prosecution or extradition in some third-party country. These Israelis could be charged with war crimes arising from their involvement in the Gaza war, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. Such an eventuality is unlikely, but its mere prospect gives rise to deep concern. The report in this way encourages a somewhat controversial reliance on what is known among lawyers as universal jurisdiction, that is, the authority of courts in any country to detain for extradition or to prosecute individuals for violations of international criminal law regardless of where the alleged offenses took place. Universal jurisdiction has long been relied upon to apprehend pirates and their vessels.

Reaction in the Israeli media reveals that Israeli citizens are already anxious about being apprehended during foreign travel. As one law commentator put it in the Israeli press, "From now on, not only soldiers should be careful when they travel abroad, but also ministers and legal advisers." It is well to recall that Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions calls on states throughout the world "to respect and ensure respect" for international humanitarian law "in all circumstances." The efforts in 1998 of several European courts to prosecute Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed while he was head of state in Chile, are a reminder that national courts can be used to prosecute political and military leaders for crimes committed elsewhere than in the territory of the prosecuting state.

Of course, Israel will fight back. It has already launched a media and diplomatic blitz designed to portray the report as so one-sided and inaccurate as to be unworthy of serious attention. The US government has without explanation disappointingly endorsed this view, and apparently rejected the central recommendation in the Goldstone report that the Security Council be assigned the task of implementing its findings. The American ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, evidently told a closed session of the Security Council on 16 September, just a day after the report was issued, that "[w]e have serious concerns about many recommendations in the report." Elaborating on this, Ambassador Rice indicated that the UN Human Rights Council, which has no implementing authority, is the only proper venue for any action to be taken on the basis of the report. The initial struggle will likely be whether to follow the recommendation of the report to have the Security Council seized of the issue so as to consider referring issues of individual accountability for war crimes to the International Criminal Court. Of course, such a referral could be blocked by a veto from the US or other permanent members, but even a discussion in the Security Council would be a severe setback for Israel.

There are reasons to applaud the forthrightness and comprehensiveness of the report, its care and scrupulous willingness to conclude that both Israel and Hamas seem responsible for behavior that appears to constitute war crimes, if not crimes against humanity. Although Israel has succeeded in having the issue of one-sidedness focus on fairness to Israel, there are also some reasons to insist that the report falls short of Palestinian hopes. For one thing, the report takes for granted, the dubious proposition that Israel was entitled to act against Gaza in self-defense, thereby excluding inquiry into whether crimes against the peace in the form of aggression had taken place by the launching of the attack. In this respect, although the report takes notice of the temporary ceasefire that had cut the rocket fire directed at Israel practically to zero in the months preceding the attacks, it seems to avoid drawing any legal conclusions as to the bearing of this context in which the Gaza war was initiated. The report also ignores Hamas' repeated efforts to extend the ceasefire indefinitely provided Israel lifted its unlawful blockade of Gaza. Israel disregarded this seemingly available diplomatic alternative to war to achieve security on its borders. Recourse to war, even if the facts were to justify self-defense, is according to international law, a last resort. By ignoring Israel's initiation of a one-sided war the Goldstone report implicitly accepts the dubious central premise of Operation Cast Lead, and avoids making a finding of aggression.

Also disappointing was the failure of the report to comment upon the Israeli denial of a refugee option to the civilian population trapped in the tiny, crowded combat zone that constitutes the Gaza Strip. Israel closed all crossings during the period of the Gaza war, allowing only Gaza residents with foreign passports to leave. It is rare in modern warfare that civilians are not given the option to become refugees. Although there is no specific provision of the laws of war requiring a state at war to allow civilians to leave the combat zone, it seems like an elementary humanitarian requirement, and should at least have been mentioned either as part of customary international law or as a gap in the law that should be filled. The importance of this issue is reinforced by many accounts of the widespread post-traumatic stress experienced by the civilians in Gaza, especially children, who comprise 53 percent of the population. One might also notice that the report accords considerable attention to the one Israeli soldier held prisoner by Hamas in Gaza, recommending his release on humanitarian grounds, while making only a very general recommendation that Israel release some of the thousands of Palestinians being held under conditions of harsh detention, suggesting that children especially should be released.

In the end, the Goldstone report is unlikely to break the inter-governmental refusal to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza or to induce the UN to challenge Israeli impunity in any meaningful way. Depending on back room diplomacy, the US may or may not be able to avoid playing a public role of shielding Israel from accountability for its behavior during the Gaza war or its continuing refusal to abide by international humanitarian law by lifting the blockade that continues to impinge daily upon the health of the entire population of Gaza.

Despite these limitations, the report is an historic contribution to the Palestinian struggle for justice, an impeccable documentation of a crucial chapter in their victimization under occupation. Its impact will be felt most impressively on the growing civil society movement throughout the world to impose cultural, sporting and academic boycotts, as well as to discourage investment, trade and tourism with Israel. It may yet be the case that as in the anti-apartheid struggle the shift in the relation of forces in the Palestinian favor will occur not through diplomacy or as a result of armed resistance, but on the symbolic battlefield of legitimacy that has become global in scope, what might be described as the new political relevance of moral and legal globalization.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Pathetic Obama, pathetic world

Oh you pathetic bastards, have you no balls to support the UN resolution denouncing the atrocities of Gaza? Fuck you bastards because today the world should denounce the existence of the holocaust -- it must have been a plot too, a conspiracy like the one to single out poor Israel. Fuck you!

Monday, August 03, 2009

More on the Evictions

Dear friends,

I trust you have seen this message from the Rabbis for Human Rights today, but I want to add more to this report as I have spoken with Naser, one of the people evicted. (I live in Jerusalem and have been part of the protests against these evictions, but am in the States for the moment. I called him a few hours after the eviction.)

Naser described the arrival of "over 1,000" Israeli police who "bombed the door" of the house listed on the eviction order. They entered the house and started beating everyone inside, including the eleven children under the age of 11 who were still in their beds. Two of Naser's sons, Iyman (18) and Islam (16) suffered a broken leg and broken facial bones, respectively. The police punched holes in the walls and proceeded to evict everyone from the six adjoining apartments - 55 people in all. Their belongings were loaded onto trucks and dumped at a local garbage dump. Naser and several others tried to retrieve some of their clothes, etc., but everything had been taken by the time they got there, save one refrigerator and one gas stove. Naser said that the families had nowhere to go and that police were preventing them from even building a tent in the empty lot near the buildings where they had been living.

Please forward this to anyone in the US government and in the media whom you might know as quickly as you can. They should contact Naser or Maher or Saar to speak to them directly. I sent this notice to CNN several hours ago. It's very important is to get the Administration's attention.

Yael

"Mitakuya oyasin." ("All beings are my relatives.") - Lakota

Sunday, August 02, 2009

This is why Zionism is Racism and Evil!

Please read and forward to your Congressmen and Senators. This email below was received by friends this morning. She is a Christian Palestinian woman in Jerusalem: Here is a news report on this story from AP and here is the BBC Report

From: Samia Khoury [mailto:samiaorama@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 7:17 AM
To: xxxxxx
Subject: Breaking news


Dear Friends:

I could not go to church this morning; I was simply too angry, and I felt like screaming and not pleading any more How Long O Lord How Long ?????

All the efforts of the local people and the support and solidarity of internationals; NGO’s and officials over and above the demand of the USA administration that Israel cease all settlement activity, and especially in Jerusalem , have failed. The Hanoun and Ghawi families were evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah area in East Jerusalem this morning to make room for Jewish settlers in that area. The Hanoun family is next door to the YWCA and the Ghawi family is not far from it and very close to where the Sabeel office used to be before moving to Shufaat. Helpless parents watched their traumatized children and a whole community stood around in solidarity while the onslaught on Jerusalem continued.

Once again evil and injustice win in the Holy city of Jerusalem from where the first message of peace was proclaimed. Once again the word peace sounds hollow by actions that do not at all indicate intentions of peace.

Once again Israel challenges the whole world with impunity. Both the USA administration which has been the main supporter of Israel, morally and financially, and the United Nations which gave Israel legitimacy by partitioning Palestine into two states in accordance to the general assembly resolution #181 in November 1947, stand impotent and are unable to take action against Israel for its continuous violations of human rights and international law. Attached is the statement of the Civic Coalition for Jerusalem regarding this eviction. The irony is that the area is to go to a settlement in the name of Shimon Ha Tzaddik ( known as Shimon the pious) How pious can the eviction of people be. It almost fits the same irony of building a reconciliation centre on the remains of the Muslim cemetery in the Mamilla area in Jerusalem . Is anybody out there listening??? Samia

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Israeli top Rabbi calls Obama a "slave" ruling over us


Rabbi Ovadia Yosef , spiritual head of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas party which forms part of Israel’s ruling coalition, criticized US president Barack Obama on Saturday describing him as "a slave" who rules the world and who wants to control Israeli policy when it comes to building in occupied Jerusalem. In his weekly sermon, Yosef protested that "American insidiousness tells us to build here and not to build there as though we were slaves working for them" then he adds that "We live in a time when slaves are governing us and are trying to control us" refusing the US administration request to stop illegal settlement building on Palestinian occupied territories.

"We are not employees of the Americans.. and Israel does not work for the United States!" asserted Yosef.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3752180,00.html

Bound Palestinian Shot point blank by Israeli Soldier

video

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Shalom Palestine!

Friday, July 10, 2009

Cynthia McKiney and filmmaker Adam Shapiro on DN!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Thank you Naomi Klein

Author Naomi Klein Calls for Boycott of Israel

BILIN , West Bank - Bestselling author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters.

[Bestselling Canadian author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters. 'Boycott is a tactic . . . we're trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa,' she said. (Photograph by: John Kenney, National Post)]Bestselling Canadian author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters. 'Boycott is a tactic . . . we're trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa,' she said. (Photograph by: John Kenney, National Post)
"It's a boycott of Israeli institutions, it's a boycott of the Israeli economy," the Canadian writer told journalists as she joined a weekly demonstration against Israel's controversial separation wall.

"Boycott is a tactic . . . we're trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa," said Klein, the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."

"It's an extraordinarily important part of Israel's identity to be able to have the illusion of Western normalcy," the Canadian writer and activist said.

"When that is threatened, when the rock concerts don't come, when the symphonies don't come, when a film you really want to see doesn't play at the Jerusalem film festival . . . then it starts to threaten the very idea of what the Israeli state is."

She briefly joined about 200 villagers and foreign activists protesting the barrier which Israel says it needs to prevent attacks, but which Palestinians say aims at grabbing their land and undermining the viability of their promised state.

She then watched from a safe distance as the protesters reached the fence, where Israeli forces fired teargas and some youths responded by throwing stones at the army.

"This apartheid, this is absolutely a system of segregation," Klein said adding that Israeli troops would never crack down as violently against Jewish protesters.

She pointed out that her visit coincided with court hearings in Quebec in a case where the villagers of Bilin are suing two Canadian companies, accusing them of illegally building and selling homes to Israelis on land that belongs to the village.

The plaintiffs claim that by building in the Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit, near Bilin, Green Park International and Green Mount International are in violation of international laws that prohibit an occupying power from transferring some of its population to the lands it occupies.

"I'm hoping and praying that Canadian courts will bring some justice to the people of Bilin," Klein said.

Her visit was also part of a promotional tour in Israel and the West Bank for "The Shock Doctrine" which has recently been translated into Hebrew and Arabic. Klein said she would get no royalties from sales of the Hebrew version and that the proceeds would go instead to an activist group.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Hypocracy about Iran

Its disgusting to see all the posturing towards Iran's so-called opposition and the hypocritical attitudes towards the demonstrations. What happened in the media when the RNC was protested in Minneapolis in this country just a few months ago? Ask Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow! about police brutality and our rights to gather and protest. Go to YouTube and search for video showing the "iron fist" that Obama so casually decries in Iran, applied to American citizens opposed to the Republicans. And if any pundits condemn the media restrictions in Teheran, try to remember that Israel, with the US approval barred ANY media from Gaza last summer. What a bunch of hypocrites we are!