CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD

HAMAS DON'T GIVE IN ON SHALIT From Desertpeace

In the final analysis, Hamas has a huge moral responsibility toward thousands of Palestinian families whose children are languishing in Israeli concentration camps and dungeons.

Needless to say, these people have spent the prime of their lives in Israeli prisons so that their people will be able to live in dignity and in order to maintain the hope for freedom and liberation from evil Zionism.

Hence, we must not hesitate to proclaim and reassert the Palestinian position in this regard, namely that Shalit must stay behind bars as long as Israel insists on keeping our men, and women and children behind bars.

Commentary by Khalid Amayreh

The cruel Israeli regime is organizing a fresh campaign to demand the release of one of its occupation soldiers, detained in a secret Gaza location.

The new campaign, publicized by the Jewish-controlled media in Europe and North America, is assuming many expressions, including protests led by the soldier’s family, a propaganda ship organized by the American Jewish followers of the Nazi-minded rabbi Meir Kahana, and a call by happy-go-lucky French President Nicolas Sarkozy for the unconditional release of the Israeli soldier.

This is the same Sarkozy who kept silent during the murderous Israeli onslaught against the defenseless people of Gaza eighteen months ago. He is now invoking humanitarianism and charity as if the thousands of Gaza children, men and women, annihilated or maimed by the Israeli army were non-humans.

It is true that Gilad Shalit is not being accorded a five-star treatment. But this is not due to any presumed sadistic urges on Hamas’s part to torment the young soldier who is likely to have the blood of many children on his hand.

In Israel, it is difficult to find an adult Israeli male whose hands have not been stained with Palestinian blood. After all, Israel is a society of murderers and child-killers. It is a society whose members Zionism has transformed into racists, cannibals and Nazi-minded murderers and child killers.

Indeed, were it not for the fact that Israel has been making constant and meticulous efforts to discover his whereabouts and liberate him by force, there is no doubt that Hamas would allow the International Commission of the Red Cross, even his family, to visit him.

But Israel, a country that murders peace activists on high seas and then calls the cold-blooded murder “armed confrontations with terrorists,” can’t be trusted.

Palestinians have had a long and bitter experience with Israeli treachery. This is why Hamas can’t allow itself to make the slightest risk in this regard. Yes, one might sympathize with Shalit at a certain human level. However, Shalit is only one person while the entire Palestinian people are held hostage by an evil regime that can only be compared with history’s worst.

There are, of course, other aspects to this sensitive issue. Israel detains thousands of Palestinian political and resistance prisoners in its dungeons. And as the recently-freed Palestinian Islamic leader Sheikh Nayef Rajoub revealed, many of these prisoners are being subjected to Medieval savagery at the hands of those claiming to be “a light upon the nations.”

For those who have forgotten, Shalit was taken prisoner in battlefield. Moreover, had Israel succeeded in carrying out a rescue operation, he would have most likely got killed.

This is probably the endgame that Israel wishes for its imprisoned soldier. A dead Shalit would be a Hasbara bonanza for the Zionist propaganda machine. On the one hand, it would allow Israel to torture and kill more Palestinian political prisoners (several Palestinian prisoners died recently due to torture, medical negligence and other causes). It would also absolve Israel from freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as demanded by Hamas and insisted by the vast bulk of the Palestinian masses, irrespective of their political orientation.

To be sure, Hamas had been negotiating in good faith with Israel, hoping to reach a dignified breakthrough that would see the repatriation of Shalit to his family in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees to their families. That would be a win-win formula for everyone.

However, the Israeli government consistently and arrogantly rejected this logical proposal, making racist arguments which even the leaders and ideologues of the Third Reich didn’t dare to make.

For example, Israeli leaders routinely invoke the mendacious canard that the Judeo-Nazi state cannot free prisoners who have Jewish blood on their hands. Well, what about the thousands or tens thousands of Israelis who have Palestinian, Lebanese and now Turkish blood on their hands? Is non-Jewish blood less red than Jewish blood?

Israel doesn’t dare indulge in a genuine argument in this regard. The reason is simple. Israel views the blood and lives of non-Jews as insignificant, at least in comparison to Jewish blood and Jewish lives. Just try to have a brief conversation with a rabbi and you will be more than shocked hearing what he will be saying in this regard.

In any case, Hamas must not show the slightest sign of fatigue vis-à-vis Israel because the lives and freedom of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are at stake. Hamas has been successfully managing this Shalit affair for over three years. Israel committed untold massacres and has been imposing a manifestly criminal siege on 1.7 million human beings, in the hope of creating a crack in Hamas’s wall of steadfastness. But neither Israeli pressure, nor western conspiracy, nor Arab collusion and Palestinian Authority treachery, have succeeded in pressurizing Hamas to give in or give up.

In the final analysis, Hamas has a huge moral responsibility toward thousands of Palestinian families whose children are languishing in Israeli concentration camps and dungeons.

Needless to say, these people have spent the prime of their lives in Israeli prisons so that their people will be able to live in dignity and in order to maintain the hope for freedom and liberation from evil Zionism.

Hence, we must not hesitate to proclaim and reassert the Palestinian position in this regard, namely that Shalit must stay behind bars as long as Israel insists on keeping our men, and women and children behind bars.

This position may not be popular in New York and Paris. But why show the slightest concern about what Paris and New York think in the firs place. They have always been and continue to be our direct or indirect tormentors. Our responsibility is first and foremost toward these tortured Palestinian prisoners and their suffering families who have kept our national just cause alive.

In a nutshell, our prisoners are not children of a lesser God

Some Americans Are Waking Up

I have to hand this guy credit:

link Come April 15, tax day, Josh Ruebner plans to send his group's members to post offices, dozens of them across the country, to "educate" people mailing in their tax forms that the United States should end military aid to Israel.

The activists will hand out literature noting that the $2.8 billion Israel gets each year could fund 65,000 vouchers for low-cost US housing or retrain half a million Americans for green jobs. It costs each taxpayer $19 a year, says Mr. Ruebner, national advocacy director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which aims to get Israel out of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

In 2007, President Bush phased out economic aid to Israel in favor of a boost in military aid, but that amounted to a 25 percent overall hike in funds. Furthermore, a reduction in the cost of maintaining Israel's expensive armed forces frees up government money to spend on other programs, including subsidized housing in the occupied territories

To Eugene Bird, president of the Council for the National Interest, a group advocating a "more balanced" approach to Middle East affairs, US money does in effect finance settlements in the West Bank that house 400,000 settlers – "though I never will be able to prove it," he confesses.

So if President Obama wants to pressure Israel to stop expanding settlements, what can he do?

He should not engage in a public fight, says Stephen Walt, a Harvard University professor of international relations and coauthor of a book on the Israel lobby. Rather, he says, Mr. Obama should use the bully pulpit to express displeasure, maybe calling the settlements "illegal." He should take diplomatic steps, such as voting for a United Nations resolution condemning the 42-year-old occupation; slow down or trim US purchases of Israeli military products (worth perhaps half a billion dollars a year); and limit loan guarantees.

One advantage of these measures: Congress would not need to be involved, notes Mr. Walt.

NETANYAHU IS RIGHT!!!!!!

Sometimes words are powerful things. And sometimes they are not. I am talking about Netanyahu’s words immediately after the Summit on Tuesday. I watched it live on television, not expecting anything as explained here. But still I watched, and afterwards a grinning Netanyahu said this about Illegal settlements:

¼ Million people living in those communities

They need Kindergartens, they need Schools,

they need Health Clinics….they are living

People have to live, you cannot freeze life

I’m sure he thought he was brilliant, that he made sense, that he could paint a picture with his words so that everyone would understand and have sympathy for the inhabitants of illegal settlements. And I have to say that I actually agree with his words "verbatim." Now, I'll bet you think I've lost my mind overnight, or that I've been indoctrinated by Zionists in my sleep. But let me show you why he's right about "illegal settlements." Because sometimes you need no words to prove your point:

¼ Million people living in those communities

There are more than 1/4 million who live in THESE Illegal settlements:






They need Kindergartens, they need Schools,

YES THEY DO!!




they need Health Clinics….

YES THEY DO!!!


AND THEY NEED THEM BECAUSE OF THIS:





People have to live, you cannot freeze life

YES, THEY LIVE:






AND THE ULTIMATE INSULT TO ISRAEL IS THIS:
AND WHO SAYS A PICTURE IS NOT WORTH 1,000 OF NETANYAHU'S WORDS!

ISRAEL SAYS DONT READ THIS

Obama was supposed to be a “uniter” the peace maker of the world. Well, today I will introduce you to a real “uniter” it is not Obama the self proclaimed “messiah of hope”

Freedom of expression, the ability to answer to your critics, the ability to contradict lies, the ability to be respected as a democratically elected government. These things are universal rights. Israel has a stranglehold on the media. Everyday we see thousands of articles being published around the world which give Israel and the US a worldwide stage to spread their agenda regarding Palestine. What we do not see, is the other side of this conflict. Obama should learn from the master. As in everything, there are always two sides. In a spectacular intelligent move, Ken Livingstone, the real “uniter” interviews Khaled Meshal the leader of Hamas. Finally someone with enough sanity to give them a voice to tell their side of the story. I cannot say enough about Ken, we know him very well, he is a fine individual and it is a shame the British government (and the American government!!) do not have more like him. In Ireland he broke ranks with the British government long ago, and dared to speak to Sinn Fein, only years later did the British government heed his advice, only then did a peace process begin. Now, years later we have come to another “Déjà vu” moment, when Ken once again gets it right. This is a MUST READ

In a world exclusive, Ken Livingstone discusses religion, violence and the chances for peace with the Hamas leader Khaled Meshal

The key to peace in the Middle East is restoration of international law and the recognition of the right of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews to live in peace and security side by side. As President Obama says, there is no peace process today. Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, continues to extend illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and maintain a near-complete blockade of Gaza. Palestinians fire ineffectual rockets into Israel. Israel regularly attacks Palestinian territories with modern weapons.

No major conflict can be resolved without each side talking to the other. That was the case in South Africa, Ireland and countless other situations where people said they would never talk to their opponents. I was vilified in the Eighties for saying that, to resolve the Irish conflict, you had to talk to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

In the Middle East, peace can only be achieved through discussion between the elected representatives of both the Israelis and the Palestinians - and that means Hamas, which won a big majority in the last Palestinian parliamentary election, as well as Fatah. This does not mean that I agree with the views of Hamas, Fatah or the government of Israel. Far from it: I do not. For example, I think a number of passages in the original Hamas charter are unacceptable and should be repudiated. Many observers believe that this is also the view of some in Hamas.

Yet, for too many people, Hamas as an organisation remains opaque. What they know about it is derived from a hostile media; it has no face. Most would probably think its leader is some disturbed Osama Bin Laden figure. In fact, al-Qaeda's supporters in Gaza are so hostile to Hamas that they have declared war on it.

For these reasons, I thought it important to interview the de facto leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, who lives in exile in Syria. Not every issue is clear. But at the beginning of any peace process, what matters most is engagement. Dialogue is necessary to get to clarity and mutual understanding. Sinn Fein did not answer every question at the beginning and neither does Binyamin Netanyahu today. The answers from Meshal come at a time of heightened tensions and renewed death threats against him, adding to the permanent danger of assassination bids not only by the Israelis, but also al-Qaeda supporters in the region.

I hope this interview will help to make the case for the dialogue that is needed, which I believe is inevitable. It is simply a question of how much suffering there will be, on both sides, before we get there:

Ken Livingstone: Could you explain a little about your childhood and the experiences that shaped your development into the person you are today?

Khaled Meshal: I was born in the West Bank village of Silwad near Ramallah in 1956. In my early age, I learned from my father how he was part of the Palestinian revolution against the British mandate in Palestine in the Thirties and how he fought, alongside other Palestinians using primitive weapons, against the well-equipped and trained Zionist gangs attacking Palestinian villages in 1948.
I lived in Silwad for 11 years until the 1967 war, when I was forced with my family, like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, to leave home and settle in Jordan. That was a shocking experience I will never forget.

KL: What happened to you after the war?

KM: Soon afterwards, I left Jordan for Kuwait, where my father had already been working and living since before 1967. After completing my primary education in 1970, I joined the prestigious Abdullah al-Salim Secondary School. In the early Seventies, it was a hub of intense political and ideological activity.

During my second year at al-Salim school, I joined the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Upon finishing my fourth year successfully I secured admission to Kuwait University, where I studied for a BSc degree in physics.

Kuwait University had an active branch of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), which had been under the absolute control of the Fatah movement. I and my fellow Islamists decided, in 1977, to join GUPS, which we had previously shunned, and contest its leadership election. However, working from within GUPS proved impossible; we felt constantly impeded and realised we Islamists would never be given a chance. By 1980, two years after I graduated, my juniors decided to leave GUPS and form their own Palestinian association on campus.

Many of the students had become disillusioned with the Palestinian leadership, who seemed intent on settling for much less than what they had grown up dreaming of, namely the complete liberation of Palestine and the return of all the refugees to their homes.

KL: What is the situation in Gaza today?

KM: Gaza today is under siege. Crossings are closed most of the time and for months victims of the Israeli war on Gaza have been denied ¬access to construction materials to rebuild their destroyed homes. Schools, hospitals and homes in many parts of the Gaza Strip are in need of rebuilding. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. As winter approaches, the conditions of these victims will only get worse in the cold and rain. One and a half million people are held hostage in one of the biggest prisons in the history of humanity. They are unable to travel freely out of the Strip, whether for medical treatment, for education or for other needs. What we have in Gaza is a disaster and a crime against humanity perpetrated by the Israelis. The world community, through its silence and indifference, colludes in this crime.

KL: Why do you think Israel is still imposing the siege on Gaza?

KM: The Israelis claim that the siege is for security reasons. The real intention is to pressure Hamas by punishing the entire population. The sanctions were put in place soon after Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006. While security is one of their concerns, it is not the main motivation. The primary objective is to provoke a coup against the results of the democratic elections that brought Hamas to power. The Israelis and their allies seek to impose failure on Hamas by persecuting the people. This is a hideous and immoral endeavour. Today, the siege continues despite the fact that we have, for the past six months, observed a ceasefire. Last year, a truce was observed from June to December 2008. Yet the siege was never lifted, and the sanctions remained in place. Undermining Hamas is the main objective of the siege. The Israelis hope to turn the people of Gaza against Hamas by increasing the suffering of the entire population of the Strip.

KL: How many supporters of Hamas and elected representatives of Hamas are there in prison in Israel? Have they all been charged and convicted of crimes?

KM: Out of a total of 12,000 Palestinian captives in Israeli detention, around 4,000 are Hamas members. These include scores of ministers and parliamentarians (Palestinian Legislative Council members). Around ten have recently been released, but about 40 PLC members remain in detention. Some have been given sentences, but many are held in what the Israelis call administrative detention. The only crime these people are accused of is their association with Hamas's parliamentary group. Exercising one's democratic right is considered a crime by Israel. All these Palestinians are brought before an Israeli system of justice that has nothing to do with justice. The Israeli judiciary is an instrument of the occupation. In Israel, there are two systems of justice: one applies to Israelis and another applies to the Palestinians. This is an apartheid regime.

KL: What part, if any, do other states and insti¬tutions, such as the US, the EU, Britain, Egypt, or the Palestinian Authority, play in the blockade of Gaza?

KM: The blockade of Gaza would never have succeeded had it not been for the collusion of regional and international powers.

KL: How do you think the blockade can be lifted?

KM: In order for the blockade to be lifted, the rule of international law must be respected. The basic human rights of the Palestinians and their right to live in dignity and free from persecution would have to be acknowledged. There has to be an international will to serve justice and uphold the basic principles of international human rights law. The international community would have to free itself from the shackles of Israeli pressure, speak the truth and act accordingly.

KL: Israel says that the bombing and invasion of Gaza last year was in response to repeated breaking of the ceasefire by Hamas and the firing of rockets into southern Israel. Is this the case?

KM: The Israelis are not telling the truth. We ¬entered into a truce deal with Israel from 19 June to 19 December 2008. Yet the blockade was not lifted. The deal entailed a bilateral ceasefire, lifting the blockade and opening the crossings.

We fully abided by the ceasefire while Israel only partially observed it, and towards the end of the term it resumed hostilities. Throughout that ¬period, Israel maintained the siege and only intermittently opened some of the crossings, ¬allowing no more than 10 per cent of the basic needs of the Gazan population to get through. Israel killed the potential for renewing the truce because it deliberately and repeatedly violated it.

I have always informed my western visitors, including the former US president Jimmy Carter, that the moment Hamas is offered a truce that includes lifting the blockade and opening the crossings, Hamas will adopt a positive stance. So far, no one has made us any such offer.

As far as we are concerned, the blockade amounts to a declaration of war that warrants self-defence.

KL: What are the ideology and goals of Hamas?

KM: Our people have been the victims of a colonial project called Israel. For years, we have suffered various forms of repression. Half of our people have been dispossessed and are denied the right to return to their homes, and half live under an occupation regime that violates their basic human rights. Hamas struggles for an end to occupation and for the restoration of our people's rights, including their right to return home.

KL: What is your view of the cause of the conflict between the state of Israel and the Palestinians?

KM: The conflict is the outcome of aggression and occupation. Our struggle against the Israelis is not because they are Jewish, but because they invaded our homeland and dispossessed us. We do not accept that because the Jews were once persecuted in Europe they have the right to take our land and throw us out. The injustices suffered by the Jews in Europe were horrible and criminal, but were not perpetrated by the Palestinians or the Arabs or the Muslims. So, why should we be punished for the sins of others or be made to pay for their crimes?

KL: Do you believe that Israel intends to continue to expand its borders?

KM: Israel does not, officially, have stated borders. When Israel was created in our homeland 62 years ago, its founders dreamed of a "Greater Israel" that extended from the Nile to the Euphrates. Expansionism manifested itself on different occasions: in 1956, in 1967 and later on in the occupation of parts of Lebanon in the Eighties. Arab weakness, Israeli military superiority, the support given to Israel by the western powers, and the massacres it was prepared to commit against unarmed civilians in Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon, enabled it to expand from time to time. Although expansionism still lurks in the minds of many Israelis, it would seem that this is no longer a practical option. Lebanese and Palestinian resistance has forced Israel to withdraw unilaterally from lands it had previously occupied through war and aggression. While in the past Israel was able to defeat several Arab armies, today it faces formidable resistance that will not only check its expansionism but also, in time, force it to relinquish more of the land that it illegally occupies.

KL: What are your principal goals? Is Hamas primarily a political or a religious organisation?

KM: Hamas is a national liberation movement. We do not see a contradiction between our Islamic identity and our political mission. While we engage the occupiers through resistance and struggle to achieve our people's rights, we are proud of our religious identity that derives from Islam. Unlike the experience of the Europeans with Christianity, Islam does not provide for, demand or recognise an ecclesiastical authority. It simply provides a set of broad guidelines whose detailed interpretations are subject to and the product of human endeavour (ijtihad).

KL: Are you committed to the destruction of Israel?

KM: What is really happening is the destruction of the Palestinian people by Israel; it is the one that occupies our land and exiles us, kills us, incarcerates us and persecutes our people. We are the victims, Israel is the oppressor, and not vice versa.

KL: Why does Hamas support military force in this conflict?

KM: Military force is an option that our people resort to because nothing else works. Israel's conduct and the collusion of the international community, whether through silence or indifference or actual embroilment, vindicate armed resistance. We would love to see this conflict resolved peacefully. If occupation were to come to an end and our people enabled to exercise self-determination in their homeland, there would then be no need for any use of force. The reality is that nearly 20 years of peaceful negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis have not restored any of our rights. On the contrary, we have incurred more suffering and more losses as a result of the one-sided compromises made by the Palestinian negotiating party.

Since the PLO entered into the Oslo peace deal with Israel in 1993, more Palestinian land in the West Bank has been expropriated by the Israelis to build more illegal Jewish settlements, expand existing ones or construct highways for the exclusive use of Israelis living in these settlements. The apartheid wall that the Israelis erected along the West Bank has consumed large areas of the land that was supposed to be returned to the Palestinians according to the peace deal.

The apartheid wall and hundreds of checkpoints turned the West Bank into isolated enclaves like cells in a large prison, which makes life intolerable.

Jerusalem is constantly tampered with in order to alter its landscape and identity, and hundreds of Palestinian homes have been destroyed inside the city and around it, making thousands of Palestinians homeless in their own homeland. Instead of releasing Palestinian prisoners, the Israelis have arrested an additional 5,000 Palestinians since the Annapolis peace conference in 2007 - actions that testify to the fact they simply aren't interested in peace at all.

KL: Does Hamas engage in military activity outside Palestine?
KM: No; since its establishment 22 years ago, Hamas has confined its field of military operation to occupied Palestine.

KL: Do you wish to establish an Islamic state in Palestine in which all other religions are subordinate?

KM: Our priority as a national liberation movement is to end the Israeli occupation of our homeland. Once our people are free in their land and enjoy the right to self-determination, they alone have the final say on what system of governance they wish to live under. It is our firm belief that Islam cannot be imposed on the people. We shall campaign, in a fully democratic process, for an Islamic agenda. If that is what the people opt for, then that is their choice. We believe that Islam is the best source of guidance and the best guarantor for the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

KL: Does Hamas impose Islamic dress in Gaza? For example, is it compulsory in Gaza for women to wear the hijab, niqab or burqa?

KM: No. Intellectually, Hamas derives its vision from the people's culture and religion. Islam is our religion and is the basic constituent of our culture. We do not deny other Palestinians the right to have different visions. We do not impose on the people any aspects of religion or social conduct. Features of religion in Gaza society are genuine and spontaneous; they have not been imposed by any authority other than the faith and conviction of the observant.

KL: It is suggested that the division in the Palestinian people between the West Bank and Gaza and between Fatah and Hamas, which obviously weakens their position, came about because Hamas seized power by force in Gaza. Is this true and how do you explain this division?

KM: Undoubtedly, division does weaken the Palestinians and harms their cause. However, the division is caused not by Hamas, but by the insistence of certain international and regional parties on reversing the results of Palestinian democracy. It dismayed them that Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people.

The division is compounded by the existence of a Palestinian party that seeks empowerment from those same regional and international parties, including the US and Israel, that wish to see Hamas out of the arena. Soon after its victory in the election of January 2006, every effort was exerted to undermine the ability of Hamas to govern.

When these efforts failed, General Keith Dayton, of the United States army, who currently serves as US security co-ordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, was despatched to Gaza to plot a coup against the Hamas-led national unity government that came out of the Mecca agreement of 2007. The plot prompted Hamas in Gaza to act in self-defence in the events of June 2007. The claim that Hamas carried out a coup is baseless because Hamas was leading the democratically elected government. All it did was act against those who were plotting a coup against it under the command and guidance of General Dayton.

KL: Do those of other political or religious views such as Fatah enjoy democratic freedoms in Gaza? What is the situation of Hamas members in the West Bank territories controlled by Fatah?

KM: Some Palestinian factions have been inspired by Arab nationalism, others by Marxism or Leninism, and others by liberalism. While we strongly believe that these ideas are alien to our people and have failed to meet their aspirations, we insist that the people are the final arbiter on whom they wish to lead them and by which system they desire to be governed. Thus, democracy is our best option for settling our internal Palestinian differences. Whatever the people choose will have to be respected.

We endeavour to the best of our ability to protect the human rights and civil liberties of the affiliates of Fatah and all the other factions within the Gaza Strip. In contrast, the Palestinians in the West Bank under Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah continue to be denied their basic rights. General Dayton is in the West Bank supervising the ¬severe and brutal crackdown on Hamas and other Palestinian groups. More than 1,000 political prisoners, including students, university professors and professionals in all fields are hunted down, detained and tortured, sometimes to death, by the US-, British- and EU-trained and -sponsored Palestinian Authority's security force.

KL: Do you believe it is possible to reunite the Palestinian people? If so, how do you think this could be done and within what kind of timescale?

KM: It is possible to reunite the Palestinians. In order for this to happen two things are needed. First, foreign interventions and demands must stop. The Palestinian people should be left to deal with their own differences without external pressure. Second, all Palestinian parties must respect the rules of the democratic game and submit to the results of its process.

KL: Hamas's refusal to recognise Israel is frequently cited as an insuperable obstacle to negotiations and a peace settlement.

KM: This issue is only used as a pretext. Israel does not recognise the rights of the Palestinian people, yet this is not raised as an obstacle to Israel being internationally recognised nor to it being allowed to take part in talks. The reality is that Israel is the one that occupies the land and possesses superior power. Rather than ask the Palestinians, who are the victims, it is Israel, who is the oppressor, who should be asked to recognise the rights of the Palestinians.

In the past, Yasser Arafat recognised Israel but failed to achieve much. Today, Mahmoud Abbas recognises Israel, but we have yet to see any of the promised dividends of the peace process.

Israel concedes only under pressure. In the absence of any tangible pressure on Israel by the Arabs or by the international community, no settlement will succeed.

KL: Do you have a "road map" of interim steps which could realistically lead to a peaceful settlement of the conflict? Do you think Jews, Muslims and Christians can one day live together in peace in the Holy Land?

KM: We do, in Hamas, we believe that a realistic peaceful settlement to the conflict will have to begin with a ceasefire agreement between the two sides based on a full withdrawal of Israel from all the territories occupied in 1967. Israeli intransigence and the lack of will to act on the part of the international community are what ¬impede this settlement. We believe that only once our people are free and back in their land will they be able to determine the future of the conflict.

It should be reiterated here that we do not resist the Israelis because they are Jews. As a matter of principle, we do not have problems with the Jews or the Christians, but do have a problem with those who attack us and oppress us. For many centuries, Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted peacefully in this part of the world. Our society never witnessed the sort of racism and genocide that Europe saw until recently against "the other". These issues started in Europe. Colonialism was imposed on this region by Europe, and Israel was the product of the oppression of the Jews in Europe and not of any such problem that existed in the Muslim land.

KL: What role do you think that other countries and organisations, in particular the US, EU and Britain, are currently playing in the Israel/ Palestine conflict and the divisions between the Palestinians?

KM: The role played by all these has thus far been negative. The attitude towards Israeli crimes against our people has been either silence or collusion. The policies and positions adopted by these parties have contributed to the Palestinian division or augmented it. On the one hand, conditions are stipulated that have the effect of torpedoing unity talks and reconciliation efforts. On the other hand, some of these international parties are directly embroiled in suppressing our people in the West Bank. The US and the EU provide funding, training and guidance to build a Palestinian security apparatus specialised in the persecution of critics of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

We have particularly been concerned about reports that the British government, directly as well as indirectly by means of security firms and the services of retired army, police and in¬telligence officers, is fully involved in the programme led by General Dayton against Hamas in the West Bank.

KL: What should countries such as the US and Britain do to assist a peaceful settlement?

KM: They should simply uphold international law - the occupation is illegal, the annexation of East Jerusalem is illegal, the settlements are illegal, the apartheid wall is illegal, and the siege of Gaza is illegal. Yet nothing is done.

KL: What relations does Hamas wish to have with the rest of the world, and, for example, with Britain?

KM: Hamas defends a just cause. For this purpose, it desires to open up to the world. The movement seeks to establish good relations and to conduct constructive dialogue with all those concerned with Palestine.link

And just like when he spoke to Sinn Fein, all those years ago, he is now being attacked by the Zionist shill British Foreign Office minister, Ivan Lewis. Who has launched an attack on Ken Livingstone over his interview for allowing BOTH sides of the conflict to be heard. Why? Because Israel MUST at all costs keep the world from hearing the other side. Israel must never allow the democratically elected government to be seen a human beings who actually have legitimate reasons for their resistance. But most of all, Israel must NEVER let the world hear what Hamas requires for a full peace agreement to end ALL hostilities. Why? Because it is common sense reasoning and just so simple to achieve. Israel cannot be seen as the one who stands in the way of real peace. If Hamas cannot be heard then only Israel controls the "message" you hear.

Netanyahu Embraces Jesus

Israel Hoping for Pigs To Fly......



Poor Bibi is looking to gain a "Sympathetic Ear" in support of his "Ethnic Cleansing and Settlement" policies in America. Instead, what he got was a "Sympathetic Ear" minus the "Sym" part, thus making it a "Pathetic Ear" in the form of John Hagee and his terrorist supporting wingnuts. This is a really good piece written by M.J. Rosenberg who is the director of policy analysis for the Israel Policy Forum in Washington. As always, I could not resist a few measly comments as well ;-)

Playing the Jesus card

Benjamin Netanyahu has a problem. The Obama administration is insisting on a settlements freeze, and the Israeli prime minister, who is resisting such demands, is not getting the support he might have expected from the U.S. pro-Israel community. Usually, when an American President makes any sort of demand on Jerusalem, pro-Israel (primarily Jewish) organizations compel Congress to pressure the president to cease and desist. It usually works. But not this time.

So what's an Israeli leader to do? Netanyahu is resurrecting a tried and true strategy: Call on Christian fundamentalists -- who see maintaining Israel's occupation as paramount -- to galvanize popular pressure against Obama.

At the president's meeting with Jewish leaders at the White House on July 13, Obama heard virtually no criticism of his policy on settlements. Even the more conservative Jewish groups held their tongues. The only exception came when one participant urged the president not to change his policy but to keep his differences with Israel private, such that there would be "no daylight" visible between Israeli and American positions. Obama responded that past administrations did not have much success with that approach. "For eight years, there was no light between the United States and Israel, and nothing got accomplished," he said.

The up-and-coming pro-Israel, pro-peace organizations like J Street and my employer, the Israel Policy Forum, oppose settlements and fully support the president's position.

Netanyahu has never been a popular figure in the American Jewish community. His last tenure as prime minister was a failure; he was turned out of office in near-record time. Yet even in this brief stint, he managed to antagonize the United States. Remember, he came to office less than a year after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and moved quickly to undo the peace process. that led to a swift deterioration in relations between Netanyahu and then President Bill Clinton

Sensing the frost, and knowing that getting in Clinton's good graces would require endorsing Oslo, Netanyahu turned to the Republicans and to the Christian Zionists for support.

At about the same time that Netanyahu started cozying up to right-wing Republicans (Like minds attract), the Israeli government intensified its efforts to court so-called Christian Zionists. These are (Mental, I mean FUNDA-Mental)Christians whose(brainwashing) theology dictates unwavering support for the state of Israel.

Christian Zionists emphatically support Israeli settlements and oppose the two-state solution. By no means liberal, they do not raise questions about Israel's treatment of Palestinians. They are, quite simply, Netanyahu's natural constituency

So, sure enough, Netanyahu was the man of the hour at this week's Christians United For Israel (CUFI) conference in Washington. The organization's founder, Pastor John Hagee, addressed Netanyahu -- who was in Israel -- by satellite, telling him that 50 million (Mental, I mean FUNDA-mental Christians) support "Israel's sovereign right to (Kill, murder, maim, steal, rape, pillage and annihilate) grow and develop the settlements of Israel as you see fit and not yield to the pressure of the United States government."

The (Evil Axis of Three) triumvirate of Netanyahu, Hagee, and Israeli Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov now plan to cement their alliance by conference call every three months."

It has all the makings of a zero sum game: Netanyahu and other right-wing Israelis hope that the support they gain from the Christian right can help make up for what they have lost among (normal sane people) American liberals over the past several years.

It won't. Christian (funda-MENTAL) Zionists of the CUFI variety are hardcore Republicans. Their votes are never up for grabs in elections because they are owned by the GOP -- and not because of Israel. Right-wing Christians, including Christian Zionists, support Republicans for the party's stance on abortion (Bomb and kill Abortion workers and clinics), gays (hate all gays), taxes (don't help fund programs for the poor) and a host of other conservative issues. Neither the Democrats, who will never get their votes or their campaign contributions, nor the Republicans, who will always get both, have any need to court them. So, loud and organized as they are, this subset of the American right is not a major political player.

the only domestic constituency that matters is the Jewish community and, thus far, it is supporting Obama -- not Netanyahu -- on the settlements issue and the peace process.

Pigs won't be flying anytime soon.........

HAMAS Calls for Channels of Communication

The Hamas Government Website is reporting that the Government is willing to communicate with any country in the world and hope the British will open channels of communication so as to work towards a resolution for the Palestinian people. IMHO I think very soon we will see this take place. You cannot have a working peace process that encompasses dialogue until Hamas is involved. Just like the Irish peace process, I think soon we will see this apply to hamas the elected government. It is clear that the US will have Britain do the engaging for them, much like America did for Britain with the engaging of Sinn Fein by Clinton:

Hamas welcomed opening channels of communications with any country in the world, but rejected the notion of classifying its leaders as moderates and extremists stressing that the movement has a Shura council and institutions on which it depends for taking decisions.

"There are no moderates and extremists in Hamas, we reject such a classification, as we are a movement that takes its decisions through consultative bodies and institutions. It is a Palestinian national liberation movement which aims to defend the Palestinian people and their usurped rights so that the people can live in Freedom and security like the rest of people," Fawzi Barhoum, the Hamas spokesman told PIC on Sunday.

Barhoum was responding to calls from the Foreign Affairs Committee on the British government to "consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas as a way of encouraging it to meet the three Quartet principles," in its report on Saturday.

Barhoum stressed that Hamas practices legitimate resistance against Zionist occupation in the same manner Churchill defended Britain and Europe against Nazi occupation, a role for which he is respected throughout Europe.

He expressed hope that the British government would heed the call of the committee and open channels of communication with the movement on the basis of respecting the usurped rights of the Palestinian people and that such rights should be restored to them.

well, well, look at this just out from the BBC:

The UK government has come under rising pressure from MPs to start making contact with Palestinian group Hamas.

committee chairman Michael Gapes said the committee saw "few signs that the current policy of non-engagement with Hamas" was effective.

He added that the government "should urgently consider engaging with moderate elements within Hamas" as it had with the political wing of Hezbollah in Lebanon earlier this year.

Designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the EU, it is seen by its supporters as a legitimate fighting force defending Palestinians from a brutal military occupation.

I rest my case...........Britain will be talking to the Gazan Government for America very soon.

Israel & Obama Have a Deal, But What?

When ever I hear of Israel “suddenly” deciding to offer a “concession” to Obama, I start to worry immediately and look for the real reason. For instance, why would Israel suddenly be publicizing that they will remove “in one day” 23 settlements? What a great sound-bite, but let’s look deeper. Firstly, it is important to note that these “settlements” are actually small horrid little outposts, like Zionist camping grounds existing on Palestinian land. They are NOT the big shiny impressive ones with lots of settler cockroaches living in big beautiful Israeli built homes over looking the hovels of the former residents of said development. No, we are not talking about “those” settlements.

So, there is something amiss, and, upon reflection, I can some up with a few reasons for Israel’s very “sudden” public decision to remove “in one day” 23 illegal “campgrounds” I mean “settlements.”

Israel never does anything for “right or moral” reasons. Only self gratifying selfish ones that advance the rogue Zionist state’s agendas. So:

1. Either Israel is offering this in the hopes it will satisfy Obama and allow Israel to keep the big settlements.

2. Or worse, it’s a token to give Obama so that Obama can claim some sort of victory on the settlement issue and now start demanding double time movement from HAMAS on accepting Israel as a Jewish state, translation, attempting remove the Right of Return for Palestinians who still have keys in their hands.

3. Or, perhaps it is all part of a trade from Israel to Obama, in order to secure Obama’s blessing for an Israeli strike on Iran. Let us not forget that early on Israel said that any peace deals with Palestine would be linked to progress on what Israel sees as needing to happen to Iran. In other words a military strike. See HERE where they link I/P peace to Obama dealing with Iran. So, if Israel is moving on the issue of Campgrounds, I mean settlements, than what deal has been struck, one wonders...

Either way, it’s a ruse by Israel to get something much bigger than what it offers. That’s the “Zionist Style” of negotiation in a nut shell. here's the story:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel plans to remove in a single day all 23 unauthorized settler outposts slated for evacuation in the occupied West Bank, a move that would meet a long-standing pledge to Washington, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

The report in Haaretz gave no date for removing the outposts, where some of the most militant settlers in the West Bank live, but said the military held an exercise last week to prepare for their evacuation.

Haaretz, a left-leaning newspaper, said the military was preparing to "forcibly evacuate 23 illegal outposts in one day. The plan was formulated by the security establishment, with the knowledge of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."

Netanyahu has so far refused to commit to a total freeze, in the most serious rift between Israel and the United States, its main ally, in a decade.

In May, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said the removal of the outposts, often a cluster of caravans on isolated hilltops built without government authorization, had become a "central issue" for the Netanyahu's administration.

COMMITMENT
The Defense Ministry says it will not reveal the locations of all the outposts to maintain an element of surprise but they include those built after March 2001, a group that Israel committed to remove during the administration of former U.S. president George W. Bush.

The evacuation is expected to be met with resistance from the settlers. Wallerstein said that some 8,000 people live at the outposts.

The Haaretz report was written by one of its most respected columnists, Yoel Marcus, who was also the first to disclose the plans of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip, a plan that came to fruition in 2005. source

Yeah, some deal has been done with Obama, what that deal is we will soon find out!

Israel May Self Destruct

In the Op-Ed section of the latimes I found this piece discussing the internal war in Israel, something I wrote about several days ago. Whilst I agree with the general premise of this piece, I think it is far more than just Jews for peace vs Zionist Jihadists. In fact it is the many years of a State creation and fostering of a nationalist separatist apartheid ideology called "Zionism" that will be the death of Israel. The general premise of Zionism is in itself exclusionary and separatist not only with regards to ideals and principles but over years has progressed into such a hardcore group being allowed to operate outside any man made laws because they are fanatics who answer only to a version of God they created. Where each person must submit to the hardcore principles or be ostracised as a "self hating Jew" anyway here's the times op ed piece, a good read:

Israel's war with itself

The rift between the Peace Party and Zealots that sent the Jewish nation wandering for 2.000 years has reappeared.

A few years ago, while walking through Mea Shearim, the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, I came across a strange poster. It pictured the Second Temple, the center of the world before the world was smashed in AD 70 by Rome, over a Hebrew phrase that means something like, "Jews! Watch what you say! For The Holy of Holies was destroyed not by Roman soldiers, nor by the Divine will, but by the gossip of the people."

What could it mean, this talk of gossip? After all, the history and its lessons seemed plain. The Jews revolted; Titus sent in the legions; Jerusalem was sacked and burned; soon after the wandering began.

In other words, don't defy Rome.

The makers of the poster, though, the story has a different meaning. Israel was not destroyed by Rome, they say, but by the feuding that preceded the invasion, the battle between the members of the Peace Party, who wanted to render unto Caesar, live like Greeks and then drift away gracefully in their own beds, and the Zealots, who wanted to die fighting. It's a debate that ribbons Jewish history, disappearing for centuries but reappearing in moments of stress.

As we head into yet another round of peace talks and the heat is turned up on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it's crucial to understand the divisions that run beneath Israeli life. There's the rift between Arabs and Jews, yes; the rift between Labor and Likud, yes; but there's also the rift between descendants of the Peace Party and descendants of the Zealots, evident in the never-ending debate: Are we too stubborn, or not stubborn enough? Are we too hated, or too afraid of being hated? Are we too aggressive, or has our fear of appearing aggressive caused us to sit in the sun as old Nebuchadnezzar builds his nuclear gallows?

In the 19th century, when the first modern Zionists decamped from Russia, they came with many theories but a shared intention -- to build a country where being a Jew would be so inconsequential that being a Jew would cease to have meaning. Only in a nation filled with Jews, they believed, could a Jew be free of being a Jew. These were secularists, scientists, students of the Enlightenment. They, and the waves of immigrants who followed them, became the elite of the new community: the left-wing politicians, professionals and kibbutzniks who built Israel, which they envisioned as a pragmatic, sane little country free of zealotry. For years, this state went unrecognized by certain ultra-religious Jews, to whom it was a grotesque presumption because, in their view, only the Messiah can gather in the exiles and restore the Kingdom. In the state of Israel after independence, many of them were marginalized --and marginalized themselves -- while the state was run by the progressive secularists, epitomized by David Ben-Gurion, the country's first prime minister.

But the national mood began to change in 1967, when, as a result of the Six-Day War, Israel took control of old Jerusalem with its holy places and the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Judea and Samaria of the Bible. The images of the war -- Israeli tanks in the tight lanes of Jerusalem, the Star of David flying above the Temple Mount, Jewish soldiers praying at the Western Wall, a remnant of the Second Temple complex -- were too powerful. People went mad with the miracle of it. For certain groups of religious Jews, the victory seemed to prove that God had in fact been involved all along -- that Yahweh was the secret force behind Zionism. No longer sinners, secular leaders like Ben-Gurion were now seen as dumb beasts, in the nature of the ass that pulls the cart with the tablets, knowing neither why nor whither it goes.

In this way, the Zealots got back into the Temple and then wandered out to the West Bank, where they built and prayed. In the years that followed, they and their right-wing allies gained political power, especially after the 1977 election of Menachem Begin, the first non-Labor Party prime minister of Israel. In this way, the argument resumed. The positions are basic: For one group, Israel is the only place a Jew can stop being a Jew; for the other, Israel is the only place a Jew can live an authentically Jewish life.

Though they inhabit the same nation, such people live in different worlds -- those who are in Israel to be more Jewish, and those who are there to be free of Judaism. If the former, you will see a flaw in relinquishing the West Bank. Without Judea, you will no doubt feel, Israel is not Israel. If the latter, the problem is just as acute. Israel, in possession of the West Bank, is outside the law, and being outside the law is not the way for a Jew to shed distinction.

History has described a tremendous arc, returning us to that same mountain, the same walls -- this time called the "security fence" -- where the rivals fight the same fight: more or less, worldly or pure, settle or retreat? (Last time, the Zealots won -- a victory followed by 2,000 years of nowhere to go.)

Unless Israel can find a way to settle this argument, the poster in Mea Shearim may well read as prophecy.

For another take on the same subject READ THIS

Israel's Biggest Problem Not HAMAS

Zionism, Peace, and Israel’s Self Created Problems
By Ban Sidhe at Irish4Palestine

Zionist Israel has a self created problem, but like all movements based on a racist ideology, they tend to begin to self destruct over time, in the light of a world that is beginning to understand that no country, no matter how great, can exist alone. And, for all intents and purposes, Israel IS alone.

Whilst Israel may have some Governmental Political support from within the ranks of major world countries like the US, England, France, Germany and Spain. They gain this support by using arm twisting, coercion, money, and a virtual world wide Borg Collective of lobby groups to both “get and maintain” this support. They do not get this support because they earn it nor deserve it, and thus must continually work 24/7 using everything they have to both monitor and protect this ill gotten support. Whilst at the same time Israel exists not as a free and respected country, but rather as a huge prison, behind walls, fences, barbed wire, check points and borders that must at all costs be continually patrolled in order to protect the criminals inside. This also poses a second problem for Israel. They need to forcibly bring young people into the army to continue this perpetual war and 365 day a year, 24/7 patrolling. So, when the Zionist indoctrination from birth fails in some cases, and a young Israeli sees the truth and refuses to become a prison guard or paid killer, then the state ostracizes them because Zionism is a separatist movement. You are either with us or against us, a Bush/Zionist classic.

The world governments may be blind, but the world’s people are not. Israel’s most serious problem is not what Israel has, but rather what it has lost forever on the heels of the Gaza Genocide. For despite Israel’s ability to effectively control powerful countries like the US, and through those means, then control the UN committees to turn a blind eye. What Israel cannot have, does not have, and cannot buy with all it’s groups and money, is the support of the people on the ground in those very same countries whose Governments turn a blind eye to Israel’s crimes.

I said at the beginning that Israel has a huge self created problem with regards to both having peace and moreover the continued existence of Zionist Israel as it stands today.

I believe that some within the Israeli government have the ability to recognize the future is a grim one, should Israel remain on its present Zionist self created course. However, if you spend years of building up this Racist Zionist Ideology so as to reap the financial and geographical benefits of Aliyah; and at the same time encourage the building of illegal settlements. And allowing the creation of groups and organisations who are encouraged and allowed to work outside the law and even murder with impunity. This, coupled with the fact that no matter what Israel claims, it does actually realise it must change with the times and can no longer get away with what it has in the past, especially after Gaza, so how does Israel put the Jeannie back in the bottle now without some Zionist Revolt against the State and Government? That’s my point.

The Racist Separatist Zionist Ideology encouraged to flourish for years, is now the self inflicted death wound to Israeli Peace and Israel’s existence as we know it today. And it can be no more evident as in the sentiments within excerpts of a letter to the editor of a Jewish paper in America from an American Zionist:

Letters
Published: 17 July 2009

The June 26 special report regarding “radical settlers” included articles each more negative than the next. In fact, it seemed that the entire settler movement was guilty by association. Is it wrong for a few aggrieved Jews to take matters into their own hands when faced with Arab violence and Israeli ambivalence?

Is it wrong for some Jews to threaten the soldiers and leaders who plot their violent and undemocratic expulsion from Judea and Samaria?

However, the real cause for what is perceived as “radical settlers” is the marginalization that they have been subjected to by the Israeli body politic. After being actively solicited to settle all of the liberated parts of the land of Israel and having been raised with the history of the Zionist movement, they have now had that support abruptly removed.

They have been inculcated with the belief that Jews living in Judea and Samaria is religiously and historically correct; now due to political expediency they are being sacrificed to satisfy the American administration and the world.

What is even more bizarre is that while Israelis view 260,000 Jews as “settlers” the United States now views over 600,000 Jews as settlers — as this now includes all Jews living in the Jerusalem neighbourhoods annexed by Israel after 1967.

As such, I side with the settlers —

Jews have the right to live in the land of Israel and it is the responsibility and imperative of the entire Jewish people to support this. It was the same during the Persian and Roman times as it is now. Nothing has changed — certainly not this essential truth.

What I can say from experience of the peace process in Ireland; is when you have a movement, you must take that movement’s support with you in order to have any success. This takes time, effort and great leadership in talking to your people about the real politics of the situation. So, if Israel truly does want peace, then they have a huge road ahead of them concerning their own inhabitants. They will have to destroy the monster they created in Zionism. People like to talk about HAMAS and FATAH needing to unite. But even if that took place tomorrow, Israel is FAR behind the eight ball. Because for years Palestinians have had time to adjust to the reality that in today’s world they will only get back the land up to the 1967 borders. They don’t like it, but they know it, and yes I don’t agree with that deal, but it’s the Political reality today. Even HAMAS has acknowledged this in many statements recently and accepts it for peace. Israel, on the other hand, has not spent any time adjusting its people to this very same reality.

So, for Israel, as it turns out today, the years spent successfully encouraging every Jew in the world to come settle in occupied land, operate in lawlessness, commit murder and believe it is their right to occupy all the land will ultimately cause Israel to die at its own Zionist hands.


Zionists will be the destruction of Israel, how prophetic!

Israel's Fairytale Blocks Middle East Peace

This appears to be another case of ancient bloody myths contributing to a modern bloody reality.

This is an excellent piece and analysis published at Middle East Online by Robert Parry who was responsible for breaking many of the Iran-Contra Affair stories among other things. He discusses the “Israeli Myths” or Three Pillars of the State Of Israel. These “Pillars” and “Myths” have created this most untenable situation of continuing war with Israel’s neighbours in the Middle East and rests directly on the premise of the Jewish State itself. He examines this from the perspective of a new book by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, titled: “ When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?” The book debunks the Myth of Rome removing the Jews from the Holy Land causing them to be scattered across Europe.

For me, this is yet another example of people with an agenda high jacking and perverting religion to serve their political purpose. Today we see much of this, those who excel at this technique, can immediately garner millions of followers and support. We see it in the Muslim Religion with groups like Al Qaeda who attack Christians AND Muslims, We see it in Christian Religion with people like Hagee and the other Zio-Christian fanatics who bomb abortion clinics and kill their workers, whilst at the same time comdemning the killing of unborn children (who may have grown up to work in a clinic, how Ironic!), we see it in the Jewish Religion in many places, such as the radical Zionist nutjobs who set off bombs in New York City. In Ireland we have seen religion used as a rallying cry against the native Irish population using Death Squads to murder the Native people for hundreds of years. This continues to some degree even today, with what has become known as "Ulster Protestantism." Another feature of these fanatic high jacked religious groups, is that the old religion names no longer serve the purpose, they are re-named to fit the times (Or the Agenda); "Born Again Christians" "Zionists" "Ulster Protestantism" etc.

So, like everything else in modern society, religion has been high jacked by subversive groups, many with political agendas, and it has become more about winning a political cause, than entering heaven. And sadly the followers have not a clue they are being used...........Here is a good portion of the lengthy analysis, a link is provided at the end for the entire piece:

Ancient Israeli Myths Deter Peace

As recently as Israeli’s bombardment of Gaza in January 2009, the myth of the Diaspora was used to justify the slaughter of some 1,400 Palestinians dead, including many children and other non-combatants. When the Israeli government investigated alleged war crimes by its army, Israeli troops testified that extremist Rabbis had proclaimed the invasion a holy war, notes Robert Parry.

The rationale for formally designating Israel a Jewish state – as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now demands – rests on three religious-political pillars: God’s purported covenant with Moses instructing the ancient Israelites to conquer the land, the injustice of the Roman-era Diaspora that supposedly removed them centuries later, and the brutal persecution of European Jews in the Holocaust.

Yet, two of these pillars – Moses conveying God’s covenant to the Israelites and the Roman Diaspora – appear based on almost no historical reality, the stuff of legend and possibly even lies that crumble under any serious scrutiny.

Netanyahu’s new demand means that these myths now threaten peace in the Middle East and conceivably could push the modern world into more bloody warfare.

Therefore, they must be given fresh examination.

the Holocaust is not in historical dispute. That horrible reality – an industrial-style extermination campaign that also targeted Gypsies, homosexuals and Communists –was proven after the World War II from a multitude of Nazi records, photographs and eyewitness accounts

It is the tales of Moses from the Torah (or the first five books of the Old Testament) and the legend of the Roman Diaspora that lack serious historical underpinnings.

The Diaspora myth has been addressed in a new book by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? It debunks the notion that Rome removed the Jewish people en masse from the Holy Land in the First and Second Centuries A.D. and scattered them across Europe.

Instead, most East European Jews appear to be descendents of converts, principally from the Kingdom of the Khazars in eastern Russia, who embraced Judaism in the Eighth Century, A.D.

Thus, Sand argues, many of today’s Israelis who emigrated from Europe after World War II have little or no genealogical connection to the land. According to Sand, a bitter irony of Israel’s founding may be that it displaced Palestinians who could be the actual descendants of the ancient Israelites, who stayed on the land and eventually converted to Islam.

Other descendants of those ancient Israelites maintained Judaism as a strong presence in the Middle East, both in Palestine and in successful communities from Egypt to Iraq and Iran. These Jews faced few religious pressures until after Israel was founded in 1948, when this new European intrusion into Islamic lands was viewed in the context of the Crusades a millennium ago.

The Moses Myth

Yet, while questioning the Diaspora myth is a sensitive topic for many Israelis and their supporters around the world, it is even touchier to challenge the Biblical claim that God, through Moses, struck a covenant with the Israelites to conquer the land and possess it for all time.

Because the Torah is sacred to Jews – and to many Christians as the revealed word of God in the Old Testament – it has been dangerous to examine the factual history behind these texts in an objective manner.

Modern Biblical scholars now agree that Moses was not the author of the Torah, that the stories were passed down orally from the 14th Century B.C. and were put into writing centuries later. But the legendary figure of Moses has remained almost beyond criticism, not only for many Jews but for people of the Christian and Islamic faiths.

Many Americans think of Moses as the angry but righteous leader as portrayed by Charlton Heston in the 1956 epic “The Ten Commandments,” or they think of their feel-good Bible studies as children. Yet, many archaeologists believe that the Moses stories were largely made up.

“This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Isrealites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel,” summed up Professor Ze’ev Herzog, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University.

“The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites’ presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the Exodus.” Nevertheless, because of the powerful influence of the Torah (and the Old Testament), the biblical Moses carries extraordinary religious and historical weight, inspiring Israeli settlers to claim Palestinian lands as rightfully theirs and rallying fundamentalist Christians across the American heartland to embrace whatever actions the Israelis take.

Though Moses is regarded by many as a great law giver (the Ten Commandants) and as a major force in the formation of monotheism (the belief in one God), the text of the Torah present him as a cruel and tyrannical leader.

From a modern perspective, Moses might be viewed as a “dictator who killed his own people” when they disobeyed him and an advocate of genocide against outsiders. His claims that he spoke with the Lord sound more like a megalomaniac who believed he could scare a primitive people into following his orders by claiming they were edicts from God.

Indeed, over the centuries, many tyrants have used religion (especially monotheism) to justify repression and to eliminate enemies and rivals. The religious wars in Europe during the Middle Ages are a classic example of how kings and popes wrapped their personal power in the bloody cloak of religion, torturing and burning alive “heretics” who wouldn’t submit.

In Exodus, for instance, there is the famous story of the Israelites creating a visible idol of their God in the form of a golden calf while Moses is absent on Mount Sinai. When Moses returns with stone tablets conveying laws of behavior, he is furious and smashes the tablets.

According to the Torah, Moses then grinds up the golden calf, mixes it with water and makes the Israelites drink it. Then, Moses recruits what we would today call a “death squad.”

The Torah reads: “Moses stood at the gate of the camp and said, ‘Whoever is for the Lord, to me!’ And the Levites gathered round him. And he said to them, ‘Thus said the Lord God of Israel, “Put every man his sword on his thigh, and cross over and back from gate to gate in the camp, and each man kill his brother and each man his fellow and each man his kin”’ And the Levites did according to the word of Moses, and about three thousand men of the people fell on that day.”

In other words, Moses ordered a massacre of Israelites whom he regarded as his enemies, people who had challenged his authority in the form of dancing around the golden calf.

The Diaspora Myth

The second pillar – the Roman Diaspora – also comes from ancient times though not as far back as the stories of Moses. If anything, however, the Diaspora has less of a historical basis.

In When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, Dr. Sand, an expert on European history at the University of Tel Aviv, says the Jews were never exiled en masse from the Holy Land and that the myth of the Diaspora was used by Zionists over the past century to buttress their argument for creating Israel.

Sand, a European Jew born in 1946 to Holocaust survivors in Austria, argues that until the Zionist movement arose, Jews thought of themselves as Jews because they shared a common religion, not because they possessed a direct lineage to the ancient tribes of Israel.

However, at the turn of the 20th Century, Sand asserts, Zionist Jews began assembling a national history to justify creation of a Jewish state by inventing the idea that Jews existed as a people separate from their religion and that they had primogeniture over the territory that had become known as Palestine.

The Zionists also invented the idea that Jews living in exile were obligated to return to the Promised Land, a concept that had been foreign to Judaism, Sand states.

If Sand’s thesis is correct – and it has faced no substantive rebuttal – it would suggest that many of the Palestinian Arabs have a far more substantial claim to the lands of Israel than do many European Jews who arrived there asserting a God-given claim.

Indeed, Sand theorizes that many Jews, who remained in Judea after Roman legions crushed the last uprising in 136 A.D., eventually converted to Christianity or Islam, meaning that the Palestinians who have been crowded into Gaza or concentrated in the West Bank might be direct descendants of Jews from the Roman era.

In his book – and in an interview with Haaretz about his book – Sand challenged the myth that the Romans relocated the Jews by force to Europe. In the interview, he said:

"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country.

“The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th Century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."

The True Descendants

Asked if he was saying that the true descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians, Sand responded:

"No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents.

“The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-1939], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don't leave until they are expelled.

“Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, 'the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'"

But there can be no doubt that the story of the Diaspora has played a key role in the founding of Israel and that the appeal of this powerful narrative has helped generate sympathy around the world, especially in the United States.

"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom," reads the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

As recently as Israeli’s bombardment of Gaza in January 2009, the myth of the Diaspora was used to justify the slaughter of some 1,400 Palestinians dead, including many children and other non-combatants. When the Israeli government investigated alleged war crimes by its army, Israeli troops testified that extremist Rabbis had proclaimed the invasion a holy war.

The troops said the Rabbis brought them booklets and articles declaring: “We are the Jewish people. We came to this land by a miracle. God brought us back to this land, and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu has insisted on a new precondition for talks – that the Palestinians must agree to a “public, binding and unequivocal” recognition that Israel is “the nation state of the Jewish people,” not simply the nation state of the people of Israel. Netanyahu is making this demand although Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population.

This appears to be another case of ancient bloody myths contributing to a modern bloody reality.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com