Netanyahu’s Transparent Dancing Demurral

The lying Nutanyahoo attempts to avoid the lobster quadrille with the Quartet, preferring to commence a secret hasbara tango with an illegitimate Abbas, who is making offers without consultation again. Anyone who’s read the Liekud Party platform, which remains unchanged, or Nutanyahoo’s Bar Ilan speech of June 09, knows how disingenuous Nutanyahoo really is. He can’t go against his own party platform which says, amongst other chauvinist, colonialist drivel that flies in the face of international law:

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.

The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.

The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs.

Palestine / Gaza Links

Viva Palestina is finalising plans for the Kick Off for Palestine campaign to construct and maintain links with sporting venues in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Ali Abunimah makes a terrific post examining the differentiation between criticism of jewishness and zionism in matters of dual loyalty:

I agree fully with Jones’ reading of Flynn’s reported comments. If accurate it is indeed outrageous to suggest that a British person cannot be loyal to the UK just because he or she is also Jewish. And it’s even more outrageous to suggest that a Jewish person has no “roots” in the UK, just as it would be to suggest the same of a British Muslim or any other person.

But what Jones – and perhaps other critics of Flynn’s comments – have missed, is that the claims Flynn reportedly made have always been at the very heart of Zionism.

Joseph Massad has noted this in his crucial book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question as has international law expert Victor Kattan.

The basic idea is simple enough: Zionists, just like anti-Semites, believed that Jews were inherently alien and rootless in Europe and needed to be expelled physically. The “father” of Zionism, Theodor Herzl in his seminal tract, Der Judenstaat, wrote this nauseatingly anti-Semitic passage:

The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France—until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of Anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.

Of course the “political solution” of which Herzl spoke was – Zionism – the removal of Jews from Europe and America so that they could not carry with them the “seeds” of their own persecution.Greatest British Zionist hero a vile anti-Semite

It is no coincidence then that the greatest British hero of Zionists to this day is Lord Arthur Balfour whose eponymous Balfour Declaration promised the Zionist movement that to which it had no right: the land of Palestine.

As Kattan points out in his book From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1891-1949, Balfour’s anti-Semitism was well documented and expressed in his writings. From Kattan:

Zionism actually provided Balfour and those who thought like him with the perfect pretext to reduce Jewish immigration into Britain whilst portraying themselves, falsely, as ‘humanitarians’ concerned about their welfare. This is what Balfour wrote in the conclusion to his introduction to Nahum Sokolow’s epic book, the History of Zionism, 1600–1918 (1919):

If [Zionism] succeeds, it will do a great spiritual and material work for the Jews, but not for them alone. For as I read its meaning it is, among other things, a serious endeavour to mitigate the age-long miseries created for western civilisation by the presence in its midst of **a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb. Surely, for this if for no other reason, it should receive our support.

That Balfour had the gall to write this in a book on Zionism was foreboding. One can only imagine what he wrote about the Jews in private or in correspondence that was destroyed or lost.

Indeed. And, as Kattan documents, such sentiments were shared by German anti-Semites who in the same period became enthusiastic supporters of Zionism.

U.S. military chief: Unclear if Israel would alert U.S. ahead of attack on Iran – protocols stuffed?

He said the United States was convinced that sanctions and diplomatic pressure was the right path to take on Iran, along with “the stated intent not to take any options off the table” – language that leaves open the possibility of future military action.

“I’m not sure the Israelis share our assessment of that.

And because they don’t and because to them this is an existential threat, I think probably that it’s fair to say that our expectations are different right now,” Dempsey said in an interview as he flew to Washington from London.

Asked whether he was talking about the differences between Israeli and U.S. expectations over sanctions, or differences in perspective about the future course of events, Dempsey said:

“All of the above.” He did not elaborate.

He also did not disclose whether he believed Israel was prepared to strike Iran.

Fayyad to Haaretz: I will not lead a Palestinian unity government
Survey released last week shows 57 percent Palestinians want Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to serve as head of the unity government.

Max Brenner, a Legend of Contemporary “Journalism”

Foreign Correspondent at Max Brenner NewtownOn the 20th September, Australian ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent broadcast a programme titled “Follow the Money”, mainly focussing on the impact of BDS on Daniel Birnbaum, the Israeli US immigrant business owner of Soda Stream, an Israeli factory illegally located in one of the neoliberal industrial zones in the Occupied West Bank. The show offered a token ‘balance’ with a Palestinian US immigrant family who supported boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israeli apartheid and occupation. The mother, Cairo Arafat, emphasised her support for two states, whilst her daughter Semma, was less enthusiastic, opining that “Two states will not work. Two states would just be a phase into Palestine being wiped off the map, into creating a one state that is an Israeli state”. The programme lacked considerable depth and sensitivity on the BDS issue within Palestine and Israel, and made some glaring factual errors – such as failing to note that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law, that instead of “Thirteen per cent of it [the apartheid wall] … being constructed inside the West Bank”, the apartheid barrier is built mainly in the West Bank and only partly along the 1949 Armistice line, or “Green Line” between Israel and Palestinian West Bank, with 12% of the entire West Bank area illegally annexed across into the Israel side of the barrier. Further, despite the new anti-boycott law passed by Israel’s far right extremist Knesset, which has been condemned by Amnesty International as “an attack on freedom of expression”, there are a growing number of Israelis who are in solidarity with the call of Palestinian people for BDS.

Foreign Correspondent programmes are re-broadcast regularly “by more than 20 international networks, including CNN International, Al Jazeera, NHK Japan and TV NZ”. Al Jazeera English re-broadcasted “Follow the Money” retitled as “About a boycott” on its “People & Power” show on October 6, 2011. So who inserted the ubiquitous fake Max Brenner this time – for this is not the first occasion that Max Brenner has been anthropomorphised.

Al Jazeera English Max Brenner Shop OwnerThe “Max Brenner Shop Owner” title pops up in the screenshot opposite at about 10.07 minutes into Al Jazeera English’s slightly truncated re-broadcast version. This individual is named in the Foreign Correspondent transcript as “GRAHAM WEINBERG (IN CROWD)”. Now we know which balding lookalike Max Brenner is this month. The Max Brenner site states “ALL AUSTRALIAN MAX BRENNER CHOCOLATE BARS ARE COMPANY OWNED & WE DO NOT CURRENTLY FRANCHISE”.

Foreign Correspondent Eric Campbell captures some correct information from a protester at a recent rally against the Israeli occupation-supporting Max Brenner business in Newtown.

CAMPBELL: “And what’s Max Brenner doing?”

PROTESTOR: “Max Brenner is financially and morally supporting the Israeli defence forces, particularly two brigades – the Golani and the Givati”.

Like Max Brenner, Sodastream is bound to the illegal, brutal Israeli military occupation, and is a legitimate boycott target.

Al Jazeera made an appearance in some recently released WikiLeaks cables.

“Al Jazeera is a vital component to the USG’s strategy in communicating with the Arab world.” — Joseph E. LeBaron, U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, November 6, 2008

“Al Jazeera Board Chairman Hamed bin Thamer Al Thani has proven open to creative uses of Al Jazeera’s airwaves by the USG beyond straightforward interviews.” — Joseph E. LeBaron, U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, February 10, 2009

Might the omnipresent bald man be such an example of ‘creative uses’ of Al Jazeera’s airwaves by the US or was the inserted caption a plausibly deniable slipup?

Related Links

Double Protests! Occupy Melbourne and BDS Action Against Apartheid Israel!
Protest against Max Brenner: Say no to Israeli Apartheid
Kate Ausburn: Conversations with BDS counter-protesters in Newtown
Conversations with BDS counter-protesters in Newtown
Accusations of anti-Semitism rife as the Australian Senate debates BDS
Max Brenner and Australia’s fascists
Just who are those blindly backing Israel and hating BDS in Australia?
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]”

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

Palestine / Israel Links

The hand of a thief: Taking a page from Nixon (“If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal!”) Netanyahu instructed Justice Minister Ya’acov Ne’eman, a religious ultra-nationalist, to come up with a legal way for Israel to keep even the radical hilltop settlement outposts built on land that Israel itself recognizes as being owned by Palestinians.

Other Links

Next come the micro-drones to zap anyone with soma who says nasty things about neoziocons. Government Aims to Build a ‘Data Eye in the Sky’
Here Comes FIATtackWatch: Ben “Big Brother” Bernanke Goes Watergate, Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed

Rolling Back the Latest Zionist Hasbara

Countering the hasbaroid ‘Judenrein’ accusation against Maen Areikat, Mahmoud Habbash, the Palestinian minister of religious affairs, stated:

“The future Palestinian state will be open to all its citizens, regardless of their religion,” Habbash said, according to USA Today. “We want a civil state, which in it live all the faiths, Muslim, Christian and Jews also if they agree, (and) accept to be Palestinian citizens.”

Maen Areikat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to the United States, told POLITICO that his comments earlier this week which some interpreted as meaning Jews would not be welcome were misconstrued.

“In no way was there a suggestion that Jews cannot enter Palestine or be in Palestinian state in the future,” Areikat said.

The officials’ comments follow a controversy the ambassador’s remarks at a breakfast on Tuesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in which he said that Jews and Palestinians “need to be totally separated.”

USA Today reported that Areikat was calling for the future Palestinian state to “free of Jews.”

USA Today has now added a clarification:

In the headline and story, Palestinian Ambassador Maen Areikat says he was referring to Israelis, not Jews, when he stated that “it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated first.”

For future reference, the US tabloids might care to comprehend Dr Saree Makdisi’s analysis about the PA:

“The PA has become what it was always intended to be; a full blown collaborationist apparatus whose main function is to facilitate the occupation and colonization of the West Bank not to challenge it or end it … The unelected leadership in Ramallah which having been swept from office by elections in 2006 was brought back to office almost literally on the turret of an Israeli tank remains completely uninterested in any accounting for the scandal of the Palestinian Papers or anything else for that matter.”

The 2011 Edward Said Memorial Lecture with Dr. Saree Makdisi “Palestine: Epicenter of the Arab Revolutions”

Israeli police evict a Palestinian family from their home in Jaffa.

Palestine / Israel Links

Is someone born in Jerusalem born in Israel?
The bulldozer ziofascist entity at its dirty collective punishment habit again
Why the UN must abolish the ‘Quartet’ – Ali Abunimah: ‘Part of the difficulty of ascertaining where official Quartet business ends and Tony Blair’s personal interests begin is a complete lack of accountability and transparency.’
Post Your Zionist Oriented Art Here (Israel Culture Ministry offers prize for ‘Zionist-oriented’ art)
Israeli yellow journalism: Anatot: Yisrael HaYom Smears Palestinian Farmer, Calling Him Convicted Rapist

Brand Hasbara Cha Cha Cha

All the perfumes of Brand Israel will not wash off Israel’s apartheid and brutal occupation. Despite, Yigal Caspi, deputy director general of media and public affairs at the Israeli Foreign Ministry explains the new soft sell approach (as if it hasn’t already been part of Israel’s dominant whitewashing strategy):

“This move doesn’t have a down-side… For a year we’ve been explaining our political policies and virtually ignoring everything else. I’m not sure that the first thing Europeans want to see when they open their morning newspaper is news about the conflict with the Arab world.”

“If we tell them about all the other interesting things here – about culinary and fashion, agriculture, innovations and high-tech – they’ll see us differently.”

Wishful thinking.

Nor can Israel obscure the consonance of government policy with its the actions of its illegal settlers.

Considering that the Foreign Minister of Israel is, in fact, a settler living in Noqdim, and that the state is addicted to building settlements while rent costs in major Israeli cities is causing nationwide protest, it is a safe bet that the interests of the state are in line with the settlers.

The affinity is further confirmed with Danny Ayalon’s new hasbara video:

Danny Ayalon, the former ambassador to the U.S., argues, in essence, the following: The West Bank belongs to Israel now and forever, so fuck off.

And the call of demographer Arnon Sofer to protesters in the Rothschild Boulevard tent city :

to move to outlying areas like Upper Nazareth, instead of demanding an apartment in “the state of Tel Aviv.” Speaking to Arutz 7, Sofer said “I would not build even one apartment in ‘the state of Tel Aviv,’ which extends from Hadera to Ashdod. Someone must tell the ‘yuppie youth’ that they should not bother fighting for an apartment there, because they will not get them.”

Sofer suggested instead that those seeking an apartment move to the south or the north. “If they all move to the periphery, the jobs will follow them. Pressure can be put on the billionaires who got rich off the rest of us to move their factories to these areas,” he said.

While Israeli hasbaraboffins plot and scheme their next apartheid-washing ad campaign, Israel is starving Gazan hospitals of fuel. Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza centres again on those least able to defend themselves – the sick.

Bassam Barhum, who oversees ministry of health supplies in Gaza, said electricity generators would stop within a day or two if fuel was not delivered.

Every hospital in the coastal strip was vulnerable, Barhum said, adding that operation rooms had already closed in Gaza City’s Ash-Shifa hospital and the European hospital in Khan Younis due to the chronic energy supply shortage.

In 2011, the Ministry of Health in Gaza received less than 400 thousand liters of fuel, but the hospitals need 1.5 to 2 million liters, he said.

Barhum said Gaza hospitals received just 25.84 percent of required fuel in 2010, and more than 10 percent was unusable.

A critical shortage of medical supplies in the coastal strip led the Hamas-led authorities to declare a state of emergency in the medical sector in June, and doctors and nurses took to the streets to protest against the ongoing crisis.

Palestine / Israel Links

Israel announces full diplomatic ties with South Sudan : Interior Minister Yishai calls on Israel to immediately begin negotiations to return thousands of Sudanese refugees who crossed into Israel illegally.
Bill would shut down PLO office for statehood action
Palestinian women from the West Bank enjoy the beach for the first time, courtesy of civilly disobedient Israelis
PLANS for Australian-designed software, which seeks to identify and dissect online anti-Semitism, have been unveiled.
Israeli bulldozers aimed at destroying 3,000 year old olive tree
Riverdance should not go to Israel: Two Open Letters from the IPSC and set designer Robert Ballagh
Israel’s Blockade of Gaza: A Twenty-year-old Injustice

Australia Links

Cheeky sign too much for Canberra

International Terrorism by Israel Against the Irish Boat to Gaza?

Dr. Fintan Lane from the MV Saoirse: “If this boat had gone to sea, it’s almost certain we would have lost lives – this boat would have sank.”

From Haaretz:

“This was done by hostile divers and identical sabotage was carried out to the Swedish ship, Juliana,” ISG spokesman Raymond Deane told DPA. “The inference is that the saboteurs were Israeli,” he said.

“This is attempted murder. The damage done to the propeller means that the ship could have sailed but the propeller would have come up through the hull after some time. We are a small ship and we would have gone down,” Deane added.

The Israeli embassy in Dublin said it had no connection with the incident and no information on it, Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE reported.

Six of the 20 crew and passengers who intended to sail on the MV Saoiree will transfer to another ship in the flotilla, ISG said. Those include former Ireland rugby player Trevor Hogan and Paul Murphy, a Socialist Party Member of the European Parliament, as well as ISG campaign coordinator Fintan Lane. They are joining activists on board the joint Italian and Dutch ship in the flotilla.

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said Thursday the U.S. has seen no independent confirmation of the ships having been sabotaged, yet nevertheless stated that “our opinion that’s been stated very clearly from the State Department, both from the secretary down to this podium, is that these flotillas are a bad idea.”

The sabotage against the Irish and Swedish boat, both of whose propeller shafts were similarly damaged, could just as well have been done by US navy divers, as a favour to Israel.

The Irish government is showing some spine, with Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore backing calls for an investigation into damage.

Minister Gilmore said he takes the matter seriously.

“I do have concerns about it, and that is something that is going to have to be investigated initially by the Turkish authorities,” the Tánaiste said.

“I would take a very serious view of it, if it turned out that there was sabotage of that vessel.”

Mr Gilmore last week told Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Boaz Modai, that any interception of the flotilla must be peaceful.

He said while the activists were well intended and well motivated, they had been warned it would it would be dangerous to travel on the MV Saoirse vessel and on the mission.

“I met with a delegation from the people who are travelling a couple of weeks ago and subsequent to that I met with the Israeli ambassador and made it clear to him both what our travel advice was but also our expectation that there would not be a repeat of last year and that people who engaged in what is essentially a form of peaceful protest activity, that there is not to be a disproportionate response to that activity,” he added.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has also called for a probe into the incident.

“The Irish government has a responsibility to protect Irish citizens abroad and must demand answers from the Israeli government on this matter,” Deputy Adams said.

“I would also urge the government to ask the Turkish authorities to carry out a full and thorough investigation into what has occurred.”

Sign the petition for an independent inquiry into the sabotage.

Related Links

Sabotage of MV Saoirse in Turkey: ‘An Act of International Terrorism’
MV SAOIRSE SABOTAGE PHOTOS AND VIDEO
Israel army uses fabrications to assert flotilla financial links to Hamas
Gaza flotilla activists: Queers welcome aboard aid ships
Alice Walker : “Settlers are the Klan,” she says definitively, referring to the notorious white supremacist terror organization. “They don’t have their white sheets because I guess they don’t need them.”
Warding off the evil eye in the Eastern Mediterranean
Why breaking Israel’s illegal blockade on the people of Gaza is essential.
Political Zionism has always been an ideology of force and violence. Israel has become a society of force and violence

This is a recurring pattern: first demonization, then legitimization (to act violently ). Remember the tall tales about sophisticated Iranian weaponry coming through arms-smuggling tunnels in Gaza, or those about how the Strip was booby-trapped? Then Operation Cast Lead came along and the soldiers hardly encountered anything like that.

The attitude toward the flotilla is a continuation of the same behavior.

British Parliamentarians add support for Flotilla to Gaza
Peaceful flotilla essential step to win freedom for Palestinians

Palestine / Israel Links

Insane racism update: Danny Danon: Send African migrants to Australia

“The arrival of thousands of Muslim infiltrators to Israeli territory is a clear threat to the state’s Jewish identity,” Danon told The Jerusalem Post.

“The refugees’ place is not among us, and the initiative to transfer them to Australia is the right and just solution.

“On the one hand, it treats the refugees and migrants in a humane way. On the other hand, it does not threaten Israel’s future and our goal to maintain a clear and solid Jewish majority,” he explained.

U.S. Senate passes resolution threatening to suspend aid to Palestinians

The PLO General Delegation to the U.S. said in response that while it respects the right of Senate members to pass resolutions expressing their views, “we urge them to use an even-handed, fair, and unbiased approach when addressing their concerns on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

The delegation added that “the Israeli government has failed to reciprocate, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly chosen a policy of land grabbing and settlement expansion over a just solution to the conflict and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

Janan Abdu on the detention of her husband, political prisoner Ameer Makhoul