Encircled by enemies again?

prime minister of Israel’s hawkish coalition government, makes no secret of his queasiness about Egypt’s upheaval and his fear that the peace treaty with Israel’s giant Arab neighbour could unravel after 32 years. The prospect of an Egyptian government that included the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone one that were led by it, plainly gives him the creeps. For one thing, it might open the Egyptian border with Gaza (see article), so strengthening the Brothers’ Palestinian offshoot, Hamas, whose charter calls for the Jewish state’s destruction. People close to Mr Netanyahu mutter darkly about the “Hamas-isation” of Egypt, a possibility that fills most Israelis, not just on the right, with dread. “Half of the Palestinian people have already been taken over by Iran,” says Israel’s prime minister, with barely a hint of conscious hyperbole.

The Egyptian upset is heightening a sense of encirclement that has not been felt so acutely by Israelis in decades. In Lebanon to the north, a pro-Western prime minister has recently been displaced by one backed by Hizbullah, the Shia party-cum-militia that is armed and sponsored by Iran. To the north-east, Syria, also on friendly terms with Iran, seems resolute in its support for Hamas. Meanwhile Iran itself, Israel’s biggest bugbear in the wider region and governed by a mercurial president fired with righteous anger towards Israel, moves steadily towards getting a nuclear weapon.

Perhaps even more worrying for Israel is a rising fear that on its eastern flank the ruling monarchy in Jordan, the only Arab country bar Egypt that has a formal treaty with the Jewish state, is being shaken by an assortment of Islamists, tribal leaders, Palestinians (who make up a good half of Jordan’s people), disgruntled former security men and a middle class irritated by the royal family’s perceived extravagance.

In the past year relations with Turkey, once a rare friend of Israel in the Muslim world, have gone from cool to icy. In the words of one of Mr Netanyahu’s colleagues, Israel is surrounded by a “poisonous crescent”. “We are in the midst of a regional earthquake,” says one of his ministers, clearly horrified by its possible reverberations.

Meanwhile, peace talks with the Palestinians have broken down, apparently irretrievably. The chances of their revival during Mr Netanyahu’s term in office, which has two years to run, seem negligible. Mr Netanyahu roundly blames the Palestinians for their supposed intransigence, an analysis not shared by American or European mediators and monitors, who castigate Israel’s government for refusing to freeze the building or expanding of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the main bit of a future Palestinian state.

Mr Netanyahu lays particular stress on Israel’s claimed need, if a Palestinian state were to emerge on the West Bank, to retain a military presence there; neutral foreign forces, provided by NATO, as suggested in previous negotiations, would not suffice. “What will prevent infiltration through the Jordan Valley?” he asks. “It requires an Israeli presence to prevent a takeover by Iran’s proxies.” Ministers in Israel’s ruling coalition repeatedly raise the possibility that Hamas might one day oust Mr Abbas’s milder Palestinian party. Some argue that Mr Abbas’s peace talk is a tactical ploy. “A peace treaty does not itself guarantee peace,” warns Mr Netanyahu bleakly. With such suspicions to the fore of his thinking, it is hard to see how a deal based necessarily on mutual trust could ever be struck.

Israel’s centrist opposition leader, Tzipi Livni insists that she came close to sealing a peace deal in 2008 with the Palestinians when she was foreign minister in the government replaced by Mr Netanyahu’s coalition. She excoriates what she sees as Mr Netanyahu’s hawkish ineptitude and his apparent belief that Israel will always be surrounded by an army of enemies infused with a murderous anti-Semitism.

As if Israel’s predicament in a region that may soon become more hostile is not bad enough, two more fears are nagging away. Mr Netanyahu and his colleagues are plainly discomfited by what they see as a burgeoning campaign, especially in the West, to erode Israel’s legitimacy. They cite what they deem unfair attitudes over such issues as the Turkish flotilla Israel stopped from sailing to Gaza, killing nine Turks in so doing, and the UN’s Goldstone report critical of Israel’s war in Gaza in 2009. “We are being denied our legitimate right to self-defence,” sighs one of them. Israel’s growing isolation in forums such as the UN is a gnawing worry. “If we are thrown to the wolves, we have a problem,” says a minister.

Source : http://www.economist.com/node/18186996

Israel's shame as Holocaust victims die in poverty

About 80,000 Holocaust survivors emigrated to Israel after WW2. Instead of finding ease and opportunity, many discovered only loneliness and grinding poverty. They accuse Israel of failing to give them the compensation paid by Germany. They say millions of dollars that was meant for them has been used to build the country instead.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown surrenders to Zionist pressure

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced plans to block private groups from seeking arrest warrants against visiting foreign officials suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity, such as Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and other suspected Israeli war criminals.

In December 2009 former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was forced to cancel a trip to Britain after a UK court issued an arrest warrant against her on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Under Brown’s proposals, the Crown Prosecution Service will take over responsibility for prosecuting war crimes and other violations of international law. Currently, magistrates have to consider the case for an arrest warrant to be issued.

Brown wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “As we have seen, there is now significant danger of such a provision being exploited by politically-motivated organizations or individuals who set out only to grab headlines knowing their case has no realistic chance of a successful prosecution.”
"Clearly, the Israeli lobby has much more influence within the British cabinet than the USA. This isn’t a big surprise for us, considering our foreign secretary, David Miliband, is a listed 'Israeli Hasbara [Propaganda] Author'."

Brown must explain to the nation why arresting genocidal war criminals like Livni, Olmert or Barak is a “politically motivated” act. He should also explain to us all why he is convinced that a case against Livni wouldn’t stand a chance in court. As far as the UN-appointed judge Richard Goldstone is concerned, the case against Israel and its leadership is actually watertight.

According to the Daily Mail, Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state and a leading player in the Iraq war, has also reportedly expressed alarm about the prospect of arrest in Britain. Yet, no one in Britain politics rushed to appease the American politician or to amend the application of universal jurisdiction laws in Britain just for him. Clearly, the Israeli lobby has much more influence within the British cabinet than the USA. This isn’t a big surprise for us, considering our foreign secretary, David Miliband, is a listed “Israeli Hasbara [Propaganda] Author”.

Brown said: “There is already growing reason to believe that some people are not prepared to travel to this country for fear that such a private arrest warrant - motivated purely by political gesture - might be sought against them.” Surely, this is good news. Criminals such as Livni or Barak should never dare to step on a plane. Instead, they should stay in their Jewish ghetto and stare at the separation walls they erected around themselves.

Gordon Brown said he wanted legislation putting jurisdiction for war crimes and similar offences under the Crown Prosecution Service to be brought in “as soon as possible”. This is indeed what you would expect from a government that is so heavily funded by the Jewish lobby. Such a move would allow attorneys such as Lord “Green Light” Goldsmith to open Britain’s gate to Israeli genocidal murderers.

Yet Brown failed to tell the British people what it is that stops magistrates from taking the right decisions regarding war criminals. Let us face it, if Brown doesn’t trust Britain’s magistrates, then he had better let them go. He can always hire some rabbis to look after Britain legal system. If Britain is about to give up on its universal jurisdiction laws, it better be prepared to let some tribal experts look after its ethical stand.

Source - http://www.redress.cc/stooges/gatzmon20100305

Netanyahu says he will oppose conversion bill

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that he would oppose a conversion bill that has rekindled the age-old debate over who is a Jew — and provoked an angry response among liberal Jewish groups abroad whose support is critical to the Jewish state.

Last week, an Israeli parliamentary committee gave preliminary approval to a draft legislation that would give Orthodox rabbis in Israel more control over conversions.
The more religiously liberal Reform and Conservative movements that represent the vast majority of Jews outside Israel contend the new legislation would be a dangerous blow to religious pluralism.
Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that he feared the bill would create a rift in the Jewish world and that if he couldn't find a compromise solution, he would ask his coalition partners to vote against it.
Under the current practice, Israel recognizes only conversions performed by Orthodox rabbis inside Israel, but people converted by non-Orthodox rabbis outside the country are automatically eligible for Israeli citizenship like other Jews. The proposed legislation would give Israel's chief rabbinate the legal power to decide whether any conversion is legitimate.
The group most likely to suffer would be immigrants who converted to Judaism abroad and could now be denied Israeli citizenship.
The bill touches a raw nerve in the Reform and Conservative movements, whose presence is marginal in Israel, where Orthodox rabbis have a near monopoly over religious practices such as marriage and burial.
While staunch backers of Israel, these groups look worriedly at the prospect of the country's Orthodox religious establishment further entrenching its control, and in effect being the arbiter of Jewish identity. Passage of the bill would also be a blow to the legitimacy of non-Orthodox rabbis the world over.
Rabbi David Saperstein, head of the Washington-based Religious Action Center of the Union of Reform Judaism, said the bill, if passed, would mark a "crisis of the first order." "It would be an enormous blow to the unity of the Jewish people and the principle of religious freedom in Israel," said Saperstein, who is visiting the country to lobby lawmakers to drop the bill.
"The American Jewish community will remain strongly engaged in Israel, but the message will be sent that the government of Israel does not accept our rabbis and our movement as legitimate, and it would make all our work much more difficult." Of the world's roughly 13 million Jews, half live in Israel and most of the rest are concentrated in North America.
Israeli religious authorities' skepticism about the legitimacy of overseas conversions has been cited as one of the main causes of a growing rift between Israel and world Jewry. Source

THE JEWS OF IRAQ - TESTIMONY OF A FORMER ZIONIST

THE JEWS OF IRAQ - TESTIMONY OF A FORMER ZIONIST
The following article, The Jews of Iraq, is the result of an interview conducted by The Link on March 16, 1998. The article was published in the [?] edition of The Link. The interviewee, Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi Jew and a former Zionist is the author of "Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews".

In his book, Ben Gurion's Scandals, Mr. Giladi discusses the crimes committed by Zionists in their frenzy to import raw Jewish labor. Newly-vacated farmlands had to be plowed to provide food for the immigrants and the military ranks had to be filled with conscripts to defend the illegitimately repossesed lands.

Mr. Giladi couldn't get his book published in Israel, and even in the U.S. he discovered that he could do so only by personally funding the project.


The Giladis, now U.S. citizens, live in New York City. By choice, they no longer hold Israeli citizenship. "I am Iraqi," he told The Link, "born in Iraq, my culture still Iraqi Arabic, my religion Jewish, my citizenship American."


The Link, honored in 1998 by the International Writers and Artists Association, is published by Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU).

In the [?] edition of The Link, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe looked at the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians whose lives were uprooted to make room for foreigners who would come to populate land confiscated by the Zionists. Most were Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. But over half a million other Jews came from Islamic lands. Zionist propagandists claim that Israel "rescued" these Jews from their anti-Jewish, Muslim neighbors. One of those "rescued" Jews, Naeim Giladi, knows otherwise.

Naeim Giladi: "I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first Prime Minister of Israel called 'cruel Zionism'. I write about it because I was part of it."

John F. Mahoney, Executive Director, AMEU: "The Link interviewed Naeim Giladi, a Jew from Iraq, for three hours on March 16, 1998, two days prior to his 69th birthday. For nearly two other delightful hours, we were treated to a multi-course Arabic meal prepared by his wife Rachael, who is also Iraqi. "It's our Arab culture," he said proudly".

http://judaismorzionism.blogspot.com/2010/02/jews-of-iraq-testimony-of-former.html