A "Humanitarian War" on Syria? Military Escalation. Towards a Broader Middle East-Central Asian War?

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan." General Wesley Clark

An extended Middle East Central Asian war has been on the Pentagon's drawing board since the mid-1990s.

As part of this extended war scenario, the US-NATO alliance plans to wage a military campaign against Syria under a UN sponsored "humanitarian mandate".

Escalation is an integral part of the military agenda. Destabilization of sovereign states through "regime change" is closely coordinated with military planning.

There is a military roadmap characterised by a sequence of US-NATO war theaters.

War preparations to attack Syria and Iran have been in "an advanced state of readiness" for several years. The Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 categorizes Syria as a "rogue state", as a country which supports terrorism.

A war on Syria is viewed by the Pentagon as part of the broader war directed against Iran. President George W. Bush confirmed in his Memoirs that he had "ordered the Pentagon to plan an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and [had] considered a covert attack on Syria" (George Bush's memoirs reveal how he considered attacks on Iran and Syria, The Guardian, November 8, 2010)

This broader military agenda is intimately related to strategic oil reserves and pipeline routes. It is supported by the Anglo-American oil giants.

The July 2006 bombing of Lebanon was part of a carefully planned "military road map". The extension of "The July War" on Lebanon into Syria had been contemplated by US and Israeli military planners. It was abandoned upon the defeat of Israeli ground forces by Hizbollah.

Israel's July 2006 war on Lebanon also sought to establish Israeli control over the North Eastern Mediterranean coastline including offshore oil and gas reserves in Lebanese and Palestinian territorial waters.

The plans to invade both Lebanon and Syria have remained on the Pentagon's drawing board despite Israel's setback in the 2006 July War: "In November 2008, barely a month before Tel Aviv started its massacre in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military held drills for a two-front war against Lebanon and Syria called Shiluv Zro’ot III (Crossing Arms III). The military exercise included a massive simulated invasion of both Syria and Lebanon" (See Mahdi Darius Nazemoraya, Israel's Next War: Today the Gaza Strip, Tomorrow Lebanon?, Global Research, January 17, 2009)

The road to Tehran goes through Damascus. A US-NATO sponsored war on Iran would involve, as a first step, a destabilization campaign ("regime change") including covert intelligence operations in support of rebel forces directed against the Syrian government.

A "humanitarian war" under the logo of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) directed against Syria would also contribute to the ongoing destabilization of Lebanon.

Were a military campaign to be waged against Syria, Israel would be directly or indirectly involved in military and intelligence operations.

A war on Syria would lead to military escalation.

There are at present four distinct war theaters: Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine and Libya.

An attack on Syria would lead to the integration of these separate war theaters, eventually leading towards a broader Middle East-Central Asian war, engulfing an entire region from North Africa and the Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The ongoing protest movement is intended to serve as a pretext and a justification to intervene militarily against Syria. The existence of an armed insurrection is denied. The Western media in chorus have described recent events in Syria as a "peaceful protest movement" directed against the government of Bashar Al Assad, when the evidence confirms the existence of an armed insurgency integrated by Islamic paramilitary groups.

From the outset of the protest movement in Daraa in mid-March, there has been an exchange of fire between the police and armed forces on the one hand and armed gunmen on the other. Acts of arson directed against government buildings have also been committed. In late July in Hama, public buildings including the Court House and the Agricultural Bank were set on fire. Israeli news sources, while dismissing the existence of an armed conflict, nonetheless, acknowledge that "protesters [were] armed with heavy machine guns." (DEBKAfile August 1, 2001. Report on Hama, emphasis added)

"All Options on the Table"

In June, US Senator Lindsey Graham (who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee) hinted to the possibility of a "humanitarian" military intervention directed against Syria with a view to "saving the lives of civilians". Graham suggested that the "option" applied to Libya under UN Secuirty Council resolution 1973 should be envisaged in the case of Syria:

“If it made sense to protect the Libyan people against Gadhafi, and it did because they were going to get slaughtered if we hadn’t sent NATO in when he was on the outskirts of Benghazi, the question for the world [is], have we gotten to that point in Syria, ...

We may not be there yet, but we are getting very close, so if you really care about protecting the Syrian people from slaughter, now is the time to let Assad know that all options are on the table,” (CBS "Face The Nation", June 12, 2011)

Following the adoption of the UN Security Council Statement pertaining to Syria (August 3, 2011), the White House called, in no uncertain terms, for "regime change" in Syria and the ouster of President Bashar Al Assad:

"We do not want to see him remain in Syria for stability's sake, and rather, we view him as the cause of instability in Syria," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday.

"And we think, frankly, that it's safe to say that Syria would be a better place without President Assad," (quoted in Syria: US Call Closer to Calling for Regime Change, IPS, August 4, 2011)

Extended economic sanctions often constitute a leadup towards outright military intervention. A bill sponsored by Senator Lieberman was introduced in the US Senate with a view to authorizing sweeping economic sanctions against Syria. Moreover, in a letter to President Obama in early August, a group of more than sixty U.S. senators called for "implementing additional sanctions... while also making it clear to the Syrian regime that it will pay an increasing cost for its outrageous repression."

These sanctions would require blocking bank and financial transactions as well as "ending purchases of Syrian oil, and cutting off investments in Syria's oil and gas sectors." (See Pressure on Obama to get tougher on Syria coming from all sides - Foreign Policy, August 3, 2011).

Meanwhile, the US State Department has also met with members of the Syrian opposition in exile. Covert support has also been channelled to the armed rebel groups.

Dangerous Crossroads: War on Syria. Beachhead for an Attack on Iran

Following the August 3 Statement by the Chairman of the UN Security Council directed against Syria, Moscow's envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin warned of the dangers of military escalation:

"NATO is planning a military campaign against Syria to help overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad with a long-reaching goal of preparing a beachhead for an attack on Iran,...

"[This statement] means that the planning [of the military campaign] is well underway. It could be a logical conclusion of those military and propaganda operations, which have been carried out by certain Western countries against North Africa," Rogozin said in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper... The Russian diplomat pointed out at the fact that the alliance is aiming to interfere only with the regimes "whose views do not coincide with those of the West."

Rogozin agreed with the opinion expressed by some experts that Syria and later Yemen could be NATO's last steps on the way to launch an attack on Iran.

"The noose around Iran is tightening. Military planning against Iran is underway. And we are certainly concerned about an escalation of a large-scale war in this huge region," Rogozin said.

Having learned the Libyan lesson, Russia "will continue to oppose a forcible resolution of the situation in Syria," he said, adding that the consequences of a large-scale conflict in North Africa would be devastating for the whole world. "Beachhead for an Attack on Iran": NATO is planning a Military Campaign against Syria, Novosti, August 5, 2011)

Dmitry Rogozin, August 2011


While Libya, Syria and Iran are part of the military roadmap, this strategic deployment if it were to carried out would also threaten China and Russia. Both countries have investment, trade as well as military cooperation agreements with Syria and Iran. Iran has observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Escalation is part of the military agenda. Since 2005, the US and its allies, including America's NATO partners and Israel, have been involved in the extensive deployment and stockpiling of advanced weapons systems. The air defense systems of the US, NATO member countries and Israel are fully integrated.


The Role of Israel and Turkey

Both Ankara and Tel Aviv are involved in supporting an armed insurgency. These endeavors are coordinated between the two governments and their intelligence agencies.

Israel's Mossad, according to reports, has provided covert support to radical Salafi terrorist groups, which became active in Southern Syria at the outset of protest movement in Daraa in mid-March. Reports suggest that financing for the Salafi insurgency is coming from Saudi Arabia. (See Syrian army closes in on Damascus suburbs, The Irish Times, May 10, 2011)
The Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan is supporting Syrian opposition groups in exile while also backing the armed rebels of the Muslim Brotherhood in Northern Syria.

Both the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) (whose leadership is in exile in the UK) and the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation) are behind the insurrection. Both organizations are supported by Britain's MI6. The avowed objective of both MB and Hizb-ut Tahir is ultimately to destabilize Syria's secular State. (See Michel Chossudovsky, SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO "Humanitarian Intervention", Global Research, May 3, 2011).

In June, Turkish troops crossed the border into northern Syria, officially to come to the rescue of Syrian refugees. The government of Bashar Al Assad accused Turkey of directly supporting the incursion of rebel forces into northern Syria:

"A rebel force of up to 500 fighters attacked a Syrian Army position on June 4 in northern Syria. They said the target, a garrison of Military Intelligence, was captured in a 36-hour assault in which 72 soldiers were killed in Jisr Al Shoughour, near the border with Turkey.

“We found that the criminals [rebel fighters] were using weapons from Turkey, and this is very worrisome,” an official said.

This marked the first time that the Assad regime has accused Turkey of helping the revolt. ... Officials said the rebels drove the Syrian Army from Jisr Al Shoughour and then took over the town. They said government buildings were looted and torched before another Assad force arrived. ...

A Syrian officer who conducted the tour said the rebels in Jisr Al Shoughour consisted of Al Qaida-aligned fighters. He said the rebels employed a range of Turkish weapons and ammunition but did not accuse the Ankara government of supplying the equipment." (Syria’s Assad accuses Turkey of arming rebels, TR Defence, Jun 25 2011)

The Israel-Turkey Military Cooperation Agreement

Israel and Turkey have a military cooperation agreement which pertains in a very direct way to Syria as well to the strategic Lebanese-Syrian Eastern Mediterranean coastline (including the gas reserves off the coast of Lebanon and pipeline routes).

Already during the Clinton Administration, a triangular military alliance between the US, Israel and Turkey had unfolded. This "triple alliance", which is dominated by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, integrates and coordinates military command decisions between the three countries pertaining to the broader Middle East. It is based on the close military ties respectively of Israel and Turkey with the US, coupled with a strong bilateral military relationship between Tel Aviv and Ankara. ....

The triple alliance is also coupled with a 2005 NATO-Israeli military cooperation agreement which includes "many areas of common interest, such as the fight against terrorism and joint military exercises. These military cooperation ties with NATO are viewed by the Israeli military as a means to "enhance Israel's deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria." (See Michel Chossudovsky,"Triple Alliance": The US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon, August 6, 2006)

Meanwhile, the recent reshuffle within Turkey's top brass has reinforced the pro-Islamist faction within the armed forces. In late July, The Commander in Chief of the Army and head of Turkey's Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Isik Kosaner, resigned together with the commanders of the Navy and Air Force.

General Kosaner represented a broadly secular stance within the Armed Forces. General Necdet Ozel has been appointed as his replacement as commander of the Army the new army chief.

These developments are of crucial importance. They tend to support US interests. They also point to a potential shift within the military in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood including the armed insurrection in Northern Syria.

"New appointments have strengthened Erdogan and the ruling party in Turkey... [T]he military power is able to carry out more ambitious projects in the region. It is predicted that in case of using the Libyan scenario in Syria it is possible that Turkey will apply for military intervention." ( New appointments have strengthened Erdogan and the ruling party in Turkey : Public Radio of Armenia, August 06, 2011, emphasis added)

MB Rebels at Jisr al Choughour

Muslim Brotherhood Rebels at Jisr al Shughour Photos AFP June 16, 2011

[Note: this photo is in many regards misleading. Most of the rebel gunmen are highly trained with modern weapons.]

The Extended NATO Military Alliance

Egypt, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia (within the extended military alliance) are partners of NATO, whose forces could be deployed in a campaign directed against Syria.

Israel is a de facto member of NATO following an agreement signed in 2005.

The process of military planning within NATO's extended alliance involves coordination between the Pentagon, NATO, Israel's Defense Force (IDF), as well as the active military involvement of the frontline Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt: all in all ten Arab countries plus Israel are members of The Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative.

We are at a dangerous crossroads. The geopolitical implications are far-reaching.

Syria has borders with Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. It spreads across the valley of the Euphrates, it is at the crossroads of major waterways and pipeline routes.

Syria is an ally of Iran. Russia has a naval base in North Western Syria (see map).

Establishment of a base in Tartus and rapid advancement of military technology cooperation with Damascus makes Syria Russia's instrumental bridgehead and bulwark in the Middle East.

Damascus is an important ally of Iran and irreconcilable enemy of Israel. It goes without saying that appearance of the Russian military base in the region will certainly introduce corrections into the existing correlation of forces.

Russia is taking the Syrian regime under its protection. It will almost certainly sour Moscow's relations with Israel. It may even encourage the Iranian regime nearby and make it even less tractable in the nuclear program talks.( Ivan Safronov, Russia to defend its principal Middle East ally: Moscow takes Syria under its protection, Global Research July 28, 2006)

World War III Scenario

For the last five years, the Middle East-Central Asian region has been on an active war footing.

Syria has significant air defense capabilities as well as ground forces.

Syria has been building up its air defense system with the delivery of Russian Pantsir S1 air-defense missiles. In 2010, Russia delivered a Yakhont missile system to Syria. The Yakhont operating out of Russia's Tartus naval base "are designed for engagement of enemy's ships at the range up to 300 km". (Bastion missile systems to protect Russian naval base in Syria, Ria Novosti, September 21, 2010).

The structure of military alliances respectively on the US-NATO and Syria-Iran-SCO sides, not to mention the military involvement of Israel, the complex relationship between Syria and Lebanon, the pressures exerted by Turkey on Syria's northern border, point indelibly to a dangerous process of escalation.

Any form of US-NATO sponsored military intervention directed against Syria would destabilize the entire region, potentially leading to escalation over a vast geographical area, extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with Tajikistan and China.

In the short run, with the war in Libya, the US-NATO military alliance is overextended in terms of its capabilities. Whiel we do not forsee the implementation of a US-NATO military operation in the short-term, the process of political destabilization through the covert support of a rebel insurgency will in all likelihood continue.

Source  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25955

Iran is Not The Threat. Israel is The Threat, American Imperialism is The Threat

A Powerful revolutionary Interview..."Governments should fear their people.!"
RT never posted this on YouTube for some reason??

Ken O'Keefe, [real living hero] an activist based in Gaza, said the uprising in Egypt is no surprise, taking into consideration the situation in the country.

"Wherever you oppress people, wherever you deny them basic human rights, wherever the inequity in the distribution of wealth is as perverse as it is in North Africa, the people will eventually rise up and it's promising to see that people have started the process of shedding off the brutal and corrupt dictate of Mubarak," he said.

As for the diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, O'Keefe said he wouldn't doubt that the US had been involved, but the blame should still be laid on the Egyptian leadership. He also added that he is not going to give credence to all WikiLeaks cables.

"WikiLeaks has perpetuated all sorts of illusions, including the illusion that Iran is the threat. Iran is not the threat. Israel is the threat, American imperialism is the threat, British complicity and support for those institutions is the threat, not Iran, and WikiLeaks has been instrumental in perpetuating that threat," O'Keefe said. "Also, the so-called leader of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has marginalized and attempted to ridicule those of us who can see the truth of 9/11. So, I am not going to buy everything that WikiLeaks produces."

The Ongoing Plot To Creat Greater Israel

"Greater Israel"--from the Nile to the Euphrates--from the Bible, of course..

"Our task consists of preparing the Israeli army for the new war approaching in order to achieve our ultimate goal, the creation of an Israeli empire." -Moshe Dayan, 1952, Israeli Defense (War) Minister
by Zen Gardner
Yes, this U.S.-hosted parasitic pagan creation of the Illuminati called Is-ra-el (read Is=Isis, Ra=sun god, El=Saturn deity) is working to metastasize in order to so-called "fulfill a promise given to Abraham", their purported ancestor.

Hebrew scholar Levnoch Osman said when defining the aims of Zionism:

"In our eternal Book of Books (the Torah), the lofty ethical teachings of which are cherished by all mankind [give me a break-Z], the land of Israel is described not as a long, narrow strip of land with wavy, crooked borders, but as a state with broad natural borders. God has promised to Patriarch Abraham the following:

"I give unto them the land where they have sown their seed, from the river of Egypt unto the great river of Euphrates’ (Genesis 15:18). And so, in order to realize the words of this prophecy, the Israeli state had to continue, not in the borders it has today but within its broad historical boundaries."

Right. Might start to have an argument if you were "Abraham's seed", if you even believe the origins of that "promise".

Who are these people that claim to be so special?

Future IDF Chief of Staff, Moshe Dayan, as a 'Noter' and wearing a metal emblem of the 'Ghaffir' (early Zionist police force) on his Slavic kolpak hat. Clear Turkish and East European derivation.
Let's look at some true history you'll never get in school today.

The vast majority of people who call themselves Jews today are Ashkenazi Jews.  Unlike the Sephardim, who are Jews descended by blood through Abraham, the Ashkenazim are actually a Turkic people descended from Khazars who had converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages, prior to their westward migrations centuries later into eastern and central Europe and eventually on to Palestine.  This, in a nutshell, is the main theme of Arthur Koestler's book The Thirteenth Tribe.



The Turkic roots of the Ashkenazim undermine their claims of entitlement in the Holy Land according to scriptures in the Holy Bible.  And so the very idea that most modern day "Israelis" are not even of the blood of Abraham is considered a national security threat to the Zionist state because their pretensions of being racial heirs of the Almighty's promises and blessings to Abraham have been annihilated by an extensive historical record.

Looks like we're back to square one, as their answer to this and any challenge on any level is always ultimately the same old accusatory mantra that's been deliberately burned into the human psyche and sends the sheeple running for cover:
"ANTI-SEMITE!"

Another problem--they're not Semites either.

In spite of all this screaming, Zionists are the true anti-semites, murdering their truly Semitic Palestinian population for decades. They even persecute their own minority of true Sephardic Jews of Israel, many of whom are anti-Zionist. Remember, there's a difference between a Jew and a Zionist. Many Zionists are not Jews, and many Jews are not Zionists. They use their "Jewishness" for a cover, to the serious detriment of the very ethnic group they supposedly champion, the sly devils.

So too, the term "anti-semitism" is rendered void of meaning and useless, at least insofar as it is employed by the Turkic Ashkenazim as propaganda.  Ironically, their Palestinian Arab victims are real Semites along with the Sephardic Jews, Arabs in general and a few other groups, all of the blood of Abraham.  At best, the Turkic Khazar-derived Ashkenazim are very long lost cousins of the Semitic folk, and have limited commonality with them in their genes along with the common house-fly and a host of other creatures of the Almighty's vast creation. (source)

Israel Born and Bathed in Blood

Israel's history, both old and new, is bathed in blood. More insidious, Zionist Talmudic teachings and doctrines tell its adherents that they are superior to all others, and that killing the inferior "goyim" is completely justified and nothing to feel any compunction about.
They will do anything, commit any atrocity, and all in the name of Zionism. But no, no. To question them is to commit the most heinous act of treason against humanity.
Talk about reversing the truth. And all this has been engineered by decades of propaganda.

“The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief” -Jacques Ellui

The Plot Towards 'Greater Israel'

The author of the following point wrote about these things in 1968. Since then, to make things worse, warring Israel has amassed billions of dollars of US-supplied state of the art weaponry including a huge nuclear arsenal--all while screaming about its neighbors being the threat. Typical.

By guile, treachery and bloodletting, the Zionists plot to annex all of Jordan, virtually all of Syria, half of Iraq and a large part of Saudi Arabia and all of the rich cotton lands of the Nile Valley. It would be a simpler matter then to grab Yemen, Aden, Muscat, Qatar and Oman with their rich oil development. Israel is already well advanced in the development of its first nuclear warhead. Source

Enter Egypt and Libya

Let's look at this map of "greater Israel". Remember, Libya just west of Egypt is considered the gateway to Egypt throughout history, while Egypt is considered the heart of the Arab world.
Here's Libya's very strategic position. I wonder why the NWO is invading? Gain, or neutralize with "friendly governments", these territories and the rest will follow.

The U.S. is already occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia is an American/Zionist puppet, as is Jordan. Lebanon's been neutered and Syria surrounded.
All while well-armed, American-backed and UN sanctioned Israel is smack in the middle causing all the problems.

Now let's see where the U.S. air and military bases are...

Looks like their imaginary boundaries are moving even farther east...

Over 50 U.S. airbases...insane...and this was in 2008! Remember, the U.S. is Israeli Zionism's puppet so you can pretty much count that Israeli territory in the making in a sense. The US and Israel have become one and the same. Just ask a fundamentalist Zionist Christian who's proud to send American youth to die for this mythical cause.
How bamboozled can you get.

Iran clearly in the way

Let's see how the U.S. was positioned even then to wage war on Iran. The days are counting down.

U.S. military bases circa 2008. Imagine now, plus the US Fleet

Is "Greater Israel" just another smokescreen justification?

Perhaps the Zionists are using this "Greater Israel" concept as an interim step of some sort. It certainly works the same old religious guilt justification synapses that rallies Zionist Jews and brain-washed conservative Christians alike.  Hell, "God told me do it. Expand, dammit!" (Isn't that was mass murderers often say? Just ask the Jesuits--same wicked credo as Mossad.)
Nothing like a "Holy Crusade" to get the blood flowing.
As is the case with all of these manufactured myths and ideologies such as the "chosen people", the idea of a "greater Israel" is in effect nothing new. It's really just another excuse to keep striking out, another Zionist religious smokescreen to justify anything and everything Zionist.

And they'll stop at nothing, including staged terrorist events which they've done for decades, their greatest feat to date being 9/11. But we're not done yet.
(And no, they don't need to inhabit these lands for them to be Israeli, any more than Romans had to populate the lands ruled by Caesar.)

But it does add to the justification to keep arming themselves to the teeth. Much like the U.S. fake "cold war" threat to arm themselves for this world-wide takeover, and now the phony war on terror to justify the NWO militarization and clampdown on their real enemy--the world population.

Epilogue

The U.S. is the main military arm of the NWO, at least for now. They answer to the globalist cabal of which Zionism is an integral part, for occult, satanic reasons. A nasty bloodline runs strong among the Khazarian Ashkenazis, but it is not the only powerful bloodline lineage, such as that of the European so-called royals running through history right on down to today's monarchies, premiers and American presidents.
The march towards global domination by these elites is on. It is accelerating, and we're seeing the outcropping of these powerful forces at work in the Middle East, concurrent to a manipulated global financial meltdown, drastic earth changes, and a worldwide societal awakening happening in parallel.
But don't hand me this BS that these are God's Chosen people. These wicked Zionists don't even believe in a true creator God...they believe in lust, power, hate and greed. Many well intentioned people, Jews and non-Jews, are deceived by this ploy.
But don't you be deceived-- these full blown Zionist manipulators advancing this phony cause are Satan's own spawn with nothing but the worst of intentions for humanity.

"By their fruits shall you know them." - Jesus

Case in point: Horrific "anti-personnel" weapons being unleashed on defenseless Palestinians

They will reap what they sow. The law of karma cannot be escaped.
Please do your part to help expose them and the NWO agenda and bring the light of Truth to the world.

by Zen Gardner at beforeitsnews.com
-Zen
www.zengardner.com

 

http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2011/03/ongoing-plot-to-create-greater-israel.html

Israel admits it used phosphorus weapons

The Israeli government has admitted that it used controversial phosphorus weapons in its attacks against targets during its month long war in Lebanon this summer.
The chemical can be used in shells, missiles and grenades and causes horrific burning when it comes into contact with human flesh.
White phosphorus (WP) weapons are not forbidden by international law but some human rights groups believe they should be re-classified as chemical weapons and banned.
The Israeli admission was made by the cabinet minister, Jacob Edery, who was questioned on the subject by Zahava Gal-On, a member of the Knesset.
Mr Edery told Ms Gal-On: "The IDF [Israel Defence Force] holds phosphorus munitions in different forms. The IDF made use of phosphorus shells during the war against Hizbullah in attacks against military targets in open ground."
Ms Gal-On said that her original question to the government related to suspicions that Israel has been using experimental weapons in Gaza so she was surprised when she was offered a confirmation that Israel had used phosphorus weapons in Lebanon. "My original question was about the use of Dime [dense inert metal explosives] weapons by Israel in Gaza but instead I was given the answer to a different question," she said. "The use of phosphorus weapons in Lebanon is shocking and unacceptable."
Mr Edery said that the Israeli army uses phosphorus weapons according to the rules of international law. However, there have been numerous reports that Israeli phosphorus munitions injured and killed civilians in Lebanon.
The war began on July 12 when Hizbullah abducted two Israeli soldiers from the Israel-Lebanon border. Israeli forces entered Lebanon in pursuit and launched air strikes on Lebanon. Hizbullah then began firing rockets into northern Israel.
Throughout the war, Israel was accused of using controversial weapons, including WP and cluster munitions against civilian targets. Both sides were accused of war crimes in their attacks on civilians by the human rights group, Human Rights Watch.
Unexploded cluster bombs in Lebanon have regularly killed and maimed civilians since the end of the war. Rami Ali Hussein Shibly, 12, was killed and his nine-year-old brother brother, Khodr, injured yesterday by a cluster bomb as they picked olives in Halta. He was 21st person to be killed by the bomblets since the fighting ended.
WP is used by armies for producing smoke screens and as an incendiary. The phosphorus ignites on contact with air and gives off a thick smoke. If the chemical touches skin it will continue to burn until it reaches the bone unless deprived of oxygen.
Many soldiers believe that white phosphorous grenades are more effective in clearing buildings than those that use high explosive because they are more likely to disable the targets.
Amir Peretz, the Israeli defence minister said yesterday that Israel would continue to carry out reconnaissance flights over Lebanon because Hizbullah continues to smuggle arms from Syria. The United Nations has criticised Israel for its continued violations of Lebanese air space


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/23/israel

Army Bombards Gaza, One Resident Wounded

The Israeli Air Force bombarded on Wednesday night after midnight several areas in the Gaza Strip leading to excessive damage; at least one resident was injured.
Three consecutive air strikes were carried out against the “tunnels area” along the Gaza-Egypt border, in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

At first, the Air force fired several missiles at a siege-busting tunnel in Yibna refugee camp, in Rafah.

Shortly afterwards, the Air Force carried out two consecutive air strikes targeting areas near Salah ed-Deen Gate and al-Barazil neighborhood in Rafah. One resident was wounded and was moved to Abu Youssef Al Najjar Hospital, in Rafah.

The third attack was carried out when the Air Force fired at least one missile at an open area, east of al-Zeitoun neighborhood, south of Gaza city; damage was reported, no injuries.

On Wednesday at dawn, Israeli soldiers invaded several areas in the occupied West Bank, broke into and searched several homes and kidnapped three residents from the central West Bank city of Ramallah, and from Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank.

Soldiers also installed several roadblocks and searched dozens of vehicles while inspecting the ID card of the drivers and the passengers.

http://www.imemc.org/article/61016?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Jewish guerrillas told British: quit Palestine or die

Fighters were led by future Israeli premier Marcus Leroux A pamphlet warning Britons to leave the Middle East or face death has come to light in a stash of illicit propaganda.

The document does not hail from Basra or Baghdad, nor was it penned by the Islamists of al-Qaeda or the al-Mahdi Army. It was found in Haifa, about 60 years ago, and it was issued by the underground group led by Menachem Begin – the future Prime Minister of Israel and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The document, which surfaced at an auction house this week, is addressed to “the soldiers of the occupation army” and aimed at British soldiers serving in Palestine, then under the British Mandate, preceding the establishment of Israel in 1948. The print has faded and the paper has discoloured since it was unearthed from a grove of trees in Haifa in the summer of 1947. Yet the language and the concerns remain current.

Bombings and murders by underground groups, such as Begin’s Irgun, hastened the British withdrawal and the United Nations declaration that led to the founding of modern Israel.

Irgun propaganda targeted the British Army’s wavering morale, already dented by the bomb attack on the Mandate’s headquarters – the King David Hotel in Jerusalem – which killed 91 people.

In the document, Irgun tells British troops: “It is unavoidable that many Jewish soldiers and many British soldiers should fall. And it is only fair that these people know at least why they may be killed.”

It adds: “Most of you have been in this country for quite a long time. You have learned what the word ‘terrorist’ means, some of you may even have come into direct contact with them (and heartily desire not to repeat the experience). But what do you know about them? Why does a young man go underground?”

It then draws a parallel with what would have happened if, seven years earlier, Britain had been overrun by Nazi Germany. “Remember 1940. Then it seemed quite possible that your island country would be conquered and subjugated by Hitler hordes . . . what would you have done? Would you have gone underground?” The pamphlet says that the occupation is “illegal and immoral” and “parallel to the mass assassination of a whole people”, in language that echoes that used on a note pinned to the booby-trapped bodies of two British intelligence officers executed by Irgun that same summer.

The pamphlet came from a stash confiscated and burnt by cyptographers from the Royal Signals regiment. Corporal Raymond Smith found them buried in a secluded grove marked by a white Star of David and was ordered to destroy them, but took one as a memento. A collector acquired the document from Corporal Smith, and brought it to Mullock’s auctioneers in Shropshire.

Richard Westwood-Brookes, Mullock’s historical documents specialist, said the pamphlet was a remarkable find, which “ amounted to a manifesto for terrorist action”. He added: “It also raises the question as to who are ‘terrorists’ and who are ‘freedom fighters’. It’s a debate which raged through the troubles of Northern Ireland and continues in the Middle East.”

Begin’s Irgun set aside its differences with Haganah, a rival underground Jewish group led by David Ben Gurion – the first Prime Minister of Israel, who once likened Begin to Adolf Hitler.

Begin forged a political career as a hardliner, but, after becoming Prime Minister, signed the Camp David agreement with Egypt in 1979.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article4360655.ece

'The bloody Israeli sojourn in Gaza'

Controversial American Jewish scholar and specialist on the Middle East, Norman Finkelstein, says Israel committed massive atrocities in Gaza during the three-week war against Hamas militants.

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.

Gazans still struggle to cross Rafah border even after the whole world supported Egypt's freedom

Crowds gather outside the office of Gaza's Borders and crossings Authority, in the southern city of Rafah. The people who have come here hope to register their names with border officials in order to gain permission to leave Gaza.

Government officials announced that the registration office would open its doors Sunday morning for the first time since anti government protests broke out in Egypt on January 25th. Since then the Rafah border, the only entrance into the Gaza that bypasses Israel, has been fully closed.
But the Egyptian authorities only authorize travel through the Rafah terminal for people who fall into 4 categories: patients with medical referrals, foreign passport holders, people with visas to other countries, who go straight to the airport, and students with proof of enrollment in their universities. For all others hoping to cross the border remains unrealized.
Approximately 1400 Gazans who were stranded in Egypt during the popular revolution were finally allowed to return home. But not all were fortunate enough to make it. Finally after obtaining travel permission this man accompanied his son, sick with Cancer, to Egypt. When they got there the country fell into turmoil and they returned home without seeing the doctor. The young man died only minutes after they crossed the border back into Gaza.

His illness progressed as we were waiting for travel permission. Even if we had seen the doctors in Egypt we knew it was too late by the time we got there because he fell into a coma. He is at peace now.

As Gaza is cut off form the outside world following years of Israeli siege, government officials have announced that negotiations with Egypt to fully open the border crossing are ongoing, and observers view the gradual easing of the closure as a good sign.

The former Egyptian regime enabled the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip by closing its borders with the territory, and with both Palestinian and Egyptian figures calling for the full opening of the border, Gazans can only wait and hope that with a new Egyptian leadership the 4 year long isolation of the territory will finally come to an end.

Safa Joudeh, Press TV, Gaza

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/166204.html

Deputy FM: Israel won't apologize for Gaza flotilla raid

Israel has no intention of apologizing to the Turkish government for the Israel Defense Forces raid on Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May that left nine Turkish citizens dead, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told the Knesset on Wednesday.

Ayalon, a member of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, spoke to the Knesset in the wake of recent reports that Israel and Turkey have been in negotiations to end the diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
Danny Ayalon- Tess Scheflan- March 8, 2010

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon
Photo by: Tess Scheflan

Earlier this week, it was reported that the negotiations have become deadlocked because of Israel's refusal to apologize for the killings of Turkish activists aboard the Mavi Marmara and Turkey's refusal to promise to abstain from legal action against Israeli soldiers and declare that the soldiers acted in self-defense.

An Israeli official told Haaretz that the talks are "stuck" and that "differences are still great." Nonetheless, he said it is still early to declare the talks dead and expects further discussions very soon. A Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman also stated last Friday that the talks will resume soon.

According to previously published reports, Israel has offered $100,000 to each Turkish family that lost a family member during the takeover of the Mavi Marmara. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, however, called these figures "pure speculation."

A senior Turkish source told Haaretz that the disagreement now revolves over the wording of the Israeli apology and not the issue of compensation.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/deputy-fm-israel-won-t-apologize-for-gaza-flotilla-raid-1.330813

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

Syria massacres Kurds aided by Turkey's Israel-made drones

Syrian troops and Kurdish tribesman are locked in fierce battle since the Syrian army blasted four northeastern Kurdish towns and neighborhoods at the end of June, debkafile's military and intelligence sources report. Hundreds of Kurds are reported dead.
The Syrian campaign is backed by Heron (Eitan) spy drones Israel sold Turkey, made accessible on the personal say-so of Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Turkey therefore becomes the first NATO member to make advanced Western military technology available for the use of a strong ally of radical Iran and an active sponsor of terrorists. Following intense exchanges between Jerusalem and Washington, the NATO command was urged to put Ankara on the carpet - with no response as yet.

The drones are being used to track Kurds in flight across Syria's borders, mainly into Lebanon, where Hizballah is helping Syria hunt the refugees down. The accessibility to Damascus of the unmanned aerial vehicles is in direct breach of the Israel-Turkish sales contracts which barred their use - and the use of other Israeli high-tech items sold to Turkey during years of close military collaboration - in the service of hostile states or entities.
Extending their sphere to Syrian and Lebanese skies gives the Syrian army and Hizballah (Iran's external arm) a unique opportunity to study the Heron (Eitan)'s sophisticated attributes in real combat conditions at close hand and adjust their own tactics accordingly to outwit them.

debkafile's intelligence sources have no doubt that Iranian intelligence officers stationed in Damascus and Beirut jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the Israeli wonder-drones.
Regarding the crackdown on the Kurds, our military sources report that three large-scale Syrian military operations against the Kurdish people are in progress under the guidance of Turkish generals based at Syrian staff headquarters in Damascus:

1. Syrian elite forces are battling suspected Kurdish members of the Turkish PKK in at least four northeastern Syrian towns near the Syrian-Turkish-Iraqi border triangle: the big Kurdish town of Qamishli, the mixed Kurdish-Assyrian town of Al Asakah and two others, Qaratshuk and Diwar. All four and their outlying villages are under massive Syrian army siege after complete residential blocks were blasted - acting as the trigger for the current fighting.
Not all the victims are PKK fighters by any means. Most were civilians. Turkish intelligence sources tried to justify the Syrian massacre and their government's complicity by claiming that 2,000 of the 6,000 PKK fighters conducting terrorist attacks in Turkey from North Iraqi havens are Syrian Kurds or providers of alternative bases for their Turkish comrades to strike Turkish military positions from a second direction.
While until Saturday, July 17, Damascus was tight-lipped about its grim campaign against its Kurdish community, Turkish military sources were more vocal. They placed the number of Kurdish dead in battle at 185 and another 400 taken captive, many of whom will be turned over to Ankara. Our sources estimate the number of dead as much higher - more than 300, with at least 1,000 injured.
2. Large Syrian contingents are sealing the Iraqi border against the flight of Syrian Kurds - but also to block the entry of PKK reinforcements for aiding their beleaguered brethren.
3. The Syrian-Lebanese frontier is similarly sealed to keep Kurdish fighters from fleeing the country. debkafile's military sources report that on this border, Syrian and Hizballah units are working together, with the latter forcibly blocking the roads to Lebanese cities.

Source - http://www.debka.com/article/8916/

Activist from Spain file suit against Israel in flotilla attacks

Two Spanish activists and a journalist arrested in a raid by Israel on a Gaza-bound flotilla are filing charges against Israel's prime minister.

The three accuse Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, six cabinet ministers and the navy commander of illegal detention, torture and deportation.

The UN has meanwhile named a team of experts to investigate the raid.
Gaza Flotilla Clash

* Q&A: Israeli deadly flotilla raid
* Guide: Eased Gaza blockade
* Israeli raid: What went wrong?
* Focus on Gaza blockade

Earlier, Israel said it would return the three Turkish vessels it had seized during the interception on 31 May.

Nine Turkish activists died when Israeli marines attacked the flotilla, sparking an international outcry.

The pro-Palestinian convoy was carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid for Gaza in an attempt to break Israel's blockade of the territory.

Laura Arau, Manuel Tapial and David Segarra, who were on the Mavi Marmara ship, say they were held illegally in international waters by Israeli forces, tortured and forcibly deported to Turkey.

They claim the move contravened international law.

Spanish courts are yet to accept the case.
'No conditions'

The UN Human Rights Council has appointed three independent experts to investigate whether the raid violated international law, after the 47-member forum voted last month for an inquiry.

These include Sir Desmond de Silva from Britain, Karl Hudson-Phillips from Trinidad and Tobago, and Mary Shanthi Dairiam from Malaysia.

Israel has said it is undertaking its own investigation, but critics say it will not be impartial.

Israel announced earlier on Friday that it will return three ships that were part of the convoy to Turkey, Israeli public radio has reported.

Turkey had already been informed of the decision by the inner cabinet in Jerusalem, the report said.

BBC Reports - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10741416

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

Peace process interrupted by Israeli bulldozers - East Jerusalem

Israeli bulldozers have destroyed six buildings in occupied East Jerusalem, resuming the demolition of Palestinian property after a halt aimed at encouraging peace talks, provoking Palestinian anger and US "concern".
Tuesday's demolitions were the first since a halt in October aimed at encouraging so-called peace talks, and Palestinians said they proved the Israeli government was not committed to the negotiations. The demolitions come just a week after Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, pledged to take "concrete steps that could be done now - in the coming days, in the coming weeks - to move the peace process further along in a very robust way" after meeting Barack Obama, the US president, at the White House.
Obama had called for direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to be restarted before the partial suspension on the construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land expires in September.
"My hope is that once direct talks have begun, well before the moratorium [on settlements] has expired, that that will create a climate in which everybody feels a greater investment in success," Obama had said last Tuesday, adding that he hoped mutual confidence-building moves would pave the way to negotiations.
The White House meeting had come as Obama and Netanyahu tried to downplay recent tensions between their countries over Israel's continuing construction of settlements, which is illegal under international law.
US opposes 'unilateral actions'
But on Tuesday the latest demolitions threatened to turn ties frosty again, with the US joining the EU and UN in expressing concern over them.
PJ Crowley, a spokesman for the US state department, urged Israel to refrain from actions that could undermine negotiations with Palestinian leaders.
"Obviously we are concerned about reports today of a number of buildings in East Jerusalem being demolished," he said at a news briefing on Tuesday.
"The US has made it clear that it disagrees with some government of Israel actions in Jerusalem that affect Palestinians in areas such as housing, including home demolitions, and has urged all parties to avoid actions that could undermine trust.
"We continue to oppose and we will make clear to the government of Israel that we oppose unilateral actions that prejudge negotiations.
"The status of Jerusalem and all other permanent status issues must be resolved by the parties through negotiations," he said.
Volatile issue
Jerusalem demolitions are a volatile issue because of conflicting Israeli and Palestinian claims to the city's eastern sector.
Israel, which captured the sector in the 1967 Middle East war, sees it as part of its capital city, while Palestinians want it returned for the capital of their future state.
Israel says it is only enforcing the law against building violations, but Palestinians say discriminatory planning practices make it impossible for them to get permits, leaving them no choice but to build illegally and risk demolition.
About a third of Jerusalem's 750,000 residents are Palestinian. They have residency status in Jerusalem and receive Israeli social benefits, but do not hold Israeli citizenship.
Tuesday's bulldozing of the buildings was carried out by a court order, none of the structures razed were homes and all had been illegally built and uninhabited, the Jerusalem municipality said in a statement.
But Palestinians disputed those claims, saying three of the demolished structures were homes and one was a warehouse.
Two daybeds and bags crammed with children's clothing and kitchen utensils were strewn outside one of the buildings.
Basem Isawi, 48, an unemployed contractor, stood stony-faced amid the rubble of his unfinished home, forbidding his six children to come out of the nearby house where they currently live to see what had happened to it.
Isawi said he built the almost-finished home illegally for about $25,000 because he was convinced the municipality would deny him a permit.
He had been notified of the impending demolition but did not know when it was set to happen, he said. Read More

CIA report: Israel will fall in 20 years

A study conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has cast doubt over Israel's survival beyond the next 20 years.

The CIA report predicts "an inexorable movement away from a two-state to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based on democratic principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter of colonial apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and 1967 refugees. The latter being the precondition for sustainable peace in the region."

The study, which has been made available only to a certain number of individuals, further forecasts the return of all Palestinian refugees to the occupied territories, and the exodus of two million Israelis — who would move to the US in the next 15 years.

"There is over 500,000 Israelis with American passports and more than 300,000 living in the area of just California," International lawyer Franklin Lamb said in an interview with Press TV recently, adding that those who do not have American or Western passport, have already applied for them.

"So I think the handwriting at least among the public in Israel is on the wall...[which] suggests history will reject the colonial enterprise sooner or later," Lamb stressed.

He said CIA, in its report, alludes to the unexpectedly quick fall of the apartheid government in South Africa and recalls the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, suggesting the end to the dream of an 'Israeli land' would happen 'way sooner' than later.

The study further predicts the return of over one and a half million Israelis to Russia and other parts of Europe, and denotes a decline in Israeli births whereas a rise in the Palestinian population.

Lamb said given the Israeli conduct toward the Palestinians and the Gaza Strip in particular, the American public — which has been voicing its protest against Tel Aviv's measures in the last 25 years — may 'not take it anymore'. Some members of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have been informed of the report.

Source

Is Obama anti-Semitic? Netanyahu brother-in-law causes ruckus.

At the height of the worst Israel-US crisis in decades, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to distance himself Wednesday from the views of his brother-in-law, who called President Obama "anti-Semitic" over the airwaves this morning.

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.In an interview with Israel Army Radio on Wednesday, Hagai Ben Artzi, the brother of Netanyahu's wife Sara, reportedly said: "it needs to be said clearly and simply: There is an anti-Semitic president in the US. It's not that Obama doesn't sympathize with [Mr. Netanyahu]. He doesn't sympathize with the people of Israel."

Netanyahu's office swifty published a condemnation: "I entirely reject the remarks of Hagai Ben Artzi."

IN PICTURES: Israeli settlements

Family ties?
Mr. Ben Artzi, who has a history of controversial remarks, is family in more than one way.

The hardliner – who's held positions as a bible lecturer at a religious college in Jerusalem, and in the Education Ministry, and has a doctorate in Israel thought and philosophy from Hebrew University in Jerusalem – also represents the family of hawkish nationalists who support Netanyahu and for whom any movement on the peace process is going to stir tension.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Knesset Member Michael Ben Ari of the far-right National Union party recently hung a poster with a picture in which Obama looks like he is bowing to a Gulf prince, underneath a headline, "Caution! [Palestine Liberation Organization] Agent in the White House!''

Suspicion of Obama
So how widespread are those views of Obama in Israel?

The opinions recall suspicions voiced about Obama in Israel during his run for the presidency that were based on his Muslim relatives and a former pastor whose sermons occasionally included remarks considered anti-Semitic.

Mitchell Barak, a pollster who used to work with Netanyahu, says there is widespread alienation among Israelis regarding Obama, whom many consider the US president most unsympathetic to Israel for decades.

That said, both Ben Artzi and Ben Ari represent fringe opinions, says Mr. Barak.

"The problem with the extremist right groups," he says, "is that they can't recognize anyone that doesn't shares the opinions of their own group.''

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0317/Is-Obama-anti-Semitic-Netanyahu-brother-in-law-causes-ruckus

Israeli air raids wound children

Three Palestinian children have been wounded after Israeli planes and helicopters launched a string of air attacks on the Gaza Strip overnight.

The Israelis claimed that the air raids were in response to rocket fire from Gaza, but Hamas which runs the Palestinian enclave blamed the Israelis for the escalating tensions.

According to Palestinian medical sources, at least seven missiles targeted various Gaza sites.

Four air attacks early on Friday destroyed two caravans near the town of Khan Younis. A fifth missile hit a cheese factory in Gaza City, setting it on fire, witnesses and Hamas officials said.

Moawiya Hassanein, head of the Palestinian emergency services in Gaza, said three Palestinian children - aged two, four and 11 - were hit by flying glass in the raid.

Hamas condemnation

Helicopters struck twice in the central refugee camp of Nusseirat, destroying a metal foundry, but no one was injured.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the attacks, saying they had targeted two weapons-manufacturing plants and two arms caches. There was no independent confirmation of the Israeli claim.

in depth




Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, blamed Israel for the increase in tensions.

"We in the Palestinian government condemn this escalation and call on our Arab brothers in particular and the international community in general to intervene in order to stop targeting our people and the escalation against them everywhere, particularly in the Gaza Strip," he said.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, told Al Jazeera that Hamas held the Israeli government led by Binyamin Netanyahu responsible for the "escalation" and said the air raids had been expected because of threats by Ehud Barak, the defence minister, and other ministers.

He also blamed "the international community and the Arabs" for failing "to do anything about the situation in Gaza".

"The absence of the international community and the Arabs has allowed the Israelis to escalate the situation," he said.


A Palestinian man inspects the damage at a cheese factory hit by Israel [AFP]


But Silvan Shalom, Israel's deputy prime minister, adopted a defiant stand and warned of more attacks on Gaza.

"If this rocket fire against Israel does not stop, it seems we will have to raise the level of our activity and step up our actions against Hamas," Shalom told public radio on Friday.

"We won't allow frightened children to again be raised in bomb shelters and so, in the end, it will force us to launch another military operation," he said.

Israel's air attacks came after a rocket fired from Gaza landed near the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon late on Thursday, causing damage but no casualties, the army said.

Hamas leaders say they have contacted armed groups in the coastal territory accused of firing rockets in an apparent bid to calm tensions with Israel.

Israel holds Hamas responsible for maintaining security in Gaza and halting the rocket attacks.

Source

Face to Face a child with a rock vs soldier with gun

This video demonstrates that, No gun or weapon built can ever contain whats in the HEART. There is a truth which is worth dieing for and there are falsehoods which are not. It's clear who is the oppressor and who is running, it's not running from certain death, for the blow of a small rock thrown by a child will not inflict that much damage. It's running of fear that I don't belong here, and this is an unjust fight. Maybe the soldier truly believes in God and at that moment he was overwhelmed with fear as this child looked like something else.

Palestine and it's struggle will be victories, because Justice is on their side.