Headlines for September 30 - October 6

A Stand For Justice


Israelis kill Palestinian worker who sneaked in
Israeli police shot and killed a construction worker from this West Bank village Sunday after he used a rope to scale a towering wall meant to keep Palestinians from sneaking into Israel, police and a witness said.



Israeli rabbis visit torched West Bank mosque
The attackers left Hebrew slogans on the mosque walls, including the word "revenge." It appeared to be the latest action in a campaign that extremist Jewish settlers call the "price tag," their response to moves by their government to remove unauthorized settlement outposts and other similar measures.



Two Israeli soldiers ‘take fall’ for Gaza offensive
Despite over 150 internal investigations being opened by the Israeli military into alleged misconduct by its troops during the assault on Gaza, only 36 have been referred for criminal prosecutions, and – until yesterday's verdict – only one conviction has been handed down by the courts, in the case of a soldier accused of petty theft....Human rights groups have documented scores of cases of similar abuses by IDF fighters since the practice of using human shields was supposedly banned in 2005. Allegations backed by substantial evidence continue to surface - and the IDF continues to fail to instigate meaningful investigations in almost all incidences.
You will not see this story in our media anywhere, certainly not in any headlines on the local or national news. Refer to the video in this batch on how Israel controls our media.


Israeli troops used boy as shield
In Sunday's ruling, a military court said the soldiers asked the boy to open bags that troops suspected contained explosives.


10 days after settlement freeze expires, 350 new units under construction



Art sellers or Mossad spies?
In Saratoga Springs, in northern Utah, there were complains that these art peddlers were asking strange questions that had nothing to do with their sales pitch. Some residents said they were asked about the new National Security Agency's data center being built at Camp Williams. Art sellers resurface in America? They were around in the run up to 9/11, according to a Fox News report on Israel's spies in December of 2001. Round them up and deport them, posthaste.


Ahmadinejad says Mideast to expel US with 'kick in butt'
Ahmadinejad has already drawn international condemnation by repeatedly casting doubt on the Nazi Holocaust since coming to power in 2005.

On Sunday he branded Iran's regional arch–foe Israel a "savage dog unleashed in the region."



FBI Targets US Palestine Activists
Despite the searches and seizures of computers, cheque books, mobile phones, documents and photographs, Molm and other activists have not been charged with committing a crime.....Molm and other American activists travelled to Palestine in 2004 to see the conditions there for themselves.


Obama envoy ends Mideast talks with no breakthrough



Hundreds of activists from Muslim countries planning new Gaza-bound flotilla
The Turkish charity IHH, which sponsored a Gaza-bound flotilla that Israeli commandos boarded in a deadly raid last spring, said Monday that some 500 activists would take part in a new flotilla that hopes to reach Gaza by December 27.


Korans burnt in West Bank mosque attack
A Star of David symbol and the words "Price Tag" were found scrawled over the mosque's doorway. Militant settlers coined the slogan to warn of the cost of any threat to their presence.



Livni tells UN to mind its own business over flotilla probe
Livni told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that his decision to appoint a panel to investigate the May 31 commando raid, which left nine pro-Palestinian activists dead, was "unacceptable". ...."Israel is investigating the events of the flotilla itself, and that is enough," said Livni, who leads Kadima, the second largest party in Israel's Knesset. Arrogant much?


Israel: Principal faces hearing over textbook
An Israeli high school principal has been summoned for a hearing by the country's Education Ministry for using a textbook that presents the Palestinian narrative about events surrounding Israel's creation in 1948, officials said Friday.....The textbook in question gives the Israeli narrative of the country's founding next to that of the Palestinians, with blank space in the middle for students to insert their own thoughts, according to a report this week in the daily Haaretz.



Egypt, Jordan back Palestinians on settlements



Court upholds deportation of Nobel laureate
She won the peace prize in 1976 for her efforts to end sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, but has since turned most of her attention to the Palestinian cause.




Arsonists torch mosque in West Bank village
Arsonists torched a mosque in a West Bank village Monday, scrawling "revenge" on a wall in Hebrew and charring copies of the Muslim holy book in an attack that threatened to stoke tensions over deadlocked Mideast peacemaking.



Ancient tree to help turn Jericho into tourism hub
At the Oct. 10 launch of yearlong festivities, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will outline ambitious plans for Jericho, a Jordan Valley oasis that bills itself as the world's oldest and lowest–lying town, at some 780 feet below sea level.

"This is to promote Palestine as a destination," Palestinian Tourism Minister Khouloud Daibes said of the venture, which includes a resort to be built on the shores of the nearby Dead Sea. The Palestinians even hope for an airport in the area, though both projects hinge on Israeli approval.....On Friday, dozens of Palestinian and Russian workers laid brick, rushing to finish the white stone building with two domes and several graceful columns in time for the Oct. 10 opening. The museum, which sits on land bought by the Russian government in the 19th century, will feature Russian art and an exhibit on cultural ties between Russia and Palestine, as well as artifacts discovered during a salvage dig before construction began.



Peace talks come and go, but a settlement grows
In 1991, when the first Bush administration was coaxing Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table, 90,300 Israelis lived in settlements across the West Bank. Today there are 300,000 – and their population is growing by 5 percent a year, more than 2 1/2 times the growth rate inside Israel.

The settlements themselves, ranging from small cities to isolated enclaves, take up just one percent of the area of the West Bank, according to government maps analyzed by Israeli human rights campaigners. But their impact is much greater than that number would suggest; the settlements and their access roads form a web of Israeli control that Palestinians say rules out any chance of viable statehood.


Webclip shows Israel soldier dancing around prisoner
A grainy video of a male Israeli soldier bellydancing around a bound and blindfolded female prisoner which went viral overnight, on Tuesday provoked a furious response from the Palestinians.



Palestinians back Abbas on settlement slowdown
Dozens of senior Palestinians on Saturday backed President Mahmoud Abbas' refusal to negotiate with Israel as long as it builds in West Bank settlements, dealing a new setback to troubled U.S. efforts to salvage peace talks.



Obama pressed to weigh Iran strike
US President Barack Obama is under pressure to consider a military strike on Iran, according to the Financial Times.


Both Senator Joe Lieberman and Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have urged the president to consider setting a time limit of just a few months on the effectiveness of the most recent sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic for its nuclear advances. Joe Lieberman is one of Israel's top agents on Capitol Hill. Any strike on Iran would place our missions and troops in the region in grave danger. For whom do these representatives work?


Israeli premier weighing new settlement curbs
The Israelis are seeking various "assurances" in return for the extension.

Officials said the Israeli wish list included additional American military support, U.S. guarantees to veto anti–Israeli resolutions at the United Nations and guarantees that Washington would not impose an accord on Israel or force a full withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians seek both areas as part of a future state.



David Grossman, a Man Who Owns Israel
As to the “oppressor,” President Barack Obama, he plainly understood that the 10-month moratorium was scheduled to end just as the American midterm election campaigns were heading into their final stretch. Ten months is such an unusual time period — the mind inclines toward nine months or 12 — that Netanyahu’s choice of 10 months was plainly intended as a trap. Surely, no American administration would take the political risk of leaning on Israel just before elections; no one wants to incur the wrath of the Jews or the evangelicals. And the fact is that we do not yet know to what degree Obama is prepared to take that risk.




How Israel Controls Your Media:
Pay particular attention to the disparity in the news coverage - even between that of the Brits and ours. I have experienced it for the 8 years I have been reading the coverage of all things Israel-Palestine. Our media is in fact controlled by Israeli interests. Not so much that they own the media, it's by way of their intense 'lobbying' of our journalists, our news wires (AP), and the threat of anti-Semitism -this is how they accomplish getting our media to carry the Israeli side of the story, nearly all of the time.


Mossad 'issued death threats' to Dubai police chief
Dubai's police chief said he has received death threats from Israel's spy agency Mossad linked to his role in uncovering details of the assassination of a senior Hamas leader, a report said on Thursday.



Hamas leader: Arafat urged attacks on Israel
Avi Issacharov, an Israeli journalist who co–authored a book about the uprising, went further: "Arafat wasn't in favor of suicide attacks. He didn't demand, he didn't order, he didn't recommend" them


Flotilla ship is setting for anti-Israel movie (AP)
Part of a movie is being filmed on board the Mavi Marmara, where Israeli troops clashed in May with pro–Palestinian activists trying to breach the blockade in Gaza, said Salih Bilici, a spokesman for the Turkish Islamic charity that sponsored the flotilla, told The Associated Press on Sunday.



Syria wants Turkey to mediate talks with Israel



Rachel Corrie, an Israeli bulldozer, and our shared global fate
Last month, several state witnesses took the stand in a Haifa District Court to testify in the civil law suit filed by Rachel Corrie’s family against the state of Israel. Many may still recall the disturbing photographs that wallpapered the world’s media outlets of Ms. Corrie, a 23-year-old activist from Walla, Walla, Washington, being crushed under a military bulldozer while trying to defend a Palestinian home in Rafah, Gaza under threat of demolition


CNN fires host Rick Sanchez over controversial remarks
Sanchez called out Comedy Central host Jon Stewart as a "bigot" for mocking him, and complained that Jews – like Stewart – don't face discrimination. He also suggested that CNN, and perhaps the media industry more broadly, is run by Jews and elitists who look down on Hispanics like himself.



The Intifada, 10 Years Later: Why Israelis Don't Care About Peace Processing
Actually, what Time said wasn’t even new or shocking to anyone who’s spoken to a real live Israeli in the last five years or so. Newsweek carried an almost identical story this past January. Fortune magazine reported it all the way back in June 2005. Israelis themselves have been saying the same thing for years: There’s no point in trying to negotiate peace with the Arabs, either because it always backfires, or because the Arabs are bunch of bums and you can’t trust them, or because, as Time reports, things are fine the way they are and nobody believes it’ll get better.




Israel's unit 8200: cyber warfare
The Negev desert based Unit 8200 has evolved from the signal intelligence arm of the Israeli military into a respected leader in high technology warfare. One American consultancy rated Unit 8200 as the sixth biggest initiator of cyber attacks on the plants.


Netanyahu Humiliates Obama Again By MJ Rosenberg
"Netanyahu said he appreciated the letter but could not accept the American proposal because it included a two-month extension of the construction moratorium, which he said would damage his public credibility."


It’s Not Easy To Build a Mosque in Brooklyn, Either
“They brought people in who aren’t from the neighborhood,” he said. “They’re anti-Muslim. What other reasons would they be here? Do they care that I have a lot of traffic here? No, seriously — they live in Queens.”.....In the view of Michael Berenbaum, head of the Sigi Ziering Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Ethics at American Jewish University, the fact that so many of the Sheepshead Bay mosque opponents are Russian Jews — immigrants themselves — “may mean that they have not internalized the notion of religious freedom, which is essential to the American experience.”






Cracks in the Democratic Coalitionby Patrick J. Buchanan
Black-Jewish tensions inside the Democratic coalition have also arisen in recent years, as Jewish contributors have poured money into races to defeat black members of Congress seen as hostile to Israel.

Two smaller minorities, Muslim- and Arab-Americans, also vote Democratic, are growing rapidly in numbers and, like many African-Americans, take the side of the Palestinians as an oppressed Third World people of color.


Antiwar Activists Refuse to Appear in Court
Activists say the feds are trying to silence criticism of U.S. foreign policy.


Israel pressures Lebanon to cancel Ahmadinejad visit



Midnight Shopping On The Brink Of Poverty
Last year, 3.7 million Americans joined those already living in poverty, meaning families of four living on just under $22,000. That's 14 percent of the population Hey I know, let's give a couple more billion dollars to Israel so she won't steal any more Palestinian land (for 'settlements'). Unf'ingreal.


Obama’s Cave-In To Israel
According to the leak, Obama made a series of extraordinarily generous offers to Israel, many of them at the expense of the Palestinians, in return for a single minor concession from Netanyahu: a two-month extension of the partial feeze on settlement growth.



Video: Even Zbigniew Brzezinski says AIPAC is bad for USA and Israel stole Palestinian land



Jewish population in Israel is declining
There is no choice but to deal with forecasts for the next decade or two, and it turns out that by then the proportion of Jews will have declined to 42 percent


Israeli cyber unit responsible for Iran computer worm – claim
Ralf Langner, a German researcher, claims that Unit 8200, the signals intelligence arm of the Israeli defence forces, perpetrated the computer virus attack by infiltrating the software into the Bushehr nuclear power station


Did the West attack Iran's nukes... with a Biblically encoded computer worm?
experts found what might be a "fleeting reference to the Book of Esther" embedded deep in the worm's code. "Myrtus," the name of one of the files, may be an allusion to "the Hebrew word for Esther." The biblical book of the same name "tells the story of a Persian plot against the Jews, who attacked their enemies pre-emptively."


Millions of Computers Hit by Virus Across China
“Once Stuxnet successfully penetrates factory computers in China, those industries may collapse, which would damage China’s national security.”


Bill Clinton: Mideast peace would undercut terror
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that solving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would take away much of the motivation for terrorism around the world.



Syrian leader: Mideast talks only to help Obama
Assad said the current attempt at dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians have brought "no change" and claimed that President Barack Obama only seeks a political boost.

"The talks are only aimed at supporting Obama's position inside the U.S," Assad said in his first public comments about the process since the latest round of negotiations began last month.




Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Mr. Ahmadinejad Comes to New York
Though we are more concerned about the risk of a bad U.S. decision in this regard than Secretary Powell appears to be, we certainly hope he is right about the chances of an Israeli or U.S. attack against Iran. And, of course, we strongly agree that acceptance of Iran's right to enrich uranium is an indispensable key to a serious and sustainable agreement on the nuclear issue. We hope that the Obama Administration is listening.


J Street Flap Shines Spotlight On George Soros And His Money
A tough critic of the pro-Israel lobby and a self-proclaimed non-Zionist, Soros has also led the campaign for democracy in Eastern Europe, a cause shared by many in the Jewish community. He has made business investments in Israel, and provides political donations to Jewish candidates.




Israel Is Now Punishing Palestinians Shamelessly
Behind a modest desk with a view of Beit Jala sits a nameless Shin Bet security service officer who is very pleased with himself. He has just saved the Jewish people in Israel from yet another grave security risk by preventing a 47-year-old woman, for five weeks now, from going abroad for urgent medical tests.


Obama faces humiliation over Middle East talks
Israel's refusal to extend a moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank is the ostensible reason for the halt in direct talks with the Palestinians. Speaking at the weekend after the PLO refused to continue the negotiations, executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi said a line had to be drawn.....Netanyahu may be calculating that big Republican gains in next month's US midterm congressional elections will curtail Obama's capacity to put pressure on Israel. If the process does collapse, Netanyahu will be able to say, publicly, that it was the Palestinians, not he, who turned their backs on peace; and privately, that the inexperienced Obama screwed up, a verdict that the American right will gleefully endorse.


Assad, Ahmadinejad: Israel's actions prove it doesn't want peace


The leaders of Iran and Syria, during a meeting in Tehran Saturday, expressed hope of expanding the anti-Israeli bloc in the region, adding that Israel's actions in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem proved the country did not truly want peace, the Iranian presidential office said in a statement.


Poet Zach: Israel apartheid state



Batsheva Dances, Challenging Gender — and Demonstrators
on a recent evening, audience members had to make it past a cacophonous demonstration outside. The protesters’ chants, accompanied by drums, cymbals and a flute, were part of Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, whose demands include the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees.




What J Street Can Learn From The Tea Party
here’s the critical distinction with the Tea Partiers: Those who have stuck with AIPAC haven’t paid a price. Consider the case of Rep. Jane Harman of southern California, a darling of AIPAC and hawkish Democrats. Harman was opposed in a bitter Democratic primary by Marcy Winograd, a leftist peace activist who would seem to be a prototypical J Street candidate: On the peace process and Israel’s need to make concessions, she was holier than the pope. But J Street stayed out of the primary battle, which Harman won (and I am glad she did).




Of Recognition, and Reality
if, as some of their spokesmen have recently confirmed, the Palestinians are refusing to recognize Israel as the Jewish State because such recognition undermines the “the right of return” of Palestinian refugees into properties inside Israel, the peace negotiations are, indeed, futile. Israel might well agree to absorb a small number of returnees. But even the most compromise-minded Israelis reject a wholesale “right of return,” as this would signal the end of the state’s Jewishness.

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