It was not too long ago that serious public debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan was non-existent. Now, President Obama is publicly deliberating whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, or to finally rethink policy. Some of the President’s advisers - including Vice-President Biden - have called for reducing U.S. troops; some have proposed redirecting U.S. efforts toward persuading the Taliban to stop fighting.But the Pentagon is publicly pressuring President Obama to approve more U.S. troops, trying to “push Obama into a corner” with public statements that the situation in Afghanistan needs more forces.

This moment could prove to be a real turning point in U.S. policy in Afghanistan; but as the Pentagon and the hawks try to push the President in their direction, we must pull him in ours. Urge President Obama to approve more U.S. troops for Afghanistan only if he institutes a long term educational solution to enable a future stable Afghanistan society by writing to him here:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/nomoretroops

Please feel free to use the following message in your letter format.

We (the United States) have created a tenuous sense of order in Afghanistan, enough so that we should now be able to neutralize the threat of terrorism coming from this region with a model that will insure long term stability, and of consequence, security for us (the United States). The use of military force in Afghanistan was (and still is) a short term solution for crisis management when we intervened in the despotic strangle hold of the Afghanistan government by the Taliban. When our military forces leave Afghanistan the Taliban will return despite whatever negotiations we might conduct with the warring factions there, and our security here at home (the United States) will be at serious risk again. The only solution to the rule of ignorance by the Taliban is education of the the Afghanistan people. We should be setting up educational institutions to enable the Afghanistan people to develop viable alternatives to growing poppies and depending upon a despotic religious cult to manage their lives.

The answer is withdrawal of troops with replacement of educational institutions. The expedient removal of troops is not a good solution to a problem that will take a long term commitment to creating an infrastructure necessary for a stable society.

Joshua Mitnick  MIDDLE EAST NEWS  Wall Street Journal
 Israel to Allow Building of New Homes in West Bank   4 September 2009

TEL AVIV — The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it plans next week to authorize construction of hundreds of new homes in the West Bank, a move that drew immediate rebukes from Palestinian officials and Washington.

The decision comes as the U.S. and Israel appeared to be moving closer to a deal over some sort of settlement halt, which would allow for a resumption of Israel and Palestinian peace talks. Both the U.S. and Palestinians have demanded a total freeze of construction.

The new building approval would be in addition to the 2,500 housing units already in various phases of construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, according to a senior official in the prime minister’s office. This official said the approval would precede Israeli consideration of a settlement freeze for “a few months.”

Palestinian officials have said that unless there’s a total freeze, they aren’t interested in restarting talks. Palestinian officials weren’t immediately available for comment Friday.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters Friday that peace talks, suspended since December, couldn’t resume without an Israeli pledge of a total freeze of settlement building.

In a statement, the White House said it regretted the Israeli decision. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion, and we urge that it stop,” the statement said. “We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate.”

The peace process for a two state solution already in its death throes received yet another blow with Mr Netanyahu’s latest pronouncement. With whom is he playing games - the extremists in his government and the settlers?  the Palestinians?  the White House. If peace is to come to the region it will take straight forward honest dialogue. Does Mr Netanyahu know how to play that game?

Censored by the Huffington Post, Imprisoned by the Past: Why I Made “Feeling The Hate in Jerusalem”Posted by Max in June 8th 2009On Wednesday, I walked around central Jerusalem with my friend, Joseph Dana, an Israel peace activist who has lived in the country for three years. We interviewed young people on camera about the speech President Barack Obama planned to deliver to the Muslim world the following day in Cairo. Though our questions were not provocative at all - we simply asked, “What do you think of Obama’s speech” - the responses our interview subjects offered comprised some of the most shocking comments I have ever recorded on camera. They were racist, hateful, and incredibly ignorant, and were mostly couched within a Zionist context - “this is our land, Obama!” The following day, we edited an hour of interviews into a 3:30 minute video package and released it on Mondoweiss and on the Huffington Post.

Within a few hours, I received an email from a Huffington Post administrator informing me he had scrubbed my video from the site. “I don’t see that it has any real news value,” the administrator told me. “For me it only proves that one can find drunk people willing to say just about anything. Especially drunk, moronic people.” For the first time, the premier clearinghouse for online news and opinions had suppressed one of my posts.

Other bloggers and commenters criticized the video on similar grounds. Their complaints generally went like this: In order to advance an agenda, Max Blumenthal exploited the wild remarks of a bunch of drunk Jewish frat-boys innocently showing off in front of their friends. The footage contained in his video in no way reflects what the Israeli public thinks. If Max went to a bar in any college town in the United States he would find the same level of ignorance and racism. Ron Kampeas at the JTA has written that I need “to grow up and put [my talents] to good use.” (While Kampeas praised some of my other video reports exposing right-wing Christians, this latest video revealing the extremism of some Israeli and American Jews seemed to hit too close to home.)

The criticism of my video raised an interesting journalistic issue: Is reporting any less credible when interview subjects are drinking alcohol? Of course not. Journalists interview people at bars all the time, especially in broadcast packages. Beer does not, to my knowledge, contain a special drug that immediately infects drinkers with white supremacist sentiments, violent rhetoric, and anti-democratic tendencies. I get drunk as much as any social drinker and I have never called for “white power” or declared, “fuck the niggers!” as one of my interviewees did. No amount of alcohol could make me express opinions that were not authentically mine. If anything, alcohol is a crude form of truth serum that lubricates the release of closely held opinions and encourages confessional talk.

The notion that the racist diatribes in my video emerged spontaneously from a beery void is a delusion, but for some, it is a necessary one. It allows them to erect a psychological barrier against acknowledging the painful consequences of prolonged Zionist indoctrination. And it enables them to dismiss the disturbing spectacle of young Jews behaving like fascist soccer hooligans in the heart of the capitol of Israel and the spiritual home of the Jewish people.

The people in my video were not white trash, nor were they the “extreme right-wing fringe” as some bloggers have called them. They were the college-educated sons and daughters of middle and upper class American Jews from cosmopolitan metropolises and genteel suburbs. Some had come to Israel on vacation, some had made aliyah, and some told me they were planning to move to Israel in the near future. Many were dual citizens of America and Israel. They may have behaved in a moronic way, but they will not grow up to toil in the custodial arts. Many of these kids will move into white-collar jobs and use their influence to advance Israeli initiatives. Programs like Birthright Israel - a few of those in my video were on Birthright tours - exist for the exclusive purpose of indoctrinating American Jews into unyielding, unthinking supporters of Israel. Thus the kids in my video represent at least one aspect of the Zionist project’s future base of political sustenance.

I do not and have never claimed that the characters that appeared in my video were representative of general public opinion in Israel. They reflect only a slice of reality, which is reality nonetheless. On the other hand, a new Yedioth Aronoth poll finds a vast majority of the Israeli public holds a negative opinion of Obama and believes he is biased toward the Palestinians. A top minister in Israel’s government has compared Obama to Pharaoh, claiming his call for a settlement freeze is like casting Jewish children into the river. A group of rightists have launched a campaign against “the anti-Semitic Obama,” apparently convinced they can make inroads with the general public.

Behind the Israeli view of Obama lies a climate of extremism that exploded into the open when the country attacked Gaza. Today, extremist sentiment hovers well above the surface. A groundbreaking study of Israeli attitudes published in the wake of the Gaza war by the Tel Aviv University political psychologist Daniel Bar-Tal, who I recently interviewed, found that “Israeli Jews’ consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering.” Bar-Tal commented to me that the army is the primary vehicle for stoking the nationalism of young Israelis. “Some countries are states without armies,” he said. “But Israel today is an army without a state. There is no civilian institution capable of restraining the army’s influence.”

In an interview with me two days ago, the famed Israeli author David Grossman echoed Bar-Tal’s findings, remarking, “The country is trapped in one legitimate narrative: that of the government, which is of paranoia, and every event serves this narrative. Those events that don’t are simply overlooked.”

I have been in Israel for over a month; almost every day I hear expressions of paranoia about Arabs, historical delusions, and the constant refrain that “the world is against us.” I hear this even from some close friends - young, cosmopolitan Israelis living the good life in the so-called “bubble city” of Tel Aviv. Last week, a friend I play basketball with in a working class suburb of Tel Aviv (he is a high-tech worker from a fifth generation Israeli family) calmly informed me while we sat in the shade by the court: “I’m a Zionist, so of course I prefer the bloodshed on the other side.” While sitting at a bar with an elegant and otherwise charming young woman, she described to me while sipping a mixed drink how she arbitrarily shot at Arabs while serving in the army because “they want to come and steal my house.” On a leafy Tel Aviv street, a friend of a friend who splits time between spinning at local hip-hop clubs and patrolling the streets of Gaza City told me if Israel has to kill 800 Palestinians to save one Israeli Jew, then so be it. “If we wanted to, we could completely wipe Gaza out,” he said. “But we don’t because the IDF is pure.”

Since Gaza, vocal opponents of the Occupation have found themselves increasingly marginalized and are hounded by the authorities (see the New Profile raid, Ezra Nawi, Sami Jubreir, and on and on). Meanwhile, Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteynu party’s unapologetically racist campaign has taken the form of a stream of bills working through the Knesset that would criminalize observance of the Palestinian Nakbah, ban public discussion of a bi-national state, and allow towns to ban people from entering their limits who do not subscribe to Zionist ideals. The bills keep coming like a flood; already, the Nakbah ban has passed a committee vote.

A straight line can be drawn from the rhetoric depicted in my video to the rise of Lieberman, a proto-fascist who draws a startling degree of political strength from Israel’s youth by channeling their innermost fears and resentments. In fact, the author of the Nakbah ban is a 28-year-old named Alex Miller - the youngest ever member of the Knesset and the chairman of Beiteynu’s youth wing. In an interview, Miller told me he introduced the bill simply because, “the Israeli public believes in loyalty.” He added, “Since the founding of our party we have grown in strength. We have never changed our platform and we are seeing increasing support from the public.”

Despite the Huffington Post’s rejection of my video report, it has exploded across the blogosphere. Even the rapper 50 Cent posted it prominently on his official website. It two days it has garnered 100,000 views. I hope those who have watched it, especially those predisposed to dismiss it as anti-Israel propaganda or shock video with “no news value,” will at least ask how vitriolic levels of racism are able to flow through the streets of Jerusalem like sewage, why the grandsons of Holocaust survivors feel compelled to offer the Shoah as justification to behave like fascist street thugs, and how the sons and daughters of successful Jewish American families casually merged Zionist cant with crude white supremacism. The willful avoidance of these painful questions by self-proclaimed supporters of Israel is setting the stage for the complete delegitimization of the country they claim to love. As Obama said, “any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it.”

Stealing land is wrong no matter who does it or for what reason.

Isn’t that basic morality 101 which is observed in all civilized countries?  All Christians hold sacred the seventh commandment: Thou shalt  not steal.  Is this not also written in the Torah and the Koran? All civilized countries are served by a legal system that have laws that protect the right of ownership to land. When condemnation by the State occurs, owners have rights to compensation 

 However this morality is not observed in Israel for people who are not Jewish - Christian and Muslim alike. This process began in 1947 and is still going on today and will tomorrow.

Land is being stolen from Palestinian families every day - by condemnation and/or confiscation or by settler invasion or by military conscription (for security reasons of course). Land taken from Palestinians is then transferred through a convoluted series of steps into the National Jewish Trust to be redistributed to Jewish organizations or individuals.

To follow here will be a series of stories to bring real faces to the reality of land being stolen every day:

From Ma’an News Agency

Mousa Muhammad Ahmad Ouda’s new name is “Number 59.”

Ouda’s house is marked 59 of a total of 88 houses in one East Jerusalem
neighborhood that are slated for demolition by the Israeli-controlled
Municipality of Jerusalem. The Municipality says it plans to turn the area
into a park.

The houses are marked in red on an official map drawn up by the Israeli
authorities. On the satellite map the neighborhood, Bustan, is a sliver
marked with a thick red boundary, an outline oddly similar to the outline of
Mandate Palestine.

The Municipality says the houses were built without construction permits,
but the residents say that the demolition orders are a calculated attempt to
remove them from the land their families have inhabited for centuries.

“This house is more important to me than the Al-Aqsa Mosque. If I lose this
house, I lose everything,” Ouda said during an interview in his one-story
home, which lies a few hundred meters from the iconic mosque itself.

*Land claims*

Residents say that the demolition orders threaten the homes of 1,500 people just in the Bustan area, an enclave in the Silwan neighborhood, a
densely-packed Palestinian area tucked in a valley adjacent to Jerusalem’s
Old City.

The status of the houses has, in one sense, been in question since Israel
seized East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967. Unlike the rest of the occupied
West Bank, Israel annexed Jerusalem, declaring the city, east and west, its
“eternal undivided capital.” Palestinians

Through urban planning Israel has sought to limit the Palestinian presence
in the city while maximizing the Jewish population. According to locals,
Israel began demolishing houses in the area in1985.

The specter of mass demolitions was raised again in February, when the
Municipality and the Israeli ministry of the interior rejected a community
proposal to rezone the area for residential use. On 22 February, a team of
Israeli surveyors visited the area, a move the residents suspect was a
prelude to the destruction of homes.

“They call me number 59,” said Ouda, a round, bearded man, with bright eyes and a soft voice. “They used to number the Jews, and now look at the
situation we’re in,” he said….

As proof of his family’s claim to his land, he produces a yellowed paper, a
Jordanian government document from 1950, signed by his grandfather. Three stamps - grey, blue, and red - are affixed to the paper, and on top of
those, his grandfather’s thumb print in blue ink. The document states that
the Ouda family owns the plot, and nams the owners of the adjacent plots,
north, south, east, and west….

Ethnic cleansing, one home at a time

Marcy Newman writing from occupied East Jerusalem, Live from Palestine

In the Sadiyya neighborhood inside the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City is the Jaber family home. There, three members of the Jaber family, as well as the Karaki family, have lived with their parents, and later spouses and children, since the 1930s. Like most homes inside the Old City, the residential space has an open center that is shared by those living inside.

Six years ago Israeli police came to the house and told Nasser Jaber that his house no longer belonged to his family, but rather to Israeli colonists from the right-wing Messianic settler organization Ateret Cohanim whose racist ideology is closely aligned with Kach, a political party that advocates the expulsion of Palestinians. But when the Israeli colonial court sent its police to investigate, the court decided that the home indeed belonged to the Jaber family. The scenario was repeated the following year, in 2004, when the judge came to investigate who the house belonged to.

For some Palestinians it has been life under military occupation for over  forty years. For other Palestinians it has been living in refugee camps for over sixty years - a virtual life time of living without civil rights, human rights, or rule of law. Any Palestinian who challenges the authority of the military occupation can be subject to imprisonment without trial or non judicial execution on site. Palestinians living in East Jerusalem or anywhere in the West Bank for that matter can have their house taken away from them without cause. A Palestinian cannot leave his/her township except with permission - can enter or exit a local township only during limited day light hours, and cannot travel to most other townships within the occupied territories.

So what does this have to do with  Americans?

For openers, we (America) claim to be the world’s champion for democracy, and most of the world sees us to be complicit in the denial of human rights and democracy to the Palestinian people.  Being seen as oppressors puts us in conflict with our image of democracy makers (and  isn’t that why we went to war in Iraq?). So President Obama’s  speech to 1.5 billion Muslims tomorrow will be a new attempt to re-establish our credibility with a third of the world’s population. If President Obama can convince his target audience that our deeds will match our words, then America will be able to replace our image of hypocrisy with believability - we can be trusted. Agreement can only be reached through trust, and if we can get agreement with contentious parties in the Middle East, then hopefully we will be able to disengage from military interventions, work towards regional stability, and yes, stabilize prices at the gas pump (not an easy sell). Thus, President Obama will be trying to pitch American trust tomorrow in our plans to bring about Palestinian peace and democracy.

The prospects:

In his quest for regional support he will have to convince his host Egyptians that we support democracy for Palestinians even though Egypt is under the control of a thirty year old oligarchy, and also, Egyptians realize that we did not and still don’t recognize the democratically elected government of the Palestinian Authority.

The take:

Posted: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 11:24 AM
Filed Under: Cairo, Egypt
By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent

CAIRO - Egyptians are immensely proud that President Barack Obama has chosen Cairo University as the site for his speech addressing the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims on Thursday. They see it as a gesture of respect, and an acknowledgement that their capital is the seat of Islamic-Arab culture.
Ingy Attallah, a 20-year-old business major, is one of about 300 students chosen to attend the speech along with politicians, business leaders and notables from all over the country.
“When they told me I could attend, I was very excited. I was one of Obama’s biggest fans during his election campaign, and when he won I was very excited,” she said.

And what would she like to hear in the speech?

“A specific plan of action on how he will deal with the conflicts in the Middle East, especially the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And when he will get American troops out of Iraq,” she said….

Mohammed Abu Shakka, a 19-year-old engineering student, also plans to attend the speech.
“We have high hopes for Barack Obama,” he said. “But if he doesn’t do anything - just talk - it will get people really disappointed.”
Actions, not just words - that was the strongest common sentiment we encountered this week when asking people in Cairo what they would be listening for in Obama’s speech…..

Mohammed Fouad, a 22-year-old Egyptian student, wants the American president to address the Palestinian-Israeli issue. “It is the main and first issue of this region,” he said……

Amr Adeeb hosts a three-hour TV show on the Orbit network, which is broadcast around the Middle East five nights a week. He said he’ll be looking for answers to the most important questions his viewers ask.
“I need to see Iraq without American troops, I need to see Afghanistan without American troops, I need a final solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said.

Does Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution seem to be a recurring theme?

 It appears that president Obama has established an open dialogue with the Saudi monarchy which rules over a population that has supplied the nucleus of Al Qaeda and Muslim extremist terrorists, and does not support a democratic process within its own borders. So will he have to get support from  Saudi citizens or the ruling family?

The take:

OBAMA KICKS OFF MIDDLE EAST VISIT    FP Morning Brief, Wednesday, June 3,2009

Top story: In his first stop on a diplomatic mission aimed at restoring the U.S. relationship with the Middle East, President Barack Obama stopped in Riyadh to hold talks with Saudi King Abdullah on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran’s nuclear program, and oil prices.

Obama may be hoping to entice the Saudis toward a significant gesture toward Israel, but Arab leaders are unlikely to act unilaterally without further concessions from the Jewish state. Obama met with Israeli foreign minister Ehud Barak in Washington just before he left, and pressed the Israeli government to curb further settlement growth in the West Bank.

Tomorrow, Obama will deliver as highly-anticipated speech to the Muslim world from Cairo University. Obama has promised that he will not avoid difficult topics as he faces up to significant regional distrust of the United States stemming from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism, and U.S. support for Israel.

And the theme (if you read the links) is…….. Trust and……. Israel-Palestine.

And for the three elephants sitting in the foreign policy room:

Even though it will not be discussed in politically correct company, Obama will have to sell American trust to Syria, Hezbollah,and Hamas, and maybe even talk to them if these contentious people are to become partners in an agreement for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

And the stumbling block:

So if President Obama can sell the Arab/Muslim world on our credibility, then what will he have to offer the Israelis to get them to buy into an agreement for a democratic autonomous Palestine? 

A tenuous detente appears to exist between the coalition of Israel’s  Netanyahu government, its Israel First Lobby and Congressional Cabal in Washington  DC, and the Obama administration. Netanyahu has all but said directly that expansion of Israeli settlements will continue, Israel will not give up occupied territory it acquired by conquest, nor will it grant autonomy to the indigenous Palestinian people. The Israelis apparently are not buying into American resolve to bring about democracy for Palestinians

and the take:

West Bank Burning
FP Morning Brief Monday, June 1, 2009

Top story: Mobs of Jewish settlers rioted in the West Bank attacking Palestinians and setting fire to agricultural land in protest of the Israeli government’s pledge to crack down on “wildcat” settlements. Settlers are also waging an ongoing legal battle to evict Palestinians from homes in East Jerusalem…….The disputes come as the Barack Obama administration is pushing the Israeli government to halt all new settlement construction, including the “organic growth” of existing communities. Benjamin Netanyahu called these demands “unreasonable” and has dispatched defense minister Ehud Barak to Washington in hopes of reaching a compromise.

 To get support from the Egyptians and Saudis neither of whom have democracy for themselves, the president will have to promise and deliver on democracy for Palestinians

And to get compliance from the Israelis who give a reluctant, limited form of democracy to Palestinians in lands that they took in conquest in 1947, and no democracy to Palestinians who live on land they have occupied from conquest since 1967, the president will have to go beyond diplomacy.

Here’s hoping for credibility! Here’s hoping for resolve!

Following up upon a Christmas donation to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund in 2006, I offered my services as a retired oral and maxillofacial surgeon for one of their future cleft palate missions to Palestine/Israel. I was looking for an opportunity to fulfill a sense of not having done quite enough during my professional career to justify the self indulgent life I was living as an affluent American retiree; and in my research of looking for worthy causes, I had uncovered a disturbing scene of utterly neglected children devoid of medical care, living in the desperate conditions of refugee camps in a time warp of 1948 when their grandparents and great grand- parents were forced to flee their farms and homes.

I eagerly accepted PCRF’s invitation to participate in a mission to the West Bank, and in April of 2007 entered though fortified gates and checkpoints into Nablus in the (militarily) occupied Palestinian territories and on to Rafidia Hospital where throngs of parents with their children awaited our surgical team. In a dawn-deep into the night schedule we operated on children who had a plethora of developmental and acquired facial disfigurements of cleft lips and palates, deformed and misaligned jaws, and untreated or poorly treated facial and traumatic jaw injuries stemming from the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

In my attempt to contribute something of value to a people in need, I found my specific surgical skills to be limited to an assistant surgeon’s role for the many cases which we treated. I soon realized though, that my unmet expectation of being able to find fulfillment in my personal mission was dwarfed by the misery of the people I had come to help. However serious might be the physical maladies that I observed around me, the spiritual and mental impairment caused by sixty years of oppressive occupation was by far the most serious injury to be seen, and it was afflicting the entire Palestinian population.

I had expected to see general deprivation in the Palestinian population before I arrived, and that in good part was why I chose to come to this part of the world and contribute in some way, but the desperation and hopelessness that I observed in their plight was overwhelming. It astounded me that a tragedy of this proportion could go on and be glossed over by the main stream media outlets of Western television, radio, and newspapers. Here in Palestine was occurring a human tragedy that caused me  to recall the horrors of  the Holocaust of World War II; and meanwhile Americans were being led to believe that Israelis are innocent victims of constant Arab terrorism, and all Palestinians are terrorists that inflict rocket attacks and suicide bombers on a civilian population without cause or reason.

The Israeli public relations program makes seemingly plausible statements that depict a scenario of Israeli reasonableness and a Palestinian position of irrational and ill founded demands for a just settlement in a well coordinated script with the Western media that belies both reality on the ground and the truth. Nowhere in American reporting is the story of the Palestinian Nakba or Diaspora ever presented on a level that gives unassailable reverence to the preservation of Israeli Statehood at the expense of the Palestinian people.

My observations of ongoing, constant oppression of the people in the occupied territories were enlivened by the many stories I heard from Palestinians with whom I came into contact while on the mission, and was given historical context after arriving back in the U.S. and reading The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. In his accounting of the take-over of the Palestinian lands by European Jews in 1947-1948, based upon reports uncovered in Israeli Defense Force files, he described the extermination of whole Palestinian villages in such a way that all romantic notions of Israeli Nationhood were over shadowed by the truth of reality.

The ongoing racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, non judicial executions, house demolitions, confinement within their isolated towns, villages, and enclaves with restriction of travel to anywhere outside their locale, land confiscation, imprisonment without trial, and denial of civil and human rights - are all well documented by United Nations agencies, Israeli and International human rights organizations, and Israeli and Western peace activist groups - so why doesn’t the world community speak out against the Israeli elephant sitting in the living room of human rights violations? The collective will of nations of good conscience forced the compliance of South Africa in regard to democratic reform. Why can that not be done in regard to Israel and its egregious mal treatment of its occupied population?

If Israel is to be brought into the community of nations that conforms to upholding basic human rights for all inhabitants subject to their authority, so must its chief progenitor, the United States, be brought into alignment with the force of boycott, divestment, and sanctions. This measure can only be achieved through courageous United Nations leadership accompanied by concurrent enforcement of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (which provided the basis for the creation of Israel), United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 242.

The insanity that allows Israel alone to determine the destiny of seven million displaced and dispossessed people must be rectified, and nowhere else can that be better accomplished than in the chambers of the United States Congress. Our Representatives and Senators must be weaned from the financial draw strings of an Israeli First lobby, and made to respond to the wishes of their constituencies that have overwhelmingly stated that we want an even handed and fair American foreign policy to bring justice and peace to the Middle East.

The immorality of stealing land from another people is a subject for another blog, and that will come about later.

If as Benjamin Netanyahu says, Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty, where does that leave Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at the negotiating table with the expectation that Jerusalem would also be the capitol of the future Palestinian state, and where does that leave the peace process that is important for all people from the Middle East and all people in the Western hemisphere? 

Associated Press, May 22,2009

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Thursday that all of Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty, taking a hard line on a key Israeli-Palestinian peace issue just hours after his forces removed an unauthorized settlement outpost in the West Bank.

Netanyahu met with President Obama last week.
The twin moves came a day after Netanyahu returned from talks in Washington, where President Barack Obama backed creation of a Palestinian state and urged an end to Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, setting up a potential confrontation between Israel and the U.S.

Netanyahu has refused to endorse Palestinian statehood, and his uncompromising statement about Jerusalem focused attention on another issue that could cause friction between Israel and Obama’s administration.

It is ironic that Prime Minister Netanyahu is defying the world community’s recognition of Jerusalem as an international city so defined by UN resolution 181 which in fact forms the basis for the recognition of Israel as a  Country and homeland for Jews. In fact, no nation recognizes Israel’s claim to sovereignty of Jerusalem by virtue of military conquest in 1967; and yet the world sits back and watches as each and every day dozens of more Palestinians are evicted from their East Jerusalem homes to make way for more Israeli residential projects for Jews to move into from Eastern Europe and the U.S. This is inconsistent with a call for peace which Netanyahu claims he is seeking.

I have been to Jerusalem. It is an integral part of my Catholic  heritage.  It  has had a predominant Christian and Muslim presence for almost two thousand years. Christiandom’s holiest shrines are there. Islam’s third most holy shrine is there, and in the markets of old town, Palestinian Merchants have opened their shops and bazars to travelers from around the world for two thousand years. It is truly an international city, and the United Nations so decreed this in 1947.

Pope Benedict’s voice was much too feeble in claiming Christian spiritual sovereignty  in a city that is an essential part of who we are in the Western world. The core values of Western societies come from Bethlehem and Jerusalem - treating others as we would want to be treated, fairness, and justice - those are the core values that have given the United Staes the foundation for a system of law that have made US the great nation that we are. These are Christian values that sprung from the Holy Land and  now  need to be sown there once again, because it is not happening under Israeli sovereignty.

Il Papa finally fulfilled Israeli expectations for making his historic trip to the Holy Land, and at his departure reiterated his denunciation of the Nazi inspired Holocaust but in a manner and language that seemed to appease almost all of the critics of his initial apologia at the Holocaust Memorial. Perhaps resurrecting the sins of the past and acknowledging the guilt that we all share, in an appropriate manner, will finally allow all of us to have closure, recognize present injustices and move into the future? I, as well as all people of conscience recognize and condemen the atrocities of the Holocaust, but I wonder how much benefit there is for the world at large to continually be revisiting the Holocaust episode and neglect the less dramatic, but just as destructive, insidious holocaustic episode that is cleansing Palestine of Palestinians each and every day? I must ask: What sins did the Palestinian people commit to deserve the dislocation from their lands and the destruction of their society that has come about with the establishment of the Israeli State? What was their crime. Why did Il Papa not raise these questions?

But as reported from Reuters, Il Papa’s position of primacy, touching upon the Catholic Church’s doctrine of morality, and Christian love; and justice for the occupied Palestinian population appears to have been largely ignored by his hosts in their determination to never let the world forget the Holocaust , and his stated spiritual mission of promoting peace was lost to the political necessities of complying to compelling criticism .

The following excerpts taken from Reuters are reprinted here to give a small measure of updated exposure on unprecedented demands from a world leader for a just solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict which Western media has all but ignored.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Pope Benedict forcefully denounced the Holocaust on Friday, telling Israelis that the brutal extermination of Jews by the “godless” Nazi regime would never be forgotten or denied. (YES, much, much more powerful language than his initial bland statements of remorse at Yad Vashem).

His language appeared to lift Jewish disappointment over earlier remarks about the murder of six million Jews by his fellow Germans, which to Israelis had sounded cold and distant. (However it should be acknowledged that the Pope did his best to respond adequately to “Jewish disappointment,” although his spiritual mission of bringing peace and hope to Palestinian Christians who are thinking of leaving the Holy Land to find peace and hope elsewhere did appear to take precedence at odd moments).

His words were welcomed by Holocaust memorial chairman Avner Shalev who said they “strengthen the pope’s message to the world about the importance of remembering the events of the Holocaust” and who rated the visit a “very positive and significant event.” (As a Catholic, I am especially looking forward to  the Pope’s messages to remind me about the events of the  Holocaust in addition to Avner and like minded people who  have been producing such excellent work in reminding me on a regular basis for over sixty years now).   

Ending a Holy Land pilgrimage which he said made “powerful impressions” of hope and sadness, the 82-year-old pontiff also appealed for peace between Israelis and Palestinians so each can live in their own state, as trustful neighbors in security.

“One of the saddest sights for me during my visit to these lands was the wall,” he said of the high barrier that Israel erected between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the Palestinian town that Christians believe was the birthplace of Jesus.

“As I passed alongside it, I prayed for a future in which the peoples of the Holy Land can live together in peace and harmony without the need for such instruments of security and separation,” the pope said on departure at the airport.

His visit had been awaited with hope in the Middle East, where peace-making efforts have stalled. In January, it was in doubt as relations with Israel plunged over Benedict’s decision to readmit to the Church a bishop who had denied the extent of the Holocaust, one of a number of issues to anger Jews. (obviously a denial of the Holocaust by a Catholic bishop  must have direct bearing upon legitimate discussions of peace with Palestinians?) .

Israelis hoping for an apology had voiced disappointment at the speech the pope made at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem.

His condemnation of Holocaust deniers seemed mechanical to many who expected more empathy from a man who was a teenage conscript in the Hitler Youth and World War Two German army.

But in Friday’s address, taking leave of President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the pontiff used more powerful language, calling his meeting with Holocaust survivors “one of the most solemn moments” of the pilgrimage.

“(It) brought back memories of my visit three years ago to the death camp at Auschwitz, where so many Jews — mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends — were brutally exterminated under a godless regime,” he said.

Nazi anti-Semitism and hatred had written an “appalling chapter of history (that) must never be forgotten or denied.”

A STATE FOR PALESTINIANS

Rabbi Yisrael Lau, a Holocaust survivor and former Israeli chief rabbi, saw in the remarks a key to wider reconciliation.

“These words are a bridge of friendship, of understanding, of peace and love between nations, religions and races,” (and will that bridge reach across the impasse to the Palestinian side?)Lau told Reuters Television

Before departing for Rome, the pope again drove home his political(?) message, calling for peace to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and give the Palestinians their own homeland. (could calling for peace ever be considered a spiritual message?)

He stressed this goal several times during his five-day tour, aware that Israel’s new government has so far declined to endorse the “two-state solution” desired by the West.

“I wish to put on record that I came to visit this country as a friend of the Israelis, just as I am a friend of the Palestinian people,” he said.

The appeal came 61 years to the day since Israel became a state, a day known as the Nakba, or disaster, by Palestinians, half of whom fled or were forced from their homes in 1948.

To both sides he urged: “No more bloodshed! No more fighting! No more terrorism! No more war!”

Israel’s right to exist in security must be universally recognized, he said, and it must be acknowledged that “the Palestinian people have a right to a sovereign independent homeland, to live with dignity and to travel freely.”

Peres told the pope his visit had made “a significant contribution to the new relations” between the Vatican and Israel, and his speeches “carried a substantive weight.”

In the final act of worship of his visit, Benedict preached a message of hope for all mankind at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City, where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead.

“The empty tomb speaks to us of hope, the hope that does not disappoint because it is the gift of the spirit of life,” he said. “Love is stronger than death.”

Let those of us who believe in the power of Christian love to heal all the wounds of injustice, that the critics in Israel who have failed to hear Il Papa’s message, and the Western media who have failed to publish his message, awaken to the World’s present cries for justice, and the need to create a future that is dedicated to peace and security for ALL.

                                       BY COURTESY OF SABEEL

A plaintive Message from Jerusalem Christians delivered to Il Papa on May 13th in Bethlehem reflecting their immediate needs for peace and justice in that the lessons learned from the Holocaust should be applied here and now for a people who face a subtle and insideous process of cleansing that while not as dramatic as what occurred in Germany during Nazi occupation never the less has the probability to eliminate an entire indigent population from its land.

Your Holiness,

We, the indigenous faithful Christians of Jerusalem, join our voices to those of our Palestinian Muslim and Christian brothers and sisters in the West Bank and Gaza to welcome you on your much desired pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Your Holiness, your pilgrimage for peace, comes at a very critical moment in the history of the Palestinian people. For this reason, religious institutions and members of the civil society have communicated to Your Holiness, their concerns and aspirations prior to your arrival in the country. We, “the little flock” of Jerusalem would have loved to celebrate with joy your presence among us, but as your experience in Jerusalem in the past few days has proved, we are not free and our rights are denied.

We are pleased that you have insisted on coming at this time to give spiritual support and guidance to the steadfast Christians of Jerusalem, the resilient faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ and His Church established in this city over 2000 years ago. Sad to say, there are only about 9000 Christians of various denominations left but they form an integral part of the rich fabric of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, the city of peace anxiously awaiting a just peace for all.

Your Holiness, you have in the past two days, observed the ramifications of the 42-year old military occupation of this city significant to all faiths. Christians and Muslims suffer the same violations of human and national rights because Jerusalem is under occupation. As the Vatican has recognized: “the part of the city militarily occupied in 1967 and annexed and declared the capital of the State of Israel, IS OCCUPIED TERRITORY (as recorded and confirmed by the United Nations) As such, all Israeli measures which exceed the power of a belligerent occupant under international law are therefore null and void”. This courageous stand of the Vatican should be upheld and prayerfully acted upon in order to end the illegal monopolization and the unilateral judaization of Jerusalem, strangulated by settlements, divided by road blocks and checkpoints. Families are separated because of the wall; residents lose their residency rights; married couples are denied family reunification and homes are demolished! Young people who raise their voices against injustice are thrown into prison and the sanctity of life is desecrated. The beautiful mosaic of Jerusalem is shattered under oppression and injustice.

How can your flock be spiritually empowered and guided when faced with the violation of their rights to worship, to move, to learn, and to return home. How can your flock remain steadfast and continue resisting non-violently? How can we secure jobs and housings for the young people so that they will not lose hope and emigrate? How can we encourage our children in exile to risk coming back to their country and contribute to maintaining the uniqueness of the Christian presence without being denied entry?

Your pilgrimage to the sites made holy by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, not only constitutes a rich spiritual experience, but, is made especially meaningful through the sharing of the sufferings of the people who also make this land holy. We count on Your Holiness, to proclaim anew to the world the teachings of our Savior “to bring good news to the poor…release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of God’s favor.”(Luke 4; 18-19)

Your Holiness, you come as a peacemaker to promote tolerance and reconciliation. We urge you to continue following in the courageous footsteps of our Savior, Jesus Christ, in daring to raise a prophetic voice and to state clearly that:

• Jerusalem must remain an open city to all faiths and be the shared capital of the two states.
• The occupation has to end.
• Israel has to abide by International Law, implement UN resolutions and be held accountable for all violations especially the most recent brutal onslaught on Gaza.

Two thousand years ago, from the Mt. of Olives overlooking Jerusalem, Jesus wept over the city, under occupation and torn apart by violence and dissent. “You do not know the things that make for peace!” That cry resonates in Jerusalem to-day, still under occupation and shattered by the absence of tolerance, respect and love.

We trust that your prayers and your genuine desire for peace in Jerusalem will drive Your Holiness and the world that looks up to your leadership to work for a just peace for all. Only then can Christians, Muslims and Jews live in freedom and in harmony in the promising land for all. Only then can the inhabitants of this blessed land enjoy a just peace that they very much deserve.

In closing, we welcome Your Holiness with the Arabic greeting “Ahlan wa Sahlan” which literally means you are among family and that your stay goes smoothly.

And what family will The Church respond to in instigating peace and justice in the Holyland?

Israelis in general have not been overly enthusiastic with Pope Benedict’s visit to their country unlike most every country that he has visited in the last couple of years where he has been showered with attention for his efforts to give voice to peace and justice.

His call for peace and reconciliation in the land that gave birth to Christianity has been overshadowed by expectations from many Israelis who were looking more for contrition rather than reconciliation.

On Wednesday, an editorial in Israel’s most widely read newspaper Haaretz called the special visit to consecrate Church-Israeli relations a “missed opportunity.”

His important statements condemning anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial lost their potency because of his lukewarm remarks at Yad Vashem,” the editorial said. “The pope’s visit shows that there is no real dialogue between Israel and the Vatican, and that it is difficult to erase centuries-old wounds.

The focus of many Israelis seems to be directed more to the past than to the future. They wanted to hear an apology and an expression of regret from the Catholic Patriarch for the Church not doing more during World War II to save six million Jews from perishing in the Holocaust, and they wanted it stated at the Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. So because Benedict did not  use the correct words in the correct manner in the correct location, the old wounds between the Catholic Church and the Israeli psyche will perhaps not be soon mended.

And as Israeli officials had trained their ears for apologies for past ommissions by the Pope’s predecessors, they missed his call for correcting the present ills that confound their peace and security. Seemingly unheard was his message for Israel to end its embargo on the Gaza Strip which was probably taken less seriously than a former government official’s joke ”The embargo is like an appointment with a dietitian. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.” Since Gaza was taken over by the Hamas led government, Israel has imposed a strict embargo on the strips ability to import construction goods and materials which the compound now badly needs to rebuild itself after the Israeli bombing in January. The Pope made a pointed  reference to the plight of the confined Gaza population when he addressed a small contingent of Gazan Catholics at mass in Bethlehem and said, “Please be assured of my solidarity with you in the immense work of rebuilding which now lies ahead, and my prayers that the embargo will soon be lifted.

Nor was there any official government reaction to his humanitarian requests to ease restrictions on Palestinian movement within the occupied territories. “Palestinians, like any other people, have a natural right to marry, to raise families, and to have access to work, education and health care.”

The Pope also criticized the building of  twenty five foot walls that surround part of Bethlehem and forms a barrier between Israel and the rest of the West bank, and later as he left the West Bank, he spoke out again on this issue and said of the walls, “They are tragic…separating neighbors and dividing families,” and they should be taken down.

And in what might put the Catholic Church at greatest odds with the present Israeli government was the Pope’s call for greater International pressure to create a Palestinian state. This appears to fly directly in the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has made it obvious that this is not a subject that he wants to discuss.

That the Benedict trip will be of any benefit for Vatican Israeli relations is doubtful, so what was this trip about? In expressing his concerns about the need for human rights to be granted to the Palestinians, it appears that he is making a strong statement advocating the Palestinian cause for justice and autonomy.

Does the Catholic Church have enough clout to move countries with significant Catholic populations to present a united front to confront Israel with a similar resolve that was necessary to bring South Africa into line? To do so the Church will have to make the transition from the spiritual realm to temporal instigator for human rights in a way that would change church state relationships for some time to come.

Christ was The Prince of Peace.  As Christ’s deciple on Earth, can the Pope be anything less than the Prince of Peace?

If you were President Obama and had a request on your desk to give $2.775 Billion of your citizen’s money to a foreign country, would you be asking, “What are we getting for OUR money?”

Israel is asking us to give them another $2.775 Billion, and their proxy in the U.S., AIPAC is urging members of Congress to approve this gift which is the second of ten annual allotments to Israel in what is known as the security assistance program.  As a citizen of the U.S. and a taxpayer, I am asking, “What am I getting for this money we are giving away?” and also, I am asking, “Why are we giving this incredible amount of money to Israel when there are so many unmet needs in our own country.?” If the money is for charity, I would follow the admonition of my grand mother who said that charity begins at home.

 As it is, one sixth or more, www.miftah.org May 20, 2002, of the money that we give to foreign governments each year goes to Israel, and according to research performed by retired State Department officers at non partison WRMEA  in their report:  A Conservative Total for U.S. Aid to Israel: $91 Billion—and Counting, we give Israel an enormous amount of money for which there is no accounting.

 But wait, wait, there is more. On the AIPAC web site there is a form letter which readers of the site and in particular, members of AIPAC, can sign their name to and click on “send”  that urges members of Congress to vote in favor of giving Israel more money to buy more quality weapons to use against their adversaries, as in Palestinians? It is not in the best interest of the U.S. to be complicit in the oppressive occupation of the Palestinians, nor is it in the best interests of the peace process that is supposed to be going on between Israelis and Palestinians. Be assured that this is not an anti-Semitic sentiment.  Jewish Voice for Peace About JVP makes clear in their mission statement that  U.S. military aid to Israel must be suspended until the occupation ends as does J Street who also speaks for peace seeking American Jews. 

 Below is a copy of the letter on the AIPAC site that urges members of our Congress to send more money to Israel.Following the copy of their letter, I have composed a paraphrased AIPAC letter that urges our members of Congress to vote against the appropriation.

 For all readers of this blog I would hope that you send a copy of  the  paraphrased AIPAC letter to your Representative and Senators in Congress and urge them to vote against the security assistance to Israel. I hope then that our members of Congress will urge Israel to give the Palestinians justice and freedom to gain their autonomy as the vast majority of Americans ,75%, Growing Majority of Americans Oppose Israel Building Settlements want for them. I have walked in Palestinian sandals in the West Bank and I have seen what the Israelis do with the billions of dollars that we give them for security assistance. If the U.S.  government insisted upon a system of American justice to be administered in the occupied territories, that would be the best security assistance that we could give them.

Copy of AIPAC letter to solicit Congressional support for security assitance for Israel :

 I write to urge you to support $2.775 billion in security assistance to Israel for fiscal year 2010 as agreed to in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the United States and Israel in 2007.

The $2.775 billion in aid level reflects the second year of the MOU’s 10-year plan to gradually increase U.S. security assistance to the Jewish state. This MOU was negotiated in order to meet the growing threats to Israel of a nuclear Iran and a more heavily armed Hizballah, rocket attacks by Hamas and conventional threats from Syria by boosting U.S. security assistance to Israel during the next decade.

Israel already spends more per capita on defense than any other industrialized country in the world-almost double what the United States spends-and continually needs to buy more sophisticated and expensive technologies to help defend its citizens.

 Democrats and Republicans agree that providing Israel with the means to defend itself is a sound tenet of American foreign policy - and for good reason. Strategically, Israel is a democratic, dependable U.S. ally in a highly volatile, but critical, region. By making sure that Israel remains strong, the United States helps to ensure the survival of a country that both reflects our values and advances our interests.

U.S. security assistance to Israel remains the most tangible manifestation of American support for Israel and the best way to ensure that Israel maintains a qualitative military edge over its potential adversaries.

Thank you for continuing the bipartisan tradition of support for a strong and secure Israel.

Please for the ordinary American citizen like myself, vote against this resolution.

 Paraphrased copy of AIPAC letter to vote against “security assistance” for Israel:

I write to urge you to ELIMINATE $2.775 billion in security assistance to Israel for fiscal year 2010 as agreed to in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the United States and Israel in 2007.

The $2.775 billion in aid level reflects the second year of the MOU’s 10-year plan to gradually increase U.S. security assistance to the Jewish state. This MOU was negotiated in order to meet the growing PARANOIA of Israel of a NON EXISTENT nuclear Iran and a DEFENCE ONLY armed Hizballah, INEFFECTUAL rocket attacks by Hamas and IMAGINED threats from Syria by SQUANDERING U.S. TAX PAYER’S MONEY TO BE GIVEN to Israel during the next decade.

Israel already spends more per capita on defense than any other industrialized country in the world-almost double what the United States spends-and continually needs to buy more sophisticated and expensive technologies to help defend(?) its citizens.

THE MAJORITY (75%) of AMERICANS agree that providing Israel with the means to OPPRESS PALESTINIANS is CONTRARIAN to sound American foreign policy - and for good reason. Strategically, Israel is a CONTENTIOUS U.S. “ally” in a highly volatile, but critical, region. By making sure that Israel ADHERES TO U.N. RESOLUTIONS G A 194 and S C 242, the United States will help to ensure the survival of a country that MISREPRESENTS our values and UNDERMINES our interests.

 U.S. security assistance to Israel remains the most tangible manifestation of AN ISRAEL FIRST LOBBYING SUBVERSION OF THE American POLITICAL PROCESS TO GIVE UNCONDITIONAL support for Israel and the best way to ensure that Israel maintains a qualitative military edge over its potential adversaries RATHER THAN NEGOTIATE ON A BASIS OF EQUALITY & JUSTICE.

Thank you for DIScontinuing the bipartisan tradition of support for AN OPPRESSIVE OCCUPIER and securing Israeli LONG TERM SUCCESS.

In the name of peace and justice send a copy of the paraphrased letter to your members of Congress.