Craig
Facebook's actions are simply knee-jerk reactions. There is a campaign to undermine Interpal and they will have caught wind of this from the usual sources. Just do a quick google on Kettering Town's support for Interpal on their shirts. KTFC is my local club so I have seen this unfolding. I expect the smears against Interpal to get heavier. Mud sticks and these poor sods don't have the resources to keep fighting it and doing their humanitarian work.

Exactly what planet are you on? You simply cannot possibly be serious about this! You may well be ant-Jewish and anti-Israel; you may well be pro-Hamas and radical Islam. I have no doubt both are defensible positions.

However, the media, both written and other- is quite overwhelmingly ant-Israeli and (anecdotally) reflects the feeling on the street. To suggest otherwise is just disingenuous and makes
the writer look ridiculously biased.

If Hamas Did Not Exist
Jennifer Loewenstein � Counter Punch January 1, 2008

Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State

Let us get one thing perfectly straight. If the wholesale mutilation and degradation of the Gaza Strip is going to continue; if Israel�s will is at one with that of the United States; if the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and all the international legal agencies and organizations spread across the globe are going to continue to sit by like hollow mannequins doing nothing but making repeated �calls� for a �ceasefire� on �both sides�; if the cowardly, obsequious and supine Arab States are going to stand by watching their brethren get slaughtered by the hour while the world�s bullying Superpower eyes them threateningly from Washington lest they say something a little to their disliking; then let us at least tell the truth why this hell on earth is taking place.

The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with �Terror�. It has nothing to do with the long-term �security� of the Jewish State or with Hizbullah or Syria or Iran except insofar as it is aggravating the conditions that have led up to this crisis today. It has nothing to do with some conjured-up �war� � a cynical and overused euphemism that amounts to little more the wholesale enslavement of any nation that dares claim its sovereign rights; that dares assert that its resources are its own; that doesn�t want one of the Empire�s obscene military bases sitting on its cherished land.

This crisis has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, justice or peace. It is not about Mahmoud Zahhar or Khalid Mash�al or Ismail Haniyeh. It is not about Hassan Nasrallah or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are all circumstantial players who have gained a role in the current tempest only now that the situation has been allowed for 61 years to develop into the catastrophe that it is today. The Islamist factor has colored and will continue to color the atmosphere of the crisis; it has enlisted the current leaders and mobilized wide sectors of the world�s population. The primary symbols today are Islamic � the mosques, the Qur�an, the references to the Prophet Muhammad and to Jihad. But these symbols could disappear and the impasse would continue.

There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafat�s Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you. They have become part of the landscape of human events in the modern Middle East today; but incidentals wholly as lethal, or as recalcitrant, deadly, angry or incorrigible could just as soon have been in their places.

Strip away the clich�s and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the world�s wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism that we try so hard to cover up with our sophisticated jargon, our refined academic theories and models actually help to guide our basest and ugliest desires. The callousness with which we in indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse.

Strip away the current symbols and language of the victims of our selfish and devastating whims and you will find the simple, impassioned and unaffected cries of the downtrodden; of the �wretched of the earth� begging you to cease your cold aggression against their children and their homes; their families and their villages; begging you to leave them alone to have their fish and their bread, their oranges, their olives and their thyme; asking you first politely and then with increasing disbelief why you cannot let them live undisturbed on the land of their ancestors; unexploited, free of the fear of expulsion; of ravishment and devastation; free of permits and roadblocks and checkpoints and crossings; of monstrous concrete walls, guard towers, concrete bunkers, and barbed wire; of tanks and prisons and torture and death. Why is life without these policies and instruments of hell impossible?

The answer is because Israel has no intention of allowing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders. It had no intention of allowing it in 1948 when it grabbed 24 per cent more land than what it was allotted legally, if unfairly, by UN Resolution 181. It had no intention of allowing it throughout the massacres and ploys of the 1950s. It had no intention of allowing two states when it conquered the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine in 1967 and reinterpreted UN Security Council Resolution 248 to its own liking despite the overwhelming international consensus stating that Israel would receive full international recognition within secure and recognized borders if it withdrew from the lands it had only recently occupied.

It had no intention of acknowledging Palestinian national rights at the United Nations in 1974, when �alone with the United States�it voted against a two-state solution. It had no intention of allowing a comprehensive peace settlement when Egypt stood ready to deliver but received, and obediently accepted, a separate peace exclusive of the rights of Palestinians and the remaining peoples of the region. It had no intention of working toward a just two-state solution in 1978 or 1982 when it invaded, fire-bombed, blasted and bulldozed Beirut so that it might annex the West Bank without hassle. It had no intention of granting a Palestinian state in 1987 when the first Intifada spread across occupied Palestine, into the Diaspora and the into the spirits of the global dispossessed, or when Israel deliberately aided the newly formed Hamas movement so that it might undermine the strength of the more secular-nationalist factions.

Israel had no intention of granting a Palestinian state at Madrid or at Oslo where the PLO was superseded by the quivering, quisling Palestinian Authority, too many of whose cronies grasped at the wealth and prestige it gave them at the expense of their own kin. As Israel beamed into the world�s satellites and microphones its desire for peace and a two-state solution, it more than doubled the number of illegal Jewish settlements on the ground in the West Bank and around East Jerusalem, annexing them as it built and continues to build a superstructure of bypass roads and highways over the remaining, severed cities and villages of earthly Palestine. It has annexed the Jordan valley, the international border of Jordan, expelling any �locals� inhabiting that land. It speaks with a viper�s tongue over the multiple amputee of Palestine whose head shall soon be severed from its body in the name of justice, peace and security.

Through the home demolitions, the assaults on civil society that attempted to cast Palestinian history and culture into a chasm of oblivion; through the unspeakable destruction of the refugee camp sieges and infrastructure bombardments of the second Intifada, through assassinations and summary executions, past the grandiose farce of disengagement and up to the nullification of free, fair and democratic Palestinian elections Israel has made its view known again and again in the strongest possible language, the language of military might, of threats, intimidation, harassment, defamation and degradation.

Israel, with the unconditional and approving support of the United States, has made it dramatically clear to the entire world over and over and over again, repeating in action after action that it will accept no viable Palestinian state next to its borders. What will it take for the rest of us to hear? What will it take to end the criminal silence of the �international community�? What will it take to see past the lies and indoctrination to what is taking place before us day after day in full view of the eyes of the world? The more horrific the actions on the ground, the more insistent are the words of peace. To listen and watch without hearing or seeing allows the indifference, the ignorance and complicity to continue and deepens with each grave our collective shame.

The destruction of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will accept no authority in the Palestinian territories that it does not ultimately control. Any individual, leader, faction or movement that fails to accede to Israel�s demands or that seeks genuine sovereignty and the equality of all nations in the region; any government or popular movement that demands the applicability of international humanitarian law and of the universal declaration of human rights for its own people will be unacceptable for the Jewish State. Those dreaming of one state must be forced to ask themselves what Israel would do to a population of 4 million Palestinians within its borders when it commits on a daily, if not hourly basis, crimes against their collective humanity while they live alongside its borders? What will suddenly make the raison d�etre, the self-proclaimed purpose of Israel�s reason for being change if the Palestinian territories are annexed to it outright?

The lifeblood of the Palestinian National Movement flows through the streets of Gaza today. Every drop that falls waters the soil of vengeance, bitterness and hatred not only in Palestine but across the Middle East and much of the world. We do have a choice over whether or not this should continue. Now is the time to make it.

Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She can be reached at amadea311@earthlink.net
www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein01012009.html

Kardinal,

Actually, I am not anti-Jewish, pro-Hamas or pro- radical Islam. I am anti-Israel, in the sense I want to see it replaced by a secular race-blind state.

The media plainly plays a role in creating public opinion. It does not merely reflect it. In this case, the remarkable thing is how comparatively little success it is having.

kardinal birkutzki

What planet do you live on???

The media is largely owned and controlled by Jews and they are obviously Zionist Jews at that.

Through the banking system Jews and freemasons (who are crypto-Jews inasmuch as they also follow a religion [at the top] that is self-serving rather than other-serving, Luciferian and, obviously, Christ-hating [read Albert Pike who wrote their oaths])....Jews and Freemasons own just about everything of significance in this country. I would vote for any political party that promised to take this country's stolen wealth back from these fiends.

Anti-Israeli bias......

.....you fool.

Craig.

You are a blatant racist.

I suppose you believe in the Protocols, as well!

I didn't know anything about Interpal until I read this post. Craig, good post, which I've linked to on my face book profile! (I joined recently to network with other activists.) Cheers.

I wonder if kardinal birkutzki thinks that the "Posted by" info pertains to the following comments instead of the preceding? It might explain his comment about Craig being a racist and believing in the Protocols.

Without wishing to be unduly pedantic or off-topic, the comment layout could do with an extra divider, just to make things crystal clear. The only current divider separates the comment from the commenter info, with nothing but whitespace separating that info and the following comment. It would be unfortunate if readers were routinely attributing comments to the wrong poster.

Craig, you don't think perhaps that the Israeli action is entirely predictable and part of Hamas strategy? Ever since the blindingly unsuccessful Tet offensive was turned into a major victory by Walter Cronkite, wars have been fought in the western media. So you provoke the mighty Israeli military into an entirely predictably bloody and genocidal response, publish pictures of dead babies and distressed Norwegian doctors, and gain "points" in the long-term battle for hearts and minds in Europe and the USA.

Neil,

I think Hamas and Israel feed off each other, yes. Extremists gain power and resources by promoting enmity. KevinB, I don't like general comments about Jews of that kind - it undermines your case.

None of which makes what Israel is doing any less evil.

In general, this blog is devoted to free speech. I have only ever deleted two comments, because they were about children. But I was called anti-semitic by David Aaronovitch in The Times because of a comment posted in my blog, even though I commented specifically to disagree with it.

I suspect Kardinal has problems understanding the degree of tolerance here. To be perfectly plain, the only comments you can agree I presume with are the bits I have written.

"Media Reform Information Center"

"In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies"...

http://tinyurl.com/2zzxd

"Information War: Strike a decisive blow"...

http://tinyurl.com/9jtefq

Craig,
Perhaps because they couldn't get rid of your comments, the secret services are now disrupting it through their usual tactics of smearing, introducing irrelevancies and counteracting arguments with stupid comments.
I think you should formally head a movement of people to fight torture, genocide etc.. This could be a charity in which you could draw a salary so you would be able to devote more time to what you are brilliant at doing. I would be the first to subscribe.

Craig,

It seems to me that our problems are spiritual as much as political. We have forgotten the importance of the invocation of spirit.
There are two directly opposing tendencies in humanity. The tendency to good (which I would call the Christ tendency....the service and, if necessary, sacrifice of self for others) and the tendency to evil (the criminal tendency....the sacrifice of others in service of self)

There are only (to my knowledge) two religions that adopt the latter as an operating principle. The first is Talmudic Judaism, the Pharisaical Judaism that Christ condemned...a religion that characterises the rest of humanity as 'goyim' or cattle and positively encourages all kinds of wickedness as long as it is practiced on the goyim but not Jews.
The second is Freemasonry that also in its writings treats outsiders as cattle and at the higher levels worships a composite Babylonian god, Jahbulon.
The man who wrote most of the modern masonic oaths, Albert Pike, stated his position clearly in "morals and Dogma' (1876) that the aim of Freemasonry is to achieve total control of the world through a single government. He also praises Lucifer as "the Morning Star' etc...

This information is not contestable. Go and study these matters for yourself.

As a Christian I object to the fact that our society is effectively run by these people. Saying that the majority of the wealth and power in the UK is controlled by Masons and Jews is, again, surely little more than a statement of fact. Our elected politicians would not get anywhere near office without the approval of these people. How can it happen that the son of a Christian minister can call for a ceasefire in Gaza while instructing his UN representative to block a cearefire. Do you really think he is a vampire who would bathe in the blood of the dead of Gaza.....or is he a controlled asset that exercises much less control over his actions than we would like to believe.

He could resign when faced with the unacceptable, of course, but he is obviously too far 'down the hole' (or up Satan's arse or whatever other moral universe he is lost inside) to consider such a thing.

I am not really interested in taking anyone's property off them but it is, sadly, through their enormous (stolen, as all great fortunes are, in my view ) wealth that they exercise their control over our society. If these people didn't own the media we would not be fed on a diet of lies and more subtle deception...and....

.....we would not be unwilling parties to the kind of obscenity we sit and helplessly watch on our TV screens today.

Some people need to stop confusing Zionism which is a facist political ideology, with jewish heritage. The latter has simply been hijacked by the former as Nazism hijacked the german identity.

On the subject of Hamas benefiting, it is clear that Israel had this planned long in advance along with the massive propaganda campaign to go with it. I suspect Hamas knew full well, but I can't see what they could have done about it. Israel want to destroy Hamas because they are determined to resist and are not corrupt and compliant like Fatah had become.

Kardinal, if you think the relentless stream of 'Israel says....' and Israeli spokespersons in western media constitutes 'anti-Israeli' you must be living in a parallel dimension. This is now an act of genocide on the part of Israel.

I have just seen this from the independent.co.uk website:
"A ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is attainable within days if the smuggling routes which supply arms and money to Hamas can be shut down, international envoy Tony Blair said today."
Words fail me.

craig,

For what it's worth - I think you are doing a great job with the limited resources at your disposal. It could almost be described as 'heroic'! It takes courage, bordering on the foolhardy, to step up and criticise Israel in a public forum.

Of course your 'heroism' and 'courage' are as nothing compared to that being shown by the shattered and beseiged civilians in Gaza. But of course you know all this as well as I do.

You are not a racist. Being critical of the government and policies of Israel, doesn't make one anti-Jewish either.

Your are perfectly right about the slanting and bias in the reporting of the 'news' relating to this terrible war. There is a massive anti-Palestinian bias in most Western media reports. There are notable exceptions, but one can almost count them on the fingers of one hand in the UK.

Basically we accept the 'ligitimacy' of Israel and its actions, and its right to 'defend' itself against attack from terrorists and by the same measure we do not accept that the Palestinians have the 'right' to fight back against occupation, subjugation and displacement.

Currently the media are bending over backwards to 'appear' unbiased and neutral in this conflict and are failing miserably. The entire concept of 'balance' when applied to a situation which is so obviously unbalanced is highly problematic in itself.

Israel cannot be seen as the weaker part in this conflict as it is so overwhelmingly stronger militarily than Hamas, yet the media give the impression in the way they slant their reports that there is some kind of equivelance between the two sides in this 'war.' Is it even a 'war'? Surely it's something else? It's an attack by the forth strongest army in the world, armed to the teeth, against a prison/refugee camp, defended by a civilian militia with small-arms.

Historically this 'battle' reminds one of the Nazi attack on the Warsaw Ghetto, and of course this is a vile and repelent, pervese, obscene, reversal of history. Now Jews have come to resmeble Nazis! How could such a thing happen? Are we incapable of learning from the past? Are we doomed to repeat the horrors of history over and over again, round and round in vicious circle of blood, gore, suffering and death for ever?

What's tragic is that this attack on Gaza will not make Israel safer over the long term, on the contrary. It will undermine Israel's security and the historic scale of this ghastly crime against humanity, the sight of almost defenceless civilians being slaughtered by such a formidable military machine will be etched into the memories and conciousness of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims for gernerations to come. We make be able to rationalise this horror, the obscenity, this vision of hell as the super-powerful Israel stamps its jackboots onto the face of the Palestinians, stomping it to a bloody pulp, but the people on the receiving end will never forget this. This new disaster will become part of the culture of the region, part of its collective memory. So rather than Israel becoming part of and integrated into the region it will always be seen as an 'invader' a new version of the old, crusader kingdom and will eventually suffer the same fate.

And Israel's brutality is not crushing the resistance, it's actually fueling it and undermining 'moderation' and 'pragmatism' in the region and beyond. The current political leadership of Israel are extremists who appear to believe they can impose a 'peace' on the Arabs on their terms, to beat, kill and smash them into total, abject, surrender. This is a very, very, stupid policy, which is doomed to failure.

In reality Israel has no choice, it can choose to become part of the Middle East, just another ethnic, religious, group, or it can choose to destroy itself by waging war on its neighbours until one day it will start to lose these wars and then it will be too late to compromise, no one will be listening and no one will care.

But of course Israel will still have its nuclear arsenal, so one can argue that it simply cannot 'lose' not ever. So is this the future for Israel? That some day it will be 'forced' to use its nuclear weapons and launch a holocaust and genocidal war of survival. What are the moral consequences for Israel and Jews, of all peoples, of such a strategy, because this is the logic of the road Israel is embarked on - nuclear war.

Already Israel is becoming a tainted and corrupted society. The very essence of Zionism, or ultra-nationalist, ethnicity, is creating a state and culture that sees itself as superior and more advanced, modern and civilised than the primative natives around it.

After the destruction of Gaza the policy of ethnic cleansing will eventually broaden out to encompass the Palestinians inside Israel and the West Bank. This is the goal of Israel's grand strategy for the future, driving the remaining Palesinians out, one way or an another, by war or by seige. Gaza is just another step on this ghastly and bloody road to hell.

The Facebook closure of the Interpal group might well be a result of work by the expanding Jewish Internet Defense Force (Wikipedia listing and try "thejidf dot org"). Ther is also Internet Haganah - more focused on Palestinian sites. There will be others with an interest in silencing any voices of criticism, particularly intelligent or authoritative criticism, whether that is of Israel or of others.
We face an accelerating form of censorship of the major community access websites through co-ordinated complaint, lobbying and too ready a capitulation to those complaints by the providers of such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube (YouTube recently censored an Israel Invades Gaza clip from the Sludgereport by way of one example).
We can expect more such silencing of vehicles for collective exchange and dialogue. The JIDF also monitor Blogger, Wordpress and Wikipedia.

Dodoze,

Thanks. I read that just as I was wondering whether it is coincidence that this afternoon a new customer review of Murder in Samarkand appeared on the Amazon website. It claims that my wife is a prostitute, is planning to leave me, and I am bankrupt and living in a friend's flat.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/product/1845962214/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R7LL64ZIIWC0O

"... this afternoon a new customer review of Murder in Samarkand appeared on the Amazon website. It claims that my wife is a prostitute, is planning to leave me, and I am bankrupt and living in a friend's flat."
- I bet you did it yourself just to get a bit more kudos and street-cred Craig.

As regards the boycott of Interpal,
here is the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campign -
'Lloyds TSB helps to enforce the siege of Gaza'
SPSC
19 Nov 2008

Leaflets and documents are available to download at the SPSC website.

Quote;"KevinB, I don't like general comments about Jews of that kind - it undermines your case."

Craig,

I understand what you say and maybe I should be more care. The same could be said about pejorative comments about Freemasons.

Most Freemasons know nothing about the nature of the leadership of their organisation. Neither do most Jews, like Christians, take their religion even slightly seriously. Both typically regard the 'God stuff' as a load of old nonsense.
But there is a problem....If one tries to address our calamities through principle rather than persons one is forced to look seriously at the spirit behind 'good' and 'evil'.

Christians are and have been as capable of great evil as anyone else. It is not a matter of Christians or Jews or Masons, it is a matter of the LEADERSHIP that is driving and demanding this evil and how this LEADERSHIP really works and thinks. These people are criminals with a fully criminal mentality, philosophy and, at the very top, religion.
This is not an issue to brush aside or look away from. It is at the very heart of our problems.
We need to examine the spirit that drives our system and the system itself.

Change all the personnel at the top for decent chaps like yourself and problems might disappear in the short term but they will sooner or later reappear because it is the nature of the system to attract the power-hungry into the highest positions of leadership. And those who live for power are the worst kind of human beings.

It is a pyramidal, top-down world. We all (or most of us...with very few exceptions) submit to the dictates of our masters.....and they to their masters.

The big game is creating a 'New World Order'. Kissinger sees 'good' coming out of the Gaza situation. He said so today:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/kissinger-calls-for-a-new-world-order.html

Does anyone doubt that this 'New World Order' will be anything other than a global tyrannical murderous Soviet Union?

We know what the religion at the top is. This is documented. We know their God is Lucifer.
It is difficult to speak out against Talmudism, Freemasonry and the 'New World Order' without insulting Jews and masons but it needs to be done.

The 'holocaust' is our only fully accepted European religion today. This, the only god that must not be blasphemed against, is in our face all the time so that the Zionists can carry out their crimes with a minimum of opposition (everyone is terrified of being called an anti-semite). If the public promotion of the 'holocaust' was all about preventing the occurrence of genocide, then who could be against it....but we participate in genocide, don’t we?…..so it can’t be about that.

There have been millions of Muslims who have died over the last decades because of our policies in the middle east.

The 'holocaust' in the context of Gaza today is a great enabler of a genocide.

Isn’t it?

How the *uck did that come about?

I've just flagged that one as defamatory.

the review two places above was more amusing:

"Serial adulterer, heavy drinker, attention seeker. A pain to his government, a thorn in the side of officialdom, a righteous upholder of justice. But enough about Oskar Schindler and John Stalker."

Get you shoes ready to hurl at the American Embassy in London and their Consulate in Edinburgh this saturday 10th!

Oh, and I've reported that review on amazon, mentioned above, as inappropriate. Do so as well and it should get taken off. If she'd said "it's alleged" at the end instead of "it's well known" then she would have been alright and Amazon wouldn't have had to take it off but as it stands she's got no leg to stand on.

We need to do something about how the media are portraying the Gaza issue: even supposedly more "liberal" papers like The Guardian aren't telling us the truth, it's hardly even impartial; it's disgusting.

I don't know how good people's French is, but since August 2008 - and particularly since the beginning of the Hanukkah Massacre - whenever I hear the "anti-semitic" abuse being thrown around I think back to this quote from Professor Shlomo Sand's article in Le Monde Diplomatique:

"L’exil de l’an 70 de notre ère a-t-il, lui, effectivement eu lieu ? Paradoxalement, cet « événement fondateur » dans l’histoire des Juifs, d’où la diaspora tire son origine, n’a pas donné lieu au moindre ouvrage de recherche. Et pour une raison bien prosaïque : les Romains n’ont jamais exilé de peuple sur tout le flanc oriental de la Méditerranée. A l’exception des prisonniers réduits en esclavage, les habitants de Judée continuèrent de vivre sur leurs terres, même après la destruction du second temple.

Une partie d’entre eux se convertit au christianisme au IVe siècle, tandis que la grande majorité se rallia à l’islam lors de la conquête arabe au VIIe siècle. La plupart des penseurs sionistes n’en ignoraient rien : ainsi, Yitzhak Ben Zvi, futur président de l’Etat d’Israël, tout comme David Ben Gourion, fondateur de l’Etat, l’ont-ils écrit jusqu’en 1929, année de la grande révolte palestinienne. Tous deux mentionnent à plusieurs reprises le fait que les paysans de Palestine sont les descendants des habitants de l’antique Judée"

So, according to Sand, the Palestinians are the original semites of the land, and not the Israeli plantation. Ironic, huh?

Craig. Thank you, you write the plain
truth. As you are someone who is well
aware of >what`s what< this takes
courage. However your evident Christianty will continue to provide
you with both tranquility and courage.

What a mad post!

When you go looking at the Biased BBC site, they also complain about the BBC's coverage of Gaza - but from the perspective of them being Pro Hamas!

I guess the only thing this posts shows is that you are only noting your own biases!

I still can't see why an organisation thinks a ceasefire means they are still allowed to send rockets over the border!

These sort of questions are not raised by the BBC or any other media. Neither are the fact that all the news from GAZA is only coming from HAMAS approved sources - not exactly balanced is it?

This does raise the question of how many of your biases show up in your other work!

"This does raise the question of how many of your biases show up in your other work!"

Only if you're tedious little Zionist shill

The tone of these troll comments seems pitched at someone with the intelligence of a 5 year old, or written by someone with the intelligence of a 5 year old

So what is it little Zio brothers and sisters, do you think we Goy are that stupid or is it that you are that stupid?

F0ul

Perhaps the reason only 'Hamas approved' news is coming out of Gaza is because Israel wouldn't let any News Reporters in there.

And let's face it - only Israeli approved news is coming out of Israel - no Hamas influence there.

Who do you think has the greater resources for a propaganda war? The broken economy of Gaza or the multi-billion $US supported Israel?

Craig, I hope you will delete the comment above Posted by: Tim at January 6, 2009 9:20 PM.

StefZ's reaction to such trolls is understandable but unhelpful -- better to just ignore them.

On the topic of BBC bias, it is now easy to see that the corp has a duty not to accurate reporting but to UK and hence to US political aims.

However, if you listen to the PM program on Radio 4 earlier today you will find that the tone was not one of support for the Israeli position.
BBC Listen Again
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/pm_tue

macshealbhaich:

Interesting! Another myth concerns Masada - see http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/masadamyth1.shtml for a discussion of how this myth was appropriated by Zionism.

Craig, Please consider enabling comment moderation, if it's possible. That would not be censorship on your part, as we all know you welcome dissenting views, and many bloggers do so. I'm relatively new to your site, and am working my way through your posts, but have found the quality of discourse to have detiorated over the last few days. The trolls are indeed out in force, with their usual vituperation and/or specious reasoning, but the responses to them (not by your good self) is no better. It would be nice if commenters could to add to your postings in an appropriate way, as many do, but there seem to be too many comments that don't dialogue or engage with what you've posted.

In addition to my hope for comment moderation, I should add I consider what Israel and the Zionists do, and have done, to be odious beyond belief. I find it equally odious other human beings offer the level of support that they do, whether these 'human beings' are in politics, media, or the populace. The reason I'm concerned is because it's imperative to be able to win over AND retain the unconvinced, and the uninformed, and Craig's website has a great potential to draw in people like this if the comments section doesn't degenerate into a turn-off for them, which would be a victory for the ADL-JIDF-and-expanding hydra.

Hi Sally,

I sort of sigh a lot.

I can delete things anytime I want, and there are quite a few posts that are, at best, obsessive. I agree that in general it lowers the standard of debate, and probably discourages some from publishing here. But by and large my belief in free speech tends to make me very loathe to hit that delete button.

What annoys me is the way people use the word "Jew" as if it identifies a race. Jews are a religious, cultural and political group only.

If you don't believe me, then explain why Russian "Jews" who went to Israel to escape persecution from ignorant people who think Jews are a race, encountered persecution from Israeli Jews? The Russian "Jews" were made most unwelcome because they didn't practice the Jewish religion or culture - they were just Russians to the Israeli Jews and, therefore, didn't belong.

Perhaps this perception of Jews as a race was only strengthened by Hitler - he was a eugenicist, and anyone who "looked like a Jew" was deemed a Jew, and sent to the camps. Eugenics has been thoroughly discredited.

My grandfather was a Jew - that is, until he renounced his religion as a load of garbage. He then became just another ordinary citizen.

Anne Frank, also, was not a Jew - she was a German caucasian girl. As far as I'm concerned children are not Jews or Christians or Muslims until they are old enough to decide whether they believe in a particular religion or not - and that means, not until they have completed their schooling.

Until then, they are children, AND SHOULD BE TREATED AS SUCH, not dragged into the ugly, evil, divided world us adults have created.

Last week, the US used its Security Council veto to block the international community from ending the carnage in Gaza. This means our government is officially supporting Israel's genocidal attacks upon a civilian population. Let us be clear. The people of Gaza are essentially unarmed and for this reason it is not a war – but a slaughter. The Palestinians are almost defenseless against the advanced weaponry being used against them, much of it supplied by the US. There have even been reports that Israel is using depleted uranium and white phosphorus weapons. What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end of the world. If we do not act then we are also guilty.

Mark Gaffney – January 5, 2009

What do you suggest Mark? It seems to me that the best thing we can do is to use our purchasing power to target businesses operating from Israel or supportive of Israel. Craig has published a link to a site that identifies these businesses.

The other thing we can do is to inform as many people as possible of the truth in order to counter the enormous propaganda machines that have been wheeled out in support of Israeli war crimes.

Professor Avi Shlaim has an excellent article in today's Guardian which might be a useful starting point in the information war. It's at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine - recommended reading.

I think the thing is, Israel could solve the Hamas problem in a day or so. Gaza is small and they have the firepower, the intelligence, and the personnel. And Hamas, too, could solve the Israel problem by forswearing violence in exchange for political recognition by Israel. The reason neither has done so is that they need each other. The far-right military-industrial complex maintains its incredibly strong hold of Israeli government and daily life because of the perennial threat of conflict with Palestine (which conflict is often provoked or exacerbated by their partners in crime, the ultra-Orthodox settlers). Hamas, on the other hand, needs the menace of Israeli military might to stay relevant: they oppose an armistice because without violence, there's nothing to separate them politically from the larger and better-organized Fatah.

I think most Israelis and most Palestinians do want peace and compromise, but the deep collusion between Hamas and the IDF to create mutual, radicalizing hatred blocks the will of this majority from coming to fruition.

They call themselves Gods Chosen People,? And killing around the inhabitants of witch they have stolen the land? for sure, its Not my God. Here the Chief of dead and destruction is at work, Their God.... ,our Satan. How dare they, those merciless Thieves and Killers ,all by the help of western Nations .Is this the Love of God, spread oud by Gods chosen People?

G-d gave his chosen people the Kingdom of David fair and square, so convert, move or feel the wrath of G-d.
-------------------------------------
Genesis 15:18-21 describes what are known as Gevulot Ha-aretz ("Borders of the Land") in Jewish tradition which define the full extent of the land promised to the descendants of Abraham through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob.
----------------------------------------
More precise geographical borders are given Exodus 23:31 which describes borders as marked by the "Red Sea" ( All the waters surrounding Arabia including the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf), the "Sea of the Philistines" (Mediterranean), and the "River" (Euphrates) ...
- The traditional furthest extent of the Kingdom of David -

Bob

Crap. At that time the Celts lived in central Europe. Shall I claim that?

Oh, I haven't felt the Wrath of God. What happened?

Craig

Hey Craig, if you are not a threat to the Kingdom of David you have nothing to fear ... shalom, Bob
Check: http://www.currentissues.tv/

Throughout History The Jews(israelis) have been kicked out from every corner of the earth for their utter wicked /evil act, as far back as 2000 yrs from Europe to the Mid East.Peace will only come to the Mid-east and the world the moment Isreal is Destroyed. This is not a Harsh statement, this is the only way to get PEACE and their time is coming. And the distruction will come from within themselves. It seems to be in their blood to be EVIL to anyone non-jew.

Ron,

There is nothing inherently wicked about Jews.
Michael, "Jews with their satanic smiles" is not an acceptable phrase.

Last warning. I am going to start banning people and deleting all their back comments.

The Jewish bit of me has a long memory going back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the wealth, sophistication, decadence of Vienna, further back into Carpathians and Silesia and lands won with the Chistian sword. Then, eventually, the Jewish bankers money united with the impoverished Austrian aristocrats.

Jews have given and Jews have taken. Jews have been bad and they've been good. Jews are saints and they are devils. Jews are greedy for gold and they've given it away by the bagfull. There is no such thing as the 'typical' Jew, that is vulgar, social-Darwinist, bullshit. Why do we believe these lies about other 'races' and about what we are as a people? Christ, life is short, too short to waste ones time killing each other. Are we all still really and merely peasants tramping off to battle in wars we don't even understand and for the interests of aristocrats and kings that don't give a fig about us?

I think what we have to concentrate on is Power, who has it and who doesn't. Israel was created simply because some people had the power to do it. It was nothing to do with right or wrong, or history or even God, or religion. What seems to happen is that might makes right. The powerful take from those with less power. The Arabs were weak and lost and Israel was stronger and still is, for now. It's highly unlikely this powerful position will last and then the Arabs will take it all back again. The land was taken by force and it can and probably will be taken back by force, and Israel's actions make this more, not less likely.

I'd prefer laws rather than wars, but we seem to be moving away from such ideas towards neo-barbarism.

Increasingly the powerful West is re-defining sovereignty and the idea of the nation state. The dickhead Miliband, and others, are talking about a post-Westphalian world where the concept of the sovereign nation state is increasingly being called into question. A state only really exists if it has the means to defend and control it's territory, if it doesn't and is defined as a failed state, others have the 'right' and 'duty' to step in and restore order.

I'm not optimistic about the future. I think it's going to be hell, unless...

It's very thoughtful of Bob to remind people here that dangerous and batshit crazy religious wackos are not always Muslim.

Bob, much of that part of the bible has been disproven through archaeology.

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/hector-avalos-how-archaeology-killed-biblical-history-part-1-of-2/265703079

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/hector-avalos-how-archaeology-killed-biblical-history-part-/2504436649

There are now only 5 nations on the world left without a Rothschild controlled central bank: Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya.

Mossad motto, “By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War”

The third world war is to be played out by stirring up hatred of the Muslim world for the purposes of playing the Islamic world and the political zionists off against one another. Whilst this is going on, the remaining nations would be forced to fight themselves into a state of mental, physical, spiritual and economic exhaustion.
the roth_childs plan.

Thanks for the links AMK. I am a non observant Jew so I don't believe in what I quoted as you can see from currentissues.tv where I am jRobert who edits and writes most of the website for Dr Hesham Tillawi who was born in Palestine but is now a US citizen. Unfortunately a large number of Jews in Israel and around the world believe that they are going to take back the Arabian Peninsular for G-d because he gave it to them. Then of course you have a great number of Christians who also believe the Jews must occupy the New Kindom of David. And the Christian Friends of Israel are doing their bit to save the Israeli Jews from the evil Palesinian terrorists. The Saudis want to trade in petroeuros, so perhaps we will see a "New Kingdom of David"?

Troll.

;)

This is Max Blumenthal's video on Christians United For Israel. Apparently the Anti-Christ can be identified because he's the one who brings Arab-Israeli peace. These people are nuts.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mjMRgT5o-Ig

[My apologies if this has already been flagged up but is always worth repeating]

If you are a UK voter,
here is a No.10 petition to be signed regarding Lioyds-TSB boycott of Interpal -
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/interpalaccount/

Deadline 26 Feb 2008

"The Bloodbath in Gaza: Separating the truth from the hype"

"by Mike Whitney"

"Bandits with planes ...
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood." (Pablo Neruda)"...

http://tinyurl.com/9q664t

Zionism and Herzl: The anti-semitic side of Zionism

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9024068972366598651&ei=Kj1dSdKRCpeg2wLho8xC&q=herzl+and+zionism&hl=en

I admit that when it comes to the exact history of middle eastern relations and the like im not the most informed, but in some regards that can be quite beneficial. Most of what reaches us through the media is biased in some way or another and so if we're honest most of us will know a lot of 'facts' and not the actual truth. I therefore dont think many people have the right to say they now exactly how it is and that others opinions are inferior.

I'm not in any way pro war or prejudice against any race or religion but i cant stand all the anti israel remarks that seem to come about. I dont think what they're doing is a good thing but i equally understand that they havent just gone in their for no reason. Hamas has been operating in palestine and attacking israel from within on top of other extremists over the last few years. Many countries bordering israel are against it and refuse to acknowledge its existence as a state. I wonder if she didnt have the backing of the united states and other nations invaded her would people kick up a fuss about that? Also, as far as im aware the rockets fired into israel arent being launched at military targets but just randomly at whatever is in the area.

Rather than just condemning one side i would say people need to condemn both. In my opinion you cant really say either is the aggressor as its been a tit for tat conflict for so long. Israel do overuse their force but at the same time they are being attacked on a regular basis. I just sometimes wish people wouldnt place blame on Israel because of its power and ties with the United States. The wave of anti American feeling seems to be creeping into anything to do with her allies and it just annoys me. Protest and call for a ceasefire on both parts, not for the slander of Israel.

In all honesty i cant see there being any peace in the middle east any time soon. There is too much hatred amongst religions and nations.

Craig is simply documenting what the majority of humankind knows and is beginning to voice. In reply to Kevinb who uses the worn canard accusing Craig of believing the Protocols which Craig never mentioned, anyone who denies their authenticity as an unfolding program is anti-gentile.

Dear Kardinal,

since the first King Kong movie, everything portrayed in ALL media, is:

anti black (one has to look at predator or even the klingons)
anti japanese-asian (including space scifi movies where asians are not to be trusted and "are different")
anti german (hans kraut der evil, just check indiana jones and star wars)

And guess what, doing a namecheck on ALL media, who do we find at the top ?
Bernie Madoff's chosen people clientelle

MAUAHHAHA, its just soooo pathetic.
And their standard tactic is to say "exactly the opposite"

example:

"we don't target civilians" , 5 minutes later a 500 pound bomb flattens a school
"we want peace" , and they cowardly snipe schoolgirls and reporters from 1 mile away
"we are facing racial annihilation" , yet there are more chosen people in the world than californians
"they hate us", and yet noone who is not jewish can enter your towns, in fact you kill them or stick them in jail (irony or hate?)
"holocaust" , anything bad that happens on your end, and you throw that "word you yourselves have degraded in value" around like its out of style.

pfff man, get a grip on the facts.

Hamas was created by Israel. That's a fact.

'I frequently pull up people commenting here if I feel they are being anti-Jewish or supporting terror, but I received all Interpal's messages and saw nothing at all that could be characterised as "Hateful, threatening or obscene" ... '

Well, you can't censor other people's views and complain when you're a victim of censorship yourself.

You either believe in free speech for all or you don't.

The actions and conduct of Israel during war are appalling.They signed treaty to protect population and allowing aid, but sadly are acting like ruthless tyrants and again blatantly breaking their promises.They have refused journalists in Gaza, and that alone tells you how freedom of speech is not on their agendas!They criticize their enemies saying how undemocratic and freedom haters they are and yet act the same!

The following statement is the reasoned,well thought out,fair response to the writers assertion from those that currently disseminate most of our news:
"ANTI-SEMITE!ANTI-SEMITE!ANTI-SEMITE"!

at the end innocent children who are real victims. today my heart break when watching bodies of innocent young children with bullet marks on 1) behind his head 2) 2 bullet marks on his chest 3) 1 bullet mark in his lower abdomen. can watch all thse on ALjazeera.

Question is when all these barbaric act will end! are we waiting for another modern day holocaust

There never is going to be a peace accord between Palestine and Israel. This has been going on sixty years now and the only solution to the situation has been Israel's only true goal. That is to hand the Palestinians their extinction papers! It is Israel's own version of "The Final Solution". If the Zionist leaders of Israel thought they could get away with using some of the stockpile of Vx nerve agent they have, they would gas Gaza in a god damn heartbeat! The Zionist's have ruined Israel for good, but they don't care because even a Jew who is a non-Zionist Jew is not even a human being to the Zionists!

Professor James Petras recently wrote an important article: The Politics of An Israeli Extermination Campaign: Backers, Apologists and Arms Suppliers

The whole article is available among other places at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11583

He concludes his article with pertinent observations and suggestions for action.

From the moment that the Israeli Government decided it would destroy the newly elected Hamas government and punish the democratic electorate of Gaza with starvation and murder, the entire Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the US, including the PMAJO, pulled all stops in implementing the Israeli policy. The PMAJO encompasses the fifty-two Jewish organizations with the largest membership, with the greatest financial clout and the most influential backers. The most prominent lobbyist within the PMAJO is AIPAC, which has over 100,000 members and 150 full-time operatives in Washington actively pressuring the US Congress, the White House and all administrative agencies whose policies may relate to the interests of the State of Israel. However Israeli political extends far beyond its non-governmental agencies. Over two score legislators in the Congress and over a dozen senators are committed Zionists who automatically back Israel’s policies and push for US funding and armaments for its military machine. Top officials in key administrative positions, in Treasury, Commerce and the National Security Council, senior functionaries in the Pentagon and top advisers on Middle East affairs are also life-long, fanatically committed Zionists, who consistently and unreservedly back the policies of the State of Israel.

Equally important, the majority of the largest film, print and electronic media are owned or deeply influenced by Jewish-Zionist media moguls who are committed to slanting the ‘news’ in favor of Israel. The composition and influence of the ZPC is central to understanding three main characteristics of Israel’s power: (1) Israel can commit what leading United Nations and international human rights experts have defined as ‘crimes against humanity’ with total impunity; (2) Israel can secure an unlimited supply of the most technologically advanced and destructive weapons and use them without limit on a civilian population in violation of even US Congressional restrictions and (3) scores of almost unanimous United Nations condemnations of the construction of genocidal apartheid barriers against a native population, starvation embargoes and the current extermination campaign in Gaza are always vetoed by the US representative.

Many critics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza also condemn what they call ‘the complicity’ of Washington or ‘the United States’ without clearly identifying the actual socio-political forces influencing policy-makers or the ‘dual’ political loyalties and identities of the ‘American’ politicians who have long-standing and deep allegiances to Israel. As a consequence, most critics fail to counter, protest or even identify the ideology and politics of the organized power configurations which define US complicity with Israel, who intimidate potential critics, who write and mouth the pro-Israel editorials in the mass media and who filter out any criticism, any truth…even when Israel engages in sustained bloody extermination campaigns.

The ZPC and the Israeli War of Extermination in Gaza

The ZPC played a major role in all stages of Israel’s extermination campaign against Gaza including a sustained propaganda effort. The ZPC orchestrated a massive successful campaign through the extensive network of American mass media, which it controls and influences. It fabricated an image of the Hamas administration in Gaza as a terrorist organization, which allegedly seized power through violence – totally denying its rise to power through internationally supervised, democratic elections and its defense of its electoral mandate against a US-Israeli backed PLO military takeover. The entire Zionist Jewish leadership backed Israel’s land grabs, its ghetto wall around Palestinians, the hundreds of road blocks, the Jewish settlers violently taking over Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the criminal, genocidal Israeli economic embargo on Gaza designed to systematically starve the Palestinians into submission. Throughout the two years of this Israeli extermination campaign, American Zionists played a major role in leading the servile US government at home and abroad in backing each totalitarian measure: The vast majority of local synagogues became bully-pulpits defending the starvation and degradation of 1.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza caged on all sides by deadly force and the ‘walling off’ into economically and socially devastating cantons of the 4.5 million West Bank Palestinian population under foreign occupation. The US Congress shamelessly followed the Zionist lead, backing every single criminal measure taken by the State of Israel and approving dozens of resolutions, which in most cases were entirely written by AIPAC lobbyists acting as unregistered agents of the Israeli government (contrary to US federal statute, which requires foreign agents and lobbyists to be registered as such). Israel’s demands for the most up-to-date US warplanes, including F-16s, Apache helicopter gun ships, and 1,000 pound bombs were secured by dint of effort of the AIPAC lobbyists and their clients in the US Congress. In other words, the American ZPC created the ideological cover and military instruments for Israel’s ‘total war’ against the defenseless Palestinian population. Equally important, prominent Zionist leaders in the US Congress and members of the foreign policy establishment blocked or vetoed any international criticism of Israel – securing its impunity and immunity from any of the Congressional sanctions usually enacted against criminal states. In other words, Israeli policy makers operated with the knowledge that there would be no negative economic, diplomatic and military repercussions to their launching the planned Gaza extermination campaign because they knew, in advance, that ‘their people’ were in total control of US Middle East policy to the extent of actually repeating verbatim each and every propaganda lie in defense of Israel’s total war against the entire population of Gaza.

In Defense of Israel’s War of Extermination

The Zionist-controlled US print media, in particular the New York Times and the Washington Post, systematically fabricated an account that fit perfectly with Israel’s official line defending its massive assault on Gaza: Omitting any historical account of the hundreds of Israeli armed incursions and ‘targeted’ assassinations of Palestinian leaders and officials (even in their own homes) which repeatedly violated the ‘cease fire’ agreed by Hamas and provoked its retaliation in self-defense of its people; omitting the years of an Israeli enforced starvation embargo of food and essentials that threatened the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians and led to the desperate efforts of the elected Hamas leadership to secure supplies for the people’s survival via tunnels across the Egyptian border and through missile attacks against Israel to pressure the Jewish state to negotiate an end of the criminal blockade.

The Conference of President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, and the vast majority of Jewish communal groups and congregations, gave enthusiastic and unanimous support to Israel’s total war, its extermination campaign against the captive Palestinian population of Gaza. Even as images and reports of the massive destruction, killing and wounding of over 2,500 defenseless Palestinians filtered in the mass media, not a single major Jewish organization broke ranks; only individuals and small groups protested. All the ‘Majors’ persisted in the politics of the Big Lie: the destruction of hospitals, mosques, universities, roads, apartments, pharmacies and fishing ports were all labeled ‘Hamas targets’. The systematic all-out assault by uncontested helicopter gunships against 1.5 millions civilians was erased by tendentious accounts of Hamas’ homemade missiles falling ineffectively near Israeli towns.

A close reading of the most important propaganda organ of the PMAJO, The Daily Alert (TDA), during the first 5 days of Israel’s assault, reveals the propaganda tack taken by the leadership of the pro-Israel power configuration. TDA systematically worked to achieve the following:

1.
Exaggerate the threats to Israel by the Palestinian missiles from Gaza, citing 4 Israeli deaths, while omitting any mention of the 2,500 Palestinian dead and wounded and the total destruction of their economy and living conditions (without safe water, electricity, food, cooking fuel, medicine and heat in the winter).
2.
Promote Israel’s military assault as ‘defensive’, directed at eliminating Hamas rocket attacks while omitting mention of Israel’s clearly stated purpose of destroying all civil organizations, social welfare agencies, educational facilities, medical clinics and public security institutions connected in any way with the elected Hamas government and any auxiliary agencies.
3.
Cite select statement from Israel’s allies and clients (Washington, the US media, Germany and the UK) blaming Hamas for the conflict without mentioning the vast majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly condemning Israel’s brutality.
4.
Reproduce Israeli slanders against any and all international human rights leaders and organizations that condemn the Jewish state’s policy of genocide against the native Palestinians. In this regard, TDA is the foremost ‘genocide denier’ in the United States and, perhaps outside of Israel, in the world.
5.
Repeatedly cite Israeli political and military leaders’ claims of acting ‘with restraint’, ‘safeguarding civilians’, and ‘targeting military objectives’, even in the face of reports and images of mass civilian destruction and loss of life documented in the vast majority of (non-US) Western media.
6.
Defend every Israeli bombing mission, every day, every hour, of every building, every home, and every economic, religious and educational institution in Gaza as ‘defensive’ or a ‘reprisal’, all the while quoting some of the most notorious, unconditional, perennial apologists of Israeli violence as if they were unbiased intellectuals, including Benny ‘Nuke Tehran’ Morris, Marty Peretz and Amos Oz.
7.
The Daily Alert quotes US writers, journalists and editors who praise and defend Israel’s ‘total war’ without identifying their long-standing affiliation and identification with Zionist organizations, giving the false image of a wide spectrum of opinion behind the assault. Never has even the most moderate Jewish or Gentile critic of Israel’s massive extermination campaign appeared in any issues of The Daily Alert.

The principle American Jewish organizations have bombarded the US Congress, influencing, intimidating and purchasing the craven so-called ‘representatives’ of the American people, the media and public notables with lies in defense of Israel’s total war to exterminate a people. Their public, brazen, open complicity in genocide can be considered crime against humanity: The willful promotion of acts of a state designed to destroy an entire people.

And yet these willing accomplices, these ‘willing executioners’ of state mass murder go uncontested within the US political class. One of their leading mouthpieces in the incoming Obama Administration, Chief Presidential Adviser David Axelrod, even cites an Obama campaign speech defending Israeli assaults on the people of Gaza.

Israel arrogantly repudiates all calls to end this mass murder, because Israel knows that ‘its people’ are still in control of US policy toward the Middle East and will use their power in the new president’s administration to block any condemnation of this crime.

To date the entire human rights and anti-war movements have failed to even mention, let along challenge, the most powerful propaganda and political organizations, which influence US policy and manipulate the mass media in favor of Israel’s extermination campaign. They will play no restraining role on Israel’s totalitarian policies as long as its principle US backers are free to lie, manipulate and defend each and every crime.

There is little hope for an independent US Congressional policy as long as Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza can be defended by the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and Zionist zealot) Congressman Howard Berman in the following terms: "Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week. No government in world would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of indiscriminate bombardment. The loss of innocent life is a terribly tragedy and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas." Thus Congressman Berman cynically omits the 2 years of Israel’s embargo, the daily ‘targeted’ assassinations of Palestinians, the ‘targeted’ missile attacks against civilians, the land, sea and air blockades and the blatant ‘targeted’ destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza. No government, indeed a democratically elected Islamist government, can stand by while its people are starved and murdered into submission. But according to the respected Congressmen Bermans of the world, only the lives of Jews matter, not the growing thousands of murdered, dismembered and mutilated citizens of Gaza – they do not count as people!

What is to be Done

Israel’s crimes against humanity demand a public response: social action, which will force it to cease and desist from its campaign to exterminate the people of Gaza. Because the Jewish state has assaulted a vast array of Palestinian social institutions, which resonate with those in our own society, we can and should mobilize them to condemn and boycott their counterparts in Israel:

1.
We should urge the entire academic community to denounce Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza and the total destruction of all of its science facilities. An organized boycott of Israeli universities and all academic exchanges, especially scientific, should become university policy throughout the country. Special attention should be paid to the 450 US university presidents, who in the recent past, denounced a call by British academics for a boycott and who remain silent and complicit in the face of Israel’s total physical annihilation of all ten faculties for 20,000 Palestinian university students.
2.
All American health workers, doctors, nurses, technicians, should organize and denounce Israel’s medical embargo against the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into the Gaza Strip. They must condemn Israel’s bombardment of Gaza’s Children’s Hospital, the neighborhood pharmacies and the attacks on any transport of those critically wounded Palestinian victims of its aerial and missile attacks. Medical personnel should raise the fundamental ethical issues regarding the collaboration of US medical personnel and programs with the Jewish State’s ‘total war’ policies of extermination.
3.
All citizens should demand the end of all US military aid to Israel, especially F-16 fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, missiles, 1000 pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs used by the Israeli armed forces on the civilian infrastructure of Gaza and the murder and maiming of over 2,500 Palestinians, civilians, civil servants, police and national militia. In pursuit of a cutoff of US military aid to Israel, every effort should be made to target and denounce the most forceful, aggressive and successful Zionist advocates and lobbyists who influence the elected members of the US Congress and White House on foreign military aid budgets. No progress in ending US military aid for Israel’s ethnic cleansing will succeed unless the peace movement and others appalled by Israel’s mass murder tackles the Zionist lobby head on. This includes boycotts, rebuttals and demonstrations against the AIPAC, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the other 50 leading American Jewish organizations, which initiate and secure US governmental endorsement of Israel’s extermination policies.
4.
US religious institutions should forcefully denounce Israel’s crimes against humanity, including its demolition of 5 mosques, uniting all faiths (Christian, Moslem, Buddhist) and especially reaching out to the tiny minority of rabbis and observant Jews willing to forthrightly denounce the totalitarian practices of the Israeli state.
5.
Port and long shore workers, sailors and other maritime workers and officials should boycott the handling of all trade with Israel and denounce its Navy’s violent illegal assault, in international waters, of civilian fishing boats and vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. No ships carrying Israeli products should be loaded or unloaded as long as Israel maintains its criminal military blockade of the port facilities of Gaza.
6.
Tens of millions of US citizens subject to the one-sided pro-Israel bias of the electronic and print media, the lop-sided presentations of Zionist ‘op-ed’ writers, ‘news’ reports and the self-styled Middle East experts, should demand equal time, coverage and reportage for non-Zionist specialists, analysts and commentators. We should demand the end of euphemisms and fabrications, which convert victims into aggressors and exterminators into victims.
7.
We should wage a battle of ideas everywhere (in every public forum) against the efforts by the Zionist Power Configuration to monopolize discussion over the Israeli policy of genocide, to censor, intimidate and slander critics of Israeli apartheid – as UN General Assembly President Manuel d’Escoto so aptly calls Israel’s Ghetto Wall surrounding Palestinian villages. The outpouring of public protest over Israel’s war of extermination is an enormous step forward in countering the Zionist monopoly of the mass media and encouraging the tens of millions of Americans who clearly recognize and privately despise Israel’s crimes against humanity and resent the local Zionist elite’s thuggery against those who speak out. Mass pressure on elected representative may sway some to reconsider their abject servility to their Zionist ‘contributors’ and their ‘Israel First’ Congressional colleagues.
8.
A patriotic nationwide campaign should demand that the Israel lobby, especially AIPAC, come clean and register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. This might undermine the Lobby’s appeal to American Jews, reduce its influence over Congress and open up judicial processes and investigations over its abuse of tax-exemptions, money-laundering and lead to revelations over its treasonous procurement of confidential US state documents for a foreign power. There is a powerful political and legal basis for such a denial of the ‘Lobby’s’ tax-exempt status and legality, apart from the transparent and overwhelming evidence that all Zionist organizations act as transmission belts for Israeli state policies: In the early 1950’s up to 1963, the forerunner of AIPAC was obligated to register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. More recently, an Israeli prosecutor presented evidence that the Israeli-Jewish Agency and its US counterparts were laundering billions of dollars especially for the funding of Israeli colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian land, condemned as illegal under international law. Congressional hearings, law suits and further published research would reveal the role of the Lobby as a Fifth Column for the State of Israel against the interest of the people of the United States.

Until we neutralize the pervasive power of the Zionist Power Configuration in all of its manifestations – in American public and civic life – and its deep penetration of American legislative and executive offices, we will fall short of preventing Israel from receiving the arms, funding and political backing to sustain its wars of ethnic extermination.

When told that the great majority of the world’s people are sickened and incensed by Israel’s mass murder of the citizens of Gaza, we can easily imagine the contemptuous dismissal by Israel’s top leaders, paraphrasing Joseph Stalin: How many bombers, missiles, fighter planes and powerful lobbies do they (the outraged people of the world) have?

Hi Craig

Great work. You are 100% on the money. Watch out for people sticking massive comments on here that are not relevant to your points since they are only trying to detract from your arguments. It would be reasonable to edit them.

No one seems to ask why is it only a few select nations like America / Israel / England (to name a few) are allowed to freely move about this world , slaughter and treat humans as other "evil empires" have. Yet, to this very minute you are given immunity (in your own minds) simply because rich men like what your leaders accomplish for them.

Israel is only protecting itself from terrorists muslims firing rockets into Israel. by reading the article and follow up posts, i get the impression that everybody thinks it would be OK for mexicans to fire rockets inti USA southern cities !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-t7PmonBEA&feature=channel_page

goldieshouse.piczo.com

I just caught the last five minutes of BBC World's "World Have Your Say", which consisted of, as far as I could see, four guests - a physician in Jerusalem ("we will fire back until Hamas stops firing its rockets"), an American ("I believe Hamas are terrorists"), an Israeli in London ("The Palestinians should blame Hamas") and a Palestinian ("The Palestinians should have given back some rights"). The viewers' emails came thick and fast and were dutifully read out as the show closed - from Jamaica, from Kenya, from Boston, and all of them defended Israle's "right to self defence". I fear we are approaching the Fallujah phase of the operation.

to "rich at January 8, 2009 3:19 PM"

If the US had tanks at every intersection in Mexico, had taken all the rivers, and closed all borders, and there would be "US-only country clubs 1 million hectar at a time, built without your permission, and against international law"

........ YOU CAN BET YOUR ARSE, that the mexicans would be launching rockets !!! (and sticking cactus thorns in the toilet rolls they manufacture !)

@cardinal.I dont know wether Craig belives in the authenticity of the Protocols but I do,ever since I had a chance to read about 30 yeaars ago.OK, forget the authenticity,just look at the world now and go back into history and things become clearer.
Jews are pressuring the govt to make sure anything pro humanitirian is shutdown. Mr Murray I salute your courage.

An interesting discussion. Jennifer Loewenstein's article is a beauty.

Yes, of course the western mass media, taken as a whole, is shockingly biased towards Israel. And yes, Israeli apologists love to claim the opposite. It makes it easier for them to justify shouting down their opponents.

I believe something needs to be said, which is often not said by those who are critical of Israel but keen not be be labelled 'anti-Semitic'.

It is generally accepted that Zionism - both an ideology and a movement - gave birth to the State of Israel. But what gave rise to Zionism?

We must be able to discuss Zionism's broader historical and cultural context or we are utterly hamstrung in understanding this extraordinary and dangerous phenomenon.

Critical discusssion of Judaism - in whole or in part - must be permissible for a full discussion of Zionism, Palestine etc. The very fact that this point needs to be articulated (the fact it is not too obvious to say) is a sign of how far the ideological terrain has been skewed in mainstream western discourse.

I touch on this topic in 'Speaking our Way out of Hell' and give some links for further reading. IMO the work of Israel Shamir is especially useful in helping to level the ideological playing field.

Links:
Speaking our Way out of Hell
http://sydwalker.info/blog/2009/01/07/speaking-our-way-out-of-hell/

Israel Shamir
http://www.israelshamir.net/

Barrak Obama is a coward - albeit an elected coward - but a coward none-the-less. The situation in Gaza proves this (as it proves the cowardice of many of our worlds leaders).
I pity the Israeli's. They might gain territory, more American support and dollars, they may even manage to grab more sympathy from those who can only see Israeli's as victims.
It seems these things come at the expense of Israeli humanity. Nothing is worth the cost of losing ones humanity. For that I pity these pathetic barbarians!

Peaceful: Craig has made it clear that he does not believe the Protocols to be authentic, and does not believe in a global Jewish conspiracy.

Pro-Western bias, anti-Muslim bias, pro-capital bias, lobbyists consisting of subsets of Jews, Christians and the arms industry, a slick Israeli PR campaign, and the strategic desirability of an ally within bombing range of Mid East oil are sufficient to explain US policy towards Israel. Some of these biases are weaker amongst Europeans, but they also don't want to go against the US. There is no need to infer a vast hidden conspiracy.

Add holocaust guilt to my above list, which has been ruthlessly exploited by Israel's jingoist supporters.

Syd: until WW2, the majority Jewish religious opinion was that a mass return to the Promised Land before the coming of the Jewish Messiah was against God's will. That is still the opinion of some ultra-orthodox sects, and despite significant Israeli enticements most Jews today have not chosen to emigrate to Israel.

Like all religions, Judaism is highly diverse, and individual Jews, being human, will tend to select the bits they like and ignore the bits they don't, reinterpreting their religion to fit into their preconceived biases.

Israel never observed the cease-fire to begin with. From the beginning, it announced a “special security zone” within the Gaza Strip and announced that Palestinians who enter this zone will be fired upon. In other words, Israel announced its intention that Israeli soldiers would shoot at farmers and other individuals attempting to reach their own land in direct violation of not only the cease-fire but international law.

Despite shooting incidents, including ones resulting in Palestinians getting injured, Hamas still held to the cease-fire from the time it went into effect on June 19 until Israel effectively ended the truce on November 4 by launching an airstrike into Gaza that killed five and injured several others.

Israel’s violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December is being used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but is a direct response to the Israeli attacks.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.

@Humanitarian,Thanks for clearing.Indeed,I was repying to cardinal's allegations.I believe Craig has to follow some "lines" of lournalism and can not really say much about the Protocol. See who is pressing for one war after another?Who is pressing for NWO? Refer to Henry Kissingers fresh comments.Who controls major media and finances?
People like Mr Murray and Mr,Galloway have to believe in official tales of Holocaust,911 to continue what they are doing.

The comments on this site illuminate the many and varied reasons that England, the country of my birth and family, is today little more that a powerless, unimportant little island.

London, Manchester, and on simply Muslim slums filled with lunatic fanatics.

And enough of the formerly "great" English
to write volumes of hateful drivel.

"England ... little island"

FAIL.

Dumbass.

Why is there so much criticsm of Israel for bombing Gaza and destroying rocket installations when there is none of Britain or germany or Japan for the devastation their bombing raids casued on civilian populations during the second world war?

Mentions of illegal Israeli settlements - 0 Which ones? In Gaza (nil?) In Israel?

Mentions Sderot used to be Palestinian - 0 (and when was Sderot ever meant to be Palestinian?)

You also forgot:

Hostage taking of Gilad Shalit a War Crime - 0

Firing unguided rockets into population centres with the purpose of killing civilians a War Crime - 0

Using civilians as cover from which to launch rockets and motars a War Crime (because, according to the Geneva Conventions, it puts civilians in the firing line) - 0