A view from the Jewish left

[kawilt]

Why I hope Netanyahu will be crushed tonight
US Politics
Philip Weiss on March 17, 2015 9 Comments

Netanyahu at AIPAC this morning

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I am in Israel hoping to see the end of an era, the downfall of Benjamin Netanyahu. I hope that he is crushed in the election tonight. Many who care about Palestinians want Netanyahu to be reelected. They say that things must get worse before they get better, or that no one has done more to delegitimize the state of Israel in the eyes of the world than crude Benjamin Netanyahu the king of the Jews. True. Keep him in another couple of years, and Israel will be discredited in more and more people’s eyes. I don’t support this view.

I look at everything Israeli first in terms of my interest, as an American. I want to end the Zionist captivity in the U.S. Wanting Netanyahu to stay in office is a little bit like saying, I want the neocons to stay in the thinktanks and influential posts and foment a war in Iran so that they will be fully discredited, and people will put their heads on pikes. That might be in my ideological interest, but it is nihilistic and has no appeal to me. The neocons have already done enough damage. If they aren’t discredited enough at this point, then you’re f’ing stupid. Walt and Mearsheimer’s worst charges against the Israel lobby have been proven, in the minds of reasonable people. I don’t want to win ideological battles at the price of a war that will hurt a lot of people I don’t know.

Another few years of Netanyahu will hurt a lot of people. It will hurt more Palestinians in the West Bank, force more people out of their homes in East Jerusalem, it will increase the likelihood of another Gaza war.

So you don’t think Labor Zionists will massacre Palestinians in Gaza? They have done so in the past, and the US liberal Zionists have supported them. They cheered Cast Lead at J Street. And won’t a Herzog government just give the occupation a lease on life?

I’m a progressive and I hope for reform. I believe that a Labor led government will be much more obedient to world opinion and to European opinion than Netanyahu. I was at Netanyahu’s rally in Tel Aviv the other night. I saw fascist strains before my eyes, the racist binding of nationalists around a mythic past, people who were ready to spill blood and who deny Palestinian existence, let alone humanity. I don’t think that’s a healthy thing for any society. Their defiance of world opinion is scary to me. They have nukes (as William Greider reminded Nation readers the other day). They help to confirm everything bad I have ever said about Israel, but am I in this to win arguments? No, I’m in it because I want to end the Zionist captivity in the U.S. and free the Palestinian people. And yes, I think Labor in the context of the rise of the Joint Arab List is less likely to commit massacres.

Will they give the occupation another five years and sustain the myth of the two state solution?

These are the most important questions. Gideon Levy is certainly right that a Labor Zionist victory will cause dancing in the capitals of Europe and Washington too. At J Street’s conference next week they will be delirious. It will be the second coming. They will say Israel is great again, Israeli democracy has vindicated itself. And Look at the Arab List!!! OMG. A friend says we are about to see a great sickening wave of Israel-loving in the U.S.

There is no doubt about any of this.

But I will be happy because it is necessary that anti-Zionists be engaged with liberal Zionists, and let the better argument win. That is an important phase of this struggle. And that battle will be at hand.

Look at it like this: for years the liberal Zionists have said, Give Israel a chance. Israel can change, Israelis want a two state solution. They actually want a Palestinian state. You will see, just give us a chance.

Now they will have their chance. They will be in power at last, the moment they’ve been preparing us for will be here. The neoconservatives will have been driven from Washington. Bill Kristol will be thoroughly discredited. Not just wrong on Iraq and wrong on a war of civilizations, but wrong on everything that Netanyahu has done politically in the last couple of years and months. The neoconservatives will be driven from the national stage. He has the reverse Midas touch; everything he touches has turned to shit.

This will leave the anti-Zionists to battle the liberal Zionists at last. The liberal Zionists will have to engage the side that believes in equal rights. There will be an open debate. Jeremy Ben-Ami who had big public conversations with Jeffrey Goldberg (who served in the IDF and stoked the Iraq war) and Bill Kristol (who didn’t serve in Vietnam and stoked the Iraq war) and tried to pretend we did not exist will have to take us on. Because the rightwing Zionists will be irrelevant and Jeremy Ben-Ami and Peace Now will be the new AIPAC. They will be the lobby, they will inherit the crown. And they will have to engage us because we are inside the Democratic Party base now. There will at last be a real debate between these two sides. It will be Rebecca Vilkomerson versus Jeremy Ben-Ami. Ali Abunimah versus Lara Friedman. They won’t be able to marginalize us.

I write in good faith. The liberal Zionists will have influence in Washington at last and let us see what they can do. The first question Jeremy Ben-Ami will get at his victory bath next week in D.C will be, Well how much time do you give this government to make a deal? Two years, Jeremy? I am open to hearing what they have to say about ending the conflict. Myself I am not wed to a one-state or two-state program, and though I oppose religious states, I am a tolerant person, I don’t want to tell other people how to live. But I will demand that the liberal Zionists perform. And if they come up with a solution to end the occupation and give Palestinians sovereignty and resolve the right of return in a way that is acceptable to Palestinian refugees, I can imagine not fighting them. I want this conflict to be over, and without massive bloodshed– as doubtful as that seems, given the Algeria-like materials that have been heaped up by the right wing I saw in Tel Aviv, and by all of Zionist Israel at Qalandiya crossing and the hateful wall.

I am dubious about the liberal Zionists; I don’t think they’re liberals, actually. And I will continue to support BDS because it is the only real pressure on a country that rubbishes Palestinian rights, but I think they will at last have their chance and depending what Herzog says in Washington, I might even wish him well. But they must produce.

So I can’t wait for the monster Netanyahu to be gone. Get him out of the picture, crush the Greater Israel lobby, put pressure on the settlement project, and clear the way for a debate between a “Jewish democracy” and equal rights. This will be an immensely clarifying moment. I can’t wait.

 

[flenser]

^^There's an awful lot of wishful thinking in that article. Maybe he could read it to a few Palestinians and see what they think.

 

[kawilt]

It's very close right now. I think the ultra orthodox party will will throw in with the Likud. No one wants a political solution to their Palestinian "problems". It's going to make no F,,,ing difference anyway.

 

[kawilt]

Going to interesting, to say the least, what will happen over the next year or less. The Palestinians probably always had some little flicker of hope that there could someday be some sort of an acceptable agreement between them. Now that is completely gone. When you have a people that have no hope and nothing to loose, well you know what happens. My whole concern in all of this is, and was, (including the rest of the Middle East), that more Americans are going to die.... I couldn't care less about Israel, but were going to get sucked back in more so than we are... so now what are our options?


Netanyahu won. Now what?
Israel/Palestine
Avigail Abarbanel on March 18, 2015 4 Comments

Likud party supporters react after hearing exit poll results in Tel Aviv March 17, 2015. REUTERS/Nir Elias

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So he won and I have to say I am relieved. There wll be no more endless cycles of pointless ‘negotiations’ with Israel pretending that some day it will agree to a two-state solution while continually escalating both settlement (colony) building and the maltreament of the Palestinians. Now everyone will see that the Palestinians were right all along and that Israel has never been a partner for negotiations.

There is no real political Left in Israel and if the other side got to form a government, all we would have seen is more of the same. Now we’ll see if the EU has the decency and conviction to enact proper sanctions. Then of course there is the US. The US Administration might stall for a while, but we’ll see if they have what it takes to do the right thing. Israel is no friend to the US and the sooner they realise it the better.

Israel is on a slippery slope of its own making. Get your popcorn, sit and watch. Israel is becoming more radicalised than ever before. Certainly much more than when I was growing up there. Of course I could be wrong — and I hope I am — but I think Israel’s pathological siege mentality will now become more pronounced and more evident to outsiders. Israel has for a long time been readying itself for when the time comes, to bunker down, live with austerity and give up the fancy lifestyle the country has become increasingly accustomed to in the last 20-25 years. They can do this.

Israel has always prepared itself psychologically and economically to being isolated. All that openness to the rest of the world that Israel has enjoyed increasingly in the last generation or so, and Israel’s acceptance by others, have always been seen as temporary in the eyes of most Israeli Jews. They had always expected it to end and had the mentality of ‘let’s enjoy it while it lasts and make the most of it while we can’. Fundamentally Israeli Jews believe that the world hates them because they are Jewish (in their mind it has nothing to do with colonialism or the Palestinians). So although Israel has brought its own situation upon itself, that is not how Israeli Jews see it. They believe things are ‘happening to them’ for no fault of their own. They expect isolation and have dropped all pretences to pander to the West and are behaving more in line now with their true nature. Even less radical people will become radicalised now in Israel. There will be even more propaganda and more brainwashing than ever before.

Netanyahu really does represent most Israeli Jews even though some of them do not like him. But the reasons they do not like him are not what you expect. Most Israeli Jews identify with Netanyahu’s perception and understanding of what the rest of the world is like and of the world’s relationship with Israel. After all Netanyahu is a product of Israeli society just like I was, and believe me, when you have that kind of psychology and that incredibly effective, powerful propaganda machine all around you, it is easy to believe that what you see is really how it is… Israeli Jews have always lived in a psychological ghetto and it’s that ghetto that I got out of back in 1991.

Life will get very difficult for Jews in Israel soon enough, and many with dual citizenship will abandon ship. Those who remain will be the die-hard fanatics and zealots who are dangerous because they might have the psychology of murder suicide. I believe that before it is over, things will get really bad there and extremely dangerous. Israel will become much more fanatic and extremist than ever before with a lot less inhibitions.

I am therefore worried about the Palestinians and wonder how much more of this they could possibly take and what they can expect in the next few months and years. Israel isolating itself is more dangerous for the Palestinians because world public opinion will no longer be a moderating factor on Israel’s behaviour. And believe it or not, it did have a moderating effect. What you have been seeing so far and what Palestinians have been experiencing is not yet the worst. Gaza gives you the idea of what Israel has in mind for all Palestinians.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Go Ahead, Ruin My Day
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/go-ahead-ruin-my-day.html

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party pretty well trounced the Labor Party leader, Isaac Herzog, in the race to form Israel’s next government. Netanyahu clearly made an impressive 11th-hour surge since the pre-election polls of last week. It is hard to know what is more depressing: that Netanyahu went for the gutter in the last few days in order to salvage his campaign — renouncing his own commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians and race-baiting Israeli Jews to get out and vote because, he said, too many Israeli Arabs were going to the polls — or the fact that this seemed to work.

 

[flenser]

Wonder how this will impact the US elections. I was half hoping the republicans could field someone to beat the War Goddess, but that seems unlikely now. Not that either party is less likely to start WWIII. I just didn't want to have to look at her ugly smug face while it was happening.

 

[CensoredBoardsSuck]

Wonder how this will impact the US elections. I was half hoping the republicans could field someone to beat the War Goddess, but that seems unlikely now. Not that either party is less likely to start WWIII. I just didn't want to have to look at her ugly smug face while it was happening.

Early-Onset Clinton Fatigue

Hillary is already reminding us of the notorious Clintonian chicanery of the 1990s.
By Charles Krauthammer — March 12, 2015

She burned the tapes.

Had Richard Nixon burned his tapes, he would have survived Watergate. Sure, there would have been a major firestorm, but no smoking gun. Hillary Rodham was a young staffer on the House Judiciary Committee investigating Nixon. She saw. She learned.

Today you don’t burn tapes. You delete e-mails. Hillary Clinton deleted 30,000, dismissing their destruction with the brilliantly casual: “I didn’t see any reason to keep them.” After all, they were private and personal, she assured everyone.

How do we know that? She says so. Were, say, Clinton Foundation contributions considered personal? No one asked. It’s unlikely we’ll ever know. We have to trust her.

That’s not easy. Not just because of her history — William Safire wrote in 1996 that “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our first lady . . . is a congenital liar” — but because of what she said in her emergency news conference on Tuesday. Among the things she listed as private were “personal communications from my husband and me.” Except that, as the Wall Street Journal reported the very same day, Bill Clinton’s spokesman said the former president has sent exactly two e-mails in his life, one to John Glenn, the other to U.S. troops in the Adriatic.

Mrs. Clinton’s other major declaration was that the server containing the e-mails — owned, controlled, and housed by her — “will remain private.” Meaning: No one will get near them.

This she learned not from Watergate but from Whitewater. Her husband acquiesced to the appointment of a Whitewater special prosecutor. Hillary objected strenuously. Her fear was that once someone is empowered to search, the searcher can roam freely. In the Clintons’ case, it led to impeachment because when the Lewinsky scandal broke, the special prosecutor added that to his portfolio.

Hillary was determined never to permit another open-ended investigation. Which is why she decided even before being confirmed as secretary of state that only she would control her e-mail.

Her pretense for keeping just a single private e-mail account was “convenience.” She doesn’t like to carry around two devices.

But two weeks ago she said she now carries two phones and a total of four devices. Moreover, it takes about a minute to create two accounts on one device. Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood did exactly that.

Her answers are farcical. Everyone knows she kept the e-mail private for purposes of concealment and, above all, control. For other State Department employees, their e-mails belong to the government. The records officers decide to return to you what’s personal. For Hillary Clinton, she decides.

The point of regulations is to ensure government transparency. The point of owning the server is to ensure opacity. Because she holds the e-mails, all document requests by Congress, by subpoena, by Freedom of Information Act inquiries have ultimately to go through her lawyers, who will stonewall until the end of time — or Election Day 2016, whichever comes first.

It’s a smart political calculation. Taking a few weeks of heat now — it’s only March 2015 — is far less risky than being blown up by some future e-mail discovery. Moreover, around April 1, the Clinton apologists will begin dismissing the whole story as “old news.”

But even if nothing further is found, the damage is done. After all, what is Hillary running on? Her experience and record, say her supporters.

What record? She’s had three major jobs. Secretary of state: Can you name a single achievement in four years? U.S. senator: Can you name a single achievement in eight years? First lady: her one achievement in eight years? Hillarycare, a shipwreck.

In reality, Hillary Clinton is running on two things: gender and name. Gender is not to be underestimated. It will make her the Democratic nominee. The name is equally valuable. It evokes the warm memory of the golden 1990s, a decade of peace and prosperity during our holiday from history.

Now breaking through, however, is a stark reminder of the underside of that Clinton decade: the chicanery, the sleaze, the dodging, the parsing, the wordplay. It’s a dual legacy that Hillary Clinton cannot escape and that will be a permanent drag on her candidacy.

You can feel it. It’s a recurrence of an old ailment. It was bound to set in, but not this soon. What you’re feeling now is Early Onset Clinton Fatigue. The CDC is recommending elaborate precautions. Forget it. The only known cure is Elizabeth Warren.


Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415327/early-onset-clinton-fatigue-charles-krauthammer

 

[MassTurk]

I love the political Discussions here. I may agree or disagree with the opinions expressed,I always feel I benefited more than I have given out. Kawilt, that article opened my eyes to the left in Israel that's in shambles.Fashism is poking its ugly head out in everywhere. Where there is no real opposition party to keep them honest, people in power get more and more drunk with power. It's not only Israel.Turkey also drowning in religious nationalistic fascists running the country for the last 10+ years. Also Russia. Does anyone have a clue what Putin will do next.Outlook is bleak to say the least.

 

[kawilt]

The historic night for the Arab List
By Allison Deger
A historic moment was about to take place at campaign headquarters. An assistant for Ayman Odeh, head of Joint Arab List, a coalition of four parties running on one ticket for the first time, pulled me aside in the Nazareth convention hall and said with a smile, “we got 14 seats.” It was 8pm, there were still two hours to go before precincts would shut. Yet the Nazareth rally was abuzz over early the results. Israeli media had estimated their group would win enough seats in the next Knesset to become the third largest party in the country. It would become an unprecedented feat for the 20-percent Arab-Palestinian minority population. In this election another candidate, Avigdor Liberman, campaigned that they are a fifth column, to be expelled to the West Bank. Those signs, were plastered all over the entrances of Arab villages throughout the north of Israel throughout the past three months.

New York Times published piece about Netanyahu’s racism, then rewrote all of it
By Ben Norton
On March 17, the day of the 2015 Israel election, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned Jewish Israelis that Arabs were voting “in droves.” The New York Times published an article about the incident—and more generally about Netanyahu’s bigoted, jingoistic, far-right tactics to attract more votes—titled “Netanyahu Expresses Alarm That Arab Voter Turnout Could Help Unseat Him.” Several hours later, the NYT published a rewrite of the article—a rewrite not just of parts of it, but of all of it. According the the website NewsDiffs, between 5:13 pm and 9:08 pm 100% of the article was re-written to mostly erase the focus on Netanyahu's racism.

 

[kawilt]

This is not from the Jewish left. Robert Parry, a journalist, covered the Iran Contra affair for the associated press. Although he may be leaning left in his political views. I don't know, but this hits the mark. By the way, in the news the other day they showed an Iranian brigade fighting ISIS in Tikrit. Are we going to wait till ISIS mess is cleaned up before we start bombing their nuclear facilities? Getting real interesting.

Netanyahu Unmasks Israel
March 18, 2015


Exclusive: For years, U.S. politicians have rejected allegations of Israeli racism and excused mistreatment of the Palestinians as a temporary necessity that would be fixed by a two-state solution. But Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has destroyed those arguments in his panic to keep his job, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Desperate to win reelection, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stripped off Israel’s mask and exposed the ugliness that has deformed his country over the past several decades. He abandoned the subterfuge of a two-state solution, exposed the crass racism that underlies Israeli politics, and revealed Israel’s blatant control of the U.S. Congress.

For years, these realities were known to many Americans, but – if they spoke up – they were condemned as anti-Semites, so most stayed silent to protect their careers and reputations. But – given Netanyahu’s brazen admissions – the American people may have little choice but to finally take notice of this troubling reality and demand a change in U.S. policy.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with his generals to discuss the offensive in Gaza in 2014. (Israeli government photo)

The truth is that the two-state solution has been a fiction for at least the past two decades, dying in 1995 with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But the two-state illusion still served important political purposes both for Israelis, who would pay it lip service while continuing their steady encroachment on Palestinian lands, and for U.S. politicians who could point to the mirage as an excuse not to pressure Israel too hard on its human rights violations.

Yet, whenever any U.S. official actually tried to reach that shimmering oasis of a two-state solution, it would recede into the distance. Then, the Israelis would rely on their friends and allies in the news media and politics to blame the Palestinians. Now, however, the illusion of Israel seeking such an outcome in good faith has been lost in Netanyahu’s anything-goes determination to keep his office – a case of political expediency trumping strategic expediency.

In the closing days of the campaign, Netanyahu promised that as long as he was prime minister he would block a Palestinian state and would continue building Jewish settlements on what international law recognizes as Palestinian land.

To further rally his right-wing Jewish base, Netanyahu warned that “Arab voters are streaming in huge quantities to the polling stations” – an alarm similar to racist politicians in the United States motivating the white vote with claims about loads of blacks being bused to the polls. With his crude appeal, Netanyahu undermined the longstanding denial that Zionism is a form of racism.

Even before Netanyahu’s last-minute histrionics, he had exploited his relationship with the United States to burnish his reputation as a world leader by appearing for a record-tying third time as a foreign leader addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress. (Only Great Britain’s Winston Churchill had appeared three times before Congress.)

Acting as almost a stand-in for the President of the United States, Netanyahu gave what amounted to a faux State of the Union address filled with scary tales about Iran and with dire warnings against international negotiations seeking to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program remains peaceful.

Though some Democrats boycotted the speech because it represented an unprecedented insult to an American president, the Republican majority and many Democrats gave Netanyahu more than 40 ovations as they cheered his vitriolic attacks on Iran and his denunciations of the negotiations supported by President Barack Obama.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Israel chooses the path to apartheid
It was once possible to argue that Israel's policies were not the same as apartheid because their stated goal, however imperfectly pursued, was to end the occupation. After Netanyahu's reelection, this is no longer the case.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.648006

In my quarter century as Washington correspondent for Jewish newspapers, I frequently defended Israel against charges that it had created an apartheid system in the West Bank. But this week's election, with Benjamin Netanyahu poised to serve another term with an even more hardline coalition, means that apartheid is the path Israeli voters have chosen. The inevitable results will include even greater international isolation for the Jewish state, a boost to efforts to apply boycotts and sanctions, diminished support from American Jews and endlessly intensifying cycles of violence.

 

[Docd187123]

Abdul Rahman tells journalist Max Blumenthal that Israeli troops forced the Wahadans to stay home before bombing their house.
(Photo tweeted by Max Blumenthal from his Twitter account on Aug. 27)

One of Israel's most repeated official claim during the latest war in Gaza was that Hamas was using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Now, several independent journalists, human rights organizations and the United Nations are accusing Israel of using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

On August 26, Israel and the Palestinian factions agreed to halt fighting indefinitely, putting an end to seven weeks of catastrophic destruction and loss of life in Gaza.

At least 2,137 Palestinians were killed, including 577 children, and 10,870 wounded, since Israel launched a massive offensive called Protective Edge against the 40-kilometer-long coastal strip on July 8.

This was Israel's third military operation in Gaza in the last six years. Excessive restrictions from Israel in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank aggravate conditions in areas that most of the world and the United Nations considers http://www.ohchr.org/en/countries/menaregion/pages/psindex.aspx by Israel.

Seventy-two percent of Palestinians killed in this offensive were civilians, http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_15_08_2014.pdf. About a third of the wounded children, will be forced to live with permanent disabilities. http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_05_08_2014.pdf of Gaza's total population, over 520,000 people, have been displaced of whom 279,389 were taking shelter in 83 UN-run schools.

When American journalist Max Blumenthal went back to Gaza following the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, he interviewed several of Gaza's residents. Here's his report for AlterNet.

One particular incident is worth quoting:

Mahmoud said the Israeli troops dragged him back into his house, blindfolded him and wrapped him in a blanket on the floor as they began to blow holes in the walls to use as makeshift sniper slits — what US troops in Afghanistan called “murder holes.” Then the soldiers stripped Mahmoud to his underwear, handcuffed him, slammed him against a wall and began to beat him. With an M-16 at his back, they forced him to stand in front of open windows as they hunted his fleeing neighbors, sniping directly beside him at virtually anything that moved. When they were not using him as a human shield, Mahmoud said, the soldiers left him alone in the room with an unleashed army dog who was periodically ordered to attack him.

Defence for Children International – Palestine reports the story of 17-year-old Ahmad Abu Raida from Khuza'a, who claims to have been used as a human shield. But the use of human shields during the Khuza'a Massacre were not limited to Abu Raida. His story echoes two testimonies of a 32 year-old and a 56 year-old man from Khuza'a collected by the American-Jewish news site Mondoweiss.

The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights also gathered testimonies from Gazans claiming to have been used as human shields. The man featured below explains how his father was killed:

“My father made a step forward, came closer and spoke to them in Hebrew. And said: we are a peaceful people, we love peace. He kept repeating it in Arabic several times. We love peace. My father was an elderly man and holds a Spanish traveling document. My dad made one step forward, hardly a step on the stairs. As he put his foot on the step, he was shot twice in the heart.”

Before himself and three children were taken to be used as human shields:

“They ordered us to take off our clothes and tied our hands up. They took us to one of the rooms and used us as shields, making us stand at the windows as if we were looking outside. I was at one window and three children from my family at another. The soldiers then began firing around us.”





It is important to note that using Palestinians as human shields is not a new Israeli practice. As early as 2002, both international and Israel NGOs reported of Israel's use of Palestinians as human shields. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reported of its use during the Battle of Jenin as part of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield during the Second Intifada. Israeli Human Rights NGO B'TSelem reported in 2006 of a particular incident in which six civilians, including two minors, were used as human shields in Beit Hanun:

After seizing control of the buildings, the soldiers held six residents, two of them minors, on the staircases of the two buildings, at the entrance to rooms in which the soldiers positioned themselves, for some twelve hours.

The IDF admitted to using Palestinians as human shields at least 1,200 times during the Second Intifada (2000-2005). Despite the fact that the practice was banned by the Israeli High Court in 2005, it continued during the 2008-2009 war in Gaza (Operation Cast Lead). Following the war, the UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel's use of Palestinians as human shields.

Breaking the Silence, the Israeli NGO composed of IDF soldiers and veterans collecting stories of their experiences in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/015/2009/en/8f299083-9a74-4853-860f-0563725e633a/mde150152009en.pdf, accused Israel of continuing to use Palestinians as human shields by forcing them to stay in their homes. After invading Palestinians’ homes, Israeli soldiers forced civilians, including children, to stay in one room of the house while they used the remaining rooms as military positions.

In 2013, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/us-palestinian-israel-children-idUSBRE95J0FR20130620 of “continuous use of Palestinian children as human shields and informants”.

Also see our in-depth 2014 coverage on war-battered Gaza.


http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/...sraeli-soldiers-used-gazans-as-human-shields/

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Base Appeals
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/base-appeals

 

[CensoredBoardsSuck]

No peace in our time

By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer March 19

Of all the idiocies uttered in reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning election victory, none is more ubiquitous than the idea that peace prospects are now dead because Netanyahu has declared that there will be no Palestinian state while he is Israel’s prime minister.

I have news for the lowing herds: There would be no peace and no Palestinian state if Isaac Herzog were prime minister either. Or Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert for that matter. The latter two were (non-Likud) prime ministers who offered the Palestinians their own state — with its capital in Jerusalem and every Israeli settlement in the new Palestine uprooted — only to be rudely rejected.

This is not ancient history. This is 2000, 2001 and 2008 — three astonishingly concessionary peace offers within the past 15 years. Every one rejected.

The fundamental reality remains: This generation of Palestinian leadership — from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas — has never and will never sign its name to a final peace settlement dividing the land with a Jewish state. And without that, no Israeli government of any kind will agree to a Palestinian state...



...In the interim, I understand the crushing disappointment of the Obama administration and its media poodles at the spectacular success of the foreign leader they loathe more than any other on the planet. The consequent seething and sputtering are understandable, if unseemly. Blaming Netanyahu for banishing peace, however, is mindless.

 

[kawilt]

http://toinformistoinfluence.com/about/

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU KNOW?
Check out his web site (or blog. whatever you call it) above)
This is a quote from Joe Harding:

…These experiences, and the fact that I spent nine years in Special Forces and that kind of thing, caused me to think. Then I began to wonder. How much of what we read and what we see is propaganda? Not foreign propaganda, but domestic? How much of that domestic ‘information’ is propaganda? …We are being smothered in one lie after another. All in the name of politics. It seems to me that these politicians are almost complacent with us behaving like suckling pigs, absolute ignorant morons...Free, unfettered, uncensored information exposes the lies their governments prefer to feed them, allowing their citizens to know and understand the truth. Authoritarians, like dictators, communists, fascists and many sectarian or religious governments, are said to enhance their authority over their citizens with the use of filters.”

So I ask you, do you see more lies and propaganda here than I saw in China or Russia? I would say it depends on your perspective. I see more lies aimed at us from our own politicians than I have ever seen anyplace else in the world... you tell me. Are Americans more susceptible to propaganda?-Harding

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[kawilt]

America’s Dead-End in the Middle East
March 19, 2015


Exclusive: When columnist Thomas L. Friedman suggests the U.S. should arm ISIS – thus joining the Saudi-Israeli regional war on Iran and the Shiites – it seems time to question the sanity of U.S. opinion- and policy-makers. But that is where the muddled U.S. post-9/11 strategy has led, explains Daniel Lazare.

By Daniel Lazare

“The enemy of your enemy is your enemy,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress earlier this month. But it’s not so simple. In today’s Middle East, a country can be another country’s enemy one day, its friend the next, and both simultaneously on the third.

Netanyahu is as good an example as any. His come-from-behind triumph in Tuesday’s election places him at the head of a grand anti-Iranian coalition that includes the Republicans on Capitol Hill, the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, and ISIS militants battling Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq. But Netanyahu clinched his victory by rejecting Palestinian statehood and issuing racist warnings that Israeli Arabs were going to the polls “in droves” to vote to unseat his Likud government – all examples of the pugnacious nationalism that has made him persona non grata in Sunni capitals that otherwise approve of his pro-Iranian stance.

So is Netanyahu a friend of the Sunnis, an enemy, neither, or both?

Or take Saudi Arabia. It has reportedly told Israel that it will allow its warplanes to fly over its territory to save fuel while attacking Iranian nuclear sites – provided that is, Israel makes progress in its negotiations with the Palestinians.https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/25/saudis-said-to-aid-israeli-plan-to-bomb-iran/]

But now that negotiations appear to be kaput, will the Saudis withdraw their offer or decide that bombing Iran trumps solidarity with Sunnis in Gaza and the West Bank?

The Saudis are also participating in the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIS, yet are increasingly nervous now that pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias are taking the lead in the fight to dislodge ISIS from Tikrit in Iraq. “The situation in Tikrit is a prime example of what we are worried about,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal. “Iran is taking over the country.” [Reuters, March 5, 2015]

So does Saudi Arabia favor an Iraqi victory, which will no doubt redound in favor of Iran, or is it thinking of switching sides and backing ISIS? Whom does it despise more – the Shi’ites or the Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State?

And then there is the U.S., the most confused of them all. Has Obama given neocons control of the State Department and Defense because he wishes to appease hardliners or because he wants them where he can keep a close eye on them? Whatever the answer, the results – half-liberal and half-neocon – are a study in incoherence.

In Baghdad, the administration helped force out Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last year because he was alienating Iraq’s 35-percent Sunni minority and brought in Haider al-Abadi in the hope that he would be more inclusive. Yet Al-Abadi has proved even more one-sided in his reliance on sectarian Shi’ite militias such as the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-controlled Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, or Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army (now known as the Peace Brigades). [“Militias Flock to Tikrit Ahead of Final Phase,” Stratfor, March 18, 2015.]

The U.S. says it wants Iraq to battle ISIS. But now that Iraq is doing just that in Tikrit, the U.S. is sitting on its hands because it doesn’t like the forces it has mobilized.

“We want nothing to be done that further inflames sectarian tensions in the country,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, stressed. [The Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2015]

Yet Saudi Arabia, America’s oldest ally in the Middle East, has been a source of non-stop sectarian tension since its inception. It has funded Sunnis in Lebanon; channeled millions of dollars to Sunnimujahideen in Syria, according to no less an authority than Vice President Joe Biden; crushed a Shi’ite-led democratic movement in Bahrain; suppressed Shi’ite protests in its own Eastern Province; and, according to a confidential State Department memo made public by Wikileaks, has exported “radical Sunni Salafism” into Yemen, thereby fueling Shi’ite paranoia.

If Shi’ites are on the offensive, it’s because the Sunnis went on the offensive first. So why does the U.S. call on al-Abadi to reduce sectarian tensions while saying nothing when the Saudis ramp them up?

The Obama administration is meanwhile talking with Teheran, but not with Damascus although Syria continues to battle ISIS on a daily basis. The U.S. refuses to sit down with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad although Secretary of State John Kerry recently admitted that the U.S. will “have to negotiate in the end.” [CNN, Mar. 16, 2015]

The administration is increasingly bellicose toward Moscow even though it is clear that Russia, a close ally of both Syria and Iran, will necessarily play a key role if a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East is ever to take place. Even though the U.S. says it opposes ISIS, the U.S. is hostile to nations that are fighting the Islamic State while maintaining close ties with countries that have supported it.

“Islamist or Wahhabi monarchies in the gulf like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain, they seek to model the Syrian regime after their own,” Alexey Pushkov, chairman of the State Duma’s Committee on International Affairs, declared recently, while the jihadis they fund “are the same kind of people who blow up American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.” [Al-Monitor, Feb. 18, 2015]

Quite right – yet the U.S. sides with the Arab gulf states regardless. Pushkov might also have mentioned Libya where gulf money continues to flow to Sunni mujahideen who are tearing the country apart. Although Qatar is apparently http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/qatar/11124714/Senior-Isil-commander-raised-1.25-million-from-Qatari-nationals-says-US-Treasury.html, Saudi intelligence has done its bit by teaming up with a Saudi scholar named Rabi’ al-Mudkhali to smash Ottoman religious monuments, strip local mosques of their decorations, and otherwise impose Wahhabist doctrinal austerity on a reluctant population. [The New York Review of Books, Feb. 19, 2015.]

Policies like these terrify ordinary Libyans while encouraging the most extreme Islamist elements, yet once again the U.S. says nothing. Obama battles Wahhabis in one venue, backs them in another, and then wonders why his Middle East policy is such a shambles.

Netanyahu’s election triumph is meanwhile raising such contradictions to the breaking point. Hisstatement that a Palestinian state — any Palestinian state — will serve as a platform for “radical Islamist attacks against Israel”€finally puts to rest twenty-five years of farcical peace negotiations in which the Palestinians have had to swallow one compromise after another while Israeli settlement construction continues unabated.

Netanyahu claims to oppose Sunni jihadism, but he welcomes it as a counter-force against the Shi’ites in Lebanon, Syria and Iran – and uses it as an excuse to tighten up control over the Occupied Territories. Liberals in the U.S. and Europe are losing patience with such antics.

But as long as America’s antiquated constitutional system gives conservatives added clout on Capitol Hill – the 47 senators who signed the March 9 letter to Iran represent less than 40 percent of the American people – Netanyahu couldn’t care less. Americans have rarely been more war weary. Yet neocons like Joshua Muravchik are using their leverage https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/16/a-neocon-admits-the-plan-to-bomb-iran/ regardless, and the Obama administration is increasingly helpless to stop them.

The Palestinian national movement is helpless as well. Even more thoroughly outmaneuvered then Obama, it is at the end of its rope. Violence will do no good against an Israeli military that receives $3 billion in U.S. aid per year, but peaceful protest will do no good either given deepening Israeli intransigence.

The movement will no doubt continue to push its feel-good boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign. But any effort to isolate Israel will only add to a Masada mentality that plays right into Netanyahu’s hands.

The Saudis, on the other hand, do have a few options at this point. Giving up on the Palestinians, they could ally themselves all the more firmly with Israel and do what they can to assist in an attack on Iran – an attack that would be directed nearly as much against Obama as against the Shi’ites across the Strait of Hormuz.

But the real game-changer would involve a non-aggression pact with ISIS. The more prominent the Iranian military presence in Iraq grows, the more Saudis will ask themselves why they agreed to fight ISIS in the first place.

To be sure, they turned against the Islamic State only after it began threatening “the Land of the Two Holy Mosques.” But a truce that allows a resumption of Saudi aid would benefit both sides by allowing ISIS to go back on the offensive in Tikrit and strengthening Saudi rule in Riyadh. For a Wahhabi regime ringed by fire from Lebanon to Yemen, it would be the first step toward breaking what it sees as a growing Shi’ite siege.

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is as muddleheaded as anyone in Washington, but he caught the mood perfectly when he asked: “Should we be arming ISIS?” Though claiming that “I despise ISIS as much as anyone,” he explained:

“In 2002, we destroyed Iran’s main Sunni foe in Afghanistan (the Taliban regime). In 2003, we destroyed Iran’s main Sunni foe in the Arab world (Saddam Hussein). But because we failed to erect a self-sustaining pluralistic order, which could have been a durable counterbalance to Iran, we created a vacuum in both Iraq and the wider Sunni Arab world. That is why Tehran’s proxies now indirectly dominate four Arab capitals: Beirut, Damascus, Sana, and Baghdad.”

Friedman was speaking half in jest, I suppose, but he couldn’t have laid the issue out more clearly. The more Iran takes charge in Iraq, the more sentiment will shift from opposing ISIS to employing it as a tool against the “Shi’ite crescent.” This will effectively put the U.S. on the same side as the people who brought us 9/11. But what are 3,000 civilian deaths among friends?

When empires weaken, they don’t merely withdraw. Rather, they leave behind a trail of broken promises and confusion. When American power was at its height, the U.S. provided blanket assurances to everyone and his brother. It assured Israel that it would guarantee its security, it assured the Palestinians that they would finally get a state, it assured the American people that it would “rid the world of the evil-doers” by rooting out terrorism, and it assured the Saudis that it would protect them against Iran.

But now that it is clear that it can do none of these things because it is vastly over-extended, a vacuum has opened up that all sorts of discordant force are rushing to fill. The upshot is likely to be even more chaos than we’ve already seen.

 

[CensoredBoardsSuck]

Exclusive: When columnist Thomas L. Friedman suggests the U.S. should arm ISIS – thus joining the Saudi-Israeli regional war on Iran and the Shiites – it seems time to question the sanity of U.S. opinion- and policy-makers. But that is where the muddled U.S. post-9/11 strategy has led, explains Daniel Lazare.

Your UNCITED article is from another one of your moon bats sites, Veteran's News Now.

To show how disingenuous you and your fellow moon bats are, look at the paragraph above where your author says Friedman suggested the US should arm ISIS.

Now look at what Friedman actually said:

"Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS? Or let me ask that differently: Why are we, for the third time since 9/11, fighting a war on behalf of Iran?"
​

As you can see, Veteran's News Today twisted Friedman's words in order to completely misrepresent what he said. But that's enough for you to say Veteran's Today quoted the New York Times.

​

It seems time to question YOUR sanity Kawilt. People who want the news don't want fiction, they want truth. The fact that you're more than content to wallow in fabrications and lies speaks volumes about you, but posting garbage like this is a waste of everyone's time. Pathetic.

 

[kawilt]

Your UNCITED article is from another one of your moon bats sites, Veteran's News Now.

To show how disingenuous you and your fellow moon bats are, look at the paragraph above where your author says Friedman suggested the US should arm ISIS.

Now look at what Friedman actually said:

"Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS? Or let me ask that differently: Why are we, for the third time since 9/11, fighting a war on behalf of Iran?"
​

As you can see, Veteran's News Today twisted Friedman's words in order to completely misrepresent what he said. But that's enough for you to say Veteran's Today quoted the New York Times.

​

It seems time to question YOUR sanity Kawilt. People who want the news don't want fiction, they want truth. The fact that you're more than content to wallow in fabrications and lies speaks volumes about you, but posting garbage like this is a waste of everyone's time. Pathetic.

Don't get so excited CBS, this was not from Veterans News Today, all though they may have run it, I don't know. And the Author in quoting Friedman's article did say that Friedman despised ISIS as much as anyone else, And that he supposed he was speaking in Jest about the rest of his article.. But that's not the point CBS. He pointed out the confusing and perplexing situation over there. You insist on attacking this or that journalist and the sites they may be posted on. The author is pointing out some facts, making assumptions, and asking questions. Read the articles and point out what you find, in your mind, to be false or wrong assumptions, and let me know why.
Hollering moonbeam at every thing that you don't agree with accomplishes nothing.

"So is Netanyahu a friend of the Sunnis, an enemy, neither, or both?

Or take Saudi Arabia. It has reportedly told Israel that it will allow its warplanes to fly over its territory to save fuel while attacking Iranian nuclear sites – provided that is, Israel makes progress in its negotiations with the Palestinians.https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/25/saudis-said-to-aid-israeli-plan-to-bomb-iran/]

But now that negotiations appear to be kaput, will the Saudis withdraw their offer or decide that bombing Iran trumps solidarity with Sunnis in Gaza and the West Bank?

The Saudis are also participating in the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIS, yet are increasingly nervous now that pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias are taking the lead in the fight to dislodge ISIS from Tikrit in Iraq. “The situation in Tikrit is a prime example of what we are worried about,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal. “Iran is taking over the country.” [Reuters, March 5, 2015]

So does Saudi Arabia favor an Iraqi victory, which will no doubt redound in favor of Iran, or is it thinking of switching sides and backing ISIS? Whom does it despise more – the Shi’ites or the Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State?

And then there is the U.S., the most confused of them all. Has Obama given neocons control of the State Department and Defense because he wishes to appease hardliners or because he wants them where he can keep a close eye on them? Whatever the answer, the results – half-liberal and half-neocon – are a study in incoherence."

 

[kawilt]

‘NYT’ and ‘J Street’ address power of Jewish donors behind Hillary and Hillel
US Politics
Philip Weiss on March 23, 2015 12 Comments

Eric Fingerhut, the head of Hillel International. (Photo: Shahar Azran for Hillel)





We keep talking about how Netanyahu’s stunning victory has changed everything. One thing it’s done is compelled the press to start talking about the power of conservative Jewish donors inside the Democratic Party to support Israel reflexively. That’s a theme our website has long dealt with frankly. And look who’s catching up.

In the New York Times last Thursday, Jason Horowitz reports that Hillary Clinton is between a rock and a hard place on Israel. The Democratic base is growing increasingly critical of Israel’s rightwing government. But Clinton is unable to criticize Netanyahu, and she distances herself from her own negative comments about the Israeli settlement project while she was Secretary of State– saying she was “designated yeller.” And why? She needs the money, Horowitz explains.

The overwhelming percentage of Jewish voters, and donors, are liberal and will never vote for a Republican. The progressives who are bothered by Israel’s conservative government care a lot more about other issues, such as the economy and social issues. Support for the government is strong among what people close to Mrs. Clinton estimate to be about a 10 percent sliver of wealthy and influential moderate Democratic Jews for whom Israel is a priority, and could be a reason to withhold their financial backing, if not support a Republican candidate.

I’d emphasize that when Horowitz talks about that 10 percent, those are pro-settlement Jews. They surely make up a lot more than 10 percent of donations to Democratic candidates. And they want no criticism of Israel. They are the reason that Hillary Clinton’s husband ran to George H.W. Bush’s right on the settlements in 1992, and won. They are the reason that Barack Obama railroaded a plank in the Democratic Party platform at the 2012 convention, calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel, in the face of a floor demonstration against the plank. He didn’t want to alienate Haim Saban.

Horowitz also referenced the power of Jewish donors in the Republican presidential sweepstakes.

Potential candidates appealing to right-wing Jewish Republican megadonors like Sheldon Adelson or a base of conservative evangelicals, many of whom believe Israel has a biblically rooted right to the occupied territories, did not mention the two-state solution.

The Jewish donor issue has also come up at J Street. The young people of J Street U are making the power of rightwing donors inside liberal institutions an issue. Chemi Shalevhas this report in Haaretz:

n a move that might be described as naïve and perhaps even quixotic, the refreshingly bright eyed and bushy tailed minions of J Street U, the student body of the left-wing Jewish lobby, intend to speak truth to the growing power of money over Jewish life. And while casino magnate and Netanyahu benefactor Sheldon Adelson was everyone’s favorite villain at the J Street conference on Sunday, repeatedly garnering boos whenever his name was mentioned in the general plenum and in the students’ meetings, the target of J Street U’s first skirmish is Eric Fingerhut, the President and CEO of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in America – or rather, Fingerhut’s donors. They are, as J Street U Director Sarah Turbow told Haaretz, “a microcosm” of “right wing donors that have a stranglehold over American Jewish institutions.”…

Fingerhut refused to speak at J Street, saying he objected to the presence of Saeb Erekat. The J Street youth leaders say this was a false cover story. “Wealthy donors” got to him.

“So what happened?” as J Street U’s hipsterish President Benjy Cannon asked a packed and excited crowd of 1100 students at Washington’s Convention Center. “It’s not hard to imagine: Wealthy donors and other stakeholders called him up and were so outraged that Eric would speak at a J Street Conference that he was forced to withdraw. Apparently, they were terrified of our politics.”

And why is that important? “These donors, the very same types who stop Hillel engaging with us, are putting Israel, Palestine and their prospects for peace in even graver danger.”

Shalev then gets to the heart of the Hillary Clinton issue too.

Cannon said that despite the Jewish community’s strong objections to settlements, its communal organs refuse to criticize the Israeli government, usually for fear of angering their right-wing benefactors. “And what does the administration learn from that? That the American Jewish community does not object to settlements.”

J Street U’s Northwest representative, Gabriel Erbs, who studies at Oregon’s Portland State University, told the crowd about his hometown precedent that will hopefully guide the group’s campaign against big Jewish money in the future.

“Big Jewish money,” supporting the settlement project– I wondered when I’d see those words in the mainstream press, without anyone saying that’s anti-Semitic. And these donors are trumping public opinion? This is actually a story about corruption. Sarah Turbow told Shalev that J Street U has challenged Hillel to meet with its donors and confront them directly. That’s fascinating; the civil war inside Jewish organizational life has begun. It’s great to see liberal Zionists (and surely some non-Zionists) taking on the Israel lobby. I believe it’s all too late for the Jewish state, but it’s very good for the American one