LET THE LIGHT SHINE ON THOSE WHO WANT NUCLEAR WAR AND WHO MASSACRE THE PEOPLE OF GAZA, GO IN PEACE

The Palestinian people have the rights all people have, or they should. Israel has decided otherwise. Today as I write the people of Gaza are in dire straights facing starvation, the denial of medical care and the termination of their water and energy resources.

Without the support of the United States this siege of more than a million people would not be happening and without the support of American clergy and congregations this would not be happening.

We need to demand that the clergy of every religion, denomination and faith based group step up and defend the right of the Palestinian people to food, water and the basic human rights all human beings deserve. Basta Ya! End the Siege of Palestine!

We must go in peace to all persons of faith to testify for and on behalf of the Palestinians. Their lives are in the hands of America's faithful and they must know the truth. They must know the truth if they say they are Christian. They must know the truth about the Palesinians if they are Jewish. and they must know the truth whatever their religion whether it be Abrahamic or not, denomination or faith based organization.

In particular those who have fooled themselves or allowed themselves to be misled in the religious communities need to be engaged in constructive dialogue and representation. Collective punishment is always a crime, isn't it?

The collective torture, starvation, deprivation, imprisonment, brutalization and murder of more than a million people is wrong and it is wrong for our clergy and tens of millions of their parishoners to silently proceed about their endless musings of the ancient texts when our brothers and sisters are on the verge of death. Let the light shine on those murdering the Palestinians and let the people of America see the truth at last.

We all are Palestinians!

OPPOSE THE INVASION OF GAZA WITH MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

The criminal siege of Gaza has now been followed by a new Israeli conducted Mumbai-like massacre including the murder of the Chief of Police in Gaza. The head of one anti-terror police agency was murdered by the ten terrorists in Mumbai earlier in the month. As I write the morning of December 27th the Israelis have murdered between one hundred and two hundred Palestinians but have required tens of millions of dollars and American F-16s to carry out their massacre.

Israel has declared this is part of a full scale invasion of Gaza and an effort to destroy Hamas, the elected government of Gaza. Meanwhile many Israelis want to expel the Palestinians from all of Palestine in much the way that they expelled Palestinians or killed them during the much misrepresented founding of Israel.

Mass civil disobedience should challenge the pro-war, pro-invasion constituency here in the United States especially those organizations and churches that support this mass murder of Palestinians and who have remained silent during the genocidal starvation of the entire people of Gaza.

Nonviolence is crucial because the Zionist aggressors want to escalate the violence. Nonviolence, resoluteness and educational efforts are crucial.

The Israeli-American strategy is to subjugate and/or expel the Palestinian people from all of Palestine. It may also include a plot to foment nuclear war between Pakistan and India. Israel and India are now military allies. Ironically the current Israeli regime and Al Qaeda may both want these terrible crimes against humanity as part of their own military strategies. Both Al Qaeda and American/Israeli imperialist aggression must be condemned by nonviolent educational and protest efforts. Immediately!

GO IN PEACE WITH THE LIGHT OF UNDERSTANDING AND KNOWLEDGE TO ALL PLACES OF WORSHIP TO DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF THE PALESTINIANS

The Palestinian people have the rights all people have, or they should. Israel has decided otherwise. Today as I write the people of Gaza are in dire straights facing starvation, the denial of medical care and the termination of their water and energy resources.

Without the support of the United States this siege of more than a million people would not be happening and without the support of American clergy and congregations this would not be happening.

We need to demand that the clergy of every religion, denomination and faith based group step up and defend the right of the Palestinian people to food, water and the basic human rights all human beings deserve. Basta Ya! End the Siege of Palestine!

We must go in peace to all persons of faith to testify for and on behalf of the Palestinians. Their lives are in the hands of America's faithful and they must know the truth. They must know the truth if they say they are Christian. They must know the truth about the Palesinians if they are Jewish. and they must know the truth whatever their religion whether it be Abrahamic or not, denomination or faith based organization.

In particular those who have fooled themselves or allowed themselves to be misled in the religious communities need to be engaged in constructive dialogue and representation. Collective punishment is always a crime, isn't it?

The collective torture, starvation, deprivation, imprisonment, brutalization and murder of more than a million people is wrong and it is wrong for our clergy and tens of millions of their parishoners to silently proceed about their endless musings of the ancient texts when our brothers and sisters are on the verge of death. Let the light shine on those murdering the Palestinians and let the people of America see the truth at last.

We all are Palestinians!

WHY AN ISRAELI OFFENSIVE AGAINST GAZA?

Why is Israel attacking Gaza with more ferocity than before, seeking to join those who throughout the ages who have persecuted and starved millions as a matter of state policy. Is it to set the precedent of Israeli impunity as we transition to a new President? Is this the way it is and always must be? Must Israel continue its endless efforts to drive the Palestinians from Palestine and to prevent their return to their homeland?

It seems to me that Israel continues to use the accusation of terrorism regarding relatively minor Palestinian attacks to justify the persecutions, starvation and even murder of the Palestinian people at large. This is not justice and if Obama supports this siege of Palestine he too is a criminal because without United States support this siege would not be happening.

If the Palestinians have any friends I don't see them in evidence. It is as if the whole world has written them off. This doesn't mean that Israel will prevail in its efforts to create an even larger Israel. Ultimately the Jews and Palestinians will sit down and the same table and wonder why peace took so long to come to. Israeli intransigence and hostility to the Palestinian people is the fundamental obstacle to peace.

Currently the parties could easily agree on a just peace. It isn't clear that the Israeli's will ever be ready for peace. They basically demand peace before their is a peace, a tall order and one they work tirelessly to make impossible. Too many of them are just unwilling to abandon the idea of taking every square inch of Palestine. Religious delusions rule despite widespread rejection of the fundamentalist notions that animate
aggressive settlers and politicians alike.

HOPEFULLY OBAMA IS NOT ANTI PALESTINIAN

One of the crucial moral issues in progressive politics is the question of Israel and Zionism and the situation in Palestine/Israel today. Currently it seems to me that there are progressive ideas about Palestine and Israel that allow for either one united secular state or two viable unconquered states at peace with one another.

The Palestinians continue to be terribly oppressed and abused in Gaza and the West Bank. The sieges of Gaza and other Palestinian areas are crimes against humanity as well as war crimes. Siege has long been condemned by international law. Nor is siege an appropriate response to the asymmetrical attacks on Israeli territory because the scale of those attacks is quite limited and ineffective although sometimes quite deadly, admittedly.

I think the Israelis and Palestinians should become one family, to put all the so called values that supposedly divide aside and to adopt one another into each others families. A religion that divides the oppressed of yesterday from the oppressed of today is an idolatry. Many already see that racial purity and this or that piece of territory is not what is crucial. A real, just peace among the two and several peoples is what is holy, not the land, not the land. Remember the golden calf when Moses came down from the mountain with the law. Call it what you may, the ten commandments or the one thousand commandments. It was the law and it is what so many who want more land say they are following.

Negotiations with Hamas have already ratcheted down the missile attacks on Israel. Isn't it possible to secure a peace agreement between Israel and all Palestinian factions and government officials.

It is time for Israel to stop trying to social engineer the future of the Palestinian people. Let's see that genius applied for the embrace of both parties, both sides, one by the other so that everyone succeeds. Of course the Israeli extremists need to be coaxed into a peaceful frame of mind. This may be a great challenge but the nonviolent struggle with, not against, these settlers by Israeli society at large could be a model for struggling with and working out a just, stable peace with Palestinians.

Consider the practicality of peace in a world of crisis. Who has not betrayed the Palestinians and now they are divided into two camps. Lets have an honest and transparent foreign policy and domestic policy towards Israel. How can Israel protect itself from the threats of the violent extremists who oppose accommodation, peace and a fraternal relationship with this close and indigenous people?

Presumably those who are for peace should not be intimidated if some are martyred in the cause of peace. Yitzak Rabin should not be the only Israeli willing to die for peace and as a peaceful Israeli leader. So some extremists may kill other Israeli leaders for peace. If so they could have other leaders ready to go, and another replacement team several replacements deep ready to go on short notice. It sucks to be in this sort of position but what is the point of dying for endless war or killing for endless war? Peace is better for everything and everyone as long as it is a just peace.

It seems that if violence trends downward that this is a good sign and that military brutality may not be the best input into the "peace process" at that time.

EDUCATE FRIENDS OF ISRAEL ABOUT THE FACTS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING SINCE 1948

I just heard a fifteen minute lecture from a fellow named Pappe? Anyway he was recounting the real history of Palestine and Israel and he very explicitly told how Ben Gurion and ten other Zionist leaders planned the ethnic cleansing of what they imagined would be, and now essentially are, Israeli territories as we know them today.

He told, very briefly, how about three quarters of a million Palestineans were cleaned out ot Palestine by a well orchestrated campaign of terror and forced evacuation in 1948. Amazingly, the world said nothing! And this sort of vicious ethnic cleansing has been going on the last sixty years. Sixty years of ethnic cleansing.

Later in his life Ben Gurion visited northern Israel and wrote in his diary how great it was but for one thing, that there were still Palestinians who had not been removed. Ben Gurion, the premier founder of the Israeli experiment was a hard core racist. He hated Arabs and Palestinians. Is this why so many enablers of Zionism don't like the term apartheid to be used vis-a-vis Israel? Is it because these racists posing as the defenders of all Jews and all Judaism really want to get rid of the Palestinians all together?

Certainly that is the endless policy of Israel for sixty years, the ethnic cleansing of the territories they call Israel proper and the colonization of the few remaining Palestinian territories. Ethnic cleansing, forced expatriation, purging Israel and the territories under its military and economic domination of all indigenous people. That is the stinking truth about Israel that must be both exposed and condemned as a matter of basic human decency.

Only when the Zionists confront their own racist ideology will peace between them and their neighbors be possible. This means they must recognize Palestinians as human beings.

Congratulations to All Parties!

Now see how easy it is to not be a pirate! Hopefully this is a sign of new flexibility and a determination to allow free access to Gaza.

There were some Palestinians on the ships, weren't there? That is to say I hope this isn't just more of that racist Zionist crap about allowing for European and non-Palestinian rights then denying them to Palestinians.

Is it hope or just a wise avoidance of a propaganda disaster?

WILL ISRAEL COMMIT ACTS OF PIRACY AGAIN?

Scores of human rights activists are putting their lives on the line as they seek to sail two ships from Cyprus to Gaza. Israel has threatened them with military attack.

That is piracy, often condemned as such when committed by other actors such as off the coast of Somalia.

However Israel's blockade of Gaza by land, sea and air is regarded as an exception to the rule at least by
a majority of American Zionists.

Of course a number of Israeli activists are involved as are some American Jews. They are putting their lives on the line for peace, justice and an end to the blockade of Gaza.

Iran, Israel and the United States Have a HIstory of Secretive Collaboration

As the United States under the leader of its idiot President and puppetmaster
Dicke Cheney appears to be bent on another act of military aggression, open war against Iran.

Remember the good ole days when Reagan and the Ayatollah Khomeini could work together to give arms to the contras in Nicaragua so they could mount a campaign of terrorism against the Sandinista regime then in power? Of course it was all hush hush. I think it tells you something about the Iranian regime that they may have provided these weapons knowing that they were going to these terrorist instruments of United States imperialism, the butcher contras, the terrorist contras.

Yes,the Iranian revolutions tend to have practical goals and yet it is motivated by religious nonsense. So I guess they didn't give a damn about the Sandinistas.
People should be grilling the Iranian revolutionaries about this. What do they say about this collaboration with empire and the betrayal of others fighting that same empire simply to achieve national independence in Nicaragua.

What did they give Iran, missiles to fight Iraq. And who started the war against Iran? Saddam Hussein under the tutelage and with the support of the United states of America. Freedom lovers to the end, eh? So the United States sought to benefit from both sides in this war it instigated! There is not simply blood upon the hands of the imperialist, their hands are nothing but blood. Someone, please say that better, and better and better.

Stop entertaining yourself, stop intoxicating yourself with ideas of slavery and submission. Look at what is happening in the real world. End the siege of your mind! Break out! Think out!

History is now, history is now! Everything from the past is now! The consequences of these imperialist invasions, interventions, occupations and conquests are now. They are real. History is liberating. Don't believe the ahistorical lies of the empire or those who imagine that the empire is necessary and inevitable. They are slaves of the system. They have not yet overthown the bourgeois ideas, the capitalist ideas, the ideas of serving the master, racism, sexism, all the crap that
weighs us down with the unnecessary tradition which is basically reactionary crap, at least a majority of it. So you have to work on overthowing that in your own mind before you can proceed with any rationality.

AS GAZANS STRUGGLE FOR LIFE PBS AIRS TALES OF JEWISH PERSECUTION

I just have to say that once again, as the Palestinians are horribly persecuted, tortured and abused by Israel, we see almost none of that in our so-called news and now a series is it on PBS about the persecution of Jews.

I actually like the program about Vilnus (sp?) and its role as a sort of de facto Yiddish capital but my critique is not of the programs per se but the focus of PBS as real people in the real world today
face dire problems while the Vilnus stuff happened more than six decades ago. Of course it does open the door to comparing the resistance of the Vilnus Jews and that of the Palestinians today.

It looked, sort of like a mini-Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is a monument to the human will for liberty and liberation. Too bad we as humans have to be so pushed to such extremities to rebel for liberty, justice and liberation.

Let us take this occasion to remember that it was European Christianity that tried to destroy the Jews, not anyone in Palestine!

Israeli Hypocrisy About Right of Return Exposes Their Lack of Moral Backbone

A year or two ago an old college friend of mine died. He was Palestinian. He died in his fifties and I don't believe he was ever able to return to Palestine. Like most Palestinians he wanted a free Palestine. It didn't matter. He lived his life and died a homeless person. Just one of millions of Palestinians, you know the folks that every Zionist used to insist didn't even exist.

It was a period when the Palestinians struggled to be recognized with an armed struggle because decades of peaceful means of gaining their rights had failed. A pro Israeli lobby and U. S. Imperialism dismissed this struggle of the Palestinians as nothing but terrorism for many more decades, even until today.

Of course millions of affluent and privileged Jews travel to and from Israel without restriction. The overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews have no historic roots in Palestine during the last few centuries. Of course, some Zionists claim that God gave them this land millenia ago. So a religious myth justifies (in the minds of the true believer) a Jewish right of return while American weapons and money have guaranteed to the settlers "rights" that are denied the aboriginal population.

Palestinians are not allowed to live in most of Palestine and their lives are made a living hell if they live in the occupied territories. American protection and sponsorship of Israeli crimes makes this so easy. Israel retains the "right" to wipe out and expel the native Palestinians in order to deny the real natives of Palestine a right of return.

Where are rights for the Palestinians? Where is their "right of return"? Most indigenous Palestinians have historic roots in Palestine that go back centuries. The European invaders of the Jewish faith proclaim their "right to return" to the land they seized from the Palestinians only a few decades ago. The Rabbis and Israeli politicians all too often do not believe that Palestinians should have the same rights they reserve for Jews, the right to return to their homeland. Different rights for different folks based upon their race and bloodline, sounds like apartheid to me!

In short, we are supposed to believe that Jews from the Bronx or Europe have a right to return to Israel despite a lack of political, cultural or historical continuity in that area for thousands of years!

I don't have a right to steal your house because I have no house. The Israelis say Palestine is their house, because god told them so thousands of years ago, but everyone knows it is a stolen house. It is just using a little knowledge about the ancient past to justify modern day thievery.
After all their were many different Jewish states, not just an Israel. Prophetic arguments justifying the oppression of the Palestinians are simply expressions of personal or group prejudice masked as faith. This is not unique to the Jews.

Maybe the Israelis will get to keep the house they stole but can't they at least let the original owners come live there too? The Rabbis and rank and file Jews are not being confronted with these questions. They don't want to think about it, but we all might benefit if they did.

The European invaders summarized their colonization of Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land." Palestinians have had to wage a tireless struggle even to be recognized by the world community. The United States and Israel alone ignore Palestinians to this day.

Of course the Palestinians deserve our support and worldwide coordinated events could focus on the demand that Palestinians be guaranteed their human rights by their occupiers, the Israelis. The dates of these educational events and rallies could correspond to historic dates in the Palestinian struggle as well as historic events during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

In a sense Gaza is a new Warsaw Ghetto. In fact, those who compare todays Zionist tyranny with that of the white supremacists in South Africa should also consider examining possible similarities between Israeli policies directed against the Palestinians and Nazi policies directed at the Jews, Gypsies, gays, etc..

Didn't the Nazis wall off the Ghetto? Isn't Israel walling off the West Bank and Gaza? Were not the Jews a captive population in the Ghetto? Are not the Palestinians a captive population in places like Gaza and bantustan-like patches of Palestinian territory on the West Bank?

Wasn't electricity and just about all goods and commerce into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto stopped by the Nazis? Isn't that what is happening in Gaza today? A handful of the Warsaw Ghetto prisoners fought the Nazis. Today a handful of Palestinians fight the Israelis. Didn't the glorious rebels of the Warsaw Ghetto seek revenge and justice at the point of a gun even though their struggle was a short one? Today the Israeli and American leaders tend to label similar efforts by the Palestinian prisoners of Gaza as despicable "terrorism".

Of course it may be objected that while the Nazis created the Ghetto to exterminate Jews that the Israelis have not created Palestinian ghettos to exterminate Palestinians, just to exterminate Palestine. I agree that this is an important difference, but it may not be as significant as we would like to believe. If Israel ever uses its vast arsenal of nuclear destruction millions could be killed within an hour's time. Peace with and justice for the Palestinians seems like a much more practical idea and a better moral choice. You don't have to be a special religious teacher to see that.

Real progressives, real liberationists, real leftists, real liberals and real revolutionaries must stand with the oppressed and dispossessed regardless of their imperfections. Many Jews, of course, will agree with most if not all of what I am saying here. Certainly oppressors are more imperfect and more guilty of wrong conduct than the oppressed. This is particularly obvious as more than a million Palestinians desperately try to survive the Israeli strangulation of Gaza.

Whatever the liberation struggle, when it comes to personal and group sacrifice it is better to die for the people than to live for the oppressor and the oppressor classes, oppressor castes, oppressive groups and exploitative individuals.

I call this hierarchy of oppressions explooitation :).

When the oppressed struggle to be free who are we to do anything but do our best to stand with their just demands such as the Palestinian right to return. Of course the human rights of the Palestinians and of all of us must be struggled for wherever they are not guaranteed. The struggle for human rights in Palestine is a just struggle, no? Oui!

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

Remember all the press President Reagan got when he said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall referring to the t Berlin Wall way back in the eighties? Well, I guess the people tore that wall
down, not Gorbachev. The same thing is happening to the wall meant to imprison the Palestinean
people. In this case, Israel seeks to implement crimes against humanity using the justification that
only collective punishment can bring them the end to Palestinean armed resistance. As always there is a silly arguement but the genocide is obvious, the right to rebel clear. I have simply put
this little article from Al Jazeera with Norman Finkelstein saying something of the same thing.

NEWS MIDDLE EAST There are no main images. Interview: Tear down the walls By Saeed Taji Al-Farouky Jewish academic says Palestinians must tear down separation wall Norman Finkelstein is one of Israel's fiercest academic critics and a vocal supporter of the Palestinians. He is urging the Palestinians to break down the "segregation" wall built across the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein was an assistant professor of Political Science at Chicago's De Paul University for six years until he was denied tenure there in June 2007. Known for his critical investigations of other scholarly works on Israel - notably his ongoing feud with Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and Israel supporter - he has published six books on the occupation and the issue of Palestine. Finkelstein's works have earned him both praise and condemnation. Finkelstein is working on his seventh book - A Farewell to Israel: The Coming Break-up of American Zionism - postulating that American Jewish support for Israel is beginning to wane. Currently on an international speaking tour of Venezuela, The Netherlands, Turkey, Lebanon, Japan, the UK, Canada and the US, Finkelstein spoke with Al Jazeera about the siege on Gaza and what options Palestinians there faced. Al Jazeera: Has there been much controversy so far on your speaking tour? Finkelstein: There are some die-hards occasionally in the US but that has pretty much ended. Israel's case [for occupation] has collapsed, it's not just weak, it has collapsed. You could see in the audience [at Manchester University] there was a row of hostile people who were anxious to hear me finally come to the end, but when I was done they had no objections because you can't argue the case any more. I think people know too much. So where does that leave the Palestinians? The suggestion has to be, as I said earlier, God helps those who help themselves. The Palestinians have to find a way to act on their own, and I think what happened in late January [the destruction of part of the wall separating Gaza from Egypt] is a good sign. That is exactly what they should be doing in the West Bank. One million Palestinians armed with picks and hammers should go to that wall and say "The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said this wall has to be dismantled. We are implementing the ICJ decision. We are knocking down the wall." Does that mean you encourage violence? What happened in Gaza last month was not violence. I advocate what international law allows - that people under occupation can resist occupation using means which are legal under that law. This includes violence so long as you are targeting combatants and not civilians. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote in their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy in 2007 that Israel has a huge amount of influence over Washington policy. Does the Israel lobby control Washington, or is it the other way around? I don't really agree with Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. On broad regional issues, such as Iran, Iraq and so forth, America is calling the shots because they are fundamental American interests. These are tough people – Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense and Dick Cheny, the vice-president - and no Israel lobby is going to tell them what to do. But when it is Israeli issues like the occupation and settlements, in that regard I think it is the lobby. George Bush, the US president, has called Iran and North Korea "rogue states". Do you consider Israel a "rogue state"? It is more than a rogue state. It is a lunatic state. The only country in the world where the population overwhelmingly supports an attack on Iran is Israel - 78 per cent want to attack Iran. The state has gone berserk. The whole world is yearning for peace, and Israel is constantly yearning for war. You have been called an extremist, a neo-Nazi, an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier. What I have to say is not particularly radical. I have said pretty much what the whole international community has said for the past 30 years. When people actually hear what I say, it's not particularly extreme. One of the most serious claims against you mentions your invitation to Tehran's Review of the Holocaust conference in December 2006. I said I would appear under three conditions. Number one, you have to provide me with a list of who the invitees are because I want to be able to judge if this is a serious conference or if it is a circus. Number two, you have to give me serious time to present my point if view, and number three, you have to let me speak at the universities to the students. They rejected all three conditions so I rejected the invitation. What about the claim that you testified as an expert witness for Hamas in a 2006 US court trial? In Chicago, there was a person who was indicted on some lunatic terrorism charge and I was called in as an expert witness on what Hamas' record was in Gaza. That's all I was called in for. I would certainly support them of course, what's wrong with Hamas? They're the elected government of Palestine. Who cares what they are considered, the people elected them. Are you deliberately trying to provoke a reaction with your views? No, I have no desire to provoke, I want to win this cause [for Palestine]. I think we can really win it; that's one of the reasons I'm on this tour. I think public opinion about Israel is now in freefall. I think it is going to be even worse now because nobody is going to defend Israel when the Palestinians blow up the wall. Source: Al Jazeera Related: Election power of the Israel lobby (30 Dec 2007) Hamas unfazed by Israeli power cuts (09 Feb 2008) Gaza Diary: Not a life for children (07 Feb 2008) Israel launches deadly Gaza raids (07 Feb 2008) A harsh light on America's Israel lobby (13 Apr 2006) Tools: Email article Print article Send your feedback Top news Beirut on alert over rallies US imposes new sanctions on Syria US senate backs waterboarding ban Iraq parliament approves key budget Bush signs off on stimulus plan MIDDLE EAST news Beirut on alert over rallies US imposes new sanctions on Syria Iraq parliament approves key budget Kidnapped interpreter freed in Iraq Israeli generals oppose checkpoints