Israel vai cair em cinco anos?

fonte:PC

Will Israel Fall in Five Years?

By Jeff Gates

'The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.' -- Albert Einstein, signatory to Letters to the Editor, New York Times, December 4, 1948.

Online reports of a study by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency cast doubt over the survival of Israel beyond the next two decades. Regardless of the validity of the report, with what is now known about the costs in blood and treasure that the U.S.-Israeli relationship has imposed on the U.S., its key ally, Israel could fall within five years.

For more than six decades, American support for Israel has relied on the ability of pro-Israelis to dominate U.S. media, enabling Tel Aviv to put a positive spin on even its most extreme behavior, including its recent massacre in Gaza. With access to online news coverage, that Zionist bias is becoming apparent and the real facts transparent.

Though Americans seldom show a strong interest in foreign affairs, that too is changing. While few of them grasp the subtleties of one-state versus two-state proposals, many have seen online the impact of a murderous Israeli assault on Palestinian civilians that was timed between Christmas and the inauguration of Barack Obama.

The leaders of the 9-11 Commission acknowledged that its members would not allow testimony on the impetus for that attack. Yet the report confirmed that the key motivation was the U.S.-Israeli relationship. With access to online news, more Americans are asking why they are forced to support a colonial Apartheid government.

With the election of yet another extremist Israeli government led by yet another right-wing Likud Party stalwart, it's clear that Tel Aviv intends to preclude peace by continuing to build more settlements. With that stance, Israel not only pushed Barack Obama into a corner, it also forced U.S. national security to make a key strategic decision: Is Israel a credible partner for peace? By any criteria, the answer must be a resounding "No."

That inescapable conclusion leaves Americans with few options. After all, the U.S. is largely responsible for the legitimacy granted this extremist enclave in May 1948 when Harry Truman, a Christian-Zionist president, extended nation-state recognition. He did so over the strenuous objections of Secretary of State George Marshall, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the fledgling CIA and the bulk of the U.S. diplomatic corps.

By December 1948, a distinguished contingent of Jewish scientists and intellectuals warned in The New York Times that those leading the effort to establish a Jewish state bear "the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party." Albert Einstein joined concerned Jews who cautioned Americans "not to support this latest manifestation of fascism."

Only in the past few weeks has the momentum emerged to subject Israel to the same external pressures that were brought to bear against Apartheid South Africa. After more than six decades of consistent behavior - and clear evidence of no intent to change - activists coalesced around the need to boycott Israeli exports, divest from Israeli firms and impose sanctions against Israel akin to those it seeks against others.

The focal point for peace in the Middle East should not be those nations that do not have nuclear weapons but the one nation that does. Absent external pressure, Israeli behavior will not change. Absent pressure - and likely force - applied by the U.S. as the nation that has long enabled this behavior, Colonial Zionism will continue to pose a threat to peace.

Occupying powers are not known to voluntarily relinquish lands they occupy. Likewise for their readiness to surrender nuclear arms.

The key issue need no longer be a subject of endless debate. There must be a one-state solution consistent with democratic principles of full equality. Informed Americans are no longer willing to support a theocratic state in which full citizenship is limited to those deemed "Jewish" (whatever that means). If local birth rates suggest an eventual end to the "Jewish state," then so be it. Why wait two decades when this nightmare can be drawn to a close in less than five years?

Forget about a return to pre-1967 borders, instead return to pre-1948 borders. Designate Jerusalem an international city under U.N. protection and dispatch multi-national forces to maintain peace. Palestinians should have a right of return, including the ability to recover properties from which they fled under an assault by Jewish terrorists. If Colonial Zionists (aka settlers) want compensation for "their" property, let them seek restitution from the Diaspora that encouraged their unlawful occupation.

Those who consider themselves "Jewish" can remain as part of an inclusive democracy. Or they can depart. Americans must consider how many of these extremists it wants to welcome to a nation already straining under an immigration burden. A reported 500,000 Israelis hold U.S. passports. With more than 300,000 dual-citizens residing in California alone, that state may require a referendum on just how many Zionists it wishes to receive.

Likewise for Russia from which many "Jews" fled, including some 300,000 Russian émigrés who support the Likud Party but have yet to be certified as Jewish.

Zionists originally saw Argentina and Uganda as desirable venues to establish their enterprise. They may wish to apply there for resettlement. The question of why Palestinians (or Californians) should bear the cost of a problem created by Europeans six decades ago is one that Tel Aviv has yet to answer except by citing ancient claims that it insists should take precedence over two millennia of Palestinian residence.

By withdrawing Israel's status as a legitimate "state," those Jews long appalled by the behavior of this extremist enclave can no longer be portrayed as guilty by association. That long overdue shift in status is certain to benefit the broader Jewish community. By shutting down Israel's nuclear arms program and destroying its nuclear arsenal, the world can be spared the key impetus now driving a nuclear arms race in the region.

Unless pro-Israelis can create another crisis by inducing an invasion of Iran (or a race war), Americans will soon realize that only one "state" had the means, motivation, opportunity and stable nation-state intelligence required to fix the intelligence that led the U.S. to invade Iraq consistent with the expansionist goals of Colonial Zionism.

Intelligence now working its way to transparency will soon confirm that, but for Zionists within the U.S. government, 9-11 could have been prevented and war in Iraq avoided. To date, this extremism has been enabled by a series of weak U.S. presidents. For the U.S. to restore its credibility requires that it not only lead the effort to shut down the Zionist enterprise but that it also share responsibility for its behavior to date.

- Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide. Gates' latest book is ‘Guilt By Association - How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War’ (2008). His previous books include ‘Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street’ and ‘The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century’. For two decades, an adviser to policy-makers worldwide. Counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980-87) He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Video: Israel / América: um poema irregular

fonte:EI


Video: Israel/America: A rambling poem
Remi Kanazi, The Electronic Intifada, 21 September 2009



The above video features a poem (transcribed below) by Remi Kanazi that he performed on GRITtv with Laura Flanders after a segment on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli repression of Palestinian rights.

Israel/America: A rambling poem

Every time I think of 9/11
I see burning flesh dripping off the bones of Iraqi children in Fallujah
Now Gaza
I tend to memorialize the forgotten
The collateral damage eclipsing our unpunished crimes

Maybe it's because I'm a numbers guy
Because if I had a dollar for every time an Iraqi died since 2003
I'd be a millionaire

And don't get me wrong
Sometimes I don't know who I hate more
The governments in the West
Or the politicians in the East
Who sell their souls quicker than the oil they export
Straw men who use Palestine as a tool to line their pockets
And don't give a nickel to their people
Quisling governments
Who stitch mouths shut for a check from Washington and AIPAC
How can you be their prototypical anti-Semite
If you are signing peace accords to oppress your own people?

And then Orientalists and idiots talk about how
We can't have democracy in the Middle East
Because of what happened in Gaza
A Hamas bogeyman wrapped in democratic elections
Rahm Emanuel wants to educate me and my people about democracy gone wrong
Why doesn't try implementing one Israel first?
Instead of bowing down to terrorists like his father and the IDF
Lauding a third rate, racist, European society that's imploding quicker
Than its moral standing in the world
Enlightened like 1950s Afrikaaners and slave traders
Just because the house is beautiful
Doesn't mean the bones you built it on have fully decomposed

The Israeli left is about as alive as Ariel Sharon
I'm sick and tired of asking for permission to resist
From antiquated leftists and progressives
Who care more about keeping it Kosher than moving things forward
I put down my pen and waving fist to resist with college kids and Palestinians
Boycott and divest!
Because who cares about preserving a living when governments are killing civilians
Complicity by silence and reserve units bombing Gaza
Your academics and scholars, theater groups and practitioners, are part of the problem

And if logic doesn't fit into your long term plan of rejecting
My right to return, I'm sorry
Maybe one day you'll return to reality
Where my people have babies quicker
Than Zionists can concoct Jordanian options

I don't want your sympathy or introspective confessions
Won't sit on my hands till they lose oxygen
Like the people of Balata and Rafah
Vote for Barack Obama
And pretend that his 22 day silence was golden
While emaciated children starved to death
Surrounded by their parents' corpses

This can't be America the Beautiful
A criminal with a few positive attributes
Doesn't alleviate genocide
Bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq
Into oblivion doesn't make you historic
It makes you as blind and bloodthirsty
As the white men that came before you
Apathetic hipsters now excited about a president
Who broke history, but not poverty, occupation, or corporate interests

I'd rather proudly walk through the graveyard of peace accords
And failed dialogue sessions
Than see my people just as occupied or third-class citizens
We are the gavel that will slam down like a verdict
We are not waiting for Israel or America or the Supreme Court to approve it
We'll boycott Lev Leviev, Caterpillar and your apartheid companies
We're taking back the right of return and the keys to a country
Because we never asked you to go back to Europe or sit in open air prisons
I'm not asking for your advice, I'm explaining the decision
You can stay here, with us, but only as equals
It's not that you're Israeli, it's that you're wrong
That's why I fight for my people!

Remi Kanazi is the editor of Poets For Palestine and will be touring the US and Canada this fall on the Poets For Palestine tour. He can be contacted at Remroum A T gmail D O T com. For more information on Poets For Palestine, visit www.PoetsForPalestine.com.

Reportagem fotográfica: Lutar para adorar em Jerusalém

fonte:EI


Photostory: Struggling to worship in Jerusalem
Anne Paq, The Electronic Intifada, 21 September 2009


Each year during the month of Ramadan, thousands of Palestinian Muslim worshipers struggle to reach Jerusalem on Fridays to pray at the Haram al-Sharif, home of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

The Israeli army imposes additional barriers with concrete slabs at both the Qalandiya and Bethlehem checkpoints -- the two main checkpoints that Palestinians from the occupied West Bank must pass in order to reach Jerusalem.

In Bethlehem, Palestinians from all over the south of the West Bank arrive as early as 5am. They are usually forced to wait for several hours and go through a number of security checks. This year, for those observing the fast, the conditions were even more difficult as Ramadan took place in September when the days are still long and the temperatures high. Exhaustion and dehydration cause many to faint.

Harsh restrictions, physical obstructions and confusing procedures prevent many Palestinians from even reaching the checkpoints. Of those who did, many are turned away. According to the UN agency OCHA, Israel has prohibited nearly 60 percent of Palestinians in the occupied territories, including all of Gaza's population and more than 40 percent of the West Bank population, from entering occupied East Jerusalem for Friday prayers.

Most Ramadan Fridays, access is restricted to men older than 50 and women older than 45 years of age, and boys and girls younger than 12, who may pass without permits. Men between the ages of 45 and 50 and women between 30 and 45 years of age are allowed to enter with special permits, except on the last Friday of Ramadan which this year coincided with the beginning of the Jewish new year holiday.

This year there was coordination between the Israeli army and the Palestinian Authority (PA). PA police officers were seen working alongside Israeli soldiers at the Bethlehem checkpoint -- a scene that troubled many Palestinians trying to enter Jerusalem.

The below images of the scenes at the Bethlehem checkpoint were photographed by Anne Paq over the course of a few Fridays during Ramadan.



















Anne Paq is a freelance photographer based in Bethlehem. She is a member of the photography collective ActiveStills.

O fim do auxilio subsistência da ONU aos refugiados palestinos exige intervenção de pessoas comprometidas com os direitos humanos e solução urgente

fonte: Liberdade Palestina

Expulsos da Palestina por israelenses, impedidos de refugiar-se nos países árabes vizinhos até que conseguiram refúgio no Iraque, expulsos do Iraque após a queda de Sadan Hussein e ascenção dos xiitas ao poder, impedidos de refugiarem-se na jordânia, barrados na fronteira entre os dois países, na região desértica de Ruweiched, onde formaram o Campo de Refugiados onde permaneceram por cinco longos anos, expulsos do Campo de Ruweished devido ao aviso sobre seu fechamento e agora, refugiados no Brasil, neste, que esperavam ser finalmente o lugar onde reconstruiriam suas vidas.

Esse é um ultraresumido relato da saga de 117 refugiados palestinos que no final de 2007 foram trazidos para o Brasil no chamado Programa de Reassentamento Solidário, num convênio "ultrasecreto" e de regras duvidosas e mais do que suspeitas entre o governo brasileiro (através do CONARE), a ACNUR-Brasil, a Cáritas Brasileira e a Associação Antonio Vieira (ASAV).

Mas, infelizmente, a transferência desses refugiados para o Brasil não significou o fim do drama, conforme lhes foi prometido, ainda em Ruweished; foi sim a continuação da "nakba" (catástrofe) dessas vidas humanas, longe de acabar se as autoridades brasileiras continuarem a não dar a devida atenção.

O CONARE, a ACNUR-Brasil, a Cáritas e a ASAV provaram total incompetência para atender os refugiados.

Os dois anos de duração do Programa de Reassentamento Solidário, foram dois anos de descaso, maus tratos e misteriosa e cúmplice relação entre essas instituições e entidades que impossibilitaram a adaptação dos palestinos no Brasil e, consequentemente impossibilitaram que pudessem sequer começar a reconstruir suas vidas.

É urgente que outras instâncias do governo brasileiro, independentes do CONARE, da ACNUR-Brasil, da Cáritas e da ASAV, intervenham no caso e apurem com profundidade o por que de tanta negligência. Todas têm responsabilidade no precário atendimento aos refugiados palestinos no Brasil, mas nenhuma assume, nem dá solução. São cúmplices na situação de risco social em que jogaram os refugiados e são recíprocas na defesa umas das outras.

Justicia e o report Goldstone

fonte:Palestine Chronicle



Justice This Time Around: Will Goldstone's Report Deliver?



Could it be that the 'era of impunity' is indeed over?

By Ramzy Baroud

'We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the era of impunity,' Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, was quoted by IPS in response to the findings of a 574-page report by a four-member United Nations Fact finding mission. The mission, led by internationally-renowned former South African supreme court justice and chief prosecutor in the international tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, investigated alleged war crimes committed by Israeli troops in Gaza in a 23-day bloody, unprecedented onslaught against a largely defenseless population.

But Hijab was not the only one who expressed optimism. Others did, encouraged perhaps, by the report’s use of terminology unfamiliar in a conflict where empirical experience has shown that Israeli actions, no matter how outrageously violent, will have no meaningful legal repercussions whatsoever.

Goldstone’s report, released on September 15, made some important recommendations, following a most thorough investigation that was carefully compiled by the mission – which was organized by the UN Human Rights Council last April.

One is that the UN Security Council should set up a team of experts to monitor Israel’s investigations of the war crimes committed in Gaza. If Israel fails to do so, then the situation should be referred to the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

This raises many questions, lead amongst them is: did Israel commit war crimes in Gaza, and, second, is Israel capable of conducting an honest investigation into those crimes, considering the state’s bloody legacy and lack of any serious legal accountability.

Goldstone answers both questions.

“The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly in some respects crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force,” Goldstone told reporters on September 16. He also said that the Israeli government has carried out no credible investigation.

Despite his recommendations that UN experts follow the progress of the internal investigation by Israel, and the Palestinians (since they too were accused of violating international law by lobbing home-made rockets into Israel, without taking into account the possible harm to civilians) it’s puzzling why Goldstone would think that any genuine investigation is possible in the first place.

Goldstone knows, as many of us already do, that the events in Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of 1,387 (other estimates put the number at 1,417, mostly civilians, including over 300 children), the wounding of thousands more, the targeting of an already dilapidating infrastructure (hospitals, police stations, factories, schools, and even chicken farms) of a deprived and besieged society was very much a political decision made at the highest levels by the likes of Olmert, Livni, Barak and other serial criminals who have tormented Palestinians for too long.

Palestinians were also chastised for rockets fired from besieged Gaza. Of course, Goldstone was not expected to justify or applaud the homemade rockets, or even underline their lack of effectiveness, as four Israelis were killed by rocket fire, during the period of the war. Out of the nine Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting, four were killed in friendly fire.

While both Hamas and the PA fully cooperated with Goldstone and his colleagues, Israel fully rejected the mission, refusing entry into Israel or Gaza, forcing the use of alternative routes into the besieged strip, through Egypt.

Israeli officials claim that the report was pre-written, rendering it biased from the start. They used the same predictable pattern of smears, redundant diatribes and predictable language.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the report created unjust “equivalence of a democratic state with a terror organization,” in reference to Hamas.

Following the good old democracy reference, racism kicks in. “We have nothing to be ashamed of, and don’t need lessons in morality from a committee established by Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Somalia,” Levy said. Apparently dark-skinned people of the South are both incapable of being democratic or moral. Only Israel and her allies are capable of those qualities.

“The Goldstone report has set a new standard for equating the behavior of democratic nations and terrorists,” wrote Richard Sideman, President of the New York-based American Jewish Committee in a letter published in the New York Times on September 18.

The same disingenuous sentiment utilized by Levy and Sideman (how curious that both seemed to be using the same script) echoed by many Israeli officials and their lobbyists abroad, who went into crisis management mode following the release of the report.

But why should they care?

Could it be because Goldstone called on the 192-member General Assembly to establish an escrow fund so that Israel can compensate Palestinians in Gaza? Israel would never spend its hard-earned US tax payers money on such frivolous matters.

Could it be because the Human Rights Council is convening on September 29 in Geneva to discuss the report, and could call for its transfer to the Security Council, and even the ICC?

Could it be because the report’s findings might empower an already growing boycott movement world-wide?

Could it be because it’s much harder to doubt the credibility of Goldstone, to smear him as anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew?

Could it be because all these factors are escalating Israeli fears that the “era of impunity” is indeed over?

“Perhaps next time we set out to wage another vain and miserable war, we will take into account not only the number of fatalities we are likely to sustain, but also the heavy political damage such wars cause,” wrote Israeli columnist Gideon Levy.

One would have to wait for the next miserable war, the next massacre to find out whether Israel has learned its lesson. Until then, thousands of starved, desperate yet resilient Palestinians in Gaza continue to live in their makeshift tents, atop the rubble, which was once called home, awaiting food, cement and international justice.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals, and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London).