Saturday, March 20, 2010
WTC7 -- This is an Orange
A comparison between what we are told and what we can see, with our own eyes. World Trade Center 7 collapsed after having been damaged by fire and falling debris, but the collapse looks very much like a controlled demolition.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Letter to Rachel Corrie's family and Washington State legislators
Below is a letter I sent to the Corries but more importantly to executive and legislative members in Washington State where Rachel Corrie was a resident. It includes the Governor, Lt. Governor, Senators and Congressmen in D.C. and senators and members of the general assembly in Washington State as well as the media.
March 4, 2010
Mr. and Mrs. Corrie
Honorable Members of the Executive and Legislative Branch Washington State
"Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is
peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the
party that committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims."
-British Historian Arnold Toynbee
This coming March 16 will be the seventh anniversary of Israel's deliberate murder of a 23 year old young idealist college student from Olympia, Washington named Rachel Corrie. Her story and the shocking photos of her murder can be found in the links below.
For seven years Israel has denied and falsified the story of this American citizen's murder, albiet with the silence and usual paralysis of our government when the issue has to do with Israel.
Notice how Israel publicly rebuffed President Obama on freezing illegal settlements. It not only continued building illegal settlements by the hundreds in the West Bank and East Jerusalem but it continues to demolish Arab Christian and Muslims homes in East Jerusalem while the U.S. retracted its opposition and took the usual default position of silence and blaming the victims as it's done for over 60 years.
The blatant and open murder of an American citizen by Israel was met by utter callousness and silence by the White House, Congress, and the main stream media. The enormous and heart wrenching pain her parents have endured all these years have been suffered alone without any substantial support from our government whose main responsibility is the protection of its citizens. They've travelled across this country and abroad keeping the memory of their daughter's death alive while seeking any support for justice for their daughter. Rachel. Other peace activists have been similarily killed, maimed and injured by Israeli forces for their just work to protect the civilian Palestinian population and bring their plight to the world's attention.
An American ecumnenical group called the Christian Peacemaker Teams (http://www.cpt.org/) risk their lives daily as they escort Palestinian children to school thereby preventing their murder or injury by Israeli soldiers (See Guardian UK paper article: Israeli Officer: I was right to shoot 13 year old child, Radio exchange contradicts army version of Gaza killing, Nov. 24, 2004)
Compare our national silence on Rachel's murder to the uproar and outrage by our government and media that followed the murder of Daniel Pearl, WSJ journalist, in Pakistan. A movie was made about his murder while for the first time in modern history the State Department placed an advertisement for the movie, A Mighty Heart, on its official website. The website later took down the ad.
(State Department Website with Daniel Pearl Movie–no longer exists)
PLUS, UNLIKE RACHEL'S DEATH SEE WHAT OUR CONGRESS DID.
Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act Subsequent to the U.S. House of Representatives passing the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act on June 10, 2009, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) introduced the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act to the Senate on October 1, 2009, where it is currently under consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This legislation would direct the State Department to include information relating to freedom of the press worldwide in annual country reports on human rights practices. "The right to a free press is a right upon which we all rely. And every time a journalist is kept from doing his or her job, it is each of us whose right is being violated,"
said Dodd in a floor statement. "This legislation, in turn, will help to shed light on crimes where these brave journalists themselves are the victims."
What Now for Rachel's parents as they continue their painful struggle for justice for their murdered daughter?
Will you the elected officials of Washington State muster the courage and compassion to speak out for this young dead American peace activist who saw the wrongs of what our nation is doing in its blind and unquestionable support of Israel?
Or will her death be once again ignored and swept under the rug of political expediency, fear and political correctness? Is her life less worthy and valuable than Daniel Pearl's or the murder of any other American citizen abroad?
When will this idealistic young Washingtonian rest in peace knowing that her parents no longer struggle alone but have been joined by your spirit for truth and justice?
Many of you are parents and grandparents and can fully understand and sympathize with the tragic pain of having a young daughter killed by an American bulldozer in a nation that wouldn't exist without America's support and contiued benevolence.
I ask you in all that is holy and meaningful in your lives do not let Rachel's death go unanswered, do not let this young woman's death pass without justice. Her parents need your help and support as they take on one of the world's most powerful nations, politically and militarily, with unprecedented support in our Congress and media.
Washingtonians need to know you'll be there to help, support, and protect them against the evil dangers they face abroad whether in Israel or Pakistan.
May the memory of our dear Rachel always be an inspiration to Peace and Freedom loving peoples throughout the world.
With all due respect and hope, I remain
Mohamed Khodr M.D., M.P.H.
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/statements.htm
(Her Memorial Site)
(Her Memorial Site)
Please view the photos of Rachel Corrie's stand in front of the bulldozer and after her murder. It clearly shows she was standing in direct site of the Caterpillar's driver. She was trying to prevent the house demolition of a Palestinian physician and his family's home, not the lie of Hamas tunnels.
(Rachel's heartwarming and moving words on Israel's occupation: See what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and many other organizations say about her murder)
Daniel Pearl's Website with Congressional Act included
Anti-Semitism – What is it?
Several of us among the incurably curious asked ourselves a simple question: what is anti-Semitism? The fact that it must be written with a capital "S" says a lot.
Then we realized it also morphs. To that feature I can attest. In November 2002, I met a "John Doe" in London who proposed a research challenge. While meeting that challenge, I encountered various versions of anti-Semitism.
A colleague advised against this challenge. First he fretted at the criminal nature of what the research has since confirmed. Then he inquired about my safety. That said a lot.
The colleague was M.I.T. Professor Noam Chomsky. For his criticism of Israeli policy, he was attacked as a self-hating Jew. Were he not Jewish, doubtless he would have been an anti-Semite. For critics of Israel, those are the only two options. He cautioned me:
You'll get the same thing: anti-Semitic, Holocaust denier, want to kill all the Jews, etc. It doesn't matter what the facts are. Bear in mind that you are dealing with intellectuals, that is, what we call 'commissars' and 'apparatchiks' in enemy states.
Is anti-Semitism a geopolitical strategy? If so, for what purpose? Character assassination?
Ten months ago, I met with Professor William Robinson on the University of California Santa Barbara campus. We met soon after he was attacked by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and its smear team.
Robinson had read Guilt By Association, the first release based on this research. His question mirrored Prof. Chomsky's concern: "Are they going to kill me?" he asked. They are those who smear anyone critical of Israeli policy.
Anti-Semitism-A License to Kill?
To his class on globalization, Robinson provided an email link to a photo essay critical of Israeli policy that had been circulating online for weeks. When two students complained to the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), its attack troops insisted on Robinson's removal while its national network urged alumni to threaten the withholding of gifts and bequests to the university.
Word quickly spread among academics nationwide. That time-critical ADL strategy silenced on-campus criticism of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Is it anti-Semitic to suggest that's how anti-Semitism works?
When the ADL (Anti-Defamation league) intimidates on a national scale, does anti-Semitism morph into something even more sinister? The Gaza assault killed 1,400, including 400 Palestinian children. That slaughter was scheduled during America's political and media "down time"-between Christmas 2008 and the January 2009 inaugural of Barack Obama.
Is it anti-Semitic to suggest a strategic motive behind the timing of Israel's latest barbarity?
Then there's the motive for 911. Is it anti-Semitic to raise that taboo subject? Ask those members of the 911 Commission who objected-successfully-when the chair and vice-chair proposed hearings on the motivation for that high-profile provocation.
Instead, Americans were left to cope with the results of an overwrought reaction to an unexplained mass murder too quickly blamed on "Islamo" fascism. Only now can we see the full costs in blood and treasure of a war waged on fixed intelligence and false pretenses.
The fiscal tab alone is projected to top $3 Trillion, including the future costs of military pensions, disabilities, record-level post-traumatic stress, suicides and so forth.
All of the money has been borrowed, a first for an American war. The interest cost could reach $700 billion. Is it anti-Semitic to point out that debt is always the prize?
At the end of WWII, the victorious U.S. was home to 50% of the world's productive power. Our bonds were guaranteed to be gilt-edged for at least two generations. Now we are widely hated, our credibility is shot, our credit rating is slipping and our economy teeters on a meltdown.
Is it anti-Semitic to ask, "What happened?"
Is it anti-Semitic to report that the so-called "mastermind" behind 911 cited as his motive the U.S.-Israeli relationship? Is it anti-Semitic to ask for an accounting of the "but for" costs of this relationship?
But for this "special relationship" what would be the current condition of the U.S.-financially, militarily, diplomatically, geopolitically? Would the computation of those costs be an exercise in anti-Semitism?
Is it Anti-Semitic to call for a New 911 Commission?
America was misled to wage war in Iraq. Who had a relationship with us that was privileged enough to succeed with such duplicity in plain sight?
Who had the means, motive, opportunity and-importantly-the stable nation state intelligence to deceive us from inside our own government? Is that question anti-Semitic?
We were betrayed. Does that betrayal trace to those who befriended us? We were defrauded. Does that treason trace to those we were induced to trust?
As counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980 to 1987), I crafted federal tax law that governs the bulk of funds under management. Those funds surged from $800 billion in 1980 to more than $17,000 billion by the spring of 2007.
The result created a vast pool of "money-on-autopilot." Today's consensus belief can be simply put: money should be allowed to pursue more of itself-freely.
The unspoken assumption is that money is smarter than people. That's the generally accepted truth behind the finance-fixated obsession now known as "economics."
Legions of consensus-touting consultants insist that this One True Faith must guide lawmaking worldwide. By law, financial freedom has now become a proxy for personal freedom. Tribunals under the World Trade Organization may yet enforce that worldview.
How did that narrow perspective become a widely agreed-to mindset? How were we induced to set America's course by those values peculiar to money?
Rather than the civil rights refrain, "Let my people go," the consensus refrain is "Let my money go." Were we induced by a subculture within a subculture…within a subculture to freely embrace the very money myopic mindset that now endangers our freedom?
This mindset first surfaced as the "Chicago model" before morphing over decades into the "Washington" consensus.
How were we as a nation induced to brand American democracy with a point of view that, by law, displaces those values not denominated in money? Is it anti-Semitic to pose that question?
Shutting Down Debate
Early on in this challenge, I included the noun "Jew" in a Google search. I received in return an automated response from the ADL implying that I was an anti-Semite. Why?
More importantly, how did a Google response appear in my email inbox-automatically-from the ADL?
The ADL now conducts trainings for law enforcement under recently enacted federal hate crimes legislation. By my use of a common noun in an online search, am I now identified in a database as wanting to kill all the Jews?
Mark Yudoff, president of the University of California, could have intervened in the on-campus events that caused Professor Robinson to fear for his life. He declined. Richard Blum, chair of the state's Board of Regents, could have intervened. He too declined.
Judith Yudoff is the immediate past international president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism representing 760 synagogues. Blum's wife, U. S. Senator Diane Feinstein, chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Is it anti-Semitic to report these facts?
My apologies. Clearly I don't yet grasp what anti-Semitism is. Thus I throw the challenge to you the reader: what is it? Together perhaps we can sort this out.
* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
From Cynthia McKinney "They're White Just Like Us . . . "
March 16, 2010
"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."
This bit of erudition came, with a shrug of the shoulders, at the end of the first session of the newly-formed Russell Tribunal on Palestine. It was not a part of the official record because it was stated in the anteroom, just off the auditorium of the elegantly-appointed Barcelona Lawyers Building where the Tribunal was held. The person making this comment was not an official expert witness--but he was a European who understood the mindset that made Europeans complicit, not only in Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people, but also in Israel's impunity.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is organized by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and has local organizing committees in each of the places where sessions will be held: Europe, United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States. The Tribunal will next venture into London, then to South Africa to ponder the peculiar institution of Israeli apartheid. And finally to the U.S. where the mother of all complicity resides.
The Tribunal stresses its independence from the influence of special interests and each Local Organizing Committee conducts fundraising activities to make each Session a success. Barcelona can be chalked up as a success that serves the Tribunal organizers well for the upcoming London Session. More information on the Barcelona proceedings can be found at http://www.russelltribunal
The original Bertrand Russell Tribunal was seated in the mid-1960s and considered the case against the U.S. war against Vietnam. Its second seating was to deliberate on human rights abuses in Latin America. Consideration of the situation of the people of Palestine commands its third seating.
The organizers of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine scoured the globe to find people of conscience to serve as jurors who are noted for acting on their convictions. The jurors include a woman who served with Bertrand Russell on the original Tribunal and another woman whose work eventually was recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize. The Tribunal's mandate is to inform and urge action by a larger community of conscience and its urgency is the understanding that the Tribunal must act in the face of inaction by national and international authorities.
In addition, the "BRussells" Tribunal on Iraq (operating from Brussels, Belgium at http://brusselstribunal.or
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine, Barcelona Session, convened for three days, considered the evidence presented to it, and delivered its decision in response to a series of questions that could be summed up as: "Is the E.U. complicit in Israel's crimes against Palestinians, and if so, in what way? What is the E.U.'s legal responsibility to itself and to international law?"
During the proceedings, I did pose the "Why?" question several times. However, the unofficial respondent answered the question in a way that even I was totally unprepared for: from his gut.
"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."
This comment haunted me for the remainder of my European tour. And, it seemed that I could never escape it. In Brussels and then again in Paris; in London, I was consistently reminded of the color line and that I was traveling in places not usually broken by it: economic and political status in these places is as defined by skin color as it is in the United States, the Presidency of Barack Obama notwithstanding.
Combine my European experience with the fact of the illegal pillage of Africa by way of stoked "civil wars" and fake "rebel groups" created for the purpose of facilitating non-African Africa pillage--done since the first Berlin Conference that organized the so-called "Scramble for Africa" at the dawn of the 20th Century. Juxtapose that to the opening of the 19th Century where Africans in Haiti defeated Napoleon Bonaparte's Army. Not only was Africa robbed of its strongest human resources for centuries during slavery, it continues to be robbed of its human and natural resources even now. Africans' patrimony is being transferred, on the cheap, to Europe, the United States, and Israel.
Anyone who doubts these facts should consider the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), now suffering six million dead just since the Rwandan/Ugandan invasion in August of 1998 facilitated by the United States. The tragedy is told in the first United Nations Report on the pillage of DRC, written by Madame Ba-N-Dow, whose life was threatened by those named in the report, causing her to have to go into hiding because she told the truth. Additionally, numerous books and articles on the subject have been written by Camerounian-Parisian Charles Onana of Editions Duboiris, for those who read French, and by Wayne Madsen and Keith Harmon Snow, for those who don't.
As I looked into the faces of Europe's most recent immigrant Africans and Asians, the immigrant wars being fought today inside Europe, Israel, and the United States crystallized in the most dismal of contexts. With each glance into every face, I strained to make eye-to-eye contact to see beyond the face of the individual in order to understand the totality of the life I was encountering. Sadly, the realities all seemed the same: certain Europeans (including certain Americans and Israelis) had arrogated to themselves the right to go into any land, vilify the indigenous, denigrate their culture and dignity, steal the resources, overturn the local economy, destroy the local polities, and ignore the human rights of self-determination and resistance to occupation, and then dare the "others" to emigrate. For context today: Think the Muslim World in Africa and Asia. Think Latin America. Think Gaza.
Everywhere around Europe, as is also the case in Israel and the United States, immigration is an issue. It seems that Europeans--who have a quality of life that includes, among other things, mass transit and continental rapid rail that works, subsidized education, subsidized healthcare, and secure work and pensions--have reached their "immigrant tolerance level:" that is, more "others" are not welcome. And, as in the United States, the role of the special interest media cannot be discounted in the popularization of hate. This is especially sad when one realizes that the Europe of today exists as it does largely because of its past policies and current bondage with the United States that politically and economically wreck the countries of the "others."
For example, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Israel are all diamond trading capitals of the world, yet none of them is a major miner of diamonds. The diamonds mainly come from Africa, and the consequent diamond empire that links all of these capitals was built on slavery and theft. (Please see the film "Diamond Empire" by investigative journalist Janine Roberts, banned in the United States because of its inconvenient, name-naming content.)
Now, take a look at these diamond-producing capitals of Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, and black South Africa--even post-apartheid--and one quickly grasps the level of theft and criminality that continues still today. Please think about this the next time you are tempted to buy a beautiful sparkling diamond in your local mall jewelry store.
And, for those who have never left America's shores, one need only look inside the United States at the genocide of America's indigenous people and the continued pillage of their land to understand how today's life of largess was made possible by years of mistreatment, lawlessness, and genocide committed generations ago.
In 1948, the cycle began again when Zionists eager to wield state power were placed in control of Palestine by Europeans, Britons, and Americans and created the State of Israel on the land where Palestinians lived.
I inquired of one Israeli testifying at the Tribunal what did Operation Cast Lead tell us about the nature of Zionism. And it was through this line of questioning that I again heard something that I have heard all over the world, but never in the media: "I am an anti-Zionist Jew."
In the United States, Zionists at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) purport to speak for all Jews and they would have non-Jews believe that criticism of them or of Israel is criticism of all Jews. For many that I encounter in the world whose only previous information came from the media, their most startling discovery is that this is a lie. And I have heard some of the most impassioned critiques of Israel's policies toward Palestinians from anti-Zionist Jews. I intend to write more on this later.
Yesterday, it was announced in the English news that blacks and Asians are stopped by the police alarmingly more than whites. The study that published these findings also suggested that if such disparities are allowed to persist, then the communities of color so targeted could become increasingly disenchanted and volatile. London, Paris, and Oakland, California have all burned in recent memory as a result of persistent disparities and loss of hope for change. If unchecked now in communities of color, repression of all will surely be next.
Given my experiences and reflections during this European tour that included the Russell Tribunal; a standing-room-only meeting of Congolese who came from all over Europe to Brussels; a standing-room-only crowd of young people in "the hood" of a Paris suburb attending an event organized by rapper Joe Dalton; and several events in London that included a standing-room-only 9/11 Truth - 7/7 Tube Truth event, I find the observation of the Russell Tribunal attendee both poignant and relevant: It is still possible for people battered by propaganda and lies, covert and false flag operations, and the meanest of media blackouts to see and hear those of us who dissent and act on conscience. Our message is being received. A growing global critical mass see the humanity that binds us together despite the lies and the screens of religion, race, ethnicity, language, gender, and sexual orientation--skillfully used in the past to divide us.
The real message from my Russell Tribunal respondent is clear: Resistance to lies, injustice, war, and indignity is necessary and more people seeing that, join with us in our principled struggle.
For more information on the Barcelona proceedings, please see:
Press TV:http://www.youtube.com/wat
The Real news network: http://therealnews.com/t2/
--
http://dignity.ning.com/
http://www.enduswars.org
http://www.livestream.com/
http://www.twitter.com/dig
http://www.myspace.com/dig
http://www.myspace.com/run
http://www.twitter.com/cyn
http://www.facebook.com/Cy
Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.
The Map: The Story of Palestinian Nationhood Thwarted After the League of Nations Recognized It
On March 10, I posted on the humiliation heaped on Vice President Joe Biden by the Israeli government of far-right Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu. Biden went to Israel intending to help kick off indirect negotiations between Netanyahu and Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. Biden had no sooner arrived than the Israelis announced that they would build 1600 new households on Palestinian territory that they had unilaterally annexed to Jerusalem. Since expanding Israeli colonization of Palestinian land had been the sticking point causing Abbas to refuse to engage in negotiations, and, indeed, to threaten to resign, this step was sure to scuttle the very talks Biden had come to inaugurate. And it did.
The tiff between the US and Israel is less important that the worrisome growth of tension between Palestinians and Israelis as the Israelis have claimed more and more sites sacred to the Palestinians as well. There is talk of a third Intifada or Palestinian uprising.
As part of my original posting, I mirrored a map of modern Palestinian history that has the virtue of showing graphically what has happened to the Palestinians politically and territorially in the past century.
Andrew Sullivan then mirrored the map from my site, which set off a lot of thunder and noise among anti-Palestinian writers like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, but shed very little light.
The map is useful and accurate. It begins by showing the British Mandate of Palestine as of the mid-1920s. The British conquered the Ottoman districts that came to be the Mandate during World War I (the Ottoman sultan threw in with Austria and Germany against Britain, France and Russia, mainly out of fear of Russia).
But because of the rise of the League of Nations and the influence of President Woodrow Wilson's ideas about self-determination, Britain and France could not decently simply make their new, previously Ottoman territories into mere colonies. The League of Nations awarded them "Mandates." Britain got Palestine, France got Syria (which it made into Syria and Lebanon), Britain got Iraq.
The League of Nations Covenant spelled out what a Class A Mandate (i.e. territory that had been Ottoman) was:
"Article 22. Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory [i.e., a Western power] until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."
That is, the purpose of the later British Mandate of Palestine, of the French Mandate of Syria, of the British Mandate of Iraq, was to 'render administrative advice and assistance" to these peoples in preparation for their becoming independent states, an achievement that they were recognized as not far from attaining. The Covenant was written before the actual Mandates were established, but Palestine was a Class A Mandate and so the language of the Covenant was applicable to it. The territory that formed the British Mandate of Iraq was the same territory that became independent Iraq, and the same could have been expected of the British Mandate of Palestine. (Even class B Mandates like Togo have become nation-states, but the poor Palestinians are just stateless prisoners in colonial cantons).
The first map thus shows what the League of Nations imagined would become the state of Palestine. The economist published an odd assertion that the Negev Desert was 'empty' and should not have been shown in the first map. But it wasn't and isn't empty; Palestinian Bedouin live there, and they and the desert were recognized by the League of Nations as belonging to the Mandate of Palestine, a state-in-training. The Mandate of Palestine also had a charge to allow for the establishment of a 'homeland' in Palestine for Jews (because of the 1917 Balfour Declaration), but nobody among League of Nations officialdom at that time imagined it would be a whole and competing territorial state. There was no prospect of more than a few tens of thousands of Jews settling in Palestine, as of the mid-1920s. (They are shown in white on the first map, refuting those who mysteriously complained that the maps alternated between showing sovereignty and showing population). As late as the 1939 British White Paper, British officials imagined that the Mandate would emerge as an independent Palestinian state within 10 years.
In 1851, there had been 327,000 Palestinians (yes, the word 'Filistin' was current then) and other non-Jews, and only 13,000 Jews. In 1925, after decades of determined Jewish immigration, there were a little over 100,000 Jews, and there were 765,000 mostly Palestinian non-Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine. For historical demography of this area, see Justin McCarthy's painstaking calculations; it is not true, as sometimes is claimed, that we cannot know anything about population figures in this region. See also his journal article, reprinted at this site. The Palestinian population grew because of rapid population growth, not in-migration, which was minor. The common allegation that Jerusalem had a Jewish majority at some point in the 19th century is meaningless. Jerusalem was a small town in 1851, and many pious or indigent elderly Jews from Eastern Europe and elsewhere retired there because of charities that would support them. In 1851, Jews were only about 4% of the population of the territory that became the British Mandate of Palestine some 70 years later. And, there had been few adherents of Judaism, just a few thousand, from the time most Jews in Palestine adopted Christianity and Islam in the first millennium CE all the way until the 20th century. In the British Mandate of Palestine, the district of Jerusalem was largely Palestinian.
The rise of the Nazis in the 1930s impelled massive Jewish emigration to Palestine, so by 1940 there were over 400,000 Jews there amid over a million Palestinians.
The second map shows the United Nations partition plan of 1947, which awarded Jews (who only then owned about 6% of Palestinian land) a substantial state alongside a much reduced Palestine. Although apologists for the Zionist movement say that the Zionists accepted this partition plan and the Arabs rejected it, that is not entirely true. Zionist leader David Ben Gurion noted in his diary when Israel was established that when the US had been formed, no document set out its territorial extent, implying that the same was true of Israel. We know that Ben Gurion was an Israeli expansionist who fully intended to annex more land to Israel, and by 1956 he attempted to add the Sinai and would have liked southern Lebanon. So the Zionist "acceptance" of the UN partition plan did not mean very much beyond a happiness that their initial starting point was much better than their actual land ownership had given them any right to expect.
The third map shows the status quo after the Israeli-Palestinian civil war of 1947-1948. It is not true that the entire Arab League attacked the Jewish community in Palestine or later Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. As Avi Shlaim has shown, Jordan had made an understanding with the Zionist leadership that it would grab the West Bank, and its troops did not mount a campaign in the territory awarded to Israel by the UN. Egypt grabbed Gaza and then tried to grab the Negev Desert, with a few thousand badly trained and equipped troops, but was defeated by the nascent Israeli army. Few other Arab states sent any significant number of troops. The total number of troops on the Arab side actually on the ground was about equal to those of the Zionist forces, and the Zionists had more esprit de corps and better weaponry.
The final map shows the situation today, which springs from the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 and then the decision of the Israelis to colonize the West Bank intensively (a process that is illegal in the law of war concerning occupied populations).
There is nothing inaccurate about the maps at all, historically. Goldberg maintained that the Palestinians' 'original sin' was rejecting the 1947 UN partition plan. But since Ben Gurion and other expansionists went on to grab more territory later in history, it is not clear that the Palestinians could have avoided being occupied even if they had given away willingly so much of their country in 1947. The first original sin was the contradictory and feckless pledge by the British to sponsor Jewish immigration into their Mandate in Palestine, which they wickedly and fantastically promised would never inconvenience the Palestinians in any way. It was the same kind of original sin as the French policy of sponsoring a million colons in French Algeria, or the French attempt to create a Christian-dominated Lebanon where the Christians would be privileged by French policy. The second original sin was the refusal of the United States to allow Jews to immigrate in the 1930s and early 1940s, which forced them to go to Palestine to escape the monstrous, mass-murdering Nazis.
The map attracted so much ire and controversy not because it is inaccurate but because it clearly shows what has been done to the Palestinians, which the League of Nations had recognized as not far from achieving statehood in its Covenant. Their statehood and their territory has been taken from them, and they have been left stateless, without citizenship and therefore without basic civil and human rights. The map makes it easy to see this process. The map had to be stigmatized and made taboo. But even if that marginalization of an image could be accomplished, the squalid reality of Palestinian statelessness would remain, and the children of Gaza would still be being malnourished by the deliberate Israeli policy of blockading civilians. The map just points to a powerful reality; banishing the map does not change that reality.
Goldberg, according to Spencer Ackerman, says that he will stop replying to Andrew Sullivan, for which Ackerman is grateful, since, he implies, Goldberg is a propagandistic hack who loves to promote wars on flimsy pretenses. Matthew Yglesias also has some fun at Goldberg's expense.
People like Goldberg never tell us what they expect to happen to the Palestinians in the near and medium future. They don't seem to understand that the status quo is untenable. They are like militant ostriches, hiding their heads in the sand while lashing out with their hind talons at anyone who stares clear-eyed at the problem, characterizing us as bigots. As if that old calumny has any purchase for anyone who knows something serious about the actual views of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, more bigoted persons than whom would be difficult to find. Indeed, some of Israel's current problems with Brazil come out of Lieberman's visit there last summer; I was in Rio then and remember the distaste with which the multi-cultural, multi-racial Brazilians viewed Lieberman, whom some openly called a racist.
"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."
Message from Barcelona from Cynthia McKinney
From Cynthia McKinney
"They're White Just Like Us . . . "
March 16, 2010
"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."
This bit of erudition came, with a shrug of the shoulders, at the end of the first session of the newly-formed Russell Tribunal on Palestine. It was not a part of the official record because it was stated in the anteroom, just off the auditorium of the elegantly-appointed Barcelona Lawyers Building where the Tribunal was held. The person making this comment was not an official expert witness--but he was a European who understood the mindset that made Europeans complicit, not only in Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people, but also in Israel's impunity.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is organized by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and has local organizing committees in each of the places where sessions will be held: Europe, United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States. The Tribunal will next venture into London, then to South Africa to ponder the peculiar institution of Israeli apartheid. And finally to the U.S. where the mother of all complicity resides.
The Tribunal stresses its independence from the influence of special interests and each Local Organizing Committee conducts fundraising activities to make each Session a success. Barcelona can be chalked up as a success that serves the Tribunal organizers well for the upcoming London Session. More information on the Barcelona proceedings can be found at http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.net/.
The original Bertrand Russell Tribunal was seated in the mid-1960s and considered the case against the U.S. war against Vietnam. Its second seating was to deliberate on human rights abuses in Latin America. Consideration of the situation of the people of Palestine commands its third seating.
The organizers of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine scoured the globe to find people of conscience to serve as jurors who are noted for acting on their convictions. The jurors include a woman who served with Bertrand Russell on the original Tribunal and another woman whose work eventually was recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize. The Tribunal's mandate is to inform and urge action by a larger community of conscience and its urgency is the understanding that the Tribunal must act in the face of inaction by national and international authorities.
In addition, the "BRussells" Tribunal on Iraq (operating from Brussels, Belgium at http://brusselstribunal.org/index.htm) is the brainchild of Russell Tribunal veteran François Houtart. The BRussells Tribunal was conducted in 2004 and found the United States guilty of committing an act of aggression against Iraq.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine, Barcelona Session, convened for three days, considered the evidence presented to it, and delivered its decision in response to a series of questions that could be summed up as: "Is the E.U. complicit in Israel's crimes against Palestinians, and if so, in what way? What is the E.U.'s legal responsibility to itself and to international law?"
During the proceedings, I did pose the "Why?" question several times. However, the unofficial respondent answered the question in a way that even I was totally unprepared for: from his gut.
"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."
This comment haunted me for the remainder of my European tour. And, it seemed that I could never escape it. In Brussels and then again in Paris; in London, I was consistently reminded of the color line and that I was traveling in places not usually broken by it: economic and political status in these places is as defined by skin color as it is in the United States, the Presidency of Barack Obama notwithstanding.
Combine my European experience with the fact of the illegal pillage of Africa by way of stoked "civil wars" and fake "rebel groups" created for the purpose of facilitating non-African Africa pillage--done since the first Berlin Conference that organized the so-called "Scramble for Africa" at the dawn of the 20th Century. Juxtapose that to the opening of the 19th Century where Africans in Haiti defeated Napoleon Bonaparte's Army. Not only was Africa robbed of its strongest human resources for centuries during slavery, it continues to be robbed of its human and natural resources even now. Africans' patrimony is being transferred, on the cheap, to Europe, the United States, and Israel.
Anyone who doubts these facts should consider the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), now suffering six million dead just since the Rwandan/Ugandan invasion in August of 1998 facilitated by the United States. The tragedy is told in the first United Nations Report on the pillage of DRC, written by Madame Ba-N-Dow, whose life was threatened by those named in the report, causing her to have to go into hiding because she told the truth. Additionally, numerous books and articles on the subject have been written by Camerounian-Parisian Charles Onana of Editions Duboiris, for those who read French, and by Wayne Madsen and Keith Harmon Snow, for those who don't.
As I looked into the faces of Europe's most recent immigrant Africans and Asians, the immigrant wars being fought today inside Europe, Israel, and the United States crystallized in the most dismal of contexts. With each glance into every face, I strained to make eye-to-eye contact to see beyond the face of the individual in order to understand the totality of the life I was encountering. Sadly, the realities all seemed the same: certain Europeans (including certain Americans and Israelis) had arrogated to themselves the right to go into any land, vilify the indigenous, denigrate their culture and dignity, steal the resources, overturn the local economy, destroy the local polities, and ignore the human rights of self-determination and resistance to occupation, and then dare the "others" to emigrate. For context today: Think the Muslim World in Africa and Asia. Think Latin America. Think Gaza.
Everywhere around Europe, as is also the case in Israel and the United States, immigration is an issue. It seems that Europeans--who have a quality of life that includes, among other things, mass transit and continental rapid rail that works, subsidized education, subsidized healthcare, and secure work and pensions--have reached their "immigrant tolerance level:" that is, more "others" are not welcome. And, as in the United States, the role of the special interest media cannot be discounted in the popularization of hate. This is especially sad when one realizes that the Europe of today exists as it does largely because of its past policies and current bondage with the United States that politically and economically wreck the countries of the "others."
For example, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Israel are all diamond trading capitals of the world, yet none of them is a major miner of diamonds. The diamonds mainly come from Africa, and the consequent diamond empire that links all of these capitals was built on slavery and theft. (Please see the film "Diamond Empire" by investigative journalist Janine Roberts, banned in the United States because of its inconvenient, name-naming content.)
Now, take a look at these diamond-producing capitals of Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, and black South Africa--even post-apartheid--and one quickly grasps the level of theft and criminality that continues still today. Please think about this the next time you are tempted to buy a beautiful sparkling diamond in your local mall jewelry store.
And, for those who have never left America's shores, one need only look inside the United States at the genocide of America's indigenous people and the continued pillage of their land to understand how today's life of largess was made possible by years of mistreatment, lawlessness, and genocide committed generations ago.
In 1948, the cycle began again when Zionists eager to wield state power were placed in control of Palestine by Europeans, Britons, and Americans and created the State of Israel on the land where Palestinians lived.
I inquired of one Israeli testifying at the Tribunal what did Operation Cast Lead tell us about the nature of Zionism. And it was through this line of questioning that I again heard something that I have heard all over the world, but never in the media: "I am an anti-Zionist Jew."
In the United States, Zionists at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) purport to speak for all Jews and they would have non-Jews believe that criticism of them or of Israel is criticism of all Jews. For many that I encounter in the world whose only previous information came from the media, their most startling discovery is that this is a lie. And I have heard some of the most impassioned critiques of Israel's policies toward Palestinians from anti-Zionist Jews. I intend to write more on this later.
Yesterday, it was announced in the English news that blacks and Asians are stopped by the police alarmingly more than whites. The study that published these findings also suggested that if such disparities are allowed to persist, then the communities of color so targeted could become increasingly disenchanted and volatile. London, Paris, and Oakland, California have all burned in recent memory as a result of persistent disparities and loss of hope for change. If unchecked now in communities of color, repression of all will surely be next.
Given my experiences and reflections during this European tour that included the Russell Tribunal; a standing-room-only meeting of Congolese who came from all over Europe to Brussels; a standing-room-only crowd of young people in "the hood" of a Paris suburb attending an event organized by rapper Joe Dalton; and several events in London that included a standing-room-only 9/11 Truth - 7/7 Tube Truth event, I find the observation of the Russell Tribunal attendee both poignant and relevant: It is still possible for people battered by propaganda and lies, covert and false flag operations, and the meanest of media blackouts to see and hear those of us who dissent and act on conscience. Our message is being received. A growing global critical mass see the humanity that binds us together despite the lies and the screens of religion, race, ethnicity, language, gender, and sexual orientation--skillfully used in the past to divide us.
The real message from my Russell Tribunal respondent is clear: Resistance to lies, injustice, war, and indignity is necessary and more people seeing that, join with us in our principled struggle.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Israel's message, a threat to Biden and Obama
WMR's government and intelligence sources are concerned about the threatening signals from the Israeli government that could impact on the security of President Obama.
The president clearly is facing a situation that pits those in his administration who oppose Israel's expansion of settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank and those who are providing support for the Netanyahu regime by stymying attempts to force Israel to the peace table with the Palestinians. The President's Special Envoy for the Middle East, George Mitchell, according to published news reports, recently expressed exasperation over the failure of the Obama administration to achieve a Middle East peace accord because of the State Department's bias in favor of Israel.
On March 11, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, in an interview with Israel Radio, stated that the White House had seen a "radical" change due to Obama's efforts to "rehabilitate" the image of Islam in United States and the Western world by removing the terrorism brand that has been affixed to it. Halevy cited the Obama policy change as the reason for the change in the White House's attitude toward Israel.
However, Halevy was careful to isolate the White House from the rest of the Obama administration. Halevy's ploy, coupled with Mitchell's revelations about the pro-Israel bias of Hillary Clinton's State Department, is an indication that the Netanyahu regime and its agents inside the Obama administration and Washington power circles are attempting a "divide and conquer" policy with regard to the Obama administration.
On March 11, the same day Halevy made his unusual comments about Obama to Israel Radio, the State Department issued its annual report on human rights. Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, ensured that Israel got off the hook on the UN's Goldstone Report that concluded that Israel may have committed war crimes in its invasion of Gaza last year. Posner, a former attorney with the law firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago and director of Human Rights First, a George Soros-funded organization, criticized the Goldstone Report, a criticism that was praised by the Zionist Organization of America, as well as other Israel Lobby organizations.
Posner, who had the final edit on the State Department human rights report, ensured the report's entry for "Israel and the Occupied Territories" [no mention is made of Palestine], reiterated the criticism of the Goldstone Report, which has been accepted by the European Union and human rights groups around the world: "On September 29, Justice Richard Goldstone, who headed the mission, presented the report (commonly known as the "Goldstone report") to the HRC [Human Rights Council] in Geneva. The Goldstone report investigated 36 incidents of alleged violations by the IDF in Gaza, as well as alleged violations by Palestinians. This reflected an effort by Goldstone to broaden the scope of his report beyond the original mandate, which was limited only to violations by Israel. Among its many conclusions, the report claimed that members of the IDF were responsible for deliberate targeting of civilians, for the destruction of critical infrastructure in Gaza, and for using weapons such as white phosphorous in highly populated areas, all of which it deemed to be violations of international humanitarian law."
The State Departmen's entry on Israel continues,"The Goldstone report was widely criticized for methodological failings, legal and factual errors, falsehoods, and for devoting insufficient attention to the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the fact that Hamas and other Palestinian militants were deliberately operating in heavily populated urban areas of Gaza. The government of Israel also sharply rejected the charge that it had a policy of deliberately targeting civilians.IDF military advocate general Mandelblit was responsible for reviewing all allegations relating to Operation Cast Lead, including those contained in the Goldstone Report. At the end of the year, Mandelblit's investigations were ongoing."
The bolded section of the State Department report [above] is a reiteration of Israel's propaganda aimed at covering up its premeditated genocide in Gaza. Secretary of State Clinton proudly released the report with her full endorsement of its "findings." While the report criticized Goldstone, it had no problem citing what it felt was a more dire threat: "growing anti-Semitism worldwide." The State Department ridiculously claims that Israel's Cast Lead invasion of Gaza has resulted in "traditional and new forms of anti-Semitism" arising around the world. In essence, because it was the Jewish state that engaged in genocide in Gaza, any criticism of that action, according to Posner, Clinton, and the Israel cell in Foggy Bottom, is "anti-Semitic."
The most serious threat against Biden, and, by extension, Obama, came when Netanyahu presented Biden a glass-framed document on the planting of trees in Jerusalem honoring Biden's late mother, said to have been a strong supporter of Israel. Netanyahu is reported to have broken the glass "accidentally" before handing it to Biden. Netanyahu reportedly shattered the glass when he leaned on the plaque on a podium with his elbows. According to Reuters, Netanyahu told Biden, "I have one thing to offer you right now and it's broken glass." But then Netanyahu pulled out the document, with glass shards flying around, and used Biden's pen to sign a dedication to Biden's mother. What is not explained is why Netanyahu would have planned to sign a dedication with the document already in a glass frame.
The more likely explanation is that the incident was planned by Netanyahu as a warning to Biden and Obama. In Jewish tradition, including weddings, broken glass is a reminder of the destruction of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem with the hope that it will be rebuilt in a united Jerusalem under Jewish rule. And for Israel, the "night of broken glass," or "Kristallnacht," is remembered as the beginning of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. In protocol- and symbolism-conscious Israel, the idea of handing the U.S. Vice President broken glass was obviously not an accident. Kristallnacht gets its name from the shattered glass that covered German streets in 1938, most of it from the broken windows of Jewish homes and businesses, as well as synagogues. Kristallnacht is still remembered on November 9 in ceremonies in Israel. They are ceremonies at which the ambassadors of Germany and Austria are expected to attend.
On November 9, 1989, when West and East Germany saw the Berlin Wall come down, Netanyahu's mentor, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, ensured that there were plenty of references to Kristallnacht in Israeli media reports on the planned German reunification. The reason was that Kristallnacht began on the evening of November 9, 1938. The editor of Ha'aretz declared: "It's very important that Germany stays divided."
But WMR's U.S. intelligence sources warn about a darker meaning. The sound of shattering glass is something that petrifies even the most seasoned intelligence agent. There is a saying among CIA old hands that once you hear the glass shatter, it's too late to save yourself from the snipers.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Dubai Investigation Exposes Israeli Ops in USA
By Michael Gillespie*
An ongoing investigation by the Dubai Police force into the assassination of a high-level Hamas official in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January has drawn back the curtains of secrecy and deception to reveal yet again the contours of Israel's massive and ever-expanding espionage operations in the United States.
The murder of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in his room at the Al Bustan Rotana, a 275-room five-star luxury hotel, in Dubai on January 19 has been widely perceived to be a Mossad operation involving, by the most recent count, 27 suspects traveling on fraudulently obtained and falsified European or Australian passports. In late February and early March, the plot thickened suddenly and significantly when major US media outlet reports connected the crime and many of those involved in it to the USA and to corporations based in the USA and Israel and revealed that some of the suspected assassins, apparently members of a Mossad kidon team, had entered the USA after leaving Dubai.
ABC News reported on February 24 that Dubai police had identified 15 new suspects as part of a ring that killed Al Mabhouh.
"Fourteen of the suspects purportedly used credit cards from META Bank, a regional American bank, to pay for hotel rooms and travel arrangements. … Dubai police linked META Bank to a New York-based company called Payoneer, which provided prepaid MasterCard credit cards issued by META Bank. According to its Web site, Payoneer has a research and development center in Tel Aviv," reported ABC.
The TV network report noted that some of the additional suspects played a central role in the crime while others were accused of "'providing prior logistical support and preparations to facilitate,' making a series of trips to Dubai in advance" of the assassination.
The New York Times reported on March 1 that, "At least two suspects in the killing of a Hamas official in a hotel here in January traveled to the United States afterward, according to a person familiar with the investigation."
"One suspect traveling on a British passport arrived in the United States on Feb. 14; the other used an Irish passport and arrived on Jan. 21, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case. He did not say where the men entered the country, and added that there was no known record of their leaving," wrote Robert F. Worth in a story filed from Dubai.
Worth's report noted that if the suspected assassins who entered the U.S. presented foreign passports, they would have been photographed and finger printed upon arrival.
The Wall Street Journal's Chip Cummins filed a similar report from Dubai on the same day attributing the information to "people familiar with the situation" and "records shared between international investigators." In many previous news reports from Dubai information about the investigation had been attributed to Dubai's Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim.
Neither report explored the rather remarkable news that the suspect carrying a British passport in the name Roy Allan Cannon was confident enough to travel on the falsified document more than three weeks after the assassination and to present it upon arrival in the USA, where passport controls are generally assumed to be most stringent.
"At one time it was possible to produce false identity documents with little or no regard for what is referred to as backstopping as data bases at national points of entry were unsophisticated and were generally unlinked to any central sources of information. That has all changed in the past eight years. European and American passports in particular can all be verified from central data bases that include information that is also drawn from other public record sources," wrote former CIA officer Philip Giraldi in a February 25 column for Antiwar.com.
On March 3, Al Jazeera TV reported that Tamim, "said he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and the head of Mossad [Meir Degan]."
Tamim's investigation, which has been described by Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble as "thorough," has seriously inconvenienced and embarrassed the Israeli government and its espionage organization.
The Money Trail
The Independent Monitor contacted MetaBank's corporate headquarters in Storm Lake, IA to ask why an Iowa bank would provide credit cards to 14 suspected members of a death squad.
MetaBank's Lisa Binder, Vice President for Investor Relations and Corporate Communications responded via telephone and e-mail with a statement saying, in part, "The Meta cards in question were issued in conjunction with a Meta Payment Systems program, not at a retail bank location. Meta Payment Systems, which has issued more than 150 million prepaid cards, markets its payroll cards through various Program Managers─in this case, Payoneer─to offer reputable US companies network branded payroll cards with which American companies can pay expatriates, employees and contractors of their company who live in the US and in foreign countries. The cards in question were 'loaded' by the companies using direct deposit for payroll, disbursements, and other compensation."
The Independent Monitor attempted to contact Payoneer offices at 410 Park Avenue in New York City but found that the only phone answered at Payoneer headquarters was a customer support line for Payoneer's Birthright Israel customers.
Birthright Israel provides first time educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26. The program sends "thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants' personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people," according to the organization's website.
Funding for Birthright Israel is "provided by our partners: private philanthropists through The Birthright Israel Foundation; the people of Israel through the Government of Israel; and Jewish communities around the world (North American Jewish Federations, Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Agency for Israel). …
"Taglit-Birthright Israel requires that all participants pay their deposit through Payoneer. … If you lose your Payoneer card while in Israel, it can be immediately blocked and will be replaced with a new card within 24 hours. … You will not need to contact your bank back home or worry about making many calls. One call to our Customer Support center and you are all set," says the www.birthright.payoneer.com website.
Payoneer's Birthright customer support center declined to provide the Independent Monitor with contact information for Payoneer founder and CEO Yuval Tal or for Payoneer corporate communications/media relations personnel.
"Since the assassination, Tal has been shielded by a wall of public relations representatives and does not respond to media requests for comments. … Tal's public relations representatives in New York have refused to comment on his past and relations with Israel's intelligence agency Mossad," wrote Abbas Al Lawati, a staff reporter for Gulf News.com on March 3.
"Tal is referred to by his associates in Israel as 'an outspoken Israeli patriot' despite having lived in New York for over ten years. In a 2006 Fox News interview about Israel's summer war on Lebanon, Tal was presented as a 'special ops commando' on Fox and Friends, and stated that 'this is a war Israel cannot (afford to) lose,'" wrote Al Lawati.
Payoneer's website proclaims that the company is "a registered MasterCard Merchant Service Provider (MSP), and partner with MetaBank or Choice Bank Limited to deliver our services. Privately held, our funding partners include Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Crossbar Capital."
The Independent Monitor found that all three of Payoneer's funding partners are venture capital firms that have offices in or strong connections to Israel.
Charlie Federman, Managing Partner of Crossbar Capital, previously co-founded BRM Capital in 1999, headed its New York office, and served as a Managing Director of the Israel and New York based fund until 2007. BRM Group, headquartered in Herzliya was founded by Nir Barkat, mayor of occupied Jerusalem.
Carmel Ventures is also headquartered Herzliya. Greylock Partners, founded in 1965, "operates in a number of global centers of innovation, including Boston, China (Beijing), India (Bangalore), Israel (Herzliya) and Silicon Valley. … Current Greylock portfolio companies include Data Robotics, Digg, Facebook, Imperva, LinkedIn, Palo Alto Networks, Pandora, Picarro, Redfin, Workday and ZipCar," according to the firm's website. Greylock's investment activities in Israel were launched in 2002 by partner Moshe Mor, who "served six years in the Israeli Army as a Captain in the Military Intelligence branch."
Tal almost certainly possess information that could be of value to U.S. law enforcement and counter-intelligence investigators, but whether their political masters, many of whom have been effectively co-opted by Israel, will allow U.S. investigators to pursue any sort of meaningful investigation is an open question. Thus far there has been little to indicate that U.S. officials are seriously interested in investigating the funding of travel expenses and hotel accommodations of suspected Israeli assassins through U.S. corporations, despite the reported entry of at least two of the suspects into the U.S. on fraudulent, falsified passports.
When the Independent Monitor contacted the Department of State (DoS) for comment about the news reports, a DoS press officer declined to comment and referred questions to the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press offices. A DoJ press officer also declined to comment and referred questions to a DHS press officer who has not responded to an e-mail message sent on March 5.
The Sayanim Network
Any substantive U.S. investigation of the suspected Dubai killers' connections to the USA would likely focus on members of the Mossad's worldwide network of sayanim, diaspora Jews who provide a wide variety of services to the Israeli intelligence and special operations agency. In his books, By Way of Deception (1990) and The Other Side of Deception (1994), former Mossad field officer or katsa Victor Ostrovsky described the sayanim network.
"Sayanim─assistants─must be 100 percent Jewish," wrote Ostrovsky in 1990.
The Mossad's helpers, chosen because they are well placed, willing, and able to provide valuable assistance to Israeli agents, are businessmen, doctors, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, police officers, intelligence officers, politicians, government bureaucrats, university professors and administrators, media professionals, information technology specialists, any occupation, profession, or position in which a sayan might prove useful in support of Israeli espionage operations.
Though they do not live in Israel, their first loyalty is to Israel. They do whatever Mossad officials, field officers, or assassins ask of them in behalf of Israel against the enemies of Israel or those who are seen as opposed to Israeli policies.
"Often the loyalty of sayanim is abused by katsas who take advantage of the available help for their own personal use. There is no way for the sayan to check this," wrote Ostrovsky.
"The one problem with the [sayanim] system is that the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the diaspora if it was known. The answer you get if you ask is: 'So what's the worst that could happen to those Jews? They'd all come to Israel? Great,'" wrote Ostrovsky.
"A sayan will rent a car or pass money to a kidon with no questions asked," said Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (1999) in a report by Alun Palmer of the Mirror (UK) on February 18. Thomas, who has estimated that there are at least 20,000 sayanim in the US and Great Britain, writes that all Mossad assassinations are authorized by the office of the prime minister of Israel.
The illegal use of U.S. banks and credit card companies to fund the movements and other expenses of a Mossad death squad in the Middle East indicates an alarming expansion of Israeli espionage operations on US soil and reveals to an unprecedented extent the foreign intelligence agency's penetration of major U.S. financial institutions, developments that limn the breadth, depth, and success of the Mossad's desperate efforts to expand and consolidate Israel's malignant influence over the Washington foreign policy establishment and sway within a broad range of U.S. institutions, despite growing popular opposition to Israel's the brutal and patently illegal occupation of Palestine and the punishing siege of Gaza.
The Myth, Cult, and Culture of Redemptive Violence
The supposed clash of civilizations, the conflict between the putatively modern Western Judeo-Christian tradition and radical Islam, the Bush administration's Global War on Terrorism later rebranded by the Obama administration as Overseas Contingency Operations, and the suppurating wound that is Israel's long-running illegal occupation and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine are evidence of a retrograde social and political dynamic that now threatens the continued progress and future of human civilization. That dynamic is epitomized by the myth, cult, and culture of redemptive violence.
"The myth of redemptive violence defends the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace. It is one of the oldest stories in the world. It misappropriates the language, symbols and scriptures of Christianity. Its God is the tribal God worshipped as an idol. Its offer is not forgiveness but victory. Its good news is not unconditional love of enemies but their elimination. Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy. It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous. And it is immensely popular," writes Dr. Walter Wink, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City.
Wink might have added that while Christian scripture is tainted by the myth of redemptive violence, the Hebrew Old Testament scriptures, attached at the spine of the Holy Bible to the New Testament, are Christianity's primary source of the pernicious mythology of redemptive violence. Only about 10 percent of the New Testament is devoted to Jesus' teachings about the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, the kingdom of Heaven, the happiness of peacemakers, and forgiveness and mercy as moral and spiritual imperatives.
True religion opposes violence as a technique of social evolution, but many Christians have been and are today all too willing and ready to embrace Hebrew Old Testament teachings that glorify war and the wholesale slaughter of innocents and ascribe such acts to the commands of a wrathful God that is both vengeful and violent. The popularity of the myth of redemptive violence in the West and the attitudes and policies it engenders in political and economic spheres of activity severely undercuts the supposed moral superiority of Western modernity and culture in relation to other traditions and cultures.
U.S. leaders often attempt to justify their wars with self-serving declarations that they are fighting for peace.
"One day the Iraqi people will understand that we came in peace," averred Secretary of State Colin Powell in March 2003 as U.S. troops advanced on Baghdad after a devastating and enormously destructive "Shock and Awe" air assault on the city.
If the status of a civilization can be accurately gauged by the fairness of its courts and the integrity of its judges, resort by national leaders to extra-judicial killings conducted by intelligence agency death squads is emblematic of the West's glorification of war and ruinous reversion to militarism─autocratic, cruel, and savage. Rigidly ultranationalistic Israel, more an army and an espionage agency with a country than a country with an army and an espionage agency, clearly intends to be the West's model and instructor in this regard.
A feature article by Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman published in the Washington Post on March 4 quoted Jonna Mendez, who worked for the CIA for 27 years and became the agency's chief of disguise. Mendez "believes the Dubai perpetrators took the fallout into account, all of it: the TV footage, the blown aliases and the head shots. The agents, she said, clearly knew they were under surveillance─they had simply decided it was unavoidable and a price worth paying.
"'You can be sure they knew they were being surveilled. Likewise, they would assume that the documents they were using would be made available after the fact,' said Mendez. 'What does this mean? It means it didn't matter. The faces and the documents that were captured by the cameras will probably never be seen again.'
"The fact that the perpetrators had to take the identities of real people rather than simply invent false identities is a symptom of the new world facing modern-day spies, one of databases and traceable passport information, she said.
"The real agents likely don't resemble the faces in the photos, she said … And if they do, plastic surgery, dental implants and hair grafts can ensure they are unrecognizable afterward.
"'Steal the identity, disguise the participants, be ready on the other side with another set of identities and documents, and embrace and conceal the protagonists on their return,' she said.
"'With that goal in mind this may, in fact, be the operation of the future,'" wrote Friedman.
Thinking Americans have an increasingly clear choice.
They can join the cult of redemptive violence, kneel before a Zionist tribal God of vengeance, and watch their country and its culture revert to the law of nature as militarism runs amok and Israeli spies and assassins, protected by corrupt and co-opted political leaders, roam America at will.
Or they can embrace and actively support not the savagery of assassins but the rule of law. They can cultivate the wisdom, insight, and foresight that are indispensable to the endurance of nations. They can persevere in their efforts to elect honest, wise, and progressive leaders. And they can continue to strive to live up and into the noblest ideals of their religions.
* Michael Gillespie, in addition to his regular freelance work for Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, is also a contributing editor and the Des Moines, IA correspondent for The Independent Monitor, the national newspaper of Arab Americans, published by Sami Mashney in Anaheim, CA.