America's Jerusalem Embassy for Mass Murder, Occupation and Wider War

Scris de **Admin** Lun Mai 14, 2018 9:28 pm

May 14, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - How obscenely ironic. Embassies traditionally symbolize diplomacy and peace. The opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem was occasioned by a grotesque baptism of murder of Palestinians, heralding wider war in the Middle East.

Not only that, but on the very anniversary of one of the most shameful episodes of ethnic cleansing and dispossession over the past century – the 1948 Nakba or Catastrophe for Palestinians – the US government is brazenly siding with the heirs of that historic violence, the Israeli state.

Trump's wholesale abandonment of any shame in endorsing Israeli violations against Arab historic rights is an incitement to regional conflagration.It's hard to express the horror. Israeli snipers shooting unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, while some 100 kilometers away in Jerusalem, US dignitaries and evangelical pastors were blessing the opening of Washington's new embassy as 'God's work'.

US President Donald Trump's policy in the Middle East, if you could call it "policy", has descended into absolute lunacy. No wonder, most European states stayed away from the US reception for unveiling its new diplomatic center.

Trump's reckless disregard for Palestinian-Israeli peace is plunging the region into a blood bath. This week's incendiary snub to Palestinians and the wider Arab region followed his tearing up of US obligations to the Iran nuclear accord. That violation of an international treaty has left diplomats from Europe, Russia, China and Iran scrambling to salvage a deal, which if it falls apart will unleash more instability and even war in the Middle East.

When Trump announced in December the moving of his country's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem it was roundly rebuked at the United Nations. The move violates decades of international consensus that Jerusalem should be a shared capital between Palestinians and Israelis pending the outcome of peace negotiations.

Trump said his decision was merely a "reflection of reality". Cynically, it marks US acquiescence to illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

To be fair, Washington's decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem was made over 20 years ago in 1995. Presidents Clinton, GW Bush and Obama opted to delay the actual move, claiming that such a move depended on progress in peace talks. Trump has now put into action legislation that was already on the books.

But what his declaration signifies is the jettisoning of any pretense by the US of being an "honest broker" between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinian leaders now refuse to even engage with US officials, such is their disgust.

Paradoxically, Trump is helping to clarify the situation. The US is openly backing Israeli conquest of Palestinian territory and oppression of Palestinians. Washington is now transparently complicit in criminal Israeli policy rather than hiding behind a facade of mediation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump this week for "making Israel great again". With typical chutzpah, Netanyahu urged other nations to follow suit, absurdly claiming that by relocating their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem they would facilitate peace.

The perverse logic, as proven already by the US policy, is that any chance of peace between Palestinians and Israelis is being utterly destroyed.

The hellish conditions that Palestinians are subjected to under relentless Israeli occupation are driving them to the desperate act of lining up in their thousands under the fire of Israeli snipers.

Over the past six weeks since Gaza's population began the "Great Return March" some 50 unarmed protesters have been murdered by Israeli live fire. On the day of the US Embassy opening, dozens of more civilians were shot dead, within hours of the Jerusalem ceremony.

Israeli commanders have openly admitted that a shoot-to-kill tactic is being used whereby soldiers are even targeting children who dare to approach a separation barrier on Gaza's eastern border with Israeli-held territory.

The Gaza protests were organized by ordinary Palestinians to highlight their desperate plea against a barbaric occupation and prevention of residents returning to their historic homes, including in Jerusalem. Some 70 per cent of Gaza's population are descended from refugees who were displaced by Israeli settlers in the 1948 pogroms and later in the 1967 War.

Under Israeli siege, which the UN has described as illegal, Gazans are prevented from moving out of the coastal strip. Some two million people – half of whom are under 18 years old – subsist in unlivable conditions. Over 90 per cent of Gaza's water supply is contaminated, electricity is available for only a few hours per day, fisherman are prevented from going beyond a few miles from the shore where human sewage runs directly into the sea.

As American historian Norman Finkelstein points out, Gaza is being tormented by military occupation, an inhuman blockade, massacres conducted with impunity by Israeli military, and children being poisoned. It is this context of genocide in which the recent protests are taking place.

Those protests were organized to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel's declared foundation on May 14, 1948. The next day, May 15, is what the Palestinians and many supporters around the world prefer to focus on – the Catastrophe.

Trump's decision to open the US Embassy in Jerusalem this week could not be more provocative and criminally insane.

It truly is a shockingly callous display of US support for seven decades of barbaric oppression against Palestinians and the wider Arab region.

Jerusalem is seen as a holy site for Muslims and Christians. Washington's acquiescing to Israel's declaration of the city as "undivided capital" of the Jewish Israeli state is an outrageous blow to hundreds of millions of people from other faiths. As well as a vandalistic swipe at world opinion based on ordinary principles of justice, morality and compassion towards the long-suffering Palestinian people.

Europe bears a heavy responsibility for the plight of Palestinians. After Hamas won the parliamentary elections in 2006, the EU and the US both moved to sanction the new Hamas government owing to its refusal to recognize the state of Israel. The Israeli siege on Gaza has thus been perpetrated with the complicity of the EU and the US, albeit the latter appearing more brazenly complicit under Trump.

European governments may be discomfited by Trump's strident contempt for Palestinian rights and international law. But they have contributed to the present deterioration in the Middle East by pandering towards Washington's policies of sponsoring Israeli occupation, as well as sponsoring reactionary Arab client regimes like Saudi Arabia, and fomenting illegal wars and regime-change operations.

Trump's impetuousness and ignorance – no doubt encouraged by multi-million-dollar donations from rich Jewish Americans like Sheldon Adelson – has set the US on a collision course with the Arab masses from his insolent indifference to their rights. As if that could not be any more combustible, Trump is pushing the same Israeli-Saudi despot agenda of hostility towards Iran, as evinced by the nuclear accord sabotage.

Europe has for too long tied itself to the shipwreck that is US policy in the Middle East. Surely, European governments must realize by now that if explosive violence and conflict is to be avoided in the Middle East, they must abandon the US shipwreck and begin asserting an independent foreign policy.

A genuine peace process advocating for long-neglected Palestinian rights, and repudiating US attempts to collapse the Iran nuclear accord are two immediate matters for the Europeans to claw back some sanity and respect – before it's too late.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

This article was originally published by "RT" -

********************

Amiralul american de la Ierusalim pentru uciderea în masă, ocupația și războiul mai larg

De Finian Cunningham

14 mai 2018 " Casa de informare a informațiilor " - Cât de obscen ironic. Ambasadele simbolizează în mod tradițional diplomația și pacea. Deschiderea Ambasadei SUA la Ierusalim a fost provocată de un botez grotesc de ucidere a palestinienilor, înștiințând un război mai larg în Orientul Mijlociu.

Nu numai că, dar chiar la aniversarea unuia dintre cele mai rușinoase episoade de purificare și deposedare etnică din ultimul secol - Nakba din 1948 sau catastrofa pentru palestinieni - guvernul american se călăuzește cu moștenitorii acestei violențe istorice, israelian stat.

Împușirea enormă a Trump de orice rușine în susținerea încălcărilor israeliene împotriva drepturilor istorice arabe este o incitare la conflagrația regională.E greu să-ți exprimi groaza. Luptătorii israelieni care trag niște protestatari palestinieni neînarmați în Gaza, în timp ce la aproximativ 100 de kilometri distanță în Ierusalim, demnitari și pastori evanghelici au binecuvântat deschiderea noii ambasade a Washingtonului ca "lucrare a lui Dumnezeu".

Politica americană a președintelui Donald Trump în Orientul Mijlociu, dacă o poți numi "politică", a coborât în nebunie absolută. Nu e de mirare că majoritatea statelor europene au rămas departe de recepția americană pentru a-și dezvălui noul centru diplomatic.

Nemulțumirea nepăsătoare a Trumpului față de pacea palestinian-israeliană este prinderea regiunii într-o baie de sânge. Scăderea incendiară a acestei săptămâni a palestinienilor și a regiunii mai largi arabe a urmărit distrugerea obligațiilor SUA față de acordul nuclear din Iran. Această încălcare a unui tratat internațional a lăsat diplomații din Europa, Rusia, China și Iran să se lupte pentru salvarea unei înțelegeri, care, dacă se destramă, va declanșa mai multă instabilitate și chiar război în Orientul Mijlociu.

Când Trump a anunțat, în decembrie, că mutarea ambasadei țării sale de la Tel Aviv la Ierusalim a fost cruțat la Natiunile Unite. Măsura încalcă decenii de consens internațional că Ierusalimul ar trebui să fie un capital comun între palestinieni și israelieni, în așteptarea rezultatului negocierilor de pace.

Trump a spus că decizia sa a fost doar o " reflectare a realității ". Din punct de vedere cinic, aceasta marchează consimțământul SUA față de ocuparea ilegală a Israelului de pe teritoriul palestinian.

Pentru a fi corect, decizia Washingtonului de a-și reloca ambasada în Ierusalim a fost făcută acum peste 20 de ani în 1995. Președinții Clinton, GW Bush și Obama au optat pentru întârzierea acestei acțiuni, susținând că o astfel de mișcare depinde de progresele înregistrate în discuțiile de pace. Trump a pus acum în acțiune legislația care se afla deja în cărți.

Dar ceea ce înseamnă declarația lui este jettisonarea oricărei pretenții din partea SUA de a fi un "broker cinstit" între israelieni și palestinieni. Liderii palestinieni refuză să se angajeze chiar cu oficialii americani, așa este dezgustul lor.

Paradoxal, Trump ajută la clarificarea situației. Statele Unite sprijină în mod deschis izbucnirea israeliană a teritoriului palestinian și oprimarea palestinienilor. Washingtonul este acum în mod transparent complicat în politica criminală israeliană, în loc să se ascundă în spatele unei fațade a medierii.

Primul Ministru israelian Benjamin Netanyahu a salutat Trump săptămâna aceasta pentru că "a făcut din nou Israelul mare ". Cu chutzpa tipică, Netanyahu a cerut altor națiuni să urmeze exemplul, ridicându-se în mod absurd că relocalizarea ambasadelor lor de la Tel Aviv la Ierusalim ar facilita pacea.

Logica perversă, așa cum a fost dovedită deja de politica SUA, este că orice șansă de pace între palestinieni și israelieni este complet distrusă.

Condițiile de urgență pe care palestinienii le-au supus unei ocupații israeliene neobosite îi conduc către actul disperat de a le strânge în miile lor sub focul lunetiștilor israelieni.

În ultimele șase săptămâni de când populația Gaza a început "Marele întoarcere de marți", aproximativ 50 de protestatari neînarmați au fost uciși de focul izraelian. În ziua deschiderii Ambasadei SUA, zeci de civili au fost împușcați, în câteva ore de la ceremonia de la Ierusalim.

Comandanții israelieni au recunoscut în mod deschis că se folosește o tactică pentru împușcături, prin care soldații vizează chiar copii care îndrăznesc să se apropie de o barieră de separare a graniței estice a Gazei cu teritoriul deținut de israelieni.

Protestele de la Gaza au fost organizate de palestinieni obișnuiți pentru a evidenția dorința lor disperată împotriva ocupației barbare și prevenirea revenirii locuitorilor lor în casele lor istorice, inclusiv în Ierusalim. Aproximativ 70% din populația Gaza este descendentă din refugiații care au fost mutați de colonii israeliene în pogromurile din 1948 și mai târziu în războiul din 1967.

În timpul asediului israelian, pe care ONU la descris ca ilegal, gazanii sunt împiedicați să iasă din banda de coastă. Aproximativ două milioane de persoane - dintre care jumătate sunt sub 18 ani - se află în condiții inutile. Peste 90% din aprovizionarea cu apă a orașului Gaza este contaminată, electricitatea este disponibilă doar câteva ore pe zi, pescarii sunt împiedicați să meargă peste câțiva kilometri de țărm unde canalizarea umană se scurge direct în mare.

După cum subliniază istoricul american Norman Finkelstein , Gaza este chinuită de o ocupație militară, de o blocadă inumană, de masacrele conduse fără milă de armata israeliană și de copiii otrăviți. Acesta este contextul genocidului în care au loc protestele recente.

Aceste proteste au fost organizate pentru a coincide cu aniversarea a 70 de ani de la fondarea Israelului pe data de 14 mai 1948. A doua zi, 15 mai, este ceea ce palestinienii și mulți suporteri din întreaga lume preferă să se concentreze pe - Catastrofa.

Decizia Trump de a deschide în această săptămână Ambasada SUA la Ierusalim nu ar putea fi mai provocatoare și nebună decât cea criminală.

Este cu adevărat o afirmație șocantă călăuzită de sprijinul SUA pentru șapte decenii de opresiune barbarică împotriva palestinienilor și a regiunii mai largi arabe.

Ierusalimul este văzut ca un loc sfânt pentru musulmani și creștini. Acordarea de către Washington a declarației Israelului despre oraș ca " capital nedivulgat " al statului israelian evreu este o lovitură de suferință pentru sute de milioane de oameni din alte credințe. Pe lângă o vânăjare vandalistă pe baza opiniei mondiale bazate pe principiile obișnuite ale dreptății, moralității și compasiunii față de poporul palestinian care suferă de multă vreme.

Europa poartă o mare responsabilitate pentru situația palestinienilor. După ce Hamas a câștigat alegerile parlamentare din 2006, UE și SUA s-au mutat pentru a sancționa noul guvern Hamas din cauza refuzului său de a recunoaște statul Israel. Asediul israelian asupra Gazei a fost astfel comis cu complicitatea UE și a SUA, deși acesta din urmă a apărut mai complicat din partea lui Trump.

Guvernele europene ar putea fi dezamăgite de disprețul dur al lui Trump pentru drepturile palestiniene și dreptul internațional. Dar ele au contribuit la deteriorarea actuală din Orientul Mijlociu prin prădarea față de politicile Washingtonului de sponsorizare a ocupației israeliene, precum și de sponsorizarea regimurilor reacționare arabe ale Arabiei Saudite, precum și a războaielor ilegale și a operațiunilor de schimbare a regimului.

Impetuozitatea și ignoranța lui Trump - fără îndoială încurajate de donații de milioane de dolari de la americani bogați evrei precum Sheldon Adelson - au pus SUA pe un curs de coliziune cu masele arabe din indiferența lor insolentă față de drepturile lor. Ca și cum acest lucru nu ar putea fi mai ușor combustibil, Trump împinge aceeași agendă israelian-saudită de ostilitate față de Iran, așa cum rezultă din sabotajul acordului nuclear.

Europa s-a legat de prea mult timp de naufragiul care este politica SUA în Orientul Mijlociu. Cu siguranță, guvernele europene trebuie să înțeleagă până acum că, în cazul în care violența și conflictele explozive trebuie evitate în Orientul Mijlociu, trebuie să renunțe la naufragiul american și să înceapă să afirme o politică externă independentă.

Un proces veritabil de pace care pledează pentru drepturile palestiniene neglijate de mult timp și repudierea încercărilor SUA de a se prăbuși acordul nuclear al Iranului reprezintă două chestiuni imediate pentru ca europenii să renunțe la o anumită sancțiune și respect - înainte de a fi prea târziu.

Finic Cunningham a scris extensiv despre afacerile internaționale, articole publicate în mai multe limbi. Este absolvent de masterat în Chimie Agricolă și a lucrat ca editor științific pentru Societatea Regală de Chimie, Cambridge, Anglia, înainte de a-și desfășura o carieră în jurnalismul ziarului. El este, de asemenea, un muzician și compozitor. Timp de aproape 20 de ani, a lucrat ca editor și scriitor în marile organizații de știri, inclusiv The Mirror, Irish Times și Independent.

Acest articol a fost inițial publicat de " RT " -

Scris de **Admin** Lun Mai 14, 2018 9:41 pm

On the day the Israeli Defence Force massacred dozens of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and maimed over 400 more, our media has carefully avoided the use of the word massacre. Here is a Google search of News I did five minutes ago on the word “massacre”.

America's Jerusalem Embassy for Mass Murder, Occupation and Wider War Screenshot-472

A massacre occurred today in which more people were killed than at Glencoe. All of them were unarmed and the majority were well over a hundred yards from the border fence. It says everything about the kind of nightmare fascist state Israel now is, that if you look through those news results for “massacre”, the only mention you get of Palestinians is a claim by the Israeli Defence Force that the Palestinian Defence Forces were planning a massacre of Israelis.

The Turkish government have now come out with a statement condemning the massacre, and in the UK the Daily Express and the Daily Star have both reported that; but both have chosen to put the word “massacre” in the Turkish statement into inverted commas, as though it were not true.

The Western media far prefers the word “clashes” to “massacre”. Because those terrible Palestinians insist upon demonstrating against the continuing theft of all their land and resources, and keep attacking innocent Israeli bullets with their heads and bodies. If you look through the Google search of News this time for “clashes”, you discover that the western and Israeli media peculiarly have precisely the same preference for this entirely inappropriate word. That, again, is fascinating.

America's Jerusalem Embassy for Mass Murder, Occupation and Wider War Screenshot-473

The gross injustice of the apartheid state of Israel appears immutable. The overwhelming force of the political and financial Establishment is behind Israel in the West, in the Russian oligarchy and even in most of the horribly corrupt leadership of Arab states. But the situation is not as dire as it seems, because the hold of those Establishment elites on the people they exploit has never been more shaky. Israel remains a touchstone issue. In order to help redress the terrible agony of the Palestinians, we must first effect a change in our own system of elite exploitation of the people at home. That change is coming.

*********************************

*-*

În ziua în care forța de apărare israeliană a masacrat zeci de palestinieni neînarmați în Gaza și a ucis peste 400 de persoane, mass-media a evitat cu atenție folosirea cuvântului "masacru". Aici este o căutare Google a Știrilor pe care le-am făcut acum cinci minute cu privire la cuvântul "masacru".

Un masacru a avut loc astăzi în care mai mulți oameni au fost uciși decât la Glencoe. Toți erau neînarmați și majoritatea erau la peste o sută de metri de gardul de frontieră. Se spune totul despre statul fascist de coșmar Israel acum că, dacă te uiți prin aceste rezultate de știri pentru "masacru", singura mențiune pe care o primești despre palestinieni este o pretenție a Forței de Apărare a Israelului că forțele palestiniene de apărare masacrul israelienilor.

Guvernul turc a ieșit acum cu o declarație condamnând masacrul, iar în Marea Britanie, Daily Express și Star Daily au raportat atât acest lucru, dar ambii au ales să pună cuvântul "masacru" în declarația turcă în virgule inversate, ca și cum nu ar fi fost adevărat.

Mass-media occidentală preferă cu exactitate cuvântul "ciocniri" și "masacru". Deoarece acei palestinieni îngrozitori insistă să demonstreze împotriva furtului continuu al întregului lor pământ și a resurselor și să continue să atace gloanțe israeliene nevinovate cu capul și corpul lor. Dacă te uiți prin căutarea Google de știri de data asta pentru "ciocniri", descoperi că mass-media occidentală și israeliană au în mod special aceleași preferințe pentru acest cuvânt complet necorespunzător. Asta este, din nou, fascinant.

Marea nedreptate a statului apartheid al Israelului pare imuabilă. Forța covârșitoare a instituției politice și financiare se află în spatele Israelului în Occident, în oligarhia rusă și chiar în majoritatea conducerii corupte oribil a statelor arabe. Dar situația nu este la fel de grozavă cum pare, pentru că menținerea acelor elite de stabilire asupra oamenilor pe care îi exploatează nu a fost niciodată mai slăbită. Israelul rămâne o problemă de piatră de hotar. Pentru a ajuta la redresarea agoniei teribile a palestinienilor, trebuie să facem mai întâi o schimbare în propriul nostru sistem de exploatare a oamenilor la domiciliu. Această schimbare vine.

Scris de **Admin** Lun Mai 14, 2018 10:15 pm

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. Each May 15, Palestinians solemnly commemorate Nakba Day. Nakba means catastrophe, and that’s precisely what Israel’s independence has been for the more than 700,000 Arabs and their five million refugee descendants forced from their homes and into exile, often by horrific violence, to make way for the Jewish state.

Land Without a People?

In the late 19th century, Zionism emerged as a movement for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Although Jews ruled over kingdoms there more than 2,000 years ago, they never numbered more than around 10 percent of the population from antiquity through the early 1900s. A key premise of Zionism is what literary theorist Edward Said called the "excluded presence" of Palestine’s indigenous population; a central myth of early Zionists was that Palestine was a "land without a people for a people without a land."

At its core, Zionism is a settler-colonial movement of white, European usurpers supplanting Arabs they often viewed as inferior or backwards. Theodore Herzl, father of modern political Zionism, envisioned a Jewish state in Palestine as "an outpost of civilization opposed to barbarism." Other early Zionists warned against this sort of thinking. The great Hebrew essayist Ahad Ha’am [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vzUrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA209&dq=ahad+ha%27am+"if+the+time+comes"&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMkvi-wPvaAhXEy1QKHRuuDNQQ6AEIKTAA%23v=onepage&q=ahad ha%27am "if the time]wrote[/url]:

We… are accustomed to believing that Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arabs… see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land. If the time comes that [we] develop to a point where we are taking their place… the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.

Jewish migration to Palestine increased significantly amid the pogroms and often rabid anti-Semitism afflicting much of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. As control of Palestine passed from the defeated Ottoman Turks to Britain toward the end of World War I, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour [url=http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/the balfour declaration.aspx]declared[/url] "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Israelis and their supporters often cite the Balfour Declaration when defending Israel’s legitimacy. What they never mention is that it goes on to state that"nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

Those "existing non-Jewish communities" still made up more than 85 percent of Palestine’s population at the time. As Zionist immigration swelled in the interwar years, conflict between the Jewish newcomers and the Arabs who had lived in Palestine for centuries was inevitable.

The Palestine Problem

Some Arabs reacted to the massive influx by rioting and attacking Jews, who responded by forming militias. Hundreds of Jews and Arabs were murdered in a series of clashes and massacres throughout the 1920s, and as yet another wave of Jewish migration surged into Palestine following the rise of Hitler, Britain formed the Peel Commission to examine the "Palestine problem." The commission proposed a "two-state solution" – one for Jews, another for Arabs, with Jerusalem remaining under British control to protect Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites.

As Arab attacks and Jewish retaliation escalated, an exasperated Britain issued the 1939 MacDonald White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration to Palestine. It emphatically stated that the "Balfour Declaration… could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish state against the will of the Arab population of the country." From then on, Jewish militias, who by now had gone on the offensive and were initiating often unprovoked attacks on Arabs, targeted British occupiers as well.

The two most infamous Jewish terror militias were Irgun and Lehi, led respectively by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both future Israeli prime ministers. Irgun was by far the most prolific of the two terror groups, carrying out a string of assassinations and attacks meant to drive out the British. On July 22, 1946, Irgun fighters bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people, including 17 Jews, an attack still celebrated in Israel today. They bombed and shot up crowded markets, trains, cinemas and British police and army posts, killing hundreds of men, women and children. Meanwhile, Lehi assassinated British minister of state Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944, while planning to kill Winston Churchill as well.

"No Room for Both"

With it soldiers, police, officials and, increasingly, its reputation constantly under attack and its resources strained to the breaking point after World War II, Britain withdrew from Palestine in frustration in 1947. The "Palestine problem" was handed off to the fledgling United Nations, which, under intense United States pressure, voted to partition the territory. The Arabs were not consulted. Jews, who comprised just over one-third of Palestine’s population, would get 55 percent of its land. Arabs were enraged.

Jews rejoiced. There was, however, a huge problem with the UN partition plan. If the state of Israel was to be both Jewish and democratic, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would have to leave. Forever. Years earlier, Jewish National Land Fund director Joseph Weitz [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=znrICgAAQBAJ&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=weitz+"we+must+not+leave+a+single+village"&source=bl&ots=S90nIIpR2z&sig=dTJGwPIbfvUXEZCsE-LZXMV8tYU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj68fj21vvaAhUT32MKHcZpBVMQ6AEIMjAD%23v=onepage&q=weitz "we must not leave a single]said[/url]:

Among ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both people in this country… and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to neighboring countries… We must not leave a single village, a single tribe.

"A Bit Like a Pogrom"

To that end, David Ben-Gurion, who would soon become Israel’s first prime minister, and his inner circle drafted Plan Dalet, the "[url=https://books.google.com/books?id=se_XAAAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PT26&dq=ilan+pappe+plan+dalet+"destruction+of+arab+villages"&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBpPiG2fvaAhUU-2MKHZFdBFsQ6AEIKTAA%23v=onepage&q=ilan pappe plan dalet "destruction of arab]principle objective[/url] of the operation [being] the destruction of Arab villages," according to official orders. At times the mere threat of violence was enough to coerce Arabs from their homes. Sometimes appalling slaughter was required to get the job done. In the most notorious of what Israeli historian Benny Morris has identified as Nakba 24 massacres, more than 100 Arab men, women and children were killed by Jewish militias at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. One 11-year-old survivor later recalled:

"They blew down the door, entered and started searching the place… They shot the son-in -law and when one of his daughters screamed, they shot

her too. They then called my brother and shot him in our presence and when my mother screamed and bent over my brother, carrying my little sister, who was still being breast-fed, they shot my mother too."

"To me it looked a bit like a pogrom," confessed Mordechai Gichon, an intelligence officer in the Haganah, which would soon become the core of the Israel Defense Forces. "When the Cossacks burst into Jewish neighborhoods, then that should have looked something like this." Widespread looting and brutal and often deadly rapes were also reminiscent of anti-Semitic pogroms, with Jews now the aggressors instead of the victims.

News of Deir Yassin spread like wildfire through Palestine, prompting many Arabs to flee for their lives. This is exactly what Jewish commanders – who would play self-described "horror recordings" of shrieking women and children on loudspeakers when approaching Arab villages – wanted. Attacking Jewish militias typically gave most of their victims room to escape; commanders generally preferred a fright-to-flight strategy over wanton slaughter.

"Like Nazis"

Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestine accelerated when Arab armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq invaded with the intent of smothering the nascent state of Israel in its cradle. On July 11, 1948, future Israeli foreign and defense minister Moshe Dayan led a raid on Lydda in which over 250 Arab men, women, children and old people were killed with automatic weapons, grenades and cannon. What followed, on future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s orders, was the wholesale expulsion of Lydda and Ramle. Tens of thousands of Arabs fled in what became known as the Lydda Death March. Israeli reporter Ari Shavit wrote:

Children shouted, women screamed, men wept. There was no water. Every so often, a family… stopped by the side of the road to bury a baby who had not withstood the heat; to say farewell to a grandmother who had collapsed from fatigue. After a while, it got even worse. A mother abandoned her howling baby under a tree. [Another] abandoned her week-old boy.

The international community was horrified and outraged by the Jewish atrocities of 1948-49. In the United States, a prominent group of Jews including Albert Einstein blasted the "terrorists" who attacked Deir Yassin. Others compared the Jewish militias to their would-be German destroyers, including Aharon Cizling, Israel’s first agriculture minister, who [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n7-I5Uq92R0C&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq="but+now+jews+too+have+behaved+like+nazis"&source=bl&ots=_HznNxEe26&sig=9pdZaK_AEN1_VcIh3cWamDWd15s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwikjo797fvaAhUL2mMKHZnlDdUQ6AEIRTAF%23v=onepage&q="but now jews too have behaved like]lamented[/url]that "now Jews have behaved like Nazis and my entire being is shaken."

Jews indeed behaved something like Nazis as they expelled or exterminated Arabs for their own lebensraum in Palestine. By the time it was all over, over 400 Arab villages were destroyed or abandoned, their residents – some of whom still hold the keys to their stolen homes – never to return. Moshe Dayan, one of Israel’s most exalted heroes, confessed in all but name to Israel’s ethnic cleansing in a 1969 speech:

"We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing… a Jewish state here. Jewish villages were built in place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because those geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either… There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab

population."

War on Truth and Memory

Today such honesty is sorely lacking, both among most Israeli Jews and their US coreligionists and supporters. In addition to efforts to silence and even outlaw peaceful protest movements like the growing worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) effort, Zionists and their apologist allies – some with their own competing religious agenda – have aggressively sought to erase the Nakba from memory. This is accomplished by denying Israeli crimes and by tarring critics with allegations of anti-Semitism.

Special vitriol is reserved for the "self-hating" Jews who dare shine light on Israeli atrocities. [url=https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/15238/Tantura Case in Israel.pdf]Teddy Katz[/url], a graduate student at Haifa University and ardent Zionist who uncovered the mass slaughter of 230 surrendering Arabs at Tantura on May 22, 1948, was sued, publicly humiliated, forced to apologize and stripped of his degree for the "offense" of telling the ugly, uncomfortable truth. The Israeli government even went as far as banning diaspora Jews who are too critical from making the "birthright return" to Israel granted to every other Jew in the world.

No Return, No Retreat

Speaking of the right to return, as Nakba refugees fled Palestine, often to settle in squalid camps in neighboring countries, the United Nations passedResolution 194, which guaranteed that every Palestinian refugee could return to their home and receive compensation for damages. None ever did. Israel ignored this and dozens of other UN resolutions over the coming decades, its impunity ensured by massive and unwavering US support.

Enabled and emboldened, Israel now marks 70 years of statehood and over half a century of illegal occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Today, Israel’s illegal Jewish settler colonies are the spear-tip of what critics call its slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Its Jews-only settlements and roads, separation wall and ubiquitous military checkpoints are, according to Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and others, the foundation of an apartheid state. Its periodic invasions of Gaza, with their 100-1 death toll disparities, their slaughter of entire families and enduring economic privation, are globally condemned as war crimes.

Yet through it all, the Palestinian people endure, despite the overwhelming odds against them. The more honest voices among earlier generations of Zionists foresaw this. Echoing Ahad Ha’am’s 1891 warning that "the natives are not going to just step aside so easily," Ben-Gurion later [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kg6uCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT150&dq=ben-gurion+"a+people+which+fights"&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjD_bTQjPzaAhUO52MKHcDEBW0Q6AEILzAB%23v=onepage&q=ben-gurion "a people which]acknowledged[/url]that "a people which fights against the usurpation of its land will not tire so easily." Seventy years later, neither Palestinians nor Jews have tired so easily, and the world is no closer to solving the "Palestine problem." Meanwhile, Jews, Arabs and the wider world brace for the next inevitable explosion. This is colonialism’s deadly legacy.

Brett Wilkins is editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. His work, which has recently appeared in thx, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, and Daily Kos, focuses on issues of war and peace, human rights and social justice.

Read more by Brett Wilkins

To Understand Iran, Try History, Not Hysteria – May 13th, 2018

Unit 731: How Leaders of Japan’s WWII Germ Warfare Unit Ended Up Working for the US – April 22nd, 2018

Deir Yassin: The Zionist Massacre That Sparked the Nakba – April 13th, 2018

Macedonia Apologizes to Innocent German Seized and Tortured by CIA – April 10th, 2018

While MSM Screams About Eastern Ghouta, US Bombs Kill Over 100 Syrian Civilians – March 6th, 2018

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. Each May 15, Palestinians solemnly commemorate Nakba Day. Nakba means catastrophe, and that’s precisely what Israel’s independence has been for the more than 700,000 Arabs and their five million refugee descendants forced from their homes and into exile, often by horrific violence, to make way for the Jewish state.

Land Without a People?

In the late 19th century, Zionism emerged as a movement for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Although Jews ruled over kingdoms there more than 2,000 years ago, they never numbered more than around 10 percent of the population from antiquity through the early 1900s. A key premise of Zionism is what literary theorist Edward Said called the "excluded presence" of Palestine’s indigenous population; a central myth of early Zionists was that Palestine was a "land without a people for a people without a land."

At its core, Zionism is a settler-colonial movement of white, European usurpers supplanting Arabs they often viewed as inferior or backwards. Theodore Herzl, father of modern political Zionism, envisioned a Jewish state in Palestine as "an outpost of civilization opposed to barbarism." Other early Zionists warned against this sort of thinking. The great Hebrew essayist Ahad Ha’am [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vzUrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA209&dq=ahad+ha%27am+"if+the+time+comes"&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMkvi-wPvaAhXEy1QKHRuuDNQQ6AEIKTAA%23v=onepage&q=ahad ha%27am "if the time]wrote[/url]:

We… are accustomed to believing that Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arabs… see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land. If the time comes that [we] develop to a point where we are taking their place… the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.

Jewish migration to Palestine increased significantly amid the pogroms and often rabid anti-Semitism afflicting much of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. As control of Palestine passed from the defeated Ottoman Turks to Britain toward the end of World War I, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour [url=http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/the balfour declaration.aspx]declared[/url] "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Israelis and their supporters often cite the Balfour Declaration when defending Israel’s legitimacy. What they never mention is that it goes on to state that"nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

Those "existing non-Jewish communities" still made up more than 85 percent of Palestine’s population at the time. As Zionist immigration swelled in the interwar years, conflict between the Jewish newcomers and the Arabs who had lived in Palestine for centuries was inevitable.

The Palestine Problem

Some Arabs reacted to the massive influx by rioting and attacking Jews, who responded by forming militias. Hundreds of Jews and Arabs were murdered in a series of clashes and massacres throughout the 1920s, and as yet another wave of Jewish migration surged into Palestine following the rise of Hitler, Britain formed the Peel Commission to examine the "Palestine problem." The commission proposed a "two-state solution" – one for Jews, another for Arabs, with Jerusalem remaining under British control to protect Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites.

As Arab attacks and Jewish retaliation escalated, an exasperated Britain issued the 1939 MacDonald White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration to Palestine. It emphatically stated that the "Balfour Declaration… could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish state against the will of the Arab population of the country." From then on, Jewish militias, who by now had gone on the offensive and were initiating often unprovoked attacks on Arabs, targeted British occupiers as well.

The two most infamous Jewish terror militias were Irgun and Lehi, led respectively by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both future Israeli prime ministers. Irgun was by far the most prolific of the two terror groups, carrying out a string of assassinations and attacks meant to drive out the British. On July 22, 1946, Irgun fighters bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people, including 17 Jews, an attack still celebrated in Israel today. They bombed and shot up crowded markets, trains, cinemas and British police and army posts, killing hundreds of men, women and children. Meanwhile, Lehi assassinated British minister of state Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944, while planning to kill Winston Churchill as well.

"No Room for Both"

With it soldiers, police, officials and, increasingly, its reputation constantly under attack and its resources strained to the breaking point after World War II, Britain withdrew from Palestine in frustration in 1947. The "Palestine problem" was handed off to the fledgling United Nations, which, under intense United States pressure, voted to partition the territory. The Arabs were not consulted. Jews, who comprised just over one-third of Palestine’s population, would get 55 percent of its land. Arabs were enraged.

Jews rejoiced. There was, however, a huge problem with the UN partition plan. If the state of Israel was to be both Jewish and democratic, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would have to leave. Forever. Years earlier, Jewish National Land Fund director Joseph Weitz [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=znrICgAAQBAJ&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=weitz+"we+must+not+leave+a+single+village"&source=bl&ots=S90nIIpR2z&sig=dTJGwPIbfvUXEZCsE-LZXMV8tYU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj68fj21vvaAhUT32MKHcZpBVMQ6AEIMjAD%23v=onepage&q=weitz "we must not leave a single]said[/url]:

Among ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both people in this country… and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to neighboring countries… We must not leave a single village, a single tribe.

"A Bit Like a Pogrom"

To that end, David Ben-Gurion, who would soon become Israel’s first prime minister, and his inner circle drafted Plan Dalet, the "[url=https://books.google.com/books?id=se_XAAAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PT26&dq=ilan+pappe+plan+dalet+"destruction+of+arab+villages"&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBpPiG2fvaAhUU-2MKHZFdBFsQ6AEIKTAA%23v=onepage&q=ilan pappe plan dalet "destruction of arab]principle objective[/url] of the operation [being] the destruction of Arab villages," according to official orders. At times the mere threat of violence was enough to coerce Arabs from their homes. Sometimes appalling slaughter was required to get the job done. In the most notorious of what Israeli historian Benny Morris has identified as Nakba 24 massacres, more than 100 Arab men, women and children were killed by Jewish militias at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. One 11-year-old survivor later recalled:

"They blew down the door, entered and started searching the place… They shot the son-in -law and when one of his daughters screamed, they shot

her too. They then called my brother and shot him in our presence and when my mother screamed and bent over my brother, carrying my little sister, who was still being breast-fed, they shot my mother too."

"To me it looked a bit like a pogrom," confessed Mordechai Gichon, an intelligence officer in the Haganah, which would soon become the core of the Israel Defense Forces. "When the Cossacks burst into Jewish neighborhoods, then that should have looked something like this." Widespread looting and brutal and often deadly rapes were also reminiscent of anti-Semitic pogroms, with Jews now the aggressors instead of the victims.

News of Deir Yassin spread like wildfire through Palestine, prompting many Arabs to flee for their lives. This is exactly what Jewish commanders – who would play self-described "horror recordings" of shrieking women and children on loudspeakers when approaching Arab villages – wanted. Attacking Jewish militias typically gave most of their victims room to escape; commanders generally preferred a fright-to-flight strategy over wanton slaughter.

"Like Nazis"

Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestine accelerated when Arab armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq invaded with the intent of smothering the nascent state of Israel in its cradle. On July 11, 1948, future Israeli foreign and defense minister Moshe Dayan led a raid on Lydda in which over 250 Arab men, women, children and old people were killed with automatic weapons, grenades and cannon. What followed, on future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s orders, was the wholesale expulsion of Lydda and Ramle. Tens of thousands of Arabs fled in what became known as the Lydda Death March. Israeli reporter Ari Shavit wrote:

Children shouted, women screamed, men wept. There was no water. Every so often, a family… stopped by the side of the road to bury a baby who had not withstood the heat; to say farewell to a grandmother who had collapsed from fatigue. After a while, it got even worse. A mother abandoned her howling baby under a tree. [Another] abandoned her week-old boy.

The international community was horrified and outraged by the Jewish atrocities of 1948-49. In the United States, a prominent group of Jews including Albert Einstein blasted the "terrorists" who attacked Deir Yassin. Others compared the Jewish militias to their would-be German destroyers, including Aharon Cizling, Israel’s first agriculture minister, who [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n7-I5Uq92R0C&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq="but+now+jews+too+have+behaved+like+nazis"&source=bl&ots=_HznNxEe26&sig=9pdZaK_AEN1_VcIh3cWamDWd15s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwikjo797fvaAhUL2mMKHZnlDdUQ6AEIRTAF%23v=onepage&q="but now jews too have behaved like]lamented[/url]that "now Jews have behaved like Nazis and my entire being is shaken."

Jews indeed behaved something like Nazis as they expelled or exterminated Arabs for their own lebensraum in Palestine. By the time it was all over, over 400 Arab villages were destroyed or abandoned, their residents – some of whom still hold the keys to their stolen homes – never to return. Moshe Dayan, one of Israel’s most exalted heroes, confessed in all but name to Israel’s ethnic cleansing in a 1969 speech:

"We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing… a Jewish state here. Jewish villages were built in place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because those geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either… There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab

population."

War on Truth and Memory

Today such honesty is sorely lacking, both among most Israeli Jews and their US coreligionists and supporters. In addition to efforts to silence and even outlaw peaceful protest movements like the growing worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) effort, Zionists and their apologist allies – some with their own competing religious agenda – have aggressively sought to erase the Nakba from memory. This is accomplished by denying Israeli crimes and by tarring critics with allegations of anti-Semitism.

Special vitriol is reserved for the "self-hating" Jews who dare shine light on Israeli atrocities. [url=https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/15238/Tantura Case in Israel.pdf]Teddy Katz[/url], a graduate student at Haifa University and ardent Zionist who uncovered the mass slaughter of 230 surrendering Arabs at Tantura on May 22, 1948, was sued, publicly humiliated, forced to apologize and stripped of his degree for the "offense" of telling the ugly, uncomfortable truth. The Israeli government even went as far as banning diaspora Jews who are too critical from making the "birthright return" to Israel granted to every other Jew in the world.

No Return, No Retreat

Vorbind de dreptul de a se întoarce, deoarece refugiații Nakba au părăsit Palestina, de multe ori să se stabilească în lagărele necinstite din țările vecine, Organizația Națiunilor Unite a adoptat Rezoluția 194 , care garanta că fiecare refugiat palestinian se poate întoarce acasă și poate primi despăgubiri pentru daune. Nimeni nu a făcut vreodată. Israelul a ignorat acest lucru și zeci de alte rezoluții ale ONU în deceniile următoare, impunitatea sa asigurându-se de sprijinul masiv și neclintit din partea SUA.

Ezitat și încurajat, Israelul marchează acum 70 de ani de statalitate și peste o jumătate de secol de ocupație ilegală în Cisiordania, Ierusalimul de Est și Heights Golan. Astăzi, coloniile ilegale de colonii evreiești din Israel sunt vârful de lance al ceea ce criticii numesc curățarea etnică înceată a Palestinei. Numeroasele așezări și drumuri evreiești, peretele de separare și punctele de control militare umbrite sunt, în opinia lui Jimmy Carter , Desmond Tutu și alții, fundamentul unui stat apartheid. Invazia sa periodică din Gaza, cudisparitățile de 100-1 de decese, sacrificarea familiilor întregi și privaționarea economică durabilă, sunt condamnate global ca crime de război.

Cu toate acestea, poporul palestinian persistă, în ciuda cotelor copleșitoare împotriva lor. Cele mai sincere voci dintre generațiile anterioare ale sioniștilor au prevăzut acest lucru. Echocându-i pe Ahad Ha'am din 1891, avertizând că "nativii nu se vor abate atât de ușor", Ben-Gurion a [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kg6uCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT150&dq=ben-gurion+"a+people+which+fights"&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjD_bTQjPzaAhUO52MKHcDEBW0Q6AEILzAB%23v=onepage&q=ben-gurion "a people which]recunoscut[/url] mai târziu că "un popor care luptă împotriva uzurpării pământului său nu se va plictisi atât de ușor". Șaptezeci de ani mai târziu, nici palestinienii, nici evreii nu s-au obosit atât de ușor, iar lumea nu este mai aproape de a rezolva problema "Palestinei". Între timp, evreii, arabii și lumea întreagă se susțin pentru următoarea explozie inevitabilă. Aceasta este moștenirea moștenită a colonialismului.

Brett Wilkins este redactor la nivel mondial pentru știrile din SUA la Digital Journal.Opera sa, care a apărut recent în thx, Common Dreams, Counterpunch și Daily Kos, se concentrează pe probleme de război și pace, drepturile omului și justiția socială.

Citiți mai multe de Brett Wilkins

Pentru a înțelege Iranul, încercați istoria, nu isteria - 13 mai 2018

Unitatea 731: modul în care liderii celui de-al doilea război mondial din Japonia au terminat de lucru pentru SUA - 22 aprilie 2018

Deir Yassin: masacrul sionist care a aprins Nakba - 13 aprilie 2018

Macedonia cere scuze germanilor inocenți confiscați și torturați de CIA - 10 aprilie 2018

În timp ce MSM critică despre Ghouta de est, bombele americane ucid peste 100 de civili sirieni - 6 martie 2018

Scris de Continut sponsorizat

America's Jerusalem Embassy for Mass Murder, Occupation and Wider War

America's Jerusalem Embassy for Mass Murder, Occupation and Wider War

When Is a Massacre Not a Massacre?

Re: America's Jerusalem Embassy for Mass Murder, Occupation and Wider War

Re: America's Jerusalem Embassy for Mass Murder, Occupation and Wider War