Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS UP

[earth_as_one]

RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

For starters:

The CIA in Iran
The Oily Business of Regime Change
http://www.globalpolicy.org/wtc/targets/2003/0528cia.htm

Ex-U.S. Official Says CIA Aided Baathists
CIA offers no comment on Iraq coup allegations
by David Morgan
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0420-05.htm

 

[earth_as_one]

RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

Published on Friday, September 14, 2001 by CommonDreams.org
Addressing the Sources of Middle Eastern Violence Against the United States
by Steve Niva

In the wake of the immense tragedy of the recent attacks on American soil it is difficult to get beyond the horror and shock of what has just happened and engage in serious reflection on the sources of violence against the United States. This is understandable given the almost unbelievable nature of this attack. Yet it is more necessary than ever if one is to find ways to prevent such attacks in the future.
What we will see in the next few days and weeks will be further investigations, arrests of individuals and intense speculation about which groups or states did this and how the United States should respond. Unfortunately, if the pattern of past responses to such attacks is repeated, we will probably not learn a great deal about the reasons behind why this attack happened, or the broader sources of violence against the United States over the past decade. Instead the usual array of retired generals and military analysts will be trotted out to explain the tactical elements of their favored military response.

We now have seen substantial evidence of a Middle Eastern connection to this attack and media coverage has frequently mentioned the name of Osama bin Laden as the number one terrorist suspect and mastermind of this operation. As we are inexorably led down the road to military confrontation in the Middle East, it is necessary to gain clarity about the specific actors and their motivations before one can even think about how to respond. For Americans who like their hero's and villains portrayed in simple dichotomies of good and evil, the result of this kind of clarity will be disturbing because the United States has created many enemies through its policies in the Middle East over the past century and bears a significant amount of responsibility for creating a fertile soil for anti-American hatred. Any American response that does not address this truth is doomed to further the cycle of violence.

Who is behind the attacks?

The recent attacks on U.S. soil are most likely related to an escalating series of attacks and bombings on U.S. targets over the past 10 years. In order, these attacks include: the recent bombing of the USS Cole in October, 2000 that claimed 17 lives; the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which hundreds were killed; the 1996 car-bomb attack on a U.S. barracks in Dharahan, Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans; the 1995 car-bomb attack on an American National Guard Training center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia that took 4 lives and, of course, the 1993 World Trade Center truck-bombing that killed 6 people and injured over a thousand others.

All of these attacks have been attributed to Islamic radicals based in the Middle East and Central Asia under the rubric of a very hazy notion of "Islamic fundamentalism." Indeed a number of people from these regions with links to certain militant Islamic groups have been arrested and charged in some of these actions. Breathless reports of a shadowy Islamic conspiracy against the U.S. led by Osama bin Laden have generated a steady stream of cliché's about this new enemy and its hatred of the U.S., but unfortunately precious little light has been shed on understanding why this is happening and what exactly these people believe. Their enmity towards the U.S. is explained as little more than the product of a fanatical and inherently anti-Western and anti-American world view. Stephen Emerson, a so-called terrorism expert who frequently appears in the media, claims that "the hatred of the US by militant Islamic fundamentalists is not tied to any particular act or event. Rather, fundamentalists equate the mere existence of the West-its economic, political and cultural systems-as an intrinsic attack on Islam."

Any explanation of Middle Eastern violence that relies upon the notion that Islam is an inherently violent or inherently anti-Western religion is false and misleading. First, Islam is one of the world's largest and most diverse religions and like Christianity or Judaism there are thousands of views within Islam about the religion and also about violence and the West. Secondly, there are major differences even among explicitly Muslim militants and activists regarding these issues-some insist upon non-violent struggle and others regard violence as a legitimate tool. There is no way one can generalize about Islam or any religion for that matter.

So who are the perpetrators and what drove them to carry this horrendous act? The most likely perpetrators of these attacks are related to an extremely small and fringe network of militants whose motivations do not derive from Islam so much as from a common set of experiences and beliefs that resulted from their participation in the U.S. backed war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's. These militants were recruited by the CIA and the Saudi Arabian and Pakistani intelligence services to fight against the Soviet Union during the 1980's. They came largely from the poor and unemployed classes or militant opposition groups from around the Middle East, including Algeria, Egypt, Palestine and elsewhere in order to wage war on behalf of the Muslim people of Afghanistan against the communist enemy.

Among the many coordinators and financiers of this effort was a rich young Saudi named Osama Bin Laden, who was the millionaire son of a wealthy Saudi businessman with close contacts to the Saudi royal family. Although accounts vary regarding his actual participation in the war, he played an important role in helping these groups recruit volunteers and build extensive networks of bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan after 1984.

This network of conservative Sunni Muslim militants, who became known as "the Afghans" in the Middle East, also served another purpose for the U.S. and its allies in the region. Not only were they anti-Communist due to their rejection of its atheism, they were also opposed to the brand of Islamic radicalism promoted by the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and its leader Ayatollah Khomeini largely because it was based on Shiite rather than Sunni Islamic doctrine, a major doctrinal cleavage within Islam. The revolution had had toppled a major ally of the U.S., the Shah of Iran, who played a major role as a pillar of U.S. hegemony in the oil rich Persian Gulf and was threatening key U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other oil rich states. Therefore, the clear aim of U.S. foreign policy therefore was to kill two birds with one stone: turn back the Soviet Union and create a counter-weight to radical Iranian inspired threats to U.S. interests, particularly U.S. backed regimes who controlled the massive oil resources.

The failure of U.S. policy in the Middle East

But this policy has now turned into a nightmare for the U.S. and has likely led to the recent attacks against the U.S. in New York and Washington D.C. After the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan in 1989 the "Afghan" network became expendable to the U.S. who no longer needed their services. In fact, the U.S. actively turned against these groups after the Gulf War when a number of these militants returned home and moved into the violent opposition against U.S. allied regimes and opposed the U.S. war against Iraq in 1991. They were particularly opposed to the unprecedented positioning of U.S. ground troops in Saudi Arabia on the land of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina. As a result, in the past decade there has been a vicious war of intelligence services in the region between America and its allies and militant Muslim groups. Many Egyptian Islamists believe the U.S. trained Egyptian police torture techniques like they did the Shah and his brutal Savak security police. Moreover, the CIA has sent snatch squads to abduct wanted militants form Muslim countries and return them to their countries to face almost certain death and imprisonment.

The primary belief of this loose and militant network of veterans of the Afghanistan war is that the West, led by the United States, is now waging war against Muslims around the world and that they have to defend themselves by any means necessary, including violence and terrorism. They point to a number of cases where Muslims have born the brunt of violence as evidence of this war: the Serbian and Croation genocide against Bosnian Muslims, the Russian war in Chechnya, the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the UN sanctions against Iraq and the U.S. backing of dictatorships in Algeria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, for example. They claim that the US either supported the violence or failed to prevent it in all of these cases. It is these beliefs that enable them to justify not only targeting U.S. military facilities but also its civilians.

It should be clear that this network is only a very radical fringe of militants who have decided that they must use armed tactics to get their message out to the U.S. and others. They differ in important ways with the wider current of Islamic activism in Arab world and more globally which in addition to its Islamic orientation has an agenda about social justice and social change against the dictatorships and corruption in many of the pro-Western countries in the region. They are anti-Iranian. They are now anti-Saudi. Their actions have sometimes even been condemned by militant Muslim organizations ranging from the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt to the FIS in Algeria to HAMAS in Palestine. They are somewhat disconnected from these movements in that they do not locate their struggle in a national context, but rather in a global war on behalf of Muslims. Nevertheless, they certainly share many common sentiments with this wider current of Islamic activism. There is no question that the one-sided U.S. support for Israel, the U.S. sponsorship of sanctions against Iraq as well as U.S. support for dictatorships across the region have created a fertile ground for some sympathy with such militancy.

Osama bin Laden is not the mastermind of these attacks as is often claimed in the media; he just facilitates these groups and sentiments with logistics and finances, as do others. He is simply a very visible symbol of this loose network and the U.S. obsession with him most likely works to increase his standing as an icon of resistance to the U.S. The network with which he is linked has no geographical location or fixed center; it appears to be a kaleidoscopic overlay of cells and interlinkages that span the globe from camps on the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands to immigrant communities in Europe and the U.S.

The rise of this militant network and their adoption of violence against the United States represents a clear failure of U.S. strategy in the region, especially the U.S./Saudi/Pakistani model of alliance between conservative Sunni Islamic activism and the West. The problem is that US has no alternative political strategy because they see all Islamic activists as their enemy and refuse to address the root causes of anti-American sentiments in the region. Moreover, the U.S appears to have no long-term strategy to address the sources of grievances that the radical groups share with vast majority of Muslim activists who abhor using violent methods that would include, for starters, a more balanced approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, ending the sanctions on Iraq, moving U.S. military bases out of Saudi Arabia, and supporting the legitimate aspirations of regional peoples for democracy and human rights.

How to truly defeat terrorism

Many of us accept the premise that terrorism is a phenomenon that can be defeated only by amelioration of the conditions that inspire it. Terrorism's best asset, in the final analysis, is the anger and desperation that leads people to see no alternative to violence.

While only a fringe element has seized upon violence as their solution, many of the world's 1.2 billion Muslim people are understandably aggrieved by double standards. The U.S. claims that it must impose economic sanctions on certain countries that violate human rights and/or harbor weapons of mass destruction. Yet the U.S. largely ignores Muslim victims of human rights violations in Palestine, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir and Chechnya. What's more, while the U.S. economy is propped up by weapon sales to countries around the globe and particularly in the Middle East, the U.S. insists on economic sanctions to prevent weapon development in Libya, Sudan, Iran and Iraq. In Iraq, the crippling economic sanctions cost the lives of 5,000 children, under age five, every month. Over one million Iraqis have died as a direct result of over a decade of sanctions. Finally, the U.S. pro-Israel policy unfairly puts higher demands on Palestinians to renounce violence than on Israelis to halt new settlements and adhere to U.N. resolutions calling for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands.

That anger cannot be extinguished by Tomahawk missiles or military operations. The present U.S. strategy for ending the threat of terrorism through the use of military force will only exacerbate this anger and desperation. When innocent U.S. citizens are killed and harmed by blasts at US embassies or bases, or used as cannon fodder for suicide hijackings, the U.S. government expects expressions of outrage and grief over brutal terrorism. But when U.S. Cruise missiles kill and maim innocent Sudanese, Afghanis, and Pakistanis, the U.S. calls it collateral damage. Even if Osama bin Laden is killed or captured, the fertile soil that creates such figures will still be there. Moreover, any attacks may simply serve to inflame passions and create hosts of new volunteers to their ranks

There is no justification for the horrendous attacks on innocent American civilians in New York or Washington. These attacks have served no cause; they have likely set back efforts to build popular movements and international solidarity that, in the final analysis, are the best chance of achieving social justice and change in the Middle East and elsewhere. Yet, at this difficult time, Americans should critically examine policies with which Arabs, Muslims and many others have legitimate grievances. Instead our leaders refuse to admit the flaws in their policies and find it easier to demonize those in the Arab world who oppose them as a way of diverting attention from their own mistakes.

Military solutions to the problems in the Middle East and the terrorism that has resulted from these problems is not a policy but a recipe for more violence and bombings.



http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0914-04.htm

 

[earth_as_one]

RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

Apartheid in the Holy Land

Desmond Tutu
Monday April 29, 2002
The Guardian


In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.
What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.

On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?

I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: "Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews."

My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.

The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty, will not provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only intensify the hatred.

Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or - I hope - to strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders.

We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land?

My brother Naim Ateek has said what we used to say: "I am not pro- this people or that. I am pro-justice, pro-freedom. I am anti- injustice, anti-oppression."

But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?

People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.

Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.

We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers.

Desmond Tutu is the former Archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission. This address was given at a conference on Ending the Occupation held in Boston, Massachusetts, earlier this month. A longer version appears in the current edition of Church Times.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,706911,00.html

 

[earth_as_one]

RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

A Letter from Nelson Mandela to Thomas Friedman

by Arjan El Fassed (Media Monitors Network)

March 30, 2001

To: Thomas L. Friedman (columnist New York Times)
From: Nelson Mandela (former President South Africa)

Dear Thomas,

I know that you and I long for peace in the Middle East, but before you continue to talk about necessary conditions from an Israeli perspective, you need to know what's on my mind. Where to begin? How about 1964. Let me quote my own words during my trial. They are true today as they were then:

"I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

Today the world, black and white, recognise that apartheid has no future. In South Africa it has been ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. That mass campaign of defiance and other actions could only culminate in the establishment of democracy.

Perhaps it is strange for you to observe the situation in Palestine or more specifically, the structure of political and cultural relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, as an apartheid system. This is because you incorrectly think that the problem of Palestine began in 1967. This was demonstrated in your recent column "Bush's First Memo" in the New York Times on March 27, 2001.

You seem to be surprised to hear that there are still problems of 1948 to be solved, the most important component of which is the right to return of Palestinian refugees.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not just an issue of military occupation and Israel is not a country that was established "normally" and happened to occupy another country in 1967. Palestinians are not struggling for a "state" but for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa.

In the last few years, and especially during the reign of the Labour Party, Israel showed that it was not even willing to return what it occupied in 1967; that settlements remain, Jerusalem would be under exclusive Israeli sovereignty, and Palestinians would not have an independent state, but would be under Israeli economic domination with Israeli control of borders, land, air, water and sea.

Israel was not thinking of a "state" but of "separation". The value of separation is measured in terms of the ability of Israel to keep the Jewish state Jewish, and not to have a Palestinian minority that could have the opportunity to become a majority at some time in the future. If this takes place, it would force Israel to either become a secular democratic or bi-national state, or to turn into a state of apartheid not only de facto, but also de jure.

Thomas, if you follow the polls in Israel for the last 30 or 40 years, you clearly find a vulgar racism that includes a third of the population who openly declare themselves to be racist. This racism is of the nature of "I hate Arabs" and "I wish Arabs would be dead". If you also follow the judicial system in Israel you will see there is discrimination against
Palestinians, and if you further consider the 1967 occupied territories you will find there are already two judicial systems in operation that represent two different approaches to human life: one for Palestinian life and the other for Jewish life. Additionally there are two different approaches to property and to land. Palestinian property is not recognised as private property because it can be confiscated.

As to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, there is an additional factor. The so-called "Palestinian autonomous areas" are bantustans. These are restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli apartheid system.

The Palestinian state cannot be the by-product of the Jewish state, just in order to keep the Jewish purity of Israel. Israel's racial discrimination is daily life of most Palestinians. Since Israel is a Jewish state, Israeli Jews are able to accrue special rights which non-Jews cannot do. Palestinian Arabs have no place in a "Jewish" state.

Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children.

The responses made by South Africa to human rights abuses emanating from the removal policies and apartheid policies respectively, shed light on what Israeli society must necessarily go through before one can speak of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and an end to its apartheid policies.

Thomas, I'm not abandoning Mideast diplomacy. But I'm not going to indulge you the way your supporters do. If you want peace and democracy, I will support you. If you want formal apartheid, we will not support you. If you want to support racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing, we will oppose you. When you figure out what you're about, give me a call.


http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/mandella.html

 

[Just the Facts]

Re: RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHO

Published on Friday, September 14, 2001 by CommonDreams.org
Addressing the Sources of Middle Eastern Violence Against the United States
by Steve Niva

In the wake of the immense tragedy of the recent attacks on American soil it is difficult to get beyond the horror and shock of what has just happened and engage in serious reflection on the sources of violence against the United States....


http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0914-04.htm

I can't believe I wasted my time reading that. It offers nothing to strengthen your position. Most of it consists of trite facts for someone who's never heard of Al Qaeda. And this whole business about sanctions and the death of 5,000 Iraqi children a month has been refuted so many times it makes one wonder about the verisimilitude of the author.

 

[Just the Facts]

Re: RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHO

A Letter from Nelson Mandela to Thomas Friedman

by Arjan El Fassed (Media Monitors Network)

March 30, 2001

To: Thomas L. Friedman (columnist New York Times)
From: Nelson Mandela (former President South Africa)

Dear Thomas,

I know that you and I long for peace in the Middle East, but before you continue to talk about necessary conditions from an Israeli perspective, you need to know what's on my mind....

http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/mandella.html

I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Mandela, but he's overlooking one important factor. Blacks in South Africa were no sworn to the annihilation of white South Africans. They were truly victims of Racism. Israeli "Apartheid" is a matter of survival. Right of return = end of Israel. Likely a bloody end of Israel. A very bloody end of Israel. Now, maybe if Palestinian Arabs can nurture a culture of cooperation and live and let live, there may be room for discussion.

 

[Just the Facts]

Re: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

I missed the Desmond Tutu one. You've been cutting and pasting fast and furious. I just skimmed over it but I expect my response to it will be identical to my response to the one by Mandela.

 

[Just the Facts]

Re: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

By the way, it's fascinating reading about opinions of people that agree with you. But do have any facts to back up your claims? I'm interested in the facts. Just the facts.

 

[earth_as_one]

RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

That article explains why 9/11 happened. It lists all the grievances people in middle east have with Israel, the United States and the west in general.

If you are Jewish in Israel, you have more rights than your non-Jewish neighbor. Education, employment, government services, land ownership... nearly every aspect of life in Israel is based on your race/religion. Its an apartheid system and people like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu are qualified to make that determination.

SECOND CLASS
Discrimination Against Palestinian
Arab Children in Israel's Schools
Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/

Marriage law divides Israeli Arab families
Under new legislation, Arabs from the occupied territories may no longer join their spouses in Israel.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0808/p06s03-wome.html?worldNav

May 1995, Summary
A Policy of Discrimination: Land Expropriation, Planning and Building
B'TSELEM - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

http://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Summaries/199505_Policy_of_Discrimination.asp

Discrimination in Israeli Law

Despite Israel's ratification of the ICCPR and its guarantee to protect all of its citizens against discrimination, Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel are discriminated against in a variety of forms and denied equal individual rights because of their national belonging. Though this discrimination is politically motivated, the Israeli legal system is part of this political context. As well as offering limited provisions for equality or political participation to members of the Palestinian Arab minority, the law in Israel subjects them to three types of discrimination: direct discimination against non-Jews within the law itself, indirect discrimination through "neutral" laws and criteria which apply principally to Palestinians, and institutional discrimination through a legal framework that facilitates a systematic pattern of privileges(1)...

details:
http://www.arabhra.org/factsheets/factsheet1.htm

This letter could be address to you JTF:

SUFFERING OF WEST BANK PALESTINIANS IS REAL
I feel compelled to respond to G. Will Brown's letter of Aug. 17 (``In West Bank, how quickly we forget''). He trivializes the suffering of Palestinians affected by the closure of the West Bank by naming it ``inconvenience,'' not realizing, perhaps, that such daily inconveniences and frustrations have a lot to do with the despair leading to terrorist acts such as the recent suicide bombings.

As a pacifist, I deplore the use of violence for any reason. However, after speaking with a number of Palestinians during a recent trip to the West Bank and Israel, I and other members of the human rights-monitoring delegation I traveled with began to understand the hardships of everyday life in the occupied territories.

We spoke with the headmistress of a girl's school in Hebron whose students are regularly harassed and assaulted by Jewish settlers, both adults and children. The Israeli soldiers take no action against the settlers, but the woman's 14-year-old daughter, after trying to defend herself, was hauled into jail for six hours of interrogation and punched in the face by Israeli policewomen.

Another woman we spoke with, whose family has the misfortune to live across the road from Ibrahami Mosque, must endure Israeli soldiers regularly using their rooftop as an observation post. While we were there, the soldiers insulted her and urinated in her water cistern. When she expressed outrage, this petite elementary school teacher was arrested for threatening a soldier.

We visited the village of Beit Miersum, 15 miles from Hebron, where 15 houses are slated for demolition, ostensibly for being built without proper permits. The catch is that such permits are virtually unobtainable in the 70 percent of the West Bank still under full Israeli control. Besides this, the Israeli military has already bulldozed the village cemetery, uprooted 1,200 olive trees and sprayed the wheat crop with herbicide to destroy it. This is not a matter of the proper regulation of home-building. It is a systemic effort by the Israeli government to force people off the land so it can be confiscated for their purposes.

When we were in Israel and the West Bank in June, Palestinians, Arab Israelis and Jewish peace activists alike expressed hopelessness over the peace process. The U.S. congressional resolution on a united Jerusalem added to the atmosphere of gloom. Now the recent incidents of violence and the closure of the West Bank have accentuated the despair on all sides.

We in the United States don't help the cause of peace when we refuse to recognize the real hardships and frustrations experienced by thousands of Palestinians who have been trying to live normal lives under conditions of occupation for 30 years. It is certainly not appropriate for us to unquestionably continue to support a state engaged in systematic oppression with billions of our tax dollars annually. MEMO: Claire L. Miller is a volunteer at Norfolk Catholic Worker, a

charitable organization serving food to the hungry. In June, she toured

Israel and the West Bank with a delegation sponsored by the Christian

Peacemaker Teams.

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1997/vp970907/09050028.htm

But if words, statistics and facts aren't enough, I suggest you watch these videos to experience life under Israeli occupation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mp9DhPamR8&mode=related&search=

GRAPHIC IMAGES OF ISRAELI MILITARY SHELLING PUBLIC BEACH IN GAZA

That girl may grow up to be a suicide bomber.

These are daily events, not isolated incidents.

 

[Just the Facts]

Re: RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHO

But if words, statistics and facts aren't enough, I suggest you watch these videos to experience life under Israeli occupation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mp9DhPamR8&mode=related&search=

GRAPHIC IMAGES OF ISRAELI MILITARY SHELLING PUBLIC BEACH IN GAZA

That girl may grow up to be a suicide bomber.

These are daily events, not isolated incidents.

Watching the first video didn't mean much to me. 12 year old thugs, so what. I got picked on by the same types when I was kid. I worked with "emotionally disturbed" kids when I was a young man. You get whacko tough guy deranged kids like that everywhere.

The second video actually elicited some sympathy. I had a hard time making heads or tails of who was harrassing who at first. The throwing of rocks at the people at the end was definitely not right. I would need more context on what was going on though.

Then on the last video you lost me completely. That wasn't an Israeli shell, it was more likely a palestinian landmine. More Pallywood. More bullshit. You show me two videos of people being roughed up by Israeli bully kids, then one of people blown to bits by Palestinians, who then promptly blame Israel. What am I supposed to conclude from that? If the Palestinians want to win my sympathy, that kind of BS has to stop.

 

[earth_as_one]

RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

The IDF investigates itself and finds itself innocent. That's good enough for you. Perhaps all criminals should be allowed to determine their own guilt.

The fact is independant experts have determined that it was an Israeli shell and was most likely fired by an Israel naval vessel offshore. Its possible but highly ulikely that Palestinians planted and rigged an Israeli shell to detonate in the beach, which was crowded with Palestinians.

Annan, US expert doubt Gaza beach blast findings

Former Pentagon analyst, now senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, says evidence gathered in Gaza points to Israeli shell as cause of blast that left seven Palestinians dead; Annan: I don't believe it is plausible that Palestinians planted charges in a place where civilians often spend their time...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3262700,00.html

 

[earth_as_one]

RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

The first video is significant not because the children were throwing rocks at the camera-person, but that the IDF soldier did nothing about it and told the camera-person to go back to England if they don't like getting hit with rocks.

 

[earth_as_one]

RE: Nasrallah's MEA CULPA ----YEP, THE AMAZING TRUTH SHOWS U

GRAPHIC VIDEO OF IDF BOMBING NON-VIOLENT PROTEST
MANY CHILDREN INJURED/KILLED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOu-NT0W2eg&mode=related&search=