Archive | June, 2009

HELD BY ZIONIST EXTREMISTS

Posted on 30 June 2009.

From FreeGaza.org

Today Israeli Occupation Forces attacked and boarded the Free Gaza Movement boat, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, abducting 21 human rights workers from 11 countries, including Noble laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The passengers and crew are being forcibly dragged toward Israel.

“This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip,” said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate. “President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do. We’re asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey.”

According to an International Committee of the Red Cross report released yesterday, the Palestinians living in Gaza are “trapped in despair.” Thousands of Gazans whose homes were destroyed earlier during Israel’s December/January massacre are still without shelter despite pledges of almost $4.5 billion in aid, because Israel refuses to allow cement and other building material into the Gaza Strip. The report also notes that hospitals are struggling to meet the needs of their patients due to Israel’s disruption of medical supplies.

“The aid we were carrying is a symbol of hope for the people of Gaza, hope that the sea route would open for them, and they would be able to transport their own materials to begin to reconstruct the schools, hospitals and thousands of homes destroyed during the onslaught of “Cast Lead”. Our mission is a gesture to the people of Gaza that we stand by them and that they are not alone” said fellow passenger Mairead Maguire, winner of a Noble Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland.

Just before being kidnapped by Israel, Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza Movement chairperson and delegation co-coordinator on this voyage, stated that: “No one could possibly believe that our small boat constitutes any sort of threat to Israel. We carry medical and reconstruction supplies, and children’s toys. Our passengers include a Nobel peace prize laureate and a former U.S. congressperson. Our boat was searched and received a security clearance by Cypriot Port Authorities before we departed, and at no time did we ever approach Israeli waters.”

Arraf continued, “Israel’s deliberate and premeditated attack on our unarmed boat is a clear violation of international law and we demand our immediate and unconditional release.”

###

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

CONTACT the Israeli Ministry of Justice
tel:               +972 2646 6666         +972 2646 6666 or               +972 2646 6340         +972 2646 6340
fax: +972 2646 6357

CONTACT the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
tel:               +972 2530 3111         +972 2530 3111
fax: +972 2530 3367

CONTACT Mark Regev in the Prime Minister’s office at:
tel:               +972 5 0620 3264         +972 5 0620 3264 or               +972 2670 5354         +972 2670 5354
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

CONTACT the International Committee of the Red Cross to ask for their assistance in establishing the wellbeing of the kidnapped human rights workers and help in securing their immediate release!

Red Cross Israel
tel:               +972 3524 5286         +972 3524 5286
fax: +972 3527 0370
tel_aviv.tel@icrc.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Red Cross Switzerland:
tel:               +41 22 730 3443         +41 22 730 3443
fax: +41 22 734 8280

Red Cross USA:
tel:               +1 212 599 6021         +1 212 599 6021
fax: +1 212 599 6009
###

Kidnapped Passengers from the Spirit of Humanity include:

Khalad Abdelkader, Bahrain
Khalad is an engineer representing the Islamic Charitable Association of Bahrain.

Othman Abufalah, Jordan
Othman is a world-renowned journalist with al-Jazeera TV.

Khaled Al-Shenoo, Bahrain
Khaled is a lecturer with the University of Bahrain.

Mansour Al-Abi, Yemen
Mansour is a cameraman with Al-Jazeera TV.

Fatima Al-Attawi, Bahrain
Fatima is a relief worker and community activist from Bahrain.

Juhaina Alqaed, Bahrain
Juhaina is a journalist & human rights activist.

Huwaida Arraf, US
Huwaida is the Chair of the Free Gaza Movement and delegation co-coordinator for this voyage.

Ishmahil Blagrove, UK
Ishmahil is a Jamaican-born journalist, documentary film maker and founder of the Rice & Peas film production company. His documentaries focus on international struggles for social justice.

Kaltham Ghloom, Bahrain
Kaltham is a community activist.

Derek Graham, Ireland
Derek Graham is an electrician, Free Gaza organizer, and first mate aboard the Spirit of Humanity.

Alex Harrison, UK
Alex is a solidarity worker from Britain. She is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.

Denis Healey, UK
Denis is Captain of the Spirit of Humanity. This will be his fifth voyage to Gaza.

Fathi Jaouadi, UK
Fathi is a British journalist, Free Gaza organizer, and delegation co-coordinator for this voyage.

Mairead Maguire, Ireland
Mairead is a Nobel laureate and renowned peace activist.

Lubna Masarwa, Palestine/Israel
Lubna is a Palestinian human rights activist and Free Gaza organizer.

Theresa McDermott, Scotland
Theresa is a solidarity worker from Scotland. She is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.

Cynthia McKinney, US
Cynthia McKinney is an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice issues, as well as a former U.S. congressperson and presidential candidate.

Adnan Mormesh, UK
Adnan is a solidarity worker from Britain. He is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.

Adam Qvist, Denmark
Adam is a solidarity worker from Denmark. He is traveling to Gaza to do human rights monitoring.

Adam Shapiro, US
Adam is an American documentary film maker and human rights activist.

Kathy Sheetz, US
Kathy is a nurse and film maker, traveling to Gaza to do human rights monitoring.

Article Source: The Free Gaza Movement

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGElVHZuOkw

Posted in Politics0 Comments

UKRAINIAN STARVED TO DEATH

Posted on 21 June 2009.

ukraineholodomorsm

Ukrainian Jewish Committee Embraces Holodomor “Denial”

The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор translation: death by starvation) refers to the famine of 1932-1933 in the Ukrainian SSR during which millions of people were starved to death because of the Soviet policies that forced farmers into collective farms. The Holodomor is considered one of the greatest national calamities to affect the Ukrainian nation in modern history. Millions of inhabitants of Ukraine (between 7000000 -10 000000) died of starvation in an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe. If any historian or researcher in Europe dares to question any part of the accepted Holocaust story, he is subject to imprisonment and ruin, but as usual, Jewish extremist hypocrisy is rampant. Jewish supremacists don’t want the world to know of their role in mass murders of Communism, much less be punished for those crimes against humanity. The Israeli Knesset won’t even acknowledge the Armenian Holocaust. The new religion of the Holocaust will allow “no other holocausts before thee.” -stsaff

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) – A Jewish group in Ukraine is objecting to a criminal case brought over the “Great Famine” committed in the 1930s.

The nation’s security service is pressing the case against a list of former Soviet officials accused of committing the Holodomor, which caused the deaths of millions in Ukraine in 1932-33. Most of the names on the list were Jewish.

Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandr Feldman, leader of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, said last week that it was “a farce” to press the case.

“All organizers of the Great Famine are dead,” he said.

Last July, the Ukrainian Security Service released a list of high-ranking Soviet state and Communist Party officials – as well as officials from NKVD, the police force of Soviet Russia – that essentially blamed Jews and Latvians responsible for perpetrating and executing the famine because most of the names on the list were Jewish.

The Ukrainian Jewish Committee called on the secret service to revise the list, which incited interethnic hatred, in order to clear up the “inaccuracy.”

Feldman believes there is a danger that the “Holodomor Affair” materials are being used for political purposes.

In late May, security service head Valentin Nalivaychenko claimed at a meeting with representatives of the World Congress of Ukrainians that “Ukraine has collected enough evidence to bring a criminal case regarding the famine, which was artificially created by the Bolshevik regime and caused mass death of citizens.”

Through the World Congress of Ukrainians, Nalivaychenko turned to leading foreign lawyers with a request to help find out the circumstances connected with preparing and committing the genocide.

Posted in Ukraine0 Comments

WORLD REFUGEE DAY

Posted on 20 June 2009.

NOVANEWS 

Displacement from Ramle, 1948.
Statistics released by UN agencies on the occasion of the 2009 World Refugee Day testify to the fact that Palestinian refugees are the largest and longest standing refugee population world wide. They lack access to just solutions and reparations, including return, because Israel and western governments continue to deny or belittle the scope of the problem and make no effort to respect and implement relevant international law and best practice.
According to a forthcoming Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons for the years 2007-2008 produced by Badil, at least 7.6 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since 1948 as a consequence of Israel’s systematic policies and practices of colonization, occupation and apartheid.
That figure represents 71 percent of the entire worldwide population of 10.6 million Palestinians. Only 28.7 percent of all Palestinians have never been displaced from their homes. (click here for information pdf)
The great majority of the displaced (6.2 million people – 81.5 percent) are Palestinian refugees of 1948 (the Nakba), who were ethnically cleansed in order to make space for the state of Israel and their descendants. This figure includes 4.7 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations (UNRWA) at the end of 2008. The second major group (940,000 – 12.5%) are Palestinian refugees of 1967, who were displaced during the 1967 Arab-Israel war and their descendants.
More attention and concern should be given to the phenomenon of forced displacement of Palestinians because it is ongoing.
Steadily growing populations of internally displaced Palestinians (IDPs) are the result of ongoing forced displacement in Israel (approximately 335,000 IDPs since 1948) and the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 1967 (approximately 120,000 IDPs since 1967). Badil’s Survey identifies a set of distinct, systematic and widespread Israeli policies and practices which induce ongoing forced displacement among the indigenous Palestinian population, including deportation and revocation of residency rights, house demolition, land confiscation, construction and expansion of Jewish-only settlements, closure and segregation, as well as threats to life and physical safety as a result of military operations and harassment by racist Jewish non-state actors.
Israeli governments implement these policies and practices in order to change the demographic composition of certain areas (“Judaization”) and the entire country for the purpose of colonization.
Data about the scope of ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians is illustrative and indicative, because there is no singular institution or agency mandated and resourced to ensure systematic and sustained monitoring and documentation. The total number of persons displaced in 2007 – 2008 is unknown.
 UN agencies, however, confirm that 100,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in the occupied Gaza Strip at during Israel’s military operation at the end of the year; that 198 communities in the OPT currently face forced displacement; and that 60,000 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem are at risk of having their home demolished by Israel.
The Palestinian refugee question has remained unresolved and forced displacement continues, because Western governments and international organizations have been complicit in Israel’s illegal policy and practice of population transfer and have failed to protect the Palestinian people.
Indicators of the severe gaps existing in the protection of Palestinian refugees and IDPs are seen in the recent crises in Iraq – where thousands of Palestinian refugees became stranded on the Jordanian/Syrian and Iraqi borders, Lebanon – where 27,000 Palestinians refugees of the Naher al-Bared camp are still waiting to return to their 2007 destroyed camp, and Gaza – where over 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 100,000 displaced, most of them 1948 refugees).
On this World Refugees Day, Badil calls upon all those concerned with justice, human rights and peace to:
Challenge Israel’s racist notion of the “Jewish state” and immediately halt its practices of displacement, dispossession and colonization;
Strengthen the global Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in order to ensure that Israel other states become accountable to international law and respect their obligations;
Improve the mechanism of international protection so that all Palestinians receive effective protection from, during and after forced displacement, including the right to return as part of durable solutions and reparation;
Ensure that the Palestinian refugee question is treated in accordance with international law and UN resolutions in future peace negotiations, including return and reparation.

Posted in Campaigns0 Comments

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Posted on 05 June 2009.

NOVANEWS

There’s an old labor song by Florence Reece called “Which Side Are You On?” Sometimes self-styled Palestinian solidarity activists bring this tune to mind. For example, not long ago I attended a presentation at the Washtenaw Community College on the Michigan Peace Team by a designated representative of that organization. One of the low points of the talk was when the presenter flashed an anti-Jewish quote attributed to King Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia from 1937. It was a portion of the passage below:

‘Our hatred for the Jews dates from God’s condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus Christ), and their subsequent rejection later of His chosen Prophet. It is beyond our understanding how your Government, representing the first Christian power in the world today, can wish to assist and reward these very same Jews who maltreated your Isa (Jesus).

”We Arabs have been the traditional friends of Great Britain for many years, and I, Bin Sa’ud, in particular have been your Government’s firm friend all my life, what madness then is this which is leading on our Government to destroy this friendship of centuries, all for the sake of an accursed and stiffnecked race which has always bitten the hand of everyone who has helped it since the world began.*

What is the purpose of this? It was given in the context of Jewish Zionist statements about Palestinians but don’t Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims already get enough bad press in the West as it is and isn’t the Jews-as-victims drum banged loudly and often enough without “friends of Palestine” joining in? Doesn’t this kind of stuff stem from genuflecting at the false idol of neutrality/objectivity?

In any case, I’m always skeptical of these kind of quotes. I mean, haven’t we learned anything from the Zionist manipulation of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy? The quote was presented with no source citation but it’s all over the Internet on mainly Zionist sites. The source appears to be a book, Islam in the modern world and other studies, by Elie Kedourie (pp. 69-74). Kedourie cites a British Foreign Office file as his source.

Unless another secondary source can be found confirming the existence of Kedourie’s primary source and his accurate usage of it, it is certainly worth wondering if Kedourie hasn’t fabricated the report. I say this because Kedourie was an ardent Zionist and an Orientalist. As Israel Shahak wrote:

… Israeli policies bear the easily recognizable imprint of Orientalist ‘expertise’ abounding in militarist and racist ideological prejudices. This ‘expertise’ is readily available in English, since its harbingers were the Jewish Orientalists living in English-speaking countries, like Bernard Lewis or the late Elie Kedourie who had visited Israel regularly for hobnobbing on the best of terms with the Israeli Security System. It was Kedourie who performed a particularly seminal role in fathering the assumptions on which Israeli policies rest and who consequently had in Israel a lot of influence. In Kedourie’s view, the peoples of the Middle East, with the ‘self-evident’ exception of Israel, would be best off if ruled by foreign imperial powers with a natural capacity to rule for a long time yet.

Kedourie was also reportedly a fan of Likud and the terrorist Menachem Begin. Kedourie was a frequent contributor to the American Jewish Committee’s Zionist, neoconservative house rag, Commentary.

Even assuming the Foreign Office record actually exists and Kedourie has quoted it accurately there are still grounds for questions about it. First, it is the record of a retired British diplomat and colonial adminstrator, at the time, very evidently still in service to the Empire, Colonel H. R. P. Dickson. The report was duly submitted to George W. Rendel of the British Foreign Office. Dickson allegedly spoke with Abdul Aziz Al Saud in 1937 in the context of the great Palestinian uprising of 1936-1939, twenty years after the British government attached itself to the Zionist project with the Balfour Declaration. In his report, Dickson indicates that the Saudi monarch did not permit anyone else to listen to his words and that Dickson did not have a stenographer standing by or tape recorder running–his report is a post hoc paraphrase of a lengthy monologue. Dickson is no disinterested party, and there is, apparently, no independent confirmation of the British diplomat’s account.

One other point worth making is that if the Dickson report is accurate and authentic it would tend to undermine a claim Kedourie makes later in his book. On page 116, he says: “There had never been a ‘special connexion’ between the Arabs in and outside Palestine, much less a ‘special connexion’ between Palestine and Saudi Arabia.” But consider this excerpt from Dickson’s report:

His Majesty early on turned to the subject obviously close to his heart, namely the Palestine tangle, and for close on an hour and a half delivered himself as follows. He spoke for the most part in low earnest voice …

‘We are most anxious that the British Government should send us every eight months or so an experienced officer whom they trust, or equally well an ex-official like yourself, who can listen personally to what we have on our minds, and what troubles our hearts, for times are deeply serious and full of danger these days. …

‘Today we and our subjects are deeply troubled over this Palestine question …

But why should Kedourie care about what an Arab says? And why should peace activists leave off bashing Arabs with questionable quotes when it serves their own purposes?

Note:
* To see the text in its larger context go to http://www.mideastweb.org/Saud-Dickson.htm and scroll down to “Report of Conversation of Col H.R.P. Dickson, with HRH Abd al Aziz ib Sa’ud, king of Saudi Arabia October 28, 1937″. I haven’t checked it real carefully but this appears to be an accurate rendition of the text in Kedourie’s book.

Last revision: 1/15/2010 Labels: , , ,

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