I agree that Jews have no historic claim to Palestine.
I am also loath to lump those Zionist criminals who are conducting a slow motion ethnic cleansing and genocide with Jews in general.
Zionists be to Jews what Nazis be to Germans.

I can speak for myself about how extensively Israel's political propaganda machine, and its systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, plus brutal demonizing of Arabs, have become transparent in the past 15 or more years.

Israel and the U.S. these days appear almost comical, albeit tragically so, when they repeat their well-rehearsed mantra of "Us good, them bad" in every setting, in the face of the most outrageous inhumanity these two countries inflict upon the innocent, defenseless and poor of the world.

The blinders, I can only hope, are falling off the world's eyes. I know mine have, ever since I first witnessed on TV the relentless attacks by the Israeli Goliath upon little children in that perpetually blood-drenched and brutally sad part of the world in the early 1980s. If what Israel, with untold stashes of money provided by its ultra-rich, muscle-flexing partner across the Atlantic, has constructed on a rather tiny sliver of land is the equivalent of some kind of Biblical paradise, holy-land, or Utopia- well, I would shudder to think what Hell must be like. Is all this racial hatred, ethnic cleansing, perpetual genocide, truly a price worth paying for this pristine chosen territory?

Honestly, Israeli politicians and even other leading figures come across as absolute boors to me these days. It used to be that I held a slightly higher opinion of Shimon Peres as a more restrained, moderate voice of Israel during the Begin and Rabin years. Not any more. I recall his utterly illogical, irrational and hateful rhetoric against the victims of Israel's Gaza massacre, using the very same mantra of "we are the good ones." I was actually rather reassured when Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan could no longer take these upside-down platitudes any longer, and walked out in protest. To kill with complete impunity and abandon, armed to the teeth with the most destructive weapons (provided by the greatest possessor and user of WMDs in the history of the world)- and then blame a bunch of hapless protesters (whatever be the long, historic context of their actions) for tossing a few relatively ineffective rockets at the Occupying power for their barbarism - well, it is truly amazing to observe the human mind's capacity at compartmentalizing.

I am equally turned off these days by the pious pronouncements of the likes of Elie Wiesel. I witnessed recently on TV during the Durban II conference his angry diatribes against the usual "enemies"-Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and others on that list. As often, this was in relation to the Holocaust (denial or acceptance) issue- in the face of which, it would appear, that Israel (and the U.S. by association) has carte blanche to inflict any amount of genocide and atrocities upon the world. This "Holocaust Industry" (to borrow from Norman Finkelstein) systematically negates the suffering and genocide of others by constructing an imaginary scale of atrocities. This is inhumanity at its worst.

By defending remorselessly the indefensible, Wiesel and others have, and are doing grave injustice to victims of hatred, racism and injustice everywhere. This includes the memory of the Jewish victims of hatred as well- most notably Anne Frank. I honestly believe Anne Frank would be deeply horrified to witness what the state of Israel and its well-entrenched minions in its client-state, the U.S., are doing to the Palestinian people. I would venture to think that she might see it as Israel's "Final solution to the Palestinian/Arab problem." In the world of ironies, this ranks very high indeed!

.
The United States must totally withdraw out of the Middle East.

Our military presence has only worsened the violence and hatred.

The U.S. has accomplished nothing, except dmonstrating our subserviency to the State of Israel.

The United States can become an "honest broker", only after it disengages from the military occupations in areas of the Middle East.

Israel will then be forced deal with a new reality. Israel might even persue peace.............

,

bligh4

Common Dreams discussion boards have turned into an absolute swamp of hatred of Jews-not Israelis-Jews.

Yet most get a free pass on these boards- ones that are supposed to be "tolerant" and "progressive".

I always thought true "progressives" were supposed to be free from hate...

Save your breath- I'm not Jewish.

there is nothing ahmadinejad says in regard to "israel" that i do not agree with , and i am jewish and lost part of my family in the holocaust...."israel" like a modern trans-national corporation, is an abstract and destructive entity. it is a blood clot in humanity's heart. a state from its origin racist at its very core, ...letto's quibbles are just attempts to control and shift the almost unbearable dark reality of this time, exemplified by america and (the state which hides behind the name) "israel"....

The United States will be drawn into this vortex of hostility, an
eye for an eye mentality of the insular bunker mind set of the "my way
or no way" Jews or Israelis and the ill educated Palestinians.
Both of their religions were concocted before the Enlightenment
and electron microscope (the scientific mind) and their silly rituals
and wailings and their belief in an intervening God is either out of
pure ignorance or genetic stupidity.
To spill American blood over these two primitive tribal malcontents
who cannot get together is insane.
The only problem is the Israelis control congress and are making inroads
into the White House. If a congress person provides some constructive
criticism, that person have nazis leanings and the whole Jewish lobby
start their WAILING campaign.
Thru history they're insular, with an abundance of hubris.

Letto -

Yes, I agree with you on the principle of Universality, as you defined it.

I wasn't aware the UN conference had become such a charade.
If the facts bear this out, then I think you and & I are actually in agreement on the issues we seemed to be contesting earlier.

Thanks for your evenhanded and informative response.

JJA

I have a hard time with this because I had Uncles and other relatives that died in WW2 in defense of these gutless cowards, the Jews. To say it is this faction or those Zionists etc is just exactly what was being said 70 and 80 years ago. I think that for justice to prevail we, by we I mean the west, should arm the Arabs with as much as the Jews have and then some. Then refuse to supply the Jews with anything and not allow them to escape to other countries. Stay and fight and die. You are cowards for not stopping the Holocaust being perpetrated against the Palestinians. As a people you had the way and the means to be honourable, instead your gutless murderous treatment of the Palestinians shows that the NAZI"S may have been right and that we were wrong to stop them!

If Palestine is the world's largest open-air prison, then Israel is the world's largest open-air Panic Room....Or it will become that soon enough.
God-these people are such a pain in the ass. I believe that it's going to end badly for Israel. When are people going to realize that a nod for AIPAC means certain death for the Jewish Diaspora??!! No one hate Jews more than these Zionist psychos-even Ariel Sharon calls them 'Yids'.

Mairead and I dialogued on PRESS TV April 19, 2009 with Charlie Wolf/Stephen Linskey, an American radio show talk host based in Britain with a neoconservative Zionist agenda, who got my Irish up on live TV:

To view: http://www.presstv.ir/programs/player/?id=92015

When he referred to Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire, and I as two well meaning ladies living in a fantasy world for calling for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine through dialogue and nonviolent reactions to violence.

On April 19, 2009 Wolf flung straw men and red herrings at Mairead and I in his vain attempt to blot out reality as the three of us addressed the topic: "Mitchell in the Middle: Obscure Way to Peace?"

Wolf deemed nonviolent resistance as "mealy mouth" and meaningless, exposing his vapid ignorance of the programs of practical nonviolent responses to the evil that is violence that have been articulated since the days of Hebrew midwives, Jainism, Buddhism, Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and the Muslim Badshah Khan.

"For decades, the Palestinian struggle for freedom was largely a non-violent movement. With occasional pockets of armed resistance, Palestinians in the occupied territories employed methods of general strikes, demonstrations and the like to express their demands and desires to finally live in freedom. And yet these were the years where Palestinians saw that great majority of their homeland swallowed up into what is now the State of Israel. Land was stolen with no recompense to its owners, prisons burst at the seams with prisoners who never received a trial, houses demolished by the hundreds, entire orchards of olive and fruit trees ransacked and burned. All this was carried out in the confines of an “Intifada-free” society. So, it might be suggested that Palestinians gave non-violent resistance more than a fair shot."[1]

In Belfast during the 1980's and early 90's, Máiread's vision of non-violence was dismissed, ridiculed, and ignored, while those who called for retaliatory vengeance and violence were applauded. From the start, Maried understood that her dream had to reach beyond the narrow boundaries of North Ireland to embrace a non-violent future for all humanity.

After a year of political negotiations, a breakthrough settlement was reached on Good Friday 1998, bringing Northern Ireland to an Easter dawn of peace. Maried was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for what had once been unimaginable became reality and she continues to envision the unimaginable: justice and peace in Israel Palestine.

On January 22, 2009 I received an email reply from Mairead inquiring what she thought about the appointment of Senator Mitchell as President Obama's Special Envoy to the Mid East.

Mairead Maguire wrote:

The rest @

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1260&Itemid=219

Eileen Fleming, Author, Founder WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"

Lefty...you might note that the designation/labeling of those not so enamored of the back-stabbing terrorist pseudo-theocracy of Israel (95% Kazars, not Semites)as Anti-semites is largely due to a pro-Israel Jew who controls the Encyclopedia Britannica...and has lied.

Israel is anti-semitic. Jews of the world, unite against this fascist government that is making a bad name for all Jews. Remember how David had to fight the Israelites for a number of years before he consolidated the kingdom. The tribe of Judah has been sold down the river by the nazi, zionist, killer greedster Israelites. They are NOT real Jews. They are atheists.

Letto -

It's your very wrong extrapolation that I '...crown Ahmadinejad as my human rights champion.' Not so.

My agreeing with Amadinejad's (and Maguire's) charge that Israel is guilty of gross HR violaitons of Palestinians means that I agree with their articulation of those charges. Period.
It doesn't mean what you want it to mean for your own propaganda purposes.

It remains the fact that all too many critics of Israel's treatment of Palestinians are atuomatically called anti-Semites. And sorry, I don't have to visit any other website to be told what constitutes 'legit' criticism of Israel.

While you didn't call me a anti-Semite for my criticism of Israeli policy, you did the next most disingenuous thing, by claiming that I admired Ahamadinejad's HR record -- a completely absurd, untrue, and unwarranted presumption.
One doesn't have to agree with everything else A may do or say, in order to agree with him on this point.

I fear that your rejoinder to my post above manifests just the kind of truth-be-damned defensiveness about Israel's appalling conduct that it was meant, among other things, to deplore.

Israel is the only country that threatens to blow up running nuclear reactors which would at the least set off waves of nuke fallout over the MidEast area.

The Blow-back from that will be catastrophic no-matter how much you think Israel is "progressive about human rights".

"Progressive" if you consider the Palestinians not to be Human.

When Iran President Ahmadinejad said much the same thing [as Maguire] about Israeli policies at the UN conference on racism a few days ago, dozens of western nation delegates walked out in a huff, and the US (which is boycotting the conference) issued a denunciation calling A's remarks 'vile and hateful.'
Other western nation's MSM editorials also quickly rose up in a seemingly orchestrated chorus to call A's remarks 'anti-Semitic.'

Calling the [basically-identical] observations of Irish Nobel Laureate Maguire 'anti-Semitic' wouldn't fly as easily in world opinion, so, naturally, another method of deligitmating such observations is required.

In sum: when Islamic spokespersons tell the truth about Israeli abuses of Palestinians, that truth is automatically labeled 'anti-Semitic' by the official west, and thus 'deligitimated.'
And when a notable western personage tells the same truth, the official response from the west is to systematically ignore it.

Either way, the mindlessly pro-Israeli caboodle sees to it that the facts of the Palestinian matter never go anywhere.

Why behaving in this insane way is in the interests of the west is a question you can't examine too openly -- because as soon as you do, you, too, will either be labeled anti-Semitic, or, as the case may be, loudly ignored.

The Zionazis do not give building permits to "subhuman" arabs.

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats

Ethnic cleansing, last I looked, was a euphemism for GENOCIDE.

Maried McGuire, Caoimhe Butterly, Damien Moran, Cathy Kelly, the Pitstop Ploughshares" Rachael Corrie, the Berrigans and too many others to name.... It is no coincidence that so many of those who speak out against injustice are Irish or of Irish descent - opression, and successfully rising above it is their historic heritage.

One tends to see a disproportionate number of Armenians in justice-activism for the same reason.

And one used to see a lot of Jews working for justice too in the old days, but they seem to have retreated into a sort of clannish, tribal, and power-insider sort of mentality over the past couple decades.

Zionism was from the very beginning a racially exclusivist ideology based on ethnic cleansing of the native people. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism in the 19'th century, wanted his dream state to be "a protecting enclave of Europe against Asia, a civilization against Asiatic barbarism". Less publicly he noted in his diary the dream of "spiriting the penniless population" across the border "discreetly and circumspectly". This was in 1865, well before the great ethnic cleansers of the 20'th century Hitler and Stalin were born.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/666/6774

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-134884394.html

Now here is someone with courage!

Well, we'll see if Maguire gets any carrots from the White House garden.

q

Another welcome voice speaking the tragic truth.

And everyone knows it-- except for the Israeli government's not-so-silent partners in Amerikan government, and the handful of mediocre resident hasbarists who will probably pepper this comments thread with their usual same stale disinformation and absolute self-righteousness.

· Yr Obd't Servant

Finally someone speaks truth to power. When the president of Iran says the same things that Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu and Mairead Maguire say, he's demonized as an anti-Semite by US politicians. But he is in good company apparently.

"The Israeli authorities say the houses were built or extended without the necessary construction permits."

And who gives (or withholds) construction permits? The Israeli government of Jerusalem which hardly ever grants the permits to Palestinians. Shame on AFP for not mentioning this--or maybe they assume all French people know that fact.

Rainborowe