Israel also has never declared its borders which is a definite sign that it is interested in colonial expansion.

Its time to let the peaceful little country myth die.
They just milked the Nazi camps for all it was worth and then some(expect to hear about the Holocaust again in the Oscars-4 movies on the same theme ).

'The colonial project that is destroying Israel's soul' is called Zionism and you can learn more about how to overcome it from Joel Kovel here.

About 1300 to 13.

Poor "little Israel," surrounded by enemies who wish to destroy her.

Are they paranoids, or merely incapable of seeing that much of their neighbors' hatred has been inspired by their acts?

Or is this too just another lie to justify Israel's brutal land grabbing acts? A lie Israel Firsters, believers in Eretz Israel, only too gladly offer the world to make themselves appear the victims? The necessary cover they need for whatever they want to do.

I believe the the myth of the victim, peaceful Israel and the brutal occupation and apartheid it practices over the lives of Palestinians can end quickly if the most complicit segment of American society can scratch away the scab from its conscience: the American artists (writers, poets, composers, singers). They can change it all!

-moazzam sheikh

Of course the Palestinians aren't guiltless. When Lebanon became independent, a majority of the people were Christians. The Palestinians helped Lebanese Muslims persecute Jews and Christians in Lebanon. See this web page:

http://multimedia.heritage.org/content/wm/Lehrman-092706a.wvx

A very nice summary of the facts. I think it's important to point out the immediate circumstances without all of the rhetoric comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and so on. What has troubled me with the situation in the West Bank and Gaza are the economic acts of war committed by Israel. This gets virtually no play in the western press (nothing is actually blowing up after all) but it has laid the foundations for the bullets and bombs on both sides of the conflict. See Global Investment Watch's post: http://globalinvestmentwatch.com/2008/10/25/west-bank-economic-crisis-poses-threat-to-peace/

You can keep demanding and begging for peace for the Palestinians but as long as you keep electing the same old tired two parties and no true Independents who are not tied to AIPAC, nothing's going to change. Besides, maybe the Israelis are fearing that being so Gandhi-like would result in seperate religious groups waging wars like crazy. Just take a look at the extremists in India and Pakistan be they Muslims, Christians, or even Hindu Nationalists. None of these religious extremists are defending their religion or culture but are hell bent on making everything worse. Ironically, Israel's fear of it is leading itself to do just that. If Israel keeps this up, they'll be in the same poor house as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

While Israel and America are involved there will never be a just peace for the Palestinians.

Look what the IDF used on innocent civilians in Gaza. They caused hideous injuries not seen before.

My blog has more as does Al Jazeera!

www.dangerouscreation.com

People of Palestine should declare sovereign independent State now.

The borders with the Zionist State can be negotiated later. The Zionists should be kept in a cage.

Any violence committed by Palestinian resistance forces is trivial compared to atrocities committed by the Zionists.

The Palestinians do not want peace. They want victory over Israel.

Let's divest!

EXCERPTED from US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation Statement on Gaza Cease-Fire
January 19th, 2009

...Since Israel’s war on the occupied Gaza Strip began, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has called for:

1) An immediate an unconditional cease-fire

2) Unimpeded humanitarian access to the occupied Gaza Strip and an end to Israel’s blockade of it

3) Accountability for Israel’s misuse of U.S. weapons in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the imposition of the required sanctions for violating this law

Tens of thousands of people in the United States took action—marching in the streets, distributing educational materials, contacting Congress, the White House, and State Department, and making your voices heard in the media—to help bring about this cease-fire.

While the weapons have fallen silent momentarily, we cannot let up in our activism...we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that Israel lifts its illegal blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip, which is a form of collective punishment of its 1.5 million residents outlawed by the Geneva Conventions.

Returning to the pre-December 27 status quo in the occupied Gaza Strip is not acceptable.

As the Occupying Power of the Gaza Strip, Israel is obligated under the Geneva Conventions to provide for the well-being of its residents.

This includes ensuring full and unimpeded access of humanitarian goods, and opening the borders of the Gaza Strip for normal trade and for freedom of movement.

Israel must also be held accountable for its destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and be forced to pay reparations for the human and infrastructural damage it inflicted. These immediate demands must be followed by a diplomatic process with all interested parties which results in an end to Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 242.

Israel must also be held accountable for its violations of the Arms Export Control Act through its wanton killing and injuring of civilians; its targeting of civilian infrastructure such as police stations, schools, universities, mosques, hospitals, humanitarian aid providers, and UN compounds; and its indiscriminate use of white phosphorous and uranium oxide munitions in civilian areas.

As we have documented, Israel’s war and siege on the Gaza Strip would not have been possible without U.S. weapons provided to Israel with our tax dollars. It is our job to demand of our politicians that Israel is held accountable for its violations of this law and that sanctions, including ending military aid, are imposed as required by law. Rep. Dennis Kucinich has already demanded a State Department investigation into Israel’s violations of the Arms Export Control Act and we must collectively build momentum to ensure the investigation is complete and accurate and that Congress acts on the results of the investigation.

...Beginning Wednesday, we will be calling upon you to take action from day one of the Obama Administration to demand an end to Israel’s illegal blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip and for accountability and sanctions on Israel for its violations of U.S. law and human rights abuses of Palestinians.

Please visit our website for more ways to take action right now:

http://endtheoccupation.org/

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

Thanks so much for this. During this wretched attack on Gaza, more and more American Jews have managed to get our voices out there, despite aggressive attempts by Jewish institutional "leaders" and lobbyists to portray themselves as spokespeople for a Jewish community supposedly united in supporting Israeli policies. There are similar voices in Israel as well - although their protests are not covered by our media.

I have posted on my blog a piece I called "Meet the Israelis Who Oppose The Attack on Gaza" accompanied by two clips - one with interviews of soldiers who have refused to serve in Gaza and another of Tel Aviv demonstrators, including interviews with Arab Israelis (nearly 20% of the Israeli population.) It can be found here:
http://suekatz.typepad.com/sue_katz_consenting_adult/2009/01/meet-the-israelis-who-oppose-the-attack-on-gaza.html

Sue Katz
www.suekatz.com

Pan

Yes Yes Yes ,as I am a critic of Israeli berzerkers and seldom see the need to give them any attaboys as they have the bulldozers Jewish financiers and support of USA planes tanks bombs submarines artillery WHITE PHOSPHORUS cluster bombs ships land water money pools disco`s american universitys retirements healthcare passports Dual citizenship and>>>> MY MONEY I<<< ///LIKE IT OR NOT\\\ I would ADD ; Protect the Palestinians RiGHTS as they have lived in refugee camps for 60 years watching the settlements grow where there once did live ,watched as their olive groves and orchards were and are destroyed by fire roads and B U L L D O Z E R S( compliments USA); ALL their rights! also it cannot be if we do not also protect JEWS RIGHTS ,so therefor the greater oppressed are the Palestinians but ALL deserve JUSTICE and maybe they will.

Great job in GAZA ISRAEL starts and stops by the inaugaration clock and humanely lets some live.

JUSTICE AND LIBERTY FOR ALLLL

Right On. Enough Jewish, Israeli voices, a tidal-wave, a chorus of them could stop Zionist Insanity. No divestment program, no group of countries, not the U.N., only enough internal will would ever possibly force change.

Thus each of these voices are terribly important, and weighted inordinately heavily in their potential effects.

Judith Laitman and Tsela Barr, Thank You.

The Israeli government has consistently avoided meaningful and honest negotiations on creating a Palestinian state, and the U.S., U.K., and Canadian governments remain silent, inspite of voices in many countries protesting what is being done to the Palestinians. It is time for peace and an end to the murder of innocent women, children, and men.

"Give me liberty or at least two shoes to hurl"

yes the arrogant, racist state of Israel must reap what it has sown.
The Palestinians have tried to negotiate, made concessions, been blamed and
scapegoated, jailed without charges, tortured, maimed, blackmailed into spying for Israel for medical care, dispossessed, exiled, murdered, checkpointed, humiliated, and now this latest atrocity.

Bill Clinton blamed the failed peace talks on Arafat, after all the concessions
that Arafat made and Israel made none, the truth comes out now after the damage has been done.

Even last week in the Oval Office Clinton & the Bushes were grouped together with
poor Jimmy Carter apart. He's still being punished for "Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid.

Anyone with eyes can see that Israel has no desire for peace, they could have it when they want.........they do not want. They want to keep everything, their rapacist greed and covetousness consumes them.

Hamas was democratically elected, get over it.
And the world will see your refusal to deal with Hamas for what it really is..more delaying tactics while you build your facts on the ground.

Palestine will have justice and I will live to see the occupation/theft end.

Peace in the Middle East is contingent upon the collective consciousness of Jews worldwide hitting critical mass in recognizing that the Palestinian people are a persecuted people. This will encourage people in this country - the good old USA - to be a little braver in speaking out. Today, most Americans feel intimidated by the fear of an anti-Semitic accusation that they find it best to remain silent. Our Senate and Congress rubber stamped pro-Israel support resolutions with hardly a discussion let alone a debate. And Israel continues to receive US tax dollars to the tune of $15 million dollars a day when people in this country are struggling to find decent jobs.

The plight of Palestinians is akin to that of Native Americans in this country. Dehumanize and demonize to justify the dispossession and disinheritance of the indigenous. Or what we now refer to as ethnic cleansing. A macroscopic view of 100 years of time in Palestinian history is proof beyond a shadow of doubt that this is the case. Gaza today is nothing more than a big prison with 7 doors controlled by Israel. Is is that much different than the reservations that we pushed our Native Americans into?

The ability of Israel to manipulate and control the mass media outlets in this country cannot last forever. Fortunatly, the Internet provides numerous alternative educational and media outlets. People do not have to depend on a CNN, NBC or CBS solely for their information. In addition, the ability to post and read comments as in this web site is helping bringing out a better gauge of what people are thinking.

Judith Laitman and Tsela Barr are to be commended and thanked for their brave position which is not an easy one to take. Their speaking out not only encourages other Jews to speak out but helps remove the religous factor out of this equation.

We need to all work hard to prevent the plight of Palestinians from having the final status that has befallen Native Americans.

Jews everywhere need to be enlightened as to the nature of zionism where it came from and how it got a choke hold on common decency.

http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm

Sophie Scholl-The Final Days

The "facts" cited after the phrase "So let us look at the record" exist as such, in Arab propaganda only. The Gaza crossings were closed, following attacks by Hamas on the personnel, who manned the crossings. Rocket firings by Hamas have been a daily event, for several years---some six thousand were fired during 2008, including during the "cease fire." Gaza isn't "occupied",it's a "foreign belligerent." The Arab League states who have offered to make peace with Israel, have no infulence over Hamas, and cannot deliver on any peace deal. "Humiliation" is a perfectly meaningless term. Israel isn't a "colony," a status which would require a "Mother Country." This last is as variant of the racist canard, which says that Jews are condemned to statelessness.

Where supporters of Arab nationalist programmes are most dishonest, is in the uncritical acceptance of the mythology, which says that the Arab states created by the British and French between the World Wars, are an uninterrupted continuation of the benevolent state founded by Mohammed. Many problems with this story: Mohammed's state expired a millenium ago, was never benevolent, and the present Arab polity owes it's nature and structure to recent history, not an old fairy tale.

The primary influence in modern Arab political life is Mussolini. Generalissimos, secret police, vast mobs chanting "Death to the Jews/America", pro-war macho bluster, sacrifice of domestic development......Mussolini, Mussolini, Mussolini.

There is nothing that Israel can do to persuade them that fascism is a bad thing. They will have to work it out for themselves. In the meanwhile, anything that Israel does to protect its citizenry, is okay with me.

Excellent article by Laitman and Barr. However there is still an enduring falsehood in this story, pernicious propaganda about the founding of Israel which obstructs justice, prevents peace, and turns the true victims into criminals in the eyes of so many.

Laitman and Barr say the Palestinians “were mandated 45 percent of Palestine” in 1948. They are referring to the so-called partition plan, Res. 181, which “mandated” no part of Palestine to anyone. The General Assembly, which passed the resolution, has no legal authority. They only make recommendations to the Security Council, which refused to pass the unworkable plan. Most definitely the General Assembly has no authority to take property away from someone – i.e. non-Jewish individuals and communities -- and give it to someone else. The failed partition plan was meaningless and had no force of law. The declaration of the Jewish state by the Zionists had no legal basis, and no moral basis either.

Laitman and Barr are to be commended. But they write as if the injustice began in 1967. It did not. It began long before, at least twenty years earlier or more, when the Zionists, following carefully laid plans, began brutally cleansing Palestine of non-Jews to make way for the Jewish majority homeland. More than three-quarters of the people now living (and dying) in the prison of the Gaza Strip were illegally forced off their lands and out of their villages, including the nearby Israeli towns of Ashkelon and S’derot. The Palestinians, all of them everywhere, have the legal right to return to their property. They have the same rights we all have. But Israel, with the backing of the United States and Europe, allows them none.

Which brings us to a vital point: the issue of self-defense and proportionality and talk of “both sides have grievances.” The Palestinians have the right to self-defense. They alone have the law on their side. They have always had the law on their side. They are the victims in this ongoing crime. They have the right and even the duty to arm themselves, by any means necessary, and defend their lives and the lives of their children and families and friends and neighbors. The attackers, the aggressors, the Zionists, in committing crimes, continuing crimes, theft and murder and genocide, by guns and tanks or by denial of food and medicine, do not have this right; they have no right to use any force whatsoever, little or large, in defending themselves against the response of their victims. They have only the right, as Michael Neumann has pointed out in an excellent article on Counterpunch, to stop committing the crime and to move their non-combatants (for example, the Israelis of S’derot) out of harm’s way.

The media never talk about the law, or who has the right. They act as if it didn’t matter. Historically and emotionally, like Laitman and Barr, many of us have been brought up to side with Israel, or to believe it’s all just some inexplicable cycle of violence. And it’s hard to change that, to believe something so completely the opposite. But the legal and historical facts of this issue are quite simple and clear. Those who claim it’s complicated or that both sides are responsible only wish to divert us while the Zionists continue their crimes. We must stand up for the legal rights of the Palestinians. There is no such thing as a little bit of justice. There are no compromises we can make on their behalf. If we do not stand up for universal human rights by standing up for the absolute rights of the Palestinians, then the rights of all of us are in danger, and we all become monsters.

An excellent website for learning about this is http://www.palestineremembered.com/

The strongest affinity between Arab nationalism-fascism and the European variety, is in the assertion that Arabs, and Arabs alone, have the right to decide, who lives and who dies. The Master Race and the subhumans, redux.

If Arabs want peace with Israel, and with non-Arabs in general, they can prove it by insuring the rights of non-Arab and non-Muslim minorities in the territories under their control. Only, it will never happen. And here's why: an Arab/Muslim state which guarantees the political and social rights of non-Arab Muslims undermines its own raison d'etre. Hamas, in particular, is fighting a war against civic equality. It is a war that has near-universal Arab support.