22 July 2009MUMBAI –
Citizen groups and activists on Monday slammed Mumbai police for ‘illegally’ detaining three anti-US and anti-Israel activists, coinciding with the visit of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Saturday.
The Citizens’ Initiative for Peace (CIP) said “the grossly undemocratic arrest and detention” of the three activists was apparently linked to the visit of Clinton and was an apparent bid to prevent any possible protests.
Feroze Mithiborwala and Kishor Jagtap of Awami Bharat, an NGO, and Aslam Ghazi of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, were the three activists who were detained at two different police stations for over 20 hours from Friday night.
“They did not file any charges against us,” Jagtap told this correspondent on Monday. “The police detained us illegally, without giving any reasons,” he added. Mithiborwala and Jagtap were detained at an Andheri police station, while Ghazi was detained at a Kurla police station.
“I was told that there was a threat to my life and was asked to cooperate with the police,” said Ghazi. “But if there was a threat to my life, why should I be detained?”
All three suspect that they were detained because the authorities felt they might stage protest demonstrations during Clinton’s two-day visit to the city. Police sources said the three activists were detained as a preventive measure, apparently to ensure that the Clinton visit went off smoothly. All three have in the past organised demonstrations against “US imperialism” and also against Mossad, the Israeli secret service.
A month after the 26/11 terror attacks, Awami Bharat had organised protests in Mumbai, demanding a high-level probe into the deaths of three top police officers in an encounter with terrorists; they claimed the attacks had been staged by some political organisations in India, along with the Mossad and the CIA.
The activists had also staged demonstrations in the past against the Indo-US civil nuclear deal and growing Indo-Israeli security ties.
According to Mithiborwala, the police suspected they would once again organise demonstrations during Clinton’s visit and decided to detain them. “But we had no such plans,” he claimed. Jagtap said there was growing Israeli influence on the state security apparatus here, and cited the recent visit of Mumbai police chief, D. Sivanandan, to Israel, as a pointer to this.
Meanwhile, about 20 eminent lawyers, journalists and human rights and social activists have denounced the ‘undemocratic’ act of Mumbai police in detaining the three. “The right to dissent, and dissent in public, is what sets a ‘democracy’ apart from an authoritarian regime,” they noted. “We never tire of claiming, and not too unjustifiably, that India is the ‘largest democracy’ in the world. It is precisely in this context that the action of the Mumbai Police is extremely unfortunate and utterly condemnable.”
The activists have demanded an apology from the Maharashtra government and action against erring officials.
nithin@khaleejtimes.com
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Security
by Hannah Mermelstein
July 20, 2009
“The war is with the Arabs.”
“We have lived through many occupations. This too shall pass.”
I saw this sign as I was entering Nablus last week, again on my way to Ramallah, and again near Bethlehem. The phrase is printed in Hebrew, presumably by Israeli settlers, on huge signs throughout the West Bank. Israeli racism rarely shocks me anymore, but its blatant display still makes me stop and catch my breath as I translate it into other contexts. Imagine driving through the middle of a predominantly black neighborhood in a US city or town and seeing a humongous sign that says, “The war is with the Blacks.”
I think about security. Israel’s abuse of the word has rendered the concept almost meaningless in the region, but the importance of security on individual and communal levels cannot be underestimated. However, most discussions I see in the media about security ignore the Palestinian people’s right to security. “The war is with the Arabs” is a new sign, as far as I know, but for years in the West Bank I have seen stars of David scrawled on Palestinian shops and homes, and signs like “Death to Arabs” and “Kahane was right” (Kahane was an extremist political leader who promoted ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people; this sign is essentially equivalent to “Hitler was right” in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood).
But signs are not only created; they are also destroyed. Since 1948, Palestinian people inside Israel have experienced erasure and denial of their identities that is perhaps stronger than that of any other group of Palestinian people. I visited a friend in Lyd last week who lives on Giborai Yisrael (“Heroes of Israel”) Street. Driving around the Palestinian neighborhoods in Lyd, we passed roads bearing the names of Herzl, Jabotinsky, and other Zionist leaders. None of the old Arabic street names remain. Even the large cities with considerable Palestinian populations are now seeing the Arabic names officially erased from the signs. In Arabic script, “Yaffa” will become “Yafo,” “Nasra” will become “Natzeret,” and “Al Quds” will become “Yerushalayim.”
Lack of security goes beyond denial of identity and history as visually expressed through signs. A Palestinian friend with Israeli citizenship told me he has heard a rumor that a huge piece of land in Jordan is being cleared and built up for the eventual arrival of the Palestinian population of Israel after they are transferred from their homes. “It may be conspiracy theory,” he said, “but I don’t know.”
“I’d like to think that Israel couldn’t get away with that,” I responded.
“Of course they can,” another friend from Lyd said, “and if the conditions are right, they will.”
Imagine living day to day thinking you might be expelled from your country in the near future. Or in Gaza, wondering if you will be killed tomorrow, or if you will ever be able to come in and out of your country at will. Or in the West Bank, if your son will be arrested, or if you will be able to get through the checkpoint in the morning to get to work. Or in Jerusalem, if your residency will be stripped or your house destroyed.
Imagine little correlation between choice and consequence, an arbitrary relationship between cause and effect. If you are just as likely to get shot and killed sipping tea in your doorway, or sitting in your fourth grade classroom, or participating in a demonstration, or joining the armed resistance, is it any surprise that some choose each?
A friend of mine from the West Bank once told me that she never feels safe, so safety is not a consideration for her in making decisions. As much as I may try, I cannot truly imagine this lack of control.
I met a woman in Jerusalem who was displaced from her home by settlers, physically removed from her house by dozens of Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night. Twice a refugee (1948 and 2008), Um Kamel currently lives in a tent near her house that has been destroyed and re-pitched six times in the past six months. This is perhaps the height of insecurity, and yet Um Kamel stays strong and determined. Many in Palestine would call it sumoud, or steadfastness.
This kind of strength is seen remarkably often in Palestine, and indicates a deeper security that comes in part from faith. Faith in God, sometimes, but also faith in each other, in the justice of one’s cause, in the tide of history that has shown that no single occupation in Palestine lasts forever. This, of course, is also Israel’s deepest fear. That no matter how many walls they build, how many people they imprison, how many homes they destroy, how many signs they erase, and how many people they expel, true security will remain elusive, and eventually, Zionism will fail. As many older Palestinian people have said to me, with security, “We have lived through many occupations. This too shall pass.”
July 20, 2009
“The war is with the Arabs.”
“We have lived through many occupations. This too shall pass.”
I saw this sign as I was entering Nablus last week, again on my way to Ramallah, and again near Bethlehem. The phrase is printed in Hebrew, presumably by Israeli settlers, on huge signs throughout the West Bank. Israeli racism rarely shocks me anymore, but its blatant display still makes me stop and catch my breath as I translate it into other contexts. Imagine driving through the middle of a predominantly black neighborhood in a US city or town and seeing a humongous sign that says, “The war is with the Blacks.”
I think about security. Israel’s abuse of the word has rendered the concept almost meaningless in the region, but the importance of security on individual and communal levels cannot be underestimated. However, most discussions I see in the media about security ignore the Palestinian people’s right to security. “The war is with the Arabs” is a new sign, as far as I know, but for years in the West Bank I have seen stars of David scrawled on Palestinian shops and homes, and signs like “Death to Arabs” and “Kahane was right” (Kahane was an extremist political leader who promoted ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people; this sign is essentially equivalent to “Hitler was right” in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood).
But signs are not only created; they are also destroyed. Since 1948, Palestinian people inside Israel have experienced erasure and denial of their identities that is perhaps stronger than that of any other group of Palestinian people. I visited a friend in Lyd last week who lives on Giborai Yisrael (“Heroes of Israel”) Street. Driving around the Palestinian neighborhoods in Lyd, we passed roads bearing the names of Herzl, Jabotinsky, and other Zionist leaders. None of the old Arabic street names remain. Even the large cities with considerable Palestinian populations are now seeing the Arabic names officially erased from the signs. In Arabic script, “Yaffa” will become “Yafo,” “Nasra” will become “Natzeret,” and “Al Quds” will become “Yerushalayim.”
Lack of security goes beyond denial of identity and history as visually expressed through signs. A Palestinian friend with Israeli citizenship told me he has heard a rumor that a huge piece of land in Jordan is being cleared and built up for the eventual arrival of the Palestinian population of Israel after they are transferred from their homes. “It may be conspiracy theory,” he said, “but I don’t know.”
“I’d like to think that Israel couldn’t get away with that,” I responded.
“Of course they can,” another friend from Lyd said, “and if the conditions are right, they will.”
Imagine living day to day thinking you might be expelled from your country in the near future. Or in Gaza, wondering if you will be killed tomorrow, or if you will ever be able to come in and out of your country at will. Or in the West Bank, if your son will be arrested, or if you will be able to get through the checkpoint in the morning to get to work. Or in Jerusalem, if your residency will be stripped or your house destroyed.
Imagine little correlation between choice and consequence, an arbitrary relationship between cause and effect. If you are just as likely to get shot and killed sipping tea in your doorway, or sitting in your fourth grade classroom, or participating in a demonstration, or joining the armed resistance, is it any surprise that some choose each?
A friend of mine from the West Bank once told me that she never feels safe, so safety is not a consideration for her in making decisions. As much as I may try, I cannot truly imagine this lack of control.
I met a woman in Jerusalem who was displaced from her home by settlers, physically removed from her house by dozens of Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night. Twice a refugee (1948 and 2008), Um Kamel currently lives in a tent near her house that has been destroyed and re-pitched six times in the past six months. This is perhaps the height of insecurity, and yet Um Kamel stays strong and determined. Many in Palestine would call it sumoud, or steadfastness.
This kind of strength is seen remarkably often in Palestine, and indicates a deeper security that comes in part from faith. Faith in God, sometimes, but also faith in each other, in the justice of one’s cause, in the tide of history that has shown that no single occupation in Palestine lasts forever. This, of course, is also Israel’s deepest fear. That no matter how many walls they build, how many people they imprison, how many homes they destroy, how many signs they erase, and how many people they expel, true security will remain elusive, and eventually, Zionism will fail. As many older Palestinian people have said to me, with security, “We have lived through many occupations. This too shall pass.”
ahmedsir, July 20, 2009 4:07 PM
I also condemn about such a bad behaviour of Mumbai police.
i also demand that the state Home Minister immediately take note and act against the erring officials.
azad, July 20, 2009 5:57 PM
Such a rediculus action taken by the police personal, we all respect the law and order but its not etall good.
the state government and central government have to take strong action against these police personal because they have to justify it.
Aamir Edresy, July 20, 2009 6:01 PM
I strongly condemn the ILLEGAL detention of Feroz Bhai and Kishore Bhai. Its extremly unfortunate and against the spirit of true democracy.
Feroz Mithiborewala, Kishore Jagtap and Aslam Gazi are well known figures in Mumbai's Social Circle. If this type of injustice can happen with them, you can imagine the injustice and harassments faced by general public.
Government of Maharashtra and specially the Home Ministry should take strong action against the involved officers.
If this doesn’t happen, legal action should be taken.
Aamir
amrita, July 21, 2009 10:31 AM
again 1 more example of the inefficiency of Mumbai police
IDMV, July 21, 2009 10:55 AM
It's sad and totally ridiculous that the democracy (which of course exist on paper only) is being suppressed like this and the so called "intelligence" is picking normal aware citizen under the name of "suspicion" and illegal detaining them...
even if they were supposed to stage a demonstration, isn't it under one of the basic fundamental right of the country bestowed to it's citizen by the mighty constitution? Is our government, police, and "intelligence" so STUPID to look over it and practicing things directly opposite to it...
leaving predictions aside...the move by the government was utterly foolish and showed it's insecurity against it's own people...It's no better a situation where you are punished for the crime you even din't think of..on the basis of someone's else forcast..
I not only condemn this act but also hope that the 'intelligence' actually works as it's name.
Syed Najeeb-Ur-Rahman, July 21, 2009 1:27 PM
"India is the biggest democracy in the world, it is a socialist democratic republic where everyone has the freedom of speech"
Did we hear it somewhere in fables or fairy tales?
So much for the Indian democratic system, where people are picked up without giving any valid reason allegedly for "questioning" and some of the fortunate do manage to return back home if they do not disappear.
Well, on one side our esteemed police force has done some commendable job in times of disaster and some other occasions and then somehow they have the knack of tarnishing their image with such "regularity".
This ILLEGAL action by the protectors of our constitution is highly condemnable by the intelligentsia and other sane thinkers of our society. It like we need to knock at the doors of the constitution and demand an explanation before the so called law-keepers come knocking at our doors for some 'action'. It seems that they just need some lame excuse and it could be anybody on their target range.
This is nothing but blatant high-handedness shown by our esteemed police force who are one of the recognized forces in the world (one wonders in what department the law keepers world wide are competing with each other?)
The people concerned, as far as my knowledge permits me, have never been involved in any unconstitutional activities and one wonders whether just having a political/ social view which is not inline with the government policies/views brands u as an offender or a conspirator. Or is it that the government wants to promote a society of "spineless" citizens who are going to ascribe to and approve all their anti-social policies or actions.
At times it makes us wonder the tryst of these law-keepers where in people who create law and order problem, burn down public properties, disrupt public life and cause harm to the public go scot-free and people who voice their concerns peacefully are being targeted and harassed. Does it promote the concept that "might is right" in a democracy?
We hold the constitution in High Esteem but it beats us to try and understand the merits of such acitons by the keepers of the constitution.
Is this another step to please 'Big Daddy' USA, to tow on the lines they have drawn for us and to show them that we are their "obedient insignificant half".
Needless to say, we love our Great country, our Motherland and we do love our fellow countrymen irrespective of caste, creed or religion and it really pains us to see our brothers like Kishore Bhai, Feroze Bhai and others being harassed this way. Today they are there tomorrow it could be anyone else as there were others harassed earlier as well by the Government machinery in the name of upkeep of the law.
The public demands an explanation and the tormented deserve an apology!!!!
Honorable Chief Minister and Home Minister are you listening???
I also condemn about such a bad behaviour of Mumbai police.
i also demand that the state Home Minister immediately take note and act against the erring officials.
azad, July 20, 2009 5:57 PM
Such a rediculus action taken by the police personal, we all respect the law and order but its not etall good.
the state government and central government have to take strong action against these police personal because they have to justify it.
Aamir Edresy, July 20, 2009 6:01 PM
I strongly condemn the ILLEGAL detention of Feroz Bhai and Kishore Bhai. Its extremly unfortunate and against the spirit of true democracy.
Feroz Mithiborewala, Kishore Jagtap and Aslam Gazi are well known figures in Mumbai's Social Circle. If this type of injustice can happen with them, you can imagine the injustice and harassments faced by general public.
Government of Maharashtra and specially the Home Ministry should take strong action against the involved officers.
If this doesn’t happen, legal action should be taken.
Aamir
amrita, July 21, 2009 10:31 AM
again 1 more example of the inefficiency of Mumbai police
IDMV, July 21, 2009 10:55 AM
It's sad and totally ridiculous that the democracy (which of course exist on paper only) is being suppressed like this and the so called "intelligence" is picking normal aware citizen under the name of "suspicion" and illegal detaining them...
even if they were supposed to stage a demonstration, isn't it under one of the basic fundamental right of the country bestowed to it's citizen by the mighty constitution? Is our government, police, and "intelligence" so STUPID to look over it and practicing things directly opposite to it...
leaving predictions aside...the move by the government was utterly foolish and showed it's insecurity against it's own people...It's no better a situation where you are punished for the crime you even din't think of..on the basis of someone's else forcast..
I not only condemn this act but also hope that the 'intelligence' actually works as it's name.
Syed Najeeb-Ur-Rahman, July 21, 2009 1:27 PM
"India is the biggest democracy in the world, it is a socialist democratic republic where everyone has the freedom of speech"
Did we hear it somewhere in fables or fairy tales?
So much for the Indian democratic system, where people are picked up without giving any valid reason allegedly for "questioning" and some of the fortunate do manage to return back home if they do not disappear.
Well, on one side our esteemed police force has done some commendable job in times of disaster and some other occasions and then somehow they have the knack of tarnishing their image with such "regularity".
This ILLEGAL action by the protectors of our constitution is highly condemnable by the intelligentsia and other sane thinkers of our society. It like we need to knock at the doors of the constitution and demand an explanation before the so called law-keepers come knocking at our doors for some 'action'. It seems that they just need some lame excuse and it could be anybody on their target range.
This is nothing but blatant high-handedness shown by our esteemed police force who are one of the recognized forces in the world (one wonders in what department the law keepers world wide are competing with each other?)
The people concerned, as far as my knowledge permits me, have never been involved in any unconstitutional activities and one wonders whether just having a political/ social view which is not inline with the government policies/views brands u as an offender or a conspirator. Or is it that the government wants to promote a society of "spineless" citizens who are going to ascribe to and approve all their anti-social policies or actions.
At times it makes us wonder the tryst of these law-keepers where in people who create law and order problem, burn down public properties, disrupt public life and cause harm to the public go scot-free and people who voice their concerns peacefully are being targeted and harassed. Does it promote the concept that "might is right" in a democracy?
We hold the constitution in High Esteem but it beats us to try and understand the merits of such acitons by the keepers of the constitution.
Is this another step to please 'Big Daddy' USA, to tow on the lines they have drawn for us and to show them that we are their "obedient insignificant half".
Needless to say, we love our Great country, our Motherland and we do love our fellow countrymen irrespective of caste, creed or religion and it really pains us to see our brothers like Kishore Bhai, Feroze Bhai and others being harassed this way. Today they are there tomorrow it could be anyone else as there were others harassed earlier as well by the Government machinery in the name of upkeep of the law.
The public demands an explanation and the tormented deserve an apology!!!!
Honorable Chief Minister and Home Minister are you listening???
Monday, July 20, 2009
Citizens' Initiative for Peace
SUB: PRESS CONFERENCE
Dear all
The Citizens' Initiative for Peace (CIP) has organised a press conference on Tuesday, July 21, 2009, at 4.30 P.M. at the Press Club (next to Azad Maidan) to highlight the issue of grossly undemocratic arrest and detention of Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishor Jagtap and Aslam Ghazi.
They were picked up by the Mumbai Police on Friday evening without indicating any ground whatever and kept in respective police stations for over 20 hours. Their arrests are, by all appearance, linked to the visit of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the city - in an apparent bid to scuttle any possible protests.
The press conference will be addressed by Adv. Gayatri Singh. She had visited the MIDC police station for the legal defence of Feroze Mithiborwala and Kishor Jagtap and effect their early release. She will explain ithe legal dimensions of these "preventive arrests", without any specific charge, in the broader context of Indian legal regime. It will also be addressed by Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishor Jagtap and Aslam Ghazi. They will narrate their own experiences.
Veteran Journalist and Loksatta Editor Shri Kumar Ketkar would speak on the implications of such arrests on India's democratic credentials and prospects.Customary question and answer session would follow.
Please depute your reporter and photographer to cover the event and oblige.
Regards,
Dolphy D'souza Jatin Desai Sukla Sen
(9322255812)
Dear all
The Citizens' Initiative for Peace (CIP) has organised a press conference on Tuesday, July 21, 2009, at 4.30 P.M. at the Press Club (next to Azad Maidan) to highlight the issue of grossly undemocratic arrest and detention of Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishor Jagtap and Aslam Ghazi.
They were picked up by the Mumbai Police on Friday evening without indicating any ground whatever and kept in respective police stations for over 20 hours. Their arrests are, by all appearance, linked to the visit of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the city - in an apparent bid to scuttle any possible protests.
The press conference will be addressed by Adv. Gayatri Singh. She had visited the MIDC police station for the legal defence of Feroze Mithiborwala and Kishor Jagtap and effect their early release. She will explain ithe legal dimensions of these "preventive arrests", without any specific charge, in the broader context of Indian legal regime. It will also be addressed by Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishor Jagtap and Aslam Ghazi. They will narrate their own experiences.
Veteran Journalist and Loksatta Editor Shri Kumar Ketkar would speak on the implications of such arrests on India's democratic credentials and prospects.Customary question and answer session would follow.
Please depute your reporter and photographer to cover the event and oblige.
Regards,
Dolphy D'souza Jatin Desai Sukla Sen
(9322255812)
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Press Statement
Press Statement
We condemn 'illegal' arrest of Feroze
We, the undersigned, note with a sense of shock and horror that last evening, at around 9 00 PM, prominent human rights and social activist from Mumbai, Mr Feroze Mithiborwala, was picked up by three police people from his residence at Marol and taken to the MIDC, Andheri(E) police station. He has been kept under detention overnight.
No reason whatever has been indicated for this official "kidnap". He was not even allowed to talk to his lawyer.
It appears that he is picked up to prevent him from holding any protest demonstration against the visiting US Secretary of State, Ms. Hillary Clinton.
One does not have to agree with Mr. Mithiborwala on his political position to denounce this grossly undemocratic act on the part of the Mumbai Police. The right to dissent, and dissent in public, is what sets a a “democracy" apart from an authoritarian regime. And we never tire of claiming, and not too unjustifiably, that India is the "largest democracy" in the world.
It is precisely in that context, the action of the Mumbai Police is extremely unfortunate and utterly condemnable.
We demand that the state Home Minister immediately take note and act against the erring officials.
He should also issue a note of apology as the buck presumably stops at his door.
Feroze and Kishore Jagtap were released today around 5.45 pm without any charge.
Mihir Desai Lawyer
Yusuf Muchala Lawyer
Sukla Sen Ekta
Jatin Desai Peoples' Media Initiative
Yogesh Kamdar Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties
Seema Mustafa Journalist
Dolphy Dsouza Bombay Catholic Sabha
Nandita Shah Akshara
Sanober Keshwaar Human Rights activist
Lena Ganesh Social Activist
Jaya Velankar Writer
Daniel Mazgaonkar Sarvodaya Activist
Kamayani Mahabal Shetty Social Activist
K L Bajaj CPM
Soheb Lokhandwala MPJ
Bhagwan Keshbhat YUVA
Sushovan Dhar Social Activist
Suvrat Raju
We condemn 'illegal' arrest of Feroze
We, the undersigned, note with a sense of shock and horror that last evening, at around 9 00 PM, prominent human rights and social activist from Mumbai, Mr Feroze Mithiborwala, was picked up by three police people from his residence at Marol and taken to the MIDC, Andheri(E) police station. He has been kept under detention overnight.
No reason whatever has been indicated for this official "kidnap". He was not even allowed to talk to his lawyer.
It appears that he is picked up to prevent him from holding any protest demonstration against the visiting US Secretary of State, Ms. Hillary Clinton.
One does not have to agree with Mr. Mithiborwala on his political position to denounce this grossly undemocratic act on the part of the Mumbai Police. The right to dissent, and dissent in public, is what sets a a “democracy" apart from an authoritarian regime. And we never tire of claiming, and not too unjustifiably, that India is the "largest democracy" in the world.
It is precisely in that context, the action of the Mumbai Police is extremely unfortunate and utterly condemnable.
We demand that the state Home Minister immediately take note and act against the erring officials.
He should also issue a note of apology as the buck presumably stops at his door.
Feroze and Kishore Jagtap were released today around 5.45 pm without any charge.
Mihir Desai Lawyer
Yusuf Muchala Lawyer
Sukla Sen Ekta
Jatin Desai Peoples' Media Initiative
Yogesh Kamdar Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties
Seema Mustafa Journalist
Dolphy Dsouza Bombay Catholic Sabha
Nandita Shah Akshara
Sanober Keshwaar Human Rights activist
Lena Ganesh Social Activist
Jaya Velankar Writer
Daniel Mazgaonkar Sarvodaya Activist
Kamayani Mahabal Shetty Social Activist
K L Bajaj CPM
Soheb Lokhandwala MPJ
Bhagwan Keshbhat YUVA
Sushovan Dhar Social Activist
Suvrat Raju
From Gaza to Tehran
"The Israeli Defense Force is the most moral army in the World!"Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
From Gaza to TehranIsrael Asserting Middle East SupremacyBy James Petras
"Information Clearinghouse" --- Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany bombed, invaded and annexed countries and territories as a prelude to their quest for World Empire. Israel's drive for regional dominance has followed in their footsteps, imitating their style:
Indiscriminate aerial bombings of civilian and military facilities, a savage blitzkrieg led by armored vehicles, disdain and repudiation of all criticism from international agencies was accompanied by an open, military buildup for a new and bigger war against Iran. Like the Nazi leadership, who played on the `Bolshevik threat', the Israeli high command has set in motion a vast world-wide propaganda campaign led by its world Zionist network, raising the specter of `Islamic terror' to justify its preparations for a military assault on seventy-four million Iranians. Just as Nazi Germany interpreted the passivity, sympathy and impotence of the West when confronted by `facts on the ground' as license for aggression, the Israeli military machine receives a powerful impetus for new wars by the Western governments' inaction and flaccid response to its invasion of Lebanon, the bombing of Syria and now its Nazi style blitz and conquest of Gaza. For the Israeli high command, the impotence and complicity of the Western states, marks the way to bigger and bloodier wars to establish Israel's supremacy and dominance of the Middle East, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf.
Gaza Blitz: Dress Rehearsal for an Assault on Iran
Israel's military victory in Gaza is a dress rehearsal for a full-scale military assault on Iran. In the course of their Gaza extermination campaign, Israeli political and military strategists gained a great deal of vital information about: (1) the levels of complicity and impotence of European, North American and Arab states; (2) the high degree and depth of material and political support obtainable from the United States government in pulverizing adversaries; (3) the high degree of internal support among the Jewish electorate for even the most brutal killing fields; (4) the massive unquestioning backing of an offensive war from all the biggest and most politically influential and wealthiest Jewish-Zionist organizations in the US and Western Europe; (5) the weakness and ineffectiveness of the United Nations and the incapacity of the entire range of humanitarian organizations to limit Israel's extermination campaign directed at destroying the very existence of an entire people; (6) the unconditional backing of the entire mass media and news agencies in the US and most of the mass media in Europe and the rest of the world; (7) the willingness of the liberal critics to equally blame the victims of extermination and the exterminators for the `violence', thus neutralizing any effective consequential condemnation of the Israeli state; and (8) the adaptation of practically all the journalists, writers, academics and politicians to the entire euphemistic vocabulary of the Israeli propaganda office.
For example, sustained total war is called an `incursion'. Ten thousand aerial assaults by hundreds of Israeli helicopters and fighter-bombers are equated with sporadic harmless homemade rocket attacks as `violence'. Israeli targeting of thousands of civilian homes, hospitals and basic infrastructure are labeled `terrorist' targets. Resistance fighters are labeled `Hamas terrorists'. The bombing of the Red Cross, the United Nations relief facilities, hospitals, mosques are called `mistakes' or justified as `launching sites for Hamas terrorists.
Israeli political leaders have drawn the lesson from their dirty little `war' that they can totally destroy a nation, decimate a society and murder and maim 7000 civilians with impunity. Israeli leaders learned they can carry out an offensive genocidal war without suffering breaks in diplomatic relations (except Mauritania, Qatar, Bolivia and Venezuela). The Israelis have successfully tested the loyalty and submissiveness of the major Arab regimes in the region and secured cooperation and acquiescence from Egypt, the `Palestinian Authority', Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Israeli civilian-military leaders calculate that with this high degree of governmental complicity, combined with support from all the major Zionist leaders and mass media moguls, they can dismiss even large-scale street protests, repeated calls for boycotts and United Nations denunciations. Israeli leaders know that the criticism of major religious leaders and the growing number of Jewish dissidents, critical intellectuals and activists will have no consequential impact on Western governments nor lessen the fervor and loyalty of the major Jewish organizations.
Invisible Threats and Visible Impunity
The two potential threats to Israel's genocidal offensive wars, namely, economic boycotts by important trading and investing countries and a cut-off of military aid, did not materialize. In North American the leading Zionist organizations ensured that the issue of a boycott was never even raised in the legislature and executive branches. In the US, AIPAC wrote resolutions and secured near unanimous passage (100% in the Senate, 90% in the Congress) of an AIPAC dictated resolution endorsing Israel's invasion and slaughter. Moreover the Zionist colonized Pentagon authorized massive new shipments of missiles and 1000 pound bombs to re-supply Israel in the midst of its massacres of the Palestinians. Israel's leaders gloated over the fact that Jewish Zionist Lobbies control over US policy went un-contested by the anti-war protestors. Few, if any, of the demonstrators around the world identified and denounced the role of the Zionist organizations in their own countries in making US, Canadian and European policy toward the Middle East.
Nothing exemplifies the total and blind subordination of the 51 Major American Jewish Organizations (see appendix #1) to Israeli foreign policy goals as two incidents during the Gaza Genocide. When the `51' got wind that Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice was working to come up with a Security Council resolution calling for a cease fire in Gaza, to stop Israeli genocide, every major Jewish organization mobilized their entire membership to oppose her. As the Jewish weekly magazine, Forward, reports: "During a January 5 (2009) conference call with Jewish activists, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations, gave special priority to blocking the international body from taking a stand on the Gaza issue. `We need to work hard to ensure the Security Council doesn't pass the resolution, Hoenlein said.'" (Forward January 15, 2009)
The second example of Zionist belief in Israeli supremacy over US Middle East policy and Presidential servility came in response to Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's boast that he successfully dictated and imposed White House policy in the United Nation. According to the Forward: "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert didn't do anything wrong but he should have kept his mouth shut. That was the reaction of several Jewish leaders…'I have no problem with what Olmert did', said Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League." (Forward, January 15, 2009) Former AIPAC chief lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield, stated that he (an American citizen) had no problem with Israel dictating US policies but `it is a mistake to talk about it.' (Forward, January 15, 2009). By talking about Israel's power in Washington, it exposes the role of the Zionist Power Configuration in deciding US policies.
These examples demonstrate once again the indivisible links between Israel and its US-Zionist Fifth Column and their power to make US policy – even when it is a question of supporting genocide. These cases also illustrate the fact that the major American Jewish organizations will not tolerate the smallest White House deviation from any Israeli policy, even if it involves mass murder. It wasn't enough that for 8 years, President Bush slavishly followed and funded Israel's war machine: For US Jewish leaders it is 100% subservience up to and including his last day in office. As the Forward writes, "That tough words from Israel and the Jewish groups…serve as a message to the incoming (Obama) administrations…" (ibid).
In addition to capturing positions of political power, one of the highest priorities of all the major Zionist Jewish organizations in the US is to propagandize, apologize and fabricate stories on behalf of Israel. Even in the face of Israel's most blatant violent crimes against Palestinians, condemned by the UN General Assembly, the International Red Cross and every humanitarian group, the principle American Jewish religious institutions and lobbies have demonstrated their loyalty to the state of Israel. The modus operendi as documented by their internal memos is to dominate the mass media through `plants' – pro-Zionist journalist, academics, `experts' and editors – who write and broadcast justifications and apologies for Israeli war crimes (parroting the line of the Israeli state) in the mass media. The Zionist propagandists then circulate the planted articles by their colleagues, giving the impression of broad public support when in fact they are reproducing prepared Israeli-Zionist propaganda. The style and substance of the Zionist propaganda operation is evident in its defense of Israel's Gaza bloodbath. The style is the Big Lie, reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. It is worthwhile to sample a few examples from the main mouthpiece of the 51 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO):
1. Denying Israeli war crimes and fabricating accounts minimizing the Jewish State's killings. The Daily Alert (January 22, 2009) claimed that Israel killed only 600 Palestinians and "most were fighters." The Daily Alert denied on site reports by major human rights workers, Red Cross officials, Palestinian and international doctors and medical workers and journalists, who risked their lives (and some died) documenting the nearly 1,400 deaths, over 2/3 of which were children, women and non-combatants.
2. Repeating Israeli propaganda justifying the bombing of the United Nations-run schools by claiming the schools were `infiltrated by Palestinian terrorists' among the thousands of refugees (The Daily Alert, January 22, 2009). There was not a single armed resistance fighter found among the 40 bodies recovered from the rubble by the United Nations workers, International Red Cross and Palestinian medical crews at the girls' elementary school; all were children, teachers and refugees. Every organization and individual eyewitness refutes the Zionist-American apology of the Israeli bombing of the school, including the entire European Union. The most bizarre fabrication printed in the Daily Alert is a headline, which read: "Hamas Shot from Civilian Neighborhoods" over an article by Rod Nordland (Newsweek), which, in fact, reports the opposite, "Everyone of the residents interviewed in eastern Jabeliya insisted that there had been no provocation from the area, no resistance fighters and no rocket launchings."
3. The third lie is a whopper: "Israel Doing its Best to Help Gazans", (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009). In fact, Israel blocked all medicine and medical equipment from entering Gaza, bombed hospitals, shot up ambulances, murdered doctors and medical aid workers and blocked all shipment of water, food and fuel. The Israelis bombed the main United Nations food and medical supply warehouse, destroying its entire contents. The US Zionists defended this bombing by citing Olmert's blood libel that the destruction of thousands of tons of food was a "response to fire coming from the building." The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was outraged by this barefaced lie as he visited the still smoldering UN warehouse to view the destruction while the US Secretary of State Rice crawled before the Israelis, begging them to "avoid (a repeat of) such incidents." (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009)
4. "Saving Gaza by Destroying the Heart of Terror" (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009). The Jewish propaganda sheet reproduces an article by the ultra-nationalist Natan Sharansky, who advocates expelling all Palestinian Arabs from `Greater Israel'. In an article published in Bloomberg, Sharansky defended the destruction of over 10,000 houses, damaging over 40,000 homes, roads, hospitals, power installations, water and sewage installations, 121 industries and commercial workshops, 30 mosques, 29 educational institutions, farms, poultries, dairies, small fishing vessels and the fishing port (according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and cited in Stephen Lendman's essay, "Israel Killed Everything but the Will to Resist", January 25, 2009).
5. The Fifth Big Lie: "Israeli Pilot Tries to Avoid Hitting Civilians", (Daily Alert, January 14, 2009). Photos published in all the international mass media refute this Zionist propaganda claim. The ghostly rubble of whole apartment blocks resembles a nuclear strike or an earthquake, according to the BBC reporters who finally made it into Gaza. Numerous European Parliamentary representatives and other on site visitors from throughout the world were shocked by the devastation. Not only did Israeli pilots target all civilian targets, but their ground troops assassinated unarmed civilians holding white flags and in some cases even small children attempting to flee. Surviving Palestinian children tell of their fathers executed in front of their families.
The Big Lie promoted by the leading Zionist organizations resonates from the Rabbinical pulpits, to their members and beyond: Informal phone surveys with rank and file members of local Zionists groups echoes the same lies and apologies, almost verbatim. In a word, neither facts, nor reports, nor universal condemnation, nor challenges by dissident rabbis, Jewish notables, writers and activists have made a dent on the major Jewish organizations and their agents in influential positions in the new Obama administration. They are the willing accomplices to mass murder in Gaza. They are active promoters of a pre-emptive aerial assault on Iran. They will unconditionally apologize for any crime against humanity that Israel perpetrates. Their academic apologists at Harvard defend Israeli Genocide as part of a `Just War'. In the face of universal condemnation they continue to cite the Holocaust and claim that they and their State are the only Moral People entitled to decide and judge, what is just and what is sacred Truth.
The Israeli leaders are perfectly aware of the `free hand' with which their `Fifth Column' operates, up to and including their prominent role in defense of genocide. Israeli leaders are assured that even when they launch a bigger, bolder and more destructive war (including the possibility of pre-emptive nuclear strike) against Iran or Syria/Lebanon, they can count on the million-member US Zionist lobby securing White House and US Congressional support. Israeli leaders now know for a fact that the anti-war movement will once again engage in inconsequential protests against the `shadows of power' and not the real power wielders embedded in the Zionist Power Configuration.
Gaza: Testing the Subservience of the US Congress and the White House
By savaging Gaza with extreme brutality, Israel is testing the waters of US support for more offensive wars. Gaza allowed the Jewish leaders to measure the depth and scope of US Zionist political influence and their willingness to `go all the way' when Israel decides to bomb 74 million Iranians in to the stone age. Or as the famous Israeli Zionist historian, Benny Morris, suggested in the New York Times July 18,2008, turn Iran "into a nuclear wasteland".
Prime Minister Olmert's public boasting that he pulled President Bush off the stage from an official public appearance and successfully ordered him to instruct the Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice to abstain from voting on her own authored resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza before the Security Council has many profound meanings. On the most obvious level Olmert's revelation confirms the power of Israeli leaders over the White House. Secondly, the public nature of the exercise of power, tells the world that Israel can openly flaunt its capacity to humiliate and ridicule the President of the United States and later brag before Israeli officials with no adverse consequences. Thirdly it tells us that Israel has a greater say in US foreign policy than the American Secretary of State (or Foreign Minister). Fourthly it tells us that Israel decides how the US behaves, votes, vetoes and abstains in the Security Council, subject to Israeli approval.
Israel, the Zionist Fifth Column and Iran
Israel exercises power in the Middle East through its military weaponry. Its repeated threats and aerial and ground assaults on neighboring countries is a deliberate strategy to assert its regional supremacy. In recent years, Israel's regional power has been enhanced by the Zionist Power Configuration in the US and Canada, who use the armed forces in their own countries to destroy any country that contests Israeli military supremacy. The classic case was the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq and the follow-up occupation, in which long-term Israel Firsters in the US Government played a deadly role in promoting the war.
From the late 1980's to the present, the US Zionist Power Configuration has been in the forefront of a campaign to promote a US military confrontation with Iran in collaboration with Israel. The Zionist military proposals gained tremendous momentum during the 8 years of the Bush Administration. The ZPC mounted an unrelenting mass media propaganda campaign demonizing Iran, fabricating and disseminating falsified accounts of its nuclear programs, infiltrating and occupying key positions in the US Treasury Department (led by Stuart Levey) aggressively bludgeoning other governments, industries, banks and investors to boycott Iran. Zionist Treasury Department officials hope to strangle and weaken Iran's economy in order to soften it up for a military strike. No other single or combined force in North America, or, for that matter, any place in the world (except Israel) has played as big a role in promoting an offensive war against Iran as the Zionist politicians and officials in the US government. They were aided and abetted by Jewish lobbies, Zionist propaganda centers, multi-billionaires and hundreds of Jewish community organizations.
Major Jewish religious organizations play a very influential role as conduits of Israeli propaganda and are an important force within the principle Zionist umbrella organizations (e.g. Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations or CPMAJO). Fully one-fifth of the Conference (see appendix for a full list)1 is made up of clerical-Zionist organizations, whose principle function is promoting Israeli goals through direct intervention in US politics at all levels. A memo from one group, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, issued on January 3, 2009, outlines their detailed strategy in defense of Israel's Gaza massacre: "Every congregation should issue a statement supporting Israel. Solicit statements from elected officials at the city, state or provincial, or federal levels. Solicit statements from local religious, ethnic and other prominent personalities. Monitor and respond to media coverage. Whenever possible, enlist non-Jews as well as public officials and prominent spokespeople to demonstrate their support for Israel." The memo then proposes a series of "talking points on the situation in the Gaza Strip" that repeats verbatim the identical propaganda fabrications of the Israeli political-military high command: Affirming Israel's peaceful intentions, blaming Hamas as the aggressor and claiming that "Israel, as always, is doing everything within its powers to limit non-combatant casualties in Gaza." The Jewish clerics in the United Synagogues tell their faithful congregants to ignore the more than 5000 civilian casualties and the 1,300 deaths, of which three quarters are women, children and unarmed civilians, the sixty schools and the tens of thousands of homes and the dozen mosques demolished, the condemnations of war crimes by the United Nations, Red Cross and every Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.
The strategy paper issued by the religious Conservative Jews is very similar to that followed by the entire network of 51 religious and secular groups affiliated with the `Presidents'. This highlights the way in which a highly disciplined, well-financed minority captures and multiplies its power far beyond its own membership, `leveraging' influential Gentiles, the mass media at all levels and public figures into a powerful juggernaut in defense of Israeli genocide in Gaza today and for war against Iran tomorrow.
Israel's Military Threat to Iran
Israel, contrary to some leftist skeptics, had advanced operational plans to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran. On several occasions in the recent past, Israel has planned several aerial attacks on Iran, only to be thwarted by the Bush White House. The Jewish state has publicly announced that it will unilaterally strike Iran if it continues its legal, internationally recognized, right to enrich uranium. The most likely winner in this February's national elections, Binyamin Netanyahu, has publicly stated that a military attack on Iran is at the top of his agenda – a message which has activated all the major Zionist-Jewish organizations in the US to redouble their efforts to secure US compliance, support and active collaboration. On January 7, 2009 The London Sunday Times, quoting several high level Israeli military sources, reported that, "Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli Air Force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear `bunker-buster'…Robert Gates, the new (sic) US Defense Secretary, has described military action against Iran as a `last resort' leading Israeli officials to conclude that it will be left to them to strike. The preparations have been overseen by Major General Eliezar Shkedi, Commander of the Israeli Air Force." (Times on Line, January 7, 2009). A subsequent article in the pro-Israel New York Times (January 11, 2009) by David Sanger, a prominent Zionist sympathizer, reported that "President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year (2008) for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran's main nuclear complex…the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran's major nuclear complex…The White House denied that request outright." Sanger goes on to claim that the Israelis were furious at a detailed report by 16 US intelligence agencies (The National Intelligence Estimate) which demonstrated that Iran had halted development of a nuclear warhead in 2003 because it undermined Israeli efforts to secure US collaborations for a military attack on Iran. Sanger spends several paragraphs trying to bolster the Israeli unsubstantiated claims regarding Iran's nuclear program framing the case for a unilateral Israeli attack…which he dates began "early 2008" but was stalled by opposition from the US military.
The forthcoming Israeli national elections (February 10, 2009) promise to accelerate Israeli plans for a massive military assault on Iran, as the polls indicate that the majority of Jewish voters will elect the ultra-militarist Zionist Binyamin Netanyahu, a favorite of the most influential Zionist-American organizations. In a very recent interview with the Wall Street Journal (January 24, 2009), Netanyahu speaks of Iran as the `terrorist mother base" and "that Israel cannot accept an Iranian terror base (Gaza) next to its major cities." He then goes on to justify the Israeli murder of civilians because, he claims, the Palestinian resistance ("terrorists") "hide behind civilians". The Wall Street journalist, one Brett Stephens, in complete awe and wonder at the feet of the Israeli leader, writes approvingly of Netanyahu's justifications for an attack on Iran, "the threat of a nuclear Iran poses a much greater danger to the world than the economic crises…this poses an existential threat to Israel directly…" Stephens goes on to sum up Netanyahu's position toward Obama: "If diplomacy fails and the US does not resort to military force, Israel will decide to go it alone…"
Israeli leaders have temporarily backed off attacking Iran – launching, instead, the Gaza assault to weaken any possible resistance among Palestinians to an Israeli war against their Muslim ally in Teheran. The Israeli war plans toward Iran will be reinforced with the new Obama Presidency. With the rise to power of the ultra-Zionist Dennis Ross as Chief Adviser on to President Obama on Iran and Hillary ("We will obliterate Iran") Clinton as Secretary of State, the question of a US backed Israeli preemptive attack on Iran looms closer to becoming a reality. As late as two months ago Ross signed on to a document, which provided a `roadmap' to war with Iran. Zionist infestation of the entire policy-making apparatus of the Obama regime means that any official military or intelligence opposition to an Israeli attack on Iran will be blunted and their spokespersons marginalized.
The Obama Regime and Israel
The Obama regime is, if anything, even more penetrated from the top to bottom and from Executive offices to Congress with Zionists in positions to influence every strategic decision having any relation to Middle East policy.
The Jewish Telegraph Agency (January 20, 2009), the principle news agency of American Jewish-Zionist publications, provides a detailed list of the `pro-Israel' Zionists in strategic Middle East positions in the Obama regime. The evidence of Zionist control is overwhelming and the consequences are deadly to any `balanced' peace negotiations and extremely promising for Israel's war ambitions in the regions:
1. Dennis Ross will be an influential adviser on Iran policy. Ross is an advocate of intensifying sanctions to undermine negotiations and force the military option.
2. Richard Holbrooke, appointed as Obama's envoy to Afghanistan, is a prominent Zionist who served as UN envoy under Clinton. He has recently headed an ad hoc group called United Against a Nuclear Iran, which advocates military action against Iran if it does not submit to an Israeli-dictated cessation of its legal nuclear energy program.
3. George Mitchell, Obama's envoy to the Palestine-Israel conflict, is one of the four co-chairs of the Zionist front group, Bipartisan Policy Center, which propose a step by step approach, from sanctions to embargo to naval blockade to a military strike on Iran.
4. Dan Shapiro and Puneet Talwar will collaborate on Middle East policy at the National Security Council. Shapiro, in consultation with Israel, was "key in shepherding the Syrian Accountability Act through the Senate (a measure that imposed tough sanctions on Syria). Shapiro drafted Obama's cringing, belly crawling speech to the AIPAC conference in Washington on May 2008. Puneet Talwar will handle Persian Gulf issues – including Iran. He was a staffer of former Senator and current Vice President Joe Biden and was a close collaborator and conduit for AIPAC.
5. Eric Lynn is heading for a White House Middle East policy job. He started his career as an AIPAC intern in 1998 and continued as a staff person for Congressman Peter Deutsch, "one of the most committed pro-Israel figures in Congress." Lynn spent a year in Israel, imbibing Zionist military culture and learning Hebrew.
6. James Steinberg and Jacob `Jack' Lew have been named as Clinton's deputies at the State Department. Steinberg has been in a `strong relation with the pro-Israel community' and was a conduit for Israeli pressure on Arafat to capitulate to Israeli demands. Jack Law will direct economic stimulus overseas. He is an orthodox-Zionist, who will use American economic resources to back Israeli militarism and reward or punish its adversaries. A former head of a Citigroup investment unit, he holds between $50,000 to $100,000 in Israel State Bonds.
7. Samantha Power, once a critic of Israeli war crimes in 2002 for which the Zionist Power Configuration had her removed from the Obama campaign in March 2008. She was `rehabilitated' and re-incorporated as a member of the Clinton transition team after an `abject apology' to Israel.
8. Cass Sunstein, a lifetime Zion-Lib, is head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs – a key propaganda arm of the Obama regime.
9. Rand Beers was lead national security adviser to Senator Kerry during his presidential campaign of 2004 and `built close relations' with the pro-Israel political apparatus. As adviser to Homeland Security, he will `likely be a linchpin as Israel and the US forge a closer alliance' (Jewish Telegraph Agency January 20, 2009).
10. Lee Feinstein and Mara Rudman are Zionist veterans from the Clinton Administrations. Feinstein is a lead adviser of Secretary of State Clinton and Rudman is Senior Foreign Policy Adviser of President Obama.
11. Susan Rice, UN Ambassador appointed by Obama, signed on to a Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) paper last summer calling for greater Israeli-US coordination for an embargo and military attack on Iran. WINEP is a well-known propaganda mill for Israel's most fanatical, bellicose and unconditional supporters. In her Senate testimony, Rice denounced the United Nation General Assembly's criticism of Israel's Gaza bloodbath.
At the head of Obama's foreign policy regime, Vice Presiden Biden ("I am a Zionist"), Secretary of State Clinton ("demolish Iran") and Secretary of Defense Gates (a holdover from the Israeli-dominated Bush Administration) have put in place the most Zionist-infested Middle East policy regime in US history. This regime is neither by background, loyalties or commitments prepared to open serious negotiations with Iran, or to `broker' an end of Israeli occupation of Palestine. On the contrary, their close ties with the Zionist Power Configuration and long-term commitment to Israeli militarism and expansionist policies ensure that the Obama regime will proceed toward collaboration with the Jewish State in a military confrontation with Iran. Everyone on Obama's team supported the Israeli carnage in Gaza and endorsed Israel's efforts to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government and prop up the discredited and corrupt quisling clique headed by Abbas.
The Obama Presidency has achieved what many observers thought impossible: It has placed more Zionist in more strategic power positions with a greater commitment to war with Iran than even the Bush Administration. Given Obama's appointments and his own personal subservience to Israeli leaders it is difficult to imagine the 16 major intelligence services issuing a report refuting Israel's fabrications about Iran's nuclear program, as happened under Bush. Even more egregious, given the Zionist stranglehold on the White House, it is unlikely that Obama would block a proposed Israeli air assault on Iran as Bush is reputed to have done.
The Israeli war strategy toward Iran follows the `salami tactics' of its Nazi forerunner: Attacks are designed for maximum destructiveness against civilian infrastructure, against countries and leaders opposed to any Israeli aggression toward Iran. Israel bombed and invaded Lebanon. It bombed Syria. Israel savaged Gaza. Its `lobby' has extended and enforced global economic sanctions through the forceful intervention of a Zionist infested Treasury Department. Obama's top economic adviser, the ultra-Zionist Lawrence Summers, promotes tighter sanctions, boycotts and embargoes against the designated enemies of Israel: policies pointing toward war.
`Peace' Negotiations Geared Toward War
The likelihood that the Obama regime will move the world closer to an offensive war with Iran is not based on idle speculation or selected quotes from his presidential campaign. No one can take serious President Obama or his Secretary of State Clinton's advocacy of `negotiations with Iran', when they are accompanied by conditions unacceptable to Iran's sovereignty or national interests. The Obama regime openly threatens war if Iran does not accept unilateral disarmament with intrusive inspection of its strategic defense installations, allowing Israel and the US a unique opportunity for pinpointing vital targets for their first wave of attack.
What conclusively demonstrates Obama's drive to war with Iran is his appointment of the most zealous Zionist militarist, Dennis Ross, to the key strategic position dealing with Iran.
Obama appointed Ross to the post of `Special Envoy to Iran'. He will act as Czar of Middle East policy. George Mitchell is his envoy on Israel-Palestine negotiations, a typical `good cop' (Mitchell) strategy to counter the `bad cop' (Ross). Ross, who is often called `Israel's Lawyer', is the ultimate Zionist, a crown prince of the US Zionist Jewish Lobby in all of its major undertakings regarding Iran. Ross is a founding leader of AIPAC, the principle and most powerful Israel First Lobby in Washington. He has been a lifelong and influential ZionCon ideologue, who successfully led the campaign in favor of the invasion of Iraq. He is among the most prolific and influential writers and propagandists at the Zionist-financed propaganda mill, WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), which has produced the most bellicose position papers pushing US military intervention in favor of Israel's expansionist ambitions. During the Clinton years, Ross was appointed head of the US `mediation' committee during the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (1999-2000). In that position, he acted as `Israel's lawyer' according to a fellow US Zionist diplomat. He scuttled all possibility of any acceptable compromise by "following Israel's lead." He set up the conditions, which made Palestinian rejection inevitable while placing the blame on that embittered people. Ross has a profound influence on Obama's politics to Israel.
Ross is a leader in a relatively new Zionist front group, known as the `Bipartisan Policy Center'. The `Center' recently published a report entitled, "Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development." This roadmap for war with Iran was produced by a task force, which included Ross and two other extremist Zioncons, the dual-Israel-US citizen Michal Makovsky and Michael Rubin. Ross' endorsement of the `Report' reflects his rejection of any possibility of a negotiated agreement with Iran, which would accept Iran's legal right to a uranium enrichment program as recognized by international treaty.
A recently reported wrinkle in Dennis Ross' appointment to the Obama Cabinet is his role as current Chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, under the Jewish Agency, which is an official part of the Israeli Government. His current work for an Israeli government agency could place Ross at odds with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a Federal statute that requires individuals working on behalf of a foreign government to register as such - something Ross has never done.
The `Report' advocates a preemptive Israeli aerial bombing and missile campaign against Iran should the US and Europe fail to strike first. This Dennis Ross-endorsed `Report' proposes a total naval and air blockade and embargo of Iran as a prelude to a US attack on Iran's vital infrastructure. This document called on Obama to `bring in troops and material to the region under the cover of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, thus maintaining a degree of strategic and tactical surprise.' In other words, Obama's forthcoming appointment of Ross to head his regime's Middle East Policy Advisory Group places an unconditional advocate and promoter of genocidal war with Iran in a key strategic foreign policy position.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Dennis Ross will do everything in their power to promote and justify a US-Israeli joint attack on Iran. Ross and Clinton will begin with phony negotiations based on unacceptable ultimatums. This will be followed by acts of war in the form of Gaza style embargos designed to starve and impoverish the people of Iran, and conclude with a Gaza-style aerial blitzkrieg. Given the extraordinary number of Zionists appointed by Obama in every key level of his government, the possibility of any internal debate or dissent over the Ross roadmap for war in Israel's interest is minimal. Obama has put together a policy-making elite so closely linked and loyal to the Israeli military that it precludes any type of meaningful negotiations with Iran.
Possible External Constraints on Zionist-Israeli-US War on Iran
The only effective deterrent to a Gaza style Israeli assault on Iran is Teheran's capacity for military retaliation, especially accurate long-range missiles capable of reaching Israel's principle military sites, infrastructure and related support systems. Given the Israeli leaders lack of any moral constraints and their immersion in a militarist ideology, in which brutal force and widespread violence are the primary means of projecting power and securing Israeli public support, a costly massive military counter-attack is probably the most effective deterrent to force its leaders to reconsider Israel's military-driven foreign policy.
While Israeli militarists adopt a `defensive' rhetoric, their strategy is to weaken Iran's defense capability and make it more vulnerable to military threats and diplomatic pressure in a lead-up to a pre-emptive aerial assault. International inspections by United Nation agencies are only carried out of Iranian sites but not of US regional military instillations, including their nuclear-armed war ships and submarines, or of Israel's nuclear weapons sites and nuclear weapon laboratories. The one-sided inspections provide a wealth of information on Iranian military capacity and defense locations and of advanced strategic research laboratories. UN inspections prior to the US invasion of Iraq identified key defense installations and Iraqi scientists, their places of work and homes, which were used in bombing missions and the subsequent assassination campaign against top Iraqi scientists. This kind of information was crucial in guiding Israel's bombing and missile assaults and assassination of leaders and their families during its invasions of Lebanon and Gaza.
The Israeli dictated and US Zionist implemented economic boycott of Iran is clearly directed toward undermining both Iranian living standards and the performance of their economy, similar to what the Jewish state imposed on Gaza. It is part of the `softening up' campaign prior to its all out attack.
To day however, despite a sustained effort by all top Zionist functionaries in the US government and the intense pressures of its lobbies on US pension fund managers, the embargo has not crippled the Iranian economy. Especially with the onset of the recession, the decline of world markets and the growing energy demands of China, there are numerous Western and Asian multinationals eager to trade with Iran and to ignore Israeli and US Zionist pressures.
Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has finally forced important cracks in the overseas Zionist monopoly over Jewish opinion. The leading Jewish communal organizations and their spiritual spokespeople continue to support each and every crime from the bombing of Red Cross ambulances and clinic to United Nations schools, food and medical supplies warehouses and refugee centers. This has finally provoked vigorous opposition among leading Jewish intellectuals, writers and other professionals.
New organizations and personalities have emerged within the Jewish community, which have forcibly repudiated Israel's genocide. Some Jewish activists have taken bold direct actions, occupying Israeli consular offices in a few major cities and calling for a total boycott of Israeli goods and academic exchanges. Others have confronted Zionist apologists in public forums and press conferences. While the number and influence of Jewish critics of Zionist war crimes is small, their importance is found in giving legitimacy and encouraging millions of otherwise intimidated and silent Gentiles to `come out'. As a result, an unprecedented number of people in the West have voiced their horror and opposition to the Zionist military juggernaut and expressed their support for economic boycotts against Israel. While Jewish and Gentile mass opposition neither stopped or weakened Israel's massacre of Gazan civilians, it has laid the political and organizational basis to launch a massive campaign against the US Zionist war plans against Iran.
Israel's military successes have created an irrational triumphalist war fever among all of its leaders and their enthusiastic supporters in the million member Jewish-Zionist organizations in the US. This has led them to underestimate the catastrophic costs of a war with Iran. An Israeli-US sneak attack on Iran will unleash major military and political retaliatory action throughout the Middle East. This will certainly inflict major human, military, political and economic losses on many US military installations in the Gulf region. This is especially the case in Iraq and the adjoining client Gulf States, where US military forces are highly vulnerable. An Israeli assault might lead to the destabilization or overthrow of Arab client states. Moreover, Iran may retaliate by successfully launching accurate long-range missiles, which will target major Israeli military complexes and adjoining population centers.
Given the enormous worldwide disgust and horror at Israel's war crimes in Gaza and the hatred evoked by the prospect of new aerial assaults on millions of Iranians, Tehran's reprisals against Israel and the US are not likely to raise much condemnation. More likely, most people will feel a sense of righteous vindication, that finally the arrogant bully is finally getting paid back for its assaults on unarmed, imprisoned civilians in Gaza. Just as the British survivors of Nazi V-2 rocket attacks on English population centers cheered the firebombing of Dresden, vast sections of public opinion may greet an Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel as a valid deterrent for its serial atrocities against humanity.
One of the most effective threats to Israel's genocidal war drive is the launching of investigations into Israeli war crimes, the establishment of tribunals to try Israeli military and political leaders for their crimes against humanity (Financial Times, January 16, 2009 page 5). Israeli leaders have advised their soldier-criminals they will be provided with legal protection. The leaders have expressed concern that they themselves may be subject to citizen arrests and tried by overseas courts. Several governments are filing war crimes charges before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The problem with laying charges on Israeli war criminals is where to draw the line between military-political leaders who directed the war crimes and the field officers, who implemented the policies violating the Geneva Conventions. For example, identifying the officials who specifically barred medical and emergency workers for over four days from evacuating wounded and starving civilians, including small children, from the site of a horrific Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians. What about the great masses of Israeli Jewish citizens who were so elated by the bombing of whole civilian neighborhoods that some Israelis set up observation posts with picnic baskets to survey the ongoing carnage? The same Israelis "delighted in the images, splashed across the front pages, of smiling Israeli soldiers riding homes on tanks in victory post." (Financial Times, January 26, 2009). Mass Israeli elation, political intoxication and embrace of the perpetrators of the killing of unarmed people may be repugnant to world opinion, but it is nor a sufficient offense to merit an international tribunal. However it is subject to the same moral repudiation, which many of us felt toward the German people who celebrated Hitler's savage bombing of Soviet, Polish and Balkan cities. Even if the Zionist-controlled White House succeeds in using its veto on the United Nations Security Council to prevent a war crimes investigation of Israeli leaders, the presentation of charges and possible arrests in several European countries will force the Israeli leaders to reflect on their pariah status and might inhibit their push for a murderous war with Iran. We have included a list (see Appendix #2) of the names of Israeli military leaders, their rank and operational role and responsibility for war crimes in Gaza.
Israelis currently dismiss out of hand the opprobrium of world opinion as irrelevant to its ongoing military offensive. This causes the Jewish state to overlook the importance of world opinion in eroding strategic political support in the future. Many observers believe hundreds of millions of Arab citizens and multitudes of non-Arabs and non-Muslims are coming to believe that Israel and its overseas Zionist Fifth column will only understand the language of force since they routinely practice state terrorism to impose their interests on captive, impoverished people. As a result, many analysts argue that it is understandable that the weapons of choice for the victims of Israel will inevitably rely on sustained, organized and militarized people's resistance. In these circumstances the current crop of anemic, impotent, collaborationist Arab leaders and regimes may be overthrown and a new combative and consequential leadership could emerge, one which consults and draws its mass support from the deepest feelings of national dignity and profound hatred of Zionist imposed humiliations.
Conclusions
Israel's Gaza war is leading its leaders and its strategically placed overseas agents in the US political system to overreach and to pursue a new war with Iran, as part of a regional strategy to secure imperial power. The Obama Administration and the newly elected Israeli prime minister share more than overlapping policy-makers and long-term commitments to military-driven empire building. They have made it clear that they will proceed in setting in motion a series of diplomatic and economic moves destined to prepare the stage for launching a genocidal war against Iran. This will be in line with Obama's rhetoric of recreating a Jewish-Afro-American alliance, one based on Israeli interests and American lives! The only deterrent to new wars of extermination is mass action, which increases the political, economic and military costs for Israeli aggression. Only when Israeli casualties mount, when Zionist exploiters and bankers suffer losses, when its academics and tourist sites are boycotted, then and only then will the Israelis and their US acolytes begin to rethink their blind adherence to militarist policies. It is only then that they will rethink their irrational Judeo-centric vision of a world made by and for the one Chosen People living in the Only Moral State in the world.
Unfortunately it may take some military shocks to dispel these tribal fantasies. History teaches us that there is nothing like a bloody defeat to end the Superman Complex.
Appendix #1
This a partial and growing list of potential war criminals compiled by a group of Israeli activists, despite Israeli government censorship, and as a challenge to the Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and his military counterpart, Judge Advocate General Brigadier General Avihai Mandelblit:
51 Member Organizations of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations:
1. Ameinu
2. American Friends of Likud
3. American Gathering/Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
4. American-Israel Friendship League
5. American Israel Public Affairs Committee
6. American Jewish Committee
7. American Jewish Congress
8. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
9. American Sephardi Federation
10. American Zionist Movement
11. Americans for Peace Now
12. AMIT
13. Anti-Defamation League
14. Association of Reform Zionist of America
15. B'nai B'rith International
16. Bnai Zion
17. Central Committee of American Rabbis
18. Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
19. Development Corporation for Israel/State of Israel Bonds
20. Emunah of America
21. Friends of Israel Defense Forces
22. Hadassah, Women's Zionist Organization of America
23. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
24. Hillel: The Foundation of Jewish Campus Life
25. Jewish Community Centers Association
26. Jewish Council for Public Affairs
27. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
28. Jewish Labor Committee
29. Jewish National Fund
30. Jewish Reconstructionist Federation
31. Jewish War Veterans of the USA
32. Jewish Women International
33. MERCAZ USA, Zionist Organization of the Conservative Movement
34. NA'AMAT USA
35. NCSJ: Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia
36. National Council of Jewish Women
37. National Council of Young Israel
38. ORT America
39. Rabbinical Assembly
40. Rabbinical Council of America
41. Religious Zionist of America
42. Union for Reform Judaism
43. Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
44. United Jewish Communities
45. United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
46. WIZO
47. Women's League for Conservative Judaism
48. Women of Reform Judaism
49. Workmen's Circle
50. World Zionist Executive, US
51. Zionist Organization of America
Appendix #2 List of Israeli Officials involved in War Crimes during the Gaza Invasion.
1. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minster
2. Ehud Barak, Israeli War Minister
3. Tzipi Livni, Foreign Minister of Israel
4. Yuval Diskin, Shin Bet security service chief
5. Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, IOF Chief of Staff
6. Colonel Hartzi Halevi, Paratroops Brigade Commander
7. Commander of the 401st Brigade Colonel Yigal Slovik
8. Brig Gen Jonathan Locker, head of Israeli air forces
9. Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, Israeli air forces
10. Colonel Ron Ashrov, Commander of the Northern Gaza
11. Brigadier-General Eyal Eisenberg - Commander of all the IOF
12. Colonel Yigal Slovik, commander of 401st Armored Corps Brigade convoy
13. Sho'alay Marom, Brigadier (res.)
14. Lt. Col. Yoav Mordechai, Golani infantry brigade's 13th Battalion in Gaza
15. Lt. Col. Oren Cohen, Battalion 13 in the Golani Brigade
16. Lt. Col. Avi Blot 101st Battalion Paratrooper Brigade
17. Lieutenant-Colonel Yehuda Cohen, Givati infantry Brigade's Rotem Regiment
18. Lieutenant-Colonel Ronen Dagmi, deputy commander of the 401st Armored Brigade
19. Col. Avi Peled, commander brigade in Battalion 51
20. Brig.-Gen.( res.) Zvika Fogel former deputy OC Southern Command
21. Brigadier-General Yuval Halamish, Chief IOF Intelligence Officer
22. Paratrooper Brigade commander, Hartzi Halevi
23. Col. Hertzi Halevy, brigade commander
24. Col. Tomer Tsiter, participated in the massacre in Gaza during "Operation Cast Lead", and previously he participated in the massacre "Operation Defensive Shield" in the Jeninrefugee camp in 2002.
25. Gur Rosenblatt, infantry reserve officer
26. Guy Ohaion, infantry reserve officer
27. Lt. Col. Erez
28. Maj. Nimrod Aloni
29. Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Shlomo Saban
30. Capt. Ron Vardi ,
31. Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, head of the International Law Department, Military Advocate General's Office,
32. Major-General Yoav Galant, southern command chief
33. Richard Awizrat, Senior Warrant Officer,
34. Major General Amos Yadlin, Military Intelligence chief
Note: James Petras' latest book, Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (2008, Clarity Press, Inc.)
From Gaza to TehranIsrael Asserting Middle East SupremacyBy James Petras
"Information Clearinghouse" --- Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany bombed, invaded and annexed countries and territories as a prelude to their quest for World Empire. Israel's drive for regional dominance has followed in their footsteps, imitating their style:
Indiscriminate aerial bombings of civilian and military facilities, a savage blitzkrieg led by armored vehicles, disdain and repudiation of all criticism from international agencies was accompanied by an open, military buildup for a new and bigger war against Iran. Like the Nazi leadership, who played on the `Bolshevik threat', the Israeli high command has set in motion a vast world-wide propaganda campaign led by its world Zionist network, raising the specter of `Islamic terror' to justify its preparations for a military assault on seventy-four million Iranians. Just as Nazi Germany interpreted the passivity, sympathy and impotence of the West when confronted by `facts on the ground' as license for aggression, the Israeli military machine receives a powerful impetus for new wars by the Western governments' inaction and flaccid response to its invasion of Lebanon, the bombing of Syria and now its Nazi style blitz and conquest of Gaza. For the Israeli high command, the impotence and complicity of the Western states, marks the way to bigger and bloodier wars to establish Israel's supremacy and dominance of the Middle East, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf.
Gaza Blitz: Dress Rehearsal for an Assault on Iran
Israel's military victory in Gaza is a dress rehearsal for a full-scale military assault on Iran. In the course of their Gaza extermination campaign, Israeli political and military strategists gained a great deal of vital information about: (1) the levels of complicity and impotence of European, North American and Arab states; (2) the high degree and depth of material and political support obtainable from the United States government in pulverizing adversaries; (3) the high degree of internal support among the Jewish electorate for even the most brutal killing fields; (4) the massive unquestioning backing of an offensive war from all the biggest and most politically influential and wealthiest Jewish-Zionist organizations in the US and Western Europe; (5) the weakness and ineffectiveness of the United Nations and the incapacity of the entire range of humanitarian organizations to limit Israel's extermination campaign directed at destroying the very existence of an entire people; (6) the unconditional backing of the entire mass media and news agencies in the US and most of the mass media in Europe and the rest of the world; (7) the willingness of the liberal critics to equally blame the victims of extermination and the exterminators for the `violence', thus neutralizing any effective consequential condemnation of the Israeli state; and (8) the adaptation of practically all the journalists, writers, academics and politicians to the entire euphemistic vocabulary of the Israeli propaganda office.
For example, sustained total war is called an `incursion'. Ten thousand aerial assaults by hundreds of Israeli helicopters and fighter-bombers are equated with sporadic harmless homemade rocket attacks as `violence'. Israeli targeting of thousands of civilian homes, hospitals and basic infrastructure are labeled `terrorist' targets. Resistance fighters are labeled `Hamas terrorists'. The bombing of the Red Cross, the United Nations relief facilities, hospitals, mosques are called `mistakes' or justified as `launching sites for Hamas terrorists.
Israeli political leaders have drawn the lesson from their dirty little `war' that they can totally destroy a nation, decimate a society and murder and maim 7000 civilians with impunity. Israeli leaders learned they can carry out an offensive genocidal war without suffering breaks in diplomatic relations (except Mauritania, Qatar, Bolivia and Venezuela). The Israelis have successfully tested the loyalty and submissiveness of the major Arab regimes in the region and secured cooperation and acquiescence from Egypt, the `Palestinian Authority', Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Israeli civilian-military leaders calculate that with this high degree of governmental complicity, combined with support from all the major Zionist leaders and mass media moguls, they can dismiss even large-scale street protests, repeated calls for boycotts and United Nations denunciations. Israeli leaders know that the criticism of major religious leaders and the growing number of Jewish dissidents, critical intellectuals and activists will have no consequential impact on Western governments nor lessen the fervor and loyalty of the major Jewish organizations.
Invisible Threats and Visible Impunity
The two potential threats to Israel's genocidal offensive wars, namely, economic boycotts by important trading and investing countries and a cut-off of military aid, did not materialize. In North American the leading Zionist organizations ensured that the issue of a boycott was never even raised in the legislature and executive branches. In the US, AIPAC wrote resolutions and secured near unanimous passage (100% in the Senate, 90% in the Congress) of an AIPAC dictated resolution endorsing Israel's invasion and slaughter. Moreover the Zionist colonized Pentagon authorized massive new shipments of missiles and 1000 pound bombs to re-supply Israel in the midst of its massacres of the Palestinians. Israel's leaders gloated over the fact that Jewish Zionist Lobbies control over US policy went un-contested by the anti-war protestors. Few, if any, of the demonstrators around the world identified and denounced the role of the Zionist organizations in their own countries in making US, Canadian and European policy toward the Middle East.
Nothing exemplifies the total and blind subordination of the 51 Major American Jewish Organizations (see appendix #1) to Israeli foreign policy goals as two incidents during the Gaza Genocide. When the `51' got wind that Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice was working to come up with a Security Council resolution calling for a cease fire in Gaza, to stop Israeli genocide, every major Jewish organization mobilized their entire membership to oppose her. As the Jewish weekly magazine, Forward, reports: "During a January 5 (2009) conference call with Jewish activists, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations, gave special priority to blocking the international body from taking a stand on the Gaza issue. `We need to work hard to ensure the Security Council doesn't pass the resolution, Hoenlein said.'" (Forward January 15, 2009)
The second example of Zionist belief in Israeli supremacy over US Middle East policy and Presidential servility came in response to Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's boast that he successfully dictated and imposed White House policy in the United Nation. According to the Forward: "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert didn't do anything wrong but he should have kept his mouth shut. That was the reaction of several Jewish leaders…'I have no problem with what Olmert did', said Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League." (Forward, January 15, 2009) Former AIPAC chief lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield, stated that he (an American citizen) had no problem with Israel dictating US policies but `it is a mistake to talk about it.' (Forward, January 15, 2009). By talking about Israel's power in Washington, it exposes the role of the Zionist Power Configuration in deciding US policies.
These examples demonstrate once again the indivisible links between Israel and its US-Zionist Fifth Column and their power to make US policy – even when it is a question of supporting genocide. These cases also illustrate the fact that the major American Jewish organizations will not tolerate the smallest White House deviation from any Israeli policy, even if it involves mass murder. It wasn't enough that for 8 years, President Bush slavishly followed and funded Israel's war machine: For US Jewish leaders it is 100% subservience up to and including his last day in office. As the Forward writes, "That tough words from Israel and the Jewish groups…serve as a message to the incoming (Obama) administrations…" (ibid).
In addition to capturing positions of political power, one of the highest priorities of all the major Zionist Jewish organizations in the US is to propagandize, apologize and fabricate stories on behalf of Israel. Even in the face of Israel's most blatant violent crimes against Palestinians, condemned by the UN General Assembly, the International Red Cross and every humanitarian group, the principle American Jewish religious institutions and lobbies have demonstrated their loyalty to the state of Israel. The modus operendi as documented by their internal memos is to dominate the mass media through `plants' – pro-Zionist journalist, academics, `experts' and editors – who write and broadcast justifications and apologies for Israeli war crimes (parroting the line of the Israeli state) in the mass media. The Zionist propagandists then circulate the planted articles by their colleagues, giving the impression of broad public support when in fact they are reproducing prepared Israeli-Zionist propaganda. The style and substance of the Zionist propaganda operation is evident in its defense of Israel's Gaza bloodbath. The style is the Big Lie, reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. It is worthwhile to sample a few examples from the main mouthpiece of the 51 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO):
1. Denying Israeli war crimes and fabricating accounts minimizing the Jewish State's killings. The Daily Alert (January 22, 2009) claimed that Israel killed only 600 Palestinians and "most were fighters." The Daily Alert denied on site reports by major human rights workers, Red Cross officials, Palestinian and international doctors and medical workers and journalists, who risked their lives (and some died) documenting the nearly 1,400 deaths, over 2/3 of which were children, women and non-combatants.
2. Repeating Israeli propaganda justifying the bombing of the United Nations-run schools by claiming the schools were `infiltrated by Palestinian terrorists' among the thousands of refugees (The Daily Alert, January 22, 2009). There was not a single armed resistance fighter found among the 40 bodies recovered from the rubble by the United Nations workers, International Red Cross and Palestinian medical crews at the girls' elementary school; all were children, teachers and refugees. Every organization and individual eyewitness refutes the Zionist-American apology of the Israeli bombing of the school, including the entire European Union. The most bizarre fabrication printed in the Daily Alert is a headline, which read: "Hamas Shot from Civilian Neighborhoods" over an article by Rod Nordland (Newsweek), which, in fact, reports the opposite, "Everyone of the residents interviewed in eastern Jabeliya insisted that there had been no provocation from the area, no resistance fighters and no rocket launchings."
3. The third lie is a whopper: "Israel Doing its Best to Help Gazans", (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009). In fact, Israel blocked all medicine and medical equipment from entering Gaza, bombed hospitals, shot up ambulances, murdered doctors and medical aid workers and blocked all shipment of water, food and fuel. The Israelis bombed the main United Nations food and medical supply warehouse, destroying its entire contents. The US Zionists defended this bombing by citing Olmert's blood libel that the destruction of thousands of tons of food was a "response to fire coming from the building." The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was outraged by this barefaced lie as he visited the still smoldering UN warehouse to view the destruction while the US Secretary of State Rice crawled before the Israelis, begging them to "avoid (a repeat of) such incidents." (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009)
4. "Saving Gaza by Destroying the Heart of Terror" (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009). The Jewish propaganda sheet reproduces an article by the ultra-nationalist Natan Sharansky, who advocates expelling all Palestinian Arabs from `Greater Israel'. In an article published in Bloomberg, Sharansky defended the destruction of over 10,000 houses, damaging over 40,000 homes, roads, hospitals, power installations, water and sewage installations, 121 industries and commercial workshops, 30 mosques, 29 educational institutions, farms, poultries, dairies, small fishing vessels and the fishing port (according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and cited in Stephen Lendman's essay, "Israel Killed Everything but the Will to Resist", January 25, 2009).
5. The Fifth Big Lie: "Israeli Pilot Tries to Avoid Hitting Civilians", (Daily Alert, January 14, 2009). Photos published in all the international mass media refute this Zionist propaganda claim. The ghostly rubble of whole apartment blocks resembles a nuclear strike or an earthquake, according to the BBC reporters who finally made it into Gaza. Numerous European Parliamentary representatives and other on site visitors from throughout the world were shocked by the devastation. Not only did Israeli pilots target all civilian targets, but their ground troops assassinated unarmed civilians holding white flags and in some cases even small children attempting to flee. Surviving Palestinian children tell of their fathers executed in front of their families.
The Big Lie promoted by the leading Zionist organizations resonates from the Rabbinical pulpits, to their members and beyond: Informal phone surveys with rank and file members of local Zionists groups echoes the same lies and apologies, almost verbatim. In a word, neither facts, nor reports, nor universal condemnation, nor challenges by dissident rabbis, Jewish notables, writers and activists have made a dent on the major Jewish organizations and their agents in influential positions in the new Obama administration. They are the willing accomplices to mass murder in Gaza. They are active promoters of a pre-emptive aerial assault on Iran. They will unconditionally apologize for any crime against humanity that Israel perpetrates. Their academic apologists at Harvard defend Israeli Genocide as part of a `Just War'. In the face of universal condemnation they continue to cite the Holocaust and claim that they and their State are the only Moral People entitled to decide and judge, what is just and what is sacred Truth.
The Israeli leaders are perfectly aware of the `free hand' with which their `Fifth Column' operates, up to and including their prominent role in defense of genocide. Israeli leaders are assured that even when they launch a bigger, bolder and more destructive war (including the possibility of pre-emptive nuclear strike) against Iran or Syria/Lebanon, they can count on the million-member US Zionist lobby securing White House and US Congressional support. Israeli leaders now know for a fact that the anti-war movement will once again engage in inconsequential protests against the `shadows of power' and not the real power wielders embedded in the Zionist Power Configuration.
Gaza: Testing the Subservience of the US Congress and the White House
By savaging Gaza with extreme brutality, Israel is testing the waters of US support for more offensive wars. Gaza allowed the Jewish leaders to measure the depth and scope of US Zionist political influence and their willingness to `go all the way' when Israel decides to bomb 74 million Iranians in to the stone age. Or as the famous Israeli Zionist historian, Benny Morris, suggested in the New York Times July 18,2008, turn Iran "into a nuclear wasteland".
Prime Minister Olmert's public boasting that he pulled President Bush off the stage from an official public appearance and successfully ordered him to instruct the Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice to abstain from voting on her own authored resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza before the Security Council has many profound meanings. On the most obvious level Olmert's revelation confirms the power of Israeli leaders over the White House. Secondly, the public nature of the exercise of power, tells the world that Israel can openly flaunt its capacity to humiliate and ridicule the President of the United States and later brag before Israeli officials with no adverse consequences. Thirdly it tells us that Israel has a greater say in US foreign policy than the American Secretary of State (or Foreign Minister). Fourthly it tells us that Israel decides how the US behaves, votes, vetoes and abstains in the Security Council, subject to Israeli approval.
Israel, the Zionist Fifth Column and Iran
Israel exercises power in the Middle East through its military weaponry. Its repeated threats and aerial and ground assaults on neighboring countries is a deliberate strategy to assert its regional supremacy. In recent years, Israel's regional power has been enhanced by the Zionist Power Configuration in the US and Canada, who use the armed forces in their own countries to destroy any country that contests Israeli military supremacy. The classic case was the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq and the follow-up occupation, in which long-term Israel Firsters in the US Government played a deadly role in promoting the war.
From the late 1980's to the present, the US Zionist Power Configuration has been in the forefront of a campaign to promote a US military confrontation with Iran in collaboration with Israel. The Zionist military proposals gained tremendous momentum during the 8 years of the Bush Administration. The ZPC mounted an unrelenting mass media propaganda campaign demonizing Iran, fabricating and disseminating falsified accounts of its nuclear programs, infiltrating and occupying key positions in the US Treasury Department (led by Stuart Levey) aggressively bludgeoning other governments, industries, banks and investors to boycott Iran. Zionist Treasury Department officials hope to strangle and weaken Iran's economy in order to soften it up for a military strike. No other single or combined force in North America, or, for that matter, any place in the world (except Israel) has played as big a role in promoting an offensive war against Iran as the Zionist politicians and officials in the US government. They were aided and abetted by Jewish lobbies, Zionist propaganda centers, multi-billionaires and hundreds of Jewish community organizations.
Major Jewish religious organizations play a very influential role as conduits of Israeli propaganda and are an important force within the principle Zionist umbrella organizations (e.g. Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations or CPMAJO). Fully one-fifth of the Conference (see appendix for a full list)1 is made up of clerical-Zionist organizations, whose principle function is promoting Israeli goals through direct intervention in US politics at all levels. A memo from one group, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, issued on January 3, 2009, outlines their detailed strategy in defense of Israel's Gaza massacre: "Every congregation should issue a statement supporting Israel. Solicit statements from elected officials at the city, state or provincial, or federal levels. Solicit statements from local religious, ethnic and other prominent personalities. Monitor and respond to media coverage. Whenever possible, enlist non-Jews as well as public officials and prominent spokespeople to demonstrate their support for Israel." The memo then proposes a series of "talking points on the situation in the Gaza Strip" that repeats verbatim the identical propaganda fabrications of the Israeli political-military high command: Affirming Israel's peaceful intentions, blaming Hamas as the aggressor and claiming that "Israel, as always, is doing everything within its powers to limit non-combatant casualties in Gaza." The Jewish clerics in the United Synagogues tell their faithful congregants to ignore the more than 5000 civilian casualties and the 1,300 deaths, of which three quarters are women, children and unarmed civilians, the sixty schools and the tens of thousands of homes and the dozen mosques demolished, the condemnations of war crimes by the United Nations, Red Cross and every Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.
The strategy paper issued by the religious Conservative Jews is very similar to that followed by the entire network of 51 religious and secular groups affiliated with the `Presidents'. This highlights the way in which a highly disciplined, well-financed minority captures and multiplies its power far beyond its own membership, `leveraging' influential Gentiles, the mass media at all levels and public figures into a powerful juggernaut in defense of Israeli genocide in Gaza today and for war against Iran tomorrow.
Israel's Military Threat to Iran
Israel, contrary to some leftist skeptics, had advanced operational plans to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran. On several occasions in the recent past, Israel has planned several aerial attacks on Iran, only to be thwarted by the Bush White House. The Jewish state has publicly announced that it will unilaterally strike Iran if it continues its legal, internationally recognized, right to enrich uranium. The most likely winner in this February's national elections, Binyamin Netanyahu, has publicly stated that a military attack on Iran is at the top of his agenda – a message which has activated all the major Zionist-Jewish organizations in the US to redouble their efforts to secure US compliance, support and active collaboration. On January 7, 2009 The London Sunday Times, quoting several high level Israeli military sources, reported that, "Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli Air Force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear `bunker-buster'…Robert Gates, the new (sic) US Defense Secretary, has described military action against Iran as a `last resort' leading Israeli officials to conclude that it will be left to them to strike. The preparations have been overseen by Major General Eliezar Shkedi, Commander of the Israeli Air Force." (Times on Line, January 7, 2009). A subsequent article in the pro-Israel New York Times (January 11, 2009) by David Sanger, a prominent Zionist sympathizer, reported that "President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year (2008) for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran's main nuclear complex…the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran's major nuclear complex…The White House denied that request outright." Sanger goes on to claim that the Israelis were furious at a detailed report by 16 US intelligence agencies (The National Intelligence Estimate) which demonstrated that Iran had halted development of a nuclear warhead in 2003 because it undermined Israeli efforts to secure US collaborations for a military attack on Iran. Sanger spends several paragraphs trying to bolster the Israeli unsubstantiated claims regarding Iran's nuclear program framing the case for a unilateral Israeli attack…which he dates began "early 2008" but was stalled by opposition from the US military.
The forthcoming Israeli national elections (February 10, 2009) promise to accelerate Israeli plans for a massive military assault on Iran, as the polls indicate that the majority of Jewish voters will elect the ultra-militarist Zionist Binyamin Netanyahu, a favorite of the most influential Zionist-American organizations. In a very recent interview with the Wall Street Journal (January 24, 2009), Netanyahu speaks of Iran as the `terrorist mother base" and "that Israel cannot accept an Iranian terror base (Gaza) next to its major cities." He then goes on to justify the Israeli murder of civilians because, he claims, the Palestinian resistance ("terrorists") "hide behind civilians". The Wall Street journalist, one Brett Stephens, in complete awe and wonder at the feet of the Israeli leader, writes approvingly of Netanyahu's justifications for an attack on Iran, "the threat of a nuclear Iran poses a much greater danger to the world than the economic crises…this poses an existential threat to Israel directly…" Stephens goes on to sum up Netanyahu's position toward Obama: "If diplomacy fails and the US does not resort to military force, Israel will decide to go it alone…"
Israeli leaders have temporarily backed off attacking Iran – launching, instead, the Gaza assault to weaken any possible resistance among Palestinians to an Israeli war against their Muslim ally in Teheran. The Israeli war plans toward Iran will be reinforced with the new Obama Presidency. With the rise to power of the ultra-Zionist Dennis Ross as Chief Adviser on to President Obama on Iran and Hillary ("We will obliterate Iran") Clinton as Secretary of State, the question of a US backed Israeli preemptive attack on Iran looms closer to becoming a reality. As late as two months ago Ross signed on to a document, which provided a `roadmap' to war with Iran. Zionist infestation of the entire policy-making apparatus of the Obama regime means that any official military or intelligence opposition to an Israeli attack on Iran will be blunted and their spokespersons marginalized.
The Obama Regime and Israel
The Obama regime is, if anything, even more penetrated from the top to bottom and from Executive offices to Congress with Zionists in positions to influence every strategic decision having any relation to Middle East policy.
The Jewish Telegraph Agency (January 20, 2009), the principle news agency of American Jewish-Zionist publications, provides a detailed list of the `pro-Israel' Zionists in strategic Middle East positions in the Obama regime. The evidence of Zionist control is overwhelming and the consequences are deadly to any `balanced' peace negotiations and extremely promising for Israel's war ambitions in the regions:
1. Dennis Ross will be an influential adviser on Iran policy. Ross is an advocate of intensifying sanctions to undermine negotiations and force the military option.
2. Richard Holbrooke, appointed as Obama's envoy to Afghanistan, is a prominent Zionist who served as UN envoy under Clinton. He has recently headed an ad hoc group called United Against a Nuclear Iran, which advocates military action against Iran if it does not submit to an Israeli-dictated cessation of its legal nuclear energy program.
3. George Mitchell, Obama's envoy to the Palestine-Israel conflict, is one of the four co-chairs of the Zionist front group, Bipartisan Policy Center, which propose a step by step approach, from sanctions to embargo to naval blockade to a military strike on Iran.
4. Dan Shapiro and Puneet Talwar will collaborate on Middle East policy at the National Security Council. Shapiro, in consultation with Israel, was "key in shepherding the Syrian Accountability Act through the Senate (a measure that imposed tough sanctions on Syria). Shapiro drafted Obama's cringing, belly crawling speech to the AIPAC conference in Washington on May 2008. Puneet Talwar will handle Persian Gulf issues – including Iran. He was a staffer of former Senator and current Vice President Joe Biden and was a close collaborator and conduit for AIPAC.
5. Eric Lynn is heading for a White House Middle East policy job. He started his career as an AIPAC intern in 1998 and continued as a staff person for Congressman Peter Deutsch, "one of the most committed pro-Israel figures in Congress." Lynn spent a year in Israel, imbibing Zionist military culture and learning Hebrew.
6. James Steinberg and Jacob `Jack' Lew have been named as Clinton's deputies at the State Department. Steinberg has been in a `strong relation with the pro-Israel community' and was a conduit for Israeli pressure on Arafat to capitulate to Israeli demands. Jack Law will direct economic stimulus overseas. He is an orthodox-Zionist, who will use American economic resources to back Israeli militarism and reward or punish its adversaries. A former head of a Citigroup investment unit, he holds between $50,000 to $100,000 in Israel State Bonds.
7. Samantha Power, once a critic of Israeli war crimes in 2002 for which the Zionist Power Configuration had her removed from the Obama campaign in March 2008. She was `rehabilitated' and re-incorporated as a member of the Clinton transition team after an `abject apology' to Israel.
8. Cass Sunstein, a lifetime Zion-Lib, is head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs – a key propaganda arm of the Obama regime.
9. Rand Beers was lead national security adviser to Senator Kerry during his presidential campaign of 2004 and `built close relations' with the pro-Israel political apparatus. As adviser to Homeland Security, he will `likely be a linchpin as Israel and the US forge a closer alliance' (Jewish Telegraph Agency January 20, 2009).
10. Lee Feinstein and Mara Rudman are Zionist veterans from the Clinton Administrations. Feinstein is a lead adviser of Secretary of State Clinton and Rudman is Senior Foreign Policy Adviser of President Obama.
11. Susan Rice, UN Ambassador appointed by Obama, signed on to a Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) paper last summer calling for greater Israeli-US coordination for an embargo and military attack on Iran. WINEP is a well-known propaganda mill for Israel's most fanatical, bellicose and unconditional supporters. In her Senate testimony, Rice denounced the United Nation General Assembly's criticism of Israel's Gaza bloodbath.
At the head of Obama's foreign policy regime, Vice Presiden Biden ("I am a Zionist"), Secretary of State Clinton ("demolish Iran") and Secretary of Defense Gates (a holdover from the Israeli-dominated Bush Administration) have put in place the most Zionist-infested Middle East policy regime in US history. This regime is neither by background, loyalties or commitments prepared to open serious negotiations with Iran, or to `broker' an end of Israeli occupation of Palestine. On the contrary, their close ties with the Zionist Power Configuration and long-term commitment to Israeli militarism and expansionist policies ensure that the Obama regime will proceed toward collaboration with the Jewish State in a military confrontation with Iran. Everyone on Obama's team supported the Israeli carnage in Gaza and endorsed Israel's efforts to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government and prop up the discredited and corrupt quisling clique headed by Abbas.
The Obama Presidency has achieved what many observers thought impossible: It has placed more Zionist in more strategic power positions with a greater commitment to war with Iran than even the Bush Administration. Given Obama's appointments and his own personal subservience to Israeli leaders it is difficult to imagine the 16 major intelligence services issuing a report refuting Israel's fabrications about Iran's nuclear program, as happened under Bush. Even more egregious, given the Zionist stranglehold on the White House, it is unlikely that Obama would block a proposed Israeli air assault on Iran as Bush is reputed to have done.
The Israeli war strategy toward Iran follows the `salami tactics' of its Nazi forerunner: Attacks are designed for maximum destructiveness against civilian infrastructure, against countries and leaders opposed to any Israeli aggression toward Iran. Israel bombed and invaded Lebanon. It bombed Syria. Israel savaged Gaza. Its `lobby' has extended and enforced global economic sanctions through the forceful intervention of a Zionist infested Treasury Department. Obama's top economic adviser, the ultra-Zionist Lawrence Summers, promotes tighter sanctions, boycotts and embargoes against the designated enemies of Israel: policies pointing toward war.
`Peace' Negotiations Geared Toward War
The likelihood that the Obama regime will move the world closer to an offensive war with Iran is not based on idle speculation or selected quotes from his presidential campaign. No one can take serious President Obama or his Secretary of State Clinton's advocacy of `negotiations with Iran', when they are accompanied by conditions unacceptable to Iran's sovereignty or national interests. The Obama regime openly threatens war if Iran does not accept unilateral disarmament with intrusive inspection of its strategic defense installations, allowing Israel and the US a unique opportunity for pinpointing vital targets for their first wave of attack.
What conclusively demonstrates Obama's drive to war with Iran is his appointment of the most zealous Zionist militarist, Dennis Ross, to the key strategic position dealing with Iran.
Obama appointed Ross to the post of `Special Envoy to Iran'. He will act as Czar of Middle East policy. George Mitchell is his envoy on Israel-Palestine negotiations, a typical `good cop' (Mitchell) strategy to counter the `bad cop' (Ross). Ross, who is often called `Israel's Lawyer', is the ultimate Zionist, a crown prince of the US Zionist Jewish Lobby in all of its major undertakings regarding Iran. Ross is a founding leader of AIPAC, the principle and most powerful Israel First Lobby in Washington. He has been a lifelong and influential ZionCon ideologue, who successfully led the campaign in favor of the invasion of Iraq. He is among the most prolific and influential writers and propagandists at the Zionist-financed propaganda mill, WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), which has produced the most bellicose position papers pushing US military intervention in favor of Israel's expansionist ambitions. During the Clinton years, Ross was appointed head of the US `mediation' committee during the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (1999-2000). In that position, he acted as `Israel's lawyer' according to a fellow US Zionist diplomat. He scuttled all possibility of any acceptable compromise by "following Israel's lead." He set up the conditions, which made Palestinian rejection inevitable while placing the blame on that embittered people. Ross has a profound influence on Obama's politics to Israel.
Ross is a leader in a relatively new Zionist front group, known as the `Bipartisan Policy Center'. The `Center' recently published a report entitled, "Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development." This roadmap for war with Iran was produced by a task force, which included Ross and two other extremist Zioncons, the dual-Israel-US citizen Michal Makovsky and Michael Rubin. Ross' endorsement of the `Report' reflects his rejection of any possibility of a negotiated agreement with Iran, which would accept Iran's legal right to a uranium enrichment program as recognized by international treaty.
A recently reported wrinkle in Dennis Ross' appointment to the Obama Cabinet is his role as current Chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, under the Jewish Agency, which is an official part of the Israeli Government. His current work for an Israeli government agency could place Ross at odds with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a Federal statute that requires individuals working on behalf of a foreign government to register as such - something Ross has never done.
The `Report' advocates a preemptive Israeli aerial bombing and missile campaign against Iran should the US and Europe fail to strike first. This Dennis Ross-endorsed `Report' proposes a total naval and air blockade and embargo of Iran as a prelude to a US attack on Iran's vital infrastructure. This document called on Obama to `bring in troops and material to the region under the cover of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, thus maintaining a degree of strategic and tactical surprise.' In other words, Obama's forthcoming appointment of Ross to head his regime's Middle East Policy Advisory Group places an unconditional advocate and promoter of genocidal war with Iran in a key strategic foreign policy position.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Dennis Ross will do everything in their power to promote and justify a US-Israeli joint attack on Iran. Ross and Clinton will begin with phony negotiations based on unacceptable ultimatums. This will be followed by acts of war in the form of Gaza style embargos designed to starve and impoverish the people of Iran, and conclude with a Gaza-style aerial blitzkrieg. Given the extraordinary number of Zionists appointed by Obama in every key level of his government, the possibility of any internal debate or dissent over the Ross roadmap for war in Israel's interest is minimal. Obama has put together a policy-making elite so closely linked and loyal to the Israeli military that it precludes any type of meaningful negotiations with Iran.
Possible External Constraints on Zionist-Israeli-US War on Iran
The only effective deterrent to a Gaza style Israeli assault on Iran is Teheran's capacity for military retaliation, especially accurate long-range missiles capable of reaching Israel's principle military sites, infrastructure and related support systems. Given the Israeli leaders lack of any moral constraints and their immersion in a militarist ideology, in which brutal force and widespread violence are the primary means of projecting power and securing Israeli public support, a costly massive military counter-attack is probably the most effective deterrent to force its leaders to reconsider Israel's military-driven foreign policy.
While Israeli militarists adopt a `defensive' rhetoric, their strategy is to weaken Iran's defense capability and make it more vulnerable to military threats and diplomatic pressure in a lead-up to a pre-emptive aerial assault. International inspections by United Nation agencies are only carried out of Iranian sites but not of US regional military instillations, including their nuclear-armed war ships and submarines, or of Israel's nuclear weapons sites and nuclear weapon laboratories. The one-sided inspections provide a wealth of information on Iranian military capacity and defense locations and of advanced strategic research laboratories. UN inspections prior to the US invasion of Iraq identified key defense installations and Iraqi scientists, their places of work and homes, which were used in bombing missions and the subsequent assassination campaign against top Iraqi scientists. This kind of information was crucial in guiding Israel's bombing and missile assaults and assassination of leaders and their families during its invasions of Lebanon and Gaza.
The Israeli dictated and US Zionist implemented economic boycott of Iran is clearly directed toward undermining both Iranian living standards and the performance of their economy, similar to what the Jewish state imposed on Gaza. It is part of the `softening up' campaign prior to its all out attack.
To day however, despite a sustained effort by all top Zionist functionaries in the US government and the intense pressures of its lobbies on US pension fund managers, the embargo has not crippled the Iranian economy. Especially with the onset of the recession, the decline of world markets and the growing energy demands of China, there are numerous Western and Asian multinationals eager to trade with Iran and to ignore Israeli and US Zionist pressures.
Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has finally forced important cracks in the overseas Zionist monopoly over Jewish opinion. The leading Jewish communal organizations and their spiritual spokespeople continue to support each and every crime from the bombing of Red Cross ambulances and clinic to United Nations schools, food and medical supplies warehouses and refugee centers. This has finally provoked vigorous opposition among leading Jewish intellectuals, writers and other professionals.
New organizations and personalities have emerged within the Jewish community, which have forcibly repudiated Israel's genocide. Some Jewish activists have taken bold direct actions, occupying Israeli consular offices in a few major cities and calling for a total boycott of Israeli goods and academic exchanges. Others have confronted Zionist apologists in public forums and press conferences. While the number and influence of Jewish critics of Zionist war crimes is small, their importance is found in giving legitimacy and encouraging millions of otherwise intimidated and silent Gentiles to `come out'. As a result, an unprecedented number of people in the West have voiced their horror and opposition to the Zionist military juggernaut and expressed their support for economic boycotts against Israel. While Jewish and Gentile mass opposition neither stopped or weakened Israel's massacre of Gazan civilians, it has laid the political and organizational basis to launch a massive campaign against the US Zionist war plans against Iran.
Israel's military successes have created an irrational triumphalist war fever among all of its leaders and their enthusiastic supporters in the million member Jewish-Zionist organizations in the US. This has led them to underestimate the catastrophic costs of a war with Iran. An Israeli-US sneak attack on Iran will unleash major military and political retaliatory action throughout the Middle East. This will certainly inflict major human, military, political and economic losses on many US military installations in the Gulf region. This is especially the case in Iraq and the adjoining client Gulf States, where US military forces are highly vulnerable. An Israeli assault might lead to the destabilization or overthrow of Arab client states. Moreover, Iran may retaliate by successfully launching accurate long-range missiles, which will target major Israeli military complexes and adjoining population centers.
Given the enormous worldwide disgust and horror at Israel's war crimes in Gaza and the hatred evoked by the prospect of new aerial assaults on millions of Iranians, Tehran's reprisals against Israel and the US are not likely to raise much condemnation. More likely, most people will feel a sense of righteous vindication, that finally the arrogant bully is finally getting paid back for its assaults on unarmed, imprisoned civilians in Gaza. Just as the British survivors of Nazi V-2 rocket attacks on English population centers cheered the firebombing of Dresden, vast sections of public opinion may greet an Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel as a valid deterrent for its serial atrocities against humanity.
One of the most effective threats to Israel's genocidal war drive is the launching of investigations into Israeli war crimes, the establishment of tribunals to try Israeli military and political leaders for their crimes against humanity (Financial Times, January 16, 2009 page 5). Israeli leaders have advised their soldier-criminals they will be provided with legal protection. The leaders have expressed concern that they themselves may be subject to citizen arrests and tried by overseas courts. Several governments are filing war crimes charges before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The problem with laying charges on Israeli war criminals is where to draw the line between military-political leaders who directed the war crimes and the field officers, who implemented the policies violating the Geneva Conventions. For example, identifying the officials who specifically barred medical and emergency workers for over four days from evacuating wounded and starving civilians, including small children, from the site of a horrific Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians. What about the great masses of Israeli Jewish citizens who were so elated by the bombing of whole civilian neighborhoods that some Israelis set up observation posts with picnic baskets to survey the ongoing carnage? The same Israelis "delighted in the images, splashed across the front pages, of smiling Israeli soldiers riding homes on tanks in victory post." (Financial Times, January 26, 2009). Mass Israeli elation, political intoxication and embrace of the perpetrators of the killing of unarmed people may be repugnant to world opinion, but it is nor a sufficient offense to merit an international tribunal. However it is subject to the same moral repudiation, which many of us felt toward the German people who celebrated Hitler's savage bombing of Soviet, Polish and Balkan cities. Even if the Zionist-controlled White House succeeds in using its veto on the United Nations Security Council to prevent a war crimes investigation of Israeli leaders, the presentation of charges and possible arrests in several European countries will force the Israeli leaders to reflect on their pariah status and might inhibit their push for a murderous war with Iran. We have included a list (see Appendix #2) of the names of Israeli military leaders, their rank and operational role and responsibility for war crimes in Gaza.
Israelis currently dismiss out of hand the opprobrium of world opinion as irrelevant to its ongoing military offensive. This causes the Jewish state to overlook the importance of world opinion in eroding strategic political support in the future. Many observers believe hundreds of millions of Arab citizens and multitudes of non-Arabs and non-Muslims are coming to believe that Israel and its overseas Zionist Fifth column will only understand the language of force since they routinely practice state terrorism to impose their interests on captive, impoverished people. As a result, many analysts argue that it is understandable that the weapons of choice for the victims of Israel will inevitably rely on sustained, organized and militarized people's resistance. In these circumstances the current crop of anemic, impotent, collaborationist Arab leaders and regimes may be overthrown and a new combative and consequential leadership could emerge, one which consults and draws its mass support from the deepest feelings of national dignity and profound hatred of Zionist imposed humiliations.
Conclusions
Israel's Gaza war is leading its leaders and its strategically placed overseas agents in the US political system to overreach and to pursue a new war with Iran, as part of a regional strategy to secure imperial power. The Obama Administration and the newly elected Israeli prime minister share more than overlapping policy-makers and long-term commitments to military-driven empire building. They have made it clear that they will proceed in setting in motion a series of diplomatic and economic moves destined to prepare the stage for launching a genocidal war against Iran. This will be in line with Obama's rhetoric of recreating a Jewish-Afro-American alliance, one based on Israeli interests and American lives! The only deterrent to new wars of extermination is mass action, which increases the political, economic and military costs for Israeli aggression. Only when Israeli casualties mount, when Zionist exploiters and bankers suffer losses, when its academics and tourist sites are boycotted, then and only then will the Israelis and their US acolytes begin to rethink their blind adherence to militarist policies. It is only then that they will rethink their irrational Judeo-centric vision of a world made by and for the one Chosen People living in the Only Moral State in the world.
Unfortunately it may take some military shocks to dispel these tribal fantasies. History teaches us that there is nothing like a bloody defeat to end the Superman Complex.
Appendix #1
This a partial and growing list of potential war criminals compiled by a group of Israeli activists, despite Israeli government censorship, and as a challenge to the Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and his military counterpart, Judge Advocate General Brigadier General Avihai Mandelblit:
51 Member Organizations of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations:
1. Ameinu
2. American Friends of Likud
3. American Gathering/Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
4. American-Israel Friendship League
5. American Israel Public Affairs Committee
6. American Jewish Committee
7. American Jewish Congress
8. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
9. American Sephardi Federation
10. American Zionist Movement
11. Americans for Peace Now
12. AMIT
13. Anti-Defamation League
14. Association of Reform Zionist of America
15. B'nai B'rith International
16. Bnai Zion
17. Central Committee of American Rabbis
18. Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
19. Development Corporation for Israel/State of Israel Bonds
20. Emunah of America
21. Friends of Israel Defense Forces
22. Hadassah, Women's Zionist Organization of America
23. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
24. Hillel: The Foundation of Jewish Campus Life
25. Jewish Community Centers Association
26. Jewish Council for Public Affairs
27. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
28. Jewish Labor Committee
29. Jewish National Fund
30. Jewish Reconstructionist Federation
31. Jewish War Veterans of the USA
32. Jewish Women International
33. MERCAZ USA, Zionist Organization of the Conservative Movement
34. NA'AMAT USA
35. NCSJ: Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia
36. National Council of Jewish Women
37. National Council of Young Israel
38. ORT America
39. Rabbinical Assembly
40. Rabbinical Council of America
41. Religious Zionist of America
42. Union for Reform Judaism
43. Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
44. United Jewish Communities
45. United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
46. WIZO
47. Women's League for Conservative Judaism
48. Women of Reform Judaism
49. Workmen's Circle
50. World Zionist Executive, US
51. Zionist Organization of America
Appendix #2 List of Israeli Officials involved in War Crimes during the Gaza Invasion.
1. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minster
2. Ehud Barak, Israeli War Minister
3. Tzipi Livni, Foreign Minister of Israel
4. Yuval Diskin, Shin Bet security service chief
5. Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, IOF Chief of Staff
6. Colonel Hartzi Halevi, Paratroops Brigade Commander
7. Commander of the 401st Brigade Colonel Yigal Slovik
8. Brig Gen Jonathan Locker, head of Israeli air forces
9. Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, Israeli air forces
10. Colonel Ron Ashrov, Commander of the Northern Gaza
11. Brigadier-General Eyal Eisenberg - Commander of all the IOF
12. Colonel Yigal Slovik, commander of 401st Armored Corps Brigade convoy
13. Sho'alay Marom, Brigadier (res.)
14. Lt. Col. Yoav Mordechai, Golani infantry brigade's 13th Battalion in Gaza
15. Lt. Col. Oren Cohen, Battalion 13 in the Golani Brigade
16. Lt. Col. Avi Blot 101st Battalion Paratrooper Brigade
17. Lieutenant-Colonel Yehuda Cohen, Givati infantry Brigade's Rotem Regiment
18. Lieutenant-Colonel Ronen Dagmi, deputy commander of the 401st Armored Brigade
19. Col. Avi Peled, commander brigade in Battalion 51
20. Brig.-Gen.( res.) Zvika Fogel former deputy OC Southern Command
21. Brigadier-General Yuval Halamish, Chief IOF Intelligence Officer
22. Paratrooper Brigade commander, Hartzi Halevi
23. Col. Hertzi Halevy, brigade commander
24. Col. Tomer Tsiter, participated in the massacre in Gaza during "Operation Cast Lead", and previously he participated in the massacre "Operation Defensive Shield" in the Jeninrefugee camp in 2002.
25. Gur Rosenblatt, infantry reserve officer
26. Guy Ohaion, infantry reserve officer
27. Lt. Col. Erez
28. Maj. Nimrod Aloni
29. Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Shlomo Saban
30. Capt. Ron Vardi ,
31. Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, head of the International Law Department, Military Advocate General's Office,
32. Major-General Yoav Galant, southern command chief
33. Richard Awizrat, Senior Warrant Officer,
34. Major General Amos Yadlin, Military Intelligence chief
Note: James Petras' latest book, Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (2008, Clarity Press, Inc.)
Terror has a Hindu face
By Anupam Dasgupta
In Lt Col. Srikant Prasad Purohit, one of the main accused along with Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in the September 29, 2008 Malegaon blasts, the country had its first serving Army officer booked on charges of terrorism. The security establishment now has to seriously consider counter-measures against a potential Hindu fundamentalist mindset that is beginning to evince group motivation and capability to engineer a ?terrorist-style attack.
For the security establishment, Purohit's involvement, and his views on majoritarian communalism needing a separate "rashtra" with its own constitution and flag, had larger internal security implications for the country. The officer had facilitated clandestine intelligence traffic through an array of "liaison channels". Along with the sadhvi and other accused, he "effectively channelised the communal angst after weaving it to the fabric of the Hindu nationalist campaign," said an intelligence source.
The residents of Malegaon are a confused lot. "We till today don't understand why the town was selected as a target," said Aasif Ali of the forum for Citizens for Justice and Peace. Ali is a founder of the Defence of India Muslim Organisation following the Kargil war to inspire locals to fight for their country,
Pre-Malegaon, there was no dominant 'organising dynamic' noticeable among the Hindu radicals. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and destruction of the Babri Masjid were target-specific acts and not aimed at spreading terror by killing common people at large. But Malegaon marked the successful translation of "misguided orientation" into effective action, said Ajai Sahni of the Centre for Conflict Studies.
"Radicalisation of the Hindu right has been happening via small experiments," said Sahni. "But Malegaon was an example in capacity-difference. That the elements of this radical fringe sourced RDX and other resources and engineered a blast in the town are proof of a scale-shift in the way the violent retaliation (in a post-Babri world) was shaped." At the same time, Sahni was confident that Malegaon would not acquire legitimacy or "get institutional backing needed to morph into something fundamentally different with reference to Hindu chauvinism."
Jyotirmaya Sharma, professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad and an expert on Hindutva, told THE WEEK that Malegaon indicates a fundamental change more in terms of strategy than ideology. "Malegaon is an example of Sangh parivar terror, of religiosity-driven violence. A tactic legitimised by belief and fanned by the retributive impulses of its executors," said Sharma.
So did the Sangh parivar's top leadership ratify Malegaon as an elite conspiracy? Venkatesh Abdeo, VHP central joint secretary, described Malegaon as "a cleverly laid-out political conspiracy against the Hindus of the country." At the other end of the spectrum, Feroze Mitiborwala of the Muslim Intellectual Forum (MIF) dubs Malegaon a part of larger design to denigrate minorities.
But the chargesheet filed by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad lays bare the mechanics of Malegaon. It holds as culprits Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya, Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey alias Swami Amrutanand Devtirth, Shivnarayansingh Kalsangara, Shyama Banwarlal Sahu, Rakesh Dhawade, retired Major Ramesh Upadhayay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sandeep Vishwas Dange and Pravin Mutalk. It says all the people facing trial tried to trigger communal passions by targetting Muslims in the backward textile town.
The operative part of the chargesheet has audio and video files retrieved from the hard disk of Sudhakar Dwivedi's laptop. The tapes have details of the many meetings the members of this Hindu band organised in places like Faridabad, Ujjain, Bhopal, Indore, Kolkata and Nashik.
Purohit, it is learnt, had amassed Rs 21 lakh on behalf of Abhinav Bharat which he formed on February 9, 2007, when he was still in the Army. The chargesheet also alleges that an organised crime syndicate had "procured and transported the materials which were required for the bomb explosions and had also transferred huge amounts of money, arms and ammunition for aiding and abetting unlawful ?activities."
1. The blast occurred at 9.35 p.m. during Ramzan, at a crowded market place. Six people were killed and 101 injured.
2. The explosive device was found fitted to a motorcycle (MH 15-P-4572). Although RDX traces were later discovered, the assemblage was crude. Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, has a masters in history and is a judo-karate expert. She was former national executive member of the ABVP, and has direct links to the near-simultaneous blasts in Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat, according to the police.
3. One pamphlet of the Abhinav Bharat exhorts members to seek revenge for the 'killing of millions of Hindus over several centuries'.
4. The arrests have thrown light on a host of fringe Hindu organisations-Rashtriya Jagran Manch, Jai Vande Mataram Jan Kalyan Samiti, Hindu Jagran Manch, Dharmashakti Sena, etc.
5. One line of the police chargesheet reads: "They advocated and facilitated to promote their fundamentalist ideology to form a separate Hindu rashtra.
In Lt Col. Srikant Prasad Purohit, one of the main accused along with Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in the September 29, 2008 Malegaon blasts, the country had its first serving Army officer booked on charges of terrorism. The security establishment now has to seriously consider counter-measures against a potential Hindu fundamentalist mindset that is beginning to evince group motivation and capability to engineer a ?terrorist-style attack.
For the security establishment, Purohit's involvement, and his views on majoritarian communalism needing a separate "rashtra" with its own constitution and flag, had larger internal security implications for the country. The officer had facilitated clandestine intelligence traffic through an array of "liaison channels". Along with the sadhvi and other accused, he "effectively channelised the communal angst after weaving it to the fabric of the Hindu nationalist campaign," said an intelligence source.
The residents of Malegaon are a confused lot. "We till today don't understand why the town was selected as a target," said Aasif Ali of the forum for Citizens for Justice and Peace. Ali is a founder of the Defence of India Muslim Organisation following the Kargil war to inspire locals to fight for their country,
Pre-Malegaon, there was no dominant 'organising dynamic' noticeable among the Hindu radicals. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and destruction of the Babri Masjid were target-specific acts and not aimed at spreading terror by killing common people at large. But Malegaon marked the successful translation of "misguided orientation" into effective action, said Ajai Sahni of the Centre for Conflict Studies.
"Radicalisation of the Hindu right has been happening via small experiments," said Sahni. "But Malegaon was an example in capacity-difference. That the elements of this radical fringe sourced RDX and other resources and engineered a blast in the town are proof of a scale-shift in the way the violent retaliation (in a post-Babri world) was shaped." At the same time, Sahni was confident that Malegaon would not acquire legitimacy or "get institutional backing needed to morph into something fundamentally different with reference to Hindu chauvinism."
Jyotirmaya Sharma, professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad and an expert on Hindutva, told THE WEEK that Malegaon indicates a fundamental change more in terms of strategy than ideology. "Malegaon is an example of Sangh parivar terror, of religiosity-driven violence. A tactic legitimised by belief and fanned by the retributive impulses of its executors," said Sharma.
So did the Sangh parivar's top leadership ratify Malegaon as an elite conspiracy? Venkatesh Abdeo, VHP central joint secretary, described Malegaon as "a cleverly laid-out political conspiracy against the Hindus of the country." At the other end of the spectrum, Feroze Mitiborwala of the Muslim Intellectual Forum (MIF) dubs Malegaon a part of larger design to denigrate minorities.
But the chargesheet filed by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad lays bare the mechanics of Malegaon. It holds as culprits Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya, Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey alias Swami Amrutanand Devtirth, Shivnarayansingh Kalsangara, Shyama Banwarlal Sahu, Rakesh Dhawade, retired Major Ramesh Upadhayay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sandeep Vishwas Dange and Pravin Mutalk. It says all the people facing trial tried to trigger communal passions by targetting Muslims in the backward textile town.
The operative part of the chargesheet has audio and video files retrieved from the hard disk of Sudhakar Dwivedi's laptop. The tapes have details of the many meetings the members of this Hindu band organised in places like Faridabad, Ujjain, Bhopal, Indore, Kolkata and Nashik.
Purohit, it is learnt, had amassed Rs 21 lakh on behalf of Abhinav Bharat which he formed on February 9, 2007, when he was still in the Army. The chargesheet also alleges that an organised crime syndicate had "procured and transported the materials which were required for the bomb explosions and had also transferred huge amounts of money, arms and ammunition for aiding and abetting unlawful ?activities."
1. The blast occurred at 9.35 p.m. during Ramzan, at a crowded market place. Six people were killed and 101 injured.
2. The explosive device was found fitted to a motorcycle (MH 15-P-4572). Although RDX traces were later discovered, the assemblage was crude. Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, has a masters in history and is a judo-karate expert. She was former national executive member of the ABVP, and has direct links to the near-simultaneous blasts in Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat, according to the police.
3. One pamphlet of the Abhinav Bharat exhorts members to seek revenge for the 'killing of millions of Hindus over several centuries'.
4. The arrests have thrown light on a host of fringe Hindu organisations-Rashtriya Jagran Manch, Jai Vande Mataram Jan Kalyan Samiti, Hindu Jagran Manch, Dharmashakti Sena, etc.
5. One line of the police chargesheet reads: "They advocated and facilitated to promote their fundamentalist ideology to form a separate Hindu rashtra.
We condemned This anti women & anti dalit castest statement
Dear All,
The statement is : " In UP if Dalits are raped then officials go there and give them Rs 25,000. Is this the value for a Dalit woman. If Mayawati is raped we are ready to give her a compensation of Rs one crore."
We condemned This anti women & anti dalit castest statement by bramhanical congress leader & UPCC president Rita Bahuguna has made..
Kishor Jagtap, Feroze Mithiborwala Varsha VV, Sayeed Khan, Amol Madame, Chetana Birje, Reshama Jagtap, Jyoti badekar, Arif Kapadia, Jagdeesh Nagarkar, Mulniwasi Mala, Awinash Kadam, Harshavardhan Vartak, Anjali Pawar. Gazala Azad, Shadab Khan.
Awami bharta,Fule Ambedkar Vichar manch, Dalit OBC Intellectual forum,
The statement is : " In UP if Dalits are raped then officials go there and give them Rs 25,000. Is this the value for a Dalit woman. If Mayawati is raped we are ready to give her a compensation of Rs one crore."
We condemned This anti women & anti dalit castest statement by bramhanical congress leader & UPCC president Rita Bahuguna has made..
Kishor Jagtap, Feroze Mithiborwala Varsha VV, Sayeed Khan, Amol Madame, Chetana Birje, Reshama Jagtap, Jyoti badekar, Arif Kapadia, Jagdeesh Nagarkar, Mulniwasi Mala, Awinash Kadam, Harshavardhan Vartak, Anjali Pawar. Gazala Azad, Shadab Khan.
Awami bharta,Fule Ambedkar Vichar manch, Dalit OBC Intellectual forum,
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