Sabtu, 21 Mei 2011
Jumat, 20 Mei 2011
Former Israeli soldiers break the silence on military violations
Testimonies posted on YouTube by campaign group describe routine harassment and humiliation of Palestinian civilians
Campaign group Breaking the Silence has met with a hostile response from Israel, especially after it published testimony by soldiers who took part in the war on Gaza in 2008-09. Photograph: Ali Ali/EPA
Transgressions by the Israeli army in the occupied Palestinian territorieswill be disclosed by a group of former soldiers in an internet campaign aimed at raising public awareness of military violations.
Video testimonies by around two dozen ex-soldiers - some of whom are identifying themselves for the first time - will be posted on YouTube. The campaign by Breaking the Silence, an organisation of former soldiers committed to speaking out on military practices, launches with English subtitles on Monday.
Some of the former soldiers describe the "neighbour procedure", a term for the use of Palestinian civilians, often children, as human shields to protect soldiers from suspected booby traps or attacks by militants. The procedure was ruled illegal by Israel's high court in 2005.
Others speak of routine harassment of civilians at checkpoints, arbitrary intimidation and collective punishment.
Idan Barir, who served in the artillery corps, describes in his testimony how an officer forced Palestinian civilians to crawl in a "race" towards a checkpoint near Jenin in the West Bank during the 2000 olive harvest. Only the first three out of "teams" of eight were allowed to pass.
Another, Itamar Schwarz, says Palestinian homes were routinely ransacked in search operations. He describes the day of the World Cup final in 2002, when soldiers confined a Palestinian woman and child in the kitchen of their home for two hours while the unit watched the game in the middle of an operation.
Arnon Degani, who served in the Golani brigade, describes the distress of a young woman who tearfully pleaded to be allowed to pass through a Jenin checkpoint in order to sit an important exam. He gradually came to understand, he says, that the Israeli army's intention was "to enforce tyranny on people who you know are regular civilians" and to "make it clear who's in control here".
"Part of the silence of Israeli society is to believe these are isolated and exceptional incidents. But these are the most routine, day-to-day, banal stories," said Yehuda Shaul, of Breaking the Silence.
Identification of the ex-soldiers willing to speak out was important, he said, "so that Israelis understand that there are people behind these stories, that in a sense we're all involved".
The former soldiers were aware of the potential legal and social consequences of going public, Shaul added. "They understand that they risk being prosecuted for what they're saying. But they're doing it because it needs to be done."
Since Breaking the Silence was launched in 2004, it has met with a hostile response from Israel's political and military establishment, partly targeting the anonymity of some witnesses. There have been attempts to discredit supporters and block funding, and its leaders have been subject to interrogation. Censure increased after it published testimony by soldiers who took part in the war on Gaza in 2008-09.
Schwarz, 29, who served in the Nahal infantry brigade between 2000 and 2003, told the Guardian that he had gone public with his testimony "because to me it's important that Israeli society is exposed to the moral price and moral experience that an Israeli soldier goes through in armed service".
The events he describes are "things that are really little, but they tell you the big picture of the occupation".
He said his army experience was "like a scar, I carry it with me. We have to talk about it, to put it out to the world. Only then can a society deal with the moral price."
The Israeli Defence Forces said: "The allegations made by Breaking the Silence are unfamiliar to us. The organisation has been informed, on numerous occasions, of the option of filing specific complaints including personal testimonies and other evidence through the appropriate channels. This is to ensure that their allegations are subjected to a thorough and proper legal investigation. To date the organisation has refused to provide substantiated allegations, making it impossible to properly examine their claims."
Kamis, 12 Mei 2011
Israel as a Terrorist State
As stated previously in The CIA as a Terrorist Organization "terrorism" is here taken to mean the practice of the deliberate inflicting (either directly or indirectly) of harm, injury, death and/or destruction upon a civilian target sufficient to cause horror, revulsion or despair among civilian populations and/or their political leaders, with the goal of causing those populations or political leaders to act in a way desired by the terrorists.
A terrorist state is a state which practices terrorism, even if it pretends (or rather, lies) to the world that it does not. It hardly needs to be pointed out that Israel is a terrorist state. Brutal repression of, and bloody attacks on, Palestinian civilians with the official Israeli aim of causing a change in the policies or actions of the Palestinian leadership is a clear case of terrorism.
One of the vilest acts of terrorism committed by Israel was the assassination on 2004-03-22 of the 67-year old spiritual head of Hamas, an organization which, as well as resisting Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, attempts to provide educational, medical, etc., services to the Palestinian people, whose social infrastructure has been practically destroyed by Israel.
Hamas spiritual leader Shiekh Ahmed Yassin was killed at daybreak Monday when Israeli helicopters fired missiles at his car as he left a mosque near his house in Gaza City.
Kawther Salam: The assassination of Sheikh Yassin was written between the Lines of the U.S. Road Map
And then a month later Israel used the same method (a missile fired from a U.S.-supplied helicopter gunship) to murder Sheikh Yassin's successor, Abdel Aziz Rantissi (his son was also killed in the attack).
There is no limit to Israel's depravity. Every abomination is followed by a worse abomination. It is almost as if Israel is taunting the world by heaping evil on top of evil.
Israel has been a terrorist state from its beginning, and has its foundations in terrorism. Three Israeli prime ministers were or are terrorists:
- Menachim Begin took part in terrorist acts in the 1940s, including the attack on the King David Hotel which killed 91 people.
Begin ordered ... the destruction of the central British administrative offices in the King David Hotel. — Jewish Virtual Library
In 1946, Jewish terrorists agitating for their own state in British-occupied Palestine blew up Jerusalem's King David Hotel, killing 91. Two years later, an independent Israel was established. "There were a lot of innocent British women and children killed there," says Hanson. "But in the end, it worked; the British left." — Some Dirty Little Secrets About Terrorism
- Yitzhak Shamir was the operations commander, and later leader, of the Stern Gang, a terrorist group which was responsible for a string of political assassinations.
Shamir was a member of two militant Jewish underground organizations which ... were active in counter-terrorist acts against Arabs as well as sabotage against the British. — The Department for Jewish Zionist Education (Note the use of the term counter-terrorist to disguise terrorism.)
In post-war British-mandated Palestine the words Stern Gang equalled "terrorism" — assassinations, bombings, the full works. ... Yitzhak Shamir had been the gang's operations commander. ... By appointing Shamir Foreign Minister, Prime Minister Menachem Begin had selected the organiser of two famous assassinations: the killing of Lord Moyne, the British Minister representative in the Middle East, in 1944, and that of Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN's special Mediator on Palestine, in 1948. — Stern Gang: what does 'mekhabbel' mean?
During the fight for Jewish statehood, extremist military groups sometimes resorted to the use of terrorist tactics. One such instance occurred in 1948 when members of the Jewish underground organization LEHI (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) killed UN Peace Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte to protest his diplomatic efforts to modify the Palestine partition plan. ... Yitzhak Shamir reputedly played a role in planning the assassination; however, he was never tried and went on to become Prime Minister of Israel. — The Assassination of Count Bernadotte
Ariel Sharon initiated the Sabra-Shatila massacre in which between 1000 and 3000 people (mostly Palestinians) were murdered, and now leads a terrorist campaign against all Palestinians living in the occupied territories of the West Bank.
As commander of the notorious Unit 101, Sharon led attacks on Palestinian villages in which women and children were killed. The massacre in the West Bank village of Qibya, on October 14, 1953, was perhaps the most notorious. His troops blew up 45 houses and 69 Palestinian civilians — about half of them women and children — were killed. — The Electronic Intifada
No one has ever been tried for the massacre, but an official Israeli commission of inquiry found that Israel's defense minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, "bears personal responsibility" as well as "indirect responsibility." It was Sharon, after all, who had ordered the Israel Defense Forces to invade Beirut and surround the camps. ... Like Pinochet and other war criminals, Sharon and his Phalangist underlings should be brought to book; if they can successfully evade justice, then it will give heart to killers everywhere. — Marking a Massacre, The Nation
Sharon's preemptive logic undercuts all form of dialogue and negotiations. Its rule of thumb is violence, and then more violence, whether it manifests itself as a military attack or as an aggressive act of dispossession. So while it may seem that the bloody routine is in some way preordained, it is actually Sharon's preemptive zeal alongside Hamas' and Islamic Jihad's fundamentalism that has clouded the horizon and concealed, as Arendt might have said, the possibility for a better future. — Neve Gordon, Sharon's Preemptive Zeal, Counterpunch, 2003-09-24
See also:
The Likud Party was founded by terrorists.
The terrorists of the 1940's were given full amnesty after establishing their nation, so instead of being brought to justice, they were able eventually to take power and keep all dissenters in line through terror and fear. The terrorists have become statesmen of the Jewish State. They have little moral ground to condemn modern Arab terrorists for doing what they themselves did in the 1940's and 1950's and have continued to do to the present day. — Zionism in Bible Prophecy: Part 6
And, of course, the terrorist state of the U.S.A. continues to support the terrorist state of Israel by giving it tanks, planes, rocket launchers and financial support to the tune of three billion dollars a year (why?), with which Israel has built up the fourth-largest military machine in the world. Israel's hegemony over the Middle East will continue, however, only as long as American money makes it possible. One day this money will no longer be forthcoming, for one reason or another. That will be Israel's Day of Reckoning. And none too soon either.
See also:
- Ronald Bleier: In the Beginning, There Was Terror
- G. J. Neuberger: The Great Gulf Between Zionism and Judaism
Jacob de Haan, a former distinguished Dutch diplomat ... initiated talks with Arab leaders with a view toward the eventual establishments of a state there in which Jews and Arabs would have equal rights. In this way he hoped to forestall the creation of a Zionist state. Despite threats to his life, de Haan, fully aware of the ultimate dangers of a Zionist state, continued his talks and negotiations. On the eve of his departure in 1924 for Britain to meet with authorities there, he was assassinated by the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary force, in the center of Jerusalem as he came from evening prayers.
- David Hirst: The Lavon Affair
In July 1954 Egypt was plagued by a series of bomb outrages directed mainly against American and British property in Cairo and Alexandria. ... The trial established that the bombings had indeed been carried out by an Israeli espionage and terrorist network.
- More Evidence Mossad Killed JFK Over Israeli Nukes
- Israel's 'Use' Of Its Nuclear Weapons Against US
- John Pilger: The Unmentionable Source of Terrorism
[Israel, the] creation, then guardian of the west's empire in the Middle East, the Zionist state remains the cause of more regional grievance and sheer terror than all the Muslim states combined. Read the melancholy Palestinian Monitor on the Internet; it chronicles the equivalent of Madrid's horror week after week, month after month, in occupied Palestine. No front pages in the West acknowledge this enduring bloodbath, let alone mourn its victims. Moreover, the Israeli army, a terrorist organisation by any reasonable measure, is protected and rewarded in the west.
- FBI evidence of Mossad involvement in September 11 attacks on the U.S.?!
- A short history of Israeli state terrorism
- Wayne Madsen: Rahm Emanuel's father specialized in bus bombings in Palestine
Is Israel Planning a Nuclear Terrorist Attack in the US?
- MadCow Morning News reported on 2004-05-20:
For the second time in the past two weeks Israelis in a moving van have been detained near a U.S. nuclear facility, this time at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base near St. Marys, GA., near Sea Island, host of the G-8 Summit next month.
- Paul Howard, 2004-05-27: Terror In The US? — Back To The Old Shell Game
The Bush administration has come out full force this week with what they claim are mountains of intelligence that claim Al Queda is determined to hit America before the elections in a massive attack. ...Could this be a way of trying to cover the fact that Israeli reservist teams have been found in this country working for "moving companies", yet they keep getting arrested around US nuclear facilities? And why do these people keep getting arrested, only to have the Feds step in to make sure they are released?
- R. Leland Lehrman: Israeli Nationals, Nukes, And Attacks On US Nuclear Facilities
The Assassination of Rafiq Hariri
A contributor to Al Jazeera's website wrote:
If some recent events are put together the finger pointing at Israel and the U.S. for Hariri's assassination will be more justified. The U.S. wants to attack Iran but fears that any attempt to do so will put Israel at risk from Hezbollah and Syrian troops. Being desperate, the U.S. connived with France to pass the most unacceptable and ridiculous resolution ever in UN history while they are in Iraq and Afghanistan, they want Syria out of Lebanon so that Israel has a free hand on Hezbollah in case of any attack on Iran. After the resolution failed to garner support, now the U.S. is using another strategy to cause a civil war in Lebanon. Al Hariri's assassination is clearly the combined efforts of the CIA and the Mossad.
See more on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri at Syria is Doomed.
And for a mention of a few acts of Israeli state terrorism from 1950 to the present see this article by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad: Motive and Precedent in the Gemayel Assassinationhttp://www.serendipity.li/zionism/israel_terr.htm
Uskup Agung: Israel Bukan Tanah Perjanjian
TEMPO Interaktif, Roma - Uskup Agung Umat Katolik menyatakan Israel bukan Tanah Perjanjian. Demikian kesimpulan konferensi Uskup Agung yang berlangsung di Tahta Suci Vatikan.
"Israel tidak bisa menggunakan alasan Tanah Perjanjian untuk mengklaim teritori Palestina," ujar Cyril Salim Bustros, Uskup Gereja Melkite Yunani, seperti dikutip CNN, Senin (25/10).
"Israel tidak bisa menggunakan alasan Tanah Perjanjian untuk mengklaim teritori Palestina," ujar Cyril Salim Bustros, Uskup Gereja Melkite Yunani, seperti dikutip CNN, Senin (25/10).
Pascaperang Dunia II, kaum Yahudi berkumpul di tepi barat Laut Tengah, dan mengklaim wilayah itu sebagai Tanah yang Dijanjikan Tuhan dalam kitab suci mereka, Taurat.
Wilayah itu merupakan tempat leluhur Yahudi, yang dipimpin Nabi Musa, tinggal setelah lari dari kejaran Firaun dan menyeberang Laut Merah. Kaum Yahudi, yang menganggap diri sebagai Umat Terpilih, tidak memandang 1,5 juta bangsa Palestina yang sudah berada di sana sebelumnya.
Bustros mengatakan tidak dapat menerima penggunaan "Perintah Tuhan" untuk melakukan ketidakadilan. Menurutnya, Umat Kristiani tidak lagi memandang Tanah Perjanjian bagi kaum Yahudi. "Karena 'Perjanjian' sudah terhapus dengan hadirnya Kristus," ujarnya.
Para Uskup Agung menyatakan "Kerajaan Tuhan" meliputi seluruh dunia. "Tidak ada 'Umat Terpilih', semua laki-laki dan perempuan di setiap negara adalah 'Orang-orang Terpilih'," kata Bustros.
Konferensi dua pekan ini berlangsung atas permintaan dunia internasional, terutama Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa, untuk membahas pendudukan Israel di Tanah Palestina. Synoda atau konferensi ini berakhir setelah sidang terakhir yang dipimpin langsung Paus Benedictus XVI, Sabtu lalu.
Pernyataan itu mengundang kemarahan Israel. "Konferensi itu dibajak gerakan anti-Israel," kata Wakil Menteri Luar Negeri Israel, Danny Ayalon. "Ini adalah serangan politik, bagian dari Proganda Arab."
Ayalon menuding pernyataan Bustros sebagai fitnah. Dia menegaskan komentar itu bukan pernyataan resmi Vatikan.
CNN | TIMES LIVE | REZA M
Wilayah itu merupakan tempat leluhur Yahudi, yang dipimpin Nabi Musa, tinggal setelah lari dari kejaran Firaun dan menyeberang Laut Merah. Kaum Yahudi, yang menganggap diri sebagai Umat Terpilih, tidak memandang 1,5 juta bangsa Palestina yang sudah berada di sana sebelumnya.
Bustros mengatakan tidak dapat menerima penggunaan "Perintah Tuhan" untuk melakukan ketidakadilan. Menurutnya, Umat Kristiani tidak lagi memandang Tanah Perjanjian bagi kaum Yahudi. "Karena 'Perjanjian' sudah terhapus dengan hadirnya Kristus," ujarnya.
Para Uskup Agung menyatakan "Kerajaan Tuhan" meliputi seluruh dunia. "Tidak ada 'Umat Terpilih', semua laki-laki dan perempuan di setiap negara adalah 'Orang-orang Terpilih'," kata Bustros.
Konferensi dua pekan ini berlangsung atas permintaan dunia internasional, terutama Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa, untuk membahas pendudukan Israel di Tanah Palestina. Synoda atau konferensi ini berakhir setelah sidang terakhir yang dipimpin langsung Paus Benedictus XVI, Sabtu lalu.
Pernyataan itu mengundang kemarahan Israel. "Konferensi itu dibajak gerakan anti-Israel," kata Wakil Menteri Luar Negeri Israel, Danny Ayalon. "Ini adalah serangan politik, bagian dari Proganda Arab."
Ayalon menuding pernyataan Bustros sebagai fitnah. Dia menegaskan komentar itu bukan pernyataan resmi Vatikan.
CNN | TIMES LIVE | REZA M
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