If you are going to take a side at lease be smart and get the facts right, don't just read whats here but get out there and search for the truth get the facts not just what FOX, MSNBC, CNN and so on tell you. I was always told that power true power is knowledge and that can not be taken from you.


Untermensch Syndrome: Israel's Moral Decay
The labeling as anti-Semitic of anyone critical of the state of Israel's policies in the continued destruction of Palestinian identity and the increasing domination into American foreign policy no longer has the sting of threat or intimidation it once mastered. For too long this masquerade has been used to silence those opposing anything Israel, shouted at anyone disseminating truth and seeking justice. Like the boy who cried wolf, this charade has lost its power or hypnotic control, and today only serves to breed more anger and resentment against the apologists and smear mongers protecting the cancerous tentacles of Zionism and the crimes against humanity it spawns.


Birth Pangs or Death Throes?
Why Do They Hate Us? Listen to Qana (Again)
By JONATHAN COOK
This link is a must see.


A Lawless World: How Israel Gets Away with Murder
by Rodrigue Tremblay
July 31, 2006

"I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts, [and those who died because of] Israel's military action." John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
"I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a U.N. Observer post in southern Lebanon," Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-general
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for the good people to do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797) British statesman

The list of war crimes and of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the government of Israel is very long and getting longer by the day.
The last series of crimes took place when Israel, a country of 6 million people, bombed the population of Lebanon, in mid-July 2006, using artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon, a more or less defenseless country of 3.8 million people. It is well known that cluster munitions cannot be used in populated areas without huge loss of civilian life. The organization Human Rights Watch believes that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law. Also, Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud has accused Israel of using phosphorous bombs and laser bombs against civilians and children, in its attacks against Lebanon.
In Lebanon, Israeli military forces have been bombing villages, homes, apartment buildings, bridges, highways, -firing at buses and ambulances and at Red Cross medics, and even deliberately murdering United Nations observers, in a demonstrable example of disproportionate and criminal use of military force.
No argument of self-defense could ever be evoked to justify such widespread killing and destruction. The right of self-defense does not allow a country to use the pretext of small border skirmishes to launch an all-out asymmetrical war of aggression against a weaker country. This was the argument used by Nazi Germany to attack other countries, such as Norway and Poland, in the late 1930's.
That argument was rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal, which proclaimed anew the 1837 Caroline Clause of international law, that reserves the right of self-defense only to situations when the requirements of self-defense are "overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation," and the act of self-defense "must be limited by that necessity, and kept clearly within it." In order words, the exercise of the right of self-defense must meet the double test of urgent necessity, i.e. when there is an impossibility of negotiations and other methods to resolve a conflict, and of proportionality, i.e the military means deployed must be proportional to the pending threat.
Nevertheless, contrary to all evidence, the U. S. Congress, in an obvious move to circumvent the U.S. Arms Export Control Act which makes it an obligation for foreign countries receiving weapons from the U. S. to use them solely for defensive purposes or to maintain internal security, voted a resolution, on July 20, 2006, proclaiming that Israel was using weapons for "defensive purposes." In the Senate, the vote was unanimous; in the House, the vote was 410 to 8.
At Nuremberg, in 1946, the American government, through its chief prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, took the following position: "Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions." In other words, a war of aggression is never permissible under international law. [By the way, such observations also apply to the Bush-Cheney administration and its war of aggression in Iraq. This is a question that I will cover in a special article next week.]
As recently as 1981, the United States government, under President Ronald Reagan, reaffirmed its commitment to international law and to the validity of the Caroline Clause as a firmly established element of international law. Indeed, on June 7, 1981, when Israel launched a strike against Iraq's Tamuz 1 reactor that was under construction, this was an example of an unlawful act of preventive war, forbidden by the Caroline Clause. On June 19, 1981, with American support, Resolution 487 of the U.N. Security Council was adopted unanimously. It condemned Israel because it considered that its unilateral move endangered peace and was contrary to international law, besides being a clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations. The fact that the Bush-Cheney administration does not follow in President Reagan's footsteps, and has condoned the Olmert's government decision to bomb and invade Lebanon indicates how extreme and lawless the current American administration is.
The United Nations Charter has also incorporated this jurisprudence about international self-defense, in its article 51, which affirms a country's "inherent right of individual or collective self-defense" against a major armed attack, but only until the Security Council has taken measures to restore peace and security. In other words, under traditional international law (Caroline Clause), under the standard of the Nuremberg Tribunal and under the U. N. Charter, the right of self-defense cannot be used as a pretext to launch an unlimited open war against another country. The argument used by the Olmert Israeli government to launch a war of destruction against the sovereign country of Lebanon, after a relatively minor border skirmish, is a red herring that would most likely be rejected by a court of law.
Because of all of this, allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Israeli government are serious and cannot be dismissed out of hand. They are numerous, well-documented and very compelling. It is a fair assessment that Israeli leadership could be brought before an international tribunal and accused of violating international law and humanitarian law. Indeed, articles 48, 51 and 57 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions make it a crime to carry indiscriminate attacks against a civilian population. That is precisely what the Israeli government has done against the civilian population of Lebanon, resulting in as many as 600 civilian deaths, one third of them children.
In Gaza, the Israeli army has also destroyed power stations and has imposed a blockade on the civilian population, depriving them of the means of subsistence. In other words, Israel has turned Gaza into an open-sky prison for its inhabitants. In Lebanon, the Israeli army has pummeled the civilian airport of Beirut, and destroyed roads, bridges, power and water supply stations all over the country. Both instances represent deliberate destruction of civilian economic infrastructures and are in direct violation of article 54 of the 1977 additions to the Geneva Conventions and are considered war crimes.
Moreover, let us keep in mind that Israel is a repeat delinquent in its propensity to attack and kill civilians. -That worsens its case. For example, on April 18, 1996, the Israeli government of Shimon Peres launched rockets and bombs on a United Nations camp, in Cana, a village located southeast of the Lebanese city of Tyre, killing 106 people, and injuring 116, among them four United Nations soldiers seriously hurt. Incredibly, Cana is the same Lebanese village that the Israelis destroyed a second time, on Sunday, July 30, 2006, slaughtering 56 people, at least 34 of them children. -In 1996, this was no accident as it was no accident either in 2006. In both cases, the world was witnessing murderous crimes against humanity.
History repeats itself. -In 1996, after U.N. Secretary-General B. Boutros-Ghali said he was shocked and horrified at Israel's shelling of the United Nations post, the Bill Clinton administration rebuked him. Soon afterwards, the Clinton administration made it known that it opposed the reelection of Boutros-Ghali for a second term. -In 2006, the Bush-Cheney administration blocked a U. N. resolution of blame against Israel for its killing in Lebanon. In fact, both George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert laughed at U. N. Secretary General Kofi Annan when he called for a stop to the killing. Now that Mr. Annan has denounced the recent acts of Israeli rampage, it is to be expected that the Bush-Cheney administration will do its utmost to undermine his authority,.
Regarding these more recent Israeli killings of civilians in Lebanon, the U. N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and former Canadian Supreme Court Justice, Louise Arbour, has said: "... under international criminal law, [those responsible] may incur personal criminal responsibility for these actions." -But, as a law professor put it, "In my opinion, yes, there appear to have been war crimes committed [in Lebanon] related to civilians, but the reality is there won't be any prosecutions." Indeed, neither Israel nor Lebanon is a party to the new International Criminal Court and it is improbable that the U. N. Security Council would exercise its power to refer cases to it because of the expected opposition and veto of the United States. Indeed, the American government has been complicit to Israel's war crimes for a very long time, using its veto at the U. N. countless times.
That is the crux of the problem with international law: How to indict and punish the guilty parties of barbaric crimes against humanity, when they are in power?
On the one hand, it is obvious that those who plan and carry out acts of so-called stateless terrorism, that result in the killing of civilians are criminals who should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, once they are caught. The fact that such terrorists belong to illegal organizations and often hide in remote areas, should not place them out of reach of the law. On the other hand, it is also true that when established states engage in state terrorism and start murdering civilians, their leaders can be more easily identified and could ultimately be brought to justice.
It was easy to do so at the Nuremberg trials, for instance, because the Germans and the Japanese had been defeated and their leaders were in prison. But, what if the alleged war criminals are not in prison and are rather heavily armed, as it is clearly the case with Israeli politicians and generals? Moreover, what about a situation where they are protected and shielded from prosecution by powerful interests, such as the case with the Bush-Cheney administration when it protects Israeli politicians and military personnel from international prosecution?
Well, the world is not completely at the mercy of war criminals. The international community could begin by ostracizing the countries that have alleged war criminals as leaders, if such countries refuse to indict and judge them. Indeed, it has been proposed many times that countries or rogue states whose leaders do not respect any international standard of morality and who engage in crimes against humanity should be suspended or even excluded from the United Nations. At the very least, the General Assembly should pass a vote of blame against any country systematically violating the basic principles contained in the U. N. Charter, the principles contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or who engage in repeated violations of international and humanitarian law.
In the case of Israel, its very admission into the United Nations on May 11, 1949 (General Assembly resolution 273), was conditional to its respect of the obligations contained in the U. N. Charter and to its fulfillment of U. N. Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, which calls for the Palestinian refugees to be able to return to their homes or be justly compensated.
In reality, the United Nations-and international law for that matter-have been paralyzed by article 27 of the U. N. Charter which creates a permanent right of veto for a few countries, a privilege that has been used and abused by some to prevent the U. N. from ensuring that the principles of its Charter be respected by its own members. -Article 27 of the U. N. Charter is an important source of instability and lawlessness in the world.
In its present form, the United Nations is in no position to exclude those countries that are guilty of not respecting its principles. Moreover, the absolute veto clause for some countries is responsible for the inability of the U. N. Security Council to take necessary and concrete measures "to maintain international peace and security," as called for in Article 51 of the U. N. Charter. -As human affairs go, however, the world would probably have to suffer a great cataclysm before proceeding with the needed reform of the world body and the establishment of a truly effective international criminal system.



ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE DAY
A Day of Mourning for Torah Faithful Jews
While the Zionists celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the so called “state” of Israel, the worldwide Jewish community faithful to the teachings of G-d and the Torah gather to commemorate this anniversary as a day of sorrow and tragedy. Our sorrow is demonstrated by the wearing of “sackcloth” and the flying of black flags of mourning.
The founding of the Zionist state is in direct contradiction to the teachings of the Torah which forbids the establishment of a Jewish state and commands Jews to remain in exile until released from that exile by G-d Himself, without any human intervention, at which time all Nations of the world will live together in peace. Two thousand years ago, at the time of the Temple’s destruction, the Jewish people were forbidden by the Creator (kesubos 111a)• To go up en masse to the land of Israel• To rebel against the nations• To in any way attempt to end the exileTorah faithful Jews are to behave in a civil, honest and grateful manner towards their hosts throughout the world.The Zionist intervention against G-d’s will by establishing the “state of Israel” represents an official rebellion against G-d and the Torah, a rebellion which has generated untold pain and suffering. On the anniversary of the founding of this heretical Zionist state, true Torah Jews mourn the attempt to transform Judaism from a religion into a secular entity and the attempt to uproot the Torah teachings. We mourn the tragedies it has produced:, desecration of the Sabbath, loss of modesty, and a litany of violations against many laws of our faith and Jewish teachings, amongst them the command of compassion for our fellow beings. The list goes on.We further mourn the deportation, subjugation, and oppression of the Palestinian people. The list goes on and on…..On the tragic day of this anniversary we fast and gather in Synagogues around the world, praying for a speedy, peaceful, and painless dismantlement of the heretical Zionist state of Israel. May we merit that this year will be the year all nations together, in the service of one G-d, can celebrate in a free Palestine and a free Jerusalem.



The Orthodox Jewish response to the criticism of the Iranian President
(statement for Al Q'uds Day)
28 October 2005
With the help of the Almighty.
Orthodox Jews the world over, are saddened by the hysteria which has greeted the recent stated desire of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to see a world free of Zionism. This desire is nothing more than a yearning for a better, more peaceful world. It is a hope that with the elimination of Zionism, Jews and Muslims will live in harmony as they have throughout the ages, in Palestine and throughout the world.
It is a dangerous distortion, to see the President’s words, as indicative of anti-Jewish sentiments. The President was simply re-stating the beliefs and statements of Ayatollah Khomeini, who always emphasized and practiced the respect and protection of Jews and Judaism. The political ideology of Zionism alone was rejected. President Ahmadinejad stressed this distinction by referring only to Zionism, not Judaism or the Jewish people, regardless of whether they reside in Palestine or else were.
We concur!!… Orthodox Jews have always prayed and till today, continually pray for the speedy and peaceful dismantling of the Zionist state. As per the teachings of the Torah, the Jewish law, the Jewish people are required to be loyal, upstanding citizens, in all of the countries where-in they reside. They are expressly forbidden to have their own entity or state in any form or configuration, in this Heavenly decreed exile. Furthermore, the exemplification of one-self, with acts of compassion and goodness, is of the essence of Judaism. To subjugate and oppress a people, to steal their land, homes and orchards etc. is of the cardinal sins, of the basics crimes, forbidden by the Torah.
We have long stood together with the suffering Palestinian people in their struggle for self determination and respect. Based on our religious teachings, we believe it is impossible that any lasting peace can be achieved, for so long as the state of Israel exists. It is towards this goal of true reconciliation that religious Jews strive; via Palestinian statehood, so that we can once again reside in harmony and brotherhood.
May we merit to see the fruition of our prayers. Ultimately we pray for the day when all mankind will recognize the One G-g and serve Him in harmony. May this come upon us in the near future. Amen. Rabbi Yisroel Dovid WeissNeturei Karta InternationalJews United Against Zionismwww.nkusa.org914-262-8342


Congratulations and Well-Wishes to Hamas from Neturei Karta International, Diaspora
27 January 2006

With the help of the Almighty Asaloom Aleikem
We are Neturei Karta International, representatives of the Torah abiding Jews throughout the world who stand true in their Torah observance and stand strong in their opposition to Zionism and the state of “Israel”.
As you may well know, we Torah Jews, have always stood in complete solidarity with the Palestinian people.
True to the precepts of the Torah, we have always acknowledged and accepted the Palestinian rule over the entire Palestine. Further, in accord with the Jewish teachings, whichever party and whichever system of government that the Palestinian people choose, was and is completely respected and accepted by us, the Jewish people.
Now, on the occasion of the recent elections that have taken place in Palestine, we join our brethren in Palestine, in humbly offering our blessings and congratulations to you leaders, followers, and supporters of the Hamas organization upon your success.
Torah true Jews have always been deeply pained by the suffering of the Palestinian people which has come about through the creation of the Zionist state – the state of “Israel” - the so-called “Jewish” state. This horrendous development is to the Torah Jews an unequaled tragedy and an extreme embarrassment, to say the least.
The Jewish people have been sent into exile close to two thousand years ago by a divine decree of the Almighty. In conjunction with this exile, He has commanded us, the Jewish people, to be loyal, law abiding, compassionate and peace-loving citizens, in every land wherein we reside.
Furthermore, we are to await patiently in exile, the revelation of the Almighty, when all mankind will recognize and serve Him together in harmony and joy. Any attempts to create our own state, in this our Heavenly decreed exile, is expressly forbidden. This prohibition is regardless of whether the land in which the state is to be created, is inhabited or desolate.
The subjugation, oppression and ultimate expulsion of a people in order to accomplish the goal of creating a state, only compounds the crime and sin, is expressly forbidden and is antithetical to all the concepts of Judaism.
The Zionists have ignored all the aforementioned. They, with brazen chutzpah rebelled against the Almighty and the laws of His Torah with the conception of the Zionist ideolegy and by creating and operating the state of “Israel.” They have expelled large numbers of Palestinian people and relentlessly and unremittingly subjugated and oppressed the remaining Palestinians and religious Jews throughout Palestine for nearly an entire century.
Therefore we declare our total opposition to Zionism and the state of “Israel”. We furthermore declare our total support and solidarity with you, the Palestinian people.
Leaders of Hamas, upon your elevation to the position of official representatives of the entire Palestinian people, we offer our blessing and a prayer to the Almighty:
MAY the Almighty guide you and bestow upon you His wisdom to enable you to lead the Palestinian nation according to His will.
MAY the Almighty unite the hearts of the Palestinian people to accept and embrace your leadership with love and good will.
MAY it be the will of the Almighty that we should merit to see the peaceful and speedy dismantlement of the Zionist entity - the state of “Israel” and the transformation of rule over the entire Holy Land, including of course Al-Quds, to its proper rulers, the Palestinian people. Then we can once again live according to the will of the Almighty, Arab and Jew as neighbors, as we have been doing for so many hundreds of years up until the inception of Zionism.
ULTIMATELY, MAY it be the will of the Almighty that the entire world merit in the near future, to behold the revelation of His glory, when all mankind will serve Him in joy and harmony, AMEN. Rabbi Yisroel Dovid WeissNeturei Karta International, USARabbi Ahron CohenNeturei Karta, UK



When will the bloodshed end?
July 19, 2006
Judaism dictates subservience to all nations
A message from Torah true Jews:
Please give us a moment of your time to consider the following information.
The Orthodox Jewish leadership and the Torah abiding Jews universally, have fought the ideology of Zionism and the State of “Israel”, since its inception and up until the present day.
What could be the reason for the most devout element of Jewish adherers, to be in such vehement opposition to such a seemingly “holy” and “Jewish” cause, as the State of “Israel”?
The Rabbis constantly declared that Judaism and Zionism are extreme opposites because...
Judaism is a G-dliness and spirituality, Zionism is its transformation into materialism with nationalistic aspirations. The fathers of this relatively new ideology of Zionism (approximately 100 years), have taken the Almighty out of the equation. The Rabbis further declared that Jews are forbidden to have a State of “Israel”, because…
The Jewish people were sent into exile by divine decree. They were then expressly commanded by the Almighty, not to attempt to leave their exilic existence through any human intervention. (Talmud, Tractate Kesuboth, p.111).
The Jewish people are forbidden to oppress another people. The creation of the State of “Israel” came about through, the theft from, subjugation and oppression of, the Palestinian people.
The Rabbis stated, that the State of “Israel” will result in unending pain, suffering and bloodshed. May the Almighty protect His creations.
The State of “Israel” does not speak in the name of Jews, they have stolen the name “Israel” from the Jewish people. Jews are commanded to be loyal citizens in every country in which they reside.
Zionism and the State of “Israel”, is the main cause of the exacerbation of anti Semitism universally.
The government of the illegitimate State of “Israel”, continually attempts to uproot the Torah and its statutes. They persistently oppress the Torah true Jews who reside in its borders.
We pray that all misery in the Holy Land shall come to an end, that Zionism, the root of the suffering, continue to fade from Jewish consciousness, to be replaced by the faith of Torah. Let us all pray for the speedy and peaceful dismantlement of the State of “Israel”. May we merit to see the day when all humanity will serve the Almighty in harmony and peace. Amen.


Israel’s Invasion Pretext Under Fire
by JOSHUA FRANK
As Lebanon continues to be pounded by Israeli bombs and munitions, the justification for Israel's invasion is treading on very thin ice. It has become general knowledge that it was Hezbollah guerillas that first kidnapped two IDF soldiers inside Israel on July 12, prompting an immediate and violent response from the Israeli government, which insists it is acting in the interest of national defense. Israeli forces have gone on to kill over 370 innocent Lebanese civilians (compared to 34 killed on Israel's side) while displacing hundreds of thousands more. But numerous reports from international and independent media, as well as the Associated Press, raise questions about Israel's official version of the events that sparked the conflict two weeks ago.
The original story, as most media tell it, goes something like this: Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory. The alternate version, as explained by several news outlets, tells a bit of a different tale: These sources contend that Israel sent a commando force into southern Lebanon and was subsequently attacked by Hezbollah near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon's southern territory. It was at this point that an Israel tank was struck by Hezbollah fighters, which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the death of six.
As the AFP reported, "According to the Lebanese police force, the two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the area of Aitaa al-Chaab, near to the border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated in middle of morning." And the French news site www.VoltaireNet.org reiterated the same account on June 18, "In a deliberated way, [Israel] sent a commando in the Lebanese back-country to Aitaa al-Chaab. It was attacked by Hezbollah, taking two prisoners."
The Associated Press departed from the official version as well. "The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them," reported Joseph Panossian for AP on July 12. "The forces were trying to keep the soldiers' captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity."
And the Hindustan Times on July 12 conveyed a similar account:
"The Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. 'Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon,' a statement by Hezbollah said. 'The two soldiers have already been moved to a safe place,' it added. The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they 'infiltrated' into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border."
Whether factual or not, these alternative accounts should at the very least raise serious questions as to Israel's motives and rationale for bombarding Lebanon.
MSNBC online first reported that Hezbollah had captured Israeli soldiers "inside" Lebanon, only to change their story hours later after the Israeli government gave an official statement to the contrary.
A report from The National Council of Arab Americans, based in Lebanon, also raised suspicion that Israel's official story did not hold water and noted that Israel had yet to recover the tank that was demolished during the initial attack in question.
"The Israelis so far have not been able to enter Aitaa al-Chaab to recover the tank that was exploded by Hezbollah and the bodies of the soldiers that were killed in the original operation (this is a main indication that the operation did take place on Lebanese soil, not that in my opinion it would ever be an illegitimate operation, but still the media has been saying that it was inside 'Israel' thus an aggression first started by Hezbollah)."
Before independent observers could organize an investigation of the incident, Israel had already mounted a grisly offensive against Lebanese infrastructure and civilians, bombing Beirut's international airport, along with numerous highways and communication portals. Israel didn't need the truth of the matter to play out before it invaded Lebanon. As with the United States' illegitimate invasion of Iraq, Israel just needed the proper media cover to wage a war with no genuine moral impetus.
Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits http://www.brickburner.org/

How long can this go on ?




MILITARY LEADERS MUTINYING
Military Men Who Oppose Neo-Con Warmongering Under Attack
By Michael Piper

For generations, Republicans were strong supporters of the American military. But now that top military men are in open rebellion against thearmchair civilian war hawks—the hard-line pro-Israel ideologues who directed President George Bush to order an invasion of Iraq and who now want war on Iran—the angriest voices condemning the military are from GOP circles.Following the lead of the neo-conservatives, who are viewed as fanatics but still dominate the Bush administration and key GOP policy groups, many GOP loyalists are declaring war on the battle-tested generals, admirals and other military heroes who are saying, “Enough is enough.”Although none of the military men have yet said “No more wars for Israel,” their rhetoric in writings and public utterances says essentially that.Conservatives roundly denounced former Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni as an “anti-Semite” for noting that pro-Israel neo-conservatives were the driving force behind the Iraq war and that everybody in Washington knew it. Zinni knew what he was talking about: he formerly commanded all U.S. forces protecting Israel in the Middle East.More recently, another retired Marine, Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, former director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in Time that the Iraq war was “unnecessary” and that the rationale for war by those whom he called “the zealots” made no sense. Newbold’s choice of the word “zealots” was loaded. The term arises from the legend of the Zealots—an ancient sect of Jewish fanatics.Newbold quit the service four months before the Iraq invasion, in part, he said, because he opposed those who exploited the 9-11 tragedy “to hijack our security policy”—referring to the zealous neo-con fanatics. He added: “Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public.” But, he said, “I’ve been silent long enough.” What particularly disturbed Newbold’s critics was that he said he was speaking out “with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership.”He also struck out at what he called “the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war”—a slam at the neo-conservatives and their Israeli allies who shoveled up garbage, disguised as “intelligence,” and used it to justify the war. Newbold brandished his anger at the armchair war hawks, most of whom never served in the military, saying, “the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.”Newbold’s statements received much media attention, so the neo-cons fired back. Perhaps the most telling attack on the generals came from Stephen Herbits, a former top executive of the Seagram liquor empire, the fiefdom of World Jewish Congress chief Edgar Bronfman, a major patron of Israel.This longtime Bronfman henchman was appointed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to make “heads roll” in the military, screening all Pentagon promotions and appointments, implementing the agenda of enforcing lockstep Zionist control of the American war machine.EXAMINE THE GENERALSWriting in the April 20 edition of the egregiously pro-Israel Washington Times, Herbits urged the media to start to investigate military leaders who dared to take on the administration.Herbits said it would be “a service to this country when the media digs a bit below these attacks to examine the generals.” Herbits is obviously calling on spy agencies such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a conduit for Israel’s Mossad, to come up with “data” on the military men and provide it to the media to bring the dissidents into line. But cracking the whip over the entire military will be tough. On April 18, David Broder, senior Washington Post commentator, revealed that some months ago after he wrote of how Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.)—a former Marine colonel who served in Vietnam—had called for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Broder was contacted by a Pentagon officer who gave his name and rank and then said: “This is a private call. I am not speaking officially. But I read your column, and I think it is important for you to know that Jack Murtha knows us very well and speaks for many of us.”This is no secret to those who know official Washington since Murtha has been a leading Capitol Hill voice for the military for years. And this is what makes pro-Israel Republican attacks on Murtha so disingenuous: they paintMurtha as a “pacifist,” “defeatist,” “liberal” ideologue. He is anything but that.For its own part, in an April 18 editorial, titled “The Generals’ Revolt,” The Washington Post said “the rebellion is problematic” and “threatens the essential democratic principle of military subordination to civilian control—the more so because a couple of the officers claim they are speaking for some still on active duty.”That same day, a lead editor of The Washington Times Tony Blankley—an advocate of all-out war against the Muslim world—declared that generals still in service who may be planning to quit together in protest against Bush policies may be “illegally conspiring.”Not content with accusing American military leaders of being seditious, Blankley followed up the next day with a repetition of his smears, calling for a court of inquiry to determine whether the military leaders are guilty of insubordination.Echoing Blankley, shrill pro-Israel agitator Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist by profession, not a soldier, blustered on April 21 with a column in The Washington Post crying of “The General’s Dangerous Whispers.”In the end, though, what’s most interesting is that prior to the explosion of reports in the mainstream media about the dissatisfied generals—four years after American Free Press first broke the story at a national level, even before the invasion of Iraq—the April issue of America’s oldest and most respected magazine, Harper’s, featured a provocative cover story: “American Coup d’Etat: Military thinkers discuss the unthinkable.” This was one month after Harper’s—in another cover story—called for the impeachment of President Bush.Clearly, some people in high places are not happy with the pro-Israel internationalism of the Bush regime.


Associated Press
Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers
By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN , 07.12.2006, 05:41 AM

The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them. The forces were trying to keep the soldiers' captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity. The Israeli military would not confirm the report. Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called an emergency Cabinet meeting and said Lebanese guerrillas would pay a "heavy price" for Wednesday's attacks. "These are difficult days for the state of Israel and its citizens," Olmert said. "There are people ... who are trying to test our resolve. They will fail and they will pay a heavy price for their actions."

On July 12th, the Associated Press reported "The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them." This is from the article Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN , 07.12.2006, 05:41 AMThis AP news article was run by several news outlets on July 12th like ABC, CBS Forbes, The Boston Herald etc. Here are more examples of articles which mention that the Israeli soldiers were captured on the Lebanese side of the boarder and a map that shows the Lebanese town refereed to in the articles: The two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon Here are two examples from those at that page:"The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. "Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon," a statement by Hezbollah said."The two soldiers have already been moved to a safe place," it added. The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they "infiltrated" into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border." [Hindustan Times 7/12/06]It all started on July 12 when Israel troops were ambushed on Lebanon's side of the border with Israel. Hezbollah, which commands the Lebanese south, immediately seized on their crossing. They arrested two Israeli soldiers, killed eight Israelis and wounded over 20 in attacks inside Israeli territory. [Asia Times 7/15/06]

Changing the Story Two Times:
5:41 AM ET, Associated Press Writer Joseph Panossian originally reported
"The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon"
7:09 AM ET, Associated Press Writer Joseph Panossian had changed his report to read: "The Hezbollah militant group captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes along the Lebanese border on Wednesday."4:13 PM ET, Associated Press Writer Joseph Panossian had again changed his report, this time to read: "Hezbollah militants crossed into Israel on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers. "On July 12th, Anthony Shadid, Scott Wilson and Debbi Wilgoren, of the Washington Post Foreign Service, did not say which side of the border in their article Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers , "The militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border Wednesday morning, and Israeli officials said seven more soldiers were killed after tanks and troops moved into Lebanon in response to the attack." [as seen in google cache.] But that article was rewritten and on July 13th it read: "The Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah infiltrated the Israeli border Wednesday in a brazen raid, capturing two Israeli soldiers, killing three others and prompting Israeli attacks on the airport in Beirut and bridges, roads, power stations and military positions across the hillsides of southern Lebanon



Did you know?
Gabriele Zamparini Tuesday, July 25, 2006

"I, Tsilli Goldenberg, Israeli citizen Accuse you - Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, Amir Peretz, Minister of Defense, Dan Halutz Head of Staff Chief Commander of the Israeli Army, of committing this bestial barbaric slaughter in Lebanon.I accuse you of committing Crimes against Humanity towards the Palestinian People. I accuse you of deserting our soldiers, when their lives could be saved by negotiations, and I accuse you of starting an unjustified war in my name." - Tsilli Goldenberg, Masarik 11, Jerusalem 93106 IsraelDid you know that "the daughter of Israel's newly elected prime minister added her voice to those of the anti-Israel [sic] forces around the world when she actively participated in a demonstration outside the home of IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, calling him a 'murderer'"?Why not?
Did you know that "45% of those killed in Lebanon are children and of the 500,000 people who have fled to safety, some 200,000 are children"?
Why not?
Did you know that Israel bombed "the nation's biggest private network, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation"?
Why not?
Did you know that a "big milk factory in the Bekaa region called 'Liban Lait' was completely burned and destroyed by direct attacks from the Israeli Air Force."? And that a "food storehouse called 'TransMed' in Choueifate, in Beirut's southern suburbs, was totally destroyed"?
Why not?
Did you know that "Lebanon's president accused Israel on Monday of using phosphorous bombs in its 13-day offensive and urged the United Nations to demand an immediate ceasefire"?
Why not?
Did you know that "the bodies of 13 Lebanese fighters were taken from Maroun al-Ras and buried in Israel to use in future negotiations over the release of Israeli prisoners"?
Why not?
Did you know that "Israeli military has said it will destroy 10 buildings in predominantly Shia south Beirut for every rocket fired at the Israeli port of Haifa, army radio said Monday"?
Why not?
Did you know that "The delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker busters bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United States to Israel for use against targets in Lebanon will result in additional radioactive and chemical toxic contamination with consequent adverse health and environmental effects throughout the middle east."?
Why not?
Did you know that what's going on is "subject to review by Israel's chief military censor, who has - in her own words - 'extraordinary power'. She can silence a broadcaster, block information and put journalists in jail"?
Why not?
Did you know that "[a]ccording to the Lebanese police force, the two [Israeli] soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory"?
Why not?
Did you know how the "cross-border" myth originated?Why not?From the beginning of this new chapter of the old madness, many people have been following on the internet this shame. We are a peaceful army of world citizens, working for free and moved by solidarity, compassion and an inner drive for justice. Not anger!But even among the elites of the anti-war movement and the so-called "left", too many have never been listening to us. Let alone important journalists working for the "pro-Israeli" mainstream media who still believe that the "internet is a new thing, and it's also unreliable.
"More than sixty years ago George Orwell wrote in The Freedom of the Press, a Preface to his political novel, Animal Farm:
"But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it... it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect..."



"The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel"

Atrocities in the Promised Land
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON former CIA analyst

Words fail; ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the horrors Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for years, against the Palestinians. The tragedy of Gaza has been described a hundred times over, as have the tragedies of 1948, of Qibya, of Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin -- 60 years of atrocity perpetrated in the name of Judaism. But the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel, in the U.S. political arena, in the mainstream U.S. media. Those who are horrified -- and there are many -- cannot penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite in Israel, even more so in the U.S., and increasingly now in Canada and Europe, from seeing, from caring.
But it needs to be said now, loudly: those who devise and carry out Israeli policies have made Israel into a monster, and it has come time for all of us -- all Israelis, all Jews who allow Israel to speak for them, all Americans who do nothing to end U.S. support for Israel and its murderous policies -- to recognize that we stain ourselves morally by continuing to sit by while Israel carries out its atrocities against the Palestinians.
A nation that mandates the primacy of one ethnicity or religion over all others will eventually become psychologically dysfunctional. Narcissistically obsessed with its own image, it must strive to maintain its racial superiority at all costs and will inevitably come to view any resistance to this imagined superiority as an existential threat. Indeed, any other people automatically becomes an existential threat simply by virtue of its own existence. As it seeks to protect itself against phantom threats, the racist state becomes increasingly paranoid, its society closed and insular, intellectually limited. Setbacks enrage it; humiliations madden it. The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.
The pattern played out in Nazi Germany as it sought to maintain a mythical Aryan superiority. It is playing out now in Israel. “This society no longer recognizes any boundaries, geographical or moral,” wrote Israeli intellectual and anti-Zionist activist Michel Warschawski in his 2004 book Towards an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society. Israel knows no limits and is lashing out as it finds that its attempt to beat the Palestinians into submission and swallow Palestine whole is being thwarted by a resilient, dignified Palestinian people who refuse to submit quietly and give up resisting Israel’s arrogance.
We in the United States have become inured to tragedy inflicted by Israel, and we easily fall for the spin that automatically, by some trick of the imagination, converts
Israeli atrocities to examples of how Israel is victimized. But a military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a residential apartment building in the middle of the night and kills 14 sleeping civilians, as happened in Gaza four years ago, is not a military that operates by civilized rules.
A military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a house in the middle of the night and kills a man and his wife and seven of their children, as happened in Gaza four days ago, is not the military of a moral country.
A society that can brush off as unimportant an army officer’s brutal murder of a 13-year-old girl on the claim that she threatened soldiers at a military post -- one of nearly 700 Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since the intifada began -- is not a society with a conscience.
A government that imprisons a 15-year-old girl -- one of several hundred children in Israeli detention -- for the crime of pushing and running away from a male soldier trying to do a body search as she entered a mosque is not a government with any moral bearings. (This story, not the kind that ever appears in the U.S. media, was reported in the London Sunday Times. The girl was shot three times as she ran away and was convicted to 18 months in prison after she came out of a coma.)
Critics of Israel note increasingly that Israel is self-destructing, nearing a catastrophe of its own making. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy talks of a society in “moral collapse.”
Michel Warschawski writes of an “Israeli madness” and “insane brutality,” a “putrefaction” of civilized society, that have set Israel on a suicidal course. He foresees the end of the Zionist enterprise; Israel is a “gang of hoodlums,” he says, a state “that makes a mockery of legality and of civil morality. A state run in contempt of justice loses the strength to survive.”
As Warschawski notes bitterly, Israel no longer knows any moral boundaries -- if it ever did. Those who continue to support Israel, who make excuses for it as it descends into corruption, have lost their moral compass.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. She can be reached at mailto:%20kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com.


The Shame of Being An American
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Do you know that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon? Israel has ordered all the villagers to clear out. Israel then destroys their homes and murders the fleeing villagers. That way there is no one to come back and nothing to which to return, making it easier for Israel to grab the territory, just as Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians.
Do you know that one-third of the Lebanese civilians murdered by Israel’s attacks on civilian residential districts are children? That is the report from Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the UN. He says it is impossible for help to reach the wounded and those buried in rubble, because Israeli air strikes have blown up all the bridges and roads. Considering how often (almost always) Israel misses Hizbollah targets and hits civilian ones, one might think that Israeli fire is being guided by US satellites and US military GPS. Don’t be surprised at US complicity. Why would the puppet be any less evil than the puppet master?
Of course, you don’t know these things, because the US print and TV media do not report them.
Because Bush is so proud of himself, you do know that he has blocked every effort to stop the Israeli slaughter of Lebanese civilians. Bush has told the UN “NO.” Bush has told the European Community “NO.” Bush has told the pro-American Lebanese prime minister “NO.” Twice. Bush is very proud of his firmness. He is enjoying Israel’s rampage and wishes he could do the same thing in Iraq.
Does it make you a Proud American that “your” president gave Israel the green light to drop bombs on convoys of villagers fleeing from Israeli shelling, on residential neighborhoods in the capital of Beirut and throughout Lebanon, on hospitals, on power plants, on food production and storage, on ports, on civilian airports, on bridges, on roads, on every piece of infrastructure on which civilized life depends? Are you a Proud American? Or are you an Israeli puppet?
On July 20, “your” House of Representatives voted 410-8 in favor of Israel’s massive war crimes in Lebanon. Not content with making every American complicit in war crimes, “your” House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press, also “condemns enemies of the Jewish state.”
Who are the “enemies of the Jewish state”?
They are the Palestinians whose land has been stolen by the Jewish state, whose homes and olive groves have been destroyed by the Jewish state, whose children have been shot down in the streets by the Jewish state, whose women have been abused by the Jewish state. They are Palestinians who have been walled off into ghettos, who cannot reach their farm lands or medical care or schools, who cannot drive on roads through Palestine that have been constructed for Israelis only. They are Palestinians whose ancient towns have been invaded by militant Zionist “settlers” under the protection of the Israeli army who beat and persecute the Palestinians and drive them out of their towns. They are Palestinians who cannot allow their children outside their homes because they will be murdered by Israeli “settlers.”
The Palestinians who confront Israeli evil are called “terrorists.” When Bush forced free elections on Palestine, the people voted for Hamas. Hamas is the organization that has stood up to the Jewish state. This means, of course, that Hamas is evil, anti-semitic, un-American and terrorist. The US and Israel responded by cutting off all funds to the new government. Democracy is permitted only if it produces the results Bush and Israel want.
Israelis never practice terror. Only those who are in Israel’s way are terrorists.
Another enemy of the Jewish state is Hizbollah. Hizbollah is a militia of Shia Muslims created in 1982 when Israel first invaded Lebanon. During this invasion the great moral Jewish state arranged for the murder of refugees in refugee camps. The result of Israel’s atrocities was Hizbollah, which fought the Israeli army, defeated it, and drove it, with its tail between its legs, out of Lebanon. Today Hizbollah not only defends southern Lebanon but also provides social services such as orphanages and medical care.
To cut to the chase, the enemies of the Jewish state are any Muslim country not ruled by an American puppet friendly to Israel. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates have sided with Israel against their own kind, because they are dependent either on American money or on American protection from their own people. Sooner or later these totally corrupt governments that do not represent the people they rule will be overthrown. It is only a matter of time.
Indeed Bush and Israel may be hastening the process in their frantic effort to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. Both governments have more popular support than Bush has, but the White House Moron doesn’t know this. The Moron thinks Syria and Iran will be “cakewalks” like Iraq, where ten proud divisions of the US military are tied down by a few lightly armed insurgents.
If you are still a Proud American, consider that your pride is doing nothing good for Israel or for America.
On July 20 when “your” House of Representatives, following “your” US Senate, passed the resolution in support of Israel’s war crimes, the most powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), quickly got out a press release proclaiming “The American people overwhelming support Israel’s war on terrorism and understand that we must stand by our closest ally in this time of crisis.”
The truth is that Israel created the crisis by invading a country with a pro-American government. The truth is that the American people do not support Israel’s war crimes, as the CNN quick poll results make clear and as was made clear by callers into C-Span.
Despite the Israeli spin on news provided by US “reporting,” a majority of Americans do not approve of Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians. Hizbollah is located in southern Lebanon. If Israel is targeting Hizbollah, why are Israeli bombs falling on northern Lebanon? Why are they falling on Beirut? Why are they falling on civilian airports? On schools and hospitals?
Now we arrive at the main point. When the US Senate and House of Representatives pass resolutions in support of Israeli war crimes and condemn those who resist Israeli aggression, the Senate and House confirm Osama bin Laden’s propaganda that America stands with Israel against the Arab and Muslim world.
Indeed, Israel, which has one of the world’s largest per capita incomes, is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. Many believe that much of this “aid” comes back to AIPAC, which uses it to elect “our” representatives in Congress.
This perception is no favor to Israel, whose population is declining, as the smart ones have seen the writing on the wall and have been leaving. Israel is surrounded by hundreds of millions of Muslims who are being turned into enemies of Israel by Israel’s actions and inhumane policies.
The hope in the Muslim world has always been that the United States would intervene in behalf of compromise and make Israel realize that Israel cannot steal Palestine and turn every Palestinian into a refugee.
This has been the hope of the Arab world. This is the reason our puppets have not been overthrown. This hope is the reason America still had some prestige in the Arab world.
The House of Representatives resolution, bought and paid for by AIPAC money, is the final nail in the coffin of American prestige in the Middle East. It shows that America is, indeed, Israel’s puppet, just as Osama bin Laden says, and as a majority of Muslims believe.
With hope and diplomacy dead, henceforth America and Israel have only tooth and claw. The vaunted Israeli army could not defeat a rag tag militia in southern Lebanon. The vaunted US military cannot defeat a rag tag, lightly armed, insurgency drawn from a minority of the population in Iraq, insurgents, moreover, who are mainly engaged in civil war against the Shia majority.
What will the US and its puppet master do? Both are too full of hubris and paranoia to admit their terrible mistakes. Israel and the US will either destroy from the air the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iran so that civilized life becomes impossible for Muslims, or the US and Israel will use nuclear weapons to intimidate Muslims into acquiescence to Israel’s desires.
Muslim genocide in one form or another is the professed goal of the neoconservatives who have total control over the Bush administration. Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz has called for World War IV (in neocon thinking WW III was the cold war) to overthrow Islam in the Middle East, deracinate the Islamic religion and turn it into a formalized, secular ritual.
Rumsfeld’s neocon Pentagon has drafted new US war doctrine that permits pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear states.
Neocon David Horowitz says that by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, “Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world,” thus equating war criminals with civilized men.
Neocon Larry Kudlow says that “Israel is doing the Lord’s work” by murdering Lebanese, a claim that should give pause to Israel’s Christian evangelical supporters. Where does the Lord Jesus say, “go forth and murder your neighbors so that you may steal their lands”?
The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com


A perilous excursion into the distant past, starting seven whole weeks ago
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.
The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.
Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.
Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.
Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.
Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.
That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret in the least. Most of the time it doesn’t even bother to pretend to regret. It says, “We reserve the right to slaughter Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the right to assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to resist we call them terrorists intent on wrecking the ‘peace process’”.
Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have something to do with Hezbollah. In any of those eventualities all bets are off. You or your wife or your mother or your baby get fried.
Israel regrets… But no! As noted above, it doesn’t regret in the least. Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice nor John Bolton who is the moral savage who brings shame on his country each day that he sits as America’s ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told the world that a dead Israel civilian is worth a whole more in terms of moral outrage than a Lebanese one.
None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in the body of Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you end up killing the body. Or bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots of them. Go to the website fromisraeltolebanon.info and take a look. Then sign the petition on the site calling on the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.
You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into history.
This time we have to go far, almost unimaginably far, back into history. Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before CNN, before Fox TV, before O’Reilly and Limbaugh. But not before the neo-cons who at that time had already crawled from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they are doing now: advising an American president to give Israel the green light to “solve its security problems” by destroying Lebanon.
In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.
Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant -- if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.
Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.
With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.
The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop. Sharon gave the White House the finger by bombing Beirut at the precise times -- 2.42 and 3.38 -- of two UN resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the matter of Palestine.
When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center at the prison of Al-Khiam.
Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.
The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.
Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure. Israel doesn’t want any “peaceful solution” that gives the Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres surrounded with barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli settlements whose goons can murder them pretty much at will.
So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t endure the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.
Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously -- Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike -- to deplore Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide birth. But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as of midday, July 19 -- don’t like what Israel is up to.
Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it doesn’t help much. Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon grew unpopular in the US, after the first few days. But forcing the US to pressure Israel to settle the basic problem takes political courage, and virtually no US politician is prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families in Lebanon and Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such cowardice


Glasgow University Media Unit
Bad News from Israel
Greg Philo and Mike Berry (2004, London: Pluto Press)

This is a study of TV new coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of how this coverage relates to the understanding, beliefs and attitudes of the television audience. The work was undertaken with support from the Economic and Social Research Council whose help we would like to acknowledge. In producing this study out intention was not to ‘monitor’ the media or to criticise individual journalists. Our intention was to discuss the pressures and structures within which they work to show the effects of those on new content and to examine the role of the media in the construction of public knowledge. It is a very extensive study with an audience sample of over 800 people and a detailed analysis of TV news over a two-year period. This work also raises a series of important theoretical issues in mass communications. The main focus of the book is on giving a clear exposition of our methods and results, but the theoretical concerns are latent and there is a more detailed discussion of them in other work by the Media Group. (For a discussion of issues in popular culture and audience response, including the active audience, resistance and post-modern accounts see Philo, G. and Miller, D. Market Killing Pearson / Longman. 2001).
The study suggests that television news on the Israel/Palestinian conflict confuses viewers and substantially features Israeli government views. Israelis are quoted and speak in interviews over twice as much as Palestinians and there are major differences in the language used to describe the two sides. This operates in favours of the Israelis and influences how viewers understand the conflict. The study focused on BBC One and ITV News from the start of the current Palestinian intifada, the Glasgow researchers examined around 200 news programmes and interviewed and questioned over 800 people. The study is unique in that for the first time it brought senior broadcasters together with ordinary viewers to work in research groups, analysing how the news informs people and how it could be improved. Those taking part included George Alagiah and Brian Hanrahan from the BBC, Lindsey Hilsum from Channel 4 news, the film-maker Ken Loach and a large number of other broadcasting professionals and programme makers. (The study was part of a large research programme analysing views and audience understanding across a range of subject areas. Those helping and taking part also included: John Humphrys, Sue Inglish, Paul Adams, Nik Gowing, Sian Kevill, Alan Hayling, Evan Davis and Fran Unsworth from the BBC, Gary Rogers, Adrian Monck and Gaye Flashman from Channel Five News, Alex Graham from Wall to Wall Television, John Underwood from Clear Communications, Sandy Ross and Paul McKinney from Scottish Television.)
Some Major Findings:
There is a preponderance of official ‘Israeli perspectives’, particularly on BBC 1, where Israelis were interviewed or reported over twice as much as Palestinians. On top of this, US politicians who support Israel were very strongly featured. They appeared more than politicians from any other country and twice as much as those from Britain.
excerpt from book
TV news says almost nothing about the history or origins of the conflict. The great majority of viewers depended on this news as their main source of information. The gaps in their knowledge closely paralleled the ‘gaps’ in the news. Most did not know that the Palestinians had been forced from their homes and land when Israel was established in 1948. In 1967 Israel occupied by force the territories to which the Palestinian refugees had moved. Most viewers did not know that the Palestinians subsequently lived under Israeli military rule or that the Israelis took control of key resources such as water, and the damage this did to the Palestinian economy. Without explanations being given on the news, there was great confusion amongst viewers even about who was ‘occupying’ the occupied territories. Some understood ‘occupied’ to mean that someone was on the land (as in a bathroom being occupied) so they thought that the Palestinians were the occupiers. Many saw the conflict as a sort of border dispute between two countries fighting over land between them. As one viewer put it:
The impression I got (from news) was that the Palestinians had lived around about that area and now they were trying to come back and get some more land for themselves - I didn’t realise they had been driven out of places in wars previously.
extract from book
Journalists gave different views on why there was so little explanation on the news. George Alagiah from the BBC stressed the problem of time:
In depth it takes a long time, but we’re constantly being told that the attention span of our average viewer is about twenty seconds and if we don’t grab people - and we’ve looked at the figures - the number of people who shift channels around in my programme now six o’clock, there’s a movement of about three million people in that first minute, coming in and out.Lindsey Hilsum from Channel 4 News also commented on how difficult it was to report in a controversial area:
With a conflict like this, nearly every single fact is disputed, I think ‘Oh God, the Palestinians say this and the Israelis say that…’ I know it’s a question of interpretation so I have to say what both sides think and I think sometimes that stops us from giving the background we should be giving.The book also examines other factors in production such as lobbying and public relations by both sides.
excerpt from book
Because there was not account of historical events such as the Palestinians losing their homes, there was a tendency for viewers to see the problems as “starting ” with Palestinian action. On the news, Israeli actions tended to be explained and contextualised - they were often shown as merely “responding ” to what had been done to them by Palestinians (in the 2001 samples they were six times as likely to be presented as “retaliating ” or in some way responding than were the Palestinians). This apparently influenced many viewers to blame Palestinians for the conflict, as in these comments from two 20 year olds:
You always think of the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the stories you hear on the news… I always think the Israelis are fighting back against the bombings that have been done to them.
I wasn’t under the impression that Israeli borders had changed or that they had taken land from other people - I thought it was more a Palestinian aggression than it was Israeli aggression.Some people disputed such views but they tended to cite alternative sources of information other than the television news.
excerpt from book
In news reporting there was a tendency to present Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as vulnerable communities, rather than as having a role in imposing the occupation. But as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has written, they have a key military and strategic function. They have been built on hilltops to give a commanding position and their occupants are often heavily armed. The Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has pointed to its role in attacking Palestinians in attempts to seize land. Most viewers knew very little of this - one describes his surprise at learning that the settlements controlled over 40% of the West Bank:
I had absolutely no idea it was that percentage… I saw them as small embattled and surrounded by hostile Palestinians - that’s entirely thanks to watching the television news.
excerpt from book
There was a strong emphasis on Israeli casualties on the news, relative to Palestinians (even though Palestinians had around 2-3 times the number of deaths as Israelis). In one week in March 02 which the BBC reported as having the most Palestinian casualties since the start of the intifada, there was actually more coverage on the news of Israeli deaths. There were also differences in the language used by journalists for Israelis and Palestinians - words such as ‘atrocity’, ‘brutal murder’, ‘mass murder’, ‘savage cold blooded killing’, ‘lynching’ and ‘slaughter’ were used about Israeli deaths but not Palestinian. The word ‘terrorist’ was used to describe Palestinians by journalists but when an Israeli group was reported as trying to bomb a Palestinian school, they were referred to as ‘extremists’ or ‘vigilantes’ (BBC 1 lunch time news and ITV main news 5/03/02). TV News coverage influenced some viewers to believe most deaths had been Israeli as in these comments about the reporting of suicide bombs:
I remembered it was the suicide bombers - they are the one who go in and take maybe a whole busload and I thought it would be more Israelis.And this is from a viewer who believed the Israelis had five times as many casualties as Palestinians:
I would imagine it’s going to be more casualties on the Israeli side, but it’s purely from television - that’s where I get my info from.
excerpt from book
The journalists and researchers also looked at issues of cultural difference - They asked viewers if they ‘saw’ conflicts in terms of who they identified with? Do we sympathise immediately with people who look and sound like us and reject the views of people who look ‘strange’? The research showed that our perceptions of others are affected by such factors but the journalists wanted to know what they should do about it. Should they intervene to help audiences ‘see through’ cultural difference by appealing to more universal values, e.g. concern for human suffering or loss – and should this be done in the name of balance? This is explored in a number of fascinating exchanges between journalists.
excerpt from book
The book shows the crucial importance of TV news in informing public opinion and the powerful influence it can have on how we see and understand our world. It also shows how news can confuse and the book is a real attempt to reach for different and innovative approaches to improve the quality of news and deal with some of the most difficult issues that journalists have to face. The study also raises serious questions for broadcasters since they have a duty to properly inform the public in these and to maintain due impartiality in reporting all sides of the conflict. The absence of any proper historical context or explanation for the reasons underlying the conflict make it difficult for viewers to understand why it is so intractable and hinders the development of an informed public discussion on how it might be resolved.
See also:
Bad news from Israel: media coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by Greg Philo

Friend Or Foe




The Assault on the USS Liberty Still Covered Up After 26 Years
By James M. Ennes Jr.
Twenty-six years have passed since that clear day on June 8, 1967 when Israel attacked the USS Liberty with aircraft and torpedo boats, killing 34 young men and wounding 171. The attack in international waters followed over nine hours of close surveillance. Israeli pilots circled the ship at low level 13 times on eight different occasions before attacking. Radio operators in Spain, Lebanon, Germany and aboard the ship itself all heard the pilots reporting to their headquarters that this was an American ship. They attacked anyway. And when the ship failed to sink, the Israeli government concocted an elaborate story to cover the crime.
There is no question that this attack on a U.S. Navy ship was deliberate. This was a coordinated effort involving air, sea, headquarters and commando forces attacking over a long period. It was not the "few rounds of misdirected fire" that Israel would have the world believe. Worse, the Israeli excuse is a gross and detailed fabrication that disagrees entirely with the eyewitness recollections of survivors. Key American leaders call the attack deliberate. More important, eyewitness participants from the Israeli side have told survivors that they knew they were attacking an American ship.
Israeli Pilot Speaks Up
Fifteen years after the attack, an Israeli pilot approached Liberty survivors and then held extensive interviews with former Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey about his role. According to this senior Israeli lead pilot, he recognized the Liberty as American immediately, so informed his headquarters, and was told to ignore the American flag and continue his attack. He refused to do so and returned to base, where he was arrested.
Later, a dual-citizen Israeli major told survivors that he was in an Israeli war room where he heard that pilot's radio report. The attacking pilots and everyone in the Israeli war room knew that they were attacking an American ship, the major said. He recanted the statement only after he received threatening phone calls from Israel.
The pilot's protests also were heard by radio monitors in the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon. Then-U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter has confirmed this. Porter told his story to syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak and offered to submit to further questioning by authorities. Unfortunately, no one in the U.S. government has any interest in hearing these first-person accounts of Israeli treachery.
Key members of the Lyndon Johnson administration have long agreed that this attack was no accident. Perhaps most outspoken is former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer. "I can never accept the claim that this was a mistaken attack," he insists.
Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk is equally outspoken, calling the attack deliberate in press and radio interviews. Similarly strong language comes from top leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency (some of whose personnel were among the victims), National Security Council, and from presidential advisers such as Clark Clifford, Joseph Califano and Lucius Battle.
A top-secret analysis of Israel's excuse conducted by the Department of State found Israel's story to be untrue. Yet Israel and its defenders continue to stand by their claim that the attack was a "tragic accident" in which Israel mistook the most modern electronic surveillance vessel in the world for a rusted-out 40-year-old Egyptian horse transport.
Despite the evidence, no U.S. administration has ever found the courage to ever found the courage to defy the Israeli lobby by publicly demanding a proper accounting from Israel.
How Does Congress React to These Complaints?
Most members of Congress respond to inquiries about the Liberty with seemingly sympathetic promises to "investigate." Weeks or months later they write again to report their "findings": "The Navy investigated in 1967 and found no evidence that the attack was deliberate," they say." Israel apologized, calling the attack a tragic case of misidentification, and paid damages for loss of life, injuries and property damage. The matter is closed.
The fact is, however, that the Navy's "investigation" examined only the quality of the crew's training, the adequacy of communications and the performance of the crew under fire. The Navy was forbidden to examine Israeli culpability and Navy investigators refused to allow testimony showing that the attack was deliberate or that Israel's excuse was untrue.
The Navy blocked all testimony about Israeli actions.
Instead of determining whether the attack was deliberate, the Navy blocked all testimony about Israeli actions. No survivor was permitted to describe the close in machine-gun fire that continued for 40 minutes after Israel claims all firing stopped. No survivor was allowed to talk about the life rafts the Israeli torpedo men machine-gunned in the water. No survivor was permitted to challenge defects and fabrications in Israel's story. Even my eyewitness testimony as officer-of-the deck was withheld from the official record. No evidence of Israeli culpability was "found" because no such testimony was allowed. To survivors, this was not an investigation. It was a cover-up.
Congress Goes Through the Motions
Occasionally a member of Congress will seem to probe a bit deeper, as Ted Kennedy once did. In response to requests, Kennedy asked Liberty survivors and others for input,which his staff then "studied" for more than a year.
Kennedy asked no questions, conducted no interviews, and showed no curiosity about the many discrepancies in Israel's story. Then Kennedy reported his "findings" in a letter to survivors. Carefully avoiding the circumstances of the attack, Kennedy's letter deplored the "tragic circumstances and loss of life" and declared that the facts about the Liberty must be uncovered "to the maximum extent humanly possible."
That letter, however, represented Kennedy's maximum effort. Appeals to Kennedy for some real help go unanswered.
The Guest Goes On
The best forum in the '90s for this story and related stories of the Middle East may well be electronic mail, the complex of computer and electronic mail systems that now span the globe.
For instance, the USS Liberty and theMiddle East are hot topics in the "Prodigy interactive computer service" run by Sears and IBM. With over 2 million members, Prodigy's "Israel" forums guarantee some lively and often bitter debates.
Unfortunately, the playing field often seems uneven. The cover-up side heavily outnumbers its critics, and is allowed tactics rarely tolerated from others. Criticism of Israeli policies is seen as "attacks on the Jewish homeland." Pro-Israel debaters charge that Israel's critics are "disciples of hate," and "pathological haters of Israel and all things Jewish."
The language gets worse. Prodigy allows Israel's critics to be called "sodomists," and "derriere bussing anti-Semites." The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which prints an update on progress toward a congressional investigation every year on the June anniversary of the tragedy, comes in for special vitriol. The magazine is described almost daily as I a hate rag." Yet Prodigy's censors often reject even mild and factual rebuttals of such charges as "insulting."
Despite a near media blackout, and such invective directed at publications that defy it, Americans, do continue to support the USS Liberty and its survivors' association. Late last year the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 560 in Zimmerman, Minnesota, raised over $12,000 to create a rest stop and picnic area on donated land near a major highway as a memorial to the men who died on the Liberty. This makes the 29th public memorial to the USS Liberty.
The memorial area and an inscribed granite stone were appropriately dedicated in a ceremony attended by survivors, VFW members, Mayor Randy Hanson, and Liberty's heroic Congressional Medal of Honor-winning skipper, Captain William McGonagle, among others.
Inspired by community support, members of Post 560 are now telling the USS Liberty story to every VFW post in Minnesota. Member Stan Wuolle tells us that after they cover all of Minnesota, they will start on Wisconsin and the Dakotas.
In New York, meanwhile, Korean War veteran John Everts learned about the attack just last year and was similarly moved. Everts inspired two Korean vets groups in which he is active, "The Chosin Few" and "The Korean War Veterans" Kivlehan Chapter, to write more than 100 letters to Congress seeking the investigation that survivors mill are denied.
To date, no member of Congress has risked re-election chances by agreeing publicly to Evert's request. No one really expected that to happen. But efforts like these help members of Congress and the American public remember that Israel attacked the USS Liberty, deliberately and then lied about it. Sooner or later, Americans will insist that their government and their representatives in Congress find out why.
James Ennes retired from the Navy in 1978 as a lieutenant commander after 27 years of enlisted and commissioned service. He was a lieutenant on the bridge of the USS Liberty on the day of the attack.


THE SECRET WAR Pre-9/11,
We fought a covert war on American soil – against Israel

You really have to hand it to the Israelis: they are nothing if not blatant. Their response to Fox News reporter Carl Cameron's devastating exposé of Israel's massive spy operation in the US can hardly be repeated with a straight face. Mark Regev, a spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington is quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying:
"The report on Fox News contains no quoted source, it has in no way demonstrated anything more than anonymous innuendo, and should be regarded accordingly. Israel does not spy on the United States of America."
Gee, Mark, does the name Jonathan Pollard ring a bell?
SUICIDAL TENDENCIES
Naturally, the law enforcement sources who utilized Cameron's investigation to voice their concerns didn't dare allow their names to be used: as Cameron related in his report, any question regarding the possibility of Israeli spying in the US is "career suicide" for those who dare raise it. Question: is it also career suicide for journalists to raise it?
I have seen a few news items reporting on the Cameron exposé, but, given the implications and scope of what we're talking about here, the answer is, apparently, yes. For Cameron and Fox News are not merely saying that the Israelis have been conducting a "sprawling" spy operation in the US, involving the massive penetration of our communications systems and government agencies. As Cameron so diplomatically put it in the first segment of his four-part investigation:
"There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it."
A GUILTY SILENCE
In other words: Israel's passive complicity made the worst terrorist attack in American history possible. One would think that the sheer enormity of such a charge would provoke a storm of outrage from Israel's many defenders in the media: the columnists, the think-tankers, the publicists who dote on Ariel Sharon's every word. But, no: instead, there is an ominous, one might almost say a guilty silence.
THANKS BE TO GOOGLE!
It's frightening, really, when you think about it. Here, after all, is a reporter's dream: a heretofore-undiscovered angle on the biggest story of our time. Yet no one will touch it. Why? It couldn't be because you'd need an army of researchers: you don't. All that's necessary is internet access, and, of course, the miracle of Google: anyone can go to google.com and type in the appropriate words and phrases, such as "Israelis detained," or, better yet, "Israeli art students" along with the word "detained." Go ahead: do it, and see what happens….
ARTISTIC ASPIRATIONS
Okay, so you did it and came up with a whole slew of news stories, published mostly in local newspapers, telling different variations on a single, very bizarre story: In locations as diverse as Dallas, Saint Louis, Kansas, Atlanta, New York, and Findley, Ohio, groups of young people describing themselves as Israeli art students suddenly descended on federal office buildings and no less than 36 Department of Defense facilities. They seemed particularly active in the state of Texas: in Dallas, one "student" was found wandering the halls of a federal facility with a floor plan in his hands. Say, what?
Starting in the third week of January, reports began to pour in to the National Counterintelligence Center (NCC) about "suspicious visitors to federal facilities." The NCC's bimonthly report for March 2001 states:
"In the past six weeks, employees in federal office buildings located throughout the United States have reported suspicious activities connected with individuals representing themselves as foreign students selling or delivering artwork. Employees have observed both males and females attempting to bypass facility security and enter federal buildings."
INVASION OF THE 'ART STUDENTS'
The NCC described these people -- supposedly working for an outfit known as "Universal Art, Inc." -- as "aggressive" in attempting to gain access to federal facilities, and reported that two had been arrested for having counterfeit work visas and green cards. Then this stunner: "These individuals have also gone to the private residences of senior federal officials under the guise of selling art." Now wait just a friggin' minute, dude – stop right there!
OMINOUS PORTENTS
Okay, so we're talking about some nine months before The Day, and mysterious "art students" are following high government officials home – that is, when they aren't trying to break in to Defense Department facilities, staking out DEA offices, and hanging around the federal prosecutor's office in Dallas. We've already had numerous terrorist scares, at this point: remember the New Year's hysteria, and there were all those frantic warnings by various "anti-terrorist" commissions and study groups. The NCC report posits the existence of two groups of "art students":
"One group has an apparently legitimate money-making goal while the second, perhaps a non-Israeli group, may have ties to a Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalist group."
So, this was the first ominous sign of the terrorist onslaught to come – or was it? The NCC's speculation that these "art students" were Bin Laden's boys turns out not to have been correct. They were Israelis, alright, except for a few Latin Americans. Not only did they carry forged immigration papers, in some cases, but also at least one we know about failed a polygraph test when he denied spying for Israel.
CELLMATES AT LAST
With some 140 picked up before 9/11, and some 60-plus afterward, we have no idea how many of these "art students" were sent back to Israel to pursue their "studies." All we know is that those let go were kept for months, and others – according to Fox News, those identified as Israeli agents – are still in custody, perhaps sharing a nice cozy cell with detainees from Arab countries. I'm sure they have a lot to talk about….
HOW ODD
The Arab detainees, as we have seen, have been the subjects of a national controversy between civil libertarians and the Bush administration. We have John Ashcroft denouncing those who would spread the "false fear" of a police state as "aiding the terrorists," while on the other hand Arab-Americans and the ACLU are rallying opposition to the round-up. But when it comes to the Israeli detainees, there is no controversy, virtually no mention of it in the national media, no nothing. Jewish groups are not rallying to the defense of these poor defenseless "art students," held without bail and without lawyers, for the most part, in very uncomfortable and worrisome circumstances. Doesn't anybody find this odd?
SUCKER PUNCH
What's significant about this story is, first, that it amounts to the biggest spy operation in the US since the days of the Cold War, and, secondly, that it provides some context for understanding the mystery of 9/11. To most of us, that horrific event was a bolt out of the blue, with no prelude, no precedent, and no way to anticipate that the best days of our lives could turn into the worst. But the view from inside the US Government must have looked a whole lot different, i.e. far more threatening. Yet the threat seemed to be coming, not from Bin Laden, but – incredibly – from the Israelis, who, not content with having gained access to our phone system and federal wiretaps, were penetrating American military and government targets. Law enforcement authorities were in the midst of a massive crackdown on the Israelis, when, suddenly, they were hit – from the other direction.
IN THE DARK
We are being kept in the dark about so many things, these days, but this, it seems, is too important to be kept secret for long. If we are going to be asked to give up our liberties, our peace of mind, and even our lives in an apparently eternal "war on terrorism," then Americans at least have a right to know who their enemies are. Yes, we know the evil Bin Laden is responsible for the murder of 3000 innocent people – but we still don't know how they managed to pull off such a well-organized and spectacular display of murderous skill, unassisted by any state sponsor.
A CAROLINA COVEN
Much has been said – but nothing proved – about the alleged role of Iraq in all this. But to anyone who has seen or read through parts one, two, three and four of the Fox News investigative report, it seems clear that the most active state intelligence agency in the US prior to the twin towers attack was not the Iraqis, but the Mossad. Carl Cameron informs us that a North Carolina Israeli spy coven is suspected of renting an apartment in California "to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism." What were they doing – and, most importantly, what did they know about the planning and execution of the 9/11 atrocity?
DEMAND AN INVESTIGATION
In the months preceding 9/11, a secret war was being waged on American soil, a silent struggle from coast to coast – not an undercover battle between us and Muslim terrorists, but one pitting US law enforcement agencies against one of our closest allies. Make of that what you will. For until the US government comes clean, and Congress investigates, we'll never even have a chance to start asking the right questions.


Did Israel deliberately allow 241 American Marines to die?
by Joseph Sobran
Yes, says Victor Ostrovsky, a former Israeli secret agent. In a new book, By Way of Deception: A Devastating Insider's Portrait of the Mossad, Mr. Ostrovsky says the Israelis had advance notice of the suicide attack that killed 241 Marines in Beirut in October 1983 but withheld the information from the United States in the hope that the attack would poison American Arab relations.
The Israeli government is desperately trying to block publication of the book, which also says the Israelis are "actively spying, recruiting, organizing and carrying out covert activities mainly in New York and Washington, which they refer to as their playground."
Although it can hardly succeed and will probably back fire, the censorship attempt enjoyed initial success in both the U.S. and Canada. Obliging courts in both countries have ordered that the book be at least temporarily suppressed When it comes to Israel, freedom of speech and of the press is considerably less than total, even in America.
Mr. Ostrovsky says Israeli agents heard he had written the book and tried to bribe and threaten him to dissuade him from going into print. He is now in hiding.
More than 17,000 copies of By Way of Deception are in print, and many reviewers have already received copies. If the book divulges sensitive information, as the Israelis' lawyers say, it's too late to stop other governments from getting it. The only purpose of the censorship is to stop Americans from reading Mr. Ostrovsky's account of how Israel allowed U.S. Marines to be slaughtered
Books are rarely suppressed in America (at least not by direct government intervention), and by the time you read this, By Way of Deception will almost certainly be unshackled. Then the Israelis will have to either discredit the author or argue, as they did in the case of the spy Jonathan Pollard, that the decision to let the Marines be killed was a "rogue" action.
Mr. Ostrovsky's allegations should be shocking. Letting the troops of a benefactor nation be blown up in their own compound is hardly the act of a "reliable ally," as Israel is said to be.
But you have to wonder whether anyone will really be shocked. The act would be consistent with a long pattern of reprehensible Israeli behavior toward the U.S. Some of it has been widely publicized; no doubt the largest part of it has never been discovered.
If anyone ought to be stunned, it's the many pundits who echo Israeli propaganda to the effect that Israel is America's only valuable and trustworthy ally in the Middle East. If they mean what they say, they should be publicly changing their minds, or at least demanding a thorough investigation into Israeli conduct toward this country.
Congress ought to be shocked, too, to the extent that its all-out support for Israel has been sincere rather than venal and cowardly. But how many of our elected representatives will dare, or care, to ask tough questions about whether our ties to Israel have done serious damage to this country's interests?
Such questions are not only long overdue, they are especially urgent right now, when the United States may be on the verge of a full-scale war in the Middle East, and the Israel lobby is eager to see America launch hostilities against Israel's chief enemy, Iraq.
The path of least resistance is to say nothing, to go on pretending that the interests of the U.S. and of Israel are virtually identical, to keep repeating that Israel is our "reliable ally" and "strategic asset." Any politician or journalist who says otherwise, even for the good of America, does so at risk to his career. That's why there is so little open debate on these matters. Even our press isn't fully free.
And now the Israeli government has mounted a direct attack on press freedom in America itself. It will be instructive to see whether the press corps goes on acting unshocked.
Joseph Sobran is a nationally syndicated columnist who now maintains a Website at http://www.sobran.com/.


THE DANCING ISRAELIS
Like most Americans, I was gripped by senses of profound shock, horror, revulsion, sadness, and rage as I watched the horror of September 11, 2001 unfolding live on my television screen. Watching the mass murder of thousands of innocent people live on television was the most upsetting experience of my life. How could any person of sound moral character not be enraged at witnessing this horrific act of barbarism? To read about some faraway, long-ago genocide in a newspaper or a book is distressing enough. But to actually witness the mass murders of what was, at first, believed to have been tens of thousands of innocent people is truly heart stopping and traumatic. I barely slept for two nights afterwards and suffered nightmares. Polling data would later reveal that 65% of Americans actually shed tears on 9-11.1 But not all of the eye-witnesses to the 9-11 slaughter were so saddened. On September 11, five Israeli army veterans were arrested by the FBI after several witnesses saw them "dancing", "high-fiving", and "celebrating" as they took pictures of the World Trade Center disaster from across the river in New Jersey. Steven Gordon was the lawyer who volunteered to represent the five Israelis. He was asked by a Hebrew newspaper why the five men were being detained by the FBI. Here’s what Gordon told Yediot America:"On the day of the disaster, three of the five boys went up on the roof of the building where the company office is located," said Gordon. "I'm not sure if they saw the twin towers collapse, but, in any event, they photographed the ruins right afterwards. One of the neighbors who saw them called the police and claimed they were posing, dancing and laughing, against the background of the burning towers…."Anyhow, the three left the roof, took an Urban truck, and drove to a parking lot, located about a five-minute drive from the offices. They parked, stood on the roof of the truck to get a better view of the destroyed towers and took photographs. A woman who was in the building above the lot testified that she saw them smiling and exchanging high-fives. She and another neighbor called the police and reported on Middle-Eastern looking people dancing on the truck. They copied and reported the license plates. 2 When the photos were developed, they revealed that the dancing Israelis were smiling in the foreground of the New York massacre. 3 According to ABC’s 20/20 attempted whitewash of the incident, in addition to their outrageous and highly suspicious behavior, the five also had in their possession the following items; box-cutters, European passports, and $4700 cash hidden in a sock. 4 Why were these Israeli agents so happy about the horrible massacre that was unfolding right before their very eyes? What evil spirit could possess people who are supposed to be America's "allies", and who receive billions of dollars in financial and military aid from US taxpayers each year , to publicly rejoice as innocent people (including many American jews) were burning to death and jumping out of 110 story buildings? Could it be that these happy Israeli army veterans were in some way linked to this monstrous attack? That’s what officials close to the investigation initially told The Bergen Record newspaper of New Jersey. 5 As incredible, as ridiculous, and as "paranoid" as that belief may appear to you at this point, the fact is that certain elements within the Israeli government, and Zionist movement in general, have a long history of attacking the USA and framing Arabs in order to gain support from the US. Before we begin to piece together what really transpired on 9-11, it is absolutely critical that we first review some historical precedents regarding Israel's and International Zionism's treacherous history of manipulating America (and other nations) for their own selfish purposes. Without a basic understanding of this history, it would be impossible to understand the truth as it is today. So put aside your preconceived notions, your psychological defense mechanisms, and your prejudices, and step into my time machine for a journey down the memory hole.


AMERICA BECOMES THE ZIONIST'S WHORE

We have reviewed how the Zionists used and discarded Germany. Then they used and discarded Great Britain. After World War II, it was clear that the chief remaining global power was the United States. Now the USA had never had any problem with the Arab people, and had no reason to quarrel with the Arabs. For the Zionists to maintain and expand the support they were receiving from America, it would benefit them greatly if the Arabs and the mighty US could somehow become enemies. Could the Zionists possibly stoop so low? Why not? Look at what they had already pulled off! Remember that the official motto of the Mossad (Israeli's intelligence organization) is "by way of deception thou shalt do war." 26 In 1955, one of these "false flag" operations was publicly exposed for the world to see. Israeli agents, impersonating Arab terrorists, were caught staging a series of bombings against American installations in Egypt. 27 When this conspiracy was exposed, it ultimately created such a controversy that it brought down the Israeli government. The long since forgotten scandal became known as "the Lavon Affair". Then again during a 1967 war with the Arabs, Israeli gunboats and fighter jets deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, an unarmed US communications ship. 28 Thirty five American sailors were murdered and 170 others injured in a prolonged Israeli onslaught - carried out in broad daylight and with the U.S. flag flying prominently. The intent was to kill all of the Americans and then leave the Egyptians to take the blame. Israel denied that the attack was deliberate but the chilling stories of the lucky American survivors clearly contradicts that lie. To this very day, the U.S. Congress has never investigated the USS Liberty massacre. In 1989, the Israelis once again succeeded in framing enemy Arabs in order to enrage America. Former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrosvky became so disgusted with the criminal behavior of his own government that he defected from the Mossad and tried to warn America of just how evil and dangerous they were. Ostrovsky revealed exactly how the Israelis framed Libya for the bombing of a German night club which killed American servicemen. 29 It was this frame up job that caused President Reagan to bomb Libya, killing the 4 year old daughter of Libyan leader Muamar Qadaffi. France refused to allow US bombers to fly over their air space and bomb Libya because French intelligence knew that Libya was unjustly framed by the Israelis. Among some of Ostrovosky's other amazing revelations are: that the Mossad often uses Arab agents to carry out missions, that Israeli agents are skilled at impersonating Arabs, that Mossad had a plan to turn American public opinion against Iraq, and that wealthy Zionists in America are often called upon to help carry out Mossad missions. Ostrovsky, whose tell all book, By Way of Deception, infuriated the Mossad and made him the target of numerous death threats. 30 In 2001, the Washington Times ran a story about a 68 page research paper issued by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). The research was compiled by 60 US Army officers as an attempt to predict the possible outcomes of deploying a US force to maintain peace between the Israel and Palestinians. Here’s what SAMS had to say about the Israeli military machine: "a 500 pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza and the West Bank. Known to disregard international law to accomplish mission" 31 Of Israel’s Mossad, the officers issued this warning: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian Arab act." 32 (emphasis added)Why does the US, which is trillions of dollars in debt, gives away billons of taxpayer dollars to a foreign government whose military violates international laws and whose Mossad is capable of murdering US troops in order to frame Arabs? Have we lost our minds?


THE BUTCHER SHARON

During the 1967 war, Israel occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Thirty five years have passed since that war ended, yet the Israeli army continues the humiliating occupation of those Palestinian areas. Those areas are not part of the nation of Israel that was created in 1948 by the UN. What the Palestinian people are resisting today is not the 1948 confiscation of their land. They simply want the 1967 occupation to end. It is this ongoing occupation, not the 1948 creation of Israel, which fuels the conflict today. Prior to the current outbreak of hostilities, the majority of the Israeli people also supported the end of Israel's occupation and oppression of these territories. They elected Yitzak Rabin as Prime Minister and Rabin made more strides towards achieving peace than any of his processors. The 1990's were a quiet years in Israel. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Rabin appeared to have finally reached a peace deal the US acting as the mediator. This did not sit well with the hard core Zionists who ultimately hope to expand Israel's borders even more. Hopes for a lasting peace deal were soon dealt a major setback when a flurry of five bullets were pumped into Prime Minister Rabin at close range as he was attending a 1995 Israeli peace rally. It was not an Arab that killed Rabin. It was a Zionist fanatic named Yigal Amir. Amir was a law student at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. He later told investigators that he had no regrets for his actions. 44 Amir, a bright young law student was willing to throw his life away in the service of the Zionist cause. (More on that concept later on.) At the head of the Israeli government today sits a brutal man who has been a guest of honor at George Bush's White House on a regular basis since he took office in October 2000. His name is Ariel Sharon. His fanatical Zionist supporters in Israel refer to him as "Arik King", but the Arabs know him as a lifelong butcher, terrorist, and war criminal. There was a time when Sharon was disgraced and his political career seemed to be over. The isolation of Ariel Sharon was the result a 1982 Palestinian massacre which Sharon engineered when he was Israel's Defense minister. It was the Israelis themselves who forced Sharon to resign. Sharon's troops blocked the exits from the Sabra and Shattila refugee camps while a Lebanese militia, allied with the Israeli military, went into the camps and slaughtered more than 1,500 unarmed Palestinian civilians while raping many women. 45 Though these Lebanese militias were the ones who did the actual killing, it was Ariel Sharon who controlled the militias and it was Sharon's soldiers who stood by and blocked the camp exits, deliberately allowing the slaughter to take place. A survivor of the attack who had been raped and shot went to Belgium and initiated a war crimes case against Sharon. Several Lebanese militia leaders were summoned to testify against Sharon. Shortly before their testimony, three of them were suddenly killed by unknown gunmen and car bombs. Israel's Mossad of course denied any responsibility for the strange and untimely deaths of these three witnesses against Sharon. 46 And if you believe that one, I’ll sell you the World Trade Center! After nearly 20 years of political exile, Sharon made his comeback in October 2000. Knowing full well how much the Palestinians hated him for his role in the 1982 massacres, Sharon and a small army of Israeli soldiers showed up at the Temple Mount 47 - a site held sacred by both Muslims and jews. This was a deliberate provocation. When the Muslims protested the Sharon provocation, the Israeli troops cracked down. Rocks were thrown and shots were fired. In just a matter of minutes, years of peace and the Israeli-Arab peace effort had been destroyed by Mr. Sharon’s bullying antics. When the fighting broke out, a frightened and propagandized Israeli population soon turned to a strong man for their protection - the very man who had deliberately instigated the violence in the first place. Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister. True to form, Sharon has brutalized the Palestinian civilian population under the pretext of "self-defense". Armed and funded by Israel's wholly owned US Congress, the Israeli war machine can bulldoze Arab homes at will. The only weapon that the outgunned Palestinians can retaliate with is the "suicide bomber". With every suicide bombing, Sharon is able to "justify" even more attacks and occupy more land. The Zionist game plan is to ultimately drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza, just like the Irgun massacres had driven the Arabs out of Deir Yassin. Standing in the way of such a bold Zionist scheme were three major obstacles: 1. the force of world opinion. Prior to 9-11, the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation had gained the sympathy of many people around the world.2. the force of Israeli domestic opinion (most Israelis wanted peace and were opposed to the 35 year occupation of Palestinian territories).3. Saddam Hussein‘s Iraq, which had always been a champion of the cause of Palestinian self determination. How useful it would be for the Zionists if some "incident" were to happen which would turn American and world opinion against the Palestinians and ultimately drag the US into a war against Israel's Arab enemies. Now you know why those Israelis were celebrating on 9-11!


THE SEPTEMBER 11 DANCE PARTY

Let us review what we have learned. We have clearly established that Zionists played a key role in steering the US into two World Wars. We have clearly established that Zionists do not care if Americans (or others) are killed to further their goals. We have clearly established that Zionists have a record of attacking Americans in order to frame Arabs. We have established that the Zionists are capable of acts of unspeakable brutality and genocide. We have established that US politicians fear the Zionist Mafia and defy them at their own peril. We have learned that warnings of a suicidal hijacking plot were issued to several people. And most importantly of all, we have clearly established that the Zionists have the capacity to make these amazing stories suddenly disappear from their controlled news media. Having established these precedents, we can now easily deduce that the reason why those five dancing Israeli agents who celebrated the 9-11 attacks were so happy is because they knew that Americans would now become unconditional supporters of their "Israeli ally" and fanatical haters of Muslims and Arabs. On the day of the attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attack would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was "It's very good…….Well, it's not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)" 57 The five Israelis made such a spectacle that everyone who saw them felt compelled to call the police. According to ABC’s 20/20, when the van belonging to the cheering Israelis was stopped by the police, the first words out of the driver's (Sivan Kurzberg) lying mouth were: "We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem." 58 The police and FBI field agents became really suspicious when they found box cutters (the same items that the hijackers supposedly used), $4700 cash stuffed in a sock, and foreign passports. Police also told the Bergen Record that bomb sniffing dogs were brought to the van and that they reacted as if they had smelled explosives. 59From there, the story gets becomes even more suspicious. The Israelis worked for a Weehawken moving company known as Urban Moving Systems. An American employee of Urban Moving Systems told the Bergen Record that a majority of his co-workers were Israelis and they were all joking about the attacks. The employee, who declined to give his name said: "I was in tears. These guys were joking and that bothered me." 60 A few days after the attacks, Urban Moving System's Israeli owner, Dominick Suter, dropped his business and fled the country. He was in such a hurry to flee America that some of Urban Moving System's customers were left with their furniture stuck in storage facilities. 61 The five Israeli army veterans (Mossad) were held in custody for several months before being quietly released. Some of the movers had been kept in solitary confinement for 40 days. 62 Immediately following the attacks, the Zionist controlled media was filled with stories linking the attacks to Bin Laden. TV talking-heads and scribblers of every stripe spoon-fed a gullible American public a steady diet of the most outrageous propaganda imaginable. We were told that the reason Bin Laden attacked the USA was because he hates our "freedom" and "democracy". The Muslims were "medieval" and they wanted to destroy us because of our wealth. But Bin Laden strongly denied any role in the attacks and suggested that Zionists orchestrated the 9-11 attacks:"I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the people who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks....The American system is totally in control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States." 63To date, the only shred of "evidence" to be uncovered against Bin Laden was a highly suspicious, barely audible amateur video, that the Zionist dominated Pentagon just happened to find "lying around" in Afghanistan. Though there is no evidence, be it hard or circumstantial, to link the Al Qaeda "terrorist network" to these acts of terror; there is in fact a mountain of evidence, both hard and circumstantial, which suggests that the Zionist Mafia has been very busy framing Arabs for terror plots against America



WHO WAS REALLY FLYING THOSE PLANES ON 9-11?

Hours after the 9-11 attacks, authorities began to find clues conveniently left for them to stumble upon. The Boston Globe reported that a copy of the Koran, instructions on how to fly a commercial airplane and a fuel consumption calculator were found in a pair of bags meant for one of the hijacked flights that left from Logan. 64 Authorities also received a "tip" about a suspicious white car left behind at Boston's Logan Airport. An Arabic-language flight training manual was found inside the car. 65 How fortunate for investigators that the hijackers "forgot" to take their Koran and Arab flight manuals with them! Within a few days, all "19 hijackers" were "identified" and their faces were plastered all over our television screens. Then, like a script from a corny "B" spy movie, the official story gets even more ridiculous. The passport of the supposed "ringleader" Mohammed Atta, somehow managed to survive the explosion, inferno, and smoldering collapse to be oh-so-conveniently "found" just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center! 66 It is obvious that this "evidence" was planted by individuals wishing to direct the blame towards Osama Bin Laden. How is it possible that Arab students who had never flown an airplane could take a simulator course and then fly jumbo jets with the skill and precision of "top-gun" pilots? It is not possible and the fact is, the true identities of the 9-11 hijackers remains a mystery. In the days following the disclosure of the "hijackers" names and faces, no less than 7 of the Arab individuals named came forward to protest their obvious innocence. 67 That's right! Seven of the nineteen "hijackers" are alive and well. They were victims of identity theft, some of whom had had their passports stolen. They were interviewed by several news organizations including the Telegraph of England. Here’s an excerpt from David Harrison’s Telegraph story entitled: Revealed: The Men With Stolen Identities: "Their names were flashed around the world as suicide hijackers who carried out the attacks on America. But yesterday four innocent men told how their identities had been stolen.The men - all from Saudi Arabia - spoke of their shock at being mistakenly named by the FBI as suicide terrorists. None of the four was in the United States on September 11 and all are alive in their home country.The Telegraph obtained the first interviews with the men since they learnt that they were on the FBI's list of hijackers who died in the crashes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.All four said that they were "outraged" to be identified as terrorists. One has never been to America and another is a Saudi Airlines pilot who was on a training course in Tunisia at the time of the attacks. Saudi Airlines said it was considering legal action against the FBI for seriously damaging its reputation and that of its pilots." 68(emphasis added) The story of these identity thefts was also briefly reported by ABC 69 and BBC (England) 70 The FBI does not deny this. Nobody denies this fact because it is easily verifiable. Instead, the US media and government just ignore this inconvenient little fact and keep right on repeating the monstrous lie that the hijacker identities are known and that 15 of them were Saudis. CNN revealed that FBI director Robert Mueller openly admitted that some of the identities of the 9-11 hijackers are in question due to identity theft. Here’s what CNN reported on September 21: FBI Director Robert Mueller has acknowledged that some of those behind last week's terror attacks may have stolen the identification of other people, and, according to at least one security expert, it may have been "relatively easy" based on their level of sophistication. 71 This opens up a whole Pandora’s box of unanswered questions. First and foremost of which is this: why would Osama Bin laden, the Saudi Arabian caveman, steal identities? To cover his tracks you say? Next question: why would a Saudi Arabian, attempting to cover his tracks, steal the identities of....fellow Saudi Arabians??? What would be the point? Why would you go through the trouble of stealing identities that would point back to you? Why not steal Greek identities, or Brazilian identities, or Turkish ones? A much more logical conclusion is that non-Arabs stole these identities as part of a "false flag" operation designed to point the blame at Arabs, and Saudi Arabs in particular. What kind of a corrupt character is FBI boss Mueller? He initially admitted that false identities were involved with 9-11, but then he allows the media to keep naming these innocent, and alive, Arabs as the hijackers? Why doesn’t he correct them? More on the slimy Mr. Mueller later on! Now I'm really going to rock your faith in the false religion of 9-11. In February of 2000, Indian intelligence officials detained 11 members of what they thought was an Al Qaeda hijacking conspiracy. It was then discovered that these 11 "Muslim preachers" were all Israeli nationals! India’s leading weekly magazine, The Week, reported: On January 12 Indian intelligence officials in Calcutta detained 11 foreign nationals for interrogation before they were to board a Dhaka-bound Bangladesh Biman flight. They were detained on the suspicion of being hijackers. "But we realized that they were tabliqis (Islamic preachers), so we let them go", said an Intelligence official. The eleven had Israeli passports but were believed to be Afghan nationals who had spent a while in Iran. Indian intelligence officials, too, were surprised by the nationality profile of the eleven. "They say that they have been on tabligh (preaching Islam) in India for two months. But they are Israeli nationals from the West Bank," said a Central Intelligence official. He claimed that Tel Aviv "exerted considerable pressure" on Delhi to secure their release. "It appeared that they could be working for a sensitive organization in Israel and were on a mission to Bangladesh," the official said. 72 (emphasis added) What were these 11 Israelis doing trying to impersonate Al Qaeda men? Infiltrating?...perhaps. Framing?...more likely. But the important precedent to understand is this: Israeli agents were once caught red handed impersonating Muslim hijackers! This event becomes even more mind boggling when we learn that it was Indian Intelligence that helped the US to so quickly identify the "19 hijackers"! On April 3, 2002, Express India, quoting the Press Trust of India, revealed: Washington, April 3: Indian intelligence agencies helped the US to identify the hijackers who carried out the deadly September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, a media report said here on Wednesday. 73 Ain't that a kick in the ass?!! Did you catch that? The Indian intelligence officials that were duped into mistaking Israeli agents for Al Qaeda hijackers back in 2000, were the very same clowns telling the FBI who it was that hijacked the 9-11 planes! Keep in mind that Indian intelligence has an extremely close working relationship with Israel’s Mossad because both governments hate the Muslim nation of Pakistan. 74 Now about Mohamed Atta, you know, the so-called "ring leader". There are a number of inconsistencies with that story as well. Like some of the 7 hijackers known to be still alive, Atta also had his passport stolen in 1999, 75 (the same passport that miraculously survived the WTC explosion and collapse?) making him an easy mark for an identity theft. Atta was known to all as a shy, timid, and sheltered young man who was uncomfortable with women. 76 The 5 foot 7 inch, 150 pound architecture student was such a "goody two shoes" that some of his university acquaintances in Germany refrained from drinking or cursing in front of him. How this gentle, non- political mamma's boy from a good Egyptian family suddenly transformed himself into the vodka drinking, go-go girl groping terrorist animal described by the media, has to rank as the greatest personality change since another classic work of fiction, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Atta, or someone using Atta's identity, had enrolled in a Florida flight school in 2001 and then broke off his training, making it a point to tell his instructor he was leaving for Boston. In an October 2001 interview with an ABC affiliate in Florida, flight school president Rudi Dekkers said that his course does not qualify pilots to fly commercial jumbo jets. 77 He also described Atta as "an asshole". 78 Part of the reason for Dekker's dislike for Atta stems from a highly unusual incident that occurred at the beginning of the course. Here’s the exchange between ABC producer Quentin McDermott and Dekkers: MCDERMOTT: "Why do you say Atta was an asshole?" DEKKERS: "Well, when Atta was here and I saw his face on several occasions in the building, then I know that they're regular students and then I try to talk to them, it's kind of a PR - where are you from? I tried to communicate with him. I found out from my people that he lived in Hamburg and he spoke German so one of the days that I saw him, I speak German myself, I'm a Dutch citizen, and I started in the morning telling him in German, "Good morning. How are you? How do you like the coffee? Are you happy here?", and he looked at me with cold eyes, didn't react at all and walked away. That was one of my first meetings I had." 79 This is eerily similar to the way in which Zacharias Moussaoui (the so-called "20th hijacker") became "belligerent" when his Minnesota flight instructor tried to speak to him in French (his first language), at the beginning of that course. The Minnessota Star Tribune reported on December 21, 2001: "Moussaoui first raised eyebrows when, during a simple introductory exchange, he said he was from France, but then didn't seem to understand when the instructor spoke French to him. Moussaoui then became belligerent and evasive about his background, (Congressman) Oberstar and other sources said. In addition, he seemed inept in basic flying procedure, while seeking expensive training on an advanced commercial jet simulator." 80 (emphasis added) It truly is an amazing twist of fate that both Atta and Moussaoui both had American flight instructors who spoke German and French respectively. Even the great Mossad could not have foreseen such a coincidence! The real Atta would have been able to respond to his instructor’s German small talk and the real Moussaoui would have been able to respond to his instructor’s French small talk. Atta just walked away and Moussaoui threw a fit! Neither responded because neither could. They were imposters, whose faces were probably disguised by a make up artist. Their mission was to frame the two innocent Arabs who were probably targeted by the Mossad at random. The imposter was able to create a new Atta by using Atta's stolen passport from 1999 - the same passport that floated safely to the ground with a few burnt edges on 9-11. These strange inconsistencies tend to give support to Mohammed Atta's father's claim that he spoke over the phone with his son on September 12th, the day after the attacks. 81 Could a group of professionals have abducted and killed the real Atta in the days following the 9-11 attacks? Mossad agents, posing as "art students" were arrested after conducting some type of operation in Hollywood, Florida, the same small town that Atta stayed in! 82 So what happened to the real Mohammed Atta? To quote his grief stricken father: "Ask Mossad!". So who, if not the "19 Arabs" was on those planes? That’s the million dollar question! There are a number of alternative scenarios. Could some Israelis have been fanatical enough to have volunteered for such a suicide mission? Odd as that may sound at first, it is not out of the realm of possibility. The fact is, hard-core Zionist extremists have proven themselves to be every bit as fanatical, (more so), than Arab extremists. A nation which can produce thousands of bloodthirsty Zionist extremists, Irgun war criminals, Mossad terrorists who blow up occupied buildings, assassins who kill Israeli Prime Ministers in full view of policemen, and crazed killers who have carried sickening massacres of Arab women and children; would surely be capable of recruiting a few fanatics willing to sacrifice for "the cause". This theory becomes even more plausible when we consider that only the pilots would have needed to know that the planes were on a suicide mission. Still don’t think Israel is capable of producing suicidal terrorists? Have you already forgotten the case of Dr. Baruch Goldstein?. Goldstein was a New York doctor and resettled in Israel. On February 25, 1994, Goldstein walked into a crowded Arab mosque in the occupied West Bank. With hundreds of worshippers kneeled in silent prayer, Goldstein sealed off the exit, and opened fire with a rapid-firing assault rifle, killing 29 and wounding many more. Goldstein, a father of four, was finally stopped and killed when the frenzied crowd overpowered him. With as many as 800 worshippers packed into the mosque, Goldstein surely could not have been expecting to come out alive. This was clearly a suicide attack. And what did Goldstein’s mother have to say about her son’s suicide attack? The Boston Globe revealed: "The mother of Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish settler who massacred about 40 Palestinians in a Hebron mosque a week ago, says she is proud of her son. "I always thought to myself, When would someone get up and do such a thing? And in the end, my son did it," Miriam Goldstein told the weekly Shishi newspaper." 83 It gets even more sickening than that. Baruch Goldstein has become a folk hero among many of the crazed side-locked settlers who have encroached upon the West Bank. They have turned Goldstein’s gravesite into a memorial and set up a website to honor his murderous deed! Look what these fanatics posted on the Goldstein memorial website: Over the years, the grave has become a site of pilgrimage. Numerous people from all over the world come to pray and honor his (Baruch’s) memory. 84(emphasis added) One has to wonder if some of Goldstein’s admirers were flying those planes on 9-11. There is one interesting side note here which may or may not be of any significance. One of the two Israelis who died aboard the hijacked planes was Daniel Lewin - who was aboard the first plane to crash into the Twin Towers. The Ha‘aretz News Service of Israel revealed that Lewin, was a one-time officer in the Israeli Defense Forces elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit. 85 Oddly enough, Lewin’s name is missing from CNN’s comprehensive September 11 Memorial website. Another possibility is that some other group of "patsies" was recruited for the operation. Perhaps some anarchists, or some leftover Marxists who thought they were going to bring down western capitalism. Or perhaps, the hijackers were another group of angry Arabs who weren’t even aware of who their true handlers really were or what the broader strategic aim of the mission actually was. In the dark world of covert operations, agents are often kept ignorant of who it is that orchestrating the show. Admittedly, these scenarios are speculative, but one thing that is not speculative is this: the hijackers were not the 19 men whose faces were shown on our TV screens!