“Nothing else in the world...is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo

Let’s face it! The year 2006 was another hell on earth for the Palestinians. Since 1967, they have been suffering under the heel of the Zionist Death, Mayhem & Occupation Machine. Earlier this summer, as the situation grew desperate in Gaza, where 1.4 million people are trapped, Israel’s Far Right Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, wisecracked: “Nobody dies from being uncomfortable.” He lied! Six hundred and sixty Palestinians perished from the 24/7 siege by the Israeli Occupation Army (IOF). Of that number, 141 were children. (1) Enter ex-President Jimmy Carter and his best selling book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” (2) Will this good and decent man from Georgia do for the Palestinians, what Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did for African-Americans, who were then languishing under the crime of slavery? Can Carter light the fuse that leads to the liberation of the Palestinians from their cruel oppressors?

Meanwhile, America is in deep spiritual decline. I don’t mean that in a religious sense. I do, however, mean it with respect to so many people not being in touch with their own humanity--their own souls. One of the ways this shows up is how we have historically subsidized, with little or no objections, the evildoings of the Zionist state of Israel. (1) According to the prestigious “Harvard Study,” over $140 billion of our tax dollars have ended up there since 1967. (3) Three to four billion dollars is added each year to that total. (4) Now, Jimmy Carter is saying: “Stop!” The Israelis don’t deserve our support because they have built a racist Apartheid-like enclave, symbolized by an Annexation Wall, on the backs of the indigenous people--the Palestinians. (1)

What is interesting to note in the Jimmy Carter/Zionist Israel brouhaha is how the former President, like so many others before him, is being subjected to an intense campaign of vilification by Israeli apologists in this country. (5) But surprise--the ubiquitous smear artists are falling on their collective faces! With every mean spirited insult, Carter sells another book. What his critics don’t understand is this: Carter belongs to America. He is one of us! They, the Carter bashers, are not only deeply resented, but are being seen by growing numbers as arrogant, spiteful and shameless shills for a foreign power. Israel is the same two-faced foreign power who slaughtered Americans on the USS Liberty, bulldozed to death peace activist Rachel Corrie, and directed the traitor Jonathan Pollard to steal our military secrets. (6) Carter is not only helping Americans see what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians, he is also opening up the eyes of many here, to what the “Harvard Study” clearly documents: The Israel Lobby has exercised “unmatched power” over U.S. foreign policy, which hasn’t been in “the national interest” of our country. (3) The hawkish Neocons are part, too, of the powerful Israel Lobby.

Thankfully, more Americans, daily, do know what is going on in the Israeli Occupied Territories. During 2006, I was privileged to cover events dealing with that issue and also Israel’s unjust invasion of Lebanon. (7) I also heard human rights experts denounce the Israeli conduct in those two areas of combat as “War Crimes.” (8) This includes the IOF’s blood stained attack on the village of Qana and its dropping of over one million cluster bombs on the civilian population of Lebanon. (9) I also got a chance to interview some of the demonstrators at these spirited protest actions, and to put on the public record their strong moral and legal objections to Israel’s serial wrongdoing. (10) At the same time, I had an opportunity to witness, close up, the nobility of the Palestinians. Ms. Laila El-Haddad and Mohammed Omer spoke volumes via their personal accounts of oppression by the IOF in Occupied Gaza.

Ms. El-Haddad, a Gaza resident, on June 23, 2006, at a forum on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Council for the National Interest, warned that the humanitarian outlook facing the people there was “extremely bleak.” She spoke of the barbaric home demolitions by the IOF, the lack of access to food, and the fact that over 9,000 Palestinians are presently languishing in Israeli dungeons, many without any charges pending against them. (11) Mohammed Omer, a Gaza-based journalist, gave a talk at the Palestine Center on Nov. 28, 2006. He spoke of how his late brother, Hussam, was shot to death by an Israeli sniper. Omer knew Rachel Corrie. He related how the children of the Rafah refugee camp, who had grown to love her, “couldn’t believe she was dead.” (12)

On a related topic, when Professor William Fletcher lectured at the Palestine Center, on Dec. 1, 2006, he shared how the present state of Israel could easily be compared with the Apartheid-era South African regime. He labeled Israel a “rabid state,” which was capable of a maniacal act, like “unleashing a nuclear weapon.” (13) Now, that Israel’s Olmert has admitted that Israel possesses Nukes, Professor Fletcher’s concern becomes even more relevant.

When “Esquire” magazine ran a cover story (Jan. 2007) showing an Iraqi War vet, Sgt. Bryan Anderson, a triple amputee, I couldn’t help but think of the Neocon, Richard Perle. (14). The last time I spotted him he was filling his mouth with chocolate chip cookies. He had just attended a memorial service for a fellow Iraqi War junkie, Philip Merrill Levine. (15) Perle is also the same hard core Zionist, who co-authored the hawkish “The Clean Break” document for Israel’s Likud honcho--Benjamin Netanyahu. (16)

Neocons, like Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, et al, all knee jerk supporters of Israel, deserve strong censure for pushing our country into the war with Iraq. (17) As I write, over 3,000 American troops have died in that conflict, about 60 of them were from my home state of Maryland. And, despite the horror story that is the Iraqi War, with 655,000 Iraqis also reported dead, Netanyahu, is calling for a U.S. led war with Iran. (18) I couldn’t help but reflect: The cunning Neocons urged sending our sons and daughters to die in Iraq based on a pack of rotten lies. Now, they, and their cronies, like Netanyahu, are looking for a war with Iran. Do these shameless war hucksters have any limits?

Getting back to Israel’s Olmert and his crude remark: “Nobody dies from being uncomfortable.” When you tie his callous comment to the significant loss of human life suffered in both Gaza and Lebanon this last summer, you need to be alarmed. Add this fact: His regime was charged with engaging in “collective punishment” tactics in those two campaigns. (8) To me, Olmert reflects a troubled man whose psyche has been unduly influenced by those vindictive Storm Gods of the ancient Canaanites. Like those deities, he too, acts like he is all powerful and omniscient, and without a conscience. Might, of course, excuses nothing. Olmert appears from his recent conduct incapable of reflecting on the morality of his own wrongdoing. He lacks wisdom, too. Is this why characters, like Olmert, are so ultra sensitive to any criticism? When you consider that this zealot has his finger on the trigger of a nuclear weapon, the world itself should shudder in fear. (19)

In any event, there is little chance that an authoritarian ideologue, like Olmert, will change on his own. What is important, however, is that ex-President Jimmy Carter’s courageous voice condemning the endemic evil that is a racist, Israeli-dominated Apartheid Palestine, is being heard. If enough Americans change their attitudes towards Israel, then there can be some real hope that the occupation of Palestine might, mercifully, end soon.

Notes:

1. http://www.pchrgaza.ps/
2. http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=788
3. http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/%24File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf and
http://www.atlasbooks.com/clarity/b0030.htm
4. http://www.wrmea.com/
5. “They Dare to Speak Out” by Paul Findley.
http://counterpunch.org/bricmont08122006.html
6. http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13104/index.php
7. http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=11848
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2006/08/01/p9765
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/35442
http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/135194/index.php
8. http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/1732558.php
9. http://miami.indymedia.org/news/2006/11/6740_comment.php
10. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=23FA9DE7E6528A84
11. http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13013/index.php
12. http://dailyscare.com/journalist_mohammed_omer_on_the_hell_that_is_gaza
13.
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13104/index.php
14. http://batr.net/neoconwatch/
15. http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2006/06/26/p9036
16. http://www.irmep.org/Defaults.asp
17. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ and http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13033/index.php
18. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/offtowar.html
19. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061212/D8LVAPKG1.html and see, “Answer to Job” by Carl G. Jung.

© William Hughes 2007.

William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘No’ to the War Party” (Amazon.com). He can be reached at liamhughes@comcast.net.

Don't get this in the mainstream media

Very true! You just don't get this info in the usual pro-israel media!
It seems that all we here and see is this media that is a fraid of being honestly critical against Israeli war crimes, as they will be falsely accused of being anti-semitic!
Israel, like the United States, are some of the biggest threats to World Peace there are!

Indeed,
Very true! You just don't get this info in the usual pro-israel media!
It seems that all we here and see is this media that is a fraid of being honestly critical against Israeli war crimes, as they will be falsely accused of being anti-semitic!
Israel, like the United States, are some of the biggest threats to World Peace there are!

Isn't true that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East? Maybe if more countries as democratic as Israel, peace might happen in no time
(This is the propaganda, here is the truth)

למאמר בעברית



There is no denying of the fact that the Middle East is mostly ruled by autocratic, oppressive, and undemocratic regimes. On the other hand, the majority of these repressive regimes were mostly founded and funded based on Israeli and American wishes. It should be noted that the most popular revolts in the Middle East have been ruthlessly crushed by American puppet regimes (whom the West often refer to by "Moderate regimes") in the area. The regimes in Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Hashemite Kingdom, Lebanon (before the civil war), Arab Gulf States, Morocco, Iran (prior to the Islamic revolution), Turkey, ... etc., were all funded and directed by the United States of America; the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sadly, many of the so called "moderate regimes" are ten times more accountable to Uncle Sam than to their own public. Ironically, if democracy truly shall serve Israel's national interests in the region, then maybe it should direct its powerful lobby in Washington, AIPAC, to start lobbying on behalf of the oppressed in the Middle East; after all promoting "democracy is the key" to a lasting peace in the Middle East?

It's worth noting that soon after the 1948 war, the undemocratic Arab regimes were the central factor in protecting the newly emerging "Jewish state". And any forms of organized local resistance against Israel, similar to Hizbullah's in southern Lebanon, was ruthlessly dealt with in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Actually, many of Israel's "moderate" Arab neighbors transplanted most Palestinian refugee camps inland away from the Israeli borders, to curb the so called Palestinian "infiltration" [ or return] back to their homes in Israel. The so called "Infiltration Problem", which faced Israel between 1949-1955, had become the most pressing and expensive challenge to face the newly emerging "Jewish state". In other words, it's not the presence, but the absence of democracy that greatly serves the Israeli interests in the region, and based on that the United States has systematically shored up these unpopular regimes against the wishes of the people (i.e. the Hashemite Kings in Jordan, the Saudi Kings in Arabia, Mubarak of Egypt, Saddam Hussein in Iraq prior to the Gulf War, and the Emirates in the Gulf States), and undermined the popularly elected governments (i.e. toppling Musadiq in Iran in the early 1950s, invading Lebanon in the late 1950s, shoring up the Hashemites in Jordan in the late 1950s, and undermining Nasser in Egypt).

It's rarely questioned, by many Israelis and Zionists, how the Jewish minority in Palestine became a majority within few months in 1948. Since the inception of Zionism, its leaders have been keen on creating a "Jewish state" based on a "Jewish majority" by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." Year after year, the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people became known as the "transfer solution". David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, eloquently articulated the "transfer solution" as the following:

* In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th, 1938:

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims p. 144).
* In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947:

"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28)
* And on February 8th, 1948 Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council:

"From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181)
* In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6th, 1948:

"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area ..... I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)
* Click here for more "Transfer" (Ethnic Cleansing) quotes from Zionist leaders.

It's not only that the Zionists deemed it necessary to practice ETHNIC CLEANSING to build their vision of "Jewish Democracy", they have also opted to keep many Israelis in the dark by directly censoring what they read, hear, and see in the Israeli media. Martin Van Creveld (the renowned Israeli military strategist, and historian) eloquently described Israeli controlled censorship as follows:

* "The [Israeli military] censor exercises draconian power over the content in the media, licenses newspapers, and fines and suspends newspapers if, in his view, they have violated secrecy. He does not have to explain the reasons for his decision; indeed one paragraph in the law obliges newspapers to publish free ads by military censor denying or correcting information that papers themselves published. . . . Thus one of the [Israeli military] censor's main functions is to keep Israelis ignorant of what everybody else knows." (The Sword And The Olive, p. 110)
* "By this time [referring to the period prior to the October war in 1973] Israel's system of media self-censorship had begun to backfire. .... the media, voluntarily refraining from publishing the news, helped the IDF in its own assessment [that Arabs are incapable of going to war] and put the public to sleep." (The Sword And The Olive, p. 223)
* Click here to view a Real Movie depicting Israeli censorship on newspapers, radio, and TV networks.

For the moment, let's assume that the above facts, arguments, and quotes are nonsense to the average Israeli and Zionist, and let's ask the following questions:

* Are you aware that 95% of Israel's lands are open for development for "Jewish people" only?
* Are you aware that the Israeli-Palestinian minority (who are close to a quarter of Israel's citizens) are restricted to 3% of land?

The implementation of these apartheid policies resulted in disenfranchising a quarter of the Israeli population, who mostly continue to live in segregate, gated, and over crowded ghettos that are plagued with high unemployment rate and suffers from lack of basic services. In fact, there are over forty plus unrecognized Palestinian-Israeli villages (within the "Green Line") that receives no public services whatsoever , such as roads, sanitation, electricity, schools, ...etc.

Finally, it's worth emphasizing that "Israeli democracy" is an incarnation of Apartheid South Africa's democracy. It also could be argued that Apartheid South Africa was for a very long time the only democracy in Africa, however, it was a democracy for the White race only. Similarly, Zionist democracy in Israel was and still is designed to empower Jews only based on their religion. At one point, Israel has to choose between being a "Democratic Jewish State" or a "Democratic State" to all of its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike. Eventually, such a facade to democracy will self-destruct, and until it changes, the talk about "Israeli democracy" is nothing but a propaganda that makes good sound bytes in the Western and Israeli medias.

Sometimes I don't understand the motivations behind editing, enforcement, review, follow through or even a learning curve.
But even if the wagon isn't a pretty sight, now and then they do listen to the rational input.
And they remember the guiding principles of this non commercial, alternative open publishing.
Wish I were able to see what the hell is going on.
Too far away and they don't seem to care very much. It's sad the way they get hammered too.

is the very definition of racism. It's evil when Aryans do it. It's evil when Serbs do it. It's evil when Hutus do it. It's evil when Jews do it.

Self-determination is not a right.

Any sane human society would consider narcissism this deep to be a form of insanity, and this is only _ONE_ of the ways he's off the Deep End

from the public record, dateline October 16, 2001:
"At his guilty plea on May 18th, [Robbins] Mitchell [a.k.a. Lord Lock-nut] admitted calling the office of [Al Gore's mother's brother Wit] La Fon repeatedly and leaving voice mail messages last November. Tapes of the calls were played in court documenting the threats to kill La Fon if he did not convince then Vice President Gore to concede the election for President of the United States being contested in Florida. In one call, Mitchell, identifying himself as “The King of England”, promised to personally drive to Jackson and kill La Fon himself. Mitchell’s attorney advised Judge Todd that Mitchell, through genealogical research, believes he is the lawful heir to the Crown of St. Edward and thus, is the rightful King of England."

Everyone here has a perfect right to know what your hatred of Carter and everything else of the "left" (as if!) is REALLY about, i.e. that you're a warped, vicious little man right out of this book right here:

http://www.abidingtruth.com/pfrc/books/pinkswastika/html/the_pinkswastika_4th_edition_-_final.htm

In fact, your now-burgeoning political type is the best vindication this book could ever have

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn01202007.html

The Israel Lobby Trips and Tilts

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Suppose the movers and shakers in the Israel lobby here -- Abe Foxman, Alan Dershowitz and the rest of the crew -- had simply decided to leave Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid alone. How long before the book would have been gathering dust on the remainder shelves? Suppose even that Dershowitz had rounded up his unacknowledged co-authors in all their tens of thousands and sallied forth to buy up every copy of Carter’s book and toss each one into the Charles River, would not that have been a more successful suppressor than the blitzkrieg strategy they did adopt?

Of course it would. For weeks now the lobby has hurled its legions into battle against Carter. He has been stigmatized as an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, a patron of former concentration camp killers, a Christian madman, a pawn of the Arabs who “flatly condones mass murder” of Israeli Jews. (This last was from Murdoch’s New York Post editorial, relayed to its mailing list by the Zionist Organization of America.)

Any day now I expect some janitors at the Carter Center to resign, declaring that they can no longer in all conscience mop bathrooms that might have been used by the former President, their letter of protest duly front-paged by the New York Times, just like the famous fourteen members of the Carter Center’s Board of Councilors. Actually there were, at the time of resignations, 224 people on this board, where membership is mostly a thank you for a financial donation to the center. So the headlines could be saying, “Nearly 95 per cent of Carter Center Board Members Back Former President.”

But the assault on Carter is all to no avail. With each gust of abuse, Carter’s book soars higher and higher on the bestseller lists, reaching number 4 on Amazon itself. This doesn’t prove the lobby has no power. It proves the lobby can be dumb. Adroit lobbying consists in preventing unpleasing material reaching the light of day. Lobbying thrives in furtive darkness: slipping language into a bill at the last moment, threatening to back a campaign opponent, making quiet phone calls to the Polish embassy. Pressure is now being exerted on Farrar, Straus and Giroux to abandon its impending publication of Mearsheimer and Walt’s attack on the lobby.

The Israel lobby retains its grip inside the Beltway, but it’s starting to lose its hold on the broader public debate. Why? You can’t brutalize the Palestinian people in the full light of day, decade after decade, without claims that Israel is a light among the nations getting more than a few serious dents. In the old days, Mearsheimer and Walt’s tract would have been deep-sixed by the University of Chicago and the Kennedy School long before it reached its final draft, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux wouldn’t have considered offering a six-figure advance for it. Simon & Schuster would have told President Carter that his manuscript had run into insurmountable objections from a distinguished board of internal reviewers. But once a book by a former president with weighty humanitarian credentials makes it into bookstores, it’s hard to shoot it down with volleys of wild abuse.

The trouble with the lobby and the Christian zealots who act as its echo chamber is that they believe their own propaganda about Israel’s equitable social arrangements and immaculate political and legal record in its relations with the Palestinians. Use the word apartheid and they howl with indignation. The shock is about thirty years out of date. Israeli writers have used the word apartheid to describe arrangements in the occupied territories for years. Hundreds of prominent South African Jews issued a statement six years ago making the same link.

As in so many things, conventional elite opinion lives in a bubble, believing mere assertion and ranting about anti-Semitism will carry the day. The New York Times featured a spectacularly disingenuous hatchet job by its deputy foreign editor, Ethan Bronner, and another assault by former Clinton-era Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross. The latter rolled out the ritual accusations about Arafat’s rejection of Clinton’s proposals in December 2000, which is nonsense, as Ross surely knows. Clinton himself acknowledged in 2001 what later historians have substantiated, that both sides accepted his proposals in principle, while filing reservations. (Israel’s amounted to 20 single-spaced pages.)

The Times’ attacks were matched in the Washington Post by Jeffrey Goldberg, formerly of the IDF and a notorious trafficker in fictions, such as the supposed terror ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Amazon ran his vulgar ravings under the “Editorial Reviews” heading—a space usually reserved for short blurbs from Publishers Weekly and the like.

But if the lobby is fighting rearguard and increasingly futile actions to suppress all discussion here of what Israel is doing to Palestinians, it continues to exercise very serious clout in such enclaves of timidity as the U.S. Congress. Bush was not foolish in singling out Iran for threats in his January 10 address. The Democratic reaction to Bush’s escalation against Iraq and Iran has mostly been confined to nervous talk of “symbolic votes.” This temperate posture is surely not unconnected to the fact that the lobby’s prime foreign policy task, joined by Israeli hawks like Bibi Netanyahu, has been to rally support for an assault on Iran.

What an irony! Desperate for an end to the war, the voters hand Congress to the Democrats. Barely more than two months later Bush is kidnapping Iranian diplomats from in their consulate in Irbil, Iraq -- a calculated provocation arousing scant tumult here. Bush is also deploying a larger naval force to the Persian Gulf, as Israel plants stories about its possible recourse to nuclear weapons. Some provocation, maybe a seizure by the U.S. of an Iranian tanker, is easy to imagine in February. In the Congress, there’s barely a whimper out of the Democrats amid these terrifying prospects. It may have made a mess of its war against Carter’s book, but as a ferryman across the Styx toward Armageddon the lobby is doing a competent job.

You mean *this* history buff?

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/07/1698659.php

(snip)

history buff

(snip)

Over and over they post this empty denial and lies.
Just because they can't stand the truth of Zionist aggression.
This is the work of fanatic ideology.

(1.) Self determination is not a right.

(2.) Self determination by ethnic groups, particularly at the expense of other ethnic groups, is racist by definition.

So another DOS...
So what? Typical attitude of certain factions about anti racist IMCs.
This site is more to your liking as the editorial staff is timid about dealing with
repercussions of any kind of moral stance.

Jesus Christ, getting the collectives to unify under common purpose is like herding frogs.
Arkies. Sheeesh.

There is no more such a thing than there is hot snow or dry water. The two are mutually preclusive.

By definition, Zionists are nationalists. By definition, anarchists are anti-nationalists. By definition, Zionists are racists. Anarchists are anti-racist.

There is no more such a thing than there is hot snow or dry water. The two are mutually preclusive.

Wrong. See:
http://8daysofanarchy.org/

What is Anarchist?

Many anarchists work from the assumption that an anarchist is a self-identification ("If you call yourself an anarchist, you are an anarchist").

Sounds good to me. Cogito ergo sum.

Others give it a fixed identity ("Anarchism is the movement for the self-emancipation of the working class").

Also sounds good to me.

By definition, Zionists are nationalists. By definition, anarchists are anti-nationalists. By definition, Zionists are racists. Anarchists are anti-racist.

Nah. You are the only one who thinks so. And you are wrong. You are usually wrong. You know that, doncha? At least we can expect consistency from you.

tia hun-neeee: "I've made the mental leap that if I keep engaging with him, he'll just come back for more."

mmm, yah, Sounds good hun'. What she really means is "I've made the mental leap that if I keep challenging him, he'll just keep opening other people 's eyes wider and wider. Fuck THAT!"

http://la.indymedia.org/news/hidden.php?id=74953#192282

some idiot who can't count: "One comment from nessie brings five whining retorts"

One comment from nessie about his inability to keep his site going, followed by five comments, two of which were from me.

Here's a helpful clue you can apply to other places in your presumably wretched life: two does not equal five.

@%<

Of course it does. It fits their agenda. That doesn't make it true.

>Many anarchists work from the assumption that an anarchist is a self-identification ("If you call yourself an anarchist, you are an anarchist").

Many fools believe anything they read on the internet.


>You are the only one who thinks so.

They wish.

Here are the facts:

Anyone who claims to be an anarchist can expect to be given the benefit of the doubt by real anarchists, at least until they prove otherwise by their subsequent actions. This does not make them be anarchists. It only means that we are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Should they prove by their subsequent actions that they hold beliefs antithetic to anarchism, we attempt to educate them. If it doesn't work, we ostracize them. We've been doing this for well over a century. This I know because I've been deeply involved in the movement for forty years. The majority of my friends are anarchists. I don't need the internet to tell me what anarchists do. I can see it with my own eyes.

No anarchist supports nationalism. No anarchist supports racism. It doesn't happen. What does happen, a lot, is people who are not anarchists claim to be. Some are racists. Some are nationalists. Some are cops. Most are just confused by the term because al they know about anarchists is what they read in the media. All of them are ostracized. Every once in a long while, one of them gets the crap beat of them first, usually not. Usually ostricization suffices. Like its cousin the boycott, ostricization is an extremely potent weapon. We use them a lot.

This I say as an anarchist activist of four decades standing, not as a racist/nationalist who is trying to pass himself off to the naive as something (s)he is not.

So the rest of you out there are going to have to decide. Are you going to believe the media, or are you going to find out for yourselves? It's easy enough to find out. Go to an anarchist gathering. Announce you are a Zionist. See what happens.

"An *old* development witnessed at least back in Feb 2005 when TWit came out in open support of the female Fuerer Nazigirl Elizabeth Dilling and then proceeded to defend his support of her when caught with his underwear down."

Well, TW was at the time trying to claim that Dilling wasn't antisemitic. This turned out to have been impossible, so the top of his head blew off every hour on the hour because of the corner he'd painted himself into. Now he's got a very simple way out, which is to say, "Yeah, so I enthusiastically quote antisemites. So what. if you don't like that, you're just trying to prevent me from telling the world about how The Jew is trying to destroy The Gentile."

The antisemitism isn't new, but he used to be ashamed enough of it to try to disguise it, while now he'll say it loud, he's brownshirt and he's proud.

@%<

Gehrig was not "hired". IMCista's are all volunteer. And UCIMC is among the most highly regarded of the IMC's. Its free of racism and anti-Semitism. Its locally relevant and features original reporting. And its solvent.

http://www.ucimc.org/

The entire center column is filled with, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, local reporting. The way an IMC should be.
Any pro-Israel articles? I don't see any.

"After all, "Israel" can never do any wrong and its financial aid must be protected. "

Well, ye old failure of reading comprehension- did you ever actually read ANYTHING that Gehrig has written? I have. He often is quite critical of specific Israeli policies. Maybe you should learn to read. hell, in your case, maybe you should learn to think, first.

Sure I've read there. Check the IP logs. Yesterday about 3:00. I didn't see any Israel critical threads. Or anything from its asshole editor, gehrig who spends so much time spamming *other* IMCs.

Sure I've read there. Check the IP logs. Yesterday about 4:00. I didn't see any "Palestine" critical threads. Or anything from its asshole uebermensch goosestepping editor, 'Sheepdog' who spends so much time spamming *this* IMC.

"I didn't see any Israel critical threads."


Duh. Thats because its an exemplary IMC, with an emphasis on LOCAL reporting.
There is no point in wasting bandwith on spammed crap that is available at two dozen other sites across the web. That just creates a homogenized network. No need for that. An emphasis on ORIGINAL LOCAL programing. Just beautiful. Its what all IMC's should aspire to.

Sheepahexahexadog: "Since the asshole at UC IMC needs to unload here it seems to me that 'his' site, although 'solvent' and sanitized has a missing component."

Sheepdog's idiocy.

@%<

>And UCIMC is among the most highly regarded of the IMC's.

UCIMC is highly regarded only by people who are willing to tolerate racists in their midst. Most people despise it.



>Its free of racism and anti-Semitism.

It is home to the notorious propagandist for racism, David Gehrig.


>Death to nessie

Talk's cheap.



>You've been doing it longer so you must be right?

Wrong. I've been doing it. They haven't.



>rank

It's not a matter of rank, but of status. Either one is an anarchist or not. I am. These racist impostors are not.


>Is Tia an anarchist?

No. Tia is a racist. Racism and anarchism are mutually preclusive.



>Is Nessie an aging blow-hard anti-Semite?

An ad hominem is not a rebuttal. It's a way to change the subject, which in case anyone has forgotten, is Jimmy Carter's book, not nessie or sheepdog or even IMC.


>love of Zion (land of Israel, not state of Israel) works just fine.

(1.) Zionism is not about "love" of the the land. It's about control of the land, and at any cost, including lies, theft, murder and ethnic cleansing.

(2.) There is no such thing as the "land of Israel," except in the mind of these racists. There is a geographic area known as Palestine, every dunam of which is occupied by the Zionist military. Some of it they call "Israel," some it they call the "territories. It's all Palestine. It's all occupied.


>his inability to keep his site going,


(1.) This is off topic, i.e., yet another attempt to distract you from apartheid in Palestine.

(2.) It's not "his site." It's a collective effort.

(3.) We took the site off line on purpose. One of the servers blew, so we had to cram its contents onto whatever space was available on other servers. This is a jury rig, but we had to do it until we could get another server to replace it. There wasn't room for all of it. SF-IMC is huge. To make room for it in the jury rig, we would have had to unhouse a dozen other sites. To temporarily pull SF-IMC to make room for them was a conscious, intentional political decision on our part.

SF-IMC is only one of the things we're doing here. The website is only one of the things SF-IMC does. First and foremost, we are organizers. Distributing news is only a means to an end. As organizing tools, we get a lot more mileage out of our IRC channels and our private CC lists.

That, combined with the sheer number of smaller IMCs we would have had to displace, forced us to conclude the temporarily suspending our website's operation was good politics. In our analysis, IMC is not primarily about SF-IMC, or about any single IMC cite. It's about the network. Political websites are a dime a dozen. Even political websites with our kind of politics are fairly common. But there is only one IMC network. Nothing else even remotely similar exists on the planet at this point in history. So, as we prioritize our resource allocation, the network must have priority over any individual site. Anything less is bad politics.

SF-IMC will be back online as soon as possible. We're working on it at this very moment. We're going to knock off for a while later to watch the game, and tomorrow during the day we all have prior commitments. But rest assured, the job will get done asap. At the moment, we're transferring data. Since SF-IMC is so large, it is going to take a while. The place is one of the biggest IMCs on the planet. It's huge, and the pipe is only so big. There are natural limits to how fast the project can move forward.

In the meantime, read other IMCs. Start here:

http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2007/01/55870_comment.php

Then check out this:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/01/82392.shtml


>The majority of my friends are anarchists.

Anarchists do not befriend racists. Ergo, at best, the majority of this racist's friends only claim to be anarchists. They're lying. Claiming to be an anarchist and being an anarchist are two different things. To be an anarchist, one must behave like an anarchist. This precludes promoting racist nationalism. It's like claiming to be pacifist while killing people, or claiming to be honest while stealing. It's a transparent lie.




>Yet many people who call themselves anarchists support Palestinian nationalism.

No anarchist support Palestinian nationalism. All anarchists support Palestinian resistance to Zionist colonialism, imperialism and persecution. If you can't tell the difference, your ignorance is appalling. I recommend some remedial study.



>It's nice how you keep calling me 'anti-Aryan,' though ;-)
But I'm confused by the way you're pretending that's a BAD thing??

It is a bad thing to be against *any* group of people, solely because of their ancestry. Racism is racism, no matter who it's against.



>substitute "Zionism" for "Jewish" and you are home free.

To equate Zionism and Jewishness is racist. It also flies in the face of the facts. Not all Jews are Zionists. The overwhelming majority of Zionists are not Jews, but Christians.


>He often is quite critical of specific Israeli policies.

This is like being critical of specific policies of the Third Reich, or of the Ku Klux Klan. Israel's "policies" are not the problem. Israel's existence is the problem. To not at least speak out, or better still act, against Israel's existence is to tacitly endorse the existence of a racist state, the brutal occupation of Palestine, and the ethnic cleansing of its indigenous inhabitants.


>Oh, San Franciscans! Must you fulfill every conceivable stereotype?

Off topic. Once again they are trying to divert your attention from apartheid in Palestine. There is a reason they don't want you to think about this. If you do, you cannot help but conclude that sit idly by and allow it to continue is deeply and fundamentally immoral. That's why they are trying to distract you with all this off topic stuff, ad hominems included. It's a trick. Don't fall for it.



>Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency

Their main weapons are lies, theft and murder. They also try to distract you.


>The entire center column is filled with, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, local reporting. The way an IMC should be.

To focus on local issues at the expense of global ones is very, very bad politics. Human society is so interconnected that no local is an island. What happens on the other side of the planet effects us all. If, for example, you don't think what happens in Palestine effects your own home town, I strongly suggest that you familiarize yourself with the following terms:

(1. ) Dimona

(2.) Samson Option

(3.) Fallout.

Then there's the moral aspect of the issue. All that is necessary for evil for triumph is for good people to do nothing. Zionism is racism. Racism is evil. To sit idly by and allow apartheid to continue in Palestine unopposed, is as morally reprehensible as it would have been to sit idly by and allow apartheid to continue unopposed in South Africa.




>Any pro-Israel articles? I don't see any.

Any anti-Israel articles? If not, it's a tacit endorsement of apartheid. To fail to speak out against evil, is evil. To ignore apartheid in Palestine is no different than failing to speak out against apartheid in South Africa, or Rwanda, or Nazi occupied Poland. It's immoral. All moral people speak out against apartheid. People who fail to speak out are committing a deeply and fundamentally immoral act.



>IMCista's are all volunteer.


That's not what UC-IMC says:

http://archive.ucimc.org/feature/display/137630/index.php

(snip)

IMC Now Hiring

(snip)

And one doesn't have to be an Arkey to be against this anti-human philosophy. To consider one group or race or religion superior and therefore more deserving of human treatment means one only has to have humanity.
Or a soul.
Anyone can see the lack of humanity exhibited by the Zionist ideology in their attempts at 'logic' which amounts to lies.
Sanction the gangster 'state' of "Israel" who view the native Palestinians as vermin to be confined and eradicated.

Still laughing over the 'Yuppie' retort.
Is that the very best you can do? Parrots are very intelligent for a bird.
Are you telling me that the Palestinians are in need of further sanctions restrictions and starvation?
Wow.

Nessie: Like all you do, this is hard to follow:


>And UCIMC is among the most highly regarded of the IMC's.

UCIMC is highly regarded only by people who are willing to tolerate racists in their midst. Most people despise it.

Not according to Jennifer Whitey
http://archive.ucimc.org/feature/display/87217/index.php

Urbana-Champaign: After buying a downtown post office and transforming it into a community center, organizing successfully to prevent the local police from buying tasers, and playing an instrumental role in voting out a corrupt mayor, it's exciting to imagine what the folks at this IMC might do next. Well, actually, next up they are helping launch a community radio station that should be broadcasting in June. Their website covers local and global issues, and often features people signing what seem to be their real names to their work. Overall, they are truly embedded in their community, and provide valuable resources in terms of trainings, open debate, and lots of media. http://www. ucimc.org

When was the last time any one called you exciting, Nessie?


>Its free of racism and anti-Semitism.

It is home to the notorious propagandist for racism, David Gehrig.

David Gehrig is a refreshing and articulate voice for tolerance. He’s even willing to fix your website. And he can do it, too. You know he can. You resent that, too, doncha?


>Is Tia an anarchist?

No. Tia is a racist. Racism and anarchism are mutually preclusive.

Not a racist. I would know better than you. ;- ). You have no idea who I am or what I do, yet you leap to such erroneous conclusions. Formulating opinions based on surface characteristics. How 50's of you!


>Is Nessie an aging blow-hard anti-Semite?

An ad hominem is not a rebuttal...

It was a question, not an ad hominem. You didn’t deny it.
Aging? Yes.
Blow-hard? Yes
Anti-Semite? Yes.
Now those were ad hominems!


>love of Zion (land of Israel, not state of Israel) works just fine.

(1.) Zionism is not about "love" of the land.

You are simply wrong.

(2.) There is no such thing as the "land of Israel," except in the mind of these racists. There is a geographic area known as Palestine, every dunam of which is occupied by the Zionist military.

Yet you don’t mention the portion that is occpied by the Jordanian military. That part of the geographic entity known as Palestine doesn’t seem to concern you. Why is that?

As organizing tools, we get a lot more mileage out of our IRC channels and our private CC lists.

Yep. Right. Anything you say, dear. Its not the age it’s the mileage. Keep telling your self that

Anything less is bad politics.

And you know all about bad politics, don’t you, dearest?

>The majority of my friends are anarchists.

Claiming to be an anarchist and being an anarchist are two different things.

Apparently we need to run our credentials through Nessie: Agent for Anarchist Homeland Security, before we get our ID cards. Ramsay has no problem with us. Nor do many of your other “friends”.

To be an anarchist, one must behave like an anarchist. This precludes promoting racist nationalism.

So carrying a Palestinian flag would be out of the picture? Promoting Palestinian nationalism would be out of the question? Just wondering....

>Yet many people who call themselves anarchists support Palestinian nationalism.

Oh, look. I should have read ahead.

No anarchist support Palestinian nationalism. All anarchists support Palestinian resistance to Zionist colonialism, imperialism and persecution.

And they are doing so by promoting Palestinian nationalism. That is the ultimate goal.

If you can't tell the difference, your ignorance is appalling. I recommend some remedial study.

Oh look. I should have read ahead again. So my ignorance is appalling. Explain the difference to me.

>He often is quite critical of specific Israeli policies.

This is like being critical of specific policies of the Third Reich, or of the Ku Klux Klan.

And why is this problematic? I object to the genocidal, racist tendencies of the Third Reich. They did a great deal of pioneering work with occupational safety and health. I don’t object to that.

Israel's "policies" are not the problem. Israel's existence is the problem. To not at least speak out, or better still act, against Israel's existence is to tacitly endorse the existence of a racist state, the brutal occupation of Palestine, and the ethnic cleansing of its indigenous inhabitants.

Here is where you begin to lapse into anti-Semitism. Or straight lying. Or general ignorance. Or all of these things.


>The entire center column is filled with, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, local reporting. The way an IMC should be.

To focus on local issues at the expense of global ones is very, very bad politics.

Absolutely not. Bumpersticker platitude: Think globally, act locally. It does not benefit the network to have the same article spammed over 2 dozen sites. Read Jennifers essay. Its good.


Zionism is racism.

You are old enough to remember broken records Bob. You are just like a broken record. Can you explore any topic deeply without resorting to your usual cliches?

To fail to speak out against evil, is evil.

I don’t remember any recent articles on your site re: Darfur. Why is it Israel is the only *evil* you feel its your obligation to defeat? There are much more egregious evils in the world.

This can be fun too...
Just scroll up and see! Wheeee! Want to know about Carter and his condemnation of Israel's policies of walls, checkpoints, and discriminatory racial/ethnic ( class ) violence? You certainly know where not to look.
Down here in the mud. Speaking of mud, does the 'muck-o-meter' hit the pin; arc, fuse, and then ionize?
Anyway, aside from nessie's extremely dedicated fan club of morons, psychopaths, equivocators and parrots who camp on these boards as if their funding depended on it and their unique input ( we shant mention the spam, shall we? ) I think that Carter, in his last years, wants to cleanse his soul from the evil he has chaired as the POTUS and is trying to bring to light the wretched life these people of Palestine endure under the yoke of 60 years of colonization. That's always why these threads become so twisted.
Check it out.


Thank you.

Some say its soul cleansing: others say its the 80 million dollars the Arab oil barons pumped into the Carter Center

So how does that benefit Carter?
Even if it is true. And the only beneficiary of Rockefellerabia.
By the way, we own them. Not the other way around. If we let them alone for two minutes the citizens of this client state ( as is Israel ) would over throw their leadership and we all know it.

We can see the direction being so 'helpful' to Israel has been.
I can't believe you used that as a point unless you are in total ignorance.
The Hidden History Of Zionism
by Ralph Schoenman.
http://takingaimradio.com/hhz/index.htm

This work uses primary source references.

Still? How? Why?

Just scroll up and see! Wheeee! Want to know more about why Carter and his condemnation of Israel's policies of walls, checkpoints, and supposed discriminatory racial/ethnic (class) violence are hypocritical in the extreme and ruted in antisemitism? Just scroll up and read the rebuttals to this poisonous article. You certainly know where not to look.
Anyway, aside from nessie's extremely dedicated fan club of rabid anti-Zionist morons, psychopaths, equivocators and parrots who camp on these boards as if their funding depended on it and their unique input (we shant mention the spam, shall we?) I think that Carter, in his last years, wants to solidify his soul''s inclination as a paragon of the evil he has long been and is trying to bring to stick up for the wretched souls of Palinazis who wreak death and mayhem upon the Israelis who have endured under the yoke of 60 years of Arab attempts at colonization. That's always why these threads become so twisted.
Check it out.

Thank you. Muchas gracias. Merci.

This makes up for everything.
Thank you. I feel much more at ease. Israel must be wonderful.
There are wonderful people in the occupation.
Now you can open the pens and allow the people inside the multiple check points, wire barriers, walls where food water and power are shut down ( blown up ) and the populations are starving, out to indulge in common rights.
Then everyone will feel at ease.
Problems solved.
...
Oh. Yes, disarm the nuclear arsenal you have if you're gonna bitch about Your neighbors. You think you're special or something?

BTW
Isn't having a huge clandestine nuclear weapons systems ( full spectrum delivery ) and not signing the NPT kinda hypocritical when you're BLEATING about other nations?
What're you gonna do with those nukes?
Unregistered
Latest developed technology packages ( you're 'welcome' [ not] for all the military and covert aid) and this makes me very nervous because some times Zionists bomb things to blame on others. Naughty.

"This makes up for everything. "

BS strawman. Does any good deed made by a Palestinian make up for any of the inequities committed by that Palestinian or his/her brethren? Gimme a break.


"Thank you. I feel much more at ease. Israel must be wonderful. There are wonderful people in the occupation."

Thanks for agreeing with us. There are great beautifuk people in the medicine occupation in Israel.


"Now you can open the pens and allow the people inside the multiple check points, wire barriers, walls where food water and power are shut down ( blown up ) and the populations are starving, out to indulge in common rights. "

Obviously you want to see your neo-Nazi wish for them to be able to proceed to massacre Jews and sow desdtruction at every turn. Not going happen.


"Then everyone will feel at ease. "

Only the pro-jihad keyboard warring Naziboys will.
Problems solved.


"Oh. Yes, disarm the nuclear arsenal you have if you're gonna bitch about Your neighbors. You think you're special or something?"

That's bunk. Israel's nukes have always meant to be for defensive doomsday purposes. Israel's enemies always acquire nukes with and for aggressive designs. Goosestep some more for us.

"Isn't having a huge clandestine nuclear weapons systems full spectrum delivery and not signing the NPT kinda hypocritical when you're BLEATING about other nations? "

Au contraire. You've got no moral leg to stand on by demanding Israel disarm itself of its nukes since it's *not* an NPT signatory.
Secondly, I'm awaiting *HARD* PROOF for the allegation that the Israeli nuclear munitions are equipped with full spectrum delivery capability.


"Latest developed technology packages"

Again, bub: what is your *HARD* PROOF for *this* allegation?? Be specific.


"and this makes me very nervous because some times Zionists bomb things to blame on others. Naughty. "

Yet once more: what is your *HARD* PROOF for *this* allegation?? Be specific. No Comintern Lenni Brenner propaganda drivel and the like please.

You'll be dismissed for the umpteenth time as a buffoon if you fail to provide all the hard proofs.

Has anyone here actually read this thing?

Has anyone here actually read Jimmy Carter's book?

>>"and this makes me very nervous because some times Zionists bomb things to blame on others. Naughty. "

>Yet once more: what is your *HARD* PROOF for *this* allegation?? Be specific.


See:

http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/jewsofiraq.htm

The zionists are reduced to a jabbering follow up, which in view of the fact that their inversions are absurd on the face of things, only serves as an illustration, the vacuous nature of their justification.
And like the link above
http://www.jewszionists.org/jewsofsf.htm
is M T.
Hmmmm could someone put the book on line for all to read?

>by history buff Monday, Feb. 05, 2007 at 1:08 PM

>by history buff Monday, Feb. 05, 2007 at 1:10 PM

Zionists love to sign other people's names. That's the kind of people they are, fundamentally dishonest. False flag ops are their specialty. We cannot help but wonder how many atrocities they have signed Osama bin Laden's name to, or Hamas' or the PLO's or Hizbullah's.

For more about "black propaganda," see:

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1555696_comment.php#1711536

-"Now you can open the pens and allow the people inside the multiple check points, wire barriers, walls where food water and power are shut down ( blown up ) and the populations are starving, out to indulge in common rights. "

Obviously you want to see your neo-Nazi wish for them to be able to proceed to massacre Jews and sow desdtruction at every turn. Not going happen. "-

WTF?
If one was to think you actually believed this.
Then.
You are unable to see beyond this affliction verging well into pathological paranoia...

Thank me.

As fate has it, you're BS isn't any less funny or hokey than the type Sigmund managed to produce to the detriment of a few generations of mental health clients. You probably learned this psychobable BS pap from your own psychoanalytic shrink.

But I for one see right through your crap and actually laugh at your vain attempt (unclever at that) to conceal your real sentiments of yearning for those quasi-Nazis to massacre and destroy if they are let in. Your problem is you'll never be able to refine your BS skills to the level 'nessie' your fellow uebermench practices on.

Yes, I thank you for being evil and unsmart. As long as "peaople" exhibiting your non-sofisticated version of hatred and bigotry exist, there's still hope that even some of the dullest Jews in the States will keep identifying you as a font of pernicious racist propaganda.

So do a lot of us. But that's really a topic for another thread. Laughing at them, no matter how justified, distracts us as much as their spam, gibberish and ad hominems do. That's what they want. They want us to be distracted. They don't want us to talk about, read or, worst of all, think about what Jimmy Carter is saying. That's the topic of this thread, not how lame and funny some of these guys are.

The very fact that the Zionist propaganda mill is putting so much effort, both online and off, into attempting to steer people away from the reading book, is a dead give away as to how important it is to them.

Let's focus on Jimmy Carter's book here. It is very important. If it wasn't, we would not see the Zionist damage control crew working so hard, in so many ways, in so many places, in even the most obscure corners of the internet, to steer people away from this book.

This is big. So don't let them distract you. It's a major, major story, no matter how poorly it is covered by the mainstream media. Repercussions of this book, and especially the discussion about it, have only just begun to cascade. Carter has initiated a brace interwoven event chains, several of which the Zionists correctly perceive as potentially catastrophic to their agenda.

We are engaged here in what is essentially a consciousness raising project. American taxpayers support Zionist oppression, aggression and institutionalized racism, not because they are evil, but because they are ignorant. If Americans knew the truth about Palestine, and what it means to the world, they would abandon Zionism in droves, and take their money with them.

Without the active support of the American taxpayers, Israel would have to tighten its belt many notches. An outright trade ban, even if only on military supplies, especially spare parts, would soon cripple the IDF. But even just cutting off their annual subsidy, would significantly curtail Zionist aggression.

The more American taxpayers who read this book, or better still discuss it, the sooner that will happen. This discussion is a conscious raising process. It's long overdue. Don't let the racists stifle it now.

They are in. Walls as well as barbed wires that are covered by intersecting fields of fire do that. Like anti-personel mine fields and check points operated at the whim of an armed occupation that has learned, as the above post shows, and have been affected by a pathological and paranoid psychosis. [ Or just a affection of same ]
Everybody is behind a wall. The only difference is who owns the walls the tanks, the jets, the White phosphorus and the nuclear arsenal.

There is no apartheid in Israel. There are Jews and Arabs on each side of the security barrier. Jews and Arabs own businesses together. In world reknowned Hadassah hospital, Arab doctors treat Jewish patients and Jewish doctors treat Arab patients. Miss Israel was an Arab. There are Supreme Court Justices and cabinet officials and members of the diplomatic core that are Arab.
Nope. No apartheid.

Miss Israel.
Doctors
Arabs and Zionists living in peace.
And when the mention of removing the restrictions on non- Jewish residents of Palestine we get this:

"Obviously you want to see your neo-Nazi wish for them to be able to proceed to massacre Jews and sow desdtruction at every turn.
Not going happen. "

Deranged yet widely accepted views and hatred that permeate the message boards and media are the real apartheid.
bite me,

And when Jackie Robinson made the team, did Jim Crow retire?

Or was that another year?

No, that was a bad analogy. The circumstances of Arabs in Israel aren't parellel to the American experience. Liberal Americans tend to want to play out their strangeobsession with color and race by analogy to the situation in Israel and it just doesn't fit.

They came from abroad, and displaced natives.

Same thing here.

Is Schartker trying to say that Israel was not settled by immigrants who displaced natives? Is that what he's trying to say?

I'm trying to explain that although history isn't that simple, you are.

The immigration of Arabs into pre-state Israel both before and during the British Mandate period is well known and documented.

There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for over 3,000 years. Jewish immigrants purchased land at exhoribitant prices from absentee Arab landlords.

There is a distinction between renting and owning- If you buy a home thats been rented, and want to live there, the renters are displaced. The landlords main concern is making money- if the landlord can squeeze more money out of potential purchasers than out of scarecroppers, its likely he will.

The Arab landlords sold out their landless bretheren. It was a class matter. Blame the Arab upper class.

Wealthy landlords are seldom the victim.

The Palestinian movement is an atavistic, anti-Progressive movement in that it seeks to restore the old power elites, the Effendi familes (i.e. Husseini, Nashibi, Khalidi etc), into positions of wealth, power and control.

It seeks to rid itself of colonialist oppression.

Absolutely! Most Americans don't realize the class and wealth implications of the struggle in the Middle east. These class / wealth distinctions are endemic in Palestinian/Arab society . We are seeing how they play out in the hamas/fatah struggle.
It was the wealthy Arabs who sold the land out from under their brothers- it continues to be the wealthy property owners squeezing out the poor.
The queen of Palestine, Arafats widow, lives in a $100,000 a month suite in Paris. Imagine how that money could be used in Gaza.

The topic of the thread is Jimmy Carter's book. Will it heklp end apartheid in Palestine?

Anything else is off topic. Don't let the Zionist propaganda mill distract you from what they obviously consider a *very* dangerous discussion.

A lie is not a rebuttal.

The Atlanta based Carter Center is not the topic. Jimmy Carter's book is the topic. Will it help end apartheid in Palestine?

Apart heid
Really, it's the attitude and mass psychology of the people who constructed it and also the tacit approval of the people who allow their taxes and their children/family to be turned into death in order to maintain it that permits it to exist...

This death and sorrow is insanity for the acquisition of an unarmed farming culture's land under the guise of a religious conflict.
It is simply an armed c invasion and now slow extermination by enclosure ( starvation/ dehydration ) and incidental ( and of course extra judicial ) executions and abductions.

Carter is only elaborating on what so many have known for so long.

Hope it does help.
Can't hurt.

Jimmy Carter’s book on Israel and Palestine touches a raw Zionist nerve
Ytzhak e-mail: montfu65@hotmail.com
While not substantively answering Carter's criticisms, his critics confirmed Carter's claim that the Zionist lobby tries to intimidate its critics by charging them with anti-Semitism. ..."It was not the crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us, but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn," said Lapid, describing his childhood in Croatia....It is inconceivable for the memory of Auschwitz to warrant ignoring the fact that there are Jews among us who behave today towards Palestinians just like German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved towards Jews,"
Jimmy Carter's book on Israel and Palestine touches a raw Zionist nerve
By Peter Daniels
5 February 2007



The uproar that greeted the publication two months ago of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the best-selling book by former US president Jimmy Carter, shows no sign of abating.

Carter has been vilified as an anti-Semite and denounced, in particular, for the title of his book, with its implied comparison between the Zionist occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the denial of political and human rights to the majority black population in South Africa under the racist apartheid regime. His Zionist opponents are incensed at his limited defense of Palestinian rights, as well as his charge that the Israeli regime and its supporters in the United States seek to squelch criticism of Israel.

Fourteen Atlanta-area business leaders resigned from the 200-member advisory board of the Carter Center, the non-profit organization founded by the former president after he left office 25 years ago. They accused Carter of having "turned to a world of advocacy, even malicious advocacy."

Dennis Ross, former Middle East envoy under the Clinton and the first Bush administrations, claimed the former president had improperly and without permission used maps that he had created. Harvard law professor and ardent Zionist Alan Dershowitz demanded that Carter debate him, and when Carter spoke recently at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, Dershowitz spoke immediately afterwards.

Carter has also been harshly criticized in newspaper columns and book reviews. The review of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in the New York Times, written by Times deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner, called it "a strange little book" and declared that the complaint about the word "apartheid" in the title was a legitimate one.

In the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley added his condemnation of Carter. And the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the most active public voice of the Zionist lobby in the US, published advertisements attacking Carter in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

While not substantively answering Carter's criticisms, his critics confirmed Carter's claim that the Zionist lobby tries to intimidate its critics by charging them with anti-Semitism. In this connection, the reaction from Carter's fellow Democrats, which ranged from joining in the criticism to a deafening silence, is particularly revealing.

What does Carter actually write that has provoked the charges that have been leveled against him? Not only is the former president not an anti-Semite, he writes as a longstanding supporter of the Zionist state and speaks about his friendship with such figures as Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir and Abba Eban.

He writes, for instance, that "of necessity, Israel has maintained one of the most powerful military forces in the world..." In a recent column in the Washington Post, he reiterates his support for a "two-state solution" to the crisis, and for "Israel's status as a peaceful nation living in harmony with its neighbors."

As for the hysteria over the use of the term "apartheid" in Carter's title, the former president defends the use of the word by characterizing the status quo in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as a system "...with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights."

This is absolutely accurate as far as it goes. As Carter explains in a chapter of his book entitled "The Wall as a Prison," the wall being erected by the Israeli regime inside the West Bank is imposing apartheid-like conditions on the citizens of the occupied territories.

Charges similar to and even sharper than those leveled by Carter, including the use of apartheid terminology, are regularly made inside Israel by writers and academics, and even by elements within the political establishment itself. Tommy Lapid, the head of the council of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel and a Holocaust survivor himself, used a radio broadcast on January 20 to denounce Zionist settlers' abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron in terms far more "inflammatory" than those used by Jimmy Carter.

"It was not the crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us, but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn," said Lapid, describing his childhood in Croatia.

"I was afraid to go to school, because of the little anti-Semites who used to lay in ambush on the way and beat us up. How is that different from a Palestinian child in Hebron?" Lapid was referring in part to television footage showing a settler hissing "whore" at a Palestinian neighbor and settler children throwing rocks at Arab homes.

"It is inconceivable for the memory of Auschwitz to warrant ignoring the fact that there are Jews among us who behave today towards Palestinians just like German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved towards Jews," said Lapid.

Tommy Lapid is a well-known Zionist politician. The former head of the secular center-left Shinui party, he participated in the coalition government only a few years ago under Ariel Sharon.

That this man now forthrightly compares conditions the Palestinians face under Zionist occupation with the torment of his own family at the hands of fascists in the period leading up to the Holocaust is a devastating indictment of Zionism and a sign of its desperate crisis. He apologized for the fact that "I tolerated this [settler abuse of Palestinians] silently as justice minister."

The outrage being directed at Carter can be understood only in the context of the longstanding "special relationship" between US imperialism and its Zionist ally, and the hints of strains in that relationship in the wake of the deep crises that have overtaken both the Bush administration and Israel.

Jimmy Carter is a longstanding spokesman for the interests of American capitalism. In the quarter century since he left office, he has successfully cultivated the image of elder statesman and human rights advocate. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 as the "friendly" face of US foreign policy. (See "Nobel Peace Prize goes to Jimmy Carter—the 'friendly' face of US imperialism").

Like every other US administration since that of Harry Truman, the Carter government maintained a strategic alliance with the state of Israel. Carter's years in office, however, coincided with a period, following the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when the US ruling elite had to make some tactical shifts.

The quadrupling of oil prices left the major capitalist economies reeling and exposed their immense dependence on Middle East oil imports. Under the Carter administration there was a major effort to bolster regional stability, thus lessening the threat that oil imports would become unavailable or that prices would continue to soar.

This took the form of the Camp David Accords of 1978 between Israel and Egypt. Carter pushed for a settlement that would strengthen and stabilize both the Zionist state and the bourgeois Arab regimes.

He secured Egyptian recognition of Israel. This sanctioning of the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land was legitimately viewed by the Palestinians and their supporters as a historic betrayal.

The Camp David Accords also included promises by all sides to abide by United Nations Resolution 242, with its formal recognition of the right of self-determination for the Palestinians, its call for a halt to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and its call for negotiations for the complete withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian land occupied after the 1967 war.

Carter's hopes to broker a grand bargain in the Middle East were not to be, however. As he acknowledges in his book, for the Israeli regime under Likud Party leader Menachem Begin, Camp David was to be limited to the peace treaty with Egypt, a treaty which was used precisely to free the hands of the Zionist regime to deepen its grip on the occupied territories. "...solemn promises regarding the West Bank and Palestinians would be finessed or deliberately violated," Carter writes.

While Likud spearheaded a general rightward shift within Israeli politics, the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan marked the same trend in US politics. The Zionist right found sympathy and support in Washington.

But this shift to the right was occurring within the entire US political establishment, as was demonstrated in the 1990s. It was during Clinton's years in office, the only period since Carter's single term almost 30 years ago that saw a Democratic occupant of the White House, that, as Carter reports, "there was a 90 percent growth in the number of settlers in the occupied territories." The same Dennis Ross who is now denouncing Carter was the Middle East envoy under both the first Bush and the Clinton administrations.

The Oslo Agreement of 1993 was another failed attempt to broker a deal. By 2000, Carter admits, the Clinton White House was offering the Palestinians a settlement that would have cut the West Bank into different fragments and essentially legitimized Zionist occupation of huge areas.

"There was no possibility that any Palestinian leader could accept such terms and survive," writes Carter, "but official statements from Washington and Jerusalem were successful in placing the entire onus for the failure on Yasir Arafat."

This is what set the stage for Ariel Sharon's provocation at Temple Mount in 2000, followed by the launching of the second Palestinian intifada. The administration of George W. Bush made fewer attempts than ever to hide its full support for the most extreme Israeli policies.

The adventurism and unrestrained militarism of the Bush administration, however, encouraged by its Zionist ally, has created a crisis for imperialism that makes the problems that Carter confronted 30 years ago pale in comparison. The Iranian regime has been strengthened by the removal of Saddam Hussein and the chaos in Iraq. American economic and diplomatic influence has been dealt major blows. Efforts to install and strengthen a pro-US regime in Lebanon were dealt a major setback by the failure of the Israeli invasion last summer and the political strengthening of Hezbollah.

With the regional stability under imperialist domination that is the common aim of all sections of the US ruling elite more remote than ever, Carter now comes forward as a prominent spokesman for that section of the American establishment seeking a change in course. He points to the growing hatred for the US government among hundreds of millions of people all over the world. He stresses that indefinite occupation of the West Bank will only deepen the crisis for Zionism, and he suggests that the interests of the Zionist state and those of American capitalism may overlap, but they are not identical.

Carter is not suggesting anything like a break with the Zionist regime, which still serves an important function in defending "regional stability." Even a partial shift in US policy, however, can have important negative consequences for the Israeli elite.

Israel is the largest single recipient of US military and economic aid over the past half century. This massive aid, unprecedented on a per capita basis, has been used by the Zionist state, alongside its incessant battle against the Arab "enemy," to dampen the class struggle inside Israel and build up support for an increasingly expansionist and reactionary course.

Fear of even a slight diminution in this financial and diplomatic support is driving the attacks on Carter and others who have questioned the power of the Zionist lobby in the US, like historians John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt and Tony Judt. (See "Zionists seek to silence critics of US policy toward Israel").

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/oct2002/cart-o12.shtml

From the relatively safer perch of respected elder statesman, Carter has declared that the Zionist emperor has lost most of his clothes. There is something increasingly desperate and hysterical about the reaction of the Zionist lobby to Carter's measured criticisms. Its claims to oppose anti-Semitism are entirely bogus. What it really fears is that the reverberations from the debacle facing the Bush administration in Iraq will undermine the unconditional US support for the Zionist state, triggering a deep political, economic and social crisis in Israel itself.
homepage: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/cart-f05.shtml

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That indy site might as well be dead, its lifeless

when they carpet bombed us along with Hizbullah. Ha ha. Joke's on them. Like Hizbullah, we just hunkered down and waited. Then, just like Hizbullah, we came back swinging, more alive than ever.

So has Jimmy Carter. A lot of people had written Jimmy Carter off as a political force in this country. He's a nice enough guy, to be sure, they thought, but totally devoid of influence, a man whose time, at best, had passed. That's what they thought.

Then this book hit the shelves, and the sh*t hit the fan. The Zionist propaganda mill is scrambling as hard as they can to keep you from reading it. Firstthey responded with a smear campaign. That's what they always do. It's flopped big time. So, confronted with yet another failure, they switched tactics. Now they're trying to distract you.

They'd rather have you talk and think about "nessie" and SF-IMC, than about Jimmy Carter's book. So they are treating us as if we were just as important, if not more so. These are the same guys, you may recall, who have been saying for years that nobody reads SF-IMC and "nessie" is widely ignored. Now they are acting as if they suddenly expect you to believe the exactly opposite. Suddenly, you are supposed to think that "nessie" and SF-IMC are so important that you should just forget about Jimmy Carter's book entirely and only talk and think about them. It's a trick. Don't fall for it.

The release of Jimmy Carters' book is an event of historic proportions. He's rolled a little snowball down a very long hill. It's growing and growing and growing, and all the petty, transparent distractions in the world are not going to stop the avalanche it is growing into even as we speak.

Zionism is doomed. It will die of being crushed by an avalanche of revulsion at the racism at its core. Truth hurts. Sometimes all it takes is to call it by its name.

Yes, it is apartheid. No, the world will not stand for it forever. Even the American taxpayers are waking up to the crime against humanity that the Israel commits by existing.

No moral people will consent to stand for crimes against humanity being committed in their name. The American people are not an immoral people. They are just ignorant. But they wont be ignorant for long. For ever eye that "nessie" and SF-IMC manage to open to the truth, Jimmy Carter's book is opening millions.

Roll, snowball, roll. You're the start of an avalanche whose time as finally come.

Just because this former prez has DARED to use the A word.
If one was to actually READ this book one would find out that he wants:
A two state solution with the UN taking over the enforcement of what the zionists are having to do themselves now.
This is hardly a pro Palestinian book. It's yet another kick into the ribs of the idea of justice for Palestine.
So spamming tirelessly:

-myths and facts
-What the palestinians did with their Marshall Plan?
-On Palestinian "Freedom Fighters"
-The denial of the right of self determination by Jews

:is a really pathetic cry of desperation and fear.
They really need to protect the foreign aid we send them in order to maintain this miserable situation.

G-d bless the resilient people of Palestine.
It is amazing that they have endured so much from the terror state of Israel.
We must confront U.S. and Israeli terror--and all right wing capitalist fascim where and when we see it.

G-d bless the resilient people of Palestine.
It is amazing that they have endured so much from the terror state of Israel.
We must confront U.S. and Israeli terror--and all right wing capitalist fascim where and when we see it.

Repeating a lie until people believe it, is a trick the Zionist propaganda mill learned from its mentor Goebbles:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/hidden.php?id=191110

Spam hate and fraud will be hidden.
It should be deleted to save BW.

And so you left up "Zionist propaganda mill learned from its mentor Goebbles: "

Simply hypocracy. Its patently advancing an ideological agenda at the expense of truth

Mr. Hypocracy -
Try the english spelling, hypocrisy.
And I wonder if it wasn't the other way around as in the Nazis learned from their Zionist mentors and financiers.
Who cares. They are brothers in fur anyway.
And Carter's book is still a long way from the reality of Zionist occupation as it implies a *future* apartheid, while it ignores the very real PRESENT Apartheid.

Hmmmm, screes like the last 'authored quotes'
The Palestinian Authority’s Record
by EH • Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2007 at 1:39 PM
would surly not be some way of blaming a captive population subject to a wide but lethal variety of violences imprisoned populations endure at the hands of their occupier; for things that occur in the infiltrated and tightly controlled inmate populations?
Nah, that would be *Hypocritical.*

http://badgerherald.com/oped/2007/02/21/jimmy_carter_confron.php

by Kyle Szarzynski
Wednesday, February 21, 2007

The release of President Jimmy Carter’s new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” has garnered a reaction from the American political establishment that can best be characterized as scandalized, tumultuous and loud. The book’s commitment to truth, including a biting analysis of Israeli human rights abuses, has resulted in a “full-scale furor,” according to The New York Times. The Anti-Defamation League took out full-page ads attacking President Carter and his book in numerous newspapers. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party was quick to satisfy the powerful Zionist lobby. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel.”

Predictably, insidious charges of bigotry have ensued as well. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and vociferous defender of the Jewish state, showed a lack of honesty and decency when he recently said, “I believe [Carter] is engaging in anti-Semitism.” Other Jewish leaders have echoed Foxman’s claim.

In response to this outcry from Zionist extremists, President Carter points out that “Out in the real world … the response has been overwhelmingly positive.” Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein notes that “Outside the never-never land of mainstream American Jewry and U.S. media, [the reality of Israeli apartheid] is barely disputed.” Still, the cries of bigotry, anti-Americanism and support for terrorism have been so shrill that a discussion of the actual content of President Carter’s book has been sidelined.

The truth is that “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” is written by a sincere man who shows a remarkable understanding of the conflict in the Middle East. President Carter first takes the reader down history lane, chronicling the major events in the region since the Yom Kippur War of 1973. He writes of the futile violence and religious intolerance for which both Jews and Arabs have been responsible. He also laments that the breakthroughs have been limited. The Camp David Accords of 1978 and Oslo Accords of 1993, for example, only amounted to broken Israeli promises.

Contemporary political developments have been similarly lamentable. At the Camp David peace talks of 2000, President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made a “generous” offer that turned out to be anything but generous, and was rightfully rejected by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian delegation. As many commentators have noted, it would have fragmented Palestine and created a system of Bantustans that remained subservient to Israel. There was a 90-percent increase in Israeli settlers as President Clinton desperately pursued peace. The continued increase of Jewish fundamentalists in the occupied territories signifies the Israeli government is not interested in offering the Palestinians a viable state. In the minds of many politicians, Israel is entitled to the entire Kingdom of David, including the West Bank.

As political negotiations ended in repeated failure, the Palestinians continued to face dehumanizing oppression. President Carter courageously points out what few Americans dare to: The Israeli system of subjugation in the Palestinian territories is apartheid. Through his visits with the Palestinians, President Carter has attained a heartfelt sympathy for the Palestinian people and their struggles. He details his visits with Palestinian families and recounts their Israeli-induced hardships.

He tells of Palestinian homes demolished to make way for Israeli settlements. He tells of villages that were destroyed in response to local children throwing stones at Israeli tanks. He tells of egregious human rights violations, including the inability to travel freely or assemble publicly. He tells of the imprisonment of Palestinian children, who are tried as adults by the age of 14. He tells of harsh Israeli military courts and a prison system that penetrates the consciousness of the Palestinian population. He tells of wealthy, subsidized Israeli settlements amidst malnourished Palestinians. He tells of the construction of a wall that encompasses Palestinian land and separates families. In short, he tells a human tragedy that both saddens and angers the reader.

While President Carter lays the blame where it belongs, at the blood-soaked feet of the Israelis, his solution to the conflict is disappointingly timid. His conviction is that the best hope for peace and dignity for the Palestinians is through peaceful negotiation. Such a conclusion is a blatant contradiction of President Carter’s own analysis. How can the Palestinians hope for justice through peace when offered no legal recourse or even a semblance of fairness from the most liberal Israeli administration? President Carter paints a bleak picture for the Palestinians, but then strips them of their only method of resistance, armed struggle.

Still, President Carter has chutzpah for bringing the reality of the conflict to Americans, who are used to being fed Zionist propaganda. For this achievement, he is to be commended.

* * * * *

Kyle Szarzynski (szarzynski@wisc.edu) is a sophomore majoring in Spanish and history.

At the Camp David peace talks of 2000, President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made a “generous” offer that turned out to be anything but generous, and was rightfully rejected by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian delegation. As many commentators have noted, it would have fragmented Palestine and created a system of Bantustans that remained subservient to Israel.

30 Billion dollars
Peace
Independence.
Gaza and the West bank will never be contiguous.
Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia called Arafat's refusal to accept the proposal "a crime against the palestinian people"

Was Annie at Camp david?
What is her authority?
Dennis Ross was at Camp David.
His description is quite different.

The questioning the qualifications of someone is perfectly appropriate. I don't go to my dry cleaner for medical advice. I don't go to my grocer to get my car fixed. A random blogger repeating talking points has much less authority to speak accurately than someone who participated in the event.
Did Annie participate in camp David?
What is her authority?
Heresay is inadmissable in court.

The subject here is the map, not Anbie. If that was not an ad hominem, then it's this:

http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/aa.htm

Appeal to Authority
(argumentum ad verecundiam)

Definition:

While sometimes it may be appropriate to cite an authority to support a point, often it is not. In particular, an appeal to authority is inappropriate if:
1. the person is not qualified to have an expert opinion on the subject,
2. experts in the field disagree on this issue.
3. the authority was making a joke, drunk, or otherwise not being serious
A variation of the fallacious appeal to authority is hearsay. An argument from hearsay is an argument which depends on second or third hand sources.

Examples:

1. Noted psychologist Dr. Frasier Crane recommends that you buy the EZ-Rest Hot Tub.
2. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith argues that a tight money policy s the best cure for a recession. (Although Galbraith is an expert, not all economists agree on this point.)
3. We are headed for nuclear war. Last week Ronald Reagan remarked that we begin bombing Russia in five minutes. (Of course, he said it as a joke during a microphone test.)
4. My friend heard on the news the other day that Canada will declare war on Serbia. (This is a case of hearsay; in fact, the reporter said that Canada would not declare war.)
5. The Ottawa Citizen reported that sales were up 5.9 percent this year. (This is hearsay; we are not n a position to check the Citizen's sources.)

Proof:

Show that either (i) the person cited is not an authority in the field, or that (ii) there is general disagreement among the experts in the field on this point.

References:

Cedarblom and Paulsen: 155, Copi and Cohen: 95, Davis: 69

Appeal to Authority
(argumentum ad verecundiam)

Definition:

While sometimes it may be appropriate to cite an authority to support a point, often it is not. In particular, an appeal to authority is inappropriate if:
1. the person is not qualified to have an expert opinion on the subject,

That is what we are trying to determine. Dennis Ross was at Camp David and has a very different version of events, and has posted a very different map.
Annie's qualifications are therefore vital to this arguement.

2. experts in the field disagree on this issue.

Can you point out soemone else who attended Camp David who has a different version of this map?


3. the authority was making a joke, drunk, or otherwise not being serious

I somehow doubt Dennis Ross would publish a 500 page book as a joke.


A variation of the fallacious appeal to authority is hearsay. An argument from hearsay is an argument which depends on second or third hand sources.

What evidence can you provide that Annie is providing anything other than heresay?

They are trying to distract you again. The issue is not what what was said at Camp David, or anywhere else, but what is actually happening on the ground.

What is actually happening on the ground is the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Like all ethnic cleansing, it is an act of pure evil. It must be stopped by any means necessary.

Death to the Zionist enterprise! Death to all colonialism.

All that matters is the facts on the ground. On the ground, all Palestine is under control of a racist army. All non Jews are second class citizens, who are being pushed off their land, "dunam by dunam." Zionists lie through their teeth about this, just like their mentors, the Nazis, lied about how they had "liberated" the Sudatenland. Don't believe a word of it. Believe only the facts on the ground.

He's right. They are. Like the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, they resist ethnic cleansing by a racist invader. Of course the suffer in the process. But victory will be theirs because, unlike the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, they have not been abandoned by the world.

and set up their colony, the set themselves up for the fate of all colonialists. They will be driven out by any means necessary. It's only a matter of time. Zionism is doomed. All colonialism is doomed. Death to colonialism.

On the ground, all Palestine is under control of a racist army.
Certainly Jordan is controlled by a racist army.

All non Jews are second class citizens
The acting president of Israel right now is an Arab Druze.
Second class? Apartheid? Only to people who really don't understand the meaning of the word.

.Believe only the facts on the ground.
And here they are:
The Israeli people yearn for peace, and for an end to war and bloodshed. They have no wish to cause suffering to the Palestinian or Lebanese people, but hope for the time when Israelis can lead normal and secure lives.
The Jewish people have endured thousands of years of exile, persecution and displacement. They long for their insecurity and suffering to end.

Israel has never known genuine peace since it was founded in 1948. Over 24,000 Israelis have died as a result of wars and terror since then.

Every day in Israel , the debate about how to make peace continues, passionately and freely.
Israel has been forced time and again to use its armed forces to quell terrorism. It is the terrorists who oppose peace, not Israel.

Don't believe these people. They lie through their teeth.

>Certainly Jordan is controlled by a racist army.

If “they do it, too” were a valid excuse, Hitler would be off the hook for killing those six million Jews, because Stalin killed six million Ukrainians.


>The acting president of Israel right now is an Arab Druze.

It's tokenism. To equate it with equality is like claiming that when Jackie Robinson made the team, Jim Crow retired.


>The Israeli people yearn for peace, and for an end to war and bloodshed.

They lie. If they really wanted peace, they would renounce supremicism and live with the other people of Palestine as equals.



>The Jewish people have endured thousands of years of exile, persecution and displacement.

They lie. Not a single Jewish person has been alive that long. Most Jews today live well, especially in Palestine, where they have the best land, the most water and all the political power.


>They long for their insecurity and suffering to end.

Then they should get out of Palestine. Zionists have created, not a haven, but a death trap for Jews. They should come to America. We like Jews here. They're a well respected and much appreciated part of the team, unlike In Palestine, where they are rightly know as imperialist invaders.


>Israel has never known genuine peace since it was founded in 1948.

Nor should it. Its existanc is an act of pure evil, just like the existence of its predecessor and role model, the Third Reich.


>Over 24,000 Israelis have died as a result of wars and terror since then.

Apparently not enough.

They want you to think about the words of their critics, not the crimes of their army. Don't let them distract you. It's not about the conversation, it's about the facts on the ground. Conversation is pointless. The issue is clear. There is nothing to talk about. Ethnic supremicism is evil. When they give it up, then we can talk. In the meantime, talk is worse than useless. It prolongs the agony. They talk only to stall for time. We must not get sucked into their game. The longer they can keep the world talking, the longer their victims suffer.

As Fanon so succinctly put it, "It is time for the talking to end and the acting to begin."

By Eitan Bronstein, 2004

In March 2004 a memorial event was held near the 'Cinema City' ( Hertzeliya) for the Palestinian village of Ijlil which had existed at the site until 1948. Its inhabitants fled upon hearing of massacres committed against Palestinians by Zionist forces in the area. A detailed report about the village, its uprooting and the fate of its refugees, was published in the local paper 'Sharon Times' on the occasion of the memorial. One week later the same paper published a letter to the editor written by a reader who was outraged at the paper for "providing a stage (...) to some Arabs who claim to have once lived on the site of the recently constructed, magnificent Cinema City." An educator working in Natanya was surprised to hear from high school students that, "before the Jews there were the British in the country." These are two rather incidental examples for the denial of the Palestinian Nakba by Jews in Israel. While it would certainly be possible to find even stronger examples, there appears to be no need for proof of the argument that the Jewish public in Israel denies the occurrence of the Nakba. The Nakba denial is found in the geography and the history taught in schools, on the maps of the country and in the signs marking places on its surface. All of them ignore almost completely the event which made possible the establishment of the Jewish State as a state with a Jewish majority and a Palestinian minority, after the majority of the indigenous people of the country were evicted, their properties destroyed and/or confiscated for the benefit of the new state.

How can we understand this denial of the Nakba?

Can it be explained in psychological terms as the denial of an event that cannot be comfortably accepted?
Could we also say that recognition of the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians would 'remove' Jews in Israel from the status of the ultimate victim which justifies almost each evil action?
Or maybe the denial is a result of plain ignorance?

There may be various correct explanations for this phenomenon. This article will try to shed light on one aspect of the discourse about the Nakba in Israel (before and after its establishment). It will show that the Nakba represents for the Zionist subject an event that cannot possible have occurred and - at the same time - had to occur. From early on, Zionism ignored the existence of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. It is, therefore, not possible that some 800,000 persons were ethnically cleansed from the country and that more than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed. On the other hand, the expulsion of the Palestinian majority from their country was inevitable for Zionism that aimed to establish a Jewish State, i.e. a national home for the Jewish people in the world on a territory ruled by a Jewish majority on the basis of law.

The Nakba - an event that did not occur!

Zionist identity was built from the beginning on a two-fold negation: it negates time and space of the Jews outside Zion, a 'negation of exile' which extends beyond the realm of religion, and it negates time and space of those indigenous to the territory of Zion. The latter is best defined by the well-known statement of Zionist leader Israel Zangvil about, "a people without land returning to a land without people." Attitudes of the leaders and architects of Zionism towards the indigenous inhabitants of 'Zion' were situated between their perception as (temporary) guards or holders of the land on one end, and their absolute non-existence as a relevant factor on the other extreme. In this aspect, Zionism resembles other colonialist projects. Edward Said writes in his book 'Orientalism,' that for the Orientalist there is "no trace of Arab individuals with personal histories that can be told (...) The Arab does not create existential depth, not even in semantics" (...) The oriental person is oriental first, and human second." According to the approach of Zionism, a typical orientalist movement, indigenous Arabs of the country exist and live in it, but they are of no importance in the sense of deserving a relationship similar to that shown to 'European humans.' They certainly do not constitute a people or a collective able or interested in realizing itself as such, or similar to the Jewish national collective.

If Palestinians do not 'really' exist, as opposed to the 'reality' of Zionist existence, then also their expulsion cannot occur. It is not possible to expel somebody who is not present. According to Zionism, the violent events around 1948 did in fact occur, but only in form of an unavoidable response to the disturbance caused by the 'locals,' who did not accept the establishment of the new entity, the Jewish State. Therefore, what is important to understand, teach and tell about this period is the story of 'liberation' and 'independence' of the Jewish people in its homeland. According to this approach there was certainly no Nakba or tragedy for any other, because the other had never really existed in the land. Hundreds of villages in the costal areas, in the south and in the center were not expelled; rather 'territorial continuity' was created according to the Haganah's Plan Dalet. The space is thus 'naturally' Jewish. It must only be realized and transferred to Zionist control. Jewish territorial continuity and Jewish demographic homogeneity in Palestine represent the core of the Zionist project. Therefore, the Zionist subject cannot understand or see the catastrophe inherent in this project, especially since what is involved is the historical realization of an idea that derives its relevance from the Bible and a modern nationalism turned into a religion in many aspects. The Zionist subject cannot see the Nakba or seriously debate its circumstances. It must strip off its inner essence, in order to start to see it as an event that has shaped the space in which Zionism realized itself.

Ever since 1948 the Nakba is dismissed, and must be dismissed, from the consciousness of the Zionist subject, because its existence challenges the basis on which it was built - a people without land for a land without people. Recognition of the Palestinian Nakba signifies the destruction of the ground underneath the feet of this subject which understands itself as autonomous, or as a closed unit [MONADA]. Therefore, any such recognition, or even the attempt to look at this tragedy as something that happened to somebody else here, is outrageous and almost incomprehensible. It is possible to recognize that some massacres happened here and there, as a result of local battles and fighting; it is possible to recognize that all Arab armies tried to destroy us, the subject that wished to form itself. It is impossible, however, to look at the Nakba as a catastrophe committed by this subject in order to form itself, or as a necessary process for the Zionist subject.

The Nakba - an event that had to occur

On the other hand, and paradoxically, the Nakba - the violent expulsion of the inhabitants of the country and the transformation those remaining into refugees in their homeland, or into incomplete citizens - is a necessary event, because it brought about the realization of the ethnically pure, closed and autonomous Zionist subject which builds itself in the framework of a state aimed exclusively for him/her. Without the Nakba, the Zionist subject might have become contaminated intellectually by foreign ideas and practices, such as bi-nationalism, or even physically from living in a space over which s/he does not exert exclusive and absolute control. Benny Morris, for example, describes eloquently how the idea of transfer was found strongly in the heads and writings of Zionist leaders back in the early decades of the 20th century, based on the profound understanding that the establishment and existence of the Jewish state will require the eviction of the native inhabitants of Eretz Isra'el.

Morris then proceeds to show that also in the process of the Nakba Zionist leaders decided immediately, and in his opinion rightly so, not to permit the return of the refugees so as not to infringe upon the possibility of the establishment of a Jewish state. The decision then, by the Israeli government, to prevent the return of the Palestinian refugees, clearly indicates that its members were aware of their capability to bring about ethnic cleansing and also justified this indirectly. Some Arab villages had maintained good neighborly relations with the Jews until 1948 and some intervened for leave of the Arabs to stay in the country, however even this did not help them to remain in their homes. Zionism was not concerned with this village or that, depending on its attitude or behavior towards the new state. Arabs stayed in the country as a result of mercy, and, according to Morris, this was a mistake. The Zionist project had to evict the inhabitants of the country in order to realize itself.

Yosef Weitz, one of the heads of the Jewish National Fund at the time, provides evidence which is surprising in its honesty. He tells of the destruction of the village of Zarnouka after its inhabitants had been expelled, despite of numerous calls by Jews to abstain from their expulsion. He describes how he stood in the village watching the bulldozers destroy the buildings which until recently had housed their inhabitants, feeling nothing. The destruction of Palestinian lives does not cause any doubts or emotional disturbance. He is even surprised about the fact that he feels nothing. As if this destruction was expected and premeditated.

The Nakba continues as a non-event and causes anxiety when it appears

If the basic argument outlined above is correct, it can help explain two processes related to the Nakba, one situated in the reality of the violent conflict, the other in the consciousness of Israeli Jews who become exposed to the Nakba..

The Nakba as an event that did not occur in the past continues to not occur also today. Extra-judicial assassination of Palestinian leaders, confiscation of land, barring of Palestinian farmers from working their land by means of the wall under construction and the denial of their basic human rights are understood by the Zionist subject as means of the war against terrorism and as defensive acts necessary in order to fight the intolerable and illegitimate terror of the Palestinian people, who, according a recent statement by an Israeli leader, are seen as a genetically abnormal species. If the Nakba never happened, it is impossible that millions of Palestinians today are refugees who demand restitution of their rights. It is also impossible that the Palestinians demand control of at least one fifth of Palestine, because they also had nothing before. In the eyes of the Zionist subject, everything that is happening today is completely disconnected from the historical context of the Nakba. Reference to the past of 1948 is made only in line with the Zionist narrative which holds that, 'just like they did not accept us here in the past (e.g. according to the UN Partition Plan), they continue to try to throw us into the sea also today.'

The above also helps explain the indifference, in Israel, towards the question of Palestinian return. On no other issue related to the conflict is there a similar and broad consensus like the consensus against Palestinian return. As a matter of fact, there is not even a need to oppose return, because the very discussion of this topic is perceived as an existential threat. It is therefore excluded from the agenda of public debate without meaningful reference. All Zionist Jewish political parties share this approach, which meets the logic of the argument that the Nakba never happened and results in a situation where the rights of millions of people remain denied until this day. If the Nakba was perceived by the Zionist subject as an event that really took place, there could be some Israelis, at least among the Zionist left, who would realize that some responsibility must be taken by the Israeli side for what happened in 1948. However, if there was no Nakba, there is also nothing to take responsibility for.

Another interesting process related to the denial of the Nakba is what happens to Jewish Israelis who become exposed to it for the first time, whether through activities organized by Zochrot or otherwise. The Jewish Israeli individual experiences the encounter with the Palestinian Nakba as a kind of surprising slap in the face. Suddenly, and without prior warning or preparation (a result of years of denial), s/he is confronted with a tragedy that happened to the Palestinian neighbor, while s/he feels part of the side that had caused it. This creates intolerable feelings of guilt and helplessness. Guilt may be relatively easy to cope with, because it can be recognized and forgiveness can be requested. If we are ready to really listen to the voice of the Nakba, the major problem, however, is the challenge of all we have grown up with. The Zionist subject stands on somewhat shaky ground. It established itself by means of a violent process that is denied as an event that did not happen. When the ghostly spirit of this process is risen (by Zochrot, for example), it triggers astonishment and anger. If, however, we rise above these emotions towards a more objective perspective of this threatening past, we may be able to find the key to conciliation almost sixty years after the Nakba.

Related Links

• Zionist FAQ: Isn't it true that Palestine was empty and inhabited by nomadic people?
• Zionist FAQ: Isn't it true that Palestinians never had either a state, nor any distinct culture or language of their own?
• Zionist Quotes: 'Transfer' (Ethnic Cleaning)
• The Camera, The Picture & The Scene By Mahmoud Darwish

From LA Times, Feb. 26, 2007:

Jimmy Carter says his recent book is drawing knee-jerk accusations of anti-Israel bias.

By Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," published last month. He is scheduled to sign books Monday at Vroman's in Pasadena. December 8, 2006

I signed a contract with Simon & Schuster two years ago to write a book about the Middle East, based on my personal observations as the Carter Center monitored three elections in Palestine and on my consultations with Israeli political leaders and peace activists.

We covered every Palestinian community in 1996, 2005 and 2006, when Yasser Arafat and later Mahmoud Abbas were elected president and members of parliament were chosen. The elections were almost flawless, and turnout was very high — except in East Jerusalem, where, under severe Israeli restraints, only about 2% of registered voters managed to cast ballots.

The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations — but not in the United States. For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries. These options are consistent with key U.N. resolutions supported by the U.S. and Israel, official American policy since 1967, agreements consummated by Israeli leaders and their governments in 1978 and 1993 (for which they earned Nobel Peace Prizes), the Arab League's offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status.

Although I have spent only a week or so on a book tour so far, it is already possible to judge public and media reaction. Sales are brisk, and I have had interesting interviews on TV, including "Larry King Live," "Hardball," "Meet the Press," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," the "Charlie Rose" show, C-SPAN and others. But I have seen few news stories in major newspapers about what I have written.

Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. Two members of Congress have been publicly critical. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for instance, issued a statement (before the book was published) saying that "he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel." Some reviews posted on Amazon.com call me "anti-Semitic," and others accuse the book of "lies" and "distortions." A former Carter Center fellow has taken issue with it, and Alan Dershowitz called the book's title "indecent."

Out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've signed books in five stores, with more than 1,000 buyers at each site. I've had one negative remark — that I should be tried for treason — and one caller on C-SPAN said that I was an anti-Semite. My most troubling experience has been the rejection of my offers to speak, for free, about the book on university campuses with high Jewish enrollment and to answer questions from students and professors. I have been most encouraged by prominent Jewish citizens and members of Congress who have thanked me privately for presenting the facts and some new ideas.

The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens. Obviously, I condemn any acts of terrorism or violence against innocent civilians, and I present information about the terrible casualties on both sides.

The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors. Another hope is that Jews and other Americans who share this same goal might be motivated to express their views, even publicly, and perhaps in concert. I would be glad to help with that effort.

Palestinians chose to engage in resistance to the racist occupation of their homeland by colonialist forces. Like the Irish, the Kenyans, the Angolans, and the Vietnamese before them, they will win in the end The sooner it happens, the better. The occupation of Palestine by racist colonials is a blot on humanity's honor.

How Israel Enforces "Demographic Separation"

By JONATHAN COOK

Nazareth

When I published my book Blood and Religion last year, I sought not only to explain what lay behind Israeli policies since the failed Camp David negotiations nearly seven years ago, including the disengagement from Gaza and the building of a wall across the West Bank, but I also offered a few suggestions about where Israel might head next.

Making predictions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be considered a particularly dangerous form of hubris, but I could hardly have guessed how soon my fears would be realized.

One of the main forecasts of the book was that Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line -- those who currently enjoy Israeli citizenship and those who live as oppressed subjects of Israel’s occupation -- would soon find common cause as Israel tries to seal itself off from what it calls the Palestinian “demographic threat”: that is, the moment when Palestinians outnumber Jews in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

I suggested that Israel’s greatest fear was ruling over a majority of Palestinians and being compared to apartheid South Africa, a fate that has possibly befallen it faster than I expected with the recent publication of Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. To avoid such a comparison, I argued, Israel was creating a “Jewish fortress”, separating -- at least demographically -- from Palestinians in the occupied territories by sealing off Gaza through a disengagement of its settler population and by building a 750km wall to annex large areas of the West Bank.

It was also closing off the last remaining avenue of a Right of Return for Palestinians by changing the law to make it all but impossible for Palestinians living in Israel to marry Palestinians in the occupied territories and thereby gain them citizenship.

The corollary of this Jewish fortress, I suggested, would be a sham Palestinian state, a series of disconnected ghettos that would prevent Palestinians from organizing effective resistance, non-violent or otherwise, but which would give the Israeli army an excuse to attack or invade whenever they chose, claiming that they were facing an “enemy state” in a conventional war.

Another benefit for Israel in imposing this arrangement would be that it could say all Palestinians who identified themselves as such -- whether in the occupied territories or inside Israel -- must now exercise their sovereign rights in the Palestinian state and renounce any claim on the Jewish state. The apartheid threat would be nullified.

I sketched out possible routes by which Israel could achieve this end:
* by redrawing the borders, using the wall, so that an area densely populated with Palestinian citizens of Israel known as the Little Triangle, which hugs the northern West Bank, would be sealed into the new pseudo-state;
* by continuing the process of corralling the Negev’s Bedouin farmers into urban reservations and then treating them as guest workers;
* by forcing Palestinian citizens living in the Galilee to pledge an oath of loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” or have their citizenship revoked;
* and by stripping Arab Knesset members of their right to stand for election.

When I made these forecasts, I suspected that many observers, even in the Palestinian solidarity movement, would find my ideas improbable. I could not have realized how fast events would overtake prediction.

The first sign came in October with the addition to the cabinet of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a party that espouses the ethnic cleansing not only of Palestinians in the occupied territories (an unremarkable platform for an Israeli party) but of Palestinian citizens too, through land swaps that would exchange their areas for the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Lieberman is not just any cabinet minister; he has been appointed deputy prime minister with responsibility for the “strategic threats” that face Israel. In that role, he will be able to determine what issues are to be considered threats and thereby shape the public agenda for next few years. The “problem” of Israel’s Palestinian citizens is certain to be high on his list.

Lieberman has been widely presented as a political maverick, akin to the notorious racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was outlawed in the late 1980s. That is a gross misunderstanding: Lieberman is at the very heart of the country’s rightwing establishment and will almost certainly be a candidate for prime minister in future elections, as Israelis drift ever further to the right.

Unlike Kahane, Lieberman has cleverly remained within the Israeli political mainstream while pushing its agenda to the very limits of what it is currently possible to say. Kadima and Labor urgently want unilateral separation from the Palestinians but are shy to spell out, both to their own domestic constituency and the international community, what separation will entail.

Lieberman has no such qualms. He is unequivocal: if Israel is separating from the Palestinians in parts of the occupied territories, why not also separate from the 1.2 million Palestinians who through oversight rather than design ended up as citizens of a Jewish state in 1948? If Israel is to be a Jewish fortress, then, as he points out, it is illogical to leave Palestinians within the fortifications.

These arguments express the common mood among the Israeli public, one that has been cultivated since the eruption of the intifada in 2000 by endless talk among Israel’s political and military elites about “demographic separation”. Regular opinion polls show that about two-thirds of Israelis support transfer, either voluntary or forced, of Palestinian citizens from the state.

Recent polls also reveal how fashionable racism has become in Israel. A survey conducted last year showed that 68 per cent of Israeli Jews do not want to live next to a Palestinian citizen (and rarely have to, as segregation is largely enforced by the authorities), and 46 per cent would not want an Arab to visit their home.

A poll of students that was published last week suggests that racism is even stronger among young Jews. Three-quarters believed Palestinian citizens are uneducated, uncivilized and unclean, and a third are frightened of them. Richard Kupermintz of Haifa University, who conducted the survey more than two years ago, believes the responses would be even more extreme today.

Lieberman is simply riding the wave of such racism and pointing out the inevitable path separation must follow if it is to satisfy these kinds of prejudices. He may speak his mind more than his cabinet colleagues, but they too share his vision of the future. That is why only one minister, the dovish and principled Ophir Pines Paz of Labor, resigned over Ehud Olmert’s inclusion of Lieberman in the cabinet.

Contrast that response with the uproar caused by the Labor leader Amir Peretz’s appointment of the first Arab cabinet minister in Israel’s history. (A member of the small Druze community, which serves in the Israeli army, Salah Tarif, was briefly a minister without portfolio in Sharon’s first government.)

Raleb Majadele, a Muslim, is a senior member of the Labor party and a Zionist (what might be termed, in different circumstances, a self-hating Arab or an Uncle Tom), and yet his apppointment has broken an Israeli taboo: Arabs are not supposed to get too close to the centers of power.

Peretz’s decision was entirely cynical. He is under threat on all fronts -- from his coalition partners in Kadima and in Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu, and from within his own party -- and desperately needs the backing of Labor’s Arab party members. Majadele is the key, and that is why Peretz gave him a cabinet post, even if a marginal one: Minister of Science, Culture and Sport.

But the right is deeply unhappy at Majadele’s inclusion in the cabinet. Lieberman called Peretz unfit to be defense minister for making the appointment and demanded that Majadele pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Lieberman’s party colleagues referred to the appointment as a “lethal blow to Zionism”.

A few Labor and Meretz MKs denounced these comments as racist. But more telling was the silence of Olmert and his Kadima party, as well as Binyamin Netanyhu’s Likud, at Lieberman’s outburst. The centre and right understand that Lieberman’s views about Majadele, and Palestinian citizens more generally, mirror those of most Israeli Jews and that it would be foolhardy to criticise him for expressing them -- let alone sack him.

In this game of “who is the truer Zionist”, Lieberman can only grow stronger against his former colleagues in Kadima and Likud. Because he is free to speak his and their minds, while they must keep quiet for appearance’s sake, he, not they, will win ever greater respect from the Israeli public.

Meanwhile, all the evidence suggests that Olmert and the current government will implement the policies being promoted by Lieberman, even if they are too timid to openly admit that is what they are doing.

Some of those policies are of the by-now familiar variety, such as the destruction of 21 Bedouin homes, half the village of Twayil, in the northern Negev last week. It was the second time in a month that the village had been razed by the Israeli security forces.

These kind of official attacks against the indigenous Bedouin -- who have been classified by the government as “squatters” on state lands -- are a regular occurrence, an attempt to force 70,000 Bedouin to leave their ancestral homes and relocate to deprived townships.

A more revealing development came this month, however, when it was reported in the Israeli media that the government is for the first time backing “loyalty” legislation that has been introduced privately by a Likud MK. Gilad Erdan’s bill would revoke the citizenship of Israelis who take part in “an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the state”, the latest in a string of proposals by Jewish MKs conditioning citizenship on loyalty to the Israeli state, defined in all these schemes very narrowly as a “Jewish and democratic” state.

Arab MKs, who reject an ethnic definition of Israel and demand instead that the country be reformed into a “state of all its citizens”, or a liberal democracy, are typically denounced as traitors.

Lieberman himself suggested just such a loyalty scheme for Palestinian citizens last month during a trip to Washington. He told American Jewish leaders: “He who is not ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state cannot be a citizen in the country.”

Erdan’s bill specifies acts of disloyalty that include visiting an “enemy state” -- which, in practice, means just about any Arab state. Most observers believe that, after Erdan’s bill has been redrafted by the Justice Ministry, it will be used primarily against the Arab MKs, who are looking increasingly beleaguered. Most have been repeatedly investigated by the Attorney-General for any comment in support of the Palestinians in the occupied territories or for visiting neighbouring Arab states. One, Azmi Bishara, has been put on trial twice for these offences.

Meanwhile, Jewish MKs have been allowed to make the most outrageous racist statements against Palestinian citizens, mostly unchallenged.

Former cabinet minister Effi Eitam, for example, said back in September: “The vast majority of West Bank Arabs must be deported ... We will have to make an additional decision, banning Israeli Arabs from the political system … We have cultivated a fifth column, a group of traitors of the first degree.” He was “warned” by the Attorney-General over his comments (though he has expressed similar views several times before), but remained unrepentant, calling the warning an attempt to “silence” him.

The leader of the opposition and former prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel according to polls, gave voice to equally racist sentiments this month when he stated that child allowance cuts he imposed as finance minister in 2002 had had a “positive” demographic effect by reducing the birth rate of Palestinian citizens.

Arab MKs, of course, do not enjoy such indulgence when they speak out, much more legitimately, in supporting their kin, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who are suffering under Israel’s illegal occupation. Arab MK Ahmed Tibi, for example, was roundly condemned last week by the Jewish parties, including the most leftwing, Meretz, when he called on Fatah to “continue the struggle” to establish a Palestinian state.

However, the campaign of intimidation by the government and Jewish members of the Knesset has failed to silence the Arab MKs or stop them visiting neighboring states, which is why the pressure is being ramped up. If Erdan’s bill becomes law -- which seems possible with government backing -- then the Arab MKs and the minority they represent will either be cut off from the rest of the Arab world once again (as they were for the first two decades of Israel’s existence, when a military government was imposed on them) or threatened with the revocation of their citizenship for disloyalty (a move, it should be noted, that is illegal under international law).

It may not be too fanciful to see the current legislation eventually being extended to cover other “breaches of loyalty”, such as demanding democratic reforms of Israel or denying that a Jewish state is democratic. Technically, this is already the position as Israel’s election law makes it illegal for political parties, including Arab ones, to promote a platform that denies Israel’s existence as a “Jewish and democratic” state.

Soon Arab MKs and their constituents may also be liable to having their citizenship revoked for campaigning, as many currently do, for a state of all its citizens. That certainly is the view of the eminent Israeli historian Tom Segev, who argued in the wake of the government’s adoption of the bill: “In practice, the proposed law is liable to turn all Arabs into conditional citizens, after they have already become, in many respects, second-class citizens. Any attempt to formulate an alternative to the Zionist reality is liable to be interpreted as a ‘breach of faith’ and a pretext for stripping them of their citizenship.”

But it is unlikely to end there. I hesitate to make another prediction but, given the rapidity with which the others have been realized, it may be time to hazard yet another guess about where Israel is going next.

The other day I was at a checkpoint near Nablus, one of several that are being converted by Israel into what look suspiciously like international border crossings, even though they fall deep inside Palestinian territory.

I had heard that Palestinian citizens of Israel were being allowed to pass these checkpoints unhindered to enter cities like Nablus to see relatives. (These familial connections are a legacy of the 1948 war, when separated Palestinian refugees ended up on different sides of the Green Line, and also of marriages that were possible after 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, making social and business contacts possible again.) But, when Palestinian citizens try to leave these cities via the checkpoints, they are invariably detained and issued letters by the Israeli authorities warning them that they will be tried if caught again visiting “enemy” areas.

In April last year, at a cabinet meeting at which the Israeli government agreed to expel Hamas MPs from Jerusalem to the West Bank, ministers discussed changing the classification of the Palestinian Authority from a “hostile entity” to the harsher category of an “enemy entity”. The move was rejected for the time being because, as one official told the Israeli media: “There are international legal implications in such a declaration, including closing off the border crossings, that we don't want to do yet.”

Is it too much to suspect that before long, after Israel has completed the West Bank wall and its “border” terminals, the Jewish state will classify visits by Palestinian citizens to relatives as “visiting an enemy state”? And will such visits be grounds for revoking citizenship, as they could be under Erdan’s bill if Palestinian citizens visit relatives in Syria or Lebanon?

Lieberman doubtless knows the answer already.

* * * * *

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist living in Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Jimmy Carter's use of the term "apartheid" to describe what is developing in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel these last 40 years is both accurate and useful. Accurate because apartheid is emerging in Israel/Palestine. What is apartheid? It is the forced separation of populations (whether on racial lines as in South Africa or on national/religious lines as imposed by Israel)in which one people establishes a regime of permanent and structured domination over another. This is exactly what Israel is doing, from annexing its huge settlement blocs to imprisoning the Palestinians behind 26' concrete walls and electrified fences. I don't even see what the "controversy" is about. Just go to the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and OPEN YOUR EYES.

Or turn to the pages of the Congressional Record. The "convergence plan" which Olmert presented (tellingly in Washington, not in Jerusalem) is precisely a plan of apartheid. It calls for, in his words,

"the determination of permanent borders of the State of Israel, to ensure the Jewish majority in the country….Israel will maintain control over the security zones, the Jewish settlement blocs, and those places which have supreme national importance to the Jewish people, first and foremost a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty….If the Palestinians abandon the path of terror [he adds] they can receive national independence in a Palestinian state with temporary borders." Is this what we can honestly call a "two-state solution"?! What are the Palestinian left with? Israel expands (under the Orwellian rubric of "convergence;" hitkansut or "withdrawal" in Hebrew) from its present 78% of Israel/Palestine to about 83-85%. It controls "greater" Jerusalem (the economic heart of any Palestinian state), the borders, freedom of movement of people and goods, all the country's water, its airspace and its communications sphere. The Palestinans are squeezed into a Bantustan truncated into four or five "cantons" (Sharon's term) by the seven settlement blocs Israel will annex, containing 80% of the settlers. How can anyone, I don't care what your political view of the conflict is, not see this as apartheid???

I can't even see what the controversy is about.

Carter's use of the term is useful because it names the thing: apartheid is the only term that gets at the systemic qualities of the regime of domination Israel is establishing. Its not just a policy or a response to terrorism or occupation -- it is a full-blown, thought-out, intentional system of control and domination. Indeed, Israel itself calls its policy hafrada -- separation. Apartheid.

Let's thanks Carter for giving us a handle on this thing. Let's stop arguing about the semantics and get on with the job of stopping it. Jews as the new Afrikaners. What a chilling thought!