Our goal was to facilitate small gatherings and discussions on the state of the Palestinian and Arab struggle. We were, as we continue to be, motivated by the Arab democratic nationalist traditions to renew and reinvigorate the discourse of egalitarianism and democratic popular empowerment, anchored in our collective history away from imposed sectarianism and religious divides that are alien to our society. We reject the notion that we are supposed to replace the long-celebrated dual vision for social equality and national liberation for scant political expediency. As a society, we can not afford to lose either pillars of this duality if we are to emerge victorious.



We believe that the Palestinian people constitute a primary flagship of liberation; a flagship proudly burdened with immense responsibilities and the need for long-term strategic resilience.



On this basis, we set out with many friends to build on our collective successes and to evaluate ways to propel our struggle forward, however possible. Addressing errors and evaluating set-backs was considered a corner stone of our initiative. After all, self-reflection and self-criticism is a tradition we celebrate.



Indeed, putting aside blind organizational biases in favor of a principled new beginning is now a matter of life and death for our people. We no longer can afford to do things as usual - plugging away as our rights are bartered away for crumbs. Failure is no longer an option. It is for this reason that when a political disagreement emerged with some on how to proceed, we elected to remain quite as our initiative was taken to different path. Principally, we differed on the very essence of the political goals we wish to achieve.



For example, we did not then nor do we now envision that this initiative or similar efforts would be discussing what actually constitutes Palestine (borders). Palestine is from the River to the Sea despite the passage of time. Nor did we think that the core Arab identity and belonging of Palestine would ever be doubted, implicitly or otherwise. We are first and foremost Arabs, basked in the sun of Arabism and nurtured by those who preceded us, whose sacrifice stretches from the Gulf to the Ocean, and on whose shoulders we stand tall today. Certainly, we never wanted to create an exclusivist cocoon for Palestinians only, away from our Arab sisters and brothers who also shoulder the collective Arab pain. The collective Arab struggle is inextricable from itself and indivisible into sectarian units. It is one and whole, and destined to win, if only we believe it so.



We emphatically wanted to stay away from the current struggle over power between Hamas and Fateh. We believe that it is critical for our people in exile, including our community in the United States, not to fall victim once again to competing interests and typical behind the curtain deals that serve only those seeking seats of power. Successive past failures are the best indicator of how well-intentioned initiatives that don't guard against the manipulative influence of the likes of Mahmud Abbas and his supporters will end up being a mouthpiece for corruption, opportunism and dismembered rights.



For example, the Palestinian American Congress was initially launched in a manner similar to the current effort, but was quickly transformed into a Palestinian Authority tool. We hope to guard against a repeat of this experience, where our voices are unknowingly usurped by a select few. Consider how many times community initiatives have been corrupted by this or that camp, and how many times we suddenly heard announcements of high level diplomatic appointments of people who have sworn up and down that they are not after seats of power.



It is worth noting that it is common for behind the scene promises to be made for appointments in presumably upcoming "representative" bodies, such as the Palestine National Council, provided that community support is rendered, albeit falsely. We fully reject such methods because they lead to nothing by nepotism, corruption and authoritarian rule.



We aimed to initiate a discussion on implementing transparency and accountability on all levels. We insisted that those guilty of treason must be held accountable by the people. We can't continue to placate those who so eagerly wish to settle for anything anywhere just to secure political expediency or occupy a functionary seat. Holding our leadership accountable is fundamental to liberation and we refuse to let records of treason slide. Those who surrender Palestinian leaders, such as Ahmed Saadat, to Israeli colonial rule must be held accountable by our people. And those who kill, burn, and mob our towns and villages under the name of nationalism or anything else must answer to the collective will of the movement. Enough adventurism with our lives!



It is of utmost importance that a clear position be adopted against the agreements that are incrementally destroying everything for which our people have struggled, including Oslo, Madrid, the Saudi initiative to normalize with Zionism, all the way up to the upcoming Annapolis conference. We can no longer afford to tolerate wholesale abrogation of rights. We also feel that it is critical to build an alternative to the destructive political lines that are infecting our people that range from religious segregation to pro-Israel Dahlan-like phenomena. We deserve better.



On the basis of these and other issues, we differed with friends who started this road with us. Some argued that we need a minimalist position. Others argued that we need the largest possible numbers at any cost. And some openly wanted alliance with any political force just to get these numbers. We disagree. It is time to stick to what counts most, our existence as a people and land within the context of our history and democratic pan-Arabist traditions.



What value are numbers if they are cheering for justice for "Palestinians and Israelis," as was the case in one demonstration in Washington DC? What value are numbers if they are controlled by Abbas and his lackeys here in the US? What value are numbers and alliances if the cost is for us to shed our Arabism and our belonging to a liberation movement? What value are numbers if they are transformed into cheerleaders in banquets and political rallies for imposed and corrupt leaders?



However, we remain steadfast in our resilience to continue. And despite these differences, the FPA will continue in its tradition of perseverance and principled unity. Thus, to help foster this sort of open discussion on these and other critical issues, we will be holding a series of meetings nationwide, the first of which will be in the Los Angeles area (the date will be announced for Los Angeles following completion of community consultation on time and place).



The FPA is proud to be known as a tough fighter in defense of the Arab people, undeterred by any pressure or difficulties. We stand firm on the egalitarian and democratic nationalist principles of the Palestinian Arab movement, from which we will not deviate under any circumstance. We stand firm on protecting organizations such as Al-Awda and others so that they may continue to fulfill critical components of our struggle.



Indeed, we continue to extend our hand out to all those who share the collectively cherished vision of liberation and equality. Shoulder to shoulder we must stand!



In that regard, we call on all to do all that is possible to support and empower the upcoming Al-Awda Convention on the 60th year of Al-Nakba to be held in Los Angeles in 2008. This will be a watershed event for our community deserving our fullest support in every way possible.



We have massive challenges before us; and the time is now.



The struggle continues.

maybe the two state solution is dead in the water

All that two states would do is institutionalize the aparthied.

Can you name any county in the Arab world where minorities have equal protection and equal rights under the law?

Iraq, before Bush invaded.

With this apparent push to legitimize the invasion occupation and Genocide of the *people who were living there* when the zionist murder machine began its wanton slaughter, one may not need to wonder why this desperate attempt to validate the mythical tribe of zion.

The world is waking up to the fabric of lies that make up the israeli pogrom of ethnic cleansing; the very evil that this cult uses to justify that pogrom.

"Islamic Supremicism" means rejection of indigenous Genocide as a codified approach to racist ethnic cleansing and 'nation building'. A pogrom for non-zionists.

Haj Amin el Husseini, founder of Palestinian nationalism, was a Nazi collaborator. In 1943 in an Arabic broadcast over Nazi Radio Berlin, he said, "Germany knows the Jews well and has decided to find a final solution for the Jewish danger which will end the evil in the world. The Arabs especially and Muslims in general are obliged to make this their goal: it is the expulsion of all Jews from Arab and Muslim lands." He said this 5 full years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.

Why do the zionists keep referring to nazi connections when zionism and the 3rd Reich through Eichmann instigated the invasion of Palestine as a nazi foreign post.

Who knows?

shrug

The nazis were not in collaboration with the people of Palestine, that's for sure.

Read up on the Arabs and the Nazis ,how theGrand Mufti organized a Muslim SS Division, how "Mein Kampf" is still wildly popular in its Arab tranlastion, how Anwar Sadat wrote love letters to Hitler and how the Arab world welcomed and hid escaped Nazi war criminals. Then reconsider your twisted, non-historic fantasises

I think the nazis were into all sorts of compromises. 'Israel' was a creation of the nazis and the zionists.

There were all kinds of relationships w/nazis involved.

Hell, the Rockefellers and the royalty of Europe, especially the Crown financed the nazis. Not just the zionists.

Certainly Not the people of Palestine.

Why do they have to suffer?

......and I'm not talking about the 'Barbie Twins'

This Twit can only post the numbing and juvenile garbage that the ADL

has in warehouses.

The zionist and Eichmann still founded the pirate state of 'Israel' out of terror and the duping with obvious willing suck ups like this 'Lord' who seems to always have garbage free to post in great abundance. The same garbage they always bring up.

Look up

Eichmann +zionists

in any search engine to see who the willing partners the nazis had in the founders of that racist enterprise.

Every time they bring up Al-Husseini, I’m going to tell you about Polkes, Begin, Shamir and the rest of the Nazi collaborator/terrorist gang that founded the rogue state of Israel.

Hajj Amin Al Husseini wasn't Hitler's only stooge in British occupied Palestine. Consider the case of Fieval Polkes:

"Von Bolschwing was deeply involved in intelligence work--and in the persecution of innocent people -- for most of his adult life. He had joined the Nazi party at the age of twenty-three, in 1932, and had become an SD (party security service) informer almost immediately. In the years leading up to 1939, von Bolschwing became a leading Nazi intelligence agent in the Middle East, where he worked under cover as an importer in Jerusalem. One of his first brushes with Nazi espionage work, according to captured SS records, was a role in creating a covert agreement between the Nazis and Fieval Polkes, a commander of the militant Zionist organization Haganah, whom von Bolschwing had met through business associates in the Mideast. Under the arrangement the Haganah was permitted to run recruiting and training camps for Jewish youth inside Germany. These young people, as well as certain other Jews driven out of Germany by the Nazis, were encouraged to emigrate to Palestine. Polkes and the Haganah, in return, agreed to provide the SS with intelligence about British affairs in Palestine. Captured German records claim that Polkes believed the increasingly brutal Nazi persecution of the Jews could be turned to Zionist advantage -- at least temporarily -- by compelling Jewish immigration to Palestine, and that the Haganah commander's sole source of income, moreover, was secret funds from the SS.

It was in the course of these negotiations that the young Baron von Bolschwing gained the trust of Adolf Eichmann, who was at the time an obscure SS functionary specializing in intelligence on Freemasonry and Jewish affairs for the Nazi party. The acquaintance was more than a casual one, for von Bolschwing went on to play a central role in arranging conferences between Eichmann and Polkes in Vienna and Cairo, contacts that established Eichmann as the SS's Jewish affairs expert and laid the foundation for his later career as the architect of the extermination of European Jewry.”

-- Blowback : America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War by Christopher Simpson, ISBN: 1555841066, p 253

Simpson’s source on this is:

Sicherheitsdienst des RFSS SD-Hauptamt, Palastinareise Bericht (U.S. designation no. 173-b-16-14/61), now at Frames 2936012-2936068, microfilm roll 411, T-175, RG 242, NA, Washington, D.C.

* * * * *

After the war, von Bolschwing settled in California. He became a Republican Party activist and a personal friend of Richard Nixon. Among his other accomplishments, he perpetrated the single largest stock fraud in California’s history. He squirmed out of the charges when a patsy took the fall for him. Later he was partners in a defense electronics company called TCI with Iran-contra figures Richard Secord and (Iranian Jew) Albert Hakim.

What a guy, huh? For details, see:

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/mbtape11,22,81,520.htm

* * * * *

Then there was Menachem Begin, terrorist extrordinaire, who later was elected to the highest office in the land.

Before that, he waged war against Hitler enemies.

See:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/irgun.html

Irgun Zeva'i Le'umi

“The National Military Organization” (Etzel, I.Z.L.)

(snip)

From 1943 Etzel was headed by Menachem Begin. In February 1944, Etzel declared war against the British administration. It attacked and blew up government offices, military installations and police stations.

(snip)

* * * * *

Begin was not just a founding father of Israel, but also the butcher of Deir Yassin, Palestine’s very own Lidice:



See:

http://www.deiryassin.org/mas.html

(snip)

Early in the morning of Friday, April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. It was several weeks before the end of the British Mandate. The village lay outside of the area that the United Nations recommended be included in a future Jewish State. Deir Yassin had a peaceful reputation and was even said by a Jewish newspaper to have driven out some Arab militants. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and one plan, kept secret until years afterwards, called for it to be destroyed and the residents evacuated to make way for a small airfield that would supply the beleaguered Jewish residents of Jerusalem.

By noon over 100 people, half of them women and children, had been systematically murdered. Four commandos died at the hands of resisting Palestinians using old Mausers and muskets. Twenty-five male villagers were loaded into trucks, paraded through the Zakhron Yosef quarter in Jerusalem, and then taken to a stone quarry along the road between Givat Shaul and Deir Yassin and shot to death. The remaining residents were driven to Arab East Jerusalem.

That evening the Irgunists and the Sternists escorted a party of foreign correspondents to a house at Givat Shaul, a nearby Jewish settlement founded in 1906. Over tea and cookies they amplified the details of the operation and justified it, saying Deir Yassin had become a concentration point for Arabs, including Syrians and Iraqis, planning to attack the western suburbs of Jerusalem. They said that 25 members of the Haganah militia had reinforced the attack and claimed that an Arabic-speaking Jew had warned the villagers over a loudspeaker from an armored car. This was duly reported in The New York Times on April 10.

A final body count of 254 was reported by The New York Times on April 13, a day after they were finally buried. By then the leaders of the Haganah had distanced themselves from having participated in the attack and issued a statement denouncing the dissidents of Irgun and the Stern Gang, just as they had after the attack on the King David Hotel in July 1946. A 1987 study undertaken by Birzeit University's Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society found "the numbers of those killed does not exceed 120".

The Haganah leaders admitted that the massacre "disgraced the cause of Jewish fighters and dishonored Jewish arms and the Jewish flag." They played down the fact that their militia had reinforced the terrorists' attack, even though they did not participate in the barbarism and looting during the subsequent "mopping up" operations.

They also played down the fact that, in Begin's words, "Deir Yassin was captured with the knowledge of the Haganah and with the approval of its commander" as a part of its "plan for establishing an airfield."

Ben Gurion even sent an apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But this horrific act served the future State of Israel well. According to Begin, “Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of ‘Irgun butchery,’ were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated.”

(snip)

Of about 144 houses, 10 were dynamited. The cemetery was later bulldozed and, like hundreds of other Palestinian villages to follow, Deir Yassin was wiped off the map. By September, Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Poland, Rumania, and Slovakia were settled there over the objections of Martin Buber, Cecil Roth and other Jewish leaders, who believed that the site of the massacre should be left uninhabited. The center of the village was renamed Givat Shaul Bet. As Jerusalem expanded, the land of Deir Yassin became part of the city and is now known simply as the area between Givat Shaul and the settlement of Har Nof on the western slopes of the mountain.

The massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin is one of the most significant events in 20th-century Palestinian and Israeli history. This is not because of its size or its brutality, but because it stands as the starkest early warning of a calculated depopulation of over 400 Arab villages and cities and the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian inhabitants to make room for survivors of the Holocaust and other Jews from the rest of the world.

(snip)



* * * * *

Then there was Yitzhak Shamir . . .



http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/15-shamir.htm

(snip)

Shamir’s Background

(snip)

. . . was born Yitzhak Yzernitzky, in Rozeny, in what is now Byelorussia, in 1915.

(snip)

Little is known of his Irgun career, but one incident stands out. In 1938 Yzernitzky and a 15-year-old recruit, Eliyahu Bet Zouri, tried to blow up a WZO defence fund collection booth which levied a toll on Jewish travellers leaving Tel Aviv. They planted a crude gunpowder bomb which went off prematurely, severely burning Bet Zouri’s legs and scorching the face of Israel’s future Prime Minister. But this bizarre incident was a mere nothing compared to his career as a leading figure in the “Stern Gang”.

(snip)

* * * * *

>a 15-year-old recruit,

Just in case you were wondering who first armed children in Palestine.