Latest anti-Zionist post of mine censored by Eric Kirk, Humboldt County Progressive activist

You have to admit, Mr. Stunich, the history of Christianity is far worse than anything Muslims have achieved in the way of dead body counts, nations and communities utterly destroyed by Christians in action acting in many instances on the Pauline Christian beliefs. So where the hell is your ability to grasp equality in bad religion?

If Christianity as is, held the spiritual answer to human woes and led human beings into becoming humane beings which is God's Plan, the world would have seen it manifested someplace on earth. Where is it? Where is the Christian utopia? Heaven, that's where Pauline Christianity placed it and didn't really give a damn about placing it on earth. It was enough for Pauline Christians to be "saved", i.e., they get to escape earthly disaster and flee to heaven where it's everything earth should be. Pauline Christianity in this modern Gnostic Christian's opinion is among the selfish religions in which the individual's salvation is the most important thing in the world. Most people outside bible scholars have little idea there has always been another major Christian religion that because it truly does aim at individual salvation through direct spiritual experience of God instead of vicarious experience of God through swearing allegiance to ancient men's Word(s) of God, the pathway of those who need a Group Mindset in order to have the courage to believe in God and follow God's guidance.

Andy, because you follow Pauline Christian doctrines, you are mesmerized by Paul's words and don't see that Paul utterly ruined Christianity that the world knows with his commandment to Christian believers to obey their governments or be condemned to hell. Here's one of the places Paul does this:

"Let every soul (not just person but soul) be subject unto the higher powers (Archons). For there is no power but God: the powers that be are ordained of God. '
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinances of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. " Romans 13: 1,2.

Paul's words above have allowed every ruthlessly ambitious evil tyrant destroyer in emperor, Pope, king, queen, presidential form call himself "Christian" and send off gullible Pauline Christians, the vast majority calling themselves "Christians", unlike real Christians who follow the teachings of Jesus and not Paul, off to kill whoever the Archon points them at lusting for whatever piece of territory and its wealth the Archon wants to possess. And the bloody history of Pauline Christians in action shows exactly why Pauline Christianity is not the anwser and never was to creating peace, love, and harmony, i.e. real Jesus style Christian eutopia where good prevails over evil.

Andy, like Zionism and its parent racist religion, Judaism, (yes, Andy, Judaism is a racist religion that is so because it bases it's ideology on a blanket hatred of everyone not Jewish. This blanket hatred goes unchecked in the West because of Pauline Christianity's switcheroo that once hated Jews to now using Jews to propel Pauline Christian ideas of the Second Coming being triggered by world war with a new Israel. And Zionist Jews use these types of Christians as well to soak them for all the money they can get to build and arm Israel to the teeth in order to carry out Judaism's ancient racist goal: get rid of all non-Jews in the Holy Land. The Israelis use their orthodoox Jewish settlers as the Jewish racist frontlines in their steady land grab of all of Palestine. A "For Jews Only" settlement policy pushing out Gentile Arab Palestinians shows the racist core of Judaism in action. Because Paul tied Pauline Christians back to the Jewish religion, claiming Christianity was like a branch on the vine of Judaism, Jewish racism in Israel gets a pass like you give it a pass. But I don't. I follow the teachings of Jesus, not those of Paul.

And I am a Celestial Torah Christian, a modern form of Gnostic Christianity, and not a Pauline Christian, so when the Armageddon/Megiddo news hits you that destroys the Jewish Torah as spiritual authority that Paul bases his Christianity on, my Christian beliefs won't suffer the End Times fate of all Abrahamic religions including Pauline Christianity. Oh yes, God does embed prophesy in Scriptures but if they come true at all, they come true in ways believers never expect.
Armageddon has truly come and anyone of intelligence who see the video The Bible Unearthed showing the findings and conclusions of Israeli archeology at Megiddo, ("named after the Canaanite Divine Assembly pantheon which was translated into Greek as "Armageddon") and realizes its inevitable consequences for the Zionist "Right of Return" claims based on an ancient Jewish millennia old presence in the Holy Land that never existed and all the Bible foundational stories complete fables. There is no spiritual authority to be derived from liars and their lies, Andy.

Check out Celestial Torah Christianity, Andy and all interested in how Christianity changes to be guidance in the New Age as the Pauline Christian path is doomed to the End Times fate of all Abrahamic religions.

Another needed exposure of local Zionist censorship

 Censored Posts from SoHum Parlance and The Humboldt Herald

This is my latest post that Eric Kirk on his SoHum Parlance blog's discussion of his radio show with fellow Zionist and Israeli supporter, Andy Stunich, has censored. He and and his Progressive cohort, "Mitch" at the Humboldt Herald blog, another closet Zionist censoring my posts for political reasons, don't want Progressives discussing Israel or Zionism as they both censor posts like this one. (forgive the length but I explain why that is)

The fact is that Armageddon has literally come to Pauline Christianity and all three Abrahamic religions basing their doctrines on the Bible stories as spiritual authority. Megiddo is named after the Canaanite religion's Divine Assembly, the Canaanite pantheon of gods, the Canaanite name for which was translated into Greek as "Armageddon". God does work in mysterious ways.

What this Megiddo information does to Muhammad's Islam is going to be really interesting. You see, Islamic fundamentalism has to overcome Muhammad's insistence that Muslims consider Islam compatible with scientific knowledge. You will see on religious forums where Muslims post their pride in showing off Muhammad's supposed scientific knowledge forecasting future science knowledge confirmation of his ideas--mostly all wrong but that's another story. What will Muslim intellectuals do with the Megiddo news?

As a Gnostic Christian guided by direct spiritual communion and not reliance on any man-made intercessor's ideas, words, or paper and ink idols in the way between God and you. That's the Gnostic way which of course negates forming organized religions which is the real reason why Pauline Church Fathers hated the Gnostics so much and ran them out of the Roman Empire as soon as it went Christian officially.

I believe that God is using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to bring the Abrahamic religious warfare madness to a head so as to cure it. Megiddo may be the only cure for the Abrahamic religionists taught to fight for their turfs and other's as well. If Abraham was a fiction and Moses too, Judaism has no authority at all to demand anything of anybody. Same with Pauline Christianity. And same for Muhammad's Islam. But we know religions are emotional security blankets for most people, including me, because they usually entail believing in a spiritual relationship with God that is akin to that of a member in a family. The belief in family of God is what allows Christians and Muslims to want to aid other peoples in service to God and humanity as one Family. Judaism is too selfish for this ethic and only helps others if it benefits Jews. One saw this in the Jewish support of black equality that faded away once Jewish capitalists were accepted into the Gentile capitalist world as equals. Jews will support Armenians only because that way they are promoting Jewish holocaustism being used to guilt trip and blackmail Western Gentiles into supporting Zionism. I guess while I'm being anti-Judaic, not "anti-Semitic" because you all know that I actively support real Semitic peoples and with a hint of pride I have Semitic Jewish ancestry from Tunisia and Libya. It's a minor player in my genetic Jewish ancestry that I would never ever think of using it as "proof" of roots in the Holy Land which it isn't at all being in North Africa where Tunisian Jews have been for a very long time. The whole concept of Zionism's "Right of Return" is not only completely immoral because based on religious mythology instead of historical truth, it's completely irrational and counter-ecology to boot. Imagine what would happen if other ethnic groups started claiming "Right of Return" to the countries they left for various reasons, many of which were threats to their lives. You'd have German American Mennonites rushing to Germany to free it from the unbelievers and claim it as a Mennonite homeland. Continue the absurdity with other ethnic groups and see how such an ideology would create world chaos in international relationships. Sound familiar? That's exactly what Israel is doing.

It will be an interesting future now as we enter the Aquarian Age which was synchronized globally for the first time as beginning at the end of the Mayan Calendar, the Mayans keeping the best track of the ancient Precession of the Equinoxes Zodiac systems. The Collective Unconscious will override material world sidereal astronomy that some astrologers are trying to copy. The Christ Aquarian Revolution has started, btw. Just ask Paul Encimer, my fellow Aquarian activist. Don't ask Darryl. He's never felt the Spirit of Christ (not talking about organized Christian religion here) and has mocked Christianity in his E.F! demonstrations. Paul and I are starting the Christ Aquarian Revolution as an Aquarian Hundreth Monkey type of thing, passing the new Celestial Torah Christianity information to all Aquarians we know or meet. Met one yesterday through my sister and he too feels the Spirit and lives in Philadelphia and so the chain reaction is spreading. The whole Messiah-Christ-Anointed One religious concept is far older than Christianity or Judaism it turns out and is astrologically based as are the roots of almost all major religions, the Abrahamic ones denying it because the Jewish priesthoods living in tents and mud brick hovels couldn't compete as astrologers with the pagan civilizations and their monumental astrolab computer systems. That's the real reason the Abrahamic insistence on the "Word of God" where priesthoods could manipulate those "Words of God" and control interpretation of it and thereby rule the people.

Ok, I've run out of steam. Just have to get these posts in when I can because Eric and Mitch are censoring me every day.

The Journey of EL and Asherah

from ancient Canaan to modern times

Long ago in a land called Canaan the people there worshipped EL, God Most High, and His wife, Asherah, the Great Mother and Lady of the Sea. On earth they were said to have lived where two rivers met on the coastlands. They were happy on earth and the land EL had fashioned and Asherah had nurtured. They had many children who squabbled amongst themselves competing for EL and Asherah’s attention and benevolence. 

These children behaved themselves for the most part but these were also ancient times and the law of the jungle and desert was still fresh in everyone’s mind. That is everyone but Mom and Dad, or Asherah and EL who being the highest representatives of the invisible Holy One, knew better ways of dealing with the problems of life in Creation.

EL had watched how His wild and domesticated animals behaved in their herds, flocks and packs and noticed most human beings followed much the same patterns only human beings clothed their animal behavior patterns so it seemed at first something different. But it wasn’t different at all. EL watched male wolves battle for control of the pack and saw the same thing in the way aggressive human males conducted politics and war. 

EL watched but didn’t judge because that was what animal life was like without knowledge of good and evil. Tooth and claw and no mercy from the strong for the weak or meek. EL wisely understood that this animal way could not continue with humanity that He had created with Asherah of the waters for He and She wanted human beings to evolve to become one with them on earth as it is in heaven where They came from. 

EL decided to educate humanity on how to overcome their animal natures so that peace and not violence ruled in human society. He told them through the mouths of seers and prophets, "Here is what pleases US. This physical world We have fashioned for the education of your souls has a fatal flaw. Physical life is dependent on death to carry on. No new life is created without the death of life somewhere else. The physical requirements for maintaining the living require the death of other living beings. 

Given the true situation that death and suffering are inevitable in Creation, what can be done? EL responded and set in motion a set of guidelines for reducing unnecessary violence in the physical world. Later on He offered humanity what only a God can offer: eternal life after physical death, eternal life in heaven where the Holy One has Its spiritual and everlasting home.

EL began the spiritual education of His children in Canaan. He showed them that in order for there to be peace in the land society must be governed by the wise and compassionate just as He ruled the Divine Assembly of gods and goddesses with wisdom and compassion. An earthly king would become His son in spirit when that earthly king mirrored EL’s mercy and forgiveness and taught his subjects the truth about all things that effected human relationships with one another and with the community of life on earth. 
 

Because EL was God Most High yet did not act like a tyrant like gods did who lacked compassion and wisdom, the Canaanites loved EL, calling Him the Compassionate One, the Merciful One, the Kindly One as well as the Father of Humanity. And the Canaanites loved His wife, Asherah, just as much devoting much prayer at shrines dedicated to Her worship. To them She was the Tree of Life on which all life was dependent. 

She too held wisdom and when the time came that the memory of EL and Asherah were to be lost for many centuries after the fall of Canaan to the Hebrews, both EL and Asherah disguised Themselves and found a way into the new Hebrew religion with its own desert war god, Yahweh. EL became the generic word for "God" and some, not all, but some of EL’s compassion and wisdom was attached to Yahweh who originally was only one of the lower gods and spiritual sons of EL.

Having some of EL’s spiritual wisdom in him, Yahweh grew conceited and thought himself as the Creator and one and only God. Yahweh taught the Hebrews to bury the Canaanite memory of EL but that memory was too strong to forget and it resurfaced in the Hebrew religion as the Messianic prophesy of Immanuel, which means "EL is with us". 

Asherah was attacked as a Goddess and so She went into Her Canaanite icon disguise as the Tree of Life in the Hebrew religious epic. Perhaps as a tree the Hebrews would not recognize the Great Goddess. And they didn’t, passing the Tree of Life story through the whole Hebrew epic which became part of the later Christian epic as well. 
 

While the Hebrews would not allow Her presence as the Great Goddess they did not notice Her presence in two spiritual daughters, the Shekkinah and Sophia, both carriers of the wisdom of Asherah to the minds of human beings who listened with their hearts. 

A dramatic change happened 2000 years ago when a man named Jesus was born to become a new son of EL, a son so spiritually close to EL he became known as the Son of God. Jesus resurrected the wisdom and compassion of EL buried for centuries under the worship of Yahweh. This was the fulfillment of the prophesy of the Messiah as Immanuel, that EL would return to humanity to give it the spiritual comfort of knowing "EL is with us" as the Messiah, the anointed one who carries the Spirit of Christ which continued the kindness and wisdom of EL instead of the heavy judgment and demand for absolute obedience that the war-god Yahweh could not rise above. 

EL was always known as God Most High and for good reason. Only EL knew love is not love if it demands conditions. EL learned this wisdom by being married to the Great Mother for it is the unconditional love mothers have always been known for. Jesus as the good Son of God also gave the world this spiritual message of unconditional love the Holy One’s highest spiritual representatives, EL and Asherah, had shown the world in ancient Canaan. 
 

Humanity, however, at that time, 2000 years ago, was still too immature to accept this Son of God, Jesus as he himself taught the things his heavenly Father taught him. The Hebrews had him killed for claiming himself a son of God even though their own scriptures foretold this would happen. Jesus taught us to follow him ourselves to likewise becoming faithful sons and daughters of the Holy One but the Hebrews and their masters, the Romans did not want to hear it. 

Jesus was killed and later on lesser men intervened and changed the message of Jesus from EL, changed that message of compassion, wisdom and forgiveness, into a message from Yahweh, love only those who love Yahweh instead of loving all, even those who do not love you in return. 

Yahweh had never learned about unconditional love because he was never married to the Great Mother, the representative of the unconditional love of the Holy One for all humanity. EL taught Jesus to respect the wisdom of women, something the followers of Yahweh could not comprehend until history of societies proved the wisdom was true: it is women who hold the keys to peace for the vast majority of violence done by human beings is done by men.

But this knowledge was not known and even when known was not accepted. EL and Asherah still had to hide Themselves because the people could not accept them as They were--the spiritual models of humanity in the fullest sense of that word while the people were still in bondage to their animal behavioral patterns where the strong and ruthless ruled as lords over the weak. Even now, 2000 years later the Meek still await the time when they will inherit the earth from the grasp of violent men.

But how did EL and Asherah disguise Themselves so well that They are with us today and have been for several hundred years? This is how: EL was imagined in ancient Canaan as an old man with long flowing hair and beard. EL dressed Himself up in the colors of Asherah, white, red and black which symbolized His connection to Her in Her three forms as virgin, mother and crone symbolizing birth, life and death. EL became the embodiment of the giving Spirit of Christ and eternal life with the Holy One, the greatest gift humankind could possibly receive. EL, the Kindly One, disguised Himself as kindly Santa Claus and the Spirit of Christmas cheer. 

Asherah, still in Her disguise as the Tree of Life became the nine-candlestick menorah of the Jews, nine commemorating the nine months of gestation. You will find Her in millions of Jewish homes again celebrating Passover. For the Christians, Asherah as the the Tree of Life, became the Paradise Tree celebrating the birth of Jesus who manifested his spiritual Parent’s wisdom and loving-kindness in little Nativity scenes in tens of millions of homes beneath Asherahs we call Christmas trees.

Noël, Noël. Know EL, the Heavenly Father and you might want to become one of His helping "elves"". Remember Asherah, the Tree of Life with Her baby Jesus tucked safely underneath Her fir branch skirt. The Holy One doesn’t want us to forget our heavenly parents.

 

AP News Update 12/23/02

In a room crowded with reporters Odin the God publicly announced his filing suit against EL for claiming to be the inspiration behind Santa Claus. Odin bases his case on two main points: 1) the resemblance he shows to Saint Nicholas, long beard and hair and all, but that argument applies also to EL's appearance and even Father Time alias the Ancient of Days and the Grime Reaper. But then Odin brought out his winning card he said smiling a huge grimace to the press: his flying eight-legged horse which he says "obviously inspired the flying eight reindeers that pulled Santa through the air. 
 

The logic of his argument would have had more impact, however, if he hadn't pulled out the spear he always carried and hurled it at a woman in the audience who claimed the poetry he sent her was derivative. Luckily Odin missed in his rage and was then seized by police and hauled off to jail. The turbulent scene would have quieted down after Odin's arrest except another woman identifying herself as Mrs. Santa Claus said she was filing divorce papers against Santa for two-timing her with Asherah..some people were heard muttering about the soap operas these gods get into..

 Merry Christmas 

and have a very 

Happy New Year!

UN demands Israel stops settlement expansion

EuroNews

20/12 02:36 CET

The UN has demanded an immediate halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Further expansion has been announced in response to the UN’s recent decision to grant Palestinians the status of observer state.

All Security Council members except the US demanded the building stop, along with the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who said:“This is clearly a violation of international law and it is a violation of Quartet guidelines and it is an obstruction of the Middle East peace process. I’m urging the Israeli government to refrain from taking any measures of establishing settlements”

Undeterred, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his government will push ahead with settlement expansion:“We are going to build in Jerusalem for all its residents, this is something that has been done by all previous governments and this is something that my government will continue to do.”, he told reporters.

Israel has this week approved plans for 15 hundred new homes at Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem. Approval for a further 2000 homes has also been granted.

Half a million Jews live in 100 similar settlements built in East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the 1967 Six Day war. The acquisition is not recognised under international law.
More about: Israel, Israel-Palestine Peace Process, Palestinian Territories, United Nations, West Bank

Copyright © 2012 euronews

UN, EU, Russia Condemn Israeli Settlements

Margaret Besheer
Voice of America
December 19, 2012

UNITED NATIONS — All members of the U.N. Security Council, with the lone exception of the United States, have publicly condemned Israel’s recent settlement expansion activities and called for them to end. In a rare move, 14 of the council’s 15 members read public statements of their views instead of seeking formal action by the council, since that likely would have been opposed by the United States.

Normally the Security Council carries on its work around the horseshoe-shaped table inside its chamber. But on Wednesday, 14 council members took to the microphone outside the chamber to express their condemnation of Israel’s latest settlement expansion announcement.

Speaking on behalf of the council’s four European members, British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters the group strongly opposes Israel’s announced plans for more than 3,000 housing units in areas of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and urged Israel to rescind its decision.

“Israel’s announcements to accelerate the construction of settlements send a negative message and are undermining faith in its willingness to negotiate,” he said.

E1 settlements spark furor

Lyall Grant said the international community, and particularly the Security Council, must urgently provide for a credible framework for the resumption of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Those talks have been stalled for more than a year.

The settlements, especially those in an area known as E1, threaten the contiguity of a potential Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its shared capital with Israel.

Eight of the council’s 15 members are part of the group of more than 120 countries known as the Non-Aligned Movement, or NAM.

Speaking on behalf of NAM, Indian Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri called Israel’s new settlement announcements “provocative” and noted they come in the wake of the November 29 U.N. General Assembly vote upgrading the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. status, giving it de facto recognition as a state.

“NAM stresses Israel’s settlement activities constitute grave breeches of international humanitarian law and violate numerous U.N. resolutions, including resolutions of the Security Council," said Puri. "This issue also remains the foremost obstacle to peace, impairing all the efforts to revive credible peace negotiations aimed at bringing an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, and achieving a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”

Russia, China join fray

In separate statements, both Russia and China expressed their condemnation and concern, with Russia urging ministers of the so-called Middle East Quartet to meet quickly.

The tripartite group known as IBSA - South Africa, India and Brazil - said in an additional statement that Israel's settlements not only must be stopped, but also dismantled.

On Tuesday, Washington criticized its ally Israel, with State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland saying Israel's construction plans "run counter to the cause of peace.” But on Wednesday, the U.S. ambassador did not join her colleagues at U.N. headquarters. 

The U.N. secretary-general has condemned the Israeli settlement activity as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace. He told reporters at his end-of-year news conference that the move is a “near fatal blow to a very fragile Middle East peace process.” 

Israeli envoy downplays move

Israel’s ambassador, Ron Prosor, dismissed Israeli settlement activity as not being among one of the urgent issues of the region, and downplayed the settlement announcements as part of a “bureaucratic process that can take years.”

The Palestinian Authority’s new enhanced observer state status at the U.N. will open the door to some international organizations that were previously off-limits. The would include the International Criminal Court, where Palestinians could ask prosecutors to investigate settlement construction and other Israeli actions on Palestinian land.

Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour said that if Israel continues on the current path, which he said could destroy the two-state solution, the Palestinians would at least be able to resort to “all possible options” available to them, raising the possibility they will go to the court in The Hague.

Why Is Israel On a Settlement-Construction Spree?

By Michael Koplow

The Atlantic

Dec 19 2012, 11:31 AM ET

The Israeli prime minister's controversial plans, condemned around the world, are about more than just punishing the Palestinians.

A construction site in Gilo, on land Israel captured in 1967 and annexed to its Jerusalem municipality, on January 16, 2011. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Over the past few weeks, the Israeli government has been on a building spree. First came word that planning and zoning would begin for E1, a controversial move that would further encircle East Jerusalem with settlements -- cutting off from the West Bank the part of the city Palestinians demand to be the capital of their future state. As part of the same announcement, Israel said that it was going to build more housing in other parts of the West Bank as well.

This week, the government approved 1500 new housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in East Jerusalem -- the same housing units whose initial announcement in 2010 during Vice President Biden's visit to Israel caused a temporary rift between the United States and Israel and Hilary Clinton's chewing-out of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The Interior Ministry and the Jerusalem Local Committee are also expected to approve plans to build in Givat Hamatos and Gilo this week, both of which are new Jerusalem neighborhoods that are also across the 1967 armistice line that divides East and West Jerusalem.

This is all taking place despite enormous pressure and condemnation from Western countries, who are not happy with the escalation of Israeli plans to expand settlements or to build up Jerusalem neighborhoods that challenge the viability of a future Palestinian state. Britain, France, Germany, and Portugal are about to formally condemn Israel over its East Jerusalem building plans, and the 14 non-American members of the United Nations Security Council are going to do the same. Even the United States seems to have lost its usual patience with the Israeli government, deeming the new building announcements part of a "pattern of provocative action" that endangers the peace process and the two-state solution. Israel seems hell-bent on isolating itself over the settlement issue, and appears determined to move ahead with plans for both the West Bank and East Jerusalem no matter the cost.

It is easy to chalk this up to Israel's fury with the Palestinian Authority's statehood bid at the United Nations, as the E1 announcement came the day after the vote, amidst stated determination on Israel's part to punish the Palestinians for pursuing unilateral moves outside of the Oslo framework. "We felt if the Palestinians were taking unilateral action in the UN, we had to also send the message that we could take unilateral actions," Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren said this week, making the connection explicit.

Yet, this does not account for the scope of the recent Israeli announcements, or for the seeming recklessness of drawing real anger and censure from Israel's Western allies immediately following American and EU support during Operation Pillar of Cloud in Gaza. There is indeed something else going on here, and it has nothing to do with the Palestinians and everything to do with the political jockeying taking place on the right of Israel's political spectrum before Israelis go to the polls on January 22 to elect their next government.

When Netanyahu created the joint list between Likud and Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, the thinking behind the move was to create a right-wing monolith that would not only handily win the election, but also present rightwing voters without a real alternative. Not only was the plan to keep Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu voters, but to recapture the erstwhile Likud voters who had cast their ballots for Kadima in the past two elections and would now, with Kadima's imminent disappearance, have nowhere else to go.

For Netanyahu though, the joint list was also about eliminating any challenges to him from his right flank. Following the debacle of his short-lived unity government with Kadima and the call for early elections after the fighting and unresolved impasse over Haredi and Arab military service, Netanyahu was afraid that Lieberman was going to outflank him on the right by appealing to nationalist issues. Netanyahu assumed that by co-opting Lieberman, he would have no real rightwing challengers sniping at him.

Instead, it turns out that Netanyahu is dealing with both external and internal challenges from the right. First is Naftali Bennett's nationalist Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party, which has siphoned off enough voters from Likud that it is now polling as the third largest party behind only Likud-Beiteinu and Labor, likely to garner at least 10-12 seats in the Knesset. Bennett, who used to be Netanyahu's chief of staff, is confident enough that he has already been demanding that Netanyahu drop Haredi parties from his next coalition and give security portfolios to aspiring Habayit Hayehudi ministers.

Within his own party, the Likud primary created a list of Knesset candidates that is the most right-wing in Likud history and includes perennial Netanyahu challenger Silvan Shalom in the fourth slot, as well as Netanyahu antagonist and settler champion Moshe Feiglin, who was not even a Knesset member in the current government. Feiglin, Danny Dannon, Ze'ev Elkin, Yariv Levin, and other Likud members who will be MKs in the next Knesset are already wary of Netanyahu and will be constantly pushing him to the right under the constant threat of challenging his leadership of the party.

Netanyahu is now facing a scenario in which his rightwing credentials are being challenged before the election in ways that he did not expect. The easiest way for him to staunch the bleeding of voters to Habayit Hayehudi and quiet the grumblings within Likud over his leadership is to back settlements to the hilt; Netanyahu has taken this strategy and run with it. Settlements are the most important issue for Israel's right wing, even above forestalling negotiations with the Palestinians or confronting Iran.

Likud is at its heart a settler party, and Habayit Hayehudi represents a fusion of settlements and nationalism. Given the predilections within both parties, Netanyahu has little choice but to keep on pushing settlement growth in the West Bank and continued building in East Jerusalem no matter how much heat he takes from the United States, the EU, the UN, or anyone else. As long as Netanyahu faces challenges from his right before the election, nothing is going to deter the recent string of building announcements, including continuing pressure from the West.

So while the Israeli government's recent spree of developing neighborhoods and towns in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is certainly in part a response to the Palestinian UN vote, focusing solely on that misses much of the story. The churning taking place in Israel's right wing and the domestic political calculus during this election season are driving the Netanyahu government's policies that are causing so much angst in Washington and Turtle Bay. As is so often the case in Israel, all politics is local.


As is often the case in liberal criticism of Israel the hidden evil empire agenda is not addressed: By "evil empire" I mean the Zionists' racist goal of a Greater all Jewish Israel that excludes Palestinian Arab society and culture and people as much as possible if not altogether. By increasing the number of hardline Zionist Jews in the West Bank it makes it more difficult to create a workable Palestinian state. But a workable Palestinian state was never the intention in the first place, even in the original Partition of Palestine, because one look at the map shows the insurmountable geographical problem: Gaza and the West Bank separated by Israel territory. Any way you look at it, the creation of Israel as Europe and European America's last vestige of European religious colonial imperialism, created a total mess in the Middle East, a cancer in their midst as the Middle East Muslims rightly point out. 

The U.N. created this mess. The U.N. needs to own up to its responsibility for creating a most dangerous product and step into the situation with the aim of stopping Israel's aggression that looks very much like fascist invasion and occupation and genocide of another peoples and their society. And we in America need to do the same owning up to the mess we've created in the world by arming Israel to the teeth and providing them the money to do their dirty work of the West's Fortress Europe and Team America in the heart of the Middle East.

Israel's Women of the Wall pray for equality

TIA GOLDENBERG 

Associated Press Published: December 14, 2012 1:12PM

 

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli security guards at the Western Wall on Friday searched women worshippers arriving at the holiest place where Jews can pray for a seemingly inoffensive object -- the Jewish prayer shawl, which under the Orthodox tradition can be worn only by men.

Once the shawls were found, dozens of women had to deposit them before proceeding to pray in the section reserved for women. A few, who managed to sneak the shawls in under their coats and wrapped them around their shoulders, were promptly evicted or detained.

Similar scenes have played out almost a dozen times every year since the group known as Women of the Wall was first established nearly 25 years ago.

Its members have endured arrests, heckling and legal battles in a struggle to attain what they consider their inalienable right -- to pray and worship at the Western Wall like men do.

Under Israel's predominantly Orthodox Jewish tradition, only men may wear a prayer shawl, a skullcap and phylacteries. Liberal Reform Judaism, marginal in Israel but the largest denomination in the United States, allows women to practice the same way as men do in Orthodox Judaism: they may be ordained as rabbis, read from the Torah, the Jewish holy book, and wear prayer shawls.

The multi-denominational Women of the Wall adheres to that liberal stream. Since 1988, its members have come to the holy site 11 times a year to pray on the first day of the new Jewish month, except on the New Year.

The police know they are coming and are on the lookout. The group's members have been repeatedly detained, as soon as they are perceived to be offending Orthodox sensibilities -- such as carrying a Torah scroll or if they try to drape themselves in the shawls. They are usually released after a few hours.
They have never been charged -- evidence, the women say, that what they are doing is not illegal.
"We want to have the ability to pray out loud, to wear a prayer shawl, to read the Torah. And we want to do it without fear at the Western Wall," said Anat Hoffman, the group's chairwoman.

Opponents see the Jerusalem-based group, which has hundreds of members and supporters, as provocateurs or kooky agitators. Supporters say they are civil rights activists working to achieve equality. Angry worshippers have hurled plastic chairs at them while others have yelled and taunted them.
Hoffman, who has been detained several times in the past, was held in 2010 for several hours after she brought a Torah scroll to the Western Wall -- another violation for Orthodox Jews, who do not allow women to hold the Torah.

A video of the event shows police attempting to pry the scroll away from her as she shouts back: "It's mine." Hoffman also spent a night in jail in October, when she was banished by a court from the Wall for 30 days.
She says a lack of religious pluralism in Israel has prevented the group from achieving its goals.
While most Israelis are secular, Judaism has a formal place in the country's affairs and Orthodox rabbis strictly govern religious events such as weddings, divorces, and burials for the Jewish population. Also, the ultra-Orthodox are perennial kingmakers in Israeli coalition politics, though they make up only about 10 percent of the country's population.

Israel's Orthodox establishment was also granted responsibility for the Western Wall and seeks to ensure its traditions are followed there.

"We try to follow the customs that our grandfathers did, what was done 100 years ago, 200 years ago, and we try to keep extremism away," said the Western Wall rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz.

The Women of the Wall "insist on coming here just to stoke the flames, to cause a provocation," he said, adding that if other customs were permitted, "there would be chaos."

The police say they are enforcing a Supreme Court decision from 2003, which ruled that allowing the group to pray with the shawls at the Western Wall constituted a danger to public safety. The women have been offered an alternative place nearby where they can don the shawls, wear phylacteries and read from the Torah. They use the place but continue to demand full access to the Wall.

More liberal streams of Judaism have been hard-pressed just to be recognized in Israel, which only this year granted funding for non-Orthodox rabbis. The plight of the Women of the Wall also highlights a growing rift between the world's two largest Jewish communities, the one in Israel and the one in the U.S.
Reform and Conservative streams, which are large in the U.S., have been at odds with Orthodox Israeli rabbis in Israel. Many members and supporters of Women of the Wall are American and are appalled at the authorities' reaction to their attempts to wear the shawls and pray at the Wall.

Laura Geller, a rabbi at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, was one of the women forced to leave her prayer shawl behind on Friday.

"It's interesting that Israel is one of the few countries in the world where I can't be the Jew that I am," she said, a blue and white skullcap placed atop her grey curls. "The Wall needs to be big enough for us to find a way to share it."

Reuters journalists: Israeli troops assaulted us, forced us to strip in street

Muhammad al-Salameh, 17, was shot dead close to his house in the heart of Hebron on Wednesday evening after an altercation with border guards at a nearby checkpoint. Israeli police said he had brandished a gun, which later proved to be a toy gun.

By NBC News staff and wire reports

HEBRON, West Bank -- Israeli soldiers have been accused of punching two Reuters cameramen and forcing them to strip in the street, before letting off a tear gas canister in front of them, leaving one of them needing hospital treatment.

Israel's military said Thursday it took the allegations seriously.

"The regional brigade commander was ordered to open an investigation," Israeli Defense Forces spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said in an email.

Yousri Al Jamal and Ma'amoun Wazwaz said a foot patrol stopped them on Wednesday in the heart of Hebron as they were driving to a nearby checkpoint where a Palestinian teenager had just been shot dead by an Israeli border guard.

Their car was clearly marked "TV" and they were both wearing blue flak jackets with "Press" emblazoned on the front.

The soldiers forced them to leave the vehicle and punched them, striking them with the butts of their guns. They accused the journalists of working for an Israeli NGO, B'Tselem, which documents human rights violations in the occupied West Bank, the Reuters cameramen said.

Locals say B'Tselem has given a number of Palestinians video cameras so they can film soldiers and settlers who live in this divided city. The NGO was not immediately available for comment.

The soldiers did not let the men produce their official ID papers and forced them to strip down to their underwear, making them kneel on the road with their hands behind their heads, the cameramen said.

Two other Palestinian journalists working for local news organizations, including a satellite television station affiliated to the Islamist group Hamas, were also stopped and forced to the ground.

One of the soldiers then dropped a tear gas canister between the men and the IDF patrol ran away, according to the cameramen. The four journalists scrambled clear and Jamal and Wazwaz got to their car, which had rapidly filled up with tear gas, they said.

More Israel coverage from NBC News

They tried to drive away, but said they only got around 200 meters before they had to stop and exit the vehicle because of the gas. The soldiers then fired more tear gas in their direction, the cameramen said.

Wazwaz was overcome by the fumes and was taken to hospital by ambulance. He was released later the same night.

'Mistreatment'
The Israeli soldiers allegedly took two gas masks and a video camera from their car. The undamaged camera was later found abandoned further up the road, according to the Reuters journalists.

"We deplore the mistreatment of our journalists and have registered our extreme dismay with the Israeli military authorities," said Stephen J. Adler, editor-in-chief of Reuters News.

Paul Danahar, the chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Israel, said on Twitter that the organization would soon issue a statement on the attack.

There “must be a limit (on) how many times (the) IDF can say this stuff is usual behavior,” he wrote.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

Tensions have been running particularly high in Hebron in the past week following repeated clashes between stone-throwing youths and soldiers.

Muhammad al-Salameh, 17, was shot dead close to his house in the heart of Hebron on Wednesday evening after an altercation with border guards at a nearby checkpoint. Israeli police said he had brandished a gun, which later proved to be a toy gun.

Some 800 Jewish settlers live among 30,000 Palestinians in the parts of the old city that are under Israeli control.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Europe court: German was victim of CIA extraordinary rendition program

Uwe Lein / AFP - Getty Images file

A leading European court ruled that German citizen Khaled El-Masri should receive damages from Macedonia over his claims he was an innocent victim of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

By Ian Johnston, NBC News, and wire reports

Updated at 6:15 p.m. to include response from NSC:

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday in favor of a German man who claims he was mistaken for a terrorist, then kidnapped and tortured by the CIA as part of the controversial extraordinary-rendition program.

The court ordered that Khaled El-Masri should be paid about $78,000 in damages by Macedonia, the European country where he says he was captured before being taken to a secret prison in Afghanistan known as the "Salt Pit."

James Goldston, lead lawyer on the case and executive director of the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, told NBC News that the ruling was significant because it was the first time a court had established "beyond reasonable doubt" that what El-Masri was saying had happened.
He said that in light of the ruling the Obama administration should apologize to El-Masri, pay damages and launch a wide-ranging investigation into his case and others like it.

"Notably, the court found that the CIA’s treatment of Mr. El-Masri at the airport in Skopje, Macedonia in January 2004 amounted to torture. This judgment by the highest court in Europe represents an authoritative condemnation of some of the most objectionable tactics employed in the post-9/11 war on terror," Goldston said in a statement.

Macedonia's 'complete denial'
According to El-Masri, he was brutally interrogated at the CIA-run Afghan prison for four months after he was flown there from Macedonia.

The European court's ruling said El-Masri's account of his "alleged ordeal was very detailed, specific and consistent."

While Macedonia had issued a "complete denial," there was a "a wealth of compelling evidence supporting his [El-Masri's] allegations and rejecting the Government’s explanation as utterly untenable," it added.

The ruling said El-Masri’s account was supported by several factors including:

    aviation and flight logs;
    geological records of minor earthquakes he recalled during his detention in Afghanistan;
    sketches he drew of the prison where he was held;
    and scientific tests on his hair showing "he had spent time in a South Asian country and had been deprived of food for an extended period of time."

The ruling said the court "observes" that El-Masri was taken from his hotel in Skopje, Macedonia, to the city's airport where he was "beaten severely by several disguised men dressed in black."

"He was stripped and sodomized with an object. He was placed in a nappy and dressed in a dark blue short-sleeved tracksuit. Shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation, the applicant [El-Masri] was forcibly marched to a CIA aircraft … When on the plane, he was thrown to the floor, chained down and forcibly tranquillized," the ruling said.

"While in that position, the applicant was flown to Kabul (Afghanistan) via Baghdad," it added.

Read the court's full ruling (pdf)

Macedonian authorities said they would not comment until they are formally notified of the ruling, The Associated Press reported. Though the case focused on Macedonia, it drew broader attention because of how sensitive the CIA extraordinary renditions were for Europe.

They involved abducting and interrogating terror suspects without court sanction in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., under former President George W. Bush.

A 2007 Council of Europe probe accused 14 European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centers or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.

American seeks political asylum in Sweden alleging torture, FBI coercion

U.S. Muslim travelers say they're still saddled with 9-11 baggage

'Huge victory for justice'

The White House referred NBC News' request for comment on the European court's ruling to the National Security Council press office, which responded later Thursday.

"The United States government does not comment on what are alleged to be activities of the intelligence community," Caitlin Hayden, NSC deputy spokesperson told NBC in an email response.

She pointed to three Executive Orders issued by President Barack Obama on his second full day in office on U.S. detention, interrogation and transfer policies directing that detainees in all circumstances be "treated humanely," that CIA detention facilities be closed "expeditiously," and that transfer practices "do not result in the transfer of individuals to face torture. The United States government is implementing those recommendations."

Goldston, who argued the case before the court, told NBC News that the United States had never commented on the claims officially and attempts to get a U.S. court to hear El-Masri’s case had failed.

He said he hoped the European court’s decision would prompt action in the U.S.

How I see America, from a former Gitmo prisoner

"The Obama administration should now apologize and acknowledge what the court has found, and undertake a more sweeping, intensive inquiry that what has been done to date," Goldston said.

"It’s incumbent on the administration to do that," he said, adding that the U.S. should also pay compensation to El-Masri.

Jamil Dakwar, head of the human rights program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the AP that the ruling was "a huge victory for justice and the rule of law."

He predicted "it will make it harder for the United States to continue burying its head in the sand" about accusations that its officials tortured suspects in the war on terrorism.

El-Masri was given a prison sentence in 2010 for assaulting the mayor of Neu-Ulm, Germany, and is due for release next year, Goldston said.

The court's rulings are binding on the 47 member states of the Council of Europe.

The Associated Press and NBC News' Kari Huus contributed to this report.

Another corrupt high level Israeli leader: Israeli FM Avigdor Lieberman charged with breach of trust

There was insufficient evidence to charge Avigdor Lieberman with money-laundering

BBC News
13 December 2012 Last updated at 13:46 ET

The Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has been charged with breach of trust in connection with a long-running financial scandal.

But Mr Lieberman has been cleared of more serious offences, including money-laundering and bribery.

He said he did not have to resign but was studying the indictment with his lawyers.

The charge against one of the most powerful politicians in Israel comes five weeks before a general election.

Mr Lieberman's party recently joined that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the elections and the Foreign Minister said he would consider how the indictment would affect the vote before he took any further action.

"A final decision will be made after consultation with my lawyers and in the consideration of not hurting the voting public," he said hours after the Justice Ministry announced its decision.

Israeli law on the matter is complex. The BBC's Kevin Connolly says it is thought that being under indictment does not prevent Mr Lieberman from running for parliament but it might force him to resign as a minister.

Opposition parties had called for his resignation if he was charged and the our correspondent says they might go to court to force the issue.

The case dates back more than a decade. Prosecutors had suspected Mr Lieberman had received illicit funds from businessmen and laundered them through shell bank accounts.

The Attorney-General decided there was apparently insufficient evidence to take the matter to trial and charged Lieberman with the lesser offence of receiving official material from the investigation against him.

Leader Celebrates Founding of Hamas With Defiant Speech

Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters gathered in Gaza City near a large replica of an M-75, a Hamas rocket, that bore the words “Made in Gaza.”

New York Times
By STEVEN ERLANGER
PuFares Akram contributed reporting
 December 8, 2012

GAZA CITY — Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas, gave a defiant speech on Saturday, vowing to build an Islamic Palestinian state on all the land of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

 Speaking before tens of thousands of supporters on the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas, Mr. Meshal said the Jewish state would be wiped away through “resistance,” or military action. “The state will come from resistance, not negotiation,” he said. “Liberation first, then statehood.”

His voice rising to a shout, Mr. Meshal said: “Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on any inch of the land.” He vowed that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants would one day return to their original homes in what is now Israel.

“We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation, and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take,” he said. “We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone. Israel has no right to be in Jerusalem.” He also promised Palestinian prisoners held in Israel that they would be freed using the same methods that have worked in the past — the kidnapping of Israelis and Israeli soldiers, like Gilad Shalit, who was released last year in a prisoner exchange after five years as a hostage.

Mr. Meshal’s harsh words reflected longstanding Hamas principles rather than new, specific threats toward Israel. But they will only reinforce Israel’s belief that Hamas is its enemy and intends to continue to use military force to reach its goals.

Mr. Meshal, on his first visit to Gaza after 45 years of exile, having fled a West Bank village at 11 with his family during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, was in a joyous but not conciliatory mood. He promised Palestinian unity, but only on the basis of Hamas’s principles, which would mean a subordinate role for Fatah, the main Palestinian faction in the West Bank. He called the United Nations General Assembly’s vote granting Palestinians enhanced status as a nonmember observer state — engineered by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank — “a small step but a good one.”

He insisted that Hamas had won a great military victory by achieving a cease-fire with Israel last month after eight days of rocket launches and airstrikes, and said it could form the basis, with the General Assembly vote, of a new Palestine Liberation Organization that would contain all Palestinian factions. An inclusive Palestinian Authority and a P.L.O. based on Hamas principles, however, would almost surely find itself shunned by Israel and much of the world. It would also be a humiliating defeat for Mr. Abbas, who supports a two-state solution and has negotiated with Israel.

The P.L.O., run by Mr. Abbas of Fatah, is the sole legal representative of the Palestinian people and does not now include Hamas.

The celebration took place under cloudy skies, mixed with periods of rain. But few of the supporters, many waving the green flags of Hamas, left the crowded square.

Mr. Meshal and Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, emerged together from a giant replica of a Hamas rocket called the M-75, which is supposed to be able to travel 75 kilometers, or 47 miles, from Gaza City, putting it close to Tel Aviv. Many experts have said they think the M-75 is a repainted Iranian Fajr rocket, but the one on display bore the words “Made in Gaza,” in English. The crowd cheered and a band played a song praising Hamas leaders for being fearless in the face of death.

The stage featured the rocket, a banner showing the walls of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock, and large photographs of Mr. Meshal and of Ahmed al-Jabari, Hamas’s military commander who was killed by an Israeli strike on the first day of November’s fighting.

While nearly everyone in the crowd carried Hamas flags, Mr. Haniya and Mr. Meshal brandished large red, white, green and black Palestinian flags from the stage, pressing the day’s theme of reconciliation and Hamas’s claim to leadership of the larger Palestinian movement, encouraged by the latest fighting and by the victory in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch.

“We are imposing a new reality on the Israeli occupation,” said Salah Bardawil, a Hamas spokesman. “All the factions are here, and the Hamas flags embrace the Palestinian flags and the Fatah flags. We need to extend the Arab revolution to all Palestine from the sea to the river, and every refugee returns to his home.”

 But Hamas is also anxious, some members say, about the current challenges to President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, who ran as the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate. To ride the wave of a Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy is fine, they say, unless it fails.

Those who came said they were thrilled to be here, proud of Hamas and its claims of victory over Israel in November. The conflict ended without an Israeli ground invasion and in a cease-fire brokered by Egypt, leaving Hamas with the sense that it had stood up to Israel despite the deaths here and the loss of many of its largest rockets.

The rally was also an entertainment for those with young children, providing a sense of excitement in what can be a difficult life here.

Many expressed the hope that Hamas and Fatah could finally reconcile in the interests of the larger Palestinian nation. Some Fatah representatives were invited to the rally, and few yellow Fatah flags, let alone Palestine flags, were seen in the waves of Hamas green. But the Fatah flags were often attached to poles also bearing the Hamas and Palestine flags.

People recalled that at an earlier rally here marking the cease-fire, a senior Fatah leader, Nabil Shaath, praised “the resistance” for its victory over “the enemy” and added, “The war has turned Hamas into a legitimate partner for Fatah.”

Abu Muhammed, 43, said he thought that the day showed Hamas’s new sense of self-confidence and demonstrated that “the mood is going toward reconciliation.” Nearly everyone in Gaza wants the two factions to reconcile, he said. The split “only favors Israel,” he said.

Mr. Meshal is thought to be more favorable to reconciliation with Fatah than is Mr. Haniya. But Mr. Haniya also basked in Mr. Meshal’s presence.

Palestinians win upgraded UN status by wide margin

President Mahmoud Abbas: "The international community now stands before the last chance to save the two state solution"


BBC News
 29 November 2012 Last updated at 17:16 ET

The UN General Assembly has voted to grant the Palestinians non-member observer state status - a move opposed by Israel and the US.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the assembly the vote was the "last chance to save the two-state solution" with Israel.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, said the bid "doesn't advance peace - it pushes it backwards".

The assembly voted 138-9 in favour, with 41 nations abstaining.
'Birth certificate'

"Sixty-five years ago on this day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 181, which partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two states and became the birth certificate for Israel," Mr Abbas told the assembly.

"The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine," he said.

Mr Prosor said "the only way to reach peace is through agreements" between the parties, not at the UN.

"No decision by the UN can break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel," he said.

Opponents of the bid say a Palestinian state should emerge only out of bilateral negotiations, as set out in the 1993 Oslo peace accords under which the Palestinian Authority was established.

Speaking after the vote, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, urged the Palestinians and Israel to resume direct peace talks and warned against unilateral actions.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the vote "unfortunate and counter-productive", saying it put more obstacles on the path to peace.

Symbolic milestone

The Palestinians are seeking UN recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967.

France, Spain and Norway are among those urging the General Assembly to raise the Palestinians' UN status. Germany was set to abstain.

While the move is seen as a symbolic milestone in Palestinian ambitions for statehood, the "Yes" vote will also have a practical diplomatic effect, says the BBC's Barbara Plett, at the UN.

It would allow the Palestinians to participate in debates at the UN and improve their chances of joining UN agencies and bodies like the International Criminal Court.

Last year, Mr Abbas asked the UN Security Council to admit the Palestinians as a member state, but that was opposed by the US.

U.N. set to implicitly recognize Palestinian state, despite U.S., Israel threats

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS | Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:39am EST

(Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly is set to implicitly recognize a sovereign state of Palestine on Thursday despite threats by the United States and Israel to punish the Palestinian Authority by withholding much-needed funds for the West Bank government.

A resolution that would change the Palestinian Authority's U.N. observer status from "entity" to "non-member state," like the Vatican, is expected to pass easily in the 193-nation General Assembly.

Israel, the United States and a handful of other members are planning to vote against what they see as a largely symbolic and counterproductive move by the Palestinians, which takes place on the 65th anniversary of the assembly's adoption of resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been leading the campaign to win support for the resolution, and over a dozen European governments have offered him their support after an eight-day conflict this month between Israel and Islamists in the Gaza Strip, who are pledged to Israel's destruction and oppose his efforts toward a negotiated peace.

The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday that Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and U.S. Middle East peace envoy David Hale traveled to New York on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to get Abbas to reconsider.

The Palestinians gave no sign they were turning back.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated to reporters in Washington on Wednesday the U.S. view that the Palestinian move was misguided and efforts should focus instead on reviving the stalled Middle East peace process.

"The path to a two-state solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Palestinian people is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York," she said. "The only way to get a lasting solution is to commence direct negotiations."

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland reiterated U.S. warnings that the move could cause a reduction of U.S. economic support for the Palestinians. The Israelis have also warned they might take significant deductions out of monthly transfers of duties that Israel collects on the Palestinians' behalf.

Despite its fierce opposition, Israel seems concerned not to find itself diplomatically isolated. It has recently toned down threats of retaliation in the face of wide international support for the initiative, notably among its European allies.

"The decision at the United Nations will change nothing on the ground," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Jerusalem. "It will not advance the establishment of a Palestinian state. It will delay it further."

'SLAP IN THE FACE'

Granting Palestinians the title of "non-member observer state" falls short of full U.N. membership - something the Palestinians failed to achieve last year. But it would allow them access to the International Criminal Court and some other international bodies, should they choose to join them.

Hanan Ashrawi, a top Palestine Liberation Organization official, told a news conference in Ramallah that "the Palestinians can't be blackmailed all the time with money."

"If Israel wants to destabilize the whole region, it can," she said. "We are talking to the Arab world about their support, if Israel responds with financial measures, and the EU has indicated they will not stop their support to us."

Peace talks have been stalled for two years, mainly over the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have expanded despite being deemed illegal by most of the world.

In the draft resolution, the Palestinians have pledged to relaunch the peace process immediately following the U.N. vote.

As there is little doubt about how the United States will vote when the Palestinian resolution to upgrade its U.N. status is put to a vote sometime after 3 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority has been concentrating its efforts on lobbying wealthy European states, diplomats say.

With strong support from the developing world that makes up the majority of U.N. members, the resolution is virtually assured of securing more than the requisite simple majority. Palestinian officials hope for more than 130 yes votes.

Abbas has been trying to amass as many European votes in favor as possible.

Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland all pledged to support the Palestinian resolution. Britain said it was prepared to vote yes, but only if the Palestinians fulfilled certain conditions.

Diplomats said the Czech Republic was expected to vote against the move, potentially dashing European hopes to avoid a three-way split in the vote. Germany and the Netherlands said they planned to abstain, like Estonia and Lithuania.

Ashrawi said the positive responses from European states were encouraging and sent a message of hope to all Palestinians.

"This constitutes a historical turning point and opportunity for the world to rectify a grave historical injustice that the Palestinians have undergone since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948," she said.

A strong backing from European nations could make it awkward for Israel to implement harsh retaliatory measures. But Israel's reaction might not be so measured if the Palestinians seek ICC action against Israel on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity or other crimes the court would have jurisdiction over.

Israel also seems wary of weakening the Western-backed Abbas, especially after the political boost rival Hamas received from recent solidarity visits to Gaza by top officials from Egypt, Qatar and Tunisia.

Hamas militants, who control Gaza and have had icy relations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, unexpectedly offered Abbas their support this week.

One Western diplomat said the Palestinian move was almost an insult to recently re-elected U.S. President Barack Obama.

"It's not the best way to convince Mr. Obama to have a more positive approach toward the peace process," said the diplomat, who was planning to vote for the resolution. "Three weeks after his election, it's basically a slap in the face."

(This story corrected name of Palestine Liberation Organization)

(Andrew Quinn in Washington, Noah Browning in Ramallah, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Michelle Nichols in New York, and Reuters bureaux in Europe and elsewhere; Editing by Peter Cooney and Xavier Briand)

Artists, Nobel laureates call for military boycott of Israel

'Military embargo against Israel.' Mike Leigh (Photo: AFP)

Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky and Roger Waters among those who signed letter saying Operation Pillar of Defense 'new chapter in Israel's decades-old violations of international law, Palestinian rights'

Ynet
Published:     11.28.12, 16:09 / Israel News

A group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, prominent artists and activists have issued a call for an international military boycott of Israel following Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, The Guardian reported Wednesday.
The group said it was "horrified at the latest round of Israeli aggression against the 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged and occupied Gaza Strip and conscious of the impunity that has enabled this new chapter in Israel's decades-old violations of international law and Palestinian rights, we believe there is an urgent need for international action towards a mandatory, comprehensive military embargo against Israel.

"Such a measure has been subject to several UN resolutions and is similar to the arms embargo imposed against apartheid South Africa in the past," the letter read.

According to The Guardian, the 52 signatories include the Nobel peace laureates Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel; the film directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach; the author Alice Walker; the US academic Noam Chomsky; Roger Waters of Pink Floyd; and Stéphane Hessel, a former French diplomat and Holocaust survivor who helped edit the universal declaration of human rights.

According to the British newspaper, the letter accuses several countries of providing important military support that "facilitated the assault" on Gaza. "While the United States has been the largest sponsor of Israel, supplying billions of dollars of advanced military hardware every year, the role of the European Union must not go unnoticed, in particular its hefty subsidies to Israel's military complex through its research programs.

"Similarly, the growing military ties between Israel and the emerging economies of Brazil, India and South Korea are unconscionable given their nominal support for Palestinian freedom," the letter says.

The letter opens with a quote from Nelson Mandela: "For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

The other signatories include John Dugard, a South African jurist and former UN special rapporteur in the occupied territories; Luisa Morgantini, former president of the European parliament; Cynthia McKinney, a former member of the US Congress; Ronnie Kasrils, a South African former cabinet minister; and the dramatist Caryl Churchill.

Five Lies the Media Keeps Repeating About Gaza

As Israel continues to pound Gaza, the Palestinian death toll of the latest round of violence has crossed the 100 mark. Thus far, the American media has given Israeli officials and spokespersons a free pass to shape the narrative of this conflict with falsehoods. Here are the top 5 lies the media doesn't challenge about the crisis in Gaza:

1. Israel Was Forced to Respond to Rockets to Defend Its Citizens
CNN, like many other American outlets, chose to begin the story of the latest round of violence in Gaza on November 10th, when 4 Israeli soldiers were wounded by Palestinian fire, and the IDF "retaliated" by killing several Palestinians. But just two days before, a 13 year old Palestinian boy was killed in an Israeli military incursion into Gaza (among other fatalities in preceding days). Is there any reason why those couldn't be the starting point of the "cycle of violence"? The bias was even more blatant in 2008/09, when Israel's massive assault on Gaza (which killed 1400+ Palestinians) was cast as self-defense, even though it was acknowledged in passing that Israel was the party that broke the ceasefire agreement in place at the time. Are the Palestinians not entitled to self-defense? And if indiscriminate Palestinian rocket fire is not an acceptable response to Israeli violence (which it absolutely isn't), how can indiscriminate Israeli bombings of Gaza ever be acceptable? And why is the broader context, the fact that Gaza remains under Israeli blockade and military control, overlooked?

2. Israel Tries to Avoid Civilian Casualties
It must be aggravating for Israel's propagandists when high-ranking political officials slip and get off the sanitized/approved message for public consumption. Yesterday, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai said the "goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages." Not to be outdone, Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, said "we need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza." If you're thinking this is just rhetoric, consider the fact that, according to Amnesty International, Israel "flattened... busy neighborhoods" into "moonscapes" during its last major assault on Gaza in 2008/09. And it wasn't just human rights organizations that were exposing Israeli war crimes in Gaza, but Israeli soldiers whose conscience could not bear to remain silent about the atrocities they had committed were also coming forward.

If, for some odd reason, you cannot decide whether it is official Israeli spokespersons or soldiers of conscience and human rights investigators who are telling the truth, consider this question: If Hamas has only managed to kill 3 people despite being bent on killing civilians with thousands of indiscriminate rockets, how has Israel managed to kill several dozen Palestinian civilians when it is using sophisticated precision weapons to avoid civilian casualties? In just one Israeli attack yesterday, Israel killed more Palestinian civilians in a matter of minutes than the total number of all Israelis killed by rocket fire from Gaza over the last 3 years. The truth is exposed by the utter disregard for civilian life we see in practice, reaffirmed by testimonies and investigative evidence.

3. This Is About Security
If Israel's main objective were indeed to end the rocket fire from Gaza, all it had to do was accept the truce offered by the Palestinian factions before the Jabari assassination. And if the blockade of Gaza was just about keeping weapons from coming in, why are Palestinian exports from Gaza not allowed out? Why were food items ever restricted? The truth is, this isn't about security; it's about punishing the population of Gaza for domestic Israeli political consumption. When Gilad Sharon recommended the decimation of Gaza, he justified it by saying "the residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas." Sharon may find this posturing to be rewarding in some circles, but it's actually the very same logic used by terrorists to attack civilians in democracies. Are Israeli civilians considered legitimate targets of violence because they elected right wing Israeli leaders who commit atrocities against the Palestinians? Of course not, and only a broken moral compass can keep this principle from consistently applying to Palestinian civilians as well.

4. Hamas Is the Problem
Between their religious right-wing domestic agenda, and their refusal to renounce violence against civilians, I'm most certainly no fan of Hamas. But whenever you hear Israel try to scapegoat Hamas for the crisis in Gaza, there are two things to consider. First, Hamas hasn't only showed preparedness to have a truce with Israel if Israel ended its attacks on Gaza, but has also suggested (though with mixed signals) that it is open to a two-state solution. Second, and more importantly, Hamas didn't come to power until 2006/07. Between 1993 and 2006 (13 years), Israel had the more moderate, peaceful, and pliant Palestinian authority (which recognizes Israel and renounces violence) to deal with as a partner for peace. What did Israel do? Did it make peace? Or did it continue to occupy Palestinian land, violate Palestinian rights, and usurp Palestinian resources? What strengthened Hamas and other extremists in Palestine is precisely the moderates' failure to secure any Palestinian rights through cooperation and negotiations. The truth is entirely inverted here: it is Israel's escalating violations of Palestinian rights which strengthen the extremists.

5. There is a Military Solution to this Conflict
This is not the first time, and probably not the last, that Israel has engaged in a military campaign to pummel its opponents into submission. But are we any closer to ending this conflict today after decades of violence? The answer is a resounding no. After the 2006 war in Lebanon, Hezbollah emerged stronger. After the 2009 war on Gaza, Hamas remained in power and maintained possession of thousands of rockets. Israel's military superiority, while indeed impressive (thanks to $30 billion in U.S. military aid this decade), is not stronger than the Palestinian will to live in dignity. The way to end the firing of rockets in the short term is to agree to a truce and end the blockade of Gaza. The way to resolve the entire conflict in the long term is to end Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and allow the Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination. We're probably close to a ceasefire agreement to end this round of violence. The real challenge is ending the Israeli occupation for long-term peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians.

#gazaunderattack   #middleeast   #Gaza   #palestine   #israel
http://www.sott.net/article/253818-5-Lies-the-Media-Keeps-Repeating-About-Gaza

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It's Palestinians who have the right to defend themselves

The Guardian:
Tuesday 20 November 2012
Seumas Milne

The US and Britain stand behind Israel's onslaught on Gaza. Justice requires a change in the balance of forces on the ground

The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel's onslaught on Gaza, you'd think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power. Israel had every "right to defend itself", Barack Obama declared. "No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders."

He was echoed by Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, who declared that the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas bore "principal responsibility" for Israel's bombardment of the open-air prison that is the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, most western media have echoed Israel's claim that its assault is in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks; the BBC speaks wearisomely of a conflict of "ancient hatreds".

In fact, an examination of the sequence of events over the last month shows that Israel played the decisive role in the military escalation: from its attack on a Khartoum arms factory reportedly supplying arms to Hamas and the killing of 15 Palestinian fighters in late October, to the shooting of a mentally disabled Palestinian in early November, the killing of a 13 year-old in an Israeli incursion and, crucially, the assassination of the Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari last Wednesday during negotiations over a temporary truce.

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, had plenty of motivation to unleash a new round of bloodletting. There was the imminence of Israeli elections (military attacks on the Palestinians are par for the course before Israeli polls); the need to test Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, and pressure Hamas to bring other Palestinian guerrilla groups to heel; and the chance to destroy missile caches before any confrontation with Iran, and test Israel's new Iron Dome anti-missile system.

So after six days of sustained assault by the world's fourth largest military power on one of its most wretched and overcrowded territories, at least 130 Palestinians had been killed, an estimated half of them civilians, along with five Israelis. The goal, Israel's interior minister, Eli Yeshai, insisted, had been to "send Gaza back to the middle ages".

True, the bloodshed hasn't so far been on the scale of Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9, which left 1,400 Palestinians dead in three weeks. But the issue isn't just who started and escalated it, or even the grinding "disproportionality" of yet another Israeli military battering (even before last month's flareups, 314 Palestinians had been killed since 2009, as against 20 Israelis).

It's that to portray Israel as some kind of victim with every right to "defend itself" from attack from "outside its borders" is a grotesque inversion of reality. Israel has after all been in illegal occupation of both the West Bank and Gaza, where most of the population are the families of refugees who were driven out of what is now Israel in 1948, for the past 45 years.

Despite Israel's withdrawal of settlements and bases in 2005, the Gaza Strip remains occupied, both effectively and legally – and is recognised as such by the UN. Israel is in control of Gaza's land and sea borders, territorial waters and natural resources, airspace, power supply and telecommunications. It has blockaded the strip since Hamas took over in 2006-7, preventing the movement of people, materials, and food supplies in and out of the territory – even calculating the 2,279 calories per person that would keep Gazans on an exemplary "diet". And it continues to invade the strip at will.

So Gazans are an occupied people and have the right to resist, including by armed force (though not to target civilians), while Israel is an occupying power that has an obligation to withdraw – not a right to defend territories it controls or is colonising by dint of military power.

Even if Israel had genuinely ended its occupation in 2005, Gaza's people are Palestinians, and their territory part of the 22% of historic Palestine earmarked for a Palestinian state that depends on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Across their land, Palestinians have the right to defend and arm themselves, whether they choose to exercise it or not.

But instead the US, Britain and other European powers finance, arm and back to the hilt Israel's occupation, including the siege of Gaza – precisely to prevent Palestinians obtaining the arms that would allow them to protect themselves against Israeli military might.

It's hardly surprising of course that powers which have themselves invaded, occupied and intervened across the Arab and Muslim world over the last decade should throw their weight behind Israel doing the same thing on its own doorstep. But it isn't Palestinian rockets that stop Israel lifting the blockade, dismantling its illegal settlements or withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza – it's unconditional US and western support that gives Israel impunity.

Whatever the Israeli government's mix of motivations for winding up the past week's conflict, it seems to have backfired. For the first time since the start of the Arab uprisings, the cause of Palestine is again centre stage.

Emboldened by the wave of change and growing support across the region, Hamas has also regained credibility as a resistance force, which had faded since 2009, and strengthened its hand against an increasingly discredited Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah. The deployment of longer-range rockets that have now been shown to reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is also beginning to shift what has been an overwhelmingly one-sided balance of deterrence.

The truce being negotiated on Tuesday would reportedly enforce Hamas responsibility for policing the strip and crucially break the blockade, opening the Rafah crossing with Egypt for goods as well as people. It doesn't, however, look like the long-term security deal with Hamas Israel was looking for, which would risk deepening the disastrous Palestinian split between Gaza and the West Bank.

Any relief from the bombardment, death and suffering of the past week has got to be welcome. But no ceasefire is going to prevent another eruption of violence. Whatever is finally agreed won't end Israel's occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land or halt its war of dispossession against the Palestinian people. That demands unrelenting pressure on the western powers that underwrite it to change course. But most of all, it needs a change in the balance of forces on the ground.