Reviving the Woolly Mammoth: Will De-Extinction Become Reality?

Science News
Megan Gannon, News Editor
Date: 15 March 2013 Time: 01:03 PM ET

 Biologists briefly brought the extinct Pyrenean Ibex back to life in 2009 by creating a clone from a frozen tissue sample harvested before the goat's entire population vanished in 2000. The clone survived just seven minutes after birth, but it gave scientists hope that "de-extinction," once a pipedream, could become a reality.

Four years later, a group of researchers and conservationists gathered in Washington, D.C., today (March 15) for a forum called TEDxDeExtinction, hosted by the National Geographic Society, to talk about how to revive extinct animals, from the Tasmanian tiger and the saber-toothed tiger to the woolly mammoth and the North American passenger pigeon.

Though scientists don't expect a real-life "Jurassic Park" will ever be on the horizon, a species that died a few tens of thousands of years ago could be resurrected as long as it has enough intact ancient DNA.

Some have their hopes set on the woolly mammoth, a relative of modern elephants that went extinct 3,000 to 10,000 years ago and left behind some extraordinarily well preserved carcasses in Siberian permafrost. Scientists in Russia and South Korea have embarked on an ambitious project to try to create a living specimen using the DNA-storing nucleus of a mammoth cell and an Asian elephant egg — a challenging prospect, as no one has ever been able to harvest eggs from an elephant. [Image Gallery: Bringing Extinct Animals Back to Life]

But DNA from extinct species doesn't need to be preserved in Arctic conditions to be useful to scientists — researchers have been able to start putting together the genomes of extinct species from museum specimens that have been sitting on shelves for a century. If de-extinction research has done anything for science, it's forced researchers to look at the quality of the DNA in dead animals, Carl Zimmer, a science journalist who wrote National Geographic's new cover story on de-extinction, told LiveScience.

"It's not that good but you can come up with techniques to retrieve it," Zimmer added.

For instance, a team that includes Harvard genetics expert George Church is trying to bring back the passenger pigeon — a bird that once filled eastern North America's skies. They have been able to piece together roughly 1 billion letters (Each of four amino acids make up DNA has a letter designation) in the bird's genome based on DNA from a 100-year-old taxidermied museum specimen. They hope to incorporate those genes responsible for certain traits into the genome of a common rock pigeon to bring back the passenger pigeon, or at least create something that looks like it.

A few years ago, another group of researchers isolated DNA from a 100-year-old specimen of a young thylacine, also known as Tasmanian tiger. The pup had been preserved in alcohol at Museum Victoria in Melbourne. Its genetic material was inserted into mouse embryos, which proved functional in live mice. [Photos: The Creatures of Cryptozoology]

Should we?

Now that de-extinction looms as a possibility, it presents some thorny questions: Should we bring back these species? And what would we do them?

Stuart Pimm of Duke University argued in an opinion piece in National Geographic that these efforts would be a "colossal waste" if scientists don't know where to put revived species that had been driven off the planet because their habitats became unsafe.

"A resurrected Pyrenean ibex will need a safe home," Pimm wrote. "Those of us who attempt to reintroduce zoo-bred species that have gone extinct in the wild have one question at the top of our list: Where do we put them? Hunters ate this wild goat to extinction. Reintroduce a resurrected ibex to the area where it belongs and it will become the most expensive cabrito ever eaten."

Pimm also worries that de-extinction could create a false impression that science can save endangered species, turning the focus away from conservation. But others argue that bringing back iconic, charismatic creatures could stir support for species preservation.

"Some people feel that watching scientists bring back the great auk and putting it back on a breeding colony would be very inspiring," Zimmer told LiveScience. The great auk was the Northern Hemisphere's version of the penguin. The large flightless birds went extinct in the mid-19th century.

Other species disappeared before scientists had a chance to study their remarkable biological abilities — like the gastric brooding frog, which vanished from Australia in the mid-1980s, likely due to timber harvesting and the chytrid fungus.

Gastric brooding frogs come in two species: Rheobatrachus vitellinus and R. silus (pictured above and last seen in 1985). These frogs had a unique mode of reproduction: The female swallowed fertilized eggs, turned its stomach into a uterus and gave birth to froglets through the mouth. Timber harvesting and the chytrid fungus are the main suspects behind their extinction.
CREDIT: Mike Taylor/Conservation International

"This was not just any frog," Mike Archer, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales, said during his talk at TEDxDeExtinction, which was broadcast via livestream. These frogs had a unique mode of reproduction: The female swallowed fertilized eggs, turned its stomach into a uterus and gave birth to froglets through the mouth.

"No animal, let alone a frog, has been known to do this – change one organ in the body into another," Archer said. He's using cloning methods to put gastric brooding frog nuclei into eggs of living Australian marsh frogs. Archer announced today that his team has already created early-stage embryos of the extinct species forming hundreds of cells.

"I think we're gonna have this frog hopping glad to be back in the world again," he said.

I've posted the idea before that California should create a Pleistocene Park complete with our California imperial (Columbian) mammoths, the biggest of all the mammoth species. We have millions of acres of former elephant foraging grounds, our oak forests, which I think are suffering from lack of predation from mammoth feeding on them. Diseases like sudden oak may be linked to lack of predators culling weaker trees out. In any event, these Pleistocene animals really could live here as it has only been some 12,000 years since they were last here, a blink of an eye in geological terms since the last elephants were wandering around here in California. 

First Miss Israel of Ethiopian descent to dine with Obama

First Miss Israel of Ethiopian descent to dine with Obama

March 14, 2013

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Yityish Aynaw, the first Miss Israel of Ethiopian descent, has been invited to meet President Obama at a dinner hosted by President Shimon Peres.
Aynaw, 21, who was crowned two weeks ago, reportedly was invited at the behest of Obama's advance team, which is currently in Israel putting the finishing touches on plans for next week's visit.
In interviews with the Israeli media on Wednesday, following her invitation, Aynaw called Obama an inspiration and a role model.
"For me, he is a role model who broke down barriers, a source of inspiration that proves that every person really can reach any height, regardless of their religion, race or gender," she told the mass circulation Israeli daily Yediot Acharonot.
She told the Jerusalem Post that she thought she was invited to the dinner because she is “the first black Miss Israel to be chosen and [Obama] is the first black American president. These go together.”
Aynaw, who immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia with her grandparents at the age of 12, said in an interview Wednesday night with Israel's Channel 2 that when she meets Obama that she will tell him he has been a role model, and that he should free Jonathan Pollard.
She told the interviewer that as head of her high school student council she worked on many projects to call for the release of Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, from a U.S. prison.  "If I have the opportunity, why not?" she said.

This story about Obama dining with a black Miss Israel, the first one for Israel and just in time for Obama's visit, just drips with cynical manipulation for political purposes by both Israel and the U.S. I wonder how eager Obama would be to dine with Bizunesh Hidana, another Ethiopian girl who perhaps could use the meal.

 Bizunesh Hidana is 3 years old and weighs less than 10 pounds. The U.N. World Food Program estimates that 2.7 million Ethiopians will need emergency food aid because of late rains — nearly double the number who needed help last year.

 Statistics on Ethiopian Poverty

There is a direct correlation between poverty and starvation.

Starvation is preventable.

    •According to research taken from Food First, the Institute for Food and Development, enough food is produced worldwide to provide every person on the planet with 4.3 lbs, or 3,500 calories daily.

    It is important to realize that much of Ethiopia’s problems stem from larger World-wide issues.

    •In order to make a more direct connection to Americans, these statistics compare aspects of Ethiopian living standards with ours, here in the United States.

	Ethiopia	USA
% Children under 5 moderately to severely underweight	47	1
% Population using improved water for drinking	22	100
GNI per Capita in $US	90	37,610
Life Expectancy	46	77
Under 5 Mortality Rate	169	8
Phone Sets per 100 People	1	113
Infant Mortality Rate (under 1)	112	7

                                                      
Statistics from Unicef, 2003

 

Israel's Iron Dome: Doubts over success rate

Iron Dome was developed by an Israeli defence contractor but paid for mainly by the US

12 March 2013 Last updated at 05:28 ET
By Jonathan Marcus
BBC Defence Correspondent

A leading US expert on missile defence has raised doubts about the efficacy of Israel's Iron Dome defence system.

Israeli officials say it hit some 84% of the targets engaged in last year's conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

But Professor Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests the defence system's success rate may have been "drastically lower".

The success of the Iron Dome was one of the most significant military aspects of Israel's brief campaign.

During this upsurge in fighting - dubbed Operation Pillar of Defence by the Israeli military - Israeli aircraft, drones and artillery bombarded Palestinian targets, while Palestinian groups fired over 1,400 rockets into Israel.

The Iron Dome missile defence system - built by the Israeli company, Rafael, but largely funded by the US - was rushed into service to defend against the Palestinian missile threat.

Track-record

Mr Postol has a track-record in debunking claims made for state-of-the-art missile defence systems.

n the wake of the 1991 Gulf War after which lavish praise was directed at the Patriot defensive system used by the Americans to defend against incoming Iraqi Scuds - Mr Postol showed that the Patriot's defenders - like the Patriot itself - were wide of the mark.

Patriot's success rate, he argued, could have been less than 10%, perhaps even zero. It may actually have hit nothing.

Mr Postol's criticism of the Iron Dome rests upon the nature of the warhead carried by the interceptor missile and the observed trajectories - or flight paths - of the launches he has studied from the November 2012 conflict.

In essence he believes that the only way Iron Dome can be sure of destroying the warhead of an incoming rocket is to hit it head on.

"If the interceptor is flying a crossing or diving trajectory compared to that of the incoming rocket," he told me, "then you are not going to destroy the warhead. Even hitting the incoming warhead side-on will probably not have sufficient energy to detonate it, he argues.
'Deception'

Mr Postol says that while he cannot say what the performance of Iron Dome was in Operation Pillar of Defence, "all the available evidence unambiguously indicates a drastically lower level of performance than the 84% claimed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)."

His view is that the successful hit rate on incoming warheads could be as low as 5-10%.

Mr Postol says that if the IDF wants to make such claims, then it should provide the data to back them up.

He acknowledges that it might have been "a reasonable strategy for Israel to claim that Iron Dome was working, as an excuse not to invade Gaza at an enormous cost to both sides. "

But he argues that "continuing such a deception can only result in the misappropriation of limited defence assets".

Mr Postol says that "as an American supporter of Israel's right to self-defence", he does not feel comfortable seeing the US spend money on a weapon system "that hardly works".

The BBC tried to contact Rafael, Iron Dome's manufacturer for a response to Mr Postol's claims but was unable to get a reply.

Earlier an IDF spokesman quoted in the Haaretz newspaper, noted that "all interceptions by Iron Dome are investigated with cross-checking of system data, radar [data], reports from different sources on the ground and other information. The data of [Iron Dome] activity was arrived at based on this process."

What will our grandchildren think of the United States of America when they are taught about how the U.S. funded Israeli racially inspired aggression against native Palestinians for decades until Palestinians regained their country despite all of America's dollars behind Israeli Zionist imperialism. The lesson of Vietnam, the lesson of Iraq, the lesson of Afghanistan, never being learned by American war leadership and arms dealers, always eager to keep the world at war.

 Alice Walker: Obama charmed me... I was naive

 9 March 2013 Last updated at 09:39 ET
Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent

She speaks softly and takes a hard look at life.

But Alice Walker always lives with hope.

"The more you honour truth, the more hopeful you can be," the acclaimed author and activist told me when she came into our BBC studios.

In an interview to mark a documentary about her life - Alice Walker, Beauty in Truth - she hailed the "awakening on the planet about insisting on truth as the guide".

Truth for Alice Walker was enshrined in her 1982 Pulitzer Prize winning book The Color Purple, where she wrote powerfully about a troubled young black woman fighting against a racist and patriarchal culture.

For her and many others, President Barack Obama's historic rise to the White House was a hopeful moment, but for her, an all-too-fleeting one.

"He charmed me, he held out a wonderful vision of a different way," she remarked wistfully, and then broke into a smile. "I was naive," she remarked.

"He and his family are visually beautiful," she explained. "But it's not so good to watch the continuation of policies we deeply disagree with."

She singled out the use of deadly weapons, including drone warfare, that she described as criminal.

In Alice Walker's view, the president "listens to bankers, not to us, the masses... the women, children and poets".

Continuing U.S. government policy to violate Separation of Church and State Obama meets privately with Jewish leaders

Washington Post
By Scott Wilson, Published: March 7

Jewish leaders urged President Obama on Thursday to make clear during his upcoming trip to Israel that he will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons — and to correct an early diplomatic misstep when he appeared to trace Israel’s historic claim to a modern state to the Holocaust rather than to the Bible.

In a White House meeting that lasted longer than the scheduled hour, Obama listened to leaders of more than a dozen Israel advocacy groups, representing a spectrum of views over the challenges facing the Jewish state at a moment of regional instability and mounting threats.

The meeting was described by nearly a half-dozen participants as cordial, led by a president who, after an early setback attempting to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, appeared far more self-assured and with a policy more in line with those of his guests than in previous encounters.

The gathering was not listed on the president’s public schedule, and some participants spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount the discussions. Some said Obama engaged most energetically, although never angrily, with those with whom he most disagreed.

In one exchange, Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, expressed concern that Obama might be softening his pledge to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, based on recent reports of frustrated international diplomatic efforts.

Obama has said his policy is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, not containing the Islamic republic if it does achieve that capability. Vice President Biden made the same point earlier this week in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but Hoenlein asked Obama what actions he intends to take to stop it, according to participants.

“I’m not going to beat my chest to prove my toughness on this,” Obama said, according to participants.

Obama continued by citing a quote attributed by some to the Chinese military tactician Sun Tzu, who suggested that a “golden bridge” must be built to give what Obama described as a “proud people” a face-saving retreat to a diplomatic solution.

“The president outlined in general terms what he hopes to accomplish during his trip,” said Robert Wexler, the former Democratic congressman from Florida who attended the meeting as the director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.

“All of that was underlined by the president’s commitment — the reiteration of his commitment — to an unprecedented security relationship with Israel and with the president’s desire to have a meaningful conversation with the Israeli people,” he added.

Obama is scheduled to leave in just under two weeks for his first trip to Israel as president. He will also visit the occupied Palestinian territories and Jordan, whose leader, King Abdullah II, is facing growing public unrest over his family’s long rule of the desert kingdom of strategic importance to the United States.

Obama has met with Jewish leaders before, including a seminal July 2009 meeting held a few weeks after his call for a “new beginning” with the Muslim world in Cairo.


Why does the Jewish religion get a pass from compliance to the U.S. Constitution's 1st Amendment guaranteeing our government will pass no laws respecting an establishment of religion when we are in fact not only promoting the religion of Judaism but having American taxpayers pay for creating a Jewish religious state. Mormons are equal to Jews in their percentage of the population. Consider what you think if America was paying for Mormons to take full political control of Utah to create a Mormon homeland using Americans to pay for it. Consider Mormons at 2% of the population becoming the majority of the U.S. economic advisors, year after year, or Mormons owning the Federal Reserve Bank. All these special treatments are being given to Jewish Americans and their religious goal of establishing a Jewish homeland. It's against America's Constitution for any Congressman or woman to aid in the establishment of religion, any religion.

Segregation claims over Palestinian-only buses

The Daily Telegraph

Date

March 4, 2013 - 1:25PM

Robert Tait

Jerusalem: Israel has been accused of encouraging racial segregation after a new Palestinian-only bus service was started in response to objections by Jewish settlers who claimed Arab passengers were "a security risk".

Palestinians travelling to day jobs in central Israel from the West Bank are being urged to board special buses at a checkpoint instead of the regular services used by Israelis.

The scheme was drawn up by the Israeli transport ministry after residents in two Jewish settlements complained that Palestinian travellers on the Trans-Samaria road, also known as Highway 5, between the West Bank and Tel Aviv were a threat.

There were also reports of overcrowding and fights between Israeli and Palestinian passengers.

The transport ministry insisted that the move was "designed to improve the service for Palestinians entering Israel".

But some human rights groups called it "blatant racism" that resembled South African-style apartheid.
"They are institutionalising segregated services for Jews and non-Jews," said Ofra Yeshua-Lyth, an activist with Women For Civil Disobedience, an Israeli-Palestinian campaign group. "Many people don't class the Israeli situation as apartheid because for a long time, Israel refrained from the characteristics of petty apartheid, like separate roads, cafes and buses. This bus situation is a step in the direction of petty apartheid because people are being segregated in their daily activities." Avner Ovadia, a transport ministry spokesman, said there was no official ban on Palestinian workers travelling on public buses.

"Furthermore, the transport ministry is not authorised to stop any passenger travelling on these bus routes," he said.

But drivers with the Afikim bus company, which operates the Trans-Samaria route, said Palestinians attempting to use the regular services would be pointed towards a different bus.

"We are not allowed to refuse service and we will not order anyone to get off the bus, but from what we were told ... there will be checks at the checkpoint, and Palestinians will be asked to board their own buses," one driver told Ynet, an Israeli news website.

Fliers in Arabic advertising the service have been distributed at bus stops near Palestinian villages in the West Bank.

Yirsael Maidad, a spokesman for the Jewish Settlers Council, said Israelis felt justified in refusing to share buses with Palestinians. "It's not a racist thing but for some strange reason, Arabs blow themselves up in buses and Israelis find that very unnerving," he said. "If you were to ask some bright young radical, he would say forcing Arabs to ride Israeli buses would be a form of colonialism. Having their own buses should be very much welcomed as part of a state-building process."

Campaigners say troops began ordering Palestinians with Israeli work permits off buses after settlers made complaints last November. After witnessing one such incident, Ms Yeshua-Lyth lodged a report with Makhsom Watch, an Israeli group that monitors checkpoint incidents. She described how soldiers herded around 30 Palestinian workers from a bus travelling from Tel Aviv to the West Bank.

Palestinians say they have been forced to walk several kilometres to their homes or use expensive taxi services since the policy of removing them from buses began. An estimated 29,000 Palestinians travel to jobs in Israel every day, according to official figures.

Israel condemns Zionism comments by Turkey's PM Erdogan

"Uh oh. Telling the truth. What was I thinking.."

Mr Erdogan made the comments at a UN forum in Vienna

 1 March 2013 Last updated at 05:22 ET
BBC News

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been heavily criticised by the US, Israel and the UN for branding Zionism a "crime against humanity".

He told a UN forum this week: "As with Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it is inevitable that Islamophobia be considered a crime against humanity."

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu called the comments "dark and mendacious".

New US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to raise the issue when he meets Turkey's leaders on Friday.

He is in Ankara for talks on the crisis in Syria.

But his visit has been overshadowed by Mr Erdogan's comments, comparing Zionism with fascism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, at a meeting of the UN Alliance of Civilisations Forum in Vienna earlier this week.

His words drew strong condemnation from Mr Netanyahu's office, which called them "a dark and mendacious statement the likes of which we thought had passed from the world".

In the US, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said "the characterisation of Zionism as a crime against humanity... is offensive and wrong".

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's office said he heard Mr Erdogan's speech through an interpreter, and called it "unfortunate that such hurtful and divisive comments were uttered at a meeting being held under the theme of responsible leadership".

Relations between Israel and Turkey have deteriorated since May 2010 when nine Turkish activists aboard a flotilla of aid ships trying to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza were killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

"...heavily criticised by the US, Israel and the UN". But the report only mention's criticism by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, and no one else. And Ban Ki-moon's comments show us why the UN is under the thumb of Zionists and doesn't take steps to condemn Israel as it does other nations for far less international law-breaking.

Palestinians sources say detainee tortured to death

Protest against the death of a Palestinian detainee in an Israeli jail, in Gaza February 24, 2013 Photo: Photo: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

 Jerusalem Post
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
02/24/2013 22:14

Family of Arafat Jaradat claim traces of blood found on the body; Israeli Health Ministry says results of autopsy inconclusive.

Palestinian Authority Minister for Prisoners Affairs, Issa Qaraqi, claimed Sunday that Arafat Jaradat, the Palestinian prisoner who died in Meggido Prison on Saturday, had been subjected to severe torture.

Qaraqi told reporters in Ramallah that an autopsy performed earlier on Jaradat's body "proved that he had been severely tortured" while in detention.

Qaraqi claimed that the autopsy did not provide any evidence that Jaradat had died of a heart attack, as announced by the Israeli authorities.

Qaraqi said that the Israeli version regarding Jaradat's death was a "lie" and held Israel fully responsible for "this cruel crime."

Israel, he added, "must be held fully accountable for this war crime." Qaraqi reiterated his call for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to investigate Jaradat's death.

Qaraqi called on the PA leadership to take a quick decision "to join the Third and Fourth Geneva Convention" in response to the death of the Palestinian inmate. He said that such a move would allow the Palestinians to seek protection of the international community for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Kamil Sabbagh, a lawyer for the PA Ministry for Prisoners Affairs, said he last saw Jaradat in court on February 21. "He was complaining of severe pain in the back and appeared exhausted," Sabbagh said. He claimed that Jaradat told him that he had been beaten during interrogation.

The Health Ministry on Sunday said the autopsy showed "no signs of external trauma."

In a statement, the ministry echoed the Palestinian account of the post mortum, saying that "two ribs were broken," but added that the broken bones may indicate resuscitation attempts.

"No signs of external trauma were found apart from those pertaining to resuscitation [attempts] and a small graze on the right side of his chest," the Health Ministry stated.

On Sunday, Jaradat's body was handed over to his family in the village of Sair, near Hebron, where he is expected to be buried on Monday.

Jaradat's death triggered fresh protests in the West Bank, with hundreds of Palestinians taking to the streets and clashing with IDF soldiers.

Clashes were reported in Hebron, Ramallah and Bethlehem, Palestinian sources said. At least 36 Palestinians were injured during confrontations with IDF soldiers, the sources added.

The worst clashes occurred near Ofer Prison on the outskirts of Ramallah, where 26 Palestinians were reportedly injured, two of them from live ammunition. Among the wounded was the 15-year-old son of Ziad Hab al-Reeh, commander of the PA's Preventive Security Force in the West Bank.

Ahmed Qurei, a former PA prime minister, warned that the violence could erupt into a third intifada. He accused Israel of "assassinating" Jaradat and endangering the lives of other Palestinian prisoners, especially those who have been on hunger strike for several weeks.

Qurei also warned that Israel was preparing to perpetrate a "big crime" against the Aqsa Mosque and Muslim worshipers in Jerusalem.

Jpost.com staff contributed to this report.

Lawyer: Australian-Israeli Denied Allegations

Ben Zygier

By IAN DEITCH Associated Press

JERUSALEM February 14, 2013 (AP)

An Australian-Israeli citizen who mysteriously died in prison after an apparent career in Israel's spy agency had denied the allegations against him and was considering a plea bargain just before he died, his lawyer said Thursday.

The attorney, Avigdor Feldman, told Israeli Channel 10 that he saw Ben Zygier a day before he allegedly committed suicide. Zygier was "rational," Feldman said, adding that the two discussed legal options, including a plea bargain.

Feldman said the allegations against Zygier were "serious" but would not elaborate further.
The lawyer's remarks were the latest in the saga of a man known as Prisoner X. On Wednesday, Israel acknowledged for the first time that it held a dual Israeli citizen under a false name for security reasons and that he died in prison in 2010.

The story broke earlier this week when Australian ABC reported that the prisoner, who it referred to as Ben Zygier, migrated from Australia to Israel in 2000 and worked for the Mossad spy agency. It reported that Zygier's incarceration was top secret, but did not say why he had been arrested. It said he was known by at least three different names and had visited countries hostile to Israel.

The report forced the Australian government to admit that it had known about the case all along but kept it under wraps. It also unraveled the media blackout that the Israeli government had imposed using military censorship laws.

Feldman said he met with Zygier in prison. "I met a balanced person ... He was rationally considering legal options."

"I can say that he denied the charges ... The crimes he was suspected of were serious," Feldman said but would not elaborate further. "He didn't admit to anything."

Israel, which initially refused to acknowledge the Australian report, on Wednesday night lifted a series of gag orders dating to March 2010, and said an Israeli man who held dual citizenship in an undisclosed country died in custody in 2010.

Identifying the man only as the Hebrew equivalent of John Doe, the court order said the prisoner's family was notified immediately after he was detained. It said he was jailed under a court order and that the prisoner's full rights were retained. It named three Israeli lawyers to represent him. Channel 10 did not ask Feldman, who was not among the three named attorneys, who hired him. Feldman could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press.

The court order said that after the prisoner was found dead in his cell, a judge ordered an investigation, which concluded that he committed suicide. A judge has now asked the state to check for possible negligence.

There were no details how the prisoner, under 24-hour surveillance in a maximum security facility, had committed suicide.

Channel 10 also said that in 2009, Australian intelligence officers interrogated Zygier about trips to Iran, Lebanon and Syria. The report alleged that the case was leaked to an Australian reporter who phoned Zygier and questioned him about his alleged Mossad links. Zygier denied the links, Channel 10 said, adding that sometime after that interview, Zygier was jailed in Israel and died six months later.

From Mazin Qumsiyeh's Human Rights Newsletter: Six actions

Human Rights Newsletter
Six actions

Action 1: Call for participation in Direct Action Saturday and beyond in
Palestine: We are the sons and daughters of Canaanites have established
Canaan Village on endangered Canaanitic Palestinian land.  We declare that
it is our natural right to develop, reclaim, improve, use, and live on all
our lands free and without threats from occupiers/colonizers.  Beginning
Saturday 9 February, we will have several days of direct work to help
farmers in the South West Bank to reclaim and improve agricultural lands.
 If interested to help, meet us at Bab Zqaq in Bethlehem at 7 AM Saturday
when we will move to the location/s of the work or email us later to find
out what is going on and how you can help where on site or off site. We
call on people of conscience and media to join us as we work our lands and
thus defend it against attempts by foreign colonizers to usurp it.
Committee against the wall and settlements, Southwest West Bank.

Action 2: Palestinians call for a boycott of Israeli diamonds
http://www.australiansforpalestine.net/75295

Action 3: Ask the UEFA to cancel planned finals in Apartheid Israel
http://redcardapartheid.weebly.com/

Action 4: Sign petition to protect Cremisan area in Bethlehem District from
being taken over by Israeli settlers (note also press conference and prayer
vigil this Friday)
http://www.change.org/petitions/save-the-valley-in-cremisan-support-bridges-not-walls

Action 5: Why Palestine should take Israel to The Hague by George Bisharat,
a professor at the University of California s Hastings College of the Law
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/why-palestine-should-take-israel-to-the-ha
gue/article4370897.ece

Action 6: Palestinian Academic and cultural boycott of Israel grow.  Vist
PACBI news letter
http://www.pacbi.org/newsletter/January2013.php

PS related to Action 5: In the last email I shared reports from UN and
human rights organizations about Israeli brutality and war crimes.  I
alluded to the Turkish government report on Israeli crimes against the
freedom flotilla.  Here is that full report of the Turkish National
Commission of Inquiry
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/data/Turkish%20Report%20Final%20-%20UN%20Copy.pdf

Finally, sometimes people say I use strong language.  These are usually
people who have not been here to see what we see.  Others who have been
here will say we are far too nice in our language and that we need much
stronger response to the atrocities.  The following videos are of children
watching their home being demolished by occupiers /colonizers in Beit
Hanina, East Jerusalem area happened two days ago.  It is one of thousands
of similar stories.  The home is demolished by occupiers intent on changing
a country from multireligious and multicultural to a  Jewish state .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_U83yMFVFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxCX9j230x8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-FySzDyOTI

Stay human
Sincerely
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

I see Mazin is using the Canaanite identification for Palestinians. When I received the Canaan Peace Plan name as part of the Holy Land peace plan vision I was sure that Palestinians would find the name confusing to any Palestinian state plans. But it wasn't so. "Canaan" is found in Palestinian expressions of national heritage and even in businesses and products. Mazin' book Sharing the Land of Canaan is typical. So a Canaan Peace Plan is not so far off the mark especially since it is the only authentic name for the Holy Land that wasn't placed there by either Rome or one tribe out of all the Canaanite federation city-states and inland tribal nations.

African elephants prefer Serengeti National Park

 BBC News
6 February 2013 Last updated at 03:54
 By Michelle Warwicker BBC Nature

Elephants get stressed near humans

Wild African elephants prefer to live in safer, protected areas and become stressed when they leave them.

Scientists have found African elephants living outside Serengeti National Park are more stressed than those within the protected area.

More elephants also choose to live inside the park, suggesting they "know" which areas are safer to live in, and actively avoid humans.

Details are published in the African Journal of Ecology.

Serengeti National Park helps protect animals from threats such as illegal hunting and habitat disturbance.

With no fences around protected areas in the Serengeti, animals and people may come and go, and elephants can enter into areas where they are at greater risk.

The study aimed to determine African elephants' (Loxodonta africana) welfare inside Serengeti National Park and in the partially-protected adjoining areas of Grumeti Game Reserve and Ikoma Open Area, where human disturbance is greater.

By testing elephant dung, the research team found animals outside the national park had significantly higher levels of the stress hormone, gluccorticoid.

Also, more elephants lived inside the park, while no single males were seen outside, suggesting the elephants preferred residing in potentially safer areas.

"The reason is most probably that elephants try to avoid human-elephant interactions," said research team member Dr Eivin Roskaft from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.
Elephants never forget?

The elephants may have learned to associate humans and vehicles with the hunting activity that occurs outside Serengeti National Park.

"Elephants probably remember where they are, and that bad experiences stress them," Dr Roskaft told BBC Nature.

"I think elephants know where they are safe or not. However, sometimes they also are tempted by nice food outside the park which attracts them to such areas."

The study is the latest research to show that animals avoid areas with human disturbances. A previous study, for example, showed African elephants became stressed even before raiding farmers' fields for crops.

The research team hope their latest study demonstrates how protected areas such as Serengeti National Park can improve elephants' welfare.

Law enforcement within the park aims to reduce illegal meat and ivory poaching. Despite this, hunters still frequent the edges of the park and surrounding areas.

"The biggest threat to African elephants and other wildlife is the human population increase outside all such parks," said Dr Roskaft.

"Humans need food, and wildlife is cheap and easy. Therefore the pressure on such animals increases."

According to Dr Roskaft, elephant poaching is once more increasing.

"The elephant population in Africa is presently declining at an alarming rate," he said.

"The world must find interest in it, if not there will be very few or no elephants in Africa in about five to six years."

California was once home for millions of years to elephants which were wiped out by a combination of human beings and global warming. We had the biggest elephants on earth here, the imperial mammoths of the Columbian type. And we still have millions of acres of natural elephant food: California oak trees which I think are suffering sudden oak disease and probably other diseases because their natural cycles as elephant food have been disrupted for the last 12,000 years. Why don't we start some serious African elephant reserves here in California? And even contemplate our own Pleistocene Park with mammoths resurrected with dna and African surrogate mothers..

CIA operating drone base in Saudi Arabia, US media reveal

Drones reportedly carry out strikes without Yemeni government permission

BBC News
 6 February 2013 Last updated at 06:18 ET

The US Central Intelligence Agency has been operating a secret airbase for unmanned drones in Saudi Arabia for the past two years.

The facility was established to hunt for members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen.

A drone flown from there was used in September 2011 to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who was alleged to be AQAP's external operations chief.

US media have known of its existence since then, but have not reported it.

Senior government officials had said they were concerned that disclosure would undermine operations against AQAP, as well as potentially damage counter-terrorism collaboration with Saudi Arabia.

The US military pulled out virtually all of its troops from Saudi Arabia in 2003, having stationed between 5,000 and 10,000 troops in the Gulf kingdom after the 1991 Gulf war. Only personnel from the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) officially remain.
'High-value targets'

The location of the secret drone base was not revealed in the US reports and the Saudi government has not yet commented.

However, construction was ordered after a December 2009 cruise missile strike in Yemen, according to the New York Times.

It was the first strike ordered by the Obama administration, and ended in disaster, with dozens of civilians, including women and children, killed.

US officials told the newspaper that the first time the CIA used the secret facility was to kill Awlaki.

Since then, the CIA has been "given the mission of hunting and killing 'high-value targets' in Yemen" - the leaders of AQAP who government lawyers had determined posed a direct threat to the US - the officials added.

Three other Americans, including Awlaki's 16-year-old son, have also been killed in US strikes in Yemen, which can reportedly be carried out without the permission of the country's government.

The Washington Post reported that President Barak Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, a former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, played a key role in negotiations with the government in Riyadh over building the drone base.

Saudi Arabia is home to some of Islam's holiest sites and the deployment of US forces there was seen as a historic betrayal by many Islamists, notably the late leader of al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden.

It was one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born militant to justify violence against the US and its allies.

Leaked memo

The revelation of the drone base came shortly after the leaking of a US justice department memo detailing the Obama administration's case for killing Americans abroad who are accused of being a "senior, operational leader" of al-Qaeda or its allies.

Lethal force is lawful if they are deemed to pose an "imminent threat" and their capture is not feasible, the memo says. The threat does not have to be based on intelligence about a specific attack, since such actions are being "continually" planned by al-Qaeda, it adds.

NBC News said it was given to members of the US Senate intelligence and judiciary committees as a summary of a classified memo on the targeted killings of US citizens prepared by the justice department.

The latter memo was written before the drone strike that killed Awlaki.

Under President Obama, the US has expanded its use of drones to kill hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. It says it is acting in self-defence in accordance with international law.

Critics argue the drone strikes amount to execution without trial and cause many civilian casualties.

Senators are expected to ask Mr Brennan about drone strikes, the memo and the killing of Awlaki on Thursday when he faces a confirmation hearing on his nomination to become the new CIA director.

Israel Boycotts U.N. Human Rights Review

Council Awards Deferral For First Time Ever

By JOHN HEILPRIN 01/29/13 11:31 AM ET EST AP

GENEVA -- Israel became the first nation to skip a U.N. review of its human rights record without giving a reason – and then won a precedent-setting deferral Tuesday.

The president of the U.N.'s top rights body, Polish diplomat Remigiusz Henczel, declared Israel a no-show at a meeting in Geneva and then reconvened the 47-nation Human Rights Council to decide what to do.

Israel had asked Henczel in January to postpone the review but did not provide a public explanation.

"This is a rather unique step which has never happened in the past," said German U.N. Ambassador Hanns Heinrich Schumacher.

But after a debate, the council unanimously agreed to defer the review until its next session in October and November at the latest. It took also take it up earlier.

Henczel said the compromise would set a precedent for "how to deal with all cases of non-cooperation" in the future.

All U.N. nations are required to submit to Human Rights Council review every four years. The council's spokesman, Rolando Gomez, said once previously Haiti did not appear for its review but provided a reason.

Israel's absence comes as it is forming a new governing coalition following last week's parliamentary election.

U.S. diplomats have said the council is too focused on Israel. Israel, meanwhile, said last year that it would stop cooperating with the council because of its plans for a fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Diplomats from nations such as Egypt and Pakistan quickly pounced on the Israeli absence, and the opening it could provide for other countries that might want to bow out of a rights review.

The European Union called on Israel to "respond positively" by submitting to the review later this year.

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, the U.S. ambassador to the council, urged the body to agree to the unprecedented deferral in an effort to "find common ground and to protect" the review process.

Israel has gone through one review before in 2008, when many delegations demanded it recognize and respect Palestinians' right to self-determination and a homeland.

The Geneva-based council was set up in 2006 to replace a 60-year-old commission that was widely discredited as a forum dominated by nations with poor human rights records.

UN probe says Israel must remove settlers

January 31, 2013 11:23 am

GENEVA – UN human rights investigators called on Israel on Thursday to halt settlement expansion and withdraw all Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that its practices violated international law.

“Israel must, in compliance with article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, cease all settlement activities without preconditions. It must immediately initiate a process of withdrawal of all settlers from the OPT (occupied Palestinian territories),” said a report by the inquiry led by French judge Christine Chanet.

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It said the settlements contravene the 1949 Geneva Conventions forbidding the transfer of civilian populations into occupied territory, which could amount to war crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

In December, the Palestinians accused Israel in a letter to the UN of planning to commit further “war crimes” by expanding Jewish settlements after the Palestinians won de facto UN recognition of statehood and warned that Jerusalem must be held accountable.

Israel has not co-operated with the probe set up by the Human Rights Council last March to examine the impact of settlements in the territory, including East Jerusalem. Israel says the forum has an inherent bias against it and defends its settlement policy by citing historical and biblical links to the West Bank.

The independent UN investigators interviewed more than 50 people who came to Jordan in November to testify about confiscated land, damage to their livelihoods including olive trees, and violence by Jewish settlers, according to the report.

“The mission believes that the motivation behind this violence and the intimidation against the Palestinians as well as their properties is to drive the local populations away from their lands and allow the settlements to expand,” it said.

About 250 settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been established since 1967 and they hold an estimated 520,000 settlers, according to the UN report. The settlements impede Palestinian access to water resources and agricultural lands, it said.

The settlements were “leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”, it said.

After the General Assembly upgraded the Palestinians status at the world body, Israel said it would build 3,000 more settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – areas Palestinians wanted for a future state, along with the Gaza Strip.

The UN human rights inquiry said the ICC had jurisdiction over the deportation or transfer by the occupying power of its own population into the territory.

“Ratification of the (Rome) Statute by Palestine may lead to accountability for gross violations of human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law and justice for victims,” the UN report said, referring to the treaty setting up The Hague-based UN tribunal which prosecutes people for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Financial Times Limited 2013.

Who owns the world?

Preview: who owns the world?

Today we have two kinds of feudal state.

By Jon Bernstein Published 10 March 2011 13:42
 

This week's New Statesman cover is devoted to the second instalment of Kevin Cahill's special investigation into land ownership.
Cahill casts his net wider this time. From the Queen of England to the Kidmans of Australia, from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to the media tycoon Ted Turner, the piece reveals the globe's biggest landowners.


As this extract from the piece explains:

Today we have two kinds of feudal state: the inherited state, usually with a monarch at its head, such as the UK; and the state that claims ownership of all land and is feudal in its conception and often totalitarian, such as China. But the core surviving feudal structure in the modern world is inherited, transnational and covers many countries. It has no formal name. It is, in fact, the British crown and its wearer, Elizabeth II. Her legal title runs thus: "by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith".
This constitutional statement includes some vast territories where the Queen is quite separately the sovereign head of state and legal owner. First among these is Australia, which, if its Antarctic territories are included, is the second-largest country on earth. And the Queen, in effect, owns it. She also owns the third-largest country, Canada.
When the Queen's territories are added together, the Russian Federation ceases to be the largest single political entity on earth. Like the Queen's realms, the Russian Federation is dramatically underpopulated and immensely rich in mineral wealth of all kinds.

Boycott apparently kills Israel rock festival

January 18, 2013

Electronic Intifada - The Lollapalooza Israel rock festival planned for next summer appears to have collapsed just months after it was launched, and all information about it has been removed from the official website of Lollapalooza, the US-based corporate concert franchise.

Israel’s Ynet reported in Hebrew that:

    As had already been reported in December, many difficulties cropped up over the last few months in recruiting the famous artists to take part in the festival, and the production had also run into logistical and financial difficulties in its attempt to produce three consecutive days of performances at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv’s “HaYarkon Park,” notably, is built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Jarisha. Ynet said that the Israeli promoters, Plug Productions, posted a message on their Facebook page:

    Dear friends, we really don’t like to discuss gossip, but we will do it this time: you don’t have to take seriously everything that’s written on Ynet. If you haven’t heard it from us, you haven’t heard it at all.

The screenshot right at the top of this post shows  last month. Note “Lollapalooza Israel” in the top left corner, and the big announcement at bottom right.

The screenshot [on the official Lollapalooza website] shows the  “Lollapalooza Israel” removed, but festivals in Chile and Brazil still apparently going ahead.

Happy Birthday, Martin! We're getting there slowly but surely!

Oxfam seeks 'new deal' on inequality from world leaders

Oxfam highlights that the World Economic Forum's own Global Risk Report identifies inequality as one of the top global risks of 2013

 BBC News
18 January 2013

Last updated at 19:12 ET

The 100 richest people in the world earned enough last year to end extreme poverty suffered by the poorest on the planet four times over, Oxfam has said.

Ahead of next week's World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the charity urged world leaders to tackle inequality.

Extreme wealth was "economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive", the report said.

The global economic system required reform so that it worked "in the interests of the whole of humanity".

A four-day summit involving political and economic leaders runs in Davos from next Wednesday.

In its report entitled The Cost Of Inequality: How Wealth And Income Extremes Hurt Us All, the UK charity said that efforts to tackle poverty were being hindered by an "explosion in extreme wealth".

The richest one per cent of the world's population had increased its income by 60% in the last 20 years, Oxfam said.

It reported that while the world's 100 richest people enjoyed a net income of $240bn (£150bn) last year, people in "extreme poverty" lived on less than $1.25 (78p) a day.

"We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many - too often the reverse is true," said Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking.

"Concentration of resources in the hands of the top 1% depresses economic activity and makes life harder for everyone else - particularly those at the bottom of the economic ladder."

The charity called for a "global new deal to reverse decades of increasing inequality".

Its suggestions for leaders due at the Davos summit include:

    Closure of tax havens around the world
    A reversal of "the trend towards more regressive forms of taxation"
    A global minimum corporation tax rate
    Increased investment in free public services and safety nets for people out of work or ill

"As a first step world leaders should formally commit themselves to reducing inequality to the levels seen in 1990," Ms Stocking said.

"From tax havens to weak employment laws, the richest benefit from a global economic system which is rigged in their favour.

"It is time our leaders reformed the system so that it works in the interests of the whole of humanity rather than a global elite."

I wrote this in 1998 and as the above Oxfam article shows, it's still appropriate economic change policy:

Tax the Super Rich

 


End Poverty, hunger and despair for millions of human beings in America and throughout the World

Tax the Super Rich and create an Economic Boom in the process

The Super Rich are an abomination before God. They are an abomination to any decent society. They are a serious threat to the Nation's international trade relationships. And they are supreme evidence of a dysfunctional social system guaranteeing social destabilization caused by enormous disparities in the distribution of socially produced goods and services. The Super Rich get that way by unconscionable conduct. By using unfair economic advantages over less economically fortunate or less aggressive individuals, the Super Rich are those individuals and families who run monopoly empires, ruling like kings over mass distribution systems such as energy, computers, drugs, weapons, sports, entertainment, communications, any systems or products that have gigantic mass markets. Once an enterprise or an individual reaches the multi-million dollar bracket, further gains become almost automatic. Bank interest payments alone will continually add gigantic amounts of new wealth to these few individuals and families.

Our current legal and business system favors Big Money enterprise over smaller enterprises. Competition gets reduced and eliminated as corporate monopoly players team together to force out competition from smaller enterprises. It's time to put a stop to the social irresponsibility of letting the Super Rich system continue. Putting enormous fortunes into the hands of a privileged few who earn as much as the combined earnings of 90% of American citizens cannot be tolerated. Putting enormous fortunes in the hands of these few Super Rich while millions upon millions of people live in constant threat of starvation is barbaric behavior and totally unconscionable in any civilized society worthy of the name. We must end the Super Rich socially criminal behavior like we ended Al Capone's criminal career. We tax them out of existence. We regain our economic strength by having Congress legislate either an Act of Congress or an Amendment to the Constitution that simply states:

1) All U.S. citizen will be taxed at a rate of 100% for any income exceeding one million dollars per year, with no exceptions, no loopholes, no way for any individual to acquire over one million dollars per year.

2) No individual or corporation can hold assets exceeding one million dollars per year or transfer assets exceeding a million dollars per year into foreign bank accounts without the same tax law applying.

3) All taxed income over one million dollars per year is to distributed to Social Security programs, Medicare programs, educational grants, low interest home and business loans to low and moderate income families and individuals, and environmental protection projects.

4) A fund will be established for United Nations and various church and charitable organizations' for bringing food, clothing, shelter, and cooperative community self-sufficiency programs and advisers to the world's desperately poor.

Taking this action will only effect the illegitimate prosperity of a very few number of individuals while it will bring the middle-class back into its rightful prominence as the stable economic and social backbone of America. This action will also begin an Economic Boom era for America's economy as the Super Rich are forced to divest their holdings and companies. With divestment mandatory, re-investment will occur and hundreds, if not thousands of new businesses and jobs will be opened up. This action will rightfully gain America new productive members of society as well as opening up huge new markets both within the U.S. and throughout the world. This action will start a worldwide precedent for all nations laboring under the thumbs of about 250 Super Rich individuals who's combined yearly incomes could feed and house the majority of the world's people and allow them the opportunity to rise out of unnecessary poverty and hopelessness. And this action won't stop the benefits of entrepreneurism. There's still plenty of room left for enterprising individuals to prosper with every year with the opportunity to become multi-millionaires.

Society should rightfully honor those individuals who organize economic enterprises that service and enhance our lives. But the economic rewards of entrepreneurial creation must not become ends in themselves or society suffers. A taxation system like this will return us pride in being Good Americans--giving as we receive--just as this taxation system will brings us new days when to be a "millionaire" will really mean something special once again.

Palestinians: Apartheid state if Netanyahu wins

By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH,
Associated Press | January 18, 2013 |
 Updated: January 18, 2013 4:11pm

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinians have long complained that Israel's right-wing government is killing peace prospects by settling the West Bank with Jews, but now there is something new. The Palestinian president is warning that Benjamin Netanyahu's expected victory in next week's election could lead to an Arab-majority country in the Holy Land that will eventually replace what is now Israel — unless he pursues a more moderate path of a two state solution to the conflict.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been careful not to intervene in Tuesday's Israeli election, but it is no secret that the Palestinians hope that Netanyahu will either be ousted or at least soften his position in a new term. He has shown no sign of doing so, and opinion polls showing hard-line, pro-settlement parties well ahead days ahead of the vote have led to a sense of despair among the Palestinians.

During Netanyahu's current term, the Israeli leader has pressed forward with construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which along with the Gaza Strip were captured by Israel in the 1967 war from Jordan. Abbas says he wants to set up a state in the territories that would exist peacefully next to Israel.

The international community considers settlement construction illegal or illegitimate. And the Palestinians have refused to negotiate with Netanyahu while he continues to allow settlements to be built, saying it is a sign of bad faith.

Israeli backers of creation of a Palestinian state say relinquishing control of the Palestinian territories and its residents is the only way to ensure Israel's future as a democracy with a Jewish majority.

Mohammed Ishtayeh, a top aide to Abbas, told The Associated Press on Friday that his boss has been warning that won't be possible if settlement building continues and Israel could end up with a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority.

He warned Israel could end up with "an apartheid style state, similar to the one of former South Africa."

"In the long run it will be against the Israeli interests because ... we Palestinians will be the majority and will struggle for equality," he said, adding that Abbas had met repeated this message in meetings with several Israeli leaders in the past year.

Abbas "told them frankly there are Palestinians who are now calling for the one-state solution, because they no longer see the two-state solution viable," Ishtayeh said.

Abbas's office said the Palestinian president spoke with multiple leaders in 2012 from Israel's centrist opposition, including lawmakers from the Labor, Kadima and Meretz parties, along with mayors, university professors and social activists. He said a mayor from Netanyahu's Likud Party was among them.

Labor parliamentarian Daniel Ben-Simon told the AP he met with Abbas in Ramallah recently and was warned that time is running out for a two-state solution.

"Abbas said the two state solution benefits both nations but he warned that if there is no two state solution within the next two or three years then it won't be practical anymore," Ben-Simon said. "Abbas told me explicitly ... the idea of a one state solution is escalating among Palestinians."

Palestinian officials have been closely following the Israeli election campaign, fearing Netanyahu's ambitious plans for settlement construction over the next four years could prove lethal to their dreams of a state, Ishtayeh said. More than 500,000 Israelis already live in settlements that dot the West Bank and ring east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital.

Some in Abbas' circle are holding out hope that President Barack Obama will re-engage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and, freed from domestic electoral considerations in his second term, get tougher with Netanyahu on settlements. Another aide, Nabil Shaath, suggested Europe is ready to jump in with its own peace plan if Washington is not.

But short of trying to rally international opinion, it seems Abbas can do little if Netanyahu wins Tuesday.

Israeli polls indicate that a majority of seats in Israel's 120-member parliament will go to right-wing, pro-settler or Jewish ultra-Orthodox religious parties. Likud is the largest among them. Netanyahu could comfortably form a coalition government with these parties, seen as his natural ideological allies. Likud's new slate of candidates is headed by hard-line lawmakers who oppose territorial concessions to the Palestinians, and a likely coalition partner, the pro-settler Jewish Home, even advocates annexing large chunks of the West Bank. Even if Netanyahu adds a centrist party to the mix, he's unlikely to shift course from the pro-settler policies of his current government

Under Netanyahu, construction reportedly began on nearly 6,900 settlement homes in the West Bank.

That's a bit less than what was started by Netanyahu's predecessor Ehud Olmert, but many of the new homes are deeper in the West Bank, the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said this week. Thousands more apartments are in various stages of planning, Peace Now said, predicting an "explosion" of settlement construction in coming years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended his position on settlements Friday in an interview with Channel 1 TV.

"I don't believe that settlements are the root of the conflict, I don't believe that territorial dimensions are the root of the conflict, the root of the conflict was and remains the refusal to recognize the Jewish state within any border, Netanyahu said. "I am not in favor of a binational state. We need to reach a solution. I don't want to rule the Palestinians and I don't want them to rule us and threaten our existence."

"We believe the two-state solution is still possible, but Netanyahu and his current and upcoming coalition are killing this solution, they...will be intensifying the buildings in the settlements, and they have no peace platform," Ishtayeh said.

The conflict with the Palestinians has largely been missing from Israeli political discourse this campaign season in Israel. The centrist Labor Party, which led peace talks with the Palestinians in the past, has shifted almost exclusively to domestic concerns, such as growing income gaps.

Just one party, The Movement led by former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, has focused on peace talks. Livni has warned that Israel's existence could be threatened without a peace accord, yet her message has not gained much traction.

Palestinians believe hopes for their state are slipping further away with each new settlement home, and that partition of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River may soon no longer be possible.

Settlements are at the core of the paralysis in peace efforts talks since late 2008. Netanyahu refuses to freeze construction, rebuffing Abbas who says there is no point in negotiating while settlements steadily gobble up more of the occupied lands.

The standoff is likely to continue, though the Palestinians believe their diplomatic leverage has improved.

In November, the U.N. General Assembly recognized a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem. The vote, while largely symbolic, affirmed the 1967 frontier which the Palestinians want to be the base line for future border talks. Netanyahu, while willing to negotiate, won't accept the 1967 lines as a point of reference and wants to keep all of Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank.

Some Palestinian officials hope Obama will now be tougher with Netanyahu after what they considered a disappointing first term.

The Americans "keep talking about negotiations and the need to restart the negotiations," Shaath said. "But what is needed is for the U.S. to pressure Israel to stop settlement activities and to go to real negotiations, to reach an agreement within six months."

The U.S.A., one of two of the world's most anti-Semitic nations on earth, say: Morsi's anti-Semitic slurs 'deeply offensive'

BBC News15 January 2013 Last updated at 21:18 ET

The US has strongly criticised Egypt's Mohammed Morsi for anti-Semitic remarks he apparently made before being elected president.

TV footage shows Mr Morsi in 2010 referring to Zionists as "bloodsuckers" and "descendants of apes and pigs".

US officials want the leader to clarify his "deeply offensive" comments, which they say run counter to Middle East peace efforts.

Egypt receives around $1.5bn (£900m) in annual US military and economic aid.

The financial support is linked to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, which the US considers a cornerstone of regional stability.
'Occupiers of Palestine'

The controversy erupted after the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) translated and released Arabic footage of interviews Mr Morsi gave in 2010, as a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the clip from Palestinian broadcaster Al-Quds TV, Mr Morsi referred to Jewish settlers as "occupiers of Palestine" and "warmongers".

He called for a "military resistance in Palestine against these Zionist criminals assaulting the land of Palestine and Palestinian".

Mr Morsi also denounced the Palestinian Authority, saying it was "created by the Zionists and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will of the Palestinian people."

In another interview, Mr Morsi urged Egyptians to "nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred".

The US State Department said the comments should be repudiated.

"We completely reject these statements, as we do with any language that espouses religious hatred," the department's spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

"This kind of rhetoric has been used in this region for far too long. It's counter to the goals of peace."

The White House called the rhetoric "unacceptable in a democratic Egypt".

"President Morsi should make clear that he respects people of all faiths," spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

However, both US officials also highlighted that Mr Morsi had shown his commitment to regional peace efforts since taking office in June last year.

The Egyptian leader helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after violence flared up in Gaza in November.

And although he has been openly critical of Israel, Mr Morsi also pledged to abide by the peace treaty when he was voted into power.

"What he has been doing is supporting that peace treaty, continuing to work with us and with Israel on common goals, including in Gaza," Ms Nuland said. "But we'll also judge him by what he says."

Egypt has been a key US ally since it signed the 1979 peace deal as part of the Camp David Accords.

But observers say fears remain that the new leadership might try to renegotiate the treaty.

"As long as peace and justice are not fulfilled for the Palestinians, then the treaty remains unfulfilled," Mr Morsi told the New York Times shortly after winning the election last year.

Let's stop accepting Zionist Jewish 1984 Double Speak definitions of what constitutes an "anti-Semite". Real anti-Semites attack Semitic peoples and who are the Semitic peoples of Palestine and Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria, Jordan, and Iraq? Jews from primarily Eastern Europe? Jews like us Ashkenazim who are descendants of Khazar kingdom Jewish converts? We are "Semitic" peoples while Arabs are somehow not?

No more "anti-semitic" smear campaign crapola from Zionist Jews or American Zionist wannabes

Please stop using Zionist terminology that is only there as a ruse to garner support for another European racist imperialist colony in a non-European land. Morsi just tells it like it is, actually pretty calm election times rhetoric for any Arab candidate facing any Middle East population that has had to deal with Israel's very real anti-Semitic aggression.

Palestinians evicted from E1, east of Jerusalem, less than 48 hours after beginning protest

Israeli border police remove a Palestinian activist from an outpost of tents in a disputed area known as E1.

Alistair Dawber
The Independent
Jerusalem

Sunday 13 January 2013

A group of Palestinian protesters who had built a tented village in a strategically important area of the West Bank have been evicted by Israeli police, less than 48 hours after beginning their action.

As many as 250 protesters were moved by the police and members of the Israeli Defence Force from the site in the area known as E1, east of Jerusalem, which has been earmarked for development by Israeli settlers.

The Palestinians, borrowing a tactic from settlers in the West Bank, moved into the area on Friday saying that they wanted to establish ‘facts of the ground,’ a phase often used during peace negotiations to recognise realities on the ground, rather than historic claims to ownership of land.

The activists said that they wanted to build a village called Bab al-Shams, or Gateway to the Sun, at the site. The bid comes two weeks after Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that Israel would press ahead with plans to build a settlement in the area, in response to the declaration at the United Nations of de facto Palestinian statehood in November.

The UN declaration attracted support from most nations, with Israel and the United States voting against the bid - the UK government abstained.

The commitment by the Israeli government to build settlements comes despite the area being internationally recognised as occupied Palestinian territory.

Palestinians say furthermore, that construction of a new settlement would seriously jeopardise the prospects of a future Palestinian state, as it would effectively cut off the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which they have designated as their capital city. The site cleared lies between East Jerusalem and the existing Jewish settlement of Maale Adumin.

Palestinian activist, Abdullah Abu Rahma, said that the protesters hoped to continue their action, and would re-pitch their tents. “Today, we will see if we can return," he said. It is thought that the Palestinians could also repeat the move in other parts of the West Bank.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police evicted the protesters from the site after a court decision authorising their removal. According to the Associated Press, he did not know which court had allowed the eviction. Mr Rosenfled said that there had been no injuries, a point disputed by the Palestinians who said that six people had been lightly hurt.

In a statement, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, a grass-roots Palestinian group, said: “Even though we were evicted, our strength was apparent since the police needed hundreds and hundreds of special unit police officers.”

Mr Netanyahu ordered that roads leading to the area be closed on Saturday evening and instructed the military to declare a closed military zone and shut off access. The prime minister’s office added that the state was petitioning Israel’s Supreme Court to rescind an earlier injunction blocking the evacuation. On Friday, the Supreme Court had given the protesters six days to dismantle their tents.

The issue of E1 settlement building has returned in recent weeks, although many doubt that the Israelis genuinely intend to build in the area, rather it is being used as a general election issue, with the polls now just over a week away.

Palestinian protest on land assigned for E1 settlement

The Palestinians say they plan to stay in the encampment for a long time

BBC News
11 January 2013
Last updated at 10:35 ET

Palestinians in the West Bank have pitched a protest camp where Israel plans to build new settlement homes.

Activists erected about 20 large tents on the patch of land known as E1, between Jerusalem and the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim.

Israeli plans to build in the area drew sharp criticism by members of the international community in December.

Palestinians say that building in E1 would jeopardise the contiguity of a Palestinian state.

Jewish settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

"We have set up 20 tents, and have enough equipment to stay here for a long time," Abir Kopty, spokeswoman for the Popular Struggle Co-ordination Committee, told AFP news agency.

"We are willing to stay here until we ensure the right of the [Palestinian] owners of the land to build on their lands," she said.

Hours after the group started setting up the camp, Israeli authorities issued an eviction order. However, Ms Kopty tweeted that the activists had obtained a High Court order suspending the eviction notice.

Israeli plans to develop the E1 area had been on hold for years until the Palestinians upgraded their status at the UN from an "entity" to that of a "non-member observer state", a move condemned by Israel and the US as a violation of peace accords.

The following day Israel approved "preliminary zoning and planning work" in E1, and plans for thousands of settler homes.

The US called this move counterproductive, while European governments summoned Israeli ambassadors in protest.

Friday's actions of the Palestinians in E1 mirrors tactics of Israeli settlers who stake their claim to parts of the West Bank by pitching mobile homes on hilltops, known as outposts, which are not officially sanctioned.

An unnamed spokesperson for the Israeli defence ministry said the creation of the Palestinian encampment, which they named Bab el Shams, "sounded like a provocation", AFP reported.

"If it indeed is a construction violation, we will deal with it," he said.