Taking To The Streets And Takin' It To The AIPAC Beast -- Never Surrender!

They were loud.  They were demanding.  And all of 'em wanted justice as they showed up to deliver a clear message to this ferocious, relentless Israeli Lobby:  MOVE OVER!



Last Sunday's protest against the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Convention in Washington featured activists from all across the spectrum.  There was a group of orthodox Jews there, praying their hearts out that Zionism will go away and stop its assault on Judiasm.  




The Palestinians were in force, reminding everyone about one of the biggest Zionist lies promoting the fantasy that their homeland was a "land without people," which explains of course why the Nakba's survivors and their descendents--more than four million in total--make up the largest group of refugees in the world. 

 And lots of Americans showed up to fight AIPAC too, including yours truly.  This marked my first but not last time to rail in person against this grotesque,
pernicious "special interest" group that robs over $3,000,000,000 annually from our cash-strapped economy. 

During our march towards the entrance to the convention center, President Obama was delivering his loyalty oath to Tel Aviv's war machine, proudly boasting about "the cooperation of our militaries to unprecedented levels" and delivering "our most advanced technology to our Israeli allies."

Nice sanitized way to put it, Barry.  Our "most advanced technology"--bringing huge profits to arms dealers in the U.S. and campaign contributions to the congresswhores that send it--definitely produces significant results.

  


  

While Obama crowed about the purported "values that we share" with Israel, Code Pink protesters illustrated exactly what other "values" these entail in addition to the wholesale murder of women & children.

The AIPAC conventioneers got to see the replica of Israel's "separation fence," a monstrosity constructed with American tax dollars and Caterpillar bulldozers that Zionists conveniently employ to stop suicide bombers and mutilate what's left of Palestine with insatiable landgrabs for their cancerous colonies and Jewish-only connecting roads.

Surprising, too.  One would think that Obama might object to Apartheid, having witnessed its practice in South Africa and now being imposed on Palestinians with a brutal vengeance.

 There was also a replica set of these colonies--which Tel Aviv's  Gangster-In-Chief "Bibi" Netanyahu likes to call his "settlements in Judea & Samaria."  This accompanying sign would be a bad omen for Zionism's official place in history.

Judging from the yahoo's wildly received address before his Congressional lapdogs, it doesn't appear this accomplished ethnic cleanser is worried one little bit about it.  His AIPAC goons will take care of all the details.  In fact, it's been reported they now have three-quarters of the membership of both the House and the Senate to sign a letter calling for an official end to public criticism of Israel, no matter what war crimes it continues committing, and to urge the U.S. to "reinforce" its relationship with Tel Aviv.

Doesn't leave a whole lot of hope for a realistic peace process, let alone a just, enduring outcome.

Wouldn't it be nice if it were left up to our consciencious D.C. police department to remove those settlements from Palestine as efficiently as they did the ones illegally errected in front of the AIPAC convention hall?

The AIPAC androids didn't look to be worried about a thing, either.  In fact, they seemed to really be enjoying themselves, swaggering, smirking, and mocking the appeals for justice.

  

Which is exactly why this conflict goes on and on, no matter what, because there's just some that will never let go of the false notion that "might makes right," no matter what the consequences or how many people suffer as a result.  As long as AIPAC thrives and maintains its stranglehold on the American government, Israel will continue committing its war crimes with impunity and without delay.

We must always hope, however, and from the hope emerges the fire to keep battling these bullies and tyrants.

When that day happens, a new Palestine will emerge.  It will, as the opposite face of the replica wall revealed.

Inshallah!

Obama "Forgets" All About The Anniversary Of The Great Disaster Produced By Israel's Birth

Last week Mr. "Change We Can Believe In" Obama sent his best wishes on Israel's birthday.

"Sixty-three years ago," said the president, "when Israel declared its independence, the dream of a state for the Jewish people in their historic homeland was finally realized.  On that same day, the United States became the first country in the world to recognize the State of Israel. As Israelis celebrate their hard-won independence, it gives me great pleasure to extend the best wishes of the American people to the people of Israel and to honor their remarkable achievements over the past six decades."

Barry didn't quite elaborate on the "realized.....hard-won....remarkable achievements" details of all this.  Never mentioned the "P" word (Palestinians) in the rest of his birthday greeting. 

Nor did he ever bring up the term "al-Nakba," the catastrophe that  has consumed the Palestinian nation for the past 63 years and which, by stark contrast, was very much in the news yesterday.  Because yesterday, May 15, was the day in 1948 that the Zionists threw their ethnic cleansing operation ("Plan Dalet") into overdrive.

Amongst those three-quarters of a million people driven from their homeland was an 11 year-old Palestinian Christian named Audeh Rantisi, whose family would be brutally force marched from their homes in July, 1948, by Israeli gunmen.

 Audeh's recollections are especially shocking--and heart-breaking:

"I cannot forget three horror-filled days in July of 1948. The pain sears my memory, and I cannot rid myself of it no matter how hard I try. First, Israeli soldiers forced thousands of Palestinians from their homes near the Mediterranean coast, even though some families had lived in the same houses for centuries. (My family had been in the town of Lydda in Palestine at least 1,600 years).

Then, without water, we stumbled into the hills and continued for three deadly days. The Jewish soldiers followed, occasionally shooting over our heads to scare us and keep us moving. Terror filled my eleven-year-old mind as I wondered what would happen. I remembered overhearing my father and his friends express alarm about recent massacres by Jewish terrorists. Would they kill us, too?

 We did not know what to do, except to follow orders and stumble blindly up the rocky hills. I walked hand in hand with my grandfather, who carried our only remaining possessions-a small tin of sugar and some milk for my aunt's two-year-old son, sick with typhoid.

The horror began when Zionist soldiers deceived us into leaving our homes, then would not let us go back, driving us through a small gate just outside Lydda. I remember the scene well: thousands of frightened people being herded like cattle through the narrow opening by armed soldiers firing overhead. In front of me a cart wobbled toward the gate.

Alongside, a lady struggled, carrying her baby, pressed by the crowd. Suddenly, in the jostling of the throngs, the child fell. The mother shrieked in agony as the cart's metal-rimmed wheel ran over her baby's neck. That infant's death was the most awful sight I had ever seen.

Outside the gate the soldiers stopped us and ordered everyone to throw all valuables onto a blanket. One young man and his wife of six weeks, friends of our family, stood near me. He refused to give up his money. Almost casually, the soldier pulled up his rifle and shot the man. He fell, bleeding and dying while his bride screamed and cried.

I felt nauseated and sick, my whole body numbed by shock waves. That night I cried, too, as I tried to sleep alongside thousands on the ground. Would I ever see my home again? Would the soldiers kill my loved ones, too?

Early the next morning we heard more shots and sprang up. A bullet just missed me and killed a donkey nearby. Everybody started running as a stampede. I was terror-stricken when I lost sight of my family, and I frantically searched all day as the crowd moved along.

That second night, after the soldiers let us stop, I wandered among the masses of people, desperately searching and calling. Suddenly in the darkness I heard my father's voice. I shouted out to him. What joy was in me! I had thought I would never see him again. As he and my mother held me close, I knew I could face whatever was necessary. The next day brought more dreadful experiences.

Still branded on my memory is a small child beside the road, sucking the breast of its dead mother. Along the way I saw many stagger and fall. Others lay dead or dying in the scorching midsummer heat. Scores of pregnant women miscarried, and their babies died along the wayside.

The wife of my father's cousin became very thirsty. After a long while she said she could not continue. Soon she slumped down and was dead. Since we could not carry her we wrapped her in cloth, and after praying, just left her beside a tree. I don't know what happened to her body.

 We eventually found a well, but had no way to get water. Some of the men tied a rope around my father's cousin and lowered him down, then pulled him out, and gave us water squeezed from his clothing. The few drops helped, but thirst still tormented me as I marched along in the shadeless, one-hundred plus degree heat.

We trudged nearly twenty miles up rocky hills, then down into deep valleys, then up again, gradually higher and higher. Finally we found a main road, where some Arabs met us. They took some of us in trucks to Ramallah, ten miles north of Jerusalem. I lived in a refugee tent camp for the next three and one-half years. We later learned that two Jewish families had taken over our family home in Lydda.

Those wretched days and nights in mid-July of 1948 continue as a lifelong nightmare because Zionists took away our home of many centuries. For me and a million other Palestinian Arabs, tragedy had marred our lives forever. Throughout his life my father remembered and suffered. For thirty-one years before his death in 1979, he kept the large metal key to our house in Lydda.

After more than four decades I still bear the emotional scars of the Zionist invasion....."

Yeah, clearly it would have been a rhetorical feat for Obama to have mentioned any of this in his "great pleasure" proclamation of the Israelis' "hard-won" achievement.

And the beat goes on.

Remember al-Nakba.  Remember hope.  Keep it alive, Palestinian brothers and sisters.

In Memorium: 63 Years Ago Today, A Village Destroyed, Nation Annihilated

The Islamic soul must be broomed out of [the Land of] Israel."
                              --Ze've Vladimir Jabotinsky

Jabotinsky

He was one of the more pernicious Zionist figures and, not surprisingly, the first commander of one of the movement's most rabidly terrorist wings,  Irgun Z'vai Leumi. But Russian-born Jabotinsky died in 1940, too early to be able to savor the triumphant "brooming" of Palestine in 1948.

Nor would he witness his doctrine's most shocking fallout take place in early April that fateful year, when his Irgunists joined another terrorist group, the Stern Gang, in brutally murdering Palestinian women and children at the village of Deir Yassin.

   Thus commenced Zionism's monstrous ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

     The Deir Yassin Massacre is an unmistakable symbol of Israel being  steamrolled into existence over six decades ago.  It was by no means the only massacre, as has been revealed in recent years when the Israeli military archives were finally opened up. The disinherited Palestinians, quite naturally, wanted back their homes and villages that the plundering new owners obliterated, like hundreds of Lidices.

1948, year of the Nakba:  Palestinians families being ethnically cleansed

Is it really that hard to see why terrorizing and dispossessing the Palestinians would condition them to lash out against their persecutors?

     A vicious cycle of terror-begetting-more-terror has thus continued for over the past half-century between armed Palestinians and heavier armed Israelis.  The window dressing U.S. "road map" peace plan that was pitched years ago for this bloodied sliver of land has continued to go nowhere.  There's of course no escaping the reality of having to pursue a two-state solution, since Israel is a permanent, long-established fact.

     But also a fact is that the final peace accord must be truly just, not based on the current insidious scheme to relegate the Palestinians to either permanent refugee status or life in a serious of Bantustans.  Half-measures that perpetuate continuing injustice against the disenfranchised Palestinians will only sustain the carnage in these killing fields.

     The war criminals running the Israeli regime continue refusing to remove those Israeli colonies ("settlements") from the mutilated 22 percent of what was Palestine (West Bank and Gaza).  Moreover, as long as the Israelis continue ignoring the refugee nightmare they created in 1948, this tragedy of millions of displaced Palestinians suffering in camps will continue fanning the terrorist brush fire.
 

Zionist squatter camps in remaining Palestine

                                             
The proverbial insult to all this injury is the spectacle of those insufferable Israeli mouthpieces that promote revisionist drivel on this conflict's origins and subsequent chapters.
  
     Some commentators, for instance, have given glowingly accounts of then-Israeli Defense Minister Sharon's savage 1982 invasion of Lebanon.  Amazing, considering the Orwellian-titled "Peace for Galilee" aggression resulted in an estimated 50,000 dead & wounded Lebanese and Palestinians, culminating in the Sharon-sponsored Sabra and Shatilla massacres.  The ulterior motive, an Israeli attempted reordering of Lebanon's political universe, ultimately failed.  One would hardly suspect foul play, however, if they believed these twisted yarns about Israel's "ethics" and "purity of arms".

     Some voices come from the Golda "There are no Palestinians" Meir mindset.  Incredibly, like the fanatics that deny the Holocaust, they go as far as trying to pretend the Deir Yassin Massacre never happened.
   
Now that's genuine chutzpah.

Begin

Shamir

In light of the fact that an astounding 95 percent of all the English language books (162 out of 170) classify Deir Yassin as a massacre, it would be no surprise to have the deniers jerry rig their arguments with "authoritative" sources, e.g., the two capos--Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir--that ran the gangs carrying out the slaughter.  Notably, Begin and Shamir later went on to run future Israeli governments, so, no, Ariel Sharon was not the first  and only terrorist to be elected prime minister.

      One of the many things that easily exposes these shameless, fraudulent claims about Deir Yassin being a mere "battle" and not a massacre is the fatality count.  There were 107  Palestinian men, women, and children left dead, and 12 more wounded.  This killed-to-wounded ratio of nine to one reveals much, because it's an appalling contrast to typical ground combat-incident figures.

     This 90 percent death ratio, characteristic of systematic killing, can be placed almost squarely between two of history's other infamous massacres:  just above Wounded Knee (85 percent dead) and just below My Lai (99 percent dead).  And a notable third massacre falls into the very same 90 percent death ratio.

     It took place also just outside of Jerusalem, near Mt. Scopus, only four days after Deir Yassin.  Arab terrorists, shouting the village's name, slaughtered a convoy of Jewish medical and military personnel, leaving 75 dead, and 6 wounded.  The vicious cycle was spinning out of control. But who in their right mind would try to title this the "Battle of Mt. Scopus" and expect to be taken seriously?

The village of Deir Yassin, circa 1930's

                                                                           
The killed-to-wounded ratio is just for starters.  Question: Was Deir Yassin a threat to the Zionists in April, 1948?  How could it be, since it was faithfully honoring an agreement made with the Haganah (the Jewish community's mainstream armed force, albeit remarkably efficient ethnic cleansers) to avoid any hostilities with nearby Jewish areas, in exchange for being protected from Jewish attack?  Moreover, reconnaissance conducted by both the Irgun and Stern Gang confirmed its peaceful status.

     Villagers also provided intelligence to the Haganah and had repeatedly kept Arab soldiers from infiltrating Deir Yassin.  A HaganahDeir Yassin's capture that its villagers had remained "faithful allies of the western [Jerusalem] sector".  Yona Ben-Sasson, the Haganah commander in Givat Shaul (Jewish Jerusalem's western suburb), later stated "there was not even one [hostile] incident between Deir Yassin and the Jews."

     So much for any of this bunk about the the village being a "threat".  Why, then, would the Irgun and Stern Gang not only target Deir Yassin for capture but also carry out a massacre? Because, simply, their criminal nature was no different from any other terrorist groups, past or present--they specialized in murdering civilians, to further a goal.  In pre-attack discussions, one Stern Gang proposal recommended "liquidating" the villagers "to show the Arabs what happens when the IZL [Irgun] and the Lehi [Sternists] set out together."

Irgun recruiting poster

                                            
At 4:45 a.m. on April 9, the beasts moved in from three different directions and descended upon the men, women, and children of the village.  The approaching blitzkrieg included an armored car with a loudspeaker to announce their arrival but as it turned out, the vehicle crashed into a ditch outside of town and remained stuck there.  How many Palestinians, therefore, were ever warned?

     True, villagers took up arms and returned fire for several hours, but who wouldn't defend their home and family against marauding thugs?  As for the women, children, and elderly, they took shelter in their homes, in desperate hopes the Stern and Irgun terrorists would be driven off.

     It was to be a tragically forlorn hope.

     By about 7:00 a.m., the villagers' brave resistance, in combination with the dismal Irgun/Stern combat performance, brought out the full fury of the beast.  "We had prisoners," recalled Irgunist Yehoshua Gorodenchik, "and before the retreat we decided to liquidate them. We also liquidated the [Arab] wounded."  Ben-Zion Cohen, another Irgun killer, later confessed:  "We eliminated every Arab we came across up to that point." 

Palestinians of Deir Yassin, murdered by Jewish terrorists

                                                 
It's more than a stretch to try to rationalize the unfolding SS-style blood bath because some villagers were supposedly faking surrender or some males disguised themselves as women.  The terrorists’ goals of "liquidating" the villagers exceeded nearly all expectations.

Sure, not all the villagers were slaughtered;  the Irgun/Stern killers forced some village women into being human shields, to transport their wounded.  (Which brings up yet another compelling ratio:  The average Israeli 1948 combat death ratio was 1 in 6.  But, lo and behold, those courageous “Jewish Underground” had a ratio of 1 in 26 at Deir Yassin.  Some "battle.”)  The Haganah also had plenty blood on its hands, having sent in one of their units at one point to provide tactical support, despite no reports of their soldiers executing villagers – that would take place at other locales.

The testimony of those Palestinians that managed to survive is horrifying.  Some villagers were shot down as they tried to escape or help injured neighbors, while others were lined up against walls and mowed down with gun fire.  Haleem Eid witnessed "a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh, who was nine months pregnant" and then brutally stab the body.  Villagers continued hoping for miracle, taking refuge inside their houses and crowded into corners, only to be gunned down or blown to pieces with hand grenades by the rampaging terrorists.

 

                                         

The fever of the massacre began waning around mid-day.  But there were still a few final touches.  The Irgun/Stern gunmen decided to load the surviving villagers onto trucks and parade them around Jerusalem's Jewish quarters.

Haganah broadcaster Harry Levin recorded this final degradation, watching "three trucks driving slowly up and down King George V Avenue bearing men, women, and children, their hands above their heads, guarded by Jews armed with Sten-guns and rifles" and that one prisoner was "a young boy, a look of anguished horror bitten into his face, his arms frozen upright."

Brings to mind a devastating photo of another young boy taken captive in 1943, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.     

Warsaw Ghetto, 1943

But the macabre Palestinian parade ended when they were dumped somewhere in East Jerusalem to become a part of an ocean of dispossessed victims of a heinous crime.  If escaping with only one's life was the sole criteria, they were the lucky ones.  An earlier parade of an estimated 25 Palestinian prisoners was returned to Deir Yassin.  All of them were then slaughtered by the “freedom fighters” in the town quarry.

The following day, Saturday, April 10, the ravaged village was inspected by Haganah operations officer Eliyahu Arbel, who related: "I have seen a great deal of war, but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin," littered with "the bodies of women and children, who were murdered in cold blood."

The Haganah's Gadna youth brigade made up the final burial crew, but the carnage was so terrible that younger brigade members were sent away.  In several houses, Gadna commander Zvi Ankori discovered sexually mutilated bodies.  Another crew member, Shosanna Shatai, found the body of an apparently pregnant woman with a smashed-in abdomen.

International Red Cross representative Jacques de Reynier also inspected the bloodied village.  At the very first house he entered, Reynier described what he saw:

"Everything had been ripped apart and torn upside down. There were bodies strewn about.  They [Irgun/Stern terrorists] had done their 'cleaning up' with guns and grenades, and finished their work with knives, anyone could see that."  He goes on to tell of seeing movement in the shadows, bending down, and discovering the "little foot, still warm" of a ten year-old girl, barely alive.

Palestinian murder victims of the Irgun and Stern Gang

The total number of Palestinians massacred at Deir Yassin was for years an exaggerated figure of 254.  But this didn't originate with the Arabs. No, it was made up by Irgun commander Mordechai Raanan in a post-battle press statement, who later explained: "I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that Arabs would panic....across the country."

Imagine how much this success story must have inspired Slobodan Milosevic when he launched his own ethnic cleansing campaign in the 1990's Balkins.  Things might very well have been different if he just had a lobby colossus like AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) manipulating our U.S. Congress like so many hand puppets.

Perhaps one day Hollywood will give actual equal time to the Palestinian people.  After all, reprehensible Israeli propaganda blockbusters like "Cast A Giant Shadow" and "Exodus" only glamorize the same Zionist myths regurgitated by Israel's media minions.  But a cautionary note; any challenge to their revisionist snake oil is sure to provoke the warn-out ad hominem attacks smearing critics as “anti-Semites.”   At the same time, hope remains whenever some important message flows out, even in the midst of a grotesque film such as the distorted "Exodus".
 

                                                 
There's a riveting scene just before a young Holocaust survivor (played by Sal Mineo) is inducted into the Irgun, when he's forced to retell the horrors of his experience in a Nazi death camp.  He pleads with the Irgun not to have to relive it, sweating and shaking.  After finishing a story that cannot help but wrench the heart, he weeps pitifully.  The Irgun chief then administers the gang's seal of approval: an oath, conducted with their two hands sandwiching a gun.

The victims then became ruthless, murderous victimizers.  Not convinced?  Go and ask practically any of today’s four million Palestinian refugees.

Deir Yassin's legacy

                           

The former residents of an extinct village near Jerusalem, naturally, would be a good start.


Rest In Peace, Deir Yassin.  
  




أنت لن تكون منسية
 .

Let The Call Go Forth Again: "Don't Stop Boycottin'" The ZioNazi War Criminal Regime

Big brave Israeli Occupation Forces sure know their craft.  Using human shields as they blitzkrieg their way through Palestine.

Brutalizing Palestinian women at their countless "check points."

Bulldoze-style ethnic cleansing of the remnants of Palestine.

Roasting Gaza's civilians with white phosphorus.

Celebrating with their "hunting trophies."

Enough already.


Turns out that just last weekend in New York City some people literally took another step to break this lethal handshake, by shaking, swaying, and belting out an appeal to end the madness.  The BDS Flash Mob has done it again.  Hopefully, it is one step closer to extinguishing Zionist apartheid and aggression.

Until the decisive stone hits the mark on that AIPAC Goliath lording over U.S., the Boycott/Divest/Sanction battle will rage on.

With unmistakable style & rhythm, of course!

Drifting Somewhere Between the Dark and the Aquarion Ages......

Ever driven by one of those gas-guzzling SUV's and spotted a sticker reminding everyone about the "cost of freedom"?  It would hardly be surprising to find one of these military wives behind the wheel.  They are wearin' the buttons and seem damn proud about the noble mission of "keeping the promise" to Iraq. 

What's really insidious is how this little catchphrase is exploited.  We know it isn't free -- but who is it that decides how much to pay, in what ways, and where does the country pay?  Moreover, what exactly are the dimensions of this "freedom"?

  Increasingly it appears we are paying more and more to get less of it, and the only real beneficiaries are the profit-crazed corporations sponsoring all this foreign adventurism.  In the last presidential administration, the very worst we ever had, a sitting vice president made a killing in profits for his company by helping to orchestrate the killing fields of Iraq.

Now under a supposed "change" president, the troops are once again being sent into another oily mess, Libya.  As much as I sympathize with its people and their right to be rid of a monstrous dictator, the blatant reality of what propels this "humanitarian mission" is as sickening as the same real reason why the United States is still squandering $12,000,000,000 each and every month in Iraq & Afghanistan.

All this, and meantime one disgusting right-wing governor after another is telling the people of their state that "sacrifices must be made."  This is too much.  Too depressing to even imagine how much worse it's going to be if the national public doesn't get galvanized.  It's as simple as this:  Confront the corporatocrisy or  continue allowing it to bring complete ruin to America and much of the rest of the planet.

Turn off that damn Fox News channel and wake up, people.

Beyond brain death, the only other end result to this Age of Stupid will be the ultimate death of us all.

Please, please wake up.