Category Archives: In The News

Israel is acting as if it is free of moral responsibilities.

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Palestinian relatives mourn over Hamas’ green flag-draped bodies of eleven members of the Al Astal immediate and extended family, killed by an Israeli strike. (Hatem Ali/AP)

By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer July 24, 2014

The civilian death toll in Gaza from Israel’s latest incursion is appalling. The right to self-defense is inalienable, but it is not free from moral constraints.

As of this writing, nearly 750 Palestinians, including dozens of children, have been killed since the Israeli assault began. On Thursday, a compound housing a United Nations school — crowded with Gaza residents who had fled their homes to seek shelter — was shelled in an incident still under investigation by the Israeli Defense Forces. Palestinian officials said 15 people were killed and scores injured.

Eugene Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture, contributes to the PostPartisan blog, and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section. View Archive

I support Israel. I abhor Hamas. But unleashing such devastating firepower on a tiny, densely crowded enclave in which civilians are trapped — and thus destined to become casualties — is wrong by any reasonable moral standard.

The Israeli government’s motivations in Gaza deserve to be taken seriously. But they do not justify the onslaught that is now in its third week. For Israeli military action to be justifiable, it must be proportionate. What we’re witnessing is not.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Hamas is “targeting civilians and hiding behind civilians,” which he called a “double war crime.” He was referring to the fact that Hamas targets Israeli civilians with its rocket attacks and positions its military installations in residential neighborhoods or near schools and hospitals.

Netanyahu is right that these practices are reprehensible and that Israel has every right to respond. But none of this absolves Israel from its own moral responsibility. A civilized nation does not repay every heinous act in kind.

Israel says it is taking great pains to avoid civilian deaths. Indeed, Israel has been warning people to leave — with leaflets, text messages and nonlethal “roof-knocking” bombs — before smashing into residential neighborhoods. It is also true that in many instances Hamas, even knowing that an attack was coming, has instructed Gazans to stay put.

I have seen no confirmed reports, however, of Hamas using force to keep people in targeted areas so they can serve as human shields — and perhaps sway world opinion by boosting the body count. When people decide they must leave their homes, they can do so. But where are these evacuees supposed to go? To the nearest school or hospital? Not if these, too, are considered legitimate targets by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Gazans cannot flee across the closed border with Egypt. They obviously do not have the option of escaping into Israel or sailing away across the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza’s 1.8 million people are packed into an enclave measuring 139 square miles — an area and population roughly the size of Philadelphia.

Israeli officials say they would never consider attacking such targets as a school, a hospital or an apartment building unless Hamas were using these places — which should be off-limits in war — as military command posts, launch sites for rocket attacks and entry points for tunnels through which assassins and suicide bombers could enter Israel.

Again, however, there is the issue of proportionality. The military and political leadership of Hamas has much better intelligence about what the Israeli armed forces are doing and more options for refuge and shelter than the average Gazan. Indeed, we have not heard of any major Hamas figure being killed. So if you’re an Israeli commander and you know that there’s a Hamas military facility next to a medical clinic, but you’re not completely sure the militants are still there, while the clinic is likely packed with injured civilians, do you still pull the trigger?

Hamas’s rockets are much less of a threat than in the past because of Israel’sIron Dome missile-defense system, which has an impressive record. The tunnels are more worrisome because of their potential for use in future terrorism. Assume for the sake of argument that Israel had no choice but to act. What, then, would be a morally acceptable number of Palestinian civilian casualties?

Let me frame the question in practical terms: How many civilian casualties are needed to guarantee another generation of hatred and war?

The scale of death and destruction appears to be aimed not just at lessening the actual threat from Hamas but also at punishing Gazans for elevating Hamas to power in the first place. Netanyahu seems determined to teach them a lesson.

From all reports, however, the people of Gaza were already weary of Hamas. Netanyahu could have offered them an alternative future of free movement, economic development and peace. Instead, he gives them no choice.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter orsubscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

Israel wrecked my home. Now it wants my land.

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Nureddin Amro at his East Jerusalem home, which was partially demolished this spring. (Quique Kierszenbaum/For The Washington Post)

By Nureddin Amro July 31

Nureddin Amro is the founder and principal of Siraj al-Quds School for Integrated Education, a Jerusalem school for visually impaired, poor, orphaned and emotionally troubled children. Orly Halpern contributed reporting and fact-checking for The Washington Post.

EAST JERUSALEM — The world is watching Susiya to see if Israel will demolish the community of 340 Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. The Supreme Court here has refused to delay the forced removal of structures where 55 families have lived since they were displaced by state-sponsored archaeological digs that helped expand a nearby settlement. Living under the threat of demolition is a horrible experience. The Palestinians of Susiya probably feel disoriented, unstable and scared that their way of life could be dismantled at any minute. I know, because I’m in a similar situation. In my neighborhood, the destruction has already started.

Just before dawn on March 31, dozens of Israeli soldiers and police officers blocked off the streets and surrounded the one-story house where my older brother Sharif, his family of six, our 79-year-old mother, my wife, my three children and I live. We had gone to bed looking forward to a picnic the next morning, but we were awoken by the frightening sounds of jeeps and heavy machinery. Israeli security forces banged on the doors, shouting in Hebrew that we had to get out at once. They had come to demolish our home.

I was born in Jerusalem. My parents were born in Jerusalem. Their parents were born in Jerusalem. Their parents were born in Jerusalem. Our modest house is approximately 70 years old — older than the state of Israel. I have lived here in al-Sawana, a neighborhood between the Old City and the Mount of Olives, not far from the Gethsemane Valley (where the Romans caught Jesus), for more than 40 years. It is near a commercial area, hospitals, Muslim and Jewish cemeteries and precious religious sites for the three big monotheistic faiths. In other words, I live on strategic land.

In December, city planners, civil engineers and workers from Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority began walking up and down the neighborhood. They ordered people on my block to clean up things like broken furniture and wood outside our houses (we complied), measured the area with surveying tools and spray-painted footpath markings for hikers. Eventually they told us that we lived on “public land” inside something called the Jerusalem Walls National Park (established in 1974), where they warned us they have plans for further work. Government documents suggest that they will connect the Tzurim Valley National Park and the Beit Orot settlement, below the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus, where I studied, to the City of David archaeological site and Jewish settlement in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan — ultimately putting a Jewish belt around the eastern, Muslim side of the Old City. The parks authority has already boastedof beautifying this area, through which many Jewish pilgrims and hikers cross on Jewish holidays.

Israel employs numerous policies to push Palestinians out of East Jerusalem, including house demolitions, often ostensibly because homeowners lack the proper building permits. Human rights organizations argue that these “administrative demolitions” are illegitimate because Israel usually refuses to issue home-construction permits to Palestinians and because the permit regime is one-way, driving Palestinians out of areas Israel wants to control. (Tear-downs can also be collective punishments for violent acts carried out by individual Palestinian family members.)

All this helps explain what happened early that March morning. At first, the officials who showed up said they had come just to raze the eastern wall near the street, although they did not have a demolition order. I went through the house to my brother Sharif’s side to tell him, but when I got there, the officials said we were standing in a room they planned to demolish. They roughly pulled us outside, injuring Sharif’s leg. Meanwhile, they began tearing down the two outer rooms on my side of the house without my knowledge. My wife shouted, “They’ve already begun demolishing our house!”

Police and soldiers — many of whom were masked — pushed us back inside and kept us there so they could work unimpeded, and when I went outside again, they were knocking over a big tree. When it fell, it collapsed part of the garden wall, a piece of which injured the leg of my 12-year-old son, Mohammed. My family documented the damage with our camera phones, even as they cut our electricity and destroyed the sewage pipes.

By the time the soldiers left, less than four hours later, they had destroyed the kitchen and three other rooms, the wall that separates the house from the street, the chicken coop and the garden that we loved. Trees felled by the bulldozer were pushed to the side of the property. The place where my children — the others are 9 and 5 — used to play under the shade of those old trees was now covered by piles of rubble.

It wasn’t easy living in a house surrounded by rubble, especially since my brother and I are both blind. Still, I found myself unable to throw away the crushed concrete, which was mixed with fragments of my entire life. Each uprooted plant and broken piece of furniture was a part of our story. While it was hard to walk over and around the rubble as we tried to live, it was just as hard to imagine tossing it into a dumpster.

For weeks, the detritus was a source of confusion. Some Palestinians in our situation are told to remove it or face high fines. Others who clean it immediately fear that they have erased the ugly testimony to Israel’s act. I didn’t want to take any action that would undermine my legal position, and I didn’t want to do anything to invite further demolitions. At the same time, I wanted to restore some amount of normalcy to our daily lives and provide a safe play space for my kids by putting up a fence between us and the road that passes by our home.

Life for Palestinians in Jerusalem is complicated. Laws favor the Israeli authorities and Jewish citizens, especially settlers, and are interpretedunevenly and unpredictably. As the principal of a school for visually impaired and sighted children, I have supported hundreds of families as they have tried to stay on their ancestral land. Now my family is among them. We live in daily fear that the soldiers will come back and that nobody will protect us.

Several weeks later, after I paid to fix the electricity and the sewage pipes, they did come back. I was at work running the school’s end-of-the-year party. My brother called to tell me that soldiers and municipal officials had showed up at our house and said they wanted to clean up the rubble. We had already been advised by other Palestinians in Jerusalem who had gone through the same experience that if the city hauled the wreckage, it would charge us exorbitant fees for the job and might later claim rights to the land. So I told my brother to prevent them from doing any work. After several hours of arguing, they gave us two hours to remove the mess. We explained that this was clearly impossible, and they agreed to give us two days.

The next day, I found a bulldozer company willing to work on promise of future payment, and we started the job. On May 30, a Saturday morning — the Jewish Sabbath, during which Israeli public offices are closed — officials returned with the police. They threatened to fine or arrest us for cleaning up the rubble without a permit.

We didn’t know if we should laugh or cry. They had themselves demanded that we clean up the debris and had given us a permit the previous day! Then they threatened to fine us if we disposed of the rubble illegally, and they reminded us that the legal disposal sites were closed until Sunday. Workers from the bulldozer company, who were busy cleaning up the rubble, promised to keep it in their trucks until the dump reopened.

Many people know that more than 600 Palestinian villages were depopulatedin the years during and after Israel’s founding and that most of them were demolished. Some people also know that tens of thousands of structures have been torn down by Israel since the 1967 war, some 500 homes in East Jerusalem alone since 2004. Fewer know that there are more than 11,000open demolition orders against Palestinian structures just in Area C of the West Bank. This means that Israel can raze them at any moment, without further warning; Palestinians in those homes live in constant fear.

There are so many demolition orders, in fact, that Israel has sought more efficient ways to get all the work done. So it often recommends that Palestinians knock down their own homes at their own expense, freeing Israel of the hassle and risk. Some do. It seems this isn’t enough for Israel, though, because authorities continue to experiment with new and creative ways of dispossessing Palestinians. My own home seems to have been demolished using a municipal ordinance related to cleanliness of public areas in order to avoid judicial scrutiny, according to a Palestinian legal clinic that is challenging the operation. Indeed, in the three months before the demolition, I received two orders to clear away broken and old objects outside my house; I did as they asked. Demolition is not listed as a punishment for violating these orders, but human rights lawyers told me they have identified other recent cases in which Israeli municipal authorities cited the ordinance as a pretext for flattening homes.

Living under the threat of demolition is nerve-racking, as the residents of Susiya know, and it seems impossible to win against the legal and physical force Israel commands. My family is unsure about what to do next. Still, we do not intend to give up. If they completely demolish our homes, we will rebuild.

outlook@washpost.com

We are lifelong Zionists. Here’s why we’ve chosen to boycott Israel.

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An Israeli soldier detains a Palestinian boy during a protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in August. (Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)
By Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl October 23

Steven Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard University. Glen Weyl is an assistant professor of economics and law at the University of Chicago.

We are lifelong Zionists. Like other progressive Jews, our support for Israel has been founded on two convictions: first, that a state was necessary to protect our people from future disaster; and second, that any Jewish state would be democratic, embracing the values of universal human rights that many took as a lesson of the Holocaust. Undemocratic measures undertaken in pursuit of Israel’s survival, such as the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the denial of basic rights to Palestinians living there, were understood to be temporary.

But we must face reality: The occupation has become permanent. Nearly half a century after the Six-Day War, Israel is settling into the apartheid-like regime against which many of its former leaders warned. The settler population in the West Bank has grown 30-fold, from about 12,000 in 1980 to389,000 today. The West Bank is increasingly treated as part of Israel, with the green line demarcating the occupied territories erased from many maps. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin declared recently that control over the West Bank is “not a matter of political debate. It is a basic fact of modern Zionism.”

This “basic fact” poses an ethical dilemma for American Jews: Can we continue to embrace a state that permanently denies basic rights to another people? Yet it also poses a problem from a Zionist perspective: Israel has embarked on a path that threatens its very existence.

As happened in the cases of Rhodesia and South Africa, Israel’s permanent subjugation of Palestinians will inevitably isolate it from Western democracies. Not only is European support for Israel waning, but also U.S. public opinion — once seemingly rock solid — has begun to shift as well, especially among millennials. International pariah status is hardly a recipe for Israel’s survival.

At home, the occupation is exacerbating demographic pressures that threaten to tear Israeli society apart. The growth of the settler and ultra-orthodox populations has stoked Jewish chauvinism and further alienated the growing Arab population. Divided into increasingly irreconcilable communities, Israel risks losing the minimum of mutual tolerance that is necessary for any democratic society. In such a context, violence like the recent wave of attacksin Jerusalem and the West Bank is virtually bound to become normal.

Finally, occupation threatens the security it was meant to ensure. Israel’s security situation has changed dramatically since the 1967 and 1973 wars. Peace with Egypt and Jordan, the weakening of Iraq and Syria, and Israel’s now-overwhelming military superiority — including its (undeclared) nuclear deterrent — have ended any existential threat posed by its Arab neighbors. Even a Hamas-led Palestinian state could not destroy Israel. As six former directors of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, argued in the 2012 documentary “The Gatekeepers,” it is the occupation itself that truly threatens Israel’s long-term security: Occupation forces Israel into asymmetric warfare that erodes its international standing, limits its ability to forge regional alliances against sectarian extremists and, crucially, remains the principal motive behind Palestinian violence.

In making the occupation permanent, Israel’s leaders are undermining their state’s viability. Unfortunately, domestic movements to avert that fate have withered. Thanks to an economic boom and the temporary security provided by the West Bank barrier and the Iron Dome missile defense system, much of Israel’s secular Zionist majority feels no need to take the difficult steps required for a durable peace, such as evicting their countrymen from West Bank settlements and acknowledging the moral stain of the suffering Israel has caused to so many Palestinians.

We are at a critical juncture. Settlement growth and demographic trends will soon overwhelm Israel’s ability to change course. For years, we have supported Israeli governments — even those we strongly disagreed with — in the belief that a secure Israel would act to defend its own long-term interests. That strategy has failed. Israel’s supporters have, tragically, become its enablers. Today, there is no realistic prospect of Israel making the hard choices necessary to ensure its survival as a democratic state in the absence of outside pressure.

For supporters of Israel like us, all viable forms of pressure are painful. The only tools that could plausibly shape Israeli strategic calculations are a withdrawal of U.S. aid and diplomatic support, and boycotts of and divestitures from the Israeli economy. Boycotting only goods produced in settlements would not have sufficient impact to induce Israelis to rethink the status quo.

It is thus, reluctantly but resolutely, that we are refusing to travel to Israel, boycotting products produced there and calling on our universities to divest and our elected representatives to withdraw aid to Israel. Until Israel seriously engages with a peace process that either establishes a sovereign Palestinian state or grants full democratic citizenship to Palestinians living in a single state, we cannot continue to subsidize governments whose actions threaten Israel’s long-term survival.

Israel, of course, is hardly the world’s worst human rights violator. Doesn’t boycotting Israel but not other rights-violating states constitute a double standard? It does. We love Israel, and we are deeply concerned for its survival. We do not feel equally invested in the fate of other states.

Unlike internationally isolated states such as North Korea and Syria, Israel could be significantly affected by a boycott. The Israeli government could not sustain its foolish course without massive U.S. aid, investment, commerce, and moral and diplomatic support.

We recognize that some boycott advocates are driven by opposition to (and even hatred of) Israel. Our motivation is precisely the opposite: love for Israel and a desire to save it.

Repulsed by the Afrikaners’ ethno-religious fanaticism in South Africa, Zionism founder Theodore Herzl wrote, “We don’t want a Boer state, but a Venice.” American Zionists must act to pressure Israel to preserve Herzl’s vision — and to save itself.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT SEASON IT IS???

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By: Hank Hardy

Everyone is familiar with the four seasons but actually the calendar year is full of seasons. Some are as short as one day like the FORTH Of JULY and THANKSGIVING, and others are longer like the CHRISTMAS SEASON which lasts for a couple of months, but the longest season which comes once every four years is called THE ASS KISSING SEASON, commonly known as the PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION SEASON.

Every candidate in this season, without exception, tries to kiss the ass of the Jews in the US in general and the Israelis’ and their supporters’ in particular. Some candidates receive millions of dollars from rich Jews like Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire owner of the Sands Hotels and Casinos who donated millions of dollars to Newt Gingrich in the previous elections after a huge ass kissing from the latter. Hillary Clinton prefers to kiss the asses of the Jews in New York who helped her get elected to the US senate representing that state. Some candidates go overboard with the ass kissing; for example Mike Huckabee who doesn’t only kiss the Israeli ass but he licks it, fondles it and takes it to bed. He recently went to Israel for a fund raising project to his campaign for the presidency, after which he came back with millions of dollars to spend in the US. During his visit to Israel he made several speeches dissing the Palestinians and calling them “invented people” and saying that he agrees with Israel to not allow Palestinians to return to their homeland. His fellow Republican Ann Coulter said that he sounded like he was running for mayor of Tel-Aviv. This Moran thought that he can revive his campaign and move ahead to the front. Instead, his campaign decided to settle in a comfortable spot, right in the toilet.

More recently, Ben Carson decided to try his ass kissing technique. He made a statement on a talk show saying that he would not support a Muslim for a president. A few days later he realized how stupid and outrageous his statement was, so he retracted it and tried explaining it in a different way saying that he would not support a member of ISIS for president…How clever, he thought that ISIS would send a representative to run for the US President so he can destroy the country from the inside. That’s how genius Carson is.

And now, here comes the grand poopa of geniuses, his name is Donald Trump. He probably thought to himself …oh, I almost forgot to kiss the Jews’ ass. Let me go big time and make a statement to please them and let everyone remember it, so he made the most outrageous statement of all, calling on a ban of Muslims entering the US for any reason, even banning Muslim American citizens who live and/or were born in the US from returning to their homes if they travel abroad. What’s next Mr. Idiot? Are you going to demolish their homes like the Israelis do in Palestine? Or you are going to go around shooting them in the streets like the Israelis do in Palestine? This A.. Hole did not care whom he hurts with a statement like that. He did not think about something called discrimination or the American Value which we all cherish. He only cared about kissing the Israeli ass. Well, Trump boy… you succeeded. He was denounced by everyone, even his fellow Republican candidates; but the sad thing is not for an idiot like Trump to make a stupid statement like this but that a small minority of his supporters who agree with him proving that they are as much of airheads as he is. This group is lead by non other than the queen of Morons, Sarah Palin. In her infinite wisdom she said: if this could save lives, profile away.

A reporter from NBC asked Trump this question: you said you wanted to keep a data base on all Muslims in the US, how is that different from requiring the Jews to register in Nazi Germany? Trump asked the reporter who he’s with; ignoring his question even after the reporter repeated it.

In a huge lie a couple of weeks ago, Trump said that thousands and thousands of Arabs in New Jersey cheered as the Twin Towers were coming down. All networks refuted his claim; even the reporter who was there in person and reported the story said it was a lie. When Trump was asked how does he remember that? He said: I have the best memory in the world, but when he was asked when and where this event took place he said: I don’t remember.

I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Idiot thought about what he was blabbering. Did he think about the backlash from everyone especially the Muslims in this country and around the world? Did he think that the only group of people he would be helping is ISIS? Was he trying to put his campaign to bed or even 6 feet under? Although he is supported by some minority followers, the rest of America is not going to tolerate such bigotry and racism. That’s not what our country stands for. Not Donald Trump or ten Donald Trumps could change that.

There you have it, the leading Republican candidate for president. What does that tell you about this party in general and Trump in particular??

Terrorists’ Attacks, Who’s Responsible??

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By: Mohamed Abulrahman

There have been numerous attacks in recent months and years on innocent people in different countries. We are not talking about the “deranged individuals” who carry a gun and go to a school, a theater, or any other crowded place and start shooting. We are referring to those organized attacks by organizations identified by our government as “terrorists” such as the recent one in San Bernardino, California that killed 14 people and the attack in Paris, France that killed 129 people, and the attack known as the “Charles Hebdo attack”, also in France that killed 11 people. There was also the attack in Kenya in 2011 that killed 147 people. Many other attacks took place in other countries over the years.

The so called “terrorist organizations” like Al-Qaida, ISIS and many others are not just a menace to the world but they are dangerous and deadly as we saw in California, France and other places. Unfortunately, all of these organizations’ members are Muslims, or so they claim, but what they are doing contradicts everything Islam stands for, which reminds me with an incident I read about on the internet. An ISIS man in Syria stopped a car driven by a Christian man with his wife sitting next to him. The conversation between the two men went as follows:

ISIS man: Are you Muslim?

The driver: Yes we are.

ISIS man: If you are Muslim, recite something from the Quran.

The driver recited something from the bible.

ISIS man: Yes, you are Muslim, go on and enjoy your day.

The driver’s wife asked her husband: Why did you tell him we are Muslims?

The driver: Because if I tell him we are not, he will kill us both.

The wife seemed to be worried. Her husband said: don’t worry, this man does not know anything about Islam or the Quran; if he does, he won’t be going around killing people.

To associate Arabs and/or Muslims with terrorists and terrorism is wrong. In fact, true Muslims are the first to condemn such heinous crimes committed by these thugs. They claim to be Muslims but they know nothing about Islam. If the profit Mohammed is still alive, I have no doubt that he will form an army and wipe those criminals off the face of this earth. The Israelis and their supporters in the United States and around the world want people in every country to believe that all Muslims and all Arabs are terrorists. Actually, you don’t blame them for this evil attempt because every criminal tries to pin the crime on someone else after profusely denying committing it. The crimes that Israel commits in the land of Palestine are numerous to mention and gruesome to talk about.

Believe it or not, the biggest and most dangerous terrorist organization in the world, and by far the overall worst one is called ISRAEL, the country of thugs. Before you let your jaw drop to the floor and say what??? Why Israel??

Well, just think about it. The definition of terrorists is a group of thugs killing innocent people and destroying their properties. No one did that more than Israel. In the name of self defense, they invaded the Gaza Strip and killed thousands of innocent people, and using the planes, tanks, missiles, bombs and other military equipment that our government gave them, they destroyed billions of dollars worth of properties in Gaza and the West Bank. If bombing schools, hospitals and homes is not terrorism I don’t know what is!!

The two biggest single attacks happened in 2001 and 2014. The first was on the Twin Towers in New York that killed 3,000 people, but the biggest and worst attack, outside of a war, happened in 2014 when Israel, for no reason at all, launched not a war but a massacre against the people of Gaza killing 2,200 of them and destroying billions of dollars worth of properties.

Although the number of people died in New York was larger than the number killed in Gaza, the latter was considered much worse due to the property destruction and the deplorable conditions that the area was left in afterword. The people who perished in New York were hailed as heroes, remembered every year in a special ceremony and their families were compensated for their loss. Our country invaded Afghanistan in attempt to revenge the incident, where as the people who died in Gaza were forgotten and the event rarely mentioned in the news. Their families were never compensated and the United Nations’ aid of food, medicine, and other life necessities were blocked by the Israeli army. A book can be written about the atrocities that the Israelis committed in Gaza and the West Bank but this is neither the place nor time for it.

BUT!! The $64 million question is…Who is responsible for the creation of such groups as Al-Qaida and ISIS??

If you say… well, the terrorist groups themselves are responsible for their actions. They committed these crimes on their own and they answer to, and take orders from, no one. Bravo, you are half right. Actually, the first blame should be directed toward the countries and organizations that either created them or caused them to exist. BUT… who are those countries, you ask?

Don’t look too far. We, the United States of America indirectly were the major contributor to the creation and strengthening of these groups.

What??? You ask in shock; how can you say that when we are fighting them and trying to destroy them (except Israel of course).

When Saddam Hussein was the president of Iraq, Al-Qaida had no trace in that country because Hussein did not like them and would not allow them in his country, but when George W. Bush, better known as “the worst president in the country’s history” decided in his infamous wisdom and under pressure from his vice president to invade Iraq to please and protect the Israelis, Al-Qaida had a golden opportunity to enter Iraq and flourish in it, thus allowing them to dig up their heals in the country. Following his orders, or rather Dick Chaney’s orders, our army killed a large number of Iraq’s army and dissolved the remaining fragments of it. Now Iraq has a few untrained soldiers who are under equipped and underfunded. This army is incapable of fighting anyone, which opened the doors to ISIS to attack villages, kill a large number of innocent people and occupy land.

It’s ironic that the two groups that we are forced to call “terrorists” have never attacked or threatened our, or any other, country in the world. The two groups are Hamas and Hizb- Allah. In the Middle East, if you Arabic and you fight for your country, Palestine, you are called terrorist.

Terrorism is a huge problem facing not just our country but the whole world. BUT… what is the solution, you ask??

Not everyone realizes this but most problems have solutions. Some solutions are more effective than others but never the less there is always one. Most people think there is no solution to terrorism or it involves a full scale war which no one wants including the president. Actually, the solution is simple and does not involve war. Here are the steps to the eradication of ISIS once and for all.

  • Pressure Saudi Arabia to cut off their funding. There is no doubt that ISIS needs a huge amount of money to run their evil operation. Saudi Arabia and some countries in the gulf provide them with that.
  • Pressure Israel to stop aiding ISIS. It’s a known fact in the Middle East that Israel and ISIS are fighting on the same side. They are both fighting the Syrian army, and they are both trying to destroy the reputation of Islam. When fighters from ISIS are injured, where do you think they are treated? In Israeli hospitals.
  • Encourage fighter to leave ISIS and financially reward them. Many fighters join the terror group for the money. They are desperate for funds and willing to do what it takes to support their families. ISIS provides the funds for them. That’s what Some of the ISIS defectors on 60 minutes said.
  • Support the individual groups in Iraq and Syria who are fighting ISIS. There are many militia groups in Iraq and Syria who are fighting ISIS with what they have which is not much. In an interview on 60 Minutes with one of the militia leaders, he said: people around here are either our friends and fight with us or our enemies and fight with ISIS. When the reporter said: then the US is your friend right? He replies, not really. The US refused to assist us in our fight against ISIS. He added: we don’t want American soldiers to fight our battles but we would appreciate other types of help like equipment and funding. The reporter then asked the commander of the American forces in Iraq about that. He said that’s true; only 20% of the people who fight ISIS qualify for our criteria to help them.
  • Get congress to authorize bombing and fighting ISIS, and continue the air strikes on ISIS and encourage other countries to join in especially the surrounding ones.

If these steps are followed, ISIS will seize to exist in one or two years without sending our soldiers to fight in Iraq or Syria.

British MP: Israel Fabricated Knife Attack Stories, Conservative Party Influenced By ‘Jewish Money’

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This an article posted on the YAHOO website.

By Belfast Telegraph | October 30, 2015

Kaufman.JPG

Labor MP Sir Gerald Kaufman has allegedly accused Israel of fabricating some recent stories about knife attacks against Jews in Israel, and claimed the Conservative party is influenced by “Jewish money,” in a speech at a pro-Palestine event at Parliament.

As reported by The Jewish Chronicle, Kaufman, MP for Manchester Gorton and Father of the House, told the audience at a Palestine Return Centre event that the Government has become more pro-Israel in recent years due to donations from Jewish groups.

“It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party – as in the general election in May – support from The Jewish Chronicle, all of those things, bias the Conservatives,” he said.

“There is now a big group of Conservative members of Parliament who are pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel, in what the Israeli government does.”

He added: “They’re not interested in the fact that Palestinians are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestinians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn’t care.”

Kaufman then went on to claim “more than half” of the stabbings that have recently happened in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel were fabricated, in comments that were recorded by blogger David Collier.

 Reading from an email from a friend who lives in East Jerusalem, Kaufman said: “More than half of the stabbing claims were definitely fabricated. The other half, some were true, the others there was no way to tell since they executed Palestinians and no one asked questions.”

“Not only that, they got to the point of executing Arab-looking people and in the past few days they killed two Jewish Israelis and an Eritrean just because they looked Arab.

“They fabricated a stabbing story to justify the killings before they found out they were not Palestinians.”

Kaufman was referring to an incident which took place earlier this month, in which an Eritrean man was killed by an angry crowd who incorrectly believed he was the accomplice of an Arab attacker.

The Palestine Return Centre, who organized the roundtable event where Kaufman made the comments, is a consultancy which focuses on issues relating to dispersed Palestians and their return to Israel.

Kaufman has been an MP since June 1970, making him the longest-serving MP currently in the House of Commons. He is Jewish, and has long been an outspoken critic of Israel and the Israeli government.

© Belfast Telegraph

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Ahmed Mohamed AND CJ Pearson

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By:Sarah Hamdan

Most people in this country and around the world have heard Ahmed Mohamed’s story, but in case you haven’t, here’s briefly what happened to him.

Ahmed is a 14 year old kid living and going to school in Irving, Texas. He designed a homemade clock and was very excited to show it to his teacher next day. Instead of praising this young man’s ingenuity and genius, his teacher called the police who came to the school and arrested this kid because they thought he’s bringing a bomb to school.

This is Ahmed’s clock

Lately, people are living on edge for all the shootings in public places especially school. So, you would think that the teacher and police arresting officer were justified to think that this ticking think would be a bomb. The teacher was either threatened by the boy’s genius because this kid is Muslim or he was prejudice against Muslims, or he was just plain stupid, not fit to be a teacher whose job is to enrich and help develop the students’ brains not get them arrested. He did not bother asking the kid what is this device he’s trying to show him. He didn’t bother looking at it and realize that there is nothing attached to it that could explode. He automatically assumed it’s a bomb because this kid is Muslim.

What about the cop who arrested this kid? If the teacher was dumb enough to think that this device is a bomb, the officer was ten times as dumb. He is in law enforcement, trained to handle and recognize different kinds of weapons and explosives. If explosives are not his specialty, he should be able to recognize a bomb when he sees one. This clock was not hidden in a box that’s ticking away to scare everyone. It was sitting on the table for everyone to see. I wonder if the cop was blind as well as dumb that he couldn’t see anything attached to the clock like sticks of dynamite or any suspicious material. He, just like the teacher, assumed it’s a bomb because the kid who brought it to school is Muslim. I think they should make a movie about these two characters and call if “DUMB and DUMBER”. Oh, I forgot, this name is already taken. Maybe they should call the movie “DUMBER and DUMBEST”.

I love the support and the reaction that this kid has received from people all over the country, among which was President Obama who called this kid’s project “cool” and invited him to visit the White House. Mark Zuckerberg invited Ahmed to visit FACEBOOK and said this kid should be applauded not arrested. M.I.T, the best engineering school in the world said that they will reserve a spot for him. He was also praised by Hillary Clinton and many others.

CJ Pearson is a 13 year old kid from Augusta Georgia. He got jealous of all the attention Ahmed is getting especially from the White House and decided to record a video and posted it on “You Tube”. He was bashing the president for inviting Ahmed to the White House. He said in his video, when police officers are gunned down, their families are not invited to the White House but when a Muslim kid makes a clock, well come-on down. Well CJ, do you know what “sour grapes” is? If you don’t, just look in the mirror and you will see him. The President can invite whoever he chooses to the White House. Sad as it is, police officers and soldiers are gunned down, around the country, almost on daily bases, so, if the president invites everyone’s family to the White House, he will have no time to do anything else. Ahmed Mohamed’s story is a unique event that happened in this country which attracted a large number of people’s attention including the president’s. And, why are you trying to steal that boy’s thunder. Are you just trying to put the attention on yourself instead? Do something good and you will get the attention you deserve. I know you are just a kid and everyone is entitled to his opinion but does it have to be in a hateful way?

HUCKABEE’S STUPIDITY SHINES THROUGH

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By: Hank Hardy

Here’s an excerpt of an article about a remark by Mike Huckabee during his visit to Israel:

“GOP presidential contender makes inflammatory claim — again

Mike Huckabee (Credit: AP/Keith Srakocic)

Mike Huckabee has revived the incendiary notion that there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people, repeating an assertion that has been condemned by a wide spectrum of historians and political analysts.

The likely Republican presidential hopeful made the claim in an interview with the Washington Post, for the paper’s story on Huckabee’s guided tours of Israel. (Price tag: $5,250.) Tourists have the opportunity to hear from guest lecturers, including Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein. The Post reports that Klein told Huckabee’s group that the idea of a Palestinian people is a fiction — a declaration with which Huckabee readily concurred.

“The idea that they have a long history, dating back hundreds or thousands of years, is not true,” the former Arkansas governor and Fox News host told the Post.

This isn’t the first time Huckabee has advanced the idea. “I have to be careful saying this, because people get really upset — there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” Huckabee told a Massachusetts rabbi during his 2008 presidential campaign. “That’s been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.”

Newt Gingrich echoed Huckabee’s remarks in 2011, proclaiming that “we’ve had invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community.” Gingrich’s remarks attracted more than the predictable condemnation from Palestinian officials, also drawing derision from Israeli historians and Mitt Romney, Gingrich’s GOP presidential rival.

Well Mr. Huckabee, the old adage says “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”. This does not apply in your case because you look intelligent, you talk like an intelligent person but you’re dumb as a door nail, that’s if you really believe what you say. You’re not a duck, you’re a craw.

I understand that you were trying to kiss the Israelis’ ass because they are paying for your trip and you’re hoping that they and their allies in the US would support you when you run for a president, but to say something outrageous and stupid, would put you in the dumb column not the intelligent. Just think about it, even Newt Gingrich, whose intellect is known to be lacking at best, is repeating your statement.

Here’s a brief lesson of history for you. The land that the Israelis occupy now has never been called Israel until 1948 when they over powered the Palestinians and robbed them of their land at gun point. That land has ALWAYS been called PALESTINE, and the people who live on it are called Palestinians. You ought to be ashamed of yourself releasing such a false and stupid statement just to kiss up to your masters.

Here’s a question for you Mr. Know it all, if the people who lived for thousands of years in Palestine should not, in your opinion, be called Palestinians because they are “invented people” for the purpose of forcing land away from Israel, what do you call the people in Israel who were collected from other countries to form the country of Israel? Are they Russians, Americans, Arabs or what? A huge number of them where not even born in Israel?

The writer of the article concluded with this statement:

“The Palestinians exist now, and that’s a politico-diplomatic reality with which a President Huckabee would have to reckon. His unwillingness to do so reveals him to be either embarrassingly ignorant or deeply dishonest.

Home Demolition In Palestine

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By:Hank Hardy

The following report was published on the YAHOO website in regard to the demolition of Palestinians’ home in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

“Israeli authorities said Monday that notices have been issued to several Palestinians warning them of a demolition drive in the West Bank. The move comes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the resumption of the practice of destroying Palestinian homes following clashes over the Al Aqsa Mosque and Temple Mount compound.

The country’s military said that the demolition of several houses had been approved and the police have also marked several houses in the eastern part of Jerusalem for destruction or to seal them up, according to The Associated Press. Officials are currently awaiting a final nod from the government before beginning the demolition drive, the report said”.

Just imagine for a second that these homes are being destroyed here, in the United States, and your house was one of them.

What would you do??

Do you just say: Ahh let them destroy it; I’ll just go somewhere else and buy another one! Or would you say:

well, God promised them this land so they’re entitled to it and everything on it!

Or would you fight them in every imaginable way, with whatever weapons accessible to you even if it’s just a stone or a small rock! Well that’s what the Palestinians decided to do, and that’s why they are called Terrorists.

27,000 homes were demolished since Israel assumed control over the West Bank and Gaza. Besides killing innocent people for no good reason or for fabricated reasons, there is no more immoral action anyone can take than destroying someone’s house just because the Israelis want his land. What’s equally immoral is our government’s unconditional support for this “country of thugs” called Israel.

What did our beloved president do when the Israeli government declared a couple of months ago the annexation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem? Absolutely nothing. The President of the United States told them not to do that, to which Netanyahu answered: You should get your facts straight. We decided to annex this land a long time ago. In other words, we are not trying to rob the Palestinians of their land now! We already robbed them of it a long time ago. One of the people in Obama’s administration was so fed up and so disgusted with the arrogance of Netanyahu and the Israeli government that he called him “chicken shit”. Actually, this unnamed person was too kind to Netanyahu.

Mr. Chicken Shit

I asked you, the reader, earlier to imagine that those destroyed homes were in this country. Well; don’t go that far, just imagine those homes were destroyed in the Ukraine by the Russian soldiers. How would the world react to such news? Better yet, how would we, in this country in general and our beloved president in particular, react to such news. When Putin annexed the Crimea area after an overwhelming referendum and approval by its people, Barack Obama went crazy and announced sanctions against Russia. The Palestinian people did not get to vote on such referendum. Their land was stolen from them at gun point. In this country we call that “armed robbery”. What did Obama do? Absolutely nothing. Not only that, but our country continues to support Israel and send them money, arms and everything else they demand.

Every president we’ve had in last 50 years called for human rights and standing up to the bullies of the world, but when it comes to the Palestinians, not only that they turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, but they help the Israelis kill those innocent people and destroy their homes with unlimited shipments of weapons and money. When other countries decide to help by sending food, medical supplies and doctors to help the Palestinians, the Israeli government blocks their shipments and stops the doctors from entering the area. And when the United Nations once sent a huge amount of food to Gaza the Israeli airplanes bombed the warehouse in which the supply was stored.

I think all those presidents who call for human rights should walk around wearing paper bags over their heads for all the lies and deceit that comes out of their mouths, except George W. Bush. He should walk around with his head tucked between his legs for all the shame and humiliation he brought upon this country.

We, the American people should stand up to our president and government and stop this madness of supporting those Israeli thugs who’s only mission in life is to kill Palestinians and rob them of their land. After all, it’s our money that’s been sent to the Israeli’s to commit one massacre after another while we sit here and watch, and if the news gets to be too gruesome, we just change the channel.

It never seizes to amaze me, how we, the American people in general and our government in particular, the most helpful nation on earth, jump to the aid of other countries if they were facing a natural disaster like hurricane, earthquake, flood or any such natural disaster, or a man-made disaster like a war. We send those people of other countries food, medicine, blankets and everything else they need to help them cope with their situation. We do that for any country on earth except the Palestinians. Not only that we ignore them and turn the other way but we send the thugs who caused their misery more money and weapons to do even more harm to them. We all should be ashamed of ourselves, claiming to be democratic and always calling for justice and human rights. Where is the justice here? Can anyone see it? I sure can’t.

How could anyone with a particle of conscience and humanity allow this to happen? How can we just sit on the sideline and pretend that we don’t see or hear the plea of help of those people whose only fault is owning land that the Israelis want. If we see an animal being abused we get outraged and offer to help in any way we can. We move heaven and earth to help a child who’s suffering from a terminal disease, but when it comes to Palestinian children we look at them being killed by the 10’s or even by the 100’s without lifting a finger to help them. More over, we give the Israeli murderers more weapons to bomb the schools, hospitals and homes, as if those people don’t exist.