by Ralph Nader

In the long sixty-year tortured history of the Palestinian expulsion from their lands, Congress has maintained that it is always the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, and now Hamas who are to blame for all hostilities and their consequences with the Israeli government.

The latest illustration of this Washington puppet show, backed by the most modern weapons and billions of taxpayer dollars annually sent to Israel, was the grotesquely one-sided Resolutions whisked through the Senate and the House of Representatives.

While a massive bombing and invasion of Gaza was underway, the resolution blaming Hamas for all the civilian casualties and devastation-99% of it inflicted on Palestinians-zoomed through the Senate by voice vote and through the House by a vote of 390 to 5 with 22 legislators voting present.

There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.

The reasons for such near-unanimous support for Israeli actions-no matter how often they are condemned by peace advocates such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, United Nations resolutions, the World Court and leading human rights groups inside and outside of Israel, are numerous. The pro-Israeli government lobby, and the right-wing Christian evangelicals, lubricated by campaign money of many Political Action Committees (PACs) certainly are key.

There is also more than a little bigotry in Congress against Arabs and Muslims, reinforced by the mass media yahoos who set new records for biased reporting each time this conflict erupts.

The bias is clear. It is always the Palestinians' fault. Right-wingers who would never view the U.S. government as perfect see the Israeli government as never doing anything wrong. Liberals who do not hesitate to criticize the U.S. military view all Israeli military attacks, invasions and civilian devastation as heroic manifestations of Israeli defense.

The inversion of history and the scope of amnesia know no limits. What about the fact that the Israeli government drove Palestinians from their lands in 1947-48 with tens of thousands pushed into the Gaza strip. No problem to Congress.

Then the fact that the Israeli government cruelly occupied, in violation of UN resolutions, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and only removed its soldiers and colonists from Gaza (1.5 million people in a tiny area twice the size of the District of Columbia) in 2005. To Congress, the Palestinians deserved it.

Then when Hamas was freely elected to run Gaza, the Israeli authorities cut off the tax revenues on imports that belonged to the Gaza government. This threw the Gazans into a fiscal crisis-they were unable to pay their civil servants and police.

In 2006, the Israelis added to their unrelieved control of air, water and land around the open-air prison by establishing a blockade. The natives became restless. Under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Primitive rockets, called by reporters "wildly inaccurate" were fired into Israel. During this same period, Israeli soldiers and artillery and missiles would go into Gaza at will and take far more lives and cause far more injuries than those incurred by those rockets. Civilians-especially children, the infirm and elderly-died or suffered week after week for lack of medicines, medical equipment, food, electricity, fuel and water which were embargoed by the Israelis.

Then the Israeli bombing followed by the invasion during the past three weeks with what prominent Israeli writer Gideon Levy called "a brutal and violent operation...far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south." Mr. Levy observed what the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann called a war against "a helpless and defenseless imprisoned population."

The horror of being trapped from fleeing the torrent of the most modern weapons of war from the land, air and seas is reflected in this passage from Amira Hass, writing in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

"The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies."

Ms. Hass is pointing to the use of new anti-civilian weapons used on the Gazan people. So far there have been over 1100 fatalities, many thousands of injuries and the destruction of homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, pharmacies, granaries, farmer's fields and many critical public facilities. The clearly marked UN headquarters and UN school were smashed, along with stored medicines and food supplies.

Why? The Congressional response: "Hamas terrorists" everywhere. Sure, defending their Palestinian families is called terrorism. The truth is there is no Hamas army, airforce and navy up against the fourth most powerful military in the world. As one Israeli gunner on an armored personnel carrier frankly said to The New York Times: "They are villagers with guns. They don't even aim when they shoot."

Injured Gazans are dying in damaged hospital corridors, bleeding to death because rescuers are not permitted to reach them or are endangered themselves. Thousands of units of blood donated by Jordanians are stopped by the Israeli blockade. Israel has kept the international press out of the Gazan killing fields.
What is going on in Gaza is what Bill Moyers called it earlier this month - "state terrorism." Already about 400 children are known to have died. More will be added who are under the rubble.

Since 2002, more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations have had a standing offer, repeated often, that if Israel obeys several UN resolutions and withdraws to the 1967 borders leaving 22 percent of the original Palestine for an independent Palestinian state, they will open full diplomatic relations and there will be peace. Israel has declined to accept this offer.

None of these and many other aspects of this conflict matter to the Congress. Its members do not want to hear even from the Israeli peace movement, composed of retired generals, security chiefs, mayors, former government ministers, and members of the Knesset. In 60 years these savvy peace advocates have not been able to give one hour of testimony before a Congressional Committee.

Maybe members of Congress may wish to weigh the words of the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, years ago when he said:

"There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinian's] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country."

Doesn't that observation invite some compassion for the Palestinian people and their right to be free of Israeli occupation, land and water grabs and blockades in the 22 percent left of Palestine?


http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/17-1

interesting

Maybe Ralph should have a few rockets rain down on his house and see how he feels. It did not take long after the Israelis quit Gaza before the rockets started to be shot at their towns again. Hmmmmmm and who has refused a ceasefire?

The inversion of history and the scope of amnesia know no limits. What about the fact that the Israeli government drove Palestinians from their lands in 1947-48 with tens of thousands pushed into the Gaza strip. No problem to Congress.

Then the fact that the Israeli government cruelly occupied, in violation of UN resolutions, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and only removed its soldiers and colonists from Gaza (1.5 million people in a tiny area twice the size of the District of Columbia) in 2005. To Congress, the Palestinians deserved it.

Then when Hamas was freely elected to run Gaza, the Israeli authorities cut off the tax revenues on imports that belonged to the Gaza government. This threw the Gazans into a fiscal crisis-they were unable to pay their civil servants and police.
From the post above

Here's another David Ben-Gurion quote:

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”


or


“We must expel the Arabs and take their places.”




Here's your full quote:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

I'm afraid these quotes are fabrications.

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=775

from your link. The Koenig Report or “memorandum” as it is sometimes referred to, was a private document of recommendations written in 1975 by civil servant Israel Koenig, the Interior Ministry’s official in charge of the Galilee, to alter the demographic balance of the region in favor of the Jews. The recommendations were rejected by then Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, denounced by senior Cabinet ministers and rued by then foreign minister Yigal Alon who expressed great regret that the recommendations were ever written. It provoked controversy within Israel after being leaked to Al Hamishmar, the publication of Israel’s Marxist party, Mapam. Koenig’s recommendations included expanding and strengthening Israel’s Jewish presence in the Galilee, applying legal consequences to Arabs expressing hostility toward the state and Zionism, enforcing tax collection from the Arab sector, cutting family subsidies to Arabs with large families, eliminating preferential acceptance of Arabs into Israeli universities, channeling Arab students into studying the physical and natural sciences rather than humanities, and encouraging young Arabs to study abroad and emigrate. As controversial as Koenig’s proposals were at the time, however, there was absolutely no suggestion of using "terror," "assassination," "intimidation" or "land confiscations."

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=775

Exactly!

also...don't forget this part of the article...

Media Monitors (http://www.mediamonitors.net)

An article archived on the Media Monitors Web site is filled with questionable assertions and bogus quotes (some of which were debunked in Part I.) The following quote (which also appears on the MIFTAH Web site) was attributed to Israeli Northern District Commissioner Israel Koenig, supposedly from his controversial report on Israeli Arabs in Galilee:

We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.

Source given: Cited in Lustick, Ian, Arabs in the Jewish State, University of Texas Press, Texas, 1980.

Investigation: Neither the source given (Ian Lustick's Arabs in the Jewish State) nor the actual report itself contains any mention of "terror, assassination, intimidation or land confiscation".

The supposed quote is inaccurate in its content AND
has nothing to do with Ben Gurion for example.

If only it would sink into the sea". Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin referring to Gaza, just before signing the Oslo Accords.

Yitzhak Shamir, one of the trio of leaders of Lehi and Israeli PM.


There are those who say that to kill Martin (a British sergeant) is terrorism, but to attack an army camp is guerrilla warfare and to bomb civilians is professional warfare. But I think it is the same from the moral point of view. Is it better to drop an atomic bomb on a city than to kill a handful of persons? I don’t think so. But nobody says that President Truman was a terrorist. All the men we went for individually — Wilkin, Martin, MacMichael and others — were personally interested in succeeding in the fight against us. So it was more efficient and more moral to go for selected targets. In any case, it was the only way we could operate, because we were so small. For us it was not a question of the professional honor of a soldier, it was the question of an idea, an aim that had to be achieved. We were aiming at a political goal. There are many examples of what we did to be found in the Bible — Gideon and Samson, for instance. This had an influence on our thinking. And we also learned from the history of other peoples who fought for their freedom — the Russian and Irish revolutionaries, Garibaldi and Tito.

An article titled "Terror" in He Khazit (The Front, a Lehi underground newspaper) argued as follows:

Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: "Ye shall blot them out to the last man." But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier. We are particularly far from this sort of hesitation in regard to an enemy whose moral perversion is admitted by all.

Unknown Soldiers are we, without uniform
And around us fear and the shadow of death
We have all been drafted for life.
Only death will discharge us from [our] ranks,



On red days of riots and blood
In the dark nights of despair
In towns and villages shall we raise our banner
On which are inscribed defence and conquest


We were not drafted by the whip, like a mob of slaves
To shed our blood in foreign lands
Our will is to be forever free
Our dream - to die for our country


From all directions, tens of thousands of obstacles
Cruel fate has placed on our path
But enemies, spies and prison houses
Will never be able to stop us


And if we fall in the streets and homes
We will be buried silently in the night
Thousands of others will fill our places
To protect and defend forever


With the tears of bereaved mothers
And the blood of pure babies
Like mortar shall we put together the cadaver building blocks
The edifice of the homeland shall we raise

Come on slow.
Who's anthem is that?

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will

be able to do about it will be to scurry around

like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." — Raphael

Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces

(New York Times, 14 April 1983)

Looks like this is another fabrication...


Summary: Fabricated quote, fabricated source.

Former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan

We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.

Source given: Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, in articles by Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot April 13, 1983 and in New York Times, April 14, 1983

Investigation: The quote does not appear in either article. While both sources discuss comments made by then-outgoing Chief of Staff Eitan, there is nothing remotely resembling this quote. A wider search of the New York Times archives, also turns up nothing.

Summary: Fabricated quote, incorrect source"

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=766&x_context=2

Yes that's right ignore the questions?
It's much easier to fabricate and believe the lies than face the facts. Isnt it?

Thats funny its the only website that says its fabricated. Is it a zionist website?

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) is a Boston-based, non-profit, pro-Israel[2] media watchdog group[3] which was founded in 1982 to respond to alleged anti-Israel bias in The Washington Post.[4]

CAMERA has been noted for its pro-Israel media monitoring and advocacy.[5][6][7][8] CAMERA releases reports to counter what it calls "frequently inaccurate and skewed characterizations of Israel and of events in the Middle East" that it believes may fuel anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice.[3] The group mobilizes protests against what it describes as unfair media coverage by issuing full-page ads in newspapers,[9] organizing demonstrations,[10] and encouraging sponsors to withhold funds.[10] Critics suggest the group is "Orwellian-named"[11] and that "like others engaged in the narrative wars, it does not understand the difference between advocacy and accuracy".[12]

In May 2008, five Wikipedia editors involved in a secret CAMERA campaign to edit Wikipedia were sanctioned by Wikipedia administrators, who wrote that the project's open nature "is fundamentally incompatible with the creation of a private group to surreptitiously coordinate editing by ideologically like-minded individuals".[13]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_Accuracy_in_Middle_East_Reporting_in_America

CAMERA is correct. It is a fabrication despite the ad hominem argument.

"Ad hominem argument is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem as abusive, sexist, racist, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.

Other common subtypes of the ad hominem include the ad hominem circumstantial, or ad hominem circumstantiae, an attack which is directed at the circumstances or situation of the arguer; and the ad hominem tu quoque, which objects to an argument by characterizing the arguer as acting or arguing in accordance with the view that he is arguing against."

-also from the wiki