Huqul al-Nakhl

Samir Quntar was a Lebanese prison held for one of the longest terms and was freed in the prisoner exchange between Hizbollah and the Zionist regime. He said: “I will continue to resist until the occupied territories are completely freed and Israel is destroyed.”

 The Saudi Arabian newspaper ‘Akaz narrated that Samir Quntar spent 30 years of his youth in Israeli prisons and wants to return to the occupied territories saying that these lands can only be freed through resistance.

 Quntar said that the years he spent in prison were very difficult but also very special. He said that he could not describe the tortures and being away from his hometown in only a ten minute span though.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

Dalal Maghribi was the first woman commander in Palestine’s history of resistance. When she was only twenty years old she led around 10 Palestinians into one of the worst martyrdom missions. After killing many Israeli soldiers they faced the Israeli Special Forces on the way back led by Ehud Barak himself. In the end all of them reached martyrdom. This was so bad for the Zionists that Barak was seen on television dragging the corpse of this brave lady through the ground.

Dalal Maghribi was born in 1958 in the Palestinian camp of Sabra from a Palestinian family originating from Yafa who had refugee status in Lebanon. She went to elementary and middle school in Beirut in schools run by agencies trying to help Palestinian refugees.

She started military training while she was still in school. She was familiarized with various weapons and styles of war. At that time she became famous for her bravery and revolutionary spirit.

For more than half a century, those who have been trying to combat the forces that are behind the Israeli paradigm have been identifying Israeli policies and practice with Zionism and Zionist Ideology. I am afraid to say that they were wrong all the way along. Indeed, Zionism’s project dictates the plunder of Palestine in the name of Jewish national aspiration. It is also true to argue that Israel has been rather efficient in translating the Zionist philosophy into a devastating oppressive and murderous practice. Yet, Israelis, or more precisely, the vast majority of Israeli-born secular Jews, are not motivated or fuelled by Zionist ideology. Its spirit or symbols are virtually meaningless to them. As bizarre as it may sound to some, Zionism is either a foreign or just an archaic notion for most Israeli-born secular Jews.

Since the vast majority of Israelis are confused by the notion of Zionism, most forms of criticism that would label itself as anti-Zionist would have hardly any effect on Israel, Israeli politics or on the Israeli people. In other words, in the last sixty years, those who have been using the paradigm of Zionism and its antipode have been preaching to the converted.

A total review of the amalgam formed by Israel, Zionism and Jewishness is now overdue.

Intimate Departure

Once a year around Easter, my family leaves me behind for two weeks. My wife Tali and our two kids Mai (12) and Yann (7) make their way to Israel. My wife calls it a family visit, she insists that the kids must see their close relatives and my views on Israel, Jewish identity and global Zionism should never stand in the way or interfere with family matters. For the obvious reasons, I myself never go to Israel. I had decided ten years ago that unless Israel becomes a state of its citizens, I have nothing to do there.

In our first parental years in London Tali and I had some discussions about her favourite choice of Easter break. Initially I didn’t approve. I insisted that schlepping innocent youngsters to the apartheid ‘Jews only state’ would contribute little to their future well-being, and in fact, it may distort their ethical senses. In those early parental years Tali dismissed my fears, she argued that our kids should be treated as free human beings. They must be entitled to see their family and it is down to them to make up their minds when they are ready to do so.

When our kids were very young, I found it pretty difficult to sustain my argument. Mai and Yann didn’t have any interest in political or ethical complexities. However, as my kids grew up, their journey in and out of the Hebraic shtetl had become a major education chapter for myself more than for anyone else. Observing my kids transformed into light Israelophiles opened my eyes. I happened to grasp the impact of Israel and Zionism through the juvenile eyes of my British kids. I had learned to admit how easy it may be to fall in love with Israel.

My kids love it there. They adore the blue sky, they go on and on about the sea and the sandy beaches. I guess that they love humus and falafel. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that everything I have mentioned so far belongs to the land - i.e., Palestine rather than the state - i.e., Israel. However, it doesn’t end there. They also love to talk in Hebrew surrounded by Hebrew speakers, to laugh in Hebrew and even to get upset in Hebrew. They love the Hebraic Chutzpah that is inherently entangled with the Israeli openness. At the end of the day, Hebrew is their mother tongue.

When Tali and the kids land in cloudy London they happen to be confused and lost for a while. Tali becomes slightly nostalgic about the successful theatrical career she left behind. This obviously makes a lot of sense. The case of my kids is slightly more complicated. They are Brits. Though Hebrew is their mother tongue, English is their first language. In London they clearly miss some liberties they celebrated there: they want to keep on playing in the open fields, to bathe in the glorious Mediterranean sun overwhelmed by the dry spring blossoms. But far more noticeably, Israel resolves what seems as their inevitable emerging identity complex. While here in London they are troubled with their ethnic identity, they can never decide who they are, whether they are ex-Israelis, ex-Jews, Secular Jews, Christian by culture, the descendents of a Hebrew speaking Palestinian, the son and daughter of a notorious proud self-hater and so on. In Israel, and especially with their family around, none of those questions come into play. The Israelis tend to accept you as a qualified brother as long as you are not an Arab. While in multi-ethnic London my kids are often confronted with some obvious questions regarding their origin, questions they find hard to tackle a lot because of myself and my stand, in Israel those questions are non-existent.

full article: www.insight-info.com

As the evil state of Israel is celebrating sixty years of ethnic cleansing and atrocities against the native Palestinians, many people around the world, especially young generations, will not be fully aware of the manner in which Israel came into existence. Similarly, the younger Zionist generations who don’t stop calling their Palestinian victims “terrorists” should have a clearer idea about Israel’s manifestly criminal past which Zionist school textbooks shamelessly glamorize and glorify.

Prior to “Jewish” statehood, three main Jewish terror organizations operated in Palestine, primarily against Palestinian civilians and British mandate targets. The three were: The Haganah, the Zvei Leumi
or Irgun and the Stern Gang. The Haganah (Defence) had a field army of up to 160,000 well-trained and well-armed men and a unit called the Palmach, with more than 6,000 terrorists. The Irgun included as many as 5,000 terrorists, while the Stern Gang included 200-300 dangerous terrorists.

The following are merely some examples of Zionist terrorism prior to the creation of the Zionist state in 1948: The list doesn’t include the bigger massacres such as Dir Yasin, Dawaymeh, Tantura and others.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

The followers of Prophet Musa (peace be upon him), like the followers of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his progeny), were Divinely-guided Muslims. Today, however, Prophet Musa’s followers aren’t known as Muslims. Instead, they’re remembered exclusively by their clan affiliation: the Children of Israel or, by the name of their clan’s politically dominant tribe, Jews. God guided the Children of Israel through the efforts of Prophet Moses and The Torah. Most followers of Moses, however, had no physical access to the Torah. It was locked up and guarded in the Ark of the Covenant. Only the high priests had access.

We Muslims of the Muhammadan dispensation of Islam are privileged. We have infallible Divine Guidance sitting on our bookshelves. Nearly every Muslim has key parts of the Qur’an locked in his/her memory, and whoever can remember it can guard the entire Holy Scroll in his breast’s treasure chest (74:55). Yet, like our ancient religious brethren, too many of us still manage to do the exact opposite of what’s best for us. We’re even known by our ethnocentric identities. We’re Arabs. We’re Persians. We’re Pakistanis. We’re African-Americans. We’re known by who we are, not what we are. We’re just like the Muslims of old, who still to this day are known as either Israelis or Jews, instead of Muslims.

Why? Because we tend to fear not and forget Allah (87:9) and de-prioritize God’s guidance in preference to the gadgetry of the world (2:102). Thus, we tend to allow our lower nature to be influenced by the Nefarious Stoned Satan, who’s dedicated to our ultimate ruin. This ancient, alien adversary isn’t alone in his mission. Shaitan is constantly trying to recruit others to the Dark Side, spreading ignorance, negligence, disobedience, and oppression. The methods have not changed throughout the ages. He invents ways to incite, seduce, beguile, and corrupt. Then he uses these inventions to turn what is closest to us into his trusted and charismatic agent provocateur, which then infiltrates into our very core, the most susceptible aspect of our humanity, the easily inflated human ego. Thus, many believe that it’s more important to be who our parents were than it is to be what our Prophet was. So we adopt our parent’s errors rather than our Prophet’s righteousness. It is our ego’s fierce fiery sense of exaggerated self-worth that stinks to high heaven and can anger God to no end.

Call it arrogance, pride, racial pride, family pride, ethnic pride, national pride, cultural pride. That accursed sin of pride: that’s what got our enemy into a hell of a lot of trouble, and that’s the weapon he uses to take us with him. All that egotistical fool had to do was bow towards a fellow creature. The command to bow was given by the recognizable voice of God. He’d been okay if he’d obeyed. But he didn’t. He thought so highly of himself that he didn’t fear His Creator. He waxed proud in his opinion of himself, rebelled, then waned in God’s Grace, and suffered an irreparable loss of spiritual face. He became morally bankrupted. No spiritual currency, condemned without hope of Allah’s Mercy, destined to dwell forever in hell, a bad place with bad feelings and even worse smell, without vision of God’s Merciful Ever Presence, cursed to his essence, existing only on hatred for those born to humanity, ultimate peace lost to eternal insanity.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973 war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suez Canal and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American military transport planes came to the rescue. They began landing every half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of its heavy armor. By the time the war as over, the United States had given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid.

The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system the United States has provided to the Jewish state. Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. Recognized the new state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly embrace ever since.

Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and got Israel’s withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS Liberty. The ship, flying the U.S. Flag and stationed 15 miles off the Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. Sailors and wounded 171. The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington’s enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-financed Israel lobby that set out to merge Israel and American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been given more than $140 billion in U.S. Direct economic and military assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. Foreign aid budget. Although most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from accounting for how it spends the aid money. And funds are routinely siphoned off to build new Jewish settlements, bolster the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories and construct the security barrier, which costs an estimated $1 million a mile.

The barrier weaves its way through the West Bank, creating isolated pockets of impoverished Palestinians in ringed ghettos. By the time the barrier is finished it will probably in effect seize up to 40 percent of Palestinian land. This is the largest land grab by Israel since the 1967 war. And although the United States officially opposes settlement expansion and the barrier, it also funds them.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

Palestinian history in the 60 years of occupation is full of murders which have been carried out by Israel against this nation. But, according to some Arab and Jewish historians, the Tantura Massacre was the most brutal massacre that the Zionists carried out against the Palestinian nation.

During the same time of the 60^th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine and the Tantura Massacre the news station Al-Jazeera held a conversation between some historians researching Palestinian massacres in this region.

The Israeli army on the 23^rd of May, 1948 massacred the residents of the Tantura village after occupying Haifa. After this they started exiling people from the West Bank to Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.

Mustafa Kibha, an Arab historian, stated in regards to the Tantura Massacre: “The Israel army decided to attack Tantura, which was comprised of 1500 families, because it was the weakest area south of Haifa and because of its special location next to the Mediterranean Sea. It was much easier to reach than the other villages near it.

Kibha added: “The Israeli army attacked this village on the 22^nd of May, 1948 from the sea before the ground.”

This historian clearly stated: “The Israeli army attacked that village because they would send weapons and military equipment to Palestinians.”

Full article: www.insight-info.com

The neocons are not going to get their war with Iran if it’s to be left to their traditional power centers in the Bush Administration to make the call: They’ve lost the Pentagon, and it’s abundantly clear that neither the uniformed brass nor Defense Secretary Gates have any interest in starting another catastrophic war. And the fact that they still have a solid ally in Vice President Cheney doesn’t mean much, because Cheney is far less influential five years into the Iraq debacle than he had been on its eve. Nor is there any significant support (outside of Israel) among U.S. allies for a confrontational path. Still, all is not lost for that merry little band of neocon bomb throwers who’ve spent the Bush tenure quite literally “setting the East ablaze.” There’s always the Treasury.

Well, its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), dedicated to fighting the “war on terror” etc. via the international banking system. John McGlynn offers fascinating insights into a critical aspect of Bush Administration policy that has scarcely appeared on the radar of most mainstream media. In particular, he warns, FinCEN’s March 20 advisory warning the international banking community that
doing business with any Iranian bank, or bank that does business with an Iranian bank, runs the risk of falling afoul of the U.S. Treasury’s expansive interpretation and enforcement of UN sanctions and of anti-terror money laundering regulations adopted under the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act.

The beauty of this approach, from a neocon point of view, is that it completely skirts all those troublesome international diplomatic forums where the U.S. and its closest allies have failed to convince others to apply meaningful sanctions against Iran — most of the international community is skeptical over the claims being made by the U.S. of an imminent Iranian threat (as, of course, is the U.S. intel community, as last year’s NIE showed) and even more skeptical of the value of sanctions in resolving the issue, rather than in preparing the way for confrontation.

What do you think this game is all about?

Nazis against anti-Semitism? As bizarre as that sounds, a group of Germans which calls itself “National Socialists For Israel” launched
its Web site in support of Israel.

“Stop the hatred of the Jewish people,” the Web site reads. “The Jews are a healthy, strong nation.”

The organization - whose members have yet to reveal themselves to the public - claims that Israel’s right to exist is anchored in the principles of social Darwinism, the same principles which the Nazis adopted prior to the Second World War.

“Israel earned the right to live among the nations [after emerging] from unending wars,” the group writes on the site. “Israel also has a right to exist. This nation also has culture… The nation of Israel is appreciated… It is our duty, as neo-Nazis, to defend this supreme success. Not just for the German people and the European cultural sphere, but also, especially, for Israel.”

As such, “Nazis for Israel” also leveled criticism at their colleagues in the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), calling them “politicos, cowards, and reactionaries.”

“Show us proof of a Jewish plot to dominate the world,” they wrote in a rare manifesto which was posted on their Web site.

These unusual statements on the internet compliment the group’s other public campaigns, including the dissemination of bumper stickers. One of the stickers features a picture of Reinhard Heydrich, the senior Nazi official who chaired the Wansee Conference where the Final Solution was hatched. Underneath the photo reads: “As a Nazi, I’m a Zionist.”

Another sticker shows a photo of Israel Defense Forces soldiers during the Second Lebanon War under the heading: “2,000 years of
struggling to survive - respect to those worthy of it.”

In terms of the group’s attitude towards the Holocaust, the organization says: “We must view what is referred to as ‘the Holocaust’ within the context of acts of self-defense undertaken by nations under threat.” It added, however, “that there is no justification for it.” Instead, the Nazis ought to have supported the Zionist cause, the group states.

The group claims it held its first meeting of activists in Berlin last month. It said the meeting touched on issues ranging
from “solidarity with Israel, anti-Semitism, capitalism, and Islam.”

source: www.insight-info.com

Markthshark, Daily Kos

May 30, 2008

It’s not just the U.S. military, and it’s not just Iraq. The U.K. has also used depleted uranium in both Iraq and Afghanistan; NATO forces have used it in Kosovo, and Israel allegedly used it in Lebanon and on the Palestinians.

The use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the U.S. military may lead to a death toll far higher than that from the nuclear bombs dropped at the end of World War II.

A waste product from the enrichment of uranium, DU, contains nearly one-third the radioactive isotopes of uranium that occurs naturally. DU is generally used in armor-piercing ammunition; despite its classification as a weapon of mass destruction, and subsequent banning by the United Nations.

Incidental inhalation or ingestion of DU particles is very toxic and can remain so forever. To give you an idea of just how toxic: at the end of the first Gulf War, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority estimated that 50 tons remained in Iraq, and that amount could be responsible for 500,000 cancer deaths by the year 2000. Now, it’s not clear whether that prediction came true or not, but to date, an estimated 2,000 tons of DU dust have been generated in the Middle East in general.

In contrast, approximately 250,000 lives were claimed by the explosions and subsequent radiation released by the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Natural News.com has the story:

“More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released from DU weaponry since 1991,” said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear scientist. “The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive.”

Because DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Middle East will, for all practical purposes, be radioactive forever.

The two U.S. wars in Iraq “have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people, particularly children, are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity,” said anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott. 

Since George H.W. Bush’s first Gulf War, birth defects and childhood cancer rates have increased seven fold in Iraq. And, our troops have paid a heavy price as well. More than 35 percent (251,000) of U.S. Gulf War veterans are dead or on permanent medical disability, compared with only 400 who were killed during the conflict.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We can’t change the past but we can fight to end the use of inhuman weapons in immoral wars of aggression. I believe Barack Obama said it best… (paraphrased)

We not only need to end the war; we need to end the mindset of war.

Those are powerful words and something I’ve never heard before from an American leader… ever.