Fortune 500 Awards Tunisian President "Chatham House Prize"

Fortune 500 Awards Tunisian President "Chatham House Prize"

Corporate-financier think-tank Chatham House showers Tunisia's President Moncef Marzouki with accolades and praise.

 Land Destroyer

November 28, 2012 (LD) - The Chatham House, a corporate-financier funded think-tank based in the United Kingdom, announced on its website earlier this week that it had awarded President Moncef Marzouki of Tunisia their 2012 "Chatham House Prize." Chatham House claimed on their website that Marzouki has "ensured that Tunisia remains at the forefront of the new democratic wave in the Middle East and North Africa."

Marzouki, who accepted the award in person (presented by the Duke of York in London) was one of several nominees which also included Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Previous recipients include US-British backed "democracy icon" Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar.


Image: Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki speaks in London before the Chatham House, a think-tank representing the collective interests of the largest corporations and financial institutions on Earth. Many of these special interests are responsible for the years of support he received while in exile, laundered through fronts such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), cultivating him as the future head of the West's new client-regime in Tunisia.  

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Ironically, Tunisia's streets are now, just days later, filled with protesters decrying the very same economic conditions that spurred protests early in 2011 leading to Moncef's ascension to power. Marzouki's security forces have begun cracking down using teargas and birdshot, leaving 250 wounded. Protesters claim that some have also been killed, but government sources deny this, and the Western media, unlike in 2011, has granted Tunisia's new strongman the benefit of the doubt.

Such generosity exhibited by the Western press is owed to who Marzouki really is a representative for - the verycorporate-financier interests that are partnered with the Chatham House.

Marzouki, who had been living in exile in Paris France for years, was head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, a US National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros Open Society-funded International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) member organization. He was also founder and head of the Arab Commission for Human Rights, a collaborating institution with the US NED World Movement for Democracy(WMD) including for a "Conference on Human Rights Activists in Exile" and a participant in the WMD "third assembly" alongside Marzouki's Tunisian League for Human Rights, sponsored by NED, Soros' Open Society, and USAID.

Image: Just some of Chatham House's "corporate members." Clearly the think-tank represents big-business and their collective interests, and are not in fact engaged in "independent thinking on international affairs" as their website claims.  

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 Image: A visual representation of the National Endowment for Democracy's corporate-financier ties found across their Board of Directors. Far from "human rights advocates," they are in fact simply leveraging such issues to disguise what is in reality corporate-financier hegemonic expansion.

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Like the Chatham House, NED is run by and for immense Western corporations and financial institutions, and features upon its board of directions a combination of pro-war Neo-Conservatives and representatives of some of the largest corporate-financier interests in America. Marzouki, like the heads other Western client regimes installed in the wake of the US-engineered "Arab Spring," has been long-cultivated, well-funded, and vigorously supported for assuming his role in the creation of subservient Tunisian proxy government.

Even as he repeats the very abuses his predecessor, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was accused of, he will continue to receive the West's support, along with his counterpart in Egypt Mohammed Morsi, in direct contradiction of nearly 2 years of US State Department rhetoric, rhetoric still being sounded against Syria, Russia, China, Iran, and a myriad of other nations still slated for destabilization and "regime change."

Image: (AFP, Fethi Belaid) This week: Protesters in Tunisia, rising up against the same economic destitution that spurred uprisings in 2011's so-called "Arab Spring" have been met with teargas and birdshot, with protesters claiming deaths have occurred. Instead of the resounding condemnation sounded by the West in 2011, current Tunisian President Marzouki has instead been invited to London to receive a "prize" for his work regarding "democracy." 

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Marzouki's "Chatham House Prize" is just the latest exhibit in a long history of servile obedience to the West. While Egypt currently is taking the spotlight, it would be wise to keep the West's other proxy in the region under close scrutiny, especially as his security forces begin sending protesters to the hospital and to their graves.  

Iraq Bloodbath: 54 Killed, 237 Wounded in Attacks against Shi’ite Pilgrims and Security Forces

Iraq Bloodbath: 54 Killed, 237 Wounded in Attacks against Shi’ite Pilgrims and Security Forces

by Margaret Griffis, November 29, 2012

The Picture's   URL HERE

The URL here

Although the climax of Ashoura observances quietly occurred over last weekend, insurgents targeted pilgrims today in Karbala and Hilla. At least 54 people were killed and 237 more were wounded in those attacks and others across the country. It is the second day of significant, possibly coordinated attacks this week.

At least 33 people were killed at a restaurant serving Shi’ite pilgrims in Hilla. One bomb targeted the civilians. Then, a second bomb exploded after first responders arrived. The second one arrived via a car that apparnetly tailed an ambulance speeding to the restaurant. Another 166 people were wounded. The casualties werelisted at a local hospital and confirmed by a Babel councilmember. Children and medics were among the fatalities.

A bomb at the gates to Karbala killed eight civilians and wounded 22 others, many of them police.

A suicide bomber in Falluja killed three policemen and wounded 11 more, when he drove into their checkpoint. Another car bomb left two civilians dead and five more wounded when it exploded near a checkpoint.

In Mosul, a bomb killed a policeman and a civilian; five more were wounded. Apoliceman was shot to death.

A bomb killed two people and wounded 11 more in Basmaiyah.

One person was killed and six more were wounded when a bomb targeting police exploded in Balad Ruz.

A bomb in Taji left one dead and seven wounded.

A roadside bomb wounded three policemen near Essaouira.

In Mahaweel, gunmen wounded a young man.

Gunmen blew up two homes in Kirkuk. One belonged to a doctor, the other to a businessman.

URGENT: NATO Preparing Psy-Op in Syria

URGENT: NATO Preparing Psy-Op in Syria

Land Destroyer

Internet connections & telecom reportedly failing across Syria, right as NATO has finished preparing their proxy "SNC" and readies for final push.

November 29, 2012 (LD) - In early summer, NATO had attempted to overwhelm Damascus and Aleppo with a torrent of psychological operations, communication disruptions, foreign terrorists crossing Syria's borders, and a devastating assassination of top Syrian officials in the heart of Damascus. The idea was to cause panic, division, mass defections and fold the Syrian state when in reality, it was more than able to fight on. Syria called the bluff and here it still stands.

With the Israel-Gaza charade concluded, it was reported that NATO would pivot back toward Syria - and it has. It has handpicked a new proxy-regime to act as the face of the terrorists battling Syrian civilians and soldiers alike within the country, while it has been conducting a concerted and refocused propaganda campaign to paint the Syrian government as once again, "imminently about to fall."

Reports are now trickling in that communications are failing across the country and another attempt at a Libyan-style "Mermaid Dawn" is being made by NATO and its terrorist proxies inside Syria. The hope is, that after several months more of terrorism, threats, sanctions, and pressure put on the border by both Israel on the Golan Heights, and Turkey along Syria's north, that this time the trick might work.

If operations are not already in progress, they will be soon, and one must recall historical instances when this tactic has been used before so as to recognize it when it is tried again. 

Reposted below, is Thierry Meyssan's June 2012 warning regarding NATO psychological operations - and the information is as relevant now as ever. Inside Syria, unity and resilience is more important now than ever. 

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McCain, Lévy Openly Conspire Against World Peace

McCain, Lévy Openly Conspire Against World Peace

Land Destroyer

Against the will of the international community, in open defiance of their own contrived international law, American and French warmongers openly plot the destruction of Syria. 

November 29, 2012 (LD) - A recent event held by the Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy Initiative, featured a "conversation" with Senator John McCain and self-proclaimed "philosopher" Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both men played a pivotal role in arranging and promoting the arming, funding, and diplomatic recognition of terrorists in Libya who have now overrun much of the country, committed wide scale atrocities, and have left a US Ambassador dead and a US consulate burnt to the ground. Despite this, they now openly seek to repeat their "success" in Syria.

Watch FPI's "The Consequences of Inaction in Syria" with several facts kept in mind...

1. Libya's "freedom fighters" are verified terrorists. Benghazi, Libya was their epicenter. 
2. These very same terrorists are now being purposefully armed, funded, and funneled into Syria, via NATO member Turkey.  
3. The violence in Syria is the result of a premeditated US-Israeli-Saudi plan stretching back to 2007, confirmed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article "The Redirection." 
4. The current "rebels" in Syria are sectarian driven, genocidal members of the Muslims Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, already subjugating segments of Syria's population along the Turkish-Syrian border to medieval,Saudi-inspired autocracy and barbarism. 
5. The so-called "Syrian National Council" is run by a Western big-oil representative who openly admits he seeks to establish an "Islamic state" upon the ashes of secular Syria. 
6. Worst of all, McCain and Lévy admit the US, French, European, and even Turkish people reject wholly the notion of intervention in Syria, as well as the fact that the International community has, on numerous occasions blocked attempts to approve of meddling in Syria's internal affairs, yet both men, and the interests they represent continue to conspire to push the conflict further, at the cost of more lives, and at the risk of unraveling regional stability.

Hungry For The Holidays: 20 Facts About Hunger In America That Will Blow Your Mind

Hungry For The Holidays: 20 Facts About Hunger In America That Will Blow Your Mind

By Michael Snyder

THE URL HERE
November 28, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -  All over America there are millions of people that will be missing meals and going hungry this holiday season.  Even as much of the country indulges in the yearly ritual of unbridled consumerism that we refer to as “the holiday season”, more families in the United States than ever before will be dealing with not having enough food to eat.  Food stamp use is at an all-time high.  Demand at food banks is at an all-time high.  They keep telling us that we are in an “economic recovery” and yet the middle class continues to shrink and the number of Americans living in poverty just continues to grow.  We are witnessing unprecedented hunger in America, and this especially seems tragic during the holidays.  Much of the country is partying as if the good times will never stop, but families that are living from one meal to the next are facing a completely different reality.  How do you tell your children that there isn’t going to be any food to eat for dinner?  How do you explain to them that other families have plenty to eat but you don’t?  Sadly, many food banks are overstretched at this point.  All over the nation, food pantries have actually had to turn people away because of the overwhelming demand.  And more Americans used food stamps to buy their Thanksgiving dinners this year than ever before.  This is a problem that is not going away any time soon, and when the next major economic downturn strikes the problem of hunger in America is going to get even worse.

For many Americans, hunger has become a way of life.  Families that don’t have enough money are often faced with some absolutely heartbreaking choices.  Just check out what one Maine official that works with the Emergency Food Assistance Program recently had to say…

“One in six people in Maine don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or skip a meal so their kids can eat, or have to choose between paying for prescriptions and food, or fuel for your car and food,” Hall said. “What’s amazing is that food is always the first thing to go from your budget. It’s staggering, the choices people have to make.”

Food banks all over the country try their best to do what they can, especially during the holidays, but it is often not enough.  In fact, some food banks ran out of turkeys well in advance of Thanksgiving this year…

Three days in advance of Thanksgiving, the Pear Street Cupboard and Café in Framingham, Massachusetts, is out of turkeys. According to organizers, “requests for help are up 400 percent over last year.”

But it isn’t just during the holidays that food banks are having problems keeping up with demand.  The truth is that many food banks find themselves out of food and having to turn away hungry families all throughout the year.  The following is from a recent Reuters article…

Overall, food pantries and soup kitchens reported a 5 percent spike in demand in 2012, according to the survey. More than half of providers said they were forced to turn away clients, reduce portion sizes, or limit their hours.

In Staten Island, all of the agencies that respond to hunger reported not having enough food to meet demand, while in the Bronx that was true for 80 percent of agencies. In Queens and Brooklyn, more than 60 percent of agencies did not have enough food to meet the needs of the populations they serve.

If you are able, please support your local food bank.  The needs are great and they are only going to get greater.

The following are 20 facts about hunger in America that will blow your mind…

#1 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

#2 In October 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps.  By August 2012 that number had risen to 47.1 million Americans.

#3 Right now, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#4 It is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.

#5 According to new numbers that were just released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans living in poverty increased to a new all-time record high of 49.7 million last year.

#6 The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by about 6 million over the past four years.

#7 Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the federal poverty level.

#8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate for children living in the United States is about 22 percent.

#9 Overall, approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

#10 In the United States today, close to 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.

#11 One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars each year.

#12 Households that are led by a single mother have a 31.6 percent poverty rate.

#13 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

#14 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children in Detroit are living in poverty.

#15 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

#16 Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.

#17 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30 percent of the children are facing food insecurity.

#18 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

#19 Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.  And that does not even count Social Security or Medicare.

#20 According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, approximately 40 percent of all food in America “is routinely thrown away by consumers at home, discarded or unserved at restaurants or left unharvested on farms.”

This article was originally posted at The Economic Collapse

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What Really Happened in Gaza

What Really Happened in Gaza

2 Minutes Video

THE URL HERE

On BBC's Question Time on 22.11.12, journalist Owen Jones described the reality-- largely ignored by the mainstream media -- of Israel's brutal attack on Gaza, 14-22 November 2012, that left close to 160 killed, over 30 of them children.

Posted November 28, 2012

What you don't see in media about Gaza

 

Is This Child Dead Enough for You? The Reality of the “Lesser Evil”

Is This Child Dead Enough for You?

The Reality of the “Lesser Evil”

by CHRIS FLOYD

THE URL HERE

To all those now hailing the re-election of Barack Obama as a triumph of decent, humane, liberal values over the oozing-postule perfidy of the Republicans, a simple question:

Is this child dead enough for you?

This little boy was named Naeemullah. He was in his house — maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a meal — when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door.

As we all know, these drone missiles are, like the president who wields them, super-smart, a triumph of technology and technocratic expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have repeatedly told us, that these weapons — launched only after careful consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas — strike nothing but their intended targets and kill no one but “bad guys.” Indeed, the president’s top aides have testified under oath that not a single innocent person has been among the thousands of Pakistani civilians — that is, civilians of a sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States — who have been killed by the drone missile campaign of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Yet somehow, by some miracle, the missile that roared into the residential area where Naeemullah lived did not confine itself neatly to the house it struck. Somehow, inexplicably, the hunk of metal and wire and computer processors failed — in this one instance — to look into the souls of all the people in the village and ascertain, by magic, which ones were “bad guys” and then kill only them. Somehow — perhaps the missile had been infected with Romney cooties? — this supercharged hunk of high explosives simply, well, exploded with tremendous destructive power when it struck the residential area, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens.

As Wired reports, shrapnel and debris went flying through the walls of Naeemullah’s house and ripped through his small body. When the attack was over — when the buzzing drone sent with Augustinian wisdom by the Peace Laureate was no longer lurking over the village, shadowing the lives of every defenseless inhabitant with the terrorist threat of imminent death, Naeemullah was taken to the hospital in a nearby town.

This is where the picture of above was taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan who has been chronicling the effects of the Peace Laureate’s drone war.  When the picture was taken, Naeemullah was dying. He died an hour later.

He died.

Is he dead enough for you?

Dead enough not to disturb your victory dance in any way? Dead enough not to trouble the inauguration parties yet to come? Dead enough not to diminish, even a little bit, your exultant glee at the fact that this great man, a figure of integrity, decency, honor and compassion, will be able to continue his noble leadership of the best nation in the history of the world?

Do you have children? Do they sit your house playing happily? Do they sleep sweetly scrunched up in their warm beds at night? Do they chatter and prattle like funny little birds as you eat with them at the family table? Do you love them? Do you treasure them? Do you consider them fully-fledged human beings, beloved souls of infinite worth?

How would you feel if you saw them ripped to shreds by flying shrapnel, in your own house? How would you feel as you rushed them to the hospital, praying every step of the way that another missile won’t hurl down on you from the sky? Your child was innocent, you had done nothing, were simply living your life in your own house — and someone thousands of miles away, in a country you had never seen, had no dealings with, had never harmed in any way, pushed a button and sent chunks of burning metal into your child’s body. How would you feel as you watched him die, watched all your hopes and dreams for him, all the hours and days and years you would have to love him, fade away into oblivion, lost forever?

What would you think about the one who did this to your child? Would you say: “What a noble man of integrity and decency! I’m sure he is acting for the best.”

Would you say: “Well, this is a bit unfortunate, but it’s perfectly understandable. The Chinese government (or Iran or al Qaeda or North Korea or Russia, etc. etc.) believed there was someone next door to me who might possibly at some point in time pose some kind of threat in some unspecified way to their people or their political agenda — or maybe it was just that my next-door neighbor behaved in a certain arbitrarily chosen way that indicated to people watching him on a computer screen thousands of miles away that he might possibly be the sort of person who might conceivably at some point in time pose some kind of unspecified threat to the Chinese (Iranians/Russians, etc.), even though they had no earthly idea who my neighbour is or what he does or believes or intends. I think the person in charge of such a program is a good, wise, decent man that any person would be proud to support. Why, I think I’ll ask him to come speak at my little boy’s funeral!”

Is that what you would say if shrapnel from a missile blew into your comfortable house and killed your own beloved little boy? You would not only accept, understand, forgive, shrug it off, move on — you would actively support the person who did it, you would cheer his personal triumphs and sneer at all those who questioned his moral worthiness and good intentions? Is that really what you would do?

Well, that is what you are doing when you shrug off the murder of little Naeemullah. You are saying he is not worth as much as your child. You are saying he is not a fully-fledged human being, a beloved soul of infinite worth. You are saying that you support his death, you are happy about it, and you want to see many more like it. You are saying it doesn’t matter if this child — or a hundred like him, or a thousand like him, or, as in the Iraqi sanctions of the old liberal lion, Bill Clinton, five hundred thousand children like Naeemullah — are killed in your name, by leaders you cheer and support. You are saying that the only thing that matters is that someone from your side is in charge of killing these children. This is the reality of “lesser evilism.”

***

Before the election, we heard a lot of talk about this notion of the “lesser evil.” From prominent dissidents and opponents of empire like Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky and Robert Parry to innumerable progressive blogs to personal conversations, one heard this basic argument: “Yes, the drone wars, the gutting of civil liberties, the White House death squads and all the rest are bad; but Romney would be worse. Therefore, with great reluctance, holding our noses and shaking our heads sadly, we must choose the lesser evil of Obama and vote accordingly.”

I understand that argument, I really do. I don’t agree with it, as I made plain here many times before the election. I think the argument is wrong, I think our system is so far gone that even a “lesser evil” is too evil to support in any way, that such support only perpetuates the system’s unconscionable evils. But I’m not a purist, not a puritan, not a commissar or dogmatist. I understand that people of good will can come to a different conclusion, and feel that they must reluctantly choose one imperial-militarist-corporate faction over the other, in the belief that this will mean some slight mitigation of the potential evil that the other side commit if it took power.  I used to think that way myself, years ago. Again, I now disagree with this, and I think that the good people who believe this have not, for whatever reason or reasons, looked with sufficient clarity at the reality of our situation, of what is actually beingdone, in their name, by the political faction they support.

But of course, I am not the sole arbiter of reality, nor a judge of others; people see what they see, and they act (or refrain from acting) accordingly. I understand that. But here is what I don’t understand: the sense of triumph and exultation and glee on the part of so many progressives and liberals and ‘dissidents’ at the victory of this “lesser evil.” Where did the reluctance, the nose-holding, the sad head-shaking go? Should they not be mourning the fact that evil has triumphed in America, even if, by their lights, it is a “lesser” evil?

If you really believed that Obama was a lesser evil — 2 percent less evil, as I believe Digby once described the Democrats in 2008 — if you really did find the drone wars and the White House death squads and Wall Street bailouts and absolution for torturers and all the rest to be shameful and criminal, how can you be happy that all of this will continue? Happy — and continuing to scorn anyone who opposed the perpetuation of this system.

The triumph of a lesser evil is still a victory for evil. If your neighborhood is tyrannized by warring mafia factions, you might prefer that the faction which occasionally doles out a few free hams wins out over their more skinflint rivals; but would you be joyful about the fact that your neighborhood is still being tyrannized by murderous criminals? Would you not be sad, cast down, discouraged and disheartened to see the violence and murder and corruption go on? Would you not mourn the fact that your children will have to grow up in the midst of all this?

So where is the mourning for the fact that we, as a nation, have come to this: a choice between murderers, a choice between plunderers? Even if you believe that you had to participate and make the horrific choice that was being offered to us — “Do you want the Democrat to kill these children, or do you want the Republican to kill these children?” — shouldn’t this post-election period be a time of sorrow, not vaulting triumph and giddy glee and snarky put-downs of the “losers”?

If you really are a “lesser evilist” — if this was a genuine moral choice you reluctantly made, and not a rationalization for indulging in unexamined, primitive partisanship — then you will know that we are ALL the losers of this election. Even if you believe it could have been worse, it is still very bad. You yourself proclaimed that Obama was evil — just a bit “lesser” so  than his opponent. (2 percent maybe.) And so the evil that you yourself saw and named and denounced will go on. Again I ask: where is the joy and glory and triumph in this? Even if you believe it was unavoidable, why celebrate it? And ask yourself, bethink yourself:what are you celebrating? This dead child, and a hundred like him? A thousand like him? Five hundred thousand like him? How far will you go? What won’t you celebrate?

And so step by step, holding the hand of the “lesser evil,” we descend deeper and deeper into the pit.

Chris Floyd is an American writer based in the UK, and a frequent contributor to CounterPunch. His blog, “Empire Burlesque,” can be found at www.chris-floyd.com.

Israeli Terror: The “Final Solution” to the Palestine Question

Israeli Terror: The “Final Solution” to the Palestine Question

By Prof. James Petras

Global Research, November 28, 2012

Introduction

            For the past forty-five years the state of Israel has been dispossessingmillions of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, confiscating their lands, destroying homes, bulldozing orchards and setting-up ‘Jews-only’ colonial settlements serviced by highways, electrical systems and water works for the exclusive use of the settlers and occupying soldiers.  The process of Israeli territorial expansion throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem has greatly accelerated in recent years, converting Palestinian-held territory into non-viable isolated enclaves – like South Africa’s Bantustans – surrounded by the Israeli soldiers who protect violent settler-vigilantes as they assault and harass Palestinian farmers at work in their fields, beat Arab children on their way to school , pelt Palestinian housewives as they hang their laundry and then invade and defecate in Palestinian mosques and churches.

The Rage and Rape of Gaza and its Apologists

            Israel ’s strategic goal is to impose ‘Greater Israel’ on the region: to take over all of historical Palestine , expell the entire non-Jewish population and subsidize ‘Jews-only’ settlements (for settler-immigrants, often from the US and former USSR ).  While bulldozers and tanks have dispossessed Palestinians in the West Bank for decades, the launching of thousands of missiles and bombs have become the ‘weapons of choice’ for uprooting and eliminating the Palestinians in Gaza .  In just eight days, Israel ’s latest blitzkrieg resulted in the killing of 168 Palestinians (42 children and 100 civilians), the wounding of 1,235, the destruction of over 1,350 buildings and the further traumatizing of over 1.7 million children, women and men fenced in the world’s largest concentration camp.  According to the Israeli Defense Minister, the Jewish State dropped “a thousand times more bombs onto Gaza ” than the Palestinians fired back into Israel .

            The current Israeli offensive began with the gruesome assassination of a prominent Hamas leader, Ahmed Jabari, and immediately escalated into an assault on the entire Palestinian population of Gaza .  Secure in the knowledge that the Palestinians had no capacity to retaliate with similar weaponry, the Israeli High Command ordered the systematic destruction of civilian life, workplaces and densely populated neighborhoods. Over 75% of the casualties have been non-combatants; almost half are children, women and elders.

            The Israeli propaganda machine and its ‘Fifth Column’ in the US fabricated and repeated theBig Lie:  that the Jewish state was ‘defending itself’… Right… with only six (mostly military) deaths and 280 wounded (the majority non-threatening) versus the nearly 200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, slaughtered.  The US Zionist power configuration (ZPC), embedded in the policy centers of the US Executive, the Congress and both political parties, parroted this line.  All the major US TV networks and print media reproduced verbatim Israeli Foreign Office press handouts about Israel ’s ‘defensive’ … genocide … while entire Palestinian families were being buried under the rubble of their bombed apartments.

            Death and destruction, planned and executed with the unanimous support of all the major Israeli political parties and leaders, enthralled the mass of its Jewish citizens: Indeed, over 80% of Israeli Jews supported the terror blitz against Gaza .  As the Russian media outlet (RT) reported: “A new wave of hatred towards Palestinians is sweeping through Israel from public figures to the man (person) in the street”.  The Israeli Interior Minister declared that “Gaza should be bombed into the Middle Ages”. Israeli demonstrators in Tel Aviv shouted; “they (the Palestinians) don’t deserve to live, they must die”, “may your children die” and “now we must go back there (to Gaza) and kick out all Arabs”.  The prominent Israeli Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, the son of a former chief rabbi, made a speech in the Cave of the Patriarchs in occupied Hebron where he blessed the Israeli soldiers and urged them “to slaughter their enemy”.

            Even more to the point, Israel Katz , Israel ’s Transport Minister, demanded “Gaza be bombed so hard the population will have to flee into Egypt (the Sinai desert)”.  Avi Dichter, the Minister of Home Front Defense, incited the Israeli military to “re-format” Gaza – that is to erase its population with bombs.

            Almost half of Israeli Jews considered Netanyahu’s terror bombing of Gaza insufficient: According to the independent Israeli Maagar Mohot poll, half of Israelis opposed the cease fire and demanded the bloody assault against the Palestinian population of Gaza continue.  The same poll reported that almost a third of Israeli Jews though their government should have sent ground forces into Gaza , an invasion which would have led to tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties and total destruction of their vital infrastructural life-lines.  Netanyahu and his allies in power now confront a new, totalitarian mass opposition that openly embraces a genocidal ‘Final Solution’ to the Palestinian problem.

Genocide at the Service of Greater Israel

            The parallels between the pronouncements and actions of Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel are overwhelming.  The bloodlust in Israel goes far beyond psychopathic raving of a few deranged rabbis and marginal politicians:  it extends from the top Cabinet members to the average citizen.

            In Israel, almost an entire people – over 80% of Jews – support, with varying degrees of intensity,  the terror bombing and slaughter of the people of Gaza.  Setting aside the profound sociopathic disorders of the raging and racist multitude in Israel , what is politically more significant are the totalitarian rants of leading Israeli public figures, published as editorials, in such newspapers as the respectable Jerusalem Post: “We need to flatten all of Gaza . There should be no electricity in Gaza , no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing,” writes Gilad Sharon and the statements of prominent Knesset members, like Michael Ben-Ari , “There are no innocents in Gaza … mow them (all) down”.  These outbursts reveal Israel ’s strategic goal:  Genocide at the service of Greater Israel – the bloody purge of 5 million Palestinians, the creation of a 100 percent ‘pure’Jewish State.  Overseas (mostly US) Zionist-Jewish media moguls, Ivy League university academics, billionaires, US Congress people and government officials finance, underwrite, propagandize for and promote with single-minded perseverance the defense of Israel’s most heinous war crimes, its violations of international law and its ongoing crimes against humanity.

            During the entire period of the recent Israeli blitzkrieg, Israel ’s Fifth column, the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, the New York Times and the rest of the major US press rose to the dirty task of giving unconditional support for Israel ’s war crimes.  Vocal support from the US White House and by extension the leaders of the European Union echoed Netanyahu’s lies.  In order to grasp the media white wash of these ongoing crimes against humanity one could compare the US press reports on Israel’s bombing of Gaza to those which would have appeared in the leading fascist newspapers at the time of Hitler’s ‘defensive’ attacks on Poland and Belgium and the bombing blitz of civilians in London.

            The true purpose of Israel ’s terror bombing raids and assassinations in Gaza and the cutting up of the West Bank is to make these territories uninhabitable for the Palestinians. The daily humiliation and destruction of the basic conditions for normal life are designed to force young, educated, ambitious Palestinians to abandon their land, homes and families for less grotesquely barbaric sites, where they might achieve a normal civilized existence, free from foul-mouthed Jewish settlers, unending military incursions, Israeli soldiers pistol-whipping their fathers or breaking the legs and arms of stone-throwing Arab schoolkids.

The Logic of Public Flogging

            This obscene Israeli-Jewish behavior is intentionally open and flagrant:  Flaunting Jewish military superiority over the defenseless Arab is vital part of the psychological war reinforcing the idea of Arab inferiority and of Palestinians as aliens in their own country.  Israel ’s underlying slogan “Arab Raus!” (Arabs Get Out!) echoes the Nazi screed, “Juden Rauss” (Jews Get Out!).  The message is clear: “If you are not a Jew then you do not exist!  Your very alien presence is an abomination in the eyes of the Zionist God. So if you won’t leave politely we will hasten your departure with a few thousand bombs, missiles and a rain of white phosphorous.”  That is the deeper meaning of Israel ’s rape of Gaza .

The Impact of Israel ’s Genocide on US Society

            Leading journalists in the politically most influential US newspapers, academics from the most prestigious universities and ‘experts’ from the leading research institutes have systematically defended each and every Israeli war-crime, including the rape of Gaza, the demolition of Palestinian civil society and the cruel blockade of 1.7 million Palestinians in the biggest ‘open air concentration’ camp in the world.

            As usual, the Uber-Zionist Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz and his acolytes provide a legal gloss on the savage bombing of essential public services and private communication and media centers.  Not to be outdone by the loudmouths in Harvard Square , Yale and Princeton professors, with tribal loyalties to the Jewish state, describe the Israeli killing machine as a righteous citizen army defending its eternally victimized people.  “Experts” at the Brookings Institute, Hudson Institute and dozens of other ‘research’ (read propaganda) centers provide ‘scientific’ explanations regarding Israel ’s unique right to dispossess millions of Palestinians. Theexperts’ justifications of Israeli war crimes permeate the mass media, penetrate the homes of millions of Americans and fill the heads of elected officials.  Meanwhile they ‘convince’ and/or browbeat thousands of non-tribal school teachers and educators into complicity or silence, thus perverting and hollowing out what residual humane and democratic values remain embedded in the citizenry.  It is precisely the much-vaunted ‘high achievements’ of so many Israel-Firsters that has led to their rise to the most influential positions in US society and state and makes their support of terror bombings, ethnic cleansing and genocide so deeply destructive to the US political culture.  In spite of this, some of the same expert-academic apologists for Israel’s terror against the Arab civilians are the most vociferous defenders of human rights everywhere else in the world –including the US (piously condemning US war crimes whenever and wherever they are not explicitly aligned with the interest of the Jewish State).  These ‘experts’ have perverted the concept of universal human rights in the minds of the US public.

            As the US mass audience and political class watches the smoke, debris and wreckage of Gaza – and even catch glimpses of a child’s dismembered small body – they are told by the tribal loyalists that this destruction is morally justified, that the target is really “Hamas” – even over the piercing cries of Palestinian mothers for their slaughtered children.  US citizens are told that Israel ’s aggressive aerial bombing and mass shelling from warships off-shore is really a “defensive” maneuver against a “terrorist” regime – one which just happens to lack a single airplane, warship, tank or missile capable of hitting a single major Israeli military or civilian installation.

The Zionist Academic –Journalist Propaganda Complex

            The Israeli academic-journalist propaganda complex in the US has pushed the entire US political narrative even further to the fascist right.  It has perverted our political vocabulary, equating mass slaughter with national defense; equating the ‘anxiety’ of Israeli Jewish civilians with the homeless, jobless and traumatized widows and children emerging from their devastated densely-populated urban neighborhoods.

            The tribal scholars and mass media pundits excel in transforming executioners into victims and victims into executioners.  The Liberal-Zionists, peace-time critics of Israel, remove their peace buttons and pick up scripts defending ‘just wars’, as soon as Israel starts bombing another Arab population or adversary.  For the liberal (human-rights-spouting) Zionists, bombing civilians is always illegal – except when it is Israel launching the missiles.  Propaganda zealots for Israel saturate the media attacking any human rights activist critical of Israel with charges of “anti-Semitism”. They smear, threaten and blackmail each and every dissenting voice daring to oppose their narrative. 

The entire mass media and the most prestigious universities censor any mention of Israeli crimes against humanity.  As bombs rained on Gaza not one single Congressional voice denounced the odious American President Obama when he defended Israel’s eight-day “Guernica” against a defenseless population.  Unlike the citizens in Nazi Germany, we, in the US and Western Europe , cannot claim that we did not know about Israeli war crimes as they were happening.  On the other hand, how can the mass of semi-literate TV viewers in the US really ‘know’ what is going on when Israel-Firsters have so thoroughly ‘framed the context’ – claiming it’s all defensive, that only Hamas “terrorists” are targeted …despite the images of children being frantically pulled from the wreckage of their homes.  However, the educated classes in the US do know about Israel ’s tradition and practice of mass civilian bombings; they do remember Lebanon 2006 as well as Gaza 2008-2009 (and countless Israeli massacres in the late 20^th century). At the same time, they also “remember” the vicious reprisals and vitriolic attacks the Zionist ideological attack-dogs launched against the critics.  Having ‘learned their lessons’ from the Zionist ‘thought-cops’ they conveniently remember … to forget and walk away… from the whole ‘Middle East mess’.  Worse still, they sanctimoniouslyblame the Palestinians for their efforts to retaliate in the face of Israel ’s blatant murders of their most prestigious leaders as well as their stubborn refusal to surrender.

There are a few Left-Zionists who actually praise the ‘resilience’ of the Palestinians and their refusal to surrender to the dictates of Israel and its occupying army. They note how the Gazans ‘celebrate’ their ‘victory’ amidst the rubble after having secured a very tenuous cease fire.  Any reasonable observer could reply to this sentimental nonsense:  Is survival in an open air concentration camp for another day, the daily prospect of Israeli drone flights overhead and a brutal land and sea blockade any “victory”?  There is no cause for celebration:  Transforming Israeli war crimes into Palestinian virtues is a cheap liberal Zionist sideshow.  An eight-day Israeli assault, which had successfully destroyed every major and minor public office responsible for providing the people of Gaza with essential services, and the savaging of the  water and sewage system, power and electrical grids and media offices (not to mention perishable food and medicine) is nothing to celebrate.  In fact the underlying strategic goal of the Jewish state – to make the remains of historical Palestine uninhabitable (a modern ‘howling wilderness’) for its people – has been advanced by leaps and bounds.  Surviving another day in order to bury loved ones and scrounging among the burnt ruins of a home for a birth certificate or photograph is hardly the noble “Hamas victory” proclaimed by Norman Finkelstein and Uri Avneri.

Why NATO – Washington Support Israel ’s Genocidal War

            Unlike in the past, where some international organizations and European states raised tepid objections to Israel ’s military assaults against Palestine or Lebanon , this time around nothing took place.  The White House immediately embraced Israel ’s terror bombing as did the governments of Western Europe .  Meanwhile, Turkey , the Gulf States , the Arab League and the pan-Islamic organizations did nothing concrete, offering no arms, no boycotts, no oil embargos – only shallow symbolic gestures. 

Netanyahu timed his assault to take advantage of the western imperial offensive against independent countries and leaders who had historically supported the Palestinian liberation struggle for decades.  Since NATO states had invaded and bombed the sovereign nation of Libya back into the Stone Age, Netanyahu’s Cabinet Ministers must have reasoned, “Why can’t we send the Gazans back to the Middle Ages with our bombs”?  When NATO and the Gulf States now arm, finance and support a prolonged terrorist-led assault against the secular regime, people and infrastructure of Syria , Netanyahu reasons, “Why don’t we do the same to the Palestinians”?

            With the EU, Washington and the Gulf States engaged in covert and overt wars against all of Palestine’s staunchest allies (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya Syria, Iran and the Sudan) and against the people’s movements in Yemen, Bahrain and Pakistan, Netanyahu’s plan to ethnically purge Palestine has advanced with total impunity – indeed with overt Western approval and without concern for any international ‘humanitarian’ sanctions or even protest. 

Netanyahu’s murderous war on Gaza , with full US complicity, has unmasked the collaborationist-nature of Egypt ’s Islamist President Morsi.  Morsi, together with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, secured a cease fire only after Netanyahu had accomplished his immediate goal of destroying the public institutions of civil society and undermining the vital public functions of the Hamas government.

            Against the protests of the blood-thirsty Israeli public, who wanted their bombers and army to ‘finish the job’, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu negotiated and signed an agreement overseen by Morsi on a cease fire where Israel will pay no indemnity to the devastated civilians of Gaza while confirming the Mubarak-era Israeli– Egyptian treaty and starvation blockade of Gaza.      Right after the ‘cease-fire’, President Morsi assumed dictatorial powers over the Egyptian state.  With the shameful terms of the cease fire and Morsi’s assumption of dictatorial powers the ‘Arab Spring’ has come to a tragic end. 

Conclusion

            The people of the Middle East , especially the Palestinians, are in their worst position ever.  Palestinians have lost the political, financial and military support of the independent, secular regimes of Libya , Syria and Iraq .  And Iran , the principle source of arms for the Palestinians, faces a US Naval armada off its coast.  Israel is accelerating its naked land grabs in the West Bank .  The PLO continues to be Israel ’s frontline ‘cop on the block’ – jailing resistance fighters and dissidents by the hundreds.  Israel ’s Fifth Column in the US ensures unconditional support for Israel ’s ethnic cleansing of its non-Jewish population. Above all, as the terror bombing of Gaza reveals, Israel, as astate and as a people, is free to bomb and destroy Gaza in order to force a mass exodus of the Palestinians so that they may establish a ‘pure’ and unadulterated Jewish state on historical Palestine.

Epilogue

            Less than 24 hours after the so-called “cease fire” Israeli soldiers murdered an unarmed Palestinian protestor and wounded dozens with live ammunition on the Gazan side of the border.  Israel storm troopers raided West Bank homes and arrested 55 Palestinians accused of supporting Hamas.  Scores more Palestinians in the Beit Lahia area of the West Bank were summarily arrested and jailed as suspected Hamas members.  Jewish vigilante settlers near occupied Hebron uprooted 400 olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers from the village of Hawara .  As the missile murderers take their break, the bull dozers rev up their engines:  Israel ’s leaders pursue their strategic objective of a “pure” Jewish state with their inexorable and destructive juggernaut.  The ‘cease fire’ merely changed the methods and the terrain of dispossession for the time being.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has totally demolished its vibrant recovery and growth since the previous war of destruction.  In 2011 the economy of Gaza grew by 20%; after the recent Israeli attack who would dare consider Gaza as a place to live and invest?