Isn't That Interesting

Palestinian children locked in solitary confinement in Israel

2012-01-24T19:17:00.000-08:00

The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel's Al Jalame jail

Special report: Israel's military justice system is accused of mistreating Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones

Harriet Sherwood in the West Bank
guardian.co.uk
Sunday 22 January 2012

The room is barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep. The delivery of food through a low slit in the door is the only way of marking time, dividing day from night.

This is Cell 36, deep within Al Jalame prison in northern Israel. It is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old claimed that he had been kept in Cell 36 for 65 days.

The only escape is to the interrogation room where children are shackled, by hands and feet, to a chair while being questioned, sometimes for hours.

Most are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers; some, of flinging molotov cocktails; a few, of more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons. They are also pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours.

At the beginning, nearly all deny the accusations. Most say they are threatened; some report physical violence. Verbal abuse – "You're a dog, a son of a whore" – is common. Many are exhausted from sleep deprivation. Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement. In the end, many sign confessions that they later say were coerced.

These claims and descriptions come from affidavits given by minors to an international human rights organisation and from interviews conducted by the Guardian. Other cells in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva prisons are also used for solitary confinement, but Cell 36 is the one cited most often in these testimonies.

Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested by Israeli soldiers each year, mostly accused of throwing stones. Since 2008, Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected sworn testimonies from 426 minors detained in Israel's military justice system.

Their statements show a pattern of night-time arrests, hands bound with plastic ties, blindfolding, physical and verbal abuse, and threats. About 9% of all those giving affidavits say they were kept in solitary confinement, although there has been a marked increase to 22% in the past six months.
Few parents are told where their children have been taken. Minors are rarely questioned in the presence of a parent, and rarely see a lawyer before or during initial interrogation. Most are detained inside Israel, making family visits very difficult.

Human rights organisations say these patterns of treatment – which are corroborated by a separate study, No Minor Matter, conducted by an Israeli group, B'Tselem – violate the international convention on the rights of the child, which Israel has ratified, and the fourth Geneva convention.
Most children maintain they are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused, despite confessions and guilty pleas, said Gerard Horton of DCI. But, he added, guilt or innocence was not an issue with regard to their treatment.

"We're not saying offences aren't committed – we're saying children have legal rights. Regardless of what they're accused of, they should not be arrested in the middle of the night in terrifying raids, they should not be painfully tied up and blindfolded sometimes for hours on end, they should be informed of the right to silence and they should be entitled to have a parent present during questioning."

Mohammad Shabrawi from the West Bank town of Tulkarm was arrested last January, aged 16, at about 2.30am. "Four soldiers entered my bedroom and said you must come with us. They didn't say why, they didn't tell me or my parents anything," he told the Guardian.

Handcuffed with a plastic tie and blindfolded, he thinks he was first taken to an Israeli settlement, where he was made to kneel – still cuffed and blindfolded – for an hour on an asphalt road in the freezing dead of night. A second journey ended at about 8am at Al Jalame detention centre, also known as Kishon prison, amid fields close to the Nazareth to Haifa road.

After a routine medical check, Shabrawi was taken to Cell 36. He spent 17 days in solitary, apart from interrogations, there and in a similar cell, No 37, he said. "I was lonely, frightened all the time and I needed someone to talk with. I was choked from being alone. I was desperate to meet anyone, speak to anyone … I was so bored that when I was out [of the cell] and saw the police, they were talking in Hebrew and I don't speak Hebrew, but I was nodding as though I understood. I was desperate to speak."
During interrogation, he was shackled. "They cursed me and threatened to arrest my family if I didn't confess," he said. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest, he said, and was charged after 25 days. "They accused me of many things," he said, adding that none of them were true.

Eventually Shabrawi confessed to membership of a banned organisation and was sentenced to 45 days. Since his release, he said, he was "now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested." His mother said he had become withdrawn.

Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when he was arrested last January, described similar treatment during arrest and detention. He says he was held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame for 17 days in cells 36, 37 and 38.

"I would start repeating the interrogators' questions to myself, asking myself is it true what they are accusing me of," he told the Guardian. "You feel the pressure of the cell. Then you think about your family, and you feel you are going to lose your future. You are under huge stress."

His treatment during questioning depended on the mood of his interrogators, he said. "If he is in a good mood, sometimes he allows you to sit on a chair without handcuffs. Or he may force you to sit on a small chair with an iron hoop behind it. Then he attaches your hands to the ring, and your legs to the chair legs. Sometimes you stay like that for four hours. It is painful.

"Sometimes they make fun of you. They ask if you want water, and if you say yes they bring it, but then the interrogator drinks it."

Ali Qadi did not see his parents during the 51 days he was detained before trial, he said, and was only allowed to see a lawyer after 10 days. He was accused of throwing stones and planning military operations, and after confessing was sentenced to six months in prison.The Guardian has affidavits from five other juveniles who said they were detained in solitary confinement in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva. All confessed after interrogation.

"Solitary confinement breaks the spirit of a child," said Horton. "Children say that after a week or so of this treatment, they confess simply to get out of the cell."

The Israeli security agency (ISA) – also known as Shin Bet – told the Guardian: "No one questioned, including minors, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession."
The Israeli prison service did not respond to a specific question about solitary confinement, saying only "the incarceration of prisoners…is subject to legal examination".

Juvenile detainees also allege harsh interrogation methods. The Guardian interviewed the father of a minor serving a 23-month term for throwing rocks at vehicles. Ali Odwan, from Azzun, said his son Yahir, who was 14 when he was arrested, was given electric shocks by a Taser while under interrogation.

"I visited my son in jail. I saw marks from electric shocks on both his arms, they were visible from behind the glass. I asked him if it was from electric shocks, he just nodded. He was afraid someone was listening," Odwan said.

DCI has affidavits from three minors accused of throwing stones who claim they were given electric shocks under interrogation in 2010.

Another Azzun youngster, Sameer Saher, was 13 when he was arrested at 2am. "A soldier held me upside down and took me to a window and said: 'I want to throw you from the window.' They beat me on the legs, stomach, face," he said.

His interrogators accused him of stone-throwing and demanded the names of friends who had also thrown stones. He was released without charge about 17 hours after his arrest. Now, he said, he has difficulty sleeping for fear "they will come at night and arrest me".

In response to questions about alleged ill-treatment, including electric shocks, the ISA said: "The claims that Palestinian minors were subject to interrogation techniques that include beatings, prolonged periods in handcuffs, threats, kicks, verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and prevention of sleep are utterly baseless … Investigators act in accordance with the law and unequivocal guidelines which forbid such actions."

The Guardian has also seen rare audiovisual recordings of the interrogations of two boys, aged 14 and 15, from the village of Nabi Saleh, the scene of weekly protests against nearby settlers. Both are visibly exhausted after being arrested in the middle of the night. Their interrogations, which begin at about 9.30am, last four and five hours.

Neither is told of their legal right to remain silent, and both are repeatedly asked leading questions, including whether named people have incited them to throw stones. At one point, as one boy rests his head on the table, the interrogator flicks at him, shouting: "Lift your head, you." During the other boy's interrogation, one questioner repeatedly slams a clenched fist into his own palm in a threatening gesture. The boy breaks down in tears, saying he was due to take an exam at school that morning. "They're going to fail me, I'm going to lose the year," he sobs.

In neither case was a lawyer present during their interrogation.

Israeli military law has been applied in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory more than 44 years ago. Since then, more than 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been detained under military orders.

Under military order 1651, the age of criminal responsibility is 12 years, and children under the age of 14 face a maximum of six months in prison.

However, children aged 14 and 15 could, in theory, be sentenced up to 20 years for throwing an object at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm. In practice, most sentences range between two weeks and 10 months, according to DCI.

In September 2009, a special juvenile military court was established. It sits at Ofer, a military prison outside Jerusalem, twice a week. Minors are brought into court in leg shackles and handcuffs, wearing brown prison uniforms. The proceedings are in Hebrew with intermittent translation provided by Arabic-speaking soldiers.

The Israeli prison service told the Guardian that the use of restraints in public places was permitted in cases where "there is reasonable concern that the prisoner will escape, cause damage to property or body, or will damage evidence or try to dispose of evidence".

The Guardian witnessed a case this month in which two boys, aged 15 and 17, admitted entering Israel illegally, throwing molotov cocktails and stones, starting a fire which caused extensive damage, and vandalising property. The prosecution asked for a sentence to reflect the defendants' "nationalistic motives" and to act as a deterrent.

The older boy was sentenced to 33 months in jail; the younger one, 26 months. Both were sentenced to an additional 24 months suspended and were fined 10,000 shekels (£1,700). Failure to pay the fine would mean an additional 10 months in prison.

Several British parliamentary delegations have witnessed child hearings at Ofer over the past year. Alf Dubs reported back to the House of Lords last May, saying: "We saw a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, one of them in tears, both looking absolutely bewildered … I do not believe this process of humiliation represents justice. I believe that the way in which these young people are treated is in itself an obstacle to the achievement by Israel of a peaceful relationship with the Palestinian people."

Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who witnessed the trial of a shackled 14-year-old at Ofer last month, found the experience distressing. "In five minutes he had been found guilty of stone-throwing and was sentenced to nine months. It was shocking to see a child being put through this process. It's difficult to see how a [political] solution can be reached when young people are being treated in this manner. They end up with very little hope for their future and very angry about their treatment."

Horton said a guilty plea was "the quickest way to get out of the system". If the children say their confession was coerced, "that provides them with a legal defence – but because they're denied bail they will remain in detention longer than if they had simply pleaded guilty".

An expert opinion written by Graciela Carmon, a child psychiatrist and member of Physicians for Human Rights, in May 2011, said that children were particularly vulnerable to providing a false confession under coercion.

"Although some detainees understand that providing a confession, despite their innocence, will have negative repercussions in the future, they nevertheless confess as the immediate mental and/or physical anguish they feel overrides the future implications, whatever they may be."

Nearly all the cases documented by DCI ended in a guilty plea and about three-quarters of the convicted minors were transferred to prisons inside Israel. This contravenes article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention, which requires children and adults in occupied territories to be detained within the territory.

The Israeli defence forces (IDF), responsible for arrests in the West Bank and the military judicial system said last month that the military judicial system was "underpinned by a commitment to ensure the rights of the accused, judicial impartiality and an emphasis on practising international legal norms in incredibly dangerous and complex situations".

The ISA said its employees acted in accordance with the law, and detainees were given the full rights for which they were eligible, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross. "The ISA categorically denies all claims with regard to the interrogation of minors. In fact, the complete opposite is true – the ISA guidelines grant minors special protections needed because of their age."

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the Guardian: "If detainees believe they have been mistreated, especially in the case of minors … it's very important that these people, or people representing them, come forward and raise these issues. The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors."
Stone-throwing, he added, was a dangerous activity that had resulted in the deaths of an Israeli father and his infant son last year.

"Rock-throwing, throwing molotov cocktails and other forms of violence is unacceptable, and the security authorities have to bring it to an end when it happens."

Human rights groups are concerned about the long-term impact of detention on Palestinian minors. Some children initially exhibit a degree of bravado, believing it to be a rite of passage, said Horton. "But when you sit with them for an hour or so, under this veneer of bravado are children who are fairly traumatised." Many of them, he said, never want to see another soldier or go near a checkpoint. Does he think the system works as a deterrent? "Yes, I think it does."

According to Nader Abu Amsha, the director of the YMCA in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, which runs a rehabilitation programme for juveniles, "families think that when the child is released, it's the end of the problem. We tell them this is the beginning".

Following detention many children exhibit symptoms of trauma: nightmares, mistrust of others, fear of the future, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness, obsessive compulsive behaviour, bedwetting, aggression, withdrawal and lack of motivation.

The Israeli authorities should consider the long-term effects, said Abu Amsha. "They don't give attention to how this might continue the vicious cycle of violence, of how this might increase hatred. These children come out of this process with a lot of anger. Some of them feel the need for revenge.
"You see children who are totally broken. It's painful to see the pain of these children, to see how much they are squeezed by the Israeli system."

Cell 36 in Al Jalame prison, northern Israel, is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. Mohammad Shabrawi from Tulkarm, in the West Bank, was arrested last January, aged 16, and Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when arrested, talk about their experiences

Archive footage courtesy of B'Tselem
Harriet Sherwood, Mat Heywood and Mustafa Khalili
guardian.co.uk ,
Monday 23 January 2012

UK raises concerns over Israel's treatment of Palestinian children

Foreign Office minister says he has raised concerns about treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli detention

Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk , Monday 23 January 2012

Israeli soldiers hold Palestinian children under arrest in the West Bank city of Hebron in August 2011. Photograph: Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA

The British government has raised concerns about Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors arrested and interrogated for stone-throwing and other crimes, highlighted in an article in the Guardian.

Alistair Burt, the Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, urged Israel to address the UK government's concerns when on a visit to the country a fortnight ago.

Burt told the Guardian he had "raised concerns about the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli detention. I urged the Israeli government to address these concerns."

Burt was also asked in the House of Commons last week about the issue of solitary confinement for Palestinian minors. Labour MP Sandra Osborne called on the government to condemn the practice and demand the release of 106 children detained in the Israeli military prison system.

In response, Burt referred to an earlier statement in which he said the practice of shackling children was wrong. Minors are routinely shackled throughout court hearings in the Israeli military justice system.

Osborne told the Guardian Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors was "unjustified in the context of human rights". She had been appalled and distressed on visits to the Israeli military juvenile court at Ofer, near Jerusalem. "No civilised democracy should treat children in that way," she said.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said the state should apply the same protection to Palestinian minors in detention that it allows to Israeli children.

B'Tselem confirmed that descriptions given to the Guardian by Palestinian juveniles of arrest, detention and interrogation under the military justice system were consistent with testimonies it had collected although mostly with over-18s.

"We have also seen long periods of solitary confinement in a small cell, with lights on 24 hours a day, with detainees unable to follow time and disconnected to the rest of the world," said B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli. "We have testimonies of detainees cuffed in painful positions while under interrogation and sometimes left for long periods.

"Throughout the military justice process, the rights of suspects are violated."

B'Tselem, she said, took issue with the claim by Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev that detainees alleging mistreatment would have complaints dealt with fairly. "This is disingenuous at best," she said.

A B'Tselem study last year showed that out of more than 700 complaints of abuse by Israeli Security Agency (ISA) interrogators brought between 2001 and 2011, none resulted in a criminal investigation.

The complaints were examined by an official of the ISA. "It is not surprising that in most cases the inspector determines that the complaint is not true," said B'Tselem.

In a few cases, the inspector found abuse had taken place but the file was closed without the state attorney's office ordering a criminal investigation. B'Tselem said this "transmits a message to … the potential complainants that the chances of measures being taken against the persons responsible is zero".

Regev insisted anyone who had a complaint that an Israeli official had acted in an improper fashion should bring the information to the Israeli authorities and civil courts. "It will be thoroughly investigated," he said.

He added: "Minors deserve special attention, special consideration … The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors."

B'Tselem said the provisions of Israeli youth law should formally be applied to Palestinian minors. Night-time arrests in military operations should cease; interrogations should be video-taped; minors should be questioned in the presence of a parent or lawyer; they should have their rights clearly read to them; and proper options for remand should be put in place.

Unicef, the UN agency for children, also raised concerns following the Guardian's article. Children had the "right to protection against violence and abuse," it said in a statement. Unicef was "monitoring the arrest and detention of children and is currently in dialogue with the Israeli authorities to improve the protection of child detainees … All children, at all times, must be treated with dignity and respect, in accordance with the convention on the rights of the child."

In the first 11 months of last year, 222 cases of stone-throwers were brought before the military court, according to a letter sent by the Israeli foreign ministry to Lady Scotland, who visited the Ofer court last autumn, and is writing a report on her findings.

The period from indictment to the conclusion of proceedings had dropped to an average of 92.5 days in 2011 from 167 days in 2007, the letter said.

It pointed out that "many crimes carried out by minors in [the West Bank] are of a violent ideological nature and pose a clear and imminent threat to the public … Despite the unique dilemmas in the dealing with minor suspects in [the West Bank], Israel makes significant efforts to provide for just and fair treatment throughout the entire military legal process in accordance with international standards."

Human rights organisations say Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors breaches the international convention on the rights of the child and the fourth Geneva convention.

Utah to make Gold/Silver legal currency

2011-10-15T17:40:00.000-07:00

Friday Oct 14, 2011

Interview with David Morgan, Silver Investor.com, Washington.

The US state of Utah has passed a Bill that legalizes gold and silver for everyday financial transactions.

For Video Go HERE

Press TV talks with David Morgan, Silver Investor.com from Washington who was a party to the signing of this declaration to allow people to use gold and silver as transactional money for their everyday living expenses. He explains how this would be done. Following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: There's a huge global insurrection against banker occupation and underneath that we see some interesting cross currents going on as well. You've just returned from the Utah monetary conference where you signed the Utah monetary declaration. How exciting - tell us all about it?

David Morgan: Utah is the first state in the union that has at law passed the fact that citizens can voluntarily transaction in the state in commerce. So in other words simply stated you can buy and sell with gold and silver as a transaction basis throughout the state.

Now, that is a little tough to do coin-wise so they've implemented a strategy that I think is very simple and one that we're familiar with - Put your gold and your silver with a depository; the bank gives you a credit on their balance sheet; they issue you with a debit card; and then you just use the debit card.

So to the merchants, Wal-Mart as an example, you simply swipe your debit card, the transaction goes down to the spot price that day whatever the spot price for gold or silver is and then at the end of the month they reconcile the account based on what you purchased during the month.

Once this is implemented I think it's going to catch on and then of course it sets a standard I think for other states to come along and do the same thing. There are 11 states that have proposed gold and silver in transactions, but Utah is the only one that has passed it in the law so far.

Press TV: If you have your account based in gold and silver and you're using it as your go-to savings account and checking account, you have protection against the government printing up lots of fiat-dollars and inflating the purchasing value away from your currency - so why wouldn't anyone not want to do this?

David Morgan: I do believe it's going to catch on - it's hard to say; there's a argument about Gresham's law that good money chases out bad - that you're only going to save the good money. But I don't think this is necessarily true and I don't have time to go into all the arguments, but I interviewed Larry Hilton who wrote the bill - he's a lawyer in Utah - and basically there's lots of reasons why you would want to use physical gold and silver in a transaction.

One, is some of the merchants will give you a discount, in other words, if you pay in real money they're more likely to take a bit of a discount just like paying for something in cash on the spot so present value for money that's one reason.

Second reason is these markets do fluctuate and there are people who say, I have this really nice move here in silver I think I'm going to take advantage of that I want to buy this X-box of whatever it is because now is the time according to my gut feeling or whatever.

Lastly and one I get all the time is, I'd love to get into the gold and silver market, but how do I sell it - so now you don't have to sell it, you can spend it.

Press TV: Yes, exactly, And I think a lot of people who follow this space, that's their exit for gold and silver is when eventually the whole world goes to gold and silver standards and you start to exit your gold and silver as you spend your gold and silver because that's the new defacto global currency.

Now, there is this global insurrection against banker occupation. We kind of started it a few years back in the work that we do here and now its spread all over the world - folks finally understand it's the banks and the banks of course create all of the fiat money.

Press TV: If you were to talk to somebody from the Occupy Wall Street - What would you tell them about the benefits of gold and silver and how that might relate to their objective?

David Morgan: I think the first thing I would start with is the fact and that is there has never been a fiat currency in the history of mankind that's ever survived. So that implies right now that the fiat system is going to collapse, or collapse further is probably a better way to state it.

And the second one is that gold and silver have maintained purchasing power for that same time frame. It does fluctuate in price, but it doesn't fluctuate in value over a long period of time. But, that's it - I think you get the basic concept that we're on a path out of fiat destruction and it's continuing and it's probably going to get worse and worse.

And secondly the only money outside of the matrix or outside of the system or outside the bankers' hands that you can employ is physical silver and gold and that can now be accomplished quite easily or will be in this Utah Bill. I don't know when they'll bring that in, but that's the trend - gold money.

Press TV: You were at the conference and you spoke on several panels including on called “Booms, Busts and Money Policy”. Explain the role of monetary policy in creating the current bust we see all around us.

David Morgan: Well, in basic high school or even college economics what you're going to find is that there is two main policies that the Federal government is in charge of - they do refer to the Federal Reserve and they talk about fiscal and monetary policy; they talk about the role of the Fed and they say basically it's to maintain low inflation and maintain a high growth rate in the economy; stability is used over and over again - and it's laughable.

This is what their mandate is, but it's anything but the truth.

The truth is that they have a bias to inflate the currency to oblivion. And that's where we're at right now and the Keynesian model is that when the economy goes poorly what you do is stimulate the economy by throwing more money out there either to the government sector or private sector or both and get things rolling again.

Well, it only happens so many times and now we're in a liquidity squeeze. They've got zero interest rates; they've got tons of funny money sitting there in banks, but the credit worthy people that could borrow it, aren't. They're sitting on cash themselves and the people that would love to borrow more are not credit worthy. So you've got a ton of cash just sitting there doing nothing and the system continues to deteriorate almost daily.

Press TV: In the US you've got free market capitalism and you've got a monetary based system run by the Federal Reserve bank in Washington and the theory is that inflation is OK - they'll keep printing dollars because if you inject a lot of currency into the economy it makes credit easier to get and it's a trade off between the GDP growth you can achieve by putting credit into the hands of so-called entrepreneurs Vs. the loss of purchasing power that comes with inflating your money supply.

And for decades this argument looked good. There was a natural rate of inflation; purchasing power went down every year - but so did GDP though. However, it increased so then they got into some statistical gamesmanship didn't they?

David Morgan: Absolutely and you stated it better than I. Basically people use that argument against me saying you've been using that argument for years and it's been good - well, it's not good now. And I had to rethink that question and basically everything has a limit. There's a limit to how many times you can bend a wing before it breaks - there's a limit to how much fiat funny money you can pump into the system before sophisticated people say enough is enough, we don't want this anymore.

Whenever you've got a lot of something the value becomes less and less. Look at the Zimbabwe dollar - most people don't know about that little video I did, was that the one dollar bill unit from Zimbabwe was worth actually more than a US dollar and 18 months later the printing of a 100 trillion dollar note was so worthless that it didn't even get into circulation - that took 18 months. Now I'm not saying the US is going to go that badly, but the implication is certainly the same because the principles are the same.

Print your way out of it - you cannot print wealth. If you could print wealth Zimbabwe would be the richest place on the planet, and it's not.

Press TV: At the moment, despite all of this printing of money in the US, the dollar is enjoying a rally against every major currency in the world and it's making some headway against gold and silver - it's become the go-to currency around the world as we see a continuation of a trend first coming to the fore in 2008 - The unwinding of decades-worth of derivatives and debt, which is forcing people to jump into the US dollar.

Is this sustainable or are people going to find themselves in a few months time as they did back in the 2008-2009 period holding a rapidly depreciating dollar against precious metals?

David Morgan: Great question and hopefully your audience is sophisticated enough to understand I'm not contradicting myself. For short periods of time and that could be three to six months we're going to see what I call a deflationary scare, which you just described. And because the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world and you've got 7 billion people on the planet you can actually print a great deal of money until it starts to really deteriorate even more.

In other words, the deflationary scare has brought a lot of money thinkers into the dollar as the reserve currency or as a stable currency and it, and it's more stable than the Euro right now - and that goes back and forth. So there could be a demand for dollars on a short term basis, but longer term the principles are still there, which means at some point you're going to see what you described as what happened in 2008 and 2009 especially among the nation states.

It's not like China, Russia even some of the IMF, even the UN - all of these have stated that they're looking for alternatives to the dollar - Well, why is that? It's because they know that the dollar's days are numbered.

Press TV: Let's consider an extreme case - let's call it hyper-deflation. The Fed would love inflation, but they can't seem to create inflation with QE1, QE2, Operation Twist - QE3 is on the horizon; they can't seem to create any inflation no matter what they do because the housing collapse and all the mortgages associated with the housing collapse and all the derivatives associated on banks balance sheet with the collapse of the housing market around the world is so great that there is no amount of money printing that will stop this deflationary crash similar to what we saw in the 1930s - I guess it's not a devil's advocate argument because didn't gold do very well in the 1930s as well?

David Morgan: Actually yes. Professor Jastrun - The Golden Constant - a book he wrote proved that gold does best in a deflationary environment. But we were also on a gold standard back then as well so the argument you're making and by my deflationist friends saying, that we are deflating - our asset prices are deflating - The money supply is still increasing and the argument is that they're not getting any stimulus into the economy.

It's true in the private sector - to not contradict myself, but it's not true in the government sector. The fiscal policy is to keep creating more and more and more make-worth jobs in the government so if you take that to the extreme it'll fail at the point at where 100 percent of the population is working for the government and all they're doing is printing funny money and a lot of these jobs are digging up holes and filling them back in again - as a metaphor.

That's the direction that we're going. The government keeps expanding, which of course is one of the main problems i.e. government regulation and the size of government, but that keeps increasing and that's where this money is actually going that they're able to get into the economy.

Press TV: Using a metaphor - I know that your background is in the aviation industry and one of the principles of flying is that the speed of wind over the wing is faster than what you see under the wing and this is why the curvature of the wing is as it is and this gives the lift, which we now know is the recipe for flight.

In the monetary authorities they're trying to fly the economy by creating the right speed of the forces of high speed monetary going one way Vs the natural deflationary tendencies of cost efficiencies and productivity gains going the other way. Now, this is the theory, but the plane is crashing, isn't that so?

David Morgan: It is. Even by the Feds own numbers the US dollar from the time that the Fed started to now; we've lost 95-96 percent of the purchasing power. And again they're mandate is to maintain stability so they really held to their mandate a dollar in 1913 would be the equivalent to a dollar in 2011 and it's not, it's worth about 3 or 4 percent of what it was then.

It think if anyone really examined that in a short term basis in other words went from one hundred basis to three in a year's time that would be hyper inflation. As it's happened over a hundred years or so people think oh well it should be that way or that's the way it just is etc.

No it isn't - because the path is very clear which way it's going. Even with this deflationary scare that we're seeing now, which could maintain for a few more months, it's not going to correct the problem.

There are two ways to correct the problem: one you stop the quantity of money in its tracks and you make the dollar stable you don't print anymore and you let the market clear - everything that's too big to fail fails - every bank that was too big to fail, it fails - let the market determine who wins and who loses - that's free market capitalism.

But you don't see that on Wall Street - they cry and say we have to be bailed out we are too big to fail. Well, that's not free market. The free market allows you to succeed and it allows you to fail, but then they changed the rules... saying the tax payers have to bail us out.

The Toronto Hearings on 9/11

2011-09-16T00:17:00.000-07:00

TheTorontoHearings 09/08/11 06:52AM

TheTorontoHearings 09/08/11 07:37AM

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TheTorontoHearings 09/08/11 09:02AM

TheTorontoHearings 09/08/11 11:40AM

TheTorontoHearings 09/08/11 02:13PM

TheTorontoHearings 09/09/11 07:03AM

TheTorontoHearings 09/09/11 08:57AM

TheTorontoHearings 09/09/11 01:13PM

TheTorontoHearings 09/09/11 02:50PM

TheTorontoHearings 09/10/11 07:19AM

TheTorontoHearings 09/10/11 09:02AM

TheTorontoHearings 09/10/11 12:21PM

TheTorontoHearings 09/10/11 02:47PM

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TheTorontoHearings 09/11/11 11:06AM

TheTorontoHearings 09/11/11 12:33PM

TheTorontoHearings 09/11/11 02:37PM

Source

9/11 Press For Truth

Judge gets 28 years for 'kids for cash' scandal

2011-08-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

By Michael Rubinkam
August 12 2011

A judge has been ordered to spend almost 30 years in prison for his role in a massive juvenile justice bribery scandal that prompted the Pennsylvania's high court to quash thousands of convictions. Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr was sentenced yesterday to 28 years for taking $1m (£617,000) in bribes from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centres in a case that became known as "kids-for-cash".

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea.

Ciavarella was tried and convicted of racketeering charges earlier this year. Known for his harsh and autocratic demeanour, Ciavarella filled the cells of the private lock-ups with children as young as 10, many of them first-time offenders convicted of theft and other minor crimes.

The judge remained defiant after his arrest, insisting the payments were legal and denying he incarcerated youths for money.Source

NATO kill 85 civilians in Libya

2011-08-11T00:54:00.000-07:00

NATO kill 85 civilians

Libyan state TV has broadcast what it said was footage of Colonel Gaddafi's son Khamis visiting people wounded in an air attack. Earlier rebels claimed he had been killed in a NATO air strike last week.
Libyan TV said the footage was recorded on Tuesday. Khamis al-Gaddafi is shown visiting a hospital chatting with people wounded in an air strike on farmhouses near the town of Zlitan, the comment said. It is the first visual evidence of Khamis being alive after the claims of his death.

Tripoli says 85 civilians from 12 families, including 33 children and 32 women, were killed on Monday night by NATO forces near Zlitan. NATO denied the allegations and said all the targets they bombed were military.

The rebels earlier said that Khamis, who commands elite loyalist troops, had been killed in a NATO strike. The government denied the report. Khamis was also wrongly reported dead in March.

Meanwhile, the head of Libya's rebel National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, has sacked the entire executive committee which functions as a cabinet. It followed the assassination of Abdel Fattah Younes, the former interior minister, who commanded the rebel forces. Source
NATO Bombing Libyan Schools, Hospitals, Food Supply and Water Pipeline

For more information

NATO raids kill 85 civilians in Libya

"The Real Terrorist Was Me"

2010-08-05T20:09:00.000-07:00

Our real enemies are not those living in a distant land whose names or policies we don't understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it's profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us- Mike Prysner

TRANSCRIPT

I tried hard to be proud of my service

but all I can feel is shame

The racism you can not master the reality of the occupation

it's the people it's the human beings

I seem I claim by guilt everytime I see

an eldery man like the one that could't walk

and we brought by the stretcher and we called the Iraq's Police to take him away

I feel guilt everytime i see a mother with her children like the one who cried hystericly

and screaming that we are worst than Saddam, as we forced her from her home.

I feel guilt anytime I see a young girl, like the one I grabbed by the arm, and dragged into the street.

We are told we are fighting terrorists;

the real terrorist was me and the real terrorism is in this occupation.

Racism within the military has long been an important tool

to justify the destruction and occupation of another country.

It's long been used to justify the killing, subjugation and torture of another people.

Racism is a vital weapon employed by this government.

It's a more important weapon than a rifle, a tank, a bomber or a battleship.

It's more destructive than an artillery shell or a bunker buster, or a Tom Hawk Missile.

While all those weapons are created and owned by this government,

they are harmless without people willing to use them.

Those who send us to war do not have to pull a trigger, or lab a mortal round.

They don't have to fight the war, they merely have to sell the war.

They need a public who is willing to send their soldiers in the harms way.

They need soldiers who are willing to kill and be killed without question.

They can spend millions on a single bomb, but that bomb only becomes a weapon,

when the ranks of the military are willing to follow orders to use it.

They can send every last soldier anywhere on earth,

but there'll only be a war, as soldiers are willing to fight.

And the ruling class, the billionaires who profit from human suffering

care only about expending their wealth controlling the world economy.

Understand that their power lies only in their ability

to convince us that war, oppression and exploitation is in our interest.

They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability

to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country.

And, convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability

to make us think that we are somehow superior.

Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen,

have nothing to gain from this occupation.

The vast majority of people living in the U.S. have nothing to gain from this occupation.

In fact, not only do we have nothing to gain,

but we suffer more because of it.

We lose wings, and bear trauma and give our lives

Our families have to watch flag draped coffins rolling into the earth.

Millions in this country without health care, jobs or access to education,

just watch over this government squander of a $ 450 million a day in this occupation.

Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in other country and make the rich richer

without racism we realize that we have more common with the Iraq people than we have with billioners that send us to war

We need to wake up and realize

that our real enemy is not the ones living in a distant land

the people whose names we don't know

and cultures we don't understand

The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify

The real enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable

the enemy is the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable,

the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it's profitable,

the Banks who take away our homes when it's profitable.

Our enemies are not five thousands miles away

the are right here home

but if we organize and fight with our sisters and brothers

we can stop this war we can stop this government and we can create a better world

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign ennemy...

The loss of Liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger

real or imagined from abroad..."

- James Madison -

Edité par Phaedrus

Tea Baggers, Hate, Racism, and Fox News

2010-04-17T01:08:00.000-07:00

Poll Reveals All You Need to Know about Tea Baggers: 57% Still Support George Bush – And, Yes, Their Rage Is Fueled by Racism, Fox News

April 15 2010

By Jon Ponder

For pundits and pols who have been casting about trying to get a fix on the true nature of tea baggers, a new poll finally offers definitive insight. According to the new CBS/New York Times poll of self-described tea-party supporters, 57 percent have a favorable opinion of George W. Bush.

Furthermore, 63 percent say they restrict their their news consumption to right-wing propaganda from Fox News. This may explain why they are outraged over the Obama administration’s efforts to pull the nation back from the brink of economic collapse while apparently having no clue that the person most responsible for the Bush Recession is their own Dear Leader George W. Bush.

It is a tribute to Fox News’ mastery at obfuscating reality with disinformation that these Bush fans are seemingly unaware that the U.S. economy crashed and the Bush Recession began in September 2008, when, indisputably, George Bush was president. Having only been exposed to propaganda from Fox and hatemonger radio and bloggers, tea baggers have no way of knowing that the malfeasant anti-regulatory policies of the Bush administration and the GOP-controlled Congress, combined with Republicans’ now-famous incompetence at governing, were directly responsible for the economic crisis.

The history of the Bush regime is being rewritten faster on Fox and in the right-wing media than anyone can keep up with, but let’s also recall that George Bush left office with 21 percent approval after being well below 50 percent for years. (About 20 percent of Americans also supported Richard Nixon when he resigned in disgrace.) Bush, Cheney et al lied about the pretexts for invading Iraq, which means that the blood of thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi families was wasted needlessly, along with billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars that were flushed away at the very moment that the economic collapse was looming.

(Let’s also not forget that, under Bush, the United States paid for universal health care for 30 million or so Iraqis while 45 million Americans had none.) But it was Bush’s ineptitude — and baldfaced lying about it — in addressing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that finally forced normal Americans to recognize George W. Bush for what he was: Worst. President. Ever. His approval ratings never recovered after that debacle.

It speaks volumes that it’s this barely articulate, incurious aristocratic bully that tea baggers voted for — twice — and still support to this day.

Another prime example of the influence of Fox propaganda: A whopping 64 percent of tea baggers believe Pres. Obama has raised taxes on most Americans. As CBS noted in their coverage of this poll result: “[The] vast majority of Americans [95 percent] got a tax cut under the Obama administration.”

One unsurprising result from the poll is that tea baggers love Fox News’ most popular propagandists. They approve of Sarah Palin by 66 percent and Glenn Beck by 59 percent. This adoration of Beck, in particular, helps explain another aspect of the poll: Like Beck, tea baggers loathe the U.S. president:

Eighty-eight percent disapprove of President Obama’s performance on the job, compared to 40 percent of Americans overall. While half of Americans approve of Mr. Obama’s job performance, just seven percent of Tea Party supporters say he is doing a good job.

Asked to volunteer what they don’t like about Mr. Obama, the top answer, offered by 19 percent of Tea Party supporters, was that they just don’t like him. Eleven percent said he is turning the country more toward socialism, ten percent cited his health care reform efforts, and nine percent said he is dishonest.

Seventy-seven percent describe Mr. Obama as “very liberal,” compared to 31 percent of Americans overall. Fifty-six percent say the president’s policies favor the poor, compared to 27 percent of Americans overall.

The fact that 56 percent of tea baggers say Pres. Obama’s policies favor the poor is telling. While only about 13 percent of Americans are black, a great many white people labor under the misperception that most poor people are black. More about tea baggers’ views on race below.

Ninety-two percent of Tea Party supporters believe President Obama’s policies are moving the country toward socialism. Fifty-two percent of Americans overall share that belief.

Asked what socialism means, roughly half of Tea Party supporters volunteered government ownership or control, far more than any other answer. Eleven percent cited taking away rights or limiting freedom, and eight percent said it means the redistribution of wealth.

Thirty percent of Tea Party supporters believe Mr. Obama was born in another country, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Another 29 percent say they don’t know. Twenty percent of Americans overall, one in five, believe the president was not born in the United States.

Not surprisingly, the poll found that tea baggers deep-seated racist views:

Fifty-two percent believe too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Far fewer Americans overall — 28 percent — believe as much. Among non-Tea Party whites, the percentage who say too much attention has been paid to the problems of black people is 23 percent.

A majority of Tea Party suppers believe the Obama administration treats both blacks and whites the same way. But one in four believe the administration favors blacks over whites, an opinion shared by just 11 percent of Americans overall and seven percent of non-Tea Party whites.

As to demographics, no surprise here. The poll that most tea baggers are middle-aged, white and Southern:

Eighteen percent of Americans identify as Tea Party supporters. The vast majority of them — 89 percent — are white. Just one percent is black.

They tend to skew older: Three in four are 45 years old or older, including 29 percent who are 65 plus. They are also more likely to be men (59 percent) than women (41 percent).
More than one in three (36 percent) hails from the South, far more than any other region. Twenty-five percent come from the West, 22 percent from the Midwest, and 18 percent from the northeast.

A lot of headlines about this poll focus on the surprising result that self-identified tea baggers claim to be wealthier and more educated than would otherwise be expected from people who are so easily manipulated and duped into believing facts that are easily disproved.

There are no national figures better known for their difficult relationships with the truth than Bush, Palin and Beck, so one plausible explanation for this apparent outlier about tea baggers’ income and education levels:

They lied.

Source

Israel: Political leaders taking bribes

2010-04-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

Can't say this is a surprise.

Nothing like getting caught with you hand in the cookie jar. Well I suppose it's about time a few of them were caught. Took long enough however. This type of activity is rather common I bet.

One also has to wonder who owns what stocks as well, that make profits from their political decisions.

In the US politicians in power make a fortune off Weapons producers, Oil companies and Pharmaceutical companies etc etc.They also get tons of donations at election time from such companies. This happens in many countries.

I bet it happens in Israel too. The problem is no one ever investigates such things.

Bribery case ‘penetrated authorities’

By YAAKOV LAPPIN

13/04/2010 19:22

Custody of 5 suspects in Holyland corruption affair extended.

The Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court extended the custody of five suspects, including the former head engineer of the Jerusalem Municipality and a land developer, who were arrested earlier this month by police investigating the Holyland real estate bribery investigation.

During the remand hearing on Tuesday evening, Judge Avraham Haiman, deputy president of the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court, said the police investigation had uncovered “the most severe episode of corruption we have seen, which penetrated the authorities.” He added, “the severity is increased due to the involvement of senior figures, and I will not say more than that.”

According to police suspicions, between 1999 and 2008 the Holyland development company and associated land development projects, then owned by businessman Hillel Charni, paid tens of millions of shekels in bribes to senior public decision makers in the Jerusalem Municipality, members of its planning and construction committee, the Israel Lands Administration, and others, in exchange for their approval for the Holyland housing project in the capital and additional developments in the North.

Real estate developer Meir Rabin is suspected of acting as an intermediary in the alleged bribery ring.

Police say he promoted Holyland projects and passed on tens of millions in bribery money to decision makers in the Jerusalem Municipality.

On Tuesday, Haiman extended Rabin’s custody by ten days.

The police representative to court said Rabin’s involvement in the alleged offenses was “monstrous,” adding that he refused to cooperate with detectives during questioning. “As the fog lifts, things are becoming clearer,” the representative said.

Rabin’s attorney, Esther Toledan, argued that police were seeking to keep her client in custody because law enforcement officials were waiting to question former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was mayor of Jerusalem during the time of the alleged offenses, and who is scheduled to return from abroad this weekend.

Toledan’s claims were rejected by Haiman, who ruled that releasing Rabin would undoubtedly lead to a disruption of the investigation.

Haiman extended Charni’s custody by 10 more days on Tuesday, ruling that a “most solid basis of evidence exists to tie the suspect” to the alleged offenses. Haiman described Charni as the “suspect with the largest interest in the corruption affair.”

The police representative to court said “new evidence” had come to light in recent days pertaining to Charni’s role as alleged bribe-giver to “elements” in the Jerusalem Municipality, and alleged attempts by Charni to disrupt the course of the investigation.

Eliyahu Hasson, an accountant for Holyland who worked under Charni, is suspected of transferring bribery funds to officials and forging documents while attempting to hide evidence of his alleged involvement. Haiman said the evidence he studied in the form of a secret police dossier showed that Hasson “carried out all of his employer’s instructions which were criminal offenses,” and extended Hasson’s custody by nine days.

Uri Sheetrit, former chief Jerusalem Municipality engineer, is suspected of dropping his initial opposition to the Holyland project in Jerusalem and becoming a supporter of the plan after receiving very large bribes.

Haiman extended Sheetrit’s custody by nine days, ruling that his release would disrupt the investigation, and noting a “development” in the investigation into Sheetrit’s alleged role. Sheetrit was “entrusted to safeguard the public interest and scenery of the capital,” Haiman said, adding that “the severity of his offenses were great.”

Police said Sheetrit had “many opportunities” to turn down bribes, but chose to receive them at every available opportunity.

Businessman Avigdor Kelner, who managed the Polar Investments company between 1996 and 2007 and had majority stock ownership in the the Holyland Park and Zera companies, is suspected of paying hundreds of thousands of shekels in bribes via companies he owned to public officials in the Jerusalem Municipality to promote the Holyland residential development.

Citing “new developments” in the investigation into Kelner, Haiman extended his custody by nine days.

Meanwhile, new details have surfaced about a man who served as a business adviser to Charni and helped manage the Holyland development for several years.

The man, named as real estate developer Shmuel Dachner, fell out with Charni over a dispute about how much he should have been paid for his services.

According to a civil lawsuit filed by Dachner at the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court last month against a company described as a loan shark, Dachner accumulated heavy debts on the gray market after managing the Holyland project.

According to the lawsuit, Charni began paying off Dachner’s gray market debtors, though in some cases the funds paid by Charni were less than the total debt, sparking the business dispute between the two men.

Dachner had threatened to sue Charni, though the latter reportedly viewed the threat as an attempt to extort him. Source

Holyland case 'just the start'

By YAAKOV LAPPIN

April 15 2010

After ex-mayor's arrest, top J'lem councilman urges more probes.

A senior Jerusalem councilman on Thursday morning said he suspected the Holyland real estate affair was “just the start” and called on authorities to investigate a number of other massive building projects he believes may be tainted with corruption.

Councilman Meir Turgeman, the head of the opposition faction in the Jerusalem municipal council, told Israel Radio he fears plans to build at the YMCA compound, the Gilo Uptown project and Mamilla neighborhood might have been approved in return for kickbacks.

On Wednesday, the police investigation into suspected massive bribery in the Holyland real estate affair took a dramatic turn when detectives from the National Fraud Unit arrested former Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski on suspicion of accepting more than NIS 3 million in bribes to ensure that the housing plan was approved, and of money laundering.

According to police suspicions, between 1999 and 2008, the Holyland development company and associated land development projects, then owned by businessman Hillel Charni, paid tens of millions of shekels in bribes through intermediaries to senior public decision makers in the Jerusalem Municipality, members of its planning and construction committee, the Israel Lands Administration and others, in exchange for their approval for the Holyland housing project in the Malha neighborhood and additional developments in the North.

Lupolianski was deputy mayor and chairman of the municipality’s planning and construction committee between 1993 and 2003, when the Holyland plan was approved. He went on to become a member of the National Building and Planning Committee when he was mayor from 2003 to 2008.

According to police suspicions, by 1999, Lupolianski had accepted NIS 1.5m. in bribes that he received “though another suspect.”

The illicit money was allegedly transferred to Lupolianski in the form of a donation to the Yad Sarah charity for disabled and elderly people, which he founded in 1976.

A Yad Sarah representative released a statement on Wednesday saying that the organization had “nothing to do with the Holyland affair and has never taken a bribe.”

A second alleged transfer of bribes took place between 2006 and 2008, when the Lupolianski allegedly received NIS 1.4m.

During a remand hearing held for Lupolianski at the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday evening, the police representative, Ch.-Supt. Lior Rice, said additional instances of bribery were being investigated, including the transfer of $30,000 to Lupolianski, which he allegedly paid to political field activists to help secure his 2003 mayoral election win. Police also suspect Lupolianski accepted NIS 100,000 in bribes in 2005, as a “donation” to a religious educational center managed by his son.

In return for the cash, police suspect, Lupolianski exploited his positions to promote an enlarged version of the Holyland project within the municipal Construction and Planning Committee, and resisted calls to lower the height of the Holyland residential towers by two stories. He also allegedly helped ensure that almost 1,000 objections to the plan were overruled.

“The suspect was supposed to safeguard the public interest, but in reality he strayed from it,” Rice said. “He saved the project’s backers millions of shekels in expenses and led to the expansion of the project and a significant increase in profit for its backers.”

Judge Avraham Haiman of the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court extended Lupolianski’s custody by five days.

Speaking to Channel 10 News on Tuesday, Lupolianski appeared to attempt to shift responsibility to former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was mayor of Jerusalem between 1993 and 2003 – when Holyland was approved.

“The mayor is the one who decides, that is the truth,” Lupolianski said. “The deputy mayor has no responsibility.”

Lupolianski’s attorney, Yair Golan, said his client had denied all suspicions against him, had consistently presented receipts for donations received to Yad Sarah and did not attempt to hide the identity of donors.

Meanwhile, anticipating an invitation to the police interrogation room, Olmert cut short a trip abroad and arrived in Israel on Wednesday night, where he is reportedly set to be questioned over the Holyland bribery investigation.

“In light of the growing number of reports, according to which police are seeking to question Olmert on his alleged involvement in the Holyland affair, Olmert decided to return to Israel tonight,” a statement released by Olmert’s spokesman, Amir Dan, said on Wednesday.

“Olmert denies any link to the affair, but has publicly stated last week that he is available for any questioning,” the statement said. “We’ve already seen how large headlines at the start of an investigation change radically with time, when the real facts begin to come to light,” it continued.

A source associated with Olmert told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that the ex-premier was keen to avoid giving the impression that he was “evading questioning.”

On Wednesday night, Israel Police Insp.-Gen. David Cohen spoke at an award ceremony for police excellence held at Tel Aviv University, and described the alleged corruption affair as “widespread and very worrying.”

“Corruption within the authorities undermines the foundations of a state built on the rule of law,” he said. Public officials suspected of corruption in the investigation abused their power and exploited their public office “for their own personal benefit,” he added.

Addressing critics of the police investigation, Cohen said, “As someone who knows the details of the affair, I advise them to watch what they say.”

Cohen offered his full backing to the National Fraud Unit and to the Israel Police’s Investigations Branch, which he said carried a “huge burden on its shoulders.”

“This is bad news for the city of Jerusalem,” Mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement on Wednesday night. “I hope the truth comes to light.”

“The Jerusalem Municipality will continue to assist the police in its investigation as needed,” Barkat said.

Haiman extended the custody of five of the suspects on Tuesday. During the questioning of one of the suspects this week, detectives from the National Fraud Unit presented documents bearing the initials “E.O.,” and asked the suspect if he knew who bore the initials. The suspect replied that he did not.

Former Olmert associate Uri Messer, suspected as acting as an intermediary between bribe givers and takers and transferring hundreds of thousands of shekels in bribes, is scheduled to appear before court on Thursday for a third remand hearing.

“We do not yet know whether police will seek to keep Messer in custody or release him,” a source associated with Messer told the Post.

Abe Selig contributed to this report. Source

Former Prime Minister Olmert, also former Mayor of The Jerusalem Municipality: Holyland probe is 'unprecedented character assassination'

By Tomer Zarchin,

April 15 2010

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday made his first comments on the Holyland bribery affair since being named a prime suspect earlier in the day, saying there is not a hint of truth in the allegations against him.

Olmert, who was Jerusalem's mayor from 1993 to 2003 and prime minister from 2006 to 2009, said in a pre-recorded statement aired on prime-time television that he was innocent and ready to answer police questions over the so-called Holyland affair.

"I am saying as adamantly as I said in the past, I have never been offered a bribe, and I never accepted a bribe from any man, for any mater, in any way, whether directly or indirectly," Olmert said.

Olmert was named on Thursday as the previously unidentified senior figure suspected of accepting an NIS 3.5 million bribe to facilitate the construction of the Holyland project in Jerusalem.

Police suspect that, between 1999 and 2008, the Holyland Development Company and associated land developers paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes to senior decisionmakers in the Jerusalem municipality, members of its planning and construction committee and officials in the Israel Land Administration.

"I welcome the decision to lift the gag order in what is being called the Holyland affair," Olmert said.

"I am relieved," Olmert said. "My name has in any case appeared in the press, and no one had any doubt about the identity of the suspect named as A.A. This is a case of unprecedented character assassination both in terms of scope and strength."

Olmert went on to add that the allegations have harmed both him and his family, saying baseless rumors about him have been spread that "do not have even a hint of truth to them."

"I supported the Holyland project from the start, when it was just three hotels meant to strengthen tourism in Jerusalem," said Olmert, adding that the project was part of an effort in the mid-1990s to draw non-Orthodox residents to Jerusalem.

Olmert said the project's plan changed after he ceased to be Jerusalem mayor and that he was not involved in it after he left office.

"I want to clarify: In recent years, during the time that I was involved in the state of Israel's most critical matters, the police opened six criminal investigations of bribery against me ? and all six cases that focused on bribery were closed," Olmert said. "Among them was the Bank Leumi case, which was characterized as the most serious corruption case in Israeli history, as were the Cremieux affair and others."

Olmert said the probes have caused him distress, "but not for a moment did I imagine not cooperating with Israel's police investigation," he said.

Olmert, who is already on trial in another corruption case, cut short a trip abroad and returned to Israel early Thursday following reports alleging his involvement.

Olmert's attorney, Eli Zohar, sent a letter to Jerusalem District Attorney Eli Abarbanel on Sunday, asking that the prosecutor's office coordinate the scheduling of any police interrogation of Olmert. However, no response has yet been received.

Police have already questioned dozens of figures connected to the construction project, some of whom testified that Olmert and other senior Jerusalem officials were involved in the suspected graft.

Some of the testimonies went into detail regarding the mechanism with which the funds were allegedly transferred.

Police believe that Olmert received his money through two channels: first through his close friend and associate attorney Uri Messer, who was arrested last week; and second, through his former by bureau chief, Shula Zaken, who is currently abroad and expected to be questioned by police upon her return.

The Rishon Letzion District Court on Thursday released Messer to house arrest on the condition that he would stay outside of Jerusalem and the surrounding area.

The court ruled Messer will have to pay bail in cash, and will be forbidden from traveling abroad for a period of 180 days and from contacting other suspects in the case.

Meanwhile, a Petah Tikva court on Thursday rejected appeals from four other suspects in the case. Hillel Charney, Avigdor Kelner, Eliyahu Hasson and Uri Sheetrit will remain in prison until April 21.

Police announced on Wednesday the arrest of Uri Lupolianski, a rabbi who succeeded Olmert as Jerusalem's mayor and held the post until 2008, in an investigation into whether bribes amounting to millions of dollars were paid for building permits.

No charges have been filed against Lupolianski, who was a deputy mayor under Olmert.

Lupolianski, who was Jerusalem's mayor from 2003 to 2008, is suspected of receiving more than NIS 3 million in bribes from Charney, owner of the site on which the Holyland project was built, in exchange for facilitating the project. Source

Ehud Olmert indicted on three corruption charges in Israel From
August 30 2009

Beaten College Student John McKenna Will Sue Police, Lawyer Says

2010-04-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

One Officer Suspended After Incident, Police Promised Investigation

The University of Maryland student whose beating was caught on video plans to sue the police officers he has accused of assaulting him, his lawyer said today.

John McKenna, 21, is still recovering from the physical injuries he received last month when he got caught up in a celebration of his school basketball team's win over Duke. Newly released video shows three Prince George's County police officers in riot gear ramming the student and then beating him with batons.

Left unconscious in the street, McKenna suffered a concussion and defensive-type bruises on his arms. He needed eight staples in his skull to close his head wound, his lawyer, Chris Griffiths, told "Good Morning America."

"He's a young man ... and he's recovering from the physical injuries," he said, "but obviously there was quite a bit of emotional distress he suffered in the incident."

One officer has been suspended and authorities have promised a thorough investigation into the incident on a College Park, Md., street, which was documented in a police report that Griffiths called a "cover-up." But Griffiths said he and his client want to make sure the officers involved are held accountable in civil court.

Griffiths said today that the police abuse continued even out of sight of the video camera. In the ambulance, he charged, McKenna was told not to make a fuss about his injuries. Griffiths said that was because injuries as severe as what the officers allegedly inflicted on the college student would have required more paperwork that would have contradicted the police report.

"On the way to the jail, officers removed the bandages from his head and said, 'Look, if you want to go home tonight, don't complain about your injuries.'"

Jail officials, he said, immediately saw the teen needed medical attention and got him to the hospital.

Photographs show a large gash on McKenna's skull, held together with multiple stitches. They also show sizable cuts and bruises on his body.

"It's clear the charging document is nothing more than a cover for the officers' misconduct," Griffiths said. "By charging him they are able to justify any injuries."

The sworn statement of charges by the officers said that McKenna himself "struck those officers and their horses, causing minor injuries."

The statement described McKenna's injuries as minor, caused when he was "kicked by the horses."

It also claims that McKenna was inciting a crowd. The charges against McKenna have since been dropped.

Multiple Attacks on Campus After Game

Other students on campus said the attack on McKenna wasn't the only time that police beat students the night of the basketball game. One student told WJLA-TV that he witnessed at least five attacks, and McKenna's lawyer has a theory explaining why.

"I think what you had was a situation where they were going to pick a few people out of the crowd and make examples of them in front of the students," said . "They took the extra step of covering up their misconduct by falsely charging."

Police Chief Outraged by Video

Prince George's County Police Chief Roberto Hylton has suspended one of the officers who's been identified on the tape and launched an investigation into the incident.

"I was outraged," said Hylton. "I was very disappointed at the conduct that I saw on the part of my officers on the video tape."

Hylton said that other officers involved in the beating will likely be fired, but McKenna's family thinks the punishment for some officers should be even tougher.

In a statement released to WJLA-TV, the family wrote, "Some of these characters ought to go to jail. ... Some ought to be booted off the force, and the remainder should be properly trained to discover that force is not always necessary, and brutality is always wrong."

Source

McKenna is happily dancing down the street see’s the officer on a horse.

McKenna stops, then backs away. The officer on horse back moves towards him.

And then three officers in riot gear attack him. Keep that in mind as you watch the Video below.

Canadian Press would not publish this: Jewish Canadians Concerned About Suppression of Criticism of Israel

2010-04-04T21:28:00.000-07:00

March 15, 2009 - 3:34pm

This statement was rejected by both the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail (as an op-ed). Please help this important statement get into broad circulation - pass it on to your networks (faculty, community, MPs, university presidents, unions etc.). You may also wish to write to the Star and Globe editorials and express your dismay that they have chosen not to publish it.

Jewish Canadians Concerned About Suppression of Criticism of Israel

James Deutsch, M.D., Ph.D.

Judith Deutsch, M.S.W., R.S.W.

Miriam Garfinkle, M.D.

Over 150 Jewish Canadians signed a statement expressing their concerns about

the campaign to suppress criticism of Israel that is being carried on within

Canada. The signatories include many prominent Canadians, including Ursula

Franklin O.C., Anton Kuerti O.C., Naomi Klein, Dr. Gabor Mate, and

professors Meyer Brownstone (recipient of Pearson Peace Medal), Natalie

Zemon Davis, Michael Neumann, and Judy Rebick. *

The signatories are particularly concerned that unfounded accusations of

anti-Semitism deflect attention from Israel's accountability for what many

have called war crimes in Gaza. They state that B'nai Brith and the

Canadian Jewish Congress have led campaigns to silence criticism of Israel

on university campuses, in labor unions and in other groups. Immigration

Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff unquestioningly

echo the views of these particular Jewish organizations.

They strongly state that they are against all expressions of racism. While

firmly committed to resisting any form of prejudice against Jewish people,

their statement explicitly states that these spurious allegations of

anti-Semitism bring the anti-Communist terror of the 1950s vividly to mind.

The statement underlines the immeasurable suffering and injustice to the

Palestinian people due to the severe poverty, daily humiliations, and

military invasions inflicted by the State of Israel.

Statement: Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of

Israel

We are Jewish Canadians concerned about all expressions of racism,

anti-Semitism, and social injustice. We believe that the Holocaust legacy

"Never again" means never again for all peoples. It is a tragic turn of

history that the State of Israel, with its ideals of democracy and its dream

of being a safe haven for Jewish people, causes immeasurable suffering and

injustice to the Palestinian people.

We are appalled by recent attempts of prominent Jewish organizations and

leading Canadian politicians to silence protest against the State of Israel.

We are alarmed by the escalation of fear tactics. Charges that those

organizing Israel Apartheid Week or supporting an academic boycott of Israel

are anti-Semites promoting hatred bring the anti-Communist terror of the

1950s vividly to mind. We believe this serves to deflect attention from

Israel's flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.

B'nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress have pressured university

presidents and administrations to silence debate and discussion specifically

regarding Palestine/Israel. In a full-page ad in a national newspaper,

B'nai Brith urged donors to withhold funds from universities because

"anti-Semitic hate fests" were being allowed on campuses. Immigration

Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff have echoed these

arguments. While university administrators have resisted demands to shut

down Israel Apartheid week, some Ontario university presidents have bowed to

this disinformation campaign by suspending and fining students, confiscating

posters, and infringing on free speech.

We do not believe that Israel acts in self-defense. Israel is the largest

recipient of US foreign aid, receiving $3 million/day. It has the fourth

strongest army in the world. Before the invasion of Gaza on 27 December

2008, Israel's siege had already created a humanitarian catastrophe there,

with severe impoverishment, malnutrition, and destroyed infrastructure. It

is crucial that forums for discussion of Israel's accountability to the

international community for what many have called war crimes be allowed to

proceed unrestricted by specious claims of anti-Semitism.

We recognize that anti-Semitism is a reality in Canada as elsewhere, and we

are fully committed to resisting any act of hatred against Jews. At the

same time, we condemn false charges of anti-Semitism against student

organizations, unions, and other groups and people exercising their

democratic right to freedom of speech and association regarding legitimate

criticism of the State of Israel.

Signatories:

Abigail Bakan

Adam Balsam

Sharon Baltman

Julia Barnett

Lainie Basman

Jody Berland

Sam Blatt

Geri Blinik

Anita Block

Elizabeth Block

Sheila Block

Hannah Briemberg

Mark Brill

Stephen Brot

Meyer Brownstone

Eliza Burroughs

Smadar Carmon

Gyda Chud

Charles P. Cohen

Nathalie Cohen

David Copeland

Natalie Zemon Davis

Eliza Deutsch

James Deutsch

Judith Deutsch

Abbe Edelson

Jack Etkin

Elle Flanders

Danielle Frank

Ursula Franklin

Dan Freeman-Maloy

Miriam Garfinkle

Alisa Gayle

Jack Gegenberg

Mark Golden

Brenda Goldstein

Sue Goldstein

Cy Gonick

Marnina Gonick

Rachel Gotthilf

Amy Gottleib

Kevin A. Gould

Daina Green

Lisa Frances Greenspoon

Ricardo Grinspun

Cathy Gulkin

Rachel Gurofsky

Deboran Guterman

Yesse Gutman

Freda Guttman

Judy Haiven

Michael Hanna-Fein

Jean Hanson

Jan Heynen

Maria Heynen

Adam Hofmann

Jake Javanshir

Jeannie Kamins

Marylin Kanee

Howard S. Kaplan

Gilda Katz

Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta

Mira Khazzam

Bonnie Sher Klein

Mark Klein

Martin Klein

Naomi Klein

Joshua Katz-Rosene

Ryan Katz-Rosene

Judy Koch

Anton Kuerti

Jason Kunin

Aaron Lakoff

Michael Lambek

Natalie LaRoche

Richard Borshay Lee

Andy Lehrer

Gabriel Levin

Gabriel Levine

Joel Lexchin

Kim Linekin

Abby Lippman

Lee Lorch

Martin Lukacs

Audrey Macklin

Elise Maltin

Richard Marcuse

Wayne Mark

Gabor Mate

Arthur Milner

Anna Miransky

Dorit Naaman

Joanne Naiman

Neil Naiman

Michael Neumann

David-Marc Newman

David Noble

Clare O'Connor

Robin Ostow

Andre W. Payant

Jenny Peto

Simone Powell

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Fabienne Presentey

Yacov Rabkin

Diana Ralph

Naomi Rankin

Judy Rebick

Ester Reiter

Jillian Rogin

Richard Roman

Joseph Rosen

Herman Rosenfeld

Martha Roth

Marty Roth

Ruben Roth

E.Natalie Rothman

B. Sack

Ben Saifer

Miriam Sampaio

Jacob Scheir

Fred Schloessinger

Alan Sears

Shlomit Segal

Edward H. Shaffer

Noa Shaindlinger

Ray Shankman

Eva Sharell

Elliot Shek

Sid Shniad

Max Silverman

Samuel Singer

Elizabeth Solloway

Susan Starkman

Greg Starr

Jonathan Sterne

Jeremy Stolow

Rhonda Sussman

Vera Szoke

Joe Tannenbaum

Howard Tessler

Marion Traub-Werner

Ceyda Turan

Sandra Tychsen

Cheryl Wagner

Jon McPhedran Waitzer

David Wall

Naomi Binder Wall

Kathy Wazana

Karen Weisberg

Barry Weisleder

Paul Weinberg

Judith Weisman

Suzanne Weiss

Abraham Weizfeld

Ernie Yacub

B.H. Yael

Yedida Zalik

Melvin Zimmerman

Source

This is in reference to this

Israel: Attempting to take away Canadians Freedom of Speech Updated April 4 2010

Fake Al Qaeda, Fake Passports, Fake planes

2010-04-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

Thought I would start a new list today. Got to love a good list.
April 3 2010
The Phony (Mossad) Al Qaeda Cell in Palestine
Adam Yahiye Gadahn: The Fake Terrorist
The FBI lists Gadahn’s aliases as Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, Abu Suhayb, Yihya Majadin Adams, Adam Pearlman, and Yayah.
But Adam Pearlmen is his REAL name! Adam is the grandson of the late Carl K. Pearlman; a prominent Jewish urologist in Orange County. Source

Israeli agents accused of creating fake al-Qaeda cell

Was Fake al Qaeda Member Adam Gadahn Arrested In Pakistan
March 8, 2010
By Keelan Balderson
Conflicting reports have emerged out of Pakistan that the alleged American born al Qaeda Member Adam Gadahn has been arrested. What needs to be explained should it actually turn out to be Gadahn, is that he’s already been exposed as an Israeli-Zionist agent through the ADL.
As reported by CBS:
CBS News was told by sources in the Pakistan government that it was Gadahn, even after U.S. officials refused to confirm it was the California native for whom a $1 million reward has been posted.
Later, CBS News’ Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad reported that earlier reports the detained individual was Gadahn proved false. According to a Pakistan security official who spoke with CBS News on condition of anonymity, the arrested individual is in fact “a Taliban militant leader who is known as Abu Yahya.”
The article then continues to reaffirm the deception that Gadahn is a real al Qaeda terrorist, and that the arrest is a severe blow to the terrorists.
WideShutUK exposes Adam Gadahn, otherwise known as Adam Pearlman
In truth this Gadahn fellow, who goes by several aliases like all criminals (Adam Pearlman, ahya Majadin Adams and Azzam al-Amriki) is actually an American born Zionist-Jew with ties to the Anti Defamation League, who has been caught several times putting out fake al Qaeda propaganda tapes. The Zionist movement of course has a religious and ideological motive in targeting Muslims in the Middle-East and on US soil. Mossad agents were present at 9/11, have been involved in the war on terror from the start and are now targeting Iran and pressuring the US to strike. For entire story go to Source
Mossad and al-Qaeda ‘both use fake Irish passports’
And the former US special military aide Oliver North, in his autobiography, said that an Israeli military cargo plane was repainted in Aer Lingus livery to smuggle arms into Iran in 1986 when the US was secretly supplying weapons to Iran as part of a deal to release American hostages. For entire story go to Source

Gee they even fake planes?????? My oh my. What don’t they fake?

Fake Passports, Fake Al Qaeda, and Fake planes what else does Israel create that is fake? Was it Israel that created all the fake Bin Laden tapes and videos.

There have been numerous tapes and Video come out with Bin Laden but he died in December of 2001.

CIA and Mossad join forces with AlQaeda for Proxy Terrorist Attacks on Iranian Regime

Video from March 09, 2010

One has to wonder just how many Al Qaeda attacks were actually Done by Mossad. How many Fake things do we need, before this is investigated.

Maybe Al Qaeda cells are just Mossad fabrications.

We know that Al Quaeda was just a Data Base, created by the CIA.

How did a “Data Base” get turned into a terrorist organization? So did Mossad create Al Quaeda with the help of the US?

Maybe they did. After all the US did need that Pearl Harbor thing.

The Underpants Bomber- Well there to is a few Israeli connections including “Mossad that being His own Father”. They really wanted to sell those Body Scanners.

How many so called Al Qaeda cells were actually set up by Mossad one has to wonder?

Israel does a lot of fake stuff including False Flags. The USS Liberty, or how about Operation Trojan was one of the Mossad’s greatest successes. The Lavon affair, Etc etc. Then there are all the Assassinations using Fake passports.

Israel does fake stuff all the time.

Nothing new, but should be investigated, as to just how many things that were told to us were done by Al Quaeda ,were really actually cone by Israel.

Fake stuff would help the US keep their wars going. Profit profit profit.

There was never any Al Qaeda in Iraq until the Iraq war. Saddam and Bin Laden never had anything to do with each other. That connection was fabricated y the US gov and the press.

Even the hijackers on 9/11 could have been anyone. Seems some of the so called hijackers were actually still alive after 9/11. Seems some of them were fakes as well. Now isn’t that special. So who created the fake hijackers?

To all the Al Qaeda recruits out there stop working for Israel. Please. Just a point of interest.

We all know if one was set up by Mossad there are more.

Many of the fake tapes come from Intelcenter,
Intelcenter, a group that regularly ‘obtains’ Al-Qaeda tapes. Intelcenter is an offshoot of IDEFENSE, which was staffed by a senior military psy-op intelligence officer Jim Melnick, who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld.
Settler even used fake documents to seal Palestinian land.
Officials in Turkey traced the documents the lawyers requested and provided affidavits that the settlers’ land claims were forged. The search of the Ottoman archives, Abu Ahmad said, had failed to locate any title deeds belonging to a Jewish group for the land in Sheikh Jarrah. Source
“Israel Did 9-11″ – U.S. Military Expert Supports Bollyn Thesis April 3, 2010
“What we need to stand up and say is that not only did they attack the USS Liberty, they did 9/11. They did it. I have had long conversations over the past two weeks with contacts at the Army War College, at the Headquarters Marine Corps, and I have made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period . . .
“And the Zionists are playing this as truly an all-or-nothing exercise, because if they lose this one, if the American people ever realize what happened, they’re done.”
For entire story Source

The Lehman Scam and Fuld’s Mossad Connection
It should be noted that Richard S. Fuld is closely tied to Menachem Atzmon, the Israeli Mossadnik who owned the passenger-screening/airport security company that was behind getting the 19 Arab hijackers on the planes of 9-11. Uzi Ruskin, Menachem Atzmon, and his Mossad-funded comrades took over the failing United Merchants & Manufacturers, Inc. in 1993 – from Fuld’s uncle, Martin Schwab, Richard’s mother’s brother.
I wrote in early October 2008 about the criminal activity of A.I.G. and Lehman, crimes which led to the trillion dollar bail-out: For the rest Source

Fake, fake and more fake slop.

An this, well this is just sad. Almost amusing. Fake Netanyahu. Bibi makes it personal

Laugh if you will but it it true Benzion Netanyahu (born Benzion Mileikowsky, March 25, 1910

Why the Blockade on Gaza the Natural Gas. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas also said no. Could be why all the lies are told about Hamas.

Gaza War Why?: Natural Gas valued at over $4 billion MAYBE?

Dubai police chief to seek Netanyahu arrest

Foreign control of large swathes of the Sinai Peninsula obtained through fraud and Israeli involvement

E-book on Jewish National Fund’s role in colonization of Palestine

Israel “blackmails Gaza’s patients to turn them into collaborators”

Recent

Israel And Apartheid: By People Who Knew Apartheid

Japan Tokunoshima islanders reject US Marines base

Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Depravity

Two-Thirds of Boys in Afghan Jails Are Brutalised, Study Finds

Israel bombards Gaza – and threatens worse

Israel Gags News on Extra-Judicial Killings

Update April 2 2010: Disease Threatens Haitian Children

Mossad using Spanish passport Arrested in Algeria

Source

Israel And Apartheid: By People Who Knew Apartheid

2010-04-03T23:08:00.000-07:00

1. André Brink, one of South Africa’s leading authors, whose opposition to the apartheid regime resulted in his novels becoming the first books in Afrikaans to be banned by the government. This extract is from his memoir, A Fork In The Road (in French, from which the excerpt is taken, Mes bifurcations, pub. Actes Sud, Arles, 2010). Translation mine.

[T]he decisive experience of this trip (in 2002) was the visit to the Palestinian University of Birzeit. I’d read a lot about the Middle East conflict; in Salzburg and elsewhere, I had long impassioned conversations with Palestinian writers. I still remember my discussion with Hanan Mikhail Ashrawi, when she visited the Cape years ago. On several occasions before his untimely death, I also benefited from the wisdom and the gentle humanity of Edward Said.
But this immersion in the terrible reality of this tragic place, of this land and its people, felt to me like very few other things in my life. I felt as if I’d rediscovered the hideous heart of apartheid: the way in which Palestinians, including some of the most wonderful people I’d ever met, are subjected to one of the cruelest forms of oppression on earth; the web of hypocrisy and lies through which the Israeli side tries to obscure and twist the truth. During this visit there was one particularly shocking event: an old Palestinian man had his shack bulldozed by the Israeli army because he had presumed to install a water tank on its roof to catch the few drops of rain that fell there.
I saw the network of modern highways built for the Israelis, and the pathetic little roads to which the Palestinians are confined; I saw olive groves, often the only means of subsistence for Palestinian farmers, uprooted by the Israelis; I saw the proliferation of new Israeli settlements in the heart of Palestinian land, built there in contravention of all the agreements signed, just to reinforce the presence and the power of Israelis in territory that does not belong to them. I had already seen this, in the era of the oppression of blacks by whites in South Africa. I had already heard the same pious excuses and explanations.
When I look back on it now, I can’t help but remember the terrible images of Dachau and Auschwitz. Even if Israel has not embarked upon a genocide of the same magnitude as the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansing it is inflicting on the Palestinians is morally equivalent to a slower and smaller-scale version of the death camps. I struggle to understand how a people that has found it so difficult to recover from the horrors of the Holocaust can go on to do to others what was once done to it.

h/t Nouvelles d’Orient.

2. John Dugard, South African Professor of International Law; formerly Special Rapporteur on Palestine to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial discrimination that the white minority in South Africa employed to maintain power over the black majority. It was characterized by the denial of political rights to blacks, the fragmentation of the country into white areas and black areas (called Bantustans) and by the imposition on blacks of restrictive measures designed to achieve white superiority, racial separation and white security.
The “pass system,” which sought to prevent the free movement of blacks and to restrict their entry to the cities, was rigorously enforced. Blacks were forcibly “relocated,” and they were denied access to most public amenities and to many forms of employment. The system was enforced by a brutal security apparatus in which torture played a significant role.
…
Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories has many features of colonization. At the same time it has many of the worst characteristics of apartheid. The West Bank has been fragmented into three areas – north (Jenin and Nablus), center (Ramallah) and south (Hebron) – which increasingly resemble the Bantustans of South Africa.
Restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by a rigid permit system enforced by some 520 checkpoints and roadblocks resemble, but in severity go well beyond, apartheid’s “pass system.” And the security apparatus is reminiscent of that of apartheid, with more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons and frequent allegations of torture and cruel treatment.
Many aspects of Israel’s occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites.
– Israelis adopt what South Africa dropped; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 29 Nov 2006.

3. Breyten Breytenbach, South Africa’s preeminent Afrikaner poet, who was convicted of treason in South Africa in 1975, and served seven years in jail for his opposition to apartheid.

I’m a writer born in South Africa now living and working abroad. For some time back there I also grew up among a “chosen people” who behaved as Herrenvolk — as all those who believe themselves singularized by suffering or entrusted with a special mission from God.
I apologize if my comparative allusion to Israel as Herrenvolk hurts because of the echoes from a recent past when, in Europe, so many Jews were the victims of a “final solution.” But how else is one to attempt describing the comportment of your armies when one is flooded by the horror of what you’re doing?
These rough equivalences don’t come lightly. As a writer I’m deeply apprised of the need to keep the words uncluttered of any urge to rouse easy emotions. This is what facile comparisons do–they nullify understanding the complexity of the observed phenomena by a rush of outrage heating the throat and staining the adversary with the vomit of borrowed or vicarious condemnation. Apartheid was not Nazism, though to say so was a striking slogan. And the policies now perpetrated by Israeli forces on the Palestinian people should not be equated with Apartheid. Each one of these processes and systems is evil enough to merit a thorough description of its own historical singularity.
And yet… (continues)
– An Open Letter to General Ariel Sharon; The Nation, 10 Apr 2002.

4. Desmond Tutu , former Archbishop of Cape Town; headed post-apartheid South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were the Jews. Jews almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust center in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.
What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visits to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us blacks in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. They seemed to derive so much joy from our humiliation.
…

People are scared in this country [the U.S.] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? This is God’s world. For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust…

– Occupation is Oppression, 13 Apr 2002.

5. Ronnie Kasrils, South African Member of Parliament. Member of the ANC Executive Committee 1987-2007; South Africa’s Minster for Intelligence Services 2004-2008, Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry (1999-2004), and Deputy Minister of Defense (1994-1999).

May I start by quoting a South African who emphatically stated as far back as 1961 that “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel like South Africa, is an apartheid state” (Rand Daily Mail, 23 Novemeber 1961). Those were not the words of Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu or Ruth First, but were uttered by none other than the architect of apartheid itself, racist Prime Minister, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd. (continues)
He was irked by the criticism of apartheid policy and Harold Macmillan’s “Winds of Change” speech and the growing international outcry following the Sharpeville massacre, in contrast to the West’s unconditional support for Zionist Israel.
To be sure Verwoerd was correct. Both apartheid South Africa and Zionist Israel were colonial, settler states created on the basis of the harsh dispossession of the land and birthright of the indigenous people. This is unblushingly documented in Israel’s case from the time of Herzl through Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan to Sharon et al. Both states preached and implemented a policy based on racial ethnicity; the sole claim of Jews in Israel and whites in South Africa to exclusive citizenship; monopolised rights in law regarding the ownership of land, property, business; superior access to education, health, social, sporting and cultural amenities, pensions and municipal services at the expense of the original indigenous population; the virtual monopoly membership of military and security forces, and privileged development along their own racial supremacist lines – even both countries marriage laws are designed to safeguard racial “purity”. The fact that the Palestinian minority within Israel is allowed to vote hardly redresses the injustice in all other matters of basic human rights. In any case those Palestinians allowed to stand for election to the Knesset do so on condition that they dare not question Israel’s existence as a Jewish state…
– Address to the Re-envisioning Israel/Palestine international conference; held in Cape Town on 12 June, 2009.
Source:

Related: Why would anyone think its apartheid?

"The Children of Gaza" From Channel 4 Dispatches

2010-03-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

On March 5 2010, Channel 4 aired an episode of Dispatches entitled "The Children of Gaza". It focused on the lives of a few of the children living in that small strip of Palestinian land whose lives were devastated when, 15 months ago, Israel launched its military attack on their homes, killing many of their parents and relatives, and shattering their already fragile existences. It showed how they have bravely tried to deal with their losses and bereavements and have tried to move on with their lives, and simultaneously how Israel has ensured that this is well near impossible as a result of the children’s literal incarceration in Gaza due to Israel’s illegal and ongoing siege. The documentary focused on how they have been struggling to deal with the fallout of their physical injuries as well as their psychological scars which, in all probability, they will never fully recover from. For once, this documentary was an opportunity for the children of Gaza themselves to speak out and to tell their own stories instead of it being told on their behalf by propagandists with a vested interest in how these children are portrayed. Listen to the Children.

Source

Pictures of Gaza during Cast Lead

Israel has been spying in the US for Years

2010-03-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

Scratch a counterintelligence officer in the U.S. government and they'll tell you that Israel is not a friend to the United States.
By Christopher Ketcham
March 2010

This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S.. The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject oft-discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state. The void where the facts should sit is filled instead with the hallucinations of conspiracy theory -- the kind in which, for example, agents of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency, engineer the 9/11 attacks, while 4,000 Israelis in the Twin Towers somehow all get word to escape before the planes hit. The effect, as disturbing as it is ironic, is that the less the truth is addressed, the more noxious the falsity that spreads.

Israel's spying on the U.S., however, is a matter of public record, and neither Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S., yet public discussion about it is almost nil. conspiracy nor theory is needed to present the evidence. When the FBI produces its annual report to Congress concerning "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel and its intelligence services often feature prominently as a threat second only to China. In 2005 the FBI noted, for example, that Israel maintains "an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States." A key Israeli method, said the FBI report, is computer intrusion. In 1996, the Defense Intelligence Service, a branch of the Pentagon, issued a warning that "the collection of scientific intelligence in the United States [is] the third highest priority of Israeli Intelligence after information on its Arab neighbors and information on secret U.S. policies or decisions relating to Israel." In 1979, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a scathing survey of Israeli intelligence activities that targeted the U.S. government. Like any worthy spy service, Israeli intelligence early on employed wiretaps as an effective tool, according to the CIA report. In 1954, the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv discovered in his office a hidden microphone "planted by the Israelis," and two years later telephone taps were found in the residence of the U.S. military attaché. In a telegram to Washington, the ambassador at the time cabled a warning: "Department must assume that all conversations [in] my office are known to the Israelis." The former ambassador to Qatar, Andrew Killgore, who also served as a foreign officer in Jerusalem and Beirut, told me Israeli taps of U.S. missions and embassies in the Middle East were part of a "standard operating procedure."

According to the 1979 CIA report, the Israelis, while targeting political secrets, also devote "a considerable portion of their covert operations to obtaining scientific and technical intelligence." These operations involved, among other machinations, "attempts to penetrate certain classified defense projects in the United States." The penetrations, according to the CIA report, were effected using "deep cover enterprises," which the report described as "firms and organizations, some specifically created for, or adaptable to, a specific objective." At the time, the CIA singled out government-subsidized companies such as El Al airlines and Zim, the Israeli shipping firm, as deep cover enterprises. Other deep cover operations included the penetration of a U.S. company that provided weapons-grade uranium to the Department of Defense during the 1960s; Israeli agents eventually spirited home an estimated 200 pounds of uranium as the bulwark in Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. Moles have burrowed on Israel’s behalf throughout the U.S. intelligence services. Perhaps most infamous was the case of Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish-American employed as a civilian analyst with the U.S. Navy who purloined an estimated 800,000 code-word protected documents from inside the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and numerous other U.S. agencies. While Pollard was sentenced to life in prison, counterintelligence investigators at the FBI suspected he was linked to a mole far higher in the food chain, ensconced somewhere in the DIA, but this suspected Israeli operative, nicknamed "Mr. X," was never found. Following the embarrassment of the Pollard affair -- and its devastating effects on U.S. national security, as testified by then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (who allegedly stated that Pollard "should have been shot") -- the Israeli government vowed never again to pursue espionage against its ally and chief benefactor.

Fast-forward a quarter century, and the vow has proven empty. In 2004, the authoritative Jane's Intelligence Group noted that Israel's intelligence organizations "have been spying on the U.S. and running clandestine operations since Israel was established." The former deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI, Harry B. Brandon, last year told Congressional Quarterly magazine that "the Israelis are interested in commercial as much as military secrets. They have a muscular technology sector themselves." According to CQ, "One effective espionage tool is forming joint partnerships with U.S. companies to supply software and other technology products to U.S. government agencies."

Best-selling author James Bamford now adds another twist in this history of infiltration in a book published last October, "The Shadow Factory," which forms the latest installment in his trilogy of investigations into the super-secret National Security Agency. Bamford is regarded among journalists and intelligence officers as the nation’s expert on the workings of the NSA, whose inner sanctums he first exposed to the public in 1982. (So precise is his reporting that NSA officers once threw him a book party, despite the fact that he continually reveals their secrets.) The agency has come a long way in the half-century since its founding in 1952. Armed with digital technology and handed vast new funding and an almost limitless mandate in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bamford writes, the NSA has today "become the largest, most costly, and most technologically sophisticated spy organization the world has ever known." The NSA touches on every facet of U.S. communications, its mega-computers secretly filtering "millions of phone calls and e-mails" every hour of operation. For those who have followed the revelations of the NSA’s "warrantless wiretapping" program in the New York Times in 2005 and the Wall Street Journal last year, what Bamford unveils in "The Shadow Factory" is only confirmation of the worst fears: "There is now the capacity," he writes of the NSA’s tentacular reach into the private lives of Americans, "to make tyranny total."

Much less has been reported about the high-tech Israeli wiretapping firms that service U.S. telecommunications companies, primarily AT&T and Verizon, whose networks serve as the chief conduits for NSA surveillance. Even less is known about the links between those Israeli companies and the Israeli intelligence services. But what Bamford suggests in his book accords with the history of Israeli spying in the U.S.: Through joint partnerships with U.S. telecoms, Israel may be a shadow arm of surveillance among the tentacles of the NSA. In other words, when the NSA violates constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure to vacuum up the contents of your telephone conversations and e-mail traffic, the Israeli intelligence services may be gathering it up too -- a kind of mirror tap that is effectively a two-government-in-one violation.

***

On its face, the overseas outsourcing of high-tech services would seem de rigueur in a competitive globalized marketplace. Equipment and services from Israel’s telecom sector are among the country’s prime exports, courtesy of Israeli entrepreneurs who have helped pioneer wireless telephony, voicemail and voice recognition software, instant messaging, phone billing software, and, not least, "communications interception solutions." Israeli telecom interception hardware and software is appraised as some of the best in the world.

By the mid-1990s, Israeli wiretap firms would arrive in the U.S. in a big way. The key to the kingdom was the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which was Congress’ solution for wiretapping in the digital age. Gone are the days when wiretaps were conducted through on-site tinkering with copper switches. CALEA mandated that telephonic surveillance operate through computers linked directly into the routers and hubs of telecom companies -- a spyware apparatus matched in real-time, all the time, to American telephones and modems. CALEA effectively made spy equipment an inextricable ligature in telephonic life. Without CALEA, the NSA in its spectacular surveillance exploits could not have succeeded.

AT&T and Verizon, which together manage as much as 90 percent of the nation’s communications traffic, contracted with Israeli firms in order to comply with CALEA. AT&T employed the services of Narus Inc., which was founded in Israel in 1997. It was Narus technology that AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, a 22-year technician with the company, famously unveiled in a 2006 affidavit that described the operations in AT&T’s secret tapping room at its San Francisco facilities. (Klein’s affidavit formed the gravamen of a lawsuit against AT&T mounted by the Electronic Freedom Foundation, but the lawsuit died when Congress passed the telecom immunity bill last year.) According to Klein, the Narus supercomputer, the STA 6400, was "known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets." The Narus system, which was maintained by Narus technicans, also provided a real-time mirror image of all data streaming through AT&T routers, an image to be rerouted into the computers of the NSA.

According to Jim Bamford, who cites knowledgeable sources, Verizon’s eavesdropping program is run by a competing Israeli firm called Verint, a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, which was founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer in 1984. Incorporated in New York and Tel Aviv, Comverse is effectively an arm of the Israeli government: 50 percent of its R&D costs are reimbursed by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. The Verint technology deployed throughout Verizon’s network, known as STAR-GATE, boasts an array of Orwellian capabilities. "With STAR-GATE, service providers can access communications on virtually any type of network," according to the company’s literature. "Designed to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent sessions, call data records, and communications, STAR-GATE transparently accesses targeted communications without alerting subscribers or disrupting service." As with the Narus system, the point is to be able to tap into communications unobtrusively, in real time, all the time. A Verint spinoff firm, PerSay, takes the tap to the next stage, deploying "advanced voice mining," which singles out "a target’s voice within a large volume of intercepted calls, regardless of the conversation content or method of communication." Verint’s interception systems have gone global since the late 1990s, and sales in 2006 reached $374 million (a doubling of its revenues over 2003). More than 5,000 organizations -- mostly intelligence services and police units -- in at least 100 countries today use Verint technology.

What troubles Bamford is that executives and directors at companies like Narus and Verint formerly worked at or maintain close connections with the Israeli intelligence services, including Mossad; the internal security agency Shin Bet; and the Israeli version of the NSA, Unit 8200, an arm of the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence Corps. Unit 8200, which Bamford describes as "hypersecret," is a key player in the eavesdropping industrial complex in Israel, its retired personnel dispersed throughout dozens of companies. According to Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily, "Many of the [eavesdropping] technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by [Unit 8200] veterans." A former commander of Unit 8200, cited by Bamford, states that Verint technology was "directly influenced by 8200 technology….[Verint parent company] Comverse’s main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology." The implications for U.S. national security, writes Bamford, are "unnerving." "Virtually the entire American telecommunications system," he avers, "is bugged by [Israeli-formed] companies with possible ties to Israel’s eavesdropping agency." Congress, he says, maintains no oversight of these companies’ operations, and even their contracts with U.S. telecoms -- contracts pivotal to NSA surveillance -- are considered trade secrets and go undisclosed in company statements.

U.S. intelligence officers have not been quiet in their concerns about Verint (I reported on this matter in CounterPunch.org last September). "Phone calls are intercepted, recorded, and transmitted to U.S. investigators by Verint, which claims that it has to be ‘hands on’ with its equipment to maintain the system," says former CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi. The "hands on" factor is what bothers Giraldi, specifically because of the possibility of a "trojan" embedded in Verint wiretap software. A trojan in information security hardware/software is a backdoor that can be accessed remotely by parties who normally would not have access to the secure system. Allegations of widespread trojan spying have rocked the Israeli business community in recent years. "Top Israeli blue chip companies," reported the AP in 2005, "are suspected of using illicit surveillance software to steal information from their rivals and enemies." Over 40 companies have come under scrutiny. "It is the largest cybercrime case in Israeli history," Boaz Guttmann, a veteran cybercrimes investigator with the Israeli national police, told me. "Trojan horse espionage is part of the way of life of companies in Israel. It’s a culture of spying."

In a wide-ranging four-part investigation into Israel-linked espionage that aired in December 2001, Carl Cameron, a correspondent at Fox News Channel, reported the distress among U.S. intelligence officials warning about possible trojans cached in Verint technology. Sources told Cameron that "while various FBI inquiries into [Verint] have been conducted over the years," the inquiries had "been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks." Cameron also cited a 1999 internal FCC document indicating that "several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system." Much of this access was facilitated through "remote maintenance."

The Fox News report reverberated throughout U.S. law enforcement, particularly at the Drug Enforcement Agency, which makes extensive use of wiretaps for narcotics interdiction. Security officers at DEA, an adjunct of the Justice Department, began examining the agency’s own relationship with Comverse/Verint. In 1997, DEA had transformed its wiretap infrastructure with the $25 million procurement from Comverse/Verint of a technology called "T2S2" -- "translation and transcription support services" -- with Comverse/Verint contracted to provide the hardware and software. The company was also tasked with "support services, training, upgrades, enhancements and options throughout the life of the contract," according to the DEA’s "contracts and acquisitions" notice. In the wake of the Fox News investigation, however, the director of security programs at DEA, Heidi Raffanello, was rattled enough to issue an internal communiqué on the matter, dated Dec. 18, 2001. Directly referencing Fox News, she worried that "Comverse remote maintenance" was "not addressed in the C&A [contracts and acquisitions] process….It remains unclear if Comverse personnel are security cleared, and if so, who are they and what type of clearances are on record….Bottom line we should have caught it." It is not known what resulted from DEA’s review of the issue of remote maintenance and access by Comverse/Verint.

Bamford devotes a portion of his argument to the detailing of the operations of a third Israeli wiretap company, NICE Systems, which he describes as "a major eavesdropper in the U.S." that "keeps its government and commercial client list very secret." Formed in 1986 by seven veterans of Unit 8200, NICE software "captures voice, email, chat, screen activity, and essential call details," while offering "audio compression technology that performs continuous recordings of up to thousands of analog and digital telephone lines and radio channels." NICE Systems has on at least one occasion shown up on the radar of U.S. counterintelligence. During 2000-2001, when agents at the FBI and the CIA began investigating allegations that Israeli nationals posing as "art students" were in fact conducting espionage on U.S. soil, one of the Israeli "art students" was discovered to be an employee with NICE Systems. Among the targets of the art students were facilities and offices of the Drug Enforcement Agency nationwide. The same Israeli employee of NICE Systems, who was identified as a former operative in the Israeli intelligence services, was carrying a disk that contained a file labeled "DEA Groups." U.S. counterintelligence officers concluded it was a highly suspicious nexus: An Israeli national and alleged spy was working for an Israeli wiretap company while carrying in his possession computer information regarding the Drug Enforcement Agency -- at the same time this Israeli was conducting what the DEA described as "intelligence gathering" about DEA facilities.

***

A former senior counterintelligence official in the Bush administration told me that as early as 1999, "CIA was very concerned about [Israeli wiretapping companies]" -- Verint in particular. "I know that CIA has tried to monitor what the Israelis were doing -- technically watch what they were doing on the networks in terms of remote access. Other countries were concerned as well," said the intelligence official. Jim Bamford, who notes that Verint "can automatically access the mega-terabytes of stored and real-time data secretly and remotely from anywhere," reports that Australian lawmakers in 2004 held hearings on this remote monitoring capability. "[Y]ou can access data from overseas," the lawmakers told a Verint representative during the hearings, "but [the legislature] seems restricted to access data within that system." The Australians found this astonishing. In 2000, the Canadian intelligence service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, conducted "a probe related to allegations that [Israeli] spies used rigged software to hack into Canada's top secret intelligence files," according to an article in the Toronto Star. Several sources in the U.S. intelligence community told me the Canadians liaised with their American counterparts to try to understand the problem. According to the Bush administration official who spoke with me, "the Dutch also had come to the CIA very concerned about what the Israelis were doing with this." The Dutch intelligence service, under contract with Verint, "had discovered strange things were going on -- there was activity on the network, the Israelis uploading and downloading stuff out of the switches, remotely, and apparently using it for their own wiretap purposes. The CIA was very embarrassed to say, ‘We have the same problem.’ But the CIA didn’t have an answer for them. ‘We hear you, we’re surprised, and we understand your concern.’" Indeed, sources in the Dutch counterintelligence community in 2002 claimed there was "strong evidence that the Israeli secret service has uncontrolled access to confidential tapping data collected by the Dutch police and intelligence services," according to the Dutch broadcast radio station Evangelische Omroep (EO). In January 2003, the respected Dutch technology and computing magazine, C’T, ran a follow-up to the EO story, headlined "Dutch Tapping Room not Kosher." The article states: "All tapping equipment of the Dutch intelligence services and half the tapping equipment of the national police force [is] insecure and is leaking information to Israel."

"The key to this whole thing is that Australian meeting," Bamford told me in a recent interview. "They accused Verint of remote access and Verint said they won’t do it again -- which implies they were doing it in the past. It’s a matter of a backdoor into the system, and those backdoors should not be allowed to exist. You can tell by the Australian example that it was certainly a concern of Australian lawmakers."

Congress doesn’t seem to share the concern. "Part of the responsibility of Congress," says Bamford, "is not just to oversee the intelligence community but to look into the companies with which the intelligence community contracts. They’re just very sloppy about this." According to the Bush administration intelligence official who spoke with me, "Frustratingly, I did not get the sense that our government was stepping up to this and grasping the bull by the horns." Another former high level U.S. intelligence official told me, "The fact of the vulnerability of our telecom backbone is indisputable. How it came to pass, why nothing has been done, who has done what -- these are the incendiary questions." There is also the fundamental fact that the wiretap technologies implemented by Verint, Narus and other Israeli companies are fully in place and no alternative is on the horizon. "There is a technical path dependence problem," says the Bush administration official. "I have been told nobody else makes software like this for the big digital switches, so that is part of the problem. Other issues," he adds, "compound the problem" -- referring to the sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

And that, of course, is the elephant in the room. "Whether it’s a Democratic or Republican administration, you don’t bad-mouth Israel if you want to get ahead," says former CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi. "Most of the people in the agency were very concerned about Israeli espionage and Israeli actions against U.S. interests. Everybody was aware of it. Everybody hated it. But they wouldn’t get promoted if they spoke out. Israel has a privileged position and that’s the way things are. It’s crazy. And everybody knows it’s crazy."

Source

Facebook Sent someone elses Password and a Virus

2010-03-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

Today I received two emails from Facebook.

This one was sent to me with my email address on it. But I don not have a Facebook account and it had a Virus to boot. Not very impressed. I can't say for sure these emails came from Facebook or from somewhere else. Don't know, don't really care. So either there is a scam going on or Facebook really messed up. Do be warned however this can happen. So if you get something from
Facebook it may contain a Virus.
Click on screen shot to enlarge.

This was sent to me, but had another persons e-mail address on it. I have sent said person and e-mail to inform them of the mistake. This time of course there was no virus in it. Yes I checked. So now one has to wonder why I received the password for someone else. Click on screen shot to enlarge.

Seems odd that the new passwords comes in a Zip File as well. I didn't open it to see what was actually in the file. Don't really want someone's password for Facebook anyway. So if and When the other person gets back to me, if they are even a real person or not is yet to be known. They like myself may not even have a Facebook account. If they do get back to me, I will update this and let you know what is happening. Until then be aware something fishy is going on.

Israel will not restrict building in occupied East Jerusalem

2010-03-21T20:40:00.000-07:00

East Jerusalem is Occupied Territory:

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has declared his government will not restrict building in occupied East Jerusalem, despite US condemnation of the recent announcement of 1,600 new housing units.

Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that he would make Israel's position on Jerusalem clear during this week's visit to Washington.

"Our policy on Jerusalem is the same policy followed by all Israeli governments for the last 42 years, and it has not changed," he said.

"As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is the same as building in Tel Aviv."

Netanyahu heads to the US capital on Sunday night to address the influential lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and meet with Barack Obama, the US president.

His visit comes amid heightened tensions between Israel and Washington over the settlement announcement, made as Joe Biden, the US vice-president, visited Israel.

The expansion plan was seen as an insult to the US and frayed Israel's usually strong ties with Washington.

Diplomatic activity

The Palestinians pulled out of planned so-called "proximity" talks after Israeli officials announced that the housing units would be built. They have demanded that all construction be stopped before they will return to negotiations.

In the aftermath there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity as major international powers have struggled to restart a peace process stalled for more than a year.

George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, met Netanyahu on Sunday, to present him with the official invitation to meet Obama on Tuesday and push for indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

He maintained pressure for renewed Israeli commitment to peace talks with the Palestinians, but also reassured Israel that the two countries enjoy an "unshakeable bond".

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's Jerusalem correspondent, said: "What we're witnessing is really concerted efforts on the part of the international community to get some sort of peace process going again.

"It's been stagnant; it's been moribund for almost a year and a half now."

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was also in the region on Sunday, criticising Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip during a visit to the Hamas-controlled territory.

Ban said that Israel's policy of closing off the territory is not sustainable and causes "unacceptable suffering".

Israel imposed a tightened blockade after the Hamas movement took full control of the coastal enclave in June 2007.

Ban told Gazans that "we stand with you" as he visited an area damaged by Israel's offensive 14 months ago.

Ban said families were living under "unacceptable, unsustainable conditions".

He saidd that it was "distressing" for him to see houses still damaged, with no reconstruction possible under the blockade.

The blockade has prevented the United Nations from completing housing projects, however, Ban pledged to continue providing aid to Gazans.

"My message to people of Gaza is this: the United Nations will stand with you through this ordeal," he said.

He also called for a prisoner exchange involving Palestinian prisoners and Israeli soldier Gilat Shilad who was captured in 2006.

'Illegal' settlements

The UN secretary-general's visit to Gaza followed a trip to the West Bank the previous day, where he reiterated demands that Israel end settlement building in Palestinian territory.

"Let us be clear, all settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and this must stop," Ban said, speaking at a joint news conference with Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister.

Ban emphasised the commitment of the so-called international Quartet of Middle East negotiators - comprised of the UN, the European Union, Russia and the US - to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

"The Quartet has sent a clear and strong message: we are strongly supporting your efforts to establish an independent and viable Palestinian state," Ban said.

He also met Israeli officials, including Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, as part of his trip.

But the moves on the diplomatic stage were overshadowed by violence on the ground in the West Bank.

Four Palestinians were killed in the past two days in the West Bank.

Source

Map of planned East Jerusalem Housing By Israel March 11 2010

Israel's approval for building 1,600 new housing units for ultra-Orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem has infuriated the Palestinians.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a Palestinian Authority spokesman, told the AFP news agency: "This is a dangerous decision and will hinder the negotiations."

The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now condemned the new project, saying it would "widen the gap with the Palestinians and the two-state solution, which risks becoming obsolete".

According to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, some 50,000 housing units are reported to be in various stages of planning and approval on occupied land in East Jerusalem.

Haaretz says plans for around 20,000 apartments are already in an advanced stage.

A spokesman for the Israeli interior ministry said: "The Jerusalem District Planning Committee today approved a plan which has been in the works for over three years.

"This is a procedural stage in the framework of a long process that will yet continue for some time. The committee meeting was determined in advance and there is no connection to US Vice-President Joe Biden's visit to Israel."

There are still various planning hurdles for the East Jerusalem project to clear, and work is not thought likely to start for at least another two years.

Under pressure from the US, Israel has agreed a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank. However, the moratorium excludes East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.

Israel's continued expansion of settlements is one of the biggest obstacles to the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians, now suspended for more than a year despite months of US-led shuttle diplomacy.

Source

Israeli security forces have forcibily evicted two Palestinian families from a contested East Jerusalem neighbourhood.

The families have lived in Sheikh Jarrah since 1956 but an Israeli court ruled that the homes belonged to Jewish families. Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports from occupied East Jerusalem.

Obama blocks delivery of bunker-busters to Israel

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out Against Israel

2010-03-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

E-book on Jewish National Fund’s role in colonization of Palestine

Rachel Corrie’s parents Get Nasty Letter from professor at Haifa University

US/Israeli Charity uses little Palestinian Childs photo to raise money for Israel’s Hungry

2010-01-13T22:37:00.000-08:00

Update on Meir Panim ad March 8 2010
They have new poster children. Are they Israeli is yet to be known of course.
If by chance they are not be sure to let me know.
Click on Screen shots to enlarge.

New HARRETZ Ad

Here is yet another Israeli Charity you should Check out. Certainly not what they portray themselves to be. E-book on Jewish National Fund’s role in colonization of Palestine

Petition to Egypt
Open Rafah Crossing and Stop the Steel Wall

Just click on the screen shots to make them larger
Update
January 15 2010
HAARETZ.COM News has obviously not been notified by Meir Panim as of yet.

From the Telegraph January 2009

From Jerusalem Post January 2009

Another screen shot of Charity Flyer

January 13 2010

This is the little girl in question

A Palestinian girl cries during the funeral of a relative that was killed in an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009. Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday, cutting the coastal territory into two and surrounding its biggest city as the new phase of a devastating offensive against Hamas gained momentum."photo by Fady Adwan/propaimages"

A Palestinian girl cries during the funeral of her brother who was killed after an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip January 4, 2009. Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants battled on Gaza City's outskirts on Sunday after Israeli troops and tanks invaded the coastal enclave in the worst fighting in the conflict in decades. REUTERS/Ismail Zaydah (GAZA)

This is a story about the day her picture was taken with the above REUTERS photo

Life gets worse for Palestinians in Gaza

For the first eight days of Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, many Palestinians trapped inside the territory believed that living conditions could not get any worse. They were wrong.

By Tim Butcher on the Israel-Gaza border
Published: 6:29PM GMT 04 Jan 2009

To go to the Story click HERE

She is the same little girl in both pictures.

This was discovered January 12 2010 and screen shots was taken so it could be proved, this child was the one being used as advertising for the Charity. One has to wonder how long they were using her photo?

Both pictures used by the Charity were cropped, but if you look closely both have the Design on the clothing of the woman, who standing on her right, in her time of such tremendous, sorrow, considering she lost her brother an being surrounded by war.

Just check the top right hand corner of the picture. Look for the green part of the design.

Definitely the cropped version of the larger "photo by Fady Adwan/propaimages" above was used at the Charity site and HAARTZ.com

The same by "photo by Fady Adwan/propaimages"of the little girl is also HERE as well third row down, third picture in.

These photos are also on this site as well HERE along with many other photo's of the War on Gaza
The first two screen shots can be enlarged by clicking on them.

This Screen shot of the Charity site itself was also taken as well.

Again the design is also in the top right hand corner. Also a of version of the larger "photo by Fady Adwan/propaimages"

Today the Charity Meir Panium removed the little Palestinians girls photo from its flyer. This of course I imagine after there were complaints about it's immoral use. There were thousands of people who saw this reprehensible use of this little girl to raise money for Starving children in Israel.

Their new poster girl. Now is she really Israeli I wonder? If you see this little girls picture and she is from anywhere but Israel do let inquiring minds know.

The ad is still on the HAARTZ site however. Seems the Charity has yet to contact them. So check to see if it is still there, it may or may not but if it is, you will see to the right of the picture of State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss. Then again in the past two days she has been most of their news stories.

Update January 20 2010

The ad has been removed from the HAARETZ site.

Seems no one has seen an apology from either the Charity Meir Panim or HAARETZ.

Shameful not a word.

http://www.meirpanim.org

Email info@meirpanim.org

The children in Gaza are far worse off, then any child in Israel. If Israel has hungry men, women and children maybe they should spend less on weapons, checkpoints or imprisoning those from Gaza and the West Bank.

The Building of the illegal wall could and should be stopped. The entire wall should be torn down.

Those in Gaza do not have enough medical supplies, hydro, food, water heating fuel, cooking fuel and next to no building supplies and the list goes on an on. Many still live in tents. The things most people take for granted, they do not have.

They are in desperate need of real help. That little Palestinian girl if she is still alive really does need help. She is an innocent little girl.

Using her picture for profit to help those in Israel is beyond reprehensible. She and everyone in Gaza are desperately in need.

Thank You to all who take the time to read this and those who took the time to do screen shots pictures and get copies of all the information pertaining to this horrid incident.

Thank You to all the blogger's or those from forums and there are many for sharing this information.

You will never see this on the main stream media.

If not for others who took the time no one would know the crime against this innocent child. This is a crime. Even Charities have laws they must live by.

Thank you all for caring. I know she is just one small little girl but we must be her voice, as her voice is so small.

The children in Gaza don't get almost 3 billion dollars from the US every year.

They don't get the millions Israel gets from Charities set up for them around the world.

Just in a recent report the US has built buildings in Israel and I guess they need them for the $800 million in munitions Israel will also have access to as well.

The US just gave it to them.

Seems Israel if they have so many hungry should be given food not weapons. The US should stop giving weapons aid to Israel. If they are so desperately, hungry as they say they are, which I doubt, they do not in need more bullets, bombs, tanks, planes, etc.

The UN and many others have demanded the blockade be lifted.

The world is watching.

Contact your Governments and tell them to have the Blockade in Gaza lifted.

When people try to get aid into Gaza, they meet with a numerous problems.

Viva Palestina Update George Galloway and Ron McKay Deported from Cairo

Gaza sees more newborns of malformation

Come the iron wall-Gaza Tunnels only used for Necessities

Turkey, Lebanon lash out at Israeli Violation of airspace

Disapproval and Lawsuit against Egyptian “Wall of shame”

UN Calls for Israel to Open Crossing for Goods

Source

HERE IS THE EMAIL THAT WAS SENT TO THE AMERICAN BRANCH OF MEIR PANIM

They WERE JUST THAT TICKED.

Greetings,

I must express my disgust at whoever is responsible for putting together your Autumn flyer headed by the line "SHOCKING REPORT EXPOSES TERRIBLE REALITY FOR ISRAEL'S POOR."

I will give you, who reads this note, the benefit of the doubt. You might really believe this is a starving little Jewish child. Not so. That traumatized child in the blue jacket is screaming because her family was just killed in front of her by the Israeli Military.

This photo appeared on many sites during the Gazan Holocaust; they did a series of shots so there are a few of her at that time. I know it appeared on mine at some point. To see her pain now being used to raise money for Israel is just plain morally wrong.

Poverty is poverty to a child, horrid to all, but this child is living in a squalor brought on by the Israel Army. Meanwhile Israel allows nothing into her country to improve her life. It seems just a wee bit bad taste to use her image in this fashion, I am sure you can only agree.

This information is out there and you can bet the blogosphere is enlightening others of the nature of the Israelis.

It would balance the scales somewhat if any monies raised by this child was donated to a Palestinian cause.

Sincerely

ADDRESSES AND EMAILS ETC OF THIS CHARITY
~ LET THEM KNOW THAT YOU KNOW,
THAT WE KNOW,
JUST HOW LOW THEY GO.

WEB SITE ~ http://www.meirpanim.org/index_e.php

UNITED STATES - CENTRAL OFFICE

American Friends of Meir Panim
5316 New Utrecht Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11219
Phone: 718.437.9100
Toll Free 1.877.736.6283
Fax: 718.437.0999
Email: info@meirpanim.org

• Volunteer Opportunities - volunteer@meirpanim.org
• Projects Director - Zev Nevo
• Director of Development - Marjorie Lynn

• ISRAEL - Central Office

Meir Panim Relief Centers in Israel

78 Yirmiyahu St. - P.O.B. 57089 - Jerusalem 91570
Phone: 972.2.501.1444
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Freunde von Meir Panim e.V.

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• AUSTRALIA

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Compliments of this site

Israel to pay compensation to UN

2010-01-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

Israel has agreed to pay the UN around $10m in compensation for damage caused to UN buildings in Gaza during last year's war, according to diplomatic sources.

The payout is the first since Israel's heavily criticised three-week war a year ago in which around 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. It is also thought to be one of the first times Israel has paid the UN any compensation for damage to its facilities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The UN's Office for Legal Affairs, in New York, has been in negotiations with Israeli officials for months over the payment before Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, agreed to pay. In an embarrassment to Israel some of the damage to UN buildings occurred while Ban-Ki Moon, the UN secretary general, was in meetings with Israeli leaders trying to win a halt to the fighting.

However, there is no sign yet that Israel is ready to pay any other compensation over the war or conduct its own independent inquiry, despite repeated allegations that its military committed war crimes.

Immediately after the war the UN commissioned an inquiry into damage to its buildings in Gaza and injuries to its staff. That investigation accused the Israeli military of "negligence or recklessness" in its conduct of the war and said reparations for death and damage should be paid, putting the figure at more than $11m.

The inquiry, led by Ian Martin, a Briton who is a former head of Amnesty International, marked the first major challenge to Israel over its conduct of the war. It found the Israeli military's actions "involved varying degrees of negligence or recklessness" and that the military took "inadequate" precautions towards UN premises and said the deaths of civilians should be investigated under the rules of international humanitarian law.

Israel at the time rejected those findings, even before the summary of the report was made public, saying it was "tendentious" and "patently biased".

However, the allegations were matched by international human rights groups and by a second, broader UN inquiry, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, and led by the former South African judge Richard Goldstone, which accused both Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, of war crimes.

One of the most serious incidents involving the UN in Gaza took place on 6 January near a UN boys' prep school in Jabaliya being used as a shelter for hundreds of Palestinians who had fled their homes to escape the fighting. The Israeli military fired several 120mm mortar rounds in the "immediate vicinity" of the school, killing between 30 and 40 people. Although Israel at the time insisted Hamas had fired mortars from within the school, the UN inquiry found this was untrue. It held Israel responsible for the attack.

Source

Certainly will not hold my breath on this one. Like that will be the day Israel pays the UN. Sounds nice however but somehow I just don't believe it.

Iraqi Babies suffering from results of Weapons of Mass Destruction

2009-11-18T21:22:00.000-08:00

Fatima Ahmed was born in Fallujah with deformities

Sept 1, 2009

By Lisa Holland
Sadness Of Fallujah's Sick Children

A doctor in Iraq has told Sky News that more and more children are being born with deformities in Fallujah, a city heavily bombed by the US in 2004. Lisa Holland's report contains pictures of children with severe medical conditions and deformities.
It may take a bit for the Video to load be patient. Of course there is a commercial first then the actual Story.

Israeli Lobby in the UK and how it influences Law Makers

2009-11-18T18:51:00.000-08:00

Dispatches investigates one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain, which is working in support of the interests of the State of Israel.

Despite wielding great influence among the highest realms of British politics and media, little is known about the individuals and groups which collectively are known as the pro-Israel lobby.

Political commentator Peter Oborne sets out to establish who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying.

He investigates how accountable, transparent and open to scrutiny the lobby is, particularly in regard to its funding and financial support of MPs.

The pro-Israel lobby aims to shape the debate about Britain's relationship with Israel and future foreign policies relating to it.

Oborne examines how the lobby operates from within parliament and the tactics it employs behind the scenes when engaging with print and broadcast media. Source

This is an excellent Documentary. They are already being Harassed.

Campus Watch copycats close in on Israeli profs
Jonathan Cook
November 18 2009

Nazareth
Right-wing groups in Israel want to create a climate of fear among left-wing scholars at Israeli universities by emulating the "witch-hunt" tactics of the US academic monitoring group Campus Watch, Israeli professors warn.

The watchdog groups IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor are believed to be stepping up their campaigns after the recent publication in a US newspaper of an Israeli professor's call to boycott Israel.

Both groups have been alerting the universities' external donors, mostly American Jews, to what they describe as "subversive" professors as a way to bring pressure to bear on university administrations to sanction faculty staff who are critical of Israeli policies.

"I have no hesitation in calling this a McCarthyite campaign," said David Newman, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, in Israel's southern city of Beersheba. "What they are doing is very dangerous."

Last month, in what appeared to be a new tactic, IsraCampus placed a full-page advertisement in an official diary issued to students at Haifa University, urging them to visit its website to see a "rogues' gallery" of 100 Israeli scholars the group deems an "academic fifth column."

"The goal is to transform our students into spies in the classroom to gather information and intimidate us," a senior Israeli lecturer said. "It's a model of 'policing' faculty staff that has been very successful in stifling academic freedom in the US."

Both the Israel Academia Monitor, established in 2004, and the later IsraCampus, modeled themselves on Campus Watch, a US organization founded by Daniel Pipes, an academic closely identified with the US neoconservative movement.

Campus Watch has been widely accused of intimidating US scholars who have expressed views critical of US and Israeli policies in the Middle East. The organization's goal, according to critics, is to pressure US universities to avoid hiring left-wing lecturers or awarding them tenure.

The advertisement placed by IsraCampus, and seen by Haifa University students as they returned from their summer break, warned that a number of their professors "openly support terrorist attacks against Jews, initiate an international boycott of Israel, exploit their status in the classroom for anti-Israeli incitement and anti-Zionist brainwashing, collaborate with known anti-Semites who publicly call for Israel's destruction."

Publication of the advert was supported by the head of Haifa's student union, Felix Koritney: "Students who study here need to know who their lecturers are, and if there are lecturers who oppose the state of Israel it is important to publish their names."

In a statement, Haifa University officials also defended the advertisement after receiving a complaint from a student who called the advertisement incitement, "justifying it on the grounds of freedom of speech."

IsraCampus is associated with Steven Plaut, an economics professor at Haifa University, who was reported to have paid for the advertisement. On the group's site and on his personal blog, Mr Plaut has lambasted many Israeli left-wing academics.

IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor have targeted professors for criticizing the occupation, joining protests against Israel's separation wall, signing petitions or attending conferences critical of Israel, defending the UN report of Judge Richard Goldstone on last winter's attack on Gaza, or calling for a boycott of Israel.

Both groups have focused their efforts on the staff at Ben Gurion and Haifa universities, two regional campuses that have attracted more outspoken dissidents.

Ilan Pappe, a former history professor at Haifa University and the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, admitted he abandoned his academic career in Israel and relocated to the UK after a campaign of vilification.

But, according to Mr Newman, Ben Gurion University had become the groups' "public enemy No 1" after publication by Neve Gordon, a colleague of Mr Newman, of an article in the Los Angeles Times calling for a boycott of Israel.

Despite having tenure, observers say, Mr Gordon has come under increasing pressure from the university to resign his position as chair of the university?s politics department over his published views.

Rivka Carmi, president of Ben Gurion University, issued a statement shortly after Mr Gordon?s article was printed, condemning his opinions as "morally repugnant" and warning that he was "welcome to search for a personal and professional home elsewhere."

Dana Barnett, founder of Israel Academia Monitor, has launched a petition demanding that Mr Gordon be sacked from his position as chair, that his courses be treated as elective rather than compulsory for his students, and that he be denied travel and research funding.

Mr Newman said decisions about hiring and retaining staff at Ben Gurion were still being taken on academic grounds but that the monitoring groups were seeking to change that by calling for donor boycotts of universities seen to be harboring anti-Zionist professors.

Yaakov Dayan, the Israeli consul in Los Angeles, sent a letter to Ben Gurion University after publication of Mr Gordon's article, warning that private benefactors "were unanimous in threatening to withhold their donations to your institution."

Although the universities are chiefly backed by government money, external donations account for about five per cent of their funding. With universities struggling with large debts, donations can be seen as leverage over the universities.

Mr Newman said the monitoring groups hoped to redirect donations to right-wing academic institutions and think tanks, such as the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem, whose founding president is the US neoconservative scholar Martin Kramer, and Ariel College, located in a West Bank settlement near Nablus.

On his website, Mr Plaut credited IsraCampus with forcing Tel Aviv University last week to investigate claims by one of its professors, Nira Hativa, that some right-wing students were afraid to speak out in class because of fears that they would be penalized by their lecturers.

Under questioning from the Haaretz newspaper, Ms Hativa admitted that her allegations were based only on ?intuition and personal impressions?.

Both IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor have been incensed by the support offered to Mr Gordon's call for a boycott of Israel by a small number of Israeli academics.

One such professor, Anat Matar, who teaches philosophy at Tel Aviv University, said the atmosphere both within the universities and more widely in Israeli society was changing rapidly and becoming increasingly ?intolerant? of dissent. "We've become a little more fascistic as a society," she said.

Mr Plaut has been at the centre of a libel battle with Mr Gordon since 2002 after he called him a "Judenrat wannabe," a reference to Jewish collaborators with the Nazis.
Source

The pro-Israel lobby in Britain

November 13 2009
by Peter Oborne

Every year, in a central London hotel, a very grand lunch is thrown by the Conservative Friends of Israel. It is often addressed by the Conservative leader of the day. Many members of the shadow cabinet make it their business to be there along with a very large number of Tory peers and prospective candidates, while the Conservative MPs present amount to something close to a majority of the parliamentary party. It is a formidable turnout.

This year’s event took place in June, with the main speech by Tory leader David Cameron and shadow foreign secretary William Hague in attendance. The dominant event of the previous twelve months had been the Israeli invasion of Gaza at the start of the year. So I examined Cameron’s speech with curiosity to see how he would handle that recent catastrophe.

I was shocked to see that Cameron made no reference at all to the invasion of Gaza, the massive destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that had resulted. Indeed, Cameron went out of his way to praise Israel because it “strives to protect innocent life”. I found it impossible to reconcile the remarks made by the young Conservative leader with the numerous reports of human rights abuses in Gaza. Afterwards I said as much to some Tory MPs. They looked at me as if I was distressingly naive, drawing my attention to the very large number of Tory donors in the audience.

But it cannot be forgotten that so many people died in Gaza at the start of this year. To allow this terrible subject to pass by without comment suggested a failure of common humanity and decency on the part of a man most people regard as the next prime minister. To praise Israel at the same time for protecting human life showed not merely a fundamental failure of respect for the truth but also it gives the perception, rightly or wrongly, of support for the wretched events which took place in Gaza. That is not to condone or excuse the abhorrent actions of Hamas, but to overlook Israel’s culpability is undoubtedly partisan.

It is impossible to imagine any British political leader showing such equanimity and tolerance if British troops had committed even a fraction of the human rights abuses and war crimes of which Israel has been accused. So that weekend, in my weekly Daily Mail political column, I criticized Cameron’s speech to the CFI, drawing attention to his failure to mention Gaza and his speaking of Israeli respect for the sanctity of

human life. Soon I received a letter from Stuart Polak, the longstanding CFI director: “Peter, the snapshot of our lunch concentrating on the businessmen and David’s alleged comments was really unhelpful.” The CFI political director, Robert Halfon, wrote saying that my letter was ‘astonishing’ and accusing me of making a ‘moral equivalence’ between Israel and Iran. I wrote back to them citing a number of reports by international organizations such as Amnesty International highlighting breaches of codes by the Israeli army.

I resolved then to ask the question: what led David Cameron to behave in the way he did at the CFI lunch at the Dorchester Hotel last June? What are the rules of British political behaviour which cause the Tory Party leader and his mass of MPs and parliamentary candidates to flock to the Friends of Israel lunch in the year of the Gaza invasion? And what are the rules of media discourse that ensure that such an event passes without notice?

On a personal note I should say that I have known both Stuart Polak and Robert Halfon for many years and always found them fair-minded and straightforward to deal with. Indeed in the summer of 2007 I went on a CFI trip to Israel led by Stuart Polak. No pressure was put on me, at the time or later, to write anything in favour of Israel. The trip, which was paid for by the CFI, certainly enabled me to understand much better the Israeli point of view. But we were presented with a very full spectrum of Israeli intellectual and political life, ranging from disturbingly far right pro-settler MPs to liberal intellectuals consumed with doubt about the morality of the Zionist state. The trip was also balanced to a certain extent by a meeting with a leading Palestinian businessman and with the British consul in East Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, the job of a political journalist is to try and explain how politics works. Ten years ago I exposed, in an article for The Spectator headlined “The man who owns the Tory Party”, the fact that the controversial offshore financier Michael Ashcroft was personally responsible for the financial survival of William Hague’s Conservatives. I asked how legitimate Michael Ashcroft’s contribution was, how much he spent, and did my best to investigate how he used his influence. Now I want to ask a question that has never been seriously addressed in the mainstream press: is there a Pro-Israel lobby in Britain, what does it do and what influence does it wield?

By James Jones and Peter Oborne

In 2007 two US academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published a study of what they called the US Israel lobby, exploring in particular the connection between the domestic power of the lobby in the United States and US foreign policy. The book caused controversy in the United States and even in Britain.

No comparable study has ever been made in this country. Indeed the pro-Israel lobby is an almost completely unexplored topic. In 2002 The New Statesman ran a cover story “A Kosher Conspiracy?”, in which Dennis Sewell examined the groups and individuals which comprise the pro-Israel lobby. Sewell cited instances of journalists being pressured and even being accused of antisemitism, but concluded: “the truth is that the ‘Zionist lobby’ does exist, but is a clueless bunch.” The very mild piece involved little investigation and, if anything, played down the influence of the groups.

There was a very strong reaction to the story and to the front cover depicting a gold Star of David piercing a British flag. The magazine was denounced as being guilty of the “new anti-Semitism”. A group of activists calling themselves Action Against Anti-Semitism marched into the magazine’s offices demanding it print an apology. Soon, editor, Peter Wilby, felt the need to apologise: “We (or more precisely, I) got it wrong... [we] used images and words in such a way as to create unwittingly the impression that the New Statesman was following an antisemitic tradition that sees the Jews as a conspiracy piercing the heart of the nation.” Since this time no national publication has attempted to investigate the pro-Israel lobby head-on.

Making criticisms of Israel can give rise to accusations of antisemitism - a charge which any decent or reasonable person would assiduously seek to avoid. Furthermore most British newspaper groups – for example News International, Telegraph newspapers and the Express Group - have tended to take a pro-Israel line and have not always been an hospitable environment for those taking a critical look at Israeli foreign policy and influence. Finally, media critics of Israeli foreign policy – as we will vividly demonstrate in this pamphlet – can open themselves up to coordinated campaigns and denunciation.

Whether as a result of these pressures or for some other reason, mainstream political publishing in Britain tends simply to ignore Israeli influence. Andrew Marr’s Ruling Britannia: The Failure and Future of British Democracy contains not a single mention at all of either Israel or the Israel lobby. Nor does the Alan Clark’s The Tories, or Robert Blake’s The Conservative Party from Peel to Major.

Similarly the presence of an Israel lobby as a factor in British public life is systematically ignored in British reporting. For example, a search of the newspaper database Lexis Nexis showed there have been only 154 mentions of the Conservative Friends of Israel in the British press, the first of which was apparently on 22 September 1985. By contrast The Tobacco Manufacturers Association enjoyed 1,083 citations during the same period, and the Scotch Whisky Association no fewer than 2,895. The Conservative Party donor Michael Ashcroft has been the subject of 2,239 articles over the comparable time period, and the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers got over 3,000. The purpose of this pamphlet is to enquire whether this paucity of public coverage is indeed a reflection of the real influence of the pro-Israel lobby in British government. In our voyage of discovery we have interviewed MPs, leading Jewish intellectuals and academics, diplomats, newspaper editors and others.

However, many people just don’t want to speak out about the Israel lobby. So making our film at times felt like an impossible task. Privately we would be met with great enthusiasm and support. Everyone had a story to tell, it seemed. Once the subject of doing an interview was raised the tone changed; “Anything at all I can do to help…” quickly became “Well, obviously I couldn’t.” or “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to.” Many people who privately voiced concerns about the influence of the lobby simply felt they had too much to lose by confronting it. One national newspaper editor told us, “that’s one lobby I’ve never dared to take on.” From MPs, to senior BBC journalists and representatives of Britain’s largest charities, the pattern became depressingly familiar. Material would come flooding out on the phone or in a meeting, but then days later an email would arrive to say that they would not be able to take part. Either after consultation with colleagues or consideration of the potential consequences, people pulled out.

Some had more reason than others. Jonathan Dimbleby had boldly expressed criticism in a powerfully argued article for Index on Censorship of the pressure from pro-Israel groups on the BBC, which led to the BBC Trust’s report on Jeremy Bowen, and had initially been keen to be involved. Suddenly his interest evaporated. There simply wasn’t the time, he said. At first we felt baffled and let down. But in due course we discovered that his comments had brought a complaint from the very same lawyer, Jonathan Turner of the Zionist Federation, that had complained about Jeremy Bowen. Dimbleby is now going through the exact same complaints process that he criticized. Turner is arguing that Dimbleby’s comments make him unfit to host the BBC’s Any Questions. The Dimbleby experience serves as a cautionary tale for anyone approaching this subject. Others, such as Sir John Tusa, who had opposed the BBC’s refusal to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza appeal, were overcome with modesty, feeling that they simply didn’t have the expertise to tackle the subject.

Indeed we found it almost impossible to get anyone to come on the record when we tried to investigate the BBC’s decision not to launch the Gaza humanitarian appeal. Here is a list of the organisations which told us that to speak publicly about the BBC’s refusal to screen the DEC Gaza appeal would be too sensitive: the Disasters Emergency Committee, Amnesty, Oxfam, Christian Aid, Save the Children Fund and the Catholic agency CAFOD. Only one of the organisations involved in lobbying on behalf of Israel, the Britain Israel Research and Communications Centre (BICOM), were willing to put forward an interviewee.

It was equally hard to find a publisher for this pamphlet. One potential publisher told us: “I don’t think that our donors would like this very much.” Another fretted that his charitable status would be compromised. One MP taunted the authors that we would never “have the guts” to make a television programme about the pro-Israel lobby. It was, he told us, “the most powerful lobby by far in parliament. It’s a big story. If you have any balls you’ll make a programme about it.” When we returned to the MP later on to ask if he would talk to us on the record, he felt unable to come forward and do so. One front bench Conservative MP was so paranoid he insisted we remove the battery from our mobile phones to ensure our privacy during the conversation.

It was only senior MPs whose careers are winding down that felt able to voice what many MPs told us in private. One of them, Michael Mates, a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee and former Northern Ireland minister, told us on the record that “the pro-Israel lobby in our body politic is the most powerful political lobby. There’s nothing to touch them.” Mates added: “I think their lobbying is done very discreetly, in very high places, which may be why it is so effective.”

Some journalists we spoke to had been accused of antisemitism, and felt inevitably it had done some damage to their careers. Others, like the BBC’s Orla Guerin, against whom this very serious and damaging charge has repeatedly been made by the Israeli government, wouldn’t even talk to us off the record. It is easy enough to see why. Guerin is a brave, honest and compassionate reporter. Yet the Israeli government has repeatedly complained to the BBC that Guerin is “antisemitic” and showed “total identification with the goals and methods of Palestinian terror groups.” On one occasion, in an appalling charge, they linked her reporting from the Middle East to the rise of antisemitic incidents in Britain.1 When Guerin was based in the Middle East in 2004, she filed a report about a sixteen year-old Palestinian would-be suicide bomber. Guerin said in the report that “this is a picture that Israel wants the world to see”, implying the Israelis were exploiting the boy for propaganda purposes. Natan Sharansky, a cabinet minister at the time, wrote a formal letter to the BBC accusing her of “such a gross double standards to the Jewish state, it is difficult to see Ms Guerin’s report as anything but antisemitic”. The following year, when Guerin was awarded with an MBE for her reporting, Sharansky said: “It is very sad that something as important as antisemitism is not taken into consideration when issuing this award, especially in Britain where the incidents of antisemitism are on the rise.”2 Officially sanctioned smears like this show why so many people shy away from confronting the influence of the Israel lobby.

The former Conservative Party chairman and shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, who is standing down as an MP at the next general election, did have the courage to talk to us. He told us that he had been accused of antisemitism “because I’ve been talking to Hamas and Hezbollah. I just take that with a pinch of salt.” The accusation of antisemitism even touches the least likely of people. Antony Lerman, a man steeped in Jewish culture and history, who has worked for much of his career combating antisemitism, was labelled “a nasty anti-Semite” on a website designed to expose antisemitism on The Guardian’s website, for an article he wrote during the making of the film. He told us: “I think there are people who are deliberately manipulating the use of the term antisemitism because they do see that it’s useful in defending Israel.”

We strongly believe the culture of silence that surrounds this issue allows sinister conspiracy theories and, by extension, genuine antisemitism to thrive. In making the lobbying transparent and an acceptable topic of conversation, we hope debate will be more open, and there will be less space for genuine antisemites to hide in the shadows.

The senior Tory MP David Amess recently put down a question in the House of Commons to enquire what the British government was doing to improve British relations with Israel. The reply came from Ivan Lewis, foreign office minister with special responsibility for the Middle East: “Israel is a close ally of the United Kingdom and we have regular warm and productive exchanges at all levels… We shall continue to foster a close relationship with Israel.”

This conversation was not quite the simple public exchange that it seemed. Neither politician mentioned that both of them had very close links to pro-Israel organizations. David Amess is the secretary of the Conservative Friends of Israel, which has been described by the famous Conservative Party politician and historian Robert Rhodes James as “the largest organization in Western Europe dedicated to the cause of the people of Israel.”

Meanwhile Ivan Lewis is a former vice-chairman of the Labour Friends of Israel. The connections of both men to the pro-Israel lobby were not declared on the parliamentary record. While neither acted inappropriately, their links would have been evident only to the most well-informed parliamentarian, and entirely invisible to the average voter.

Many of the most sensitive foreign affairs, defence and intelligence posts in the House of Commons are occupied by Labour or Conservative Friends of Israel. Mike Gapes, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, is a former deputy chairman of the LFI. Kim Howells, the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (and another former Middle East minister) used to chair Labour Friends of Israel. James Arbuthnot, chairman of the powerful Commons Defence Select Committee, is also the serving parliamentary chairman of the CFI. There is no prohibition on parliamentarians having membership of such groups, but how many voters are aware of these links.3

If a Conservative government wins the forthcoming general election the influence of the pro-Israel lobby is likely to increase. We believe that at least half, if not more, of the members of the shadow cabinet are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel.4 Let’s try a thought experiment for a moment. Let’s suppose that over half of the members of the shadow cabinet were not Conservative Friends of Israel but Conservative Friends of Belgium, and that once a year an enormous dinner was held in central London attended by the majority of Conservative MPs.

Speculation would naturally ensue about the relationship between the Conservative Party and Belgium. Indeed the friendship between Belgium and the Conservative Party would become a matter of notoriety. Every trip made to Belgium by a Conservative would be a matter of prurient curiosity for the tabloid press. It is doubtful the Conservative Party would be able to sustain such a relationship for long.

And yet Belgium is not nearly as controversial a country as Israel. It does not illegally occupy large sections of neighbouring territory. Its soldiers are not accused of war crimes by human rights organizations. There is no question, therefore, that the connection between mainstream British political parties and the state of Israel is a matter of legitimate enquiry. We will now turn our intention to the lobby groups which act as advocates for Israel at Westminster.

The Conservative Prime Minister Harold MacMillan once remarked that “there are three bodies no sensible man ever directly challenges: the Roman Catholic Church, the Brigade of Guards and the National Union of Mineworkers.” It is tempting to speculate that today he might have added the Conservative Friends of Israel to that list.

The Conservative Friends of Israel is beyond doubt the best connected, and probably the best funded, of all Westminster lobbying groups. Eighty percent of Conservative MPs are members. The leader of the Conservative Party is often expected to appear at their events, while the shadow foreign secretary and his team are subjected to persistent pressure by the CFI.

CFI’s director, Stuart Polak, is a familiar face in Westminster and well-known to everyone in the Tory establishment. Robert Halfon, the CFI’s political director and Tory candidate for Harlow, is sometimes regarded as the brains of the operation. Both are well-liked by Tory MPs.

One Tory MP has told us that, before he stood in the 2005 election, he met Stuart Polak, who put Israel’s case to him strongly at a social event. Towards the end of the meal, Stuart Polak asked if his campaign needed more money. Sure enough, weeks later two cheques arrived in the post at the Conservative office in the constituency. Both came from businessmen closely connected to the CFI who the Tory MP says he had never met before and who had never, so far as he knew, ever stepped inside his constituency. Another parliamentary candidate fighting a marginal seat told us that he had gone to see Stuart Polak, where he was tested on his views on Israel. Within a fortnight a cheque from a businessman he had never met arrived in his constituency office.

On studying donations to Conservative Constituency offices before the 2005 election a pattern emerges. A group of donors, all with strong connections to pro-Israel groups, (almost all are on the board of the CFI) made donations of between £2,000 and £5,000 either personally or through their companies to the constituency offices of certain Conservative candidates.5

The donors involved include Trevor Pears, a property magnate, who has sat on the BICOM board, used to sit on the CFI board, and has donated to Cameron in the past; Lord Steinberg, vice-president of Conservative Friends of Israel and sponsor of Stuart Polak in parliament; Michael Lewis, a South African businessman and deputy chairman of BICOM who was formerly on the Board of CFI; three or four other prominent members of the CFI. The method of donation – medium-sized sums to constituency offices often through companies rather than personal names – means that connections to the CFI or other pro-Israel group are by no means obvious. These donors may never have met the candidates, nor stepped foot, let alone actually live, in the constituency, but were happy to make donations. All candidates in these constituencies either won the seat or came close. Interestingly, in constituencies where the Conservative candidate stood little chance, the CFI made the £2,000 donation themselves.

The Tory MPs fighting parliamentary seats in 2005 whose campaigns were funded by these donors included Ed Vaizey, shadow minister for culture, media and sport; Greg Hands, shadow treasury minister; Michael Gove, shadow education secretary; Brooks Newmark, opposition foreign affairs whip; Shailesh Vara, shadow deputy leader of the Commons; Grant Shapps, shadow minister for housing; Adam Holloway MP. Many of them then went on a CFI trip to Israel in 2006, although Michael Gove - whose polemic Celsius 7/7 comes free with CFI membership - has never been to Israel. Most have been supportive of Israel in speeches to parliament and none have been overtly critical.

There is also a suggestion that some members of the CFI target MPs who are critical of Israel. For instance Karen Buck, the Labour MP for Regent’s Park and Kensington North, has been an outspoken critic. Her Conservative opponent Joanne Cash, who works for the think tank Policy Exchange, has received cheques cumulatively worth at least £20,000.6It cannot be stressed too strongly that this pattern of donations is entirely legal. However, it is at least arguable that it contravenes one of the seven principles of public life, concerning integrity, as set out by the Committee on Standards in Public Life: "Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties."

Over the past three years the CFI has flown over thirty Conservative parliamentary candidates to Israel on free trips.7 Sometimes MPs can take their wives on these superbly organized events. Excellent access is granted to senior members of the Israeli political and security establishments, though the trips are balanced by a meeting with a Palestinian businessman or politician.

For a junior or a prospective MP to be taken on such a trip and granted access to which they are not accustomed can be a powerful and persuasive experience MP. The CFI will often include pro-Israeli quotations from many of the Conservative candidates in its newsletter. The impression given, normally far from inaccurate, is that they have new loyal supporters. In the months following one trip in November 2007, ten candidates received small donations to their constituencies from prominent CFI sponsors. The recipients included high-profile candidates such as Margot James, vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, who has not yet declared the trip. Another, Andrew Griffiths, who had spoken about the difficulties of negotiating with people “trying to blow up your friends, family and people you care about”, received three donations, including one from CFI chairman Richard Harrington.8Often these donations are carefully targeted. In the months after William Hague was appointed shadow foreign secretary, he accepted personal donations from CFI board members totaling tens of thousands of pounds.9 However, Conservative MPs are extremely unwilling to talk publicly about CFI funding and influence inside the Party. Michael Mates told us that “no one will talk to you before the election.”

Conservative support for the Zionist cause dates back at least as far as the famous meeting between then Conservative Prime Minister AJ Balfour and the great Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1905, when Weizmann convinced Balfour of the case for the state of Israel. Weizmann also converted to the cause the future Conservative statesman Winston Churchill, then a Liberal candidate, at around the same time. Indeed one of Churchill’s most ferocious attacks on the Chamberlain government came in May 1939, when it announced its decision to cut back on Jewish immigration into Palestine. Churchill told MPs that “this pledge of a home of refuge, of an asylum, was not made to the Jews in Palestine but to the Jews outside Palestine, to that vast, unhappy, mass of scattered, persecuted, wandering Jews whose intense, unchanging, unconquerable desire has been for a National Home.”

The Conservative Friends of Israel was founded in 1974 by the Conservative MP Michael Fidler.10 Since then it has emerged as a powerful lobby group. By 1984, the Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, had been prevailed on to become chairman of the CFI branch at her local Finchley constituency, a development which elicited the following denunciation on state controlled television in the strongly anti-Israel Soviet Union: “The Conservative Friends of Israel group essentially plays the role of a powerful pro-Zionist lobby within the Conservative Party.”11

No other lobbying organization – least of all one that acts in the interests of a foreign country – can virtually guarantee that the leader of the Conservative Party, his or her most senior colleagues, and scores of Tory MPs will attend such a grand annual celebratory lunch with such regularity. Most of today’s shadow cabinet are members, including the leader of the opposition, shadow foreign secretary and shadow defence secretary. As we have seen, many of the key back-bench positions are held by CFI supporters. Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult to demonstrate how much influence the CFI actually wields within the policy-making apparatus of the Conservative Party.

For example the former Conservative Party chairman and shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, has long been a member of the CFI. This has not prevented him being a severe critic of Israeli foreign policy – he was seen rolling his eyes when David Cameron praised Israel for the preservation of innocent life at it’s the CFI’s Dorchester lunch last June – and an advocate of direct negotiation with Hamas. Richard Spring is another senior Conservative MP who has made trips to Israel as a guest of the CFI. Yet he is also a regular visitor to Israel’s opponent Syria and often urges the return of the Golan Heights as prelude to a peace settlement. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, is also a member of the CFI, but that has not stopped him from being an occasional critic of Israeli foreign policy.

Hague is an important case study. He accepted donations from Conservative Friends of Israel board members after becoming Shadow Foreign Secretary, but within months William Hague had fallen out with the CFI.12 Hague was on the receiving end of an ear-bashing, was targeted in a critical letter to The Spectator, and subject to threats to withdraw funding from Lord Kalms, a major Tory donor and member of the CFI, after he used the word “disproportionate” about Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon.

At the same time, rumours swirled around Westminster that Hague had been influenced by his Bosnian Muslim adviser, Arminka Helic. In the wake of this fall-out, we understand from Tory sources that Stuart Polak was able to secure a meeting with David Cameron in which the Tory leader gave what was understood as an undertaking not to use the word “disproportionate” again. Nevertheless, any effort to portray either William Hague or David Cameron merely as a passive instrument of the pro-Israel lobby is wide of the mark.

More recently, Tory sources say that the CFI played an influential role in stiffening the Conservative Party’s opposition to the UN resolution based on the Goldstone Report into the Israeli attack on Gaza. According to our sources, Hague was persuaded to sit down with David Cameron and Andrew Feldman, an influential supporter of the CFI, and produced the following quotation for the CFI newsletter setting out their opposition to the resolution: “Unless the draft resolution is redrafted to reflect the role that Hamas played in starting the conflict, we would recommend that the British Government vote to reject the resolution.” Hague had decided to take the American line of rejecting the UN resolution, unlike the Labour government, which, in effect, abstained.

To assess the influence of the CFI within the Conservative Party, it is useful to compare it to the Conservative Middle East Council (CMEC), which focuses on the wider Middle East in the Conservative Party and works hard to balance the CFI’s influence. According to its website, every year CMEC seeks to take “a series of delegations to Iran, the Arab states and Israel.” It claims that just over half of all Conservative MPs are members. Chaired by the former shadow cabinet minister Hugo Swire, CMEC has yet to establish itself as a potent serious rival to the CFI.

For the thirty-five years the CFI has existed, the Conservative Party, both in government and opposition, has taken a strongly pro-Israel stance. The CFI alone cannot take the credit for this. Indeed other factors – above all, British subordination to US foreign policy – are considerably more significant. Nevertheless, no political lobby inside the Conservative Party – and certainly no longer the Brigade of Guards – carries comparable weight.

Whereas the CFI has the luxury of working with the grain of the Conservative Party, the Labour Friends of Israel has tended to face a considerably tougher job. There is a much stronger Labour tradition of supporting Palestinian causes since the 1967 war, where Conservatives are more likely to instinctively assume that Israel is in the right. The visceral anti-Americanism of many Labour MPs also plays a role here.

The LFI was founded in 1957 at a public rally at that year’s Labour Party Conference. It describes itself as “a Westminster based lobby group working within the British Labour Party to promote the State of Israel”. It has very close ties with the Israeli Labor Party, and British Labour Party figures like Philip Gould have given training to Israeli politicians in electoral strategy. For that reason the LFI is perhaps less unquestioning in its support of the Israeli government than the CFI. The two lobby groups both work closely with the Israeli embassy and even share supporters, such as the businessmen Victor Blank and Trevor Chinn, but they work independently within their respective parties.

Labour Friends of Israel has taken more MPs on trips than any other group. Only the CFI comes close. Since 2001, the LFI has arranged more than sixty free trips for MPs. LFI and CFI trips combined account for over 13% of all funded trips for MPs and candidates. That’s more trips to Israel, a country with a population smaller than London’s, than to Europe, America or Africa. Even in America, where the pro-Israel lobby is extremely influential, trips to Israel account for only ten percent of all politicians’ foreign trips.13

The group is similarly well connected within the party, and has regular meetings with David Miliband and his Foreign Office team to make Israel’s case. Labour MPs told us that young, ambitious MPs see a role at LFI as a good way to get ahead. Chairs of the LFI very often go on to become ministers. James Purnell and Jim Murphy, the Secretary of State for Scotland, are two recent chairmen. Ivan Lewis, the foreign office minister with responsibility for the Middle East, is a former vice-chair.

One of Tony Blair’s first acts on becoming an MP in 1983 was to join Labour Friends of Israel. He remained close to the group throughout his career, regularly appearing at their events. Jon Mendelsohn, a former chairman of the LFI, and now Gordon Brown’s chief election fundraiser, speaking in 2007, described Tony Blair’s achievement in transforming the Labour Party’s position on Israel. “Blair attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party. Old Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs to support, but the milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Labour Friends of Israel meetings.”

Blair succeeded in making the Labour party more attractive to donors connected with the Labour Friends of Israel. The key figure in building these relationships was, of course, Michael Levy.

Blair met Levy in 1994 at a dinner party thrown by Gideon Meir, number two at the Israeli Embassy. Blair was just back from a trip to Israel with the LFI.

The two men quickly recognised the mutual benefits offered by the relationship. By early 1995, Blair was leader of the opposition and he dropped in on his new friend for a swim and a game of tennis almost every weekend. Levy had been collecting donations to a blind trust, known as the Labour Leader’s Office Fund, raising nearly two million pounds, a sum “previously unimaginable for a Labour leader”.14 Blair maintained that he was unaware of the sources of these donations despite being in almost constant contact with Levy and even meeting some of the donors.

We now know that the secret donors included funders of pro-Israel groups such as Trevor Chinn and Emmanuel Kaye. Levy had played a crucial role in persuading donors that Labour had changed. Blair told Levy, “I am absolutely determined that we must not go into the next election financially dependent on the trade unions.”15 Instead, Blair became financially dependent on large donors, some of whom had very strong views on Israel.

According to Levy, the subject of Israel was second only to fundraising in his conversations with Tony Blair. Levy is estimated to have raised over fifteen million pounds for Blair before the “cash for peerages” affair brought Levy’s fundraising to an end in the summer of 2006.

16 Indeed one well-regarded Times correspondent, Sam Kiley, took the extraordinary step of actually resigning from the paper because of interference with his work on the Middle East.17

In addition to the Murdoch press, the Telegraph Media Group and Express Newspapers have tended to support Israel. So has Associated Newspapers, though to a less obvious extent. There are, however, two important media organisations, which have consistently sought to report fairly from the Middle East and present the Palestinian point of view with equal force to the pro-Israeli government line. These are The Guardian and the BBC. These two organisations have been subjected to ceaseless pressure and at times harassment both from the Israeli government itself and from pressure groups.

This chapter will document some of this pressure by chronicling some of the campaigns mounted by the pro-Israel lobby against The Guardian and the BBC. We will then turn our attention to the pro-Israel media lobby groups, of which the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) is by some distance the most important.

The Guardian was more closely involved in the creation of Israel than any other British newspaper. Its editor C.P. Scott was instrumental in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, introducing Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the Zionist movement and later the first President of the state of Israel, to leading members of the British government.

However, the paper now finds itself at the centre of an international campaign accusing it of anti-Zionism and even antisemitism. Through much of the last decade, The Guardian has been in dispute with the Israeli government and in particular the combative Israeli Government press office director, Danny Seaman. In 2002, Seaman publicly boasted that he had forced The Guardian to move correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg after she had been transferred to Washington. “We simply boycotted them,” claimed Seaman, “the editorial boards got the message and replaced their people.”

Seaman is well known for using tactics such as denying or delaying visas to obstruct correspondents he sees as hostile to Israel. One reporter familiar with Seaman described him as a “bully” who was “at the forefront of the general harassment. Rusbridger wrote to Seaman insisting he withdraw his comments, only to be told by Seaman: “I will happily withdraw my comments about Ms. Goldenberg when your newspaper withdraws the biased, sometimes malicious and often incorrect reports which were filed by her during her unpleasant stay here.”18 Rusbridger insists he had total faith in Goldenberg’s reporting, for which she received numerous awards, and that “only the Israelis would see a move to Washington as a demotion.”

In 2006 The Guardian was caught up in another row after publishing a controversial article by correspondent Chris McGreal comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa. The episode reveals the workings of the pro-Israel lobby with the Israeli embassy coordinating the offensive. An emergency meeting was called at the Israeli ambassador’s residence with BICOM chairman Poju Zabludowicz, board of deputies president Henry Grunwald, community security trust chairman Gerald Ronson and Lord Janner of Labour Friends of Israel to plan the response.

Ronson and Grunwald were dispatched to visit Alan Rusbridger in his office to convey their feelings. According to Rusbridger, Ronson didn’t even take his coat off: “He began by saying, I think his phrase was ‘I’ve always said opinions are like arseholes, everyone’s got one’, and then he effectively said ‘I’m in favour of free speech but there is a line which can’t be crossed and, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve crossed it, and you must stop this’.” Ronson accused The Guardian of being responsible for antisemitic attacks, a claim Rusbridger refused to accept: “I mean I didn’t want to get in a great row with Gerald Ronson, I just said I’d be interested in the evidence, I’m not sure how you make that causal connection between someone reading an article that is critical of the foreign policy of Israel and then thinking why don’t I go out and mug Jews on the streets of London. I just can’t believe that happens.”

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media watchdog, made a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, arguing that McGreal’s article was “based on materially false accusations”. The complaint was not upheld. Alan Rusbridger’s decision to run the Chris McGreal article was vindicated. The Guardian is not the only newspaper to come under pressure. and, according to Rusbridger, it works. He told us that “there are a lot of newspaper and broadcasting editors who have told me that they just don’t think it’s worth the hassle to challenge the Israeli line. They’ve had enough.”

The case of the BBC is extraordinary. The organisation has become a hate figure for pro-Israel groups, who resent its global reach and supposed sympathy for the Palestinians. We have spoken to BBC journalists and recently departed staff who say that rarely a week goes by without having to deal with complaints about their coverage of the Middle East. This year has been particularly difficult for the Corporation. The BBC refused to screen an aid appeal from Britain’s top charities for the people of Gaza, resulting in millions of pounds less money being raised. It reacted to pressure from pro-Israel pressure groups by publishing a report, which criticised its own Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen. Finally, it refused to disclose a report by Malcolm Balen into its Middle East coverage which cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds to the licence fee payer. Through a Freedom of Information request we discovered the BBC had spent over a quarter of a million pounds on legal fees relating to the case.19

It is no surprise that at the start of the year the culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw, himself a former BBC reporter, remarked that “I’m afraid the BBC has to stand up to the Israeli authorities occasionally. Israel has a long reputation of bullying the BBC.” Bradshaw added that “I’m afraid the BBC has been cowed by this relentless and persistent pressure from the Israeli government and they should stand up against it.”20

This report has its origins in the spring of 2003, when the BBC’s relationship with Israel completely broke down. The Israeli government imposed visa restrictions on BBC journalists and refused access to Israeli government figures after a documentary about its nuclear weapons entitled “Israel’s Secret Weapon” was shown on BBC World. The Israeli Government press officer, Danny Seaman, compared it to “the worst of Nazi propaganda”.

For a time Israel joined a small band of countries, including North Korea, Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan, which refused the BBC free access. When Ariel Sharon visited London in July 2003, BBC journalists were in the ludicrous position of being banned from attending the press conference. By the autumn, pressure on the BBC from pro-Israel groups and the Israeli government was so great that the head of BBC news Richard Sambrook felt obliged to act.

Sambrook employed Malcolm Balen, a former head of ITV News and senior BBC executive, to write the now infamous Balen Report on the BBC’s Middle East coverage during the previous four years. In October, the High Court finally ruled that the BBC does not have to publish the report, which has become an obsession for Israel’s supporters, who hold this up as the BBC trying to hide its anti-Israel bias.

This is dubious. We have spoken to one of the very few people who have read the report. He says that far from concluding the BBC’s coverage was biased against Israel, it simply finds examples where more context should have been given. If anything, our source claims, the impression given is that the BBC is sympathetic to Israel.

In April this year, in an important success for the pro-Israel lobby, the BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, was criticized by the BBC Trust for breaching their rules of accuracy and impartiality in an online piece, and their rules of accuracy in a radio piece. Bowen’s critics have seized on his humiliation, demanding that he be sacked and insisting that the episode proved the BBC’s “chronically biased reporting”. The real story behind the BBC Trust’s criticism of Bowen reports is rather different: it demonstrates the pusillanimity of the BBC Trust and the energy and opportunism of the pro-Israel lobby.

The story begins with an essay written by Bowen to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War for the BBC website. Though many people viewed Bowen’s essay as a fair and balanced account, erring if anything on the side of conventional wisdom, this was not the reaction of two passionate members of the Pro-Israel lobby, Jonathan Turner of the Zionist Federation and Gilead Ini, who lobbies for CAMERA, an American pro-Israel media watchdog organization.

Turner and Ini subjected Bowen’s article to line by line scrutiny, alleging some 24 instances of bias in his online article and a further four in a later report by Bowen from a controversial Israeli settlement called Har Homa. Turner and Ini’s complaints were rejected by the BBC’s editorial complaints unit, so they duly appealed to the BBC Trust. The meeting was chaired by David Liddiment who, to quote Jonathan Dimbleby, “is admired as a TV entertainment wizard and former director of programmes at ITV but whose experience of the dilemmas posed by news and current affairs, especially in relation to the bitterly contested complexities of the Middle East is, perforce, limited.”

The BBC Trust found that Bowen had breached three accuracy and one impartiality guideline in his online report, and one accuracy guideline in his radio piece. This was a massive boost for the organizations to which Turner and Ini were attached. The Zionist Federation at once called for Bowen to be sacked, calling his position “untenable”, while adding that what they called his “biased coverage of Israel” had been a “significant contributor to the recent rise in antisemitic incidents in the UK to record levels.” Meanwhile, CAMERA claimed that the BBC Trust had exposed Bowen’s “unethical” approach to his work and insisted the BBC must now take “concrete steps” to combat its “chronically biased reporting” of the Middle East.

These powerful attacks might have been justified if the BBC Trust had found Bowen guilty of egregious bias. In fact he was condemned for what were at best matters of opinion. In a majority of the cases, the complaints were found to have no merit, and where changes were made they changed the meaning very little.21

As Dimbleby concluded, “You don’t have to search far on the web to find Zionist publications, lobby groups and bloggers all over the world using distorted versions of the report to justify their ill-founded prejudice that the BBC has a deep-seated and long-standing bias against the state of Israel. Conversely, millions of Palestinians, other Arabs and Muslims will by now have been confirmed in their — equally false — belief that the BBC is yet again running scared of Israeli propaganda…

“Not only has Bowen’s hard-won reputation been sullied, but the BBC’s international status as the best source of trustworthy news in the world has been gratuitously — if unintentionally — undermined.” The Trust’s ruling was met with dismay in BBC newsrooms. A former BBC News editor, Charlie Beckett, told us “the BBC investigated Jeremy Bowen because they were under such extraordinary pressure... it struck a chill through the actual BBC newsroom because it signaled to them that they were under assault.”

We can reveal that Jeremy Bowen had an article “Israel still bears a disastrous legacy” (31 May 2007) published a week earlier than his BBC piece (4 June 2007) in The Jewish Chronicle containing most of the contentious sentences.

Indeed, even the problematic lines that led the BBC Trust to conclude there had been a breach of accuracy and impartiality, such as “Zionism’s innate instinct to push out the frontier” and “The Israeli generals, mainly hugely self-confident sabras in their late 30s and early 40s, had been training to finish the unfinished business of 1948 for most of their careers” are still in Bowen’s article on The Jewish Chronicle’s website. Perhaps the BBC Trust’s interpretation of due impartiality is different to that of Britain’s Jewish community.

The BBC has a long tradition of showing humanitarian appeals, including those that are seen as politically sensitive, such as the Lebanon appeal in 1982, and has helped raise tens of millions of pounds for people in need around the world. But in January 2009, Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, took the unprecedented decision of breaking away from other broadcasters and refusing to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Appeal for Gaza, claiming it would compromise the BBC’s impartiality. ITV and Channel 4 screened the Gaza appeal, but Sky joined the BBC in refusing. The BBC’s decision had an undeniable impact. Brendan Gormley, Chief Executive of the DEC, told us that the appeal raised about half of the expected total: £7.5 million. In the first 48 hours of the appeal phone calls were down by 17,000 on the average.

Thompson also cast doubt on the charities’ ability to deliver aid on the ground despite assurances from the DEC and his own charitable appeals advisers that this was not the case.

We asked Charlie Beckett why the BBC had refused. He replied: “If there was no pro-Israeli lobby in this country then I don’t think [screening the appeal] would have been seen as politically problematic. I don’t think it would be a serious political issue and concern for them if they didn’t have that pressure from an extraordinarily active, sophisticated, and persuasive lobby sticking up for the Israeli viewpoint.”

BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, is Britain’s major pro-Israel lobby. Founded in 2001 as an equivalent to America’s hugely influential AIPAC, it is bankrolled by its Chairman Poju Zabludowicz, a Finnish billionaire and former arms dealer. Over the past three years Zabludowicz has given over two million pounds in donations. This year, they sent thirty representatives to the AIPAC conference in America, a sign of BICOM’s growing ambition.

Incredibly, almost no one we interviewed for the film had even heard of Zabludowicz, a key player at the heart of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain. Our questions continually met with blank expressions from senior politicians and people in the Jewish community. Zabludowicz fiercely guards his privacy and does so with great success despite his wife being a renowned art collector, and counting Madonna and other A-list celebrities among close personal friends.

Zabludowicz’s father, Shlomo Zabludowicz, made his money through Israeli arms manufacturers Soltam Systems, a company, which continues to thrive and recently provided the IDF with artillery for its Gaza campaign. Poju Zabludowicz also ran Soltam, but has since moved his money from arms into property. He is now estimated to own around forty percent of downtown Las Vegas.

Far more significantly, we have discovered that he owns property in the illegal settlements in the West Bank. He has a stake in a shopping centre in Ma’ale Adumim, a settlement which is seen as strategically crucial in ensuring Jerusalem remains in Israeli hands. So much so that Netanyahu launched his election campaign in the settlement in 2005. “Starting my campaign here is not coincidental [it is] because Jerusalem is in danger.”

Zabludowicz believes Israel suffers unfairly from an image problem with Palestinian propaganda swallowed too readily by European liberals. He hoped to create one lobby that oversaw media and politics in the style of AIPAC, but met with resistance from the parliamentary Friends of Israel groups, guarding their patch. He does, however, play a role at Conservative Friends of Israel as a significant donor. He has also established a relationship with David Cameron, the man almost certain to be Britain’s next prime minister.

In September 2005 when Cameron was planning his Conservative leadership election campaign he met Zabludowicz for a coffee. Zabludowicz was suitably impressed with what he heard, and Cameron received £15,000 from Zabludowicz over the course of his election campaign.22 To ensure that the donations complied with election law, he made the donations through his British subsidiary Tamares Real Estate Investments. Despite the CFI and BICOM not formally merging there is a huge amount of co-ordination. Many of BICOM’s key figures also play roles in the CFI: Trevor Pears, Michael Lewis and Poju Zabludowicz are driving forces behind both lobbies. David Cameron also accepted £20,000 from Trevor Pears in his leadership election.23

BICOM performs a similar role to the parliamentary groups: building relationships with key journalists and editors, taking them on paid-for trips to Israel, and setting up high level meetings in Israel and the UK. They also provide journalists with daily briefings and suggest stories and angles to friendly contacts. During key periods, like Operation Cast Lead, BICOM goes into overdrive.

In its early days, BICOM received criticism from some in the Jewish community for not doing enough and in 2006 they replaced Daniel Shek, a smooth Israeli diplomat, now ambassador in France, with Lorna Fitzsimons, a former Labour MP in Rochdale. The appointment surprised some as Fitzsimons is not Jewish and has no obvious connection to Israel, but she is combative and, of course, had good contacts with the current government.

She leads a team of bright PR professionals who make Israel’s case in a sophisticated way, not resorting to accusations of anti-Semitism and simplistic explanations, instead focusing on shared values and the threat from Israel’s neighbours.

There is a question too of whether journalists should accept free trips from an organisation representing only one side in such a controversial conflict. And if they do so, then surely they should make clear in any resulting article that the trip has been funded by a pro-Israel lobby? Of the dozens of journalists that make the trips each year, only very few seem to make any reference to BICOM, giving the impression they were on a neutral fact-finding mission by default, whereas in fact it was a carefully coordinated trip. That is not to say such trips can never be useful for a journalist, just that they should declare them in the same way as MPs so their readers can take an informed view.

Two months after the end of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, BICOM sent half a dozen journalists on a free trip to Tel Aviv to talk to Israeli defence analysts. The message BICOM wanted to get across was that they should pay more attention to Iran than to the Palestinians.

The Sunday Times wrote a piece about how the world looks from the point of view of Israel’s top generals. The News of the World contained a brief piece about Iran’s nuclear ambitions: “Psycho Doomsday is Nigh”. The Mirror’s security correspondent wrote two pieces from Israel, detailing their list of meetings. Only The Sunday Times made any reference to BICOM, acknowledging it had arranged the trip half-way through the piece. The News of the World and The Mirror made no reference to BICOM arranging and funding the visit.24

In a response to our questions, Poju Zabludowicz wrote: “BICOM is a British not-for-profit organization which produces information and provides activities that seek to explain the complexities of the issues facing Israel and the Middle East, while promoting the policy of a two-state solution with the Palestinians… There are countless numbers of journalists (broadcast and print), politicians (Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat), as well as academics and analysts with whom BICOM maintains regular contact.”

A Short Summary of Recent Relations Between Britain and Israel Since 1997 there has sometimes appeared to be an assumption at the highest levels of British government that the interests of Israel and Britain are identical. For example, during Israel’s catastrophic invasion of the Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the Blair government failed even to call for a ceasefire.

The idea that British and Israeli foreign policy interests should be the same is, however, relatively new. While Britain played a famous role in the creation of the Israeli state, for a long time after World War Two it was never afraid to criticise Israeli foreign policy.

For example, the Conservative foreign secretary (and former prime minister) Sir Alec Douglas Home called at Harrogate in October 1970 for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and for Israel to abandon the territories occupied in the aftermath of the Six Day War in June 1967. This firm sense that Britain could confidently challenge Israeli foreign policy persisted for some time afterwards.

Margaret Thatcher was an instinctive and long-standing supporter of Israel. Through connections with the large Jewish community in her Finchley constituency she was a member of the Anglo-Israel Friendship League and a founder member of the Conservative Friends of Israel. Thatcher visited Israel twice before becoming PM, and became the first serving British prime minister to visit in 1986.

However, when events warranted, she was ready to criticize Israel, far more strongly than more recent prime ministers. After Israel’s bombing of the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak in 1981, Thatcher described the actions as “a grave breach of international law” and a “matter of great grief ”.These were words that no government minister would use today, and certainly stand in stark contrast to William Hague’s mild comments in the summer of 2006, condemning Israeli actions as “disproportionate”, which provoked such outrage among the pro-Israel lobby at the time.

After the Lebanon war in 1982 Thatcher took an unprecedented stand by joining other European countries in imposing an arms embargo on Israel, which lasted twelve years until it was ended in 1994. Again this action contrasts with the reaction to the Lebanon war of 2006. Afterwards, British arms exports to Israel increased.

The election of Tony Blair’s New Labour government in 1997 marked the turning point in British-Israeli relations. Tony Blair soon brought Britain into line with the American position, which was significantly more supportive of Israeli policies. This change of approach can be measured by the use of Britain’s vote as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

The United States has used its veto at the UN Security Council forty times since 1972 over resolutions concerning Israel. The resolutions have focused on the settlements, the status of Jerusalem, and Israeli military action. On Israel and Palestine, there has historically been a gap between US policy, being strongly supportive of Israel, and the other members of the Security Council. Between 1972 and 1997 inclusive, the UK and France voted the same way as China and the Soviet Union/Russia, and the opposite way to the US, on almost 80% of Middle East resolutions.

The Labour government has subtly changed Britain’s approach. Since 2003, France has continued to vote the same way as China and Russia, but the UK has abstained on every Middle East resolution, which the US has vetoed. This suggests a growing reluctance to be seen to be contradicting US and by extension Israeli policy.

Growing Importance of the Pro-Israel Lobby

Sir Richard Dalton, former British ambassador in Tehran and consul in Jerusalem, told us that when he was a young diplomat in the 1970s, Britain felt able to act purely in its own interests. Throughout his career he has seen that change as the influence of the pro-Israel lobby has grown. “One of the frustrations is that my colleagues and I are not pro-Palestinian, pro-Arab, pro-Israel, pro-anything. We want what is best for Britain. “But there is a pro-Israel lobby and it’s active in trying to define the debate in order to limit the options that British politicians can choose to options that would be acceptable to that lobby.”

He told us that increasingly politicians are afraid to express publicly what they may say in private. That means Israel is not subjected to the same public scrutiny as other countries. He cited the Lebanon war as an example: “The Israel lobbies appear to want to censor British politicians from saying that elements of the Israeli action were disproportionate and they appear to be willing to use financial pressures as a way of enforcing that decision.” Even more significantly this senior diplomat felt that his own actions when serving as Consul General in Jerusalem in the late 1990s were limited by the influence of the lobby at home in Britain.

This influence works in a variety of ways: the unceasing cultivation of British MPs; political donations; availability of research briefs; brilliant presentation of the case for Israel. The Israel lobby has enjoyed superb contacts at the very top of British politics, and never hesitated to use them. As we have shown in this pamphlet, it has used them at key moments; for instance the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon three years ago and the publication of the Goldstone Report into alleged war crimes during the invasion of Gaza earlier this year.

Beyond these specific examples of influence, there is also a wider presence. The Friends of Israel groups in the House of Commons have firmly established themselves in the interstices of British political life. Their heavy presence at party conferences is taken for granted, their lunches and dinners an ingrained part of the Westminster social scene, the donations a vital part of the political financing. An environment now exists where MPs and ministers feel cautious about criticizing the foreign policy of the Israeli state, wary of opening themselves to criticism on the home front.

Meanwhile, public discourse on Israel, as we have shown, is heavily policed. This policing takes two forms. First, critics of the Israel government policy – The Guardian and the BBC are the two most prominent examples – come under heavy and incessant attack from pro-Israel media monitoring groups. Second, journalists from key media outlets are assiduously cultivated.

The Need for Openness

The pro-Israel lobby does nothing wrong, or illegal. It is not sinister and it is not unusual. It cannot be too much stressed that British public life is populated by all kinds of interest groups, many of them extremely active at Westminster.

While this pro-Israel lobbying is lawful, it is emphatically not transparent. We have shown in this pamphlet that journalists very rarely declare their BICOM funded trips to Israel. We have also shown how patterns of donations from CFI members to Tory candidates are sometimes opaque. Indeed, the financial structure of the CFI as a whole is obscure. It does not declare its funding, the identity of its donors, or its annual turnover. Despite being composed almost entirely of MPs and Conservative party members it is registered not as a members’ association, a lobby, a company, or a charity, but as an unincorporated association. This means it does not exist as an organization, but merely as a collection of individuals.

This allows its donors to give money without being identified. This means that some of these donors could be foreign nationals, who under British electoral rules should not be allowed to fund political parties or members of parliament. For a foreign donor wanting to fund a British politician or political party, unincorporated associations offer that opportunity. This anonymity is not acceptable for any political pressure group of whatever persuasion in 21st century British politics.

A similar observation applies to other pro-Israel pressure groups. While BICOM’s work is entirely legitimate, it is by no means transparent. They never declare, for example, which journalists go on trips and who they meet. In the United States, AIPAC must register as a lobby and declare its activities. Over here, BICOM is simply a company registered at Companies House, and doesn’t make its work public.

The Pro-Israel lobby and British-Jewry

There is one final set of questions to be asked. Who does the pro-Israel lobby represent? Is it mainstream British-Jewish opinion or the state of Israel or neither? More likely, it exerts pressure for a particular set of interests within Israeli politics. Globalisation has led to a wide and welcome recognition that we all have multiple legitimate interests and identities. There are countless good reasons for the interests of Israel to have a place in UK politics and vice versa, not only because of interests of State, but also because there are many British subjects who have direct legitimate interests and concerns for what happens in Israel and vice versa. The reason we need to ask who or what is represented by the UK’s pro-Israel lobby is precisely so that we can understand what effect UK policy does actually have in Israeli politics and whether these legitimate interests are effectively being promoted.

Of course, this question is especially difficult to answer because the main pro-Israel lobbying organizations do not have a transparent financial structure. It is impossible to state with confidence that they receive all their money from British sources. Indeed we have discovered that the biggest funder for BICOM is not a British citizen, but a Finnish business tycoon with a commercial interest in a shopping centre in Ma’ale Adumim, a West Bank town regarded in international law as an illegal settlement. One of the enduring paradoxes of the discussion of Israeli foreign policy is that it is much more contested and debated inside Israel than outside.

Some Jewish interviewees told us that they were felt that the main pro-Israel organizations in Britain were less critical of Israeli foreign policy than mainstream British Jewish opinion. David Newman (who represented Israel’s universities in the fight against the proposed academic boycott in the UK):

“There is clearly a debate, and it’s not just a debate it’s a huge debate inside Israel, whether Israel should or should not continue to control the West Bank, whether settlements are legal or illegal, moral or immoral. And what you often find is that the groups such as AIPAC or BICOM outside Israel tend to close down that sort of debate, they tend to say you have to be totally supportive of Israel full stop, whatever Israel does.”

Newman added that:

“The fact that someone, if as you say, has a major investment in Ma’ale Adumim [and] is the major investor also of BICOM, that would tend to indicate in what direction BICOM is going. It’s going to be more supportive of settlements or less critical of settlements than if someone on the left was investing their money in BICOM.”

One of the reasons for the stale debate in the UK and Europe around Israel and Palestine has little to do with the politics of the lobbies but stems from our own hang-ups and history: we resist being anti-Israeli because of the difficulty of confronting the reality of European antisemitism; and yet we resist being anti-Palestinian because of the difficulty in confronting the reality of the European colonial past. So partly the UK (and Europe more widely) needs to be prepared to confront the issues of Israel and Palestine themselves, and not the issues of its own fraught history towards them if it wants to have a mature debate and any significant influence in the region.

The UK’s pro-Israel lobby is able to take advantage of this stale debate in order to project and promote a specific view of Israel’s interests, one that is hotly debated within Israel. It is in the interest of our own democracy, and our effectiveness in promoting the legitimate interests of Israel within the British state to have more transparency here.

Summary and Conclusion

Israel is a wonderful and extraordinary country with a rich and flourishing democratic history. Founded in terrible circumstances in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and World War Two, it has a profound right to exist. But this moral legitimacy does not mean that the foreign and internal policies of Israel should be exempt from the same kind of probing criticism that any independent state must expect. Nor does it mean that the rights of Palestinians to their own state can be ignored.

The pro-Israel lobby, in common with other lobbies, has every right to operate in Britain. But it needs to be far more open about how it is funded and what it does. This is partly because the present obscurity surrounding the funding arrangements and activities of organisations such as BICOM and the CFI can paradoxically give rise to conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact. But it is mainly because politics in a democracy should never take place behind closed doors. It should be out in the open and there for all to see.

---------------------

The Jerusalem Post, 25 April 2005

ibid

Robert Rhodes James, The Jerusalem Post, March 13th 1995

We have been unable to establish an exact number because membership is not publicly listed, but members include senior figures, such as David Cameron, George Osborne, Michael Gove, Liam Fox, and Chris Grayling.

Seven PPCs on November 2006 trip; twenty PPCs on November 2007 trip; Three on February 2009 trip; two on September 2009 trip. [Source: CFI newsletters]

Robert Rhodes James, The Jerusalem Post, March 13th 1995

Mrs Thatcher and the ‘pro-Zionist lobby’, 2nd July 1984, BBC Monitoring Service.

See note 10

Walt and Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby

Michael Levy, A Question of Honour

Ibid

16 Murdoch’s two daily newspapers, The Sun and The Times, between them account for some 35% of the daily newspaper market. His Sunday papers, The News of the World and The Sunday Times, have between them a market share approaching 40% of Sunday papers. Additionally, Murdoch controls the extraterrestrial Sky TV.

Kiley recorded that The Times' foreign editor and other middle managers flew into hysterical terror every time a pro-Israel lobbying group wrote in with a quibble or complaint, and then usually took their side against their own correspondent - deleting words and phrases from the lexicon to rob its reporters of the ability to make sense of what was going on. So, I was told, I should not refer to “assassinations” of Israel’s opponents, nor to “extrajudicial killings or executions”. Evening Standard, September 5th 2001. Kiley resigned in August 2001.

Danny Seaman’s letter to Alan Rusbridger, 17th October 2002

Letter from BBC Information and Compliance, 10 November 2009

BBC Any Questions, 24th January 2009

On the grounds of 'accuracy’, Bowen’s reference to the 1967 war as a chance to “finish the unfinished business of Israel’s independence war of 1948”, was amended to define “the unfinished business” as “the capture of East Jerusalem”. On the same grounds, a reference to Zionism’s “innate instinct to push out the frontier” was amended to “the tendency with Zionism to push out the frontier”. Israel’s expansion of the settlements being “in defiance of everyone’s interpretation of international law except it own” was amended to “in defiance of almost all countries’ interpretation of international law except its own”.

The report concluded that Bowen “should have done more to explain that there were alternative views on the subject which had some weight” to protect readers from concluding that “the interpretation offered was the only sensible view of the war”. A paragraph which originally began: “The myth of the 1967 Middle East was that the Israeli David slew the Arab Goliath” was replaced with: “While historians hold different views on the 1967 war, one school of thought is that it is a myth…”

Through Tamares Real Estate: 17.10.05 David Cameron £5,000 03.11.05 David Cameron £10,000

13.10.05 David Cameron £10,000 03.11.05 David Cameron £10,000

Fraser Nelson’s response: “I didn’t mention BICIOM because the piece was a 110-word short – about the tenth of the size of the piece which Martin Ivens wrote up following the same trip. I was trying, in that period, to convey to readers a point that the Israelis would not want made: that for all their intent, they don’t believe that can stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.”

Source

US Trips to Israel 862 Seems trips to Israel are high on the places to go for those in the US Government. This is the country visited most by them. Second place is Germany at 763 trips.
It is all rather interesting. Seems the US and Britain have much in common.

Iran is right about US ,UK, Israel backed Jundallah

2009-10-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

“Al Qaeda is CIA Arab legion”

October, 21 2009, 23:04

“Al Qaeda is a kind of CIA Arab legion created during the Soviet presence in Afghanistan,” believes author Webster Tarpley.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused the West of being behind the bombings which killed leaders of the Revolutionary Guard. Many people say the allegations are shocking.

The group that claimed responsibility for the attacks is a Sunni separatist group called Jundallah, or Soldiers of God. Reports say they have links to Al Qaeda. How in the world could the US be linked to them? Tarpley doesn’t regard it confusing.

“Al Qaeda itself is a kind of CIA Arab legion created during the Soviet presence in Afghanistan,” he said. “It is an open secret to any regional expert: the Jundallah is controlled and funded by the US and the British.”

Source

The US used Saddam and funded him and supplied him with weapons to go to war with Iran. This attitude from the
US and their allies has not changed over the years.

It is not a stretch of the imagination to say the US, UK and Israel are working behind the scenes.
Compliments of the US and Nato attacks on Afghanistan Iran and Iraq also now have a Heroin problem. But then again so do the US and Europe. The Taliban as awful as everyone perceives them to be had destroyed all the poppy fields.

If anyone has been watching the news from Israel and the US as of late will notice they are spewing out propaganda against Iran. They want Iranian leaders to bend to their will just like they want the rest of the world to bend to their will.

They want Iran’s oil and gas. Just like they want everyone’s gas and oil.
Get with the program people it is obvious that the people behind the attacks are probably funded by the US, UK and Israel. They are behind many militant groups and have done so for years in Africa and South America.

This is very typical of all three.

I actual expect them to interfere if they didn't it would be a miracle. They have to stick their warmongering noses into everyone s business. All three love war and death.
When you listen to Benjamin Netanyahu it is obvious how the hate is spewed out.

Iran has complied with UN inspectors and is not doing anything wrong except not giving the US, UK and Israel what they want access to the oil and gas.

The IAEA has so far made 25 unannounced inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities and has published more than 20 reports -- all of which confirm that there has been no diversion of the civilian nuclear program for military needs.

Israel in spit of UN Resolutions have not allowed inspectors in.

So who is breaking the Law?

Well it’s isn’t Iran it is Israel!

United Nations resolutions that concern Israel and bordering states such as Lebanon From 1947 to 1989 the UN Security Council passed 131 resolutions directly addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israel has broken many of them.

The only reason for the attack on Afghanistan was the pipeline and of course the US CIA loves the heroin trade money. The US told the Taliban if they didn't get the pipeline they would attack and they did. That is what they do.

This is what the US and NATO do.

Israel on the other hand neglect their prisoners and torture them.

We are all familiar with Guantanamo prisoners and how they wre abused an tortured.

And we must not forget the pictures a reminder of their crimes in Gaza and Photos of Lebanon War 2006
It was Iran Proposed a Control System Aimed at Eliminating Nuclear Weapons
back in September not Israel. Israel just wants more war. It is Israel who has committed terrorist attacks and assassinations around the world not Iran.

Israel and the US that have connections to 9/11

The FBI doesn’t even have any connections to Bin Ladin on 9/11.

Israel has been found committing war crimes The UN Mission 575 Page Report on Gaza/Israel War
The US has been found committing war crimes Spanish judge resumes torture case against six senior Bush lawyers
Again it is the Legal Case Filed Against 4 U.S. Presidents and 4 UK Prime Ministers who are being charged in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan
America’s Most Wanted The Top 50 US War Criminals

It’s Israelis who send out hate and threaten other countries not
Iran. Army rabbi ‘gave out hate leaflet to troops’,Israel: ’We Could Destroy All European Capitals’

If anyone wants to complain about human rights they might want to look in their own back yards. You might find the human rights there are not so sweet. Guantanamo bay comes to mind. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan comes to mind.
The bombing with DU and Nuclear bombs alone say plenty.

Israel is guilty of many crimes and the US is guilty of aiding and abetting or accessory in Israel’s crimes. The US is guilty on many counts. The US has vetoed over 40 UN Resolutions and continued to fund them.

The US is an accomplice: that is someone who helps in, or encourages, the commission of a crime. The US is as guilty of Israel’s crimes, as is Israel.

in the Crimes the US has committed in Africa and in South America, Israel is also guilty of aiding, abetting and is an accomplice to those acts of crimes against humanity.

Both should be held accountable for all crimes.

So who are the real criminals?

'Israel is nuclear elephant in the room capable of wiping out Iran' October 21, 2009
Iran's tentative deal with the West to upgrade its uranium outside the country is in the news spotlight.

"Operation in Afghanistan is rooted in Israel" July 20, 2009
The real reason why the U.S. continues its presence in Afghanistan is Iran the country which is an annoyance for Israel, said Karen Kwiatkowski, a writer and former U.S. Air Force officer. She also admits Iran is not a threat to the US nor was Afghanistan or Iraq.

Poll: Should Israel be disarmed of Weapons of Mass Destruction

2009-10-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

Poll: Should Israel be disarmed of Weapons of Mass Destruction
A simple yes or no.

Israel has not complied with UN Resolutions to allow inspectors in.
They have also fraudulently taken Billions from US Tax payers.
This fraud began in 1960 and has continued until today.