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| THE HANDSTAND | DECEMBER 2007 |
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| Meantime
un Update - and you would not expect anything else from
the craven usa would you - US withdraws annapolis Mideast resolution at UN http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_mideast By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS - In an about face, the United States on Friday withdrew a U.N. resolution endorsing this week's agreement by Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008, apparently after Israel objected. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff informed the Security Council that the United States was pulling the resolution from consideration less than 24 hours after Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad introduced it and welcomed the "very positive" response from council members. Khalilzad had said he needed to consult with the Israelis and Palestinians on the text of the resolution to ensure that it was what they wanted following the decisions by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md. Wolff said the U.S. had held intensive consultations in the past few days "and the upshot was that there were some unease with the idea" of a resolution. Well-informed diplomats said Israel, a close U.S. ally, did not want a resolution, which would bring the Security Council into the fledgling negotiations with the Palestinians. The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Khalilzad introduced the draft resolution without getting broad support from the Israelis, Palestinians and the Bush administration. "It's not the proper venue," Israel's deputy ambassador Daniel Carmon said after Friday's council meeting. "We feel that the appreciation of Annapolis has other means of being expressed than in a resolution. "We were not the only ones to object," Carmon said. He added that the Americans had told the Israelis that the Palestinians also objected. "The focus, we all realized again, should be placed and remain on Annapolis and the understanding that was reached there," Wolff said. "It's a momentous decision ... and rather than dilute from that and in respect to both parties in terms of what they thought would be most helpful, we reached a conclusion that it would be best to withdraw it," Wolff said. Normally, the United States would have consulted Israel, a close ally, in advance of introducing a Security Council resolution, as well as the Palestinians, to gauge their reaction. The State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had decided such a resolution was unnecessary. "We have looked at this and, at the end of the day, the secretary believes that the positive results of Annapolis speak for themselves and there is really no reason to gild the lily," spokesman Sean McCormack said. "I am not sure that we saw the need to add anything else to the conversation. Sometimes, the results and the event speak for themselves." THE ONE STATE DECLARATION The Electronic Intifada, 29 November 2007 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9134.shtml For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them. The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return. The two-state solution entrenches and formalizes a policy of unequal separation on a land that has become ever more integrated territorially and economically. All the international efforts to implement a two-state solution cannot conceal the fact that a Palestinian state is not viable, and that Palestinian and Israeli Jewish independence in separate states cannot resolve fundamental injustices, the acknowledgment and redress of which are at the core of any just solution. In light of these stark realities, we affirm our commitment to a democratic solution that will offer a just, and thus enduring, peace in a single state based on the following principles: - The historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status; -Any system of government must be founded on the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens. Power must be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all people in the diversity of their identities; - There must be just redress for the devastating effects of decades of Zionist colonization in the pre- and post-state period, including the abrogation of all laws, and ending all policies, practices and systems of military and civil control that oppress and discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion or national origin; -The recognition of the diverse character of the society, encompassing distinct religious, linguistic and cultural traditions, and national experiences; -The creation of a non-sectarian state that does not privilege the rights of one ethnic or religious group over another and that respects the separation of state from all organized religion; -The implementation of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN Resolution 194 is a fundamental requirement for justice, and a benchmark of the respect for equality. -The creation of a transparent and nondiscriminatory immigration policy; - The recognition of the historic connections between the diverse communities inside the new, democratic state and their respective fellow communities outside; -In articulating the specific contours of such a solution, those who have been historically excluded from decision-making -- especially the Palestinian Diaspora and its refugees, and Palestinians inside Israel -- must play a central role; -The establishment of legal and institutional frameworks for justice and reconciliation. The struggle for justice and liberation must be accompanied by a clear, compelling and moral vision of the destination a solution in which all people who share a belief in equality can see a future for themselves and others. We call for the widest possible discussion, research and action to advance a unitary, democratic solution and bring it to fruition. Madrid and London, 2007 Signed: Ali Abunimah Naseer Aruri Omar Barghouti Oren Ben-Dor George Bisharat Haim Bresheeth Jonathan Cook Ghazi Falah Leila Farsakh Islah Jad Joseph Massad Ilan Pappe Carlos Prieto del Campo Nadim Rouhana The London One State Group Annapolis? The Myth of Peace ? By William A Cook How can any serious person consider the probability of peace in Palestine when the Olmert government includes the racist party of Avigdor Lieberman who advocates the expulsion of Palestinians from their land, and has, in effect, achieved a "Targeted assassination" of the summit before the invitations went out (Ha'aretz, Yossi Verter, "Assassinating Annapolis," 15/11/07)? How can any serious person consider the probability of peace when the broker of record is the United States, the erstwhile Godfather of the Neo-con Zionists that control both Israel and the multitude of AIPACs that own our Congress? And even now the racist government of Olmert cuts off electricity to the already decimated people of Gaza because he does not accede to international law but only to his own. In brutally blunt terms, the peace process overseen by Condoleeza Rice is a joke. The United States is not an honest broker. It has colluded with the Olmert government to negate the democratically elected government of Palestine, and then has engaged a previously discarded politician, Ahmud Abbas, as a straw man to circumvent the duly elected government. In this process the US government and that of Israel has decimated the Palestinian people making their lives a living hell, and they have done it in full contravention of international law that prohibits collective punishment and demands of the occupier that they care for the people under their control. Concurrent with these deplorable actions, the "broker," the fair and balanced broker, has not only continued its normal welfare to the state of Israel in the form of 5 billion in aid, but has doubled that this year while adding an additional 15 billion over the next ten years. How can the world blind itself to the hypocrisy of these actions?
But the picture painted above does not reveal the real reason why peace is impossible in Palestine. The real reason is imbedded in the reality of Zionism and the forces that now control and have controlled the rise of the Israeli state from the very beginning. In a heretofore unreleased file housed in the Rhodes archives of the Bodleian Library at Oxford (MSS.Medit. S. 20 (1), the Palestine Government (the British Mandate government) submitted a most secret report to the British Secretary of State through its High Commissioner, Harold MacMichael. The document labeled "Jewish Approaches to the Question of Jewish-Arab Co-Operation during the period 1919-1941" covers the early attempts by Jewish leaders, before the takeover of the Jewish population by the Zionists from Europe, to find accommodation through agreements and assimilation with the much larger Arab population. The report outlines two "schools of thought" among the Jews: a majority opinion that regarded Jewish Agency co-operation as an "instrument, which can be picked up and set aside as needed, for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine," and a minority opinion that regarded co-operation with Arabs as essential to the continued existence of the Jews in Palestine. A side note states that intellectuals, professionals and socialists belonged to this second group. The report mentions three phases of co-operation.
The Feisal-Weizman agreement detailed how the Balfour Declaration could be affected and guaranteed, how continuation of Jewish immigration on a larger scale could be accommodated while maintaining the rights of the indigenous population, and how freedom of worship, Moslem control of their holy places, economic assistance by the newly arrived Zionist groups could be achieved, with the understanding, that the agreement would be implemented, contingent upon the claim submitted to the Peace Conference for Arab independence in Palestine. The parties did not contemplate Palestine as either a Jewish or an Arab state but rather a bi-national state associated with other Arab states. The Feisal-Weizman agreement did not die altogether. Dr. Chaim Kalvarisky, working on behalf of the Brith Shalom, the Kidma Mizrahi, and the Jewish Arab Co-operation groups, and at the invitation of a Feisal advisor, outlined a plan based on the historical affinity of the two peoples that could serve as a foundation for collaboration, that both groups would have opportunities to administer the country, and practical measures for education based on the ideal of close co-operation and freedom of immigration into Palestine by Jews could work. The Zionists wanted a National Home supported, not by the Arab Federation, but by Europe and the United States. This plan was submitted to the Zionist Council in 1936 and was rejected out of hand. That rejection doomed the dreams of Dr. Kalvarisky for a state where Jewish and Arab cultures could develop "side by side in perfect and undisturbed harmony." The British report notes the Royal Commission had determined by 1937 that Jewish Arab co-operation was not possible, indeed, that the two sides were irreconcilable. "The Jewish desire for a National Home in fact excluded Arabs and this was the main objection of Arabs to further co-operation." It's important to realize that the conclusion arrived at in this report comes after the Zionist organization had taken absolute control of the Jews in Palestine. "The Zionist organization, the whole social structure which it has created in Palestine, has the trappings but none of the essentials of democracy. The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions The reality of power is in the Agency, with the Hagana, the illegal military organization, always in the background." (MacMichael, 2). The report itself, accompanied as it is with documentary evidence from the Jewish organizations detailing their activities, demonstrates that the Zionists had created "(1) a secret army and espionage system, (2) utilized smuggling, theft and the manufacture of arms (3) illegal immigration, (4) violence and civil disobedience, (5) seditious and hostile propaganda, and (6) encroachment upon the civil rights of Jewish citizens to force their will upon the Jewish people and undermine the legitimate government in Palestine." This last item is perhaps the most telling and the least known or understood. The Zionists controlled the Jewish communities by intimidation, coercion, physical harm and even death. (Evidence, based on seized documents from the Jewish organizations, presented in the appendices of the report (see appendices XXXVII, XLb and B among others) reveal these methods of handling uncooperative Jews. No one can help but see the irony of the conditions now faced by the Israeli government as it occupies Palestine and is confronted by "terrorists" fighting for their own homeland. Thus does the wolf in its uncontrollable viciousness bite its own tail. We must not overlook the initial impetus of the Jews, the real Jews, to further their condition by full co-operation with the Arabs that inhabited Palestine when the British were in charge of the Mandate. "Since authentic Jewish people are opposed to the notion of a State altogether, there would be no problem whatsoever in Jews living in the area of Israel and Palestine. For hundreds of years there were Jewish communities of Prayer and study in the area that the State of Israel rules today. These communities lived in complete peace with the surrounding Arabs. The hatred between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was caused by Zionism." "The true definition of a Jew is faith and Torah. Zionism says it is nationalism." (Pat Harrington interview with Rabi Beck of Neturei Karta, 1991). To what extent will Zionists go to attain their predetermined ends? Theodore Herzl in 1895, founder of the Zionist movement, made clear the original intent: "We should try to spirit the penniless Arab population across the borders by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Thus begins the deception that has characterized the ethnic cleansing and genocidal actions of the Zionists ever since. "In 1921, Dr. Eder, a member of the Zionist Commission in Jerusalem, told the British court of enquiry appointed to investigate the causes of the first riots to break out between Arabs and Jews that 'There can be only one national home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equity in the partnership between the Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the (Jewish) race are sufficiently increased.'" (Sami Hadawi, Journal of Historical Review). "One National Home without equity," so has it been ever since. Does the international
community and International Law acknowledge the right of
a small religious group to assert that their belief in a
God who dispensed real estate to their fore bears
centuries ago gives them a right to confiscate that land
from people who have lived on it and worked it for over
two thousand years? Should that right be acknowledged,
then the Native American population, asserting the
sacredness of the land they occupied for thousands of
years before the arrival of the Europeans, could claim
the return of the United States to its rightful owners.
Indeed, they would have a more valid claim since they
never left the land that was stolen from them while over
90% of the Jews now in Israel are immigrants and most had
never been to Palestine. Without this assertion of land
rights from centuries ago, the Zionists have no claim to
the lands of Palestine. So this "nationalist"
and secular group uses the religious beliefs of the Jews
to force into existence the state of Israel. In the
process two horrific consequences emerge: they become
complicit in the genocide taking place in Palestine, and
the Palestinian people are destroyed, their lands and
homes confiscated or demolished, and those with rights
under International Law portrayed as terrorists. Hope
destroyed, justice denied. The Zionist Organizations in Palestine has committed itself to an enlarged program which would include (1) a sovereign Jewish state which would embrace Palestine and probably eventually Trans-Jordan; (2) an eventual transfer of the Arab population from Palestine to Iraq; (3) Jewish leadership for the whole Middle-East in the fields of economic development and control. The Rhodes papers referred to above contain seized documents from the Jewish Agency and the Hagana papers among others that describe details of Plans A and B covering the period from 1941 on as the illegal Zionist military imposed its will on the Jewish communities in Palestine. Indeed, every 18 year old was conscripted into the Hagana army and sworn to alliegeance by an oath that culminated with this statement: "I hereby swear to devote all my strength, and even to sacrifice my life, to defence (sic) and battle for my people and my Homeland, for the freedom of Israel and for the redemption of Zion." In this personal commitment lies the true deceit since no individual had freedom to not serve and thus all Jews were immersed in the intentions of the Zionist Organization whether they understood the totality of its illegal goals, as outlined by General Hurley to President Roosevelt, or not. The full implications of their intent are present in the first of the program goals, in short, a plan to steal lands already occupied by other people. To maintain this secret and illegal army, the Zionist Organization needed funds. It created a levy system that was imposed on all Jews, a taxation on top of that imposed by the British Mandate government. Some objected. A letter in Hebrew dated 5/4/46 from Y. Gesundheit in Tel Aviv to D. Ben Gurion of the Jewish Agency decries both the levy of this tax to fund the military and the need to use violence to establish the National Home. He expresses concern that he has paid out LP 1000 "more than I can afford, to the Rescue Committee for the express provision that it was only to be used for the rescue of refugees from Europe and not for volunteering purposes or for Hagana and weapons." He expands on this point to drive home his real feelings as a Jew. "I am opposed to the use of arms except in self-defense I do not believe in conquering the country by violence, be it directed against the British or against the Arabs." And he goes one step further by referring to Ben Gurion's answers to the Enquiry Commission Hearing, telling him, " it is impossible to rebuild the country and to found a Jewish State by resort to obvious lies." But conscientious objection carried no weight with the Zionist Organization. In the document that lays out how these funds were to be assessed and collected there is this item: "Everyone who assists a shirker or who refuses to comply with the directions of the disciplinary committee will have all the requisite steps taken against him." The steps mentioned can culminate in death. (appendix XLb). The systemization of the expulsion process adopted by the Zionist Organization as the critical years of 1946 and 1947 approached are detailed in yet another set of Plans C and D. The nature of these plans does not appear in the MacMichael/Catling files at Rhodes, but they are presented by Professor Ilan Pappe in his carefully documented and authoritative work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. "It was this Plan (D Dalet) that sealed the fate of the Palestinians within the territory the Zionist Leaders had set their eyes on for their future Jewish State. Indifferent as to whether these Palestinians might decide to collaborate with or oppose their Jewish State, Plan Dalet called for their systematic and total expulsion from their homeland." (28). It must be understood that these secret plans of the Organization required the Zionists to operate illegally against the British Mandate government. Yet that government was essentially pro-Israel in that it was the Balfour Declaration that gave hope to and actually followed through with the establishment of a Jewish state. However, to the Zionists, any action that ran counter to the Zionist positions was anathema and could not be tolerated. "We regard it as our duty to caution you against any attempt to decide on an anti-Zionist solution We shall not accept the status of a minority in our own land, whether the minority be 33% or 49%." This arrogance against the legitimate government of Palestine, a government required to protect both populations, Arab and Jew, meant nothing to the Zionists and they so informed the British authorities. "The Jews are a nation. The land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel. The Jewish State will be established. It is better that it should be established with your help and for your benefit, than against you."(25th March, 1946, The Jewish Resistance Movement, continuation sheet 9, appendix VIII). I close this section with this quote from the British GSO 1 resulting from an interview with Dr. Weizman in Appendix XXB. "If further action was taken or if the Jews really believed that Britain meant to destroy Zionism, then there would be a 'blood bath.' Nothing could prevent it. Not only would we be forced to fight the 80,000 of the Hagana but the 200,000 reserves that stood behind them as well, for all these would shoot. Nobody would be safe in Palestine." (12/7/1946). It's important to recognize just how strong the Jewish forces were at this time. They were without question, both in their own minds and that of the British occupying forces, the superior military in the mid-east. The cries of the Zionists that this small group of innocent Jews were at the mercy of the Arab forces that desired to drive them out is nothing short of deception and a calculated plea to exact sympathy from the American people and its politicians. Thus does deception masquerade as truth. There followed, of course, the UN's partition of Palestine in 1947 with full implementation to take place May 14 of 1948. Between March and May the world failed to notice one of the most vicious, ruthless, calculated slaughters ever undertaken by a purported civilized group of people. The Zionist army went on the march as the Mandate forces looked on, unable to stop the rampage, the destruction, the rape and carnage. I need not detail this period, it's available to those who would want to know in the recent history of the period by the Israeli historian, Benny Morris who has identified 34 Arab communities whose inhabitants were expelled or killed or, better yet, the very recent study done by Dr. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. The instruments of expulsion were many, psychological, economic, and military. The Huns had swords, horses and bad temperaments. The Zionists had cold, heartless intelligence and a trained and superior military force that could surround a town on three sides, drive the inhabitants out the fourth, kill any who resisted, rape women, pillage houses, dynamite homes while the residents were inside, unable to get out, their home becoming both their tomb and their headstone, and force those who fled to walk long miles to another Arab area or another country to become refugees for the next 60 years while Israel brazenly goes to the international courts to get redress for Jews expelled from Arab countries years ago, indifferent to the anguish they inflicted on the impoverished natives of the land they stole. All of this forced on those true Jews who did not accept the nationalist tenets of the Zionists or the methods they employed to carry out their designs. How ironic, no, how unjust the hypocrisy that grows with arrogance. How ironic that "Right of return" as a principle of human rights to protect those forced from their homes and land, a guarantee that they can have redress and return, becomes twisted in the Israeli, Zionist state to protect those who had never been to the land of Palestine because they belong to a religion while preventing the return of those expelled from their homes and livelihoods. How ironic to proclaim that a state created on the assumption that only those of a particular religion can be members of the citizenry is a democracy and repeat it over and over so those who do not know the truth accept it as true. How ironic to cry to the world that Jews are victims of terrorists, heartless terrorists who blow themselves up killing in the process innocent people. How ironic that Israel goes before the UN to decry Iran's proclamation by its President that "Israel will be wiped off the map," when that translation is not correct but serves their purpose, calling on the UN to condemn Iran for intended genocide while they have been in the slow, agonizing process of ethnically cleansing the people of Palestine for 60 years. How ironic that our American main stream press touts the new peace initiative as one proffered by Israel attempting to provide yet once more peace in Palestine when Olmert's government can remain in place only if he denies the very premise of peace, the just return of Palestinian land to its owners and full recognition of a contiguous Palestinian state capable of managing its own affairs independent of Israel, something comparable to the Saudi Prince's plan, rejected out of hand by Sharon in 2002. We hear the Zionist's cry
heralded from the temple mount by Menachem Begin "a
Jew will not bow to anybody except God," a God whose
will is determined by Zionists and Zionists alone, and is
that not the greatest deception of all, that God speaks
through the mouths of those who slaughter God's
creatures? |
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