After weeks of provocative war mongering moves, such as opening a synagogue at Al Aqsa Mosque, refusing to let Muslim enter Al Aqsa Mosque, ethnically cleansing Muslims from their homes in East Jerusalem, announcing more land grabbing settlements of close to 2 thousand new psychotic settlers, and generally poking sticks and attempting to instigate fights with Muslims, Israel is today rejoicing, their work has now paid off.

Today a small rocket was fired into Israel (by a handful of dissidents) and a Thai agricultural worker died as a result, this is very sad for the innocent man, however it is not a reason to once again bomb thousands of innocent Gazan civlians.

The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that [U.S. envoy and former Senator George] Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow ... and too late."

Israel will not cancel the newly approved East Jerusalem construction project, but will postpone its execution to facilitate peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, a Washington Post report citing Israel's U.S. envoy said on Thursday.

Senior Post reporter Jackson Diehl, said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to tell the Obama administration that he both cannot revoke the Ramat Shlomo expansion plan both for legal reasons and as a result of wide public support in continued building in Jerusalem.

The Anti-Defamation League takes the unexpected step of criticizing Gen. David Petraeus, the widely respected commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, for his recent comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee that lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace sets the “strategic context” for U.S. security fortunes in the region. “Gen. Petraeus has simply erred in linking the challenges faced by the U.S. and coalition forces in the region to a solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and blaming extremist activities on the absence of peace and the perceived U.S. favoritism for Israel,” the ADL’s Abraham Foxman says in a just-released statement. “This linkage is dangerous and counterproductive.”

On Tuesday tens of hundreds of Palestinians of all political persuasions took to the streets, alleys and sidewalks as widespread rioting and protests spread across East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and into Israel proper.

The worst violence in several years, something of a mini Intifadah or uprising, followed the Islamist movement Hamas calling for a ‘Day of Rage’ to protest Israel’s continued Judaisation of East Jerusalem and what Palestinians see as an attempt to take over Islamic holy sites.

If Israel wanted an excuse to have another go at Gaza, and the occasional feeble, homemade rocket biting sand in the Negev failed to provide one, would it sacrifice a Thai worker and blame it on Gazan terrorists?

Two Israeli aircraft appearing to be spy planes flew near Budapest's international airport last week but did not land there, Hungarian media reported Thursday.

According to the reports, the planes were on a "spy mission" that may be connected to the assassination of a Syrian national in his vehicle Wednesday in the Hungarian capital.

Israeli fighter jets have bombarded at least two sites in the Gaza Strip shortly after a Thai agricultural worker was killed when a rocket fired from the besieged coastal enclave struck the northern Negev.

The eyewitnesses said Israeli F-16 fighter jets targeted an open area north of the Gaza City. The warplanes also fired missiles at an open area in the central Gaza Strip.

One of the warplanes broke the sound barrier in the skies of northern and central Gaza Strip, causing panic through the crowd, especially women and children.

The president and his inner circle are appalled at Israel’s self-absorption and its failure to notice that America is not only protecting Israel from Iran, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also dealing with a miasma of horrible problems at home. And Israel insults the Obama administration over a domestic zoning issue that has nothing to do with its security?

“That’s not how you treat your best friend,” said one Obama official.

On or about 8 March 2010, Israeli authorities transferred at least seven Palestinian children from Ofer Prison, in the West Bank, to Rimonim Prison, inside Israel. This decision occurred after lawyers for DCI-Palestine informed Ofer military court that children were being detained illegally with adult detainees inside Ofer prison. However, the response of the Israeli authorities to transfer the children to Israel amounts to a further contravention of international law.

In Argentina, during the reign of the fascist coup they were simply called Los Desaparecidos (the disappeared).

In Palestine, under the fascist occupation they are called CHILDREN.

First we must recognize that International law is rather
clear that East Jerusalem is illegally occupied by Israel and per the Geneva conventions, and buildings or activities in the occupied areas are subject to those conventions. Any transfer of population to the occupied areas including infrastructure for these individuals is considered proscribed settlement activity contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law.

A Zionist friend and writer, Bernard Avishai, recently wrote in his latest book, “Israel is a society where institutional discrimination against individuals for an accident of birth or a profession of faith has been so routine it is hardly noticed—not, at least, by Jews.”

The Palestinian ministry of health reported Sunday that the number of victims who have been killed in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli occupation since the start of 2010 and until the ninth of March amounted to 12 Palestinians and the injuries to 25 others.

According to a report issued by the ministry’s information office, 75 percent of these deaths happened during last January and 91.7 percent of the victims were under age 18.

Karl Rove flatly rejects the notion that Israel was connected to the George W. Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, in a new book that hit bookstores Tuesday.

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell will arrive in the region on Sunday for a visit that had been delayed amid a row between Washington and Israel, a senior Palestinian official told AFP.

Yet it is also the country where the largest-circulation newspaper published a scandalously misleading report accusing the Israeli military of killing Palestinians to harvest their human organs – a modern-day repetition of the historical blood libel all too familiar to Jews. It is a country where the vice-chair for the Social Democratic Women in southern Sweden felt free to prattle: "I think Gaza is comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto ... I'm surprised that Israel ... can do the exact same things the Nazis did.''

Really? The exact same thing?

According to the Vilna Gaon, one of the greatest sages of the 18th century on ”March 16, 2010, Israel will begin construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem….,

Palestinian militants fired a rocket from Gaza into Israel Thursday, killing a Thai farm worker, while the European Union's foreign affairs chief was visiting the Hamas-controlled enclave.

The inclusion of Israel in the European Security Research Programme undermines the EU's commitment to even-handedness in the Middle East.

US congressmen have rebuked President Barack Obama's administration for its criticism of Israel over its illegal settlement expansions.

Eric Cantor, the number two Republican in the House of Representatives, claimed on Tuesday that the government's criticism of Israel threatened US national security.

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and Joint Chief's Chairman Mike Mullen have all recently visited Israel on two issues, reliable information that Israel was planning an attack on Iran, a plan designed to push America into a war our leaders believe is both wrong and likely to risk a global nuclear confrontation with Russia and the building of a massive housing project on the Arab side of Jerusalem in violation of numerous agreements, a project that is likely to cause a spike in world terrorism and send thousands of new fighters to Afghanistan to face American forces there.

Among other things Ben Artzi said “We are a nation dating back 4,000 years, and you (America) in a year or two will be long forgotten. Who will remember you? But Jerusalem will dwell on forever."

The US Department of Justice has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A 392 page legal filing presented by a four person IRmep delegation in a two hour meeting with top officials of the Internal Security Section substantiated the following case for AIPAC's immediate registration:

PART 2

PART 3

Feeling the Love in Jerusalem from Joseph Dana on Vimeo.

The demands made by the U.S. and other world powers regarding the cessation of Israel's building projects in East Jerusalem is unreasonable, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Wednesday, adding that he felt preventing Jews from buying lands anywhere in the capital is a form of discrimination.

After visiting the grave of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah on Wednesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the security barrier must come down.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Da Silva added that Brazil would continue to support the Palestinians so that their dream of establishing an independent, secure state will come true.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Yesh Din, groups that are sponsored by the New Israel Fund, are upset over an IDF decision to declare the villages of Bilin and Naalin closed military zones every Friday. “The IDF is trampling on freedom of expression in a place that has become a symbol of protest,” they said.

The groups' statement ignores and denies the violent nature of the weekly actions at Bilin and Naalin, which began five years ago and have, in one case, caused an IDF soldier to lose an eye.

The United States may invade and occupy Iraq, undermine elected presidents in Haiti and throw its weight around in numerous ways in numerous parts of the world. Yet there is one country it does not dare to confront. Of course, the nation in question is Israel.

Israel and its allies in the United States make certain that no president, no political party, no congressional leader nor any citizen who wishes to be in any way influential, will dare to step outside the lines of proscribed behavior and discourse. The American public, either because they are aware of the pro-Israel grip on power, or because they have swallowed the propaganda whole, remain cowed and silent.

Many of you are parents and grandparents and can fully understand and sympathize with the tragic pain of having a young daughter killed by an American bulldozer in a nation that wouldn't exist without America's support and continued benevolence.

I ask you in all that is holy and meaningful in your lives do not let Rachel's death go unanswered, do not let this young woman's death pass without justice. Her parents need your help and support as they take on one of the world's most powerful nations, politically and militarily, with unprecedented support in our Congress and media.

Israel is being accused of deepening the crisis with the US by announcing it is set to build 426 new settler homes - in addition to the 1,600 announced last week.

The plans, for two areas of East Jerusalem, come the day after Israel's ambassador to the US described relations between the two countries as at their lowest in 35 years.

Netanyahu evidently calculates that the U.S. cannot or will not distance itself from Israel despite his stubbornness about building, especially since the Palestinians have shown little interest in a genuine, enduring peace.

The Israeli activist group Peace Now says Netanyahu is "trying to make Jerusalem indivisible so that it will not be possible to reach a solution based on two states for two peoples." This is not a claim Netanyahu can plausibly deny. But can anybody really call such a policy the earnest pursuit of peace?

The Israeli government has implemented a series of draconian measures to silence and discredit dissidents, leading intellectuals and human rights organizations.

Yesterday, demonstrations were held throughout Jerusalem by Palestinians and progressive Israelis. They were protesting the growth of illegal settlements and evictions throughout the occupied eastern part of the city.

One of the demonstrations was held on the campus of the Hebrew University. About 80 Palestinian students assembled peacefully outside one of the main entrances. They were jeered by no more than 10 Israeli students who chanted “Go back to Gaza”, among other chants that I dare not put in writing without putting an ‘adult content’ tag on this post.

It was an ugly situation to say the least.

There seems little chance that everyone will soon "calm down," as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it, about his confirmation that Israel will go ahead with 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem.

Defending the plan, Netanyahu reminds the world that since 1967, Israeli leaders have considered all of Jerusalem ("complete and united," as a 1980 law says) to be the capital of Israel. Construction projects serve to convert political assertion to demographic reality.

What's different in this case, however, is that U.S. President Barack Obama's administration was by some accounts losing patience with Netanyahu over the issue even before last week's shocking embarrassment of Vice-President Joe Biden.

Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode.

First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.”

“For world Jewry,” Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans, “Israel is the heart. … Israel is the light. … Israel is the hope.”

Meeting Shimon Peres the next day, Joe confessed that when he first visited at age 29, “Israel captured my heart.”

In Peres’ guestbook, he wrote, “The bond between our two nations has been and remains unshakable.”

He then told Peres and the world, “There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.”

Right-wing ultra-orthodox Jews handed out Arabic fliers calling on "non-Jews to leave the land of Israel," in the streets of Jerusalem on Sunday, witnesses reported.

The fliers, quoting Torah and Qur'an, used scripture to urge Palestinians living in the city to leave.

"The Old Testament says the land of Israel is small and belongs to Jews only. Others are not allowed to stay permanently," the flier read.

Republican Whip Cantor (R-VA) called the U.S. reaction to the Israeli announcement "irresponsible."

"In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends," Cantor said. "Israel has always been committed to the peace process, including advocating for direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians, in effort to bring this conflict to an end. Unfortunately, the Palestinian government continues to insist on indirect talks and slowing down the process."

“Why didn’t you invite any speakers with an alternative perspective?” Franke asked Schizer.

His reply was curt. “We invited one or two but they couldn’t make it,” Schizer claimed before hurrying away.

Schizer was understandably nervous about his exposure. After all, he had just presided over a day-long conference during which Israeli human rights workers were labeled as traitors while Judge Richard Goldstone and human rights groups were compared to “anti-Semitic street gangs.” After several speakers had harshly condemned legal efforts against the construction of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Schizer appeared beside them to lend his credibility to their views.

The neoconservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal accused President Barack Obama of having deliberately "chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally." It also warned that Israel will be more likely to attack Iran unilaterally if it "senses that the administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations."

The neoconservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal accused President Barack Obama of having deliberately "chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally." It also warned that Israel will be more likely to attack Iran unilaterally if it "senses that the administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations."

The neoconservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal accused President Barack Obama of having deliberately "chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally." It also warned that Israel will be more likely to attack Iran unilaterally if it "senses that the administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dismissed the idea that US-Israeli relations are in crisis amid a row over Jewish settlers in Arab East Jerusalem.

A group of far-right activists on Tuesday announced their plan to hang hundreds of posters across the country depicting U.S. President Barack Obama under the headline "agent of the PLO." The banner is already on display in the office of National Union MK Michael Ben Ari.

"The poster is within the limits of the country's freedom of speech act," said Ben Ari's aide, Itamar Ben Gvir.

Violent clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians have broken out in Jerusalem, after Hamas announced a "day of rage."

Hamas was angered by the reopening of a synagogue in Jerusalem's Old City, fueling Palestinian fears that the restoration of the Hurva synagogue would endanger a nearby mosque. Hamas rival Fatah urged Muslims to rush to the al-Aqsa mosque, the most sensitive of Muslim sites in the divided city.

After the astounding humiliation of Vice President Joseph Biden by Israel’s rightwing government, that nation’s premier newspaper, “Ha’aretz,” cited an old Hebrew saying, `Biden had to wipe spit off his face and say it was only rain.’

Before arriving in Israel, Biden had repeated President Obama’s demand that Israel cease building new housing in East Jerusalem, which violates international law and decades of UN resolutions. Washington and the EU have repeatedly asked Israel to cease most building activity in the occupied West Bank.

Recent exposés revealing that Ethan Bronner, the New York Times Israel-Palestine bureau chief, has a son in the Israeli military have caused a storm of controversy that continues to swirl and generate further revelations.

Many people find such a sign of family partisanship in an editor covering a foreign conflict troubling especially given the Times’ record of Israel-centric journalism. Times management at first refused to confirm Bronner’s situation, then refused to comment on it. Finally, public outcry forced Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt to confront the problem in a February 7th column.

The Obama administration's fierce denunciation of Israel last week has ignited a firestorm in Congress and among powerful pro-Israel interest groups who say the criticism of America's top Mideast ally was misplaced.

Newly discovered footage of a terrorist attack perpetrated by an Israel Defense Forces soldier in the Arab town of Shfaram five years ago indicates that authorities were aware of plans to commit the attack, a lawyer representing Israeli Arabs suspected of taking part in the subsequent lynching of the gunman said Sunday.

Shameful Zionist propaganda lobby group The Simon Wiesenthal Center has issued a report which smears people who question government as racists and terrorists, labeling conspiracy theories “hate” in the latest crusade against free speech on the Internet.

...

In reality, the only peddlers of “hate” are the Simon Wiesenthal Center itself. Their latest report is yet another salvo in the long-standing agenda to silence what they characterize as “conspiracy theories,” but what in fact constitute legitimate criticism of the abuses committed by Israel against Palestinians.

Terrorism, or the glorification of it, is not the solution to anything….it will only prolong the struggle for a permanent Just Peace. We must find ways and means to get to that goal. Both sides must unite against terrorism!

A year ago. Israeli Border Police shattered the skull of Tristan Anderson with a high-velocity tear gas canister as he stood unarmed following a weekly demonstration against Israel’s Separation Wall in the West Bank village of Nilin. Since then, his family, friends, and supporters around the world continue the struggle to hold Israel accountable.

Anderson, a now-39-year-old resident of Oakland, California, still lies in the Tel Hashomer hospital outside Tel Aviv, where he was taken after the March 13, 2009, shooting. Although his mother Nancy Anderson recently reported some welcome signs of progress in his recovery, he remains in critical condition, with severe permanent brain damage and an uncertain prognosis.

The Israeli military finally constructed the watchtower in Ush Ghrab in the middle of our town of Beit Sahour today. An ugly reminder to us of the apartheid military power and an eye-sore too. News also indicates that the army decided to declare areas of Bilin and Nilin as closed military zones on Friday so that they try to prevent the weekly demonstrations.

Entire Villages Declared “Closed Military Zones” for Protesting

Israeli Army: Bil’in and Ni’ilin a Closed Military Zone for a Six Months Period Dozens of masked soldiers raided the West Bank villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin this morning to post decrees designating the village’s lands as a closed military zone on Fridays for a period of six months.

Conventional marketing wisdom has it that even bad news is good news, as long as people talk about you. But Jonathan Gabay, a leading London-based marketing and branding expert, disagrees, at least when it comes to Israeli hasbara, or public diplomacy.

He is extremely critical of the new campaign recently launched by Israel's Information and Diaspora Ministry, which seeks to motivate Israelis traveling abroad to speak up on behalf of Israel. Dubbed Masbirim Israel, or Explaining Israel, the campaign advises citizens on how to discourse politely and provided a list of Israel's achievements to be highlighted in conversations.

This coming March 16 will be the seventh anniversary of Israel's deliberate murder of a 23 year old young idealist college student from Olympia, Washington named Rachel Corrie. Her story and the shocking photos of her murder can be found in the links below.
For seven years Israel has denied and falsified the story of this American citizen's murder, albiet with the silence and usual paralysis of our government when the issue has to do with Israel.

Israeli authorities ordered Sunday the destruction of Salman Al-Farsi, the mosque under construction in the northern West Bank village of Burin, reported Ghassan Daghlas, head of the Palestinian Authority's settlement portfolio.

Daghlas explained that the Israeli Civil Administration ordered a stop on construction work at the mosque, demanding the demolition of what has already been completed of the three-story building.

President of Brazil, Lula da Silva, who arrived this evening (Sunday) to visit Israel, refused to visit Mount Herzl and lay a wreath on the grave of Theodor Herzl.

In response to his announcement, Hagai Merom, whose job it is to escort the heads of state at the ceremony at the tomb of Herzl, said that the decision insults the accepted rules of politeness and friendship between countries.

Bashing Islam is Freedom of Speech Criticizing Israel is a Hate Crime

Last week, a few Palestinian journalists and I had the opportunity to meet with Martin Day, a spokesman of the British government. The meeting, which was hosted by the Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN), took place in Ramallah. In his introductory remarks, Day gave the impression that the imminent renewal of peace talks between the almost completely helpless Palestinian Authority (PA) and a brazenly insolent Israel, ruled by the most hawkish government in the Jewish state’s history, will eventually achieve peace and lead to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. He also lauded the Obama administration, underscoring its “sincerity” towards resolving the enduring Palestinian cause.

For over 60 years zionism has lied to the world. They have us believe that their state is the ‘Only Democracy in the Middle East’….. they want us to believe that they are the ‘good guys’ surrounded by a sea of enemies.

Now that they are possibly being ‘called’ on specific issues, rather than admit the errors of their way, they merely twist the truth to get their way….. Unfortunately they probably will as they have for all these years.

Below you can see their attitudes and positions…. with one MAJOR flaw…. Abe Foxman speaks for the right wing, racist ADL…. NOT THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY, certainly not for anyone I know.

Dr. Yehuda Hiss, the former head of the Israel Forensic Institute who conducted the autopsy of Rachel Corrie at the request of the Israeli military, admitted that he violated an Israeli court order requiring that an official from the U.S. Embassy be present during Rachel’s autopsy. Hiss also stated that his policy was not to allow entrance to the autopsy to anyone who is not a physician or biologist. Dr. Hiss stated that he spoke by phone with the US Embassy after receiving the court order and was told they would not be sending a representative, and that the Corrie family had agreed to the autopsy. Dr. Hiss admitted there was no documentation in his file of this conversation with the Embassy.

Residents of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Saad will have to go through a special gate in the separation fence in order to reach Jabel Mukaber and the rest of Jerusalem, the High Court of Justice ruled on Monday.

The judges rejected a petition filed by residents of the village and partially accepted the defense establishment’s stance, meaning the current situation will remain unchanged and the temporary fence in the area will become permanent.