All peace proposals after 1967 were based on maintaining Israel as a regional power and forcing the Palestinians to settle for less than they were entitled to. They were repeatedly offered paltry settlements that legitimised Israel's hold on most of their land and undermined their right of return.

Rick Rozoff views the United States’ growing arms exports to Middle East countries, which will spend an estimated 100 billion dollars on arms from the US by 2014, and the lost opportunities for development in a region that “has known the least peace in the past 60 years and that is in most need of it”.

Al Quds - Jerusalem: The city of martyrs; the occupied city. A city painted a deep shade of crimson with the blood of the oppressed. A city occupied far longer than I have walked this earth; far longer than my father has existed.

I have been to the West Bank, I have seen with my own eyes how the settlers walk around with machine guns, terrorizing the native Palestinian population. They are only in the West Bank to justify a continued Israeli military presence there; and they are armed to the teeth.

The Israeli daily Maariv reported Monday that the Israeli army will deploy the “Kfir” infantry brigade to the border with Lebanon further north.

By Gus Bridi (Sabbah Report)

“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.”- Newt Gingrich

Has Lebanon officially become more tolerant and progressive than the United States?

Let’s talk about Lebanon’s Ground Zero and you can decide for yourself.

One must first understand what “Ground Zero” means to most Lebanese.

"Besides bordering on Israel, Lebanon's resources make it vulnerable, namely its water and natural gas reserves, one reason for the 2006 war, South Lebanon to the Litani River especially important. Also the Wazzini springs feeding into the Hasbani River tributary of the Jordan River. It flows into Israel two miles downstream from the Wazzini, then into the Sea of Galilee that's Israel's largest fresh water source."

On BlackBerry bans and the real threat to national security
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Mohannad El-Khairy
"Thousands of Israeli companies have contributed to the information and communication technology needs of modern day life. What do they, along with the names mentioned above, share in common?"
"Unlike Dubai, Unit 8200, known as “Shmone Matayim” in Hebrew, doesn’t like the lime light. Set up in the 1959 on Mount Avital in the occupied Golan Heights, Unit 8200 is as a secretive electronic warfare unit responsible for collecting signal intelligence and code decryption."
"Both Gadi Mazor and Ron Maor of Onset and Nobex Technologies are veterans of Unit 8200 as well; so is the influential Yossi Vardi.
Arab resistance groups have taken notice."

Did the Israeli Defense Force Bomb Jews?
August 29, 2010 posted by Bob Nichols
San Francisco) – Israel, a nuclear weapons armed colossus in the Middle East, fights a lot of wars with two small, almost defenseless neighboring countries – Lebanon and Gaza. The 2006 War with Lebanon took a turn for the worse, though.
Israel executed an emergency purchase for 100 plus US GBU-28 5,000 lb, or 2,722 kg, weaponized uranium aerosol bombs from their patron, the United States.
The GBU-28 is a cobbled together weapon consisting of an approximately 20 ft long surplus artillery barrel stuffed with uranium ballast and high explosives. It is very good for the delivery of a particular form of poison gas – a War Crime

Palestine is belligerently occupied. Threats continue against Iran and Syria as well as Lebanon, specifically Hezbollah, elected partner in the nation's unity government, bogusly designated a US State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), what Israel also calls it, repeating veiled and overt warnings, suggesting violence or an impending attack. Why not, after so many earlier in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, and 2006.

Hezbollah was born out of Israel's 1982 Lebanon invasion, its horrific war slaughtering around 18,000 people, mostly civilians, including in the Sabra and Shatila camps, what journalist Robert Fisk called "one of the most shocking war crimes of the 20th century."

Today, a personal story of a national tragedy. Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born New Orleans building contractor, stayed in the city while his wife and children left to Baton Rouge. He paddled the flooded streets in his canoe and helped rescue many of his stranded neighbors.

Days later, armed police and National Guardsmen arrested him and accused him of being a terrorist. He was held for nearly a month, most of which he was not allowed to call his wife, Kathy.

An ambulance is stopped, and the sick people inside brought out to explain their ailments. A mother is separated from her very young children. Young Palestinians laugh and throw snowballs at Israeli soldiers, who jovially respond in kind. One Israeli soldier harasses a pretty Palestinian girl. Another refers to the Arabs as "animals," and suggests the documentary crew is making a film for the Discovery Channel. Palestinians wait in the pouring rain while an Israeli soldier eats his lunch.

The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America's military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people. Conducting assassination operations throughout the 1.3 billon-strong Muslim world will inevitably increase the murder of civilians and thus create exponentially more "enemies," as Gen. McChrystal suggests–posing a major long-term threat to U.S. national security. This mass assassination program, sold as defending Americans, is actually endangering us all.

Israel has been subject to some bad publicity recently. In 2008-09, it launched a brutal military campaign in the Gaza Strip that killed more than 400 Palestinian children. In May 2010, bumbling Israeli commandos murdered nine nonviolence activists on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla's Mavi Marmara. It only got worse for Israel when it was revealed that soldiers stole and sold personal items such as laptops from the ship. Last week, former Israeli soldier Eden Abergil posted photos onto Facebook showing her preening in front of blindfolded and despondent Palestinian prisoners, in some instances mocking those prisoners with sexual undertones. The photos were part of an album entitled "IDF [Israeli army] -- the best time of my life."

A senior advisor to US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell has threatened Lebanese army commander, Jean Qahwaji that should his army initiate additional fire exchanges with Israel, the Israeli occupation army would annihilate his military within four hours, Lebanese newspaper al-Liwa’a reported Friday.

Bishop Donald R.Corder
Now we are faced with reports of Zionist participation in blowing up the World Trade Center on 9/11. Articles are circulated throughout the Internet and alternative media channels, elaborating upon the Israeli government’s fabrication of intelligence and the subsequent war in Iraq, the subsequent execution of their rightful sovereign Saddam Hussein and murdering of hundreds of thousand of Iraqi civilians

Mossad is also reported to be grooming a successor to the Lebanese Shi’a political leader Nabih Berri, currently the speaker of the Lebanese parliament. The Mossad operation is being actively supported behind the scenes by Saudi Arabia, a country that is fast becoming one of Israel’s most “open secret” allies in the Middle East.

According to WMR’s sources in Lebanon, one network that Israel and the United States can rely on to support the UN after the expected indictment of Hezbollah for Hariri’s assassination is a Sunni network in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. It includes a member of the same family as Ziad al-Jarrah, one of the alleged United Flight 93 hijackers on September 11, 2001.

The story of mass-destruction weapons was fabricated; and here are the facts today which show that terrorism did not exist in Iraq before the war. It was the invaders who opened the doors wide open for terrorism. The ex-MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller confirmed to the Chilcot inquiry that “Our involvement in Iraq radicalised a few among a generation of young people who saw [it] as an attack upon Islam.” She adds: “There was no evidence of any link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida – not even the CIA believed that”.

Three weeks ago the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) published a notice, as it is legally required to do, announcing that Israel has ordered massive quantities of various fuels suitable for military use, and in the case of the order for JP-8 jet fuel, suitable only for military use.

The massive order is valued at some $2 billion and, as well as the 284 million gallons (1.075 billion litres) of JP-8 jet fuel, the order also includes 60 million gallons (227 million litres) of unleaded gasoline and 100 million gallons (378 million litres) of diesel fuel.

We, the Palestinians, have a voice; a strong one that never tires no matter the deafness or the silence of the world. We speak of our suffering, aspirations and hopes when all others are silent. We tell our story, the story of a land usurped by foreign colonists, the story of an indigenous people ethnically cleansed from their ancestral home, the story of an olive tree steadfast in the face of Zionism.

We have a voice, a voice that speaks of the suffering that is daily, of the fears that are touchable, of the pain that is real, of the land that is mingled with our blood, a voice that is Palestinian.

Can Israel survive its recent battering in public opinion? Many believe that this may be a defining moment in a long history of Israeli impunity.

These images are graphic, yes. But, they must be seen.
These are our brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers; How much longer can we sit in silence while the people of Palestine suffer under Zionist occupation?

As the racist regime of Israel moves toward greater international isolation due to its aggressive, belligerent policies, Iran receives wider support from the world’s nations for its uncompromising resistance against the bullying superpowers and annulling their mischievous plots. The world is witness to the growth of Iran’s popularity while hatred and disgust against Israel builds up progressively.

Iran is reaching out to the hearts and souls around the world while Israel ignites denunciation and deprecation in the four corners of the globe.

WMR has learned from its Lebanese intelligence sources that the Lebanese government is coming to realize that Israeli intelligence penetration of all political groups in the country is worse than originally believed.

Israel’s Mossad, once content on penetrating the Christian and Druze parties in the country, has now thoroughly infiltrated the top echelons of Sunni and Shi’a parties, as well. Recently, Lebanon charged retired General Fayez Karam, a senior member of retired General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, which is allied with Hezbollah, with spying for Mossad.

Hezbollah has voiced support for the Lebanese president's decision to ask Iran for help in equipping the country's army, saying Beirut must acquire weapons from friendly countries...

"Despite the fact that Obama and the Europeans act like Abbas is the head of a Palestine government, he represents almost no one but a largely corrupt cabal armed and financed by the Americans and the European Union"

Lebanese President Michel Sleiman has officially asked Iran to equip and modernize the Lebanese Army, given the problems Beirut is facing.

Sleiman has asked Iranian officials to consider selling advanced military equipment to the Lebanese Army, reported IRNA...

strong>This video presents the inspiring speech in Arabic with English subtitles of Archbishop Atallah Hanna and Supreme Justice Sheikh Taiseer Al Tamimi as filmed at the Sixth International Annual Al-Awda Convention

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, threw hopes for a smooth resumption of Middle East peace talks into turmoil by rejecting demands to continue a freeze on settlement building in the West Bank.

Mr Netanyahu said any deal must provide real security for Israel, provide a solution to the refugee problem within a future demilitarised Palestinian state, and must include Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and an 'end of conflict’ clause.

---Comment---

Let me get this straight, Netenyahu wants Palestinians' to recognize the state of Israel's ownership of stolen lands and not to retaliate when they kill or blow-up Palestinian homes and other public buildings. Recall that Israel has never defined its boarders, which allows them to annex adjacent lands. Coupled with the blockade around the remaining Palestinian territory that is slowly starving them to death. This kind of gall can only be encouraged with American tax dollars; lets change that and defund Israel. American tax money should benefit Americans - first, second, and third. - kdtroxel

Grassroots Palestinian boycott campaigns across the occupied West Bank to take Israeli settlement products off the shelves of local stores have made an impact on the Israeli settlement economy, to the unease of the Israeli government, noted the Israeli daily Haaretz this week.

There will be nothing spontaneous or ‘unilateral’ about the coming confrontation; it has been in the planning for decades by the Zionists and their neoconservative supporters. Regime change in Iran will be the war aim for the US while the defeat of Hezbollah and Hamas and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon with a view to eventual annexation will be Israel’s war aims while creating a Greater Israel will be their ultimate goal. In all theatres the war will devastate the civilian populations leading to massive upheavals and deaths.

Women instructed to carry blood type info in case 'they need blood transfusions in the event of being attacked by Israeli forces.'

Samar al-Hajj says the ship, the Mariam, named after the Virgin Mary, will be carrying medicine for the seaside strip. Al-Hajj said all the passengers will be women activists.

Lebanon and Israel are technically at war and Israeli officials have warned Beirut not to allow the boat to sail.

If the United States backs an attack on Iran, a large percentage of Americans will have nothing to do with it.
Protests and riots will begin and never stop. The US military will splinter and fall into factions. The US economy will collapse, more Americans will be sent to die in a needless war.

The members of Parliament decided to do essentially nothing to meet Lebanon’s legal, moral, religious, social and political obligations to her unwanted refugees. Parliaments gesture will likely not improve the lives of many, if even a handful, of the hundreds of thousands of refugees, 62 years after their expulsion from their homes and lands in Palestine.

So, you hate us because of the 9/11 events. Well, 99% of Muslims condemned in the strongest terms these terrorist acts. And we are sorry for the umpteenth time for the death of dozens of hundreds of innocent Americans, including Muslims, in these terrorist attacks.

By Franklin Lamb

Part XI of a series on securing civil rights for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon “Palestinian guests in Lebanon are working with total freedom. First of all we do not refer to them as “refugees”. They are our brothers who are suffering and in a very difficult situation that they did not cause [...]

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE:

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2010/08/lebanon-scatters-a-little-chicken-fee...

One document in particular, Plan Dalet, demonstrated the army’s intention to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. Its existence explains the ethnic cleansing of more than 80 per cent of Palestinians in the war, followed by a military campaign to destroy hundreds of villages to ensure the refugees never returned.

A Lebanese military court on Tuesday sentenced two citizens to death on charges of spying for Israel’s Mossad, a judicial source said.

Why has Lebanon ended up as the graveyard of so many invaders? Israelis used to say in the 1960s that one of their military bands would be enough to conquer the country.Within a few years of the Israeli invasion of 1982 Israeli soldiers returning home would throw themselves to the ground to kiss Israeli soil as soon as they crossed the border, thankful only to have made it back alive.

It took four years for the tribunal to admit that much of “the evidence” used against Syria was fabricated by false witnesses, some of them even tied to Israeli intelligence. The whole case against Syria collapsed and the four senior security officers held for over four years were consequently released. In the mean time, the false witnesses were relocated outside Lebanon and given protection and new identities in different European countries.

Hizbullah Official in South Lebanon Sheikh Nabil Qaouk assured that the audio and visual evidences Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah presented shocked “Israel” and revealed the level of threats it imposes on the Lebanese stability, security, and sovereignty.

In a speech he delivered during a fast breaking gathering in Nabateye on Sunday, Sheikh Qaouk pointed out that these evidences are much stronger than being ignored or neglected. Therefore, they gave a big chance to redirecting the investigation’s track.

Secret meeting of Iranian and Turkish intelligence officials leads to new weapons supply route
August 12, 2010 - 16:00 AMT 11:00 GMT
Iranian and Turkish intelligence officials recently signed an agreement that establishes territorial continuity for Turkey, Iran, Syria and Lebanon, and guarantees a constant supply of weapons to Hezbollah, a report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera said.

Syria, Iran support Lebanon against Israel
(AFP)
11 August 2010
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki underlined their joint support for Lebanon in the face of Israeli ‘aggression,’ state news agency SANA said.
The two met at Lattakia on Syria’s northern coast and discussed the situation in Lebanon ‘following the Israeli aggression against Lebanese sovereignty,’ it said.
They affirmed ‘their support for Lebanon in the face of such aggression,’ SANA said of an August 3 clash on the Lebanon-Israel border between the two countries’ troops.
"In April, the United States accused both Syria and Iran of supplying Hezbollah with sophisticated missiles which could be used against Israel."

U.S. Rep. Howard Berman announced that he had exercised his "legislative prerogative to place a suspension" on $100 million of aide to the Lebanese army. Berman said he suspected Hezbollah involvement. Lebanese Minister of Defense, Elias Murr , "those who want to help the army on condition that it doesn’t protect its territory, people and border from Israel, should keep their money...."

Lawrence Davidson considers calls within the US Congress to punish the Lebanese army for defending Lebanese territory against Israeli violations and asks: “What will it take to make ordinary Americans ... grasp the danger of allowing their Middle East policy to be made by a special interest that has no regard for either the wellbeing of individual citizens or the national interest?”

”When it comes to Middle East foreign policy, men like [US congressmen] Howard Berman and Ron Klein and many others too, still stand in as agents of a foreign power. And they do so in an obvious knee-jerk fashion. I am afraid it will stay this way until Israeli behaviour becomes a voting issue in the US for more than just Zionist Americans.”

The hasbara industry is in full swing at the moment as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government pulls out all the stops to create a smokescreen to cover its crimes.

An influx of hair-raising stories keeps coming from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border terminal. Nearly all these stories underscore the degrading treatment meted out to Gazans, already thoroughly savaged by the manifestly criminal siege imposed by Israel on the coastal enclave in coordination with several regional and international players, including Egypt itself.

The American people does not deserve that their government supports the wrong side, once more, while they pay the price with their blood, credibility and reputation. It should support those fighting for freedom and peace not those who promote racism, occupation and terrorism.

With the destruction of Iran, the countdown for the takeover of Saudi Arabia would begin. In words of a neocon: “Everyone wants to take out Tehran. But real mensch wants to take out ar-Riyadh”. Provided that no attack on Iran is possible without Saudi connivance, the “irony of history” will be complete. The enemies of Israel will be taken out one after another, each with help of the next, still unsuspecting victim.

Saad Hariri suggests evidence presented by Hezbollah could point to Israeli involvement in the assassination of his father in 2005, Lebanese paper reports. Nasrallah held a press conference during which he attempted to shift the blame to Israel, citing an audio recording of an alleged Israeli agent and intercepted Israeli aerial drone footage.

On August 4, US State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said that the firing by Lebanese armed forces on Israeli troops near the Israel-Lebanon border the previous day, which killed two Lebanese soldiers and one Lebanese journalist as well as one Israeli officer and seriously wounded another, was “totally unjustified and unwarranted.” Shortly before, Israeli Ambassador in Washington, Michel Oren, held talks with US senior officials to demand them a harsh US response.

The leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, has charged that contrary to an expected UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon report that will blame Hezbollah for the February 14, 2005 bomb assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, he has Israeli spy plane evidence that shows the Israelis were closely monitoring Hariri’s route on the day he was killed in Beirut.

WMR has previously reported that it was Mossad, along with CIA contract operatives in Lebanon, that carried out the assassination of Hariri.

While Israel demolishes Palestinian homes and expropriates the properties of absent Palestinians by forcibly expelling them from their homes, it demands that Arab countries return the possessions of the Jews who used to live in them. It expels African children from Israel so that it remains ‘Jewish and white’.

US Intelligence Community Israel have been working longer hours than most members of Lebanon’s Parliament, carefully analyzing the language of the main draft proposals concerning elementary civil rights for Palestinian Refugees. US-Israel plan is to allow nothing to be enacted into law that would actually benefit Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees.

Both God’s blessing and his generosity are best exemplified this month, as giving alms to the poor, suppressing greed and lust, along with feeling for suffering of the other all dominate interaction between people, bringing out the finest in both men and women.
The Intifada Palestine Team

US and Israeli outrage is easy to understand. The Lebanese has not used US weapons to crush Hezbollah but to defend Lebanon and this is an unbearable reality for Israelis and pro-Zionist circles in Washington. For Washington and Tel Aviv, the truth is simple: the Lebanese Army is not supposed to protect Lebanon from Israeli violations of the Lebanese sovereignty and, thus, it shot at whom did not have to.

Dr. Alan Sabrosky
We know about Israel’s control of the Congress and the media, and I think people on our side generally understand about their control of political appointments that absolutely keep opponents of Israel out of office – the Chas Freeman incident ought to have been telling

By Dr. Franklin Lamb

Part X of a series on securing Civil Rights for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (NIR) is part of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s panoply of 16 agencies, which comprise the US Intelligence Community (IC). According to Congressional sources consulted below, NIR and Israel have been working longer hours than most members of Lebanon’s Parliament, carefully analyzing the language of the main draft proposals concerning elementary civil rights for Palestinian Refugees. The proposals are currently scheduled for an August 17, 2010 Parliamentary vote and the US-Israel plan is to allow nothing to be enacted into law that would actually benefit Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees.

By Dr. Alan Sabrosky* for My Catbird Seat

As the US edges toward an unprovoked and utterly needless war with Iran, some remarks by an eminent and experienced observer of that part of the world caught my attention. First, he noted that Israel and the US realize that the next war will burn much of the Middle East and may well spell the end of Israel.

Second, he remarked that Every week Israel becomes weaker vis a vis the “resistance axis” and at what point does Israel decide to bring down the house and start again if it can survive with enough military power (backed by the US) to remake the region.

Continue reading:

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2010/08/israel%e2%80%99s-pillars-of-samson-no...

Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern
The following important warning from former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern. The United States could be drawn into yet another unwinnable war if Israel attacks Iran

How many " Angels" are still left over?

Israeli hasbara doctors and their mouthpieces in the West don’t stop dithering about the perceived failure of the Israeli propaganda machine “to get the message through” to western audiences. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year and the best of the best PR firms are recruited to do the job for Israel.

"He lived like a martyr and became a martyr", says Derya, Martyr Cevdat K?l?çlar (Jawdat kilichlar)'s wife and life partner.

strong>Donna Shalala, Clinton's secretary of health, arrives in Israel in order to fight academic boycott against Israel, was held for two-and-a-half hours at Ben Gurion Airport during which she underwent a humiliating security debriefing because of her Arab last name

A ship bearing aid for Gaza is preparing to leave Tripoli in Lebanon this weekend in the latest attempt to defy the Israeli blockade – with only women on board.

The Saint Mariam, or Virgin Mary, has a multi-faith international passenger list, including the Lebanese singer May Hariri and a group of nuns from the US. "They are nuns, doctors, lawyers, journalists, Christians and Muslims," said Mona, one of the participants who, along with the other women, has adopted the ship's name, Mariam.

Israel's Jerusalem Municipality said Thursday that tombstones razed by authorities a day earlier in a 12th-century Muslim cemetery were "built illegally with the aim to take over the plot."

At least 15 tombstones and structures were torn apart Wednesday in the Mamilla (Ma'man Allah) cemetery, the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage said. The latest demolitions follow the disinterment of over 1,500 graves in 2009 to make way for a controversial Museum of Tolerance. The foundation quickly denounced the move, describing it as a "heinous crime."

It’s a relatively new method, but it’s been hitting headlines almost every day lately. It’s called the ‘price tag’ policy. Here’s how to do it.

The Israeli daily Maariv reported on its Website that “a long line of rabbis” declared that Israel will engage in a ‘bloody war’ this month.

According to the report, rabbi Amnon Yitzhak said during a lecture last week that the recent training of Israeli troops on helicopters in Romania was aimed at making it possible to “attack distant countries, the government of Hamas, and the government of Lebanon during the next war with Hezbollah.”

By Dr. Franklin Lamb
“Some members of Parliament prefer that the camps explode and then they will insist that “Palestinian security problems must be resolved before Parliament can consider giving them civil rights”—meaning several more years of delay. That would be a disaster for all concerned.”

Lebanese Lawyer May Al Khansa denounced the claims of the United Nations Interim Forces in South Lebanon (UNIFIL), which said that the trees uprooted by the Zionist enemy were inside the "Israeli" territories. She described these claims as fabrications that serve the image of "Israel", as if it were the assaulted which affects the international opinion in its regard.

In an interview with moqawama.org, Al Khansa said that will be filing a complaint on Tuesday's "Israeli" crimes before the International Criminal Court, in coordination with lawyers from Spain and Italy.

In the wake of the Israeli attack on Lebanon’s sovereignty, a Lebanese foreign ministry diplomatic campaign was launched to clarify the Lebanese position and resilience to face any aggression on the borders with occupied Palestine.

Arab and foreign ambassadors lashed out at Israel’s aggression on the Lebanese Army (LAF) as a “flagrant infringement” and “blatant violation” of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. They also called upon their governments to support Lebanon and work on implementing resolution 1701.

THE Israeli massacre of nine activists on the Freedom Flotilla could in time to be a game-changer with regard to the siege of Gaza. International attention has focused on the humanitarian crisis there and on the sheer brutality of Israel’s enforcement of the blockade.

These are the supposed protectors of Lebanon?

As UN Forces come back from the clash between Israeli Forces and the Lebanese Army you can see the villagers of Addayse’, which is near the border, come out to offer them water and drinks.

Since the year 1945, the United States of America has attempted to overthrow at least 50 foreign governments – including most recently that of Iran. This variety of political play-making is not just bad diplomatic policy; when US President Obama signed into law, on July 1st 2010, sanctions against Iran he was not making a careless mistake. The United States of America’s foreign policy is comparably similar to that of a cold, calculated killer.

Three Lebanese were martyred on Tuesday and five others were injured in the Israeli aggression along the Occupied Palestinian- Lebanese border.
Israeli occupation troops exchanged fire on Tuesday with the Lebanese soldiers along the Odeisseh southern village, sparking clashes that left two Lebanese army soldiers and one journalist martyred. The journalist was identified as Assaf Bou Rahhal working for Al-Akhbar daily.

Four countries have established relations with Israel among the Arab states and they are Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Oman. This is damaging for the cause of the Palestinians, especially when the country betraying them is Egypt which is the largest Arab country. This is a result of the increasing hegemony of the United States over the Middle East, which pushes the Arab governments to establish relations with the state of Israel against the will of their own people.

In a clumsy and transparent effort to avoid granting Palestinians civil rights in the interim, some US protégés in Lebanon could care less about the refugees reclaiming their stolen homes and lands in Palestine. But, like the Palestinian refugees themselves, they are dead set against the refugees staying any longer than absolutely necessary in Lebanon.

While most Israeli leaders are resistant to fully lifting the blockade of Gaza, Avigdor Lieberman, the right-wing foreign minister, is advocating that Israel abandon the Strip to international monitoring and economic rehabilitation.

The proposal, recently leaked to the Israeli press, does not amount to freeing Gaza but rather to placing it under European sea and land inspections and a reconstruction plan.

A rabbi from one of the most violent settlements in the West Bank was questioned on suspicion of incitement last week as Israeli police stepped up their investigation into a book in which he sanctions the killing of non-Jews, including children and babies.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is one of the leading ideologues of the extreme wing of the religious settler movement. He is known to be a champion of the “price-tag” policy of reprisal attacks on Palestinians, including punishing them for attempts by officials to enforce Israeli law against the settlements.

In the interim things have only gotten worse for the Zionist defenders of the idealized Israel. Multiple invasions of Lebanon and the essentially defenseless Palestinian cities and towns, the slaughter of the innocent, the reduction of Gaza to an open air prison, the on-going confiscation of land and property in the Occupied Territories, rampant settler violence, and the repeated election of racist governments have resulted in a worldwide civil society effort to isolate Israel and induce it to reform itself in the same manner as South Africa.

By Sami Moubayed

Saudi King Abdullah’s landmark visit to Syria on Thursday, his second since assuming the throne in 2005, mirrors Arab diplomacy at its finest hour.

The king is worried – just like his Syrian host President Bashar al-Assad – about two critical files in the Arab world: Iraq and Lebanon.

In Iraq, political rivalries have prevented creation of a cabinet for five months, signaling a political vacuum and security disaster in the weeks to come that would be very troubling for Syria and Saudi Arabia, two of Iraq’s main neighbors.

“We have lived through hell,” Qana resident, Fawzeya Atwi cried. “The people were chopped into pieces by the Israeli bombs. They bleed these people. You should have seen the heads.”

“Do you know what the dogs did at night after the killings? They were hungry and I saw them in the ruins eating fingers and pieces of our people,” Atwi said about the Qana massacre during the July 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon.

The Palestine Authority and Israel have been talking face to face for close to 20 years but to no avail, the main reason being Israel’s unwillingness to concede anything. In fact, it is unclear whether Israel can embrace any solution that leads to a Palestinian state, given the phenomenal proliferation of Jewish colonies on the West Bank.

Deputy Israeli chief of staff, Gaby Ashkenazi said that an earthquake was in store for Lebanon later this year, when the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) names Hezbollah figures in connection with the 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

“We have lived through hell,” Qana resident, Fawzeya Atwi cried. “The people were chopped into pieces by the Israeli bombs. They bleed these people. You should have seen the heads.”

“Do you know what the dogs did at night after the killings? They were hungry and I saw them in the ruins eating fingers and pieces of our people,” Atwi said about the Qana massacre during the July 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon.

Beirut will be abuzz with diplomatic activity this weekend as Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah makes his first official visit to Lebanon since assuming the throne. Reports are that President Bashar Assad of Syria will accompany him as the two aim to diffuse mounting tension over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) anticipated indictment of “rogue” Hezbollah elements allegedly involved in the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

I asked the IPPNW member aboard the Mavi Marmora, how he, as a practicing psychiatrist, would evaluate the mental state of the Israeli leadership, he quipped that he was merely a psychotherapist, and did not deal with cases of grave psychosis.

In the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is credited with masterminding the 9/11 attacks, their purpose was to focus "the American people ... on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people …."

Special to My Catbird Seat

Defenders of Israel right or wrong continue to assert that the absence of peace is all the fault of the Palestinians.

We are now witnessing the legalization and industrialization of another war, one which will set the entire region ablaze.

Two recent reports discuss it, a July Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-IL) one titled, “A Situation Report on Obstacles Facing Gaza Residents in Need of Medical Treatment,” and a June one titled, “Who Gets to Go,” jointly prepared by PHR-IL, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. All cite Israeli medical ethics and international law violations by discriminating on the basis of need, denying adequate treatment to seriously ill Gazans by:

– preventing the restoration and development of the Strip’s healthcare system; and
– restricting travel to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Israel, or neighboring countries for treatment.