donderdag 21 mei 2009

De Pro Israel Lobby 129

Iqbal Jassat - ‘Terror’ Channels Face Freedom Threat

Posted: 20 May 2009 01:45 PM PDT

The perception that many American policies are influenced by Israel has been given a further boost with the latest attempt by the US Congress to silence free speech.

The current move to ‘cleanse’ the airwaves involves pro-Israeli members of the congress who are in the process of submitting a bill that seeks to target satellite stations as “terrorist organizations”.

The proposed bill is viewed as Israel’s on-going efforts to stem the tide of widespread support Palestinians have received following the Gaza disaster spawned by the apartheid state’s inhumane war.

Graphic details and gruesome images of victims of Israeli brutality have also resulted in global outrage resulting in condemnation of these war crimes and demands for the prosecution of the perpetrators.

Having failed to eliminate Hamas and the spirit of resistance embodied within all sectors of Occupied Palestinian in spite of the most lethal weapons of mass destruction deployed over three weeks in an intense and highly disproportionate manner, Israel has once again turned to American legislators for help.

In keeping with its need to veil its own hidden agenda, Israeli lobbyists within the US Congress seek to promote the bill as part of US efforts to “stem the demonization of Americans in the Arab media”.

Satellite carriers ArabSat and NileSat that broadcast channels such as al-Manar and Hamas’ al-Aqsa are in the firing line.

Authors of the bill from both the Republican and Democratic parties have explained that these television broadcasters were helping “foreign terrorist organizations in their objectives, including recruiting fighters, collecting funds and disseminating propaganda”.

The language sounds as archaic as the Bush administration’s neocon warmongers. Yet it seems that despite the euphoria of “change” heralded with the election of Barack Obama, no fundamental changes in the American construct of the discredited “war on terror” are discernable.

The phenomena of “terror-related channels” are part of the Israeli political psychology that treats resistance to its illegitimate Occupation of Palestine as “terrorist”. This ploy is designed to demonize media activists, analysts, authors, commentators and broadcasters in one single sweep and thereby discredit their authenticity.

It’s not any different to the propaganda war unleashed against South Africa’s freedom struggle by the now defunct National Party. The essence of this is captured in a critical study by Terry Bell and Dumisa Ntsebeza titled “Unfinished Business: South Africa Apartheid & Truth”:

“The optimism stemming from the effective council of war in Simonstown was bolstered politically by elements within the United States security establishment. They were actively engaged in planning armed resistance to the new, Soviet-leaning governments in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. The fact that such governments has come to power in 1979 and that South Africa then faced the prospect of Rhodesia going the way of Angola and Mozambique, fed into the paranoia of the time. South Africa, it seemed, was back in the frontline of the ‘free world’ fight. Here was international communism on the march; the evil empire had gained some advantage, which the CIA and the Pentagon were trying to claw back, having been betrayed by their politicians and congress.

“Botha and his generals saw themselves very much part of this ‘international struggle’. South Africa would play its part in fighting the Red menace and so earn the eventual gratitude of the world at large. The enemy could be resisted and overcome by sponsoring opposition from within the very communities that may initially have supported the new governments. An iron fist could be created and wielded by those whose hearts and minds had been won over. Besides, as Botha was especially pleased to note, in Britain the woman he regarded as a friend, Margaret Thatcher, had swept to power. There was also the prospect of a Republican victory in the US presidential race, which would bring the rightwing Ronald Reagan to power. The CIA and the Pentagon might have less difficulty under such an administration. In Germany too, the conservative Helmut Kohl seemed on the way to eventual victory and Robert Muldoon, regarded as a friend of the apartheid state, was back in charge of New Zealand.”

Though Bell and Ntsebeza describe the rightwing mood prevalent during the eighties which was inclined to be supportive of the apartheid regime’s version of the war on terror, the current ideological battle waged by Israel in cahoots with its Western allies, including unelected Arab states euphemistically referred to as “moderate”, is a continuation of the same propaganda war.

It is a revolting thought that so-called liberal societies who value freedom of expression are being manipulated to implement punitive measures on the back of special legislation designating satellite providers as transmitters of “terror-related channels”.

In addition, the bill urges governments and private investors who own shares in satellite companies to oppose transmission of telecasts by al-Aqsa TV, al-Manar TV and other channels designated as “terrorist”.

Since al-Aqsa and al-Manar are transmitting on the satellite providers Nile-Sat, controlled by the Egyptian government, and ArabSat, controlled by the Arab League, it is entirely possible that the timing of this bill was calculated to coincide with Hosni Mubarak’s visit to the US following Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama.

This latest move to reverse Israel’s negative profile in the battle for hearts and minds is the worst form of mind control and should be resisted.

- Iqbal Jassat is chairperson of the Media Review Network (MRN), an advocacy group based in Pretoria, South Africa.
By Iqbal Jassat – Pretoria, source  (and thanks to Silver Lining blog)

De Pro Israel Lobby 128


This is from a dedicated BDS activist in Australia ... It is an opinion piece by union heavyweights in the UK, US and Australia opposing the Israel boycott, published in Australia's only national newspaper -- a "hard Zionist" paper, as the activist reports.  

The main point to note is that these pro-Israel union voices have been summoned by the lobby to counter the boycott, which they themselves admit is "growing by leaps and bounds" and "seems unstoppable." As in the striking admission by the AIPAC Executive Director earlier this month, such testimonies from our staunchest adversaries are the strongest indicators that BDS is not only working, but truly shaking the Western mainstream walls.

Omar Barghouti

Unions move to overturn Israel boycott

Paul Howes, Michael Leahy and Stuart Appelbaum | May 21, 2009

Article from:  The Australian

LAST month, the Scottish Trade Unions Congress became the latest in a series of unions to call for a boycott of Israeli products. Support for boycotting, divesting from and sanctions against the Jewish state appears to be growing by leaps and bounds.

It has already won considerable support from trade unions in South Africa, Ireland, Britain and Norway. It seems unstoppable. But we intend to stop it.

TULIP - Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine - is a new global movement that believes in engaging with workers and their unions in Israel and Palestine, promoting co-operation and reconciliation.

We do not believe in boycotts, divestment and sanctions. We believe in peace and in a two-state solution to the conflict.

Our new global movement seeks allies in unions and non-governmental organisations everywhere who want to work together to demand respect for all Palestinians, Israelis and guest workers living in that region.

We believe we can take significant strides towards peace and reconciliation if we support those striving to improve the living standards of all working people in the region.

There are outstanding examples of co-operation between Israeli and Palestinian unions that need to be encouraged. For example, there's a remarkable initiative launched by the International Transport Workers Federation to make life much easier for Palestinian drivers.

This has been a small but ground-breaking union agreement encouraging dialogue between the Palestinian and Israeli national trade union centres, as well as individual unions and their members on both sides of the divide. This agreement will help improve the livelihoods of hard-working union truckers and their families.

As we write this the ITF is organising to move this important project to a higher level with the co-operation of the Israel trade union congress Histadrut and the Palestinian transport workers union.

This model is a firm rejection of those in trade unions promoting an Israel boycott movement.

This model upholds the traditional role of trade unions when faced with disputes of this kind: bridging the gap between nations at war, encouraging peace, justice and conciliation. It is a trade union tradition and role that we are particularly proud to uphold.

We also applaud the role of the International Trade Union Confederation, which has helped to broker co-operation agreements between the Histadrut and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions.

It is unfortunate that in recent years a number of national unions and trade union centres have changed course and abandoned that role.

Instead, they have rallied behind those Palestinians who are opposed to the peace process. Some have gone so far as to deny Israel's right to exist and attacked the Histadrut.

In doing so, in backing the Hamas terrorists who deny Israel's right to exist, they have thrown their support behind Iran's power play in the region. And the Iranian regime is no friend of the trade union movement. Iran - and its Hamas puppets - have a long record of suppressing trade unions and human rights.

Those who support the boycott of Israel actually do nothing to promote peace, justice and reconciliation: in fact, they harm those who want to end the political hegemony of the extremists on both sides.

The boycott stance provides succour to the extremists in Israel and Palestine who refuse to accept the humanity of the other, who refuse to respect the right of all workers in the region to be able to build decent lives for themselves and their families in a peaceful, just and democratic climate.

In recent weeks and months a number of unions have called for boycotts and sanctions directed exclusively against Israel.

They are attempting to demonise the Jewish state, to deny it legitimacy, and to whip up hatred against it. Sometimes that hatred spills over into anti-Semitism.

Those unions are terribly wrong.

We believe the time has come for trade unionists across the world to join forces in support of genuine Israeli-Palestinian peace with justice, based on a two-state solution with secure and recognised borders.

There are already unions and associated NGOs in a number of countries that support this goal. But they are fighting this battle alone, each in their own country. It is time we united our forces.

Today we are publicly launching this new global movement, TULIP.

At the moment, the opponents of a two-state solution are on the offensive, working hard to promote their destructive agenda of boycotts and sanctions targeting Israel. It's time for trade unionists in all countries to go on the offensive, to challenge the apologists for Hamas and Hezbollah in the labour movement.

We have no illusions that this will be anything other than a long and difficult process. But we also know that we have no choice.

We cannot abandon the field to those whose goal is the destruction of any chance for a real Israeli-Palestinian peace.

We welcome trade unionists from all countries to join us.

Paul Howes is national secretary of the Australian Workers Union; Michael J. Leahy is general secretary of Britain's Community union; and Stuart Appelbaum is president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, representing workers in the US and Canada.

www.tuliponline.org


Noam Chomsky 33

American Amnesia: We Forget Our Atrocities Almost As Soon as We Commit Them

By Noam Chomsky, Tomdispatch.com. Posted May 20, 2009.

Historical amnesia is a dangerous social phenomenon because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead. 

The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation, and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable. The surprise, less so.

For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantanamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would be beyond the reach of the law -- a place, incidentally, that Washington is using in violation of a treaty forced on Cuba at the point of a gun? Security reasons were, of course, alleged, but they remain hard to take seriously. The same expectations held for the Bush administration's "black sites," or secret prisons, and for extraordinary rendition, and they were fulfilled.

More importantly, torture has been routinely practiced from the early days of the conquest of the national territory, and continued to be used as the imperial ventures of the "infant empire" -- as George Washington called the new republic -- extended to the Philippines, Haiti, and elsewhere. Keep in mind as well that torture was the least of the many crimes of aggression, terror, subversion, and economic strangulation that have darkened U.S. history, much as in the case of other great powers.

Accordingly, what's surprising is to see the reactions to the release of those Justice Department memos, even by some of the most eloquent and forthright critics of Bush malfeasance: Paul Krugman, for example, writing that we used to be "a nation of moral ideals" and never before Bush "have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for." To say the least, that common view reflects a rather slanted version of American history.

Occasionally the conflict between "what we stand for" and "what we do" has been forthrightly addressed. One distinguished scholar who undertook the task at hand was Hans Morgenthau, a founder of realist international relations theory. In a classic study published in 1964 in the glow of Camelot, Morgenthau developed the standard view that the U.S. has a "transcendent purpose": establishing peace and freedom at home and indeed everywhere, since "the arena within which the United States must defend and promote its purpose has become world-wide." But as a scrupulous scholar, he also recognized that the historical record was radically inconsistent with that "transcendent purpose."

De Nieuwe Reporter


Dit krijgt u te zien zodra u de website van De Nieuwe Reporter bezoekt:

Beste bezoeker,

In samenwerking met InSites organiseren wij momenteel een onderzoek om onze website te verbeteren en een beter beeld te krijgen van onze bezoekers.

Als u deelneemt, kunt u een 
LCD televisie winnen.

Wenst u deel te nemen?

Twee vragen:

1. Waarom organiseert 'De Nieuwe Reporter in samenwerking met Insites... een onderzoek'? Deze o.a. door de belastingbetaler gefinancierde website geeft zelf als verklaring het verbeteren van 'onze website'. Maar stelt deze journalistenwebsite nu dat voor hen geldt: 'U vraagt en wij draaien'? Zo nee, wat bedoelen ze dan? Hoe komt het dat deze mensen die claimen journalisten te zijn niet zelf weten hoe ze hun website moeten verbeteren? 

2. Dat lokkertje, een 'LCD televisie'. Wat voor soort journalisten worden met een 'LCD televisie' gelokt? En als ze al door een 'LCD televisie' worden gelokt, waar worden ze dan nog meer door gelokt? Ik bedoel, is dit slag journalisten wel te goeder trouw als ze gelokt moeten worden met een 'LCD televisie' zodra het gaat om het 'verbeteren' van 'onze website'? Waarom denkt niemand na bij deze website?


woensdag 20 mei 2009

Het Neoliberale Geloof 450

Wall St. and the Media Are Trying to Make Us Forget Who Started the Financial Crash

It’s fast approaching the time Wall Street has been waiting for: the time when the media and the public forget what got us into this economic mess. As massive doses of taxpayer Viagra lift the stock market ticker, we hold out hope that our 401k and pension plans will re-erect themselves along with our jobs. We feel stimulated by the stimulus package… and the morning after we forget. The crisis, whatever it was, is over, isn’t it? Surely, it’s time to move on.

Wall Street is praying that we forget how they broke open the Treasury vault to the tune of trillions in loan guarantees, subsidies and interest free money in addition to the more highly publicized TARP funds — the largest transfer of wealth since African-American slaves built the South. It would be nice if we forgot about proposed wage caps on bankers. It would be nice if we stopped talking about ridiculous reforms and regulations that might prevent banker and hedge funds operators from walking off with hundreds of millions in private booty. Better to turn our attention to the auto industry. And maybe, if it all breaks just right, most of us might start to believe that the real problem all along was Detroit, rather than the wildest Wall Street casino ever created. It would be much better for the wealthy if we returned to one of our favorite pastimes: blaming autoworkers’ health care and pension benefits, or blasting big government for interfering in the economy.

Are we really going to forget? That depends on the severity of the crisis and it depends on our ability to understand it. Some see green shoots all around. (I would like to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge) I’m no soothsayer so I can’t tell you how long this crisis will last, or how much carnage it will cause, or even if the green shoots will be killed by all the financial toxic waste still polluting our economy. But I can help us remember its key characteristics: This crisis was the result of a total failure of financial markets. It wasn’t caused by consumers taking on too much debt, or a housing bubble, or uncompetitive industries. It was caused by financial markets run wild. It wasn’t caused by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or big government. It was caused because our leaders believed free-markets could run on their own. Greenspan, Rubin, Bernanke and scores of others both on Wall Street and in government (or in the revolving doors between them) proclaimed that the free-market always knows best. It was ok if the elite gained riches once reserved for royalty. It was ok because their prowess and ingenuity drove our economy to new heights. They were the financial innovators of the world. It was far better for America to produce new financial instruments than to make solar energy or efficient cars.

They were dead wrong. Left to its own devices, the financial system crashed. We gave them every kind of deregulation they wanted and they drove the economy off a cliff.

Yet, it’s easier to blame average consumers who ran up too much debt on their credit cards or subprime borrowers who got in over their heads. In times of crisis, our complicit media likes to spread blame around. Columnist David Brooks suggests that the big unanswered question of the crash of 2008 is “how so many people could be so stupid, incompetent and self-destructive all at once.” ( www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/opinion/16brooks.html.) But everyone is not to blame. Not this time. Financial free markets failed. Free-market ideology failed. Firms that are too big to fail, failed (while profiting all the way until they raided the Treasury.). Let’s hope our memories don’t fail as well.

The Empire 452


States: It's taxes, taxes and more taxes
Desperate to balance budgets, states are hiking income and sales taxes on
people and businesses.


Last Updated: May 20, 2009: 12:22 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Facing mounting budget deficits and seeing few
areas left to cut spending, states increasingly are turning to the only
option they have left: raising taxes.

Though public officials are loath to do this, particularly during a
recession, many governors are increasing personal income taxes, raising
corporate income taxes, hiking cigarette and gas taxes, or broadening sales
taxes.

Already, 16 states have taken this unpopular step this fiscal year, and
another 17 have proposed tax hikes for the coming year, according to the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a policy group. In many cases, they
are making small increases in specific taxes, rather than imposing a broad
rate hike.

"The question isn't whether to raise taxes, it's which taxes to raise,"
said Linda Bilmes, professor of public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government.

Wealthier residents in Hawaii are now paying higher personal income taxes.
The state increased the tax rate to 11% for single filers earning more than
$200,000 and couples making more than $400,000, while also raising levies
on hotel accommodations and real estate purchases.

Smokers in Rhode Island, meanwhile, now pay the highest state tobacco taxes
in the nation, forking over an additional $1 for a total of $3.46 in state
levies per pack.

De Israelische Terreur 865


Can Obama meet Netanyahu's challenge?

By Mustafa Barghouthi
 
20 May 2009

Mustafa Barghouthi argues that if President Barack Obama fails to stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu now, he will be consigning Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism “that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state”.
 
I cannot recall a more important meeting between an American president and an Israeli prime minister than today's [18 May] meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Will the Obama administration have the courage to challenge Netanyahu, or will all the talk of change dissolve in the face of a concerted one-two punch from Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)?

I am increasingly convinced that if Obama fails to speak out now, it will doom the two-state solution forever. Further fiddling in Washington – after eight years of it – will consign Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state.

It's now or almost certainly never. If Obama lacks the political will to stand up to Netanyahu now, he will lack the capacity later. And by the time Obama leaves office, it will be too late to salvage anything more than an archipelago of Palestinian Bantustans. We Palestinians seek freedom, not apartheid, and not the sort of Potemkin villages on the West Bank that Netanyahu is trying to package to the West as visionary economic boomtowns for desperate Palestinians. Yes, we want economic improvement, but the best way to achieve that is through control over our own lives, borders and resources.

Israel's new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, claimed in an April interview that "America accepts all our decisions". I was in Washington in February and did not find that to be the case. The Obama administration, I was pleased to hear, planned to be in neither the Israelis' nor the Palestinians' pocket. That is all we Palestinians have ever asked.

Yet, just as in the 1990s, Netanyahu believes that he is the world's driving force and that a Democratic president should be following his lead. In his memoir, former lead American negotiator Dennis Ross quoted an exasperated President Clinton as complaining that Netanyahu comported himself as though he thought Israel, and not the United States, was the superpower. That doesn't appear to have changed. How else to explain the recent assertion by Israeli officials that, before Israel will address core Palestinian-Israeli negotiating issues, the United States must deal – apparently to Israel's satisfaction – with Iran's nuclear programme?

The false Iran-Palestine linkage troubles me because its Israeli boosters think that Iran is an immediate concern, and Palestinian freedom can once again be kicked down the road. Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister and a representative of Lieberman's extremist Yisrael Beiteinu party, said in April that "the Iranian clock should be measured in months", but the Palestinian timetable "is open-ended".

What Ayalon, Lieberman and Netanyahu fail to grasp is the world's increasing recognition that they are attempting to dictate the timetable for another people's freedom. This is unacceptable in the 21st century.

De Israelische Terreur 864


Netanyahu adviser moves out of the shadows
US forced to rehabilitate former spy Uzi Arad

By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth

20 May 2009

Jonathan Cook considers the rise of a former official of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, Uzi Arad, formerly barred from entering the US by the Bush administration after implication in a spying scandal but recently rehabilitated by Obama. Arad is an implacable opponent of Palestinian statehood and believes that Israel should strike  “anything and everything of value” in Iran, including its “holiest sites”.

As might be expected of a former senior official with Israel’s spy agency Mossad, Uzi Arad – the most trusted political adviser to Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister – has got used to being in the shadows as he exerts influence.
 
But that is fast changing. Mr Arad was prominent in preparing Mr Netanyahu’s tough positions as he headed for Washington this week to meet Barack Obama, the US president, who is seeking to advance a Middle East peace plan.
 
Mr Arad, recently appointed the head of Israel’s revamped National Security Council, will oversee an organization that Mr Netanyahu regards as the linchpin of the new government’s security and foreign policy.
 
One military analyst, Amir Oren, has noted that, given Mr Netanyahu’s unstable coalition, Mr Arad “is likely to emerge as a strong adviser to a weak government”.
 
Mr Arad has been outspoken both in rejecting Palestinian statehood and in promoting the military option against Iran, positions believed to be shared by the Israeli prime minister and that will be at the root of a possible confrontation in the coming months with the Obama administration.
 
Mr Arad is also one of only a handful of senior figures on Mr Netanyahu’s Iran Task Force, charged with devising a strategy for dealing with Tehran and its supposed ambitions to attain nuclear weapons.
 
That will make some in Israel uneasy. The hawkish views that have made Mr Arad indispensable to Mr Netanyahu have also earned him several high-profile opponents.
 
Arik Carmon, founder of the Israel Democracy Institute, has described Mr Arad’s proposal to arrange “territorial exchanges” to strip some of Israel’s Palestinian minority of their citizenship as “racist”.
 
Alon Liel, a former director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, has called Mr Arad’s efforts to derail recent talks with Syria by demanding the continuing occupation of the Golan “ridiculous and nasty”.
 
In 2007, before his rise to public prominence, Mr Arad also fuelled worried speculation about Israel’s plans for a military strike on Tehran, after he described it as “easier than you think”. A wide range of non-military Iranian targets were legitimate, he added.
 
But despite Mr Arad’s espousal of opinions that in many respects accord with those of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu Party and Mr Netanyahu’s foreign minister, few doubt the prime minister’s fierce loyalty to him.

Theodor Holman 8


Paul2 heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "Theodor Holman 7" achtergelaten: 

Hoe serieus kun je zo'n man nemen
'Moord op Theo van Gogh

Holmans geloofwaardigheid liep in 2004 na de moord op collega Theo van Gogh een geduchte deuk op. In het televisieprogramma Barend & Van Dorp beweerde Holman dat hij bij het opgebaarde lijk van Van Gogh had gevoeld dat het been was geamputeerd. Dit zou volgens hem door de politie zijn gedaan omdat er nog kogels van de moordaanslag in zouden zitten die onderzocht moesten worden. Enige dagen later bleek zijn verhaal niet waar te zijn en slechts bedoeld om de gemoederen in de Nederlandse gemeenschap nog wat meer te verhitten. Onder de dreiging van een juridische aanklacht wegens het 'aanzetten tot haat' (in de richting van de Nederlandse moslimgemeenschap, waaruit de dader van de aanslag voortkwam) trok Holman zijn opmerkingen in.'
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Holman 

De Commerciele Massamedia 213


De Volkskrant bericht: 
Vliegtuigcrash Indonesië eist tientallen levens
Zeker 79 mensen zijn woensdag om het leven gekomen door het neerstorten van een militair transportvliegtuig in Oost-Java. Dat heeft een woordvoerder van de Indonesische luchtmacht voor de radio gezegd.


Vraag: waarom is dit nieuws? En waarom is het volgende geen nieuws? 18,000 children die every day of hunger, U.N. says. Elke dag weer tenminste 18.000 kinderen. En hoe komt dat? Waarom is dit geen nieuws voor de westerse commerciele massamedia?



Theodor Holman 7


Dit schreef anzi naar aanleiding van een stukje van mij over het fascistje "Theodor Holman" Er is hier ook sprake van ironie en overdrijving, maar ik geloof niet dat jij deze humor helemaal begrijpt.Jammer, want net als bij Reve, zit daarin zijn kracht. Ik moest ook altijd lachen om de humorvolle azijnzeikerij van van Reve en nu om het grappige pissen op moslims van Holman. De urinestraal, die doet 't,he! Geweldig, je moet er toch maar opkomen, geniaal!  
anzi  

Mijn reactie:
'dit schreef ik 16 juni vorig jaar: 

Zonder uitgebreid op Holman's ongein in te gaan, is het opmerkelijk hoe hij een steeds grotere epigoon van Gerard Reve is geworden. Wat hij schrijft lijkt ironisch bedoelt, alleen valt hij in dezelfde kuil als zijn leermeester. Laten we daarom ook het origineel als voorbeeld nemen. In Het ironische van de ironie, over het geval G.K. van het Reve schreef Harry Mulisch aan het eind van de jaren zeventig over het racisme en antisemitisme van de “grote volksschrijver”: “De ironie leidt to parodie, de parodie leidt tot identificatie – dat is de onwrikbare wet, waaraan Van het Reve nog het meest onderhorig is… Zo wordt het spel ernst. De corpsstudent speelt net zo lang de man met de grote bek, tot hij het is. Dat is het ironische van de ironie: dat zij het plotseling niet meer is. Hij is als het ware door de dubbele bodem van de ironie gezakt. Wie ironisch spreekt, zegt het tegendeel van wat hij meent, maar zodanig, dat de ander dat doorziet. Van het Reve zegt wat hij meent, maar zodanig, dat de ander dat niet doorziet en denkt nog steeds met ironie te doen te hebben… Als hij… schrijft: ‘Ik vind, dat de arbeiders in bepaalde aparte wijken zouden moeten wonen, die ze alleen op weg van of naar hun werk zouden mogen verlaten, & verder alleen met speciale verlofpasjes’- dan is dat eenvoudig zijn mening, geen grap, geen fantasie.”

dinsdag 19 mei 2009

The Empire 451


The Case of the Missing H-Bomb: The Pentagon Has Lost the Mother of All Weapons

By Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch. Posted May 16, 2009.

60 years have passed since a damaged jet dropped a hydrogen bomb near Savanah, Ga. -- and the Pentagon still can't find it.

Things go missing. It's to be expected. Even at the Pentagon. Last October, the Pentagon's inspector general reported that the military's accountants had misplaced a destroyer, several tanks and armored personnel carriers, hundreds of machine guns, rounds of ammo, grenade launchers and some surface-to-air missiles. In all, nearly $8 billion in weapons were AWOL.

Those anomalies are bad enough. But what's truly chilling is the fact that the Pentagon has lost track of the mother of all weapons, a hydrogen bomb. The thermonuclear weapon, designed to incinerate Moscow, has been sitting somewhere off the coast of Savannah, Georgia for the past 40 years. The Air Force has gone to greater lengths to conceal the mishap than to locate the bomb and secure it.

On the night of February 5, 1958 a B-47 Stratojet bomber carrying a hydrogen bomb on a night training flight off the Georgia coast collided with an F-86 Saberjet fighter at 36,000 feet. The collision destroyed the fighter and severely damaged a wing of the bomber, leaving one of its engines partially dislodged. The bomber's pilot, Maj. Howard Richardson, was instructed to jettison the H-bomb before attempting a landing. Richardson dropped the bomb into the shallow waters of Warsaw Sound, near the mouth of the Savannah River, a few miles from the city of Tybee Island, where he believed the bomb would be swiftly recovered.

The Pentagon recorded the incident in a top secret memo to the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. The memo has been partially declassified: "A B-47 aircraft with a [word redacted] nuclear weapon aboard was damaged in a collision with an F-86 aircraft near Sylvania, Georgia, on February 5, 1958. The B-47 aircraft attempted three times unsuccessfully to land with the weapon. The weapon was then jettisoned visually over water off the mouth of the Savannah River. No detonation was observed."

Soon search and rescue teams were sent to the site. Warsaw Sound was mysteriously cordoned off by Air Force troops. For six weeks, the Air Force looked for the bomb without success. Underwater divers scoured the depths, troops tromped through nearby salt marshes, and a blimp hovered over the area attempting to spot a hole or crater in the beach or swamp. Then just a month later, the search was abruptly halted. The Air Force sent its forces to Florence, South Carolina, where another H-bomb had been accidentally dropped by a B-47. The bomb's 200 pounds of TNT exploded on impact, sending radioactive debris across the landscape. The explosion caused extensive property damage and several injuries on the ground. Fortunately, the nuke itself didn't detonate.

The search teams never returned to Tybee Island, and the affair of the missing H-bomb was discreetly covered up. The end of the search was noted in a partially declassified memo from the Pentagon to the AEC, in which the Air Force politely requested a new H-bomb to replace the one it had lost. "The search for this weapon was discontinued on 4-16-58 and the weapon is considered irretrievably lost. It is requested that one [phrase redacted] weapon be made available for release to the DOD as a replacement."

De Pro Israel Lobby 127

Israel Lobby Is in a Public Opinion Pickle: Jewish Voters Went for Obama Big Time, and He's No Neocon

By Robert Dreyfuss, TheNation.com. Posted May 19, 2009.

If Obama decides to get tough with Israel over the Palestinians, he'll have the support of his base, and much opposition from conservatives.

While Prime Minister Netanyahu was meeting President Obama at the White House Monday morning, the Zogbys -- John Zogby, president/CEO of Zogby International, a polling firm, and Jim Zogby, his brother, president of the Arab American Institute -- were a few blocks away at the New America Foundation to discuss the surprising results of an interactive poll about US attitudes toward the conflict in the Middle East.

The results suggest that Obama would have strong support for a hands-on US diplomatic effort to forge an Israel-Palestine deal, even if it means pressure on Israel.

According to the poll, when asked if the United States should "get tough" with Israel in order to back up its call for an end to settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, fully 50 percent of Americans said yes, with just 19 percent saying "do nothing," and 32 percent not sure.

Even though Americans have a high opinion of Israel (by a 71-21 margin) and a low opinion of the Palestinians (by a 25-66 margin) in terms of favorability, overall -- not just in regard to settlements -- Americans say that it's "time for the United States to get tough with Israel" by a surprising 45-44 margin.

Hiding in those numbers, however, is an overwhelming partisan gap, and that is the really striking thing about the Zogby poll. From my notes:

 
Asked whether the interests of Israel and the US are identical, only 28 percent of Obama voters agreed, while 59 percent disagreed. Among McCain voters, it was the reverse: 78 percent of McCain voters said US and Israel interests were identical and 15 percent said they are not.

    Asked about Netanyahu, the favorability rating for Obama voters was 29-49 percent, while the rating for McCain voters was a lopsided 82-9 percent.

    And on the crucial question, is it time to get tough with Israel, the gap was a veritable Grand Canyon. Among Obama voters, 71 percent agreed and 18 percent disagreed. Among McCain voters, 16 percent agreed and 73 percent disagreed.

The Empire 450

The Disease of Permanent War

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted May 19, 2009.

The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation.
The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent. The collapse of liberalism, whether in imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Weimar Germany, ushers in an age of moral nihilism. This moral nihilism comes is many colors and hues. It rants and thunders in a variety of slogans, languages and ideologies. It can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades. It is, at its core, all the same. It is the crude, terrifying tirade of mediocrities who find their identities and power in the perpetuation of permanent war.

It was a decline into permanent war, not Islam, which killed the liberal, democratic movements in the Arab world, ones that held great promise in the early part of the 20th century in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. It is a state of permanent war that is finishing off the liberal traditions in Israel and the United States. The moral and intellectual trolls--the Dick Cheneys, the Avigdor Liebermans, the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads--personify the moral nihilism of perpetual war. They manipulate fear and paranoia. They abolish civil liberties in the name of national security. They crush legitimate dissent. They bilk state treasuries. They stoke racism.

"War," Randolph Bourne commented acidly, "is the health of the state."

In "Pentagon Capitalism" Seymour Melman described the defense industry as viral. Defense and military industries in permanent war, he wrote, trash economies. They are able to upend priorities. They redirect government expenditures toward their huge military projects and starve domestic investment in the name of national security. We produce sophisticated fighter jets, while Boeing is unable to finish its new commercial plane on schedule. Our automotive industry goes bankrupt. We sink money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies to fight global warming. Universities are flooded with defense-related cash and grants, and struggle to find money for environmental studies. This is the disease of permanent war.

De Israelische Terreur 863



  • Vaderdag: Geef een olijfboom cadeau
  • Duizend-en-één nachten benefiet voor Gaza (zie bijlage voor flyer met programma)
  • Palestijnse Dabka dans groep in Rotterdam
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Vaderdag: Geef een olijfboom cadeau

Vaderdag is dit jaar op 21 juni 2009. Geef een bijzonder en origineel cadeau en maak twee vaders blij! Jouw vader krijgt een certificaat voor het bezit van zijn eigen boom in het Heilige Land en een Palestijnse vader krijgt een olijfboom die hoop geeft op een betere toekomst. Lees meer over deze actie en hoe je een olijfboom cadeau kunt geven op www.planteenolijfboom.nl

Je kunt het digitale formulier op onze website invullen of het bedrag van 20 euro overmaken op onze giro rekening. Maak het bedrag voor eind mei over, om er zeker van te zijn dat het certificaat op tijd klaar is!

Duizend-en-één nachten benefiet op 14 juni in Utrecht

De Olijfbomencampagne en YWCA Nederland organiseren een Benefiet voor Gaza in Arabische sferen.

Zie de flyer in de attachment! Dit is ook leuk voor familie, vrienden, buren, collega's...

Gaza ligt in puin en is nog steeds afgesloten van de buitenwereld. Theatre Day Productions verzorgt theater workshops en trainingen voor de jeugd in de Gazastrook. Het biedt een uitlaatklep voor de jongeren en geeft hen iets om voor te leven.

 
De YWCA Nederland steunt het werk van de YWCA in de Gazastrook en het werk van de Olijfbomencampagne Houd Hoop Levend in Nederland. In samenwerking met de Olijfbomencampagne, heeft zij het initiatief genomen een benefiet voor Gaza te organiseren. Een middag in Arabische sferen, met workshops, optredens, Arabische theetuin en een Oriëntaalse Bazar met veel mooie producten te koop. Alle opbrengst is bestemd voor het werk van Theatre Day Productions in Gaza.

Palestijnse dabka dansgroep uit Nablus op 29 mei in Rotterdam

Locatie: Engels Grand Cafe

Aanvang: 19.30 uur

Kaarten kunnen aan de deur gekocht worden, maar om zeker te zijn van een plaats kun je alvast reserveren via: 06 14375904

Entree: 10 euro



De Israelische Terreur 862

South African Study Finds Israel Practicing Apartheid

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released findings that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT).

Titled "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law," the study represents 15 months of research by a team of experts in international law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank. The team was commissioned by the HSRC to review Israel’s practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law.

The findings and Executive Summary will be presented by members of the research team at the School for Oriental and African Studies, London, on 16 May (Saturday) at 10.00. The Programme is appended to the end of this Press Release. The full 307-page report will go on line on the HSRC website by 21 May.

Regarding colonialism, the team found that Israel’s policy is to fragment the OPT and annex part of it permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism. Israel has appropriated land and natural resources in the OPT, merged the Palestinian economy with Israel’s economy, and dominated the Palestinian people to ensure their subjugation to these measures. Israel has also denied the Palestinians their right to govern their own natural resources and economic affairs. These practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the international community developed in the 1960s during the great decolonisation struggles in Africa and Asia.

Regarding apartheid, the team found that Israel’s laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. In brief, Israeli law defines the Jewish people as a distinct group with special rights and privileges. These laws are then channelled into the OPT to convey privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantage Palestinians on the basis of their identities, which function as racial identities in the sense provided by international law. A policy of apartheid is especially indicated by the demarcation of geographic ‘reserves’ in the West Bank to which Palestinian residence is confined and which they cannot leave without a permit. The system is very similar to the policy of ‘Grand Apartheid’ in South Africa, in which blacks were confined to black Homelands (Bantustans).

From the Executive Summary:

“A troika of key laws underpinned the South African apartheid regime… The first pillar was formally to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups…and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group… The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups.… The third pillar was ‘a matrix of draconian ‘security’ laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination.”

“Israel’s practices in the OPT can be defined by the same three ‘pillars’ of apartheid. The first pillar derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews.… The second pillar is reflected in Israel’s grand policy to fragment the OPT [and] ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory. This policy is evidenced by: Israel’s extensive appropriation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink the territorial space available to Palestinians; the hermetic closure and isolation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the OPT; the deliberate severing of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank; and the appropriation and construction policies serving to carve up the West Bank into an intricate and well-serviced network of connected settlements for Jewish-Israelis and an archipelago of besieged and noncontiguous enclaves for Palestinians.… [The third pillar] is Israel's invocation of 'security' to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement [to] mask a true underlying intent to suppress dissent to its system of domination and thereby maintain control over Palestinians as a group.”

This study was researched and written by scholars and international lawyers based at the School for Oriental and African Studies (London), the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (Durban), the Adalah—Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and Al-Haq, the West Bank Affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. Consultation on the study’s theory and method was provided by eminent jurists from South Africa, Israel and Europe.

The MIDDLE EAST PROJECT of the HSRC is an independent two-year project to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy. Its funding was provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of South Africa. The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the Government of South Africa and does not represent an official position of the HSRC. It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the concerned international community. 

For more information on the SOAS panels, contact:

HSRC Middle East Project:
Tel: +27 (0)21 466–7924
Email: mep@hsrc.ac.za

or the Sir Joseph Hotung Research Project in Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, SOAS:
Email: sh84@soas.ac.uk

Zie: http://www.arabhra.org/Hra/SecondaryArticles/SecondaryArticlePage.aspx?Language=2&SecondaryArticle=1763

De Israelische Terreur 861

Gilad Atzmon - Seven Hasbara Tricks

Posted: 18 May 2009 05:36 AM PDT

I went to see ‘Seven Other Children’, the clumsy production that was set to counter Caryl Churchill’s highly praised ‘Seven Jewish Children’. According to the Jewish press, The seven-minute play was written by a “Goy” named Richard Stirling, who was devastated by the ‘unfair’ and ‘unbalanced’  representation of Churchill’s play. In practice, Stirling created a ‘counter-production’, a one-sided pro-Zionist seven minutes that desperately aims at portraying the Palestinians in a bad light. Yet, unlike Churchill’s thought-provoking phenomenal text, Stirling lacks the talent, the spirit or the depth. Unlike Churchill, who has managed to magically and profoundly elaborate on some very deep layers within the Jewish identity discourse, Stirling is stuck in a banal adaptation of Churchill’s transition of a victimhood/aggression binary into a Palestinian theatrical reality.

 

Imitating Churchill’s innovative template, Stirling’s Seven Other Children is a brief movement of scenes: it departs in 1948’s Nakba, Israeli brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine of its indigenous population and it lands eventually in the current Palestinian reality which Sterling foolishly portrays as an ‘indoctrination to hatred’. Following Churchill’s template, the message is delivered in short sentences of adults talking to an imaginary Palestinian child. In practice, Churchill’s plot made of short segments of  “Tell her… Don’t tell her that…” is replaced by Stirling into  “Ask him… Don’t ask him that…”

 

There is not much to write about the play, for bad art doesn’t deserve attention. Seemingly, even the Zionist press was confused by its lameness and failed to write much. However, we can regard the play as a further glimpse into tribal ideology and practice. We can learn about the precepts that set the production into an inevitable theatrical failure.

 

As I explored in a previous paper, Churchill who originated the given theatrical format by locating a young female child at the receiving end of the Israeli metamorphosis from victimhood into collective brutality. Stirling, on the other hand has chosen to set a male child at the receiving end of his play.  The difference is rather clear. While Churchill’s representation of the ‘Jewish narrative’ within an effeminate framework is something that may bring to mind a similar equation made by the misogynist philosopher Otto Weininger 100 years ago, for Stirling, the Palestinian identity is represented by a young masculine voice. As much as Churchill’s Jew is submerged with a phantasmic imagery of victimhood, Stirling’s Palestinian boy is an assertive character. He is just about to become a warrior. May I suggest at this stage that considering the IDF failures in every one of its military campaigns in recent years, and bearing in mind the Israeli Hasbara spreading images of sobbing, traumatized Jews in Sderot, Churchill’s choice to portray the Jew as a female child makes some sense. Yet, we better also remember that the reality on the ground doesn’t leave much room for doubt.  It is actually the Israelis who spread death en masse around them.  It is actually the Israelis who drop WMDs on civilians. It is the Israelis who are following a racist national murderous philosophy. It is the Palestinians who are practically seeing their towns and villages being transformed into concentration camps by the Jewish state. Incorporating Churchill and Stirling into a unified reality would leave us with a clear image of a beastly neurotic girl who locks the naive confused boy in a cellar and throws away the key.  Thinking about it for a second longer reveals the devastating truth. This is not just a remote theatrical reality, this is actually the true reality of the Jewish state and its brutality. However, in reality, the boy is slowly but surely growing out of his naivety. He is now determined to liberate himself against all odds. And he will.

 

It is also important to mention that Stirling’s attempt to set the Palestinian narrative as a transition from Victimhood into aggression is not only unimaginative, it is wrong, it is misleading and probably the outcome of some banal Ziocentric projection.

 

Unlike Jews who keep maintaining their historic suffering institutionally and juridically, Palestinians hardly present themselves as victims. Similarly, the aggression manifested by the Jewish state in the name of the Jewish people and approved by their institutional supporters cannot be translated into Palestinian reality or Palestinian identity discourse. Palestinians are fighting for their liberation, they legitimately struggle for freedom. By no means freedom fighting can be realised as aggression unless one is a Zionist, a Sabbath Goy or both.

 

This is enough to establish the fact that the premise of the play was rather frail. However, a few issues to do with the play and the motivation behind it should be raised. The Jewish lobbies and blogs that promote the play insist that Churchill failed to even-handedly represent the conflict. This argument is ludicrous on the verge of pathetic. Since when do artists have to be impartial? Since when does an artist have to present a balanced outlook? Artists are committed to beauty.  They are obviously capable of passing a message through beauty. Do we impose a demand of impartiality on Shakespeare or Picasso?  But we can take it further, did the Jewish activists who are so devastated by Churchill’s play protested against Spielberg’s for his ‘one sided’ presentation of the political and social conditions in ‘Schindler List’? Clearly, the film failed to bring to light the voice of the Nazis. Obviously, no reasonable being would pose such a demand.  However, like in the case of the fight against racism, Jewish ethnic activism falls into the same trap. The Jewish activist is not against racism in general, he is solely against anti-Jewish racism. Similarly, Jewish tribal activists are not trying to promote here a new scheme for ‘balanced reporting in the arts’. Instead, they just insist that Jews look better in a given play.

 

Apparently, UK Zionist lobbies are now putting some enormous pressure on every theatre that gives stage to Churchill’s play, demanding that their current most beloved Goyish play should be staged alongside it, regardless of its quality or lack thereof. I assume that since I myself play every night and each of my gigs are rallies for Palestine, it won’t be long before the same tribal lobbies will sponsor a Jazz act that would counter mine. They may even teach the lucky saxophonist to play my music back to front.

 

On the face of it, one thing is rather evident. Years ago, London’s prime stages were reserved for Zionist hasbara projects. The Palestinian cause would be celebrated in some alternative theatres, community centres and churches. This has been officially changed. Churchill’s play was performed at the Royal Court Theatre and successfully attracted the attention of the entire British media. Sterling’s Zionist pastiche is humiliatingly stuck in a tiny theatre in Hampstead. It is performed mainly to a Jewish audience. It would be right to claim that the Palestinian discourse is now successfully claiming the big stage while the Zionist seems to be trailing behind.

 

In the play Stirling keeps asking the Palestinian boy:

 

… Why we have no friends… “ask him to name one friend”.

 

But then at the final scene, the one that reflects on Gaza 2009, Sterling himself realises that the Palestinians now have very many friends:

 

“Ask him if he knows about our friends

Ask him if he knows they have no friends

Ask him if he knows about our friends in Europe”

 

Clearly, Caryl Churchill and the Royal Court Theatre are just two of the very many Palestinian friends.

 

Stirling is not alone either, he has now at least seven Zionist bloggers who claim to be his friends. The notorious Israeli smear campaigner David Hirsh promotes him, the Ziocon cyber noticeboard Harry’s Place gives him space, another Jewish blog named OyVaGoy threatens to libidinally explode. With such good friends, Stirling will realise soon that by the time his Kosher associates finish assaulting every theatre in this country, he may have to consider a career change. Watching his play and seeing what Stirling is capable of, it is not exactly a big loss for British Theatre.

 

However, someone may want to remind Stirling that a brave historical scrutiny of the Jewish reality of the 20th century will reveal the devastating fact that the Zionist project never had real friends. Indeed, it had power, it has influence, it still has a lot of power. But power and friendship are remote categories.

 

In the play, the final words addressed to the child are there to leave the Jewish audience devastated.

 

“Ask him if Hitler had the wrong idea”

 

As if the Palestinians are motivated by racial hatred against Jews, as if they have ever been. Someone should explain to Mr Richard Stirling that as things stand, it is actually the Jewish state that practices racist laws against Palestinians and others. It is the Jewish state that locks millions of people behind barbed wire. It is the Jewish state that squashes neighbourhoods on its habitants. It is the Jewish state that follows Hitler’s doctrine systematically. They somehow must truly believe that the mustachio-ed man had the right idea.  

Zie: http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/05/18/gilad-atzmon-seven-hasbara-tricks/

 

De Israelische Terreur 860

The Sons of Eilaboun newsletter


He choked and his eyes were full of tears, and with a trembling voice he said “I remember it as if it has just happened”, this is the way he ended the story, the story of a nine years old boy from a small village called Eilaboun (Eilabun), in Palestine 1948, the story of my father, when he was a refugee.

It all started on October 30, 1948, when the Israeli army interred his village and massacred 14 young men, one of them was his brother, and some of the others were his cousins, and the villagers were forced to leave their country to Lebanon. This was only the beginning of what he went through, a beginning of a long nightmare. In this nightmare my father witnessed the massacre of about 50 young men, who were convinced to surrender their weapons, and the minute they did, they were murdered in cold blood in front of the people of two villages (their own village, and Eilaboun (عيلبون)). A boy of his age was shot while speaking to him about games, the blood of a woman sitting next to him splashed on his face, when the solders shot her hand, the fear he had…

My father told us those stories many times before, but this time it was different. This time he was very emotional; he made us live his story, he made us feel what he went through, or at least part of it, for the first time I felt that it happened to my father and indirectly it happened to me!

The Sons Of Eilaboun (أبناء عيلبون) is a documentary film about the massacre, expulsion and return of a small Palestinian village in the Galilee. In the film the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe introduce the history behind the Nakba events. And the Eilaboun (Eilabun) people tell their story.

The Film is in production, and a short version (about 24 minutes) is produced, and a full length version will follow soon.

Natascha van Weezel's 'REDELIJKHEID.'

In haar Parool -column van deze week liet Natascha van Weezel, die er vanuit gaat dat zij als joodse Nederlander die al  decennialang Israel...