Israel

While Obama publicly pressured Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians over settlements, he secretly sold Jerusalem deep-penetrating bombs it had long sought. Eli Lake previews an exclusive story appearing in Monday's Newsweek.

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By Charles M. Young

By Dave Lindorff

Among the many shameful and cowardly things that President Barack Obama has and has not done, few can rival his complete unwillingness to express outrage at the Israeli military’s murder of a young American teen executed at close range during the Israeli Defense (sic) Force assault on the Turkish-flagged aid ship the Mavi Marmara in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea back on May 31, 2010.

Furkan Dogan, born in the US to Turkish parents, both legal residents of the U.S., and educated in the US, was a volunteer on the Mavi Marmara, the flag ship in a six boat aid flotilla that tried to sail  with humanitarian aid from Turkey to the Israeli prison colony known as Gaza only to be stormed and captured and pirated to Israel.

  Israeli/Turkish/Palestinian Tensions - by Stephen Lendman

Issues affecting Palestinians include: 

• statehood within 1967 borders (22% of historic Palestine);

• East Jerusalem as its capital;

  Anti-Israeli Rage in Egypt - by Stephen Lendman

On August 18, Israel aggressively entered Sinai, killing five Egyptian security force members and injuring seven others. 

At issue was allegedly looking for unnamed attackers held responsible for eight same day Israeli deaths.

By Ann Wright

After a 3 month voyage of 8,000 miles from Galveston, Texas, Texas sailor Larry Toenjes, his one person crew and his 37 foot sailboat, the S/V (sailing vessel) Liberty arrived September 7, 2011 at 3pm local time, at the spot off the Egyptian coast that is the site of the June 7, 1967 Israeli attack on the US Naval vessel, the USS Liberty.  The deliberate Israeli attack killed 34 US Navy sailors and wounded 174. Toenjes sailed all the way from Texas to bring attention to the deadly attack 44 years ago and is conducting a memorial service for those killed at that spot.

Since he arrived in the Mediterranean Sea over a month ago, Toenjes has been in communication with Commander Robert Palm, the Naval Attaché at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, about his concern that Israeli Navy commandos would attack him as they had attacked other vessels in international waters.

  Allegedly Foiling Jerusalem Terrorist Attacks - by Stephen Lendman

Here we go again. We've seen it all before strategically timed, especially in America. A previous article explained, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/05/false-flags-american-tradition.html

It said:

  Systematic Israeli State Terror - by Stephen Lendman

Despite his own cross to bear, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan got it right calling Israel responsible for "state terror."

In fact, it's official policy, ongoing for decades against non-Jews, especially Palestinians without letup.

  Lawlessness and Injustice Define America and Israel - by Stephen Lendman

Rogue state lawlessness and contempt for humanity define both nations.

At home, America is plagued by police state laws, contempt for human and civil rights, out-of-control corruption, banker occupation, corporate control of Washington, record budget and national debt levels, as well as depression-sized unemployment, poverty, homelessness, hunger and despair.

  Turkey and Israeli War of Words - by Stephen Lendman

A previous article discussed release of the leaked UN Palmer Commission's report on Israel's May 2010 Mavi Marmara massacre, killing nine Turkish nationals in cold blood.

Access it through the following link:

  Israel's Proposed Counterterrorism Law - by Stephen Lendman

In recent years, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) increasingly warned about infringements of democratic freedoms in Israel. 

Major concerns involve undermining free expression, human dignity, equality, pluralism, freedom of assembly and right to protest, and whether certain positions can be declared illegitimate, despite the democratic right of anyone to profess them.

Journalists from ThisCantBeHappening! took on the Philadelphia Inquirer, the nation’s third oldest surviving daily, this morning, conducting a leafletting “happening” in front of the paper’s soon-to-be-sold headquarters building on Broad Street.  

A one-page flyer, written in old English and featuring a replica of the masthead of Benjamin Franklin’s original one-page broadsheet, the Pennsylvania Gazette, accused the oft re-sold and steadily downsized and gutted Inquirer of abandoning its Fourth Estate role in favor of entertainment and profits.

  Another Israeli False Flag? - by Stephen Lendman

Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel's Security Agency) have  long, odious histories of committing them. More on that below. 

At issue now is whether the August 18 bus and other attacks inside Israel were committed by external elements or Israel, and if so, why?

  Eretz Yisrael: Lawless, Corrupt and Dysfunctional - by Stephen Lendman

What do you call a country that persecutes occupied people and one-fifth of its own population for not being Jewish? An illegal occupier for over 44 years, suffocating over 1.6 million Gazans under siege! A nation practicing torture, persecution, and racism as official policies! A modern day Sparta, glorifying wars and violence!

  Daily Rogue State Israeli Lawlessness - by Stephen Lendman

It begs the question why Israelis put up with lawless governance harming them as well as Palestinians. When will weeks of social injustice outrage arouse them to embrace universal equity? 

Why haven't Martin Luther King's words hit home that, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." In Israel and Occupied Palestine, Arabs and Jews both are harmed. Injustice to anyone denies it to all.

  Netanyahu Spurns Social Justice Demands - by Stephen Lendman

Unaffordable housing prices ignited mass social justice protests in Israel. At issue is settlement developments at the expense of other construction, creating a supply/demand imbalance enough to cause prices to skyrocket. Israelis demand that issue be addressed responsibly.

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy is promoting a bill to suspend U.S. assistance to three elite Israel Defense Forces units, alleging they are involved in human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Leahy, a Democrat and senior member of the U.S. Senate, wants assistance withheld from the Israel Navy's Shayetet 13 unit, the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force's Shaldag unit.

	A checkpoint between the West Bank village of El Khader and the outskirts of Jerusalem, 2003.
	Photo by: AP

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a long-time friend of Leahy's, met with him in Washington two weeks ago to try to persuade him to withdraw the initiative.

According to a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem, Leahy began promoting the legislation in recent months after he was approached by voters in his home state of Vermont.

By Ann Wright

Larry Toenjes, 74, from Clear Lake Shores, Texas, is sailing his 39-foot sailboat, the s/v Liberty, to the coordinates of the June 8, 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 sailors and wounded another 173. 207 were killed or wounded out of the 294 on board the USS Liberty in the 90 minute attack by strafing attack planes and torpedoes.  At the site, Toenjes will be holding a memorial service honoring those killed on the USS Liberty by the Israeli military. 

  Israeli Social Justice Protests Continue - by Stephen Lendman

Ongoing since mid-July, America's media hardly notice, but indeed care as evidenced by their silence to suppress mass outrage over longstanding social injustice Israelis want changed.

  Congressional Junkets to Israel - by Stephen Lendman

Eighty-one House members, one fifth of the chamber, will visit Israel during the traditional summer recess, instead of addressing festering local issues at home during the nation's gravest economic crisis too serious to ignore.

Arriving first were 26 Democrats together, including Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (MD). Another 55 Republicans will follow in two groups, including 47 freshmen. 

  Sustaining Protest Energy in Israel - by Stephen Lendman

Since mid-July, Israelis have protested in unprecedented numbers for long denied social justice. Succeeding depends on sustaining that energy disruptively for change. Though never easy, it's the only way.

Frances Fox Piven discussed it in her book titled, "Challenging Authority" about social movements becoming pivotal forces for change when ordinary people used their considerable clout, saying:

  Growing Israeli Tyranny - by Stephen Lendman

For years, America and Israel followed similar paths toward full-blown tyranny, threatening all their citizens. Believing either is democratic and egalitarian is ludicrous and nonsensical, especially now under right-wing neoliberal governments, cracking down hard against challenges to their authority. 

  Escalating Israeli Street Protest - by Stephen Lendman

Ongoing since mid-July, Israeli street protests are unprecedented in size, scope, and (so far) determination to stay the course for social justice.

Two previous articles discussed them, accessed through the following links:

Being, so to speak, of the “flotilla folk” ourselves, we read with some interest Rothstein and Seid’s idle speculations on who our shipmates might have been, for idle speculations they certainly are, the writers having never contacted any of us. In fact, at least when it comes to the American-flagged boat, The Audacity of Hope, we are not nearly as much of a mystery as one might imagine. Our biographies are all publicly posted at www.ustogaza.org,.

A perusal of our stories would reveal, among other things, that 58 percent of us are women and that our median age is 60.

Similar demographic patterns existed on other boats as well. Many are retired people; most with modest means. We are people willing to spend our savings to fly to Athens and stay there for weeks, doubled or tripled up in hotel rooms, waiting to sail to Gaza.

We are people who felt, who still feel, that we must make the time and find the means because struggling for justice is the moral thing to do. Because we have all come to believe, in the words of Howard Zinn, that “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” – all notions, one feels, that Rothstein and Seid view with a mixture of scorn and incredulity.

In an interview with Press TV, Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, talks about the dodgy nature of the Israeli regime.

Press TV: Twice this month and, of course, even prior to that in terms of wanting this to be postponed, what do you make of this development, first of all?

McGovern: The delay of the UN report is part and parcel of the US and Israel exerting overweening influence on what happens at the UN.

Analysts believe Iran scientist death was a foreign hit

Open "The Slow Boat to Gaza"

Life and Death on the Mavi Marmera

Canadian aid worker Kevin Neish was one of 581 passengers on the Mavi Marmara, the lead vessel of the Gaza freedom flotilla that was attacked in international waters on May 31, 2010, while on a mission of mercy to deliver aid to residents of Gaza. Israeli commandos boarded the ship, killed nine of its passengers, arrested the others and confiscated their cameras and film-making equipment. Neish, however, hid the memory card from his camera and smuggled it to safety. In this special photo report, ColdType publishes many of the pictures for the first time, along with Neish’s story of how he managed to get the photographs away from his interrogators

Click here or on image above to download low resolution pdf

Click here to download high resolution pdf

  Brutally Isolating Detainees in Israeli Prisons - by Stephen Lendman

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Adalah and Physicians for Human Rights/Israel (called Mezan et al below) June 2011 report headlined, "Solitary Confinement of Prisoners and Detainees in Israeli Prisons" explains harsh and abusive conditions they endure.