Israeli's Celebrate and Palestinians Mourn!!!!!!!

Expulsion And Dispossession Can't Be Cause For Celebration

The demand to make Palestinian rights a reality is no longer simply a matter of justice but also of self-interest

By Seumas Milne

15/05/08 "The Guardian" -- - George Bush arrived in Jerusalem yesterday to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary and talk up what has to be the most bizarre proposal yet for achieving peace: a "shelf agreement". This, Bush explained before he set out, would be a "description" of a Palestinian state to be hammered out between the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert before the end of the year. The idea would then be to put this virtual state on the shelf until the time might be right for it to be turned into a reality. In perfect step, Tony Blair announced that he has succeeded in negotiating the removal of three checkpoints and one roadblock on behalf of the Quartet of big powers and the UN - out of a total of 560 throughout the West Bank - but Israel will only actually remove them "in the future".

In other words, it's business as usual, as the crisis of occupation deepens. Neither man, meanwhile, seems to have thought it right to offer any words of condolence to the Palestinians, whose national dispossession and suffering were also unleashed by the creation of the state. That is why today - the anniversary of the end of the British mandate in Palestine and the declaration of Israeli statehood - is also a day of mourning for 10 million Palestinians and their supporters: the commemoration of the nakba, or catastrophe, that led to the destruction of their society and expulsion from their homeland. Ninety years after the Balfour declaration - when on behalf of one people a British cabinet minister famously promised a second the land of a third - the ruins of more than 500 Arab villages destroyed and emptied of their people in 1948 can still be seen all over Israel.

That ethnic cleansing began months before the end of British rule, as has been meticulously documented by Israeli historians such as Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, and before the arrival of the Arab armies, who mostly fought in areas earmarked by the UN for an Arab state. Sixty years ago, Arab Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, had just fallen to the forces of the embryonic Israeli state and tens of thousands of Palestinians had fled or been driven out, some of them literally into the sea. From there, they were evacuated by boat to Gaza, where 80% of the population today are refugee families from what is now Israel.

Morris now argues that ethnic cleansing was justified because a Jewish state "would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. There was no choice but to expel that population". It would certainly have been a different kind of state, but the expulsion was also a crime with devastating consequences both for the Palestinians and the Middle East. By the time the fighting ended in 1949, Israel had expanded its territory from 56% to 78% of Palestine, and the large majority of the Arabs, who made up two-thirds of Palestine's population before 1948, had become refugees barred from returning to their homes. The same process was repeated on a smaller scale when Israel conquered the rest of Palestine in 1967. And today the Palestinians are still waiting for the state which the UN voted to award them in less than half their own land - and they rejected as unjust - more than 60 years ago.

It is to Britain's historic shame that having played such a central role in the creation of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the dispossession of a people it had promised to protect, it has done so little to try to right those wrongs. In Gordon Brown's message of congratulation to Israel, he didn't find it possible even in passing to regret the terrible injustices its foundation entailed. The fact is that the takeover of Palestinian land by overwhelmingly European settlers could only have happened under colonial rule, a reality which only fuels the long-term bitterness of the conflict.

Israel was, of course, also born out of idealism and genocidal horror in Europe and can boast remarkable achievements. But it was the tragedy of the Zionist project that Jewish self-determination could only be achieved at another people's expense. Israel's independence and the Palestinian nakba are not just different national narratives, but diametrically opposed experiences which make one-sided tributes to Israeli nationhood seem so brutally galling in the Arab and Muslim world and beyond.

Meanwhile, the western failure to take responsibility for the gaping wound it has inflicted on the Middle East is allowing the chances of the most plausible settlement - the much-acclaimed two-state solution - to slip away. While all Palestinian factions are in practice now prepared to end the conflict in exchange for 22% of historic Palestine and acknowledgement of the refugees' right to return, there is clearly not remotely the commitment necessary in either Israel or its US sponsor to push through even such a lop-sided settlement. And as the carving-up of the West Bank into walled reservations, ever-expanding colonies and settler-only roads make the prospect of a viable state appear increasingly unlikely, it also seems to many Palestinians to have less and less to do with their aspirations to self-determination and dignity.

For some, that means returning to the goal of one state for both peoples - which has very few takers among Israeli Jews. Given that Palestine has effectively been one state under Israeli rule for more than 40 years - longer, for instance, than East Germany existed - others are being drawn towards a struggle for equal rights on the anti-apartheid model. Now there are almost as many Palestinians in Palestine as Israeli Jews, that appears an increasingly realistic option. It also causes panic in the Israeli establishment: "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses," Olmert warned recently, "and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights ... the state of Israel is finished."

What is certain is that there is no future for either Israelis or Palestinians in managing the status quo. If the Palestinians face nothing but shelf agreements and continued repression - 312 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military this year, 197 of them civilians, while five civilians and five soldiers have been killed on the Israeli side - the prospect must be of an escalating spiral of violence and misery. The commitment to Palestinian rights should first of all be a question of justice. But, given the toxicity this conflict brings to the entire relationship with the Muslim world, it is also a matter of obvious western self-interest.

Feds Accuse Student Of "Terror and Espionage" For Talking About Constitution

East Texas pastor threatened by anonymous men in dark suits for giving talk to Boy Scouts about bill of rights

Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Monday, May 12, 2008 |

A student of a large bible college in east Texas was accused by federal agents of committing an "act of terror and espionage" after he gave a talk to a group of Boy Scouts in which he encouraged them to educate themselves about the U.S. constitution.

Jeff, who wishes to remain anonymous at present, is a student of the college and an interim pastor of a small church in Mount Vernon, Texas. He appeared today as a guest on the Alex Jones Show to relate what took place.

As part of his duties as an advisor in the college office, Jeff was tasked with the role of giving a short speech and a tour to a group of Boy Scouts that were visiting the college, with a focus on how patriotism and liberty are emphasized in the teaching style of the university.

Jeff said he told the boys, "It's going to be you who is going to take this country and either make or break it - you need to get back to your constitution, you need to get to know your bill of rights and you need to stand up for them."

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Jeff also mentioned that the freedoms enumerated in the bill of rights were fast being usurped by the government and he briefly talked about the USA Patriot Act.

"I said they're stripping us of what we know to be America, what you need to do is re-orient yourself to the constitution because that is the very founding basis of our government and it is the supreme law of the land," he added.

The next day Jeff was called into the main administrative office of the university where he was met by college officials and two men wearing dark suits and sunglasses who did not identify themselves. A state trooper was also guarding the door to make sure everyone stayed inside the office.

Jeff was asked by the men if he talked to the Boy Scouts about the constitution the previous day. Jeff was then shown a transcript of what he said and asked to fill in the blanks.

"I saw the transcript of what I said and every word that those boys had said," stated Jeff.

Jeff speculated that the recording of his talk with the Boy Scouts may have been made by a scout master who looked like a Marine that was taking the tour with Jeff.

After asking the men where they were from, Jeff was told he was committing "acts of terror and espionage" by talking to the Boy Scouts about the constitution and the bill of rights.

Jeff was unable to ascertain exactly where the feds were from but university officials later indicated that DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and the FBI were involved.

Jeff said that the two men told him, "If you say anything, do anything, continue to talk about these kind of things, we can have your head on a silver platter and the University's head on a silver platter and all the programs they've got going on."

Jeff said that a high level college official who was present during the meeting, himself an ex-Marine Vietnam veteran, was extremely nervous and "shaking" as Jeff was being lectured by the two men.

"I went to my room and I broke down in tears," said Jeff after the meeting was finished, "That's it - our country's gone," he added.

Click here to listen to Jeff's interview with Alex Jones.

To have secret police threatening bible college students for talking about the constitution is the most disturbing and un-American scenario one can possibly imagine, but it's not a new phenomenon.

This is just the latest shocking example of how federal agents and authorities across America are targeting people who discuss the U.S. constitution and the bill of rights and accusing them of engaging in political terrorism.

Alex Jones' 2001 documentary film 9/11: The Road to Tyranny featured footage from a FEMA symposium given to firefighters and other emergency personnel in Kansas City in which it was stated that the founding fathers, Christians and homeschoolers were terrorists and should be treated with the utmost suspicion and brutality in times of national emergency.

The lecturer identifies George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers as "terrorists".

In 2001, housewife Abbey Newman was assaulted and arrested by police at a checkpoint for exercising her 4th amendment right. Cops looked through literature which included a copy of a pocket constitution and debated whether or not the material was illegal.

In 2004, Kelly Rushing was charged with making "terroristic threats" after he handed out Alex Jones' videos and recordings of a Congressman Ron Paul speech on C-Span to Lyon County, Kentucky officials and Kentucky State Trooper Lewis Dobbs.

A jury later ruled in favor of Rushing but he continues to be harassed by authorities and local law enforcement.

In October last year a Michigan man was harassed, handcuffed, assaulted, branded "unpatriotic" and subjected to an unconstitutional search of his vehicle during which drugs were allegedly planted, before being ticketed by a police officer for the apparent crime of freely distributing DVD's about 9/11 truth.

We have highlighted previous training manuals issued by state and federal government bodies which identify whole swathes of the population as potential terrorists. A Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Law Enforcement pamphlet gives the public characteristics to identify terrorists that include buying baby formula, beer, wearing Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents like a drivers license and traveling with women or children.

A Virginia training manual used to help state employees recognize terrorists lists anti-government and property rights activists as terrorists and includes binoculars, video cameras, paper pads and notebooks in a compendium of terrorist tools.

Shortly after 9/11 a Phoenix FBI manual that was disseminated amongst federal employees at the end of the Clinton administration's term in office caused waves on the Internet after it was revealed that potential terrorists included, "defenders of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN, " and individuals who "make numerous references to the US Constitution."

To have secret police and federal authorities target people who discuss the very document that they swore an oath to uphold and protect is a chilling prospect and rivals anything that was a pre-cursor to Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.

The precedent of treating a knowledge of the U.S. constitution and the bill of rights as suspicious and possibly a sign of terrorism can only be linked to careful preparations for martial law which are now public.

A shocking KSLA news report last summer confirmed the story we first broke in 2006, that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to "quell dissent" and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law.

In May 2006, we exposed the existence of a nationwide FEMA program which is training tens of thousands of Pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" in preparation for the implementation of martial law, property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination programs and forced relocation.

A whistleblower who was secretly enrolled into the program told us that the feds were clandestinely recruiting religious leaders to help implement Homeland Security directives in anticipation of a potential bio-terrorist attack, any natural disaster or a nationally declared emergency.

The first directive was for Pastors to preach to their congregations Romans 13, the often taken out of context bible passage that was used by Hitler to hoodwink Christians into supporting him, in order to teach them to "obey the government" when martial law is declared.

It was related to the Pastors that quarantines, martial law and forced relocation were a problem for state authorities when enforcing federal mandates due to the "cowboy mentality" of citizens standing up for their property and second amendment rights as well as farmers defending their crops and livestock from seizure.

It was stressed that the Pastors needed to preach subservience to the authorities ahead of time in preparation for the round-ups and to make it clear to the congregation that "this is for their own good."

Pastors were told that they would be backed up by law enforcement in controlling uncooperative individuals and that they would even lead SWAT teams in attempting to quell resistance.

The chilling preparations for martial law and the targeting of Americans who merely talk about the U.S. constitution should act as a wake-up call and prompt more people in different levels of authority throughout religious and educational establishments to go public and expose similar examples of this unfolding tyranny.