The Ghosts of Terezin

According to the World Bank, Israelis make $25,740 per year, while Palestinians make $1,230.

As I was getting ready to leave my house this morning, I was half-listening to Democracy Now on the tv....until Norman Finkelstein came on, and then my ears perked up like Yoda from Star Wars! Finkelstein was talking about something near and dear to my heart: The Horrible treatment of the Palestinian people.

This particular subject has been brewing in my mind for many years....ever since Gene Burns, talk radio host, began mentioning the intifada back in the 1980's.

What is the Intifada ?

"It literally means "shaking off", and in this context it means to set free from the Israeli oppression. The first intifada started on 8th Dec 1987 when four Palestinian men queuing at a checkpoint into Gaza were crushed to death by an Israeli army transporter. The second Intifada started on 28th Sept 2000 when Sharon with over 2,000 Israeli soldiers desecrated the Al Aqsa Mosque and killed 4 people."

Since then, my curiosity led me to a little group known as The Project for a New American Century...PNAC for short. A group of neo-con henchmen roaming around behind the scenes of our government since their college days. Yes, my friends, these are well known names in our lexicon--and depending on your political bent, they can be seen as well-meaning political operatives, or demagogues facilitating America's destruction. You decide. William Kristol, Karl Rove, Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld...the full list of reprobates can be found here:

THE TVNL ROGUES’ GALLERY OF

NEO
CON ARTISTS
THE MEMBERS OF
PNAC - THE PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
in the G.W. BUSH Administration!

The point is, regardless of how you feel about them, make no mistake; they have shaped the current situation we are living through and surely have their hands in all pies, from the invasion of Iraq to the despicable bombardment of unarmed citizens in Gaza.

Here's a little primer from a pretty cool web-site:

SOTT Focus / Best of the Web

"William Kristol, PNAC member and son of CIA asset Irving Kristol. Kristol and Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle were two of the major shapers of Bush's war policy. Perle, of course, is a long-time spy for Israel. As an aid for Senator Henry Jackson in 1970, Perle was caught passing classified information to the Israeli embassy. Jackson refused to fire him, and since then Perle's influence has only grown."

PNAC's influence is big too. As far back as 1998, they sent a letter to then- President William Jefferson Clinton, laying out their reasons to invade Iraq. Well-known Israeli-Firsters, their imprint must surely be in Gaza."

I bring this up now, because what I heard Finkelstein say today is so much more un-Constitutional, un-American and in-humane than anything this Healthcare Bill represents, that I cannot believe no one is suing the government for IT instead!

No one is suing, no one is protesting, no one is screaming on the floor of the House, no one is even acknowledging the existence! But it is a degradation far more insidious and dangerous than anything we are hearing debate about now.

Here is the awful truth to which Finkelstein grasped my attention this morning:

We the people of America, with our tax dollars, are the ones who paid for, provided the weapons for, and manufactured the white phosphorous for that horrendous massacre of civilans in Gaza! Those beautiful babies and beautiful gramma's and beautiful aunts and uncles, mommies and daddies. We bank-rolled their demise! And here we are arguing about the constitutionality of a healthcare bill...so we can kill it! It blows my mind. It leaves me speechless.

No one says anything. The Goldstone Report, which is full of heart-breaking and LAW breaking facts, is denied by the United States of America. American ships with American citizens in them are turned back from Gaza by Israeli tankers.....

And we cry for Insurance companies.

We live in Bizarro World.

*************

"While World War II history has been sanitized, some historians can still discern the truth, which is the Zionists have sacrificed Jews to gain the “moral authority” in order to greatly institutionalize their “Holocaust” and to steal and plunder Palestine and eliminate all native Palestinians with constant genocide.

In Jewish writer, Ben Hecht’s book, Perfidy, he tells how the Zionist bankers (who funded Hitler) sacrificed 1,000,000 European Jews by refusing Adolph Eichmann’s offer (with total authorization from Hitler and Himmler) to free those Jews in exchange for merely 1,000 tons of coffee and tea and 10,000 trucks."

http://rense.com/general95/unfath.html

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

A forensic search of www.ratfacedjews.com, and dozens of other objectionable websites has shown that the Anti-Defamation League headed by Abe Foxman, is funding them and that ADL workers along with volunteers are managing these “NAZI” websites.

These and other websites are used by the ADL in a pattern of massive piracy and copyright violation, a pattern of criminal activity that violates their tax exempt status with the IRS.

“They got some splainin’ to do”

"Aprox 300 olive trees uprooted overnight in Qusra by Israeli settlers overnight today IDF is shooting at the villagers 4 injured so far"

Can none stop this Armegeddon?

"Netanyahu represents the worst of rogue leadership. He defies rule of law principles and other democratic values. He's contemptuous of Palestinian rights. He threatens world peace.

He's defiant. He won't touch defense spending. He menaces the region. He endangers his own people.Megalomania and delusions of grandeur define him.

His mindset is messianic. He's a loose cannon. He's out-of-control. Hardliners around him share his vision. His Iranian obsession threatens Israel. His "bomb or be bombed" rhetoric reflects bluster. It demands condemnation and rejection.

He lied. Current and former Israeli officials deplore him. Some went public and said so. Israelis aren't paying attention. On January 22, he's favored to remain prime minister."

http://rense.com/general95/israeli-fascism-face.html

What can be.....

Moore‏@MMFlint

Is "5 Broken Cameras" the 1st-ever Oscar nom for a Palestinian film? I think so! Many thanks 2 the Israeli citizens who generously funded it

And thanks too to the Israeli co-director who helped this incredible 1st-time Palestinian filmmaker make his movie and have his voice heard!

What still is....

"With Palestine now able to seek redress for war crimes by Israel in the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Israel is seeking to silence all dissent, Palestinian and otherwise, that would aid in their prosecution."

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01/15/283609/israeli-witch-hunt-to-choke-free-speech/

"Seven to eight hundred thousand Palestinians were driven from their homes and lands, into exile in foreign countries or into Gaza . They are a people without a homeland, contrary to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No passports, no recognized rights to employment or medical care or support of any kind—in Beirut and other cities in Lebanon , in Syria , in Jordan . To this day they live in refugee camps, thousands imprisoned with no place to go, no right of return, yet any Jew living anywhere in the world, who never stepped foot in Palestine, who has no Semitic blood in his/her veins, has a “right of return.” How can this be? Where is the justice?"

http://www.countercurrents.org/cook280113.htm

THE GHOSTS OF TEREZIN

I saw the pictures children drew at Terezin
As they clustered in the attic's closing darkness, --
Pictures of the sun beyond the rain,
Of Mothers muffled in scarves and solemn dress,
Of Fathers proud beneath their yarmulkas, --
All waiting patiently the promised day
When they would board the silver train
And flee to the Holy City.

And I wept at their plight,
The silent, unknown, gnawing fright
That burned within their Ghetto of sin,
This Terezin.

And then before my eyes there came
Another scene, so strange, as if incarnate in the first
That burst untimely before my weeping heart;
A scene more ravaged than Terezin,
Of streets and alleys swamped in sewage and despair
Where children breathed the fetid air of hate
That smoldered like steaming ashes there.

Suddenly appeared above the graves, the ghosts of Terezin,
Arising like mist around the crematorium;
Fathers and Mothers, in their promised land at last,
Grasping children to their breasts.
Silent as sentinels they stood,
And there they wept as they watched in vain
The wardens wander through the camps
Like Gestapo agents of old,
Stark, cold, indifferent to the pain
Of those who huddled beneath the tin roofs,
Encased like the dead in cement boxes
As the acrid stench of lingering sewage
Flowed through the alleys and the homes.

They saw the tanks rattle through the streets
With ranks of soldiers scurrying behind,
Seeking the vermin that infested this place, –
Homeless, nameless, without a face, --
Sneaking through this ghetto in the dark of night
To drive the children from this transport town,
This resurrected refugee camp, this new Terezin,
Where the new Jew wanders the world
Like the Jews of Terezin,
Joined in their loneliness and despair
As they watch their children there
Become the walls of Terezin!

"For now, I would advise the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC to adopt a more universal approach and, rather than focusing solely on the suffering of Jews, to look into the suffering inflicted on Palestinians by the Jewish State because, as far as we can see, the whole of Palestine is now an open air prison."

With only just over thirty members and an extravagant Grade II listed Moorish building, the tiny Jewish community of Bradford have for many years been in despair about their finances - until the local Muslim community stepped in to help.

The grand-looking Reform synagogue, is on an unassuming street, between the Yorkshire Tandoori, Al-Hijaab Islamic Clothing and the Jamia Shan-E-Islam Educational Centre.

Built in 1880, it has long been under threat of closure, but several Muslim organisations in the city have pledged to stop it falling into ruin, with donors giving £2,000 to save the synagogue's roof.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/19/bradford-synagogue-muslims_n_2908254.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

"That’s why Netanyahu and his supporters cannot see the world through the eyes of a Palestinian child. Because nothing more profoundly illustrates how the world really has changed. To truly look at the world through that Palestinian child’s eyes is to see ourselves as we have always seen others: powerful, alien, terrifying. It is to realize that today it is no longer Jewish children who grow up watching their parents laugh and shrug and cry, and struggle to maintain their precious heritage and human dignity under the control of a foreign army. That experience, the one that every Jew identifies with in her bones, is no longer ours. It is the Palestinians’. By clinging to it, by insisting that we are still the real victims, we free ourselves from our moral obligations to that child.

But the message of Exodus is not that freeing yourself from bondage frees you from moral obligation. To the contrary, the whole point of linking Passover and Shavuot, as Jewish tradition does, is to link the Jewish escape from oppression with the Jewish acceptance of the moral responsibilities that come with receiving the Torah. To disavow those moral responsibilities, our tradition suggests, is to not be truly free.

“It is our duty, to ourselves and to our children, to see the new world as it is now,” said Yitzhak Rabin upon being sworn in as Israel’s prime minister in 1992. “No longer are we necessarily ‘a people that dwells alone,’ and no longer is it true that ‘the whole world is against us.’ We must overcome the sense of isolation that has held us in thrall for almost half a century.” The year after that speech, Benjamin Netanyahu compared Rabin to Neville Chamberlain for signing the Oslo Accords. And two years after that, after being endlessly compared to a Nazi, Rabin was murdered by a Jew who claimed that Oslo threatened Jewish lives.

Today, in Jerusalem, Obama stood on Rabin’s shoulders: “the world can change.” He too declared that because Jews are not the world’s permanent victims, we must use our power to help ensure that Palestinians are not either. Tomorrow, on Mount Herzl, Obama will visit Rabin’s grave. Then, in the precious little time that’s left, he must try to finish his work."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/21/obama-to-israelis-the-world-can-change0.html

“The Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and justice must also be recognized. Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes.

It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.”

--James M Wall reporting

“the most significant part” of Obama’s speech came when the President referred to the Palestinians’ right to justice, specifically referencing settler violence that goes unpunished”

Rosenberg adds that he believes Obama is the first US president to use “the language of justice in discussing Palestinian rights, which is, of course, how Palestinians rightly see it”.

"Israel has created distinct zones that prevent Palestinians from moving freely throughout the area. The zoning leaves only six percent of the land for Palestinians while ninety-four percent is allocated to Israeli settlements (which are illegal according to the UN), military zones, and nature reserves. The military zones are called “firing zones.” The Israeli military performs exercises in the firing zones, demanding that Palestinians move out or face military eviction, which can include demolition of their homes. There have been 200 such demolitions since 2011. The Israeli government has also shut off access to clean water and electricity.

By contrast Israelis who live in the area receive financial assistance to encourage settlement expansion, and they benefit from modern infrastructure unavailable to Palestinians living in the same area. The residents of ten Israeli settlements in the firing zones rarely, if ever, face the possibility of having their homes demolished."

http://www.anonpaste.me/anonpaste2/index.php?9e509fe322291fc2#vL7IZzQ10fZEHReDg5RaYDcpAOk1sxmkyJjJtr9QyUM=

"Israel jails 700 children every year. Most children prosecuted in Israeli military courts are charged with throwing stones. This is an offence under Section 212 of Military Order 1651. It says: (i) Throwing an object, including a stone, at a person or property with the intent to harm the person or property carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment."

"The jailing of children and other crimes committed by Israel and regularly condemned by the UN and other international organizations are crimes against humanity to the extent that Israel was defined as “terror-inflicting” by the UN Human Rights Council. Israel cannot judge itself. An international court, like the one that judged Nazis in Nuremberg, must be created for the task."

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/04/19/american-palestinian-jailed-by-israel-does-it-matter/