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words fail .....

‘Ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the horrors Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for years, against the Palestinians. The tragedy of Gaza has been described a hundred times over, as have the tragedies of 1948, of Qibya, of  Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin - 60 years of atrocity perpetrated in the name of  Judaism.

But the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel, in the US political arena, in the mainstream US (and Australian...ed) media. Those who are horrified - and there are many - cannot penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite in Israel, even more so in the US, and increasingly now in Canada and Europe, from seeing, from caring.

But it needs to be said now, loudly: those who devise and carry out Israeli policies have made Israel into a monster, and it has come time for all of us - all Israelis, all Jews who allow Israel to speak for them, all Americans who do nothing to end US support for Israel and its murderous policies - to recognize that we stain ourselves morally by continuing to sit by while Israel carries out its atrocities against the Palestinians.’

The Insane Brutality Of The State of Israel

By the seashore...

When one looks at a [http://www.eyeonisrael.com/|map of Israel] created by Jews, even the grey bits on the map above do not exist... All the roads and the towns anywhere are "Jewish" owned... full stop. The Palestinians are not included in the land equation... It's a beautiful day on the Gulf of Eilat...

clear felling .....

Yes Gus .... that seems to be the general idea. 

grand fantasies of conquest

From Al Jazeera

The erosion of the Arab state

[http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/10E17155-88CD-4837-9600-2303870886F2.htm| By Soumaya Ghannoushi]

Sunday 24 September 2006, 19:50 Makka Time, 16:50 GMT
The Israeli assault on Lebanon has poignantly brought two truths home: that some Arab states are unable to respond to ever- mounting external threats, and that the burden of homeland protection is increasingly shifting from the standard political order to non-state actors.
The Lebanese case offers a glimpse of the shape of the balance of powers in the Middle East in years to come.
The modern state, we should recall, derives its legitimacy from the right to monopolise and use the instruments of organised violence for the purpose of maintaining internal stability and civil peace on the one hand; and securing its borders, or what is conventionally referred to as national sovereignty, on the other.
Some Arab states have failed on either or both counts. Of these, the worst and most striking has been its impotence to confront external dangers, be it in Syria, Iraq or Lebanon.

...

The likelihood is that this new Middle East born in the womb of pre-emptive strikes and proxy wars will neither be American nor Israeli but will gravitate between "deconstructive chaos", and the rise of popular resistance movements.
The lesson we would do well to learn from Iraq's unfolding tragedy is that the Middle East is far too complex, far too unruly for the grand fantasies of conquest and subjugation.

read all at Al Jazeera

why rob banks .....

‘Total US aid to Israel is approximately one-third of the American foreign-aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes. Indeed, Israel's GNP is higher than the combined GNP of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. With a per capita income of about $14,000, Israel ranks as the sixteenth wealthiest country in the world; Israelis enjoy a higher per capita income than oil-rich Saudi Arabia and are only slightly less well-off than most Western European countries.’

US Aid To Israel

sensitive generals .....

‘A bloodbath is taking place in Beit Hanun, the Israel Defense Forces runs rampant and kills at least 37 people in four days - and Israeli public opinion yawns with indifference. A brigade commander tells his soldiers, who killed 12 people in one day: "You've won 12:0," and the soldiers grin broadly. This is the moral nadir we have reached, following a long slide down a slippery slope: Human life has become cheap.

Proof of this came at the end of the week from the big mouth of Major General Elazar Stern, the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, who occasionally says true things. "The IDF's excessive sensitivity to human life led to some of the failures in the Lebanon war - and this should not happen," Stern told Channel 7. Stern should be praised for these forthright words: Those who embark with unbearable lightness on a futile war of choice cannot allow themselves the luxury of showing sensitivity for the lives of their soldiers. In war, soldiers not only kill, but are also killed. This should have been stated in advance.

But the general's remarks are also tainted with hypocrisy: Those who over a few months kill more than 1,000 Lebanese and 300 Palestinians for dubious reasons do not have the right to speak about sensitivity to human life. The fact that the public protest against the war did not take off demonstrates that after having lost all sensitivity for the lives of others, we are also gradually losing sensitivity for the lives of our children who are killed in vain. The contempt for human life starts with the lives of Arabs and ends with the lives of Jews.’

Listen To Major General Stern