To Schlep Them to Justice in Safety by Gilad Atzmon

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Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe (Bogi) Yaalon told Ynet yesterday that "When the Arabs realized they cannot defeat us with their armies, they turned to terrorism and rockets.” But they didn’t stop just there, "now they are realising that they cannot defeat us this way either, so they are taking the path of de-legitimization." Yaalon, is a veteran IDF’s chief of staff. He knows pretty well that as thing stand it is actually the IDF that didn’t win a single war since 1967. Yes it killed many, it starved millions but it didn’t win a single war. As if this is not enough in 2006 the IDF was humiliated in Lebanon by a tiny para-military organisation namely the Hezbollah. In its last Gaza campaign the IDF failed to achieve any of its military targets (destroying the Hamas leadership and dismantling its rocket launching capacity, freeing a captive Israeli soldier). Considering the damage Operation Cast Lead inflicted on Israeli public relations, the IDF initiative better be seen as a total  disaster.
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Israel's Leaders on the Run by Gilad Atzmon

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Senior officials in Israel confirmed reports on Monday that a British court issued a warrant against opposition leader Mrs. Tzipi Livni for her role in orchestrating Israel's military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip last December.

British sources reported  that though a British court had issued an arrest warrant for Livni over war crimes committed in Gaza, it annulled it upon discovering she was not in the U.K.

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Making Friends with Israel by Gilad Atzmon

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In case you want to learn how to appeal to the Jews, British diplomat Matthew Gould gives a free lesson. Haaretz reported yesterday that Gould, the newly appointed British Ambassador to Israel, wasn't too connected to his Jewish roots until he served in Tehran. Seemingly, now he knows where he belongs.

 

"Being posted in Iran made me go to shul more regularly", says the new Ambassador. "I did it to reach out to the Jewish community in Iran and to show that Western embassies were watching out for its welfare," Gould explains. "I was determined to go to shul to show both the Jewish community and the Iranian authorities that I was Jewish and not embarrassed of it."

 

Gould says that his two-year stint through 2005 in Tehran as deputy head of mission has given him "a real expertise in an issue of profound security importance to Israel."

 

The religious process that began in Tehran continued in Britain. "I got more active [with Judaism] and over the last couple of years I've spent a lot more time and a lot more thought on my Jewish identity and what it means to be Jewish," says Gould.

 

Haaretz reports that Gould and his wife go to shul every week at the West London Synagogue. As a child, Gould recalls going to Middlesex New Synagogue in Harrow with his parents, who still live in London as "proud but inactive" members of the Jewish community.

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‘Anti-Semitism up, Islamophobia down” a New Academic Research Says

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One-quarter of Europeans  believe that “Jews have too much influence“

31% agree that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind.”

 45.7% of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.”

 About 37.4% agree with the following statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”

 

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon

According to new research conducted by Bielefeld University hatred towards Muslims decreased over the past year while hatred of Jews is growing. Israelis must be concerned. The sudden drop in European Islamophobia doesn’t fit into the Zionist global plan in which Muslims are cornered and ostracised as reactionaries while Israel is dropping bombs in the name of democracy and liberalism. According to the leading Israeli paper Ynet, “the level of resentment against most minorities declined – sexism considerably, Islamophobia slightly. There were only two exceptions: homophobia and anti-Semitism.”(1)

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You Want to Understand Anti-Semitism? Just Look in the Mirror by Gilad Atzmon

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Benjamin Weinthal, the Jerusalem Post’s correspondent in Berlin wondered earlier this week whether Germany has learned from its Nazi history? The question is in itself very intriguing. Considering its past, one may expect Germany to oppose any form of racist, discriminatory, expansionist and nationalist ideology. Bearing in mind Israelis are considered the ‘Nazis of our time’ by more than just a few commentators, one may expect the Germans to advise the Israelis what not to do. One may also expect Germany to stand by the Palestinians for the Palestinians are, de facto, the last victims of Hitler.
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Vineyard Saker's Interview with Gilad Atzmon

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It was an enlightening experience  for me to exchange with  the  Vineyard Saker. I hope that you find it an interesting read.
The following was Published on Thursday, December 3, 2009 on:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2009/12/gilad-atzmon-ethics-and-morality-are.html

Gilad Atzmon: "Ethics and morality are far more crucial than some UN decision"

It is a huge pleasure for me to share with you the transcript of a Q&A by email which I did recently with Gilad Atzmon. I first discovered Gilad the jazz musician years ago when I myself was still playing jazz guitar (btw - I recently reviewed his latest album here), and only later did I learn of his political activism. Having since read as much of his writings as I could find, I now consider him to be one of the most intelligent, well-informed and insightful political activists ever. What I most love and respect in Gilad are his absolute commitment to the truth and his equally forceful determination to speak that truth to power; I can only begin to imagine the vitriolic hatred which Gilad elicits from the Zionist crazies which he relentlessly denounces.

The Saker
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VS: Two leading intellectuals have recently made strong arguments for the so-called "right to exist" of Israel. Norman Finkestein's argument is simple, yet powerful. He says the international community, via the UN General Assembly and the World Court, has already decided what the solution of the conflict should be: two states in the 1967 borders, side by side, with refugees either back or compensated. He points to the fact that all the countries in the world agree on that except the Israel, the USA, and some small south Pacific Islands. He does not claim that this is the best solution, but he says that this is the only doable one. He therefore dismisses the "One State" solution as unachievable.

GA: In general, I am trying to avoid any discussion to do with discourse resolution. I avoid it for a few reasons. I do not live in the region and it is not down to me to decide for the Palestinian what country, political setting or resolution they should follow. However, I may use the opportunity to suggest that the Two State Solution doesn't address the Palestinian cause. It is impractical for the Israelis will never let refugees into their shtetle state. But most importantly, the right of return or the right to live on your land is not a subject to international community decisions or laws. It is actually a moral right. And as far as I am concerned as an individual, ethics and morality are far more crucial than some UN decisions that are made by Zionised politicians and corrupted diplomats.

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Accessory vs. Perpetrator by Gilad Atzmon

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German State Prosecutors Hans-Joachim Lutz announced yesterday that Mr John Demjanjuk, 89, is accused of being an ‘accessory’ of the death of 27,900 Jews.

Many of us may not understand what the legal notion of ‘accessory’ stands for. An ‘accessory’ is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal.

Bearing that in mind. I wonder what Demjanjuk’s court case is there to serve?

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Report: Pollard proposes killing Palestinian prisoners until Shalit freed

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 Haaretz                Dec. 2, 2009
Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard made clear that he strongly opposed the prisoner exchange deal to free Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, reported the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

Pollard has been in an American jail for over 20 years for spying for Israel while serving as a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst.

Pollard met with Likud activists Moshe Feiglin and Shmuel Sackett at his prison in North Carolina.

Instead of talking about freeing Palestinian prisoners, Pollard said, "Netanyahu should take the list of prisoners Hamas requested and kill one of them every day until they release Gilad from prison."
In a letter sent to the Jerusalem post and published last week, Pollard wrote, " Why is the life of one Israeli captive deemed so precious that Israel's leaders are willing to dispense with all logic and morality in order to redeem him?"

"As long as Israeli leaders demonstrate a unanimous will to exploit the value of rescuing one captive because it suits their political ends, while simultaneously ignoring another captive, there can be no national honor, nor national self-respect," the letter said

Source:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1132228.html

Hasbara Author vs Iran’s Bomb by Gilad Atzmon

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Hasbara author (1) David Aaronovitch is pretty much unstoppable. The man who together with the Jewish Chronicle writer Nick Cohen encouraged the war in Iraq, is now warning us about the evolving Iranian bomb. “Wake up”, he urges us in The Times, “this threat is too big to ignore”.  As if more than one million Iraqis killed in a war he advocated were not enough, the enthusiastic Hasbara author has a new conflict to propel.
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We are all Palestinians now by Maidhc Ó Cathail

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Maidhc Ó Cathail compares Gilad Atzmon and Jeff Gates (http://usa.mediamonitors.net)

"While the bold experiments proposed by Wolfowitz and Greenspan may have “looked promising on paper,” they ultimately proved to be disastrous not only for the Middle East, but also for America."

“The same ideology that brought carnage on Iraq and Palestine is the same ideology that makes you lose your home tomorrow.”

- Gilad Atzmon

Comparisons are said to be invidious, but in the right hands they can be very illuminating.

The toxic dust from the economic 9/11 of 2008 hadn’t even begun to settle when a perceptive observer noticed an important connection to the geopolitical fallout from the more dramatic 9/11 seven years earlier.

On September 16, Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli expatriate, told the Cambridge Forum:

“As the picture of the current economic disaster becomes ever more clear, it becomes rather obvious, to me at least, that the ideology and the people who are directly responsible for the mass killing of millions of Iraqis and the displacement of many other millions, the people who keep the Palestinians starved behind walls, are unfortunately very much the same people who are responsible for a class genocide of millions of disenfranchised Americans who are now on the brink of total dispossession.” [1]

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United Against Spitting by Gilad Atzmon

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Three days ago the Israeli Right wing paper The Jerusalem Post published an exposé of the growing tendency of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem to spit on their Christian neighbours. (‘Mouths Filled with Hatred’, By Larry Derfner The JPost, Nov. 26, 2009).

Father Samuel Aghoyan, a senior Armenian Orthodox cleric in Jerusalem's Old City, told the JPost “that he's been spat at by young Haredi (God fearing religious Jews) and national Orthodox Jews ‘about 15 to 20 times’ in the past decade”. Father Aghoyan added, "Every single priest in this church has been spat on. It happens day and night."

Similarly Father Athanasius, a Texas-born Franciscan monk who heads the Christian Information Centre in Jerusalem’s Old City, said he's been spat at by Orthodox Jews "about 15 times in the last six months".

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A Night Unto The Nations by Gilad Atzmon

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In his latest Haarertz commentary, the Israeli political analyst Yoel Marcus wonders “How Israel became a night unto the nations?” Marcus is obviously nostalgic about the days where the great powers “were not only sympathetic to Israel's establishment, but admired its valor in repulsing the Arab states' onslaught.”

Proudly he mentions the ‘renowned foreign journalists’ who came to Israel in 1948 and wrote “glowing reports about this war of David against Goliath”. Noticeably, Marcus fails to mention or to grasp that the expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians from their villages and cities wasn’t exactly a repetition of a ‘David against Goliath’ narrative. Quite the opposite, it was a story of a young organised Jewish army that ethnically cleansed a defenseless civilian  population consisting mainly of peasants.

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Get Ready for Another Whitewash

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The Jerusalem Post reported today that Sir Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics to the UK's Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

 Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former prime minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war.

 "It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available," he added. "Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced."

 The former ambassador also said that having two historians in a panel of five "seems a lot" and also questioned the Jewish academics' credentials.

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Far Beyond Chutzpah by Gilad Atzmon

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“How come Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, is under threat of being arrested in the UK while Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas, roams London free of concern” asks Prof  Alan Dershowitz, who is probably the leading defender of the Jewish state in America. In fact the question could be easily extended, one may wonder how come Dershowitz and his ilk are roaming freely between Western capitals considering the racist, nationalist expansionist ideology they promote i.e. Zionism. At the end of the day, Dershowitz the loudest Zionist apologist in America is promoting a precept that has proved to be genocidal.

What intrigues me about Dershowitz is the fact that Israel’s leading Hasbara cheer-leader is also one of America’s most prominent criminal lawyers specialising in murder and attempted murder cases. As a criminal appellate lawyer, Dershowitz has won thirteen out of the fifteen murder and attempted murder cases he has handled. Notable is his role as the appellate adviser for the defence in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson. Seemingly, this is exactly what Israel needs and deserves, a ‘criminal attorney’. One that would help it to get away with murder.

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Lexicon of Resistance by Gilad Atzmon

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Published originally in April 2009

The following is an attempt to present my own personal dictionary of what seems to be the most charged terminology and concepts attached to the Palestinian solidarity and anti-war discourse.

Palestine- a piece of land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. For many years Palestine was the home of the Palestinian people: Muslims, Christians and Jews who lived in peace and harmony for hundred of years. In the late 19th century, in the light of emerging European nationalism, a few Jews had decided that Jews should not be left out. They theninvented the notions of: ”Jewish people”, ”Jewish history” and ”Jewish nationalism”. They decided to settle the majority of world Jewry in Palestine. Throughout the years the Jewish national project, i.e., Zionism, had become more and more sinister and ruthless. In 1949 70% of the indigenous Palestinian population had already been ethnically cleansed. Nowadays the majority of Palestinians are living behind barbed wire in a state of terror guarded by Israeli soldiers.
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