My Father was a Freedom Fighter- a book review by Gilad Atzmon
Ramzy Baroud’s “My Father Was A Freedom Fighter” is more than a book, it is actually a masterpiece. In an overwhelmingly evoking personal style Baroud manages to bring to light the history of the Palestinian people and their battle with Israel and Zionism. Through the story of the Baroud’s family the book outlines every event in the history of the conflict and reflects on the way it transformed the Palestinian reality.
The book is a heart breaking depressing story of the Baroud family’s journey from paradise to hell. It is a flight that starts in Beit Daras, a small pictorial village in the south of Palestine. It ends in a Gaza refugee camp. It is a tragic journey of a rural self-sufficient population that is driven into total dispossession, humiliation and absolute poverty. And yet, there is a beam of light along the book namely resistance: Ramzy’s father Mohammed, was a freedom fighter. He didn’t win a single war, not even a battle, yet, against all odds, in spite of his poverty and illness, he managed to educate his children and to plant hope in their young souls, to fuel Ramzy with fierceness, which along the years transformed the young man into a monumental inspirational writer and an icon of intellectual resistance.
British Citizens vs an IDF Guard by Gilad Atzmon
The Times reported today that the British Government is blocking a deal for Paul and Rachel Chandler's release.
The British couple were kidnapped by Somalian pirates in the Indian Ocean. Paul and Rachel may be facing a doomed fate as the British Government is blocking a deal for their release.
A company that claimed to have had a deal for the release of Paul and Rachel Chandler said it was scuppered by the British Government's refusal to negotiate with hostage-takers and said today that it demanded to be allowed to arrange their release.
In the centre of the British Government’s refusal to interfere in this saga we meet none other than David Miliband the Foreign Secretary
The Arab International Forum for the Support of the Resistance, Beirut Lebanon 15-17 January 2010 Report by Lasse Wilhelmson
The Conference on resistance, 15-17 January 2010 in Beirut.
The conference concerning the resistance, held in Beirut from the 15th to 17th January 2010, was an overwhelming experience for me personally with its almost 10 000 delegates from all over the Arab world and a small number from Europe and the US. It was indeed a great honour for Sweden to have a delegation of four. The conference opened at the UNESCO Palace where the leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and Iraq’s armed resistance, in that order, held introductions that set the tone for the conference. Prominent religious Muslim leaders and representatives of Syria’s government also spoke. It was a powerful manifestation of unity against the politics of Israel and the US and, with no name mentioned serious criticism of Egypt, and open praise for Iran.
Enough is Enough by Gilad Atzmon
The UK Jewish Chronicle is apparently stupid enough to unveil the ferocity of Zionist lobbying within the British Government and its corridors of power. The Jewish weekly is happy to outline the relentless measures that are being taken by Jewish lobbyists in order to Zionise the British legal system and its value system.
As one may assume the supporters of Israel in Britain are far from happy about Britain’s magistrates being able to implement ‘universal jurisdiction’ laws, laws that allow local magistrates to issue arrest warrants for high profile foreign visitors accused of war crimes. The rabid Zionist Jewish Chronicle is obviously outraged because universal jurisdiction puts most of the Israeli political and military echelon at a severe risk. Last month ex Israeli Foreign minister Mrs. Tzipi Livini cancelled her visit to Britain over fears that arrest warrants would be issued in connection with accusations of war crimes under laws of universal jurisdiction.
Israel’s voice on Britain's Iraq Inquiry accuses critics of “anti-Semitism” By Nureddin Sabir
Source: Redress Information & Analysis
Britain inquiry into the Iraq war has been dealt a severe blow by a pro-Israel activist on the inquiry committee who has given an interview to a Jewish settlers’ radio accusing his critics of “anti-Semitism”.
The Iraq Inquiry, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, was set up by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June 2009 in order to “identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict”. It began its deliberations in November.
On 22 November 2009, as the inquiry, was preparing to convene, a former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote an article in the Independent on Sunday newspaper expressing concern at the fact that two out of the five members of the inquiry’s committee, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman, were “strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war”. He also pointed out that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish, and that “Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism”.
Writing in the Independent newspaper a week later, Richard Ingrams wondered whether the Zionists' links to the Iraq invasion would be brushed aside. Referring to Oliver Miles’s article and to an extraordinary attack on Miles by The Times, in which the paper described his comments as “disgraceful”, Ingrams said:
The ambassador's comments and the attention paid to them by The Times may be helpful in the long run, if only by drawing attention to the Israeli dimension in the Anglo-US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a dimension that hitherto has scarcely been mentioned. Yet it is a fact that the campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein was initiated, well before 9/11, by a group of influential American neo-cons, notably Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz (once described by Time magazine as "the godfather of the Iraq war") nearly all of whom were ardent Zionists, in many cases more concerned with preserving the security of Israel than that of the US.
Given that undeniable fact, the pro-Israeli bias of Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman, both of them supporters of the 2003 invasion, is a perfectly respectable point to raise. It is equally legitimate to ask if at any point the panel will investigate or even refer to the US neo-cons and their links to Israel. Call me snide if you like, but I very much doubt they will.
On 28 January 2010, BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme reported that Martin Gilbert, whom it described as a “proud practising Jew and Zionist”, had expressed “deep unease” at the previous November’s articles by Miles Oliver and Richard Ingrams.
The radio broadcast extracts from an interview given by Gilbert to an internet radio station run by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank in which he described Oliver’s and Ingrams’s articles as “really unpleasant”. He referred to people who questioned the wisdom of including pro-Israel activists in an inquiry whose purpose was to investigate an Israeli-instigated war as “these anti-Semites”. And he said that “more leading figures” should “speak out against” what he described as the “crude anti-Israel feelings” in Britain.
| Listen to BBC correspondent Tim Franks's report on the allegations of "anti-Semitism" made by Israel's voice on the Iraq Inquiry panel, Martin Gilbert |
In the interview with the settlers’ radio station, Martin Gilbert appeared to be aware of the logic behind concerns regarding the role of Israel lobbyists and agents of influence in the Anglo-US invasion of Iraq in 2003. As an eminent scholar, he should therefore understand why the British public should be worried that an active supporter of Israel on the Iraq Inquiry might not be impartial or rigorous in scrutinizing the conduct of those who launched the aggression against Iraq at the behest of pro-Israel activists like himself. Instead, he chose to divert attention with the smokescreen of “anti-Semitism”.
This subterfuge casts serious doubt about the integrity of the Iraq Inquiry. It means that if Israel lobbyists played a part in pushing Britain to join the US aggression against Iraq, this would probably be overlooked by the Israeli activists on the inquiry, who make up 40 per cent of the panel.
It also means that the Iraq Inquiry has not only been severely compromised, but was in fact doomed before it even started.
The Holocaust Backfires
"Ynet reports:" Peres in Berlin, Netanyahu in Auschwitz, Lieberman in Budapest and Edelstein at the UN headquarters in New York all plan to attack the Goldstone report into the Gaza war on International Holocaust Day this Wednesday.
Israel's political echelon will once again try to divert attention from the fact that the Israeli crime is beyond comparison.
Israeli Propaganda Minister Edelstein told Ynet before leaving for New York. "The connection between the Goldstone Report and the international Holocaust memorial day is not an easy thing”. He is indeed correct. The true interpretation of the Goldstone report is that Israelis are the Nazis of our time. “We must learn the lessons from what happened” Says Edelstein, “then too, those who yelled out were told that Hitler is a clown and that all the gloomy predictions of the 1930s were nonsense.”
Someone should advise the Israeli Propaganda man that by now no one regards mass murderer Barak, Nuclear enthusiast Peres, warmonger Livni or ultra racist Lieberman as clowns. We respect them for what they are. Yet, we prefer to see them locked behind bars.
The Shoa Must Go On by Gilad Atzmon
Last week saw Holocaust survivor Thomas Blatt, 82 give testimony at the trial of John Demjanjuk. Blatt stated that he still has nightmares about his time at the camp at Sobibor, "I go there in my dreams, they are so real. In them I am still there. I can't get it out of my head. This is the price I paid for getting out."
Ukrainian born John Demjanjuk, 89, is accused by the Munich court of being an ‘accessory’* in the death of 27,900 Jews at the Sobibor camp while being a German POW. As it happens, the German Justice system is now chasing ‘accessories’ to the Nazi crime. Embarrassingly enough it doesn’t do very well in the current case. Demjanjuk denies anything to do with the crime referred to him and furthermore, the German prosecution lacks any evidence whatsoever that supports or links Demjanjuk personally with murder or any other holocaust related criminal event.
In Memory of Martin Luther King by Gilad Atzmon
I have a dream that in the ‘Jews-Only State’ people will not be judged according to the blood of their (Jewish) mother, but rather by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Israel in spite of their racist Foreign Minister, mass-murderer Defense minister and Jewish supremacist Prime Minister, one day right there in between the river and the sea boys and girls will be able to join hands as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every ‘Separation Wall’ will be rubble. The horror of the refugee camps will be made plain and the crooked Israeli town will be made straight by Palestinians returning to their homes, villages, fields and orchards. "And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." God Almighty, we are free at last!
I have a dream today and this dream will become true. However when this happens the Jewish state will be called Palestine and it will be one and a state of its citizens.
Inshallah
'Israelis stealing organs in Haiti'
Does the IDF steal organs in Haiti? Probably not, However one thing is clear. The Israelis have bought themselves some reputation...
If the IDF is such a 'humanist army', how come its commanders are chased for war crimes?
The Israelis better take responsibility for the destruction they create.
Gaza is a good place to start.
Netanyahu, Hegel and the Jewish Spirit by Gilad Atzmon
“Spirit does not toss itself about in the external play of chance occurrences; on the contrary, it is that which determines history absolutely, and it stands firm against the chance occurrences which it dominates and exploits for its own purpose”. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831)
PM Netanyahu was quoted by the Israeli Ynet last week saying that the “whole of Israel would be surrounded by a fence eventually”. According to another report he said “there will be no choice but to fence Israel in on all directions”. What Netanyahu means by ‘fence’ and ‘all directions’ may be left open for the time being. However, PM Netanyahu has managed to bring to light an Hegelian interpretation of the notion of ‘Jewish spirit’ as a relentless inclination towards segregation and isolation. It is the tendency to keep oneself apart that determines and shapes Jewish collectivism. Whether it is the Zionists and their walls, the Orthodox and their Kosher universe or even Jewish anti Zionists and their racially segregated miniature activist cells, somehow every form of Jewish political engagement is there to set the Jews apart.