As George Galloway put it, “we had to walk through the Rafah crossing and leave the brand new vehicles we bought with our own money, in Egypt, behind!”

Enjoy our blog and we hope that you will visit us often!

Ehud Olmert officially tenders his resignation as Prime Minister of Israel and Tzipi Livni is expected to take his place. The “Butcher of Lebanon” is no more.

Olmert told his Cabinet yesterday morning that he would resign and followed that with a visit to the official Jerusalem residence of President Shimon Peres — both formalities in a process that began in late July, when Olmert caved under the pressure of multiple corruption probes and announced he would step down after the Kadima primary election.

“This decision was not easy, it was not simple, and it was not taken in an offhanded way,” Olmert said before the start of yesterday’s Cabinet meeting. He pledged to help Livni, a longtime rival, form a new government.

“Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented to me this evening his resignation as head of the government,” Peres said after the two met. Peres thanked him for his service. Olmert did not talk to reporters.

At stake is political stability in Israel as the clock winds down on a January target date for a peace accord with the Palestinians, set by Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a US-sponsored peace conference last November.

Livni favours negotiations and making concessions to forge a peace agreement, but if she fails to form a coalition, elections would be called, and Israel might not have a new government until next spring. That could freeze peace efforts for months.

Olmert succeeded the popular and respected Ariel Sharon, who was felled by a stroke, and weeks later Olmert led Israel into a war with Hezbollah guerillas in Lebanon. The decision to go to war and its inconclusive outcome, along with the damage wrought by almost 4,000 rockets fired at Israel by Hezbollah, decimated Olmert’s popular support.

Then old corruption allegations caught up with him. Police began pressing their investigations, and a key witness testified in a “trial” against Olmert though no charges had been filed. That led Olmert to step down, setting the search for a new leader in motion.

Over the past several months, a group of 45 Palestinians from all walks of life — men and women, on the political right and left, secular and religious, politicians, academics, civil society and business actors, from occupied Palestine, inside Israel, and in the Diaspora participated in a workshop. After several workshops in Palestine and abroad and a continuous online debate, the group have produced the first iteration of “Regaining The Initiative: Palestinian Strategic Options To End Israeli Occupation.” The document is posted at www.palestinestrategygroup.ps and reflects an alternative to an official but impotent Palestinian discourse that will very shortly, in the judgment of most Palestinians, run head-on into a brick (cement) wall.

Download “Regaining The Initiative: Palestinian Strategic Options To End Israeli Occupation” [.pdf format]

Palestinian society is a dynamic, thinking society which has been so battered and demeaned by Israel and its supporters that many folk, including many Palestinians themselves, will be surprised that the Palestinians have any options whatsoever. One thing is for sure: no matter how long the illegal Israeli occupation continues, do not expect the Palestinians to wake up one morning and accept that they are somehow less human than any other free person in this world.

The Palestinian people have given everyone — including their own traditional leadership — plenty of time to end this humiliating and brutal occupation. When all else fails, Palestinians will reclaim the initiative, and will continue to do so over and over, until this occupation is consigned to the trash bin of history, along with all the war criminals who allowed it to persist for so many years.

An article in a leading Norwegian newspaper last weekend lambasted Israel and Judaism and said Israel has lost its right to exist in its present form. Entitled “God’s chosen people,” the article by author Jostein Gaarder in Aftenposten is raising a storm in Norway. Gaarder, author of the book “Sophie’s World,” links the Israel Defense Forces’ acts in Lebanon to Jewish history and foresees the coming dismantling of the state as it exists today, with the Jews becoming refugees.

In an interview with Haaretz, Gaarder said Thursday that he was misunderstood. “As John Kennedy declared in Germany ‘I am a Berliner’ I say now ‘I am a Jew,’” he said.

The article compares Israel’s government, the Afghan Taliban regime and South African apartheid, and states, “We no longer recognize the State of Israel” and “the State of Israel in its current form is history. We call child murderers ‘child murderers,’ and will never accept that they have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages,” Gaarder writes.

“Shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hezbollah or the State of Israel!”

Gaarder repeatedly refers to the role Judaism plays in Israel’s territorial aspirations, writing, “We don’t believe in the notion of God’s chosen people. We laugh at this nation’s fancies and weep over its misdeeds.”

He writes, “It is the State of Israel that fails to recognize, respect or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want, with God’s assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem.”

The article has triggered off thousands of comments and dozens of stormy debates in the Norwegian media. It also has sparked off a debate about Gaarder’s alleged anti-Semitic tendencies and the right to criticize Israel. The Jewish journalist and music critic Mona Levin spoke out in public against Gaarder and said she was shocked by the Norwegian government’s silence. She blasted the cabinet for not denouncing what she described as “the most appalling thing I’ve read since ‘Mein Kampf.’”

“We’re dealing with an ignorant man, a hate-filled man who derides Judaism,” she said in an interview from Oslo. Levin said it was unacceptable that a man of such international repute (26 million copies of his book have been sold) could attack an entire ethnic group and that politicians would remain silent.

“This is a classic anti-Semitic manifesto, which cannot even disguise itself as criticism of Israel,” said Professor Dina Porat, head of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University.

“The writer does not address the conflict in its contemporary context but reaches back thousands of years to assert that the Jewish people have traits of cruelty that have remained unchanged and account for the current war,” she says.

Porat says that according to the European Union, denying Israel’s right to exist arguing that its existence is racist is an anti-Semitic statement.

She also finds in Gaarder’s text the use of classic anti-Semitic symbols, like infanticide.

“I’ve been head of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism for 15 years and it’s not every day that I get to read such a radical document, in terms of its content and rhetoric,” she said.

Gaarder writes, among other things, “We do not believe that Israel mourns 40 killed Lebanese children more than it has lamented for more than 3,000 years 40 years in the desert. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as ‘fitting punishment’ for the people of Egypt.”

He writes that the first Zionist terrorists started operating in the days of Jesus.

Speaking to Haaretz on Tuesday, a day before he stopped talking to the media, Gaarder said he was misunderstood and emphasized that he is a friend of Israel and the Jews.

“I think what Hezbollah is doing is terrible,” he said, adding that he supports Israel’s right to exist as a national homeland for the Jews since 1948.

Gaarder said he does not question Israel’s right to exist, “but not as an apartheid state.” He said he could understand how his article could be interpreted as “anti-Jewish” and admitted that if he were to rewrite it, he would change a few things.

He is aware he has hurt the Jews in Norway, he said, adding that he would make sure the article is not translated into other languages. However, Gaarder refused to retract publicly his main theme.

Aftenposten’s political editor Harald Stanghelle said he saw no problem publishing Gaarder’s article.

“Of course I don’t agree with what he says,” he said. “But an open debate on the issue is better than a covert one.

“Gaarder’s voice is important in the Norwegian discourse and it was right to publish the article,” he said.

Meanwhile, the furor over Gaarder’s article coincides with a series of anti-Semitic incidents in Norway, including the desecration of an Oslo Synagogue and cemeteries and the assault and battery of a skullcap-wearing youngster.

1947. Information collected by the ADL in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL’s reports on suspected communists as “hearsay”.

1950 John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department’s internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets.

1954 A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv.

1956 Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attaché in Tel Aviv.

1954 “The Lavon Affair”. Israeli agents recruit Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

1965 Israel apparently illegally obtains enriched uranium from NUMEC Corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, “US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.”)

1967 Israel attacks the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering vessel flying a US flag, killing 34 crew members. See “Assault on the Liberty,” by James M. Ennes, Jr. (Random House). In 2004, Captain Ward Boston, Senior Legal Counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack swears under oath that President Lyndon Johnson ordered the investigation to conclude accident, even though the evidence indicates the attack was deliberate. Given the use by Israel of unmarked boats and planes, and the machine-gunning of USS Liberty’s lifeboats, the most likely explanation is that USS Liberty was to be sunk with all hands, with evidence left to frame Egypt for the sinking. This would have dragged the US into the war on Israel’s side.

1970 While working for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Perle is caught by the FBI giving classified information to Israel. Nothing is done.

1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. Bryen obtains a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and the case heads for the grand jury, but is mysteriously dropped. Bryen later goes to work for Richard Perle.

1979 Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tries to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a “Honey Trap”, using a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl.

1985 The New York Times reports the FBI is aware of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, quoting [former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal. The Justice Department does not prosecute.

1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO, is indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel (Washington Post, 10/31/86).

1987 April 24 Wall Street Journal headline: “Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won’t be Explored in Detail by Panels”

1992 The Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc’s top-secret airborne spy-camera system.

1992 Stephen Bryen, caught offering confidential documents to Israel in 1978, is serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant — with security clearance — on exports of sensitive US technology.

1992 “The Samson Option,” by Seymour M. Hersh reports, “Illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, Ari Ben-Menashe recalled: “Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts.”

1993. The ADL is caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco police. Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forces the city to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.

1995 The Defense Investigative Service circulates a memo warning US military contractors that “Israel aggressively collects [US] military and industrial technology.” The report stated that Israel obtains information using “ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties” of US citizens.

1996 A General Accounting Office report “Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors” found that according to intelligence sources “Country A” (identified by intelligence sources as Israel, Washington Times, 2/22/96) “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.” The Jerusalem Post (8/30/96) quoted the report, “Classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country.” The report described “An espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific and technologic information for [Israel] paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military intelligence documents.” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was “a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel’s LAKAM [Office of Special Tasks] espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages of classified US intelligence information.”

The GAO report also noted that “Several citizens of [Israel] were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes.”

1996 An Office of Naval Intelligence document, “Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare” reported that “US technology has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology.” Jane’s Defense Weekly (2/28/96) noted that “until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel] to China.” The report noted that this “represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation.” (Flight International, 3/13/96)

1997 An Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, “inadvertently” gives classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).

1997 The Washington Post reports US intelligence has intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis, identified only as “Dov”, had commented that they may get the letter from “Mega”, the code name for Israel’s top agent inside the United States.

1997 US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, complains privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents.

1997 Israeli agents place a tap on Monica Lewinsky’s phone at the Watergate and record phone sex sessions between her and President Bill Clinton. The Ken Starr report confirms that Clinton warned Lewinsky their conversations were being taped and ended the affair. At the same time, the FBI’s hunt for “Mega” is called off.

2001 It is discovered that US drug agents’ communications have been penetrated. Suspicion falls on two companies, AMDOCS and Comverse Infosys, both owned by Israelis. AMDOCS generates billing data for most US phone companies and is able to provide detailed logs of who is talking to whom. Comverse Infosys builds the tapping equipment used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on all American telephone calls, but suspicion forms that Comverse, which gets half of its research and development budget from the Israeli government, has built a back door into the system that is being exploited by Israeli intelligence and that the information gleaned on US drug interdiction efforts is finding its way to drug smugglers. The investigation by the FBI leads to the exposure of the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, operated by Israel. Half of the suspected spies have been arrested when 9-11 happens. On 9-11, 5 Israelis are arrested for dancing and cheering while the World Trade Towers collapse. Supposedly employed by Urban Moving Systems, the Israelis are caught with multiple passports and a lot of cash. Two of them are later revealed to be Mossad. As witness reports track the activity of the Israelis, it emerges that they were seen at Liberty Park at the time of the first impact, suggesting a foreknowledge of what was to come. The Israelis are interrogated, and then eventually sent back to Israel. The owner of the moving company used as a cover by the Mossad agents abandons his business and flees to Israel. The United States Government then classifies all of the evidence related to the Israeli agents and their connections to 9-11. All of this is reported to the public via a four part story on Fox News by Carl Cameron. Pressure from Jewish groups, primarily AIPAC, forces Fox News to remove the story from their website. Two hours prior to the 9-11 attacks, Odigo, an Israeli company with offices just a few blocks from the World Trade Towers, receives an advance warning via the internet. The manager of the New York Office provides the FBI with the IP address of the sender of the message, but the FBI does not follow up.

2001 The FBI is investigating 5 Israeli moving companies as possible fronts for Israeli intelligence.

2001 JDL’s Irv Rubin arrested for planning to bomb a US Congressman. He dies before he can be brought to trial.

2002 The DEA issues a report that Israeli spies, posing as art students, have been trying to penetrate US Government offices.

2002 police near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in southern Washington State stop a suspicious truck and detain two Israelis, one of whom is illegally in the United States. The two men were driving at high speed in a Ryder rental truck, which they claimed had been used to “deliver furniture.” The next day, police discovered traces of TNT and RDX military-grade plastic explosives inside the passenger cabin and on the steering wheel of the vehicle. The FBI then announces that the tests that showed explosives were “false positived” by cigarette smoke, a claim test experts say is ridiculous. Based on an alibi provided by a woman, the case is closed and the Israelis are handed over to INS to be sent back to Israel. One week later, the woman who provided the alibi vanishes.

2003 The Police Chief of Cloudcroft stops a truck speeding through a school zone. The drivers turn out to be Israelis with expired passports. Claiming to be movers, the truck contains junk furniture and several boxes. The Israelis are handed over to immigration. The contents of the boxers are not revealed to the public.

2003 Israel deploys assassination squads into other countries, including the United States. The US Government does not protest.

2004 Police near the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Tennessee stop a truck after a three mile chase, during which the driver throws a bottle containing a strange liquid from the cab. The drivers turn out to be Israelis using fake Ids. The FBI refuses to investigate and the Israelis are released.

2004 Two Israelis try to enter Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, home to eight Trident submarines. The truck tests positive for explosives.

Fredrick Tobin, who has been jailed on the charges of questioning the holocaust, has said that the holocaust is supported by three claims: the claim that Germany under Hitler’s control systematically killed Jews, the claim of gas chambers, and the claim that 6 million Jews were killed. He said that none of these are true.

In 1945 after Nazi Germany was defeated by the allied forces a trial was ordered to punish the German generals, officers and those known to have cooperated with Nazi Germany and the third Reich of Adolf Hitler. The trial of Nuremberg as it is known in history was also to help the Jewish community get back at the Germans for what is called the “Holocaust”.

Text books tells us that 6 million Jews died as a result of the holocaust and that they all died in concentration camps and after torture, miseries and all kinds of punitive treatments given to them. They were men, women and children said to have been killed by the Germans under Hitler’s rule. There are however many other historians and university professors as well as Germans themselves and at times Jews who find it important to question the holocaust and the use of the holocaust by the Jewish community to gain sympathy 60 years after the events.

And this is where problems start for those wrongly said to be in denial of the holocaust. The critics are not necessarily in denial as they feel they have the right to question history on the exactitude of events. However, the people who question the holocaust are denied their rights and freedom to do so in what seems to be a total embargo on any forms of criticism of the holocaust.

This limits the freedom of the people who lives in regimes and countries that claims high and loud to be the defenders of the freedoms and liberties of the people. There seem to be total freedom for these people to criticize others, criticize Islam in particular but they are NOT allowed to criticize the Jews, Judaism and the Holocaust and their freedoms – so cherished and adored like a goddess – suddenly finds its limitations: Holocaust is off limit!

The limitations of the people who are supposed to be free in their countries in the West – which includes America, the EU and Australasia – does not end with the strict limitations imposed on them with regards to the holocaust. They are also not able to criticize Israel and its continued use or abuse of the events 60 years ago to promote Judaism and Israel as a legal entity.

Besides the limitations imposed on them, the “free” thinkers of the western world faces jail term and even more if they persist in presenting to the world a different view of what the holocaust is all about. The political conspiracy of the West to protect the Jewish community and their use of the holocaust to protect themselves from their own crimes against the Palestinians is more than obvious.

Those who feel it right to question the very motives of the use of the holocaust to preserve Israel and protect it of all its crimes against humanity in Palestine and the occupied territories are condemned severely by the “freedom” lovers in America, Europe and Australia or New Zealand.

The so called freedom of speech in the west is supposed to allow people to think freely and to act freely too according to their beliefs but the big question is why can’t they protest or question the holocaust. They can however question the deaths of 2 million Iraqis (corrected from 12 millions which was a typing error) – killed by the US and the EU and the UN – thanks to their sanctions against the tiny Arab country.

They are however allowed to criticize Islam and the Muslims for whatever good or bad they represent and they are to get away if they call Muslim names or draw pictures, cartoons of Muslims and their Prophets and the companions of the Prophet. They are also given gold medals if necessary or big pay checques if they do write books against Muslims and against Islam.

Yet if they do the same against the Jews and the holocaust, they are jailed, they stripped of their honorability and they are banned from writing on the holocaust ever again if they do not want to lose even their nationality!

They become outcast and they are kicked out of their realm by a set of laws that exist within the EU and in the US if they write or criticize the holocaust. But they are protected by another set of laws that allows them to criticize Islam.

What is it with the holocaust that they cannot think against it or present a different view – which is the basis of freedoms – of the holocaust? There must be something secretive about it in order for the west, the champion of freedoms, to be afraid about that it imposes such tough fines and jail sentences against writers, thinkers and even artists who are against the ‘protective’ custody given to holocaust.

Whether the Jews and the West want to protect Israel because of the 6 million killed (that is what they say) during the said holocaust is another story but why do they not allow people to speak freely on what they think the holocaust means to them? Strange it is for the West to impose such black outs on a subject that was supposed to be an open book for anyone to review.

If the holocaust was supposed to be viewed without contest then it surely mean it did not happen the way it is declared it happened and that probably not as many Jews died out of holocaust and gas chambers as they claim had happened!

In the name of press freedom and freedom of speech and of anything else you may think of, the right must be given to everyone to decide if they believe or not in the holocaust!

Fredrick Tobin, who has been jailed on the charges of questioning the holocaust, has said that the holocaust is supported by three claims: the claim that Germany under Hitler’s control systematically killed Jews, the claim of gas chambers, and the claim that 6 million Jews were killed. He said that none of these are true.

According to his beliefs, Auschwitz was a transfer center where Jews were led out of Europe to establish themselves in Palestine. The Austrian born historian also said it would have taken a much longer time for the Germans to kill 6 million Jews in 4 years during WWII.

Regarding the claimed 6 million Jews killed at the time of World War II, he has said that this is a mythical number. He said one time Jewish historians claimed that four million were killed, then this number decreased by 1 to 1 and a half million. Now they announce that the number of Jews who were killed in the Second World War to be 500,000. But, they continue to propagate that 6 million were killed.

He was jailed for questioning the Holocaust and he insist that anyone who questions the holocaust will be jailed because there is something wrong with the holocaust. Hence we can conclude that there is a limitation in the freedom of the press and freedom of speech in the West and it its limitations starts with the holocaust!

Another professor Robert Faurisson, 76, who has two citizenships in England and in France, was a professor at Leon University in France. But, in 1989 France forced him to end his teaching career due to his beliefs about the holocaust and the genocide that happened to the Jews. He did not agree that Germans were killing Jews by millions and this landed him in big trouble.

Advertisement: Watch Winders at WatchCases.com. Read how to choose a watch winder. Save money buy right!

Mohamed S. Kamel

Most of us remember 1948’s catastrophe, The Nakbah; the days when almost 900,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes and become refugees, the worst refugee crisis in history. Citizens, that should have been refugees for a few days ended up being so for 60 years and amount to more than 4 millions.

But this Nakbah did not start in 1948 it started long before; and it is well known to many of us but not to all.

The Nakbah really started in 1825, in Arrarat, when Mordechai Emanuel Noah[i] purchased the Grand Island, near Buffalo New York, as a homeland for demoralized Jews.

The Nakbah was renewed in 1890, with the scandal known as “The Dreyfus Affair” [ii]. That political scandal, with anti-Semitic overtones, is what divided France from the 1890s to the early 1900s. It involved the wrongful conviction for treason, in 1894, and the degradation and imprisonment on Devil’s Island, of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young and promising French artillery officer who was in advanced training with the Army’s General Staff.

The anti-Jewish sentiment that rocked the west from Europe to North America was the real reason behind the Nakbah and the real start. But the Nakbah practically started in 1897, when Theodore Herzl[iii] met with Mordechai Emanuel Noah and both converted the people’s yells in Dreyfus’ convection “Death to the traitor, death to the Jews” into a project of a Jewish state.

Herzl wrote: “A Jewish state” — this is the only solution to anti-Semitism. Herzl decided to work hard so that the Jews could have a state of their own. He hardly saw or spent any time with his family. His friends thought he was crazy. They did not believe it was possible to establish a state for the Jewish people. Orthodox Jews argued that it is forbidden to establish a Jewish state, because only Hashem will return the Jews to the land of Israel. The Jews were scared that if they began to desire their own state – this would lead to even more hatred. But Herzl did not give up.

They did not get the help they were looking for in the beginning. When Herzl met with important people, leaders and ministers of influential European countries (Germany, England, Turkey and Russia), he wanted them to help the Jews get a legal right (charter) to establish a state of their own.

Herzl invited representatives of the Jewish communities from all over the world to the first Zionist congress in 1897 in Basel (Bazel), Switzerland. The representatives at the congress decided that they wanted to establish a home land (state) for the Jewish people.

The British offered them what was commonly known as the “Uganda Project[iv]” before the Sixth Zionist Congress (Basel, August 1903), carrying the majority (295:178, 98 abstentions), then Argentina in 1904′s declaration, but both failed to be sold to the Jewish people.

While Herzl did not live to see the rejection of the Uganda plan or even the Argentina plan, his successor chose Palestine, where they can convince Jews to immigrate to the Promised Land.

In 1906, the Zionist congress decided that the Jewish homeland should be Palestine.

So Palestine was not the goal because of religious reasons but rather became the reason to reach a state.

They tried with the Sultan of Turkey, but the Sultan refused to cede Palestine to Zionists. They tried with Egypt to get Al ‘Arish, in the Sinai Peninsula, adjoining southern Palestine, but failed yet again.

The Zionist movement started out secular then turned into a coalition between Jewish religious and seculars where the religious side attracts the Christian Zionist.

The opposition to Zionism from Torah leaders was initially almost universal. These authorities rejected Zionism as a heresy without genuine basis within Judaism, and in conflict with the teachings of the Torah. In 1892, Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, at that time the most representative Jewish personality in America, denounced, in a Montreal conference, the Zionist project as entirely antithetical to the spirit and letter of Judaic teachings:

“We totally disapprove of the initiative aiming at the creation of a Jewish State. Attempts of this type highlight an erroneous conception of the mission of Israel … that the Jewish Prophets were the first to proclaim … It aims at a Messianic time when men recognize belonging to one great community for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.”[v].

This movement is still alive and has it is own supporters[vi] even within the state itself[vii].

Because the establishment of the Jewish state would need the approval or the collapse of Ottoman Empire, European Jewish offered Europe their support in the WWI in return of their right in Palestine. So the result was the Balfour Declaration in 1917[viii]. That declaration was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation. The “Balfour Declaration” was later incorporated into the “Sèvres Peace Treaty[ix]” with Turkey and the Mandate for Palestine.

Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely

Arthur James Balfour

In spite of all this, the immigration rate to Palestine was very low and they did not meet their real goal for the establishment of the state until the early thirties.

This era was marked by the raise of the Nazism movement and the threat from Germany’s new plan for an obligatory displacement of Jewish from Europe to Madagascar, where they can establish a Jewish homeland, in what is known as “Madagascar Plan”[x]. Such plan and all the discrimination against Jews in Europe was the success start of the mass immigration to Palestine.

The other problem faced by the Zionist’s plan was the Arab Jews, who were living a reasonable wealthy life in their countries[xi]. The Zionist movement is in real need for them for two reasons. First, the political argument for Jewish state will not be acceptable as long as there are Jews living a peaceful life in Arab countries. Second, the project needs finance and by them living in their native lands, the Arab countries, no finance would be wired to the new born state.

The huge example about this issue was the “Lavon Affair”, where a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Susannah occurred, in which Egyptian, American, British and manly Jewish owned targets in Egypt were bombed in the summer of 1954[xii].

Some people might consider it a pro-Palestinian propaganda but it is the history and the reality. Even Zionists cannot deny it.

To recover from this Nakbah, we have to recognize the cause and work for justice. We have to remember that it is the Palestinian’s land. Still, at the same time, we have to recognize the reality.

Recognizing the reality does not mean giving up the land and the rights but struggling to achieve a real justice and long stand solution to the problem.

There is a big different between wishing and what could be done. In real life, there is no “Undo” but there is; let us do it.

Many of today’s Jewish recognize the grave mistake done on behalf of their name and we have to work with them hand in hand to return the golden era when Jews and other Arab were living side by side in harmony in peace and full citizenship. Let us promote the one state solution, the only solution by applying the South Africa model and live two people in one state [xiii].

So it is not 60 years it is long before, but is it going to stop here?

* Mohamed S. Kamel: is a Freelance writer, the editor of I.N. Daily http://indaily.net/, co-founder of the Canadian Egyptian for Democracy (CEFD), Alternative Perspective Media (APM-RAM) and the Canadian Muslim Forum (FMC-CMF), could be reached at mskamel@fmc-cmf.com

[i] Dreyfus Affair
[ii] ibid.
[iii] Theodor Herzl
[iv] British Uganda Program
[v] http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq30.html#_ednref32
[vi] http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/
[vii] http://www.doublestandards.org/jaz1.html
[viii] Balfour Declaration of 1917
[ix] Treaty of Sèvres
[x] Madagascar Plan
[xi] Naiem Giladi, The Jews of Iraq
[xii] Lavon Affair and What Really Happened: Lavon Affair
[xiii] Jewish Opposition to Zionism and Are All Jewish Zionist?

The Palestinian people are not only Muslims; the internally displaced population and that which has been displaced subsequent to the illegal formation of Israel is composed of a multi-religious and in some sense multi-racial population. It is a problem impacting all of humanity, not merely Jews and Muslims.

On this day, our hearts go out to all the Palestinians and we stand in solidarity with them in mourning the Nakba of 1948; we support their resistance of the Israeli occupation of historic Palestine; we strongly codemn the 1967 territorial expansion which continues to facilitate the expansion of the Zionist colonial agenda until today.

We are extremely appalled at the distortions and lies that the pro-Israel lobby has disseminated through global media as a result of Palestinian resolve resulting from these acts. This has led to widespread stereotyping of Muslims, Islamophobia and ignorance in the world community concerning the truth of the conflict.

It is almost impossible to speak about the Nakba without speaking about taking responsibility and repairing the historical injustice that was committed against the Palestinian people. Such repair must emphasize first and foremost the recognition of the rights of Palestinians to return.

We stand in solidarity with all Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and self-determination and strongly reiterate the following:

• Our demand that Israel cease its siege of Gaza and lift its blockade to allow for the free flow of people, food, humanitarian aid and energy to the Palestinians in Gaza. According to the 4^th Geneva Convention, collective punishment is a crime;
• Our further demand of the cessation and action-reaction syndrome that intensifies with each new incident, and the blatant excessive, extra-territorial incursions by Israel;
• Our denunciation of all illegitimate Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine and demand immediate demolition of the apartheid wall. Both settlements and the wall violate the rights of Palestinians through illegal land confiscation, home demolitions, and restrictions of movement;
• Our opposition towards prejudice, including racism and anti-Semitism, in all its forms, and insistence that the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinian people manifest both racism and state terrorism;
• Our strong urge to all nations, particularly the United States and its Western allies to give due regard to the interests of all parties to the dispute in the Middle East, and especially encourage those who would be peacemakers to be impartial in their approach, and not show favor nor fail to condemn either party for the breach of any agreements; and
• Our demand that Israel recognize all Palestinians’ Right of Return, as guaranteed in the United Nations’ General Assembly Resolution 194. The refugees are mentioned in Article 11, which resolved: “… that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”

AZRIL MOHD AMIN
Vice President (International)
Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

Advertisement: Watch Winders at WatchCases.com. Read how to choose a watch winder. Save money buy right!

Mussab Abu Maateq, one, Hana Abu Maateq, three, Rudeina Abu Maateq, four, and Saleh Abu Maateq, five, were killed along with their mother when a tank shell hit their home in Beit Hanun, doctors at the Kamal Radwan hospital said. Ten people were reportedly injured in the incident, three of them sustaining serious to critical wounds, and one person was trapped under the rubble. A Palestinian source in the Strip said that a member of the al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad’s military wing, was also martyred by Israeli occupation army soldiers.

Earlier Monday, Palestinian fighters fired three Qassam rockets from northern Gaza towards occupied territories. The rockets landed in the Netivot area, within the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council and on Palestinian territory. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian organizations are preparing for another round of talks in Egypt in regards to the offer for a truce with Israel. According to estimates, the parties will accept the proposal presented by Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar over the weekend.

Israeli daily Ynet said Sunday that Abu Mujahed, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, said that Israel is continuing its activities in the Gaza Strip, while completely ignoring the discussions on a truce. “Therefore, there is no reason for us to stop taking measures to defend ourselves,” he said.

Heavy exchanges of fire took place over the weekend between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian resistance fighters in Beit Lahiya. A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was killed in the incident, and at least seven other Palestinians were injured, three of them sustaining critical wounds.

The hospital in the northern reported that the girl killed was the daughter of a senior Hamas members arrested by the forces during the incident. The Palestinians added that the girl’s mother was also injured in the clashes.