"You think he'll
be truthful on 9-11 (while working for Bush)?
Not a chance."


I think he's a lying piece of shit and will continue to lie to maintain his good standing with the Republican party ... that's why he ignores the oil factor and blames everything on the Jews.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/world/middleeast/09mideast.html?_r=1&hp

Israel Blocks Air Travelers to Palestinian Conference
By ISABEL KERSHNER

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Israel prevented a gathering of foreigners here on Friday by blocking, deterring or deporting hundreds of air travelers who had been invited by Palestinian activists to fly into Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport and then travel to the West Bank for a week of “fellowship and actions.”

Israel has traditionally been welcoming of foreign tourists, including more than a million Christian pilgrims who visited this Palestinian city of the Nativity last year. But the Israeli authorities prepared for days to head off Friday’s planned fly-in. The Israeli news media added to the hype by calling it a “flightilla” — a reference to the flotilla of boats that was supposed to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza last month but has been stymied by Israeli pressure and by the cooperation of the Greek port authorities.

As a result, most of the foreigners who planned to fly to Tel Aviv and join the “Welcome to Palestine” initiative were either deterred from trying to come or were prevented from boarding flights to Israel by foreign airlines, on instructions from the Israelis.

The Palestinian hosts decried the Israeli measures, but also chalked up a small victory.

Fadi Kattan, a Palestinian organizer, said at a news conference in Bethlehem that he was “pleased — sadly pleased” that the episode had exposed what he described as Israel’s draconian anti-Palestinian policies.

Over the past few days, hundreds of police officers were deployed in and around the airport near Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the base of operations at Ben-Gurion with his internal security minister, the police chief, security branch representatives and immigration officials.

There were persistent reports that the foreign visitors would try to create chaos and paralyze the airport, despite strenuous denials from the organizers of the campaign, who advocate nonviolence. They insisted that the foreigners wanted only to transit the airport and “go to Palestine.” (The West Bank has no airport of its own.)

By Thursday, the Interior Ministry had sent letters to foreign airlines with a list of 342 passengers it described as “pro-Palestinian radicals” planning to “arrive on commercial flights from abroad to disrupt the order and confront security forces at friction points.” Israel said people on the list would be refused entry, and it asked the airlines not to allow them to board flights, warning that if the listed passengers arrived at Ben-Gurion, they would be sent back on the same aircraft. Several airlines, including Lufthansa, complied with Israel’s request.

Several passengers at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris were barred from boarding a Lufthansa flight to Tel Aviv on Friday morning, and staged a protest. About 50 people were turned away, according to Agence France-Presse. There were reports of a similar disturbance at the Geneva airport.

“Like any other airline operating internationally, Lufthansa has to comply with the immigration laws and administrative decrees of the country we are flying to,” said Martin Riecken, a spokesman for the airline.

Such requests by national governments are not altogether uncommon, Mr. Riecken said, noting for example the United States’ no-fly list, which includes several thousand names.

Malev, the Hungarian airline, denied boarding to about 10 ticket holders in Paris on Friday. The decision to deny passengers the right to board does not indicate that “the airline likes or doesn’t like anyone,” said Marta Rona, a spokeswoman for the airline. Rather, she said, Israel had made it clear that the return of blacklisted passengers would be the responsibility of the airline.

“It’s our cost; it’s our responsibility; it’s our problem,” Ms. Rona said.

Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said that the Israeli authorities had followed the activists’ plans and compiled the list of undesirables by tracking the Web sites and social networking of the organizations involved.

“We did not need the Mossad,” Mr. Palmor said, referring to Israel’s intelligence agency. “It was all out there in the open.”

At Ben-Gurion Airport, two American women were deported from Israel early Friday after flying in from Athens. In the afternoon, six Israeli left-wing demonstrators were detained for questioning after shouting pro-Palestinian slogans in the arrivals hall.

By early Saturday, 124 foreigners had been refused entry and were awaiting deportation, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, Sabine Haddad, said. They had come in on six different flights and included Spanish, French, American, Belgian, Bulgarian and Dutch nationals, she said.

Israel’s Internal Security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, had branded the potential visitors as “hooligans.” Mr. Netanyahu said that every country has the right to block the entry of “provocateurs.”

Still, Israeli commentators and some politicians have described the Israeli preparations as excessive and bordering on hysterical.

“The state of Israel has taken leave of its senses,” wrote columnist Eitan Haber on the front page of the popular Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Thursday. “Instead of welcoming these loony visitors, permitting them to sing, whistle and even raise signs, the world is liable to see the ‘Zionist storm troopers’ in action once again.”

Brigitte Von Winterfeld, 71, from Germany, was one of a few foreigners who got to Bethlehem to join the campaign. She said she flew in on Tuesday, chose a “smiley” immigration officer at the passport control booths, and told him she was coming to visit friends. Ms. Von Winterfeld said she spent a while here last year with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, a World Council of Churches organization that says it brings people from other countries to the West Bank to experience life under occupation.

The Palestinian organizers of the week’s program include well-known advocates of nonviolent protest like Sami Awad of the Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust, and Mazin Qumsiyeh, a science professor at Bethlehem University. They said they were going ahead with the schedule as planned.

The itinerary includes visits to families in Palestinian refugee camps as well as demonstrations at various traditional Israeli-Palestinian flashpoints.

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/mexico-provokes-israel-with-historical-question/

Mexico Provokes Israel with Historical Question

Al-Manar – July 11, 2011

Amid Israel’s uninterrupted efforts to manipulate history and conceal historical events, the entity has started interfering in the educational system of some countries.

Israel caused internal trouble in Mexico over a national geography exam question about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Zionist website Ynetnews reported that “a geography question was raised focusing on the economic reasons for the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It included the following answers: “The Jewish community used biased and racist methods against the Arab population when the State of Israel was founded”, and “Israel uses its military superiority to control borders, roads, airspace and maritime space.”

The Israeli community in Mexico was outraged, considering that the exam questions were biased against Israel. As a result, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon raised the issue with his Mexican counterpart, urging Mexico’s Education Ministry to present an official apology.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/isra-a01.shtml

Jewish, Arab workers and youth protest against social conditions in Israel
By Patrick O’Connor
1 August 2011

An estimated 150,000 mostly young people in Israel, both Jewish and Arab, protested Saturday over spiralling living costs and the economic and social policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The demonstrations—held in eleven cities, with the largest in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa—mark a significant development in the “tent city” movement against high housing costs launched by students nearly three weeks ago. With a total population of about 7 million, 150,000 people represents a large percentage of the country.

While still in its early stages, a movement within the Israeli working class is being driven by worsening social inequality, economic hardship, and enormous anger with the Netanyahu government and the existing political setup in the country.

Yediot Aharonot columnist Nahum Barnea described the protests as unprecedented. “Whether the crowds numbered 100,000 or 200,000, never have such numbers descended into the streets over social issues,” he wrote. “Who would have believed that 150,000 Israelis would take the trouble to go out into the street in the name of social change… the alienation and cynicism that typified the public in the past number of years has now been replaced by involvement and protest.”

The largest protest was in Tel Aviv, where up to 100,000 people marched through the city centre. According to media reports, another 10,000 rallied in Jerusalem outside the prime minister’s residence and 8,000 marched in Haifa. A smaller demonstration in central Nazareth involved both Jews and Arabs, the first such joint rally since the housing protests began.

Slogans included: “The people demand social justice”, “We want justice, not charity”, and “When the government is against the people, the people are against the government”. Protestors also made banners pointing to the influence of the recent uprisings in Egypt and other Arab countries. One read: “This is the Israeli spring”, and another, “Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu!”

One young person was asked by the RT news network whether the protests had been inspired by events in Arab countries. He replied, “There is a lot of influence of what happened in Tahrir Square… There’s a lot of influence of course. That’s when people understand that they have the power, that they can organise by themselves, they don’t need any more the government to tell them what to do, they can start telling the government what they want.”

These developments presage a major shift within the Zionist state. Amid a worsening global economic breakdown, the social crisis in Israel is laying bare the objective potential for unifying Jewish workers with their Arab brothers and sisters both within Israel and throughout the Middle East. Opening up is a new path of political and social struggle, in opposition to the Zionist ruling elite, the Arab bourgeoisie and their imperialist backers—on the basis of common class interest, not nationality, race or religious identity.

Wider layers of the Israeli population are being drawn into the protest movement. Prominent musicians and writers have joined the demonstrations. Yesterday about 1,000 parents and their young children participated in a “strollers’ march” in Jerusalem and Haifa to protest against excessive day care centre costs and inadequate parental leave provisions.

A strike of public hospital medical professionals is in its fifth month. On Sunday, hundreds of doctors, medical residents and hospital interns protested near the Knesset (parliament) demanding adequate funding for the public health system.

Today, local authority workers are set to strike in support of the antigovernment protests, shutting down public offices and leaving rubbish uncollected.

The Netanyahu government has been plunged into crisis. A comment published by Ynet News columnist Attila Somfalvi noted: “Some 150,000 people who left their homes yesterday directed their fury at the man who they view as the culprit behind the State’s privatisation and burial of concern for the regular folk. These are not a bunch of ‘spoiled brats’ who can be dismissed with a disparaging hand gesture or by rolling one’s eyes; these are working people; angry people facing collapse... This protest is making its way to the top of the government, shakes up Likud, rocks the leather chairs in the Knesset and makes the prime minister and finance minister sweat and seek an escape route from the fury pouring into the street.”

The Shas party, which represents ultra-orthodox Jews and has 11 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, has warned it may withdraw from Netanyahu’s coalition government, potentially triggering new elections.

The prime minister has rushed to try to defuse the protest movement. Immediately after Saturday’s demonstrations Netanyahu called a cabinet meeting and announced that a “special team” of ministers and experts would listen to the protest leaders and submit a plan to “alleviate Israelis’ economic burden”. He declared: “We are all aware of the genuine hardship of the cost of living in Israel… we must deal with the genuine distress, seriously and responsibly. This, without a doubt, compels us to change our list of priorities.”

This hollow rhetoric has been accompanied by various sops in response to the protestors’ demands. Last Tuesday, Netanyahu promised to build 50,000 units of housing within 18 months. The government yesterday announced that the excise tax on petrol is to be lowered for one month, during August, and that some elderly people will have their home heating grant doubled. The prime minister has also suggested that he hopes to cut taxes and water charges.

At the same time, Netanyahu has made clear that there will be no serious concessions to the social demands of the protesting workers and youth. “We must avoid irresponsible, hasty and populist steps that are liable to cause the country to deteriorate into the situation of certain European countries, which are on the verge of bankruptcy and large-scale unemployment,” he declared.

Finance minister and senior Likud member Yuval Steinitz raised the spectre of state bankruptcy even more sharply. “We see the talk about the debt crisis in Europe,” he said. “We are even hearing talk of a possible default in the United States. My supreme duty is to ensure we do not reach this situation in the State of Israel... we will not turn the rich and the business people and the investors and the industrialists into the enemies of the people, because they are part of a healthy economy.”

The financial markets are clearly bringing enormous pressure to bear on the Netanyahu government, urging a continuation of pro-business policies irrespective of mass opposition. The value of Israeli government bonds declined after the weekend’s rallies. “Growing protests over rising prices increase pressure on the government to act,” Tel Aviv bond trader Ehud Itzhakov told Bloomberg. “There is concern in the market the government may need to raise more debt, which is creating uncertainty about the deficit.”

The Israeli Treasury Department is reportedly outraged over the government’s limited spending announcements in response to the protests. The director general of Israel’s finance ministry, Haim Shani, resigned yesterday. He cited “differences of opinion in fundamental issues” with the finance minister, adding that “events of the past few days have exacerbated the problems.”

It remains to be seen how the Netanyahu government responds to the crisis in the next days and weeks, but there is a real danger that a provocation will be launched against the Palestinian people or neighbouring Arab states as a diversion. Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar reportedly advised his Likud faction colleagues last week that every election in Israel that has “revolved around a socio-economic issue, Likud lost”, whereas when the main issues were “security related, Likud won.”

The author also recommends:

The Israeli protests and the unity of Arab and Jewish workers
[30 July 2011]

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The Director of the theatre

Juliano Mer-Khamis

was murdered
a short time ago.


Now this.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeegeo2NVAU&feature=player_embedded

The Freedom Theatre attacked.mov

"In the protest camps, Jewish supremacists increasingly clash with left-wing protesters demanding more attention for the Palestinian question. Some progressives are demanding the removal of racist and fascist elements within the movement."

http://wlcentral.org/node/2119

Unfortunately their politicians are no different than ours. Which means they'd rather perish than live in peace....

Gilad Altzmon has a different take on the protest.

Gilad Atzmon: The Landlord Wannabe Protest

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-the-landlord-wannabe-protest.html

WSWSORG take on the protest:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/pers-a09.shtml

The Israeli protests and the reemergence of the working class
9 August 2011

Saturday’s mass demonstration in the streets of Tel Aviv powerfully illustrates the fundamental feature of the developing international situation—the reemergence of the working class as the most important force in world politics. Called against low salaries and rising living costs, the march of over a quarter million working people was the largest social protest in Israel’s history.

It came amid a new stock market crash that threatens to return the world economy to the conditions of slump that emerged following the financial meltdown of September 2008.

For weeks, tent cities have occupied Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, inspired in part by the mass protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that led to the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Doctors and public sector workers have mounted strikes to protest underfunding and poor working conditions. Israeli demonstrators carry signs written in both Hebrew and Arabic, some of them exhorting fellow protesters to “walk like an Egyptian.”

The eruption of mass revolutionary struggles against US-backed dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt has galvanized political opposition in the working class internationally. This has now spread to Israel, long presented as the homeland of the Jewish people. As the protests reveal, however, Israel has not provided a way forward for the Jewish people, but rather a garrison state that serves the interests of a bourgeois elite and oppresses both Jewish and Arab workers.

The ruling class tells Jewish workers their political duty is to prepare for fratricidal wars against their class brothers in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iran and beyond. As for Israeli Arabs, they are second-class citizens who are exploited, together with much of the Jewish working class, as cheap labor. On this basis Israel has served as a key outpost of US imperialism.

The Israeli ruling elite has for years pursued free-market policies that enrich the country’s 16 billionaires, who control roughly half the country’s stock. Privatizations, corporate deregulation and the financial drain from Israel’s military-industrial complex have bled the workers white. Since 2008, surging prices have devastated even better-off layers of the working class. House prices are up 55 percent, rent is up 27 percent, and prices for key food staples have surged 40 percent.

As protests continue to spread internationally, masses of people increasingly understand that class, not religion, nationality or ethnicity, is the central question of political life. The deepening exploitation of the working class—in Israel as well as in the United States and Europe—is objectively laying the basis for unified revolutionary struggles by the international proletariat.

The experience of the Egyptian revolution—which middle-class forces are trying to derail and defeat by negotiating agreements with the ruling military junta—is critical for Israeli workers. They cannot fight the causes of their oppression by seeking to pressure the ultra-right regime of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, any more than Egyptian workers can build democracy through appeals to the junta. The proletariat in Israel must build a new, politically independent movement fighting to bring down the Netanyahu government and implement socialist policies.

In contrast, Ofer Eini, the leader of the Histadrut trade union federation, says that although he may announce token strikes in support of the demonstrations, he has no intention of “bringing down the government.” Eini is encouraging working people to rely on the tender mercies of Netanyahu and the 16-minister “dialog team” that is being formed to negotiate with protesters.

What a fraud! In line with union bureaucrats and their pseudo-left allies throughout the Middle East, Eini is revealing himself to be an agent of the financial aristocracy, assigned the task of containing and defusing the struggles of the working class.

As secret US cables published by WikiLeaks and Haaretz show, Eini supports Netanyahu’s policies. In a May 2009 meeting with US diplomats, Eini said his approval of Netanyahu’s budget and economic policy was the “kosher seal” necessary to guarantee that the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) would approve it. US diplomats concluded that Eini is a “key power broker” in negotiating the right-wing measures to be imposed on Israel’s population.

The eruption of mass protests in Israel, shaking the government and demonstrating the possibility of uniting Jewish and Arab workers, will encourage workers all over the world to take the path of struggle and overcome all attempts to divide them along religious, ethnic or national lines.

The central question facing working people is how to turn this instinctive sentiment into a politically conscious and worked out strategy to defend their interests. The only perspective that provides a basis for this is the program of world socialist revolution, advanced only by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

As struggles in Israel, Egypt and other Arab countries make clear, the conditions for a common struggle of the Middle Eastern proletariat are emerging amid a historic crisis of capitalism. In their struggles, Middle Eastern workers will find allies in the workers of Europe, America and Asia, who face draconian attacks on their living standards at the hands of financial parasites who have looted their countries for decades.

The critical issue is the building of a new revolutionary leadership in the working class and the establishment of new organizations of mass working-class struggle. The rising tide of workers’ protests is a powerful confirmation of the ICFI’s perspective. A section of the ICFI must be built in Israel to unite Jewish and Arab workers in the struggle for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East as part of the fight for world socialism.

Alex Lantier

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/an-open-letter-to-israel-concerning-the-freedom-theatre.html

An Open Letter to Israel Concerning The Freedom Theatre
Sunday, August 14, 2011 at 7:41AM
Gilad Atzmon

Open Letter to the Israeli Security Apparatus

11 August 2011

This is an open letter from representatives of the international volunteers and staff members, the friends, supporters and foundation of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin to the Israeli security apparatus including the Shabak, the IDF and Israeli Police.

After the attack on The Freedom Theatre's office and multimedia centre, during which you arrested our head technician Adnan Naghnaghiye and Bilal Saadi, the chairperson of The Freedom Theatre Board in Jenin; and after you have for two weeks refused Adnan and Bilaal access to a lawyer, treated them inhumanely and denied them their basic human rights, and after the arrest of our acting student Rami Hwayel, we hereby state:

We encourage all efforts to find whoever is responsible for the brutal murder of Juliano Mer Khamis and we are deeply concerned over the fact that the murderer has not yet been found. Nevertheless we reject the inhumane methods that you apply in investigating the murder. The Freedom Theatre has been seriously damaged by your actions which have further implanted fear and trauma not only among our students and employees but also into the very society we aim to empower.

By acting the way that you act you have once again proved to the residents of Jenin refugee camp as well as to the outside world that the only methods you know are the ones involving violence, terror and fear. We in The Freedom Theatre have nothing to conceal regarding the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis.

We have made that very clear and we state it again that everyone in the theatre has given statements to the Palestinian Police when they were asked to do so and are willing to do so again.

No matter what harm you cause to us or the theatre, we will continue our struggle for individual and collective liberation. We have joined our comrades in Jenin Refugee Camp in their struggle for liberation using culture and non-violence in order to not only shake off the occupation that you keep the Palestinian people under, but also other forms of oppression that they are faced with.

We demand that our friends and colleagues who have been subjected to severe cases of human rights abuses will be treated with absolute respect for all their basic human rights according to international conventions, receive immediate access to their lawyer and be promptly released.



The international staff, friends and supporters of The Freedom Theatre as represented by:



Jacob Gough, acting general manager at The Freedom Theatre

Micaela Miranda, Pedagogical Director at The Freedom Theatre

Jonatan Stanczak, co-founder of The Freedom Theatre

Udi Aloni, film and theatre director at The Freedom Theatre

Dror Feiler, co-founder of The Freedom Theatre and board member of The Freedom Theatre Foundation

Jan Tiselius and Britt-Louise Tillbom, chairpersons of the Friends of The Freedom Theatre (Sweden)

Constancia Dinky Romilly, president, Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theatre (USA)

Mrs Zahia Oumakhlouf and Mrs Marie-José El-Haimer, co-presidents of The Friends of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin (France)



You can also make your voice heard!

Contact your local The Freedom Theatre friendship association, or contact The Freedom Theatre if you want to start a group in your own country.

For more information on local groups: http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/support-friend.php

or contact us at: info@thefreedomtheatre.org

Article originally appeared on Gilad Atzmon (http://www.gilad.co.uk/).
See website for complete article licensing information.

Israel makes a mockery of the Nuremberg trials on a daily basis..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14488066


11 August 2011 Last updated at 06:30 ET


Israel approves 1,600 settler homes in East Jerusalem

Final approval has been given for the building of 1,600 settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem by the Israeli interior ministry.

The ministry is expected to approve the building of a further 2,700 homes, an official has said.

This comes weeks ahead of expected moves by the Palestinian Authority to have a Palestinian state recognised at the United Nations.

The campaign for recognition is strongly opposed by Israel.

Direct talks between the two sides are stalled, and there are no known current initiatives to get them re-started.

The Israeli announcement has been criticised by Palestinian officials.

"We strongly condemn the new Israeli decision," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told the AFP news agency.

"[I urge the US] to reconsider their position rejecting the Palestinian move to go to the UN for recognition of a Palestinian state… We call on [US President Barack Obama] to support this approach because it is the only way to preserve the two-state solution."
'Economics not politics'

A spokesman for the interior ministry, Roei Lachmanovich, told AFP minister Eli Yishai had given approval for "1,600 homes in Ramat Shlomo and will approve 2,000 more in Givat Hamatos and 700 in Pisgat Zeev".

The approval of 1,600 homes in Ramat Shlomo caused a diplomatic row between the US and Israel. The initial go-ahead for the homes was initially given in March 2010 as US Vice-President Joe Biden was on a visit to Israel pressing for the resumption of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

Mr Lachmanovich insisted that that the approval for the settlement homes was "economic" not political.

Israel is currently experiencing nationwide protests over the high cost of living. One of the central issues is the lack of affordable housing.

"These are being approved because of the economic crisis here in Israel, they are looking for a place to build in Jerusalem, and these will help," he said. "This is nothing political, it's just economic."

Last week, the interior ministry issued a final green-light for the construction of 900 new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa, which lies in the south-west of the city, beside Bethlehem.

Direct talks between the Palestinians and Israelis are currently stalled over the Palestinian refusal to take part while the Israeli government continues to build settlements in the West Bank.

The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and annexed East Jerusalem, a move not recognised by the international community.
BBC Map of jerusalem

More than 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.