The Israeli Wehrmacht
From Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
I realize that comparing Israel with Nazi Germany makes many people angry. However, it is perfectly true that when Israel thinks, behaves and acts as Nazi Germany did, Israel becomes deserving of and qualified for the ultimate comparison. And Israel has been and is behaving and acting very much as Nazi Germany did prior to and during the Second World War. I bet this is not news for all those who have been following up Israeli behavior against the Palestinians (and other peoples of the Middle East) ever since Zionism seized Palestine from its native inhabitants sixty years ago…

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Video: Gilad Atzmon talk at Euro Palestine
Haitham Sabbah, Palestine Think Tank
Gilad Atzmon talk at Euro Palestine event at the Parisian Librairie-Resistances bookshop featuring the legendary Tunisian singer Dhafer Youssef 16/5/08. On May 16th Gilad Atzmon presented his ‘Primacy of the Ear’ talk at Librairie Résistances in Paris. The room was filled to capacity with enthusiast Palestinian solidarity activists. The following is a short video clip of Atzmon’s performance together with the astonishing Dhafer Youssef. The video includes as well part of Atzmon’s talk where he reflects on global Zionism and its impact on contemporary world affairs and the situation in Palestine in particular….

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Video: East Jerusalem Arabs detail violence they face by city’s Jews
Haaretz.com/Channel 10 daily feature
Last month’s attack by a Jewish mob on Arab youths got ample press, but shouldn’t be considered an isolated incident. In fact, Arab residents of Jerusalem, particularly taxi drivers, detail a pattern of racially-motivated violent acts by religious Jews. The drivers from East Jerusalem call the western part of the city the “Wild West.” This week, prominent rabbis circulated Halakhic rulings online, calling for the city’s Jews to carry out violent acts against Arab residents…

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‘I kicked the Arab, I stepped on his head’
Uri Blau, Haaretz
Dozens of teenage boys from Jerusalem received the same ICQ message: “We’re putting an end to all the Arabs who hang out in ‘Pisga’ [Pisgat Ze’ev] and the mall, whistle at the girls, curse, threaten little kids. Anyone who is Jewish and wants to put an end to all that should be at Burger Ranch at 10 P.M., and we’ll finally show them they can’t hang in our area anymore. Anyone who is willing to do that and has Jewish blood should add his name to this message.”…

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The Sword of Damocles…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
Cicero in his 5th Disputation when referring to the Sword of Damocles allegory asks “Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms?” An everlasting fear is what looms over Iraqi heads, for this is no ordinary occupation… On the one hand we have the Americans and on the other the Iranians, both gluttonously vying for this ancient piece of land, like two vultures ready to pounce on the last carcass…

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Murder at Huwara checkpoint
Sabbah’s blog
This time we came to the checkpoint especially in order to gather testimony about the murder of 15.5-year old Fahmi Abd alJawaad alDarduk (???? ??? ?????? ???????), who was shot by the soldiers at this checkpoint on Monday, May 19th 2008. After he was shot, the army claimed that pipe bombs had been detected in his belt. That wires had been seen hanging from under his clothing. That three pipe bombs had been observed. Later it was said there were five. One of the perpetrators of this crime was cited for excellence….

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US paying allies to fight war in Iraq
Subodh Varma,TNN
The tale of massive fraud and embezzlement of millions of dollars by the US military in its operations in Iraq continues. Testifying before the US Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on 22 May, Mary Ugone, deputy inspector general of accounts in the Pentagon said that an audit of $8.2 billion spending related to the Iraq war showed that $7.8 billion had been improperly spent…

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Whatever Happened to Iraq?
How the media lost interest in a long-running war with no end in sight
Sherry Ricchiardi, AJR
…For long stretches over the past 12 months, Iraq virtually disappeared from the front pages of the nation’s newspapers and from the nightly network newscasts. The American press and the American people had lost interest in the war. The decline in coverage of Iraq has been staggering. During the first 10 weeks of 2007, Iraq accounted for 23 percent of the newshole fornetwork TV news. In 2008, it plummeted to 3 percent during that period. On cable networks it fell from 24 percent to 1 percent, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism…

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The Jordan Valley’s forgotten Palestinians
Ben White, The Electronic Intifada
…While Israeli policies in the West Bank, such as the consolidation of colonies in the “Jerusalem Envelope” and the separation wall, not to mention desperate and besieged Gaza, rightly deserve attention, the Jordan Valley is in danger of being passed over. It’s an omission that will primarily affect those Palestinians whose very presence in the Valley is under threat by unchecked Israeli colonization.
…

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Two different kinds of “rejection”
badger, Arablinks
…Political and religious currents came together yesterday in rejection of the proposed Iraq-US treaty, considering it “an infringement on sovereignty” and “binding future generations”; and observers stressed that the latest version includes text relating to the establishment of 400 locations and bases [for the American forces], exemption [from Iraqi legal process] for American soldiers and citizens, and elimination of any responsibility [on the American side] for participation in the rebuilding of Iraq….

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Bomb Haters, Unite!
Anwaar Hussain
Walk down a busy Kabul street and try coming back unscarred. Legless men rattle down bazaars in wheelbarrows, little children with missing limbs crab along like some decapods, one-legged men hobble about on ugly crutches among the throng of people. The common threads; they are all war victims, they are all beggars. Welcome to the land of the wretched. Perhaps no other place on earth has a larger proportion of disabled citizens living out their miserable existences in such heart rending circumstances as Afghanistan. Three decades of war, millions of mines and unexploded ordinance (UXO) for children to trip over, not to include the hordes of suicide bombers now killing in the name of God, have turned Afghanistan into a wasteland of the mutilated and the crippled…

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URGENT APPEAL TO ALL ACADEMICS: CONDEMN U.S. GOVERNMENT COMPLICITY IN BLOCKING PALESTINIAN RIGHT TO MOVEMENT AND ADVOCATE MEASURES TO PRESSURE ISRAEL
Haitham Sabbah, Palestine Think Tank
The news that the US State Department has decided to cancel all previously approved Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza is deeply shocking. In yet another clear demonstration of US complicity with the Israeli occupation regime, the State Department has decided to withdraw the grants for graduate studies in the US because Israel has not given permission for the students to leave Gaza. The US Consulate in Jerusalem is reported to have stated that the grant money had been “redirected” because of concern that if the students were forced to remain in Gaza the grant money would go to waste. Is it credible for the US government, principal supporter and financier of Israel, to claim impotence in the face of Israeli measures restricting the movement of Palestinians into and out of the Gaza Strip?…

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Nine policemen killed in suicide bombing in W Iraq
Xinhua
Nine policemen were killed and seven others wounded when a suicide bomber struck their checkpoint in western Iraq on Saturday night, a local police source said. A suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest at about 9 p.m. (1800 GMT) at the checkpoint in the town of Hit, some 160 km west of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity…

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What the U.S. Wants in Afghanistan
Eric Ruder
A U.S. Marine Corps general has decided not to bring criminal charges against two officers who led their unit on a March 2007 killing spree that left 19 Afghan civilians dead and 50 more wounded. The decision infuriated Afghanis. “This is too much,” said Kubra Aman, an Afghan senator from Nangarhar. “First, they say it’s a mistake, and after that, they let them go without charges.”…

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FREE WORLD OF CENSORSHIP ~~ PURGE AT HaARETZ NEWS
Desertpeace
Many of my readers may have noticed that I have not been posting many articles by Amira Hass lately. I have also not been cross posting a regular column by Gideon Levy called ‘The Twighlight Zone’. To be honest with you, I have combed the pages of HaAretz looking for these tidbits but to no avail. This morning I found out why… there has been a purge at HaAretz. New owners of the newspaper are slowly but surely ‘weeding out’ the only voices of truth and reason in the Israeli press…. so typical of what has been going on generally in the ‘free world of censorship’…

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