In the US, people like Dennis Ross, Alan Dershowitz, Elie Weisel are all bent out of shape since Carter”s book ” Palestine, Peace not Apartheid” came out and as expected all simply hate to recognize the fact that the Israeli Occupation is more than apartheid, it is inhuman, cruel and it is clear indication that Israeli society for the most part is really sick. How could any human being accept seeing others going through these 400 check points as if they are livestock. It is too bad the American Jewish community for the most part does not live up to the moral standing that is expected of it, and for the most part remains silent about Israel’s crimes in the Occupied Territories. Mr. Ross, if it looks like apartheid, sound like apperthied and feel like apartheid, then it is apartheid. You and the others like you, might as well admit it. You could not deny that Israel’s Occupation is not only illegal and criminal but is apartheid as well.
Sami Jamil Jadallah, editor

It’s simple apartheid
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/825/op15.htm21-17.12 Al-AhramJust as the US and Europe once opposed apartheid in South Africa, Israel’s discrimination against Palestinians must be similarly exposed and dismantled, writes Jamil Dakwar*
President Jimmy Carter is drawing criticism because his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, uses the label apartheid to describe Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian territories. As second-class citizens in their own land, the term “apartheid” often rings truer for Palestinian citizens of Israel than democracy.
Israel’s Jewish majority enjoys a thriving democracy. But Israel’s non-Jewish citizens — nearly 20 per cent of the population — live a different reality. Palestinian citizens of Israel send their children to separate but unequal schools that receive less funding than Jewish schools, they cannot buy land or lease apartments in most Jewish towns, and they must often stand in a separate line at the airport from Jewish people.
While it is in the West Bank and Gaza that the apartheid analogy holds best, in many ways Palestinian citizens of Israel live under an apartheid-like legal regime. More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews, including the law of return that grants automatic citizenship rights to Jews from anywhere in the world upon request, inviting them to settle on land that is not theirs, while denying that same right to Palestinians. Israeli housing and land policies are racially driven. Hundreds of thousands of acres of privately owned land have been expropriated from Palestinians for the establishment of Jewish settlements.
The nationality and entry into Israel law prevents Palestinians from the occupied territories who are married to Palestinian citizens of Israel from gaining residency or citizenship status. The law forces thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel to either leave Israel or live apart from their families.
Israel’s recently appointed deputy prime minister and minister for strategic threats, Avigdor Lieberman, considers Palestinian citizens of Israel to be a “demographic threat”. Over the years, he has advocated ridding Israel of its indigenous Palestinian inhabitants to maintain a Jewish majority. His appointment did not elicit the same outrage as the 1999 victory of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party in Austria. Back then, Israel re-called its ambassador, Europe threatened Austria with economic sanctions and the US threatened to react swiftly to any expression of racism or anti-Semitism.
In the West Bank, though Palestinians have lived under Israeli rule for 40 years, they have no voice in Israeli politics and very limited recourse to Israel’s legal system. Hundreds of checkpoints impede movement, disrupting, or blocking access to schools, jobs and medical care. As under South Africa’s “pass system”, Palestinians often require permission to travel from one village to the next inside the West Bank. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said during a visit to Palestine that the situation was “much like what happened to us black people in South Africa.” At the same time, Israel has constructed a vast road system for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers living illegally in the West Bank. This network of settlements and segregated roads bisects the West Bank, furthering the Palestinians’ isolation and loss of land and property.
Israel’s separation wall/barrier inside the West Bank confiscates Palestinian land and separates Palestinian communities. Dwarfing the Berlin Wall, it serves not solely security, but reaches deep into the West Bank to encompass major illegal Jewish settlements. Palestinians in the West Bank are increasingly penned into ghettoes that resemble the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa.
Meanwhile, Israel “withdrew” from Gaza more than a year ago, but it continues to control Gaza’s borders, airspace and coastline and continues military strikes and operations inside Gaza at will. Determining everything that gets in or out, it has turned Gaza into the world’s largest open-air prison.
Though it took decades, the world (with the exception of Israel) united against the South African apartheid regime and demanded equal rights for all of that country’s citizens. This same standard should be applied to Israel immediately. The discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel and the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as disinherited Palestinian refugees, demands a comprehensive solution based on international law and equal rights regardless of race, religion or ethnicity.
The United States and the EU have a pivotal role to play. The US State Department and the EU have repeatedly documented Israel’s discriminatory practices. Yet while the Bush administration and the EU demanded that Palestinians under occupation develop democratic systems, no pressure has been applied to Israel to reform its exclusivist democracy for Jews to include all citizens of Israel, including 20 per cent of its citizens who are Palestinians. It is time the US and the EU hold Israel to account by making its massive economic and military aid contingent upon Israel abandoning its discriminatory policies. Americans and Europeans shunned apartheid once. It is time to do it again.
* The writer is a formerly senior lawyer with Adalah, the legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel

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The other day after dinner, a number of us, Palestinian-Americans sat at the table to get feed back from one of our good friends who arrived the same day from Ramallah. Of course the subject of the discussions ranged from the armed skirmishes taking place between Fatah and Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas calls for new elections and of course the ever lingering issue of corruptions and cleaning up the Palestinian Authority and the freezing of the Fatah militias and its warlords.
The discussions were quite frank and open with no reservations and our good friend whom we have known for sometimes was also quite open and very frank and quite objectives in addition to being well informed.
Of course and as always, I spoke my mind and was quite frank in my criticism of both Fatah and Hamas, both of which have narrow interest and do not represent or put forwards what is best for the Palestinians. Hamas, sad to say did not live up to the expectation, even though it was handicapped right out of the gate and did not take advantage of its sweep in the election to offer a good solid alternative to the corrupt and incompetent Fatah. Hamas made the fatal mistake of not coming out with its “peace plan” and in support of the Arab Peace Plan, and instead put itself in the corner by getting directions and instructions from Khalid Mishal who is not elected by any one and who gets his instructions from Damascus, which over the last 40 years did not do the Palestinian people much favors. Hamas behaved as if it continues to run small NGO and is not a government that has to take care of every thing from education to garbage collections to providing public security.
Fatah on the other hand did not and will not change at long as the decisions are in the hands of the old guards who proved they are, not only corrupt but a total failure and as long as the decision is also in the hands of warlords and those who became very rich from racketeering, protection money and selling cement to build the Israeli War.
Between a wall and a hard stone sits President Mahmoud Abbas who was elected on a “Peace Plan” by the overwhelming majority of the people. Even Hamas was elected not because of its ‘war plans” but as an alternative to Fatah and in the absence of any “liberation” plans. I did agree with my friend that the Hamas was elected as a majority in the parliament, but once selected to form the government must be committed to carry out the president program and not its own agenda, letting the parliament decide on major legalisations. I also agreed with my friend, the only way out of this deadlock and impasse is a new presidential and parliamentary elections. The situation on the ground does not stand a Hamas government, that is unable or unwilling to address the daily issues of the people and one that does not advance a peace plan, having tried a ‘war” plans for the last 40 years and it failed. Abbas is right in calling a new election and must not only call for new elections, but must set a date not later than 120 days from the date he submit his resignation and 120 days from dissolving the parliament. The Palestinians people could not stand to have a Hamas government that gets its instructions from Damascus and could not afford a government that does not go along and show strong an unequivocal support for the King Abdallah’ Peace Plan. Equally important in all of this is giving the opportunity to the Palestinians in the Diaspora, who form a “ majority” to have a say so in what is going on and who must have a voice and participate in the decision to move forward with peace. The PLO as an organization no longer serves the purpose and is no longer the right mechanism for the Palestinians. More important, the PLO was never elected by the people and its executives are nothing but old bags whose time has come to retire to the farm and whose executives are at best parasites that serve no good purpose. President Abbas has a once in life opportunity to rise above the partisan level and has a chance to prove that he is the president of all the people and not as head of Fatah. He must prove to the people that he has what it takes in courage, vision, and commitment to peace to take the people out of the mess they are in. He also must take the decision to clean the place up, clean it from all the thugs, warlords, and corruption mafia of his Fatah and must clean and get rid of all of the militias out there and give them alternative and productive job. He also has to get rid of a number of key people around him who are nothing more than incompetent parasites and warlords. His strength is not Fatah men, but the average citizen who is looking for a leader to stand up to the occasion and deliver independence and liberation. Removing some 30 checks points out of 400 is not enough. The people want liberation and an end to the occupation. Let us see if President Abbas live up to the expectation and prove he is the president of all the people. Hamas must accept its failure and agree to go back to the people and not cling to power for the next 3 years. Until the people elect Khalid Mishal he should not make the decisions.

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Few minutes ago, our neighbor, Michael, a successful engineering manager with a top Fortune 5, walked over to his house after dropping some very tasty “Italian” Christmas cookies that his wife, also an Italian-American made. Michael’s family emigrated from Italy some hundred and fifty years ago. There are hundreds of millions like Michael whose families immigrated to this country and who individually and collectively makes this country the great country it is.
My mother in-law who is over 70 and has both a bachelor and a master degree from the American University in Cairo made a statement that promoted me to write this post about America. She said “ I feel so privilege, I grew up in Cairo and now I am enjoying the rest of my life in this great country” and yes, this country is great because new immigrants like my mother in law, love this country as much as those whose family came here some centuries ago.
I too feel very privileged to be in this country and call this country “home” without ever losing the feeling and attachment I have for Palestine. I feel honored and privileged to join the many millions of immigrants who made this country the great country it is and will always be, not withstanding what some bigoted congressman from Virginia think.
This country is great because it has great and giant “founding fathers” that argued so hard and debated for endless days, months and even years. Who disagreed with each other in public and in private and who in the end came up with perhaps the most powerful written instrument ever written by man, the US Constitution. In my view, after the Torah, the Bible and the Quran the US Constitution ranks holy. No one would imagine that some centuries ago, these men could come up with governing instruments that defines us as a nation of values, of freedoms, liberty and institutions. It defines a system of government incorporating checks and balance, with separate but equal branches of government. Sad to say that the legislative branch did not live up to the letter and spirit of the US Constitution, with its corruption, professional and life long politicians driven by greed and bought and sold and traded on K Street
Yes, this country is great because the great grand sons of immigrants the like of Bill Gates, George Marshal, Jonas Salk, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Wilbur and Orville Wrights, Gus Grissom, Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther Kings and Rosa Park, Farouk El-Baz, Edward R. Murrow and the many Nobel laureates in the arts and science and the many institutions of higher learning and the many research institutions the likes of N.I.H and CDC make up this country. It is also a country where citizens took on some very powerful senators and made them look the fools they were and contributed to the great freedoms we enjoy now. It is a great country because of some great presidents the likes of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and of course Bill Clinton. It is also a country of very generous populations that gives hundreds of billions to charity. It is a country where immigrants can graduate at the top of their class at the US Air Force Academy. Where else but in American where Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Hindu neighbors can share the holidays and visit each other in celebration of the different religious holidays. Where else but in American where millions of immigrants (documented and un-documents) work so hard for this nation and for their families and survive the daily abuses by those who claims they are “patriots”. This country is great because it has hundreds of millions of honest, decent and hardworking parents, and who are also good and active citizens in neighborhood associations. It is great countries because aggrieved mothers can get together and raise a powerful voice and win against the liquor industry that took away their loved ones. It is a great country because student activists got together and pushed for the establishment of the EPA. It is a great country not withstanding some minor errors in its history with the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Alan Dershowitz, Elie Weisel, Bill O’Reilly, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and the KKK among others. It is a great country, because someone like me, an immigrant, the son of an immigrant can write and post these comments. I had the honor and privilege to be not only a citizen of this great country of ours, but also, with my four other brothers’ veterans of its armed services. Yes, Congressman Goode, we love and honor this country as much as you do and we honor this country for its diversity and its encompassing and embracing system, not for its exclusivity and xenophobia based on ignorance and fear. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and Happy Eid to one and to all. This is the great land from California to New York, the land for you and me.

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Senator Kerry. I read with much interest and amazement your article in today’s “Outlook” section of the Washington Post. Yes, I do agree there is nothing wrong with changing one’s mind if one discovers that assumptions made in support of the war, in the first place where wrong. However you and your Democratic colleagues who voted and supported the war, knew the assumptions were not only wrong, but also an absolute lies. You and your colleagues in the Senate were in the best position to seek the truth and have an independent source of finding out the lies of the Chaney-Bush team. We the citizens in the US do not have access to classified information and intelligence reports and we as citizens are not in a position to second-guess the administration, but you and your Democratic colleagues were in such a position. Yet you voted for and supported the war, knowing it was not only wrong but also was based again in lies.
Though I voted for your ticket, you were not my favorite candidate. You simply were too arrogant and too condescending to be the Democratic leader on the presidential ticket. Your arrogance and your flip-fop did lose the Democratic the presidency and with that you are to share with Chaney-Bush the responsibility for the War on Iraq. Not only that but I never imagined that someone who served in combat will allow someone who hid in Texas to claim valor and patriotism and win the election on national security issues. Yes, Mr. Kerry, I believe the Democratic Party did not do us, Democrats and did not do America a favor with it nominated you as the candidate to stand against the Chaney-Bush ticket. There is nothing wrong with changing one’s mind, but there is something wrong when someone does not stand up to what they believe in and go along with the wind.
As an Arab-American I was never convinced that Saddam Hussein when he started his war on Iran was defending the “Arab” nation. Saddam was a coward in the face of the late Shah and did engage in his war on Iran in support of US policy in isolating the new Khomeni regime in Iran. Saddam did engage in his long and bloody and costly war consistent with his part as “stooge” for the Republican administration. He killed millions of people and destroyed his country and its wealth as a “favor” to this country and its long time support for his “Ba’athist” criminal regime. No one wanted to see Saddam go more than I. I spoken out against Saddam when the “Arab streets” where cheering for him in his war on Iran and was against Saddam when he invaded Kuwait, and sad to say again, to the cheers of millions of people on the “Arab streets”. However the Arab street forgot that Saddam was America’s boy carrying out it wrong policies in the Middle East.
The US should have gone to Baghdad at the end of routing Saddam’s Republican Guard, yanking him out of his palace and hanging him from the nearest tree for his crimes against the Iraqis, the Iranians and the Kuwaitis. I am afraid the Democratic Party will lose the next presidential election if it continues to be on the fence, not standing up to issues of great concerns to our people such as the War on Iraq. The Democrats need to make sure that our national security issues are not decided by the Republican chicken hawks and their “Think Tanks”. We in the Democratic Party must shape the debate on national security issues and not allow the alliance between weapon makers and evangelical Christians to succeed in forming the nature of the debate. There are many within the Democratic Party with military service and who are well qualified to speak and lead the discussions. The Democratic Party need a major surgery on its spinal cord and needs a ‘titanium” rod in its place. It is too bad that you failed us all and failed the nation as well. At least you are now on the right track.

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On page 11 of Friday’s (December 22, 2006) Washington Post, Secretary Rice is quoted as saying the Iraq War “ Worth the Investment” and this is the entire quote from the Washington Post “ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said yesterday that Iraq is “worth the investment “ in American lives and dollars” and I continue to quote the Washington Post “When asked whether throwing $100 billion the Pentagon wants for the Iraq and Afghanistan might amount to throwing good money after bad in Iraq, she replied ‘ I don’t think it’s a matter of money. Along the way, there have been plenty of markers that show that this is a country that is worth the investment”.
Now who could ever accept such an absurd statement to come of the Secretary of State, when she and her Boss and all their friends are not the one that has to pay for the this war, not in their lives and certainly not by their money.
One has to wonder what criteria does Secretary Rice used when she describe wasting the lives of more than 3,000 of our men and women, wasting the lives of some 700,000 Iraqi, and of course not counting the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted down the drain on this war. Of course, if Secretary Rice thinks that giving the opportunity to many contractors to steal, rob and waste taxpayers money is worth it, then she is right. I am not so sure this can be the case of the lives of those lost. I am sure their families may think other wise.
The late president Johnson got us in the Vietnam War on false pretenses and lies and now president Bush is doing the same thing, and the those in the military have to pay with their lives for such lies and false pretenses. Yes, those of us who served in the military do expect to fight for and defend the USA. No one can disagree on that, but no one should go to war and fight personal wars and fight and die for wars that are totally based on false pretenses and lies.
Perhaps Secretary Rice needs to travel around this country, to states in the South like Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and travel to states in the North West and Mountain States like Idaho and Wyoming to check and see what are the “markers” and indicators she sees that these states and their citizens are worth the investment. I am sure few hundred billion dollars invested in housing, education, medical care, environmental protection and preservation, child care, job training and job creations will also be worth while in these states and in the rest of the country. One has to wonder how many hospitals and clinics and how many elementary, grade and high schools can be build with these wasted billions. One has to wonder how many universities and job training program that can give the people the opportunity for a decent living and decent lives can these wasted billions for our citizens and taxpayers. The only beneficiaries out of this war are the many contractors and subcontractors who are robbing the Pentagon and the taxpayer’s blind. Of course giving the money to the military industrial alliance may be worth the investment, but I think that our people and our tax payers are more worthy than corporations with big fat checks to their managers and shareholders. Perhaps we the citizens should incorporate and seek contracts from the federal government to send our kids to decent schools and give them the kind of education that at least give them the chance to have a decent job in a changing work environment. No, Dr. Rice, the decision to go to war is not worth the investment. Perhaps you can come back again in few days and says that the US and Israel decision to drop more than 5 million cluster bombs on Lebanon was also worth the investment.

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I always said, in Israel there are more freedom of the press than here in the good old USA, more freedom to talk about Israel and the Occupation, and certainly a whole lot of courage, guts, and moral standing than one can find here in our so called “main stream” media. When it comes to Israel no editor dares to publish what is published in the Israeli press. Such an article will never be printed in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the LA Times or the Chicago Tribune. Sami Jadallah

By Dror Etkes (Peace Now) HaaretzDec. 22, 2006http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/804275.html
The curtain has dropped on the Theater of the Absurd directed by the Iranian regime last week - an event that convened figures from the margins of the Holocaust-denial scene and its `alternative` researchers. In Israel the conference was covered with an emphasis on the statements by the participants and the reactions of Israeli politicians. True, this was an international conference behind which was a country that declares its desire to bring about the fall of the `Zionist regime` - but beyond that hides a deeper factor, which is indicative of the connection between contemporary Israeli identity and the Holocaust. `If the occurrence of the event (the Holocaust) is cast into doubt, the identity of the Zionist regime will also be cast into doubt.` From these words, spoken at the opening session by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, it emerges that the Iranian regime has correctly identified the connections that exist in Israel between the Holocaust and local politics. One of the formative historical events of the West today, whose significance is relevant to all of humanity, the Holocaust is continuing more than 60 years later to provide Israel with an alibi for the deviancy of its political choices. Israel, with no real distinction between the establishment political left and the right with all its offshoots, continues to make use of the Holocaust in a way that combines cynicism and boorishness. Even though there is indeed a considerable and complex connection between the Holocaust and Israeli political culture, there isn`t - nor has there ever been - any justification for harnessing its memory for the sake of preserving the continuing occupation project that Israel has been conducting for 40 years now in the territories. Israel`s attitude toward the Holocaust is not really derived from the way in which the leadership is responding to the incendiary declarations of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his propagandists, which above all testify to the speakers themselves. It is possible to learn about this attitude from, among other things, the way in which it relates to the tens of thousands of survivors in whose flesh and minds the Nazis` crimes are etched, who live here in disgraceful conditions and below the poverty line. However, the real treatment of the survivors is apparently a lot less glamorous than the cult of the worship surrounding those who were murdered, which provides a stage for every politician who is seeking his way to the center of the consensus. Thus, as was recently published again in Haaretz, the state is continuing to nationalize the reparations monies that are transferred to it for the benefit of those hundreds of thousands of survivors - while criminally neglecting many of them. The primitive instrumentalist use that Iranian politics is making of the Holocaust is nothing but a mirror image of the way the memory of the Holocaust is exploited in political life in Israel. One of the aims of the Iranian campaign to `research the historical truth` surrounding the Holocaust is to unravel the system of justifications that Israeli politics has been accustomed to using in its all-too-frequent definition of the criticism of those politics, expressed both domestically and abroad as being tainted with anti-Semitism. Thus the role of the Holocaust as the sole justification for the existence of Israel has been sharpened, instead of focusing on the fact that today more than 7 million people of varied origins and nationalities are living in this country - a place which in most cases is their only possible home. If indeed the Iranian foreign minister is correct and this is the sole source of legitimacy from which the Zionist project derives today, then apparently the time has indeed come for a radical revision of the concept of Zionism. And it would be a good thing if this is done before Ahmadinejad and his ultra-Orthodox partners from Brooklyn launch a new production. The author coordinates the settlement follow-up in the Peace Now movement.

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