Jefferson Corner

Every one including the Palestinian leadership talks of aids, peace discussions etc, yet no one talks of ending the Israeli Occupation to immediate end. Of course, Israelis and beyond them the Jewish community at large simply ignor that the Israeli and Jewish Occupation is not only legally wrong, but morally wrong as well. For a community that talks so much of morality, there is not only total silence, but try to find execuses and justification for the worst military occupation in modern history after the Nazi and Japanes occupation. My wife told me of an incident that happened in an Israeli court looking into fraudulent property transaction. When the Palestinian landowner presented all the legal documents proving evidence of ownership according to Israeli laws, the Jewish settlers stood up in court and said, but I have a more superior document of ownership one from G-d. Of course, the document was did not have the seal and signiture of G-d and was not legalized at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Worse Than Apartheid?
By Robert D. NovakMonday, April 9, 2007; 12:00 AM
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Hani Hayek, an accountant who is the Christian mayor of the tiny majority-Christian Palestinian village of Beit Sahour, was angry last week as he drove me along the Israeli security wall. “They are taking our communal lands,” he said, pointing to the massive Israeli settlement of Har Homa. “They don’t want us to live here. They want us to leave.”
Har Homa, dwarfing nearby dwellings of Beit Sahour, seemed larger than when I saw it at Holy Week a year ago. It is. The Israeli government has steadily enlarged settlements on the occupied West Bank, and I could see both the construction at Har Homa and road building for a dual transportation system for Israelis and Palestinians.
Jimmy Carter raised hackles by titling his book about the Palestinian question “Peace Not Apartheid.” But Palestinians allege this is worse than the former South African racial separation. Nearing the 40th anniversary of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, the territory has been so fragmented that a genuine Palestinian state and a “two-state solution” seem increasingly difficult.
The security wall has led to virtual elimination of suicide bombings and short-term peace. But life is hard for Palestinians, whose deaths because of conflict increased 272 percent in 2006 while Israeli casualties declined. In a minor incident last week of the type that goes unnoticed internationally, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troopers killed a Palestinian man accused of illegally entering a firing zone while collecting metal scraps to sell. The Britain-based organization Save the Children estimates that half the children in the occupied territories are psychologically traumatized.
Palestinians argue that things have gotten worse because of pervasive feelings of hopelessness. Students at Bethlehem University (run by the Catholic Brothers of De La Salle, with an enrollment that is 70 percent Muslim) sounded more pessimistic and radicalized than a year ago. Ahmad al Issa, a fourth-year journalism student, was held for a year in an Israeli prison on charges of throwing stones at Israeli troops. Now he has bought into the libel that Jewish employees at the World Trade Center were warned in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The U.S.-backed boycott following the election victory of the extremist group Hamas in early 2006 has made the Palestinian Authority destitute, crippling government services. Deprived of help from the authority, with the economy in a shambles, city governments are bankrupt. Bethlehem’s mayor, Victor Batarseh, has a special problem because tourists and pilgrims no longer stay overnight in the city of Christ’s birth. Out of money and credit, he is ready to lay off the city’s 165 staffers.
Batarseh, a U.S. citizen who practiced thoracic surgery in Sacramento, is pinned down in Bethlehem. A Christian and political independent who calls himself a private-enterprise democrat, Batarseh is on the Israeli blacklist because he contributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the State Department has designated a terrorist organization. Denied permits for Jerusalem, the mayor must drive to Amman, Jordan, to get to meetings in Europe.
Contact with the PFLP is not a requirement for being holed up by the Israel Defense Forces. Bethlehem University students cannot get to Jerusalem, a few minutes’ drive away, unless they sneak in illegally. The students from the separated Gaza enclave have to take classes from Bethlehem via the Internet.
Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey was at the university the same day I was, and faculty members could hardly believe a real live member of Congress was there. Smith later was given a tour of Jerusalem to see with his own eyes that the separation barrier in most places is a big, ugly and intimidating wall, not merely a fence.
Smith, an active Catholic layman, was drawn here because of the rapid emigration of the Holy Land’s Christian minority. They leave more quickly than Muslims because contacts on the outside make them more mobile. Peter Corlano, a Catholic member of the Bethlehem University faculty, told Smith and me: “We live the same life as Muslims. We are Palestinians.”
Concerned by the disappearance of Christians in the land of Christianity’s birthplace, Smith could also become (as I did) concerned by the plight of all Palestinians. If so, he will find precious little company in Congress.
© 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

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George Bush not known for his smarts and is well known for choosing mediocre if not incompetent senior officers within the administration (minor exceptions are Bill Gates and John Roberts, chose to circumvent the normal process of having senior appointments come before US Senate, chose to appoint Daniel Pipes board members of US Institute of Peace and chose to appoint John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN.
Daniel Pipes is not known for his intellect nor for his intellectual credentials, but is well known for his hate and his attacks on freedom of speech through his dog pack like organizations Campus Watch and his attacks on Arabs and Muslim was appointed to perhaps one of the most prestigious US institutions known for the quality of scholars it hosts and well known for the work it does around the world and of course the god face of an otherwise ugly ad vindictive foreign policy.
Of course Pipes appointment was against the majority will of the US Senate and many of senators voiced their appositions to such appointments. However George Bush chose to be feisty and chose such an obnoxious senior officers and his appointment is nothing more than an insult to our sense of sensibilities and our sense of honor and dignity. One would think that George Bush would chose against the advice of his senior administration advisor one who will promote reconciliations and who will promote the mission and vision of the US Institute of Peace. As one except from such an incompetent administration, George Bush chose Daniel Pipes to sit on the board of directors of US Institute of Peace.
Adding insult to injury, again, George Bush chose other senior officers not know for his intellect but is well know for being obnoxious to represent us at the UN.
One only to recall some of our UN ambassadors such as Henry Cabot Lodge, George Bush, Arthur Goldberg, Richard Halbrook, even Madeline Albright and compare to that of John Bolton. What an insult such an appointment not only to us, the people of the US but to the UN and to the world at large.
However with the exception of John Roberts and Robert Gates, most if not all appointees where chosen for their right wing ideology and not known for their competence and intellect. One only need to see how we made such a big mess of Iraq and how George Bush and Dick Chaney chose to appoint a High Commissioner, Paul Bremer, who knew nothing about Iraq and whose decisions are directly responsible for the tens of dead US soldiers and Iraqis and responsible for the big mess that is Iraq today and responsible for the billions of dollars stolen by US corporation and of course stolen by senior Iraqi officials.
Thanks God, our democracy does not allow such incompetent, vindictive highly ideological president and vice president to stay in power beyond their maximum 8 years term. We can only hope that Cheney/Bush team will not commit more stupid reckless ventures in what is left of their term. Their tenure can only be classified as the worst in our history and history of the world. There are jinxed from day one. They came to power not to uplift American but to destroy what ever great things we have. They totally failed at their war on terror, and they succeeded to fleece the country and take it to being broke and of course they could only succeed in instilling hate and fear in our people and the world. They will not be missed.

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